Chapter 41
IT WAS ALMOST NINETY minutes later, and Chambers was once again sitting next to Pendergast—this time in the lobby of the university’s Roscommon Center for Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering.
Using the only name that had been dropped that day—Dr. Telligren, the one professor still around who’d taught some of the courses Wickman might have taken—Pendergast had used a combination of lies, threats, and brandishments of their FBI badges to break down two unusually stubborn secretaries plus an obdurate research assistant and secure a half-hour appointment with Dr. Telligren during the professor’s usual lunch break.
Chambers looked around. Situated on St. Charles Avenue, the Roscommon Center was much more modern and high-tech, inside and out, than most of the places they’d been that morning.
It was less a lecture hall than a hospital or research lab—and Chambers figured that this was most likely exactly what it was.
“What the hell is biomedical engineering?” he said out loud. “Sounds like a course in how to build suspension bridges out of elephant bones.”
“Scientific disciplines are, for better or worse, undergoing mitosis into ever-greater subcategories faster than the humanities can ever keep up with. You can thank the march of technology for that.”
He was leafing through Wickman’s transcripts as he spoke. The way he said “technology,” Chambers wasn’t sure if he approved, disapproved, or was indifferent. Maybe the vintage Rolls was a clue.
“This is most peculiar,” Pendergast said.
“What is?”
Pendergast pointed to a transcript. “This list of courses that Wickman took. Several make sense for someone interested in a career involving psychology and medicine—these pathology courses, for example: Gross Anatomy, Pathology Techniques. Same with Molecular Biology. But I can’t find any mention of PSI courses in here.
Where are the parascience, psychical history, and like courses?
Where are the reports from his thesis advisor on his progress?
Who was his thesis advisor? Instead, these transcripts are salted with eccentricities.
” He held up the page. “Public Health Grant Writing? Interracial Themes in American Art? Fundamentals of Industrial Hygiene?” He gathered the pages and let them drop into Chambers’s lap.
“This is too eccentric to be plausible. The choice of courses is almost… whimsical.”
“You yourself said he went crazy during grad school,” Chambers replied, stuffing the pages back into their envelope.
“That is true. But this…” He gestured at the envelope. “I sense a devious, even perverse hand at work here.”
Cue the sinister organ chord, Chambers thought to himself, managing not to roll his eyes.
At that moment, the door leading to the faculty offices opened and a young man, clearly a research student, appeared. “Dr. Telligren will see you.”
They rose and followed him through the open doorway, down a corridor that managed to look sterile and high-tech at the same time, until the student stopped at a door about halfway along the passage. He knocked.
“Come in,” came a cultivated voice from the far side.
The student opened the door and Chambers followed Pendergast into a large, wood-paneled room, a brace of windows in the far wall rising to the ceiling, bathing the spotless furniture and bookshelves in mellow, warm light.
The contrast between the corridor and this room could not have been greater—Chambers was imagining a lab of some kind, with Telligren hunched over a beaker and holding a pipette in one rubber-gloved hand.
But instead the man sat behind an elegant desk, a row of windows behind him, leaving his face partially obscured in shadow.
As they approached, Chambers made out the face: steady blue eyes; patrician features; a full head of gray hair, carefully combed.
He was wearing a suit—not a lab coat—and he rose as they came closer.
“I’m Dr. Telligren,” he said in a voice with a trace of old New Orleans in it. “Which of you is Special Agent Pendergast?”
“I am, sir, and it’s an honor to meet you.” Pendergast offered his hand, and they shook. “This is my partner, Agent Chambers.”
Chambers shook hands as well, and then took a proffered seat from one of the three that sat arranged in a semicircle before the desk.
Countless rows of books, arranged on shelves, rose on both sides of the room—and though many of them looked valuable, with leather spines, they also bore the obvious marks of reading.
“It’s a very close thing, actually—your getting the chance for a meeting on such short notice, I mean,” Telligren said.
“I always have a weekly luncheon with my colleagues, which I wouldn’t miss on pain of excommunication, but today’s was canceled because two are out of town.
And so I have—” he consulted his watch—“thirty-five minutes to hear what, exactly, is so urgent that it could not wait.”
“We appreciate your sacrificing your time like this,” Pendergast said. His voice was still smooth, although less buttery than it had been with the registrar. “And given how precious it is, we’ll get straight to the point. We’re here about one of your students—Parker Wickman.”
For a moment, Chambers thought he saw Telligren’s face go blank. But when he glanced again, he saw the same look of sharp intellect and half-concealed impatience he’d noticed before. “I’m sorry. Could you repeat the name?”
“Wickman. He was your student in 1985 and 1986. Involved with your research studies into PSI and parapsychology.”
“Parapsychology,” Telligren said as if tasting the word. “I had little to do with that field—should you wish to call it that.”
“Odd. I thought you had been one of the professors spearheading the initiative… before it was debunked as a pseudoscience, I mean.”
If this was an attempt to rile Telligren, it didn’t work.
“That’s why I hesitated to call it a ‘field.’ I didn’t know if you were a believer or not—there are quite a few zealots out there, and one must be careful.
” He paused as if recollecting. “It is true that we made a few attempts to conduct research into certain aspects of parapsychology, but they were brief—nothing like Duke University, which for a time jumped in with both feet. But then we realized no legitimate discipline could be fashioned from it. It’s our duty as scientists to examine any potentially promising avenue, no matter how risible it may seem initially.
Gravity, evolution, Helicobacter pylori, the earth orbiting the sun, they were all ridiculed at first—why, when Edward Jenner tried to spread the news about the vaccine he’d created to eradicate smallpox, a portion of the population threatened him…
thinking the ‘cowpox’ vaccine would turn them into cows! ”
“You said you made ‘a few attempts to conduct research on certain aspects of parapsychology,’” Pendergast replied, ignoring this burst of historic trivia. “What sort of research, may I ask?”
“Precisely what you’d expect. Looking into whether the pioneering Zener and Ganzfeld experiments could be duplicated in double-blind tests.
Establishing the historical context, and a scientific baseline, for testing the validity of such phenomena as out-of-body experiences, dream telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis. ” He shrugged dismissively.
“And this despite knowing that—for example—psychokinesis violates certain fundamental laws of physics.”
“Such as?”
“Conservation of momentum. The second law of thermodynamics.”
Dr. Telligren raised his hands. “Please—far be it from me to defend PSI research! On the contrary. As I said, our work was confined to seeing if it was possible to establish scientific criteria. After a few years, we decided further research would be a waste of time, that there was no scientific basis for PSI hypotheses, and that was that. We canceled the program.”
“Then let’s get back to Parker Wickman, your graduate student in 1985 and 1986,” Pendergast said.
Dr. Telligren went silent for almost a minute. “That’s a decade back. You can’t expect me to remember all of my students.”
“Do try, Professor Telligren.”
Pendergast’s tone had become aggressive and skeptical.
Another pause. “I do remember him now—faintly. He’d majored in psychology as an undergraduate, I believe… but the rigorousness required for the doctoral program was not to his taste. As I recall, he dropped out.”
“Would you happen to have course catalogs or syllabi from the years when Wickman was your student?”
“I would not. If I had need of them, I’d ask a research librarian.”
“You would be disappointed, Professor. The course catalogs and all other relevant information are missing from both graduate libraries. It appears they were stolen.”
Chambers wondered exactly what Pendergast was trying to get out of this guy, especially with the sudden, challenging tone.
They’d done what little background research on Telligren they could while setting up this appointment, and it looked to Chambers like the man was a highly respected researcher and winner of several prestigious awards.
If Wickman had been his student—if he’d really gone crazy during his graduate years, which was what Pendergast’s investigation seemed to be whittling it down to—the guy would remember him.
Dr. Telligren sighed, looked at his watch.
“Let me ask you, Agents Pendergast and—I’m sorry, was it Chambers?
Did you really make such an effort to secure a few precious minutes of my time only to pepper me with questions about an abandoned and disgraced project and a long-forgotten student?
You come in here like Don Quixote and Rocinante—full of misdirected virtue. All you’ve done is waste my time.”
Chambers couldn’t have summed it up better himself. Pendergast was starting to embarrass him.
“I would my horse had the speed of your tongue,” Pendergast said, sounding a little provoked.
“God send you, sir, a speedy infirmity, for the better increasing your folly.”
This was spoken not by Telligren, but someone behind them.
Chambers looked around to see a man standing in a far corner.
He couldn’t be sure if the guy had been there when they came in, or whether he’d quietly entered during the conversation—he suspected the former, because he knew Pendergast’s ears could detect even a fly farting.
What surprised him more than the man’s presence was his appearance.
He was dressed in a beautifully cut chalk-stripe suit, black horsebit loafers, with a diamond stickpin and gaudy vintage tie.
His features interested Chambers even more than the attire.
He looked to be in his early thirties, eyes fairly sparkling with an impish yet discerning intelligence.
He laughed at this exchange of quotations: a brief, barking laugh, like the yelp of some night creature.
With tight blond curls framing his forehead and ears, he reminded Chambers of some Roman emperor or, perhaps, the Caravaggio masterpiece of Bacchus brandishing a bunch of grapes—a painting his wife particularly admired.
Now the man came forward and took the empty seat, which happened to be between Pendergast and Chambers.
“Forgive me for not introducing myself earlier. I’m Dr. Dorion Magnus, a colleague of Dr. Telligren’s.
When I heard that the FBI were here, I was intrigued!
In fact, I was the one who persuaded him to see you. ”
Pendergast was looking at the man intently. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance. Are you a professor of Shakespeare, Dr. Magnus?”
Another perverse, barking laugh. “Please call me Dorion.”
“Dorion, then.” He did not offer to reciprocate.
“Nothing so straightforward, I’m afraid.
I specialize in bioengineering—biomechanics and biotransport.
Rather recondite subjects, and they keep me more in the research lab than the lecture hall or a surgical bay—but they’re proving quite promising in terms of new pharmacology and diagnosis tools.
” He waved a hand with a dismissive, effeminate gesture.
“But let me not distract you. By all means, continue the Inquisition.”
“The fact is, Dorion, we’re investigating a serial-murder case.”
“Serial murder,” Magnus repeated. “Oh my! Has somebody shot up a box of Frosted Flakes?”
It took Chambers a moment to get the joke. This man Magnus was amazingly obnoxious.
“My time available to you, gentlemen, is almost gone,” Dr. Telligren said, an edge to his voice. He seemed to have been given new backbone by the presence of this cherubic-looking fellow. “What murders are you talking about?”
“The murder of your ex-student Parker Wickman, for one,” Chambers broke in, tired of all this beating around the bush. “He died on the grounds of his house on the Pearl River, which burned to the ground just a few nights ago. It’s been confirmed as arson.”
“Ah, yes, I saw a news report about the fire. Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward,” Magnus intoned. “I always knew Parker Wickman would be a loser. Pardon me: I should phrase that as ‘one whose post-college life might prove difficult.’”
“So you knew him,” said Chambers.
“We were classmates,” said Magnus.
“As I’ve been telling them,” Telligren broke in hastily. “I’ve confirmed he was a student here—briefly, before dropping out. Now, gentlemen: do you have what you need? Your time is up.”
As he was speaking, Dr. Magnus slipped a gold cigar case out of his suit pocket and opened it. “Cigar, anyone?” he asked as he showed it to Chambers, Telligren, and last of all Pendergast.
Nobody took him up on the offer. Pendergast peered into the box, complimented Magnus on his taste in cigars, and turned back to Telligren: “Why did Wickman drop out?”
Dr. Telligren shook his head. “It’s exactly like I said. Some students can’t handle the graduate workload. Or the long hours of lab work. I really have no idea.”
“Did you notice a change in him—more specifically, a change in personality—between the time he first became your student and the time he left Tulane?”
“As I’ve said repeatedly—” Telligren’s voice was now impatient—“I barely recall the fellow!” He rose from his chair with a finality that added special gravitas to his short stature. “And now we’ve run out of time, and I’ll have to bring this interview to a close.”
Chambers quickly rose. High time to get the hell out of here. Even though the Rolls had a decanter of brandy in a rear compartment, he thought he could manage to keep away from it—as long as they got their asses back to the office. Pendergast had made a hash of it. It was embarrassing.
As they got up to leave, Magnus said cheerfully, “But, gentlemen, no need to stay at arm’s length.” He placed a comradely hand on Pendergast’s shoulder as he steered them firmly to the door. “We’re always delighted to help—perfectly delighted, anytime!”