by Robin Lamont
“I like it raw.”
“I don’t understand how you digest it.”
“When I was a kid growing up on my uncle’s farm, I ate raw veggies all the time. Guess my system is used to it.”
“The other day you ate brussels sprouts right out of the bag. Really? Why not just chew on a branch?”
“You ran out of ’em,” said Tim. He fed a carrot stick to Finn before popping another floret into his mouth.
“Let’s talk about the video,” sighed Jude.
“We’ve been over it a thousand times. I know, I know, ‘verifiable, solid evidence to connect the animals with the laboratory.’”
“And how do you do that?”
“By keeping objects and personnel unique to Amaethon in the continuous footage,” he intoned.
“Is this so dull for you?” accused Jude. “I hope not, because there’s no point taking this risk if all you come away with is generic video of animals being tossed into cages. They’ll just call it fake, doctored footage. And then we’re in a we-said-they-said situation which we always lose. It has to be specific to Amaethon.”
“Don’t worry,” soothed Tim, reaching over to sweep her loose hair over her shoulder. “I’m going to get you a lot of good stuff.”
“We don’t need a lot,” she countered. “What we need is irrefutable evidence that the USDA cannot sweep under the rug.”
“You worry too much.” Tim put the half-eaten vegetable plate on the bedside table and plucked the pad out of her hands. He tossed it aside as he climbed over to straddle her thighs.
Jude tried to gather her concentration and press on. “And don’t do it for me. There are animals suffering, and I presume you took this job to make a difference.”
Tim kissed her neck. “Are you going to come up and visit me?”
“I … no, probably not.”
“Why not?” He slowly undid two of the buttons on her shirt and kissed her bare shoulder.
“Because if anyone is keeping tabs on you and sees us together, it would raise questions.”
“I won’t make it three months without you.”
At this, Jude pushed him roughly back. “Of course, you will.”
He grabbed hold of her hands and said, “I need you.”
“Well, don’t.”
“I can’t help how I feel.”
“Oh God, Tim, let’s not get into this again. We’ve only got two more days to–”
“No, let’s talk about it. I’m crazy about you, and I’m tired of having to keep us a secret.”
“I never promised you–”
“I never promised to hide like a criminal. Why do you think Gordon and everyone wouldn’t understand? We’re on the same team, remember?”
“It wouldn’t look good.”
“Screw that. We’re both grown-ups, we both want this.”
“It’s unprofessional.”
“Not if you’re doing your job and I’m doing my job. I don’t want to just assume this is temporary.”
“Oh, Tim. You don’t know what you want.”
“That’s insulting. Of course, I do.”
Jude wrested her hands away from his grasp and said, “It cannot work with us long term. I care about you, but I don’t do long term.”
“Because you’re older than me?”
“No, because the animals will always come first.”
Hurt flashed in his eyes and then was gone. As easy as breathing, he leaned down to take her ear lobe in the tip of his teeth. Using his tongue, he swept down her neck, while his hands pulled up her shirt and cupped her breasts.
Jude didn’t resist. She couldn’t. Even knowing this was his way of exerting control, his tenderness was so rich, so arousing, it took her will away. He touched and kissed in places he knew excited her, hesitating at just the right moments to make her ache for more. When she beggingly arched her hips toward his, he was ready.
He looked deep into her eyes, and said, “I’m going to make you proud of me, you’ll see.” Then slowly, he slipped inside her and Jude came with a strangled cry.
CHAPTER 9
The image of Sylvia’s fierce, defiant dancing was still with her as Jude drove back to the Riverside Motel. If nothing panned out with Bobby G, the girl would be worth contacting again, hopefully next time when she wasn’t wrecked.
Jude eased her old Subaru station wagon into the first open parking slot, surprised that the place was so full. When she got out, she could hear the thudding of heavy bass coming from one of the rooms and even at this late hour smelled barbeque smoke.
She stepped along the pathway from the parking lot, her feet crunching on the gravel. The knee-high solar lights shone on the surrounding grass, and in the glow, lingering raindrops looked like tiny jewels. They made her think of second grade when she’d been desperately and hopelessly enthralled with fairies, headstrong maidens, and powerful dragons who fought for good. She’d point out twinkling dew in the early morning sun, telling anyone who’d listen, and many who didn’t, that the sparkling droplets were fairy money – valuable, but fleeting.
One day, her teacher tried to disavow her of her fantasies. “You know, Jude, that fairies are just made up, right?”
“They’re real!” insisted Jude.
“No, dear, they’re not.”
“Oh, yeah?” challenged Jude, small chin thrust forward. She pointed to the windows of the classroom that were dusted with overnight frost, creating impossibly intricate crystal patterns that winked in the sun. “Then how do you explain that?” She tromped off, having proved her point.
There was a childlike part of her that still wanted to believe in fairies. On early morning runs with Finn when the grass shimmered with dew and her running shoes became sodden with their currency, she imagined they might exist in the places where the land and sky still belonged to the animals.
But not tonight. And not here in Half Moon where dogs and mice were kept in cages from the moment of their birth until they were euthanized and necropsied. Here there was no magic or wonder in the beating hearts of animals – they were just useful statistics on a graph.
A man stepped out of the shadows in front of her and Jude quickly jumped back.
“Ms. Brannock.”
“Sergeant Haydon.” It took a moment before she relaxed the grip on her keys she’d instinctively fashioned into a weapon.
“Sorry to startle you. Thought I’d catch you here when I couldn’t reach you by phone,” he said.
Her chest constricted so tightly she could hardly breathe. Police officers didn’t usually come around in person unless they had bad news. “Did you find anything?” she managed to get out.
“No, I just wanted to let you know that I put out a BOLO, a be-on-the-lookout, for Tim and his car. Nothing back yet.”
The air came out of her lungs in a rush. And then she wondered why, if Haydon hadn’t come to tell her they’d found Tim’s body, he’d sought her out at this hour. To report that he’d been doing what a missing persons investigator did as a matter of routine? No, there was something else behind it.
“You work long hours, Sergeant,” she noted dryly.
“I wanted you to know, that’s all.”
“Thanks, but come on, it’s nearly midnight.” Then it hit her. “Oh, right, I get it. I’m an animal activist and you have to keep tabs on extremists like me.”
Haydon didn’t offer a denial, nor did he seem in any way defensive that she’d seen behind his pretext. “Goodnight, Ms. Brannock,” he said, nodded curtly, and stepped around her.
“What are you afraid I’m going to do? Burn down the lab?” she called after him.
He stopped and turned. “Are you?”
“Jesus! Of course not. I told you, we don’t do that sort of thing.”
“We? You didn’t tell me you have c
olleagues here.”
“I don’t. I meant, we … as in my organization.”
“And you can’t see that an organization like yours might be on our radar screen?” he shot back. “I’m supposed to take your word for your good intentions? I’d like to, but here I am wondering how you got Tim into the laboratory and what lines you folks might have crossed to do that.”
Jude didn’t like where this was headed. “Sergeant, I’m just here looking for my friend. That’s the truth. Yes, he was working undercover, but that’s not illegal. Not in Vermont, anyway. If you had a co-worker undercover and he suddenly disappeared, I bet the state would pull out all the stops to find them. We’re not on opposite sides.”
“Maybe not.”
“And I could use your help.”
“I’ll do what I can, so long as you stay on the right side of the law.”
“It’s a deal. We might even be able to help each other.”
Haydon walked a little closer. “Did you learn something?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. Tim was sleeping with a girl named Heather Buck, and she claims he introduced her to heroin. She’s only seventeen and her father found out. He was livid. I saw him today at the farmers market, like you suggested, and he’s still very angry. He said, and I quote, ‘If I ever see him around Heather again, I’ll kill him.’”
“Not an unusual reaction from a father, I’d say.”
“It’d put him on my suspect list,” Jude replied.
“Suspect for what, exactly? There’s been no crime committed. Until I file my report, you don’t even have an official missing persons case. All you have is an animal activist that you can’t find and for all we know, is sipping a piña colada in the Bahamas right now.”
“Well, something doesn’t add up. Tim was not a user, I’d stake my life on it.”
“There’s a first time for everything. We happen to have a big heroin problem in the northeast.”
“You ever hear of a dealer named Bobby G?”
If he had, Haydon didn’t let on. He just said, “If I was you, I would just go home. We have your contact info and will call you if we come across something. Should your guy turn up, maybe you let me know.”
But Jude wasn’t going anywhere. “If I were looking for someone like Bobby G, where might I find him?”
Haydon squinted at her and sighed, “Lady, you are looking for trouble.”
“No, I’m looking for information.”
“Go home, Brannock. That’s the best information I can give you.”
As Jude was opening her door, her cellphone began to chirp. It was Lucas. “Where have you been?” he asked. “I’ve been trying to reach you all night.”
“Sorry, I was busy.”
“Anything develop after we talked?”
“I might have a lead on where Tim allegedly got his heroin,” she said, letting herself in and tossing her shoulder bag on the bed.
“Allegedly?”
“I don’t believe this drug thing. Hell, I never even saw him smoke a joint. Maybe he was forced into it or maybe he was so stressed he was looking for a moment of escape.”
“Listen to yourself, Jude. You told me that he and the girl got caught shooting up. That’s no beginner stage. Usually, people start by snorting it. Injecting heroin is a whole other thing, okay? You have to cook it with water and a solvent. You have to filter it, and you have to know how to get it in without blowing a vein.”
“Straight from the horse’s mouth.”
Silence.
“I’m sorry,” said Jude. “That was unfair.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“I know. I know that, Lucas. It’s just that Tim wasn’t a junkie.”
“A lot of people who shoot up say the same thing.”
Jude kicked off her shoes and sat heavily on the bed. Damn, Lucas could be annoying. He questioned everything. What was wrong with going with your gut once in a while? For all his hang-loose, drowsy demeanor, he approached every investigation as if he was building a Lego tower, one tiny brick at a time. She wondered if his inability to occasionally tap into instinct was a coping mechanism he’d adopted from his wartime experiences. Sometimes she wished she’d known him before his time in the military, sure that three tours in Afghanistan – the last one disastrous – had changed him. How could it not?
They’d met at an animal rights conference where he was searching for some way to channel his anger. The people and the places that abused animals were a good start. Even though he was reserved, she recognized a powerful hunger in him. He walked the conference with a cautious, watchful gate, like a big cat searching for prey. In some ways he looked like a starving lion – all ribs and tawny, shaggy mane. She took a seat next to him at one of the panel discussions and asked him what had brought him to the conference. He told her that he wanted justice for the animals, but after she got to know him better, she thought that what he was really yearning for was truth and fairness for himself. So far, life hadn’t given him much of that.
She found herself drawn to his opaque wariness, keen to solve him like a puzzle, and she believed there was a mutual sexual attraction. On the last night, he invited her to his hotel room, but it didn’t go the way she had imagined. Physical intimacy was not what he needed just then.
Lucas tossed the plastic room key on the dresser and took the single chair by the window, leaving Jude to sit uncertainly on the edge of the bed. She was wondering whether to make the first move when suddenly, a white rat scurried out from under the bed between her feet. She screeched and drew her legs up. To her horror, the rat leapt onto Lucas’s lap.
“Meet Habib,” he said.
“What?”
“He’s my rat.”
“You can’t be serious. You brought a rat into the Hyatt?”
“We’re very close.”
By now, the rodent had crept up to Lucas’s shoulder and was nuzzling his hair. “If the cleaning staff finds him, they’ll call an exterminator,” Jude pointed out. “Try explaining to them how close you two are.”
“You want to pet him?” asked Lucas.
“No thanks.” She didn’t even want to step on the floor. She had nothing against rats and mice, just preferred they keep their distance.
“Rats are very intelligent, you know,” said Lucas, stroking Habib with his finger. “They communicate with each other using high-frequency sounds we can’t hear. And they like to play. I don’t keep him in a cage much. He doesn’t like it. If I have to put him in, as soon as I open the door, he’s like, boom! I’m outta here.”
“Why do you call him Habib?” asked Jude, feeling only slightly more comfortable since the rat showed no signs of bounding in her direction.
Lucas gazed out the window at the lights spread out below and didn’t say anything. His face had all but closed down.
“Habib’s an unusual name … for a rat,” prodded Jude gently.
Finally, he looked back at her. “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes, I want to know.”
“I’ve never told anybody this, but I’ll tell you because I think you’re as damaged as I am, and you’ll understand.”
“Thanks,” replied Jude, not entirely sure what she was thanking him for.
As he absently stroked Habib, he recounted, “My last tour in Diyala, I was a squad commander. One night when we were stationed away from the base, a bunch of Sunnis took us on. It was quick. Two of my men were killed and I was taken alive. Turned out they weren’t really Sunnis. They might have been Shi’a, who the fuck knows – religious affiliations are pretty strict over there, but allegiances run a whole lot looser. Either way, they thought they could get a decent price for an American squad commander.
“They moved me around some, but finally I ended up in a village in the mountains. They kept me in a room with no windows.
Four months. They tossed me food in the afternoon and beat the crap out of me once a week for fun. Anyway, there was a rat that used to come visit me. At first, he came for the food, whatever crumbs I dropped. But then he started to hang around. He took food from my hand and after a while, he let me pet him. He was my friend and I named him Habib. The only thing that kept me from losing my mind was looking forward to his visits.
“One day, a guard saw him and crushed him with his rifle butt. After that, I didn’t care what happened to me and I sort of wished they’d just shoot me. But about a week later, out of the blue, I was traded for some prisoners in Baghdad. That’s it.”
Jude allowed the painful memories to wash over them for a moment before asking, “So, obviously, that’s not the same Habib.”
“No, even if they hadn’t killed him, rats in the wild don’t generally live for more than a year or two. I’ve had several since I’ve been home. I name each one Habib.” He looked at her with mournful eyes. “To me, they’re all Habib.”
That night, Lucas and Jude talked until the sun began to brighten the horizon.
Back in the present, Jude settled more comfortably on the bed and put her phone on speaker. “Okay, Lucas. Let’s just say Tim thought he could woo Miss Heather by introducing her to heroin, as she claims. What if he really liked it? Do you think he could have OD’d someplace?”
“Possible. But look at this rationally. If he was new to drugs, he wouldn’t be going off to shoot up by himself. He wasn’t stupid. It’s much more likely that he’s alive and well. If he left the lab outright or if he somehow got made and had to run, he’s made a choice that doesn’t include phoning in to you and having to face your disappointment. For all we know, he’s in California having a grand old time.”
Annoyed that both Haydon and Lucas were so quick to place Tim in a palm-treed paradise, implying a lazy indulgence in him, Jude pushed back. “I don’t think so. I think something happened to him.”
“Like what? If Amaethon made him as an undercover, they never would’ve bought your story about being his sister.”
“What about Heather’s father? He’s out there broadcasting that if he ever saw Tim again, he’d kill him. Maybe he already did and that’s just an act.”