Rabid (59 page)

~~~~~

The next day, Leila sat in Conroy’s office in his grimy chair, trying not to tip over his paper stacks, working with his notebooks to figure out how he had stained those thin sections of mouse brain. His samples looked good but he hadn’t written down the names of the antibodies he had used because he had been hiding that he was working with fucking rabies virus.

Leila must have been as quiet as a sacrificed mouse and entirely hidden behind the city block of paper stacks because Joe and Yuri started talking loudly outside the open door.

“You see morning paper?” Yuri asked. “Why they call Leila to witness? Why not all of us?”

“Thank your lucky stars you don’t have to testify, Yuri-go. She and Sloan were friends. Maybe he told her something.”

“Do you mean he was sleeping with her?”

“I think she’s dating someone else. Maybe it’s about his computer. He always had trouble with it and needed her help. God, you remember the red X’s? Maybe because she figured out about the fucking rabies virus.”

“Fucking rabies virus. My ass still sore. You think his wife killed him?”

“That’s what everyone says, but I don’t know. She was so nice at all those Christmas parties. Never thought she might be a snapper.”

“Snapper? Fish?”

“No, Yuri. The fish is a red snapper.”

“Is that communist crack?”

“A snapper is someone who
snaps
, goes crazy.”

“Yes, Mrs. Sloan did not seem red snapper. I didn’t even get his old Porsche. Capitalist swine.”

“Yes, Yuri.”

Leila’s reputation was safe for the next few months.

God or lack thereof willing, she planned to defend her PhD thesis as soon as she could, testify, deposit her thesis, and leave this goddamned town the next day.

The prosecuting attorneys had interviewed her last week, and they had been pissed when Leila admitted to the affair with Conroy.

Beverly Sloan had surely also told her lawyer that Leila had been screwing Conroy.

If she hadn’t, that damned priest had.

Leila had thought Dante
liked
talking to her.

That priest didn’t
like
talking to her.

He wasn’t staking out the Dublin because she was smart or interesting or because he wanted to talk about the impossibility of a deity in a scientific, logical universe. He had an ulterior motive: to get information for that murdering woman.

He was a stinking hypocrite, screwing Beverly Sloan and probably other women, too.

Asshole.

Tomcat.

Catamite, probably.

So this claustrophobic, buffeting feeling was what it was like to have Beverly Sloan and the Jesuit and everybody ganging up on you.

No wonder Conroy had bolted.

~~~~~

Dante sat in his library, reading yet more literature on the treatment for victims of child sexual abuse, but he still felt like he was blundering in every counseling session. Though every child had a different personality and background and sensitivities and thus each responded differently to his attention and the abuse and the counseling, he still felt like an armless, legless man taking psychoanalytic notes with a crayon in his mouth, every now and then looking up at the suffering child and muttering
Tell me about your parents
.

A knock jostled the library door. “Come in,” he said.

The door rattled, hesitated, and slammed open.

Leila, impossible Leila! Dante’s rising heart pulled him to his feet.

She glared at the stubborn door. “Sorry. The door stuck.”

“It is the humidity. Come in. Sit? Would you like a coffee?”

“I’m just dropping off the first paper. It made it past abstract review at
Nature
. I’ll let you know if they want revisions.” She held out a few pieces of paper. Leila’s hand was on the doorknob, ready to jump backward and slam the door, as if his attack were imminent.

Dante set his book aside and took the manuscript. He thumbed through the thin stack. “It’s short.”

“
Nature
, you know. Space is premium. It’s not
J of V
where you can blather on for thirteen pages about one point and show ten gels to support it.” Leila stepped back from him, and kicked the door with her heel. The door rattled. “I’ve got to run.”

Dante flipped the stack sideways and craned his neck to look at a picture. Neon green and red lines floated in black space. “Nice confocal.”

“Yeah.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

Her defensive gestures had returned in force. He hadn’t shown up, drunk and belligerent, on her doorstep at midnight lately. He touched his white Roman collar and realized he was wearing his full cassock in the chilly library. He looked like a medieval priest. “I can take out the collar tab.”

“I should go. If you want your name on the next paper, I’ll put it on. Other than that, we probably shouldn’t talk. Lawyers, and all that.”

~~~~~

Leila shifted on her feet in the dungeon of an office that Dante evidently inhabited. The heavy wooden door and thick stone walls could muffle any scream. She had to get out.

“I don’t understand.” The priest’s perplexed eyes were dark.

How calculatingly sweet, like a bright angel, but he was a fallen angel, and the hypocrite had screwed Conroy’s wife after caterwauling about searching for something that couldn’t be found in a life of debauchery. He had implied that he had given up women, the liar.

Leila wasn’t interested in fallen angels or debauched priests. This guy wasn’t
caged
at all. He prowled.

She said, “Oh, you know, the Beverly Sloan thing. The prosecutors told me that I should only talk to her attorney, and I don’t have to talk to him if I don’t want to, and I really shouldn’t discuss that night with anybody else who was a witness. You’re testifying for her, aren’t you?”

“Both the lawyers have called me. But surely we can still discuss science.”

“Let’s just get these papers out. You’re going back to Rome soon, right?”

He bent his neck, and his head bobbled left, inviting sympathy, flirting. “They have told me now that it will be years before I return to Roma. I have sublet my apartment there.”

“So the Inquisition has you by the short and curlies.”

“Pardon me?” He scratched at his collar.

“They’re running your life.”

“Oh, yes. I was thinking, however, when you are ready to submit the second paper, perhaps I should write a response rather than being an author.”

“The Church’s response?”

“No, my own. I think the second paper should have only your name. It’s a seminal paper. It’s going to change things. If you publish it alone, you could write your own ticket in a university, perhaps go directly to faculty.”

“No way.” She touched the cool, insulated door with her hand behind her back.

“You could. Crick did.”

Surely, he was joking. “Crick as in Watson and Crick,” Leila said. “That was
DNA
. This is just neuroanatomy.”

Dante tapped the molecular manuscript on the coffee table. “You’re explaining how we perceive the world, and what areas of the brain cause us to believe the things we do. There is a great deal of scientific support for your ideas, but it’s disparate, from many fields. I can tie it up, support your data. I think you could,” he licked his lips, “win prizes.”

Three little syllables that tripped on the tongue and buzzed at the end had driven Conroy raving mad.

Dante must still be trying to get her into bed. This fallen angel and debauched priest had invoked that old demon Flattery, that furry apparition that rubs so softly against your skin.

“I’ve got to go.” She walked out, pulling the door behind her. The swollen door bumped the jamb.

“Leila?”

She trotted out of the church, into the sunny, cold parking lot. The unseasonably cool May wind spun her black hair, and she yanked it out of her eyes with one hand while she fumbled with her car keys in the door with the other.

“Leila!”

“Look,” she called across the parking lot, “if there’s something you think should be changed, call me, or email, or something.”

She got in the car and punched the accelerator.

~~~~~

The Daily Hamiltonian:

Trial Set for Slain Doc’s Wife

By Kirin Oberoi

Judge Leonine Washington today announced that the trial of Mrs. Beverly Sloan, accused of stabbing to death her husband Dr. Conroy Sloan last February at his newly acquired apartment near the UNHHC, will begin on July 10th.

Jury selection will take place on July 6th and 7th.

Judge Washington has allowed three weeks in her calendar for the trial in its entirety. Neither the defense nor the prosecution has asked for a continuance to delay the trial, an unusual tactic for both the prosecution and the defense, though neither will comment to the press about their rationale.

While no official motive theory has been set forth as of yet by the prosecution, Mr. District Attorney George Grossberg and Assistant District Attorney Ms. Georgina Pire have noted in the press that Dr. Sloan was fined $30,000 by the College of Medicine for continuing an affair with an unnamed College of Medicine employee. His recently-rented apartment near the UNHHC may also play into the prosecution’s theory of motive.

Forensic evidence relating to the murder weapon, a four and a half inch steak knife, is expected to be presented by Dr. Sridhar Bhupadi, a forensic scientist for the NHPD.

No witness for either the prosecution or the defense has yet spoken to the press.

~~~~~

Dante copied his notes from his session with John Williams that afternoon onto paper stapled into a manila folder labeled
Complicity – Father Samual
.

When this file was complete, he could type the notes and send them to the Vatican and the good Dominican brothers in a proper, formal format, but he was free in his notes with his thoughts and comments.

An Elie Wiesel quote was etched inside the cover:
Let us remember: what hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.

That day, Dante wrote,
John’s abuse was typical of N’s predations, combining sacred Catholic symbolism with perversion.

One series of events of which Samual had knowledge occurred a year ago, last May.