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It was the first time since they’d come into his apartment that Webber actually looked scared. He cast his eye to the floor, thinking. He then looked toward his bedroom and shrugged. “I think the only proof would be on my laptop, but I don't even know how you'd go about finding the proof."
“Do you work late?”
“Not all of the time. I’ll go a week or two without working at all, but I'll work crazy hours other weeks to make up for it. This week and last week have been crazy ones. Some nights I'm up until almost one in the morning or so, working."
“Any Zoom calls or anything like that?”
“No.”
“Any software with autosave?”
“I honestly couldn’t tell you. Maybe. It’s a combination of Google Docs and a file management system.”
“Google Docs uses autosave,” Rachel said. “And if the file management system requires a log-in, we could use it to back up your story. Would you allow us to check your computer?”
“I…I think I’m uncomfortable with that.”
“So you’re saying no?” Jack asked.
“I just—”
"Listen," Rachel said. "I'm not concerned about your extracurriculars right now…anything you might be doing on the side. Right now, I'm only concerned about making sure no one else dies. And quite frankly, if I have to get a warrant to have a look at your computer, that’s going to delay us by hours. And that’s going to piss me off. Just make it easier on us here…and maybe help us save a few lives.”
Webber looked positively sick with worry, but he nodded and waved his hand almost dismissively at his laptop.
“Fine,” he said. “Whatever you need,. But I'm telling you right now, I had nothing to do with either of those murders. Both of those women were remarkable, and whoever killed them robbed the world of two bright and brilliant minds."
He led them into his surprisingly tidy bedroom. His twin bed was pushed into a corner, and his workspace took up roughly half of the remaining room. The desk was actually quite nice, as was the laptop and accessories. Everything was nice, neat and in its proper place. Webber walked over to the laptop and signed into his Google account.
“Okay, so…this is the project I’ve been working on for the past three days,” Webber said.
He stepped aside, allowing Rachel to take control of the laptop’s touchpad. It took her a moment to remember what needed to be done because she hadn’t used the program in quite some time. But in under a minute, she found the version control feature. And in just a few clicks, she was able to pull up the document history. She found that he’d worked until 11:47 last night, and 1:32 the night before that. Most importantly, though, she saw a series of autosaves and corrections on the night Emma Willis was murdered that did indeed pin him to this very bedroom between the hours of 7:30 and 12:26. And because they knew Dr. Willis had been attacked before midnight, it did rule him out.
“What about six nights ago?” Sullivan asked. “What were you working on then?”
“That’s when Jane was killed, eh?” Webber asked with an edge of irritated sarcasm. Without waiting for an answer, he opened up two different documents. “Both of these. This last one was wrapped that night. I delivered it through the management system, which I’m actually currently logged into.”
Even without looking behind her, Rachel could feel a sort of deflation to Sullivan. She then checked the same details as before. The first document confirmed that he’d been working on it up until eight at night. The second one showed edits and revisions all the way up until 9:35. She then checked the management system and saw that two notes and a single file had been uploaded at 1:14.
She pulled up the information on Dr. Adler in her head. The reports had indicated that the figure passing through the halls shortly after midnight. She figured, based on the drive to Sunquest Apartments, that the drive over to Adler’s labs would take twenty minutes or so. In other words, he wasn’t completely cleared from either murder, but he would have had to plan things masterfully to pull it off.
She glanced back and saw that Sullivan had taken a few steps in her direction to look over her shoulder. He did look deflated, apparently coming to the same conclusions she had. They locked eyes for a moment, and he simply nodded.
“Mr. Webber,” he said, “most of this does check out. But we’re going to have to ask you not to leave the city until we have some answers in this case.”
“Okay…”
“And beyond that,” Rachel said, “we need to ask if you had any initial thoughts when you heard about the murders. Did anyone come to mind…anyone you thought might want either of them dead?”
“No, not really. My first thought was that it was just some overzealous protestor. I’m sure you know that people tend to get very up in arms over stem cells. It’s becoming a little more accepted, but not nearly as much as we’d like to see.”
“Were there any organizations or individual protestors you can think of that ever specifically targeted Dr. Willis or Dr. Adler?”
They were still standing in his bedroom, between is desk and bed. Something about it all made him seem so much more vulnerable to Rachel.
“No. Of course, they more or less erased me from their lives after all of my mistakes. So if they’d had issues with anyone in the past year and a half to two years or so, I’d not know about it anyway.” He grimaced a bit and when he looked to both of them—back and forth as if to truly drive home his sincerity—he looked to be on the verge of tears. “I wish…I wish I could be of more help. I was especially taken with Dr. Adler. I was sure she was going to revolutionize the field…that within a decade, her stem cells approaches would help hundreds of thousands of people in terms of regenerative medicines. Both women…such terrible losses.”
The comment seemed to bring the conversation to a close. And though Carl Webber wasn’t quite off the hook, Rachel knew a dead end when she saw one. He was innocent—it was just a matter of proving it by finding the true killer.
