Knockout Mouse by James Calder Page A

independent documentary and begin research for a second.
    Rita arched her brows as soon as I entered the house. The living room was an obstacle course of film gear. I left my camera there and we went into the kitchen, a large room with windows on two walls. A breakfast table sat in the middle. A couch wasin the corner. I dropped into it and Rita stuck a cup of coffee in my hand.
    “Two nights in a row with Jenny,” Rita said. “I smell a matrimonial mishap.” Her bright, throaty voice undercut itself with a low current of irony.
    I frowned. “I haven’t told you the reason yet.”
    I related the whole Sheila story. Rita’s expression sobered. “I can see why Jenny’s upset,” she said. “But I don’t see why she feels responsible. She took all the right precautions.”
    “The doctor was sure it was something Sheila ate. The reaction comes on pretty fast. Where else would the toxin have come from but dinner?”
    “Something in her car?”
    I shook my head. “Sheila was careful.”
    Rita gave a sympathetic shrug. “Just one of those terrible, inexplicable things, I guess. You may never know the real cause.”
    I looked at her without answering. She was nearly my height, with light sandstone hair that fell to her shoulders in waves. Her round face and fine features reminded me of a Botticelli painting. We had been a couple for two years, but that seemed ages ago, before the Internet bubble swelled big enough to separate us. While I got sucked into it, she stuck with film. We’d been a good team. I could shoot and she could direct, or vice-versa. On the kind of films I shot now—documentaries, industrials, independent narrative, most with small crews—half the directors didn’t know how to compose a frame. Rita knew cinematography. We agreed about the process, and I didn’t have to put up a fight to make the picture look good.
    We sipped coffee for a minute and stared out the window. Her little house was set back from the street. A neighbor was hanging laundry on the line that stretched from her porch to Rita’s roof.
    Rita got up and tossed a script into my lap. She’d written it with someone from Kumar’s marketing department. The first shoot would last five days, all next week. We began to plot out each day’s work, each setup, each piece of gear. This afternoon I’d go and rent the specialized equipment we’d need.
    It was a bioinformatics industrial, meant to show off the company’s tech to the stockholders. There’d be lots of shots of computer screens. Not much challenge, except to use Clearscan to make sure no bars went rolling up the screen. We also came up with ideas for showing some of the micro world that underlay all that computation. That would be more interesting to shoot.
    “We can get inside with the snorkel lens we used on our last microchip job,” I said. “Put a one-and-a-half-inch probe lens on it, use a ninety-degree rotating periscope to get different angles on the circuitry. They don’t want to use film, do they?”
    “No, HD. Everyone’s on a budget these days.”
    “I did some establishing shots of the building on Wednesday.” That reminded me of the parking lot. “Hey, Gregory hasn’t bothered you again, has he?”
    Rita rolled her eyes. “Only six times yesterday. He doesn’t leave messages, but I see his number on caller ID.”
    “I told him to lay off. You want to see what he looks like? I’ve got the tape in my camera bag. You’re not going to believe this guy.”
    “Not necessary. I won’t be working with him.”
    “I got footage of Sheila, too. She was in the same parking lot. The camera spooked her. I wonder what she was up to.”
    “You said she worked in biotech. People in the industry know each other, right? Maybe her company was doing business with Kumar.”
    “Why would she hide, though? There are so many weird things going on. The missing hard drive. Mr. Alpha Male atLifeScience. Why did he want Sheila’s journal? And Fay, stealing it in the