Page 39 of The Botanist's Assistant
Joe shrugs. “I have friends.”
He leans back in his chair. “I doubt it would be admissible in court, but it shows a pattern.”
The café door opens, releasing the sound of clanging silverware, the hiss of coffee machines, a burst of laughter.
Margaret studies him. “Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what? Having coffee? Well, I like the taste of it, for one thing.”
“No, helping me.”
“First, because it feels good to flex some old reporter muscles, and second, because I like the fact you say what you mean instead of dancing around things, and third, it’s exactly what Jonah Hex would do. He’d search for justice. Minus the tomahawk and rifle, of course.”
She has no idea about the tomahawk and rifle and why he would like her directness since most people don’t. Still, she asks him the favor she has been contemplating since yesterday.
He doesn’t hesitate. “Sure, I’ll help you get into your professor’s office again. Does six o’clock tonight work?”
Margaret tells him that’s just fine.
The fading light gives Dr. Deaver’s office a muted, church-like glow. Shriveled yellow leaves carpet the floor around the ficus. An indoor ficus can live for twenty years, but this one is dying an early and undeserved death. Just like Dr. Deaver had.
Margaret looks away only to have her eye catch the bloodstained rug. It’s been eleven days since she discovered Dr. Deaver’s body, but it feels like months. She fights the urge to get rag and soap and scrub the blemish out.
She goes to the windows and opens one slightly. Fresh air is what she needs. A hard northeast breeze has sprung up outside.
Dr. Deaver’s weekly planner and papers lie askew on the desk. She straightens them and adjusts his Lionel Cohen Award photo to the spot where it usually sits, three inches from the right corner and facing toward the door. She hangs Dr. Deaver’s fallen jacket on the coatrack and rolls his desk chair into place.
“So, what are you looking for exactly?” Joe interrupts. He’s standing in front of the closed office door and must wonder why she’s asked to be let in the room just to straighten up.
“Oh. Right. Sorry.”
Margaret tells him about Dr. Deaver’s research journals and explains that while most scientists now keep electronic records of their thoughts and processes, Dr. Deaver had stuck to the old-fashioned way of writing out his notes, which he said had the feel of authenticity and also were almost impossible to alter because they were handwritten. Each numbered page was also signed and dated, strong proof in case someone challenged a result or a researcher’s methods.
“Clever,” Joe says.
“What I’m looking for is where he recorded his discovery of the bush and its compound and also to see if there were any worries about our results or challenges from another scientist that might make him feel depressed.”
“Depressed?”
Margaret hadn’t meant to say that last part. For once, she wishes he was one of those people who paid no attention to her. Joe, however, waits patiently. Should she tell him about the atropine and the sign-out sheet?
She does.
“That’s heavy,” Joe says, which is exactly how the idea of Dr. Deaver dying by suicide sits on Margaret’s chest.
She leads him over to a metal filing cabinet and pulls open the middle drawer. Inside are a dozen brown 9¼-by-11¾-inch notebooks filed with their spines facing up. Each spine carries the dates the books cover.
She’s reaching for those books that mark the last three years of Dr. Deaver’s research when, suddenly, there is a rattle from the doorknob. She freezes. The knob twists back and forth. Someone is trying to get inside.
Joe hisses a curse. “Behind the couch,” he orders.
He moves quickly and almost without sound. Margaret, however, is not as graceful or as athletic. She drops to her knees and scuttles behind the sofa like a cockroach seeking shelter from a smacking broom. She is hunched over, her feet tucked beneath her, wondering if any part of her is showing—how can you check when you’re curled up like a pill bug?—when there is the sound of a key turning in a lock and the office door opens.
She and the custodian are almost nose to nose. He gives her a slight nod as if to say everything will be OK. But will it?
What if it’s the dean come to review some of Dr. Deaver’s papers? If he spots her in a room that he strictly forbade her from entering, she will be fired for sure. Or what if it’s OfficerBianchi finally arriving to do his job and he discovers that she’s tampered with evidence? Why did she have to hang up the jacket and straighten the desk? Can you be arrested for that?
The door closes and someone moves across the room, then pauses. Margaret’s heart clutches. Is some part of her showing? She presses herself lower to the ground. Would someone notice the jacket was moved from the floor and a breeze sifted through the window? Did she leave the file drawer open? The questions are followed by an even more ominous thought. She’d brought her cell phone to take photos of evidence as Joe had advised and now it lies in the pocket of her skirt. Unmuted.
