Read Online Hangman's Root by Susan Wittig Albert - Free Book Online Page A

I used her words with emphasis. "The police will have to see this letter, and the others. Do you have them?"
    Dottie dropped her eyes. "Yes," she muttered. She yanked the desk drawer open and fished around in it. She pulled out two envelopes and tossed them on the desk. "This is the lot. Take the damn things. I don't want them."
    I pulled the letters out of the envelopes and examined them. They looked identical to the one Dottie claimed to have received today. The handwriting on the three envelopes didn't look exactly the same, however. I'm no handwriting expert myself, but I've examined and cross-examined my share, and I know something of the art. It was my guess that whoever addressed the first two envelopes had not addressed the third. I remembered telling Dottie that it would be easier to prosecute Harwick if he threatened her.
    I put the letters back in the envelopes. "Since these came in campus mail," I said, "you should notify campus security. Because of the death threat, I'm sure they'll bring in the Pecan Springs police. They'll need these for evidence." I hoped she was smart enough not to make an accusation the evidence would not support. She could get into almost as much trouble forging death threats as she could slinging hammers.

    Dottie looked at me, then away. "I thought maybe you could just kind of handle this," she said slowly. "You could talk to him. You're a lawyer. You can get people to . . . stop doing things they shouldn't. Like threatening my cats."
    Now I was sure I was being used, and although I understood Dottie's motives, it made me angry. When I replied, I was terse.
    "A death threat is police business. They'll examine the handwriting, the printing, the paper. They'll look at everything before they attempt to decide who sent the three letters." I paused and looked her straight in the eye. "If there's any indication that Har-wick isn't the one who wrote them—" I stopped. I'd already made my point.
    "Okay, okay," Dottie growled. She scooped all three letters into the drawer and stood up. "There's something I want to show you." She took a camera off a shelf and checked the flash. "Come on. We're going to the basement."
    I stood up too, hoping I'd heard the last of that letter. However Dottie intended to take revenge on Harwick for catnapping Ariella and threatening her rescue project, framing him with a bogus murder threat definitely wasn't the way to do it.
    The basement of Noah's Ark was a warren of hallways, labs, and graduate student offices. The section where Dottie was taking me was apparently only used for storage and utilities. The hallway was so dimly lit that there was barely enough light to see the cracks in the cement floor and the water stains on the walls.
    "Not very pretty, huh?" Dottie said as we ducked under a steam pipe. "Just wait until you see this. " We had come to the end of the hallway. She produced a key from her pocket, unlocked the solid-core door, and pushed it open. "I came looking for the source of a bad odor in my office this morning, and I found this." Her sarcasm was scorching. "I wonder what the animal rights people will say when they get a look."

    The stench of animal odor, ammonia, and disinfectant hit me Hke a fist, and I took an involuntary step backward. "What is this place?" I asked, when I could breathe.
    "It's an animal holding facility," Dottie said disgustedly.
    The windowless room was dark and airless and smaller than my shop. Against one cement wall were shelves of caged mice, hamsters, rabbits, many of the cages caked with filth, urine and rust encrusting the wires. Along another wall were stacked dozens of cages of guinea pigs, with three and four animals crowded into a cage—over a hundred in all. Along a third wall were smaller cages housing frogs, lizards and other reptiles, even a few birds. Opened sacks of food pellets, trash cans overflowing with litter, and boxes of supplies were stacked along the fourth wall, some of them wet from a dripping