Lab Notes: a novel

by Nelson, Gerrie

  The policemen had brought their own air rifle and darts. They also brought a spotlight and bananas. “We’ll use the bananas to lure the chimps out of the trees if need be before darting them,” Sabbatini said. “We don’t like to tranquilize animals then have them fall to the ground.”

  Wilbur gave the officers a trail map and David checked their darts and medication.

  “We just want to tranquilize them, not paralyze them,” he said. He approved of the dosage, needle size and gelatin collars used to hold the dart in place until the injection was complete. Handing the darts back to one of the officers, he said, “I don’t know if you’ve ever used these at night, but with the small explosive charge that injects the drug, there will be a visible flash.”

  The officers said they knew about the explosive.

  “Another thing before you head into the woods,” David said. “Don’t underestimate the chimpanzees. They weigh close to a hundred pounds, stand about four feet tall and have large teeth. They can be very aggressive, especially in groups.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Conway said, patting his sidearm as they headed toward the woods.

  Diane retrieved the restaurant take-out containers from David’s jeep. After stuffing a few French fries into her mouth, she placed the Styrofoam boxes in the back seat of the golf cart along with the canvas bag of darts and climbed in beside them.

  With David and Wilbur in the front seat, they set out on the hunt. Diane leaned forward. “Wilbur, since you’re driving, do you mind if I carry your air rifle back here?”

  “Do ya know how to use it, doc?”

  “I’ve darted research animals before.” Actually, she had used an air pistol, not a rifle. And most of her gun-toting experience had been with shotguns in the jungle. But she felt she could handle a rifle if she had to.

  Wilbur grunted in disapproval, but handed the rifle back to Diane.

  David had brought a spotlight. But Wilbur said he knew the trails like the back of his hand. “Better to sneak up on the chimps in the dark”, he said.

  They rode along the perimeter trail in silence, listening. To their left, through the trees, they could see the lights of the primate house.

  “Head to the lights,” Diane said. “I want to bait the trail. Maybe some of the chimps will follow the food back to their cages.”

  Wilbur turned left at the next intersecting trail and headed for the primate house.

  Diane tossed out French fries, one by one, as they moved along. To the east, toward the bay, they heard a chimpanzee scream. Closer in, tree branches cracked as if under a load. It was going to be a long night.

  They baited the primate house with beef ribs then rode toward the trail that ran along the bluff. A hazy half-moon aided visibility.

  David motioned for Wilbur to stop. “Listen.” He pointed to their right. Off in the woods, underbrush cracked in a rapid rhythm. Someone, or something, was running. Then a chimpanzee screamed.

  They heard a pop and saw a flash of light followed by shouting. Then a spotlight turned on.

  Wilbur steered into the woods. The cart bumped along the uneven ground heading toward the light and the sound of angry voices.

  By the time they reached the two policemen, Officer Conway—presumably the shooter—had removed a tranquilizer dart from the butt of Officer Sabbatini whose speech had become somewhat slurred.

  “Let’s get you back to the offices,” David said and assisted him as he stumbled toward to the cart. “You’ll be alright,” he assured the policeman. “That dosage was intended for an animal about half your size.”

  Satisfied that his partner would live, Officer Conway shouldered his air rifle and walked out the trail heading east.

  David turned Sabbatini—by then rather docile—over to Maxine in BRI’s lobby. She showed him to a sofa where he collapsed in slumber.

  Suppressing their laughter, Diane, David and Wilbur headed out again. Their first stop was the primate house where they discovered Hear, See and King happily gnawing on beef rib bones.

  David and Diane carefully locked their cages. Kong and Speak, both aggressive males, were still out there in the woods.

  Wilbur steered the cart toward the center trail. “I’m not as concerned about the chimps as I am about sharing the woods with ‘Officer Quick Draw,’” he said.

  “He walked in the other direction,” Diane assured him. “Why don’t we drive a little closer to the center, stop the cart and listen for animal sounds.”

  With everyone in agreement, they drove a short distance east of the primate house, parked the cart and sat very still. A breeze had come up. Tree limbs rasped together. Spanish moss swung from the branches, pulling the eye in every direction.

  Diane gripped the rifle that lay across her lap. She knew the chimps were terrified, therefore dangerous. She could see the newspaper story now: After a career spent trekking hundreds of miles through the treacherous jungles of Central and South America, a scientist is killed by chimps on a jogging trail south of Houston. Or, if written by an animal rights activist: After months of imprisonment and torture at the hands of depraved scientists, chimpanzees revolt.

  Something crashed onto the cart roof, and the threesome bolted as if a bomb had gone off. Shaken, they stood on either side of the vehicle looking up at the culprit: a fallen tree branch.

  They decided to walk awhile.

  David and Wilbur toted the air rifles. Diane slung the bag of extra darts over her shoulder and carried the remaining box of ribs and fries. Wilbur shined a dim flashlight at their feet as they headed toward the middle of the compound.

  After ten nerve-racking minutes of bump-and-go, the trio approached a large clearing. Immediately, they spotted a commotion on the opposite side. Then they heard a screech and a shout.

  Staying inside the tree cover, they hastened toward the noise. As they neared, they recognized Raymond Bellfort’s voice. They approached him from behind.

  Bellfort was waving a baseball bat at a tree limb over his head. “You shouldn’t have run from me, Darlin.’ Now look at the trouble you’re in.” His voice had an eerie quality.

  Suddenly, he whacked at the branch with the bat. One chimp screamed. Then both of them jumped from the tree. One landed on Raymond’s head, the other hung from his shoulder.

  The surprise impact toppled Bellfort to the ground. The chimps scattered. Then they turned and charged. One went for Raymond’s hands, the other, his head. He fought back, cussed and shouted commands at the primates, but to no avail.

  Diane, David and Wilbur took a few seconds to react, then they moved cautiously toward the frenzied scene.

  Wilbur was the first to take action. In the limited light, he put the rifle to his shoulder and fired. Bellfort screamed and reached for the dart as it exploded in his thigh. He kicked his legs and shouted, “Take it out. Take it out.”

  Emboldened by their quarry’s agitation, Kong and Speak jumped up and down on his chest and abdomen. Diane tore open the Styrofoam box and tossed a beef rib, hitting Speak square in the face. The rib bounced off and hit the ground a foot away.

  The animals lost interest in Raymond Bellfort. They jumped to the ground and fought over the rib. Diane tossed two more ribs, then snatched the air rifle from the stunned Wilbur.

  “You take the left one,” she shouted at David while she loaded a dart. She aimed and hit her target dead in the center of his buttock. David missed his chimp.

  Diane loaded again and fired. Pop! She hit the other chimpanzee in the shoulder.

  Speak lost interest in his meal and lay down for a nap. Then Kong staggered and rolled to the ground.

  The trio ran to Raymond. His head and hands were covered in blood. He was somewhat sluggish, reacting to the tranquilizer. “The dart, the dart…” he muttered.

  “Hold the flashlight on him,” David said to Wilbur as he tore off his own shirt sleeve. He blotted Raymond’s face and neck to check for hemorrhage. Most of the bleeding was coming from his left ear, which was partly torn a
way from his head. “Put pressure here, David said.” Wilbur followed the instruction pressing the fabric against the side of Raymond’s head.

  David examined Bellfort’s hands. “Looks like you lost part of your finger,” he said, tying a tourniquet around his left pinky.

  After determining she wasn’t needed to help Raymond, Diane tracked down Bellfort’s golf cart several trees away. She drove back to the men and picked up Wilbur. They rode over and retrieved the other cart.

  David removed the dart from Bellfort’s thigh, then helped him to his feet and half-carried him to Wilbur’s cart. He phoned Maxine and told her to call for an ambulance. Wilbur helped Diane load the limp chimpanzees onto the other vehicle.

  The carts made their first stop at BRI’s lobby where Maxine settled Raymond onto a sofa. “This is beginning to look like a freakin’ triage center,” she muttered. Across the lobby, on the other sofa, lay the snoring police officer. His partner remained at large.

  Diane and David in one cart, and Wilbur in the other, took the sleeping chimps to the primate house. After David did a quick physical assessment of the animals, they were settled gently into the cages. The chimpanzees had survived their romp in the woods unscathed except for Kong’s leg and foot contusions, caused—in David’s professional opinion—by contact with a baseball bat.

  The ambulance arrived to pick up Raymond Bellfort. Charlotte was meeting him at the emergency room. Raymond’s bleeding had diminished to a slow ooze. He’d require the services of a skillful plastic surgeon to suture his ear and some jagged facial wounds.

  The police left. Maxine went home. David and Diane walked through the labs assessing the damage. After checking the first three floors, they arrived on the fourth floor and entered the lab through the back door.

  “Intruder entering, intruder entering,” Maggie blared out. Diane switched on the lights, ran to the controls and pushed “reset.”

  “I guess she’ll never accept me,” she said.

  “At least she’s still in good voice; they didn’t mess with her,” David said.

  “Obviously, the real intruders didn’t come through the back door. If they had, Maggie would have set off the alarm and alerted Wilbur.”

  They walked through the laboratory. Like the labs downstairs, broken glass littered the countertops. David picked up the bottom half of a beaker and tossed it into the trash as they walked by.

  “We’d better leave the mess for the insurance company,” Diane said. Then she pointed to a box containing the new spectrophotometer. “It’s interesting that they left the large equipment intact.”

  “Maybe this was just a warning visit,” David said.

  “I would have preferred a phone call… They didn’t even leave a note. How are we supposed to know what they want from us?”

  “My bet is on the animals. The activists want us to stop using them in our studies.”

  The chimps were to take part in the conclusion of Vincent’s Peruvase animal studies. Diane remembered how excited he was the day they arrived. But now, with Vincent and Peruvase gone, BRI didn’t need the chimps, unless another study came up.

  If, indeed, animal rights people were the culprits, the chimps’ presence would keep BRI under a continued threat. And the chimps themselves were in danger if the activists returned and released them again. They didn’t do well running free in a strange environment.

  After a quick pass through the lab, David headed for the door. Diane followed, switching off the lights on her way out.

  She walked across the hall to check her offices before David drove her home.

  Diane entered the suite. The lights were on. At first glance she saw her assistant’s desk had been rifled. Joyce would have to inventory the damage in the morning.

  Diane headed to her office, stopped dead in the doorway and sucked in her breath. The destruction had become personal.

  She ran to her desk. The computer was still there, but her papers were in disarray as if someone had looked through them and tossed them aside.

  The desk drawers stood open—even the ones she had carefully locked. She slammed the top drawer closed and stared down into the second drawer in disbelief.

  μ CHAPTER TWENTY TWO μ

  “Coast Guard Galveston. Chief Petty Officer Barker speaking.”

  “Chief Barker, this is Diane Rose. I was supposed to bring in the video cam from Woodwind this morning.”

  “Yes Ma’am?”

  “We had a break-in last night. The camera was stolen.”

  “Sorry to hear that, Ma’am.”

  “But I viewed the video prior to the theft, and I’d like to discuss what I saw. Can we do that over the phone?”

  “Certainly.”

  Chief Barker’s voice was pubescent. But his professional demeanor helped Diane deliver a dispassionate account. She described the fast approach of the white yacht and the collision. “It was a hit and run; there’s no doubt about it,” she said. Then she told him about the letters on the stern: “The yacht’s name ended in AV—I’m certain of that. And its hailing port ended in either UDA OR UBA.”

  “UBA could be Cuba,” Chief Barker responded. He didn’t sound encouraged. “And that AV ending sounds like a Russian name. There are some old Russian yachts in Cuba—left there from the Cold War era. They’ve been used to smuggle black market goods between Mexico and the sparsely-populated western end of Cuba.”

  “What kinds of goods?”

  “You name it: drugs, cigars, flesh trade. We’ve also had reports of piracy involving those Cuban boats. They board fishing trawlers and private yachts and rob them, sometimes tossing the crew overboard, sometimes not.”

  Diane didn’t want to dwell on that. “Is there an international registry for boats?”

  “Not for private yachts. It would be difficult to do a search anyway, not knowing the first letter of the name.”

  “Yes… Of course.”

  “I could check shipyards along the U.S. Gulf Coast for boats having hull repairs around that time. Even if it were a steel hull, it would have sustained some damage in a collision like that.”

  She knew he was trying to give her hope. But why would a Cuban boat come to the U.S. for repairs?

  “I don’t want to waste any more of your time,” she said. “But I’m curious about something: Vincent’s last reported coordinates placed him south of the Texas-Mexico border. How would Woodwind have gotten back up to Padre Island?”

  “There’s a strong current flowing northward from the Caribbean into the Gulf of Mexico. It squeezes through the Yucatan strait between Mexico and Cuba. That current spawns large eddies. The boat could have ridden an eddy around to the northwest, then washed ashore.”

  Chief Barker assured Diane he’d alert Coast Guard patrols in the Gulf to look out for the Cuban yacht.

  Diane hung up the phone in despair. The reality was: even if the Coast Guard found the culprits, they couldn’t return Vincent to her.

  She yearned for the halcyon days when shipwrecks and pirates only appeared in her storybooks.

  It was her first visit to the cupola since Vincent sailed away. But judging by the pile of rawhide bones and toys near the telescope, Huck had been keeping a vigil there.

  She could feel Vincent’s presence.

  She pressed a button and the roof opened. It was a perfect night for viewing the heavens, even with the naked eye.

  She picked out the brightest star. “Is that Venus?” she asked Vincent. “Or is it The North Star? I know, I know. You’d have told me their names if I hadn’t been too busy to stargaze with you.”

  She removed the cap from the telescope eyepiece and ran her finger around rim where Vincent’s face had touched “I’m so sorry I let your video get away. But maybe they won’t watch it. I’d hate for anyone to see you in that state. You had such a wonderful mind. But even the greatest among us has a breaking point… I think I can play our song for you now.”

  Diane closed the roof and headed downstairs to the piano wi
th Huck at her heel.

  She sat for a moment and stared at the keyboard. Perhaps the song would provide some sort of closure. She began playing. But almost immediately, several keys stuck. “That’s strange.” She jumped up, opened the top of the piano and gasped. There, strewn over the hammers and strings, were piles of Vincent’s notebooks and flash drives.

  Diane flipped quickly through the notebooks, stacking them one by one on the sofa table. In addition to Vincent’s bench notes on Peruvase and Chimeron, there seemed to be volumes devoted to his suspicions regarding BRI, Harry Lee, and on and on.

  The more she saw, the more depressed she became. To her, the writings chronicled the decline into paranoia of a once great mind. She closed the piano and trudged upstairs to her solitary bed. Tomorrow she’d plan her trip to Pittsburgh for Vincent’s wake.

  Outside, a classic wooden runabout motored slowly along the lakefront. The lone occupant watched the light go out in the upstairs room, then tied the boat up to an old dock and jumped ashore.

  μ CHAPTER TWENTY THREE μ

  Diane ended her call, slipped her cell phone into her shirt pocket and stepped out onto the front deck. Through the trees, the lake shimmered in the late afternoon heat of the endless summer.

  Three weeks earlier, she had been in Pittsburgh where evening temperatures dipped into the fifties, and the harbinger of fall, Queen Anne’s lace, decorated the roadsides.

  The nostalgia of early autumn had sharpened the poignancy of Vincent’s memorial Mass. Cousins and friends were there for support, all the while pressuring her to return home. Her old colleagues persuaded her to look into positions at colleges and universities in the Northeast. Others—some of Vincent’s friends—were less than collegial; their pointed questions seemed to accuse her of carelessness in losing him in such an unsuitable way. Perplexed, she wondered if Vincent’s death would have been fine by them if only he had died in a lab explosion, or overexposure to radiation or acting as his own guinea pig.