Beth gingerly reached into the box and lifted out a petri dish labeled A-81. She lifted the top and looked in at expanding bacterial colonies. They were transparent and mucoid and they were growing on a medium she recognized as chocolate agar.
A sharp mechanical click of the insulated door opening startled Beth. Her pulse raced. Like a child caught in a forbidden act, she frantically tried to get the petri dish back in the box and the box back on the shelf before whoever was entering saw what she was doing.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time. She’d only had a chance to close the box and pick it up before she found herself face-to-face with Dr. Martin Cheveau. Ironically, he was at that moment carrying a box identical to the one she was holding.
“What are you doing?” he snarled.
“I’m…” Beth voiced, but that was all she could say. Under the pressure of the circumstance, no potential explanation came to mind.
Dr. Cheveau noisily stashed his box on one of the shelves, then grabbed Beth’s away from her. He looked at the open latch. “Where’s the lock?” he growled. Beth extended her hand and then opened it. In her palm was the open padlock. Martin snatched it and examined it.
“How did you get it open?” he demanded.
“It was open,” Beth asserted.
“You’re lying,” Martin snapped.
“I’m not,” Beth said. “Honest. It was open and it made me curious.”
Likely story, Martin yelled. His voice reverberated around the confined space.
“I didn’t disturb anything,” Beth said.
“How do you know you didn’t disturb anything?” Martin said. He opened the box and glanced inside. Seemingly satisfied, he closed it and locked it. He tested the lock. It held.
“I only lifted the cover and looked at one culture dish,” Beth said. She was beginning to regain some composure, although her pulse was still racing.
Martin slipped the box into its position. Then he counted them all. When he was finished, he ordered her out of the incubator.
“I’m sorry,” Beth said after Martin had closed the insulated door behind them. “I didn’t know that I wasn’t suppose to touch those boxes.”
At that moment Richard appeared in the doorway. Martin ordered him over, then angrily related how he’d caught Beth handling his research cultures. Richard acted as upset as Martin when he heard. Turning to Beth, he demanded to know why she would do such a thing. He wondered whether they weren’t giving her enough work to do.
“No one told me not to touch them,” Beth protested. She was again close to tears. She hated confrontations and had already weathered a previous one only hours earlier.
“No one told you to handle them either,” Richard snapped.
“Did that Dr. Stapleton put you up to this?” Martin demanded.
Beth hesitated, not knowing how to respond. As far as Martin was concerned her hesitation was incriminating. “I thought as much,” he snapped.
“He probably even told you about his preposterous idea that the plague cases and the others were started on purpose.”
“I told him I wasn’t supposed to talk with him,” Beth cried.
“But talk he did,” Martin said. “And obviously you listened. Well, I’m not going to stand for it. You are fired, Miss Holderness. Take your things and get out. I don’t want to see your face again.” Beth sputtered a protest and with it came tears.
“Crying is not going to get you anywhere,” Martin spat out. “Nor are excuses. You made your choice, now live with the consequences. Get out.”
Twin reached across the scarred desk and hung up the phone. His real name was Marvin Thomas. He’d gotten the nickname “Twin” because he’d had an identical twin. No one had been able to tell the two of them apart until one of them got killed in a protracted disagreement between the Black Kings and a gang from the East Village over crack territories.
Twin looked across the desk at Phil. Phil was tall and skinny and hardly imposing, but he had brains. It had been his brains, not his bravado or muscles, that had caused Twin to elevate him to number-two man in the gang. He had been the only person to know what to do with all the drug money they’d been raking in. Up until Phil took over, they’d been burying the greenbacks in PVC pipe in the basement of Twin’s tenement.