The President nodded. ‘I know the history, thank you,’ he said, somewhat coldly, ‘and I’m well aware of what we’ve gained from this business, but that still doesn’t mean I have to like it. Roland Oliver is, and always has been, the trade-off from hell, not to mention political suicide.’
‘But we needed it then, and we still need it now,’ Dickson said stubbornly.
‘I know, I know,’ Gainey said irritably. ‘On a possibly related note,’ he went on, turning to address Donahue, ‘James and I have been discussing a CIA report that you probably won’t have seen yet. There’s some reasonably compelling evidence that women who’ve been in close contact with Roland Oliver are only producing female children. That worries me.’
Donahue looked at him. ‘That’s news to me, Mr. President, but if it is true it’s certainly worrying. That suggests that they’re manipulating the gene pool for their own purposes. I don’t recall any agreement that they could do that.’
‘You don’t recall one because there never was any such agreement,’ Dickson said. ‘Once the present situation has been resolved we’ll have to sort this out.’
‘Now,’ the President said, looking back at Donahue, ‘what’s your view of the Beaver Creek incident?’
‘I presume,’ Donahue said, ‘that we’ve got a problem with trespassers, for want of a better word. Some other group has started poaching here.’
‘That’s correct,’ Dickson said. ‘I know something about this from our own people and also from Roland Oliver itself. A freelance group did start operating here, but they were quickly detected. The word from Roland Oliver is that the problem has been dealt with, and there should be no repetition. There was a confirmation of that from independent sources.’
‘Independent sources? What independent sources?’ the President asked.
‘A couple of reports on the Internet from astronomers,’ Dickson said. ‘They detected a high-intensity flare of light, well out beyond the satellite belt. Roland Oliver confirmed that the location tied in with their action against the poachers.’
Gainey nodded. ‘As long as they didn’t do it in our own backyard, I don’t care,’ he said. ‘So, all we have to do now is clean up the mess at Beaver Creek. And you are confident that that, George, is being done right now?’
‘Yes, Mr. President,’ Donahue replied. ‘Like you, I don’t like this business, and I don’t like what we’re having to do in Montana, but I do recognize the necessity for it.’
‘How long before the team finishes?’ Dickson asked.
‘Unless they meet any problems,’ Donahue said, ‘the operation should be completed no later than tomorrow afternoon.’
‘That’s longer than I would have expected.’
‘I know, Mr. Secretary,’ Donahue replied, ‘but the people involved in this incident live in Beaver Creek and Helena, and we’re only using a four-man team. We always try to use the smallest number of people possible. It will take longer simply because of the distances they’ll have to travel.’
‘What’s the progress so far?’ the President asked.
‘I got a report from the team leader immediately before I left Headquarters,’ Donahue said. ‘The body of the victim will be cremated within the next twelve hours – the mortuary people will be given an FBI authorization and instruction – and the pathologist has already been eliminated. I’m still waiting to hear about the law enforcement officer and the other physical evidence at Beaver Creek, and the team will clear up everything there before moving on to Helena. They can’t get to the FBI agents until tomorrow.’
Highway US91/Interstate 15, Western Montana
‘Hey, you know him?’ the trooper asked, interested.
‘Yes,’ Hunter replied. ‘We were working with him up in Beaver Creek. Would you mind if I took a look at the wreck?’
‘No. No problem.’
Hunter opened the driver’s door of the car. ‘It’s Doctor Parker, Christy. He’s dead.’
Christy-Lee gasped and put her hand to her mouth. ‘God,’ she said. ‘We only saw him, what, four or five hours ago.’
Hunter nodded. ‘The trooper thinks he may have fallen asleep at the wheel. Stay here. I’m just going to take a look at the car.’
He scrambled down the incline and walked over to the wrecked vehicle. It was a late-model Lincoln, dark blue in colour.
‘What happened?’ Hunter asked.
The trooper pointed. ‘The car left the Interstate and hit a pine tree hard, real hard. That didn’t kill him, as far as we can tell, ’cause his airbag deployed. Looks like the car was going so fast that it snapped the tree clean off, and the trunk fell onto the car’s roof. The driver got his head crushed by the roof collapsing on him.’
Hunter looked at the car and the figures working around it. The roof had already been cut away by the rescue team, and the figure in the driving seat was covered by a red blanket, while they worked on freeing the legs.
He walked closer to the car, careful to keep out of the way of the men working on it. He didn’t disagree with the trooper’s reconstruction of the accident, but his training had taught him to always check, never assume, so he looked carefully. He walked completely around the car, looked at the tyres and wheels, glanced into the trunk and inside the car, and knelt for several seconds by the driver’s door, which had been cut off and tossed aside. Then he walked back to the car and looked carefully along its left hand side.
‘Thanks,’ he said to the trooper. ‘That’s a hell of a way to go.’
The trooper nodded and turned away, but as Christy-Lee watched from the passenger seat of the Ford – she didn’t feel like driving any further – Hunter called him back to ask a question.
She saw the trooper’s emphatic shake of his head, then Hunter climbed back up to the road. Before he got back in the Bureau Ford, he looked carefully at the road surface in the nearside lane and hard shoulder.
One of the troopers there stopped the traffic to let Hunter drive past the parked cars, and he accelerated away towards Helena. Christy-Lee’s eyes were moist, and she stared straight ahead through the windshield.
‘We hardly knew him,’ she said finally, ‘but I really liked him. It’s such a stupid waste of a life.’
Hunter shook his head. ‘It wasn’t a waste, not exactly.’
Christy-Lee looked at him in disbelief. ‘What?’ she demanded.
‘Doctor Parker didn’t fall asleep at the wheel,’ Hunter said. ‘Somebody drove him off the road. He was murdered.’
Chapter Six
Wednesday
Cedar City, Utah
When Maria Slade showed her appointment letter at the reception area of the Cedar City General Hospital, she was directed to the Special Unit at the rear of the main building. Carrying her case, she walked through the cool blue and white painted corridors until she reached a door labelled ‘Special Unit – No Admittance Without Appointment.’
‘I’m Maria Slade,’ she said to the receptionist. ‘I have an appointment for some routine tests.’
‘Maria Slade,’ the girl murmured, running her pencil down a list on the desk in front of her. ‘Oh, yes, here we are. You’re to see Doctor Stevenson.’
She glanced at the wall clock and noted Maria’s arrival time in the correct column, then looked up. ‘Did you drive here, Miss Slade?’
‘Yes,’ Maria replied, slightly puzzled.
The receptionist smiled. ‘No problem,’ she said. ‘I’ll just need your car’s license plate number for security purposes. We have to tell the security staff which cars belong to our patients.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Maria said.
The receptionist noted down the number that Maria gave her, then stood up and walked around the desk. ‘I’ll just show you to your room. Please follow me.’
The room Maria was given was light and airy, with the sun streaming in through the large window. The view from the window was disappointing: it just looked onto the parking lot.
‘Please get undressed and get i
nto bed. Doctor Stevenson will be along to see you later this evening. We’ve already served dinner, but would you like a cup of coffee?’
‘Thank you, yes,’ Maria said, putting her case on a low table near the window. ‘That would be lovely.’
The receptionist left the room and walked down the corridor to a small kitchen. She unlocked a tiny steel wall cupboard, reached inside and took down a jar labeled ‘Coffee – Dr. Stevenson ONLY’ and spooned granules into a mug on a tray. Then she replaced the jar and re-locked the cupboard. She poured in boiling water, took a sealed individual container of cream from the refrigerator, added three wrapped sugar lumps and two small packets of biscuits, and took the tray to Maria’s room.
The girl was in bed, propped up on the pillows and flicking through a magazine she’d found in the bedside locker.
‘Here you are, Miss Slade,’ the receptionist said, and gave Maria the tray.
Back at her desk, the receptionist sat down and dialed a local number.
‘Miss Slade has arrived, Doctor Stevenson,’ she said, when the phone was answered. ‘She’s one of your special patients.’
The coffee was good, Maria decided, as she put the empty mug back on the bedside locker. She picked up the magazine again and began to read. After a few minutes she yawned, then yawned again. She was finding it difficult to concentrate on what she was reading. In fact, she was finding it difficult to even focus on the words. She put the magazine down, snuggled further down in the bed and closed her eyes. Three minutes later she was sound asleep.
Highway US91/Interstate 15, Western Montana
Christy-Lee Kaufmann was silent for a couple of minutes, then spoke. ‘How do you know he was murdered? The state trooper thought he’d just fallen asleep at the wheel. How come you know different?’
‘I know different, as you put it,’ Hunter said, ‘because I know what to look for. The police find a car that’s run off a straight road and smashed into a tree. The driver’s dead. There are no witnesses, and no other vehicles are around. What other conclusion can they come to?’
‘Exactly. So what did you see that they didn’t?’
‘This,’ Hunter said, pulled a small clear plastic evidence envelope from his inside jacket pocket and passed it over to her. Kaufmann took it, switched on the map-reading light and peered at the contents curiously. It appeared to be a flake of very dark paint.
‘What is it?’ Christy-Lee asked.
‘What does it look like?’
‘Paint?’ she replied.
‘That’s what it is,’ Hunter said. ‘Black, I think, but it could be very dark blue. There were traces of it all the way along the left side of Parker’s car. I picked that fragment off the driver’s door.’
He glanced over at Kaufmann, then turned his attention back to the road.
‘The way I see it,’ he said, ‘somebody who knew what they were doing followed Parker and waited until there was no other traffic around. Then they pulled alongside his car, and pushed him over to the right side of the road until he drove off it. That’s the way a professional would do it – no dents, no broken glass, just match speed and then steer to the right. Parker’s car has very little panel damage on that side, but there are black paint marks all the way along it.’
‘It couldn’t be just a parking accident?’
‘No, Christy, it couldn’t. The damage would be completely different. And beside, I saw the skid marks back there. Parker was braking hard when he crossed the hard shoulder. His car’s tyre marks are quite clear, and so were two others, just to the left of where the Lincoln left the road.
‘And there’s something else,’ Hunter added. ‘Doctor Parker said he was taking the skull and femur back for DNA examination in Helena. You probably didn’t notice, but the trunk of his car was open, and there was no sign of either the bones or his baggage in it.’
‘Maybe they flew out when the car left the road,’ Christy-Lee suggested.
‘No,’ Hunter shook his head. ‘I checked with the trooper. His team looked around the whole area when they arrived, just in case anybody else was lying injured in the woods, and they didn’t remove anything from the car.’
‘So somebody else must have removed them?’
‘That’s what I think,’ Hunter said.
Christy-Lee was silent for a few moments. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘You saw the paint and the damage, and I didn’t, and you’ve obviously got far more experience in this kind of thing than me, so I guess you’re right. But why? Why kill a forensic pathologist?’
‘That,’ Hunter said, ‘is a very good question. And another very good question is the one you asked earlier. Why pull us off this case?’
‘You think they’re connected?’
‘I don’t know, and I hope not, but I’m getting a real bad feeling about all of this.’
Cedar City, Utah
Doctor Stevenson was a tall thin man of middle years, his face dominated by a large hooked nose that, together with his slightly hunched shoulders, gave him the appearance of a large predatory bird. He opened the door to Maria Slade’s room a little after ten that evening, and peered inside.
The girl was sleeping peacefully, the covers rising and falling slightly as she breathed, her long ash-blonde hair spread over the pillows. Stevenson walked over to her and gently lifted her left eyelid. She didn’t stir.
He left the room and returned a couple of minutes later with a dish containing two small syringes. He pulled Maria’s right arm out from under the covers, swabbed the crook of her elbow with a cotton wool swab, and deftly extracted two samples of blood. Then he folded her arm back to hold a clean swab in place and left the room.
Stevenson carried the dish to a laboratory on the other side of the corridor, switched on the lights and placed the first blood sample in a sophisticated analysis machine. Ten minutes later he repeated the process with the second sample. Then he took both sets of printed test results over to his desk and looked carefully at them. He nodded in satisfaction, and reached for the telephone.
A little over ninety minutes later an ambulance arrived at the rear entrance to the Special Unit. Two attendants got out, opened the rear doors, extracted a gurney and pushed it into the building. Five minutes later they re-appeared. On the gurney was a female figure, covered in a white sheet and red blanket. The attendants loaded her into the ambulance, then closed the rear doors. Both got into the front of the vehicle, and it drove quietly away into the silent streets of Cedar City.
A little later, a male figure walked out of the same entrance carrying a small suitcase. He walked about two hundred yards down the street until he came to a group of six trash bins by the roadside, opened one, threw the suitcase inside and then returned to the hospital.
Doctor Stevenson left the Special Unit an hour or so later, Maria Slade’s car keys in his pocket. He would drive the car out of the parking lot and leave it in some anonymous back-street, with the keys in the ignition. Somebody would notice it eventually and drive it away, and there was a good chance it would never be found. After all, nobody was going to be looking for it.
On his way out, Stevenson made a notation beside the name ‘Slade, Miss Maria’ on the receptionist’s admissions sheet. The notation read simply ‘Discharged.’
Helena, Western Montana
‘Where are you going, Steve?’ Christy-Lee Kaufmann asked. ‘This isn’t the way to my apartment.’
‘I know,’ Hunter said. ‘I’m not letting go of this, orders or not. I’m going to take a look at the Helena Airport radar tapes and see if I can identify the aircraft that dropped those bones.’
Eight minutes later Hunter pulled up at the gateway to the Helena Regional Airport technical site. Christy-Lee Kaufmann leaned across him and showed her FBI identification to the guard.
‘We need to speak to somebody about a radar tape replay,’ she said, as she signed the paper on the guard’s clipboard.
‘No problem. Just go straight ahead and park next to the control tower.’ He
pointed at a tall building topped by a green-glazed visual control position directly in front of them. ‘I’ll give them a call and tell them you’re on your way.’
As they walked towards the building, a door opened and a short, rotund figure peered out, saw them and beckoned.
‘You’d be the FBI agents George called about?’ he asked.
Hunter nodded, and Kaufmann again showed her identification.
‘Maurice Moore, radar supervisor. Call me Morry. You were lucky to catch me – I was just about to leave for home. Now, how can I help the FBI?’
Moore’s face was round, eager and open. Hunter got the feeling that helping the FBI was the kind of thing he’d still be telling his grandchildren about in forty years time.
‘It’s very simple, Morry,’ Hunter said. ‘We’re investigating an incident that took place a little way north of here a few days ago, and we believe an aircraft may be involved. We’d like to see your radar tapes. You do keep radar tapes?’
‘You bet we do,’ Moore replied. ‘FAA – that’s the Federal Aviation Administration – rules. We hold them for a month, then recycle them unless there’s been some kind of an incident. Follow me.’
Moore led the way down a cream-painted corridor to a blue door. He reached into his pocket, took out a bunch of keys, selected one and turned it in the lock. The room he led them into had three huge tape decks, almost five feet tall and two feet wide, ranged along one wall. Each carried tape spools about a foot in diameter, carrying one inch recording tape. Only one of the machines was running, the spools rotating slowly.
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