by Robin Lamont
Finally, she made out a sliver of light underneath the door and mentally reviewed where she was – in the storage room where cleaning materials and empty crates and cages were kept. Melissa had sketched the corridors and stairway she’d need to navigate to get to the kennel. There she would find a metal cabinet that held the dogs’ feed and vet supplies. Jude put some weight on her injured foot and found it would support her; it was sore but serviceable. She took a deep breath and ventured into the hall.
* * *
Dillon Byer grabbed Ostrovsky’s wrist. “What are you doing?” he demanded.
“Calling the police.”
“No, not yet.”
“Listen to them,” cried Ostrovsky. “They’re going to break in.”
“No one’s getting across the fence, Stu. Calm down.”
Ostrovsky put his hands over his face and moaned, “Oh my God, they know. How did they find out?”
His partner knew exactly how they’d found out – Jude Brannock. But he didn’t say. He took the phone out of Ostrovsky’s hand, cautioning, “They don’t know. They’re speculating. Listen to me, if the cops show up, they can’t search anything without a warrant. Just in case, I want to get rid of the corn feed. It’s kept in the kennel, right?”
“What about Jim Davidson?”
“Davidson is on board.”
“What about the animals?”
“Nobody takes them without a court order. And by that time, we’re all cleaned up. Now, where’s the feed?”
Ostrovsky nodded. “The big red container. In a cabinet.”
“Locked?”
Looking around wildly, the scientist tried to remember. “No,” he said. “I opened it last night. I … don’t think I locked it again.”
“And what about the rodent stuff?”
“Same thing, a red container in their housing area.”
Byer didn’t particularly want to go in there, but right now, his partner on the loose was a liability. “You sit tight. If the cops show up, they’ll call you to open the gate. Don’t let them in the front door. Ask to see a warrant. I need a little time.”
“What are you going to do with the feed?”
“Put it in the freezer.”
“What?”
“The big freezer in the basement – that’s where you put the carcasses, right? In plastic bags. I throw the corn in the same bags and stuff them in the freezer underneath. No one is going through a pile of dead animals, and the disposal company is coming soon for pick up. By the time they think to look there, it will all be gone.”
“We’ll never get away with it.”
Byer rushed at his partner and threw him against the wall. With his forearm at Ostrovsky’s throat, he said roughly, “Yes, we will, Stuart. We will get away with it – unless you fuck up. Do you understand?” He pushed harder against Ostrovsky’s neck until his face turned bright red. The scientist gave a strangled assent and Byer let go. He left him slumped against the wall, heaving for breath, before he made his way toward the animal housing. But first, he had another stop – something he should have done days earlier.
He had never killed anyone before. But afterwards when he thought about it, he decided that he hadn’t killed Jeffries … not really. The guy was already one head bump away from an intracerebral brain hemorrhage. Just walking into a door frame might have done it. And even if he had killed him, it was partially Jeffries’ fault.
Jeffries shouldn’t have come back to the lab to get one of the dogs. A whining dog was hard to conceal. And for damn sure, he shouldn’t have mouthed off about going to the cops and telling them everything he knew – about the corn and Amaethon’s gross negligence. That Jeffries had himself eaten some of the cross-pollinated corn was just plain bad luck and evidently made it acutely personal for him. His nose began to bleed as he threw off Byer’s restraining hand.
But he’d made even more mistakes. Assuming he wouldn’t be followed, for one thing. And then, when he finally did spot the tail, trying to make a run for it on back roads.
Byer had thought the crash would kill him outright. But when he got down to the car, Jeffries still had a pulse, though his pupils were fixed and dilated which meant that blood vessels in his brain were probably leaking. There was a good chance he would die if left there. Byer couldn’t take the chance that he would wake up and try to get help. He had to finish the job. He thought of strangling him in the car or hitting him on the head with a rock but knew that when the cops found him, they’d see marks inconsistent with the crash.
It took nearly ten minutes to drag Jeffries far enough away that he wouldn’t be found easily. If anyone discovered the car, they’d have to assume the driver had climbed the embankment for help. By the time Byer thought he’d gone far enough, Jeffries was already dead.
He cleaned out the car and removed the license plates, shoving the contents into plastic garbage bags. He took them to one of the abandoned quarries nearby and threw them over a cliff where they joined the broken TV sets and other rusted junk that the local dump refused to take. All but Jeffries’ phone, which had turned out to be a good move. It revealed him to be the animal rights bastard Byer suspected he was, and the litany of angry texts from Brannock could deflect suspicion onto her.
Then just before dawn, he returned to bury Jeffries in the woods.
All in all, Byer figured that Jeffries had basically dug his own grave with his missteps. Byer, on the other hand, knew he’d made only one, and he was going to fix that now. He’d torn off Jeffries’ t-shirt to wrap his sore hands while he shoveled and forgot to throw it in with the body. He couldn’t leave it at the scene; it would have his DNA all over it. And he didn’t want to keep it in his own car while it went to the body shop. So, he tied it up in a plastic bag and shoved it in the back of a file drawer at the lab. He’d been meaning to dispose of it long before now – now that there was an angry mob outside the lab, soon to bring the police into the picture.
CHAPTER 26
The cool lab air felt rough against her skin and her sneakers sounded too loud in her ears. Jude moved quickly down the hall toward the red exit sign above the door to the stairwell. The animals were kept on the floor above. The plan was to get into the kennel, fill the ziplock baggie in her pocket with feed, and take one of the dogs – more if she could. Then she was to make her way back to the storage room, where Kurt would meet her at the window.
Jude focused on the exit light like a beacon.
She had no sooner opened the fire door of the stairway when she heard the clatter of footsteps coming down. Hastily, she reversed course. No way to get back into the storage room in time. She had no choice but to duck into the first door she came to. It was marked “Mechanical.”
Emergency floor lighting revealed that she was in an area that housed the lab’s cooling and air purification systems. The drone of machinery and its thrumming vibration penetrated her body until it felt like it was rattling her bones. Ahead of her was a large box-like appliance with the “Turbo Air Cooled 2000” plaque identifying it as the system’s air compressor. Against the wall to her left were two seven-foot stainless steel freezers. But what stood out were the frantic blinking lights of an electric grid mounted on the opposite wall. She cursed her bad luck in seeking refuge here. Whoever was coming down was sure to come in here to check on the short-circuit.
Jude dove behind the air compressor just as the door opened. She crouched low and peered around the compressor, able to make out a man’s legs from the knees down. He went over to the freezers and set a heavy bucket on the floor. She recognized the figure of Dillon Byer. He reached up and punched in a code on the panel of one of the freezers. Then he wrenched open its door. A blast of frigid air came whooshing out. Only then did she remember what the freezers were there for: the storage of dead animals waiting for pick up. At the very thought, bile rose up in her throat. But she barely brea
thed as she watched what he did next.
Byer pulled out a heavy black garbage bag from the freezer and placed it next to the bucket. He put on rubber gloves and cut the fastening on the bag. When it was open, he withdrew from it a smaller plastic bag. This one was clear and marked with numbers drawn with a thick black Sharpie. It was filled with dissected rodent bodies, flesh and fur frozen into a distorted, sickening clump. He laid it on the floor. Then withdrew another. What was he doing?
When he had taken out about a third of the bag’s contents, he looked around as if he thought someone might be watching. He dug into the bucket he had brought and pulled out a big rag. Except that it wasn’t a rag. Bursting through her cloudy vision, Jude saw that it had sleeves and a neckline, and it was printed with the swirling tail of an “M” and the iconic tips of the Manhattan skyline. The New York Mets logo. Yet the familiar, faded orange and blue colors were distorted, clotted with dark red blood. Jude clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming aloud. Tim’s favorite t-shirt – the one she had so often rested her cheek against. And now, Byer was stuffing it into the bag and hurriedly covering it with the bloodied rat bodies.
Jude let out an involuntary moan. Byer heard it and whipped around. Taking advantage of his moment of surprise, she leapt out from behind the compressor. His eyes filled with fury and he grabbed at her. But she dodged his reach, threw open the door, and began running down the hall.
As she raced up the stairs, Jude fought her emotions. He killed him, he killed him! Until this moment, she’d clung to the barest of hope that Tim might still be alive, perhaps in a hospital somewhere trying to process what he knew, maybe scared of what he might believe was his failure and what she would say. In the far reaches of her fantasy, he’d struck his head in the car accident and had amnesia. More than once, she’d imagined telling him it was okay, she didn’t blame him, she understood what he was trying to do. But now, the truth tore through her like a searing hot poker. He was gone, and the possibility of reconciliation had been trashed along with the frozen animal bodies. Reason roared at her to get out – get out and tell someone what she’d seen. But rage overtook self-preservation. Not until she got her hands on the feed.
Jude threw open the door to the ground floor hallway and thundered toward the canine housing. What had Melissa told her? Second on the left? A few more steps and she spotted the steel door with a ventilation louver. Throwing her shoulder against the door, she burst in.
The first thing that hit her was how un-noisy it was, certainly compared with the cacophony of a normal kennel. Yet it was far from silent. There were the sounds of tails whapping against the sides of metal crates and the strained yelping of de-barked dogs. Jude had seen many horrific things done to animals. She’d worked undercover in factory farms and once at a slaughterhouse. She’d seen videos, hundreds of them – dog fighting, elephant poaching, dolphin killing. And even though she knew that it was a standard practice to remove the vocal cords of laboratory dogs, she had never heard what they sounded like. Never been surrounded by the smothered, garroted cries of animals that had been bred to be man’s best friend. Sweet Jesus! They were trying to greet her.
The clouds in front of her eyes grew thicker, darker. She squinted at the crates, stacked two-high on both sides of the room, and could identify the moving shapes of the dogs pacing inside. At that moment, the door behind her flew open. Byer had found her.
Jude backed away, trailing her fingertips along the metal bars to guide herself. She needed time. Just a few seconds until her vision returned. It always did.
“You didn’t have to kill him,” she breathed, feeling him close in on her.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” replied Byer.
“I saw his shirt. Tim found out about the corn, didn’t he?” she challenged, even as she inched her way back. “And he was going to expose you. But you drove him off the road. What did you do to him, you sonofabitch?”
“Didn’t have to do anything. He was already bleeding internally.”
Jude screamed at him, “Because he’d eaten the fucking corn! What did you do with him?”
“It was his own fault,” replied Byer. “He made a big mistake – one that all you animal activists make. He came back to rescue a dog.”
Jude’s hip connected with something hard. Instinctively, she reached out and felt some kind of metal shelf that began to roll away. As it did, her fingers brushed against a row of slim cylinders and their needles. She knew what they were: euthanasia injections lined up, any one of which would provide a lethal dose of pentobarbital to a dog.
He didn’t speak right away, but when he did, his voice came from a place off to her right. “Hellooo?” he sing-songed.
She whipped around to face him.
“I’m over here,” he taunted, this time from her left.
Straining to hear his steps or the rustling of his clothes, Jude struggled to come up with something to say to keep him from hurting her.
But he quickly filled the gap. “This should make it a little easier, I suppose. The bleeding-heart animal activist devastated at witnessing the death of all the doggies. It’s too much to bear. She’ll never save all the animals. Better to end it all now.”
With that, he picked up one of the syringes and came at her, grabbing her arm and twisting it to give him a chance at a vein. Jude lashed out with a punch in the direction of his face. It barely connected, but in the instant that he dodged, she wrenched from his grasp. When she turned to run, she knocked into the cart. Spinning it around, she rammed it into Byer’s knees. The impact sent him flying backwards amidst the jangle of glass vials and metal instruments falling to the floor. It gave her enough time to get through the door and into the hall.
Her panic escalated as she realized that she didn’t know which way to turn. She could hardly see anything, just the barest of light from the ceiling and a long tunnel of black ahead. How could she possibly get away? Clinging to the walls, she stumbled down the hall, shouting for help. Her cries died into the baffling overhead.
Another doorknob in her hand. Turning it hard, she shoved her way inside. By now, she could see nothing. The blackness and panic became one and threatened to swallow her whole. Frantically feeling along the walls, she sought to take cover. She’d gone a few steps when she collided with something hard and cold. The sound of tiny, scurrying feet reacted to the contact. She ran her fingers along an eight-inch length of smooth plastic, then a break, and then another. Moving her hand upward, she reached more boxes. She could feel movement inside them and realized she was touching the stacked bins of rodent housing. This was where the rats and mice were kept. She tried to remember some of the photos that Tim had sent her. There would probably be six to ten of these racks in the room, each holding storage bins. Inside each bin, little bigger than a shoe box, would be two or three rats, maybe more. Jude felt her way past the first rack, her hands desperately exploring the air in search of the next one. When she found it, she crouched behind and held her breath.
The door opened with a crash, and Byer was in. She could sense him surveying the room and could hear the moment when he spotted her. It was just a small grunt, but it resonated with victorious fury. His footsteps grew closer, and she threw up her hands to protect herself. Useless attempt.
He pulled her up roughly and pushed her back, pinning her against the wall. She fought, kicking at his legs, but he held her hands in a vice-like grip and pressed them over her head against the cold plaster. His smell was strong and sour. It flashed through her mind that it wasn’t coming from him. It was the smell of her own death. She felt the sting of the needle in the soft crook of her elbow. No! She screamed and aimed a vicious kick at his groin. This time she connected, and he fell back, doubled over.
Jude lurched around him, but he grabbed her leg. She fell onto the floor. Scrabbling on her hands and knees, she tried to crawl away. She clutched at the linoleum tiles
, clawing for anything to hold onto. As Byer dragged her back, she writhed and kicked. In the struggle, one of the racks toppled and fell with a crash, storage bins scattering on the floor, lids flying off.
Byer threw himself on top of her and pinned her with his entire body. “You bitch!” he rasped in her ear. There was a moment when Jude felt the tingling of small claws cross her hands and the brush of fur against her face. He wrenched her arm behind her back and twisted it. She felt the needle once again, piercing her skin. “You fucking b—”
Right then, Byer let out a yelp and rolled off her. Jude heard the rodents’ feet, now scratching on the floor. It sounded like hundreds of them. And Byer screamed. He screamed like a terrified child and began slapping at his clothes. The sounds of rats screeching and hissing were all around them.
Jude didn’t wait. She squirmed away from him again, got to her feet, and ran toward the door. Or where she thought the door was. She banged hard into the wall. Ignoring the blow, she frantically felt for her escape until she found it. Behind her, Byer was making strange noises.
Jude stumbled down the hall and ran directly into a pair of strong arms. In her terror, she swung her fists, trying to break away. But the arms held her fast, and she heard his voice. “It’s me, Jude. You’re okay. It’s okay.”
“Lucas?” she whimpered.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“He’s trying to kill me,” she cried, looking futilely over her shoulder.
“Who?”
“Byer. He killed Tim.” It was only then that she took in the other footsteps running down the hall. At first, she thought Byer was coming after them. “We have to get out of here,” she cried.
And then she heard heavier boots coming from somewhere else. And shouts. She didn’t understand.
“It’s alright,” said Lucas. “Come with me.” He guided her away from the chaos down the long hall. Without being able to see where she was, each step was excruciating. And he sensed her pain because he finally stopped and took her by the shoulders, repeating, “Jude, are you hurt?”