The Blackbird Papers (16 page)

Sterling opened the closet door. There wasn't much in it except for an old computer monitor, a filing cabinet that was largely empty, and a couple of overcoats hanging on hooks. It didn't look like it had been disturbed. Sterling wondered if the intruder had run away before he had a chance to go through it. He reached up to the top shelf and blindly ran his hand along the paneling. He found an old baseball, a catcher's mitt, and an ancient pair of boxing gloves. Why did Wilson have these? Nothing else caught his attention.

Sterling locked all of the doors and windows, then went into the front living room and found a comfortable spot on the sofa—half sitting, half reclining. He rested his gun on a small end table within arm's reach, before quietly looking out the window into the empty shadows of night. Wilson's secret must not have been lost with his death. Whoever killed him still hadn't gotten what they were looking for.

25

S
terling rubbed off the film of sweat misting his watch crystal. His run completed, he stood in front of the house waiting for his breathing to return to normal again. He had shaved a full minute off his morning jog, a sign that his lungs were adjusting to the altitude and his legs were growing more comfortable with the hilly terrain. He raced into the house, took a quick shower, and changed before returning outside to rev up the Mustang. He wanted to grab a bagel and the
New York Times
before heading over to Professor Mandryka's lab.

The Bagel Basement was Hanover's most popular morning joint, inconspicuously situated in the basement of a two-story building on Allen Street, a small one-way path in the center of town. Grumpy Oscar Nederhoff lit the old cast-iron ovens at five every morning, and for the next twelve hours—long after Nederhoff had gone home for the day—the smell of freshly baked dough pulled in customers from miles around.

Sterling settled the Mustang in an empty parking lot behind the building and bounded down the stairs. A young woman in her late teens stood behind the counter filling the baskets with warm bagels. She had pink-and-green fluorescent hair with a big silver loop dangling from her nose. Her oversized clothes hung wrinkled and loose.

Sterling looked around at the early arrivals. An older man in a long trench coat sat at a corner table, reading the thin
Valley News
. He dipped his bagel in hot coffee, then nibbled it as he moved from one news item to the next. The woman sitting next to the window pored over what looked like a term paper, vigorously marking it with red ink. She had barely touched her poppy seed bagel, but the tall cup of coffee was almost finished.

Sterling took his toasted cinnamon-raisin bagel and orange juice and sat down at one of the small back tables. It was only six thirty; he wasn't expected at Professor Mandryka's for another half hour. He flipped open the
Times
and began skimming the front page. Nothing. He then scanned the nation section. There was the headline
DARTMOUTH PROFESSOR MURDERED IN VERMONT.

It was a short article, starting at the bottom of the page and continuing in the science section. Most of the space was devoted to Wilson's scientific accomplishments. A biologist whose name Sterling didn't recognize was quoted as calling Professor Bledsoe one of the most important ethologists in the history of the discipline, in the same class as the Austrian Konrad Lorenz.

Sterling thought it odd that only the last paragraph dealt with Wilson's murder. The details were sketchy at best. He had been killed after a party in his honor, and the authorities had no suspects or motive for the killing. There was no mention of the racial disfigurement or that he had been found in a heavily wooded area. The quote from President Mortimer was brief but it expressed the sadness felt not only by the community but by Mortimer himself, who had been a colleague and friend for almost twenty years. That at least was heartening.

Sterling pulled out a dollar and left it in the empty tip jar on the front counter. The fluorescent-headed girl gave him a lazy nod of appreciation. Professor Mandryka was waiting.

P
rofessor Yuri Mandryka spent most of his time in a dark, musty laboratory that took up the entire third floor of the Gilman Life Sciences Laboratory building. His lab was housed in three rooms, all of them with views overlooking downtown Hanover and the greenery of the surrounding area. Sterling found him lighting a Bunsen burner underneath a column of foamy blue liquid.

“Good morning, Professor Mandryka,” Sterling said.

“Morning to you,” Mandryka replied. “But call me Yuri. No need for titles and formalities. Those things don't matter so much when you get to be my age.” Mandryka poured more of the blue liquid into the glass column, then turned his attention to Sterling. “Did you bring any company?”

“No, just me, as you asked.”

“Good. Privacy could be important.”

Mandryka continued to fiddle with the bubbling solution while measuring a charcoal-gray liquid in two other graduated cylinders. He whistled a tune as he fidgeted with the experiment, hobbling from one side of the lab bench to the next. Though he moved slowly and deliberately, his decades of experience still allowed him to deftly handle the solutions and instruments.

“Just a second,” Mandryka said, still rearranging the glass beakers and eyeing the levels of the fluids. “I want to get these reagents going so we can talk without being interrupted. I'm trying to degrade some proteins.”

“I thought you did animal research,” Sterling said, looking around the room. It was full of smoky glassware, microscopes, and test tubes. “This could be a chem lab.”

“It is,” Mandryka said, wiping his hands on a lab coat that looked like it had survived a chemical war. He folded his wire-framed glasses and tucked them in his breast pocket. “I'm from the old school. When I was coming up in science, there was a lot of crossover in the disciplines. Chemists were biologists and biologists were chemists. These days, everyone is super-specialized, just working on a small part of the problem. I like to work a problem from beginning to end. My lab has been trying to develop new ways to analyze the mitochondrial DNA in monkeys. We're almost there.”

Mandryka rinsed out a couple of glass beakers in the sink and brought them to an empty lab bench. He poured equal amounts of clear white solution into each beaker, then put them on a rotating mixer. He opened one of the drawers and pulled out a timer, turning the small knob with great effort and setting it on the counter.

“Follow me,” Mandryka said.

Mandryka opened a door to an expansive office. Windows filled one entire wall, overlooking a vast wooded area that dropped into a valley—a spectacular view of unblemished wilderness.

“Quite a view you have here, Yuri,” Sterling said, walking over stacks of books and papers to get to the windows. Mandryka hobbled to his chair without using his cane and took a seat behind the cluttered desk.

“That's one of the few perks that comes with all these gray hairs,” Mandryka said. “Or at least what's left of them. Choice lab space goes to the most senior in the department.”

They looked out over the endless mountains, quietly taking in the soaring peaks and deep valleys. It was still early in the morning, but the haze had lifted and visibility extended for miles. Sterling knew that back in the city rush hour was just beginning, with cars jamming the narrow streets and buses careening down the wide avenues. But outside Mandryka's lab, Sterling counted only three cars on the road below and no signs that it would get much busier anytime soon. He turned and found an empty chair across from the old scientist. It was time to talk.

“How much did Willie say to you about what he'd been doing lately?” Mandryka asked.

Sterling shrugged. “Not much. We only spoke to each other once every couple of months, and when we did, we didn't talk much about our work. We spent more time catching up on our lives. Personal things.”

“I see.” Mandryka removed a stack of papers and cleared off a small oak humidor on the corner of his desk. He opened the lid and pulled out a fresh cigar. “Care for one?”

“I don't smoke, but thanks anyway.”

“One of my students is from London,” Mandryka explained. “When he goes home for vacation, he always brings me back a box of Cubans.” Sterling watched as Mandryka clipped one end, lit the cigar, then took a long drag. “Of course, I pay him,” he said, blowing a cloud of bluish-gray circles toward the ceiling. Sterling looked at the no-smoking sign tacked to the bulletin board and smiled.

“I've already told you that your brother and I go back a long way,” Mandryka said, allowing the cigar to rest in the corner of his narrow mouth. “Willie knew that I spent a good portion of my time studying animal anatomy. I took an interest many years ago after I hit a deer one morning on the way to work. When I went to move the poor thing to the side of the road, I noticed that it had been severed in half, just as if someone had taken a saw and buzzed it right down the middle. Its innards were spread all over the hood of my car and the ground. The heart muscles were still in spasm.”

Mandryka took another drag on the cigar and leaned back in the chair, making his small frame look like that of a child who had climbed into his father's recliner.

“I lost my old car in that accident, but I found a new interest in anatomy. For years I had studied animals, their behavior, and their relationship to environment, but now I was going to find out not only how they behaved but why they behaved as they did.”

“Anatomy is my area of expertise,” Sterling said.

“Yes, Willie told me, which is why I thought you might appreciate that story. A few months ago, Willie called me at home very early in the morning and asked if he could bring something by the lab. I, of course, said yes, and he came that morning with a brown bag that had been wrapped in a larger plastic bag. I thought he was bringing me breakfast.” Mandryka took another drag and let out a soft cackle. “Wilson had brought me breakfast all right. It was a dead blackbird.”

“Where did he get it from?” Sterling asked.

“The back of his property. You see, what made Willie such a good scientist was that he lived his craft. He didn't just sit in front of the classroom or laboratory and teach these kids. He went out in the field and collected data, developing his theories and putting them to the test.”

Sterling thought of the story he had read on the Internet about Chogan and of how Wilson had spent his last minutes alive writing the word on his ankle. Sterling was unsure how much Mandryka knew, but to call a clandestine meeting like this, he knew something.

“Birds and other animals die all the time,” Sterling said. “I'm sure Wilson could have found plenty of dead animals in those woods if he had looked long enough.”

“Yes and yes,” Mandryka said. He leaned forward to stand, grabbing on to the edge of his desk. “Come and let me show you something.”

Yuri Mandryka waddled around his desk, barely able to lift his legs high enough to clear the stacks of science journals and papers littering his floor. He ignored the cane resting next to the door and instead reached out to different pieces of furniture to maintain his balance. Before he left the office, he snuffed out the cigar and slid it into one of his coat pockets. Sterling followed, noticing the nasty curve that twisted the old man's spine and bent his head downward. He had probably been half a foot taller in his younger years, but the curse of osteoporosis and its insidious thinning of the bones had robbed him not only of his height but of the ability to straighten his neck for long periods of time.

Professor Mandryka led Sterling to the other end of the long hallway, where they caught the elevator to the basement. He didn't say anything during the ride, instead keeping his eyes straight ahead, weighing something serious. The doors opened onto a dimly lit, bare hallway that looked like a storage room for custodial supplies.

Mandryka continued to waddle down the hall, reaching out to the wall with every step to balance himself. They walked through one heavy steel door, then another, which Sterling helped the old man open. Mandryka fumbled with his key ring for a few minutes, then inserted a long key in the lock of the third door. It took all of his effort to push the door open, and once he did, Sterling was immediately hit with the room's teeth-chattering chill and the heavy smell of formaldehyde. Mandryka turned on the light, but Sterling was not prepared for what he saw.

“Jesus Christ!” Sterling exclaimed. “What the hell is this?”

Blackbird carcasses were everywhere. In cages, on top of cabinets, lined up on metal tables, wrapped in bags on the floor. There must have been hundreds of dead blackbirds in that tiny room. Mandryka stood there quietly and allowed Sterling's mind to catch up with his eyes.

“You see, Sterling,” Mandryka finally said. “Willie did walk farther into the woods, and as you surmised, he did find lots of dead animals. The only problem was that they were all blackbirds—not one or two, but hundreds.”

“I've never seen anything like this before,” Sterling gasped.

“And neither had Willie, which is why he brought them to me.” Mandryka let out a violent cough.

“What did he expect you to do with them?” Sterling asked.

“He needed to find someone who could help explain all this death, but he didn't want to raise too many eyebrows. He knew my chemistry background, so he thought I could help.”

Sterling walked around the room, looking inside the cages and picking up the bags on the floor. There were so many birds, it was hard to believe that they were real. Some had black bodies, others were a streaky brown.

“There are two different species here,” Sterling said.

“Not true,” Mandryka said, shuffling to a stainless steel table covered with an opaque plastic bag. He reached underneath the table for a box of gloves and snapped on a pair. “Not to worry—your mistake is common. This is one species.” He removed the plastic table cover.

Five birds had been lined up in different stages of dissection. The first three had been dissected down to the skeleton with all of their organs exposed and tagged. The last two were completely intact. Mandryka offered Sterling a pair of gloves, then picked up the last two birds. “These are the red-winged blackbirds,” he said, holding them up in the light. “They're arguably the most abundant type of blackbird in North America.” Mandryka handed one of the birds to Sterling.

“But they look so different,” Sterling said as he turned the bird in his hand.

“Only on the outside,” Mandryka said. “What you're holding is the male red-winged.”

Sterling grabbed a tuft of small scarlet feathers that sprouted from the rest of its shiny black feathers. “And this is how it got its name.”

“Precisely,” Mandryka said, taking the bird from Sterling's hand and spreading its wings. “This area is called the
epaulet
, from the French word meaning shoulder. As you can see, the males are glossy black everywhere except on the shoulder of their wings.” Mandryka brushed the scarlet feathers, which were bordered with a yellow stripe. The bill was also black, thin and pointed.