“Sure,” said Nick.
“I’ll drive, okay?” She slid behind the wheel again. Nick grabbed a paper towel and scrubbed Zelle’s damp paws before putting her in the back. Mary Beth waved from the curb as they left, wishing them both well. Don’t push, she had said.
Maggie said almost eagerly, “Okay. Are you ready to be a sounding board?”
“Nick the Ear, at your service. Take it from the top.”
“Okay. The beginning was that wastebasket I wrote you about. Noon Thursday. It scared people, especially Tom Conklin, the guy who tossed in the coffee. That afternoon I mailed that letter to you. After dinner, Monica went back to the lab. Norman met her at the door, looking terrified. The reason was that someone had butchered a whole group of Dr. Weisen’s test rats.”
“Butchered?”
“And mutilated. Forty of them, twenty experimentals and twenty controls. Monica said there was no earthly way to get the data they would have provided. They check the brains for tumor size, but all the skulls were smashed. They check the internal organs too, for side effects. Heart, liver, kidneys. The bodies were all hopelessly mangled.”
“God, Maggie! Why?”
“No one knows. But it was more than just cruelty. You have to understand what goes into that sort of study. Each animal was carefully paired with a littermate of the same sex, same adult weight. All the rats were injected with a tumor agent and checked later to make sure they had one.”
“Sounds expensive already.”
“Right. These are not your garden-variety vermin. These are thoroughbred, elite rats. One batch even raised germ-free in a sort of space capsule. Anyway, one of each pair gets the new drug and the other a placebo. After the treatment, all the rats are killed. Humanely, Nick, not like these poor things. The tumors are compared, the various organs are tested. If it’s all been done properly, you know if the drug is really effective or not. If you blow it, the whole logic of the study is destroyed. You’ve learned nothing.”
“So Dr. Weisen will have to do that study all over?”
“Right. No usable data at all.”
“But you said you’d already completed statistics on one set of rats. This was a second set?”
“There are lots of sets. He’s doing a whole battery of tests. Different ages of tumors, different dosages of drugs. The two sets that I finished last week were for the lightest dose of drugs. This batch that was mutilated would have been euthanized in just a day or two. That’s why this vandalism is so upsetting.”
“Poor Dr. Weisen.”
“Yeah. He was beside himself. He’s a jolly old fellow really. But on Friday he kept stamping around asking, ‘Who would do it?’”
“Who would?”
“Nobody I can think of. Everyone at the lab knows what effort goes into research. Monica says they don’t even breathe on each other’s animals. In fact, the most likely suspect may be Norman, though I can’t believe that. But he was alone in the building at dinnertime. The assistants left, and Dr. Weisen too at about six, and Monica arrived at seven. The other people who use the lab, biologists and psychologists, had all left before Weisen’s group.”
“Is the lab locked?”
“Not in the daytime, but Norman locked it at night. He said it usually took him a few minutes after the last people left. So it’s just possible someone from outside slipped in. Everyone wants to think so.”
“Who do they have in mind? The Pied Piper?”
“Yeah. I know.” They were driving along the highway now, through a drenched summer world steamy with rain and growth. “But if it wasn’t an outsider, you see, everyone thinks it was connected with the wastebasket.” Her hands had tightened on the wheel. “Norman was so pleased with that trick. He might have let someone know he was involved. And after the rats, would they think he killed them too? And get back at him?”
This was the shadow, then: the fear that she had contributed to her friend’s death. He said, “That doesn’t follow, Maggie.”
“Maybe not, but … Nick, once you told me you watched someone die, and weren’t allowed to help him. He was trying to get over the Berlin Wall.”
“Right.”
“Well, I … once I watched a suicide.” The pain in her glance hurt him too. “We’d talked it over very rationally. It seemed … just. Merciful, even, compared to the alternatives. But I still get the shakes. Lousy dreams. It was right, and rational, but it won’t leave me.”
“I know what you mean. Letting that kid die at the Wall was rational too. Avoiding World War III, we thought.”
“But it keeps on hurting?”
“Yeah. It was worse than playing God, Maggie. It was playing an indifferent God.”
“That’s exactly it! You do understand! So you see, I can’t be indifferent. I’ve got to find out why Norman died!”
He nodded. “To work, then. What exactly happened?”
“Bicycle accident, they say. He was found Monday afternoon, near the lab driveway, in a roadside ditch. He’d hit his head on a rock. He’d been there since early morning. The bike was there, all bent out of shape.”
“So it might not be connected to the rats at all?”
“Oh, I know. A good statistician assumes that things happen at random unless there’s evidence that they’re connected.”
He was grinning at her. “I didn’t mean it as a professional attack! I know you’re filled to the brim with scientific logic.”
“Damn right! But also, if you were going to murder someone you saw every day, wouldn’t you make it look like an accident?”
“I see. Knock him on the head and throw him and his bike into the ditch. Did he bicycle often?”
“Yes. He was a widower, shared a house and car with his sister. In good weather he rode a bike. He reported for work at four p.m., heard from Gib about any problems, then started his work. He slept right at the lab, but he was willing to get up a couple of times a night to help out with special feeding schedules or whatever. He was very reliable. A good man.”
“Yeah.”
“And then he’d leave around eight in the morning, when Gib arrived. Gib said he was surprised Monday that he’d already left, because he usually waited for him to arrive.”
“When did he die?”
“Before eight, the police thought, though he wasn’t found till afternoon. Someone going by noticed the bicycle mirror in the weeds. They didn’t hear about it at the lab until the police came checking around. Monica said they asked a lot of questions. She gathered that they thought he’d been drunk.” She shook her head. “He was never drunk that I knew about, Nick.”
“The police would have done blood alcohol tests.”
“But—well, anyway, Dr. Weisen was worried that without Norman around, it would be easier for someone to get at the rats. Weisen stayed overnight himself that first night, got Gib to stay the second. The assistants may have to take turns too.”
“Can’t he hire another custodian?”
“Oh, you know regulations. Equal opportunity. He can’t make a permanent appointment until the required advertising is done. And nobody good would take a job for just a few weeks. It would take most people that long just to learn the ropes. Weisen has some funds. He was asking if any of the assistants wanted to take the job temporarily. But a full-time second job is outlawed by the terms of the assistantships. So they have to take turns doing it, for free.”
“Bureaucracy strikes again.”
“Yeah. By the way, if you’re still interested, your car is suffering from a lazy hydraulic valve lifter.”
“Oh.” Nick had forgotten his original pretext. “Is that fatal or expensive?”
“Neither. Just goes tock-tock.”
“Maybe I can trade it in on a Timex instead of a Ford.”
“Good solution.” She turned into the Cafe Michel parking lot. “Does your dog need anything?”
“She’ll be fine out here if you park in the shade.”
The restaurant claimed to be Provença
l, with red-checked tablecloths and photos of the Mediterranean. They ordered bouillabaisse and, in honor of Maggie’s article, started on a bottle of champagne while they waited.
“Okay,” said Nick when they were settled. “Uncle Nick will lay out the possibilities. Number one: Norman really was drunk, and his accident has nothing to do with the lab. Or, number two: it has to do with his private life.”
“Right.” She was always hungry, was already on her second slice of fragrant sharp-crusted bread. “Though he was at the lab so much, he couldn’t have had a lot of private life.”
“Three: Someone found out he helped make the wastebasket explode, assumed he had killed the animals too, and hit him on the head in vengeful fury.”
That was the one that hurt. She said gamely, “That’s possible too. Or maybe crowded him with a car so he really did crash into the ditch. But if they only meant to scare him, they’d stop and help.”
“Right. Four: Norman found out something about who killed the rats. He was murdered because of that knowledge.”
“Right.” She gestured eagerly with her butter knife. “That seems most likely, doesn’t it, Nick? Maybe it’s just because I’d feel guilty as hell if it turns out to be number three. But I just can’t see anyone at the lab murdering to revenge forty rats. Scaring him, maybe, but not killing. On the other hand, if Norman could prove they’d damaged Dr. Weisen’s experiment, their whole career would be over. Now there’s a motive.”
“Okay,” said Nick. “But the problem is, we don’t know what he knew. Why were those animals killed? I’m afraid it’s not my area of expertise.”
The blue eyes lit on his a moment, amused. “Shucks. Another illusion shattered. Uncle Nick is not omniscient.”
“Also, there’s no Easter Bunny,” he informed her solemnly, pouring more champagne. “Actually, I have been a janitor. But never an animal keeper. Closest I ever came was cashier for the Capri Lounge. They featured both live lobsters and cockroaches.”
“Hush. Here’s the food,” she said, only her eyes laughing.
Big chunks of halibut, flounder, and crab. Saffron and tomato and garlic scented the steam that curled from the big pottery bowls. She spooned up a bite and leaned back blissfully in her chair. “Mmm. What good ideas you have, Nick.”
“Dr. O’Connor’s prescription for sad and worried statisticians.”
“Right.” She began to eat in earnest, talking between bites. “Okay. You’ve zeroed in on the problem. Why were the animals killed? Who could possibly benefit? Well, there’s a hell of a lot of money riding on these tests. Two different drug companies are competing for the drug. Maybe one of them hoped that incomplete tests would cause the other company to lose interest, so they could get it cheaper. And maybe Norman saw the hit man.”
“Then why didn’t he say something between Thursday and Monday?”
“Well, maybe he didn’t figure it out till Monday. Or maybe it wasn’t the companies. Maybe it was professional jealousy, directed against Weisen. Some other professor, maybe, trying to get at Weisen through his research.”
“Better. Okay, we have two possible villains so far. A company hit man and a jealous professor. Who else can we invent? Someone that Dr. Weisen wronged in the dim past? Or maybe a fanatic hater of science?”
“We can eliminate anti-vivisectionists, at least. Whoever killed those rats was not squeamish. You’re right, though, it’s pretty far-fetched.” She frowned thoughtfully at a chunk of crab before popping it in her mouth. “There’s one other thing.”
“Oh?”
“If Weisen in fact sells to one of the companies, he’ll retire from teaching and end the best training program in this area. All of his students would suffer.”
“So a student might have done it to prevent his departure?”
“Or slow it.”
“But you said this one group of rats wouldn’t stop the whole project.”
“No. They’ll have to kill more of them.”
“God, no wonder Dr. Weisen’s nervous! Who are these students?”
“Well, Tom Conklin. The one who set off our wastebasket. Beard, anti-war, anti-establishment. Arrested briefly last year when SDS took over a campus building. He’s upset at the moment because Weisen won’t let him start pilot work for a thesis until he knows if he’s leaving or not.”
“Aha. Motive.”
“Next, Les Warden. Viet Nam vet. Family to support, so there’s pressure to finish and get a real job. Weisen leaving could slow him down.”
“Aha again.”
“Monica you’ll meet at dinner. Barbara Burke is winding up her thesis work. She’s a year ahead of the other three, very capable, ambitious black woman. She might or might not be done before he leaves. But Dr. Weisen is a sweetie. He’d make arrangements to be sure she got her degree if she was that close.”
“He’s not making arrangements for Tom.”
“That’s different. If he does leave, it’s kinder in the long run. If Tom tailors a thesis for Weisen, Weisen’s successor might not be willing or capable of supervising it. Tom would have wasted a lot of time.”
“I see.”
“There are two other senior assistants finishing, but they’re even less likely than Barbara. Martin has finished all the lab work. He’s writing it up now, and just comes in to do his share of Weisen’s analyses. And the other guy isn’t even in town. He’s collecting data at one of the big VA hospitals. And again, Weisen won’t let them down if they’re so close to degrees.”
“Three students finishing, three getting ready for their last year. Is that all?”
“Yes. There will be three more selected this summer, if he stays. God, Nick, it’s so good to be able to talk to someone about this mess! I haven’t been able to lay it all out before. Hope it’s not spoiling your lunch.”
“Not at all. Next time we can discuss dissecting frogs, or maybe cancer of the bowel.”
Her grin was like sunlight. “Here comes dessert. Let’s change the subject.”
The waitress brought French pastries, and Maggie attacked a huge stack of flaky golden crust layered with whipped cream and shaved chocolate. Nick, watching her with a hunger of his own, realized suddenly that she was asking him something. A familiar question. How did you get started acting? He gave the automatic answer. “When I was about five, in a Christmas pageant—”
“You played the ass.” She headed him off, laughing at him, jolting him back to the present.
“That’s my line!” he objected. “Anyway, it’s donkey in mixed company. But how did you know?”
“You weren’t paying much attention. But I really want to know, Nick.”
A serious question, deserving more than the cocktail-party answer. He considered. “I can’t put my finger on any magic moment. As long as I can remember I liked to clown around. And I was happy to find out that people enjoyed seeing me do it.”
“So acting is about pleasing people?”
“No, it’s more than that,” he admitted. “Sure, it’s partly a power thing. All those people trusting me. All those people clapping. That’s fun. But that’s not the important thing. Maybe there was one magic moment after all, but it wasn’t me. When I was about fourteen I saw my first professional performance. A forgettable play, but Eli Wallach was in it. I was just sitting in the audience, expecting something like TV, I guess, just an ordinary bashful teenager with acne and a knack for reading aloud. And Wallach came out and said a few words and just overwhelmed me. Made all of us in that audience into one community, one creature. Wrapped us up and delivered us to the gods. A silly trivial play, but what he was doing was sacred, somehow.”
“The word made flesh,” she murmured. She understood.
“Yes. I was dazzled. If I could do that for just one moment, I thought, my life would be worthwhile.”
“I’ve seen you do it, Nick. You were right.”
“It’s what I’m here for.”
She smiled, approving of him, and licked the last curl of choc
olate from her fork with a unconsciously seductive tongue. Steady, Nick old man. He cleared his throat and asked, “What are you here for, Maggie?”
“Nothing so glamorous. Not a priest. A messenger, maybe. Because it has its sacred side too, Nick. Math is so impossibly pure and true and certain, not like everyday life. And yet somehow it helps us figure out this impure and uncertain world. Helps us attack tumors. Or guides us across the ocean and up to the moon.”
He filled the glasses with the last of the champagne and lifted his own. “To the messenger of the gods!”
“And to the incarnation.” She touched her glass to his and grinned—at herself, at him, at their seriousness.
After lunch they walked Zelle, then Nick took the wheel and waited until they were back on the highway to ask.
“Maggie, you left out one person when you described the cast of characters.”
“Yeah. I want you to be her friend. The others you’ll never even meet.”
“But if laying it all out has any value to you, you’ll have to face the fact that she’s there too.”
“Look, Nick. One thing has become crystal clear—I don’t have enough information. I’m going to have to nose around that lab, find out about drug companies, about pressures on Les and Tom and Barbara, about how Gib gets along with Weisen, et cetera.”
“That’s all true. But Monica’s in the equation too.”
“I know.”
“And she’s in so far you don’t dare discuss it much with her. Have to wait for the ex-cashier of the Capri Lounge to be your sounding board.” She was silent, and he added, “Weisen leaving would really mess her up. Is that it?”
She sighed. “Nick, you’re a goddamn mind reader. Look, okay, maybe objectively it wouldn’t. No more than any of the other students. But Monica—well, we were just talking about our own commitments, the religious edge that our work has for us.” The blue eyes, troubled again, glowered out at the puddled meadows. “Well, Monica is more intense than anyone I’ve ever met. Her work is the only thing she lives for. If you and I are priests, Nick, she’s the hair-shirted flagellant.”
On the way back Maggie asked to stop for a moment at Norman’s sister’s house, to pay her respects while she was still dressed appropriately. It was a small neat pink house on a well-kept downtown street. Nick took advantage of her visit to settle into a telephone booth around the corner to call motels. As he had feared, the alumni coming for their class reunions had overflowed the campus housing provided, and none of the nearby motels had vacancies. Finally, as he neared the end of his supply of coins, a reservation clerk responded to the desperation in his voice and suggested that he try the Seville Motel, twenty miles west of town, inconvenient and so new that it was not yet in the Yellow Pages or motel directories. The Seville agreed to hold a room for him until six.
Murder Is Pathological Page 4