Cutting Edge (8 page)

Duncan waved her hand and sniffed. “They’re all the same nuts.”

Perhaps, but the arsonists were specifically targeting biotechnology companies or, in the case of Sac State, bioresearch. Not all of the targets used animals in their research. Nora knew ALF wouldn’t have gone after the Sac State lab because it didn’t engage in animal testing. The lab was solely involved in agriculture bioengineering, genetically manipulating plants to grow in areas with limited water.

The only commonality between all four entities was their involvement in biotech research. Langlier, Nexum, and Butcher-Payne used animals; Sac State didn’t. Unless there was another reason the arsonists targeted the college.

“From my experience,” Pete said, “extreme environmentalists tend to come together over multiple issues. There’s a lot of overlapping.”

Nora concurred. She turned back to Duncan. “You said Jim Butcher has the threatening letters?”

“Bobbie — Roberta Powers — would keep the correspondence. She’s Jim’s personal assistant. If it was overtly threatening, we’d have sent it to the sheriff.”

“Has Dr. Payne fired or let go any staff in the last year?” Pete asked.

“You can’t possibly think that anyone from Butcher-Payne had anything to do with arson and murder.” It was a statement.

“You’re a scientist,” Nora said. “You may have a hypothesis, and in your gut know that you are right, but you need to prove or disprove your theory, and that requires extensive research. For us, it requires a lot of investigation. Including asking questions we don’t necessarily think are going to give us the right answers. But if we don’t ask all the questions, our investigation won’t be complete.”

Duncan relented, but mumbled that it was a waste of time.

Nora said, “The biohazard team went through the scene and determined it safe enough, but the arson investigator noticed that one or more cages may have been removed.”

“Cages? Our birds are kept in a secure room.”

“There were no animals in the main area of the lab?”

“No.” She looked down, frowning. “South wall? There was a long worktable, several file cabinets, a mini-refrigerator. Empty cages and carriers because we didn’t have any more room in storage, but we don’t keep animals in the main lab unless we need them. They always go back in their room. How can you tell that a cage is missing? You said there was a fire.”

“The fire investigator is analyzing the entire scene and she knows how fire spreads, how it’s extinguished, and whether something is out of place. It’s not an exact science—”

“Don’t tell Quin that,” Pete interjected with quiet humor.

“It’s based on educated guesses,” Nora continued. “In her opinion, something seemed missing. But it could be nothing — it could be a large file box that was moved to storage. It would help, though, for you to walk through the scene and see if something is missing, or something is there that shouldn’t be.”

“I can do that. Yes, of course, anything.” Duncan sat back down, her head in her hands. “I know this is going to sound callous, but Jonah would want us to continue. This was everything to him.” She looked up. This time the tears had escaped. “I need to recover any remains. They might be worthless, but if I can get the bodies of the birds, our vet and I can analyze their genes on a cellular level. There should be something — and it could help. All our hard-copy documents are gone — I assume they are — but we have copies of everything in the computer. Not the logs — oh, God, those are going to be impossible to re-create. But at least we don’t have to go back to square one. For Jonah, I need to complete this. Jim will agree.”

Whether she added that last thought to make it true, or because she believed it, Nora didn’t know.

“I don’t think there’s anything left,” she said, but she pictured Jonah Payne’s body. Second- and third-degree burns … birds were smaller, they’d disintegrate much faster. But Quin would have said something. In fact, she thought Quin was certain they’d been released — or taken in the missing cage. She pulled out her BlackBerry. “I’ll ask the investigator to specifically pull aside the birds. How many were there? What kind?”

“Twelve mallard ducks, six male and six female. They were in the room to the left of my office. It’s a double room, with an entry and decontamination area, then the chamber where the birds lived, with a small built-in pool.”

“How many birds can one of your standard cages hold?”

She looked at Nora as if it was an odd question. “They’re mallard ducks. We put one in per cage, sometimes two if they’re a mating pair. More than two would be inhumane, but I suppose you could fit four.”

Nora was fairly certain they weren’t in the lab and in fact had been taken or released.

She sent Quin a text message:

Payne’s assistant said there were twelve mallard ducks in a room to the left of Payne’s office. Are there any remains? If so, can you preserve them? And ask Chief Nobel to debrief his crew and ask if they recall which doors off the main lab were open and which were closed when they went in. Thanks, N
.

“When do you want me to go down?”

Nora glanced at Pete. “When did Jim Butcher say he would arrive?”

“He took a seven-fifteen flight out of LAX, but I didn’t get confirmation he was on it.”

She looked at her watch. About seventy minutes, then another thirty from the airport. He’d be arriving within the next half hour.

“I’ll call him,” Pete said.

Nora wanted to talk to Butcher without Payne’s loyal research assistant around. She also needed to follow up with the Lake Tahoe office about Jonah Payne’s house, have her team pull his credit card records and bank information to determine if he ever arrived and if so, when he left.

And she had to ask Duke Rogan to explain the security system. There could even be hidden data that would identify the culprits. Nora dreaded the thought of spending time with Duke, knowing it could weaken her resolve to stay far away from him.

“How about ten-thirty?” Nora asked Duncan. “Does that give you enough time to pull yourself together?”

“I can do it now.”

“Ten-thirty is better. The arson investigator isn’t going to let anyone walk the scene until she’s done with her preliminary walk-through, which takes several hours.”

“Was there anything left?”

“It’s hard to say. There’s of course fire and smoke damage, as well as water damage.”

“When can I get in and see what we have left?”

“You mean go through everything? It’ll be at least two days, maybe longer. It’s a crime scene, we need to keep it intact until the investigators are done with evidence collection.”

Pete touched her arm and Nora looked over. He held up his BlackBerry. It was a message from their ASAC, Dean Hooper.

BLF posted a letter online about the Butcher-Payne arson. When can you be at HQ?

She shook her head. She didn’t want to talk in front of Duncan, so said cryptically, “There’re a half-dozen things we need to check on before memories fade.”

“If you want to drop me off at headquarters,” Pete said, “I can take care of that situation.”

“Thanks. I need some background work done, so I’ll go with you for a few minutes.”

They stood and thanked Melanie Duncan for her time. Nora’s phone vibrated and she glanced down at the message. It was from Quin.

No birds, no ducks, no furry, finned, or feathered creatures at all. The room was empty. The fire did not reach that area of the lab, only smoke and water damage, so if they were there, they’d be slow-roasted, not extra crispy
.

Only Quin could make Nora smile at the macabre. She squeezed her lips closed, because this wasn’t the time or place. She said to Duncan, “There were no animals at all in the lab.”

Melanie shook her head. “All our work. Years. Years. Turned to ash. I don’t know enough about DNA to see if we can get something from the ash, I really wanted blood, but maybe—”

“I should have clarified. There are no remains. The room you described wasn’t damaged by fire. There were no birds, dead or alive.”

Melanie paled.

Nora knew exactly what happened to them. “Animal-rights groups usually release captive animals into the wild or take them to sympathetic rescue facilities.”

“Oh no. No. Oh, God, we have to find them.”

Nora froze. “Why?”

“The avian flu! Half the birds were infected. We were using gene therapy on them to find a genetic cure to prevent virus carriers. But we’re still in the testing phase. They’ll infect any bird they come in contact with.

“Worse,” she continued, “there’s no vaccine, no cure. The virus they have has been genetically altered to be particularly virulent. We were so successful with the weaker viruses, we needed to find a therapy that could attack any mutation of the virus.”

“What are the chances the virus will spread to human populations?”

“I don’t know. Whenever you’re dealing with viruses there is always the risk of mutation. There would need to be prolonged physical contact with the ducks, but the far greater risk is spreading the disease to other waterfowl. It’s the end of September. They’ll begin to migrate. We have to find them now.”

At his desk, Duke Rogan stared at the computer logs. What the hell was this? He examined the logs every which way he could, including evidence of earlier hacking attempts, but again and again he came to the same conclusion: Jonah had disabled the security system.

It didn’t make sense. There were strict protocols set up in the security plan. The system was set 24/7 to record the exterior of the building, the lobby, the elevators, and inside every entrance, except when in test mode. But Jonah had put the security on test mode, which would have converted automatically to the armed mode in two hours even if he didn’t manually reset the codes … if there hadn’t been a fire.

“You’re making assumptions, Duke,” he muttered to himself. Just because Jonah’s codes were used didn’t mean that Jonah himself had disabled the system. But why would Jonah give the codes to anyone? There was a fail-safe; if Jonah was threatened, he could put in false codes that would appear to disable the system, but alert both Duke and the sheriff’s department. Duke had successfully used such protocols with high-risk businesses where having a “panic” code worked exceptionally well. Several smaller banks used it as the last resort for their secure areas. There was also a panic button in the lab, in the lobby, in Jonah’s office, and in Jim’s office.

But the system had been put in test mode at 12:48 a.m.

Sheriff Sanger had told him the 911 call came in from a passing driver at 1:57 a.m., more than an hour later.

There were no video files. They just weren’t there. All cameras fed into the main database, and it was replicated every hour to an external server. If the replication failed, the system administrator would be alerted.

The digital files had to be here! Somewhere … he would re-create them if he had to.

“Dammit.” He’d already left two messages for Russ Larkin, the I.T director for Butcher-Payne.

Duke scanned the log, making notes on the pad beside him.

Jonah — or someone with his personal codes — had entered the building at 12:15 a.m. He had turned off internal security, but the doors were still locked, cameras on, and to enter someone would need an employee card
and
a key to the building — and the entry code. It was a backup system — if the card, or the key, were lost or stolen, neither could be used alone to enter the building. It was Jonah all the way. Jonah’s pass, Jonah’s code.

“Jonah, what were you doing last night?”

He buzzed Jayne Morgan, the in-house computer database manager for Rogan-Caruso, and asked her to come to his office. Duke had worked closely with the young, socially inept genius to code computer security systems for many of their clients. Duke’s job was on-site, Jayne handled most of the programming.

Though Duke had a corner office with a view on two sides — one looking down the K Street Mall, the other overlooking Cesar Chavez Park — he grew antsy when he had to spend more than an hour at his desk. His strength was field security, not sitting around analyzing computer data. His favorite assignments were when he was hired to physically break in to facilities and analyze their security systems. Jayne’s strength was
cyber hacking.

“Is this for Dr. Payne?” Jayne asked.

“Yes. The video backups are missing. They seem to be completely gone.”

“Not possible,” she said with confidence.

He slid over a notepad listing the details he knew. “Why would he put the system in test mode in the middle of the night?”

“Because you can’t turn off the system without alerting us.”

“Shit, I knew that.” He rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay, someone threatened him. Someone manipulated him. But why would he do it? How would they even know about the test mode? That the system can’t be turned off?” Any interruption would send an alert to the Rogan-Caruso on-call security supervisor. The logs said no such interruption happened until 1:45 a.m. Which would have been about the time the fire had damaged the electrical system. The disruption prevented the Rogan-Caruso servers from talking to the Butcher-Payne system, which triggered the automatic alert.

“An inside job?”

“Maybe.” He frowned. He’d already printed out background reports on all Butcher-Payne employees, past and present. “Maybe he was meeting someone at the lab, but why so late?” And that still didn’t explain putting the system in test mode.

His cell phone rang. He would have ignored it, except it was Jim Butcher.

“Jim,” he answered.

“Is Jonah dead?”

“I’m sorry.”

“God fucking dammit.” Jim sounded tough, but his voice was strained. “What happened?”

“We don’t know everything, but I’m consulting with the FBI on this one.” Nora had seemed amicable to the suggestion earlier, but he had to play the situation carefully or she might pull him off. Duke didn’t want to go over her head, but he would if it meant staying on the case. “I’m not going to stop until I find out who did this.”