Human Remains Read online

  Dr. Hay's lab and office doors were locked. I knocked on both of them.

  At least one and perhaps two body shapes moved in the lab, behind the frosted glass, but no one moved toward the door, even when I waved and knocked louder.

  I didn't have Dahiyyah's e-mail or phone number, but I moved back into the purple-walled waiting area and picked up the plastic-framed phone numbers. I dialed Judith Hay's assistant first.

  Did she have a secretary? I'd never seen one, only Dahiyyah and Stephen. It went to Dr. Hay's voice mail, and I hung up. I tried the lab number next. It rang and rang. The shadows behind the glass never answered.

  I hung up. Sooner or later, I'd see Dahiyyah again, and I definitely had more questions for her.

  Chapter 35

  Meet you downstairs? Done with our run.

  Ryan texted a picture of himself and Roxy in front of the hospital. It was hard to make them out as more than shadows against the brick building. The sun had set, he was wearing black, and she was black-furred except her brow eye and muzzle markings, belly, and legs.

  For a second, I thought of the two men who'd beat up and suffocated Lawrence Acayo, because they'd worn black, too, before I shoved the thought away. Ryan and Roxy were innocent. That, I knew.

  When I hurried down the flights of stairs, Roxy barked at me from around the mostly-deserted bike racks, but Ryan was frowning over his phone. He crossed the sidewalk toward me and kissed me. He didn't smile, though, even when I broke away to stroke Roxy's fur to tell her she was a good dog, a very good dog, such a good dog, yes, yes, yes. In response, she kept trying to jump on me.

  "Down, Roxy," said Ryan. He shortened the leash. It meant that Roxy's paws clambered in mid-air, so he covered her paws with his hands and set them on the ground. She panted and tried to lick the bit of exposed skin of my wrist, between my glove and coat sleeve. That reminded me of my dream with Lawrence's body, where snow had chilled the gap between my snow pants and my boots.

  No. I forced myself to pat Roxy's soft, black head. She whined. "Roxy, sit." Ryan sounded annoyed.

  She sat, but her tail wagged, and as soon as I laughed, she stood up again.

  Usually, Ryan's in a better mood after a run. Sweat dampened the roots of his hair, and I loved the sharp angles of his face and the muscles hidden under his jacket, but something was bugging him. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing."

  I looked at him. Even though most of the light was only spillover from hospital windows and a clouded-over moon, he could tell I didn't believe him.

  He ran a hand through his hair. "I guess it's the stuff online."

  "Your White Birthright site?"

  "I'm working on that, but it's more 14-88."

  I stood still. He'd mentioned that website on the way to Joan's party.

  "It's basically home base for the WH movement online. White Heritage. Alt-right. Alt-Reich. Whatever you want to call it." His mouth twisted.

  "Like the Ku Klux Klan or Aryan Nation?"

  Roxy sniffed Ryan's hand. He stroked her head absently.

  I pulled off my gloves so I could feel her silky ears with my fingertips, even though the wind whipped around the building and cooled the rest of my hands. Roxy looked up at me and sidled closer to both of us, stepping on my right foot. The one with the sprained ankle, although it was getting better. I laughed at her.

  "Funny that you should say that. 14-88 started up as part of a campaign for David Duke. He was a white supremacist who ran for the US senate. He used to be a grand wizard in the Ku Klux Klan."

  "Was that a long time ago?"

  "Nineteen-ninety."

  If I could've whistled, I would have. "No way. But David Duke lost, right?"

  Ryan nodded. "Still, 14-88 has over 300,000 registered users. It's in the top 15,000 websites on the Internet."

  "But not here. Not in Canada. Not in Ottawa."

  He shrugged. "There's a thread about Ottawa, started by a Slavic high school senior. I joined it."

  "What?" I wanted to seize him by his jacket collar, lift him off the sidewalk, and shake some sense into him.

  He stared at me, brown eyes unflinching. "Hope, if my website's going to have any credibility, I have to talk like they do. I have to establish a presence on their forum. And then I can get them to click."

  "Ryan, no. This is more than you signed up for."

  "It's not as dangerous as what you do every day."

  "Ryan, I help—I used to help—sick people. So yeah, I might catch a virus. But I'm not hanging out with white supremacists. You don't have to do this, Ryan!"

  He turned away from me, so I couldn't see his face, and started walking back toward Lindsay Lane.

  Roxy whined, following him but craning her neck at me. I hurried after them. She lay down on the snowy grass next to the sidewalk and rolled onto her back, tucking her front paws away so I'd have maximum access to her belly.

  Aww. I still wanted to haul Ryan back to safety, shutting down his Wi-Fi and zip-tying his wrists if I had to, but in the meantime, who could resist this animal who wanted love so desperately?

  I crouched to rub and scratch Roxy's belly. Her head rolled side to side, and she flexed her paws even further, retracting them as much as she could. I laughed, trying not to scratch her small, pink nipples as I massaged her tummy. "Aw, Ra-Ra, you're so good. You would never chase after bad guys on your own. You're too smart. Yes, you are."

  Ryan snorted.

  I squinted and grinned as I looked up at him. It was starting to snow, and the street lamps illuminated the fat, wet flakes, turning them yellow before they fell on my face.

  He exhaled and said, in a calmer voice, "I'm fine. It's not like I got kidnapped and held hostage with a gun to my head."

  "That's true, but the difference is, it's optional. If I could've, I would've avoided the gun. You don't have to do this, Ryan. You can walk away."

  "I'm not going to. These people are f—messed up. I'm not stopping now." His masseter muscles flexed in his jaw before he glanced down at Roxy. "I guess they'd hate Roxy, too. Because she's black."

  We both laughed, but it caught in my throat. "Ryan. This is no good for you."

  "I want to do this, Hope. I don't want you to go alone."

  I stood up and tucked my hands under his jacket. His skin was toasty, but he didn't flinch. I stared directly into his eyes. "What if I stopped? What if I started … baking apple pies instead?"

  The corner of his mouth twitched. "That's not going to happen." Roxy stood up and nudged our legs with her head, obviously looking for more attention. Since Ryan was the only one with free hands, he patted her head, and she let out a comical little groan. "We both know that. We can't go backwards. Anyway, apple pies remind me of 14-88. They have a whole thread for 14-88 'ladies.' Their tag is 'sugar and spice and everything nice.'" He played with Roxy's ear, and she shook her head, ringing her tags together and gazing at him adoringly. "Don't go on there, Hope. It'll mess with your brain."

  My fingers immediately twitched in anticipation of logging on. It's like Bluebeard's chamber. We tell each other, "Don't look! Don't look!" but it made us want to rubberneck even harder.

  For now, I took a deep breath and slipped my hands below Ryan's belt line. His abdominal muscles tensed in response before he grinned at me, and I kissed him.

  Chapter 36

  THURSDAY

  Since it wasn't even 8:20 a.m., I decided to cut through the parking circle. I'd be stuck inside for the rest of the day. I admired the bare branches of the deciduous trees outside the circle. Even leaf-free, they were, in their own way, as beautiful as pine trees looped with Christmas lights.

  I glanced downward to make sure that salty slush didn't kick up onto my pants. Damp air chilled my face. I strode past the cars nudging their way around the hospital, and then I caught my breath.

  Three white cars emblazoned with the word POLICE filled the short-term parking spots.

  Had they come to investigate Lawrence's homicide? But why
converge on the hospital en masse four days later?

  I yanked open the double doors and pressed the handicapped button so it would stay open for the old lady toiling behind me on her cane. I barely glanced at the elevator, clogged with people whispering to each other, before I rushed up two flights of stairs.

  My stomach tightened as I pushed open the door to the third floor landing.

  Yellow police tape cordoned off Dr. Hay's lab.

  POLICE LINE

  DO NOT CROSS

  BARRAGE DE POLICE

  PASSAGE INTERDIT

  The air seemed to squeeze out of my lungs for a second, although the logical part of my brain noted that, yes, in Canada, we pay double for bilingual police tape. Maybe triple, because it also had the Crime Stoppers number stamped on it.

  Two officers stood in front of Dr. Hay's frosted glass doors. A young, male officer with a brown crew cut held out his hand to stop me. "This area is closed."

  I had to swallow to make my throat start working again. Please don't let this be what I think it is. "I work at the Zinser lab." I pointed at the glass doors opposite them. "That one's open, right?"

  He nodded, but said, "I'm going to need your ID."

  I showed him my badge. Good thing I'd remembered to bring it, and even better that it worked under the police's watchful eye. I hurried into the Zinser office, pulling the door closed to help it along. Then I bent over to take off my boots and work my feet into my shoes.

  Someone bumped into my bum. I whirled around, ready to yell at Mitch, but Susan was trying to edge her plump form past me to her secretarial desk. "I'm sorry," she said. "I can't believe this. First Dr. Acayo, now Ducky."

  Ducky. No, no, no, no, no.

  They make fun of me.

  They dump everything on me.

  They spill things.

  They mess up my papers.

  Jamais deux sans trois.

  They'd been gaslighting her, making her think she was the crazy one.

  I 'd thought random acts of cruelty wouldn't escalate to murder.

  "You mean it's Dahiyyah?" I waited for Susan's nod. For a second, my vision telescoped. Susan looked like she was in a tunnel, far away from me, with only her head showing. Then my eyes reverted to normal. I shook my head. "And she's dead?"

  "Dr. Hay found her this morning. She was—deceased."

  You'll never speak to me again.

  Dahiyyah had been right. I would never speak to her again. I'd tried, I'd gone back to her lab, but she hadn't answered. Had she been too afraid to answer the door? "Somebody killed her?"

  "No! I mean, I don't think so. She sent out a note at 5 a.m." Susan pressed a hand to her own cheek. She reached into a pocket of her black trousers and pulled out a Kleenex so she could touch her eyes.

  "What did the note say?"

  "They think it's … it's suicide. At least that's what I heard. What a terrible thing! Dr. Hay wants to reach her family, but their lab is cordoned off, so I'm going to try to—excuse me. I have to find her next of kin, if I can." She put out her hand to steady herself on someone else's desk before she made her way to her own computer.

  I followed her for a second, but I was still in my stockinged feet, and I'm not great at comforting people. Mostly, I sit and listen to them. Susan was rifling through her file folders, so she didn't need a sympathetic ear.

  I turned back to my shoes as the card sensor clicked from yellow to green. Mitch pushed open the door.

  I jerked back, my socks slipping on the tile floor, and he nodded sympathetically. "Hell of a thing, eh? Poor Ducky."

  The woman was dead, and we still couldn't give her the respect of her real name. "Her name was Dahiyyah. Dahiyyah Safar." At least my brain cells managed to dredge that up. "What happened to her?"

  Mitch shrugged. "No one's talking, but my security guy said it was a mess. They found her on the ground with vomit and diarrhea, you know?"

  "No, I didn't know that." But I was thinking. "Vomit and diarrhea makes me think of an anaphylactic reaction. Or a poison. Did she have a rash? How did she die? Do we know?"

  He raised his eyebrows. "My security guy didn't know that part."

  "Did he read the note?"

  Mitch shuffled his feet. He glanced around the office. Susan was tapping on her computer, and Tom's door was closed; we were fairly isolated. "Well, I did. We all got a copy. She e-mailed it to everyone in the two labs."

  "She e-mailed her suicide note?" Bizarre. I'd never heard of that before.

  He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and unlocked it before handing it over. The beginning was in Arabic, but the English words jumped out at me.

  I love my family. I want them to know that I have been working very hard. I have the proof on my computer. If anything happens to me, the password is SWJHRVDZSA.

  Some Arabic words followed.

  "This is not a suicide note," I said immediately. "This is her protecting herself."

  Mitch shrugged. "I don't know what it is, but she sent it to everyone at 5:13 a.m."

  "Who's everyone?" I hadn't checked my e-mail, but I bet I'd been excluded.

  "That's the funny thing. She didn't bother to bcc, so I can tell you exactly who. Judith, Stephen, even Lawrence, from her lab. Everyone in Tom's lab, except you, and I bet that's only because she didn't have your e-mail."

  "The police have this note, right? Did you send them a copy?"

  "Yeah, I downloaded the app and pasted it in. I bet they got, like, 200 copies."

  "Good," I growled. "This woman did not want to die. She only needed to get away from that terrible place. Can I forward this to myself ?"

  Mitch shrugged, which I took as assent. While I figured out his phone and typed my e-mail address, he said, "That's a pretty dramatic way of putting it. She was a research assistant. We all know what that's like."

  "She wanted to get out. She was applying to grad school. She didn't know how she was going to get there, but that was the plan." The most dangerous time for abused women is when they try to leave. But I didn't know who wanted to kill Dahiyyah. Why would Dr. Hay kill her own research assistant and right-hand woman? Wouldn't it make more sense to keep her around as a slave?

  Mitch raised his eyebrows and glanced at Susan, who was sniffing but back to typing on her computer again. "I have no idea."

  "Okay. Do you know if there was a handwritten paper note, too?" He shook his head.

  "An e-mail is too impersonal. And she gave everyone her computer password. What if that was her e-mail password, too?" People are pretty dumb about passwords. Ryan had told me to get two-step verification for Gmail because otherwise, anyone could hack my e-mail and reset my accounts everywhere else.

  "No clue. I've got to get back to work."

  While he hastened into the lab, I slipped on my black flats and followed him.

  My iPhone rang. The coroner was delaying our appointment until next week "due to further complications." I agreed and hung up.

  When I pushed open the lab door a minute later, Summer was huddled with Dr. Wen and Samir. Dr. Wen looked like he didn't know what to do with her, especially since she was crying and saying, "I feel so bad for her. She was only 24!"

  Samir leaned in from the aisle to pat her on the back. "Yes, it is a tragedy."

  "She probably blamed herself for Lawrence dying!"

  "It is very difficult indeed." Samir made circles on her back. When he noticed me, he dropped his hand to his sides, but continued to hover. Dr. Wen cleared his throat and shook his head. He nodded at Mitch, who was standing in the doorway a step ahead of me, and turned back to Summer, clearly non-plussed.

  Summer spotted us. "Mitch!" she cried, throwing herself in his arms. He caught her with an almost-inaudible oof. "Yeah, baby. Yeah, sweetie. I know, I know," he said, holding her close, and then he started whispering in her ear.

  I turned my head away. It was too intimate. I didn't want to see.

  Samir sighed before he returned to his lab bench. Dr. Wen, who had already
donned his lab coat, strode toward the fume hood at the back of the lab.

  Business as usual, except in less than four days, of the four people working in Dr. Hay's lab, half of them had died.

  Chapter 37

  First things first. I couldn't think with all the commotion in the lab, so I headed into the office. While Susan typed in her corner near the main entrance, I found an empty desk by the window and figured no one would care.

  I downloaded the Ottawa police app and pasted Dahiyyah's suicide note into it. Mitch said he'd already done it, but better double than nothing when death is on the line.

  I texted Ryan, Tucker, my family, and my friend Tori, to let them know I was okay, in case they'd heard the news and wondered who'd died. It took longer to craft a carefully-worded message to Joan that I was thinking of her and the babies. No details, only reassurance.

  Ryan called me immediately. "You okay?"

  "Yeah. I wasn't even there. I feel really bad for Dahiyyah and her family, though. Are you okay?"

  "Didn't sleep much. I don't like this. I was going to tell you that I got some activity on my website, but now—"

  "Hang on. I want to go somewhere private." I beeped open the door to the lobby, giving a tight smile to Susan and then the police officer. I thought I'm sorry at an invisible Dahiyyah as I sequestered myself in the bathroom, checking both stalls to make sure that I was alone with the Koala Kare change station. They still hadn't fixed the faucet, and someone had already splashed the countertop with water. I kept my voice low as I murmured to Ryan, "You mean the White Birthright website?"

  "Yeah. People logged on from both labs."

  "Both labs? You mean—"

  "Your stem cell lab and the virology lab. Other spots in Ottawa University, too, mostly on the landing page. Someone from the virology lab clicked the 'Contact Us' page, and someone from the stem cell lab hit every page."

  My mind tried to picture the browser activity as dots on a map of Ottawa University, much like the historical map of a cholera epidemic where black bars illustrated the number of cases, with maximal clustering around one contaminated pump. The stem cell lab was the contaminated pump. "What time was the hit from the virology lab?"