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.
chapter nine
I managed to find Cindy’s office on my own, although it looked more like a recycling depot than a place of learned thought. It also stank of formalin.
When I pulled out the desk chair, the cushion was greasy and wet. I wiped my finger across it and sniffed. At least that explained the odour. Cindy must have dropped a sample before leaving the lab the night before. Formalin is a diluted form of formaldehyde and equally as toxic. Short-term exposure in an enclosed space, like this office, could cause brutal headaches, nausea, and blurred vision. With long-term exposure you were headed for the cancer ward.
On the side wall, running just below the ceiling, were three blacked-out windows. I pushed aside the papers and empty coke cans, climbed up on the desk, and managed to pry one open. Clean, cool air spilled into the office like a sacred, healing force, and I surveyed the scene from above. I read in a book once that a messy office is the sign of a brilliant mind; someone who does-n’t require external order to keep all their thoughts lined up and in focus. If it was true then Cindy was a genius.
As soon as I had wheeled the chair out into the lab, I began to gather up all the papers on her desk. Most of it looked like scrap paper, but there were several unmarked file folders buried at the bottom. Out of curiosity I flipped one open. Inside were raw data sheets, “massaged” data, where the raw data had been run through several statistical tests, and some computer-generated tables and graphs. It looked like the results of an experiment on gravel composition and survival, although survival of what I wasn’t sure.
I flipped open another file. Same sort of thing: the component parts of single experiments being prepared for analysis and publication; definitely not for the garbage heap. I rooted around, separating the files from the scrap paper. As I pulled the last file toward me, a tattered Rite-in-the-Rain data book slipped from between the covers.
There was no label on the cover, no name and no dates, so I fanned through the pages. It contained field notes from this year’s season. The date, time, and weather conditions were noted at the top of each page, followed by an observation on the density of something per square metre. Following this there were five columns of numbers, each column headed by a code of some sort. The book was full, with the entry on the last page dated “14 October 1038 h.” A week ago Monday. It didn’t mean much to me, but with Cindy’s sudden absence Elaine might be needing this record to continue her experiments. I opened up my briefcase and popped it in.
Once the desk was clear enough to work on, the next order of business was calls: Sylvia, the hotel, and maybe Dr. Edwards, but I needed a phone book. There was nothing on the shelves, so that left the desk drawers. I braced myself and opened up the top right-hand drawer. It was even scarier than the surface of the desk. In addition to random pieces of paper — old data sheets, computer printouts, course notes — my hand came in contact with sticky, lint-covered cough candies, frayed Kleenex (looked used, but I didn’t investigate further), and an unhealthy supply of long, black hairs. I found a photo of, presumably, Cindy and her mother, with Cindy looking as disorganized as her office. Her hair needed a good trim, and although she was pleasant looking she would never be described as pretty, in part due to her teeth, which were crooked and overlapping in front. She wore a tatty South American poncho and was squinting at the camera, her arm around a matronly-looking blonde. Both women were smiling. I put the picture back where I found it: next to the half-eaten bagel.
I finally located the phone book buried in the bottom left-hand drawer. I excavated around it and managed to get enough of a hold to pull it out. As I did so, I heard a set of keys slide from between the pages. I put the book on the desk and rooted around in the drawer until I found them. The key chain was in the form of a salmon with You’re my Chum enamelled on the side. Cute. On the back it was stamped Campbell River, BC. There were Volkswagen keys, lots of official university keys stamped Dept. of Zoology, Do Not Duplicate, and several other keys that I couldn’t identify. These must be Cindy’s extra keys.
After a brief moral skirmish I shrugged and dropped the keys into my jacket pocket. As a graduate student, Cindy would have access to all sorts of interesting places, and I prefer legal access to break and enter. Anyway, it was the least she could do after making me clean up her office.
There