from South America.
It’s just another animal case, I told myself, returning the pictures to their envelope. We’d get them occasionally, because someone thought the remains to be human. Bear paws skinned and left behind by hunters, pigs and goats slaughtered for meat, the unwanted portions discarded by a roadside, dogs and cats abused and thrown in the river. The callousness of the human animal always astounded me. I never got used to it.
So why did this case hold my attention? Another look at the five-by-sevens. Okay. The monkey had been cut up. Big deal. So are a lot of animal carcasses that we see. Some asshole probably got his jollies tormenting and killing it. Maybe it was a student, pissed off at his grade.
With the fifth photo I stopped, my eyes cemented to the image. Once again, my stomach muscles knotted. I stared at the photo, then reached for the phone.
23
THERE’S NOTHING EMPTIER THAN A CLASSROOM BUILDING AFTER hours. It’s how I imagine the aftermath of a neutron bomb. Lights burn. Water fountains spew forth on command. Bells ring on schedule. Computer terminals glow eerily. The people are absent. No one quenching a thirst, scurrying to class, or clicking on keyboards. The silence of the catacombs.
I sat on a folding chair outside Parker Bailey’s office at the Université du Québec à Montréal—UQAM. Since leaving the lab, I’d worked out at the gym, bought groceries at the Provigo, and fed myself a meal of vermicelli and clam sauce. Not bad for a quick and dirty. Even Birdie was impressed. Now I was impatient.
To say the biology department was quiet would be like saying a quark is small. Up and down the corridor every door was closed. I’d perused the bulletin boards, read the graduate school brochures, the field school announcements, the offers to do word processing or tutoring, the notices announcing guest speakers. Twice.
I looked at my watch for the millionth time—9:12 P.M. Damn. He should be here by now. His class ended at nine. At least, that’s what the secretary had told me. I got up and paced. Those who wait must pace—9:14. Damn.
At 9:30 I gave up. As I slung my purse over my shoulder, I heard a door open somewhere out of sight. In a moment a man with an enormous stack of lab books hurried around the corner. He kept adjusting his arms to keep the books from falling. His cardigan looked as if it had left Ireland before the potato famine. I guessed his age at around forty.
He stopped when he saw me, but his face registered nothing. I started to introduce myself when a notebook slipped from the stack. We both lunged for it. Not a good move by him. The better part of the pile followed, scattering across the floor like confetti on New Year’s Eve. We gathered and restacked for several minutes, then he unlocked his office and dumped the books on his desk.
“Sorry,” he said in heavily accented French. “I—”
“No problem,” I responded in English. “I must have startled you.”
“Yes. No. I should have made two trips. This happens a lot.” His English was not American.
“Lab books?”
“Yeah. I just taught a class in ethological methodology.”
He was brushed with all the shades of an Outer Banks sunset. Pale pink skin, raspberry cheeks, and hair the color of a vanilla wafer. His mustache and eyelashes were amber. He looked like a man who’d burn, not tan.
“Sounds intriguing.”
“Wish more of them thought so. Can I—”
“I’m Tempe Brennan,” I said, reaching into my bag and offering him a card. “Your secretary said I could catch you now.”
As he read the card, I explained my visit.
“Yeah, I remember. I hated losing that monkey. It really cheesed me off at the time.” Suddenly, “Would you like to sit?”
Without waiting for a reply, he began shoveling objects from a green vinyl chair and heaping them onto the office floor. I stole a peek around. His tiny quarters made mine look like Yankee Stadium.
Every inch of wall space that wasn’t covered with shelves was blanketed with pictures of animals. Sticklebacks. Guinea fowl. Marmosets. Warthogs. Even an aardvark. No level of the Linnaean hierarchy had been neglected. It reminded me of the office of an impressario, with celebrity associations displayed like trophies. Only these photos weren’t signed.
We both sat, he behind his desk, feet propped on an open drawer, I in the recently cleared visitor’s chair.
“Yeah. It really cheesed me off,” he repeated, then switched the topic suddenly. “You’re an anthropologist?”
“Um.