Diablo Mesa(57)

Beyond was nothing but blackness—even the exit signs were off—and she was almost overwhelmed by an acrid odor of smoke, melted plastic, burnt electronics, and something else she didn’t care to identify. She raised herself to full height, pushing the door closed behind her. Then, reaching into her bag, she located her SureFire Defender, pulled it out, and snapped it on.

The 1,000-lumen LED bulb illuminated a damp, hellish landscape. She directed the beam toward her feet, but not before noticing that the lab’s lone security camera was partly burnt, covered by more security tape, and half-disassembled. At least she didn’t have to worry about being seen inside.

She switched off the flashlight and stood motionless in the dark, catching her breath. What the hell was she doing here, anyway?

But she knew the answer even before she’d asked herself the question. On Saturday and again today, her eyes had darted more than once toward the basement stairs. Both Garcia and Agent Lime had told her she had nothing to worry about. But that was just talk. She couldn’t leave it alone; she couldn’t wait for however long the investigation might take to release a report: she had to know if she was responsible for Morwood’s death. She had to know now. But even beyond that, she wondered why Morwood had come back to the lab at midnight on a Friday. What was so pressing that he couldn’t wait until morning?

She had to hurry. This had been an impulsive decision on her part—and if she was caught, she would be in deep shit, especially since she was a potential suspect. Christ, she had to finish and get out before she lost her nerve.

She turned her light on once again and shined it around. She was used to seeing a long, narrow hallway, made narrower by the rows of boxes and packing materials Lathrop never seemed to clear away. Now, however, only ruin lay ahead of her—charred piles of ash and half-burnt, unidentifiable things, sodden and sunken in on themselves and coated with foam retardant. Above them, soot streaks curled up the walls and across the ceiling, bizarre and clutching, like silhouettes from a German Expressionist film. All around her were little numbered flags—some red, some yellow, some blue. And on the floor directly before her was a particularly heavy swarm of flags that—she realized in sudden horror—formed the outline of a human being.

Stifling a gasp and looking away, she passed by this quickly, staying close to the ashen boxes that lined the wall, their contents now exposed. The Bunsen burner was her objective: she had to examine it and get out.

She turned the corner, placing her feet with care, and the beam of her light fell across the main lab. She quickly aimed it toward the soapstone table on which the burner sat, and there it was, scorched but intact…and turned off.

Thank God.

The rubber hose was unhitched and her light played on the valve, which was also turned off. Of course, one of the investigators might have turned it off, but that seemed unlikely: they would have shut down the gas farther back and left everything inside the lab as undisturbed as possible until their work was complete.

Embarrassed at her overwhelming and selfish sense of relief, she let her light drift over the rest of the lab. A platoon of flamethrowers couldn’t have done a more thorough job. Storage cabinets hung loose from the walls, glass fronts melted; cabinets that had been full of papers and evidence were now just shapeless lumps of steel and carbon; the lockers that held the two sets of human remains had burst open under the heat, ghastly as crematoria, the evidence inside thoroughly burnt. And the table where she’d worked so hard on her facial reconstructions no longer existed; it was just a low pile of broken metal, covered—like everything else—with tiny evidence flags. It was as Agent Lime had told her. All the evidence—everything she’d been working on—was gone. And Lathrop was as full of shit as she’d expected—the fire wasn’t her fault.

She’d better get the hell out. This was crazy. She couldn’t afford to spend any more time here—not even a minute.

As she turned to leave, her light passed over something lying on the floor, in a melted evidence box, that gleamed dully. It was the device Morwood had brought back to the lab from his visit to Eastchester. Was that why he was there? If so, why wait until midnight? He would have been back from Los Alamos no later than nine thirty or ten.

She peered at it more closely. It was heavily blackened by smoke but otherwise intact. On impulse, she took her phone from her pocket and—leaning forward so as not to leave footprints in a layer of sodden ash and rivers of plastic—took pictures of the device: top, sides, and bottom, where the legend and some numbers had been stamped.

Walking gingerly, she reached the door, opened it slightly, made sure nobody was in the hall beyond, and slipped out.





37



NORA WOKE TO the smell of bacon and eggs and the sound of Skip’s usual morning conversation with Mitty, who listened with great attention and zero comprehension.

As she came out of her bedroom, Skip, without turning around, said: “Bet you slept soundly.”

“Now, why would you say that?” Nora asked, sitting down while Skip placed a latte in front of her.

“Well,” he said cheerily, “when you came in rather late last evening you looked like you’d just run a marathon—all pink-cheeked and glowing.”

“Please shut up,” Nora said, and buried her lips in the warm foam, taking a deep draw of coffee.

“I figured you worked up quite an appetite, too.”