Free Death Match by Lincoln Child

was clear none of the faces assembled here belonged to him. Some looked at Lash with curiosity; others with grave concern; still others with an expression that was probably hope.
    John Lelyveld sat in the same chair he’d occupied at the first meeting. “Dr. Lash.” And he waved at the sole vacant seat. Mauchly quietly closed the door to the boardroom and stood before it, arms behind his back.
    The chairman turned to a woman at his right. “Stop the transcription, if you please, Ms. French.” Then he looked back at Lash. “Would you care for anything? Coffee, tea?”
    “Coffee, thanks.” Lash studied Lelyveld’s face as the man made brisk introductions. The benevolent, almost grandfatherly manner of the prior meeting was gone. Now the Eden chairman seemed formal, preoccupied, a little distant.
This is no longer a coincidence
, Lash thought,
and he knows it
. Directly or indirectly, Eden was involved.
    The coffee arrived and Lash accepted it gratefully: there had been no time for sleep the night before.
    “Dr. Lash,” Lelyveld said. “I think everyone would be more comfortable if we got straight to the matter at hand. I realize you haven’t had much time, but I wonder if you could bring us up to speed on anything you’ve learned, and whether—” he paused to glance around the table “—whether there’s any explanation.”
    Lash sipped his coffee. “I’ve spoken with the coroner and local law enforcement. On the face of it, everything still points to the original conclusion of double suicide.”
    Lelyveld frowned. Several chairs away, a man who’d been introduced as Gregory Minor, executive vice president, moved restlessly in his seat. He was younger than Lelyveld, black-haired, with an intelligent, penetrating gaze. “What about the Wilners themselves?” he asked. “Any indications to explain this?”
    “None. It’s just like the Thorpes. The Wilners had everything going for them. I talked to an emergency room intern who knew the couple. They had great jobs: John an investment banker, Karen a university librarian. She was pregnant with their first child. No history of depression or anything else. No apparent financial difficulties, no family tragedies of any kind. The autopsy bloods were clean. It will take a thorough investigation to be certain, but there seems no evidence to indicate suicidal tendencies.”
    “Except the bodies,” Minor said.
    “The evaluator at their class reunion here made a similar report. They seemed just as happy as the rest of the couples.” Lelyveld glanced at Lash. “You used the phrase ‘on the face of it.’ Care to elaborate?”
    Lash took another sip of coffee. “It’s obvious the suicides in Flagstaff and Larchmont are related. We’re not dealing with coincidence. And so we need to treat these incidents as what, at Quantico, we termed ‘equivocal death.’ ”
    “Equivocal death?” Caroline Long sat to his right, her blond hair almost colorless in the artificial light. “Explain, please.”
    “It’s a type of analysis the Bureau pioneered twenty years ago. We know the victims, we know how they died, but we don’t yet know the
manner
of death. In this case, double suicide, suicide-homicide—or homicide.”
    “Homicide?” said Minor. “Just a minute. You said the police are treating these deaths as suicides.”
    “I know.”
    “And everything you’ve observed agrees with that finding.”
    “That’s correct. I mention equivocal death because what we have is an enigma. Every
physical
sign points to suicide. But every
psychological
sign points away from it. So we can’t close our minds to any possibility.”
    He looked around the table. When nobody spoke, he went on.
    “What are those possibilities? If we’re dealing with homicide, then it has to be somebody who knew both couples. A rejected suitor, perhaps? Or somebody who was rejected as an Eden client by your winnowing process and now holds a grudge?”
    “Impossible,” Minor said. “Our