THERE’S A RAT ON HER desk, a large rat, a large dead rat—no, it twitched—and blood is oozing from its mouth and nose and eyes, and Erica watches in horror as the rat struggles to crawl across her desk, leaving a trail of smeared blood in its wake. Her stomach turns over, she’s going to heave, and then Nancy is there and then Greg, and they turn her away and close the office door and lead Erica to a chair in the hallway and sit her down. She opens her mouth and a thin stream of watery vomit pours out.
Greg is on the phone, and now a top man from the building’s maintenance department appears and he takes one look at the rat and says it’s eaten anticoagulant poisoning but that the building has never seen a rat above the second floor and in any event there’s no current problem and no poison has been laid out in at least three months. And then a low-level maintenance guy appears and puts the rat in a bag and cleans off Erica’s desk. And Nancy hands Erica a warm, damp towel and she wipes herself off.
“Do you want to take the rest of the day off?” Greg asks.
And even though all Erica can feel is fear, she answers, “No.” And she stands up and walks into her office. Nancy and Greg follow. She sits behind her desk, takes shallow breaths that slowly deepen. Nylan’s behind this. Nylan and Wilmot. They have a thing for dead animals. And dead people?
If they think this is going to stop her investigation, they’re wrong. Dead rat wrong.
“I’ve got work to do,” Erica says simply to Greg and Nancy.
“Erica . . .,” Greg begins.
“I said I have work to do.”