Allison Brennan - Cutting Edge

On the short drive from the morgue to Butcher-Payne, Nora spoke with the Centers for Disease Control. They were a bunch of pricks. Necessary, but pricks nonetheless.

At least the jerk she’d spoken with was. But she hoped she had them under control. They were on alert, but weren’t about to respond to this potential emergency without more proof that they were needed.

When she drove into the parking lot she was pleased to see that Sheriff Sanger had set one of his men on the entrance to check IDs to keep the media and others away. She didn’t want anyone without official clearance-especially the media-to get wind of the fact that there were twelve research animals potentially infected with a deadly virus loose in the area. She noted that Quin’s truck was still on-site. Arson investigations took time and painstaking attention to detail. All of which was vital when and if anyone went to trial.

She introduced herself to the team leader from the Department of Fish and Game. Kevin Barry was a tall, skinny, bearded wildlife biologist with long dark hair restrained with a rubber band. He and his people pored over a map of the area, identifying nearby bodies of water, while close by Melanie Duncan paced. When Nora approached, Duncan was on her cell phone talking to the vet who was driving in from UC Davis with a prototype electronic reader that could register the microchips embedded subdermally in each duck.

Nora let them do their job while she looked at her own map.

“Hello, Nora.”

She immediately recognized the low, sexy voice behind her. She braced herself against the presence of Duke Rogan before turning to face him. Even though she was prepared, she was still stunned that he had such a strong impact on her.

To compensate for this reaction, she got right to business.

“Anything from your security disks?” she asked him.

His face went from subtle flirt to serious. She almost regretted it.

“Jonah’s codes were used to get into the building. My staff is working on reconstructing the video surveillance.”

“What happened to it?”

“I wish I knew. It’s just not there.”

Nora saw that the lack of answers bothered Duke even more than her. Her job was, in part, finding the answers, so the search might disturb her at times, or irritate her often, but it was simply part of the process in an investigation. For a man of action like Duke Rogan, not knowing struck at his core.

“You’ll find it,” she said.

“I went by Russ Larkin’s apartment on my way here. He runs the I.T. department for Butcher-Payne. He’s not there.”

“He’s not here either. The sheriff’s department is keeping tabs on employees, neighbors, and potential witnesses, but I’m in the loop.” She caught the worry in Duke’s expression. “Are you concerned about Larkin’s well-being?”

He didn’t directly answer her question. “I put someone on his apartment. She’ll call me if he shows up there.”

“All right,” Nora said, “I’ll issue a BOLO for him if you think it would help. We do need to talk to all staff.”

“Good thinking,” he said. Duke gave her Russell Larkin’s vital stats and the make and model of his car. Nora sent the information to headquarters.

She began, “You don’t-”

He interrupted and gestured toward the Fish and Game trucks. “What’s this? Jim said some ducks are missing?”

Duke never made it easy to get rid of him. “We have reason to believe that the arsonists released the research ducks into the wild.”

Duke’s face darkened and he said in a low voice, “They killed Jonah to let some ducks out? They’re fucking nutjobs.”

Nora had no answer for him. It seemed wholly incomprehensible to her as well.

Kevin Barry looked up from marking his maps and said, “Can we identify them from their bands?” He specialized in birds, and Nora had immediately sensed his competence when first talking to him.

Nora said, “Most likely, the arsonists would have cut off the bands. They don’t want the ducks recaptured.”

“They should have thought about it before they released them,” Barry said.

Duncan was within earshot, and the researcher hurried over to where they stood in the staging area on the far side of the parking lot. “Release?” she balked. “How do you know the ducks were released? Why wouldn’t they take them home?”

Nora explained. “Animal-rights activists rarely, if ever, keep research animals as pets. Twelve mallard ducks? Where would they keep them? In their swimming pool? When the news gets out about the missing birds, neighbors and relatives could become suspicious and turn them in. In addition, they don’t believe that wild animals should be in captivity, by researchers or even themselves.”

“But you said they weren’t animal-rights nuts. That they were opposed to genetic research.” Duncan’s tone was accusatory.

“Yes,” she said, “but the fact that they took the ducks would suggest that they’re involved in more than one political cause.”

“Why do they think they can get away with it?”

“By cutting off the bands, the twelve ducks blend in with the thousands in the area. They’ve given them a chance of freedom.”

“You sound like you agree with them!” Duncan said.

Nora didn’t need to explain herself to this semi-hysterical woman, though she well understood Duncan’s anger. Nora was angry, too, but she didn’t have time for social niceties. In a clipped voice, she said, “Part of my job is to think like them, to understand their motivation and their goals. Their goal is to liberate the birds, not keep them as pets.”

Barry interjected, “Well, they’ll be neither free nor captive after we find them. They’ll be dead.”

Duncan panicked. “Can’t you return them to me?”

Barry shook his head. “Gotta kill ’em. Them and any duck in the area. We can’t possibly risk this virus spreading. And after, we’ll have to sample birds in a wider area, make sure we got them all and the virus didn’t spread.”

Duke leaned over to Nora. “Is that true?”

She nodded. “I hope we find them all quickly.”

Duncan resumed pacing, then glanced up at a van whose driver was showing credentials to the deputy manning the entrance. “Finally!” She strode over to the car that had just been waved through by the deputy.

Nora assumed it was the veterinarian and said to Barry, “Are you ready to go? I think that’s the vet with the equipment.”

“Almost.” Barry pulled a map from his pocket. “These nuts could have taken the birds anywhere. Do you have any idea which direction they’d go? Looking for a dozen ducks in the Gold Country is harder than finding a needle in a haystack.”

Nora considered what she knew about how these people operated. “Maybe not as hard as you think,” she said slowly as she looked at the map and the areas the Fish and Game staff had already marked. “First, they’re not going to keep the ducks for too long. They left here between one-thirty and two in the morning. They wouldn’t take the ducks anywhere near their work, school, or residence. That would increase the odds that someone they know would see them releasing them.”

“And you know where they live?” Barry asked sarcastically.

She ignored his comment and put herself in their shoes-easy to do, since she’d learned from one of the best animal liberators: her mother. “They won’t take them to the closest lake-they’d assume that’s where we’d go.”

She remembered the times she’d freed research animals with her mother. When she was little she thought she’d been doing the right thing, the humane thing. But she’d learned far too quickly that freedom didn’t mean safety, at least not for animals who were raised and cared for by people.