Читать книгу Morgan O'Brien Mysteries 2-Book Bundle - Alex Brett - Страница 11

As Elaine moved into her office, I followed, curious to see what I would find. From her reaction I knew she’d noticed something, but not something she felt compelled to share. That meant she was assuming I wouldn’t see it.

It was a small office, with bookshelves lining one wall, filing cabinets along another, a desk on the back wall, and a work table just inside the door. Nothing seemed out of place. The surface of the work table was covered with neat stacks of files, journals, and papers to mark, and the desk top was clear. I glanced at the desk chair, hoping to see a report or book with a friendly little thank you post-it note attached, but the seat was empty. I wandered over to the bookshelf and made like I was examining her books, always a popular pastime with academics, and immediately noticed the bottom shelves, a section devoted to old files and theses.

Elaine is a registered neatnik, with books and papers precisely arranged, pens consolidated in a single holder, everything in its place. Dust and dirt, however, don’t faze her, and I’d seen plants and grungy coffee cups neglected for years on end. Given the healthy layer of dust on the shelf, these papers hadn’t been disturbed, at least not by Elaine, for several months. Someone, however, had been looking at them, and had tried to conceal it. I knelt down to get a better look. A coffee cup, which even the mould had died in, had been moved off the edge of the shelf then carefully replaced, but not carefully enough. A hairline displacement was evident in the dust. Also, papers in some of the files had been pulled out of alignment, something Elaine would have tidied up before she replaced the file. Why would anyone be interested in old files and theses?

I heard the metallic jingle of keys behind me and stood up. “Cleaning staff come in here much, Elaine?”

She slid the filing drawer closed and shook her head. “Cutbacks. They empty the garbage, that’s all.” She crossed the room to me. “Here.” She dropped the keys in my hand, then took my elbow in a firm grip and propelled me toward the door. “It’s 105 in the basement. The offices are on the right, behind the chamber. Cindy’s is in the back, Dinah’s is the one in front. They both should be open. Log in on the lab account if you need network access. Dinah can help you. Oh, and if you see her down there tell her to wait. We need to touch base before class. Still on for dinner?” I nodded. By this time we’d reached the threshold, and she gave me a solid nudge that sent me into the hall. She wanted me out of the office. “Good,” she said. She had the edge of the door in her hand and was closing it as she spoke. “Call me here. Not before eight.”

I managed to twist around and get my foot wedged in the door just before she slammed it. All I could see was a narrow strip of her face through the slit in the door. Her eye glared at me.

“O’Brien!”

“What’s your problem? I haven’t finished.”

She made no move to open the door. “I told you, I’m in a hurry.”

“Then I suggest you open the door, because I’ve got all day.” She opened it a bit, at least releasing the pressure on my shoe, but I knew enough to keep my foot firmly in place. Now I could see most of her face. “I cut through here this morning and saw a guy who looked familiar, but I can’t place him.” I gave her a rough description of the man who’d been in her office. “Ring a bell?”

“It sounds like Graham Connell, Madden’s student. I’m sure you’ll meet him later. Is that all?”

“Where would I find him?”

“Christ, Morgan. The fish museum, okay? Near my lab. But don’t tell him I told you. Anything else?”

I took my time answering, as if pondering the question. “I think that’s it.” Then I smiled and said, “Have a nice day,” and pulled out my foot. She slammed the door in my face.

Elaine and abrupt are synonymous terms, so for her this kind of behaviour was normal, just more dramatic than usual. I wondered if she actually knew someone had been in her office or she just suspected. It was an intriguing question, but not one I would know the answer to until she was good and ready to talk. In the meantime I’d do a little investigating on my own.

Going down the stairs I focused my thoughts on the real investigation, and what I had learned from Elaine. So far, I knew she liked Riesler, hated Edwards, and had implied that Jacobson might be involved. Edwards was associated with some sort of scandal but she wasn’t going to tell me what, Jacobson was a jerk, and a person — maybe Riesler’s graduate student — had broken into her office. Nice department, but it got me no further ahead than I had been when I left Ottawa yesterday afternoon. Things were not going as planned.

As I neared the basement I could feel moist, cold air seeping up the stairwell to forewarn me of the wet labs below: damp rooms crowded with tanks that teemed with aquatic life, everything from sturgeon to sea slugs. By the bottom landing the odour of mildew and rotting fish had mixed with the clammy air, and when I swung open the vestibule doors I got it full force, along with the sound of cascading water.

In another place — the northern rainforest or the Canadian shield — the sound would have been reassuring, even sublime, a perfect complement to the smell of moss and pine; here in the stark light of the basement corridors it was ominous and unfriendly.

I walked slowly down the hall, reading the names of professors posted beside lab doors. In the labs I caught glimpses of white-coated people moving between the tanks. When I saw Riesler’s name I slowed and glanced through the door. His lab was double the size of the others and alive with students and helpers. The central area housed tanks, but I could see offices along the back and a large glassed-in area to the left. It looked like a fully equipped high-end genetics lab. I moved on before I was noticed.

By the end of the hall I still hadn’t found Elaine’s lab, but I had found a door labelled Fish Museum. Someone was moving around inside. The door was ajar, so I pushed it open. It was like walking into the Coliseum when you’re the entertainment. A thousand malevolent eyes stared down from the shelves: preserved fish packed so tightly in jars that they strained against the glass. The place reeked, a combination of formaldehyde, lab alcohol, and fish. I decided against tuna for lunch.

The guy in the lab coat hadn’t heard my entrance. He had his back to me and was moving down a counter lined with dissecting trays. I stood quietly and watched. Jeans, high-top sneakers, about the right size and colouring. Under his arm he held a large, wide-mouth bottle: one of those mega-jars that holds bulk ketchup and mayonnaise for the restaurant trade. But instead of mayo, this jar was half filled with an aquatic version of E.T., a hideous little fish with bulging eyes, a misshapen head, and limb-like fins. The specimens were suspended in a greasy yellow liquid. The technician stopped, wiped his nose on his sleeve, then continued, dipping his gloved hand into the jar, pulling out a fish, and flopping it into a dissecting tray. As I watched his hand disappear into the liquid and pull out another fish, I decided against lunch altogether.

“What is it?” I said pointing to the bottle.

He swung around, surprised. I smiled. My mystery intruder. At first glance he was handsome, with blonde hair and luminous blue eyes framed by long, dark lashes, but he was older than I had thought, definitely not an undergraduate, and the first impression of him being handsome was due solely to his eyes. His face was, in fact, sharp and angular, giving him a hungry look verging on cunning. He made no attempt to hide his scrutiny of me. When he was satisfied with the examination, he pulled another fish from the jar, this one about forty centimetres long, and held it up by the tail. “A chimaera. Also known as a ratfish. Pretty wild, eh?”

I grimaced. “I wouldn’t want to see one staring up from my dinner plate, that’s for sure.” I looked him in the eye. “I’m looking for Dr. Okada’s lab. Is it around here?”

I saw a spark of interest in his eye. “Sure. See that little hall?” He waved the poor pickled chimaera in a vague over-to-the-left direction. I looked out the door. At the end of the hall there was a little corridor almost hidden by the wall. I nodded. “Down at the end. It’s sort of out of the way. You a new graduate student?” He threw the fish into an empty dissecting tray, but kept his eyes on me.

“Visiting post-doc. Just checking out the possibilities.”

“Really.” For some reason he wasn’t thrilled with the answer, but he put down his jar of fish and moved toward me. “Graham Connell. I’m a Ph.D. student with Dr. Riesler. I’m also the curator of this.” He swept his hand around the room and gave me a charming, lopsided, little-boy grin. “It pays the bills.”

Then he held out his hand, the same one that had been in the jar. I felt a cool, oily liquid on my palm.

“Morgan O’Brien, from the Canadian Genomics Institute. I’ve been working on E. coli, but I’m interested in moving over to fish, something a little more applied.”

When he released my hand I had to resist the urge to smell it or wipe it on my pants. I was sure I detected a smirk around his eyes, but his face remained serious and his tone was friendly. He must have decided that I’d be more useful as a friend than an enemy.

He produced another charm-the-pants-off-women smile. “Well, if you need a tour guide I’d be happy to oblige.”

I smiled back. Two could play at this game, and I had the advantage. I knew we were playing a game. “Really? Gosh. I’d love to find out more about Dr. Riesler’s lab. I’ve read some of his papers and they’re very impressive.” Then, just to make sure I didn’t threaten him, I said, “Of course, it’s not quite my area of interest, but it’s fascinating stuff. How about this. You take me for a tour, I’ll take you for a beer.”

“You’re on. I’m teaching a lab this morning, but I’m free after. How about twelve-thirty?”

“Great. We’ll have…” I tried to sound enthusiastic, “… lunch.”

“And you can tell me all about your research.”

“Love to.” Then I lowered my voice and leaned forward. “And I’d value your honest opinion on the department. I mean, not just the propaganda. You know … problems, tensions, egos… I’d kind of like to know before I…” I let my voice trail off and shrugged.

He laughed. “You want to know it now, not later.”

“Right. Like after I’ve committed myself. And it’s hard to get that kind of information.”

He pulled his lips back in something between a smile and a sneer. “I think I may be able to help out. If I’m not out here,” he jerked his head toward a door in the back corner of the museum, “check my office.”

“Perfect,” I said, and meant it. With that, I turned and started down the hall.

I could feel him move to the doorway behind me. “There is one thing…” he said. I stopped and turned. He was leaning against the door frame watching me. “You better learn to identify a chimaera before you switch to fish.”

It wasn’t until I was out of sight down the dead-end corridor that I heard the door to the museum close.

Elaine’s name was embossed on a metal plate just to the side of her lab door. That must give her a thrill, I thought, after all those years of graduate school and post docs. I tried the door, but it was locked. I banged on it, but there was no answer, so I let myself in with the keys Elaine had given me. Inside the lights were on.

“Dinah? Hello?” Still no answer.

The lab was a big open space, but so crowded with equipment that it looked like a rummage sale for used aquarium supplies. In the middle there were four huge tanks, the size of above-ground pools, swirling with water. To the left there was a glassed-in room with a large apparatus sitting in the middle. It had a dissecting microscope mounted on a mobile arm at one end, a delicate measuring device at the other end, and a bank of electronic equipment attached, including a computer and several oscilloscopes. Elaine’s single-cell recording equipment, probably.

The environmental chamber sat like a parked airstream trailer near the wall to my right. As an undergraduate I’d worked in one of those chambers over a frigid Winnipeg winter. We’d been raising jumping wabeens, a bizarre little unisex fish from the Florida everglades, so the temperature and humidity were set to tropical. The light inside was a soft blue, filtered through the water and glass. I would spend my days wrapped in the silent warmth of the chamber, cleaning aquariums, hovering over sick fish, preparing and doling out brine shrimp. Then every afternoon I would exit to the brilliant white of the prairie at twenty below. It made me wonder why people live in Canada.

Elaine had said that the offices were behind the chamber, and that took me by the big tanks. The first two were empty, just swirling water. I moved to the tanks behind, curious to see what might be in them. The one to my left was empty, but on my right, a dark, motionless form sat at the bottom of the tank. With the frothing water it was hard to make out what it was, and I leaned over. It looked like a seal. Without warning, the thing turned and shot straight up at me. I leapt back. There was a flash of scarlet, and something large broke the surface where my face had been, spraying water. Then the form split in two, half going around one side, half going around the other, to reconverge again at the bottom of the tank. I clutched my chest. What had looked like a single body was in fact an undulating school of large sockeye salmon, maybe ten to fifteen housed in the vat. I let out my breath and dropped my hand. Really. For a bunch of fish. I had been in Ottawa too long.

Just then, the door of the chamber opened and a man, with his back to me, lifted two buckets of gravel and started to walk out, holding the door open with his hip. I cleared my throat, but the noise of the water covered it.

I tried again. “Hello.”

The person at the door looked back, still holding the buckets, and registered my surprise. What’s more, she knew exactly why. She turned slowly and, looking mildly amused, said, “Can I help you?”

I scrambled to reorganize my response. The woman was an Amazon. I’m not wimpy. At five-eight and with years of karate behind me I have exceptional physical strength for a woman, but those buckets of gravel must have weighed sixty pounds each. I could lift one, but I certainly couldn’t heft one in each hand and stand there casually carrying on a conversation.

When I had recovered my composure I said, “I’m looking for Dinah.”

She lowered the buckets, taking her time, showing me she wasn’t in any hurry, then she straightened up and crossed her arms, shifting her weight to one foot. She must have been over six feet, and the attitude made her look taller.

“What can I do for you?” she said cooly.

“You’re Dinah?”

“Mmm.”

While she might be mistaken for a man from the back, nobody would ever make that error head on. Her auburn hair was cut short, but gently feathered around her face. With her pale, lightly freckled skin and delicately sculpted features she could have been strutting the fashion runways of Paris and Milan. Her eyes, though, were her most startling feature: large, clear, and a dark topaz, and right now they were trained on me. It was like being assessed by a timber wolf.

“Elaine said you’d direct me to Cindy’s office.”

She cocked her head slightly. “Cindy isn’t here. She doesn’t usually come in until around ten, but you can leave a message on her desk.”

“I could, but I don’t think she’d get it. She’s gone to New Zealand. I’ll be using her office while she’s away.” I started to move forward.

At the news, Dinah’s eyes widened, then her cool shifted into surprise and something else I couldn’t read. She put her hand on my shoulder to stop me.

“What did you say?”

“Cindy’s gone to New Zealand. Her mother’s in the hospital.”

Dinah’s eyes narrowed. “When?”

Oh. Now I could identify that emotion. Raw and burning anger. “When what?”

“When did Cindy leave?”

I shrugged. “Last night? This morning? I’m not sure. You’ll have to check with Elaine.” I looked pointedly at her hand on my shoulder and said, “Do you mind?”

Dinah sucked in her breath then exhaled the word “Fuck.” She glared at one of the buckets, pulled back, and kicked it so hard that it skittered across the cement, tottering precariously before finally coming to a halt… fortunately upright. When I turned back to look at her she’d covered her face with her hands, but not quickly enough to hide the tears welling in her eyes. Her final statement was halfway between a curse and a sob.

“The bitch,” she said, and she took off out the door.