A half-open door off the living room shows an empty study, a table lamp highlighting a stack of papers on the mahogany desk. Directly opposite the living room is the kitchen. To the left of the kitchen is the TV room, the electric-blue glow of the television the only light in that dark room. I know there are alarm panels scattered throughout the house. I can’t allow Hutchinson to activate a panic button.
My nerves strumming, I make my way to the TV room and flip the light switch.
Graham Hutchinson is sprawled on the couch. At my intrusion, his head jerks up. “Officer...” The title stumbles from his lips, but the rest of his sentence trails off.
I watch him struggle to reconcile the uniform of a police officer with the ski mask of a criminal.
“Who are you?” Hutchinson demands, fear lending a quavering pitch to his voice. “What are you doing in my house?”
Although Amy’s father presents a timid and ineffectual figure in his plaid pajamas and bare feet, I remind myself not to underestimate him. This is a man who commands his own research program, who claims the respect of his peers, and who has caused the mutilation and deaths of hundreds of animals.
Ignoring his questions, I reach into my pocket and toss the envelope onto the coffee table. “Look inside.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Look inside!” I repeat, my voice harsh.
Still blinking owlishly, Hutchinson picks up the envelope and pulls out the contents. The photographs fan out in his hand. “Amy!” It’s an anguished cry. “What did you do to my daughter?”
“I paralyzed her. Then I stuck her in a cage for observation. Sound familiar?”
“You paralyzed her?” Horror and disbelief pull at his features. “Permanent paralysis?”
I shake my head. “I just gave her a taste.”
“Why...why would you do that?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
A frown jerks his eyebrows together. “You mean my work? My research?”
“If you want to call what you doresearch.”
A beat of silence passes. “Is that what this is about? Is that why you’re here? Because of my work?”
At my nod, he whispers, “How could you do this? Do you know how terrified she is of—” His mouth snaps shut, as if aware it’s spilled too much information.
But I’ve already pocketed the ammunition.
“What did you give her?”
“Pancuronium bromide.”
His eyes flash fire. “You could have killed her!”
“Yes, I could have.”
Graham Hutchinson would know that pancuronium bromide is one component of a three-drug cocktail used in some US states for death by lethal injection.
The photographs fall from Hutchinson’s fingers and spill onto the coffee table. His stricken gaze is once again drawn to them, to Amy’s terror-contorted face and the caricatured arrangement of her limbs. I don’t look at them. The images are stamped on my mind, a stain I can’t erase.
“I’m trying to understand,” Hutchinson says shakily. “Are you operating alone? Are you part of some group?”
“We’re an underground animal rights activist group.”
“Which one?”
“You’ll know the name of it only when Amy is released.”
