Lab Notes: a novel (14 page)

She was jolted from her musings by the sound of an outboard motor. She turned and saw a wooden runabout with two people on board enter the harbor. The boat made a slow circle inside the marina. One of the passengers, a woman, spotted Diane and waved. Diane waved in return. The boat darted back out into the bay.

μ CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR μ

Returning home Diane discovered that, in her absent state of mind, she hadn’t locked the downstairs door when she left. But that didn’t dim her after-party glow. At about the time she was ready to leave the “fiesta,” David had shown up, downed two
margaritas
then convinced her to try the Mexican hat dance with him. It had been fun, a reminder that life still held its pleasures.

Climbing the steps from the ground level to the first floor, she suddenly realized that Huck hadn’t charged down the stairs to drown her in welcome home kisses. She called to him. But he didn’t show up.

She peeked into the living room and dining room, then headed up the curved staircase toward the second floor. “I bet you’re sacked out in the middle of my bed, you scoundrel.”

Anxiously, she glanced around for signs of her dog. She didn’t think she could bear losing him too.

Huck’s father, Buster Brown, had brought Diane and Vincent together. When she was a graduate student and Vincent was lab chief, Buster had been donated as a research animal. He was just a puppy then.

For a week, he had followed her around the lab with his hound dog eyes. Then one day, on her way out, she grabbed him from his cage, placed him in her giant shoulder bag and ran to the elevator. A clean getaway, she thought. But just as the doors were closing, Dr. Vincent Rose—her boss—jumped onto the elevator.

For four long stories down, while her shoulder bag wiggled and whined, Dr. Rose nibbled on his bottom lip and stared at the floor.

The next day Vincent invited Diane out to lunch, their first date. A couple months later he confessed he had fallen in love while riding down in the elevator with her and her whimpering shoulder bag.

When Buster was eight years old, he was mated with a friend’s dog, also of questionable lineage. Miraculously, the coupling resulted in Huck, a short-haired hound—a clone of his father, but much larger.

He was her only remaining immediate family member.

Diane stood very still and listened for panting, scratching or paws ticking on wood or tile—anything that would direct her to Huck’s whereabouts. But all she heard was the house’s implacable silence.

When she had returned to the treehouse from Vincent’s memorial Mass in Pittsburgh, the new silence that greeted her at the door was not quietude, but a void that could not be filled up with the air conditioner and the refrigerator running or the surround sound and TV playing or Huck’s bark or her own sobs or even the telephone ringing, because she knew it could never again be him calling.

Now, in a high state of anxiety, Diane ran back down the stairs and into the kitchen. Huck could have gone out through the dog door. She flipped on the spotlights.

She stepped onto the back deck and called to him. Then she headed for the screen door that opened onto the side deck. Huck had access though a hinged opening at its base. Maybe he went around to the front deck and couldn’t hear her, unlikely though. With his hearing he could detect a rabbit’s nose wiggling a mile away.

Diane walked slowly along the side of the house, listening, afraid of what she might find. At first, all she heard was the slow ting, ting-ting of wind chimes and the lazy rubbing of pine branches.

Then the thunder of big feet announced Huck’s approach as he rounded the corner from the front deck, tail wagging, and one knotted end of a large rawhide bone in his mouth.

“There you are, you scamp. I should have known you were eating something—the only distraction that would keep you from greeting me.”

She bent down to hug him and got a whiff of the rawhide clenched in his teeth. It was beef-basted. She never bought those; they stained the rugs.

She admonished him again. “Where did you dredge that up?” Vincent must have bought it months before. And Huck had hidden it, knowing she’d take it from him. But right then she didn’t have the heart to do so.

After Diane took Huck for a walk, it was almost midnight. But she knew she wouldn’t sleep until she checked her emails.

She went upstairs to her computer and found it booted up with the password prompt flashing. Either she’d left it on or it had rebooted itself in the midst of turning off. First, she had left the door unlocked and now this. She really needed to get her mind straight.

She sat down and keyed in her password. Clicking open her incoming mail, she froze. Tung Chen had already sent a response.

With anxious fingers, she clicked on his attachment. And there it was:
Murder Suspected in American Scientist’s Fall.
Diane’s heart throbbed in her ears as she read the article. Dr. Harry Lee—an American—had been pushed or had jumped from a viewing area on Victoria Peak in Hong Kong.

In an interview, Harry Lee’s uncle Hu Lee, a Hong Kong investment banker, stated that his nephew was ecstatic about a new business venture, and he never would have committed suicide.

Harry had left his uncle’s house, briefcase in hand, to sign up the deal. Harry had told Hu Lee that confidentiality was key. So Hu Lee had no idea who Harry was meeting that fateful night.

Harry Lee’s wallet, credit cards, cash and his Rolex watch were all found on his body. The search continued for his briefcase.

The newspaper article stated that an unnamed source close to the police department disclosed that forensics found marks on Harry Lee’s neck and sweater fibers and dog hairs on his jacket. When presented with the information, Harry’s uncle was baffled by the report of dog hairs. “Harry was terrified of dogs,”

The Hong Kong police were working close with American authorities in the case.

Diane jumped up from her chair and paced around her home office. In the short space of the past five hours, two items had been confirmed under the classification:
Things Vincent Mentioned Regarding Harry Lee.
1) Harry Lee had been hard of hearing. 2) Harry Lee was murdered.
What were you on to, Vincent?

If she had listened to him, if she hadn’t had such a strong psychological bias against his “paranoid” assertions, he would have told her exactly what it was.

But wait. He could still tell her. She closed her eyes, dropped her head back and groaned. How could she be so obtuse? Vincent’s song wasn’t the product of a demented mind. He was pleading with her to find his notes in the piano and study them. That being the case, he knew he might not be returning. He knew he was being followed.

The collision was a hit and run alright, but it wasn’t an accident.

She stopped in her tracks, stunned by the epiphany. Was it the pirates? Drug runners? Or someone else.

The camera had stopped shortly after the collision. It had been connected to the boat’s electrical system, which could have become submerged. Or had someone come aboard out of camera view, disconnected it and thrown Vincent overboard?

Diane buried her face in her hands. She had to stop torturing herself with those images. She’d probably never know exactly what had happened or why. But there were things she
could
investigate.

She turned and ran down the stairs, opened the top of the piano and peered inside. The notebooks and flash drives were still there where she had carefully replaced them before her trip to Pittsburgh.

Diane went to the kitchen and brewed a pot of coffee. Then she settled onto a bar stool and opened a notebook—as well as her mind.

By daybreak, Vincent had made her a believer.

μ CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE μ

Fog had formed in low-lying areas on the roadsides and was starting to roll across the pavement—just the beginning according to the weather report. Diane slowed down and switched on her fog lights. She wasn’t about to let a little visibility problem thwart her plan.

Wilbur remained her only concern. What reason would she give for showing up at BRI’s gates at ten p.m.—and without her office keys? It was absurd to worry of course. She was on administrative call. She had every right to be there.

As for the prospect of Wilbur following her around like a bodyguard, she felt confident that wouldn’t happen now. Ever since the chimp roundup, he had been less protective, and maybe even a little intimidated by her. Too bad, really, Wilbur was the only one in the organization Vincent trusted, according to his notes.

A second evening spent poring over her husband’s notebooks had driven her out into the weather. Vincent’s jumbled thoughts were, at times, nearly illegible. But his frenzied attempts to connect all the snippets of information came through clearly.

Calling it “the handwriting on the wall” (Vincent’s prophesy of doom for Bellfort and BRI, she supposed), he had made lists upon lists: technology transfer companies he called “the fences”—TekTranz, Cell Trans, Intel Trans etc. etc; pharmaceutical companies (mostly in Asia); GPS coordinates (oddly enough); and people’s names.

Some names weren’t familiar to her. But Vincent’s comments about the people she
did
know were startling:
Pete is over-friendly. Is he a refugee from Hematec or a spy for them? Or for someone else? Saw Colton Fey loitering around the primate house yet again.
And the real shocker:
Saw David Crowley leaving our lab. He had no reason to be there.
Then later:
Crowley is watching me.

But even with Vincent’s myriad suspicions—including the suggestion that Harry Lee’s death was tied to his technology—there wasn’t a hint that his own life might be in jeopardy. Of course, if one considered the basic tenet of scientific research: “Similar things happen under similar circumstances,” a proposition that Harry Lee and Vincent’s deaths were similar, in that they were both connected to their technologies, would not hold up. Vincent’s research had been sold before he disappeared.

For now, Diane pledged to let Vincent take the lead. She’d continue studying his notebooks and investigating his facts and comments. But he had left large gaps; it was going to be a bear of a completion test.

In keeping with all that, she found herself creeping along in the fog tonight because of Vincent’s reminiscences about his grandfather. Throughout his notes, vignettes penned in loving prose, spoke of the man’s influence in Vincent’s life.

Invariably, venomous indictments of unethical business practices in biotechnology followed those sections. It seemed that Vincent mined his childhood memories to fuel his anger regarding the premature sale of
Peruvase
.

Diane never got to know Vincent’s granddad. He died from Parkinson’s disease shortly after she met him. Even so, how could she have forgotten how much he had meant to Vincent? His death had been the force behind the early development of
Peruvase.

Tonight she vowed she’d track down the drug and check on its development. Maybe she could suggest a joint venture with the new owners to move things along, possibly reinvesting some of the money she and Vincent received from the sale. She was about to take the first step in that direction.

She pulled up to the guard booth and greeted Wilbur warmly, offering her
mea culpas
for forgetting her office keys. After some chit chat about the weather, she pulled through the gates, grinning, master keys in hand. She had little less than an hour until Wilbur would make rounds at shift change. Plenty of time.

Her lights played off small puffs of fog as she curved around toward the main building. But nearing the bay, she was faced with ever diminishing visibility. Her headlights became useless. She switched them off and inched along aided by her fog beams and shrubbery lighting that peered out dimly from either side of the drive. Through her open window she could hear the cacophony of tree frogs permeating the thick night air.

Finally, the lighted Greek Revival columns emerged through the mist. Tonight, in that gothic atmosphere, the building reminded her of a mausoleum. She parked the car in front and headed up the steps. She never locked her car doors at BRI, but tonight her thumb quickly sought the lock button on her key ring. Behind her, the horn beeped and the lights flashed. The frog chorus went silent.

Nothing stirred. A distant foghorn sounded. Diane shuddered.

Creeped out, but curious, she stepped around the side of the building, near Raymond Bellfort’s private entrance, to look at the bay. A wall of fog had risen from the water. It loomed before her, a chilling presence whose hoary fingers inched their way towards her. She turned and ran for the front door.

Diane stood inside Maxine’s office feeling like she did when she mistakenly walked into a restaurant men’s room at age sixteen: She didn’t belong there; she had violated some ancient code of civilization just stepping through the doorway.

But tonight she wouldn’t retreat.

She walked over and studied Maxine’s desk. Everything on top was perfectly parallel or perpendicular to everything else. A crystal monkey weighted down a stack of papers, their edges in exact alignment. A framed picture of a generic cat and dog stood next to the lamp.

Diane wondered why she hadn’t known that Maxine was an animal lover. Then she realized she didn’t know much at all about BRI’s business manager. She shrugged and headed for the closet—on one occasion, she had seen Maxine emerge from there, file cabinet keys in hand. She flipped on the light switch outside the door and entered.

Inside, she was faced with shelves and shelves of boxes, color-coded, labeled and alphabetized in categories and subcategories. Hoping for the obvious, she checked the walls to the right and left of the door for a key hanger. No such luck.

Resigning herself to the task, she began with the yellow box section nearest the door, running her hand along the shelving and reading the “K” labels all the way to the purple section at the back wall, using a small ladder to reach the upper shelves. No keys.

She turned to the other side and worked her way back to the door. She was standing on the ladder when he saw the key ring hanging on an old bent nail near the top of the doorframe.

Diane let out a growl of frustration, snatched the keys off the nail and headed for the file cabinets.

She opened the “Inactive Personnel” files, flipped through to the L’s, and there it was:
Harry Lee PhD.
She scanned the file hurriedly. It had the usual stuff. His educational background: University of Michigan, UCLA. He had worked for a small biotech company in Palo Alto before signing on with BRI.

Diane looked at her watch; it was almost 10:40. She flipped quickly through the pages until finally she found what she was looking for: Next of kin.

Jerry Wentzel had mentioned that Harry’s parents had been killed in an auto accident. His next of kin was listed as Hu Lee along with an address and phone number in Hong Kong—the same uncle as the one quoted in the newspaper article. Diane scribbled down the information, replaced the file and locked the drawer. Time to get out of there.

Then, a label marked “Active Personnel A thru L” caught her eye. She hesitated a moment. Would she be invading his privacy? She fought off her conscience, found the corresponding key on the ring and opened the file drawer. She quickly walked her fingers back to the C’s where she found the folder labeled “David Crowley DVM, PhD.”

According to the file, David was divorced and had come to BRI from a veterinary clinic. Before that he was a researcher at Texas A&M in the poultry science department. Diane chuckled. She didn’t know why, but that particular specialty always amused her.

As with Maxine, Diane wondered why she didn’t know much about David. Had she assumed their lives could not possibly have the gravitas of her own and therefore neglected to show an interest in them? Or, were they hiding things from her?

Replacing David’s file, Diane spotted a tab labeled “Leonard Everly.” She didn’t know anyone at BRI by that name, yet it seemed familiar. Snickering, she dismissed the idea that Maxine could have misfiled it. She pulled the folder and opened it just as she heard a noise outside. She glanced at her watch. It was 10:48. Was Wilbur early?

Diane replaced the folder, locked the file, returned the keys to their nail, switched off the closet light and quietly closed the door. All in less than fifteen seconds.

The fog bank had moved ashore. Diane found it waiting outside. She jumped in her car, hit the door lock, checked the backseat for intruders, then sat there feeling silly about her fright. The only creatures ever spotted on BRI grounds at night were possums, deer, raccoons and once, a bobcat. Never werewolves or vampires—not even in dense fog.

Diane returned the master keys to Wilbur and headed home squinting to follow the road’s edge in near-zero visibility.

It wasn’t until she pulled up the driveway to the treehouse that it rushed at her. She saw it clearly, sitting alone on an otherwise crowded notebook page—
Leonard Everly
. The only things distinguishing it were the three question marks that followed.