by Robin Lamont
When Jude saw the crumpled hood, she gasped, “Oh my God, what happened?”
“We’re not exactly sure,” replied Haydon. “If he was driving, he went off the road near Roxbury, it’s about ten miles southeast of here. You have any idea what he was doing down there?”
Jude barely heard him. “Where is he? Is Tim all right?”
“He was not with the vehicle.”
“Well, where is he?”
“Don’t know, Ms. Brannock. It looks like he was able to leave the scene, but we don’t have any indication at this point of where he went. Again … that’s if he was driving the car.”
“But that’s crazy,” said Jude, ignoring any hypothesis that Tim was not the driver. “He must have been hurt.”
“The air bags inflated and likely protected him from major injury, but we did find some blood in the vehicle. Could be from the impact, although of course, there were the bloody tissues you saw in his hotel room which make me think he might have sustained an injury before the crash.”
“Did you call the hospitals?” she wanted to know.
“Yes, and no one fitting his description has been admitted.”
“Then where could he have gone?” With each question, Jude was becoming more alarmed.
Haydon tried to calm her by focusing on why he had her brought to the impound. “I understand your concern. Let’s get through the formality of identification first, Ms. Brannock. Do you recognize this vehicle as belonging to Tim Mains?”
“Yes, it’s definitely his car.”
“And what about that?” asked Haydon, pointing to the scrape in the fender.
“No, that wasn’t there when he left. Is it from the accident?”
“We don’t know.”
Jude took a step closer to examine the lacerations of blue dug into the silver paint. “Wait a minute,” she said. “That looks like somebody hit him. Do you think he could have been pushed off the road?”
“It’s hard to know when exactly the fender was damaged, but I’m sending some of the paint chips out for analysis.”
Jude walked around the car. “Why did you take the plates off?” she asked.
“We didn’t. They were gone when we found the car. And there was no registration or insurance card found in the glove compartment.”
“That’s so bizarre. How did you even know it was Tim’s car?”
“The VIN number. It’s possible someone saw the car and stripped the plates. Short term they can be a valuable commodity.”
“What about his things? His suitcase or his computer? There was nothing at the hotel.”
The Sergeant and Willison exchanged glances at the brass of this civilian now conducting her own interrogation.
“Car was empty.”
“His phone?”
“No phone.”
Jude’s frown deepened. “I don’t get it. Somebody must have seen him.”
“Maybe somebody did.” She was asking all the same questions he had, but Haydon didn’t have answers, only speculation. He thought it was time to tell her. “I looked up The Kinship and spoke with Gordon Silverman.” Surprised when Jude’s head whipped around, he asked, “Is that a problem for you?”
“No, of course not,” replied Jude, flustered. “It’s just … I could have told you anything you needed to know.”
“I wanted to get another perspective on Tim.”
“What did Gordon say?”
“He told me something that you haven’t mentioned. Namely, that Mains might have been working not for you people, but for Monsanto.”
“Gordon told you that?” asked Jude affronted. “He doesn’t know for sure. And even if it’s true, how is that relevant?”
“It does add to the mystery.”
“There’s no mystery here,” snapped Jude. “Somebody ran Tim off the road.”
“It could have been an accident, a hit and run.”
Jude rebuffed that idea with a quiet grunt. But Haydon remained unruffled, saying, “Your boss also told me that you were Tim’s mentor, his teacher, so to speak.”
Jude felt a rush of anger and betrayal. What else had Gordon told Haydon – a state trooper he didn’t know from Adam? That she and Tim were lovers?
“He said you were a good investigator,” Haydon continued, “but thought you might have lost some objectivity when it comes to Tim.”
“Well, he’s right about that,” Jude flared. “I’m not objective about a friend who’s been in an unexplained car accident. And I’m sure as hell not objective about an undercover investigator who suddenly vanishes off the face of the earth.”
Putting up his hands defensively, Haydon said, “There are some things that don’t add up, I grant you. But if your boss is right and Tim was, in fact, working both sides, he might not want to be found and certainly not by you. Now, maybe some kids took the plates and cleaned out the car, but it was not easily visible from the road. I have to consider the possibility that Tim took those things himself to slow the process of identifying his vehicle.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at. Are you suggesting that Tim crashed his car deliberately? He may be a lot of things, but he is not stupid.”
“No, I’m not saying that. But like I said, the car was hard to spot from the road.”
Jude took a moment to collect herself. She didn’t want to get on Haydon’s wrong side and wondered if Gordon had found something else about Tim that he relayed to the officer. Still, she really couldn’t see where he was going with this. “I’m sorry, but I can’t see it: bleeding profusely, Tim climbs out of a wrecked car, unscrews the plates, grabs his suitcase and then trots off to Monsanto headquarters in St. Louis?”
“He might have called someone to pick him up,” offered Haydon.
Buying herself some time, Jude stepped up to the car and peered into a side window. “Can I look inside?” she asked.
Haydon hesitated, then handed her a pair of surgical gloves. Maybe she would see something they’d missed.
Snapping on the gloves, she had to admit that Haydon’s scenario didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility, certainly not if Tim was, as they feared, some kind of double agent. On the other hand, it said a lot that Haydon had chosen to send paint chips out for analysis – it meant he hadn’t ruled out Tim as a crime victim. And when she peered inside, she could see why. The dead air bags smeared with blood looked as much a crime scene as anything. She could picture Tim, flying down the road in the dead of night. A car coming up behind him, then alongside, ramming him hard. Losing control and careening into the guardrail or a tree. Tim thrown forward at impact, smashing against the bags, the seatbelt wrenching tight against his chest and cutting off his breathing. A symbiotic pain seared across her chest as she visualized it.
Jude turned her attention to the car. She leaned her hands on the back seat to examine the floor. There were crumbs and granola bar wrappers strewn on the floor; when it came to his car, Tim hadn’t been a model of cleanliness. But she didn’t see anything that told her what happened or why.
She stepped back and stripped off her gloves. She was about to hand them back to Haydon when she saw something stuck to one of them. A few pale, thin filaments that moved slightly in the breeze. Picking one of them from the glove, she turned it around in her fingers, feeling its texture. Then she leaned into the car again and sniffed the seat and cushioned backrest.
“Dog hairs,” she announced.
“Tim had a dog?” asked Haydon.
“No, he did not.”
“Could have been somebody else’s dog.”
“Maybe. But these are white, some with a little brown edge.” She scraped a few more hairs from the seat and offered them to Haydon. “And they’re short. If I had to take a guess, I’d say they’re from one of the beagles.”
“What beagles?”
“The beagles they’re testing on at Amaethon.”
The sergeant regarded her oddly for a moment, then asked, “They test on beagles?”
“Yeah. They’re small, docile, friendly … easy to handle.”
“I know,” replied Haydon, his eyes softening and making him look vulnerable for the first time since Jude had met him. “I have one. A beagle. Well, it’s really my kids’ dog.”
“What’s his name?”
“It’s a she. Her name is Molly.” He cleared his throat. “Well, Tim was working with the dogs, wasn’t he? Probably got hairs on his clothing.”
“I doubt it. He would naturally have gotten dog hair on his lab uniform,” said Jude. “But the uniforms don’t leave the lab. They go out at the end of the day for cleaning. They’re pretty strict about that.” She challenged Haydon with her gaze. “I think he had one of the Amaethon dogs in his car.”
“Are they allowed to leave the facility?”
“Absolutely not. If he took a dog out, that would be totally against protocol.”
“Why?”
“Because those dogs are test subjects,” she replied sorrowfully. “They’re born and raised in a hygienic environment. No grass, no dirt, no chasing squirrels. And no playing with kids. They’re bred to be live sanitary vessels in order to test Amaethon’s drug. If Tim had the dog outside the lab, even once, it necessarily meant the animal was exposed to germs, which would then make him worthless as a test subject.”
“What would the lab do?”
“Euthanize him,” said Jude, then added with a wan smile, “The dog, that is.”
CHAPTER 16
Jude asked to see where Tim had gone off the road and found herself in the passenger seat of Willison’s patrol car speeding down Interstate 89. Her gut told her that the hairs in the back of Tim’s car were important, but she couldn’t put a scenario together that made any sense. How could he get a dog out of the lab with no one seeing him or raising a red flag about the beagle’s disappearance? And if he was working for Monsanto, why would he do that and risk Amaethon’s trials? For God’s sake, where was the dog? As questions plagued her, Willison rocketed off the highway, heading west. Then he turned onto Loop Turnpike, where they drove for nearly a mile without seeing a house.
He drew to a stop as far onto the shoulder as gravity would allow. Jude got out and was hit with the heat rising from the asphalt. Even the birds had taken cover; the only sounds were the fluttering of yellow police tape in the feeble breeze and the squawking of Willison’s radio. The scene was almost peaceful. Until Willison pointed out the spot where the car had gone over.
“The car ended up all the way down there?” she asked in alarm. “You didn’t tell me it was that bad.”
Willison winced, he didn’t know what to say.
With her hand clamped across her mouth, Jude stood at the edge looking down at a few pieces of glass reflecting sunlight through the broken thicket. Just then, from the corner of her eye, she spotted the shimmer of bright orange and blue deep in the woods and the flash of a human figure.
“Tim!” she cried as she lurched forward.
* * *
It had been nearly three days since they’d last spoken.
“Where are you?” demanded Jude.
“In the car,” Tim replied.
“I was just about to go to sleep. Where are you going?”
“Into town.” He sounded drunk.
Jude exhaled a suffering sigh. “You’re supposed to call in every day.”
“I know.”
“And you promised to send me footage a week ago. Gordon is all over my ass.”
“Wish I was him.”
“Come on, what’s going on? I really need something.”
“I really need you,” said Tim plaintively.
Hearing a vulnerability in his voice that spelled danger, she softened, saying, “I’m here, okay?”
“I need you next to me, not at the other end of a stupid phone.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m coming apart.”
Oh, please, not now. “You’re almost at the finish line,” she urged. “Another ten days, then you’re out.”
“I’m not going to make it.” He slurred a little on his consonants. “They just look at me with the saddest eyes, and I can’t do a damn thing for them.”
“But you are doing something for them … and for all the dogs that’ll come after them.”
“They think I’m betraying them.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
Jude swiveled her legs from her bed to the floor and switched her cell to the other ear in an attempt to start over. “You can do it, Tim. Listen, I’ve been there. You gotta try and push through this. The animals need you. And you’re doing an amazing job.”
“No, I’m not,” he laughed harshly. “You’ve been bitching at me to get more, get more, get video, send video, we need proof, we need pro—”
“Okay, I know I’ve been on your case, but there’s not much time left.”
Jude pressed the cellphone to her ear, but all she could hear was his breathing and cars passing in the background. “You still there?”
“I love you.”
“Oh, come on, Tim,” she pleaded. “Now is not the time.”
“Screw you, Brannock. When is the time? It wasn’t before I left, and it won’t be when I get back. You’re just jealous ’cause I have a new girlfriend. And she is so cute!”
“Stop it.”
“And hot ….”
“Shut up.”
“Then come here, dammit.”
Jude fingered the bedsheet as she contemplated the idea. Maybe she could calm him down, get him through the end of the assignment.
“We don’t have to meet in Half Moon,” he argued. “I’ll get us a room in Montpelier or in fucking Canada if that’s what you want.”
Would it be so hard to meet him somewhere? Jude was torn. She could help get him through this, but it irked her that he was extorting her with this alleged girlfriend.
He misread her silence for caving to his need. “How about Sunday?” he asked.
“I can’t Sunday. That’s my shelter day.”
“Then Monday.”
“I can’t. I have a doctor’s appointment.” She would be in New York to meet with Dr. Amin who would have the test results from her MRI.
“Cancel it.”
“No, it’s important.”
“Why?” he pushed. “Is there anything wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Then for Christ’s sake, cancel the fucking thing!” he yelled.
Jude bit her tongue to keep from jumping down his throat. She hadn’t told Tim about her eyes or what it was like to wait and hear if you had a brain tumor. She’d kept it all to herself. He had to focus on his job and shouldn’t have to deal with her anxiety. But he was such a child sometimes – always thinking about what he needed, what he wanted.
She heard him fumble with the phone. He cursed softly to himself and she thought he would come up with an apology but got instead, “My nose is bleeding. Shit.”
With an eyeroll, Jude asked, “Can you pull over?”
“I’m getting them all the time now,” he mumbled.
Another attempt to get her to travel to Vermont and take care of him? She didn’t respond.
“I’ll call you later,” he sulked.
“Hey, Tim. You can’t stand to see the dogs suffer? Get it on video and we can do something about it.”
* * *
Willison grabbed Jude’s arm to keep her from falling into the ditch. “Hey, hey! Careful now.”
She craned her neck to look again, but the colors she had seen blinking in the light were actually a few early autu
mn leaves, and the shape of a man was just a shadow burrowing in the underbrush.
“Are you alright, ma’am?” asked Willison. “Do you need to sit down?”
“I thought I saw him.”
“Saw who?”
“I thought I saw Tim. But … it wasn’t.”
“Mmmn. Well, this heat can get to you.”
Jude’s uncertainty was more suffocating than the heat. She was seeing things that weren’t there and not seeing things that were. It was like living in an Alice in Wonderland world where men in Mets t-shirts suddenly ran through the woods, colleagues turned against her, and nothing made sense. I’m not just losing my vision, she thought, I’m losing my mind, too.
She struggled to marshal her sanity and squared her shoulders, saying, “That must be it.”
“I’ve got some water in the car. You ready to go?”
“Not yet.” Jude looked up and down the road. “Where does Loop Turnpike go?”
“No place, really,” replied Willison. “It runs into Route 12, which takes you down to Randolph.”
“What’s in Randolph?”
“Not much. There’s a golf course and the Amtrak station. Beats me why they put a station in Randolph. Nothing happens, except for maybe the technical college. It’s got a pretty good reputation. My brother-in-law graduated from there.”
“Sergeant Haydon said the car went off near Roxbury.”
“We’re technically in Roxbury, but the town center is a couple of miles up the road.”
“Why do think he would take this road?” Jude asked.
“Must’a had some reason.”
Jude heard her cell phone and checked the caller. It was Gordon; she’d been expecting him to call. She was still angry about what he’d said to Lucas and that he’d shared his suspicion with a police officer about Tim working for Monsanto. More than that, she felt too vulnerable to speak to him right then. But the ring persisted. Jude sighed and hit the green button. “Hullo, Gordon.”