by Robin Cook
“Who wants to know?” he asked.
“Your boss here, Dr. Frank.”
Pedro came out of the guardhouse and over to Victor’s car. He stuck out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Frank. I’m Pedro Gonzales from Able Protection.”
Victor shook hands with him. He wasn’t happy. “Why aren’t you with my boy?” Victor asked brusquely.
“I was,” Pedro explained, “but when we got here, he said he was safe inside the compound at Chimera and that I was supposed to wait in the guardhouse.”
“I think your orders were pretty clear to stay with the boy at all times,” Victor said.
“Yes, sir,” Pedro answered, realizing he’d made a mistake. “It won’t happen again. Your son was quite convincing. He said you’d wanted it this way. I’m sorry.”
“Where is he?” Victor asked.
“That I can’t say,” Pedro answered. “He and Philip are on the grounds here someplace. They haven’t left if that is what you’re concerned about.”
“That’s not what I’m concerned about,” Victor snapped. “I’m concerned that I hired Able Protection to watch over him and the job’s not being done.”
“I understand,” Pedro said.
Victor looked up at the gate operator. “Is Sheldon working today?”
“Hey, Sheldon!” the guard yelled.
Sheldon appeared at the doorway. Victor asked if he had any idea where VJ was.
“Nope,” Sheldon said, “but when he arrived this morning, he and Philip headed that way.” He pointed west.
“Toward the river?” Victor asked.
“Could have been,” Sheldon said. “But he could have gone to the cafeteria, too.”
“Would you like me to come with you and help find him?” Pedro asked.
Victor shook his head no as he put his car in gear. “You wait here until I find him.” Then, to the guard, who was blankly listening to the conversation, he said, “I’d appreciate it if you could raise this gate before I drive through it.”
The guard jumped and ran back inside to activate the gate mechanism.
Victor floored the accelerator and sped onto the Chimera lot. Forsaking his reserved parking space, he drove to the building that housed his lab and parked in front of the entrance. It said no parking but he didn’t care. He pulled his coat collar up and hunched over, running for the door.
Robert was the only one still there. He was as busy as usual, again working with the gel electrophoresis unit. That was where the bits and pieces of the cleaved DNA were separated.
“Have you seen VJ?” Victor asked, shaking off some of the rainwater.
“Haven’t seen him,” Robert said. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “But I have something else to show you.” He picked up two strips of film which had dark bands in exactly the same location and held them out for Victor to take. “That second tumor sample you gave me had the same extra piece of DNA as your son’s. But the sample was from a different person.”
“It was from our live-in nanny,” Victor said. “Are you positive that the moiety was the same in both samples?”
“Quite sure,” Robert said.
“That’s astounding,” Victor said, forgetting VJ for a moment.
“I thought you’d find it interesting,” Robert said with pride. “It’s the kind of finding that cancer researchers have been seeking. It could even be the breakthrough that medicine has been waiting for.”
“You’ve got to sequence it,” Victor said impatiently. “Immediately.”
“That’s what I’ve been doing,” Robert said. “I’ve got a number of other runs with the electrophoresis unit and then I’ll let the computer have a go at it.”
“If it turns out to be a retro virus or something like that . . .” Victor said, letting his sentence trail off. It was just one more unexpected finding to be added to a growing list.
“If VJ shows up, tell him I’m looking for him,” Victor said. Then he turned and left the lab.
In the cafeteria, Victor went straight to the manager. “Have you seen VJ?”
“He was in here for an early lunch. Philip was with him along with one of the guards.”
“One of the guards?” Victor questioned. He wondered why Sheldon hadn’t told him that. Victor asked the manager to call his lab if VJ showed up. The manager nodded.
There were a handful of people in the library. Most of them were reading, a few were asleep. The librarian told Victor that VJ had not been around.
Victor got the same response at the fitness center and the day-care center. Except at the cafeteria, no one had seen VJ all day.
Getting an umbrella from his car, Victor set off toward the river. He walked north and hit it at about the middle of the Chimera complex. He turned west, walking along the granite quay. None of the buildings lining the river had been renovated by Chimera as yet, but they’d make ideal sites for some of the intended expansion. Victor was considering moving his administrative office down there. After all, if he had to spend all his time doing administrative work, he might as well have a view.
As he walked, Victor gazed down at the river. In the rain the white water appeared even more turbulent than it had on the previous day. Looking upriver toward the dam, he could barely see its outline through the mist rising from the base of the falls.
Passing the line of empty buildings, he realized there were hundreds of nooks here a boy could find entertaining. It could be a paradise for games like hide-and-seek or sardines. But those games required a group of kids. Except for Philip, VJ was always on his own.
Victor continued moving upstream until his path was blocked by the portion of the clock tower building that was cantilevered out over part of the dam and a portion of the millpond. To go beyond, Victor had to skirt the building, then approach the river on its west side. There, Victor’s path was blocked by the ten-foot-wide sluice that separated from the millpond, then ran parallel to it before leading to a tunnel. Back in the days when waterpower ran the entire mill, the sluice carried the water into the basement of the clock tower building. There the rushing water turned a series of huge paddle wheels which effectively powered thousands of looms and sewing machines as well as the tower clock.
Standing at the tunnel’s edge, Victor inspected the bottom of the sluice. Besides a trickle of water, there was debris mostly made up of broken bottles and empty beer cans. Victor eyed the junction of the sluice and the raging river. Two heavy steel doors had once regulated the water flow. Now the whole unit was horribly corroded with rust. Victor wondered how it could still hold back the horrendous force the water exerted on it. The river was practically at the level of the top of the doors.
Victor skirted the sluice and continued his walk westward. The rain stopped and he lowered his umbrella. Soon he came to the last building of the Chimera complex. It, too, was cantilevered out over the river. Beyond it was a city street. Victor turned around and started back.
He didn’t call VJ as he’d done the last time. He just looked around and listened. When he got back to the clock tower building, he headed toward the occupied portion of the complex. Stopping in at his lab, he asked Robert if VJ had appeared, but he hadn’t.
At a loss as to what to do, Victor returned to the cafeteria.
“Hasn’t shown up yet,” the manager said before Victor even asked him.
“I didn’t expect so,” Victor said. “I came over for some coffee.”
Still damp from the rain, Victor had become quite chilled as he’d walked along the river. He could tell that the temperature was dropping again now that the storm was over.
Once he’d finished his coffee and felt sufficiently warm, Victor pulled on his damp coat. He again reminded the manager to call over to the lab if and when VJ showed up. Then he returned to the security office. The warmth in there was welcome even if it was heavy with cigarette smoke. Pedro had been playing solitaire on a small couch in the back of the office. He got up when Victor appeared. Sheldon stood up behind his
small desk.
“Anybody seen my son?” Victor asked abruptly.
“I just spoke to Hal not two minutes ago,” Sheldon said. “I specifically asked him, but he said he hadn’t seen VJ all day.”
“The manager at the cafeteria told me that VJ had lunch with one of you guys today,” Victor said. “How come you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t eat with VJ!” Sheldon said, pressing his palm against his chest. “I know Hal didn’t either. He ate with me. We both brown-bagged it. Hey, Fred!”
Fred stuck his head into the main part of the office from the spot where he operated the entrance and the exit gates. Sheldon asked him if he ate lunch with VJ.
“Sure didn’t,” he said. “I went off-site for lunch.”
Sheldon shrugged. Then he said to Victor, “There’s only three of us on duty today.”
“But the manager said . . .” Victor started, but he stopped. There was no point getting into an argument over who ate with VJ and who didn’t. The point was, where the hell was he now? Victor was getting curious and a little concerned. Marsha had wondered, and now he did too, just what did VJ do at Chimera to keep himself occupied. Up until that moment Victor had never given it much thought.
Leaving the security office, Victor went back to his lab. He was running out of ideas of where to search.
“The manager over at the cafeteria just called,” Robert said as soon as Victor appeared. “VJ’s turned up.”
Victor went to the nearest phone and called the manager.
“He’s here right now,” the manager said.
“Is he alone?” Victor asked.
“Nope. Philip is with him.”
“Did you tell him I was looking for him?” Victor asked.
“No, I didn’t. You just told me to call. You didn’t tell me to say anything to VJ.”
“That’s fine,” Victor said. “Don’t say anything. I’m on my way.”
Crossing to the building that housed both the cafeteria and the library, Victor chose not to enter through the main cafeteria entrance. He went in a side entrance instead, climbed to the second floor, and only then entered the cafeteria on the balcony level. Going to the railing and looking down, he saw VJ and Philip eating ice cream.
Keeping back out of sight, Victor allowed VJ and Philip to finish their afternoon snack. Before long they got up and disposed of their trays. As they were leaving, Victor came down the stairs, staying out of sight close to the wall. He could hear the door close behind them as they left.
Quickening his step, he got to the door in time to see them turn west on the walkway.
“Something wrong?” the manager asked.
“No, nothing is wrong,” Victor said, straightening up and trying to appear nonchalant. The last thing he wanted was office gossip. “Just curious about my son’s whereabouts,” he said. “I’ve told him time and time again not to go near the river when it’s raging like it is now. But I’m afraid he’s not minding me at all.”
“Boys will be boys,” said the manager.
Victor exited the cafeteria in time to see VJ and Philip in the distance, turning to the right beyond the building housing Victor’s lab. Clearly they were heading toward the river. Moving to a slow jog, Victor followed as far as the point where VJ and Philip had turned right. About fifty yards ahead he could still see them. He waited until they veered left just before the river and disappeared from sight. Victor ran down the alleyway.
When he arrived at the point VJ and Philip had gone left, he caught sight of them nearing the clock tower building. As he watched, the two mounted the few steps in front of the deserted building and entered through the doorless entranceway.
“What on earth can they be doing in there?” Victor asked himself. Keeping out of sight as much as possible, he went as far as the entranceway, then paused to listen. But all he could hear was the sound of the falls.
Perplexed, Victor entered. He waited a moment until his eyes adjusted to the dim light. Once they had, he found just the kind of mess he’d expected to find in the abandoned building. The floor was littered with rubble and trash.
The first floor was dominated by a large room with window openings over the millpond. Any glass had long since been broken. Not even the sashes remained. In the center of the room was a pile of debris giving evidence of squatters who had probably occupied the place before Chimera purchased the complex and fenced it in. Over the whole scene hung a pervasive smell of rotting wood, fabric, and cardboard.
Stealthily moving toward the center of the room, Victor tried to listen again, but the noise of the falls was even more dominating inside than it had been outside. He could make out no other sounds.
Along the side opposite the river was a series of small rooms that opened onto the main room. Victor started at the first and worked his way down. Each was filled with trash, to varying degrees. At either end and in the center of the building were stairwells that led to the two floors above. Victor went to the center staircase and slowly climbed up. On each floor he searched the warren of little rooms on both sides of a long hallway. Each room had its complement of rubble, litter, and dirt.
Mystified, Victor returned to the first floor. He walked to one of the front window openings and gazed out at the river, the dam, the pond, and then at the empty sluice, closed from the river with its rusted doors.
It was then that Victor remembered that the clock tower building was connected to the other buildings by elaborate tunnel systems to distribute the rotary mechanical power of the paddle wheels. It was obvious VJ was not in the clock tower building now. Victor wondered if it was this system his son had stumbled onto.
Victor whirled about, his hair standing on edge. He thought he’d heard something over the roar of the falls, or felt something; he wasn’t sure which. His eyes rapidly scanned the room but no one was there, and when he strained to listen, all he heard was the sound of the river.
Going from one stairwell to the other, Victor searched for the entrance to the basement. But he couldn’t find it. He looked again, still to no avail. There were no steps leading down. Stepping over to a window opening on the south side of the building, he looked to see if there might be a basement entrance from the outside, but there wasn’t. There seemed no way to get into the basement.
Victor left the building and walked back to the occupied section of the Chimera complex to visit the office of Buildings and Grounds. Using his master key, he let himself in and turned on the lights. He immediately went to the file room. From a huge metal cabinet he retrieved the architectural drawings of all the existing structures on the Chimera property. Referencing the clock tower building on the master site plan, he found the drawings for it and pulled them out.
The first drawing was of the basement. It showed where the water tunnel entered the edifice. Within the basement the water flowed through a heavily planked trough where it turned a series of paddle wheels that were mounted both horizontally and vertically. The basement itself was divided into one central room with all the power wheels and a number of side rooms. The tunnel system emanated from one of the side rooms on the east end.
Victor then looked at the plan for the first floor. He found the stairway that led down to the basement easily enough. It was immediately to the right of the central stairwell. He could not imagine how he had missed it.
To be doubly sure, he made a copy of the basement and first-floor plans, using the special copy machine that Chimera had for that purpose. He reduced the copies to legal-paper size. With these in hand, he returned to the clock tower building, determined to explore below.
Victor made his way through the trash on the floor and approached the central stairwell. Standing in front of it, he looked to the immediate right. He even took the copy of the existing floor plan and held it up to make sure he’d read it right.
Victor couldn’t understand what he was doing wrong. There were no basement stairs. He even walked around the other side of the stairwell just in case the blueprints were
in error. But there were no stairs going down on that side either.
Walking back to the location where the plans said the stairway was supposed to be, Victor noticed that the area was devoid of the debris that was scattered over the rest of the floor. Finding that odd, he bent down and noticed something else: the floor planking was wider than it was in the rest of the building. And it was newer wood.
Victor started at a sound from behind. He turned, but it seemed there was nothing there. Still, he felt there was someone there in the semidarkness. Someone very near. Terrified, Victor tried to scan the surrounding cavernous room. Again from behind he heard or felt a second sound or vibration. No doubt about it: a footfall. Victor turned, but too late. He could just make out the shadowy silhouette of a figure raising some sort of object over his head. He tried to lift his hands to protect himself from the blow, but could not save himself from its power. His mind collapsed into a black abyss.
After leaving Lowell, Marsha stopped at a roadside concession and used the phone and called the Blakemores. She felt mildly awkward, but managed to get herself invited over for a short visit. It took her about half an hour to get to their home in West Boxford at 479 Plum Island Road.
As she pulled in, Marsha was glad it had stopped raining. But as she opened the door to her car, she wished she’d taken one of her down coats. The temperature was dropping rapidly.
The Blakemore house was a cozy structure reminiscent of the kind of houses seen on Cape Cod. The windows were mullioned and painted white. Arching over the entranceway was a latticed wood arbor. Marsha climbed the front steps and rang the bell.
Mrs. Blakemore opened the door. She was a stocky woman about Marsha’s age, with short hair turned up at the ends. “Come in,” she said, eyeing Marsha curiously. “I’m Edith Blakemore.”
Marsha felt the woman’s stare and wondered if there was something amiss with her appearance, like a dark spot between her front teeth from the fruit she’d just eaten. She ran her tongue over her teeth just to be sure.
Inside the house was every bit as charming as the exterior. The furniture was early American antique with chintz-covered couches and wing chairs. On the wide-planked pine floor were rag rugs.
