I hesitate briefly at the open gate, and then walk through and cross to the entrance to the garden.
It is eerie quiet. There are two paths; the one that winds through from which you can observe the Bengals, the same path on which Thomas was killed and where we had the confrontation with Lester before he became Bengal dinner; the other, what I consider the maintenance path, is the one Aileen took me on when we released the cow and pigs. I choose the later one.
As I move along the pounding pressure in my chest increases. Not only is the tragic event eminent, but I’m getting closer to it. I would turn and run but I already know I cannot escape it. It keeps drawing me closer. For some ungodly reason I have been chosen not only as a foreteller, but as a witness.
The doors to the barn are cracked open. There are voices. I slip in and slink along the dark edges until I come to the stairs to the loft from where I can see the backs of two security guards. One has a rifle slung over his shoulder; the other has his pointed at the ground. The voices are not theirs and neither are they English. I move up the stairs and peek around to see a half dozen Mexican men. Two are herding several pigs down a ramp off a truck. One pig makes a break for it and heads toward the security men. They holler and spread their arms until the pig turns. The Mexicans take control and the pigs head off out of my sight. The other four Mexicans are mucking out stalls. I silently continue my ascent into the loft.
From various viewpoints I watch the events below. There are a total of seven Mexicans and three guards. Once the truck is empty of animals, they toss in the straw, hay and muck that they’ve pulled from the stalls. I watch for forty-five minutes, until they start putting the tools away. Then words from one of the guards send several Mexicans up the stairs and into the loft. One guard follows. I dash into a corner, behind some hay bales and hope that it isn’t these hay bales they go for. I’m lucky. They go to the other side and start breaking bales and tossing them down to the waiting cows. My bet is that the others are feeding the pigs. This must be a weekly event, and they come in via the road I saw from the roof.
Where do they come from? Where are they living?
Which one of them is about to die? I know now that it’ll probably be one of them and it’s very close–within minutes I’m sure.
But nothing happens. They finish dropping the hay and go back down the stairs. I return to where I was watching. Several are moving the hay into bins for the cows. Another is drawing water into troughs. One is behind several of the cows and is not visible to the guards. Suddenly he backs into the holding pen and then slips through the gate leading into garden number three. He thinks he’s escaping. “Hey!” one of the guards hollers and the Mexican disappears from sight. In the resulting commotion I retreat down the stairs and out of the barn and sprint toward the third garden. I race up to the observation deck, take up the binoculars and look out over the sabre-tooth habitat. The Mexican is already on the same path as the cow the other day and he’s running for his life. Does he know his guards have not gone after him, that his actual pursuers are not human and are already aware of his presence?
Within two minutes he exits out the far end and disappears. The two male sabre-toothed cats exit as well, only twenty or thirty yards on his heels. Both of the female cats, Nadia and Duscha, lie together under a bush on the other side of the garden. They don’t seem to be aware of the approaching kill, or else are still quite satisfied with the cow.
I do not witness the actual death this time, but I feel it at the moment it takes place. The pressure in my chest releases and my body relaxes. I lay the binoculars down and sit on the bench.
What next? What more is there to Sans Sanssabre?
Whatever it is, I’m becoming more and more inclined to not want to know. My expose-the-facts side of me is shrinking away and I just want to take Tanya out of here, go home and face the consequences of my actions. I have a feeling we are not going to be allowed to leave. Does Tanya’s sister know exactly where we are? Would we just disappear, never to be heard from again, a mystery our daughters will talk about for the rest of their lives, they to be raised by Aunt Suzie? There is something deep and dirty in this place and we are too close to it to be allowed to leave. Why did Doctor McCully die? Was it jealousy? Why did Thomas die? Did he know something he shouldn’t have known? Is Wolf really away taking care of his sick mother or was he terminated as well? What about Lester? Why was he killed?
I stand and look out across the garden. I’m beginning to think like Professor Boggs. He’s convinced that the Bengals were instructed in some way to attack, that it’s all premeditated murder. Maybe he has gone off the edge and I’m going off with him. But there is something that stinks in Sans Sanssabre and it’s more than just using illegal immigrants to maintain the stock.
Lay low, Zach. Tanya is here and you need to get her, both of you, out. Don’t do something stupid like what you’re doing right now. What are they going to do to you if they catch you in the gardens? And if they decide to terminate you, what about Tanya? They won’t be able to let her go home. They’d have to kill her too, and then they’d have to track down whoever else knows where you are, and tie up all the loose ends. They’d find Tanya’s sister and the girls. Would they kill them all as well, or are you overreacting here, Zach?
Can I get out of the gardens without being spotted? What if they all left and locked the gate behind them. Can it be opened from the inside without the code? How soon before they’re back watching the monitors?
I rush down the stairs and head back on the run. In the first garden I slow in case I should come upon them. I don’t. When I get to the gate, I find it closed. I look around for some way to open it. Why have I not paid attention the other times I’ve been out here? There is a button next to the door and a speaker. I don’t want to alert them of my presence so I step way.
I’m trapped. The only way to get out is to admit to security that I’m in here. There has to be another way. If I stand here too long someone will eventually look at the monitor and see me. I could go back into the garden. Maybe there’s an “Open Gate” button in there. I get several paces toward the garden entrance when I hear the clank of the lock releasing on the gate. It pops open several inches. As I go through and approach the door, it opens. My heart races and there is a sudden weakness in my legs as I expect to be dropped to the ground by a goon with an attitude. But it’s not one of the dog-faced guards. It’s Aileen.
She drags me in by the arm. “What in the hell are you doing out there?”
“Where’s Tanya?”
“She’s back in your apartment. You’re lucky I saw you out there. If security had seen you . . . well, shit, I don’t know what would have happened. How did you get in there anyway?”
“The gate was open.”
“Open?”
“They were bringing in more animals and cleaning up. Had a bunch of Mexicans. Illegals no doubt.”
“Yes, yes,” she says. “We can’t talk here. Come on.”
I go with her up to my apartment.
“Wait,” she says and goes in. A half minute later she comes out with Tanya. “Let’s go.” Tanya gives me a look. I don’t know what it means. She follows after Aileen. I take up the rear and wonder where we’re going, not so much right this minute but more along the line of our marriage; our life. I’m certain I’m headed for the dog house. Will my dog house be a cheap one-room apartment on the seedy side of Dallas so that I can pay child support and alimony? It’s such a small indiscretion.
We take the stairs to the fourth floor. Aileen puts her finger up to her lips as we pass the open door to Henri’s office apartment. We continue on to Vandermill’s residence. She has a key. We go in.
After the door is closed Aileen says, “Victor doesn’t have cameras in here, so we can talk. No one knows where we are and I don’t think it would occur to them to look here.”
“But there are cameras in the halls. They have probably seen us come in here.”
She shakes her head. “
I doubt it. There’s something going on. I don’t know what it is but all security is involved. When that happens the guard watching the monitors is elsewhere. Besides they’re short one as a result of Lester’s death.”
Victor’s place is huge. It’s at the end of the building with corner windows giving a great view to the East and North. My eye is almost level with the top of the dome buildings. I think about what Sergei and Karlov, the two male sabre-toothed cats, are doing right now and hope that the Mexican’s death was swift and painless.
“I know what’s going on.”
“What?” Aileen says. She and Tanya walk up next to me.
I then see some movement off to the left, north of where the Mexican would have exited garden number three. There is a break in the trees, a small opening, and I see at least one animal, maybe two. I’m surprised that at this distance I can see anything. I look around the apartment and sure enough, Victor has a pair of binoculars on the lower shelf of a coffee table. I retrieve them. “One of the Mexicans tried to escape.” I raise the binoculars to my face and adjust them.
“Escape? How? There’s nowhere for him to go.”
“He went out the chute from the barn into garden three.”
“Oh, God!”
“What?” Tanya says. “What does that mean?”
“Garden three,” I say, “is where the four sabre-toothed cats that protect the area around Sans Sanssabre live. Anything that enters their area is fair game.” I point to the break in the trees and say to Aileen, “See the opening between the two stands of pine, about fifty yards left of the building?”
“Yes,” Aileen says.
I hand her the binoculars. “Tell me what you see.”
She looks and her face turns white. She hands me back the binoculars and I offer them to Tanya. She shakes her head. “No thank you. I get the picture.”
I lay the glasses down and collapse onto a sofa. “So what all is going on here, Ms. Bravelli?”
She takes a deep breath and sits in a chair. “Victor has been using illegal immigrants since the beginning. It isn’t so much the cheap labor; he could afford more. It’s the quiet labor. Illegal immigrants are a labor force who won’t talk.”
“Won’t talk about what? There’s another level to this place, an area the size of this building but one more floor down. What’s down there?”
She shakes her head. “You two need to get out of here. The less you know the better.”
Now I’m really beginning to hate myself. An hour ago I wanted to leave, run away from it all. Now I want to know what is hiding in the dungeons. The got-to-have-the-facts side of me surfaces at the wrong damn times. “What the hell is down there? Double fences with rows of barbwire and sabre-toothed cats for security, plus an armed-for-combat human security force with cameras everywhere tells me that Victor is protecting more than sabre-toothed cat and organ cloning experiments. There is something deeper and darker that everyone knows about and everyone guards.”
She only looks at me.
“Wait,” I add. “Not everyone wants to guard it. Some want to expose it.”
She still says nothing, but she wants me to know. She wants me to figure it out on my own so that she doesn’t have my blood on her hands and she can truthfully say that she didn’t tell me.
“Whatever it is Doctor McCully must have threatened Victor with exposing it, so Victor killed him. Could it be that you and the doc planned out how to do it during your late-night rendezvous? You’re worried now because you don’t know if Victor knows that you were in on the plan. Or maybe he does know but because you . . . ah . . . ah ha! That’s why you slept with Victor. You knew he found out. You were protecting your own ass.”
Her face remains rock solid expressionless. But her eyes flicker just a little.
“But you didn’t know that Victor would kill, did you?” I jump to my feet. Things are coming clear. “When you saw McCully lying in his own blood did you suspect that Victor did it?”
She slowly shakes her head. “No. I really thought it was Simon.”
“It was when I told you Victor had motive and means that things started coming together for you, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. But I didn’t believe you at first, especially since it was well known that you didn’t stick around long enough to analyze Simon, that you ran off and got sick and then locked yourself outside the building to nearly freeze to death.”
“You aren’t the only one on the Sans Sanssabre payroll who talks to me in private.”
“Who else?”
“Sorry. Professional ethics and all. What’s going on in Sans Sanssabre’s cellar, or do I have to guess until I hit it?”
“You have a talent for figuring things out after being told almost nothing.” Aileen looks at Tanya. “Has he always been like this?”
“As long as I’ve known him. When the girls are old enough to date, I feel sorry for them. When we were dating I couldn’t hide anything from him, especially the other guy I was still seeing occasionally.”
“You were dating two guys at once?”
“It wasn’t like I was engaged to either of them.” Tanya gives Aileen the look. “And neither of them was married.”
Aileen inspects her feet.
I clear my throat and turn back to the window.
“That wasn’t meant to happen,” Aileen says, “and as I have already said many times, I am so sorry.”
“And as I’ve said,” Tanya’s voice softens, “it’s not you I blame. The blame resides right where it should.”
“I can’t believe how well you’re taking this,” Aileen says.
“Oh, I’m not handling it well at all. If I had any self-respect I’d have already cut his balls off. That, in my mind, would be handling it well.”
An eerie feeling that only men know about runs down my legs; my scrotum pulls up inside.
Tanya continues. “Right now there’s a more pressing issue. There’s plenty of time for handling it well later.”
I recover my legs. “Is Victor trying to create a master race?”
There is silence. I turn from the window. Aileen is looking off in the distance, her face expressionless.
“No. That’s not it.” I walk over to the display case holding the sabre jaws of steel. Even in their miniature form they look lethal, lethal enough to kill Doctor McCully. “Too big a project to be accomplished in the basement.”
And then I notice it. What turns my head to the right and up, I don’t know. Why I didn’t notice it before now, I don’t know either. Mounted in the corner, against the ceiling, is a dome of smoked glass.
Suddenly Aileen is standing next to me. “Oh, shit. That wasn’t there before.” She heads for the door. “Let’s get out of here.”
Tanya is on her feet and I’m right behind them. “Where do we go?”
“If they know we’re here and have heard every word we’ve said, they’d have already been here. We just need to get out of here before they start looking at the monitors.”
Aileen reaches for the door just as it flies open. Two security guards storm in; she shrieks and jumps. One guard pushes her hard with his rifle and she stumbles back eight feet before hitting the edge of the carpet. There is a glass-top end table behind her and there is nothing to do except watch her head smash down onto it. But in mid-flight she twists and sees the table, throws out her hand and catches the corner, taking the table top, the lamp and a crystal decorative dish full of hard candy down with her. The heavy lamp lands on her head with a crack. Both guards’ rifles turn on Tanya and me.
Henri Cassell steps in behind them. “Easy. We don’t have to get rough.” He looks at Tanya and me and then down at Aileen groaning on the floor. “I really don’t think they’re a physical threat. Take them down to room A. I’ll be down shortly.”
The guards herd us down to the elevator. Aileen is struggling with walking straight. One of the guards takes Tanya’s arm to guide her into the elevator. She jerks away. He grabs her again and pushes her. I s
tep between them, some crazy heroic move, and yell, “Leave her alo. . .” His fingers choke off the words and the next thing I know I’m against the back wall of the elevator hanging from his hand by my neck, my toes barely touching the floor. I’m choking while my head throbs where it hit the elevator wall. This is not your run-of-the-mill part-time security guard. These guys have had some military training.
“Enough!” the other guard yells. The one in whose grip I am being held holds me for another count of five, sends daggers out his eyes and then drops me. I crumple to the floor, coughing, gagging and struggling to breathe.
Tanya drops down next to me. I feel her hands. “Asshole!” she says. I hope it’s directed at the guard. She puts her back to the wall and pulls my head onto her lap. “I’m sorry,” she says to me, and runs her fingers through my hair.
Okay. Maybe I’m not the asshole, at least not on this count. The doors close and the elevator starts moving.
When the elevator doors open again I’m breathing without wheezing, but there is still a pulsing pain at the back of my head. I reach up and feel the knot. “Is this the dungeon where the real secret stuff goes on?” My voice is groggy around my crushed windpipe.
“Stand up!” the one who didn’t choke me says.
Tanya stands first and then helps me up. Aileen struggles to her feet from where she had slumped into the corner. Her eyes don’t look good.
“Out!”
We stumble into a hospital-like corridor and come up against a desk with another security guard. At the end of the corridor to the right stand two women talking to each other. One is very pregnant. The other might be. They are both Mexican. They glance our way and then continue talking.
“We caught them in Mister Vandermill’s office,” one of our escorts tells the desk guard. “Cassell told us to take them to Reception A.”
“Why?”
“Beats me. Just following orders.”
“No sweat off my back.”
The guard with the short temper leads, the other takes up the rear and we move along the corridor to the left until we come to the second door. The lead guard opens the door and then points us in. The door closes behind us and we are alone.
Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy Page 20