Back at her DEA desk, Dema sent an email to Rosita Sanchez in Veracruz. After pleasantries about her Gulf cruise trip with Ryan Shaunessy, she asked her to dig up particulars on the company that had been funding the Catemaco research over thirty years ago. She was pretty confident of her intuition, but it didn't tell her the name of the company, or exactly what kind of research they had been doing.

Apparently the answer was common knowledge in Veracruz. It was not long before Rosita emailed her back with the information she needed.

Then she gave her the real news. While they were on the cruise, Captain Shaunessy had hit it off with the ship's crew, and found out the cruise line was expanding their fleet. Ryan had gone back to Seattle to sell his house and quit his job with the ferry line. He was going to relocate to Veracruz and become the captain of a cruise ship!

Dema reread Rosita's reply. The name of the funding company was Karger. The parent company was based in Germany, but it didn't take long for Dema to find out that they had funded a number of research grants in the Chicago medical district. When she looked into the particulars, she found one local research institute that was more tightly connected with the parent company than just accepting research funding. They were in fact wholly owned by Karger and did proprietary research along the same lines as the old Catamaco institute.

So Dema called Sarah, and asked her if she or any of her contacts had information about the type of research Karger Pharmaceuticals was doing. She got an earful.

"They're one of the ones that does shotgun research with all sorts of experimental drugs, seeing what kind of effects they have on the animals. But they can't use healthy animals, because then there's nothing to cure, so first they infect them with all sorts of horrendous diseases. If a new drug happens to 'cure' something, great, they have a success and move it up to human trials. If not, oh well, another dead monkey. They don't care, they've got a big incinerator."

"You have proof of this?" Dema knew the answer before she asked.

"Of course not. They have very tight security. But they have employees, and people talk. You think my report came from there?"

"Quite possibly," Dema said. "Maybe I can arrange to get some real proof."

She drove out to where Karger Pharmaceuticals was located and looked it over. It was not part of the University complex. It was in a more suburban setting, quite modern looking and surrounded by an expanse of green lawn. To give security cameras a better view, she thought. But the building had been there a while, and the trees and shrubs originally planted as landscaping had grown enough to obscure the sweep of the cameras in some directions. That was all she needed. She planned to return later that night. Back at the office she downloaded copies of the disclosure documents that Karger Pharmaceuticals had submitted to the FDA, to find out what they said they were doing.