He did not pause to inspect them further, but lifted the bags and removed them quickly through the service door into the woods. The first priority was to get them to a safe place. He slung them over his shoulder. Small creatures, but they added up. The three bags together were close to a hundred pounds. He made his way as quickly as he could through the dark foliage, across behind the new lab to the rocky ledge, and along the path to the little hollow where Maggie sat waiting for him.
“Santa Claus!” she said delightedly when she saw him.
“Ho ho ho,” said Nick. He put down the bags. “Actually that’s Weisen’s department. This department is more like coals for naughty little kids.”
She peered into a bag. “Oh, God, Nick! Jackpot!”
“Your incinerator trick worked. I think it’s the whole colony from the old lab. They’re all gone.”
“At least they aren’t mutilated this time. Well, as the naughtiest kid here, I guess I’ll take them.” She retied the neck of the bag and looked up at him owlishly, triumphant and grateful and adorable. Steady, he told himself. This is merely your buddy, Nick old man. Damn, damn. She asked, “Do you have more to do at the lab?”
“Yes. I should get some decoy bags filled with wood and pine cones and stuff. Maybe whoever it is will try to incinerate them when the incinerator’s fixed tomorrow.”
“Okay. Why don’t I take these to Monica, get her started, and meet you back here in an hour? I want to ask you about something.”
“Why not ask now?”
“Well, it may be complicated. And we both have to hurry.”
“Okay. See you soon, then.”
She picked up the first bag and limped off, the weight and uneven path and sore leg giving her the ungainly look of a temporarily earthbound heron. She’d worked so hard. He hoped Monica could help answer the questions.
He strolled back to the new lab and to the supply closet. He had just put three fresh plastic bags into his jeans pocket when he heard steps coming in the front door. Tom.
“Hello, Mr. Conklin.”
“Hi, Rick. How’re you doing?”
“Fine, thanks.”
“Working hard?”
“Well,” said Nick, “I was just finishing up. Thought I’d take a little walk.”
“It’s still pretty warm out there. Enjoy yourself.” Tom disappeared into the grad office and switched on the light there.
A few minutes later Barbara came in, early tonight. “Hey, Rick. How’re things? Aren’t you excited about Dr. Weisen?”
“Yes, ma’am. I mean Barbara. It’s wonderful for him.”
“Sure is. You know, we’ve all been complaining about him leaving, but it seems to me that maybe he’ll be able to give us a better hand up from a new lab of his own. You too. You’ll probably need a recommendation sometime. He can write you a really good one now.”
“Yes, I hope so.”
“He can tell everyone we helped with this project.”
“Yes. How is your own work coming?”
“Oh, it should speed up some, now that Dr. Weisen’s work is done. My rats are starting to learn their task, but it’s been a little slow. I could only give them a little time each day.”
“Yes. I guess everyone can get back to normal now.”
“Right. We’ve all got a lot of catching up to do. Oh, hi, Tom.’’ She waved a hand through the door of the grad office as she headed for the shower locks.
Nick walked out to the parking lot and then into the nearby woods. He picked up branches, pine cones, and chunks of a rotting log, and filled the sacks until they approximated the size and weight of the ones he had given Maggie. Then he went to the service door of the old lab. Neither of his keys worked on this door. He left his bags and went cautiously around to the front. Barbara’s car was gone, he saw, although Tom’s black one was still sitting not far from the front door of the old lab. Should he risk going in now? He took a few more steps toward the door. Then he paused.
The door was opening. Tom was backing out, his arms full of a bulky load.
Nick stepped forward quietly, put on his Southern accent, and said, “Hello, Mr. Conklin.”
Tom jerked around, almost stumbling with the weight of his burden. In the light from the parking lot lamps his eyes were wide with fearful surprise. He said, “Oh—Rick!”
“Excuse me, sir, what are you doing?”
“I’m just, um, getting some supplies.” His burden, Nick could see now, was a dozen or so reams of paper.
“Supplies? For what, sir?”
Tom thought.
Nick said apologetically, “You see, Mr. Gibson said that Dr. Weisen was supposed to have the only key. Is Dr. Weisen here?”
“No. No, he’s not. But he, um, asked me to get this.”
“Oh, I see. He gave you the key.” Nick could feel it in his own pocket and felt hypocritical. “I’ll tell Gib it’s all right, then.”
“No. Look, Rick, I’ll level with you. I won’t give you any crap.” Tom was pulling himself together.
“Okay, sir.”
“Have you heard of Students for a Democratic Society?”
“Yes, sir. SDS, right?”
“Yeah. You don’t have to call me sir. Well, you must know SDS is on your side.’’
“My side?”
“Of course. Black people. Poor people. We want justice.”
“Yes, sir. I want it too.”
“Right! And we have rallies, and explain the problems of this country to people. The fascist system, the racist war in Viet Nam. You know.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But we don’t have much money. I mean, our supporters are poor people, right?”
“I wouldn’t know, sir.”
“Well, they are. Anyway, we need paper and things to do the work. If the movement is going to succeed we have to communicate.”
“Yes, I see.”
“Well, that’s what this is for.”
So the stack of paper in the hall the night of the fight had been Tom’s. Nick said, “But it’s the lab’s paper, isn’t it?”
“It’s really the people’s paper. Taxes paid for it.”
“Yes, sir. But the people bought it for the lab.”
“Not the people! The bosses, who take the people’s money and spend it.”
“Yes, sir. But it was spent on the lab. Not on SDS.”
Exasperated, Tom shifted the weight of the paper toward his other arm. “Right. But if the people had anything to say about it, they would be glad to let SDS have it.”
“I don’t understand, sir. The lab does good work too. I think the people would want the lab to be successful too.”
“Yes, of course. But the movement—”
“Yes, sir. But it still seems a little like stealing to me.”
“No, of course not! It’s the people’s paper!”
“Yes, sir, you’re probably right. I’ll ask Gib about it tomorrow.”
“Oh, God,” said Tom. He shifted the weight again. Then he said, “Look, Gib might not understand.”
“Yes, sir. But you see, I have to report it. It’s my job.”
“You’re a friend of the movement, aren’t you? You know we were the ones that got higher pay for university blue-collar workers? You want justice, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir. I sure do. But that higher pay is for doing a job, you see. I have to tell Gib about the people’s paper. I’ll do my best to explain it to him.” Nick looked worried.
“Look. What if I put it back?”
Nick put on a big relieved smile. “Well, then there wouldn’t be anything to report, would there?”
“Right! Good man.” Tom dodged back into the old lab through the door that he had not yet allowed to close fully. A moment later he reappeared, empty-handed.
“Good night, sir,” said Nick.
“Listen, we’ll talk again. You could really help the movement, you know.”
“Yes, sir, thank you.”
“You don’t have t
o call me sir. You’ll remember your promise?” Tom added anxiously.
“Yes, sir. Of course.”
Tom jumped into his car, looked uneasily at Nick, and drove away down the driveway. Nick looked after him a moment. SDS propaganda. Dr. Weisen would be shocked to find that lab supplies had been going for this cause.
He looked at his watch. Damn. Almost eleven. His hour was almost gone, and she would be waiting. He hurried to the door Tom had just vacated and unlocked it. Inside, he waited a moment, listening, but nothing could be heard. He brought in the bags from the service door, went cautiously to the furnace room door, unlocked it, and set the bags in their places by the tires.
Something seemed wrong. A sound? All he could hear now was the faint blowing sound of the water heater pilot light, a soft crackle as a bag settled. He frowned at the tires, at the other bags full of bedding, at the furniture and cages, but saw nothing. He adjusted the top of a bag and stepped back into the hall, letting the door close behind him. And froze, his attention riveted on the little window of the service door.
There was the problem. Subconsciously he must have heard the quiet approach of the dark car that was parked among the bushes behind the lab once more. Had Tom come back for some reason? Was he here now? Nick knew suddenly that someone was.
He thought no further. A detonation of brilliant light splintered his world into shards of brightness. Then he was sinking through the beginnings of pain into the dense massive darkness beyond.
XIII
Monica rolled up the bright-colored sports poster that she’d bought for Jock and put it next to the package of paper and pencils for Ted. Tomorrow she would finish with Moore’s rats early and hurry straight to the nursing home. She wasn’t sure what she expected. Even if Ted could manage to write a word or two, he wouldn’t be able to read what he had written. He still wouldn’t be able to find words quickly, or to organize more than three or four into phrases. His visual problem would make it difficult for him to grasp the pencil to begin with, she knew from experience. Yet she was sure that he would find some way to use whatever small additional ability this technique might give him. She was trying to prepare herself for another disappointment, because there had been so many. But hope was stubborn tonight.
She heard an irregular bumping step again on the stairs, Maggie limping up. Hadn’t she just come up a minute ago? Monica stuck her head into the hall. Maggie was placing a third trash bag outside her own door.
“Monica! Just the person I need. Do you have a few minutes?”
“Sure. I’ve got something to ask you too, about Les.”
“Okay. But this will take quite a while.”
“I’m just marking time until I can go teach Ted to write words.”
“God, I hope it helps,” Maggie said warmly. She seemed to understand Monica’s excitement. She added, “Well, you can help me a lot tonight. I told you I was hard on my friends.”
“Oh, God, Maggie! What have you done now?”
“First let me put Zelle in your room, the damn little carnivore.” She unlocked her room and brought out the squirming puppy. “Go on in there. I’ll have to explain a lot.”
Monica went into Maggie’s room, wondering uneasily what her unpredictable friend was about to reveal. Maggie followed her in, pulled the plastic bags in after her, and locked the door. Then, with a guilty bravado, she whisked the sheet away that covered the lumpy object on her table. Monica found herself staring at the missing microscope.
“My God!” she said, all thoughts of Les’s sins forgotten. “I’m sorry. I can’t believe it. You didn’t steal the microscope!”
“Not steal. Borrowed,” Maggie replied cheerfully, only a little embarrassed. “Now listen, Monica, I can’t get any further by myself. I need an expert. You.”
“Maggie, you stole the microscope?” She still couldn’t believe it.
“I borrowed it. I borrowed these too.” She untied the top of one of the bags. It contained a mass of dead rats. Monica took a step back.
“You—borrowed them.”
“I did not kill them. I borrowed them.”
“Maggie, I just don’t understand! What the hell are you up to?”
“Monica, listen, I’m trying to tell you. Just settle down.”
“I can’t believe it!”
“Sit!” Maggie pushed her into a chair. “Listen! Worry about believing later.”
“Okay, but—”
“Here are the facts. First of all, someone, I don’t know who, has been stealing weanling rats from the breeding colony, and running some sort of experiment with them in the old lab. It seems to parallel Weisen’s experiments.”
“In the old lab? You can’t be—”
“Listen, goddamn it! Yes, in the old lab! Sneaking over every day to feed them, clean their cages, et cetera. Sacrificing them at the same time Weisen’s rats were killed. Incinerating the carcasses on the same nights, so the janitors wouldn’t notice that the incinerator had been running extra time.”
“The incinerator. So that’s what you were up to the night you were shot!”
“Yep. And it worked. Weisen’s carcasses are in the refrigerator in the new lab. And here are a hundred others, also waiting for the incinerator to be repaired.”
“A hundred? Are you sure?”
“Nope, haven’t counted. That’s part of your job. You’re to find out what the experiment was about, what’s been done to these rats, why it seems to parallel Weisen’s work. Why would someone go to this amazing amount of trouble? And maybe the why will tell us who. Because Norman found out about the young rats disappearing from the breeding colony, and Norman was killed. If you figure it out, tell me or the police. Okay?”
“The hell with that. I’m not making any promises. Last time I promised you something, I ended up practicing surgery without a license!” Monica was irritated because she was starting to believe this impossible story.
“Okay, okay. We’re talking to the police tomorrow anyway, remember? But please, use your head. Now, if you’ll get to work here, I’ll go back to watch the lab, and maybe between the two of us we’ll get things back to normal.”
“What do you mean, get to work? You want me to make slides from bits of rat hacked off with your all-purpose X-Acto knife?’’
“Okay. I’ll go borrow some more stuff. Just tell me what you need.”
“No, no, no!” Monica was horrified at the thought. “Things are bad enough. I’ll see what I can figure out.”
She started her investigation, fascinated despite her misgivings. She began by autopsying one rat carefully. Not healthy, a shaggy unthrifty coat, but not dead of any disease yet either. Cause of death was cervical dislocation. That probably meant the organs were to be analyzed after death. Otherwise it would be far more efficient to use gas for such a large number of animals. But gas affected the internal organs; cervical dislocation did not. So the organs were important. She’d check them next.
She had to work crudely, without laboratory equipment, and the animals had been dead and unrefrigerated for many hours. The answers were obvious anyway. The first animal had a small but easily visible brain tumor. Normal heart and liver. But the kidneys were in bad shape, pale and pitted. She sliced one and found the telltale white streaks radiating to the center, just as in the few of Weisen’s animals that had renal problems. Maggie was right; this could easily have been one of the rats that she had checked as a favor to Barbara. Except that its ears were not notched. Strange.
Maggie had said that the rats had been taken as weanlings. That would explain the ears.
The second rat she picked up seemed identical at first glance, even to unnotched ears and unthrifty coat. She thought, do I have to check every one of them? Then she noticed a small rough patch in the fur of its back and looked carefully. A needle mark? But it had died of cervical dislocation, like the first! Carefully, she removed the area and examined it. Another diseased kidney; she could see clearly that it too had been analyzed already by a biop
sy needle.
She turned her attention to the whole group, and now that she knew what to look for, she found the telltale needle mark on every rat. Eighty-nine rats, total; eighty-nine right kidneys biopsied. Working fast, she selected five more rats at random, removed the kidneys, and checked them. Every one showed moderate to severe damage.
Clearly, whatever experiment was being done, it damaged rat kidneys.
The fifth animal still lay by the microscope, and suddenly she noticed something about it. Its ears were notched. She went through all eighty-nine again, and discovered that sixteen of them had notched ears, including two of the seven she had checked for renal damage. Carefully, she wrote down the sixteen numbers, and stared at the list. She might be remembering wrong, of course. But she was almost certain that at least two of the numbers were the same as those of rats whose kidneys she had checked for Barbara just yesterday morning.
What the hell could it mean?
Okay, start from Maggie’s suggestion: this experiment was in some way parallel to Weisen’s. But if her random sample of seven rats was any indication, whatever was done to these rats was far harder on their kidneys than paramustine. Weisen’s experiment had shown that even at the highest doses he had administered, only a quarter or even fewer of the rats had suffered kidney damage, and the damage had been less serious. If this mysterious experiment had been truly parallel to his, only one or two of the random seven she had looked at would have shown such advanced damage. So that was one major difference—that, and the secrecy. These animals had received a more potent drug. Or perhaps even Weisen’s drug, in larger doses. Could that be it? Maybe she should check to see if the other rats had tumors too. But that would tell her very little. Without being able to do biochemical analyses, she wouldn’t know what drugs had been administered, much less the dosage. And checking the brains for tumors would be very time-consuming. It probably wasn’t worth the time at this point.
Try another tack, then, still supposing it was Weisen’s drug, in larger doses. Who would want to find out about the effect of larger doses?
Murder Is Pathological Page 18
