Deja Dead Page 0,97
“Did you ever read Marie-Lise’s project notes?”
He stopped doodling and looked at me sharply. “What do you mean?”
“Is there any chance of something she wanted to cover up? Some reason to want to dump the project?”
“No. Absolutely not.” His voice held conviction. His eyes did not.
“Does she keep in touch?”
“No.”
“Is that common?”
“Some do, some don’t.” The triangles were spreading.
I changed tack. “Who else had access to the . . . is it a lab?”
“Just a small one. We keep very few animal subjects here on campus. We just don’t have the space. Every species has to be kept in a separate room, you know.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. The CCAC has specific guidelines for temperature control, space, diet, social and behavioral parameters, you name it.”
“The CCAC?”
“The Canadian Council on Animal Care. They publish a guide for the care and use of experimental animals. It’s our bible. Everyone using research animals has to conform to it. Scientists. Breeders. Industry. It also covers the health and safety of personnel working with animals.”
“What about security?”
“Oh yeah. The guidelines are very specific.”
“What security measures did you follow?”
“I’m working with sticklebacks right now. Fish.”
He swiveled and waved his pen at the fish on the wall.
“They don’t require a whole lot. Some of my colleagues keep lab rats. They don’t either. The animal activists don’t usually get wrought up over fish and rodents.”
His face did the World Cup of wry.
“Alsa was the only other mammal, so security wasn’t all that stringent. She had her own little room, which we kept locked. And, of course, we locked her cage. And the outer lab door.”
He stopped.
“I’ve gone over it in my mind. I can’t remember who was the last to leave that night. I know I didn’t have a night class, so I don’t think I was here late. Probably one of the grad students did the last check. The secretary won’t check those doors unless I specifically ask her to.”
He paused again.
“I suppose an outsider could have gotten in. It’s not impossible someone left the doors unlocked. Some of the students are less dependable than others.”
“What about the cage?”
“The cage was certainly no big deal. Just a padlock. We never found it. I suppose it could have been cut.”
I tried to broach the next topic delicately. “Were the missing parts ever found?”
“Missing parts?”
“Alsa had been”—now I groped for a word. KISS—“cut up. Parts of her weren’t in the bundle that was recovered. I wondered if anything showed up here.”
“Like what? What was missing?” His pastel face looked puzzled.
“Her right hand, Dr. Bailey. Her right hand had been severed at the wrist. It wasn’t there.”
There was no reason to tell him about the women who’d suffered the same violation, about the real reason I was there.
He was silent. Linking his fingers behind his head, he leaned back and focused on something above me. The raspberry in his cheeks moved toward rhubarb. A small clock radio hummed quietly on his file cabinet.
After a decade, I broke the silence.
“In retrospect, what do you think happened?”
He didn’t answer right away. Then, when I was convinced he never would, “I think it was probably one of the mutant life-forms that are spawned in the cesspool around this campus.”
I thought he’d finished. The source of his breathing seemed to have moved deeper into his chest. Then he added something, almost in a whisper. I didn’t catch it.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“Marie-Lise deserved better.”
I found it an odd thing to say. So did Alsa, I thought, but held my tongue. Without warning, a bell split the silence, firing a current through every nerve in my body. I looked at my watch—10:00 P.M.
Sidestepping his question about my interest in a monkey dead four years, I thanked him for his time and asked him to call me should he think of anything else. I left him sitting there, refocusing on whatever had floated above my head. I suspected he was gazing into time, not space.
Not too familiar with the territory, I’d parked in the same alley as the night I’d cruised the Main. Stick with what works. I’d come to think of that outing as the Great Gabby Grope. It seemed like eons ago. It had been two days.
Tonight was cooler, and a soft rain still fell. I zipped my jacket and started back to my car.
Leaving the university, I walked north on St. Denis, past a cavalcade of upscale boutiques and bistros. Though just a few blocks east, St. Denis is a galaxy away from St. Laurent. Frequented by the young