The Prodigal Son. Colleen McCullough

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ to his wife, Dr. Millicent Hunter. He was one of the biggest whales in the vast protean ocean, whereas she was a sprat. As post-doctoral fellows or as faculty, the financial outlay for two Hunters was considered excessive. If this was complicated by the inter-racial nature of their union, no one was prepared to say.

      After six years in Chicago they were poorer than ever, never having actually held a job. Their grants contained a subsistence-style living allowance, and on that they subsisted, dressing from K-mart and eating supermarket bargains. A Chinese meal to go was a luxury they indulged in once a month.

      Then their luck turned.

      In 1966 the President of Chubb University, Mawson MacIntosh, was actively looking for racial misfits—and also for potential Nobel Prize winners. Jim Hunter looked good on both counts; M.M. was determined that Chubb would stay in the forefront of academic integration at all levels. Without any idea that Dr. Millicent Hunter was the Holloman Medical Examiner’s daughter, M.M. sent a quiet directive to Dean Hugo Werther of Chemistry that the Doctors Hunter be given two faculty positions. They were not in the same lab, and her post involved some teaching, but they were both in the Burke Biology Tower and would be seen together. Dr. Millie pleased M.M.; biochemistry was a discipline that visibly changed while you looked at it, so teachers were rare. Whereas Dr. Jim Hunter was a breaker of new ground, his mind that of a true genius. Only his having a beautiful white highly educated wife told against him, and that could not be seen to matter. The couple had been married for years, so probably had nothing left to learn about racial discrimination.

      Thus it had been that over two years ago Millie had phoned out of the blue and asked if she and Jim could beg a bed for a couple of nights. Admittedly four of the O’Donnell daughters were gone, but of spare bedrooms there were none; Carmine had come to their rescue by giving them use of his apartment in the Nutmeg Insurance building before he sold it upon his marriage.

      Overjoyed though they were at the return of Millie and Jim, Patrick and Nessie discovered very quickly that whatever they could offer was too little, too late. The Doctors Hunter were armored against the world so strongly that even parents couldn’t find a weakness in the rivets. And what could they have done differently? Fear for a child leads to all sorts of hideously wrong decisions, Patrick reflected as he tramped up a set of cold stone stairs. If only Jim had looked like Harry Belafonte or at least been an ordinary brown! But he didn’t, and he wasn’t.

      If the relationship between the Doctor’s Hunter and her parents was a rather distant one, it was also genuinely friendly. What Patrick and Nessie continued to fear was simple: how could a fifteen-year-old possibly own the wisdom to choose the right life’s partner? One day either Millie or Jim was going to wake up and discover that the childhood bond was gone, that a cruel world had finally managed to separate them. So far it had not happened, but it would. It would! They had no children, but that was probably deliberate. Until now, they plain couldn’t afford a family. The steel in them! It amazed Patrick, who had to wonder if his own comfortable marriage to Nessie could have taken one-tenth of the blows Millie and Jim took every day.

      Over two years last September since they came to Holloman!

      Carmine was in. As he came through the door, Patrick had to smile. His first cousin was napping in the extremely efficient way he had perfected over hundreds of hours waiting to be called as a trial witness. What had happened last night?

      “Did you and Desdemona toast the New Year too lavishly, cuz?” he asked.

      Carmine didn’t jump or twitch; he opened one clear eye. “Nope. Alex is teething and Julian is like his daddy—a very light sleeper.”

      “You would have them so close together.”

      “Don’t look at me. It was Desdemona’s idea.” Carmine swung his feet off the kitchen table he used as a desk and opened both eyes. “Why are you slumming, Patsy?”

      “Have you heard of tetrodotoxin?”

      “Vaguely. It’s been suggested in a sensational Australian case some years ago—the symptoms fit, but they couldn’t isolate a poison of any kind. The Japanese flirt with it, I found out during my years in the occupation forces as a Tokyo M.P. Blowfish, blue-ringed octopus and some other marine nasties. According to my sources, it’s fully metabolized and out of the system before autopsy can detect it,” Carmine said.

      Patrick blinked. “You perpetually amaze me, cuz. I presume it has to be logged in a poisons register if it’s anywhere near the general public, but what happens if it’s nowhere around the general public, yet goes missing?”

      “That depends on whether you’re ethical, or the type who covers his ass. Ethical, and you report its loss to someone. If inclined to cover your own ass, you write ‘accidentally destroyed’ or ‘out of date and discarded as per regulations’ in a register. But I presume this victim is ethical, right?”

      “Right. My problem daughter, Millie. She’s been working with the stuff, had enough left over to kill ten heavyweight boxers, divided into six glass ampoules of a hundred milligrams each—yes, yes, I’ll slow down! She put the six ampoules into a beaker, stuck the skull-and-crossbones on it, then shoved it in the back of her lab refrigerator.” Patrick frowned. “She didn’t tell anyone it was gone until she came to see me. I advised her to remain silent, to tell no one further.”

      “Who else knew it was there?”

      “Only Jim. She told him, in passing. Not his field.”

      “Was it labeled, apart from the poison sticker?”

      “She didn’t say. But while she may be too honest to forge an entry in her register, she is highly organized, Carmine. It would have been coded rather than named. Anyone poking through her refrigerator wouldn’t have known what he was looking at,” Patrick said. “My girl’s worst fault is that she’s too trusting. An untidy worker she’s not. The trust baffles me, I confess. How can you trust a world that shits on you the way Millie’s world shits on her?”

      “It’s her nature,” Carmine said gently. “Millie is an honest-to-goodness saint.” He caught sight of the railroad clock on his wall. “Lunch at Malvolio’s?”

      “Sounds good to me.”

      As soon as Merele cleared the dishes away Carmine returned to his cousin’s problem.

      “You’d better look up tetrodotoxin’s clinical symptoms,” he said. “If anyone took it with nefarious intentions, a gurney holding a victim is going to roll through your morgue doors, and the faster you can screen for tetrodotoxin, the better your chances of finding it. In fact, why don’t you tell Paul you’re running a little unofficial test to keep your technicians on their toes? Tell him they’re to look for abstruse neurotoxins like tetrodotoxin. It won’t fool Paul, but your technicians are used to your—er—unofficial exams. Let Paul in on it, he’s no gossip, Patsy.”

      “Well, I have to keep my technicians on their toes now my lab is the major one in the state. I’ll look, Carmine—and look hard.” His face puckered; he fought for control and found it. “This isn’t fair! Millie doesn’t need extra grief.”

      “She did exactly the right thing in reporting her loss,” Carmine said, voice level. “Had she concealed the theft, you might easily have missed a tetrodotoxin death at P.M. If the thief’s motive was nefarious, he was looking for a rare and undetectable poison. And that means he’s knowledgeable. A biochemist or biologist, or maybe a doctor.” Carmine frowned, toyed with his spoon. “Given Jim’s relationship to Millie, he’s out of the picture, and that means СКАЧАТЬ