Tunnel Vision

66

“You knew about these deaths. You were there.”

Morris Stern was at his desk in his office at the Tufts University School of Medicine, hunched over a cup of coffee he had been sipping before Sarah pushed her way in. But for the twitching tic of his left eye, he stared blank-faced at the photocopied articles of street people found dead.

“They could have come from any number of other labs.”

“What, the Zombie Research Center?”

“That’s not particularly funny.”

“Neither is your stonewalling, Morris.”

The teeth in her words surprised even her. Morris had been her favorite professor and thesis adviser. Moreover, she looked up to him as a father figure, someone she could confide in. When her mother had died two years ago, it was Morris who gave her comfort, who helped make funeral arrangements. “I was flattered when you asked me on. Privileged to be working on a great cutting-edge project. But you used these people, Morris. You suspended them and dropped them off on some park bench. No follow-ups. No checking for bad side effects. You used them like lab rats.”

“These people were homeless,” he said, stabbing his finger on the article and squinting at her in a pretense of outrage. “You know as well as I do that all our volunteers are college students and closely monitored during and after.”

“Now they are. Before that you bought people off the street—people no one would miss.”

He couldn’t hold her gaze and dropped his eyes to the clippings. “They could have gotten the drug anywhere—another lab, the black market, whatever. So don’t come accusing me of unethical practices before you know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“It says that scientists paid them to take sleep tests. That’s the same pitch you put up on student bulletin boards all over town. And I checked with the state health agencies—no other research institution has used tetrodotoxin for years. Only Proteus.”

“I’ve heard enough from you.” He stood up. “This conversation’s over.”

“You don’t even care, do you? Two committed suicide, another had his friend bash his head in. And who knows how many others. They were plagued with horrible visions, and you people didn’t care.”

“Sarah, this has turned into an interrogation, and I resent it.”

“Would you prefer the police?”

His eye spasmed. “Is that a threat?”

“What you people did is criminal.”

“You have no proof and no right accusing me. Now get the hell out of here.”

She could hardly believe that he was the same man she had adored—a man of high-minded ideals, a man who had seemingly dedicated his science to raising the quality of life, who had taken the Hippocratic Oath. Suddenly he was a cowardly, pathetic old man denying he was a murderer. Before she left, she removed a wide folder from her briefcase and dropped it before him.

“What’s this?”

“One of your skeletons.”

He didn’t touch it. “I said to get out of here.”

She flipped open the folder to reveal downloaded neuroelectrical images taken from the lab archives. “Look familiar?” she asked.

He glanced at the imaged configuration and the name in bold on the sticker.

“You used him, too,” she said. Then she turned on her heel toward the door. “Maybe you’re right after all: There is no God, only man.”