The Art of Forgetting (33 page)

              “Roy?”

              “Hello Lloyd,” Uncle Roy said.

              “How’s mom?”

              “Lloyd, we lost her.”

              “What do you mean?”

              There was no reply, which said everything.

              “What happened?” Lloyd asked.

              “She didn’t feel well this morning. Her chest was hurting and she couldn’t catch her breath. By the time the paramedics got her to the hospital… The doctors say it was a pulmonary embolus. Apparently, this happens sometimes in people with her condition.”

              Lloyd thought of the last time he saw his mother. He remembered the swollen leg, that tell-tale swollen leg. A wave of nausea engulfed him. What an idiot he was!  He should have recognized the risk. He was disgusted with himself – a doctor who couldn’t even help his own mother.

              “She went quickly. Peacefully,” Roy said. “Lloyd? Lloyd?”

              “I have to go now,” Lloyd said.

              Tears were streaming down Erin’s face. She covered her mouth with her hand.

              “My mom died,” Lloyd said.

              Erin buried her face in Lloyd’s shoulder and her body shuddered with sobs. Lloyd managed to swallow, and put an arm around her shoulders. The door opened. The ER attending stepped in, stopped in his tracks. Erin turned and wiped her face.

              “You want me to come back later?” the doctor asked.

              Lloyd shook his head.

              “We have some papers that need to be signed. Do you know how to reach the next of kin?”

              “I’ll sign the papers,” Lloyd said. He stood up, squeezed Erin’s shoulder and stepped away without saying a word. He followed the doctor around the corner to the nurse’s station. Dr. Lasko was standing there in his white coat, examining a paper chart.

              Lloyd’s pulse quickened. The surge of nausea receded and was replaced by a throbbing rage. For an instant, as he paced towards the nurse’s station, he thought his knees would buckle. He tightened his fists and marched up to Lasko.

              “You killed him, you son of bitch!” Lloyd said.

              Lasko studied Lloyd with a sort of bemused surprise. “Why no, Dr. Copeland. It would seem that if anyone killed Mr. Volkov, it was you.”

              “I’m going to figure out how you did it, and then I’m going to nail you!”

              Lasko took half a step forward and leaned into Lloyd. “You couldn’t nail a thumb tack if you had a hammer.”

              Lloyd was inches from his face. “Murderer,” he whispered.

              “Are you going to assault me, Dr. Copeland? I would enjoy that very much. In front of all these witnesses… it would be such a fitting end to your sordid career.”

              Lloyd felt a hand on his shoulder.

              “Let’s take a walk, Dr. Copeland.” It was Nick De Luca.

              “Yes, Mr. De Luca. Have Dr. Copeland take a walk, straight out of my hospital. And make sure he doesn’t set foot in here again until the time of his hearing with the disciplinary tribunal.”

              Lloyd shrugged off De Luca’s hand.

              “Come on, doc,” De Luca said.

              Lloyd marched out of the nurse’s station, De Luca close behind. Erin was standing outside the family room. She reached out and caressed Lloyd’s hand as he walked by and said, “I’ll come by later.”

              Lloyd nodded. He couldn’t manage to get out a word.

              “Don’t misunderstand, doctor, I’m only trying to help,” De Luca said.

              “Oh, you’re helping alright,” Lloyd said. He turned into the hallway leading to the research tower. “I have to go to my lab.”

              “As long as we’re quick about it.”

              Up in the lab, Lloyd found his cell phone lying on the counter under the lab coat. He flipped it on and checked the log. There were a bunch of missed calls, most of them from Uncle Roy and Erin. He slipped the phone in a back pocket of his pants, stepped into his office and grabbed a black marker from a drawer.

              “Nice painting,” De Luca said. “Lake Garda?”

              “Lake Como,” Lloyd said.

              “You ever been?”

              “You really want to help? Then stop the chit-chat and give me a hand,” Lloyd said.

              He handed De Luca some clear plastic sandwich bags and the black marker.

              “What do you have in mind?” De Luca said.

              “You’ll see.”

              Lloyd rushed to the cages. One by one he placed the dead mice in the plastic bags as De Luca held them open for him, wincing.

              “Please tell me you’re not going to take these home,” De Luca said.

              Lloyd scooped some dry food pellets from a plastic tote box and poured equal portions into the aluminum receptacles clipped to the cages of the live mice. He almost felt a need to apologize to the mice. There would be no more fresh vegetables, at least not for a while. A thought crossed Lloyd’s mind: he needed to find someone to keep caring for the animals. He paused by the cage marked 4006. The little guy was scurrying on his exercise wheel again. The last surviving prion-treated mouse.

              Lloyd grabbed the cage. De Luca was looking at him with raised eyebrows.

              “I’m taking this guy home,” Lloyd said.

              “You sure about that?”

              Lloyd walked past him, set the cage on a counter. He grabbed the black marker, wrote the serial numbers of each dead mouse on the plastic bags, sealed them and placed them all in a large paper grocery bag.

              “We ready now?” De Luca asked.

              “We’ve got one more stop,” Lloyd said. “By the way, I don’t have a ride. You’re driving me home.”

              Chapter 35

             
L
loyd made De Luca wait outside as he stepped into Kowalski’s office. There was no need for the security chief to be privy to their conversation. Even if the guy did seem sincere, to the point that Lloyd felt a pang of guilt for continuing to be rude in the face of De Luca’s civility, the man still worked for Lasko. That was clear enough.

              “Mercury levels through the roof,” Kowalski said of the toxicology report on Wolfgang.

              “What about the other samples?” Lloyd asked.

              “Food pellets, veggies and water: not a trace. And the blood samples on the other mice – squeaky clean, pardon the pun.”

              “So how did he get poisoned?”

              “Are any of the other mice showing signs of illness?”

              “Well, not until today,” Lloyd said.

              He passed the paper bag to Kowalski who took it cautiously and peered inside. He furrowed his brow. “Please tell me you don’t want me to do autopsies on all of them.”

              “Let’s just start with toxicology exams.”

              Kowalski nodded. “This is very peculiar, Lloyd.”

              “It’s beyond peculiar,” Lloyd said. “It’s downright suspicious.”

              Lloyd wasn’t too happy to have De Luca see where he lived, but he figured that, being a private eye, De Luca would be able to find his address if he really wanted to know. Still, he was annoyed when De Luca killed the engine of his car outside the front door as if expecting to be invited inside.

              “I spoke with Dr. English the other day,” De Luca said. “You know, Dr. Todd English. Had to interview him to get his version of the facts on the incident.”

              Lloyd said nothing for some ten seconds. When De Luca wouldn’t stop staring at him, Lloyd finally said, “So?”

              “So, you ought to talk to him.”

              “I’ve got nothing to say to that twerp.”

              “You really ought to talk to him.” De Luca turned the key in the ignition and the engine settled into a smooth muffled hum. “You still have my card?”

              Lloyd nodded.

              “You know, if you need anything…” De Luca said.

              Lloyd got out of the car, the mouse cage under an arm. He was about to shut the car door when he hesitated and said, “Hey, De Luca… thanks.”

              De Luca nodded with a thin smile. “My pleasure, doc.” The car slowly pulled away from the curb after Lloyd shut the door, its red tail lights coming alive as it slowed to turn at the end of the block.

              Lloyd entered the apartment, set the mouse cage on the teak coffee table and got himself a beer from the fridge. He settled on the couch looking at the mouse scurrying back and forth along one edge of the cage.

              “You want to come out for a while?” Lloyd said. He leaned forward, flipped open the metal grid that covered the plastic bin and scooped the mouse in the palm of his hand. He placed the creature on his thigh and took a swig of beer. The mouse rose on its hind quarters, its whiskers twitching as it sniffed the hair. It settled back on all fours and took a few tentative steps toward Lloyd’s knee.

              “We should give you a real name, double-o-six.” The mouse turned around as if it were responding to Lloyd’s voice. “How about Frederic? You like that?  Freddy Chopin?” The mouse scurried up to Lloyd’s hip. Lloyd took him in his hand and studied him. “Look buddy, let’s get one thing clear. I never had a damn pet before and I don’t really want one now. So don’t even think of getting emotionally attached, okay? My interest in you is purely scientific. As far as I’m concerned, we’re just temporary roommates. And good roommates don’t shit all over the house. You got that?” Lloyd placed the mouse back in the cage and took another sip of beer. “I’m talking to a fucking mouse!”

              When he finished his beer, he got to his feet, picked up the keys to the Subaru and headed to the hospital in Park Ridge to see the corpse of his mother.

              Chapter 36

             
L
ater in the afternoon, Lloyd called a cab to go pick up his bike from in front of Kaz’s apartment. The door to the apartment was locked and someone had secured a flimsy piece of plywood in the frame of the broken window with strips of duct tape. He tried ringing the upstairs apartment but there was no answer, so he got on his bike and rode off.

              When he got home he considered scouring through the data on the computerized spreadsheet once more, but he wasn’t in the right state of mind and deep down he knew that the answers he was looking for were not be found concealed by lot numbers and dates of injection so meticulously recorded. He thought about what De Luca said. He grabbed a beer, downed it in just a couple of long drags. Then he picked up the phone and dialed the main operator for the hospital.

              “This is Dr. Copeland. I’m trying to reach Dr. Todd English.”

              “Please hold,” the operator said.

              Vivaldi’s Four Seasons played as Lloyd waited on the phone. Hadn’t Kaz wanted to name a mouse after the Italian composer? Lloyd straightened his spine and sighed. He wondered if for the rest of his life a few bars of classical music would be enough to stir up a fog of melancholy.

              “This is Dr. English,” a voice said after the music stopped.

              “Dr. English? It’s Lloyd Copeland.”

              There was a pause.

              “I wanted to apologize,” Lloyd said. “I might have gone a little overboard when –”

              “Look, it isn’t my fault that you’re getting canned,” English said.

              “I know. I’m not holding any grudges against you,” Lloyd said, thought it wasn’t quite true.

              “No, you don’t understand. It’s not like I squealed on you. The whole thing just snowballed out of control.”

              “It’s alright. Like you said, it’s not your fault.”

              “Once that guy gets a hold of you, he’s like a pit bull. He just doesn’t let go,” English said.

              “I’ll handle Dr. Lasko.”

              “Lasko?” English said. “Hell, I’m not talking about Lasko.”

              Lloyd paused. “Todd, what are you saying?”

              “Man, figure it out. I’m done talking to you.”

              The line went quiet and then a tone told Lloyd that English had hung up. Lloyd looked at his phone replaying the conversation in his mind when the door-bell rang. It was Erin. She stepped inside the apartment and smothered Lloyd in a long embrace. Lloyd couldn’t remember a hug ever feeling so good.

              “I came as soon as I could,” Erin said.

              Lloyd tried to kiss her but she put a palm out in front of his face and said, “Lloyd, we really have to talk.” She grabbed his hand and tugged on it as she led him upstairs.

              They sat at the dining table. Erin opened her purse and pulled out the two tickets for the gala, set them on the table in front of Lloyd without saying a word.

              Lloyd stared at the tickets for a few moments. He wrinkled his brow and let his gaze drift up to Erin’s face.