Chapter 25 A Hunter at Work
A Hunter at Work
“What do you mean you can’t send me more specimens?
” Margaret asks the email on her screen, even as she knows there will be no answer and that the question is better suited to a phone conversation.
Since the guide who supplies the stinging leaves, however, lives in a rainforest in the and doesn’t own a phone and only goes into town twice a month to get supplies and yesterday was his resupply day, when he also uses a friend’s computer, that is impossible.
So much for cats bringing you luck, she thinks.
What the cat actually brought this morning was a dead mouse, which he proudly displayed on the kitchen floor when she’d come to make her coffee.
Part of her was glad that the feline had nabbed the rodent, which she’d suspected of being the source of the small bits of foam she’d found under her couch on Saturday.
A mouse in a house can be destructive, chewing holes in oatmeal containers and nibbling loaves of bread, which makes her glad the rodent resident is no more.
The other part worried, however, that if she allowed the determined hunter to stay, she couldn’t stop the wanton killing of small animals and, possibly, birds, which this animal seemed inclined to do.
She would not be the one to upset the balance of nature in her tiny corner of the planet.
She disposed of the mouse carcass, fed the cat the remainder of the tuna (an expense that would only get worse if she bought canned food, which, according to her research, was the most nutritional choice for domesticated cats) and again bowed to its demands and let it outside.
As it leapt from the porch, she issued a stern warning to not kill anything more, unless he came across the gopher that, yesterday, had attacked two of her red torch gingers, felling them like an underground lumberjack.
The cat had sauntered off.
So far this experiment in mutual dependency was yielding conflicting data.
This news, however, was worse than bad luck. It was devastating, research-ending luck.
What the guide’s email had actually said was that he had only been collecting the leaves as a favor to Dr. Deaver’s wife, whom he’d known since college, and that with the dangerous nature of the job and the fact that Veronica Ann Deaver’s husband had tried to divorce her, he had no interest in continuing the work.
Unless, he noted, he was paid approximately fifty dollars per leaf and, even then, that he would collect no more than thirty leaves at a time.
“Do you realize what you’ve done?” she asks the room, the air, whatever energy belonging to the divorcing Dr. Deaver might have lingered after his death.
“You’re right and, yes, I do,” comes Calvin’s voice.
Margaret startles. She’s been so wrapped up in bad news, she didn’t hear him come in.
He stands a few feet inside the door. His shoulders slump and his skin has a bluish, skim-milk tinge to it.
“I know I shouldn’t have signed it,” he says. “But I just got so mixed up with everything, and I was coming off this horrible panic attack so I wasn’t thinking clearly. Also, I haven’t slept in two days and all I’ve been able to eat is saltine crackers and, oh lord, what have I done?”
Margaret knows better than to tell Calvin to calm down. That would be like pouring water on a grease fire.
“Clarity, please, Calvin,” she says.
“The dean. He asked me to come into his office and Dr. Blackstone was there and they said if I didn’t sign a statement with these things you supposedly did, then I’d be gone. They had my termination form right there, Margaret. It was like looking into the void. I think I might throw up.”
“Deep breaths. Go stand by the window and take deep breaths.”
Calvin does as Margaret says. After a few minutes, color returns to his skin, although technically, there is not much color to return.
Calvin is chronically pale, which has prompted Margaret to suggest more than a few times that he take at least one of his smoke breaks out in the sun instead of huddling beneath the limbs of several coast live oaks (Quercus agrifolia), where he and others are allowed to pursue their destructive habit.
Vitamin D deficiencies are nothing to mess with.
“Better now?” Margaret asks after a few minutes.
“Whew, for a minute there—”
“No need to go into details, Calvin. What’s this statement you’re talking about?”
A shudder runs through Calvin’s thick frame. “It’s a witness statement saying that you violated safety practices when it came to chemical storage and also failed to supervise the lab properly, causing an explosion that resulted in permanent trauma to an undergrad.”
“Emily wasn’t even there when it happened.”
Calvin groans. “I know. I know. And, also, that you wantonly disobeyed orders from superiors. ‘Wantonly’ was their word, not mine. I told them you always say that scientists are not sheep to be herded but are independent-minded beings whose discoveries are rooted in freedom of thought.”
That is, indeed, what Margaret often said.
“And what did they say to that?”
Calvin hangs his head. “That Dr. Deaver gave you too much freedom of thought and that you’d gone rogue.”
“Rogue” is not a word Margaret associates with herself, but she knows where this is leading. She is about to be shoved out academia’s door once again.
“It was the dean’s idea,” Calvin says. “He said Dr. Blackstone was confident he could continue Dr. Deaver’s work and that research assistants were a dime a dozen.
Again, his words not mine. He’s also got this molecular biologist he’s trying to bring to the college.
Apparently, the guy’s brother owns a venture capital company or something and could be a big donor.
” Calvin groans. “I don’t know, it all happened so fast. I’m sorry, Margaret. I didn’t mean…” His voice trails off.
“Calvin, I want you to go to the café and order pancakes and eggs—carbohydrates for energy and protein for the brain—and drink several glasses of water. Then come back and we’ll see what we need to do next.”
“OK. Yeah. I’ll do that. Should I take another Xanax? It might help.”
“Try the breakfast first.”
“Got it,” Calvin says and heads for the door, stopping at the threshold. “And, Margaret?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t stand up for you when I should have,” he says. “I learned my lesson.”
“Thank you,” Margaret says as he scoots out the door, although the harm has already been done. She shuts down the computer.
Then we’ll see what to do next?
It’s what she told Calvin but, really, she has no clue about next steps. Her world is burning around her, a fire so hot and dangerous, there is a very good chance she will be destroyed, like a Tecate cypress in a cataclysmic blaze.
Perhaps a walk will help. It’s close enough to her break time that she can take the short trail through the oak woodland to a small pond that is so filled with invasive Typha latifolia (broadleaf cattail) that it is barely a pond anymore, which is why hardly anyone goes there.
Solitude is what she needs right now, although by solitude, she doesn’t mean an absence of life.
The cattail-choked pond is home to song sparrows, Canada geese, salamanders, frogs and fish. A whole city of life. It’s only humans that are absent.
Margaret seats herself on a wooden bench that was erected at some point when the pond was still a pond.
Shredded clouds lace the sky, the remnants of yesterday’s storm.
What should she do?
A red-winged blackbird trills, conk-la-ree. Wind hushes through the cattails. A bullfrog croaks a baritone note. Margaret lets her thoughts run: through actions and reactions, through the way plants defend themselves against attacks.
She thinks of California laurel (Umbellularia californica), whose leaves contain a pungent oil that acts on the same cellular receptors that cause ice-cream headaches.
A strong whiff of the scent can spark migraines and even cause some people to fall unconscious.
Several California Native American tribes, however, would tuck laurel leaves into headbands and hats to relieve headaches.
So the laurel was a contradiction, both a catalyst and a healer.
Science says that the way you look at a problem affects how you solve it and that changing your point of view may bring you to an answer more quickly.
A scientist must embrace the unexpected, the contradictions.
She has been too focused on one view for too long.
There’s a soft plop as a frog leaps into the metropolis of cattails.
What if she changed her perspective to one in which Dr. Deaver was a possible womanizer and Blackstone was a loving father?
How did those unexpected facts change her hypothesis?
They changed it a lot, she realizes as a song sparrow lets loose with a buzzing trill.
They lead to a whole side of the mystery that she hasn’t explored.
“Well, don’t just sit there,” she says and pushes herself from the bench. Then: “You need to stop talking to yourself, Margaret,” which is another contradiction since she’s issued this command out loud to no one but herself.
She glances at her watch. Time to get busy. She will not go down without a fight.
It’s as she’s returning through the building’s front doors that Beth Purdy beckons Margaret to her desk.
“Yes, Beth?”
Today, the woman is wearing a blouse in a shade of pink that, if it were any brighter, might actually cast a shadow.
Beth leans forward. “You can’t say who told you, but you need to be careful,” she whispers.
“The dean just asked me to type up a termination form.” Purdy waits a beat. “It’s for you.”
The announcement is no surprise. What is a surprise is that Purdy would warn her. Margaret is sure the woman thinks her both odd and annoying.
“Thank you, Beth,” Margaret says. “I’ll try to be careful.” She doesn’t want to give away that she knew this was coming.
Purdy, however, goes on. “They gave me a list of things you supposedly did but I think it’s also about Dr. Deaver and the poison thing.”
Margaret feels a brushstroke of panic. How much does Purdy know? Does Margaret dare?
Embrace the unexpected, she thinks.
“What makes you say that?”
“Because I heard the dean say that, besides you refusing to do what he asked, he’d gotten a complaint from the campus police that you kept insisting that they do some kind of drug test on Dr. Deaver’s body.”
“A toxicology screen.”
“Right. To test for poison.”
“To test for many things. And I only phoned twice.”
The message Officer Bianchi had left after her second call was the same as his first one: We’re following procedure, and this isn’t a TV show. Did he really think any scientist worth her salt would believe an hour-long TV show was real life?
“Also, Dr. Blackstone said that you’ve been poking your nose into business that isn’t yours.
That you disrespected him by saying that he was sloppy and apparently your postdoc told him you wanted to know all about Dr. Deaver’s marriage and were looking up stories about wives who poisoned husbands.
Did you see the movie Lethal Vows? It’s based on a true story about a husband at a university poisoning his ex-wife.
Do you think Dr. Deaver’s wife poisoned him? She was a chemist, you know.”
Purdy has unknowingly veered close to the truth of Margaret’s investigation and yet there are enough discrepancies to allow her a denial.
“Dr. Blackstone has an ax to grind with me. He makes things up.”
“I know,” Purdy breathes. “He did the same to me.” She looks around the empty lobby as if someone might overhear.
“A few months ago, he said that my clothes were inappropriate in a university setting and said I needed to dress more conservatively. Like he wants the place run by nuns.” She clucks her tongue.
“When I asked him if he knew this was 2024 and not 1954 and to grow up, he went to the dean and claimed I exposed my breasts to him on purpose when I dropped a pen and bent to pick it up. As if! He should stop looking at my chest if he didn’t want to see what’s there.
Then, right after that, he complained that I’d purposely left his name off the guest list for the reception with Roger Levian.
” Levian was the founder of a successful biotech company.
“He wanted it noted in my performance review. What a jerk.”
Another glance around the room. “I told the dean it was a computer error, but guess what—I did leave his name off the list. Don’t tell anybody.”
“I won’t,” Margaret agrees, although whom would she tell? Certainly not Blackstone.
“That’s why I’m letting you know,” Purdy says.
“Blackstone is a woman hater. That’s pretty clear.
” Her voice drops to a whisper. “And, if you want, after the dean signs the termination form, I can send it to Anita Allshouse in HR. Her husband left her for her younger sister four months ago, if you can believe that, and all she does is sit in her cubicle and sob. Eight hours a day. She’s got two kids too.
Everybody says she’s a complete mess and behind in her work, but her supervisor can’t do anything about it because it’s a mental health issue, and if I get your form on her desk—which I can do—you’ll have at least a month to figure things out.
Maybe more. Anybody else will have it processed in two weeks. ”
How does Purdy know about heartbroken office workers and their cheating husbands on the other side of campus?
“Well, thank you, Beth. I would appreciate that.”
“We women have to stick together. Girl power, right?”
“I guess so,” Margaret says, despite the fact that the diminutive “girl” seems to dilute the word “power.” Wouldn’t it be better to use the right term for what she and Purdy are? “Woman power” or “female power.” She doesn’t correct Purdy, even though the temptation is there.
“So, do you think she did it?” Purdy asks.
The conversation has so many twists and turns, it’s hard for Margaret to keep track. “Do I think who did what?”
“Dr. Deaver’s wife. Do you think she poisoned him?”
Margaret is saved from answering by the arrival of the dean, who pushes through the building’s front doors.
“Beth, I need you in my office now,” he says.