The Lamia

8-3

At DEA headquarters the next day, Captain O'Mally called Dema into his office.

"Looks like we've got a case that might keep you here at home for a while," he said. "There's a local group of Animal Rights activists that's been stepping on toes in the medical district. The FBI got detailed to investigate their activities. The Bureau's report showed that the activist's rants got pretty extreme all right, but they didn't seem to have done anything really criminal.

"On the flip side, it does appear that they had somehow acquired real data of a disturbing nature. The legality of the drug testing procedures used by some pharmaceutical companies right here in Chicago, for both animal and human subjects, got called into question.

"The FBI shared the info with the FDA, and the FDA enlisted us, because they don't have any real investigative resources." O'Mally grinned. "And I'm enlisting you."

"Why didn't the FBI just handle it themselves?" Dema asked.

"There was no case. The AR goofs didn't really know the source of their data, just some nameless 'insider,' and they weren't even sure what research facility it was. The AR goofs don't care, it's all ammunition for them. They think all the research labs are equally guilty anyway. But the FBI thought their data looked authentic enough to warrant further investigation. Just not by them."

"Alright, then, why me?"

"Because you wrote that report."

"What, my Veracruz report?"

"Yup. And you talked about monkeys in there."

"The Catemaco island monkeys..." Dema got the picture. Her mention in the Veracruz report of the Catemaco monkey situation had put her at the top of the list when the DEA needed an agent to investigate the claims of an AR group in Chicago.

Because she had mentioned that the monkeys were not native to the area, but had been released onto the islands from a medical research center, she became the obvious choice to ferret out the truth about claims of animal and human abuses in medical research facilities here in Chicago. Typical bureaucrat logic.

As she reviewed the files she became aware of something else. Her report from Veracruz and Catemaco included how the island monkeys had developed unusually aggressive behavior patterns after being released into the wild from a testing lab. She had suspected that these behavioral traits might trace back to the experimental procedures they had been exposed to.

Now she realized that when she wrote that report she had aroused in herself a Lamia response to the injury done to the monkeys. The ancient promise to avenge the blood of the innocent extended to these innocents as well. She knew now that this was what really had pulled her into the case. More evidence that everything really is connected.