Love & Other Crimes

by Sara Paretsky

  The doorbell rang just then, a loud shrill sound that frightened both girl and mouse. Miss Bianca skittered down inside Abigail’s pajama top, trying to hide. By the time Abigail was able to extricate the mouse, she was covered in scratches. If Mother saw them—

  The doorbell rang again. Mother was getting up. Abigail ran back to her bedroom and put Miss Bianca into the shoe box. She peeped out of her room. Mother was tying a dressing gown around her waist, opening the front door. Dr. Kiel was standing there, the vein in his forehead throbbing.

  “Did you do this?” he demanded, shaking a newspaper in Mother’s face.

  Mother backed up. “Dr. Kiel! What are you—I just got up—Abigail! Put some clothes on.”

  Abigail had forgotten to button her pajama top. She slipped back into her room, her heart pounding. Dr. Kiel had come to fire Mother. Her teeth were chattering, even though it was a warm fall day.

  She flattened herself against the wall and waited for Dr. Kiel to demand that Mother turn her daughter over to the police. Instead, Mother was looking at the newspaper in bewilderment.

  “‘Reds in the Lab’? What is this about, Dr. Kiel?”

  “You didn’t tell the paper that the FBI was in the lab yesterday?” he demanded.

  “Of course not. Really, Dr. Kiel, you should know you can trust me.”

  He slapped the paper against his hand so hard that it sounded like the crack of a ball against a bat. “If Bob Pharris did it—”

  “Dr. Kiel, I’m sure none of your students would have called the newspaper with a report like this. Perhaps—” She hesitated. “I don’t like to say this, it’s not really my place, but you know Dr. Dolan has been concerned about Elena Mirova.”

  Dr. Kiel had been looking calmer, but now his jaw clenched again. “Elena is a refugee from communism. She came here because I thought she could be safe here. I will not let her be hounded by a witch hunt.”

  “The trouble is, we don’t know anything about her,” Mother said. “She knows a great deal about your work, more than seems possible for a dishwasher, even one whose husband was a scientist.”

  Dr. Kiel snarled. “Patrick Dolan has been sharpening his sword, hoping to stick it into me, since the day he arrived here. He’s not concerned about Communist spies, he’s studying the best way to make me look bad.”

  He looked down the hall and seemed to see Abigail for the first time. “Get dressed, Abigail; I’ll give you a ride to school.”

  Dr. Kiel drove a convertible. Susie Campbell would faint with envy when she saw Abigail in the car. When she started to dress, Abigail realized her arms were covered with welts from where Miss Bianca had scratched her. She found a long-sleeved blouse to wear with her red skirt. By the time she had combed her hair and double-checked that Miss Bianca had water, Mother was dressed. Dr. Kiel was calmly drinking a cup of coffee.

  Abigail looked at the newspaper.

  The FBI paid a surprise visit to the University of Kansas campus yesterday, in response to a report that the Bacteriology Department is harboring Communists among its lab support staff. Several members of the department work on microorganisms that could be used in germ warfare. The research is supposed to be closely monitored, but recently, there’s been a concern that a Communist agent has infiltrated the department.

  The newspaper and the FBI both thought Elena was a spy. Maybe she was, maybe she really had given Dr. Kiel a magic potion that blinded his eyes to who she really was.

  “Rhonda, we’re going to have every reporter in America calling about this business. Better get your makeup on and prepare to do battle,” Dr. Kiel said, getting up from the table. “Come on, Abigail. Get to school. You have to learn as much as you can so that morons like this bozo Burroughs from the FBI can’t pull the wool over your eyes.”

  Abigail spent a very nervous day, frightened about what would happen when she got to the lab and Bob Pharris accused her of stealing Miss Bianca. She kept hoping she’d get sick. At recess, she fell down on the playground, but she only skinned her knees; the school nurse wouldn’t let her go home for such a trivial accident.

  She walked from school to the Bacteriology Department as slowly as possible. Even so, she arrived too soon. She lingered at the elevator, wondering if she should just go to Dr. Kiel and confess. Bob Pharris stuck his head out of the lab.

  “Oh, it’s just you, short stuff. We’ve been under siege all day—your mom is answering two phones at once—someone even called from the BBC in London. A guy tried to get into the animal room this morning—I threw him out with my own bare hands, and for once Dr. Kiel thinks I’m worth something.” He grinned. “Number Nineteen cannot get a PhD, but he has a future as a bouncer.”

  Abigail tried to smile, but she was afraid his next comment would be that he’d seen that Number 139 was missing and would Abigail hand her over at once.

  “Don’t worry, Abby, this will blow over,” Bob said, going back into the lab.

  Dr. Kiel was shouting; his voice was coming up the hall from Dr. Dolan’s lab. She crept down the hall and peeked inside. Agent Burroughs, the bozo from the FBI, was there with Dr. Kiel and Dr. Dolan.

  “What did you do with her?” Dr. Dolan said. “Give her a ticket back to Russia along with your mouse?”

  Abigail’s heart thudded painfully.

  “The Bureau just wants to talk to her,” Agent Burroughs. “Where did she go?”

  “Ask Dolan,” Dr. Kiel said. “He’s the one who sees Reds under the bed. He probably stabbed her with a pipette and threw her into the Kansas River.”

  Agent Burroughs said, “If you’re hiding a Communist, Dr. Kiel, you could be in serious trouble.”

  “What is this, Joe McCarthy all over again?” Dr. Kiel said. “Guilt by association? Elena Mirova fled Czechoslovakia because her husband was imprisoned. As long as she was in Bratislava, they could torture him with the threat that they could hurt his wife. She was hiding here to protect her husband. Your jackbooted feet have now put both her and his lives in danger.”

  “There was no Elena Mirova in Czechoslovakia,” Burroughs said. “There are no Czech scientists named Mirov or Mirova.”

  “What? You know the names and locations of everyone in Czechoslovakia, Burroughs?” Dr. Kiel snapped. “How did you get that from the comfort of your armchair in Washington?”

  “The head of our Eastern Europe bureau looked into it,” Burroughs said. “The Bratislava institute is missing one of their scientists, a biological warfare expert named Magdalena Spirova; she disappeared six weeks ago. Do you know anything about her?”

  “I’m not like you, Burroughs, keeping track of everyone behind the Iron Curtain,” Dr. Kiel said. “I’m just a simple Kansas researcher, trying to find a cure for Q Fever. If you’d go back to the rat hole you crawled out of, I could get back to work.”

  “Your dishwasher is gone, whatever her name is, and one of your infected mice is gone,” Burroughs said. “I’m betting Mirova-Spirova is taking your germ back to Uncle Ivan, and the next thing we know, every soldier we have below the DMZ will be infected with Q Fever.”

  Abigail’s book bag slipped out of her hand and landed on the floor with a horrible noise, an earth-ending noise. The men looked over at her.

  Dr. Kiel said, “What’s up, Abigail? You think you can be David to all us angry Sauls? Play a little Bach and calm us down?”

  Abigail didn’t know what he was talking about, just saw that he wasn’t angry with her for standing there. “I’m sorry, Dr. Kiel, I was worried about the mouse.”

  “Abigail is the youngest member of my team,” Dr. Kiel told Burroughs. “She looks after our healthy animals.”

  The FBI man rounded on Abigail, firing questions at her: Had she noticed Elena hanging around the contamination room? How hard was it to get into the room? How often did Abigail feed the mice? When did she notice one of the mice was missing?

  “Leave her alone,” Dr. Kiel said. “Abigail, take your violin down and play for the mice. We have a lab full of Fasc
ists today who could infect you with something worse than Q Fever, namely innuendo and smear tactics.”

  “You signed a loyalty oath, Dr. Kiel,” Agent Burroughs said. “Calling me names makes me wonder whether you really are a loyal American.”

  Dr. Kiel looked so murderous that Abigail fled down to the animal room with her violin and her book bag. She felt guilty about taking Miss Bianca, she felt guilty about not rescuing the other mice, she was worried about Miss Bianca alone at home not getting all the pills she needed. She was so miserable that she lay on the floor of the animal room and cried.

  Crying wore her out. Her head was aching, and she didn’t think she had the energy to get to her feet. The floor was cool against her hot head and the smells of the animals and the disinfectants were so familiar that they calmed her down.

  A noise at the contamination room door woke her. A strange man, wearing a brown suit that didn’t fit him very well, was trying to undo the lock. He must be a reporter trying to sneak into the lab. Abigail sat up. Her head was still aching, but she needed to find Bob.

  The man heard her when she got to her feet. He spun around, looking scared, then, when he saw that it was a child, he smiled in a way that frightened Abigail.

  “So, Dr. Kiel has little girls working with his animals. Does he give you a key to this room?”

  Abigail edged toward the door. “I only feed the healthy mice. You have to see Bob Pharris for the sick mice.”

  As soon as she’d spoken, Abigail wished she hadn’t; what if this man wrote it up in his newspaper and Bob got in trouble?

  “There aren’t any foreigners working with the animals? Foreign women?”

  Even though Abigail was scared that Elena was a Communist spy, she didn’t feel right about saying so, especially after hearing Dr. Kiel talking about witch hunts.

  “We only have foreign witches in the lab,” she said. “They concoct magic potions to make Dr. Kiel fall in love with them.”

  The man frowned in an angry way, but he decided to laugh instead, showing a gold tooth in the front of his mouth. “You’re a little girl with a big imagination, aren’t you? Who is this foreign witch?”

  Abigail hated being called a little girl. “I don’t know. She flew in on her broomstick and didn’t tell us her name.”

  “You’re too old for such childish games,” the man said, bending over her. “What is her name, and what does she do with the animals?”

  “Mamelouk. Her name is Mamelouk.”

  The man grabbed her arm. “You know that isn’t her name.”

  Bob came into the animal room just then. “Abby—Dr. Kiel said he’d sent you—what the hell are you doing here? I thought I told you this morning that you can’t come into the lab without Dr. Kiel’s say-so and I know damned well he didn’t say so. Get out before I call the cops.”

  Bob looked almost as fierce as Dr. Kiel. The man in the brown suit let go of Abigail’s arm.

  He stopped in the doorway and said, “I’m only looking for the foreign woman who’s been working here. Magdalena, isn’t it?”

  Abigail started to say, “No, it’s—” But Bob frowned at her, and she was quiet.

  “I thought you knew, little girl. What is it?”

  “Mamelouk,” Abigail said. “I told you that before.”

  “So now you know, Buster. Off you go.”

  Bob walked to the elevator with Abigail and called the car. He stood with a foot in the door until the man got on the elevator. They watched the numbers go down to “1” to make sure he’d ridden all the way to the ground.

  “Maybe I should go down and throw him out of the building,” Bob said. “He was here when I opened for the day. Elena took one look at him and disappeared, so I don’t know if he’s someone who’s been harassing her at home or if she’s allergic to reporters.”

  He looked down at Abigail. “You feeling okay, short stuff? You’re looking kind of white—all the drama getting to you, huh? Maybe Dr. Kiel will let your mom take you home. She didn’t even break for lunch today.”

  When they got to the office, Bob went in to tell Dr. Kiel about the man in the animal room, but Rhonda took one look at Abigail and hung up the phone midsentence.

  “Darling, you’re burning up,” she announced, feeling Abigail’s forehead. “I hope you haven’t caught Q Fever.”

  She went into Dr. Kiel’s office. He came out to look at Abigail, felt her forehead as Rhonda had, and agreed. “Better get a doctor to see her, but I can give you some tetracycline to take home with you.”

  Rhonda shook her head. “Thank you, Dr. Kiel, but I’d better let the pediatrician prescribe for her.”

  Mother collected her book bag and violin where Abigail had dropped them on the floor of the animal room. “I never should have let you work with the animals. I worried all along that it wasn’t safe.”

  In the night, Abigail’s fever rose. She was shivering, her joints ached. She knew she had Q Fever, but if she told Mother, Mother wouldn’t let her stay with Miss Bianca.

  Mother put cold washcloths on her head. While she was out of the room, Abigail crawled under the bed and got the mouse. Miss Bianca needed more of her pills, but Abigail was too sick to feed her. She put Miss Bianca in her pajama pocket and hoped she wouldn’t make the mouse sick again.

  Mother came and went, Abigail’s fever rose, the doorbell rang.

  “What are you doing here? I thought it would be the doctor! Abigail is very sick.”

  “I sorry, Rhonda,” Abigail heard Elena say. “Men is watching flat, I not know how I do.”

  She was a terrible spy; she couldn’t speak English well enough to fool anyone.

  “You can’t stay here!” Rhonda said. “Dr. Kiel—the FBI—”

  “Also KGB,” Elena said. “They wanting me. They find me now with news story.”

  “The KGB?”

  “Russian secret police. I see man in morning, know he is KGB, wanting me, finding me from news.”

  “But why do the KGB want you?”

  Elena smiled sadly. “I am—oh, what is word? Person against own country.”

  “Traitor,” Rhonda said. “You are a traitor? But—Dr. Kiel said you had to hide from the Communists.”

  “Yes, is true, I hiding. They take my husband, they put him in prison, they torture him for what? For what he write in books. He write for freedom, for liberty, for those words he is enemy of state. Me, I am scientist, name Magdalena Spirova. I make same disease that Dr. Kiel make. Almost same, different in small ways. Russians want my Rickettsia prowazekii for germ wars, I make, no problem. Until they put my husband in prison.”

  Rhonda took Elena out of the doorway into the front room. For a few minutes, Abigail forgot how sick she felt, how much every bone in her body ached with fever. She slid out of bed and went into the hall, where she could hear Elena’s story.

  When Elena learned that her husband was being tortured, she pretended not to care. She waited until she could take a trip to Yugoslavia. She injected herself with the Rickettsia she was working on right before she left for the airport.

  In Sarajevo, Elena ran away from the secret police who were watching her and hitchhiked to Vienna. From Vienna, she flew to Canada. In Toronto, she called Dr. Kiel, whom she had met when he came to Bratislava in 1966. He drove up to Toronto and hid her in the back seat of his car to smuggle her to Kansas. He gave her tetracycline tablets, but she didn’t take them until she had extracted her infected blood to give to Dr. Kiel. That was the magic potion Abigail had seen in the animal room; that was why her arm was all bruised—it’s not easy to take a blood sample from your own veins.

  “Now, Dr. Kiel have Rickettsia prowazekii, he maybe find vaccine, so biological war not useful.”

  The words faded in and out. Miss Bianca had a bad Russian germ, now Abigail had it, maybe she would die for thinking Elena-Magdalena was a Communist spy.

  The front door opened again. Abigail saw the brown suit. “Look out,” she tried to say, but her teeth were chattering t
oo hard. No words would come out.

  The brown legs came down the hall. “Yes, little girl. You are exactly who I want.”

  He put an arm around her and dragged her to her feet. Mother had heard the door; she ran into the hall and screamed when she saw the brown suit with Abigail. She rushed toward him, but he waved an arm at her and she stopped: he was holding a gun.

  He shouted some words in a language that Abigail didn’t understand, but Elena-Magdalena came into the hall.

  “I am telling Dr. Spirova that I will shoot you and shoot the little girl unless she comes with me now,” the man said to Rhonda. His voice was calm, as if he was reading a book out loud.

  “Yes, you putting little girl down.” Elena’s voice sounded as though her mouth were full of chalk. “I go with you. I see, this is end of story.”

  Elena walked slowly toward him. The man grinned and tightened his grip on Abigail. It took Rhonda and Elena a moment to realize he was going to keep Abigail, perhaps use her as a hostage to get safe passage out of Kansas. Rhonda darted forward, but Elena shoved her to the ground and seized the man’s arm.

  He fired the gun and Elena fell, bleeding, but he had to ease his chokehold on Abigail.

  “Miss Bianca, save us!” Abigail screamed.

  She dropped the mouse down the man’s shirtfront. Miss Bianca skittered inside in terror. The man began flailing his arms, slapping at his chest, then his armpits, as the mouse frantically tried to escape. He howled in pain: Miss Bianca had bitten him. He managed to reach inside his shirt for the mouse, but by then, Rhonda had snatched the gun from him. She ran to the front door and started shouting for help.

  Abigail, her face burning with fever, fought to get the mouse out of his hand. Finally, in despair, Abigail bit his hand. The man punched her head, but she was able to catch Miss Bianca as the mouse fell from his open fist.

  The police came. They took away the KGB man. An ambulance came and took Elena to the hospital. The pediatrician came; Abigail had a high fever, she shouldn’t be out of bed, she shouldn’t be keeping mice in dirty boxes under her bed, he told Rhonda sternly, but Abigail became hysterical when he tried to take Miss Bianca away, so he merely lectured Rhonda on her poor parenting decisions. He gave Abigail a shot and said she needed to stay in bed, drink lots of juice, and stay away from dirty animals.