Part 25 (1/2)

”I don't believe it,” she said.

I'd said the same thing that afternoon. Looking at the hogs, listening to Melford explain how they were housed, why they were housed that way, and what it did to them and the people who ate them, I hadn't believed it. Looking right at it, I hadn't believed it.

”Believe it,” Melford said. ”Lemuel, over here. We're in luck. We've found some videotapes.”

So while Desiree finished snapping pictures, he and I shoved videotapes into his bag. We then shut out the light and left the lab. Melford looked at his watch. ”We shouldn't push our luck, and we don't want Lemuel here to turn into a pumpkin if he doesn't get to his pickup, but why don't we do one more lab. I kind of want to see Lab Two for myself. I've heard things.”

We followed him around a corner, where he opened another door. Here we were met by the sounds of subdued whimpering. The smells weren't much different from those of the monkey lab, but when he turned on the light we were met by a room stacked with dog cages, two or three on top of one another. Thin wooden boards separated them, but they did a poor job, and the feces from the animals above dripped onto the animals below.

A few let out tentative barks, but mostly they watched us. They rested, heads on paws, eyes wide and brown, watching. Off in the distance I heard one let out a whimper.

Melford handed Desiree the camera, and she began to snap photos again. He looked around until he found the clipboard he wanted. ”Oh, no,” he breathed. ”They're scheduled for an LD50 test for pesticide to start in two days. This is what sucks about this kind of operation. There's nothing wrong with these dogs. Those monkeys were the living dead, but these guys are savable. Unfortunately, we can't do anything. If we try to get them out of here, we'll get caught, they'll get brought back. The best we can do is doc.u.ment this and get the evidence into the right hands and wait for a better day.”

”Where do they get these dogs?” Desiree asked.

”A lot of shelters have deals with places like this. They send over unclaimed strays. But the truth is, labs have backdoor deals with animal abductors. People will steal pets and sell them to a place like this for fifty bucks a pop. You can make decent cash if you don't have scruples.”

Desiree put down the camera. ”Melford, we can't leave them here. They would at least have a chance if we could let them out in the woods.”

”We can't do it,” he said. ”How are we going to herd twenty or thirty dogs out of here without alerting the guards?”

”I'm not leaving them,” she said.

”You are,” he told her. ”If we all go to jail, we won't do any good. You want to walk this path, you have to harden yourself. You can't blow up every Burger King you drive past. You can't liberate all tortured animals from all the factory farms. You want to, but you can't, and it drives you crazy sometimes because everything you do is just a drop in the bucket. This isn't a fight for the moment or a year or even a decade. This is a battle that will be resolved over generations. And right now we have to make choices. We do what we can and we stay free and keep going and chip away at the edifice. Our getting arrested and those dogs being sent back to their cages isn't going to accomplish anything.”

”Doesn't choosing who lives and who dies make us as morally suspect as the people who put these animals here?”

”No,” Melford said. ”They put the animals here, not us. And we're doing the best we can-which right now is to bear witness.”

”We're taking one,” I said. ”We can take one, can't we?”

”How do you choose which one?” he asked.

I pointed. It was a black poodle. It wasn't Rita, Vivian's black poodle, but it was a black poodle, and I knew that Vivian would take care of it. I knew that she would regard it as some sort of divine compensatory gesture. Maybe the idea was silly, but I believed it. I believed that dog could have a home and someone to love it. This was no longer abstract, no longer theoretical.

”We're taking this dog,” I said. ”If you don't like it, you can leave without me.”

Melford swore but didn't say anything else. Desiree, however, nodded at me. ”If Lem knows someone who'll take the dog, we can't leave it here to feast on Black Flag.”

”She's a poodle,” Melford said. ”She'll bark.”

”I don't believe this.” I could feel myself getting agitated. ”Melford Kean, with ice water in his veins, is afraid to do the right thing?”

”It's a matter of being practical. I don't want to fight a battle that will lose the war.”

”It's one dog,” Desiree said, her voice hard. ”We'll keep her quiet. And I'm with Lem. We're taking the dog whether you help or not.”

Maybe it was that he didn't think he could dissuade her, but I had the sense that it was because he liked the fact that she felt so adamant. ”Boogers,” he said. ”Let's do it.”

He went over to the cage and began to open it very carefully. I suspected he knew enough to suspect that a dog that had been mistreated the way this one had might well turn on him, but she came out docilely and licked his hand. I figured that was a good sign.

”Okay,” he said. ”Let's try to pull this off.”

But when we turned around, we saw the guard standing at the door.

Melford didn't see it, but I did. Desiree reached into her back pocket and removed a switchblade. She didn't open it, but she balanced it in her palm. She might believe that Melford was committed to nonviolence, but she clearly had not yet signed off on that part of the Animal Liberation Front manifesto. Maybe the two of them belonged together.

”Can I help you?” Melford asked. He had found a leash and was in the process of attaching it to Rita's collar. He hardly even bothered to look at the guard.

”Who are you?” he asked. He was in his forties, overweight to the point that he had trouble walking. He stared at us with dark and heavily bagged eyes.

”I'm Dr. Rogers,” he said. ”And these are my two students, Trudy and Andre.”

The guard stared at us. ”What are you doing here?”

”I'm running a 504-J,” Melford said.

From the puzzled look on the guard's face, it seemed pretty clear to me that Melford had just made up the 504-J.

”How come I didn't get any word that anyone was going to be here?”

”Do you really think I would know the answer to that?” Melford asked.

”You have your ID card?”

”I'll show it to you on my way out,” Melford said. ”In the meantime, you can see I'm doing something. Are you new here? Because you're supposed to know that you must never disturb the staff when they're handling animals.”

The guard stopped to think for a minute. ”I've been here all day. How come I didn't see you come in?”

This question must have stumped Melford, because he paused.

”Right,” the guard said. ”I'm calling Dr. Trainer, and if he doesn't know what you're doing here, I'm calling the cops. Now put the dog back in the cage and come with me.”

”No, wait,” Melford said. ”Let me show you something first.” He handed the poodle's leash to me and walked over to his black bag. I stood frozen with fear. Desiree had her knife out, and now Melford was going to take a gun and kill this guard, just for doing his job. This wasn't some nefarious force of evil, like he claimed Karen and b.a.s.t.a.r.d were. This was some poor working a.s.shole.

I tensed, ready to dart forward, but when Melford took his hand out of the bag, he didn't have a gun. He had a stack of money. They were twenties, and I couldn't tell how many, but there was easily $500 there.

”I don't know what they pay you to keep guard over this house of horrors,” Melford said, ”but you have to know what goes on here is wrong. So I'll make you a deal. You take this cash and let us walk out with this dog. It's one dog. No one will miss her. No one will know we were here. Anyone asks, you say you have no idea. Simple as that.”

The guard looked at the money and then around the room. Sure, there was no sign anyone had been here. We hadn't vandalized the place. Many of the cages were empty anyhow, so no one would notice one more empty one. He didn't know about the missing videotapes, so it seemed like a good deal.

The guard s.n.a.t.c.hed the money. ”I'll make my rounds again in half an hour,” he said. ”If you're still here, I'm calling the cops and I'll deny you gave me anything.”

”Fair enough,” Melford said. He turned around to grin at Desiree, who already had the knife back in her pocket.

Most of the ride back went silently. We made a stop at a 7-Eleven and bought some doggie treats and water for the poodle, and she happily ate and drank in the backseat with me. She hardly made a noise. It was just one dog, I thought. One dog rescued from being forced to eat insecticide. We'd made some small difference.

I told Melford where Vivian lived, and we stopped outside her trailer; he tied the dog to the door, rang the doorbell, and we drove off. We were halfway down the street when her door opened and we heard her m.u.f.fled shriek of joy. What we didn't hear was the subsequent disappointment. It wasn't her dog. Her dog was gone, maybe dead. But it was a dog, and I had to think it would be some comfort.

We were tired from what we had done and what we had seen, but I was lost in another thought. Why had Melford said he had no idea what Oldham Health Services was if he'd been keeping his eye on the place for who knew how long? And what was its connection to b.a.s.t.a.r.d?