Colleen McCullough - The Prodigal Son

“Don’t you lock the refrigerator?”

“Why? It’s mine, and my little lab. My grant doesn’t run to a technician—I’m not Jim, surrounded by acolytes.” She held out her mug for more coffee. “I lock my lab door when I’m not in it. I’m as paranoid as any other researcher, I don’t advertise my work. And I’m post-doctoral, so there’s no thesis adviser looking over my shoulder. I would have thought that no one even knew I had any tetrodotoxin.” Her face cleared, grew soft. “Except for Jim, that is. I mentioned it in passing to him, but he’s not into neurotoxins. His idea of soup is E. coli .”

“Any idea when it disappeared, sweetheart?”

“During the last week. I did a stocktake of my refrigerator on Christmas Eve, and the beaker was there. When I did another stocktake this morning, no beaker anywhere—and believe me, Dad, I looked high and low. The thing is, I don’t know what to do about losing it. It didn’t seem like something Dean Werther is equipped to deal with. I thought of you.”

“Reporting to me is fine, Millie. I’ll notify Carmine, but only as a courtesy. It can’t be equated with someone’s stealing a jar of potassium cyanide—that would galvanize everybody.” Patrick gave a rueful grin. “However, my girl, it’s time to shut the stable door. Put a lock on your refrigerator and make sure you have the only key.”

He leaned to take her hand, long and graceful, but marred by bitten nails and general lack of care. “Honey, where you did go wrong was in keeping what you didn’t use up. You should have disposed of it as a toxic substance.”

She flushed. “No, I don’t agree,” she said, looking mulish. “The extraction process is difficult, painstaking and extremely slow—a lesser biochemist would have botched it. I’m no Jim, but in my lab techniques I’m way above your run-of-the-mill researcher. At some time in the future I might need the leftover tetrodotoxin, and if I don’t, I can legitimately sell it to get my investment in the blowfish back. My grant committee would love that. I’ve stored it under vacuum in sealed glass ampoules, then slowed its molecules down by refrigerating it. I want it potent and ready to use at any time.”

She got to her feet, revealing that she was tall, slender, and attractive enough to turn most men’s heads. “Is that all?” she asked.

“Yes. I’ll talk to Carmine, but if I were you I wouldn’t go to Dean Werther. That would start the gossip ball rolling. Are you sure of the amount in each ampoule? A hundred milligrams in—liquid? Powder?”

“Powder. Snap the neck of the ampoule and add one milligram of pure, distilled water for use. It goes into solution very easily. Ingested, one heavyweight boxer. Injection is a very different matter. Half of one milligram is fatal, even for a heavyweight boxer. If injected into a vein, death would be rapid enough to call nearly instantaneous. If injected into muscle, death in about ten to fifteen minutes from the onset of symptoms.” Such was her relief at sharing her burden that she sounded quite blithe.

“Shit! Do you know the symptoms, Millie?”

“As with any substance shutting down the nervous system, Dad. If injected, respiratory failure due to paralysis of the chest wall and the diaphragm. If swallowed, nausea, vomiting, purging and then respiratory failure. The duration of the symptoms would depend on dosage and how fast respiratory failure set in. Oh, I forgot. If swallowed, there would be terrible convulsions too.” She had reached the door, dying to be gone. “Will I see you on Saturday night?”

“Mom and I wouldn’t miss it, kiddo. How’s Jim holding up?”

Her voice floated back. “Okay! And thanks, Dad!”

Snow and ice meant that Holloman was fairly quiet; Patrick made his way through the warren of the County Services building sure he would find Carmine in his office—no weather to be out in, even black activists knew that.

Six daughters, he reflected as he plodded, did not mean fewer headaches than boys, though Patrick Junior was doing his solo best to prove boys were worse. Nothing in the world could force him to take a shower; two years from now he’d be a prune from showers, but that shimmered on a faraway horizon.

Millie had always been his biggest feminine headache, he had thought because she was also his most intelligent daughter. Like all of them, she had been sent to St. Mary’s Girls’ School, which for masculine company tapped the resources of St. Bernard’s Boys. Including, over eighteen years ago—September 1950, so long ago!—a special case boarder from South Carolina, a boy whose intelligence was in the genius range. On the advice of their priest, an old St. Bernard’s boy, his parents had sent him to Holloman for his high schooling. With good reason. They were African Americans in a southern state who wanted a northern education for their precious only child. Their Catholicism was rare, and Father Gaspari prized them. So Jim Hunter, almost fifteen, arrived to live with the Brothers at St. Bernard’s: James Keith Hunter, a genius.

He and Millie met at a school dance that happened to coincide with her fifteenth birthday; Jim was a few days older. The first Patrick and Nessie knew of him came from Millie, who asked if she could invite the boarder at St. Bernard’s for a home cooked meal. His blackness stunned them, but they were enormously proud of their daughter’s liberalism, taking her interest in the boy as evidence that Millie was going to grow up to make a difference in how America regarded race and creed.

It had been an extraordinary dinner, with the guest talking almost exclusively to Patrick about his work—not the gruesome side, but the underlying science, and with more knowledge of that science than most who worked in the field. Patrick was still groping his way into forensic pathology at that time, and freely admitted that conversing with Jim Hunter had administered a definite onward push.

A shocking dinner too. Both Patrick and Nessie saw it at once: the look in Millie’s eyes when they rested on Jim, which was almost all the time. Not burgeoning love. Blind adoration. No, no, no, no! That couldn’t be let happen! Not because of a nonexistent racial prejudice, but because of sheer terror at what such a relationship would do to this beloved child, the brightest of the bunch. It couldn’t be let happen, it mustn’t happen! While every look Millie gave Jim said it had already happened.

Within a week Jim and Millie were the talk of East Holloman; Patrick and Nessie were inundated with protests and advice from countless relatives. Millie and Jim were an item! A hot item! But how could that be, when each child went to a different school, and their teachers disapproved as much as everyone else? Not from racial prejudice! From fear at potentially ruined young lives. For their own good, they had to be broken up.

The fees were a burden, but had to be found; Millie was taken out of St. Mary’s and sent to the Dormer Day School, where most of the students were the offspring of Chubb professors or wealthy Holloman residents. Not the kind of place parents with five children and a sixth on the way even dreamed of. But for Millie’s sake, the sacrifices had to be made.

An instinct in Patrick said it would not answer, and the instinct was right. No matter how many obstacles were thrown in their way, Millie O’Donnell and Jim Hunter continued to be an item.

Even looking back on it now as he tramped through County Services was enough to bring back the indescribable pain of those terrible years. The misery! The guilt! The knowledge of a conscious social crime committed! How could any father and mother sleep, knowing their ethics and principles were colliding head on with their love for a child? For what Patrick and Nessie foresaw was the suffering inflicted on Millie for her choice in boyfriends. Worse because she was prom queen material, the most gorgeous girl in her class. The Dormer Day School seethed with just as much resentment as St. Bernard’s and St. Mary’s—Millie O’Donnell was living proof that a black man’s penile size and sexual prowess could seduce even the cream of the crop. Girls hated her. Boys hated her. Teachers hated her. She had a black boyfriend with a sixteen-inch dick, who could possibly compete?