Rabid (58 page)

Lydia whispered, “A man.”

“What?” Confusion buzzed in Bev’s head.

“That flabby bit of skin around a penis.
A man
.”

Bev pressed a hand over her sternum, where her heart fought to free itself. “Oh, I get it.
A man
, of course. That’s funny. A man.”

~~~~~

One spring night, Bev let herself into Conroy’s laboratory with his key from his home desk drawer. Christine and Dinah were at the movies with Laura and Luke, so she had the evening to herself.

Bev’s version of her and Conroy’s lives was missing something. She needed to understand.

Conroy’s office door was closed, and a thin line of fluorescence lay on the floor under it. Light irradiated the white paper over the arrow slot window.

Surely his office light hadn’t been burning for the last month and a half. The waste irritated her. She unlocked his office and pushed Conroy’s door open.

Black-haired, dark-eyed Leila, sitting in Conroy’s chair amongst Conroy’s stacks and piles of white papers and slick journals and thick books, looked up, startled, but her wide eyes narrowed, glittering.

Leila asked, “What are you doing here?”

Bev said, “I didn’t know anyone would be here.” Her good arm cradled her cast. Bev was intruding on Conroy’s little tramp sitting in his office. Her guts twisted, but no violent fantasy entered her mind. That thought train was too dangerous, and Bev didn’t ever, ever think about violence anymore. “What are you doing in my husband’s office?”

“Figuring out if your husband was trying to kill us with anything else besides live rabies virus.”

“Oh.” Tension still racked Bev, but this trashy lingerie of a girl had raised the alarm that Conroy was working with rabies virus, exposing them all, and Leila had therefore ensured Christine and Dinah and Bev’s own safety.

Leila had always been cordial at Christmas parties, and she had dumped Conroy at home when he had been drunk that one time, though Bev suspected Leila had something to do with how he got drunk.

Bev said, “Christine, Dinah, and I tested negative, but we’re being vaccinated anyway.”

“I heard. Well, I heard that Danna was the only one who tested positive, so I assumed you guys were all right.” She clicked a ballpoint pen twice and stared at the nib protruding and retracting. “I’m glad you guys are all right. I heard that Dr. S.’s test was inconclusive.”

“Yes. They were worried about me.” Bev scooted books aside, sat in a melamine circa 1955 office chair, and propped her graying cast on the arm of the chair.

Leila picked up the papers she had on her skinny lap and set them on the desk amongst the other papers. Even upside-down, Bev recognized Conroy’s cramped handwriting in the tables and rough graphs and lists on the yellow graph paper page.

Leila said, “I don’t think he knew Danna had it. He thought she had prion disease, mad cow, that she picked up in France.”

Anger swirled into a snipe. “So he didn’t take responsibility for that, either.”

Leila folded her arms across her chest and her head dipped toward the lab book. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“I want to ask you something.”

Leila doodled in the margin of Conroy’s notebook. “The DA said I shouldn’t to talk to you directly. Only to your lawyer. And not to him.”

“It’s scientific. Well, medical.”

Leila picked up a pen from the desk, one of those fat, smeary kinds that Conroy detested, and flipped it over her knuckles. “Okay, what do you want?”

Bev wasn’t sure how to ask what she hoped might be the case, and she stumbled through phrasing the question. “If Conroy did have that virus, the rabies virus, even if he wasn’t sick yet, could it have changed
him
, his thoughts, or what he did?”

Leila’s shoulders released, and she nodded. “Behavioral changes are a major symptom of all kinds of rabies.”

“Is that why he got the apartment? Could the virus have made him do that?”

Leila leaned on Conroy’s smothered desk and licked her burgundy-lipsticked lips. “He didn’t consult me when he got the apartment. I didn’t know about it until he sprung it on me that night. It could have been the rabies virus, making him act so weird.”

“You didn’t want him to move out?”

Leila shook her head, still staring at the lab book. “I told him he was an idiot for leaving you, and that he shouldn’t.”

Bev settled herself farther into the chair. It was almost comfortable, talking with Leila like this. They had Conroy in common. “Peggy must have wanted him to move out.”

“Peggy?” Leila frowned. “Is she the slut who left the underwear in his suitcase? Or was it Valerie Lindh who did that? I have a hard time keeping them straight.”

That first night when he had been home and talking about Dr. Lindh, Bev had suspected that Conroy had been screwing Dr. Lindh, too, and Bev had been right. Bev smacked the chair’s armrest with her right palm. Her left arm lay dead in its leaden cast. “He
was
having an affair with Valerie Lindh.”

And he had lied to her about that, too.

“Well, he said he was.” Leila flicked the pen into the air, and it turned end over end near the fluorescent light like a tumbling dragonfly. She pinched the falling pen out of the air. “God only knows what was running through his head sometimes.”

Bev wanted to poke this little git. “Peggy attended the funeral.”

“No!” Leila sounded scandalized, and she straightened.

“You did, too.”

Leila’s lips thinned, and she licked them again. “Dante said it would look worse if I didn’t go, because the whole lab was going. I tried not to interfere.”

“And I barely saw you, which I appreciate, by the way, but that Peggy introduced herself to me and tried to pass the peace.”

Leila shook her head. “Uppity bitch.”

“That’s what I thought!” Conroy had deceived them both. Con-sorority sparkled in Bev’s heart. “I thought she shouldn’t have come.”

“Did
she
know,” Leila illustrated her question with scooping pen sweeps in the air above the desk between them, “that
you
knew,” one more black arc in the air, “who
she
was?”

“I think so. She was so smug.”

“Uppity bitch.” Leila shook her head.

“Yes,” Bev said. “Uppity bitch.” She smiled at Leila, tentatively.

Leila grinned an embarrassed half-smile and looked at her lap.

Something tickled her head. Bev asked, “Who told you to go to the funeral?”

“Father Dante. The Jesuit from your church.” Leila’s left eyebrow rose.

“How do you know Father Dante?” Bev’s spine clenched, rounding her shoulders, and she bowed slightly, an inborn posture of raised vestigial hackles. This lithe, smoky, floating cunt pursued every man she sniffed out, flying through the air and sticking on them like a hunting jellyfish, a vaginal man-of-war jellyfish.

Leila shrugged. “Dr. S. had mentioned him one time, and we googled him. He helped me read some fMRIs and understand some of the neuroanatomy.”

The girl was oblivious that Bev could stab her with that ballpoint pen she was flipping around.

Leila continued, “And, I don’t know, we just got to talking. I don’t have a supervising professor right now, you know. It was nice to have someone to talk to about the science.”

Bev clutched the arms of the chair as if she were handcuffed to it. “Are you screwing him, too?”

Leila uncapped the pen and clicked the cap back on. “I would never, ever, fuck a priest. It’s obscene. And I won’t be that kind of a
victim
.” She dropped the pen into the spine crease of Conroy’s open notebook. “Aren’t these the questions you should be asking me about your husband?”

Bev’s spine arched back and yanked her soft body with it, as if recoiling from a slash. “I know you were screwing my husband.”

“Why are you so interested in the priest, Beverly?” Leila closed the notebook on the pen.

“He’s
my
priest. You’re taking him away from me, too.”

“He’s everywhere I turn around. He’s hunting me, the same way he stalked Conroy until Conroy bolted. You set him on me, didn’t you?”

“No.” Footprints marred the faux-marbled floor tile beside Bev’s chair. Most of the footprints were slim and short: Leila’s. Under the computer counter, a large, dusty print, not yet trampled, might have been Conroy’s.

“You’re screwing him, aren’t you?” Leila asked.

“I,”
am not good at lying and I was screwing him but I’m not anymore,
“no. I’m not.”

“You’re fucking him.” Leila stood up and tucked Conroy’s notebook under her arm. “I don’t give a shit. All that sanctimonious suffering he spouts is just shit.” She picked up a thick, red book with papers hanging out like a ragged sandwich. “I’ve got to go write my thesis so I can get out of this fucked-up town.”

She walked out.

Bev breathed through her mouth and tasted whiskey.
God, oh God.
Now that little bitch knew about her and Dante. She would tell the prosecutors. There was nothing to do but sell the house and provide for her girls because she was going to jail.

Bev rifled through her purse, found a brown prescription vial, and dry-swallowed two little green pills.

Work,
she commanded them.
Hurry up and work.

~~~~~

The Daily Hamiltonian:

Witness List for Trial of Alleged Doc-Killing Wife

By Kirin Oberoi

The trial of Mrs. Beverly Sloan, who allegedly stabbed her husband Dr. Conroy Sloan at his recently rented apartment near UNHHC, will be here in New Hamilton.

Earlier this week, Mr. Heath Sheldon, the defense attorney for Mrs. Sloan, requested a change of venue due to the overwhelming antagonistic reaction toward the death of Dr. Sloan, who was well-loved in the community.

The next day, the prosecuting attorneys, Mr. George Grossberg and Ms. Georgina Pire, also requested a change in venue owing to the overwhelming popular support for Mrs. Sloan, a beloved music teacher at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Elementary School and community activist.

Judge Leonine Washington declined the both motions.

Dozens of witnesses are expected to testify, but only a few names have been released. Witnesses scheduled to testify for the prosecution include: Leila Sage Faris, 24, a graduate student in the laboratory of the deceased Dr. Sloan; Peggy Anne Strum, 38, a New Hamilton University College of Medicine Department Secretary; Dr. Sridhar Bhupadi, a forensic scientist, and the paramedics who were first on the scene, Mr. Carleton Davis and Mr. Josef Menz.

Witnesses scheduled to testify for the defense include Monsignor Dr. Dante Maria Petrocchi-Bianchi, SJ, MD, PhD, the Sloans’ priest, who lives in Rome, Italy and works for the Vatican but is temporarily assigned to the OLPH Catholic Church.

Judge Washington has threatened a gag order, but none has been imposed so far.