Phillip Margolin - The Associate

Kate walked over to another computer. “I can get directions and a map on the Internet.” While she worked Daniel took a closer look at Kaidanov’s study. The more he looked the more depressed he felt. Five minutes later Kate showed Daniel a map with directions to the lab from her town house. “I dug up something else,” Kate said. “After I got the map I found the assessment and taxation information on the property.

The land is owned by Geller Pharmaceuticals.”

Twenty minutes later Daniel was driving in the country on a narrow road with Kate beside him. The sun was setting and they had been quiet since leaving the highway. Kate was staring ahead and Daniel chanced an occasional glance at the investigator. Daniel had consulted with Kate at work a few times and she’d impressed him with her intelligence, but he had not been attracted to her. Now he noticed that she was good-looking in a rugged sort of way. Not model beautiful like Susan Webster, but interesting to look at. And she was certainly intriguing. He didn’t know any other woman who wrote voodoo software programs and had been a cop. “This is it,” Kate said. Daniel turned onto a logging road ignoring a “No Trespassing” sign. The shock absorbers on his secondhand Ford were not in the best of shape and Kate swore a lot after they left the pavement. She was registering another complaint when the road curved and a one-story building appeared. Just as they got out of the car the wind shifted and a strange odor made Kate’s nostrils flare. “What’s that smell?” Daniel asked. “It’s a little like barbecue,” Kate answered. Pieces of glass covered the ground under a window that had blown out and the front door was charred and had buckled. Daniel peeked through the window cautiously, then jerked his head back. His face was drained of color.

“What is it?” Kate asked. “There’s a body on the floor. There’s no skin. It’s like a skeleton.” Kate extended a hand toward the door tentatively, worried that it might be hot. She touched her fingers to the metal. It was cold. Kate pushed and the door swung inward. She looked for a light switch and found one, but it didn’t work. “Do you have a flashlight?” Kate asked. Daniel got one from the car and Kate started inside. He tried to follow, but she stopped him. “This is a crime scene. Just stay here and keep the door open so I can have a little more light.” Daniel propped open the door but did not go any farther. He was secretly grateful not to have to view the body. Kate walked slowly toward the room she had seen through the window and stood in the doorway. Part of the roof had collapsed and a ray of fading sunlight illuminated a section of the room. Charred wooden beams had crushed a table and what had once been a video monitor. Near the monitor was a rack of plastic test tubes that had been melted by intense heat. Kate edged around a burn-scarred desk that was tipped on its side. She noticed another roof beam resting on the top of two filing cabinets whose drawers had all been pulled out. The paint on the cabinets had blistered off. The metal was charred and scarred but intact. A breeze gusted through the broken window and drifted down through the gaps in the roof. It blew blackened scraps of paper around the room. The source of the paper was a pile of ashes in the center of the floor that Kate guessed had once been the contents of the filing cabinets. Kate’s eyes stayed on the pile for a moment more before being drawn, almost against her will, to the two bodies sprawled in the center of the room. One was human, its skull charred and its clothes seared to ash. Kate’s stomach heaved, but she closed her eyes for a second and kept it together. When she opened her eyes they shifted to the second corpse. For a moment Kate was confused. The body was too small even for a child, unless it was an extremely young one.

She braced herself and stepped closer. That’s when she saw the tail.

Kate backed out of the room. “What’s in there?” Daniel asked when she stepped outside. “A human corpse and a dead monkey. I’m going to look down the hall.” “We should get out of here,” Daniel said nervously.

“In a minute.” “No one’s alive. We would have heard them.” “Just give me a second.” The light from the doorway barely reached the end of the hall, so Kate had to use the flashlight. She spotted two open doors but had no idea what was inside. The smell of burned flesh grew more intense as she neared the rooms. Kate held her breath and cast the beam inside. The first room was filled with cages, each containing a monkey, and every monkey was pressing against the wire mesh as if it had been trying to claw through the wire when it died.

A uniformed officer was taking Kate and Daniel’s statements when an unmarked car parked behind the van from the medical examiner’s office. Homicide detective Billie Brewster, a slender black woman in a navy-blue windbreaker and jeans, got out of the car. Her partner, Zeke Forbus, a heavyset white man with thinning brown hair, spotted Kate at the same time she spotted him. “What’s Annie Oakley doing here?”

Forbus asked Brewster. “Shut the fuck up,” the black woman snapped angrily at her partner. Then she walked up to Kate and gave her a hug.

“How you doing, Kate?” Brewster asked with genuine concern. “I’m doing fine, Billie,” Kate answered without conviction. “How about you?” The black woman shot her thumb over her shoulder toward her partner. “I was doing great until they partnered me up with this redneck.” “Zeke,”

Kate said with a nod. “Long time, Kate,” Zeke Forbus answered without warmth. Then he turned his back to her and addressed the uniformed officer. “What have we got here, Ron?” “Crispy critters,” the officer answered with a sly smile. “If you ain’t had dinner, I’ll get you a bucket of KFM.” “KFM?” “Kentucky Fried Monkey,” the cop answered, cackling at his joke. “We’ve got a passel of ’em inside.” “Why am I investigating monkey murders?” Forbus asked. “Don’t we have animal control for that?” “One of the crispy critters ain’t a monkey, that’s why,” the uniform answered. “I understand you called this in,” Billie said to Kate. “Why were you out here at night in the middle of nowhere?” “This is Daniel Ames, an associate at Reed, Briggs, the firm I work for. One of our clients, Geller Pharmaceuticals, is in the middle of a lawsuit over one of its products. Up until last week all of the tests of the product came out favorable to Geller, but a scientist named Sergey Kaidanov reported negative results in a study of rhesus monkeys.” “The same type of monkeys we’ve got in there?”

Billie asked with a nod toward the lab. “Exactly. Everyone wants to talk to Kaidanov because the study could have a huge impact on the lawsuit, but he disappeared about a week ago.” “Anyone fixed the time of this fire?” Billie asked the uniform. “Not yet, but it’s not recent.” “Go on,” Billie told Kate. “Dan and I went to Kaidanov’s house to interview him. He wasn’t there, but someone had taken the house apart.” “What’s that mean?” Forbus asked. “Someone searched it and left a mess. We did a little investigating and found an address for the lab. We came out here hoping that we’d find Kaidanov and it looks like we have.” “You think the dead guy is your scientist?” “I think there’s a good chance he is.” “Let’s take a look,” Billie said to Forbus as she started inside. Kate took a step toward the door, but Forbus held out an arm and barred her way. “No civilians allowed in the crime scene.” “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Billie responded, glaring at her partner. “Forget it. He’s right. I’m not a cop anymore,” Kate said, trying to sound unconcerned, but Daniel saw her shoulders slump.