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CHAPTER 034

Henry Kendall’s wife, Lynn, designed web sites for a living, so she was usually at home during the day. Around three in the afternoon, she got an odd call. “This is Dr. Marty Roberts at Long Beach Memorial,” a voice said. “Is Henry there?”

“He’s at a soccer game,” she said. “Can I take a message?”

“I called his office, and I called his cell, but there was no answer.” Dr. Roberts’s tone made it sound urgent.

“I’ll see Henry in an hour,” Lynn said. “Is he all right, Dr. Roberts?”

“Oh sure, he’s fine.He’s perfectly fine. Just ask him to call me, would you?”

Lynn said she would.

Later, when Henry came home, she went into the kitchen, where he was getting cookies and milk for their eight-year-old son, Jamie. Lynn said, “Do you know somebody at Long Beach Memorial Hospital?”

Henry blinked. “Did he call?”

“This afternoon. Who is he?”

“He’s a friend of mine from school. A pathologist. What did he say?”

“Nothing. He wanted you to call him back.” She somehow managed not to ask her husband what it was all about.

“Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”

She saw Henry glance at the phone in the kitchen, then turn on his heel and walk into the little study that they both shared. He closed the door. She heard him speaking softly on the phone. She couldn’t make out the words.

Jamie was eating his snack. Tracy, their thirteen-year-old, was playing her music very loud upstairs. Lynn yelled up the stairwell: “A little less noise, please!” Tracy didn’t hear her. There was nothing to do but go upstairs and tell her.

When she came back down, Henry was in the living room, pacing. “I have to take a trip,” he said.

“Okay. Where?”

“I have to go to Bethesda.”

“Something at the NIH?” The National Institutes of Health were in Bethesda. Henry went there a couple of times a year, for conferences.

“Yes.”

She watched him pace. “Henry,” she said, “are you going to tell me what this is about?”

“I just have some research-I just have to check on something-I just-I’m not sure.”

“You have to go to Bethesda but you’re not sure why?”

“Well, of course I’m sure. It’s, um, it’s to do with Bellarmino.”

Robert Bellarmino was the head of genetics at NIH, and no friend of her husband. “What about him?”

“I have to, uh, deal with something he has done.”

She sat down in a chair. “Henry,” she said, “I love you but I am really confused here. Why aren’t you telling me-”

“Look,” he said, “I don’t want to talk about it. I just have to go back there, that’s all. Just for a day.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it, Lynn. I have to go back.”

“Okay…when?”

“Tomorrow.”

She nodded slowly. “All right. Do you want me to book-”

“I’ve already done it. I have it handled.” He stopped pacing and went over to her. “Look,” he said, “I don’t want you to worry.”

“That’s pretty hard, under the circumstances.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “It’s just something I have to take care of, and then it’ll be taken care of.”

And that was all he would say.

Lynn had been married to Henry for fifteen years. They had two children together. She knew better than anyone that Henry was prone to nervous tics and flights of fancy. The same imaginative leaps that made him such a good researcher also made him a bit of a hysteric. He was inclined to frequent self-diagnoses of dreaded diseases. He visited his doctor every couple of weeks, and telephoned more often than that. He was plagued by aches, itches, rashes, and sudden fears that woke him in the middle of the night. He dramatized small concerns. A minor accident was a brush with death, the way Henry told it.

So even though his behavior about a trip to Bethesda was odd, she was inclined to regard it as probably minor. She glanced at her watch and decided it was time to defrost the spaghetti sauce for dinner. She didn’t want Jamie eating too many cookies or it would spoil his appetite. Tracy had turned her music up louder again.

In short, daily events took over, and pushed Henry and his odd trip from her mind. She had other things to do, and she did them.