Chapter 3 - GENERAL PICKLES
The aquarium building opened at nine, but the university had suspended Chloe's laboratory access before dawn.
Rebecca had arranged a supervised retrieval of personal belongings, and I accompanied her as a visitor rather than a commando reclaiming territory.
A dean named Harold Pike met us outside a glass door.
He said the university cared deeply about Chloe's recovery, then refused to let us approach her assigned research station.
"The equipment belongs to the grant," he explained.
"Her personal notes belong to her," Rebecca answered.
We remained in the corridor until Pike called the laboratory manager.
The manager was a tired woman named Dr.
Sofia Reyes, who took one look at our authorization and unlocked the room.
Inside, pumps murmured under blue aquarium lights.
General Pickles watched us from behind a pane of thick glass.
He pressed one curious arm against a plastic castle Chloe had put in his tank.
I almost laughed because the ordinary absurdity of the animal made my grief feel suddenly enormous.
Chloe had spent six months training him to open puzzle containers for his food.
She had also taught him to distinguish red and blue plastic lids.
Under the tank was a yellow lunchbox decorated with cartoon fish.
Pike insisted it was laboratory property.
Reyes shook her head.
"Her father gave her that lunchbox," she said.
I remembered buying it at a thrift store after Chloe broke her expensive equipment case.
Rebecca opened the box in the presence of Reyes and a university compliance officer.
Inside were two plastic feeding jars and a waterproof notebook.
Every page of the notebook appeared blank.
Pike's relief was almost comical.
Reyes asked whether we intended to take the jars too.
"Only Chloe's personal items," Rebecca said.
The older scientist studied the jars, then looked at the octopus.
"Chloe always said her fish had secrets," she murmured.
The animal was not a fish, but I remembered how Chloe used the phrase whenever she wanted to annoy the biology department.
I examined the lunchbox lining and found a false cardboard bottom secured with ordinary tape.
Under it lay a microSD card inside a sealed sample pouch.
The compliance officer demanded possession.
Rebecca photographed the discovery, logged it, and placed the pouch into a numbered evidence envelope.
"A court can determine who owns the data," she said.
"Until then, nobody touches it without a record."
Pike made a call before we reached the parking lot.
Within ten minutes, the university sent Rebecca a demand letter alleging theft of proprietary material.
Within twenty, an anonymous account posted Chloe's hospital photograph online and described her as a disgruntled student.
By the time we drove away, my daughter's reputation was being dismembered with the same precision someone had used on her jaw.
Marcus waited at the hospital with an isolated computer and a digital forensic specialist named Leo Mercer, no relation to the detective.
The card contained one video, a spreadsheet, and a text file.
We opened the video first.
Chloe appeared in her lab coat, looking straight into the camera.
"If you're watching this," she said, "I couldn't convince anyone to listen."
Then she held up a photograph of my wife.
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Evelyn was smiling beside a steel door marked BLACKWATER ANNEX.
