Cutting Edge f-3

by Allison Brennan

  Nora didn’t think Payne’s body was in good shape, but from an arson investigator’s standpoint she could see that the body being intact was a huge plus.

  “You’re incredible, as usual, but you still haven’t explained why you think the arsonists took the research animals.”

  “A cage is missing. Maybe more than one. And I could find no animal remains in the lab.”

  Nora looked at the wall-what was left of it-and all she saw was a mess of melted steel and ash. Some of the metal could have been cages, but she didn’t see-wait. “There’s a gap.”

  “Bingo! You win!”

  “We need to get the staff in here and find out if the animals were, indeed, birds and what kind. And if there had been cages here prior to the fire.” Nora almost jumped out of her boots. “Wait, don’t researchers mark their test animals? With tattoos or bands around their leg or something?”

  “Makes sense to me.”

  If the animals were marked-and the arsonists had kept one or more in their possession-that was hard physical evidence. Enough to get a warrant at the very least. “Quin, you’re incredible.”

  “That’s what Devon said after the show last night.”

  It was Nora’s turn to roll her eyes. “I’m calling on Payne’s staff. We may have our biggest break yet. I just wish we’d had it before someone died.” She glanced around. “By the way, where’s your friend, the county arson investigator-Ulysses, right?”

  Quin grinned. “I tasked him with an assignment outside the building. I couldn’t stand him hovering, and one thing I’ve learned is that if you give someone something productive to do, they leave you alone.”

  “So is that why you sent me out to defuse Sanger with the reporter?”

  “Of course not. I wanted you to see the hunk Sanger was talking to.” She paused a beat. “Though I get more done when no one is asking questions.”

  “I get the hint. Be available, Quin. No out-of-town dates for the next few days.”

  “Never in the middle of a job.”

  Professor Leif Cole had just sat down at his desk with a stack of papers and his morning coffee when his phone rang. It was early, the department secretary hadn’t come in, and all calls rolled over to his direct line. All he had wanted was a few moments of peace, but technology thwarted him again.

  He considered letting the call go to voice mail, then he noticed that it was his direct line flashing. He picked up the receiver.

  “Professor Cole.”

  “Hi, Professor, Rich Belham from the Bee. I’m in Auburn right now, outside-”

  Leif didn’t care for Rich, but the reporter had given the college and Leif’s demonstrations fair coverage, so he didn’t simply hang up. “Rich, I don’t have time for this now. I have a class to prepare for. Call me-”

  “-outside Butcher-Payne along with the fire department and the FBI.”

  Every muscle in his body tightened as if they were being squeezed by a thousand small vises.

  In a voice far calmer than he felt, he said, “I told you the arson fires are off-limits. I’m not involved, I don’t know who is, and the FBI is wasting taxpayer resources by hounding me. But what else is new, right?”

  “Right,” Rich laughed, his voice dripping with falseness. “Except this is much bigger.” All fake humor was gone.

  Against his better judgment he asked, “How?”

  “Murder.”

  His stomach dropped as if he were on a roller coaster, and he leaned back into his chair.

  “Someone was hurt?” he finally asked.

  “Someone is dead. Caught inside. I don’t have the details, but I have confirmed with the sheriff-Lance Sanger, a friend of yours, right? — that there is definitely one dead body in all that destruction.”

  “Who?” Leif was whispering. He cleared his throat. “Do the police know who?”

  “Not officially.”

  Rich was quiet. Damn that man, he wanted to play. He didn’t know how good Leif was at these games.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “A quote.”

  “On what? Shit, Rich, I’m not involved. The fact that the FBI keeps dragging my name and the college through the mud because they don’t have enough evidence or intelligence to do their job is inexcusable. They’re looking at a lawsuit, and you know it.”

  “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. I got squat from the feds. It’s your friend the sheriff who has it out for your neck.”

  Lance. He should have known. Lance never understood how Leif had grown up, educated himself, become a better person than he’d been before. Lance was a thug, a cop; he played by society’s corrupt rules. Harboring a fantasy that Leif was still the same Boy Scout who raped the earth and killed innocent creatures for sport.

  “What do you want?” Leif asked slowly.

  “Two years ago, you led a protest against Butcher-Payne for their research into gene therapy, which spurred Butcher-Payne into funding a media campaign to discredit you and your claims-”

  “Hold it. You’ve already gotten it wrong. I didn’t lead the protest, I participated in it. And Butcher-Payne has not even begun to discredit my facts relating to Frankenstein’s monster-namely, genetic engineering.”

  “I’m sure they’d disagree. They certainly aren’t at a loss for funding, picking up huge private and public grants.”

  Rich knew how to stick in the knife.

  The reporter continued. “So there’s no love lost between you and Butcher-Payne. Their research lab was destroyed. Do you have a comment?”

  Leif crafted his response. “Human life is as precious as animal life. It is tragic that someone died at Butcher-Payne, but I hope that the other people behind the company realize that their research is just as criminal as the actions of whoever set the fire in the first place.” He paused, then asked, “Who died in the fire?”

  “It hasn’t been released, pending notification of next of kin-”

  “I understand.”

  “Jonah Payne.”

  “They’re certain?”

  “Oh yeah, they just want to tell his son first, then it’ll be all over the news.”

  There was no love lost between Leif and Jonah Payne. They’d battled for years about biotechnology in academic journals, mainstream newspapers, and even on national cable news. But Leif didn’t want him dead. He didn’t want anyone to die.

  “An accident?”

  “They’re not saying.”

  “Of course not. Look, I have to go.”

  “Don’t-”

  Leif hung up on the reporter and sat at his desk, staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows, but not seeing the trees or morning sky.

  Jonah Payne had died in the fire. That Leif was innocent didn’t matter, for his innocence wasn’t pure. He knew too much. He’d known for a long time. And he’d thought he’d stopped it.

  He left his office, computer on, email open, coffee cooling on his desk. He had to find out if the group had gotten back together and if so, what the hell for?

  At dawn, Maggie unbolted the door of her small, one-room cabin and carefully carried the cage inside, placing it on the round table that took up most of the kitchen space.

  The duck wasn’t making noise; his spirit had been defeated by the cruelty of those so-called scientists.

  She locked and bolted the door out of habit-no one lived anywhere near her here in the middle of nature. People called it “the middle of nowhere” when in fact the few places like her mountainside were the only somewhere she wanted to be. It calmed her, and especially now she needed to be calm.

  “It’s okay, Donnie,” she cooed, opening the cage and sitting across from the mallard. He looked at her, waddled forward, and stood there, his wing crooked.

  She swallowed her anger, knowing that animals had much better instincts than people, and she didn’t want to scare Donnie. First those people did untold things to him, poking him and injecting him with who knows what, keeping him locked in a room for his entire life. What kin
d of life was that? A prison for innocent animals, yet they were incapable of doing wrong.

  And then that jerk, dropping the cage with the ducks still inside! He was lucky she didn’t slit his throat then and there. If one of the birds had died, she would have. Then she’d have to kill the others, too, and that would be messy. Her impulsive nature could get her in trouble-she’d had some close calls in the past-so she worked hard to control her reactions.

  Maggie had a better way to take care of them. She’d been thinking about it for several weeks. It had been far too difficult to convince them to reunite and continue their plan. Not Scott, but she had him by his cock.

  It was Anya she was worried about. Anya, who had an ill-formed conscience. She was feeling guilty about the fires. How could she feel any remorse for the corrupt businesses profiting from the torture and abuse of animals? It would only stop when they stopped it. People were mostly too stupid to care or understand what was for their own good. Her mother had explained it all to her.

  “The masses don’t understand what’s at stake,” her mother said often. “They are content working in a broken system that is spiraling out of control. Until those of us who care about the future take action and protect the earth and plants and animals who were here long before we were, our world is doomed.”

  Maggie gave Donnie water and bread crumbs. He ate from her hand, tame for a duck. He sensed that she’d never hurt him. She hadn’t wanted to keep him in the cage, but with his damaged wing he wouldn’t be able to fend for himself. When he was healthy, she’d take him to a lake and free him.

  She went to her bathroom and showered in icy water, washing away the dirt and grime from the fire and the lake. Remembered the power she felt when she held the knife to the man who had betrayed her family.

  Her mother had told her everything. How Jonah Payne tried to get her father fired only weeks before he died. How he belittled him, embarrassed him in front of his peers. The man was so arrogant in his success, so confident that he was right, Payne never listened to her dad, never even tried to understand his point of view. Just because Payne was the shining star, the kid who could do no wrong, everyone believed him.

  While Jonah Payne hadn’t killed her father, he had contributed to his death. And for that, he’d had to die. Because the time had come to destroy everyone who’d turned against her and her family.

  Cutting him had been better than sex. Watching the blood flow from his arms and legs and chest … never-ending rivers of blood. She’d avenged her family and it freed her.

  Skin burning with cold, Maggie stepped from the shower and dried her thin body, then cleaned the bathtub. While it filled with cold water, she dressed in jeans, a white T-shirt, and her favorite sweater, one she’d knitted from yarn she’d made herself.

  When the tub was full, she turned off the faucet and brought Donnie to the room. “No more cages for you, Donnie,” she told him. He waddled around the bathroom and Maggie left him to explore.

  She made tea from plants she’d picked and dried and blended herself, and sat at her laptop. It was eight in the morning, time to take credit for a job well done.

  To say his brother Sean looked unhappy with his assignment was an understatement, but he reluctantly agreed that Duke’s plan could work.

  “Isn’t there anyone else?” Sean asked. “I hated college.”

  Duke pulled into a parking slot outside the administration building at Rose College. “And you were so awful at it,” Duke said sarcastically. Sean had an exceptionally high I.Q., started college a year early, and had graduated with two bachelor’s degrees and two minors. He became bored easily, which had been a problem from the time he was little, resulting in his being labeled difficult.

  “Duke-”

  “A few days. Week maybe.” He turned off the ignition.

  “Investigations like this take years.”

  “It’s already been nearly two years. They just need a little inside information to give them direction. The feds have rules and regulations they have to follow. We don’t.”

  “That’s not what you said when I wanted to get the goods on that embezzler last year.”

  “You wanted to break into his office and hack his computer. I’ll stretch the rules, Sean, but I’m not sending you to prison.”

  “I’m good.”

  Duke shot him a glance. It was true, he probably would have gotten away with it, but Sean was already playing close to the edge and it was Duke’s responsibility to keep him on the legal side of the gray line.

  “Arrogance will be your downfall, little brother.”

  Sean grumbled. “Yeah, yeah. Okay, I get the plan-get close to the people in Cole’s group and find out if any of them are talking about arson or murder or Butcher-Payne. Or, anyone who seems to be acting weird, guilty, or unusually nonchalant about arson.”

  “You’re here to observe, not act-understand?”

  “I got it.” He made a move to get out of the car, and Duke grabbed his arm.

  “This is serious, Sean. You have good instincts with the brains to match, but you’re reckless.”

  Sean brushed off his hand with a frown. “I’m not a kid who needs to be bailed out of trouble, Duke. I know what I’m doing. I thought you trusted me.”

  “I do.”

  “You say you do.”

  “Sean-”

  “Look, I’m not going to do something stupid. You agreed that I’d be a partner by the time I was twenty-five, and I only have eighteen months to go. Or was that just talk to keep me in line?”

  “You know it wasn’t-”

  “Then let me do this my way. I know what you need. If any of Cole’s people are involved, I’ll find out who and give you the information.”

  Duke had to let go. It was hard. He didn’t know if it would be any harder if Sean was his son instead of his brother. But Duke, fifteen years older, had always been protective of Sean. And after their parents died, Duke had raised him while their older brother Kane continued to fight other people’s wars. Duke hadn’t always done a great job-he pushed Sean hard and was often critical-but he was proud of his younger brother.

  Duke said, “I already called the admissions director, he’s expecting you.”

  Sean raised an eyebrow. “Someone you know?”

  “An old friend.”

  “Why am I not surprised you know just the right person to get me inside?”

  “He might suspect I have another reason wanting you here, but I told him there was a glitch with your diploma from MIT and you need a social science requirement you’d missed as an undergrad. It happens that Professor Cole’s class fits the bill. He didn’t asked questions. By the time he gets your files from MIT, you’ll be out of here.”

  Sean shook his head with a half grin. “And you think I break the rules.”

  “I’m bending them.” He added, “The only thing, you might want to tone down your background.”

  “In what?”

  “Having two bachelor of science degrees and graduating from MIT might be a tip-off that you aren’t a liberal-arts major.”

  “Got it.” He glanced toward the building, but Duke saw his mind working.

  “What do you have up your sleeve?”

  “Nothing. Trust me, I can blend in, no problem.”

  “One of them could be a killer. Don’t get cocky.”

  He grinned and winked. “No cockier than the average Rogan.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  While Quin continued to work her magic at the crime scene, and the M.E. moved the body to the morgue, Nora drove with her partner Pete Antonovich to the town house of Melanie Duncan, Jonah Payne’s head research assistant.

  “You were right,” Pete said as he parallel-parked down the street from Duncan’s residence. “The water pump was sabotaged, and whoever did it knew exactly what they were doing. Either an inside job or a smart guy with an engineering background. Popped the locks like a burglar, and inside the substation the water was shut off at the source. No comput
er knowledge necessary, just knowing which screws to turn, so to speak.”

  “And I’m guessing no fingerprints or tools left around to identify the culprit,” she said.

  “The sheriff’s forensic unit is printing and documenting the scene, but I don’t think they’ll find anything. The arsonists also blocked the camera.”

  “How?”

  “Simple. Put on a mask and tape a piece of cardboard to the camera lens.”

  “You’d think,” Nora said, “that in the twenty-first century we’d find a better way of surveilling remote locations.”

  “There is,” Pete said as he knocked on Duncan’s door. “But city government is behind the curve.”

  Melanie Duncan came to the door in a robe, her wet, dark red hair dripping down her back. Other than the simple black-framed glasses over bright blue eyes, Duncan was completely antithetical to Nora’s image of what a female researcher should look like. She was tall, voluptuous, and attractive.

  “It says no solicitors,” Duncan snapped when she opened the door.

  Nora showed her badge. “Special Agent Nora English. My partner, Pete Antonovich, FBI. Melanie Duncan, correct?”

  She frowned, a typical expression when confronted by government agents.

  “What do you want?”

  “May we come in?”

  “What do you want?” she repeated, not opening the door any wider.

  “There was a fire at Butcher-Payne,” Nora said. She watched Duncan carefully. First reactions were the most difficult to fake, except for the most accomplished pathological liars.

  “A fire?” She sounded skeptical, her brows drawing together. “Why are you here? The-” She glanced at Pete, then back at Nora. “The FBI?”

  “Ms. Duncan-”

  “Dr. Duncan,” she replied automatically. She stepped away from the door, and Nora and Pete entered. “I need to call Dr. Payne,” Duncan said. “I don’t see why you didn’t call him, or why the FBI is involved with a fire. Our lab isn’t a government facility. We have a grant, but-”