“Is there anybody here?” he called out.
The only reply came from the prisoners: more hysteria, more cage rattling. He stared across the room at them. They stared back, their teeth bared in fear or welcome; Dooley didn’t know which, nor did he wish to test their intentions. He kept well clear of the bench on which the cages were lined up as he began a perfunctory search of the laboratory.
“I wondered what the hell the smell was,” McBride said, appearing at the door.
“Just animals,” Dooley replied.
“Don’t they ever wash? Filthy buggers.”
“Anything downstairs?”
“Nope,” McBride said, crossing to the cages. The monkeys met his advance with more gymnastics. “Just the alarm.”
“Nothing up here either,” Dooley said. He was about to add, “Don’t do that,” to prevent his partner putting his finger to the mesh, but before the words were out one of the animals seized the proffered digit and bit it. McBride wrested his finger free and threw a blow back against the mesh in retaliation. Squealing its anger, the occupant flung its scrawny body about in a lunatic fandango that threatened to pitch cage and monkey alike onto the floor.
“You’ll need a tetanus shot for that,” Dooley commented.
“Shit!” said McBride, “what’s wrong with the little bastard anyhow?”
“Maybe they don’t like strangers.”
“They’re out of their tiny minds.” McBride sucked ruminatively on his finger, then spat. “I mean, look at them.”
Dooley didn’t answer.
“I said, look McBride repeated.
Very quietly, Dooley said: “Over here.”
“‘What is it?”
“Just come over here.”
McBride drew his gaze from the row of cages and across the cluttered work surfaces to where Dooley was staring at the ground, the look on his face one of fascinated revulsion. McBride neglected his finger sucking and threaded his way among the benches and stools to where his partner stood.
“Under there,” Dooley murmured.
On the scuffed floor at Dooley’s feet was a woman’s beige shoe; beneath the bench was the shoe’s owner. To judge by her cramped position she had either been secreted there by the miscreant or dragged herself out of sight and died in hiding.
“Is she dead?” McBride asked.
“Look at her, for Christ’s sake,” Dooley replied, “she’s been torn open.”
“We’ve got to check for vital signs,” McBride reminded him. Dooley made no move to comply, so McBride squatted down in front of the victim and checked for a pulse at her ravaged neck. There was none. Her skin was still warm beneath his fingers however. A gloss of saliva on her cheek had not yet dried.
Dooley, calling in his report, looked down at the deceased. The worst of her wounds, on the upper torso, were masked by McBride’s crouching body All he could see was a fall of auburn hair and her legs, one foot shoeless, protruding from her hiding place. They were beautiful legs, he thought. He might have whistled after such legs once upon a time.
“She’s a doctor or a technician,” McBride said. “She’s wearing a lab coat.” Or she had been. In fact the coat had been ripped open, as had the layers of clothing beneath, and then, as if to complete the exhibition, the skin and muscle beneath that. McBride peered into her chest. The sternum had been snapped and the heart teased from its seat, as if her killer had wanted to take it as a keepsake and been interrupted in the act. He perused her without squeamishness; he had always prided himself on his strong stomach.
“Are you satisfied she’s dead?”
“Never saw deader.”
“Carnegie’s coming down,” Dooley said, crossing to one of the sinks. Careless of fingerprints, he turned on the tap and splashed a handful of cold water onto his face. When he looked up from his ablutions McBride had left off his tête-à-tête with the corpse and was walking down the laboratory toward a bank of machinery.
“What do they do here, for Christ’s sake?” he remarked. “Look at all this stuff.”
“Some kind of research facility,” Dooley said.
“What do they research?”
“How the hell do I know?” Dooley snapped. The ceaseless chatterings of the monkeys and the proximity of the dead woman made him want to desert the place. “Let’s leave it be, huh?”