Cutting Edge

CHAPTER EIGHT

Under other circumstances, the beautiful Lake of the Pines community-predominantly populated with the vacationing and the retired-would have enticed Nora into a long walk along the shore, or renting a paddle-boat to soak in the sun, or taking a cold swim. Though it was a popular spot for picnics and outdoor recreation, the area was well maintained, with numerous garbage bins encouraging people to throw their trash where it belonged. For the most part, people complied-probably driven to comply by the signs prominently posted advertising the steep fine for littering.

A light breeze cooled the heat from the day, and Nora remembered why she loved Indian summer best. The remnants of summer during the day, the hint of winter at night, warm colors and vibrant life surrounding her wherever she went. The time for harvest, the cycle of life, the greens and golds, reds and browns. Autumn was a time for reflection, of celebrating the end of one year and anticipating the next.

It was late in the afternoon, nearly five, and early commuters had stopped at the sight of police activity. The media had arrived; there was no stopping them from reporting. Fish and Game and the CDC had come up with a statement that bordered on the truth: Several ducks had turned up with a deadly virus and in order to prevent the spread of the disease, they had to destroy the infected ducks.

Dr. Ian Thomsen showed Kevin Barry how to use the prototype scanner. “It’ll read fifty feet away, provided there are no obstacles.”

“Fascinating.” Barry looked at the model. “The ones we use you have to be practically on top of the animal to get a beep.”

“The company making this one is going into mass production next year. Part of the difference is the implanted microchip itself.”

Thomsen and Barry started their walk around the lake with the microchip reader to see if it picked up a signal while everyone else waited at the staging area that had been cordoned off. Nora stood rigid, watching the men and not the ducks who swam up to them or waddled along the shore, looking for food. So trusting. If Nora’s hunch was right, all these animals would be killed.

Pete and Jim Butcher were talking with the CDC representative, and Duke stood by her side. She was finding it hard to compartmentalize her feelings.

“You don’t have to watch,” Duke said.

“I’m not going anywhere. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

How could Nora tell him anything when she barely understood it herself? It wasn’t that she felt responsible for what had happened at Butcher-Payne or what the arsonists had done with the ducks; it was a more ethereal feeling of helplessness and the need to be enraged in order to be more effective. She had to watch the end result of their stupidity to both hone her analysis and, perhaps, to punish herself. All the bad things she’d done in her past … not because she’d wanted to, but because she hadn’t known any other life.

“Nora?” Duke said softly.

“Not now.” Maybe not ever, but she couldn’t talk as she watched Thomsen and Barry walk toward her with the microchip reader.

Beep.

“Does that mean-” Duke began, but Nora put up her hand. She couldn’t explain, she needed to focus.

It beeped again. The beeps were faint, but definitely audible. The two men continued walking along the shoreline; the beeping stopped. Barry turned and walked along an inlet filled with reeds. The beeping started again and grew stronger. As they approached, the beeping increased in both tempo and duration.

They stopped and talked. Nora joined them, and Duke followed. She didn’t want to admit that she was glad he was with her.

“What are these numbers?” Barry asked Dr. Thomsen.

Nora glanced over. Numbers flashed across the device’s small display.

Dr. Thomsen frowned, then nodded. “There’re several ducks-I’ve never used it in broad scan mode, only the individual scan. This may be a glitch, but it looks like the display is flashing all the numerical codes it’s finding.”

Barry looked at the lake, then at the display. “Agent English, do you have that map I gave you?”

Nora pulled out the map of the immediate area. He handed her the microchip reader and looked at the map, then talked into his radio. “We hit paydirt. Get the nets. No guns.”

“You’re going to save them?” Nora asked, hopeful but unbelieving.

Barry shook his head. “We don’t have a choice. They’ll be killed and sent to our lab. I don’t think we can handle this quantity, and I’m sure the CDC will insist we ship every one off to Madison.”

“Wisconsin?”

“Right. The lab there has everything. A regular animal CSI unit.”

“But you said no guns.”

“One shot and we get one duck, the rest will scatter. Then we’re screwed. They’ll go in all different directions. If all twelve are here, our job is done when we get every duck in this area.”

Nora must have looked confused, because Barry added, “We’ll snap their neck. It’s instantaneous. Painless.”

Nora’s phone rang. It was Quin. She didn’t want to be interrupted now, but Quin might be calling about the case.

“Hi Quin. I’m kind of busy.”

“Lance told me you’re with Fish and Game at Lake of the Pines. Why? Did you find the ducks?”

“Yes. I have-”

“What are they going to do?”

Quin sounded panicked. Nora wished she had had the time to explain it to her sister earlier. “You know what they have to do, Quin.”

“How can you participate in a mass slaughter?”

“It has to be done or thousands of ducks are in jeopardy. You know that.”

“I–I can’t think.”

Lorraine had done a number on Quin. For some reason, Nora had never adapted to Lorraine’s way of life. She’d rebelled from an early age, knowing deep down what they were doing was wrong but not knowing how to stop. Quin had wanted their mother’s approval and attention so badly; she’d taken everything Lorraine said as gospel. It had taken Nora years to get Quin to think for herself and not spout out slogans and rants on every political subject under the sun.

“Honey, it’s going to be okay. Are you done there?”

“What? Yes, yes, for now. I’m coming.”

“Go home. Call your boyfriend and have him take you out to a nice dinner.”

“I can’t even think about eating when I know what’s happening.”

Barry said to Nora, “We’re about to begin.”

She nodded, and Barry motioned for his team to fan out.

“Quin, please go home. I’ll call you later.”

Quin hung up and Nora frowned.

“Something wrong with your sister?” Duke asked.

“She’s upset.” But Quin’s panic surprisingly calmed Nora. She did much better when she had a crisis to resolve; talking to Quin had put her in the proper mindset.

Barry and his team were working along the western perimeter of the lake. They all wore protective breathing masks. Dr. Thomsen and Dr. Duncan handled the microchip reader.

It was an assembly line with multiple approaches. Fish and Game employees captured the ducks with a net or their hands, brought them to Duncan and Thomsen. After twenty ducks, they still hadn’t found a bird from the lab. The ducks they’d captured were put in the back of an enclosed truck. If they couldn’t get a positive identification of a lab duck, all the ducks would be freed. But if they found even one from Butcher-Payne, the captured ducks would be killed.

The work was painstaking and methodical. The wait was agonizing. The sun dipped lower in the southwest; the air grew cooler.

Duke stood as close to her as he could without touching. She closed her eyes and wondered if she was crazy for wanting to give in to her attraction, but right now the idea of having someone come home with her, someone to hold her close, someone who understood her job and what she did and still cared … she wanted it.

How Nora could want something she’d never had, she didn’t know.

You wanted a home before you ever had a real one.

A loud beep cut through the silence and her eyes opened.

Thomsen inspected the duck, nodded. Melanie Duncan started crying silently as Thomsen handed the duck back to Fish and Game. “That’s one.”

Barry ordered the ducks already captured destroyed, and he took the Butcher-Payne bird from his staffer. Without hesitation, he snapped its neck and placed the bird in an individual bright orange plastic biohazard bag and sealed it. The other ducks were killed and then put in large clear plastic bags, ten to twelve per bag.

Nora stood and watched as duck after duck was scanned, killed, and sorted into an orange bag or clear bag. Even the wild ducks would be tested-blood drawn and dissected-in case the virus had spread in the day they’d swam with the contaminated birds.

It wasn’t the sight that bothered Nora the most.

It was the sound.

Like a thin, dry tree branch, each slender neck was snapped, the carcass disposed of in the correct manner.

Nora watched with wide eyes, fearing that if she only heard the sound she’d fall apart.

She remembered the day, years ago, when Lorraine had freed the wild horses. The horses Nora’s mother told her had been born free, and should be let free. Nora had helped. She desperately wanted to please Lorraine, who just told Nora the day before that she was pregnant.

Nora would never forget the stampede. Hiding in the brush. The shouts and curses of men and women trying to recapture the animals. The horse falling in front of her, the snap of his leg loud enough that Nora knew he was lame.

When a man found the distressed horse, Nora saw pain in his expression. Pain and shock and anger. He talked to the horse quietly, whispering so softly, so soothingly that Nora was almost lulled into believing what he said, that the horse was going to be okay, that he was safe. Nora didn’t hear the words, but she felt the rhythm, the tone.

It’s okay, boy … You’re safe … Shhh, relax.

The man, who looked like he might have been a cowboy though Nora had never seen one outside of a book, knelt by the horse’s injured leg. He gingerly touched it and the horse tried to stand, stumbled, and fell, his whinny full of agony.

“I’m so sorry.”

The cowboy took a gun from his belt and put a bullet in the horse’s head.

Nora froze. Stunned. She’d believed …

Then the man turned away from the horse, looked at the sky, his face wet from tears. Before then, Nora had never seen a man cry. She’d never seen such real pain.

Later, her mother told everyone who would listen, “That bastard just killed the poor animal in cold blood. Didn’t even try to save the horse. Probably enjoyed it. Or didn’t even think about it, just a stupid animal,” she added sarcastically.

Nora went to her mother later and said, “He was crying, Mama.”

“No he wasn’t,” Lorraine said. “And don’t call me Mama.”

That had been the day Nora realized that her mother was wrong, and if she would lie about the sad man, she could lie about anything and to anyone. That had been the day Nora started believing in herself and not in her mother, the day Nora had decided she wanted a different life, and she would do everything to get away.

Quin was born six months later, and Nora realized she couldn’t let her beautiful baby sister grow up like she had. She would find a way for both of them to be free.

Nora had been nine.

As Duke watched, a pair of mallard ducks, male and female, waddled up to where Nora was standing on the edge of the gruesome scene. Some of the Fish and Game people were enticing the ducks from the water with bread-they were all quite domesticated. Evidently, these ducks thought Nora had food for them.

“Hey, Agent English, can you grab those for me?” one of the men called.

Nora didn’t move. Her face was hard, icy, her entire body rigid. Something was wrong, even though he couldn’t see her eyes through her sunglasses.

Instead, Duke managed to catch the birds and bring them over to the assembly line. A moment later, Dr. Thomsen, the vet, ran a scanner over them. It beeped.

“That’s ten and eleven,” Melanie Duncan said, her voice thick with emotion as she sealed their dead bodies in the biohazard bags. Her face and eyes were swollen from tears, though her red eyes were now dry.

“Team B is done as well,” Barry said. “That’s it.”

“We’re missing one,” Melanie said.

“It’s not here,” Barry said. “But I’ll send the team out to canvass the area one more time.” He walked away, wiping his brow.

Duke went back to Nora. “Hey.”

She didn’t acknowledge him.

He reached out and touched her shoulder. She jumped, her body so tense he expected her to snap. Her face was pale, as if all the color from her tan had been leached out of her skin. “Please don’t touch me,” she whispered.

“It’s okay. Hey, Nora, it’s okay.”

“Go away.”

Was she angry with him for handing over the ducks? “They’re done for now,” he said. “Why don’t you sit down?” He looked around, saw a private place about twenty yards away, shaded by trees.

“Leave. Now.” She swallowed. “Please, Duke, leave me alone.”

Her voice cracked and Duke realized how precarious her emotional balance was right now.

Barry from Fish and Game approached. “That’s it, one’s missing. I sent everyone out to scan the area one more time, but we’ve already been around it three times. The vet said he’d drive around with me along the entire perimeter. Dr. Duncan said it’s a male, and he couldn’t have gone far, since their wings are clipped. I’m sending these other birds to the lab now. The CDC guy is getting a bee up his ass with the media here, and wants me to clear out ASAP. Is that okay with you?”

Nora nodded.

Duke had a half-dozen questions he wanted to ask. Then another voice from behind them called, “Sheriff, I found these in the Dumpster behind the bathrooms.”

Duke turned and saw a deputy carrying two cages.

Duncan exclaimed, “Those are from the lab!”

The sheriff of Nevada County, Donaldson, approached. “Tag them as evidence, Boyle.”

“Will do.”

“Agent English,” Donaldson said, “I think we should sweep the public restrooms. Don’t know that we’ll find anything-they’re not the cleanest of facilities-but we might get lucky. Is your lab handling the evidence? This is getting to be a jurisdictional problem, but we don’t have a big lab here. We send most of our big cases to Sacramento or the state lab.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Nora said, her voice restrained.

“Great. I’ll get it packaged up and off to your people. Wish this wasn’t so damn depressing. When my kids see the news footage, I’m not going to hear the end of it.”

Nora jerked her head toward the sheriff and snapped in a surprisingly harsh tone that sounded nothing like the Nora English Duke knew. “When criminals break into high-security labs and steal what doesn’t belong to them, bad shit happens.”

Her stance shifted, she tightened her jaw, making her cheekbones appear sharper.

“It’s a tragedy,” Duncan said. “Didn’t they think through what they were doing? A man died last night because they wanted to free a dozen research animals-and one hundred fifty-seven ducks are dead because of their reckless act.”

“Who’s talking to the press?” the sheriff asked the assembled group.

“The CDC,” Nora said.

“I’ll give him the stats,” Barry said. “He’s going to need some spin on it.”

“They’ll keep the lake closed for a few days, until we find that last duck,” Dr. Thomsen said. “We need to look-every minute we waste …”

He didn’t have to finish his thought. The group dispersed and Duke stood alone with Nora.

“Nora?” he said, gently but firmly putting his hands on her shoulders. He pulled off her sunglasses. Her eyes were dry, so dry they were red. She grabbed her glasses and put them back on, though the sun was setting and she no longer needed them.

“Why don’t I take you home?” he said. “Your partner can take the car back, right?”

“I’m fine,” she said.

She was anything but fine.

She stepped forward and a loud snap had her jumping as if she’d seen a ghost. She looked down and saw she’d stepped on a tree branch.

“Dammit,” she whispered. “It’s just a damn branch.”

Duke said, “I am taking you home, Nora.”

She didn’t object. She turned back to face him, her chin quivering, and said, “Thank you.”

Nora was grateful she didn’t have to drive back with Pete and listen to details about the case. It was after seven, and she’d been moving nonstop for sixteen hours. The sun was sinking, and so was she.

“Agent English!” a news reporter called out.

She jerked her head up. Everything was dark, but she didn’t take off her glasses. Not until she had her emotions completely under control.

“No comment,” she called, but no one heard her as a group of bystanders started shouting at her.

“Murderer!”

“The ducks didn’t do anything to you!”

“Killer!”

“Bitch!”

She noticed the flying object a second too late to avoid being hit in the chest by an open, partially filled soda can. The dark, fizzy liquid splattered across her chest like dark, watery blood.

She faced the crowd. They had no idea what was going on and why those poor animals had to die.

She saw Duke make a beeline toward the twenty-something girl who had thrown the can, a defiant look on her face. She wasn’t scared-or if she was, she hid it well.

“Rogan!” Nora called. He hesitated. The anger in his face was palpable. It gave her the strength she needed to shake out her memories, to put her mother behind her for the rest of the night. “It’s okay.”

She walked back to the reporter and said, “I have a brief statement.”

She was going to get reamed by her boss for this, but she wasn’t going to let the truth be shoved under the rug by the CDC, who would give no real information, other than that the public was safe. Everyone would believe that the government had overreacted and killed animals without good cause.

The news reporter rushed over, followed by the cameraman. Nora said, “I’m only saying this once.”

“Can I ask-”

“No,” she said emphatically.

“Okay. Okay, fine. I need your name-”

Nora reached into her pocket and handed him a card. She cleared her throat, saw that the camera was rolling, and began.

“The tragic killing of one hundred fifty-seven ducks today-specifically, five different species of ducks and two species of geese-is solely the result of a small group of criminals who broke into a private laboratory and released twelve quarantined ducks. The thieves believed that they were helping the birds by releasing them into the wild. On the contrary, they are responsible for all the dead animals you saw today.” She paused a moment, and when the reporter looked like he was opening his mouth, she added, “But even worse, they set the laboratory on fire and a human being died as a result.”

She wasn’t going into details regarding Jonah Payne’s death. She had some ideas about how to draw out one or more of the arsonists, and she didn’t want to give information that they might decide to keep in-house for the time being.

“Rest assured,” she continued, “the FBI, the domestic terrorism joint task force, the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office, and the Placer County Sheriff’s Office will do everything we legally can to find and arrest those responsible for this tragedy.”

She paused a second, then said, “Cut.”

“Can I-”

“No.”

She turned and briskly walked away. Amazingly she felt better. She’d been so scared earlier that she was going to completely fall apart-her compartmentalization technique hadn’t been working. Every snap, every duck, reminded her …

Don’t think about it, Nora. Don’t think about it.

She shook her head, needing to put it aside, and stumbled.

A strong arm wrapped around her waist. She hadn’t realized she was on the verge of falling until Duke pulled her up and held her against his side for a moment of time that was several beats too long for the chivalry of the act. And she liked it. A lot. His broad chest a perfect resting place for her heavy head; his warm, muscular arm holding her close. Just for a moment, just for a glimpse of what it would be like to have someone to call her own, someone who cared … but she’d given all that up long ago.

“You did good,” Duke Rogan whispered in her ear.

“I’m sorry for-earlier.”

“No apologies.”

Nora took off her glasses and put them in her pocket, then reluctantly took a step away from Duke. “Thank you for being here.”

Duke touched her cheek lightly. “I think I have a shirt in my trunk.”

She’d almost forgotten about the girl who’d pelted her with the open soda can. She glanced over her shoulder, but Duke said, “She’s gone.”

“Just an unhappy bystander,” she said. “I’ll live.”