Page 45 of Hard Heart

“I don’t get it.”

“Water electrolysis… Potential…”

“Still nothing.”

“You need a potential difference between the electrodes. A minimum difference in voltage of at least one point two three, although in practice, it’s more like one point five because… Never mind. That isn’t really relevant to our purpose.”

No, it wasn’t. But for the briefest of moments, I glimpsed the real Levi Sykes, the man who geeked out over science and spoke excitedly about a subject that interested him. Now he was back to his usual, controlled self.

“So you have hydrogen and oxygen?” I prompted.

“Yes. The oxygen has industrial and medical uses, and the hydrogen can be used as a fuel. And when you put it in, say, a vehicle, you can use a fuel cell to reverse the process—hydrogen and oxygen combine to make water and electricity, and it’s the electricity that powers the car.”

“Which is why Big Oil doesn’t much like it?”

“Exactly. August and I were working on a more efficient method of water electrolysis, one that needed less energy to create the hydrogen in the first place. But the truth is, we probably weren’t as far along as people thought. August liked to talk up the project because we were always in competition for grants, but we were years off a prototype, let alone a commercial solution. My PhD research only covered one very small area—the material the electrodes were made from.”

“Was anyone else working with you?”

“Several grad students. But it was my work that showed the most p…promise.”

“You nearly said ‘potential’ again, didn’t you?”

“Don’t go there,” he warned, but he was smiling.

“And you possibly kept a backup?”

The smile dropped. “Off-limits. If it still exists, it’ll never see the light of day.”

Fine. We’d move on, for now at least. Maybe someday I’d push him again, but today, I needed to keep him talking.

“Then let’s move on to item two: Justin Norquist. I did some research last week, and as you said, he’s still living in Virginia. He’s engaged to a model named Melanie Dean.”

“Bet she’s a redhead,” Sykes said.

“How did you know that?”

“Justin always went for redheads.”

“But Ruby was blonde.”

“Which is why I say he got paid for killing her. It wasn’t a sex game gone wrong. She just wasn’t his type.”

“What if he’d been drinking? There was wine flowing that night.”

“Justin was a pliable drunk, but not a violent one. Plus he was engaged at the time, and he wasn’t a philanderer. Grey had already claimed that role and made it his own.”

“You’re talking about Greyson Meyer? Congressman Meyer?”

“Yeah, I heard he ran for office. Figures.”

“Why does it figure?”

“He had a silver tongue and fluid morals.”

“When you say ‘fluid morals’…?”

“Still not murderous.”