by Robin Lamont
The Kinship Series
THE EXPERIMENT
Also by Robin Lamont
If Thy Right Hand
Wright for America
The Kinship Series
The Chain
The Trap
The Kinship Series
THE EXPERIMENT
ROBIN LAMONT
Award winning author of The Chain and If Thy Right Hand
Copyright 2019 All Rights Reserved, Robin Lamont
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events of locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover: 99Designs
Interior Design: Jera Publishing
Cover Imagery: Shutterstock/Dreamstime
Grayling Press
ISBN: 978-0-9858485-8-3 (print)
LCCN: 2018913953
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As I dove into the connecting spheres of pharmaceuticals and animal testing, there were many people who helped me along the way. Many thanks to Michael Budkie, who for decades has worked hard to protect animals in laboratories. Much appreciation to Dr. Aysha Akhtar, Alka Chandna, and Kari Hamerschlag for their referrals and counsel. Special thanks to Michael Hansen, Senior Scientist at the Consumers Union for his expertise. Any errors made with the science are entirely on me. Finally, much gratitude to Matt Swensen for his thoughtful reading of the manuscript and helpful insights.
The Experiment is for Ken.
CHAPTER 1
Jude Brannock strode through the noisy mob. They’d heard her coming. As she advanced the length of the kennel, stepping purposefully along the cracked, concrete floor, the dogs that knew her leapt up on the chain link fencing and barked riotous, happy greetings. The new arrivals barked because everyone else was barking. Jude barely glanced at them.
The one she was looking for was housed at the end. The shelter director made sure that there was an empty pen between him and the others. For good reason. He had backed himself into a corner and pulled his lips back showing a lot of teeth. A black mutt, Jude figured he was a hound mix of some sort. Very thin. Very fearful. And in this state, very dangerous. She stopped in front of his pen. “What up, dude?” she asked.
He answered with a menacing growl at which point she re-thought her strategy. She was armed with a fistful of dog biscuits but now thought they weren’t going to do the job alone. If she had any chance of getting through to this fellow, she would also need to compose herself, clear her head of the raging storm of emotions that had been building for days.
She was buffeted by alternating bouts of frustration and anxiety. The undercover investigator that she’d trained and been running for the past two months was going off the rails. She knew what Tim’s problem was, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. Not from here. And there was no one she could consult with. This was between the two of them.
The rumble of the dog’s feral warning sounded again. He had started to drool. Jude pushed aside thoughts of Tim to return to the challenge at hand. Avoiding eye contact, she said, “Okay, bud, I’m all yours,” and she lowered herself to the concrete floor outside his pen, keeping her back to him and focusing on her breathing. Before long, the other dogs settled down, but not her new friend.
Finally, she spoke to him, turning her head only slightly in his direction. “I thought we were past this. After all we’ve been through, you don’t remember me? I mean, don’t you want to find a nice home? You’re not a bad looking guy. You can do better than this place.”
He barked harshly.
“I think it’s time we give you a name,” she said softly. “How about Rocky? You’re a fighter with the heart of a marshmallow. Let’s see if we can get through to that heart – or at least your stomach. What do you say?” Jude hummed the first few bars of the Rocky theme and then began to talk about nothing in particular. All the while she maintained non-confrontational body language. After a few minutes of steady, low-key patter, Rocky stopped panting, though she could hear him padding back and forth, unsure. She had no illusions that he ever took his wary golden eyes off her.
Jude broke some of the biscuits into pieces and pushed one under the chain link gate. After a moment, Rocky snatched it up and dashed back to his corner. Jude gave him another piece, and another. With each successive trip he eased his retreat until finally he hung around by the door, waiting for the next morsel. In slow motion, she stood up and unlatched the pen. Rocky withdrew to the back and snarled. But it was half-hearted.
She edged herself inside and crouched by the gate. Refraining from making eye contact, she resumed her exercise of chatting softly and occasionally leaving a piece of biscuit on the ground. He came closer and closer. From the corner of her eye, she saw the running scar around his neck where his fur had been scraped off – a sure sign he’d been chained up, and for a long time. Finally, he took a treat from her hand. She reached out and touched his shoulder. Rocky trembled but didn’t draw away.
Jude said, “We can’t keep meeting like this, boy. People will start to talk.” The thin dog gazed at her wistfully; he wanted to trust her but was still wary. “It’s okay,” she reassured him. “There are really good folks here, and they’ll help you. You don’t have to be afraid.”
She fought the urge to stroke his neck. It was enough for today. He needed time.
Back in the shelter office, Madelyn, the ruddy-faced director, greeted her. “It’s awfully quiet down there. I really appreciate you coming on such short notice. You’re the only one who can get close to him.”
“Where did he come from?”
“I have no idea. One morning I found him tied to the fire hydrant out front. I barely escaped with my life getting him into the pen.”
Jude dropped into a chair, drained. “I think he’ll be okay. He just doesn’t know what end is up. Take it slow and bring those treats, he likes them.” She brushed off the crumbs and then sniffed her hands. “I’m going to smell like peanut butter all day. Oh, and his name is Rocky.”
“You’re a saint,” exclaimed Madelyn.
“Hardly,” replied Jude. A slender lock of auburn hair fell against her neck and she reflexively tucked it back into the messy topknot that languished at the top of her head. Jude paid scant attention to her looks, neglecting what many women would view as minimal hair styling and makeup. Not that she needed it, but a little would have gone a long way toward brightening her pale complexion and bringing out the green in her hazel eyes. Similarly, more thought to her everyday wardrobe would have helped draw attention to her long legs and carved shoulders. Jude preferred to direct the spotlight to matters that needed desperate fixing.
“Do me a favor,” Jude said. “Don’t send him to County without telling me, okay?”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“No,” insisted Jude, getting up to go. “County is a high kill shelter. He won’t last two days, and you know it. Give him some time.”
“I promise. You want a cup of coffee?”
“Thanks, I’m late for work,” she said distractedly, eyeing her cellphone. She checked for new messages, but still nothing from Tim. The precariousness of their situation came crashing through the storm gate again, and her fingers twitched, a hair’s breadth from sending him the code that would pull him off the investigation immediately. That’s what her boss Gordon would
tell her to do, but he didn’t know the whole story and Jude wasn’t about to tell him.
She slipped the phone back into the pocket of her jeans. Even knowing some of it was of her own making, Jude couldn’t shake the feeling that, like Rocky, she was being pressed into a corner by events spinning out of control and was ready to snap if anyone moved too fast.
CHAPTER 2
From the minute she laid eyes on Tim, she was conflicted. Jude’s physical attraction locked in combat with her sense of professionalism. He had just turned twenty-six and had raw good-looks, with fair Celtic skin that reddened easily in the wind and thick, curly hair. There was a glint in his eyes that saw humor in almost any situation, until, that is, he came face to face with the suffering of animals. Then his brow would furrow, and the glint would crystalize into something hard and brittle. With an athlete’s physique, he was lean through the torso and hips, broadening to shoulders and arms that worked hard at the gym. From their first touch, Jude desired him.
“It’s an honor to work with you,” he told her, shaking her hand enthusiastically. “Everyone says you’ve done like the most astounding undercovers.”
“You make them sound like backflips,” she laughed.
He grinned. “Oh, you can do those, too?”
Shit, she thought, I’m in trouble. But she ignored the warning signs and pushed any misgivings about training the “new guy” into the musty back closet of her mind.
Jude was a senior investigator with The Kinship, a small group dedicated to animal protection. They didn’t have the visibility or the financial backing of some of the big organizations like the ASPCA or PETA, preferring to work in the shadows. Their specialty was in undercover investigations to gather and document evidence of industrialized or large-scale animal abuse. Working across the spectrum, they’d send in an investigator to secure a job at a factory farm, a race track, or a puppy mill. Then with film, photos, or witness statements in hand, they’d go to the authorities, or if no one would take action there, to the media.
Tim had come to them recently and seemed well suited for one of the targets The Kinship had in their sights – Amaethon Industries, a private laboratory in Vermont that tested on animals. In the past, the company had been cited for violations of the Animal Welfare Act, which imposed rules on the treatment of animals in laboratories. And in June, Amaethon was due to begin pre-clinical testing on an experimental drug, using dogs and rodents.
They needed to get someone inside, and Jude thought that Tim was the right candidate to land a position as a lab technician, whose primary job was to monitor animal behavior and assist the researcher with handling the animals. Tim was good with dogs, exceptionally good. And a crash course interning with a local veterinarian would give him the necessary skills and vocabulary to pass muster. Meanwhile, the organization’s resident computer engineer CJ Malone would take care of creating a checkable identity and a sure-to-be-noticed resume. CJ was wheelchair-bound, but could go anywhere with his coding skills, including hacking into other databases where stored information could be “amended” as he put it. His personal motto was, “my other computer is your computer.”
There was only one wrinkle. Before he had come to The Kinship, Tim had done a covert operation with another animal protection organization, landing a job at a factory farm that raised pigs in Minnesota. The investigation was a failure. Word had it that he’d blown his cover, although no one knew exactly how it had gone down, least of all Tim. Jude believed him. It could happen to a rookie: a stray wire showing on the hidden camera or one too many questions in a rush to extract an admission. She was sure that under her tutelage, he’d be successful at Amaethon.
When Tim was, in fact, hired to work at Amaethon in the canine section, Jude was anxious to get started. “Yes!” she fist-pumped. “We know for a fact that they’ve ignored the housing and handling rules, pitifully inadequate as they are. All they got was a slap on the wrist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and I’m certain that hasn’t stopped them. If we can prove new infractions, the government will have to do more than fine them. I want to get these guys.”
With four weeks until he had to be in Vermont, they began to work. Except for his mornings at the vet, they were together almost constantly, crafting Tim’s backstory – where he grew up, what sport he played in high school, his political leanings, his favorite ice cream. From there, Jude went over the hidden cameras that could be placed in the brim of a cap, a buttonhole, or a wristwatch. “You’re going to be there for almost three months, so you’ll have plenty of opportunities,” she told him. “What we need is documentation of the violations.”
She hammered home the house rules for maintaining contact. He was to call her every day. Just as important, if he or anyone at The Kinship felt he’d been compromised, he was to heed Jude’s message that would signal him to get out of there fast.
Tim was an eager, receptive student and fun to be around. But not a day went by that Jude didn’t war with herself. Sometimes she’d stay professionally detached, determined that he would not blow his cover again – if in fact, that’s what had happened. Not on her watch. At other times, she forgot herself and was drawn into his aura of warmth. He’d say something that would make her laugh and then when she was totally disarmed, he’d put a light hand on the small of her back as they walked through a door, causing her knees to nearly buckle.
It wasn’t long before she surrendered and took him into her bed.
* * *
Jude drove back streets from the shelter to The Kinship offices in Brentwood. Anything to avoid the clogged highways of Washington, D.C. at rush hour. It gave her enough time to make her decision. She would give Tim one more day. It was a risky move. Their communication had begun to falter in recent days; he’d sounded distracted and rushed on the phone. Worse, his contact became sporadic, sometimes going two or three days between calls – a serious violation of “the rules.” In their last phone conversation, he sounded drunk. They’d fought. But dammit, she couldn’t pull him off now. Not after the email he’d sent yesterday morning. I have something big for you. Still working on it. Will call tonight.
This was what she’d been waiting for. Finally, he had something – something big. Of course, it was disappointing that when she opened the accompanying attachment, she didn’t find a video or audio recording. Just two photographs: the first was of a ramshackle yellow house, and the second a photo of an empty field with a jagged rim of hills in the distance. No clarification about what they meant or what connection they had to his mission. She waited for his call to explain, but it never came. Cause for concern perhaps, but not yet cause for alarm, given that he was probably still angry with her. And she rationalized that there was nothing in his email or the seemingly random pictures to indicate that his cover was compromised.
Just one more day. If Tim had something big on Amaethon, he had to see it through. Her job was to find a way to hold off Gordon a little longer.
Jude parked in the community lot across the street from the converted hosiery mill where The Kinship maintained an office. It was a solid brick building with tall windows and old wood floors that were worn and smooth. There were places one could see the embedded edges of metal tracks where two hundred years ago, carts ran between the sewing machines. They shared the third floor with a lawyer, an architect, and a couple of accountants, each of whom had their firm names etched on the glass front door. The Kinship had only the suite number on theirs.
She stopped at the Starbucks on the ground level and ordered coffee, adding a splash of soymilk to the scalding hot liquid before taking the stairs. But as she shouldered her way through the stairwell door, she took a sip from her container and burned her tongue.
Gordon’s door was closed. Good. She didn’t see CJ and assumed he was hidden behind a computer screen somewhere. She waved to the new intern, a bright-eyed, bubbly girl with grand ambitions to save all animals, and made her w
ay through the loft area peppered with cubicles until she got to her own.
The gray fabric panels that separated the work stations were richly decorated with snapshots of friends and family, pets, and framed slogans like “Don’t Think Outside the Box, There Is No Box.” All but Jude’s. While her desk was piled with files and DVD’s, her cubicle walls were bare except for one picture torn from a magazine. It was a photo of a man, holding his scoped high-powered rifle aloft and sitting on the back of a male lion he had just shot in a game park. The animal was thickly-maned, huge and magnificent, the color of the sandy ground where his blood had pooled, his eyes closed forever. The killer atop him was so grotesquely obese, it looked like he might have trouble getting up without help. But he smiled broadly, proud of his accomplishment.
The image, for Jude, captured everything that was wrong in the relationship between man, animals, and nature. Each time she looked at it, she was reminded that trying to change that relationship was something worth fighting for.
She deposited her backpack next to her desk and turned on her computer. While she waited for it to boot up, she ran the tip of her tongue across her teeth, feeling the small screech of the burn. Gordon’s voice startled her.
“Hey, there.”
Jude quickly swiveled to greet him.
“How was New York?” he asked.
Gordon Silverman was the founder of The Kinship and had hired Jude as an investigator at the outset. Ten years her senior, a silver-haired man with an aquiline nose, nearly hawk-like, he had become Jude’s lover for a brief time. They were friends and co-workers now, but it was a relationship built on scarred trust.
“Good.”
“You and your friend Alicia have a nice time?”
“Alice.”
“Alice, right.” He seemed inclined not to ask further about the days off she’d requested, and Jude was fine with that.