CHAPTER 10
Ramsey didn’t get to his office until early afternoon the next day. He’d been busy with phone calls to Monterrey, Mexico, and phone calls to Mexico were more difficult and complex than calling Australia. He had spent a frustrating three hours trying to get some needed information on the whereabouts of a dialysis machine, most of which had been spent simply trying to reach Dr. Garza.
When he finally got to his lab, he saw that Dottie was at the computer. She turned, frowning as he entered. She said, “Dr. Ramsey, have you been fooling with the computer?”
He stopped short of his office door. “Me? Fooling with that thing? I’d just as soon touch a live snake. Why?”
“Because someone phoned it and spent from about six p.m. until nine fifty trying to access your information and research file.”
“What do you mean, ‘someone phoned it’? Does my computer have a telephone number?”
“Oh yes.”
“What? Why?”
Dottie rolled her eyes as if she couldn’t believe anyone didn’t know about this. “Say you were in some other location and you wanted some information out of your files. You’d just get to another computer, dial your number, and then access your information files with the password.”
“How do you know somebody ‘phoned up’ my computer?”
“Because I programmed a trap into it that would tell me when the computer is turned off and on. And I shut it down yesterday before lunch, when you let me have the afternoon off. So, if you didn’t do it, who did? Someone tried awfully hard to discover your password, tried for four hours almost. Until almost ten o’clock.”
“What, does that thing have a clock in it, too?”
“Oh yes.”
“What will they think of next? Does it give head?”
She blushed, deeply, even though she should have been used to Burton Ramsey’s unrestrained language. “The code words they tried for passwords all had to do with you. Obviously, someone who didn’t know that you never use a computer was trying to break in. They were very determined, but they never had a chance, because they didn’t know that I programmed the machine and devised all of the passwords. Who do you think it was, the progress committee?”
He shook his head. “Nah. They can get at my files any time they want just by asking. It’s in my contract. Besides, at ten o’clock last night they were all at home pretending to have sex with their wives.”
“Then who could it be?”
He thought for a moment and then smiled grimly. “Sounds to me like the work of the rat thief.”
“Dr. Williams?”
“Haven’t you heard? Dr. Williams is extremely interested in what I’m doing down here in this little ol’ laboratory. I thought it was the talk of BioTech.”
Dottie said, hesitantly, “I think I did hear something.” Then she looked up at Dr. Ramsey. “What are you going to do, report her? We can’t really prove it unless I put a trace on the computer that will cause her computer to identify itself.”
He was starting to smile. “No need for that. I’m fairly certain of who the culprit is.” He knelt over the workbench by the computer and quickly scrawled out, on a blank sheet of paper, a long, four step chemical equation. He handed it to Dottie. “Can you put that in the computer, separate from the other stuff? Make it look like the big casino? Put some kind of program in that leads her straight to this?”
She looked at the paper uncertainly. “I suppose so. You want her to see this? It looks quite important.”
“Oh, it is. It is. It’s one of the three major medicines in the world.”
“What are the other two?”
“Sex and alcohol. Don’t you know what that is?”
She studied the paper and shook her head. “No. But I’m a biology major.”
“Yes, I forgot that. God forbid a biologist should learn some chemistry. But you can put this in that Rube Goldberg invention and lead our good Dr. Williams to it? Correct?”
“Sure, but what shall I label it?”
He thought a moment. “Call it the X-Factor Serum.”
“What does that mean?”
He shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me. Just sounds mysterious.”
He waited while her chubby little fingers nimbly worked over the keyboard. After a few moments, she looked up. “Anything else?”
“Yes. We’ve baited the trap. Now we’ve got to guide our rat to its mouth.”
“Huh?”
He walked around, thinking and jingling the change in his pants pocket. “I think it’s pretty common knowledge that I’m leaving BioTech in less than a month. That supposedly puts you out of a job.”
“But I thought you had it fixed where I’d be the assistant to whomever takes over your lab?”
“I do. But that’s our little secret. Dr. Williams doesn’t know that. And she won’t know it when you go down and ask her if she might not have an opening for a lab assistant.”
“But she’s already got a lab assistant.”
He grimaced and grabbed his hair with both hands. “Argh . . . Dottie, I am trying very hard not to strangle you. Fine. We both know she’s got a lab assistant. But she knows you’ve been my lab assistant and I’ve got something she badly wants and you’re going to let on you know where it is. Not directly, you understand, like you were selling out completely, but obliquely. You’re going to tell her that I can’t use a computer, that you do all the programming for me from my notes. And you’re going to keep on telling her that until she finally figures out that it has to be you who put in the passwords, which you are going to change to your first name right now . . . ‘Dottie.’
“And you keep saying your name, over and over, Dottie, Dottie, Dottie. Maybe she’ll get it, maybe she won’t. Maybe she’ll ask you what you know about my work, and you’ll just tell her only what’s in the notes I give you, and they’re all about chemistry and you’re a biology major. Just be yourself, Dottie. Just act like you’re really going to her for a job. Now, can you do that?”
She mulled it over in her mind a moment. “I think so. But isn’t it dishonest?”
“Not if you put yourself down for twenty hours of overtime this week.”
Her lips rounded. “Oh!”
“Yes. Oh! Just remember, you own the computer and all the goodies are stored in it. Tell her I have a ritual of burning my notes every evening and dancing around them buck naked and smeared with paint. She’ll probably believe it.”
“When should I do this?”
“Anytime Dr. Williams is in and her assistant is out. Maybe this afternoon. The sooner, the better. I think her assistant leaves at five and Williams usually works late. What do you think?”
She studied on it for a moment. “I think she deserves it. Dr. Ramsey, do you know she lied to me? She told me that you and she were good friends and she knew all about your research.”
“Why, that cur!” Ramsey laughed delightedly. Williams’s attempt to break in to his computer had relieved Ramsey of all of his guilt about forcing her to tell her story under false pretenses.
* * *
Kat Williams was waiting with ill-concealed impatience for Kevin to arrive. It was nine in the morning, and usually, unless he had a school schedule interference, Kevin was right on time. On this morning, of all mornings, he had decided to be late. But Kat was feeling so satisfied and relieved that she was willing to overlook the young man’s minor transgression. Still, she was impatient to get on with the information she now had in hand.
The night before, thanks to Ramsey’s ditzy assistant, she had easily accessed the computer using Dottie’s name as the password. Her first name, she’d thought, now, that was certainly clever thinking—and so original. Of course, she had no intention of hiring the young woman when Ramsey left, but it wouldn’t hurt to let her think the job was going to be hers. There was no telling what else she might be able to glean about Ramsey’s formula before he was gone for good.
When her phone rang, she answered it, thinking it was probably Kevin calling to explain why he was running so late.
“Hello, Kevin . . . ?”
“Hello, Kat. This is Dr. Diane Washburn.”
“Oh, hello, Diane.”
“Did Kevin talk to you about my visit with Angus yesterday afternoon?”
“No, not really. He did say you wanted to talk to me, though.”
“Kat, this is a very hard call to make, but I think we need to talk about when we’ve let Angus suffer enough.”
“What?”
“Kat, Angus has very severe arthritis in both of his hips, and it is progressing into his spinal vertebrae. I’m afraid before long he is going to lose control of his bladder and bowel functions.”
Kat felt her heart sink as she glanced over at Angus sleeping in his bed. “Are you talking about putting him down?” she fairly sobbed.
She could hear the doctor sigh over the phone. “Not immediately perhaps, but, Kat, I think the time is not far off. After all, Angus is thirteen years old, and that is a very advanced age for a Scottie.”
“But . . . but . . .”
“All right, Kat. I can see you are not ready for this right now . . . but I want you to start thinking about it, for Angus’s sake. I don’t know how much longer I can control his pain.”
“Okay, Diane,” Kat sobbed. “I will, I promise.”
When she hung up, she went right to Angus’s bed, sat down, and pulled him into her arms, sobbing into his fur.
After a while, Kat got control of herself. She took Angus for a short walk in the park and told him over and over how much she loved him and how much he meant to her. From the look in his adoring brown eyes, she knew he understood.
Now Angus was back in his bed, chewing contentedly on a Greenie, and Kat was examining the data she’d stolen from Ramsey’s computer files the night before.
She was certain she had what she was looking for. Once she had gotten into the computer, the programming had led her straight to a complicated-looking chemical equation that Ramsey had dubbed, in more blazing imagination, the “X-Factor.“ Kat could only conclude that Ramsey had seen too many early 1950s science-fiction movies.
She did not know what the chemical equation was, but she knew it was important by the devious path she’d had to follow to find it. Her chemistry was weak, but it didn’t matter. Kevin was a doctoral candidate in physical chemistry, which was one of the reasons Kat had chosen him as her assistant.
She’d gained the information just as she had begun to despair. To make certain that Ramsey’s serum had been the catalytic factor in her rats’ much-improved behavior, she’d ordered a group of rats of the same strain as those she’d taken from Ramsey’s lab, and of the same age. She had inoculated them with exactly the same serum as she had the original six rats from the Ramsey group. The results had been the same old failure she’d experienced before, except the brain cell deterioration had occurred faster because, as she’d expected, of the rats’ age.
The six rats of the Ramsey group that she had been using as a “control” she’d realized were not control subjects at all, since they, too, had been injected with Ramsey’s serum. She had run them through the maze along with a control group of normal five-year-olds. Even without her NeurActivase serum, Ramsey’s rats had done better than the new control group.
And then there had been the breeding. To her surprise, she’d noted that all of the rats of the twelve she’d taken from Ramsey’s lab were actively breeding. Five-year-old rats occasionally bred, but with nothing like the activity she’d been seeing. These rats were acting like teenagers in a testosterone storm!
The progress of the original group had continued until they seemed to have settled down to running the maze in a little over three and a half minutes, a phenomenal time that indicated the rats were at least three times as smart as rats were supposed to be. But Kat’s elation at how well the dually injected rats were doing was tinged by worry that she would not be able to learn what Ramsey had originally injected the rats with.
But now Kat was almost certain she was holding the answer in her hand in the form of the four-step chemical equation she’d written out on a sheet of paper. In a little while, she would know.
Kevin finally showed up at a little after ten, offering an excuse that he’d been called into consultation with his thesis professor. Kat brushed it aside and thrust the piece of paper into her assistant’s hands. She said, “Fine, fine. Now, take this and go down to Supplies and make sure we have the necessary chemicals to compound this formula.”
Kevin took the paper and walked toward the door, reading it. Kat got up from the computer desk and stretched her arms over her head. Kevin stopped at the door. He looked back at Kat, a funny look on his face. “Dr. Williams . . .”
Kat lowered her arms from their stretch and said, impatiently, “What’s the matter, Kevin, forget your way to the supply room?”
“No, ma’am.” He hesitated. “It’s just that this formula”—he motioned with the paper—“it’s acetylsalicylic acid.”
Kat wasn’t really listening. “So what? I didn’t ask you what it was. Just please get it.”
“But it’s aspirin, ma’am. I’ve got some in my desk if you need it.”
Kat stared at him blankly, her brain taking in the information but her mind not wanting to accept it. “It’s what?”
“Aspirin, ma’am. Plain old aspirin. The kind that Bayer claims nine out of ten doctors prefer.”
Kat felt her heart sink in her chest. Her stomach gave a flip, and she thought she was going to be sick. She’d been suckered—and not only suckered, but taken in by a silly little fat girl and a hulking oaf. They had deliberately let her into Ramsey’s computer, deliberately given her the password, and deliberately let her know that they knew she was trying to break in to Ramsey’s files. She sat down heavily in the stenographer’s chair.
At that instant Burton Ramsey suddenly appeared in the lab door. He said, “Why, hello, Doctor! Did my little prescription help your headache?”
And then he had disappeared down the hall, laughing wildly.
Kat put her head in both of her hands. She was defeated.
Sometime later, with the dying sun sending shadows through the windows of the cafeteria where Kat sat thinking over a cup of coffee, she finally reached a conclusion and an admission. The admission was that she had never planned to work with Ramsey. That she had intended to steal whatever data Ramsey had about whatever it was that had enhanced her serum, and then work alone, taking all the credit. She might have told Ramsey that they needed to talk, but what she’d meant was that Ramsey should talk and tell her all about his own serum. Never, never, had she intended to be put in a position of having a man like Ramsey as her scientific equal and partner. But now that had all changed.
The conclusion she’d reached was that she had to find some way to get Ramsey to work with her and share equally in the stupendous breakthrough her research was indicating. But that appeared as if it was going to be easier said than done. She had heard that there was only one person whom Burton Ramsey would listen to, and that was his ex-wife, Dr. Sheila Goodman.
Kat glanced out the window, watching the parking lot empty. She didn’t know much about Dr. Goodman. She could only hope she was nothing like Burton Ramsey, because, for all practical purposes, she was her last hope.
Kevin walked up and interrupted her reverie. “Dr. Williams, I’ve finished cleaning up the lab and I’ve put the rats in their cages. Everything is ready to shut down for the night.”
“Okay, Kevin, thank you.”
“Uh, Dr. Williams, do you mind if I ask what that asshole Ramsey meant when he taunted you from the door?”
She looked at him and couldn’t help it. She teared up and just shook her head.
Surprisingly, he moved to her, pulled her to her feet, and put his arms around her, squeezing gently. “Dr. Williams . . . Kat, I know something is going on that you’re not telling me about. I know the new test rats have been doing much better than ever before, and that you’ve had some sort of breakthrough. The rats act younger and smarter. Now, I know that I am only a lowly lab assistant, and if you don’t want to talk about this with me, just say so and I’ll go home and forget all about it.”
His kindness affected her in ways she couldn’t understand, but she did know his arms felt great around her, and so she sat him down and told him the entire story, up to her humiliation at being tricked by Ramsey’s computer joke.
He took her hands in his. “If you want, Kat, I’ll go and beat the truth out of him.”
She laughed and shook her head. “No, I don’t think that will be necessary, Kevin. I’ve got something else in mind.”
He nodded. “Okay, but from now on, will you promise to tell me everything and let me help you?”
Touched, she nodded. “Of course.”