Murder Is Pathological

by P. M. Carlson

  Suddenly he noticed what he was looking at. A bank of cages, eight high and twenty wide.

  Well. He had things to tell Maggie tonight.

  “Going for a walk,” he announced to Murph a little before ten. “Don’t shoot me when I come back, okay?”

  “Where do you walk around here?”

  “Woods. Not much else around. But I have to get out of that sanitary air for a while.”

  “Yeah. I know what you mean. I’m an outdoor guy myself. Well, when you come back, walk right up the middle of the driveway. I can see you then.”

  “Hands up, waving a white flag,” said Nick. Murph looked at him suspiciously, and he added hastily, “See you in about an hour.”

  Nick wandered off into the woods, toward the ridge. Once among the trees he angled south. The moonlight sprinkled through the leaves, but it was still hard to progress without bumping into saplings and bushes periodically. God, he was tired. He needed sleep. O gentle sleep, nature’s soft nurse, et cetera. He found his way finally to the stony shelf near the bottom of the ridge, where the rock prevented much growth, and followed it with better speed to the fire watchtower.

  Maggie was there already, sitting comfortably halfway up the ladder. To Nick’s weary eyes she seemed ethereal, a fantasy of black curls and long limbs from some imagined realm of youth and grace, Ariel to his own earthbound Caliban. When she saw him she rose and swung up the last steps to the little room. The thin light spattered the floor irregularly, leaving deep shadows. Nick hauled himself up after her and sat down heavily on the floor in one corner.

  “Tired?” she asked, sitting opposite him in a patch of dim light.

  “Not much time for sleep on this job.”

  “Think about that next time before you volunteer.” Her voice was almost sympathetic.

  “Yeah. The jobs George finds for me have more reasonable hours.”

  “He’d never have let you sign for this one.”

  “Never.”

  “Well.’’ She was businesslike again. “I got your packages.’’

  “Good. Sorry I couldn’t warn you, but someone was coming down the hall. I had to get off the phone.”

  “It’s all right. Takes more than a rat to shock me now. Though I’ll have to admit that these were not in good shape. They looked just like Norman’s. I refrigerated them all.”

  “Good.”

  There was a wicked smile in her eyes. “I just hope my roomies don’t decide to raid the fridge.”

  “God!” Nick shuddered. “Do you suppose the Guatemalans have a recipe?”

  “I told them it was dog food for Zelle.”

  “Wise.” With an effort, he pulled his dallying mind back to the business at hand. “Look, Maggie, I have a lot to report. For starts, I know what Norman knew. Some of it.”

  “You do?” A joyous sparkle lit her eyes. Suddenly it didn’t matter how tired he was.

  He said, “It’s a map of a bank of cages in the breeding room. His sister said there were half a dozen papers, right?”

  “Right!”

  “Six banks of cages in the breeding room, eight cages high and twenty cages wide.”

  “Terrific! And the numbers?”

  “First let me tell you about the old lab last night.”

  “Okay.’’ Elbows on knees, she was leaning forward eagerly.

  “Two things last night. Thing One, I found Tom Conklin sneaking around in the dark. Had to knock him out so he wouldn’t spot me.”

  “Tom! You mean inside the old lab? What was he doing?”

  “I don’t know. There was a stack of paper in the hall. And there was Thing Two. A room full of rats.”

  “In the old lab?”

  “Right.”

  “Lab rats?”

  “Lab rats. Caged. Carefully taken care of, clean bedding and so forth. This last week I’ve developed a connoisseur’s eye for rat bedding.”

  She grinned. “I warned you that this is an educational institution.”

  “Well, I’m ready for a doctorate in rats. These were related to the main lab rats.”

  “How do you know, doc?”

  Nick adjusted imaginary spectacles, shuffled imaginary papers. “Following the guidelines set down by a certain widely known statistician,” he intoned, “a random sample of three rats in the old lab was taken, and their cage cards memorized. Upon comparison with the cards of the main breeding colony, it was discovered that two out of three rats had mothers in the breeding colony.”

  “Sorry,” she said with mock regret, “not statistically significant. But even though you can’t publish it, I’ll accept your conclusion.”

  “Good of you.”

  “But how could they be there? Wouldn’t Gib notice if some of the rats were gone? Why wouldn’t he say something? Do you think he did it?”

  “There was one difference between them and the rats in the main lab.”

  “Yeah?”

  “They were all adults, well past weaning. But their ears hadn’t been notched.”

  She frowned as she worked out the implications. “That means they were moved before weaning, if their mothers are in the new lab. Because up till then they’d be part of a litter in a common cage, right? When they’re weaned they get their individual code numbers notched into their ears.”

  “Right.”

  “But how could someone steal a whole litter without someone noticing? Oh, I see. Leave most of them. But there’s still a problem. The number of pups in the litter is written on the litter cage card, you said.” He nodded and she went on. “But suppose you redid the cards, changed the numbers of pups written there. No one would know. Unless—” The blue eyes widened in excitement.

  Nick nodded again. “Unless someone remembered. Unless someone noticed that litters of nine kept turning out to be litters of seven, and so forth.”

  “Right!” Enthusiastically, her mind leapfrogged over this discovery to the next. “So somebody’s doing a secret study in the old lab! And Norman started noticing things, and Norman was killed!”

  X

  “But why would a study have to be secret even from Norman?”

  After a moment she said, “Quit asking hard questions.”

  “I thought that was what educational institutions were for.”

  “All right, here’s one for you. Who’s doing it?”

  “Well, there’s Tom,” he said dubiously.

  “Yeah.” She didn’t sound very satisfied with the idea either.

  “Of course, if he figured a way to get in, maybe others could too.”

  “Yeah. Let’s not rule anyone out yet. It could be anyone, professors, grads, Gib.”

  “Which reminds me. Just tonight Gib was telling Murph and me that someone offered him money to spy on Dr. Weisen’s research.”

  “Who?”

  “He was offended and hung up on them before he got any details. But he figured it was one of the drug companies.”

  “Well, that makes sense. Maybe that’s what Tom is up to. Do you think they would ask him to do a study? But that’s silly. They’ve got facilities of their own. It would make more sense for them to do it privately, themselves. Nick, we’ve got more questions than ever!”

  “That’s what progress is. Trading in old questions for new.”

  “Yeah.” She pulled her knees closer to her chin and studied her sneakered toes intently. “Part of the answer is probably sitting in my freezer. But I can’t figure it out. We need someone who can use a microscope.”

  “But what can we do, if we can’t trust Monica?”

  “Oh, we can. I’ve changed my mind about her, Nick. I mean, I don’t want to tell her much yet, because she’s not an actress. She might give you away. That would be dangerous for both of you. But we can let her look at the rats. She’s okay.”

  “You’re sure?” This was quite a change from yesterday’s hurt, betrayed anger.

  “I’m sure.” She nodded vehemently. “We had a long and confidential talk this afternoon.
And she’s okay. She’s a remarkable person. She changed my mind about a lot of things.”

  Nick said, “I’m glad you’re friends again, Maggie.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  What was it? She seemed more luminous tonight, softer, somehow. Probably just the moonlight, and his weary mind playing tricks. He was too tired to think quite straight. He waited a minute, but she didn’t add anything. So he said, “Ask her about two things when she looks at the rats.”

  “Okay. What?”

  “One, there wasn’t much blood. I wondered about that. And two, when rats are frightened, they defecate, as we say in educational institutions. My connoisseur’s eye saw very little sign of that. Not around the heap of rats, not even in the cages they came from.”

  “My God, Nick, you really throw yourself into a role, don’t you? Stanislavski would be proud of you.”

  “I’m hoping for a Tony. Best performance in a rat lab.”

  “Okay. Blood and shit it is. I’ll ask her. Anything else?”

  “Not for her. But I timed the incinerator last night after all the excitement.”

  “And?”

  “It ran a bit over twice as long as it should have.”

  “Wow.” She leaned back against the wooden wall of the little room and stretched out long legs in front of her. Nick, propped bone-weary against the opposite wall admiring her, found that he was sick of labs, of Rick, of Dr. Weisen’s highly important experiment. Sick of rats. The only worthwhile thing was the lanky, vivid woman sitting across from him.

  She, unfortunately, was talking about rats.

  “The incinerator time fits, doesn’t it?” she was saying. “The extra rats in the old lab have to be disposed of somehow when the experiment is done. So instead of leaving them around where someone might notice, the incinerator is used.”

  “And used very cleverly,” Nick agreed. “Our schedule is for me to put in the day’s carcasses, run it overnight, let the day people clean out the ashes next morning. No one will be around it at three a.m. or whatever. And from inside the lab, you know only if the safety lock is on. You can’t tell if it’s in its active phase or its cool-down phase. The smoke is all that tells you it’s still active.”

  “Why did you notice the smoke?”

  “I wouldn’t have, except that my window gives me a view of it, and I lay there my first night feeling morbid and thinking of Auschwitz.”

  “God, Nick.”

  “I’ll try to check it more often these next nights. Whoever it is has to add the new load at night after the incinerator has cooled down from the first.”

  “Have you heard anything? Footsteps?”

  “The ventilation system masks most noises. The building has its creaks and bumps in the night, of course, but you can’t really identify them. I’ll check in person.” More lost sleep ahead.

  “There’s the old lab too.”

  “Yeah. I’ll try. But I can’t be two places at once. And the rats were killed in the new lab, so that has to come first.”

  “Okay. God, we’re up against a tough one, Nick. He’s managed to spirit rats out of the new lab into the old one, and alter the cage cards so skillfully that only Norman noticed. He’s maintained those rats on a daily basis in the old lab, probably experimented on them somehow, and finally disposed of them in the new lab incinerator. Nobody was suspicious except poor Norman.”

  “And now poor us.”

  “I love the way you look on the bright side. Anyway, my idea is that this has to be a well-organized person. Keeps things going smoothly.”

  “That description fits everyone at the lab. Except Tom, maybe.”

  “Yes, but wait. Whoever this is panicked, you see, when Norman found out about the lost rats. So I think we should interrupt the smoothness. See what happens when something goes wrong.”

  “We know what happens, Maggie. Murder.”

  “Yes. Norman’s. That’s why we’re here, remember? Because the person who killed him is walking around here, free.”

  Nick said warily, “What do you have in mind?”

  “No confrontations. Hell, who would we confront? But suppose something went wrong with the incinerator?”

  “Maggie, I can’t! I don’t know how the damn thing works!”

  “Bet I could figure it out.”

  “I bet you could too. But mere statisticians aren’t allowed back in that area. No, that’s no good. Let’s think of something else.”

  “Like telling the police? Hey, officer, somebody’s doing experiments at the experimental lab? And even using the rat incinerator to incinerate rats?”

  “Doesn’t sound like a felony, does it?”

  “We could tell Weisen, I guess. But that would mean showing your hand. It’s the same problem as with Monica. He’s so open he’d give it away. I hate to reveal all this before we have something on the murderer.”

  “True. But we have another goal too. We want Weisen’s experiment to succeed. With Murph and me both watching, we can probably get to Thursday without catastrophe. We shouldn’t sacrifice that either.’’

  “No, of course not. But I still think a little bobble in the smoothness would be a good idea.”

  “Norman’s little bobble got him killed.”

  She stood up, crossed to the window, and looked down at the labs. “We’ll be careful,” she said. “Anyway, the person most likely to kill someone is that trigger-happy Irishman down there.”

  “Good old Murph.” Nick grinned. “Mislike me not for my complexion, the shadowed livery of the burnished sun.”

  “A bigot, huh?”

  “Yeah. I couldn’t resist telling him I was mostly Irish. Made him uncomfortable.”

  She laughed and sat down again. “Irish via Africa. The Nairobi O’Connors.”

  “Top o’ the mornin’, honky.”

  “Right.” Still grinning, she studied her shoes again. “Well, okay. Keep your eyes open around the lab, then. I’ll hit Monica with the problem tomorrow night. I just hope she doesn’t let anything slip. She has to spend hours around our chief suspects. And she’s not as good at lying as we are.”

  “We’re Olympic caliber, all right.”

  “But listen, Unk, be careful. We know as much as Norman now. More.”

  “Okay. No bicycling on the highway for you either, Mademoiselle.”

  “I promise.’’ She glanced up briefly, then down at her clasped hands.

  “Well, then,” said Nick. But when she still didn’t move, he asked, “Is there anything else?”

  “Yeah. George called.”

  “What did he want? Is there an audition or something?”

  “Well, no. He seemed to be calling as a friend, not as an agent. He started railing at me. Said I should leave you alone, you’re a decent guy, I should quit leading you on.”

  “I see.” Nick rubbed his tired face. Damn George. “So you said you’d told me to get lost a million times, and for him to get the hell off your back.”

  “Well, I didn’t put it so politely.”

  “I’ll bet.” George had probably had his ears burned off. Served him right. Nick said, “My friends are unanimous in their disapproval of my love life.”

  “Yes.” She flexed her hands, and added, “He told me to tell you not to worry about Carmen.”

  “Oh?”

  “He said she’d called asking about you twice this week, and the third time he took her under his wing, and you’re a damn fool.”

  “I see.” George was certainly right on that score. Well, maybe he and Carmen would be good for each other. Or maybe not. Nick was clearly not the one to advise people on how to run their lives. As Romeo he’d earned the booby prize.

  “Who’s Carmen, Nick?”

  “She was a friend.”

  “Why did George want me to know about her?”

  “He doesn’t understand.”

  “He thought I’d be jealous or something?”

  “Maybe.” Nick realized he had to explain. “I was trying to forg
et, Maggie, and poor Carmen happened to be handy. I was rotten to her. That’s what brought me to my senses. Or what passes for my senses. I realized that forgetting was not an alternative. Damn George anyway.” Wretched rash intruding fool. Things were bad enough without his meddling. The little whisper of partial victory he had felt earlier, when he realized what Norman’s diagram had meant, had evaporated now. Everything seemed pointless, or dangerous, or hopeless.

  Maggie said softly, “I’ve done that too, Nick.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been rotten to people, trying to forget. Doesn’t work.”

  Suddenly reckless, too tired to be careful, Nick said, “Maggie, we’re both unhappy. And I’d leave you alone. But you love me.”

  A long silence while she studied her sneakers. Finally she said, “Yeah.”

  Astounding syllable. Confirming his hope, and simultaneously confirming his despair. He asked, “What is it, then? Why can’t we work something out? What the hell am I fighting?”

  Again, she was quiet, then said without looking up, “It’s that I can’t trust you.”

  He felt a sudden need to inspect his own shoes. “Can’t trust me? George Washington and Walter Cronkite rolled into one?”

  “I know, Nick. Look, imagine one of your happy little rats on an electric grid.”

  “An electric grid?”

  “And imagine a teenage girl. She’s going to be an astronaut and an Olympic champion and a concert musician and a mother of about fourteen kids. And a Nobel Prize winner. She can do anything.”

  “Still can.”

  “Not anymore. She meets a wonderful man. Older than she is, getting an engineering degree, a gymnast. All laughing blue eyes and intelligence and fun. There are a few wonderful months. Lots of promises and laughter. And then he disappears.”

  “Why?”

  “The old squalid story. She gets pregnant. And he’s married already, a father already. He forgot to tell her.”

  “Bastard!”

  “Yeah. Well, being pregnant at sixteen, and abandoned, is not one of life’s high points. Every answer is wrong. Every answer hurts someone. The bright-eyed girl who’s going to save the world can’t even—” She broke off, drew a deep shaky breath. “Anyway, it takes her four years to patch herself together again. She throws herself into schoolwork and music and friendships, and grieves, and gets better. Wiser, she thinks.”