“What?” Tracy asked with alarm.
“Marsha Baldwin’s head!” Kim said. “It’s probably all that’s left of her, along with a few bones. As disgusting as it sounds, I’m afraid most of her must have gone for hamburger.”
“Oh, God!” Tracy murmured. Her eyes locked with Kim’s. She saw tears appear, and it made her respond in kind.
“First Becky and now this,” Kim managed. “I feel so damn responsible. Because of me, one tragedy had to lead to another.”
“I can understand how you feel,” Tracy offered. “But as I’ve already said, Marsha was doing what she wanted to do, what she thought was right. It doesn’t justify her death, but it’s not your fault.”
Tracy reached out toward Kim. He took her hand and squeezed it. For a few moments a wordless but powerful communication passed between the two people.
Tracy sighed, shook her head in despair, then took her hand back. She twisted around in the seat and started the engine. Before Kim had gotten to the car, she’d already hauled in the antenna.
“One thing is for sure,” Tracy said, while putting the car into gear. “We’re getting out of here.”
“No!” Kim said. He reached forward and put a restraining hand on her shoulder. “I’ve got to go back. I’m going to see this to the end. Now it’s for both Becky and Marsha.”
“Kim, this now involves proven murder!” Tracy said evenly. “It’s time for the police.”
“It’s only one murder,” Kim said. “And one murder pales against the murder of up to five hundred kids a year that this industry is guilty of in the name of increased profit.”
“Responsibility for the children might be hard to prove in court,” Tracy said. “But finding the head of a person makes a startlingly clear case.”
“I found the head, but I don’t know where it is now,” Kim said. “It was in with the cow heads, but when I slammed the cover, I activated the system to take them away. It’s on its way to the renderer. So there’d be no corpus delicti even if we wanted to blow the whistle on Marsha’s death. Obviously my word at the moment means nothing to the police.”
“They can start their own investigation,” Tracy said. “Maybe they’ll find other bones.”
“Even if they did,” Kim said, “the issue here is not to prosecute one low-level thug like the guy who tried to kill me. It’s the industry I want to do something about.”
Tracy sighed again and turned off the engine. “But why go back now? You’ve accomplished what you set out to do. You’ve learned that it will be easy to document how the meat gets contaminated.” Tracy tapped the tape recorder. “This tape alone might be almost as good as a video. I can tell you it’s powerful stuff the way you described what’s going on in there. I’m sure Kelly Anderson will jump on it.”
“I want to go back mainly because I’ll be working the three-to-eleven cleanup as you heard,” Kim said. “I’m hoping that sometime during that shift I can get into the record room. Marsha found what she called a ‘deficiency report’ that involved the head of a sick animal. She said she was putting it back into the file, and I heard her do it. I want to find that paper.”
Tracy shook her head in frustration. “You’re taking too much of a risk,” she said. “If Kelly Anderson gets on the case, let her find the deficiency report.”
“I don’t think I’m taking any risk at this point,” Kim said. “The guy with the knife looked me right in the eye in the men’s room. If I were to be recognized, that would have been the moment. In fact, I don’t even want this gun anymore.”
Kim struggled to get the pistol out of his pants pocket. He handed it to Tracy.
“At least keep the gun,” Tracy said.
Kim shook his head. “No, I don’t want it.”
“Please,” Tracy said.
“Tracy, I’m carrying enough stuff with these battery packs,” Kim said. “And I think having it is more of a risk than a comfort.”
Reluctantly Tracy took the gun and put it down on the car floor. “I can’t talk you out of going back in there?”