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I asked him if he’d noticed then that the monitor covering the area of the cages had gone blank. He replied that he was certain all the monitors were in working order when he started his meal.

After directing one of the crime scene officers to secure the Coke bottle in the staff refrigerator, and after seeing that Mort had a ride home, Lieutenant Tracy and I went with Dr. Simone into her office.

Taking notes, the lieutenant with firm gentleness took Dr. Simone through what she had found upon arriving at work. I must say I admired again the thoroughness of his questioning. However, I was able to make one important contribution. I asked if Bert had been in the larger cage alone when she had left in the evening.

Dr. Simone nodded. “He still gets moody, and at night we usually put him in that cage by himself.”

“How would someone have enticed Betti to leave her cage and go into Bert’s?”

“They may have used M&M’s.”

“M&M’s?” the lieutenant asked.

“M&M’s were used in the writing program that was in place before I came here,” Dr. Simone explained. “Betti participated in that program and, like the others, developed a craving for them. We still use them as little bribes to get the animals to do things.”

“Who would have known about that?” I asked.

She made a shrugging gesture with her hands. “Anyone who worked with the chimps. I mean people in the lab.”

“Could you possibly get us a list of names?” the lieutenant asked.

“I’ll try,” she said. “It might not be complete.”

The lieutenant thanked her in leaving and paused to commiserate with her, letting her know in a subtle way that he realized her charges were something more to her than mere animals.

We stopped by the crime scene again so that the lieutenant could tell one of the crew to keep an eye out for M&M’s.

“We’ve already found some,” the officer said, and indicated a clear plastic bag with some of the candies in it along with a distinctive brown smear.

Next we met with Hank, the technician in charge of audiovideo security. He indicated the camera, an unobtrusive black device with a short lens that covered the cage area. As he showed us, the cable from the camera to the monitor and the digital recorder had been not only cut but also reconnected to a router programmed to a device attached to the pay phone in the booth next to the visitor cloakroom. A sign on the booth said OUT OF ORDER. The thing was wired into the phone in a way that made Hank, a burly fellow with an engaging face, shake his head. “Whoever did this knew what they were doing.”

“What do you mean?” Lieutenant Tracy asked.

“I’d say, when they wanted to see what was going on and to tape it at the same time, all they had to do was dial this number.”

“Wouldn’t the phone company have a record?” I asked.

He shrugged. “You could try them, but I doubt it. They probably phoned from another booth. There’s other ways around it as well.” He attached a small video screen to the device on the telephone and showed us how the video camera had been adjusted to take in just the cage where Bert and Betti were found.

The lieutenant and I finally went up to my office. Doreen brought us coffee. I could not sit still. I paced diagonally corner-to-corner while the lieutenant watched me pensively.

“The two cases are obviously related,” I said, stating the obvious.

“But not really the same.”

“Yes.” But for the moment I was too agitated with anger and frustration to think straight. I sat down and took a couple of deep breaths.

Lieutenant Tracy went on. “The Ossmann-Woodley case could be murder. This looks more like an accident.”

“Yes, yes, but a kind of deliberate accident.”

The lieutenant’s frown eased as he picked up on my meaning. “The way accidents occur when someone is testing something.”

“Exactly. They may be trying to calculate exact doses or ratios of that mix Cutler described for us. Which is what may have happened to Ossmann and Woodley. But … if both cases were deliberate and made to look like accidents, experiments gone wrong …” I paused, and the lieutenant waited.