I’ll help. It’ll get me in the mood for our trip.”
She still looked wary but finally nodded. “Okay, but I’m not sure how much help I’ll be.”
“More,” I reassured her, “than you can imagine.”
She gave me an odd look then pushed herself off the door frame. “Okay. Whatever. I’ll be in the main lab getting out the gear. When you’re finished up here you can come and help.”
She turned and disappeared back down the hall. I smiled, saved and closed my file, then snapped the laptop shut.
I was halfway out of my chair when I remembered something, and I gave myself a little mental kick. I couldn’t let Elaine divert me from other possibilities. I picked up the phone, dialed Duncan’s number, and got his machine. He was probably putting the kids to bed. I gave him several new chores, the most urgent being a complete history of Graham Connell, including his academic records and a criminal check. Given the three-hour time lag he would have most of the work done by the time we opened for business tomorrow. I had just hung up the phone when I heard a loud expletive and a crash. I came around the corner into the lab to find Dinah standing, her back to me, in a large storage closet. She swore again, then she hauled off and kicked an innocent cooler, which flew full-force against the back wall and crashed to the floor. She turned and stormed out of the closet, almost bowling me over.
“Whoa,” I said, and jumped aside.
She wheeled around and glowered at me for a second before connecting that I wasn’t the enemy, then she threw her arm toward the closet. “None of the gear is there. She runs off without saying a word, not a note, no message, nothing. And she can’t even take the time to stow the gear? Who the hell does she think she is? Give me a fucking break.” Then she crossed her arms and stared at the closet, her eyes narrowed.
I kept my own voice quiet and low, trying not to inflame her emotions. “Maybe you should give her a break. For all we know her mother’s dying.”
She gave a brief laugh and spit out a sarcastic, “Right.” Then she paused, looked at me for a second, then back at the closet, obviously trying to decide if she should say more, but finally dismissed the idea. With a pout and a terse shake of her head she said, “Shit. Let’s check the van. The gear must still be inside. And I swear to you, the moment she sets foot back here, I’m gonna kill her.”
I followed Dinah out of the lab. Instead of turning left into the main hall we continued straight across, down another narrow corridor that led out to a double set of doors. Dinah opened one and I followed behind.
The night was sharp and cold, the sky dotted with the pinpoint light of the brightest stars. Dinah shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. We were in a dark courtyard. In front of me, just in front of the exit, was a loading dock. In the far corner was a dumpster, and around the periphery I could just make out the shadowy forms of discarded equipment pushed up against the walls. It had the feel of an abandoned warehouse.
In front of us a line of vans stood haphazardly parked under a row of feeble lights. All were an identical fading silver with Department of Zoology, University of Southern British Columbia stencilled in black on the side. They were dented and scratched, some even had cracked windows, and this added to the derelict feel of the enclosure.
Dinah’s eyes wandered down the line of vans. “Over there,” she said, and she crossed to a slightly newer van parked near the end of the line. When she got to it she cupped her hands around her eyes and peered in. “It looks like the nets are still in here. She never even cleaned the truck out.”
I’d come around to the side. In the dubious light it was hard to make out what was in the cargo area, but it certainly wasn’t empty. There was a big mound of something in the middle, maybe a pile of nets and a tarp.
Dinah pulled the keys from her jeans and inserted a key in the lock, turning to speak to me at the same time. “If the nets are wet we’ll have to hang them in the lab overnight.” I heard the key engage. She pushed the handle down, pulled open the door, and bent forward to reach inside. Then she jerked her head to the side and staggered back a few steps with her hand covering her mouth and nose. “Oh God.” She stood like that for a second then took a deep breath and turned unwillingly back to the truck. “It smells like one of the coolers dumped.”
I stepped forward around her. The cargo area was in chaos, nets piled in a big heap, the waders tossed on top. One cooler was on its side with the fish spewed out across the floor. Everything looked slimy and wet, and the smell was an unappetizing mixture of damp nets and rotting fish. Dinah moved in beside me and pulled out a cooler that was upright. She pulled it away from the truck and opened it up. Dry ice vapour slipped over the top and spread across the ground, covering her feet. Dinah inspected the fish inside. They were rock solid and covered with a fine white frost.
“These look okay.” She snapped the cooler shut. There were two more coolers inside. She grabbed one, I grabbed the other. Hers was full of fish, still nicely frozen, but mine was empty.
“We have to get these to the freezer fast,” she said, but instead of moving she stood, momentarily lost, staring into the van. Finally she said, “It’s bizarre, you know. Cindy’s a total space cadet, but not with her samples. Her research is sacred. I can’t believe she’d leave these sitting out, even for her mother. And look at that.” She motioned to four plastic garbage cans stacked near the front of the cargo section. “She didn’t even try to get Elaine’s live samples — they’d be in the garbage cans — and you don’t do that to Elaine.”
We unpacked the rest of the gear in silence, first getting the samples into the freezer then disposing of the rotting salmon, and finally piling the nets and equipment just inside the lab door. Since Dinah knew the equipment and I didn’t I volunteered to wash the inside of the van while she hung the nets to dry. By the time I’d finished it was so dark, and the light in the van so feeble, that I couldn’t see if I’d missed a pool of slime or a patch of scales. I picked up my bucket and mop, took one last look around, and climbed out the back door. I locked the back doors and had turned toward the entrance when I heard a scraping sound two vans down. I stood still, listening. At first there was nothing, but then I heard a quiet crunch, as if someone had stepped on a dry leaf or stone. I felt a shot of adrenaline and started to move nonchalantly toward the doors, away from the line of vans. I wanted to see who or what was there, but from a safe distance, just in case I needed to make a dash for the building. When I was far enough to feel safe I turned and moved up the line of vans.
The first one was clear. The second one looked fine too, but, dark as it was, behind the third van I could see the shadow of a human lurking between the hood and the wall. I had to make a decision quickly. Should I let him (or her) know that they’d been seen, or fake it. Walk a few more steps up the line then turn around and disappear inside. I considered my surroundings. It was dark, I was alone, and nobody was going to hear me if this person had a knife or a gun. I choose option two: to pretend that I’d seen nothing. I walked on a few paces, gave a dramatic shrug, then turned and walked in the doors. Once inside I swung open the second inside set of doors, but instead of going through into the hallway I stepped back into the darkened vestibule and waited. Within a minute JJ stepped out of the shadows, took a furtive look around, then walked toward Dinah’s van, just out of my line of sight. I swung open the door and went after him. He was peering in the back window of Elaine’s van but turned quickly when he heard my footsteps.
The jolt of adrenaline had shortened my temper, and I stormed right up to him. “What the hell were you doing behind those vans, or is skulking part of your job as well?”
He took a step back. “I do check the vans every night, not that it’s
