She wrapped her coat around herself and walked through blowing leaves. Down the way, at the main building, she saw much more activity than she would have expected on the Sunday morning after Thanksgiving. At the gate she held a plastic card that Ben had given her up to the electronic detector and passed through a heavy revolving gate. Months ago Garth Frick had taken her original keycard with great fanfare. That had been the final humiliation.

Haley knew that she needed to be careful here. She didn’t really like coming to Sanker. Those old feelings of self-doubt threatened her every time she walked in the place. Worse, if she were caught inside, Frick would seize the keycard that Ben had loaned her for just such occasions. Fortunately Ben’s fellow scientists, although mostly against her, really weren’t the sort of people to fight over entry privileges and they had ignored her on the few times that she had come. Their shunning only added to the pain.

She walked through some attractive gardens with some artificial ponds and flowing water and up to the glass revolving door where she used the card again. Downstairs things appeared empty. As she mounted the stairs she looked from a lower floor lab open door, through the window and onto a small garden area. She saw a man running across the front of the building, apparently headed for the forest. That was strange.

Coming back down the stairs, she walked into the waterfront lab space and looked to the right down the building. Sure enough, she saw a couple of men putting up yellow tape. Immediately she thought of the crime scenes you see on TV. She went back and ran up the stairs. The halls were half dark, the labs all silent. Turning around, she looked for a sign of someone, anyone. Nothing. As she walked down the hall toward Ben’s office and lab, shadows and dark corners and the occasional watchman making the rounds replaced her memories of cheery, collegial greetings and chats and the perpetual movement of people.

The lights were off in the organics lab too. She turned them on. What she saw was appalling as if someone had gone on a rampage. Had something happened to Ben?

“Hello?”

She jumped, badly startled by a sound. It was Frick, behind her, leaning against the doorway.

Garth Frick looked the part of an unpleasant cop. He smoked small cigars and told jokes, but his cadaverously wiry body expressed menace that outweighed any efforts at geniality. Frick’s hair was black, drawn back and tied in a small pony tail. His sallow skin matched the gaunt look of his frame and his crooked teeth – a man who looked fit, lethal, and unwell all at once.

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