Murder Is Pathological

by P. M. Carlson

  “Hi, Misha,” said Monica, hanging up her raincoat. “Have you been abandoned?”

  “No, no,” he said with a sweet crooked-toothed smile. “She busy. She finish chapter on Georgian personal pronouns. Report in seminar tomorrow.” Misha was an instructor in comparative literature and could write beautifully turned English sentences, but in speaking he still had the Russian disdain for English be verbs and articles.

  “I see. But we’ll see her at dinner.”

  “Sure. Smells good tonight, no?”

  “Sure does.”

  She wandered to the kitchen door and observed a moment. Bashful, angular Craig was measuring coffee. Tall, blonde Mary Beth was chopping tomatoes and peppers. They were singing “Besame Mucho” in exaggerated Latin crooner style.

  “Smells wonderful,” said Monica when they finished. “Wish I could say it sounds wonderful too.”

  Mary Beth looked around, grinned. “We just need practice. Want to hear it again?”

  “Spare me!”

  “Well, this’ll be wonderful, anyway,” said Craig, poking a wooden spoon at a pan of bananas sizzling on the stove. “Guatemalan gourmet.”

  “What’s the occasion?” Monica wondered because, like all of them, Mary Beth usually fixed quick meals when it was her turn, just one or two special dishes on weekends when there was more time. Today was only Wednesday.

  “Maggie’s having a guest,” Mary Beth explained. “Her friend Nick is in town.”

  “Nick O’Connor? The Elson Beer guy?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I’ve wanted to meet him.” Monica thought a minute, then asked, “She isn’t back yet?”

  “No. She’s grading exams for Bennett.”

  “Yes. But she’d finished those and stopped by the lab a little while ago. She left right before I did, driving like a fiend.”

  “Really?” Mary Beth frowned at her tomatoes.

  “And she was in an odd black mood. Said she’d had a hell of a day and didn’t want to talk about it. Insulted the new custodian, but he didn’t get it, thank God. Then she gave Weisen his stuff and raced off. She was really upset.”

  “Damn!” Mary Beth stopped chopping and looked at Craig. “I told him not to push. Idiots!”

  “Push what?” asked Monica.

  Mary Beth considered, then said, “Look, I’m only telling you so you can avoid stepping on sore toes. She’s been crazy for him for a year.”

  “Maggie has?” Monica was astonished. “She certainly hides it well.” She tried to remember some occasion on which Maggie had appeared crazy for the Elson Beer man, a paunchy bald type with a foolish smile.

  “Yeah. She maintains he’s just a friend, and I think that’s what she wants him to be. But when I saw him today he seemed tired of the game.”

  “The game?”

  Mary Beth shrugged. “I’m no mind reader. But, yeah, that’s my impression. You should see them together. Keep their distance. But their minds work the same way. Bounce off each other. Flint and steel. Do you know what I mean?”

  Monica remembered a freckled face, her own voice and his joined in earnest playful argument about science or morality or the purpose of life, tugging and nudging each other with words into unsuspected realms of insight and laughter. She nodded briefly. “Yeah. I know.”

  “God, I hope they haven’t messed themselves up. Idiots.” Mary Beth began chopping again ferociously, the slippery chunks of tomato piling into a glistening red heap on the cutting board.

  “What’s her problem?” asked Monica.

  “Hell, I don’t know. I gather she’s been unlucky a couple of times. She’s determined to control her own life. Scared of her own feelings, maybe.”

  “They can be scary sometimes.”

  Maggie didn’t get back till well after six. Her story didn’t fit anyone’s fears or suspicions, but she produced a very convincing proof of it.

  “He had to leave suddenly for a job,” she told them when the chorus of disappointment died down. “You know how actors are.”

  “How long?”

  “Two or three weeks. But he left Zelle as a pledge that he’d be back soon.” The little black spaniel was nosing energetically around the living room, investigating Misha and Sue and Monica and especially Mary Beth, who had been fixing food.

  “Better be soon, or the landlord will flip,” warned Sue.

  “I’ll watch her,” Maggie promised, and as she looked at the little dog, her determined nonchalant facade softened for a moment. Behind her Mary Beth and Monica exchanged mystified shrugs.

  “Tuck in, team,” said Craig, bringing in a big plate of Mayan chicken. Without the guest of honor, they made their feast.

  V

  Nick’s preparations had not taken long. The Seville Motel was filling up with alumni too, and the busy manager had checked him in with no more than a confirming glance at the required cash. Nick’s room, imitation Spanish with a red shag carpet, was hearteningly private, facing onto cornfields at the rear of the motel. He stowed away his I.D. cards and playscripts, then pulled out hair dye and bottles of a bronzer that claimed on the label to be “Sun-Safe! Sea-Safe!” His goal: a man who could almost, but not quite, pass for white.

  When he left a little later, he had become Rick Donner.

  Now he was listening carefully as his new boss explained the routine.

  “You see, Rick, you can think of it as an island inside a big rectangle,” Gib explained.

  “Okay,” said Nick.

  Gib was small, leathery, with black bright eyes like a monkey’s, a tough little man who was clearly very worried by the situation. His eyes bounced around the hall alertly, often resting on Nick with a curious mixture of hope and guilt. But the conversation was businesslike enough. Nick was preparing to accompany his wiry little boss on the rounds tonight, to learn about his new job, the details of the twenty-four-hour day of an animal laboratory. He was now being given a quick introduction to the physical layout.

  “The outside rectangle, where we are now, is dirty. The island is clean.”

  “Okay,” said Nick again.

  “My wife says, ‘What do you mean? This looks clean to me.’” Gib’s grin crinkled his weathered face, but his eyes were still alert.

  “Yeah, it sure does,” Nick agreed.

  “And she’s right. It is clean. Our dirty areas are cleaner than ninety-five percent of buildings. Part of your job is to help keep it that way.”

  “Okay. Sure.”

  “But the clean areas are even cleaner. Every piece of equipment in those areas has been sterilized. The bedding, the cages, the bottles, the mops, everything. Even the air. The air gets ultraviolet radiation before it’s blown into the clean areas. It’s blown in there under a little bit of pressure, so it flows from the clean area vents through the connecting areas and out to the dirty areas. That way, if there’s a crack, or if someone opens a door, the air is always flowing away from the clean areas.’’

  “And never from dirty areas into clean.” Nick looked impressed.

  “Right. You should still avoid having both doors of a connecting area open at once.”

  “What’s a connecting area?”

  “Three types.” Gib began to tick them off on his knobby fingers. “Number one: cage washers and autoclave. Right here in this wall.” He indicated an alcove where a pair of shiny steel boxes, with doors as complex as a safe’s, dominated the area. “I’ll show you how to work them later. We don’t have a load now. You see how they’re set into the wall?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, you put the soiled cages or whatever in here, and the machine pops them out sanitized on the other side of this wall, in the clean area. There’s also an ultraviolet box for supplies and stuff.”

  “I see.”

  “The second type of connecting area is the animal rooms themselves. Down this way.” Gib indicated the long main corridor. “Doors on the north are to offices, storage rooms, main entry, as you know. These on the so
uth are animal rooms.” He opened one of them. “This one is part of Professor Farkas’s project.”

  Nick looked around. Clean gray walls, banks of cages on each side. Black and white rats peered at them through the mesh. Besides the cages, the room contained a sink, and another door at the far end.

  “What’s that other door?”

  “That’s a no-no for us right now. Goes into the clean area. Clean bedding, food, water come through that door from the clean area. Soiled bedding and so forth we take out this door.”

  “I see. One-way traffic, clean out to dirty. For the air, and for the supplies.”

  “And for people. There’s a third kind of connecting area. Come on this way.”

  Nick followed Gib past the cagewasher and autoclave to another room. “The shower locks,” explained Gib. “When you have to work in the clean areas, you go through here. Young ladies generally use the one at the other end of the building.” He was stripping, scrawny and pale except for walnut-tan face and arms. Nick imitated him, hanging his street clothes in the locker Gib indicated, and praying that “Sun-Safe! Sea-Safe!” implied shower-safe as well. Small and efficient, Gib stepped through the shower, scrubbing quickly, and when Nick emerged, still brown, tossed him a towel and indicated a lab coverall. “That one’ll be big enough,” he said.

  They emerged into a hall similar to the one they had left, except that the flooring was beige instead of gray. There was a steel door and a steel box set into one wall. Nick asked, “Is that the other end of the cagewasher?”

  “Right. And autoclave. I see you’ve got your bearings.”

  “Yeah. And those are clean supplies?” Near the doors, wheeled steel racks held cages and bottles.

  “That’s right. Okay, here we go. Other end of Professor Farkas’s room.” Nick glanced in; the dozens of little eyes glittered at him again. Gib continued, “You can see there are twenty-some of these animal rooms down this hall. We’ll just peek in each one. And down here at the end is the observation room. Come on in.” Nick did. Another row of cages, but larger ones, and all at waist level. Only two were occupied, by rats with bandaged heads. “You should check this room every couple hours when there are animals here. Often the experimenters will hang around too. This is where the animals go when they’ve just had operations, and if they start looking bad we’re supposed to notify the experimenter.”

  Nick inspected the two rats dubiously. “How do I know if they look bad?” They certainly weren’t as alert as Professor Farkas’s. Both had leaden expressions.

  Gib laughed. “The experimenters leave instructions to tell you what to look out for.’’ He pointed at a note clipped to the cage. “These two are okay, considering. They’re Barbara Burke’s rats, just had electrodes implanted in their brains.”

  “I see,” said Nick, not completely glad that he knew.

  “You’ll quit feeling queasy after a few days,” predicted Gib cheerfully. “Okay, back out. We’ll go next door into the microscope room.”

  A big fluorescent-lit tiled room, dozens of electrical outlets for the big microscopes and a variety of other equipment on the steel countertops. Gib pointed out a cryostat, racks of slides and supplies for staining, a big walk-in refrigerator. “We try to get the cleaning done here during the day,” he said, “but they’re at the equipment hammer and tongs these days, getting the Weisen experiment finished. So sometimes it’s free only at night, and you’ll have to do it.”

  They moved on toward the end of the building. “The western area is for isolators and the breeding colony, also Dr. Weisen’s experimental rooms.”

  “What’s an isolator?”

  “A special germ-free cage. Brains are very susceptible to infection. So for some types of research it’s necessary to have animals that have never been exposed to any kind of disease. They’re raised from birth in a hundred percent germ-free isolator.”

  “God. Cleaner than the clean areas.”

  “Right. And here are Dr. Weisen’s experimental rooms. The bloody mess of rats was found in that room.” The black simian eyes shifted toward him questioningly.

  “A bloody mess?” Nick remembered that Rick hadn’t heard the story yet.

  “Yes.” Gib told him about it, with nervous relish. It was clearly the most shocking thing that had happened in his entire career as animal supervisor. He finished, “Now, you keep an eye on this end of the building especially. We can’t afford to lose any more.” He was still eyeing Nick a little edgily, and Nick realized suddenly that Gib was afraid Rick would quit.

  He said earnestly, “I’ll watch. That’s a terrible thing.”

  Gib, somewhat reassured, went on. “Here’s one of Dr. Weisen’s rooms. Here, look at a cage card.” He pointed to a card fastened to one of the mesh cages. Every occupied cage that he had seen had such a card, Nick realized. “This rat is G-860. On this line you see that the diet and water supplies are both normal. No special notes. We just treat him like one of the gang.”

  Nick frowned through the mesh at G-860. “Maybe this never happens. But if they ever get out of the cages, how do you know which one is which?”

  “Oh, they don’t get mixed up. See, there’s a system of ear notches. You won’t have to bother learning it, but basically the number and location of the notches tell you what the number is. That’s built into the rat. No one can erase it.”

  “I was thinking of whoever killed those rats. I mean, if someone’s trying to ruin Dr. Weisen’s experiments, wouldn’t mixing up the rats do it?”

  Gib looked at him thoughtfully. “Yeah. Guess it would. But that scene I told you about was really crude work. Lizzie Borden and her ax.”

  “I’m sorry. Silly idea. Still, isn’t it possible that whoever it is knows his way around the lab?”

  “Yeah. Damn.” Gib peered into the cages, squatted and looked at the lower ones. “But there are a million ways to mess up an experiment. I guess you could sabotage the ID system, maybe. The cage cards are easy to change, but it won’t make any difference because there are duplicate records in Dr. Weisen’s safe, and those can be matched to the ear-notch numbers. In fact, we have a third running record book that we keep in the animal technician’s office. Not as detailed, but the notch numbers are recorded there too. So you’d have to do something to the rats themselves.”

  “How difficult would that be?”

  Gib straightened. “First, there are only certain changes that could be made. I mean, the absence of a notch is just as significant as the presence of one. And there’s no way to fill in a notch once it’s there. And of course we might notice if there were fresh notches. There aren’t any.”

  “Yeah. It was just a thought.”

  “Well, you’re right, we ought to keep our eyes open.”

  “Do all the animals get their ears notched?”

  “Rats do, as soon as they’re weaned. Up till then they just have an overall litter number on the card. Mice are smaller; we often use spots of dye on them instead, especially for short-term projects.”

  “Well, I’ll keep my eyes open.”

  “Right. Okay, come on through here to the breeder rooms.”

  The large room they entered next ran along the entire west end of the building. Racks of cages divided the room like library shelves. Some of the lower ones were empty, but most contained several rats or mice, even whole families. There was a rustling sound and then near silence as they entered; the animals, tame though they were, still obeyed the ancestral instinct to take cover when strange animals entered. The little eyes sparkled from the dimmest corners of the cages.

  “No special treatment here,” said Gib. “They all get practically identical care. Just check the food and water supplies. Water especially.” He was moving among the cages, refilling bottles occasionally at the sink. “They’re all on exactly the same diet and schedule, so you can get through pretty quick.”

  Nick found a bottle that needed refilling, filled it, figured out how to reattach the drinking tube, then asked, “
Don’t they start experiments sometimes on baby rats? They wouldn’t be treated like the others, would they?”

  “No,” said Gib, “but in that case you move the pregnant female out of here into an experimental room, raise the litter there. Professor Moore had some like that, half of them raised in fancy cages with lots of toys, and the other half in deprivation cages. We weren’t even allowed in the room for weeks. His assistant, Monica Bauer, did all the work from behind a sort of wall so they couldn’t see her. Not even the lighting changed.”

  “I see. So if there’s any special treatment like that, they’ll be in experimental rooms.”

  “Right. Just check the cage cards in the experimental rooms pretty carefully. You don’t want to feed a rat that’s supposed to be on a thirty-six-hour fast for a learning experiment.”

  “Okay.”

  “In here, the only extra problem is to watch the pups right after they’re born. Every now and then rats turn cannibal. Count to be sure the total matches the cage card. Sometimes we take pups from a big litter to add to a smaller litter, but in that case a note is made on both cage cards. Watch for dead pups. And also watch for CRD.”

  “CRD?”

  “Chronic respiratory disease. Rat sniffles.”

  “What are the symptoms?” Nick was increasingly impressed with the amount of work that went into animal research.

  “Harsh breathing sounds. Runny noses, bloody noses. General shabby appearance. If you see one, zip the whole cage out of here into an empty room instantly. Leave me a note. But most of these guys are healthy. Look.” He pulled out a cage, set it on one of the long stainless steel tables that ran between the ranks of cages, and expertly lifted out a rat. The bright eyes peered around, the ears—neatly notched—swiveled about. “See, he’s alert, his coat is in good shape, his breathing is normal. He’s not too thin, and he’s not too fat.”

  “I see,” said Nick. He glanced around at the nearby cages. “This one is too fat, then.”

  Gib laughed. “That one is merely pregnant. Here.” He put back the sleek male rat and pulled out the other cage. “Look,” he said, carefully lifting the bulging rat. “All her weight is down here, and you can feel the fetuses.” Nick passed his fingers across her belly, felt the lumps under the stretched fur.