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"This will all make sense in a minute. I promise." She sipped her coffee, and I noticed a silver Navajo bracelet on her right arm. No wedding ring on either hand. "Take your time," I urged. Despite my strong preference that people get right to the point, experience had taught me that the best way to conduct an interview was to shut up and listen. "As I said," she continued, "my specialty is fractal geometry." I noted the Ph.D. from Harvard on the wall to my right. "Last year I began working on a paper I intended to present at a conference this fall. It's publish or perish, you know." "So I've heard." "When I completed my draft, I wanted someone else to cri- tique it." She finished her coffee and set the mug to one side. "The last thing you want to do is publish a paper that contains a flaw." "So you have your colleagues read it in advance to see if they can poke holes in it?" "Yes, but my colleagues here wouldn't be much help. Fractal geometry is a rather narrow specialty, so I compiled a list of five of the most respected people in the field and attempted to contact them to see if they would be willing to critique it." Her slender neck became visibly tense and I thought she might be having trouble breathing. "Are you all right?" I asked. She took a deep breath and nodded affirmatively. "Mr. Keane," she continued, "when I attempted to contact these people, I learned that two had been murdered and a third had committed suicide." "Over what span of time?" "All within six months of each other," she said. "Do you know the odds against that?" It was a rhetorical question, but I had a hunch she could tell me the odds right down to the decimal point if she wanted to. "And you want me to find out if these deaths were related?"