Hangman's root : a China Bayles mystery

by ALBERT, SUSAN WITTIG

  I held up the champagne and the catnip. "Party time."

  Dottie's face is long and narrow, and her intense eyes signal an impatient, combative disposition. It's hard to tell because her normal expression is somewhere between a frown and a scowl, but it looked like she had something on her mind. She hefted the cat, which had just one ear. "Let me shoot Ariella and we'll see if we can find any clean glasses."

  Ariella (the name, I understand, means "Lioness of God") did not appear to object to being shot. Dottie sat down with the cat on her lap and deftly injected something under a fold of shoulder skin. Ariella jumped off her lap and padded purposefully in the direction of the kitchen.

  "Insulin," Dottie said, brandishing the empty syringe. "Ariel-la's diabetic."

  "Isn't that pretty expensive?" I asked.

  Dottie stood up. "Yeah. But she's a good friend. And a brave one. She lost that ear defending her last litter against a dog.

  Anyway, if I weren't spending the money on her, I'd be spending it on one of the others." She coughed. "Or on cigarettes."

  "I could say I told you so." For Christmas last year. Ruby and I went in together on a present for Dottie: the Surgeon General's warning rendered in needlepoint and framed in black. Dottie hung it over the toilet.

  She grinned. "If you did, I'd tell you to mind your own damn business."

  "That's why I didn't say it."

  I followed Dottie into the kitchen, threading my way through the lineup of feeding dishes for the dozen or so cats she calls her "live-in lovers." Maybe she's a little on the nutty side. But then, aren't we all a little nutty about something? It might as well be cats.

  A few minutes later, laden with glasses, champagne, and tea-cakes, we went into the back yard, where Dottie pushed a calico off a picnic table to make room for the food.

  "I want to ask you a question," she said. I saw the look again. Something was definitely bothering her. "But let's take the tour first."

  We started out in the new room she had built behind the garage, which served as treatment center and isolation room. It contained a stainless-steel sink, enameled table, and a large storage cabinet. There were several cages in the room. In one, a gray tabby was nursing a litter of five kittens on a bed of clean newspaper.

  "I picked these up yesterday behind the freshman dorm." Dottie's voice was hard. "Students get tired of their cats and dump them, particularly at the end of the semester." She poked a finger into the cage and the tabby licked it. "I isolate the new strays in this room until I'm sure they're not contagious. Then I give them their shots and move them to the cattery."

  "Who's your vet?" I asked.

  "Joanna Wagner, on Limekiln Road." Dottie unlocked the

  cabinet and opened it to show me its neat, fully-stocked shelves. "She keeps me supplied with free drug samples and sells me medication at cost. She used to handle the euthanizing, but I do that myself now. I hate it, but it has to be done."

  Behind the treatment room was Dottie's cat hotel. She had built it out of wooden posts and wire fencing, a six-foot-high, tin-roofed cage on a cement slab that extended the width of the yard and half its depth. It contained dozens of deluxe plywood sleeping cubicles, a feeding center with offerings to appeal to the pickiest kitty, a sand latrine modestly situated behind a privacy hedge, and a playland that rivaled Fiesta Texas. And of course there were cats. Cats playing, cats eating, cats grooming themselves and each other, cats napping. While some were still obviously recuperating from the trauma of life on the lam, most looked sleek, serene, and self-congratulatory, having finally been admitted to cat heaven. When we opened the gate and went inside, they acknowledged Dottie with nonchalant affection but ignored me. I was only a tourist.

  But they were a little less nonchalant when I tossed out the catnip mice. After a moment's hesitant sniffing, there was a mad scramble followed by a general free-for-all, as the cats batted the catnip mice, rubbed their faces against them, and rolled over on them in a frenzy of kitty euphoria.

  "Fve always been curious about catnip," Dottie said, watching the melee. "What makes cats go crazy over it.^"

  "It's genetic, actually," I replied. "Nearly all cats are attracted to the volatile oils in the bruised leaves, even the big cats—lions, tigers. But only about two thirds have the gene that makes them go bananas."

  "Maybe I should grow some catnip," she said. "Trouble is, the house cats will tear it up."

  "They will if you set out plants," I said. "But they'll probably ignore it if you grow it from seed. I'll give you some."

  Dottie bent over to adjust a watering fountain. "Is it good for anything besides getting cats high?"

  "You might try brewing a tea of the leaves if you want to relax before bedtime, or if you have a cough or an upset stomach. And once upon a time people chewed it to relieve toothache." I grinned. "Keep the root away from your enemies, though."

  "Oh, yeah?" Dottie's laugh was not altogether pleasant. "What would happen if I slipped it into the departmental coffee pot? Mass poisoning?"

  I shook my head. "Not exactly. According to folklore, you'd get people royally pissed. The root was said to turn even the mildest person into a mad dog, so back in the seventeenth century the hangman would brew a cup of tea from the root before he went out to do his deadly deed. That's how it came to be called hangman's root."

  Dottie made a sound deep in her throat. "The guys in my department don't need hangman's root. They're mad dogs without it." I didn't think she was joking.

  I stepped out of the way of a dainty-looking white cat bent on body-slamming a catnip mouse. "Just out of curiosity, how many cats do you think you've rescued over the years?"

  "Not enough." Dottie picked up a tattered black kitten and cuddled it against her face. "Did you know that just one pair of fertile cats and their offspring can produce over seventy thousand kittens in six years?"

  I goggled. "Seventy thousand!"

  "Yeah. Nature is incredibly fecund." She held up the kitten with a grin. "Hey, wouldn't this little guy make a nice herb shop kitty?"

  "Thanks," I said hastily. "I have all the pets I can handle." One, that is. He's an arrogant Siamese who permits me to share his home on the condition that I provide lightly cooked chicken livers, chopped, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. His former

  patron named him Pudding. When he came to Hve with me, he became Cat. After Ruby complained that the name was too low class for His High-and-Mightiness, I renamed him Khat.

  "Pets?" Dottie sounded irritated. "Come on, China. Cats are companions, not pets." She put the kitten down in front of a bowl of food and opened the gate for me. "No offense," she added, "but the word is anthropocentric, as well. Actually, we're their companions."

  I felt chastised, but I knew that Dottie was right. Khat's cosmology is very simple: God is a cat, the devil is a dog, and humans are handy to have around because we have opposing thumbs and money to buy chicken livers.

  Dottie closed the gate behind us. "Nice as this new cattery is," she remarked as we went back to the picnic table, "it's not nearly big enough. It only houses a hundred and fifty. There's a little money left in Mother's estate and I'm using it to buy the vacant lot next door. In fact, I've already made an offer on it. But there isn't enough money for construction and operating expenses, so I'm starting a cat rescue foundation—the Ariella Foundation."

  Ariella, Lioness of God, champion of homeless cats. I had to smile. "It fits," I said, pouring champagne. "To the Ariella Foundation." We lifted our glasses and I took a sip, glancing over the fence, where I could see a house on the other side of the vacant lot. "What about the neighbors? How are you zoned?"

  Dottie put her glass down and took a cigarette out of a pack on the table. "Falls Creek isn't incorporated, and there are no deed restrictions that would keep me from building or expanding." She lit a cigarette like a man, the match bent out of a paper matchbook, sheltered against the slight breeze with her cupped hand. "But that brings me to my question."

  "A neighb
or?" I guessed.

  She leaned on her elbows and exhaled a cloud of blue smoke.

  "Yeah. Miles Harwick. Over there." She nodded in the direction of the house I had seen. "He's also got the office across the hall from mine in the biology department. I don't know which is worse."

  "Harwick. Isn't he the one who's been in the news lately?" For the past couple of weeks, the Pecan Springs Enterprise had been full of stories about some professor's animal research. There had also been a piece in the Austin American-Statesman, and a segment on the Channel 7 news.

  "Somebody leaked the protocol of his latest experiment." Dottie's mouth was sour. "Next week he's planning to hang a hundred guinea pigs in a traction device that will suspend their hind quarters off the ground. After ninety days he'll slaughter them and measure the reduction in bone density. The results are supposed to prove something about the effects of weightlessness."

  I frowned. "If I were a guinea pig, I'd rather have a different career. But if Harwick is learning something that's crucial to—"

  "He isn't." Dottie exhaled sharply. "I'm not opposed to necessary, well-designed animal research, but this isn't it. What's more, I don't think our department ought to be doing animal research. The faculty was hired to teach students, not get famous doing exotic studies. That's why I'm against the animal lab."

  I chuckled. "Castle's Castle?" I'd read about it in the paper. Frank Castle was the chairman of the biology department and the champion of the proposed science complex, which included a state-of-the-art animal lab that would cost a couple of million dollars—a big investment for a small college. A year ago, the administration decided to raze the old Noah Science Building— familiarly known as Noah's Ark—and start construction on its replacement. The Pecan Springs Humane Society immediately began to raise questions and the project was put on hold.

  Dottie nodded. "Yeah. Castle's Castle. The Sierra Club and the Humane Society have joined forces against it. The greenies say the

  complex will have a negative impact on the environment, and the Humane Society people argue that it will only encourage unnecessary experimentation, like this absurd study of Harwick's."

  "What's wrong with the experiment? Other than the fact that it involves animals."

  "It's stupid, that's what's wrong with it." Dottie was contemptuous. "The basic assumption is flawed. What can you learn about weightlessness in a gravity environment? Anyway, NASA's already done a number of long-term studies of astronauts. So the experiment is not only flawed, it's unnecessary. No reputable, caring scientist sacrifices animals to produce data that are of no use. I've already filed a complaint with CULAC."

  "CULAC?" Universities are as bad as the government when it comes to coining acronyms.

  "The Care and Use of Laboratory Animals Committee." She snorted. "A bunch of good old boys with rubber stamps—the 'You-approve-my-protocol-and-I'U-approve-yours' Club." She took a heavy drag on her cigarette. "They're studying my complaint. At least that's what they say. But that's so much bullshit. In the end, they'll come down on Harwick's side. Old boys hang together."

  I studied Dottie. Annoyance, frustration, anger—it was all written on her face. I wondered if there wasn't something else behind this whole thing. "If the experiment is all the things you say, why is Harwick doing it?"

  Her tone was dry. "If you're thinking it has anything to do with science, forget it. Castle made a new rule that everybody has to go after at least one grant every year. The ones who get outside money will also get the goodies—promotion, salary increases, a course or two off. The ones who don't, won't. And Castle and Harwick are buddies, of course. Castle will see that Harwick gets all the goodies he wants."

  I had met Frank Castle several months ago at a faculty and staff reception at the home of Dr. Patterson, the chairman of the

  criminal justice department, who also happens to be McQuaid's boss. Castle is a handsome man, and well dressed, which struck me as slightly odd. Most of the scientists I know don't much care about their appearance. Castle seems to care. In fact, I had the impression that, in general, appearance means a great deal to him, which is probably why he's pushing his faculty to get grants. The chairman whose department brings in the most outside money is the BMOC with the administration.

  Dottie poured herself another glass of champagne. "You know, China, it's funny how people who make noises about Harwick and Castle get shafted. We get the extra committee assignments, more student advising, heavier class load, less travel money." She slugged the champagne as if it were Gatorade. "No, it isn't funny. It's sick. The whole damn department is dysfunctional."

  I poured her another glass. "Have you thought of finding a new job? Women biologists are probably in demand these days."

  "Actually, what I've been thinking about is hanging Harwick out to dry. Seeing that the bastard gets what he deserves." Dottie stabbed out her cigarette. "That's what I want to talk to you about, China. I need some legal advice."

  I sighed and reached for a teacake. Once a lawyer, always a lawyer. Unfortunately, people ask about things I don't know anything about—tax law, for instance, or property law. I had to hire a lawyer when I sold some commercial property I inherited from my father, although I could have given you chapter and verse on the Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure.

  But not anymore. It's been a few years since I lived the part, and I've been trying to forget my lines. My reasons for walking out were valid—and good. I was frazzled and weary, tired of never having time for anything but work, sick of living on the margin of life. I was afraid that as long as I thought of myself solely as a lawyer I'd never know who else I was. I'd given up believing that

  our legal system actually worked to serve justice. But worst of all, rd given up believing that there was a difference between right and wrong. Fd bought into the notion that it was okay to advocate any position, right or wrong, good or bad. That every defendant, innocent or guilty, deserved the best defense that could be bought. After a while I began to feel like a hired gun, working for anybody who could pay. I could have gone into a different firm, or a different kind of law, but I was sick of the life as well. I've never been sorry I quit.

  "What kind of legal advice?" I asked.

  But Dottie wasn't listening. A gray cat had jumped up on her lap and was purring loudly. Picking up the cat, she stood and walked around the fence. She bent over to examine a spot behind the latrine area where a board had come loose.

  "So that's how you got out," she said to the cat, annoyed. She pushed it through the fence. "Get in there and behave yourself, you hear.^" Holding the board with one hand, she turned to me. "China, would you mind getting the hammer and some nails out of the shed?"

  On the shelf in the shed I found a paper bag of shiny spikes and the largest carpenter's hammer I had ever seen. The handle was as long as my forearm, and the head seemed half again as heavy as the one I owned. I carried it outside.

  "Thanks," Dottie said. She took several of the large nails from the bag and stuck them in her mouth. With her left hand, she held the board in place and positioned the nail. I noticed the strength and thickness of her wrist. It had taken plenty of hammering to create a wrist like that. "About that legal matter," she said. With her right hand, she hit the nail dead on four times, sharp blows and terse words coming together. "Harwick's— sending me—hate—mail." One last blow. "Anonymously."

  Why wasn't I surprised? "If it's anonymous, how do you know he's sending it?"

  She propped the hammer against the fence and straightened up. "Because he's a dimwit. He uses the department's computer printer. One of the guide pins on our laser printer has worn a groove in the platen. It leaves a ridge down the left margin of the paper. His letters have the ridge."

  "Why couldn't somebody else in the department be using the printer?"

  Her laugh was harsh. "The printer doesn't do envelopes without a lot of fiddling, so he addresses them by hand. He must really be a knucklehead if he thinks I can't recognize that lousy
handwriting after all these years of serving on committees with him."

  I leaned against the post. "What do the letters say?"

  "That if I don't stop opposing the lab I'll wake up one morning and find my cats dead. All of them." She looked bleakly into the cattery, where the animals were still making amorous fools of themselves over the catnip mice. "It wouldn't be hard for him to do it, either. He could put poison in their food or water. There's no way I can stop him, short of sitting out here day and night with a gun." She looked at me. "I was hoping you could help. What can I do?"

  I put on my lawyerly face. "Rrst you prove that he wrote the letters. Then you take the letters to the sheriff. But it'd be a better case if he threatened3/0^, not just the cats. Has he done that?"

  She pushed her mouth in and out, considering. "Not yet." She looked at me. "What if he actually comes over here and does something to the cats?"

  "That's a different ballgame. Criminal mischief. Trespassing. Not to mention cruelty to animals, which can get expensive, if it's multiple counts. It's a Class A misdemeanor, two thousand dollars and one year for every—"

  Behind me, the yard gate slammed open with a bang. When Dottie spoke, her teeth were clenched over her words. "What's on your mind, Harwick?"

  I turned around. Miles Harwick was a short, slight man with a beaky nose and thinning hair artfully arranged to camouflage the gap between his receding hairline and his eyebrows. They were the bushiest eyebrows I had ever seen. His smugness pulled him to his tiptoes, roosterlike. Even so, he was a head shorter than Dottie, and his arms and wrists were as slender as a boy's. He made a noise that just missed being a crow.