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. Hm.”

“Do much with primates?”

“No. Used to, but not anymore. I’m on the anthropology faculty at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Occasionally I teach a course on primate biology or behavior, but I’m really not involved in that work anymore. I’m too busy with forensic research and consulting.”

“Right.” He waved the card. “What did you do with primates?”

I wondered who was interviewing who. Whom. “I was interested in osteoporosis, especially the interplay between social behavior and the disease process. We worked with animal models, rhesus mostly, manipulating the social groups, creating stress situations, then monitoring the bone loss.”

“Do any work in the wild?”

“Just island colonies.”

“Oh?” The amber eyebrows arched with interest.

“Cayo Santiago in Puerto Rico. For several years I taught a field school on Morgan Island, off the coast of South Carolina.”

“Rhesus monkeys?”

“Yes. Dr. Bailey, I wonder if you can tell me anything about the monkey that disappeared from your facility?”

He ignored my not so smooth segue. “How’d you get from monkey bones to corpses?”

“Skeletal biology. It’s the crux of both.”

“Yeah. True.”

“The monkey?”

“The monkey. Can’t tell you much.” He rubbed one Nike against the other, then leaned over and flicked at something. “I came in one morning and the cage was empty. We thought maybe someone had left the latch unhooked and that Alsa, that was her name, maybe she let herself out. They’ll do that, you know. She was smart as a pistol and had phenomenal manual dexterity. She had the most amazing little hands. Anyway, we searched the building, alerted campus security, jumped through all the hoops. But we never found her. Then I saw the article in the paper. The rest is history.”

“What were you doing with her?”

“Actually, Alsa wasn’t my project. A graduate student was working with her. I’m interested in animal communication systems, particularly, but not exclusively, those relying on pheromones and other olfactory signals.”

The change in cadence, along with the shift to jargon, clued me that he’d given this synopsis before. He’d launched into his “my research is” spiel, the scientist’s oral abstract for public consumption. “The spiel” is based on the KISS principle: Keep It Simple Stupid. It is trotted out for cocktail parties, fund-raisers, first meetings, and other social occasions. We all have one. I was hearing his.

“What was the project?” Enough about you.

He gave a wry smile and shook his head. “Language. Language acquisition in a New World primate. That’s where she got her name. L’Apprentissage de la Langue du Singe Americain. ALSA. Marie-Lise was going to be Quebec’s answer to Penny Patterson, and Alsa would be the KoKo of South American monkeys.” He flourished a pen above his head, gave a derisive snort, then let his arm drop heavily. It made a soft thud against the desk. I studied his face. He looked either tired or discouraged, I couldn’t tell which.

“Marie-Lise?”

“My student.”

“Was it working?”

“Who knows? She didn’t really have enough time. The monkey disappeared five months into the project.” More wry. “Followed shortly thereafter by Marie-Lise.”

“She left school?”

He nodded.

“Do you know why?”

He paused a long time before answering. “Marie-Lise was a good student. Sure, she had to start over on her thesis, but I have no doubt she could have completed her master’s. She loved what she was doing. Yeah, she was devastated when Alsa was killed, but I don’t think that was it.”

“What do you think it was?”

He drew small triangles on one of the lab books. I let him take his time.

“She had this boyfriend. He’d hassle her all the time about being in school. Badgered her to quit. She only talked to me about it once or twice, but I think it really got to her. I met him at a couple of department parties. I thought the guy was spooky.”

“How so?”

“Just . . . I don’t know, antisocial. Cynical. Antagonistic. Rude. Like he had never absorbed the basic . . . skills. He always reminded me of a Harlow monkey. You know? Like he was raised in isolation and never learned to deal with other beings. No matter what you said to him, he’d roll his eyes and smirk. God, I hated that.”

“Did you ever suspect him? That maybe he killed Alsa to sabotage Marie-Lise’s work, to get her to quit school?”

His silence told me that he had. Then, “He was supposedly in Toronto at the time.”

“Could he verify that?”

“Marie-Lise believed him. We didn’t pursue it. She was too upset. What was the point? Alsa was dead.”

I wasn’t sure how to ask the next question. “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 and affluent, St. Denis is the place to go seeking—a dress, silver earrings, a mate, a one-night stand. The street of dreams. Most cities have one. Montreal has two: Crescent for the English, St. Denis for the French.

I thought about Alsa as I waited for the light at De Maisonneuve. Bailey was probably right. Ahead and to my right sat the bus station. Whoever had killed her hadn’t gone far to ditch the body. That suggested a local.

I watched a young couple emerge from the Berri-UQAM Métro station. They ran through the rain, clinging together like socks just out of the dryer.

Or it could have been a commuter. Right, Brennan, grab a monkey, take the Métro home, whack it, cut it up, then haul it back on the Métro and leave it at the bus station. Great thinking.

The light turned green. I crossed St. Denis and walked west on De Maisonneuve, still thinking about my conversation with Bailey. What was it about him that bothered me? Did he show too much emotion for his student? Too little for the monkey? Why had he seemed so—what?—negative about the Alsa project? Why didn’t he know about the hand? Hadn’t Pelletier told me Bailey inspected the cadaver? Wouldn’t he have noticed the missing hand? The remains had been released to him, and he’d taken them from the lab.

“Shit,” I said aloud, mentally smacking my forehead.

A man in coveralls turned to look at me, registering apprehension. He wore no shirt or shoes and carried a shopping bag in both arms, its torn paper handles pointing at odd angles. I smiled to reassure him, and he shuffled on, shaking his head at the state of humanity and the universe.

You’re a regular Columbo, I berated myself. You didn’t even ask Bailey what he did with the body! Good job.

Having chastised myself, I made amends by proposing consumption of a hot dog.

Knowing I wouldn’t sleep anyway, I accepted. That way I could blame it on the food. I went into the Chien Chaud on St. Dominique, ordered a dog all dressed, fries, and a Diet Coke. “No Coke, Pepsi,” I was told by a John Belushi look-alike with thick black hair and a heavy accent. Life really does imitate art.

I ate my food in a red-and-white plastic booth, contemplating travel posters peeling from the walls. That would do, I thought, gazing at the too blue skies and blindingly white buildings of Paros, Santorini, Mykonos. Yes. That would do nicely. Cars began to crowd the wet pavement outside. The Main was revving up.

A man arrived and engaged Belushi in loud conversation, presumably Greek. His clothes were damp and smelled of smoke and fat and a spice I didn’t recognize. Droplets sparkled in his thick hair. When I glanced over he smiled at me, cocked one bushy eyebrow and ran his tongue slowly along his upper lip. He might as well have shown me his hemorrhoid. Matching his maturity level, I showed him middle man, and turned my attention to the scene outside the window.

Through rain-streaked glass I could make out a row of shops across the street, dark and silent on the eve of a holiday. La Cordonnerie la Fleur. Why would a shoemaker call his shop “The Flower”?

La Boulangerie Nan. I wondered if that was the name of the bakery, the name of the owner, or just an ad for Indian bread. Through the windows I could see empty shelves, ready for the morning’s harvest. Do bakers bake on national holidays?

La Boucherie St. Dominique. Its windows were covered with news of weekly specials. Lapin frais. Boeuf. Agneau. Poulet. Saucisse. Fresh rabbit. Beef. Lamb. Chicken. Sausage. Monkey.

That’s it. You’re out of here. I wadded the wrapper into the paper tray that had held my hot dog. The things for which we kill trees. I added my Pepsi can, threw the whole mess into the trash, and left.

The car was where I’d left it and as I’d left it. Driving, my brain looped back to the murders.

Each slap of the wipers brought up a new image. Alsa’s truncated arm. Slap. Morisette-Champoux’s hand lying on her kitchen floor. Slap. Chantale Trottier’s tendons. Slap. Arm bones with cleanly cut lower ends. Slap.

Was it always the same hand? Couldn’t remember. Have to check. No human hand had been missing. Just coincidence? Was Claudel right? Was I getting paranoid? Maybe Alsa’s abductor collected animal paws. Was he just an over-zealous Poe fan? Slap. Or she?

At eleven-fifteen I pulled into my garage. Even my bone marrow was exhausted. I’d been up over eighteen hours. No hot dog would keep me awake tonight.

Birdie hadn’t waited up. As was his habit when alone, he’d curled up in the small wooden rocker by the fireplace. He looked up when I came in, blinking round yellow eyes at me.

“Hey, Bird, how was it being a cat today?” I purred, scratching under his chin. “Does anything ever keep you up?”

He closed his eyes and stretched his neck, either ignoring or enhancing the feel of my stroking. When I withdrew my hand he yawned widely, nestled his chin back onto his paws, and regarded me from under heavy lids. I went to the bedroom, knowing he’d follow eventually. Unclasping the barrettes in my hair and dumping my clothes in a heap on the floor, I threw back the covers and dropped into bed.

In no time I fell into a dense and dreamless sleep. I hosted no phantom apparitions, no menacing stage plays. At one point I sensed a warm heaviness against my leg, and knew that Birdie had joined me, but I slept on, enveloped in a black void.

Then, my heart was pounding and my eyes were open. I was wide awake, felt alarm, and didn’t know why. The transition was so abrupt I had to orient myself.

The room was pitch black. The clock read one twenty-seven. Birdie was gone. I lay in the dark holding my breath, listening, straining for a clue. Why had my body gone to red alert? Had I heard something? What blip had my personal radar detected? Some sensory receptor had sent a signal. Had Birdie heard something? Where was he? It was unlike him to prowl at night.

I relaxed my body and listened harder. The only sound was my heart hammering against my chest. The house was eerily silent.

Then I heard it. A soft clunk followed by a faint metallic rattle. I waited, rigid, not breathing. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty seconds. A glowing digit changed shape on the clock. Then, when I thought I might have imagined it, I heard it again. Clunk. Rattle. My molars compressed like a Black & Decker vise, and my fingers curled into fists.

Was someone in the apartment? I’d grown accustomed to the ordinary sounds of the place. This sound was different, an acoustic intruder. It didn’t belong.

Silently, I eased back the quilt and swung my legs out of bed. Blessing last night’s sloppiness, I reached for my T-shirt and jeans and slipped them on. I stole across the carpet.

I stopped at the bedroom door to look back in search of a possible weapon. Nothing. There was no moon, but light from a streetlamp oozed through the window in the other bedroom and partly lit the hall with a faint glow. I stole forward, past the bathroom, toward the hall with the courtyard doors. Every few steps I stopped to listen, breath frozen, eyes wide. At the entrance to the kitchen, I heard it again. Clunk. Rattle. It was coming from somewhere near the French doors.

I turned right into the kitchen and peered toward the French doors on the patio side of the apartment. Nothing moved. Silently cursing my aversion to guns, I scanned the kitchen for a weapon. It wasn’t exactly an arsenal. Noiselessly, I slid my trembling hand along the wall, feeling for the knife holder. Choosing a bread knife, I wrapped my fingers around the handle, pointed the blade backward, and dropped my arm into full extension.

Slowly, testing with one bare foot at a time, I tiptoed forward far enough to see into the living room. It was as dark as the bedroom and kitchen.

I made out Birdie in the gloom. He was sitting a few feet from the doors, his eyes fixed on something beyond the glass. The tip of his tail twitched back and forth in jittery little arcs. He looked tense as an unshot arrow.

Another clunk-rattle stopped my heart and froze my breath. It came from outside. Birdie’s ears went horizontal.

Five tremorous steps brought me alongside Birdie. Unconsciously, I reached out to pat his head. He recoiled at the unexpected touch and went tearing across the room with such force that his claws left divots in the carpet. They looked like small, black commas in the murky darkness. If a cat could be said to scream, Birdie did it.

His flight totally unnerved me. For a moment I was paralyzed, frozen in place like an Easter Island statue.

Do like the cat and get yourself out of here! the voice of panic told me.

I took a step backward. Clunk. Rattle. I stopped, clutching the knife as if it were a lifeline. Silence. Blackness. Da-dum. Da-dum. I listened to my heartbeat, searching my mind for a sector still able to think critically.

If someone is in the apartment, it told me, he is behind you. Your escape route is forward, not backward. But if someone is just outside, don’t provide him with a way in.

Da-dum. Da-dum.

The noise is outside, I argued. What Birdie heard is outside.

Da-dum. Da-dum.

Take a look. Flatten yourself against the wall next to the courtyard doors and move the curtains just enough to peer outside. Maybe you can see a shape in the darkness.

Reasonable logic.

Armed with my Chicago Cutlery, I unglued one foot from the carpet, inched forward, and reached the wall. Breathing deeply, I moved the curtain a few inches. The shapes and shadows in the yard were poorly defined but recognizable. The tree, the bench, some bushes. Nothing identifiable as movement, except for branches pushed by wind. I held my position for a long moment. Nothing changed. I moved toward the center of the curtains and tested the door handle. Still locked.

Knife at the ready, I sidled along the wall toward the main entrance door. Toward the security system. The warning light glowed evenly, indicating no breach. On impulse I pressed the test button.

A noise split the silence, and despite my anticipating it, I jumped. My hand jerked upward, bringing the knife into readiness.

Stupid! the functioning brain fragment told me. The security system is operating and it hasn’t been breached! Nothing has been opened! No one has entered.

Then he’s out there! I responded, still quite shaken.

Maybe, said my brain, but that’s not so bad. Turn on some lights, show some activity, and any prowler with sense will beat it out of here.

I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. In a gesture of bravado, I switched on the hall light rapidly followed by every light between there and my bedroom. No intruders anywhere. As I sat on the edge of my bed holding the knife I heard it again. A muffled clunk, rattle. I jumped and almost cut myself.

Emboldened by my conviction that no intruder was inside, I thought, All right you bastard, let me catch just one glimpse, and I’m gonna call the cops.

I moved back to the French doors adjacent to the side yard, quickly this time. That room was still unlit, and I moved the curtain edge once more and peered out, bolder than before.

The scene was the same. Vaguely familiar shapes, some moved by the wind. Clunk, rattle! I started involuntarily, then thought, That noise is back from the doors, not at the doors.

I remembered the side yard floodlight, and moved to find the switch. This was no time to worry about annoying the neighbors. With the light on I returned to my curtain edge. The floodlight was not powerful, but it displayed the yard’s features well enough.

The rain had stopped but a breeze had picked up. A fine mist danced in the beam of the light. I listened for a while. Nothing. I scanned my available field of vision several times. Nothing. Recklessly, I deactivated the security system, opened the French door, and stuck my head outside.

To the left, against the wall, the black spruce lived up to its name, but no foreign shape mingled with its branches. The wind gusted slightly, and the branches moved. Clunk. Rattle. A new surge of fright.

The gate. The noise was coming from the gate. My gaze whipped to it in time to catch a slight movement as it settled into place. As I watched, the wind surged again and the gate moved slightly within the boundaries of its latch. Clunk. Rattle.

Chagrined, I marched into the yard and up to the gate. Why had I never noticed that sound? Then I flinched once more. The lock was gone. The padlock that prevented any movement of the latch was missing. Had Winston neglected to replace it after cutting the grass? He must have.

I gave the gate a sharp shove to secure the latch as tightly as I could and turned back toward the door. Then I heard the other sound, more delicate and muffled.

Looking toward it, I saw a foreign object in my herb garden. Like a pumpkin impaled on a stick coming out of the ground. The wispy rustle was that of a plastic covering, moved by the wind.

A horrifying realization overtook me. Without knowing why I knew, I sensed what was beneath that plastic cover. My legs trembled as I crossed the grass and yanked the plastic upward.

At the sight, nausea overcame me and I turned to retch. Wiping my hand across my mouth, I charged back inside, slammed and locked the door, and reset my security alarm.

I fumbled for a number, lurched to the phone, and willed myself to punch the correct buttons. The call was answered on the fourth ring.

“Get over here, please. Right now!”

“Brennan?” Groggy. “What the f—”

“This goddamn minute, Ryan! Now!”