“Could I get you something to drink, Agent?” Dr. Halpern offered. He moved some newspapers off a chair and motioned for Jack to sit. “My wife used to keep me organized. She died six years ago.” He glanced around the room. “I’m afraid I’ve let things go.”
“How did your wife handle your long trips to Alaska?” Jack asked.
His face lit up. “She went with me. She loved my work and helped. It was after she passed that I joined Eric and Marcus and Brandon at Inook.”
“Tell me about them, Doctor.” Jack stood and removed his top-coat. Noticing Halpern staring at his gun, Jack draped the coat on the back of the chair and took his seat again.
“Please call me Kirk. I can’t tell you anything I haven’t already told the other agents.”
“I would appreciate it if you would go over it again,” Jack urged.
“There isn’t much to tell.” He moved a needlepoint pillow from the chair and sat down. “I’ll begin with our team leader, Brandon…Dr. Brandon Finch. He was very organized. He even made charts so that we wouldn’t waste time. Brandon got on our nerves after awhile. Things had to be just so. He was obsessive about everything from how we prepared our food to when we went to bed. It was irritating. I got along with him all right, but occasionally we bickered. After a while, the isolation and the weather gets to you.
“I felt just terrible when he died. None of us knew about his heart condition. He was overweight, but not too out of shape. He kept up with us in the field.”
“How did the other doctors get along with him?”
“They put up with him, just like I did. Every now and then they’d get into it with him, but there weren’t any hard feelings after they let off steam.”
“What about Eric Carter?”
“Young, eager, intense. He and Marcus became close friends right away since they were the same age. They worked together well and shared similar interests—at the beginning anyway. Eric began to stay by himself more. The longer we were there, the more their friendship was strained. One afternoon while Eric was examining some blood samples he’d taken, Marcus took Brandon and me aside and told us he was worried about Eric. He asked us if we’d noticed any changes. Indeed, we had. Eric had become so withdrawn, he wouldn’t let any of us look at his notes until he had them organized. Most of it was gibberish to us anyway. Marcus said he couldn’t read his scribbles.”
“You didn’t have any idea what he was hiding?”
“No, I didn’t. The agents told me that before he died, he said something to Miss Rose about a test subject. He was concerned about something she was looking for. I have no idea what he meant.”
Jack was about to move on to Marcus Lemming when he thought of another question to ask. “Which of you did the recording?”
“At first we all took our turns with the camera, but the last couple of years, Eric insisted on taking it over.”
“So there were videos from the last year?”
“Of course. Eric watched them over and over and over. It drove the rest of us crazy. We finally moved the player into the small room so we could shut the door. Hour after hour he’d watch. He loved Ricky. But then, all of us did. He was a splendid alpha male. I only wish I could have observed him to the end. Don’t imagine he’ll be around long. Arctic wolves don’t have long life spans, you know. I had to leave that phase of the study because the last couple of years Brandon wanted me to go with him to track the pups from Ricky’s second pack. I guess you could say we were creating a family tree of sorts. I will admit we learned a great deal, but we didn’t get to film the new packs as much as we would have liked. Eric hogged the good audio and video equipment. He had thirty disk files marked. At night, he’d watch with the sound muted. He didn’t want to hear, just to watch. One through thirty—when he finished the last one, he’d start all over again. Marcus thought Eric was having a breakdown of some sort. He wanted him to go home for a while, see a medical doctor. We would have sent him home, but we were going to close up soon anyway, so we put up with his odd behavior awhile longer. I believed that, once Eric got back to the city, he’d snap out of it.”
Jack wanted to go back to the videos. “You said one through thirty disks. Are you sure of that number?”
“Oh, yes, I’m sure.”
“I’ve found only twenty-three disks.”
Kirk sat back. “What happened to the other seven?”
“You tell me.”
He scratched his chin. “I don’t know. Eric must have done something with them. Maybe he shipped them home. Did you check?” He smiled as he continued. “Of course you did.”
Jack moved to the last scientist: Marcus Lemming.
“Like I told you, he was close to Eric until Eric started acting strange. Marcus was dedicated to the study and the pack, and by the time we finished, he was closer to me than Eric. In the evening, while Eric watched his videos, Marcus and I played Scrabble and cards.
“We’ve talked a few times since we left Inook. Marcus is thinking about moving back to North Dakota to be near family. This study burned him out.”
Jack spent another hour talking to Kirk. He was putting on his coat and heading toward the door when he stopped to ask, “You never called your study the Alpha Project?”
“I’ve been asked that question about a hundred times now. I told the agents no, and I told Miss Rose no. We didn’t call it the Alpha.”
“You spoke to Sophie?”
“Yes, she called yesterday. She said she’d like to come see me. We spent a long time on the phone. She asked about the Alpha Project, but then somehow we started talking about my wife. It felt good to reminisce. I’m afraid I got carried away, but Miss Rose seemed genuinely interested.”
That was his Sophie. She could get anyone to tell her his life story. But then, she wasn’t really his Sophie, was she? Jack thought about her a lot. He missed her.
She was on his mind as he flew back to Chicago. She was still “pecking away,” as Eric had accused. She wasn’t going to let it go, which gave him an uneasy feeling. Jack needed to call her and tell her to stop. He needed to talk to her, convince her to back off. He needed to see her again.
THIRTY-SEVEN
“GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE.”
Sophie watched the protesters picketing in front of the grocery story with a mixture of disbelief and shock. Mr. Bitterman had given her the assignment, and this one was going in her I-hate-this-job notebook. It might even make the top five.
Seven protesters holding placards marched back and forth at the store entrance. Three were dressed up as turkeys.
Sophie crossed the parking lot. Bracing herself, she tapped on the shoulder of the woman at the end of the line. “Excuse me. Could you tell me who the head turkey is? I’d like to find out what you’re protesting.”
A gentleman with a round face framed in feathers and an orange wattle hanging from his chin stepped forward.
“That’s me. I put this together,” he announced with great seriousness.
“I’m writing an article for the Illinois Chronicle, sir. May I ask you some questions about your protest?”
“Of course. We want to draw attention to this horror.”
“What horror would that be?” Sophie asked.
“The heartless cruelty to turkeys.”
“It’s barbaric is what it is,” a woman shouted over her placard. “The assassins raise them just to kill and eat them. It’s murder!”
“You don’t want grocery stores to sell Thanksgiving turkeys?” Sophie asked calmly.
A thin older woman with thick glasses stepped forward. “That’s right, and we’re going to stay here until the killing stops.”
Each of the protesters had something to add, and they made extra sure that Sophie spelled their names correctly. When she couldn’t think of another absurd question to ask, she thanked them for the interview and turned to walk away. Behind her, the small but vocal group chanted, “Save the turkeys! Save the turkeys!”
Holding up her phone, Sophie took some pictures. Cordie and Regan would never believe her unless she showed them the proof.
She took her time walking back to the office. Pedestrians were rushing about all bundled up in their heavy coats with their collars over their ears and their wool hats pulled down. Sophie hadn’t noticed the cold and was surprised when she looked up at the First Commerce Bank building and saw the temperature in big red letters below the time: twenty-eight degrees. Considering where she’d been, this was balmy weather.
What was she going to write about the turkey people? She couldn’t call them crazy, and the article needed to be upbeat and cheerful because that’s what people wanted to read. Okay, she’d make them cheerful turkey people.
Oh God, how had she come to this? Turkey protesters and the heartbreak of static cling—that’s what she was writing about these days.
Enough with the whining, she told herself. She would write the story without balking because that was her job, but as soon as it was finished she thought she just might run out into traffic and hope she got run over by a very large bus.
Gary was in her cubicle again. He was getting so bold, he didn’t even pretend to be looking for something.
Sophie didn’t pretend to be gracious. “Get out.” She wanted to push him, but knowing Gary, he’d probably sue her for assault. “This is my space, not yours.”
“Just looking around,” he said sullenly.
She didn’t ask what he was looking for. He’d told her once that she always got the good stories—he obviously hadn’t heard about the turkey people—and he wanted to see if he could snatch one for himself. After she looked around to make sure he hadn’t stolen anything, she sat down at her computer, typed in her password, and started writing her article. It took her twenty minutes from start to finish. She attached a note asking Mr. Bitterman not to run her photo with the story.
She looked at the stack of assignments she needed to catch up on. What next? she thought. Sitting back in her chair, she took a deep breath. Her old notepad was sitting on top of her desk. She picked it up and thumbed through the pages, thinking yet again about her interview with Harrington. She knew she was missing something, and it was driving her crazy. Having read her notes at least twenty times already, she went over them again.
Selected to join an exclusive club. Was that the Alpha Project? He’d called it a club and had compared it to an Olympic trial. He’d bragged to her that he had taken a battery of tests to qualify.
“Just look at me.” That’s what he’d said. A superman club? She’d made that note a question. “Just look at me.”
She needed to talk to Kirk Halpern again, so she made the call.
Kirk was happy to hear from her.
“I really hate to bother you,” she began, “but I was wondering about the wolves you studied.”
“I’d be happy to tell you anything you want to know,” he offered.
“Were these particular animals unusually vigorous or strong?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t say they were unusual,” he answered. “They were what we expected for that particular subspecies.”
“Did you notice any tremendous improvement in their condition while you observed them?”
“Actually, I didn’t get to observe the same animals throughout the study. Dr. Finch and I branched off to another group the last couple of years. Eric and Marcus continued with the initial alpha male. He, of course, was the strongest of the pack. As you might know, we called him Ricky. He was mature when we first began our observations, so the likelihood of his growing stronger was remote. We couldn’t tell the exact age, but we estimated him to be older based on the wear and tear on the teeth. The life span of the arctic wolf is only about seven years. It was amazing, actually, that Ricky was still alive at the end of the study.”
“How much of your observation was recorded on video?”
“Dr. Carter was diligent with his recordings, though I’ve just learned that the later ones are missing. An FBI agent, Jack MacAlister, was just here asking about that very thing.”
“When did he leave?” she asked.
“About fifteen minutes ago.”
“Thank you so much, Kirk,” she said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“Call me anytime.”
Sophie put the phone down and tapped her pencil on her chin as she thought. How was she going to get to those videos? Everything that had been in the Inook facility was evidence in an ongoing investigation, and it would be heavily guarded.
She was going to have to get tricky. Kirk unknowingly had helped her by mentioning that Agent MacAlister had just left. Assuming Jack would get on the first available flight back to Chicago, she had to hurry. Timing was important.
She called Alec, and without explaining why, asked him if he would meet her in the lobby of the FBI building. Since he was already at the office, he agreed.
She smiled sweetly and kissed his check when she saw him.
“Jack told me I should watch some of the videos of the wolves,” she said. She shrugged and sighed. “I know it will be boring, but he did ask, and I promised I would. Could you get them for me?”
Alec smiled back. He had known Sophie long enough to recognize when he should be suspicious. “This isn’t Blockbuster. You can’t just check them out.”
“Yes, you’re right. How about I watch them here? That wouldn’t be a problem, would it?”
“Maybe I should check with Jack,” he said.
“Good idea. Is he here? He’ll tell you he wanted my help.”
“No, he isn’t here.”
“Do you want to call him?” she asked, hoping to heaven that he was in the air.
“I doubt I can reach him. I guess I could arrange for you to watch the disks.”
Five minutes later, armed with a visitor’s badge clipped to her blouse, she followed Alec down a corridor to a sparsely furnished room. A technician came in carrying a DVD player, hooked it up, and then asked which of the disks she wanted to watch.
“The first three and the last three, please,” she said.
Alec stayed in the room while she watched the wolves. He did paperwork, but every once in a while, he’d glance up and ask, “Find anything yet?”
“No, not yet.”
She scanned the first disk and the last.
“Okay, I’m finished,” she announced. “I don’t need to see any more. Thank you, Alec.”