The Blackbird Papers (17 page)

Sterling picked up the other bird. “And this is the female.”

“Exactly. And to the untrained eye it looks like a different bird altogether. The females are blackish-brown on top, streaked with buff and chestnut. The head is streaked and the cheeks are brown. You can see how the throat is pale with a pink tinge and the breast and belly are whitish with heavy dark lines. They share some of the male's red coloring in the wings, but not much.”

“What killed them?” Sterling asked.

“That's why Willie brought them to me over the last couple of months. I've been dissecting them every day, comparing the size of their organs and looking for an abnormality that might be common to all of them.” Mandryka went to a large refrigerator and opened the top door. A puff of cold mist dusted his face. Hundreds of tiny vials had been separated in long metal baskets. They were full of a dark-crimson viscous liquid.

“Serological studies,” Sterling said.

“That's right. I've been running blood tests since Willie brought me the first bird.” Mandryka closed the cooler and hobbled over to the back wall, where he pulled a notebook from a rusted metal drawer. He placed the book on the corner of a table so Sterling could read over his shoulder. The word “Chogan” had been carefully written across the top.

“Willie and I made some interesting discoveries,” Mandryka said, flipping the wrinkled pages. “All of the blood samples we tested were positive for a compound called bufalin.”

“Lethal?”

“Take enough of the stuff and it can kill you in seconds,” Mandryka said. “Its common name is toad venom. Several pharmaceutical companies used to synthesize a derivative, because it had cardioactive properties similar to the digitalis plant, which is used in the heart medication digoxin.”

“Why did they stop making it?”

“Two Japanese women back in the eighties. Lovers, ostracized by their families and community. They committed suicide by taking high doses of the Chinese medicine Kyushin, which contains a bufalin derivative. They died in a matter of minutes. Autopsies showed their hearts had doubled in size. The pathways that conduct electricity throughout the heart had been so badly destroyed that the medical examiner suspected the muscle lost its rhythm and began beating erratically like a bag of worms. Horrible way to die.”

“So the FDA wouldn't let the companies develop the drug here?”

“As you might expect. We have the most conservative drug approval policy in the world. If a drug makes you sneeze one extra time, patient advocates are down the FDA's throat not to approve it.”

“That explains what I found on Wilson's computer. The last website he had visited was the FDA. I found some of the printed pages in one of the trash cans. They didn't say much, but he had been looking at the safety alert pages.”

“That's right. We found a posting in the archives that warned consumers and scientists about the dangers of this toxin and the products that were being made from it.”

“But how do you know that bufalin killed all these birds?”

“Take a look at this,” Mandryka said, hobbling over to another cooler. He opened the door and pulled out a covered tray. He carried it back to an empty lab bench and rested it on the counter, then removed the cover.

“What are those?”

“You've probably never seen these before. They're bird hearts.”

Fifty beefy-red hearts, smaller than olives, covered the tray. They had been divided so the larger hearts were on the right and the smaller ones on the left.

“The hearts on the right side belong to the birds with the highest levels of bufalin in their blood,” Mandryka explained. “Those on the left either had trace amounts or none at all.”

“So the poison is causing the hearts to enlarge to the point that it kills them,” Sterling deduced. “How fast do they die?”

“All depends on how much they consume and how concentrated it is. If I had to guess, I'd say a matter of hours to a couple of days. When I opened the hearts and dissected the muscles and septum, I found that all of their electrical systems were ruined.”

“So these birds are coming in contact with the toads that carry this poison?”

“Impossible. First of all, the poison is located in the toad's skin glands, so they'd have to eat the toad or its skin to be poisoned. Blackbirds don't feast on toads. Secondly, bufalin is found almost exclusively in the
Bufo bufo gargarizans
species, toads which predominantly live in China. The European toads—
Bufo bufo vulgaris
—contain a similar compound, but it's not as lethal as the Chinese bufalin. But there's something else.” Mandryka turned the pages of the register. “I've taken blood from at least a couple of hundred of these birds and I've found that not all of them contain the poison.”

“So the birds that don't have the poison are dying from something else?”

“No, I still think they're dying from the poison. They have the enlarged hearts and the ruined electrical systems. It's just that there's no detectable poison in their blood.”

“Degradation,” Sterling said. “By the time you run tests on the blood, the poison has degraded beyond recognition.”

“Exactly. And when I did an external examination of the birds, I found that the longer the birds had been dead, the less likely they were to have traces of the poison.”

Mandryka pointed to a series of columns for Sterling to analyze.

Everything he had just said made sense. The birds had been listed from those most recently killed to those that had died a long time ago. The new deaths had the highest concentrations of poison while the older deaths simply had “undetectable” scribbled beside them.

“In some of the specimens, the poison is completely intact, but in others, I can only find traces of the bufalin. It's a perfect poison. It does its dirty work over a matter of hours, then quietly degrades and disappears.”

“Amazing,” Sterling said. “Hundreds of blackbirds are dying in the woods of the Upper Valley from some type of mysterious poison and no one knows about it.”

“Willie only found hundreds, which means there are probably thousands,” Mandryka said. “Something strange is happening out there. Willie and I were hot on the trail.”

“Who else knows about your discoveries?”

“We haven't told anyone,” Mandryka said. “At least I haven't. That's why I've kept everything stored down here in this basement. No one has the key to this room but me.”

“None of your research assistants helped you in this?”

“Not a bit,” Mandryka insisted, clearly understanding Sterling's line of questioning.

“What about Wilson's lab? Would any of his research students know about this?”

“I don't think so,” Mandryka said. “We agreed to keep a tight lid on things until we had a better idea of what was going on and who was involved. Willie was writing a paper or case study for
Science.
I don't know if he finished, but he was close to it. He'd been working very hard the last couple of weeks. He wanted to have it done before the party, but I'm not sure if he made it. He left that night before I had a chance to ask.”

“Some of these pieces are starting to fit,” Sterling said, flipping through the pages of his little book. “Nel Potter's live-in, Heidi, mentioned that Wilson's night scouts would often take him onto the Potter farm. She said that he would come over early in the morning to observe the blackbirds.”

“She wouldn't have known about this,” Mandryka said. “Willie didn't even tell Kay. He was too worried about who might be behind these killings. This toxin isn't just some simple compound anyone can mix up in a lab. This is powerful stuff. Someone knew what they were doing.”

Sterling flipped another page in his book. “A month or so ago there was an article about Wilson in
The Dartmouth
. I picked up a copy when I was over at the Hop. In the article, Wilson mentioned that at a future date he'd be delivering some information about his recent discoveries on blackbirds.”

Professor Mandryka walked over to another table full of dead blackbirds and began inspecting them. “He gave that interview after we were certain something was going on. He was about to reveal everything he had learned, but then I found something that gave both of us pause.” Mandryka lifted two blackbirds from the heap, one male and one female.

Sterling examined them. Mandryka pulled on the tiny white metal bands strapped to their legs. “What's that?” Sterling asked.

“Bird ringing. Look at the tiny numbers stamped here.”

Sterling picked up one of the birds and peered at the ring. “Where did this come from?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. That's where we left off. Bird ringing can be something that bird-watchers do as a hobby, but usually it's done by professionals. This is how ornithologists mark birds and track their movements. It's been an effective way of studying life histories, population dynamics, and bird migratory patterns. Started in Denmark in the late 1800s. A researcher there fitted starlings with metal rings engraved with successive numbers and a return address. Then he released them into the wild. Bird ringing is now practiced in every corner of the world.”

“And you have no idea who might've been ringing these birds?”

“Not in the least. But one thing's for sure, someone else out there knows that these birds are dying and isn't saying. Willie placed a call to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in Washington. Sometimes they get involved with migratory studies. He thought they might be behind the ringing.”

“Their answer?”

“They couldn't deny or confirm, but agreed to look into it.”

Sterling closed his book and slid it in his pocket. “Something's going on here, Yuri, and it sounds like Wilson was getting close to it.” Sterling hesitated, unsure whether to take Mandryka into his confidence. “Someone was fishing around in Wilson's office the night that he was killed,” he finally said. “I haven't been able to figure out who it was or what they wanted, but I'm certain they came specifically to find something.”

“Check his research records,” Mandryka said as he opened the door and turned off the light. The two men stood facing each other in the dark hallway as the sound of water dripping on concrete echoed in the distance. “One thing about your brother, he was meticulous at documenting everything. I taught him that when he was my student in Chicago.”

“Yuri, are you sure no one else knows you have these blackbirds?”

“I'm the only one with keys to this room. The maintenance people can't even get in.”

“I'm not sure why Wilson was murdered, but if it has anything to do with these blackbirds, then you could be in danger too.”

“I'm an old man,” Mandryka said. “I'm not much use to anybody.”

“But the information you have could be. Be careful, Yuri.”

Mandryka didn't have to answer. The concerned look on his face said it all.

The two climbed into the cranky elevator and left the dank basement. As Sterling had predicted, the evidence was starting to talk.

26

T
he Mustang left a cloud of smoke and dust in its wake as it raced up the dark driveway, eating up patches of dead grass and snapping twigs like broken pencils. Vermin and other four-legged animals scrambled into the woods as their imminent death bore down on them like a runaway freight train without brakes. Sterling couldn't wait to get back to the house. With the information that Mandryka had just told him, he was convinced that he knew what the intruder was after. He went directly to the study, then systematically searched the room. First, he removed all the books from the shelves, opening each one to make sure there wasn't an envelope or a message hidden between the pages. Then he opened the closet. He had looked at everything the previous night, but what he hadn't done was check the top shelf carefully. He stood on his toes and tried reaching back, but the shelf was too deep. He pulled over a chair to stand on. He was ready to step down, when he felt it. A small keyhole all the way in the back wall, which he would surely have missed had he not run his finger along the paneling. He cleared the other items, then knocked on the area around the lock. A secret compartment. It had a much hollower sound than the rest of the wall. He searched the entire study for the key, making more of a mess than had already been made. Frustrated, he considered his options for opening it without the key and thought about hammering his way through. But that would risk destroying whatever was inside.

Sterling sat in Wilson's tall leather reclining chair and closed his eyes. Where would he hide something as small as a key? Sterling lifted the blotter. Nothing. He slid out the middle desk drawer and completely emptied its contents on the floor. He placed the drawer on top of a pile of books, but seconds later it tipped and fell to the floor before Sterling could catch it. That's when he saw it. Affixed to the underside of the drawer was a small black metal box. Sterling opened it and pulled out a tiny key.

He stood on the chair and stretched to the back wall. After a couple of tries, the lock clicked. The small compartment door swung open. Sterling didn't know what to expect, but it certainly wasn't what was sitting there. A compact Sony mini-DV camera. He pulled it out and ran his hand along the empty space. Nothing else. He sat behind the desk and opened the pop-out LCD monitor. It was a nice camera, state of the art, loaded with buttons and connection ports and a high-powered mega-pixel zoom lens. But why had Wilson locked it away in a secret compartment? Surely there were more expensive items sitting openly in the study.

Sterling pushed the Eject button and found a tape in the cassette holder. He rewound the tape, then pushed Play. The picture was out of focus at first, then he recognized trees and rocks and a tiny ravine. The camera jostled as whoever was holding it stepped over branches and lost his footing on the rough terrain. Sterling could hear labored breathing. The video went on like this for several minutes, then Wilson's voice. “This is where it starts and runs for about two hundred yards into the northeast corner of the Potter property. They're here by the hundreds.” The camera now focused on a blackbird lying on its back, its beady eyes staring blankly into the sky.

Sterling watched the next thirty minutes of tape, blackbird carcasses by the hundreds, scattered under rocks, floating in the water, caught between dead branches, covering dirt paths. Most of the tape had been shot with natural sound, the crunching of leaves under Wilson's steps, animals calling from a distance. Every few minutes, Wilson could be heard as he identified his location with precise compass directions, pinpointing the specific degrees along the horizon, as well as the lines of latitude and longitude. He distinguished male from female birds, and when he came across a heavily concentrated area, he zoomed in on the bodies, turning them over with sticks to make sure he had captured everything. Before the tape ran out, Wilson turned the camera on himself, his face barely visible. Once he had framed himself as best as possible, he spoke decisively. “You have just witnessed the physical evidence of immense wildlife death. This is no mere accident. These birds are being poisoned. But by whom and why?”