The case file folder that Captain O'Mally had given her included contact information for the local AR people involved. They called themselves SAAN, pronounced sane, for Stop Animal Abuse Now, and had a website called SAAN.com, with links to ALF and PETA. 

They had a blog, too, and Dema brought it up on her browser and read some of the "rants," as O'Mally had called them. A lot of it was pretty bizarre all right, but there was some internal logic to much of it, and a lot of obviously genuine, if perhaps misguided, care and concern for the plight of lab animals.

Some of the rants she found were about the claimed drug research abuses, but O'Mally was right about that too. They tended to paint all the research centers with the same brush, and didn't single out any one of them. Dema did not have any great love for these drug developers either, in fact she shared a lot of the sentiments about them that the bloggers had.

But unsubstantiated allegations were no good to her. She needed facts, direct evidence. So she needed to go talk to some of these people. They might know things they weren't saying. They could be protecting a source, as the FBI report implied. Or they might simply not realize the importance of certain details. So she made some calls, and arranged to show up at one of their meetings.

They had a pet monkey. It was a rhesus macaque that had been "liberated" from a drug-testing lab. She knew it was there before she went in, because it started screaming when she got to the door. She reached out to it with her shaman dream and realized it was sensing the snake-essence in her, which had been aroused by her Lamia reaction to the case. When she entered the room, the monkey was cowering in a corner, as far from the door as it could get. 

She deliberately opened herself to its monkey dream, and treated the monkey as a familiar, allowing herself to absorb the essence of its monkey nature. It quieted as she did this, and before long it came scampering across the room to her and climbed up onto her shoulder, where it sat calmly nestling against her head, clinging to her hair.

"Would you look at that!" one of the men present said. He was a dark-haired, fit-looking young man with round wire-rimmed glasses that made him appear a bit owlish. "I've never seen Bitsy take to someone like that. We all thought the lab experience had alienated her from human contact."

He took a step toward her and said, "Pardon me, I'm Dave." He put out his hand. "You must be Dema, from the DEA."

She nodded and took his hand. The contact allowed her to learn a little more about his sense of self. He was a Sierra Club member whose passion was protection of the wilderness, especially wolves, cougar, bear, buffalo, elk, any animals whose habitats were encroached upon by developers, especially if they were therefore considered "endangered." He had been involved in efforts to get old dams taken out of salmon rivers. He was here because of Sarah.

The rest of them stepped forward to introduce themselves, obviously as impressed as Dave with Bitsy's behavior.

Judith didn't really look at Dema, but oohed and aahed over Bitsy. She was a frail-looking blond girl with pale eyes and blond eyelashes who gave the impression of being completely colorless. Dema sensed she was the type who frequently breaks down and cries at the plight of stray animals that have been impounded in city kennels.

Sarah was a spitfire who fundamentally believed that the only way to save the planet was to abandon all forms of industrial activity. Her impulse in forming this group had been that animals are more important than people, so animals that are preyed upon by industry must be saved first. It was her apartment they were meeting at, and she was the one who maintained the website and blog.

John had been a volunteer in medical studies while he was in college, to help pay his tuition. He'd had some bad experiences, and witnessed some things that were even worse. He'd first been invited into the group by Judith, but it was Sarah's insistence that made him stay.

This was the core of Sarah's group. There were others who she thought of as "stringers" who might show up for a rally or a demonstration, and regularly added comments to her blog, but didn't often come to meetings.

After the introductions, Sarah said, "Okay, what do you want from us? How can you help us free the lab animals?"

Dema said, "I need specifics about what abuses are going on, and where. I've read the FBI reports, and I've read your blogs, and I haven't found anything that tells me who your inside source was, or what company he was talking about. If I had a name, even a company name, it would be a start."

Dave said, "Pick one. They all do it."

Dema said, "I understand why you say that, but you have to know that isn't enough even for a search warrant, let alone a conviction in court.

"Some of the things you don't like, and I don't like, are still legal. If I can't produce evidence that a law has been broken, I don't have a case. I need at least a foot in the door. If they can be brought to court, we can air more of their dirty laundry, and maybe get more or their abusive activities outlawed."

John said, "Have you ever been in one of those medical research labs? They'd like you to believe they are sanitary, even sterile, with loving care given to all the animals in their studies. But the ones I've seen look worse than a city animal pound. 

"They only get as much care as the researchers can afford. And most of them are run by university staffers, and are operating on grant money, which there is never enough of. So the labs are underfunded, and the animals are overcrowded, and the care is minimal."

Dema said, "I understand. I've read the blogs, and I believe you. But again, where do I start? The 'insider' report said there was evidence of falsified or incomplete reports, cover-ups, misinformation provided to the FDA in support of approval requests. Are you that insider, John?"

"No, no, that wasn't me. I just saw the conditions, I didn't know what they claimed to be doing in those places. I just knew that what they were actually doing was bad."

Judith came to John's defense. "What they do goes against the laws of nature. All creatures have a place in the natural order of things. Kidnapping animals out of the forest and using them as lab subjects violates that. What they do may not be breaking any human laws, but it violates the natural rights of innocent animals."

Dema just nodded. She could hear the voice of the Lamia inside her saying almost the same thing. She might need more evidence than she had to act as an enforcer for the DEA, but as the Lamia she was an enforcer of more ancient law, which included exactly those natural rights Judith spoke of.

Sarah said, "Look, Dema, we got this anonymous report, okay? It's not like it was written on company letterhead or something. But it was obviously authentic. Even the FBI said it looked authentic."

Dema understood that these people really didn't have any idea where the report had come from, and she was beginning to feel a little frustrated. Then her shaman intuition kicked in. Company letterhead or not, the paper may have come from the place the report was about. She would be able to read more than words from it.

"Sarah, do you still have that original report?"

"You bet I do. I let the Feebs make all the copies they wanted, but they weren't getting the original away from me." She went to a desk and unlocked a drawer. A few seconds of rummaging, and she handed Dema a sheaf of papers.

The instant it touched her hand, Dema knew. The trace essence was faint, but unmistakable. It was the same company. The one that had funded the research in Catemaco. The one that had abandoned its lab monkeys on the islands in the lake. 

They hadn't stopped their operations. When things went bad in Mexico, they had merely relocated to Chicago. Possibly had some of the same monkeys shipped here. Although they could have easily imported more from Thailand. It was done all the time.

Dema's shaman insight on this was so strong that her Lamia response was threatening to take over. Bitsy got a little nervous. She pretended to be looking through the report while she brought the Lamia urge under control, although she'd already read a copy in the FBI file. She hoped her eyes hadn't turned snake-yellow when she looked back at Sarah.

"Sarah, I think this might help." She gave the report back to her, and Sarah locked it away. Sarah looked up at her from the desk chair.

"What did you find in there? How does it help you?"

"I'm not sure," said Dema, "Just a lead I'll have to investigate. I'll get back to you." She silently asked Bitsy to stay calm, and passed her to Judith as she left. Judith was thrilled when Bitsy came to her.