Beneath the Cracks (39 page)

"This guy really was a nut job, wasn't
he?"

"That doesn't mean he wasn't brilliant or
capable of growing a deadly crop in the greenhouse, Crevan."

Briscoe shuffled into the room.  "They
found them bags we saw delivered yesterday morning.  They're
chock full of bundles of hundred dollar bills.  Zahar thinks
there could be a couple million bucks in there."

"I don't get it," Crevan said.  "Is the
money coming in as payment for the plants, or is it financing by
someone who wanted Denton to continue his research?"

"Could be drug money.  Let's not forget
the methamphetamine in Cox's body when he died.  We definitely
know there's a drug connection beyond the poison burritos in this
case.  Some of it will be sent to the crime lab for
testing.  There could be traces of meth on the money," Briscoe
said.

"Have they found any evidence that meth was
being manufactured here?" I asked.

"Nothin' so far, but like I said.  This
place is friggin' huge.  We could be out here for days,
Eriksson – provided more bodies don't end up in the trash in the
meantime."

The sense of urgency was overwhelming. 
We had to find the gulty parties behind the mess in Denton's lab
before they realized we were collecting evidence.  My mind
kept coming back to Denton's murder.  It stood out for obvious
reasons, and those went far beyond the method of his
execution.  We already knew that whoever was behind the crime
had nerves of steel.  Killing a cop was serious business, and
generally considered evidence of a willingness to resort to any
extreme in the furtherance of a crime.  But strolling into a
police division to execute a potential witness went beyond
chutzpah.

I glanced at my watch.  Ten in the
morning, Sunday already.  Had it only been a week since all of
this started?  "Have we heard from anyone at the crime lab
this morning?"

Briscoe shook his head.  "I'd imagine
they're none too happy with us for dumping a shitload more on them
from this seizure, Helen.  We've been runnin' those boys
ragged all week."

I pulled out my cell phone and made the
call. 

"Forsythe."  He sounded as weary as
Maya looked last night.

"Ken, it's Helen."

"Yeah, we've been calling everybody in to
help with the steady stream of evidence from Dupree Farm. 
Please tell me you're getting close to the end."

"I'm afraid we aren't, but that's not why
I'm calling.  Before I get into that, you might want to call
Chris Darnell and request back up to process through OSI's
lab.  We don't want anything missed because we're overwhelming
your team."

"That would be helpful.  If you're not
calling about those plants, which by the way, Billy Withers is
personally helping us process, what can I do for you?"

"I keep coming back to Brian Xavier and the
borrowed uniform.  I don't suppose you've had a chance to
examine it yet."

"Honestly, that sweat test for drugs is
relatively simple," he said.  "Once the sweat is extracted, we
use ion mobility spectrometry and get a result in a matter of
seconds."

"How long will it take to extract the
sweat?" I asked.

"Not long."

"Can you do it right away?"

"Sure.  Let me give you a call back
when it's done."

My phone was still in hand when Oded Zahar
made an appearance in the office.  He crooked one finger at
me.  "You need to see this.  My men and I don't know what
to make of it."

I followed him out of the office with Crevan
and Briscoe right behind me.  Zahar wove a path through the
interior of the lab, through rooms with expensive equipment,
laboratory specimen storage units, more nursery areas with budding
plants of unknown variety, and finally down a long corridor.

The moment we started trekking down the
concrete and cinderblock passageway, the unusual finding became
obvious.

"Cows," Briscoe shouted over the din. 
"Ain't that somethin'?  The weird thing you find on a
dairy
farm
is cows."

I tossed a grin over my shoulder and
followed Zahar to the end.  He turned and pointed to the wall
where several gas masks hung from hooks.  "We don't know if
there's some kind of contagion in here or not, but when we saw the
gear, we figured it would be wise to enter with caution. 
You'd better put one on.  This isn't the most pleasant room
you'll ever encounter."

The din beyond the door was already making
my temples throb.  I half expected to see a stampede when he
swung the door open.

Contrary to the chaos in Denton's office,
the large barn area was remarkably neat.  At least a dozen
head of cattle were contained inside individual wooden
stalls.  The noise was the result of their hooves banging
against the gates on the stalls in an irregular rhythm and the
incessant deep vocalization of animals in apparent distress.

Zahar shouted to be heard.  "Any idea
what's wrong with them?  I've never seen cows act this way
before."

"Jesus!" Briscoe tugged at one of my
arms.  "Helen, is this what mad cow disease looks like?"

Mad cow disease, or less commonly but more
scientifically known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy was
exactly what it sounded like – in the less common vernacular. 
The disease degenerated the brains of cattle to the point that it
resembled spongy tissue instead of normal brain matter.  It
was pointless trying to offer an explanation over the din.  I
shook my head and shouted, "No!"  Mad cow disease resulted in
the inability to stand, let alone kick up the storm of thundering
hooves we witnessed.

I jerked my head back toward the hallway
where the ruckus of the cattle could be dimmed by a closed
door.  I pulled off my mask the second the door closed. 
"We need a vet to come out and euthanize these cattle."

"You want to kill evidence?"  Zahar's
objections quickly passed the tip of his tongue.

"We have to examine them internally,
Zahar.  How do you propose that happens if not through
necropsy?  Are you volunteering to get close enough to those
animals for a thorough examination?"

"A vet can sedate them, see if there's
something that can be done."

I shrugged.  Any humane vet on the
planet would agree with me that the kindest action would be to
euthanize the poor animals.  "We'll agree to follow his
recommendation when he sees this for himself.  How soon can
you get someone out here?"

"I'll have to make some calls. 
Saunders at our crime lab probably knows who to get out here to do
the job."

I nodded.  "We'll be back in Denton's
office.  When the animals are neutralized and removed, that
room will have to be thoroughly searched."

Three hours later, after what felt like
gallons of coffee and near toxic doses of ibuprofen for the
headaches induced by mounds of evidence in the lab, Zahar showed up
once more.  "The vet has the animals euthanized,
Eriksson.  He wants to see you before they're removed."

This time, we took a shortcut to the lab's
barn facility on the outside of the building.  The fresh air
and sunshine invigorated me more than the coffee had. 

"Dr. Wozniak says there's nothing harmful in
the barn, that the masks were likely used because of the smell of
waste soaking into the hay in the stalls.  He thinks the place
was probably due for another thorough scrubbing."

"Is that all?"

"You need to talk to him.  I'm afraid
some of what he said went over my head, Eriksson."

Dr. Wozniak was directing his assistants in
removal of the dead cows.  He saw Zahar leading me through
doors large enough to accommodate a semi-truck trailer.  "Dr.
Eriksson?"

"Yes, what have you learned?"

"I suspect that these animals are full of
cancer," Wozniak said.  "I see evidence of gross abnormalities
without opening a single carcass.  Do you have any idea what
this research facility was doing?"

"He claimed it was telomere research. 
If you suspect cancer in his test subjects, it would certainly bear
out that theory.  He probably activated cancer cells in the
course of his experimentation."

"It explains my preliminary findings. 
Do you have any idea how rare breast cancer is in cows,
doctor?  There are only a few dozen cases documented in over a
hundred years, yet I felt the tumors in the milk sack of the first
cow we euthanized.  They were impressively advanced," Wozniak
shook his head in disbelief.  "Testing telomeres should never
be conducted on live animals, certainly not on this scale or at
this stage.  Absolutely not on cattle.  Do you have any
idea how many times these animals had to be shot with tranquilizers
before we could get close enough to euthanize them?"

I had no idea, but Wozniak didn't expect an
answer.  "Zahar said you thought the animals were being tended
otherwise, that the barn had been cleaned, but was in need of
another change of hay."

He nodded.  "Though I can't imagine why
anyone would keep cattle on a concrete floor.  It's a wonder
these poor animals could stand at all."  One of the carcasses
rolled by on a transport dolly, and Wozniak stopped it.  "Look
at this animal's hoof, Dr. Eriksson."

Instead of the smooth, hard surface one
imagines on cattle, the hoof was grooved and uneven, looked
abnormally thick.

"Like I said, whoever is responsible for
this has a lot of questions to answer.  I'd like to have the
other cattle on this dairy farm examined for similar
treatment."

Something clicked in my head, staring at a
hoof that looked like a calcified fist.  "Dr. Wozniak, have
you ever prepared a cast of an animal's hoof?  Like an
impression that could be used for comparison to an injury?"

Briscoe and Conall, who had followed from
Denton's office, listened quietly to the discussion until now.

"Son of a…that's what killed our homeless
guys, isn't it?  They got kicked so hard by these crazy cows
that it ripped their guts open." Briscoe stomped in a small circle
and kicked up a cloud of dust.

Wozniak stared at me.  "Well?"

"A slight exaggeration.  Nothing was
ripped open, but there was a consistent internal injury to a few
men who I suspect were hired to tend to these cattle."  I
walked to one of the open stalls.  "If a man of say, Detective
Conall's height was standing here and suffered a kick from one of
the cows, where would the impact point be in your opinion, Dr.
Wozniak?"

He positioned Crevan next to the door,
pocked with dings from the deceased former occupant of the
stall.  "I'd say middle-upper abdominal area.  Is that
consistent with the injury in the homeless men?"

"You tell us," Crevan said.  "Would a
kick like that have enough force to rupture a diaphragm, for
instance?"

"Sure.  Ordinarily I wouldn't think so,
but considering the condition of these cattle, and the…is there
such a thing as psychosis in animals, Dr. Eriksson?"

"Not in the sense that we understand
psychosis, but I understand what you're saying.  There was a
noticeable change in the behavior of these cows, and a high risk
for injury based on that atypical behavior."

"So the homeless deaths really were
accidental," Tony muttered.  "I'll be damned."

"That didn't justify dumping the bodies,
Tony," Crevan said.  "There was still a criminal act involved,
one that lead to Cox's murder."

"Right," I said.  "Even if the deaths
of the homeless men were accidental, they couldn't report
them.  To do so would've risked exposing Denton's horrible
research.  I think this building has proven why the guards out
here carried automatic weapons."

My cell phone rang.  I held up one
hand.  "Eriksson."

"Sorry it took so long to get back to you,
Helen.  It's a madhouse around here and getting worse.  I
finally got the sweat test done on Brian Xavier's uniform.  We
called Xavier over for a drug test just for confirmation."

"Methamphetamine?"

"Oh yeah, in the sweat but not in
Xavier.  Does that help you?"

The forgotten printout from Ben Karen's dry
cleaning business was in my purse, tucked into the console between
the seats in the Expedition.  I felt an inexplicable urgency
to review it in more detail, with a database or two in front of me
to check criminal backgrounds against the names.  "It helps
more than you know.  Thanks, Ken."

Before I could relay the information, one of
Zahar's men yelled, "We've got a trap door under the hay in one of
the stalls."

The unit fell into formation and disappeared
below with guns drawn.  Zahar warned us to stay put until
whatever was below was cleared by his tactical team.  Seconds
ticked by and seemed like hours. 

Finally Zahar shouted from below.  "All
clear.  We found the meth lab."

Chapter 35

Sneaking away from Dupree Farm wasn't going
to be easy.  Briscoe and Conall's Crown Victoria was destroyed
in the shootout with Dupree's security guards.  Zahar and his
men were expanding their search of the farm to include more than
the initial warrant had stipulated after the meth lab was
uncovered.  Darnell showed up by late afternoon for an
update.  Briscoe started the tour of everything we
discovered.

"Crevan, could you get a couple of techs in
here to box up all of this paperwork from Denton's office? 
I'm gonna go find Zahar and see if they've found anything else to
further overwhelm CSD."

I glanced at my watch.  Six
fifteen.  By the time I got back to Darkwater Bay, it would be
close to eight.  One of the vans from OSI was stuffed full of
evidence and ready to return to the city.  I slipped out of
the research building and snagged the tech before he climbed into
the van.