27
Logan looked around the room. Its contents brought the memory of his old friend back to him with a fresh pang of grief. The shelves, on which books about forestry and wildlife management sat cheek by jowl with philosophical treatises. The tidy desk, with its computer and small neat piles of papers. The bust of Thoreau that Jessup had kept near at hand ever since his senior year in college. Several framed photographs, carefully arranged on the walls: a young Jessup, wearing a backpack, tanned and smiling, in some exotic eastern location. A much more mature Jessup, straddling the roof beam of this very house, one victorious hand holding up a hammer, apparently just having finished construction. Jessup the family man, posing with Suzanne and the kids in front of what looked like Mirror Lake, the buildings of Lake Placid rising up behind.
His eyes wandered absently across the top of the desk. They stopped when they reached Jessup’s battered leather-bound notebook, lying beside the computer. This was surprising: Logan had never known Jessup to go anywhere without that notebook peeping out of his breast pocket.
Only one voice could be heard now in the living room: low and consoling. Logan stared at the notebook. What had Jessup’s last words been to him, over the phone, when he’d asked for the meeting in the Pike Hollow bar? Jeremy, I don’t know how to tell you this — how to ask you this. Do you remember our conversation of two nights ago? When I told you that I was looking into something — and I’d say more if I learned anything specific? Well, I have. And we should talk.
He reached out, let his fingertips brush the cover of the journal. Then he picked it up. He felt a tinge of voyeurism — but also intense curiosity. Suzanne wanted to hear stories about her dead husband’s past; Logan wanted to know what had been occupying the ranger’s thoughts in the present.
He began paging through the journal. It was not the typical law officer’s log: jotted facts and dry observations were interspersed with quotes from Jessup’s favorite thinkers — on an early page, Logan came across G. K. Chesterton’s observation, “The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything.” As Logan continued to leaf through the notebook, the entries became increasingly focused on the recent killings: the condition of the bodies, where they were found, summaries of official briefings. There was also, he noticed, an entry describing Logan’s own aborted attempt to visit the Blakeney compound, and what he’d reported about his initial visit to Pike Hollow. But then, on the last page, the carefully penned, methodically entered notes gave way to a series of fragments and questions:
C. Feverbridge — died April 16. Direction of final research
Jeremy and Laura Feverbridge—? Not hearing whole story!
Lunar effect??
Albright: F. & Blakeneys
He closed the journal and put it down. What these fragments meant, exactly, Logan did not know — but it appeared that Jessup had been focusing on him, and on the Feverbridges, almost as much as on the degenerate Blakeneys. He wasn’t sure, but it seemed that his explanations of why he’d been visiting the old fire station had not completely satisfied his old friend.
Jeremy, I don’t know how to tell you this — how to ask you this. I think we should talk now.
Jessup had discovered something. That was why he did not bring his notebook with him the night before. He wasn’t planning to meet in order to interrogate Logan further, but to tell him something.
He let his eyes continue roaming over the desk as he tried to parse this sudden and surprising development. Now his eyes stopped on the screen of the computer. It showed two browser windows, each containing what appeared to be a scholarly paper. To his astonishment, Logan saw that the papers were written by Chase Feverbridge.
Eyes not moving from the screen, he sat down at the desk and began to read. Both articles, it seemed, had appeared in less-than-reputable publications: perhaps the best, or only, scientific organs in which Feverbridge could lately get his work disseminated.
He read through both from beginning to end. The first article, actually more of an extract than a full-blown paper, had been published late the previous year and discussed how Feverbridge planned to demonstrate, through conclusive proof, that elements in the moon’s atmosphere were the direct cause of the “lunar effect.” The second — and last, having been published this last February — dealt with transformational biology and regrowth: the macrophages that permitted a salamander to regrow a lost limb; the “imaginal discs” that allowed a caterpillar to transform into a butterfly, even once enzymes had dissolved many of its tissues. The article concluded with speculation about potential ways in which animal DNA could be used to influence, if not directly modify, human DNA and its genetic code — and how such changes could perhaps be precipitated in the laboratory.
Logan sat back in the chair. No wonder Laura Feverbridge had spoken of her father being the object of withering scorn. The first article reflected in vague terms Feverbridge’s recent experiments with the quality and duplication of moonlight and its influence on behavior, which he’d seen firsthand, but the second — with its talk of bizarre transformational effects — was no doubt what had really made him an object of ridicule. Perhaps coming under severe academic fire had forced him to reconsider such radical speculation and — in the wake of his aborted suicide and apparent death, which in a sense gave him a new lease on life — Feverbridge had scaled back the nature of his experiments and concentrated on proving the argument made in his first paper.
One thing was clear: Jessup had been on a journey of discovery that Logan himself should, if he was honest with himself, already have made. With his eidetic memory, he recalled Laura Feverbridge’s words: And then, he published those last two articles… but he did it prematurely, submitted without my knowledge, promising much in the text but without the necessary scientific underpinnings and relevant data. I guess he was lashing out at his detractors, trying to prove his point. The result was precisely the opposite he’d hoped for — he was subjected to academic ridicule even more severe. It was then that he… tried to kill himself.
The first thing he should have done, he now realized, was consult those articles she’d mentioned — if only for the sake of comprehensiveness. But then, at the time he’d been too shocked by the discovery that Dr. Feverbridge was still alive, and too impressed by the laboratory results he’d been shown, for her passing reference to her father’s last articles to truly register.
He wondered just what Randall had discovered, and what he’d planned to tell him at the Hideaway. Was he planning to confront Logan about the Feverbridges? Was it possible he’d learned the father was still alive? No — that didn’t seem likely. What could he have wanted to tell Logan so badly it could not wait for the following day? He sighed: now it did not seem like he would ever know.
But wait: there had been another fragmentary entry in the last page of Jessup’s notebook — one that Logan understood even less. Albright: F. & Blakeneys…
The voices from the living room increased in volume; there was the sound of an opening door. Quickly, Logan rose from the chair, pushed it back up to the desk. He considered closing the browser windows, but left them untouched out of respect for his dead friend. A moment later, Suzanne appeared in the doorway to the office. Her eyes were even redder now, but a small, sad smile was on her face.