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The woman appeared to be in her late thirties or early forties. She was dressed simply and inexpensively but with some sense of style. She walked into Professor Harmon Griffin’s office at the University of Chicago and dropped a clear sealed plastic bag on his desk. The bag contained the partially decomposed remains of a rodent.

Griffin looked at the bag without moving his head. He had been reading and grading essay tests. His “Come in” had been offhand when he heard the knock on his open door. Slowly, he turned and looked up at the woman at the side of his desk. She was no one he had ever seen before.

“There’d be a whole lot more left of that mouse if someone had paid attention sooner,” she said.

Harmon blinked. “You must be Mrs. Beloit.”

“Marietta Beloit. I’ve been trying to get someone to look at that mouse for three weeks. The Chicago Housing Authority wouldn’t come. They said I was imagining things, wouldn’t send someone to look. ‘It’s just a mouse,’ they told me. How would they know? That isn’t just a mouse. At least, it’s like no mouse I ever saw or heard of before.”

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