Sleeping With the Crawfish

by D. J. Donaldson

  “It’s all right with me, but don’t say you’re here and don’t try to get me on the line. They’re not interested enough to call me, I don’t want to talk to ’em.” She opened the storm door and a big brown flop-eared rabbit hopped onto the threshold. “No you don’t.” She shooed him back inside with her foot. “Watch where you step. I ain’t run the vacuum yet this mornin’.”

  Inside, Broussard saw three rabbits—the one the old woman had pushed back inside and two others under a rocking chair—a white one with black splotches on his back and another brown one with erect ears. The carpet was a minefield of fecal pellets.

  Noell followed the woman to the phone while Broussard waited by the door, not wanting to soil his shoes.

  Noell made the call and waited for someone at the hotel to answer.

  In the interim, the black-and-white rabbit mounted the small brown one.

  “Do you have a Mr. and Mrs. Keough registered?” Noell asked into the phone.

  She waited for the clerk to check the guest list.

  “I see,” she said a moment later. “Thanks.”

  She hung up and looked at the old woman and then at Broussard. “They were expected last Wednesday but never arrived.”

  16

  The new samples Kit and Jenny had prepared on Monday were run the following morning. Shortly before noon, the destaining had progressed to the point where the thin blue lines of protein were clearly evident.

  Mudi was ecstatic. “In all of recorded history, there has never been a better gel than this,” he gloated. “Kate, I am forever in your debt. May you come back as an eagle in your next life and find all your enemies furry and edible.” He then disappeared down the hall with the gel to photograph it and begin his analysis.

  Since it was too near lunch to begin anything else, Kit and Jenny walked down to Thrifty Fifties, where Jenny’s shake of the head when Kit ordered the chili made her switch to a chef’s salad.

  “You certainly made a good impression on Mudi,” Jenny said as the waitress carried their orders to the kitchen.

  “Lucky, that’s all.”

  “Don’t be so modest. It wasn’t luck. You’ve got a good head for science. I’m not particularly bright, but I am careful. Have you done any graduate work?”

  “A little.”

  “You should do more . . . get a Ph.D. and put some X chromosomes at the top of the peck order.”

  The conversation was getting very uncomfortable and Kit wished she were elsewhere. Lying to the others didn’t bother her, but she regretted having to deceive Jenny. The girl was kind, considerate, and honest, and if anything illegal was happening at Agrilabs, she was certainly not part of it.

  “What about Lewis?” Kit said. “She’s pretty far up the ladder.”

  “Yeah, right. Like she has X chromosomes.”

  Shortly after they returned to work, Kit’s duties took her past one of the windows that looked out on the bayou behind the institute. There, she saw Rose Lewis and a man, who, from what Jenny had said, must be the director. They were coming toward the building, each carrying a folding chair. Wanting to get a better look at the director, Kit remained at the window.

  Suddenly, Lewis looked up—right at Kit. Startled, Kit darted to the side, out of sight. Then, remembering the windows were reflective, so you could see out but not in, her pulse slowed. Pulling back like that had been instinctive, but not the right move. Had the window been two-way, her actions would have appeared suspicious.

  As she walked back to Mudi’s lab, a small voice reminded her she was assuming the rear windows were one-way like the others. The same voice also pointed out that Lewis had been wearing sunglasses, which might have allowed her to see through any of the windows.

  Late that afternoon, when Kit’s scare at the window had largely been forgotten, Rose Lewis crept up and jabbed a finger in her back.

  “Dr. Woodley, the institute director, wants to see you,” she said with a mocking look. “He’s waiting in his office.”

  Kit’s first thought was that her true identity and purpose there had been discovered. The voice that had been whispering in her ear strongly advised her to run for it. A calmer influence reminded her there were many other reasons why Woodley might want to see her. Maybe he simply wanted to meet the new employee. After all, he was the boss. Besides, now she’d get a look at his inner sanctum.

  At the door to Woodley’s area, Lewis paused and spoke one word, “Access.”

  There was a faint hum and the door slid open.

  Lewis pushed Kit through the doorway and went off down the hall. Inside was a long table filled with metal rods, glass cylinders, and plastic spaghetti tubing. From an open door at the far end of the room, she heard the squeak of a chair and the rustle of paper. On her right, something moved near the floor.

  Turning, she saw a man in a blue lab coat kneeling in front of an electrical receptacle. A shock of straight black hair hung over his forehead. The rest was combed back in a single glossy sheet. His thin lips were drawn into a subtle sneer that made her feel as though she were being leered at through a keyhole.

  For a moment, she stood rooted to the floor, hypnotized by the look of unmitigated evil in his glistening rodent eyes. Regaining her senses, she turned with a defiant tilt to her chin and moved toward the chair squeak, realizing she’d probably just met Tom Ward.

  Through the open door, she saw the top of a balding head, its owner writing furiously in a notebook. The office looked as though it had been ransacked. The shelves lining the walls were filled with books that might have been thrown up there with a shovel. There were stacks of manila file folders and journals everywhere, even on the floor. The desktop was paper insanity. Amid the clutter, her eyes found the phone on a table behind the desk, just as Tabor had said. Encouraged by the absence of any evidence this was to be an interrogation, she knocked lightly on the door frame.

  Woodley looked up. “Ms. Martin, so good of you to come.”

  Earlier, when she’d glimpsed him through the window, she’d thought him to be in his sixties. Up close, he looked older, his face more heavily lined than she’d realized. From this improved vantage point, she saw, too, that his lips were unnaturally red and he held them pursed, like a preacher who’d just caught the head deacon and the church organist in flagrante.

  In an old management trick designed to make the bosses seem like just plain folks, Woodley came around to the front of his desk and cleaned the litter from two heavy wooden chairs. Sitting in one himself, he motioned Kit to the other. As she sat down, he smiled stiffly. “Dr. Mudi has been telling me some good things about you. It seems we made a wise choice in asking you to join us.”

  “Thank you. It’s always nice to be appreciated.”

  “But mere appreciation isn’t enough, is it? It can’t clothe us or feed us.”

  Unsure where he was going with this, Kit said, “But I believe it is a fundamental human need.”

  “A perceptive comment to be sure, but not entirely appropriate for this conversation.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Mostly because I say it isn’t. That’s the wonderful thing about being in charge. I get to have everything just the way I want it. And right now, I want you to have a fifty-dollar-a-month raise. And by my saying it, it’s done.”

  “You’re very kind.”

  A thunderhead rose in his eyes. “No. I’m not kind,” he said sharply, pointing a finger at her. “Make no mistake. This is a reward for achievement, not a kindness.”

  As suddenly as the storm had blown up, it departed.

  “I see from your résumé you’ve had some experience with gel chromatography.”

  He was referring to the process in which a protein mixture goes into the top of a glass cylinder containing sandlike spheres of a particular size and then separated proteins come out the bottom, biggest ones first. Quick and easy, if you knew what you were doing, and she did.

  “I’m familiar with the technique, yes.”

 
“From time to time, I may be needing some proteins purified. When I do, I’d like you to handle it. We’ve recently begun some new experiments and could use an extra hand.”

  “I’ll be working in here, then?” she said, trying to conceal her excitement at being moved into a position where she could get at his phone.

  “No. You’ll set up your equipment in Dr. Mudi’s lab. When we need something run, we’ll deliver the samples and tell you what matrix to use. All you have to do is collect the fractions and give them, along with the strip chart, to Ms. Lewis. I know it doesn’t seem like I’m expecting much from you, but let’s start this way and see how things go.”

  Then, as though Kit’s interest in it had set it off, the phone rang.

  “I’ve got to take this call. . . . We’ll talk again. The red button by the hall door will let you out.”

  Obviously dismissed, Kit got up and left his office. In the lab, Tom Ward stepped in her way.

  “Anytime you want one of those fundamental needs filled, let me know,” he said. “I’m good at filling things.”

  He leaned his face toward her neck. As she pushed him away and stepped back, she heard Woodley say, “Oh hell. Tom, come in here.”

  “Another time,” Ward whispered.

  A few seconds later, in the hall, as Kit was about to turn the corner, she saw Woodley and Ward leave the lab and head for the stairs. After waiting long enough to make sure they were gone, she went back to Woodley’s lab, checked to make sure no one was watching, and stood in front of the door. “Access.”

  Nothing happened.

  She tried again. “Access.”

  Still nothing.

  Thinking this over, she went back to work.

  “BRIAN . . . ANDY BROUSSARD. I’VE got more news. I just learned from Toxicology that the agent used to kill Hunter was batrachotoxin, a frog-derived dart poison five hundred times more powerful than curare. It depolarizes nerve and muscle cells, sendin’ the heart into a lethal fibrillation. It also causes contraction of the rest of the body musculature, so the victim appears to be in premature rigor.”

  Broussard regretted he couldn’t see the look of amazement on Tabor’s face at how much he’d learned. “That’s not all. Every copy of his latest research grant is missin’ from the university here.”

  “So his death had something to do with his work,” Tabor concluded.

  “Not much doubt about that.”

  “Have you asked his colleagues what he was working on—or even better, his research techs? They should know.”

  “His colleagues don’t know anything, and his two techs, a husband and wife, are missin’. They won a free Mexican vacation, but they never arrived at the hotel. The airline says they were on the flight, so they disappeared between the airport in Mexico City and the hotel. And guess what—the firm that awarded the free vacation doesn’t exist.”

  “I’d sure like to know what he was working on.”

  “I thought we could get a copy of his newest grant from NIH, but they said they never received it. There was no grant on Hunter’s computer, either, most likely because it was deleted by whoever stole the university copies. The crime lab here checked Hunter’s hard disk to see if any of the grant was still there, but they found nothin’.

  “On a different front, I have learned the curator of reptiles at the zoo here has a collection of poison-dart frogs. My detective liaison and I have an appointment with him tomorrow at four o’clock.”

  “That sounds promising.”

  “There’s another thing—my liaison, Sergeant Noell, needs to talk to you.” He gave Tabor the number of the Memphis Police Homicide Division. “I think she’s in the office now.”

  “It’s a woman?”

  “And a very competent one.”

  “I’ll give her a call.”

  “I’m sure she’d appreciate it. What’s happenin’ with Kit?”

  “At this moment, I expect she’s at work in Thibodaux.”

  “You let her go back?”

  “She wasn’t influenced by Hunter’s death. Said she thought he was murdered from the start.”

  “But you didn’t know it.”

  “We’ve always assumed the people involved would be capable of murder. If you recall, the governor pointed that out in your office. That’s why we made sure she could protect herself. Andy, she’s a grown woman. She was given all the facts and she decided to continue.”

  “I’m just worried about her.”

  “I am, too. But the fact you’ve uncovered one definite murder and two probables makes it even more important these criminals be stopped. I’m a good judge of people. If it makes you feel any better, Kit is uncommonly suited to this job. She could use a little more confidence, but other than that, she’s solid. And she’s always known she should get out of there at the slightest sign of trouble. Did you leave a message for her about the two techs disappearing?”

  “No.”

  “When I talk to her tonight, I’ll tell her.”

  “Despite what you’ve said, I’m still gonna worry about her. There was something else I wanted to . . . Oh yeah—the business card you gave me had a name and phone number handwritten on the back. Thought you might need it.”

  He recited what was on the back of the card and hung up, wishing he’d never sent Kit to Angola.

  “I MET THE AGRILABS director today,” Kit said into the phone. “He wants me to do some work for him.”

  “So the fly blundered into the web,” Tabor replied. “I told you something would develop. Does this mean you’ve moved into his personal lab?”

  “No. I was in there today, but any work he gives me is to be done elsewhere. It’s too bad we don’t already have the tap in place. While I was talking to him, he got a call that seemed to shake him up; then he and Tom Ward went somewhere in a hurry.”

  “Who’s Tom Ward?”

  Kit described Ward.

  “That’s not someone I know about. But he sounds like their enforcer. If you decide to continue, he’s the one to watch out for.”

  “If I decide to continue?”

  “I heard from Andy. Hunter’s techs have disappeared. We have to assume they’re dead, too. That raises the ante to where, once again, you can drop out gracefully if you wish.”

  “Drop out . . . I don’t think so. Not when I’ve just figured out how to get to Woodley’s phone.”

  17

  Finally . . .

  After spending most of the morning on supposed trips to the bathroom in response to a feigned intestinal disturbance, Kit caught Rose Lewis pushing a cart of clean glassware toward Woodley’s lab. Counting on the fact Lewis never acknowledged the presence of an underling when she passed one in the hall, Kit timed her own approach to coincide with Lewis’s arrival at the lab door just as Lewis said, “Access.”

  It wasn’t likely Lewis could have heard it over the sound of jiggling glassware, but Kit still waited until the lab door had closed before she pushed the stop button on the tape recorder in the pocket of her lab coat.

  Her luck held awhile longer when she ducked into the restroom and found it empty. She took out the recorder, ran it on rewind for a few seconds, then pressed the play button.

  A few bars of “Stayin’ Alive” echoed off the tile walls; then there was only the faint sound of jiggling glass, which gradually grew louder before that, too, played out. A scant second later, Rose Lewis said, “Access.” Kit stopped the tape and rewound it to the beginning.

  The plan was to get away from Jenny at lunch and rig Woodley’s phone while he and Lewis sat out back and ate—that is, if the recorder hadn’t distorted Lewis’s voice in some minor way so the door control wouldn’t recognize it. It certainly sounded just like her, but there was no way of knowing how sensitive the control was. The wild card was Tom Ward. She knew nothing about his schedule, but did know his car, and so far today, it wasn’t in the parking lot.

  It wasn’t a perfect plan. Her chances of being seen as she invaded Woodley’s lab
would be far fewer if she made the attempt at night, but the previous afternoon, on a real trip to the bathroom near quitting time, she’d seen Rose Lewis enter a series of numbers into a keypad mounted on the wall next to Woodley’s door. Lewis had then tested the voice sensor, which had failed to respond. Apparently satisfied with what she’d done, Lewis had then walked away.

  The keypad was obviously used to switch off voice control of the door. Kit had described all this to Tabor, hoping he’d be able to reactivate the control so they could go in together at night. But he’d said he couldn’t.

  To get the activation number, Kit would have needed to watch over Lewis’s shoulder while she punched it in. That left only one alternative: to go in during the day—alone.

  In addition to the risk of being seen, it was possible the voice control was also switched off during lunch—more of that slippage Tabor was always mentioning. The only way to know was to try it.

  Heart in her throat at the knowledge of what she was going to do, Kit left the restroom and put the recorder with the other one in her locker.

  For the next hour and a half, she was practically a zombie, mentally rehearsing and refining what she was going to say to Jenny come lunchtime, and planning each movement of her assault on Woodley’s phone.

  All too quickly, it was noon. As expected, Jenny assumed they’d go to lunch together.

  “I wish I could,” Kit said with as much sincerity as she could muster. “But I’ve got to meet the plumber at my place.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  What’s wrong? . . . What’s wrong? The question rattled around in Kit’s skull. “The kitchen sink won’t drain.”

  “Which one did you call? Some of the plumbers in this town are real crooks.”

  Good God. Who’d have thought she’d ask that? “I don’t know. Somebody out of the phone book. I forget the name.”

  “I hope they don’t take you for a ride.”

  “Me, too.”

  “And I hope they show up.”

  “I expect they will. I better get going, so I don’t miss them.”

  Kit went to her car, left the parking lot, and drove around town, returning at 12:35. She took a quick tour around the lot to make sure Ward’s car wasn’t there, then went inside through the side door to avoid the receptionist, who usually ate at her desk.