Cutting Edge

CHAPTER SEVEN

Duke listened to Jim Butcher as he accepted that his life’s work was gone, and his best friend was dead. Jim didn’t know what to do. Duke struggled to reassure him by saying, “I’m not walking away from this.”

They sat in an office across the two lane highway from Butcher-Payne. A friend of Jim’s had let him have a space for the duration of the police investigation. It was both good and bad that the office had a window with a view of the partially destroyed Butcher-Payne office building. Right now there were two sheriff’s cars, the arson investigator truck, and three large California Fish and Game vehicles parked in the lot.

Jim stared at him. “The FBI didn’t do jack shit on the other arsons, and now my partner is dead.”

Duke stiffened. While he understood Jim’s frustration, he also knew that the FBI had vigorously worked the case. That’s what they did. And Nora English was one of the very best-Duke had seen her work firsthand on half a dozen assignments where their paths had crossed.

“I know the agent in charge of this investigation, and she’s not going to let up.”

“Fantastic!” Jim said sarcastically. “How many people are going to die because of these lunatics? They’re fucking insane.”

Duke changed the subject. “I swung by Russ’s apartment. He wasn’t there. No sign of him. His neighbor hasn’t seen him since Saturday, but that’s not saying much. She admitted she doesn’t know him well. Did Russ mention to you that he might be going out of town?”

“No,” Jim frowned. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know.” He sent a quick email on his iPhone to his partner, J. T. Caruso.

Run a full search on all financials, recent travel, etc for Russell Larkin, IT Director, Butcher-Payne. Address 1010 Rocklin Rd #16, Rocklin.

“Russ wouldn’t be involved in anything that might hurt Jonah,” Jim said. “What do you think is going on?”

“I don’t know,” Duke repeated, hating not having the answers. “Russ is the only one besides me who knows all the security codes and understands the system well enough to manipulate it.”

“You’re missing something. That just can’t be,” Jim said, though without conviction. Jonah was dead, all their research destroyed, anything was possible.

“I’ll find him,” Duke said.

“Melanie Duncan called me and said the FBI has already been out to talk to her. Is it true the research ducks were released into the wild?”

Duke hadn’t spoken to Nora since sending her a copy of the security logs when she asked for them an hour ago.

“I haven’t heard any information about that. If the FBI said they were, it’s likely true.”

“This is fucked.” Jim ran a hand through his thin hair, leaving it sticking up in places. “I don’t know what to do. I’m a damn media consultant and I don’t have any idea what to do!”

Duke said, “Do what you do best, and by that I mean gather the facts. Before you go public with anything though, you should first talk to the FBI.”

Jim said, “Agent Pete Antonovich told me to meet him here ten minutes ago, I gave him this address.”

“He’ll be here.”

“Duke, I’ll pay anything to find these people.”

“I’m not charging.”

Duke saw an unmarked sedan pull into the lot. The car had “fed” written all over it. “I think Antonovich and English are here,” he said.

He watched Nora slide out of the driver’s seat. Pete Antonovich said something to her, then started toward the building where Duke was sitting with Jim. Nora went to talk with Fish and Game.

Duke looked at his long-time friend. “If you want me to stay while you talk to Agent Antonovich, I will. Otherwise, I want to see what I can get out of Agent English.”

“Go. I’m fine. I have nothing to hide. I didn’t kill Jonah, or want him dead.” His voice cracked. “He was practically my brother. Losing him is devastating for Butcher-Payne, but for me, personally, it’s …” He threw up his hands. “I’ve lost my best friend. The business means nothing to me without Jonah.”

On the short drive from the morgue to Butcher-Payne, Nora spoke with the Centers for Disease Control. They were a bunch of pricks. Necessary, but pricks nonetheless.

At least the jerk she’d spoken with was. But she hoped she had them under control. They were on alert, but weren’t about to respond to this potential emergency without more proof that they were needed.

When she drove into the parking lot she was pleased to see that Sheriff Sanger had set one of his men on the entrance to check IDs to keep the media and others away. She didn’t want anyone without official clearance-especially the media-to get wind of the fact that there were twelve research animals potentially infected with a deadly virus loose in the area. She noted that Quin’s truck was still on-site. Arson investigations took time and painstaking attention to detail. All of which was vital when and if anyone went to trial.

She introduced herself to the team leader from the Department of Fish and Game. Kevin Barry was a tall, skinny, bearded wildlife biologist with long dark hair restrained with a rubber band. He and his people pored over a map of the area, identifying nearby bodies of water, while close by Melanie Duncan paced. When Nora approached, Duncan was on her cell phone talking to the vet who was driving in from UC Davis with a prototype electronic reader that could register the microchips embedded subdermally in each duck.

Nora let them do their job while she looked at her own map.

“Hello, Nora.”

She immediately recognized the low, sexy voice behind her. She braced herself against the presence of Duke Rogan before turning to face him. Even though she was prepared, she was still stunned that he had such a strong impact on her.

To compensate for this reaction, she got right to business.

“Anything from your security disks?” she asked him.

His face went from subtle flirt to serious. She almost regretted it.

“Jonah’s codes were used to get into the building. My staff is working on reconstructing the video surveillance.”

“What happened to it?”

“I wish I knew. It’s just not there.”

Nora saw that the lack of answers bothered Duke even more than her. Her job was, in part, finding the answers, so the search might disturb her at times, or irritate her often, but it was simply part of the process in an investigation. For a man of action like Duke Rogan, not knowing struck at his core.

“You’ll find it,” she said.

“I went by Russ Larkin’s apartment on my way here. He runs the I.T. department for Butcher-Payne. He’s not there.”

“He’s not here either. The sheriff’s department is keeping tabs on employees, neighbors, and potential witnesses, but I’m in the loop.” She caught the worry in Duke’s expression. “Are you concerned about Larkin’s well-being?”

He didn’t directly answer her question. “I put someone on his apartment. She’ll call me if he shows up there.”

“All right,” Nora said, “I’ll issue a BOLO for him if you think it would help. We do need to talk to all staff.”

“Good thinking,” he said. Duke gave her Russell Larkin’s vital stats and the make and model of his car. Nora sent the information to headquarters.

She began, “You don’t-”

He interrupted and gestured toward the Fish and Game trucks. “What’s this? Jim said some ducks are missing?”

Duke never made it easy to get rid of him. “We have reason to believe that the arsonists released the research ducks into the wild.”

Duke’s face darkened and he said in a low voice, “They killed Jonah to let some ducks out? They’re fucking nutjobs.”

Nora had no answer for him. It seemed wholly incomprehensible to her as well.

Kevin Barry looked up from marking his maps and said, “Can we identify them from their bands?” He specialized in birds, and Nora had immediately sensed his competence when first talking to him.

Nora said, “Most likely, the arsonists would have cut off the bands. They don’t want the ducks recaptured.”

“They should have thought about it before they released them,” Barry said.

Duncan was within earshot, and the researcher hurried over to where they stood in the staging area on the far side of the parking lot. “Release?” she balked. “How do you know the ducks were released? Why wouldn’t they take them home?”

Nora explained. “Animal-rights activists rarely, if ever, keep research animals as pets. Twelve mallard ducks? Where would they keep them? In their swimming pool? When the news gets out about the missing birds, neighbors and relatives could become suspicious and turn them in. In addition, they don’t believe that wild animals should be in captivity, by researchers or even themselves.”

“But you said they weren’t animal-rights nuts. That they were opposed to genetic research.” Duncan’s tone was accusatory.

“Yes,” she said, “but the fact that they took the ducks would suggest that they’re involved in more than one political cause.”

“Why do they think they can get away with it?”

“By cutting off the bands, the twelve ducks blend in with the thousands in the area. They’ve given them a chance of freedom.”

“You sound like you agree with them!” Duncan said.

Nora didn’t need to explain herself to this semi-hysterical woman, though she well understood Duncan’s anger. Nora was angry, too, but she didn’t have time for social niceties. In a clipped voice, she said, “Part of my job is to think like them, to understand their motivation and their goals. Their goal is to liberate the birds, not keep them as pets.”

Barry interjected, “Well, they’ll be neither free nor captive after we find them. They’ll be dead.”

Duncan panicked. “Can’t you return them to me?”

Barry shook his head. “Gotta kill ’em. Them and any duck in the area. We can’t possibly risk this virus spreading. And after, we’ll have to sample birds in a wider area, make sure we got them all and the virus didn’t spread.”

Duke leaned over to Nora. “Is that true?”

She nodded. “I hope we find them all quickly.”

Duncan resumed pacing, then glanced up at a van whose driver was showing credentials to the deputy manning the entrance. “Finally!” She strode over to the car that had just been waved through by the deputy.

Nora assumed it was the veterinarian and said to Barry, “Are you ready to go? I think that’s the vet with the equipment.”

“Almost.” Barry pulled a map from his pocket. “These nuts could have taken the birds anywhere. Do you have any idea which direction they’d go? Looking for a dozen ducks in the Gold Country is harder than finding a needle in a haystack.”

Nora considered what she knew about how these people operated. “Maybe not as hard as you think,” she said slowly as she looked at the map and the areas the Fish and Game staff had already marked. “First, they’re not going to keep the ducks for too long. They left here between one-thirty and two in the morning. They wouldn’t take the ducks anywhere near their work, school, or residence. That would increase the odds that someone they know would see them releasing them.”

“And you know where they live?” Barry asked sarcastically.

She ignored his comment and put herself in their shoes-easy to do, since she’d learned from one of the best animal liberators: her mother. “They won’t take them to the closest lake-they’d assume that’s where we’d go.”

She remembered the times she’d freed research animals with her mother. When she was little she thought she’d been doing the right thing, the humane thing. But she’d learned far too quickly that freedom didn’t mean safety, at least not for animals who were raised and cared for by people.

If Nora had taken the ducks, she would have found a place for them where people came to toss bread crumbs. A place with a lot of water, so the ducks could escape little kids who didn’t know better when they chased them, and teenagers who did. But people were a must, because anyone worth their salt in the animal-rights movement knew that captive animals would have a difficult time fending for themselves. These birds needed food, water, safety.

“They won’t be able to tolerate any quacking, thinking they were hurting the animals by caging them,” Nora said. “And the ducks would have been crammed tight in the cages they took-they can’t hold more than four ducks each. The arsonists would be nervous as well, having evidence in their possession.”

“Well-how many miles?”

“I’m not sure, but not more than thirty minutes away. They wouldn’t risk being pulled over if someone called in the arson quickly and the police were looking for a specific vehicle. A body of water off a freeway-preferably a protected area.” That reminded Nora to check with Sanger about the canvass his men were doing earlier and if they had tracked down any potential witnesses.

“Hmm.” Barry pondered his map.

Nora looked at the map upside down. If she had a dozen semidomesticated waterfowl and wanted to give them the best chance of survival in the wild, what would she do?

Steady supply of food. Lots of water. A park.

Finding such a place would be secondary to getting out of the vicinity, so they would pick a place along their escape route. She speculated that the route would be in the opposite direction of their final destination.

Barry said, “There are several ponds in this area. Some are seasonal and dry now, but-” He pointed to three less than two miles away. There wasn’t anything special about them-no parks, no people. They bordered industrial areas. No, the arsonists would be concerned about toxins in those ponds.

She shook her head.

“How about Lake Arthur?” Barry pointed to a larger pond-hardly what Nora would call a lake-east of their location, right off I-80.

That was a possibility, ideal for escape. So was a group of man-made ponds in Newcastle, about ten minutes west. Except there wasn’t a nearby park. It was also a new development near a light industrial area. Less pollution from business, convenient to dump the ducks, but it wasn’t good enough for the animals. Nora would never have left them there.

“Here.” She pointed to Lake of the Pines. “That’s it.”

“There’re at least a dozen locations just as good that are closer.”

The more Nora thought about it, the more convinced she was that she was right. The other locations just weren’t as good. Lorraine would have chosen Lake of the Pines. Nora thought it ironic that she was thanking her imprisoned mother for lessons learned.

Nora said, “From Lake of the Pines they can head up Highway Forty-nine to Highway Twenty and cut across to Maryville, then head north to Chico or south to Sacramento. It’s longer than going virtually anywhere via I-Eighty, but it gets them out of the area and they don’t have to backtrack past the scene of the crime.”

“You’re amazing,” Duke said.

Surprisingly she’d forgotten Duke was standing next to her. He usually wasn’t so quiet. “Thanks.” She was trying to be sarcastic, but it came out differently, almost as if she cared what he thought of her. Which she didn’t.

All right, she did. But she wasn’t about to admit that to him.

“This is a huge recreational area,” she continued. “There are people, pets, kids-the ducks will be well fed. They’ll be concerned about that. They don’t want the ducks to die of starvation, and that’s always a risk.”

“Well,” Barry said, folding up the map, “they’ll be dead any way you slice it. And all the other ducks on that lake. We’re talking hundreds of ducks. I hope you’re wrong.”

Nora’s heart thudded in her chest and she felt sick. It pained her that innocent animals had to die, but the risk of the virus getting into the duck population was far too great to chance it. Thousands of wild ducks could die, species decimated from Canada to Mexico, and there was the additional risk to humans if they didn’t quickly eliminate the threat.

“We’d better go now,” she said.

“I hope you’re wrong,” Barry repeated as he folded his map.

“Me, too.” But Nora knew she was right. “I’ll meet you there. Take Dr. Duncan and Dr. Thomsen with you. They’ve agreed to assist.”

“It’ll take us a bit to set up, and I hope Dr. Thomsen’s reader works. I’ve never heard of one working more than a couple feet away from the source.” He walked off to dispatch his team.

To Duke, she said, “Did you see Pete?”

“He’s talking to Jim Butcher across the street.”

Duke followed her. He’d seen the worry on Nora’s face. He was hugely impressed with her analysis, and not a little curious how she came up with it. He’d always admired Nora’s intelligence and quick thinking, but this was different. It was as if she could read the minds of the anarchists. But of course that was silly. And Duke knew, from working with Kane, that good soldiers became great warriors when they could put themselves in their enemies’ shoes and anticipate their every move.

Good cops weren’t much different.

They stopped outside the building where Jim had set up temporary shop.

“We’ll find them,” Duke said.

“The ducks or the arsonists?”

“Both.” He reached out and touched her chin, lightly, but he couldn’t help himself. She was so sad. “Chin up, Nora.” She was so drained. Not a surprise; she’d been up since before dawn.

“Jonah Payne was murdered.”

“I know. We-” He stopped. “You mean he was intentionally murdered? That his death wasn’t an accident?”

“Pete and I came here from the autopsy,” she said. “Dr. Payne was dead long before the fire started-six hours or more. And based on the evidence, he was killed somewhere else.”

Duke tried to wrap his mind around what Nora was saying. He spoke almost as if to himself.

“It’s far too coincidental that someone disconnected from the arson killed Jonah and dumped his body in his office the same day that a group of anarchists came to burn down the lab and free research animals.”

“That’s exactly what I thought. But this behavior is completely out of character from what I know about anarchist terrorist groups. And I know quite a bit. This is more like the work of a psychopath.”

Duke frowned. “How was Jonah killed?”

“It’s inconclusive, but the M.E. believes he died from massive blood loss. There were multiple shallow cuts on his arms and torso. No major arteries were hit, but when Dr. Coffey dried his jeans there was a substantial amount of blood.”

It sounded like torture to Duke. He couldn’t figure out why-Jonah was a scientist. A bit absentminded maybe, but brilliant and dedicated.

Nora said softly, “I just don’t understand. Everything about this case is textbook perfect for a standard environmental extremist group. The arsons, the spray-painting, the messages they sent. Everything … except premeditated murder.”

“You said this sounds like a psychopath. Are anarchists exempt from being psychopaths?”

Something changed in Nora’s expression. “No. I knew one a long time ago.”

Taken aback by this admission, Duke wanted to ask her about it, but Nora abruptly entered the building. Again, he followed her. He’d make certain she’d tell him later.