painful process of committing suicide with drink.
I looked at the old house now, standing firm and solid despite our neglect, and tried to remember. I did know happiness in that house. I must have known happiness there in those early years, but all memories of that time seemed to have vanished in the turmoil of events that followed. Even confronted with the tangible evidence of an earlier era, that part of my past remained firmly locked away.
I turned and looked across the bay to the North Shore. Grey mist hung in the air, and the soft smudge of dawn was just appearing behind the mountains. The pale light draped the landscape, reducing all colour, all contour, to a monochromatic scale of greys. I took one last glance at the house, felt nothing, then put the car in gear and headed toward Southern.
Five minutes later I drove into the back of C-lot, the vast student parking area cut out of several acres of virgin old-growth forest. At this time of the morning it was almost empty, but I pitied the poor students who had to park in the outer reaches. It would be a forty-five minute walk to the nearest building.
I made for the first row of cars and spotted a tight space between a vintage red Mustang and a new blue Miata. I pulled in with room to spare. I still had some time before my meeting with Elaine so I got out my Southern map and tried to orient myself. From the car, dead ahead, was a covered parkade. If I followed the street that ran just to the left of the parkade, that should take me to the Life Sciences complex with its Zoology wing.
I zipped the map back into my briefcase and locked up the little beater. As I crossed in front of the row of cars I smiled. In addition to the Mustang, there was a neon-yellow Rabbit in perfect condition, and further down the line an old two-door Acadian that looked new. I’m a bit of a car nut, and coastal B.C. is the only place in Canada where you can see mint-condition older cars parked casually along the streets. Everywhere else in Canada they have long been devoured by road salt and slush.
Life Sciences was easy to find. It looked like a huge concrete bunker sitting at the corner of the biggest intersection on campus. Instead of going to the front I followed the service road around behind, where, according to my map, I would find a separate entrance for the Zoology wing.
The doors were unlocked, but the lights inside were still off, the corridor dark. Some light filtered in through the windows that ran up the stairwells at either end of the hall, but it wasn’t enough to read by. I unzipped my jacket and pulled out the flashlight. Since Zoology rated a separate department I reasoned that it should have a separate office, which in turn should have a listing of the professors’ office numbers posted somewhere nearby. I wasn’t disappointed. Halfway down the hall there was an expanse of plate glass. Through it, I could see a high counter that ran the length of a large room, blocking off an open office in behind. At this hour the whole area was black, but by 9:00 A.M. it would be as active as an overstocked aquarium.
On a bulletin board next to the door I found what I wanted: a listing of the profs with office and lab numbers. Edwards wasn’t on it, which I thought was bizarre, but I found Riesler’s office and lab number and scribbled it in my notebook. I did the same for Jacobson, then slipped the notebook back into my pocket. Riesler had a lab and an office on the top floor, as well as a lab in the basement. I didn’t have time to see everything, so I decided to check out his office and lab upstairs. The rest could wait for later.
On the fourth floor there was just enough light for me to read the numbers and names on the doors. I walked slowly, listening for any activity, but the corridor and surrounding labs were silent. Riesler’s lab was near the end of the hall. I was expecting a huge space jammed with benches and equipment, but when I peered in the narrow window I saw a small room, no more than three metres by four metres. Windows ran along the outside wall, with a lab bench tucked in beneath them. Another bench bisected the room. Both were covered with micro-pipettes, tiny Eppendorf vials, Nalgene squirt bottles half-filled with liquid. There was a fume hood in the corner, and I could see the dark brown bottles of reagents and stock chemicals crowded in behind.
In addition to the small pieces of equipment, there were two chest freezers, what looked like a heating or drying oven, and a small table-top centrifuge. In other words, the place had the look of barely contained chaos typical of most labs. I noticed a door in the left back corner of the room and, like a light switching on, the size of the room suddenly made sense. This must be a tiny private lab attached to Riesler’s office. The bulk of his research, or should I say his students’ research, would be done in the basement lab. I tried the door-knob. Too bad. Locked. I looked both ways to make sure nobody was coming, then I knelt down to examine the lock. It was a shame, really. When I had the time the door would be frightfully easy to open.
From there I headed for the stairs, but just before them I noticed a small corridor off to the right. Another entrance to Riesler’s office? I shone my flashlight down the hall, and sure enough, there was a door with a brass plate on it: Dr. Madden Riesler, Assistant Dean of Science. Bloody hell. Assistant Dean? Why hadn’t that been in the file? Since the halls were so quiet, and I was in the neighbourhood, I thought I might as well give his office door a try as well. Not surprisingly, it was locked, but I was happy to see that the mechanism was no different from the one on the lab door. Really, the university should do something about that. I’d have to mention it in my report.
On my way down the stairs I decided to do a quick scan of the floors below, just to see if I could find either Edwards’s office or Elaine’s. I crossed the third floor quickly. No Edwards and no Elaine, although there were several doors without nameplates.
I was halfway across the second floor when I saw a large poster on salmon migration next to one of the lab doors. I had just started to read it — looking for a few quick tips — when I heard a door open down near the end of the hall. It was a cautious sound, so furtive that I instinctively switched off my flashlight and moved into the shadow of a door well. Across from me, near the end of the hall, a door slowly opened, exposing a wedge of black interior. For a minute there was nothing, as if maybe the door had opened on its own, then a young man, as graceful as a cat, stepped out. He was wearing a lab coat and latex gloves. He glanced up and down the hall. I held my breath. Satisfied, he pulled the door shut behind him, bracing it from the outside so it made no noise. Then in one fluid movement he was through the doors and had disappeared down the stairs.
When I was sure he’d gone, I stepped out of the shadows and strolled to the door. There was a number but no name.
What, I wondered, was that all about?
chapter seven
I was ten minutes late for my meeting with Elaine. The café was up the main boulevard in a little strip mall. I pushed open the door and was hit by the yeasty aroma of warm croissants and steaming bowls of café au lait, the essence of Vancouver. Elaine was sitting at a corner table facing the door, absorbed in what looked like a reprint from some lofty biology journal. I moved forward a step and let the door swing shut behind me.
Her hair had changed since I’d last seen her. It had always been long and thick, held back in a simple braid. Now it was cut short in a fashionable straight-edged bob that fell like a curtain across her profile. I had expected an upgrade in clothing with her new position in the academic rat race, but she was dressed no differently from the way she had dressed on the field trips of our youth: a hand-knit Icelandic sweater, button-down cotton shirt, jeans, and sensible shoes. In fact, her clothes were almost the same as mine, but I was simulating a visiting post-doctoral fellow. She was now Dr. Okada, Assistant Professor.
I shook my head, halfway between amusement and disgust. Elaine willfully chose the hardest possible route to get from point A to B, as if even a touch of compromise might sully those pure ideals that drove her in her work. Well, I had bad news from the other side; those pure ideals — like the pursuit of truth, objective and free of ego — were as dead in science as they were in government. It’s a career like any other, and if you want the career you better play by the rules.
I felt the door open behind me, forcing me forward, so I crossed to the table and slid into the chair facing her. She looked up from her paper as if being drawn back from another world. A smile spread across her face, and she leaned over, cupped my