Jed took a cautionary step backward while hastily pointing off to the side.
Kim retched but managed to slap a hand to his face. He followed Jed's pointing finger and saw a door with a crudely painted sign that read: GENTS.
Kim made a beeline for the bathroom. He yanked open the door and dashed to the sink. Leaning forward on the cold porcelain, he convulsively vomited up the breakfast he'd shared with Tracy that morning.
When the retching finally stopped, he rinsed out the sink and raised his head to look at himself in the cracked, dirty mirror. He was paler than he'd ever remembered, emphasized by his reddened, congested eyes. Beads of perspiration rimmed his forehead.
Supporting his torso against the sink, he fumbled with the earphone that he had coiled beneath his shirt. With trembling fingers he plucked out one of the earplugs Jed had given him and pushed in the earphone.
" Tracy, are you there?" Kim questioned with a raspy voice. "I've got my earphone in. You can talk."
"What happened?" Tracy asked. "Was that you coughing?"
"It was more than coughing," Kim admitted. "I just lost my breakfast."
"You sound terrible," Tracy said. "Are you all right?"
"I'm not great," Kim admitted. "I'm embarrassed at my reaction. With all my medical training, I didn't think I'd react quite so viscerally. This place is… well, it's indescribable." He looked around the room, which was the filthiest men's room he'd ever been in. The walls were covered with stains and smutty graffiti, mostly in Spanish. The tiled floor looked like it had never been mopped and was covered with a film of blood and other debris tracked in from the kill floor.
"You want to call it quits?" Tracy asked. "I can't say I'd mind."
"Not yet," Kim said. "But I'll tell you; I was only out on the kill floor for twenty seconds, and I think I've become an instant vegetarian."
The sudden sound of a flushing toilet in one of the two stalls lining the side of the men's room made Kim jump. He'd not bothered to check if either of the toilets was occupied. He yanked out the earphone, tucked it and its wire back under his shirt, and turned to the sink to pretend he was washing. Behind him he heard the stall door bang open.
Kim worried what the stranger had heard, and for the moment he didn't look in the man's direction. In the mirror he saw the man pass slowly behind him, studying him quizzically; and Kim's heart leaped up into his throat. It was the man who'd attacked him, first there at Higgins and Hancock and then again in his own home!
Slowly Kim turned around. The man had proceeded to the door but hadn't opened it. He was still staring at Kim inscrutably.
For an instant, Kim locked eyes with the stranger. Kim tried to smile as he pretended to look for paper towels. There was a dispenser but its front was ripped away and its interior was empty. Kim hazarded another glance at the stranger. His enigmatic expression had not changed. Kim's right hand sought the comfort of the gun in his pocket.
Seconds seemed like minutes to Kim. The man's cold, black impenetrable eyes remained riveted on him. The man was like a statue. It took all of Kim's self-control not to say something to break the uncomfortable silence.
To Kim's utter relief, the man suddenly broke off the confrontation, pushed open the door, and disappeared.
Kim exhaled. He'd not even been aware that he'd been holding his breath. Bending his head down, he whispered into his concealed microphone: "Good Lord, the knife-wielding madman was in one of the toilet stalls. I don't know what he heard. He stared at me but didn't say anything. Let's hope to hell he didn't recognize me."
After splashing some cold water on his face, and replacing the earplug, Kim took a deep breath and pushed out through the bathroom door to return to the kill floor. He tried to breathe shallowly through his mouth to avoid the smell. His legs felt a little rubbery. Just in case the stranger was waiting for him, he had a hand in his pocket, gripping the snub-nosed pistol.
Jed was standing close by, obviously waiting for Kim. Kim looked for the stranger, and he thought he caught sight of him off to the side, just disappearing around the edge of a distant piece of machinery.
"You all right?" Jed shouted over the din.
Kim nodded and tried to smile.
Jed gave him a wry smile in return and handed him the long-handled, stiff-bristled broom. "You must have had more in your stomach than you thought," he said. Then he patted Kim on the back before walking off.
Kim swallowed and shuddered to stave off another wave of nausea. He put his head down to avoid looking at the line of headless, skinless carcasses moving rapidly in front of him on their way to the cooler. Grasping the broom in both hands, he tried to concentrate on pushing the offal that covered the floor toward one of the many grates.
"I don't know if you can hear me with all this noise," Kim said with his mouth close to his microphone. "Obviously the guy with the knife works here, which, when I think about it, doesn't surprise me. I think I better locate him."
Kim ducked as one of the thousand-plus-pound, steaming carcasses brushed by him. By not looking where he was moving, he'd inadvertently gotten in the way of the overhead conveyer. Now his white coat had a blood stain just like everyone else's in the vast room.
Kim straightened up, and after judging the speed of the carcasses, stepped through the line. He was intent on following the route taken by the man who'd attacked him.
"Obviously I've been given the worst job in the place," Kim commented, hoping that Tracy could hear him despite the general racket. "I'm the lowest of the low but at least it gives me the opportunity to move around. It's like an assembly line for all the other workers. They stay in the same place while the carcasses move.
Kim moved around the monstrous piece of machinery he'd seen the stranger disappear behind. The floor in this area of the room was relatively clean. There was only a small amount of blood that had seeped beneath the equipment. To Kim's left was a wall.
Kim continued forward. Ahead, in a darker area of the room where there were no ceiling fluorescent lights, he could see several men working. A new sound emerged from the general background noise. It was an intermittent percussive sound that made Kim think of the kind of air gun used in carpentry to shoot nails.
Kim continued to sweep with his broom although there was little debris on the floor. After another twenty feet and rounding another piece of equipment, he could see what part of the room he was in.
"I've come to where the live animals enter the building," Kim said into his microphone. "They're funneled into single file. When the lead animal comes abreast of an elevated platform, a man presses what looks like a jackhammer against the top of its head. It sounds like a nail gun. It must shoot a bolt into their skulls because I can see brain tissue spatter out."
Kim looked away for a moment. As a man who'd dedicated his life to saving lives, this unabated carnage made him feel weak. After a moment, he forced himself to look back.
"The cows immediately collapse onto a large rotating drum that throws them forward and upends them," Kim continued. "Then a worker hooks them behind the Achilles tendon, and they are hoisted up onto the overhead conveyer."
"If and when we get mad-cow disease in this country, killing the animals like this will not be a good idea. It's undoubtedly sending emboli of brain tissue throughout the cow's body since the cows' hearts are still beating."
Despite his revulsion about what he was witnessing, Kim forced himself to move forward. He now had an unobstructed view.