I called Donny and told him I’d be late. He said he wasn’t going anywhere.
Jerry and I set out in the car Georgia had driven up in, a black Cadillac Escalade Hybrid.
We returned to the farm. We parked a half mile from an entrance. We planned to enter by tramping through the cornfields.
As we took our first steps, I asked, “You’re sure about security?”
“Yep. They’ve just got the entrances covered with electronics. They’ve got random patrols like the one we ran into yesterday. We’ll see or hear them coming.”
A half-moon shone and the stars were bright as we stepped through the night. Crickets chirped, mosquitoes whined, and fireflies danced. It was almost windless. Near the pole sheds the air hung heavy with the aroma of cow. We passed three football field-long sheds filled with animals.
At the fourth, Jerry tapped my shoulder and motioned me toward a window. We peered inside.
I could see long rows of benches with vials and funnels and pulleys and chemical containers. There were occasional dim emergency lights.
I whispered, “Where are the guards?”
“It’s mostly big, burly college kids. The one we ran into yesterday afternoon must have gotten lucky when he stumbled on our car.”
“Are these buildings wired?”
“Pretty much. I found a way to crawl under and get inside from below.”
We crawled under the building. It smelled less like cow and more like musty earth. Using elbows, knees, hands, and feet we crept twenty feet. Jerry lifted a trapdoor.
I whispered, “Why is there a trap door?”
“I think it’s where they used to run an outlet for cow shit.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry about sensors inside. They only have motion detectors set to sound an alarm. I disabled two of them inside here earlier, and we can do any others if we have to now. There’s no surveillance cameras.”
He scrambled through and turned and gave me a hand.
We stood amid the vast array of tables. We used pencil thin flashlights. He pointed to several wall mounted alarms that neither blinked nor glowed.
We walked down the central aisle. There were conveyor belts and work stations. We found one wall lined with unlabeled vats.
Several voices broke the quiet. We shut off our lights and dropped to the floor. They were outside. The locks on the doors were rattled. Then the voices moved on.
We resumed our inspection.
By the time we were inside the third building, I said, “There’s nothing here that says they’re doing something illegal. Supposedly he’s providing elixirs.”
“Do they do any good?”
“No idea. Murray says a lot of people in the town think they’re great.”
“The whole town is addicted to drugs?”
“Hell if I know.” In the next building we found what looked like bottles of finished product. There were unlabeled glass containers crammed with different colored pills. Rows of bottles filled with multi-colored liquids sat on deep shelves. I pointed at them and said, “Lydia Pinkham’s’ Vegetable Compound.”
“Who?”
“More of a what. Not important.”
We entered four more buildings and found a variety of chemical-making equipment and finished product in jars, boxes, and bags. No neon signs said ‘illegal drugs here’. In the last one Jerry said, “If they’ve got secret or underground lairs, I haven’t found them.”
“Can we take a look around the house?”
Jerry led the way.
It was after one in the morning when we looked through the large picture window into Hopper’s front parlor. We were on the other side of a wide, poorly-lit lawn. A can of bug spray and a set of binoculars sat next to each other in my field kit. Jerry pulled out a pair of night vision goggles.
The driveway was filled with cars.
Through the window we saw Hopper, Sebastian Rotella, Trader Smith, Brandon Saldovi, Todd Timmons with his bushy red beard, Krunst, Bordine, Meyers, Ornstein with a small bandage on his head where his huge zit used to be, and the two guys from the limousine. They crowded the room and all had drinks in their hands.
I said, “What the fuck?”
Jerry said, “That is the correct technical question.”
We continued to monitor our surroundings for the guard patrols. We spoke in low voices.
I said, “Wish we could hear what they’re saying.”
Jerry said, “We could ask the guy hiding in the bushes to the left of the window.” He handed me his night vision goggles.
I looked. It was Murray. “What the hell?”
“Want me to sneak up on him? Capture him?”
“He might call out and alert someone to our presence.”
A door slammed on the left side of the house. A siren began a full-throated, gurgling whoop-whoop. Floodlights flashed on. The people in the room jumped to their feet. Guards emerged from the darkness.
I heard a voice yell, “Get the dogs.”
Murray sprinted toward our position.
I saw one of the guards lifting a shotgun. Jerry’s gun was in his hand. He fired and hit the shotgun as the guy pulled the trigger. The guard’s shot went wild. Then they all had guns out blasting away. They shouted to each other.
Murray, who hadn’t stopped sprinting, rushed past our position about ten feet to our right. We dodged deeper into the trees after him.
He wasn’t hard to follow as he crashed through the woods. When he’d gone far enough to run out of breath, he stopped. I tackled him and put my hand over his mouth. I said, “It’s Mike King. Shut up, they’re right behind us.”