“Fortunately, her hatred of cruelty outweighs her hatred of me.” I head to the driver’s side window. “Michael, you all set?”
Michael, one of Joel’s activist friends and an ex-slaughterhouse worker, nods. A divorced father-of-two still on a hangover from the punk rock scene, he had to remove an impressive number of piercings for tonight’s role. The piercings were there the last time I saw him, his neck fastened to the steering column of his car, which he parked in protest outside the gates of a research center experimenting on chimpanzees.
“You got the police scanner?” I ask.
Michael taps the scanner. “All set up.”
After testing the radios, I say, “Security patrol is in twenty minutes. The guard is accustomed to the sight of a cleaning van parked outside, but not someone inside the vehicle. Make sure you stay out of sight.”
“Got it.”
“If anything happens, we’ll meet at the emergency rendezvous point.” I clap Michael on the shoulder. “Good luck.”
“You too.”
If Michael has difficulty taking orders from a nineteen-year-old, he hides it well. Joel and I picked a good team. The priority for everyone is getting the animals out, no power plays here.
I rejoin Joel and Sue. After snapping on disposable gloves and pulling our peak caps low to obscure our faces in the event of hidden cameras, we make our way toward the back of the Animal Unit building, passing two large dumpsters and a haphazard pile of broken lab cages rusted by rain.
Joel pushes on the handle of the back door. Nothing happens. “It’s locked.”
Sue swears under her breath. “What do we do now?”
Joel looks shaken. “I guess we try to find another way in.”
“Wait.” I grasp the door handle and shove. The door gives a little. Leaning my shoulder into it, I strain against the door until it finally opens with a scraping sound. Our informant hasn’t let us down; the door is simply swollen from all the rain we’ve been having.
Sue goes in first with the service trolley, huffing a little when a caster catches on the doorframe.
I stay Joel with a hand on his arm, nudging him out of earshot of Sue. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not,” Joel replies, and I glimpse how this has thrown him. “I’m a liability, Justin. I’m not as quick as I used to be.”
“And I’m not as clever as I want to be,” I retort. “C’mon, you’re doing fine.” I squeeze his shoulder and he nods, still looking unconvinced.
We step inside. Since the play of flashlights will look too suspicious—and since we’re ostensibly here to clean—I locate the light switch and flip it. My gaze sweeps the necropsy room, taking in the circular saw lying on a table, the large drum with HAZARDOUS WASTE emblazoned on the outside, and two stainless steel sinks dominating one corner.
I depress the talk button on the radio. “Testing, one, two, three.”
“All clear,” Michael’s voice crackles back.
I thumb the volume control. From now on, we maintain radio silence, breaking it only in an emergency. “Let’s go.”
Earlier today, the three of us hunched over smudged building schematics and plotted our route. According to the informant, the beagles are housed on the second floor. We locate the elevator bank, our feet tracing the path in our heads. Sue’s staggered breathing and the nervous grinding of Joel’s molars compete with the hum of the elevator as it lurches upward.
We step out onto the second floor, a long corridor stretching out in front of us, closed doors on both sides. The air is warm and humid, typical in an animal unit. Attached to the wall next to each door are timers to switch the lights off and on every twelve hours.
As we walk the length of the corridor, my pulse is tripping like I just snorted a line. I find myself snatching glances at Sue. She seems way too jittery, like she’s ready to run at the slightest setback.
“According to the university’s web site,” Joel says casually, breaking the silence, “they chose beagles for the nicotine experiment because a dog’s respiratory system resembles ours.”
“What a load of crap!” Sue responds heatedly. “As if it isn’t obvious animals metabolize drugs and react to them differently than we do.” She continues her diatribe while Joel nods and makes encouraging noises.
I smile inwardly. Joel is purposefully distracting Sue in an effort to ease her nervousness.You still got it, old man.
Outside the fifth door on the right, Joel keys in the four-digit number we received from the informant. The door opens and we enter the outer room. With Joel breathing down my neck, I push open the double doors to the inner room where the beagles are housed. The smell hits me first, sneaking past the Vicks I smeared under my nose.
The room is silent, only the odd whimper and scuffle fracturing the darkness. In the corridor, Sue fiddles with the timer, and light chases away the gloom.
