Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Lexi
A few minutes later, another car entered the lot and parked off to the side, away from the flashing police cars.
I immediately recognized Mr. Whiny, one of Dick’s minions.
As he started walking toward the building, he abruptly looked over his shoulder, started screaming, and sprinted full speed toward the gate.
Behind him, with an evil look on its face that gave me flashbacks to Hawaii, was the pig. Fortunately, the gate was still open, and when Mr. Whiny got there, he was able to slam it shut just as the pig barreled into it. The gate wobbled but held.
Mr. Whiny stumbled in the main entrance with a harried look on his face. “Oh my God. What’s going on?” he asked. “Why are there police and a pig in the parking lot?”
Dick pushed aside a policeman and grabbed Mr. Whiny by the shoulders. “The dog is gone again,” he hissed. “Find it.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Out there somewhere.” He pointed to the parking lot.
“I’m not going out there,” Mr. Whiny said. “There’s a pig patrolling the fence. If you want that damn dog, you find it!”
He turned toward the exit as if to leave, and Dick followed, but a cop blocked them. “Sorry, guys. No one’s leaving until we have everyone’s statements and figure out what’s going on here.”
As the staff took the animals back to the containment area, Dick led the officer in charge and me toward the security room, which was just off the lobby. We went inside while everyone else crowded around the door.
The security room itself was larger than I expected.
It was windowless, lit by fluorescent lights, and humming with electronics.
One wall was covered in monitors arranged in neat rows, each showing a different angle of the facility, including the hallways, doors, and exterior views of the parking lot and the fenced yard.
A metal desk sat beneath them, with a stained coffee mug and a laminated checklist titled Night Operations Protocol resting on it.
Dick pushed his way to the front, chest puffed out like a man about to be vindicated. “This is the heart of our operation,” he said. “State-of-the-art surveillance.”
The lead officer crossed his arms. “Who was on duty tonight?”
Dick waved a hand dismissively. “There’s no physical guard overnight. We don’t need one. We have eyes and ears everywhere.”
That drew a surprised look from the policeman.
“The building is fully secured,” Dick said. “Cameras, motion sensors, alarms, and access controls. Everything is automated. We’ve never had a break-in. Not once. This place is locked down tighter than Fort Knox.”
I glanced at the monitors. “So, no one actively watches the feeds at night, either?”
Dick scoffed. “That would be redundant. The system flags anomalies automatically. If something trips, we’re immediately alerted.”
“And did it alert you?” the officer asked.
Dick opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “Well, yes. Eventually. As soon as the alarms went off.”
“After the animals were already loose?” the officer asked.
Dick bristled. “I…I don’t know.”
The officer gestured to the screens. “Okay, well, let’s review the footage.”
Gray, Gwen, and Barbie sidled up next to me. Basia was still in the car with Tootsie. We all watched as Dick rolled the footage back until about closing time.
Dick skimmed through a few hours of staff members walking the halls, going to the bathrooms, or checking on something.
But there was nothing out of the ordinary.
The footage covering the animal area showed no one going in or leaving it after seven thirty in the evening.
I spotted something just as Dick started scrolling forward again. My breath caught.
Then, abruptly, the image of calm erupted.
Animals started flooding the corridors. The door to the lab was suddenly wide-open.
What little staff were on the premises were running out of their offices to see what was happening and then ducking back into their offices.
Alarms flashed and blared. But nowhere on the tape was there evidence of an outside intruder. No documented break-in.
And, most importantly, no Barbie on any of the footage.
Dick leaned closer to the screens, squinting. “That’s impossible. The animals couldn’t have just unlocked the door themselves.”
“Okay, so then what happened?” the officer asked.
“I don’t know what happened,” Dick snapped. “Someone had to open the door and get them out of the lab, obviously.”
“Maybe one of your own employees?” he suggested.
“No,” he said, forcefully pointing at me. “They wouldn’t do that. It was her.”
“And exactly how did I do that?” I asked lightly. “By walking through walls?”
He shot me a glare. “You know exactly what I mean.”
“I really don’t, Dick,” I said with special emphasis.
“Because according to your own system, nothing unusual happened until the animals started escaping. Maybe the door glitched and popped open of its own accord. Maybe everything was too automated and when something went wrong, it went really wrong.”
The officer made a note but didn’t comment.
“Officer, you must believe me, she is responsible for all this,” Dick said, pointing at me. “Somehow, she broke in and tried to destroy my lab.”
“Officer, I think I might have gotten a glimpse of the source of the problem there on the video,” I said. “Can I show you?”
“Anything you can do to shed a little light on this would be most appreciated.”
“Dick, if you wouldn’t mind backing up to closing time again, I thought I saw something in the animal containment area as you were leaving.”
“What kind of trick is this?”
“No trick. I just think I saw something on your video that could explain everything.”
Reluctantly, he complied. “There, that’s it.”
On the screen we could see Dick leaving the biocontainment area door. “Stop,” I said. “Freeze it there.”
We peered closer and saw the door to the animal lab hang up partially open behind him as he walked away without noticing.
“That’s it,” I said. “The door was inadvertently left open. It looks like you were the culprit.”
Dick stared at the open door with his mouth wide-open. “That’s impossible. I was already gone before that time.”
I peered closer at the video. “This time stamp shows 8:21 p.m. What time did you leave?”
“I was gone by seven thirty, and I can prove it. The system will show I exited the building at that time.” He was pawing furiously at the keyboard, calling up the access log for the day.
“There,” he proclaimed as the log finally appeared on the screen. “My employee number is 101, and you can see that I left the building at…” His voice trailed off.
I leaned over his shoulder and finished his statement. “It looks like 8:35 p.m. That would line up with the video. Would you like me to take a picture of the screen, Officer?”
Dick was babbling incoherently. “What? No. Impossible.”
Barbie, who had been quietly peering over the shoulder of someone in the doorway, spoke up.
“Officer, if we’ve resolved how the animals got loose, I have another point to make, since you’re already here.
From what research I’ve been able to gather on this lab, they do not have the proper credentials to conduct research on vertebrate animals.
And yet, wasn’t that a chimpanzee I just saw in the parking lot, jumping up and down on the hood of a car? ”
“What? That? We’re not doing research on chimpanzees,” Dick said. “That chimp is here for different things.”
“Funny, because that’s exactly what Vision Zone Technology said when I investigated their lab for unethical research on animals twenty years ago,” she responded.
“Regardless, this lab is not certified to host or use vertebrates as research subjects. And, unless I’m mistaken, all of us just saw cats, dogs, monkeys, a chimp, and a pig come out of your lab.
In case you need a science refresher, all those animals are vertebrates. ”
“Who the hell are you?” Dick asked her in surprise. “And what are you doing here?”
“I’m the investigative journalist who broke open the Vision Zone Technology story twenty years ago,” she replied. “It’s starting to look to me like that animal research never really went away, did it?”
“Interesting as all that may be, ma’am, why are you here at three o’clock in the morning?” the lead officer interrupted.
Barbie lifted her hands. “I received an anonymous text message tip to show up here at 3:00 because there was a story unfolding that I’d want to see. And being the curious investigative reporter that I am, I showed.”
“Another anonymous text?” the lead officer repeated, frowning.
“Yes, sir. It said there were animals in danger because the lab is an uncertified, unregistered biomedical research facility. The lab was allegedly undergoing unapproved testing and life-threatening procedures that violate numerous laws and animal welfare regulations in the state of New Jersey and the United States. I even received pictures of animals being operated on in this very lab, which would be in serious violation of many statutes. See?”
Barbie expanded a couple of the gruesome photos she’d taken earlier and showed the policeman. Those who saw the photos gasped and covered their mouths in shock.
The policeman slowly lifted his eyes from the photo to Dick. “Sir, does this lab conduct experiments like this on animals?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he exclaimed, obviously very flustered. “I don’t know where she got those photos. That’s not our lab.”
“You can corroborate these photos by the background,” Barbie said. “You can even check it yourself. Right now.”
“You wouldn’t be lying about this, would you?” the officer asked Dick again. “If so, that would be considered impeding this investigation.”
“I—I don’t know,” Dick stammered.
“Officer, I got the same anonymous text tip,” Mandy said, stepping forward. “It’s interesting, because this lab was already on my radar. So I was quite intrigued to get a tip about it.”