Chapter 14 Trial by Fire
Trial by Fire
Margaret has often wondered, if she were suddenly transformed into a plant, which one she would be.
There is the giant sequoia, which matches her large and sturdy frame.
Its status as the most massive tree on earth, however, seems too prideful to select.
The tough saguaro cactus would also fit, although Margaret doesn’t consider herself quite as prickly as the plant’s hard spines would indicate. Certainly, no flowers would qualify.
No, what Margaret considers the plant she would most likely become is the Tecate cypress, Callitropsis forbesii.
The bushy bright-green tree grows in chaparral zones in Baja and Southern California and is what’s called an obligate seeder.
That means, unlike other plants, the tree welcomes wildfire.
Without low-intensity flames, the tree’s cones won’t open and its seeds won’t be released so the next generation of cypress can grow.
Margaret has already had one wildfire in her life, which, like the cypress, seeded the person she is now.
Too big a firestorm, however, will destroy the Tecate cypress and all its seedlings.
Is that what she’s facing now? A firestorm of jealousy and ambition and deceit? Can she survive?
When Purdy blurted out her question outside the dean’s office, Margaret had panicked. What could she tell the woman that would satisfy her notorious curiosity but also not violate the dean’s orders or set the hounds of gossip loose?
“I only mentioned the possibility of poison because I’d seen certain things in Dr. Deaver’s office that could point to that possibility,” she said. “And, in science, possibilities should always be examined. It was nothing more than that.”
Purdy leaned forward, her low-cut blouse revealing the swell of her breasts. “What things did you see?”
How to answer that?
“Well, I saw an overturned photo on Dr. Deaver’s desk plus a Diet Coke bottle and his leather jacket on the floor like there’d been a disturbance.
” Purdy opened her mouth to ask another question; however, Margaret rushed on.
“The dean told me, and rightfully so, that those things were merely coincidences, which you can’t use to draw a conclusion.
He also reminded me that grief and shock can disrupt rational thought.
In short, I may have committed the sin of confirmation bias. I saw what I expected to see.”
Purdy seemed not to have heard a word of Margaret’s attempted denial. She shivered with either fright or thrill. Margaret couldn’t tell.
“Who do you think poisoned Professor Deaver?”
Sweat gathered in Margaret’s armpits. Her mind locked. “Without proof, a conclusion is impossible,” she’d blurted, and rushed away.
Now she sits at the lab’s computer with the Cameron Foundation grant application open in front of her.
If the lab doesn’t get the grant, the all-important next phase of Dr. Deaver’s research—ferrying an engineered gene from the stinging bush into a more easily grown plant or finding a plant with a similar compound—was in jeopardy, and without a ready supply of the compound, no drug could be made.
Margaret’s mind, however, keeps wandering back to her meeting with the dean and her confrontation with Blackstone, both of whom seemed to think anyone could step into Dr. Deaver’s shoes.
(How could an ordinary person don the footwear of a science giant?) She also wonders how she can convince Bianchi to take her seriously.
Her thoughts tumble and crash until they resemble a junkyard of twisted metal and broken glass.
Calvin interrupts. “Mind if I grab a smoke? I’m so jumpy I can’t sit still.”
He’s only been in the lab for twenty minutes.
Margaret could tell him that no work will get done if he keeps rushing outside to destroy his lungs, but then she’s not accomplishing much herself.
“Do whatever you need,” she says.
Calvin must hear something in her voice because he asks, “Are you OK, Margaret?”
The question surprises her. Since when has Calvin thought of anyone besides himself?
Should she tell him about Dr. Deaver’s dark pupils, the threats from Blackstone and the dean?
Should she mention the suspects that seem to be piling up?
Could she ask him to call Officer Bianchi to see whether the autopsy had been completed and anything suspicious found?
He and the officer seem to have a rapport.
Would Calvin know the whereabouts of Zhang on that fateful day?
“Margaret?” he prompts.
She must have been thinking longer than she realized.
“It’s just that…” She turns and is about to spill everything when, suddenly, she notices what Calvin is wearing. Instead of shorts and his terrible T-shirts, he’s clad in a button-down shirt and khakis. And are those leather shoes on his feet?
Something rises inside Margaret. Dr. Deaver used to call it his “spider sense.” It’s the way you know something without really knowing it.
“It’s just that…I’m a little tired,” Margaret finishes.
Calvin’s shoulders drop in what looks like relief.
“Whew, for a moment, I thought maybe you were getting sick. I heard half the theater department is down with this norovirus bug. The dance director got so dehydrated from vomiting, he ended up in the ER. It’s super contagious, you know. Even hand sanitizer doesn’t work.”
Margaret lifts a hand to stop the spew of words.
“Just have your smoke, then go on to lunch. I’ve got to work on our grant application and that’s a one-person job right now.”
Calvin grabs his messenger bag and practically runs out the door.
“Later, Big Bird,” he says.
Did he even realize what he called her?
Margaret leans back in the chair, wishing she could ask Dr. Deaver how to proceed.
Would he tell her to fight on, even if it meant losing her job? Or would he say that when clowns were in charge, she shouldn’t be surprised at the circus that breaks out and to forget looking for a possible killer and just get his research finished?
Margaret doesn’t believe in ghosts or spirits although other scientists had.
Thomas Edison, for example, tried to invent a spirit phone to speak with the departed, and Marie Curie regularly attended séances.
Alfred Russel Wallace, the great naturalist and leading evolutionary thinker, once visited a “spirit photographer” and came back with a portrait of himself with his deceased mother hovering in the background and became convinced the spirits of the dead were nearby.
Stop acting like a fool, Margaret thinks.
Later that evening, she will warn herself of the same thing.
Calvin returns at one p.m., and at two oh five p.m., the intern, Emily, phones.
She says the grief counselor has advised her that continuing her work in the lab would only add to her trauma and that she needs to quit.
Margaret says that is fine with her. To herself, however, she adds that Dr. Deaver may have thought poetry had its place in a lab, but she disagrees.
Data is data and facts are facts. No flowery words would change that.
Nor will flowery words help her in this situation.
“Well, have a nice life, Emily,” Margaret concludes.
“Really?” Calvin says after she’s hung up.
What was wrong with wishing someone well for the entirety of their lifespan?
At five thirty p.m. sharp, Margaret closes and locks the lab door.
The hallway is empty. She is wrung out from the day.
She glances at the makeshift memorial for Dr. Deaver and, for a moment, doubts her eyes.
There, among the wilting bouquets and now-sagging balloons, is a single fresh stem of bright-green leaves supporting a spike of purple-blue flowers.
Could it be?
Margaret bends closer.
Aconitum napellus. Wolfsbane or aconite. What the Greeks called the Queen of Poisons.
Margaret rears back as if the stalk were a rattlesnake coiled to strike.
It’s one thing to know the toxic qualities of a certain plant: blurred vision, severe pain, tingling of extremities, nausea, heart arrhythmia and eventually death. It’s another thing to find it next to the door where you’d just been working.
A chill ripples down Margaret’s spine. Ancient hunters once dipped their arrows in wolfsbane to kill creatures they believed were powerful and strong. Was this stem a warning that independent-minded women can be felled as easily as mighty beasts? Or was this a last display of hatred for Dr. Deaver?
Margaret stares at the plant and some primal instinct kicks in.
Before she knows it, she is hurrying down the hall with the aconite stem in her hand.
She pushes through the door to the basement and clambers down the stairs into a cavernous room filled with a jumble of discarded desks, chairs and file cabinets; a huge dumpster; an ancient incinerator and an autoclave where hazardous waste is sterilized with steam, then thrown away or burned.
She stuffs the stem into a biohazard bag, throws it into the machine and sets it running.
Her commute home is a blur.
Margaret is too rattled to cook anything substantial and, instead, heats a can of chicken noodle soup (62￠ per can). She eats the entire bowl without tasting a drop of it. She tries to read but can’t concentrate. She goes into her garden.
A wet and unseasonable fog has drifted in from the ocean, turning the world gray and spongy.
She carries the rocking chair from the porch and sets it on a flat spot next to the roses and lavender.
She pushes off with her toes and lets herself rock.
An owl calls a foghorn-like hoot. She’s glad she put on her sweater.
She pictures the stem of wolfsbane and how she’d shoved it into the autoclave as if simply touching it was enough to summon death. She knows better. Why had she panicked? Why had she left the specimen to be destroyed? She hadn’t even taken a photo to prove the stem’s existence.
What a fool, she concludes for the second time that day.
She continues to rock until the dripping fog drives her inside.