Murder Is Pathological

by P. M. Carlson

  “No, Maggie.” Dr. Weisen’s voice was cold. Nick’s hopes evaporated. He had not been fooled by her feigned stumble. And Nick could see from the sudden still tautness of her body that there was a new problem. Dr. Weisen continued, “I would not say you are clumsy at all. I would say you are rather fatally curious and deceitful. No—don’t get up.” He had responded to an infinitesimal bunching of her muscles. “I prefer not to shoot. It means an extra delay for retrieval of the bullet before incineration. But of course I’ll do whatever is necessary.”

  “Yes. I understand.”

  “Good girl. Now, if you’ll just crawl into the room—no, no, not next to our snoopy friend, over on this side—with your head toward the door, please. That’s right. Now please buckle that collar around your ankles. Both ankles at once, that’s right. It’s too bad you’re overly curious, Maggie. You might have turned out to be a fine statistician.”

  “What did you mean, incineration? Is this an incinerator too?”

  “No, my dear. You must know you are too large for our incinerator. But there will be a fire in the old laboratory tonight, and I’m sorry to say, two people will perish in it.”

  “Oh.”

  “Work a little faster, there.”

  “Aren’t you afraid someone will come?”

  “Everyone has already come and gone. Barbara has finished with her rats. Monica won’t need to work with Professor Moore’s animals until tomorrow. Les and Tom and Martin have been working on my projects, and have no reason to return tonight. And I’ve never seen any of the other professors here so late.”

  It was all true, thought Nick. No one else would come. He was lying very still. The room was only six or seven feet across. Weisen had bound him to the wall with his head away from the door. Now Maggie had buckled her own feet together four feet from his nose. Between them, Dr. Weisen stood guard with the gun. He was ignoring Nick’s limp form. Nick had edged as close as he could to the wall. The chains were only a little over a foot long, and if the opportunity presented itself, he wanted to be able to strike out at least the distance of that foot. Not that it could do any good. Weisen would just shoot them both. A miserable end to her bright young life. And she had come here searching for him, he knew. His foolish lapse of attention would cost them both everything.

  Dr. Weisen was saying, “All right, now, Maggie, take that collar—no, I mean the next one—and just slip the leather into the buckle. Don’t tighten, just let it slide. Fine. Now let’s have you facing out into the room, lying down, hands behind your back up high—right. Good girl. Now I must kneel on you.” He did, the gun never wavering from her temple. “Now hold very still.”

  He was no fool; he did not underestimate her. He held the gun steady in his right hand while he groped with his left, slipping the collar she had looped for him over her hands, then jerking it tight before he dropped the gun and buckled the collar tight with his right. “There. Very sensible, Maggie.” He heaved himself up and retrieved the gun. Unexpectedly, he gave Nick another kick; it was a painful shock, and it took all his acting ability and will power to remain limp. “Odd,” said Dr. Weisen. “The fire won’t destroy the bones, so I was careful not to fracture the skull. He should be awake by now. Well, it can’t be helped.”

  “What now?” asked Maggie. In her clear voice there was a quaver of fury and despair.

  “Now, I complete the preparation.” He went briefly into the hall, returned with a bowl in his hands. Maggie was bucking violently against her straps. “Perhaps I should warn you, Maggie. This bowl contains the sulfuric acid that you were so curious about. I must place it on the shelf above your head. If you happen to trip me or cause me to spill even a small amount on your face, you will suffer a far more unpleasant death than the one that is planned.”

  She lay still while he placed the bowl on the shelf, almost directly over her head. He stepped back quickly, and stood at the door a second regarding them. “All right,” he said. “I’m sorry to cut short a promising career, Maggie. Let me assure you that death will be quick and humane. Just breathe deeply. Now good night.”

  The door closed. Nick could hear him sealing the door, one latch after another. He whispered, “Strange. He didn’t say anything about my promising career.”

  “The Olympic caliber janitor! Thank God! Nick, what is he doing? How does it work?”

  “He’ll tip a lever and lower the bag of potassium cyanide pellets into the bowl of sulfuric acid up there. It produces hydrocyanic acid fumes. First breath we take, we’re dead.”

  “Can you unbuckle my ankles?”

  “Peculiar last wish.” But he set to work.

  The hardest thing was reaching her, the chains were so short, and with the door closed most of the room was in shadow. But by both of them straining against the bonds, and by almost pulling his arms from their sockets, he managed to catch the collar around her ankle in his teeth, and find the buckle. He explored his way with lips and tongue. It tasted like dogs. He gripped the leather in the center of the buckle with his teeth and tugged, lost it, gripped again, and managed to pull a loop up. His head ached, and he loved her, and he didn’t want to die. His eyes were watering, probably the sulfuric acid fumes, mostly. Straining painfully, he made the loop bigger, and suddenly the end was free. He pulled it back against the edge of the buckle and nudged the metal pin from the hole with his tongue. Then he began to work the buckle up the strap. She realized she was almost free and wriggled her feet, kicking Nick in the face in the process, but freeing herself. Then suddenly her feet were gone. There was a scrabbling noise in her corner and a click of porcelain on metal. Maggie drew in her breath sharply. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  Nick spat out the dog collar. “You okay?”

  No answer. The acid smelled stronger than ever. Outside the latching noises had stopped, but then Nick heard a more ominous sound. He said, “He’s released the safety catch on the lever. Are you okay? I mean, comfortable?”

  “Yeah. For a while.” Clenched-teeth sort of voice.

  “What are you doing?”

  “A headstand.”

  He understood suddenly, with a wild lurch of hope. He could picture her upside down, hands buckled low to the wall but those long gymnast’s legs free to reach up toward the bag of cyanide pellets, pull them aside, away from the basin of acid. Still whispering, he asked eagerly, “Have you got the bag?”

  “Yeah. Between my foot and the wall. I felt him release it.”

  “Look out for the acid.”

  “Yeah, I know. Tell me what he does next.”

  “When he thinks we’re dead he’ll reverse the lever, flush the room with fresh air. Then he can come in and take us to the old lab, where there will be a fire.”

  “So when the cord tightens again we’re safe?”

  “No. But I suppose we can expect some improvement in the air-quality index.”

  A quickly smothered chuckle. She asked, “How long will it be?”

  “Gib didn’t say. Can you hold on?”

  “I will,” she promised grimly.

  The minutes ticked by. Nick was rubbing the collar against the rough eyebolt again. Through the porthole he could see the back of Dr. Weisen’s gray jacket, shifting occasionally, probably as he checked his watch. Gib had said it was a quick death. It didn’t seem quick from in here. But then, miraculously, they weren’t dying. Yet. He wondered how long she could bear that position, strained and contorted, holding the lethal bag jammed against the wall and trying to avoid bumping the bowl of acid. His eyes were stinging and watery now from the acid fumes, his nose runny. Must be twice as bad where she was, right under the bowl. Maybe he should talk a little, try to distract her.

  “Um—tell me if you’d rather not talk,” he whispered. “But you said you had something important to ask me.”

  “Yes. But it’s silly to mention it now.”

  “Ask anyway, if you want.”

  “Well, I just wondered if you meant what you said in the fire tower. About being
buddies.”

  He nibbed the collar on the eyebolt. “Yes. I meant it.”

  “You’d just go on this way? On and on? I mean, if we get out.”

  “I can’t help it, Maggie. That’s just how I’m built.”

  “A kind of burr, you said.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed sadly. “Olympic caliber burr.”

  “Yeah. Well, that makes it okay somehow.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nick, if we get out, let’s give it a try.”

  He felt stupid, his aching head not working right. “Give it a try?”

  “Oh, shit. Nick, I’m no good at this kind of thing. But I’m trying to jump back on the grid with you. Trying to say yes.”

  For a moment he couldn’t answer.

  She whispered apologetically, “Poor timing, huh?”

  He redoubled his efforts to saw through the collar. But it was a slow business, plagued by poor grip and inexactness, and his wrists seemed to be abrading faster than the leather against the rough eyebolt. He found that he had to clear his throat. He said, “The time’s okay, love. But I don’t think much of the place.”

  XV

  The lab parking lot was empty. Had Maggie left already? Monica checked Rick’s room, but the door was closed. She knocked gently and was astonished to hear a soft yelp. The door was unlocked, so she pushed it open a crack and saw Zelle. So Maggie was here somewhere. Sneaking around again, maybe, or temporarily gone, but she’d be back for Zelle. Monica glanced quickly into Weisen’s animal rooms and the grad office; no one was there. She checked all of the areas where her roommate was allowed, and finally gave up for the moment. The thing to do was go compare the numbers of the sixteen ear-notched rats she had left in Maggie’s room, and then wait by Rick’s door until her friend returned for Zelle. She went through the shower locks, and to the big refrigerator. Weisen’s forty carcasses, deprived of brains, livers, hearts, and kidneys, were still in their bags. She found all sixteen numbers, and looked inside the bags to make sure. It was true; the ears on these dissected animals were notched identically. Duplicates. She had to be right. The rats Maggie had found must have been meant for substitutes.

  Now that she was in the clean area, she might as well give a quick look around to see if Rick was here. He might be able to tell her when Maggie would be back for Zelle. Or hell, Maggie might be here herself. She’d ended up with instruments that were supposed to be in the clean area. Maggie might do anything.

  She checked the area hastily, and as she entered the main hall of the east area, she heard a clank from the direction of the cat room. Maggie? Rick, more likely. But he might know where Maggie was. Monica went into the room but it was empty. Then she saw a light in the adjacent hall, and approached to see Dr. Weisen.

  It came to her suddenly that he was the logical person to talk to, even more logical than Maggie. He’d be the one who should decide what to do about this substitution of kidney-damaged rats into his study. Monica stepped into the hall and said, “Hello, Dr. Weisen.”

  Startled, he turned to her with a jerk. “Oh—Monica! What are you doing here at this hour?”

  “Oh, it’s a long story. But I’d like to talk to you.” There was a handgun lying on the sink counter across from him. Monica hated guns, had hated them ever since Ted’s injury. She moved to the counter and turned her back to it, because it distracted her. She was trying to think of the best way to explain the problem to him. “I, um, found out something you should know about,” she began awkwardly.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. About your experiments on paramustine.” God, it was difficult. How could you tell a brilliant scientist, the man who held your future in his hands, that someone had destroyed the value of his last six months’ strenuous work?

  “Yes?” He turned from her briefly to adjust the controls on the decompression chamber, switching it to flush. A corner of Monica’s mind labeled it odd, but she was engrossed in the difficulties of explaining gently that all the work on his drug had been compromised.

  “Yes. Well, you see, Maggie and I were curious about the vandalism,” she began.

  “That’s right. You’re a good friend of Maggie’s, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. And we found out some things, but we only figured them out tonight, or I would have said something sooner.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “Well, first of all, someone’s been taking rats from the breeding colony.”

  “That’s impossible. They’re given ear-notch numbers when they’re weaned. Gib is quite good about keeping records.”

  “Yes. But they were taken just before weaning, and hadn’t had their ears notched yet. Most of them hadn’t. And Maggie said they were being raised in the old lab.”

  He laughed. “Monica, I’m sorry. But you’re usually so reasonable. This is a silly story. Maggie must have been teasing you.”

  “Wait, listen. These rats were given tumors, just like your rats. And they were given heavy doses of a drug, probably paramustine. Enough to give them severe kidney damage.”

  “Did Maggie tell you all this too?” he asked skeptically.

  “No, Dr. Weisen. I saw the rats. I saw the kidneys. All inflamed.”

  “Who have you told about it?”

  “No one, yet. I just saw it. I’ll have to tell Maggie, because I’ll have to know exactly where she found the rats.”

  “Good idea. That would be important to know. It might be a hoax, you know. Your friend Maggie can be a whimsical person. And what does all this have to do with me?”

  “It’s not a joke, Dr. Weisen! These rats were being substituted for your rats! I’m sure of it!”

  “What do you mean, substituted?”

  “A few of the rats had ear-notch numbers. And those numbers were exactly the same as the numbers of the last set of experimental rats we tested. So I figure they were prepared for substitution into your experiment, but it didn’t happen this time. Probably the armed guard you hired. The person wasn’t able to substitute them this time, but he probably did in your earlier experiments.”

  He was reacting very oddly. Not the horrified curiosity and denial she had expected, not the immediate grasp of the hideous rupture of scientific method that her story implied, not concern about the collapse of his arrangements with the drug companies. Instead he was smiling a little, and seemed more interested in her reasoning than in the ghastly truth. He asked, “Why do you think they were substituted earlier, but not this last time?”

  “Well, the only possible reason for substitution would be to discredit your work, right?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “So the animals would be given the same treatment as yours, except for higher dosages. That way the biochemical tests and our tissue analyses would look okay, except that the kidney damage would be very bad, and you couldn’t get much money for your patent.”

  “I see. An interesting theory.”

  “Except,” Monica added, frowning, “it’s sort of surprising that he didn’t substitute more animals with severe damage in the early experiments. Maybe he got a late start and they just hadn’t had time for much deterioration. Because these animals he was about to substitute had horrible damage. They’d probably be dead from renal failure in another few days. That’s how bad it was. It would have made the drug companies lose interest fast.”

  “Yes, I see. So I was lucky that the last substitution was never made.”

  “But Dr. Weisen, don’t you see? Even if the last exchange was prevented, the earlier ones weren’t! Whoever did it had free access to the labs. And I think those slaughters were done by the same person, because he didn’t have enough rats to substitute yet for your whole set of experiments. Maybe that’s why he decided that the major exchange would occur in the last group. Because he had sixteen ready, Dr. Weisen. Sixteen very sick rats. Sixteen out of twenty of your experimental rats would have had renal failure!”

  “I see.”

  “And also, if you’ll re
member, the slaughtered rats all had been crushed in the kidney area. I think it was to conceal the marks of a biopsy needle.”

  “Yes, you’re very bright, Monica, to figure that out.”

  “But it’s odd that there should be marks to conceal, now that I think about it. I mean, he would biopsy his extra rats so he could pick out the ones with the worst renal problems to substitute. But if he was killing all the rats in your experiment anyway, why bother to check them? And if he hadn’t checked, why bother to damage that area so precisely in every rat?” She was frowning; a chink in her theory. “Why would he test the rats in the real experiment? It’s almost as though he thought they were the ones with the kidney problems!”

  Dr. Weisen said nothing, just smiled that odd smile, and suddenly there was another Gestalt shift, and Monica understood.

  “They were!” she exclaimed. “The substitutions went the other way, didn’t they? The rats from the old lab with the best kidneys were substituted for the rats in the real experiment with the worst kidneys! That’s why both sets had to be biopsied! And those rats I saw tonight, with ear notches, were from the real experiment. The substitution did take place, after all!” She looked at Dr. Weisen, horrified. “The ones we analyzed were substitutes! Not even the last experiment is valid! We analyzed the sixteen rats out of eighty-nine with the healthiest kidneys!”

  Dr. Weisen still did not react.

  Monica said desperately, “Dr. Weisen, don’t you see what this means? If you give paramustine to humans, their tumors may shrink, but they could die of kidney failure!”

  “Possibly. We haven’t done tests on humans yet.”

  “But, Dr. Weisen, don’t you see? This tampering with your results might lead the drug companies to test it on people without adequate monitoring of the kidneys.”

  “I don’t think so. The results show that kidney damage is a possibility. Your friend Maggie, with her special statistical treatment for side effects, saw to that.” He sounded bitter.