Diablo Mesa(25)

“Sort of like the Second Coming?” Skip asked.

“Well, in a way. Peace will reign. Poverty and hunger and strife will disappear.” Bitan spread his arms like Moses on the mount, and his voice deepened.

“From what I’ve been reading,” Skip said, “some think we have it all wrong. They say the aliens are the bad guys, set on conquest and pillaging.”

“Doesn’t it make sense,” Bitan said, “that the more intelligent a being is, the more capacity it has for compassion and ethics—and the less logic there is in violence?”

“Makes sense to me,” said Skip.

“I left SETI,” Bitan went on, “because I realized they were only going to listen to the universe. I felt we needed to take the initiative, show that we’re interested and willing to join the galaxy-wide civilization out there. When they shot down my proposal to create CE-TIP, the Contacting Extraterrestrial Intelligence Project—that is, to beam messages to nearby stars—I had to resign.”

“So you’re part of this project,” Nora said, “because you feel it’s important to discover intelligent life visited Earth—in hopes of hastening the day of revelation?”

Bitan beamed. “While at this point it’s all still speculation, the answer is…yes.”





15



CORRIE SWANSON GAZED at the two sets of human remains, carefully arranged on two gurneys in the middle of the forensic lab, under bright lights, in the basement of the Albuquerque Field Office. They had completed the autopsies—such as they were. Most of the flesh was gone, leaving only a few desiccated bits of muscle and internal organs. The meager haul of physical evidence lay spread out on a third gurney: two .45 shells, the object from HiChem Industries, some loose change recovered from the pocket of the male victim, and a key. Also on the gurney stood an array of evidence containers with samples and histology slides, ready for further testing and analysis.

“Are we all ready, then?” said Nigel Lathrop, the forensic laboratory manager, who had run the lab seemingly forever. He had a brisk British accent and was a sort of retrograde personality, even for the FBI. “Everything tip-top?”

“It would seem so,” said Corrie carefully. In Lathrop’s heyday, a single forensic pathologist was expected to do everything. The problem was, he hadn’t kept up with the field since he left graduate school, but he still carried around a superior attitude and he had a tendency to pooh-pooh, in his condescending British way, Corrie’s own experience and training. Not to put too fine a point on it, but he was a jerk. Morwood had warned Corrie to get along with him, and “getting along” was what she’d been doing for the past seven months. This was a perfect case in point: she had done 90 percent of the work while Lathrop fussed and fiddled with inconsequential stuff and tried to look busy.

Morwood arrived right on the dot of one, with Special Agent in Charge Julio Garcia, head of the Albuquerque FO. Garcia was a big, beefy, soft-spoken agent with a circle beard shot through with gray, impeccably dressed in blue. She’d only seen him in the path lab once before, and his surprise presence made her nervous.

“Agent Swanson,” said Garcia, extending his hand. “I hope you don’t mind. Agent Morwood was telling me about your case, and I couldn’t help but take an interest—as a bystander, of course.”

“Thank you, sir.” She liked that phrase, your case. Garcia seemed like a pretty good guy, even if a bit remote.

“That’s right,” said Lathrop, “the results of our work are quite striking, quite striking indeed. We’ve been working day and night on these two poor souls.”

In the past few days, since the bodies had come in, Corrie had been working almost round-the-clock; Lathrop had gone home at six and returned at nine in the morning. But she said nothing.

Morwood turned. “Good lord, look at those faces.”

“Let’s start with that,” said Corrie quickly. “The histology sections of the skin suggested a strong acid had come in contact with it, and a chemical analysis confirmed it: HCl, hydrochloric acid. It looks like both individuals had highly concentrated hydrochloric acid splashed or sprayed into their faces—repeatedly, in fact, as evidenced by the microscopic layering of damage I saw in the samples.”

“Torture, in other words?” asked Morwood.

“They were tortured, yes. But not with acid. I believe the acid was applied postmortem to erase their facial features, make identification harder. The same acid was applied to the fingers—most likely to dissolve the fingerprints.”

“Extraordinary. Does it mean we can’t do facial reconstructions?”

“The acid penetrated to the bone in places, but no more than surface etching. We should be able to do reconstructions.”

“And the cause of death?”

“Execution-style shots to the left temple of each victim, with powder burns and flakes. We recovered both shell casings. The muzzle of the gun, a .45, was pressed to the skin.”

“I see,” said Morwood. “What about the torture?”

“Fingernails were removed from the thumb and pinkie of the right hand of the man, and from the index and middle fingers of the woman’s hands.”

Morwood bent over the bodies. He pulled on a pair of gloves and gently lifted one of the hands, examining the fingers. “Crushed as well.”