The Evolution of Evil (The Blackwell Files Book 6)

by Steven F Freeman

  Shoemaker turned to his original captors. “Can’t you do something?”

  “It’s not our jurisdiction,” said Alton. “Enjoy your jail cell.”

  Shoemaker assumed a stoic expression. “Whatever. As long as Summit’s research is shut down, I really don’t care.”

  Fuentes led off his prisoner. Dark shadows seemed to swallow them up as they stepped out of the lab’s harsh, florescent lights into the black island night. The twittering of a flight of herons ended abruptly as the door snapped shut.

  The NSA team huddled around Delaney’s work area to discuss this latest turn of events. She brought up a file of case notes, angled the laptop so all could see, and began typing in an update of the break-in.

  “What do you all think?” asked Delaney. “Is Shoemaker mixed up in Summit’s kidnapping?”

  “Are you kidding?” asked Cragmire. “The dude admitted he’d like to kidnap her, and we caught him breaking in. How much more proof do we need?”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Alton. “Maybe he’s guilty, maybe he’s not. If he is, what about the guy with the crooked nose and scar, presumably Shoemaker’s buddy who got away? How is he connected to this, if Shoemaker kidnapped Summit?”

  “We know more than one person was involved with Summit’s abduction,” said Cragmire. “Maybe Shoemaker and Broken Nose worked together to abduct her just like they worked together tonight.”

  Alton rubbed his chin. “Shoemaker strikes me as the type to brag about the kidnapping if he had carried it off. He seems to care less about his own incarceration than he does about his cause.”

  “Maybe,” said Cragmire, “but ever heard of Occam’s razor?”

  “What the hell does shaving have to do with this?” asked the Gooch.

  Cragmire assumed a sneer of intellectual superiority. “Occam’s razor is a problem-solving philosophy. It says that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. In other words, if you have to decide between a simple explanation and a complicated one, the simple explanation is usually correct.”

  “That’s true only in the absence of more information,” said Alton. “We’ve just identified Shoemaker as a suspect, so certainly we’ll acquire additional data soon.”

  “Plus, we have no ironclad kidnapping evidence against Shoemaker,” added Mallory. “If he did abduct Summit, we’ll need to gather enough proof to support a conviction. Either way, we need to keep digging.”

  “Agreed,” said Delaney. “The good news is that with Shoemaker in jail, we may already have Summit’s kidnapper in custody. The bad news is that if Shoemaker keeps refusing to talk, we’re no closer to finding Summit.”

  “One other piece of bad news,” said Alton, “is that the rest of Summit’s kidnappers are still out there. If they haven’t already killed her yet, the fact that we captured a member of their gang might rattle them enough to consider it. They may want to get rid of her before they’re caught, too.” He cast his gaze across all the members of the team. “We have to find Summit before her kidnappers reach that conclusion.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Héctor Urbina set a brisk pace along the shoreline sidewalk. The harbor’s placid waters appeared silver in the moonlight, setting a tranquil scene. But a long day at work had been followed by a long evening in Taberna de Tortuga, a local tavern. At this late hour, all Urbina wanted was to get home and catch some sleep.

  Urbina’s wavering concentration improved as the faint buzz of local Pilsener beer began to fade. He stopped to catch his breath and hitch up his sagging pants. In ten more minutes, he would be home. His friends had ribbed him for not catching a taxi, but he couldn’t see spending the money when he lived so close.

  Urbina turned onto a branching side street, angling away from the bright lights of the waterfront. He nearly tripped over a wooden crate that had been thrown onto the curb. He slowed his pace a little to avoid any more obstacles on the dark patch of road.

  A noise behind him gave him a momentary start. Then he remembered a few occasions when he had surprised sleeping animals on that very road. Nevertheless, he quickened his pace just a bit.

  An explosion of pain on the back of Urbina’s head joined a constellation of twinkling lights filling his field of view. He fell with a crash on his side and rolled onto his back, holding up his arms to protect himself.

  As his vision cleared, he could discern a shadowy figure hovering overhead. Urbina rolled to the right and lurched to his feet, wobbly but upright.

  He ran, nearly falling again as flashes of agony pounded through his head.

  Footsteps—from behind. He’d never escape.

  Urbina turned to fight. He raised his fists high, as his boxing instructor had taught him years ago. The attacker, still obscured in the shadows, closed in.

  Urbina wished his head would clear, but there was no time. He must fight now or die.

  He took a wild swing at his attacker, scraping the person’s face but nearly sending himself sprawling with the force of his swing. He aimed another punch at a shadow in the dark but missed.

  Another flash of movement from the left. This time Urbina’s skull exploded in cacophony of pain. He could feel blood running down the side of his neck. No mental effort could prevent him from crashing onto the gritty street.

  He tried to move, to run, but couldn’t. Every effort was met with a piercing lance of pain and a fresh wave of dizziness. He could only struggle in the dirt.

  He rolled into a shaft of moonlight. Something—someone—moved into the light, blocking it. The figure raised something overhead and swung it down with a deadly motion.

  No!

  * * *

  The attacker surveyed the bloody scene. Héctor Urbina’s lifeless corpse lay crumpled in the alley, a crimson trail flowing from the body and pooling in a crack in the asphalt. Good thing the man had made a habit of following the same route home from the same seaside bar every night. His consistency had certainly simplified tonight’s ambush.

  Now to get rid of this pile of evidence. Luckily, Urbina’s diminutive stature aided in the disposal of his body.

  The murderer walked a few dozen yards down the road, back to the spot where a fish market cart had been concealed with the old topsail of a fishing boat. The murderer wheeled the cart back to the body and stuffed the corpse inside it.

  Only fifteen minutes were needed to push the cart down to the dock and load it onto a boat moored on the shoreline. The figure tied down the cart and fired up the engine. The soft putt putt of the motor could scarcely be heard over the slosh of gentle waves against the pilings. A glance around the harbor revealed an absence of witnesses, not surprising at this late hour but certainly welcome.

  Exiting the harbor and heading into open water, the attacker couldn’t help but smile. The fish cart had been a nice touch. It would be returned to its normal spot before the owner arrived in the morning. Any residual blood would be attributed to the fish that normally lined its interior.

  Yes, everything had fallen into place. One could only hope the next steps would proceed as smoothly.

  CHAPTER 30

  Robb Shoemaker rose from the filthy cot in his prison cell and squinted into the early morning sunlight pouring from a window on the other side of the room. The tall policeman, the one who had come on-shift at midnight, approached his cell.

  “You have rich friends,” said the lieutenant, whose name badge read “Rios.”

  “Guess that means I made bail,” said Shoemaker with an approving nod. If only Rios knew the whole story. This was the most recent of several favors Shoemaker’s benefactor had provided.

  Rios didn’t reply. He inserted a heavy key into the lock and swung open the ancient door. “You can’t leave the city until your case has been heard in court.”

  Shoemaker put both hands on his sides and leaned back into a long stretch. “When will that be?”

  “I don’t know. You can ask Captain Fuentes when he gets here.”

  �
�Thanks, but I won’t be waiting around. Maybe I’ll call him later.”

  Shoemaker staggered toward the police station’s exit, still stiff from a night spent on a prison cot of dubious quality. He emerged onto the street and blinked in the bright morning sun. Around him, life in the coastal town proceeded as normal: boats chugged out of the harbor, vendors set up roadside stands intended to grab the attention of locals and tourists alike, and children chased each other around a nearby playground. No one seemed to care that he had just spent the night in conditions that, had a dog been subjected to it back home, might have been considered cruelty to animals.

  Shoemaker stopped on the sidewalk and made a point of swiveling at the waist, pulling his torso around in an extended stretch. While twisted, he scanned the police station. He didn’t seem to have a tail, but better to play it safe. He’d walk a mile or two before calling his associates for a pickup.

  He turned away from the bustling harbor and trudged uphill along a coastal road. As he walked, Shoemaker fell into a contemplative mood. He shuddered as he considered his overnight accommodations. His stomach continued to churn in response to an Ecuadorian cell that stank of urine, vegetable decay, and sweat. His father, a Wall Street investment banker, had insisted on the usual trophy house to compliment Gloria, his trophy wife—and Shoemaker’s step mother. As much as Shoemaker despised his father’s ostentatious McMansion, he couldn’t help but experience a renewed appreciation for its maniacal cleanliness.

  Father…a person who would never understand his son, a person who judged others based on their material success, a person who valued government connections over personal ones. The man had never understood his son’s passion for the cause that had brought him to this island. Fortunately, Shoemaker himself suffered no such myopia. His pit stop in the deluxe accommodations of Santa Cruz’s jail represented only a brief detour.

  He quickened his pace. It was time to refocus on the job at hand: putting an absolute stop to Summit’s destructive activities. The irony of Summit’s research taking place here on the Galapagos Islands, the cradle of the idea of natural selection, wasn’t lost on Shoemaker. Summit’s research threatened to launch a wave of unnatural selection in the form of mankind’s wholesale collection and annihilation of unique, precious species.

  Even the policeman guarding Shoemaker last night had admitted as much. How could Galapagos citizens stand by and watch their native species irrevocably wiped out? Shoemaker may not have been an Ecuadorian citizen, but unlike his father, he acted under the conviction of loftier principles, a conviction that held him firm to a higher purpose. He had an important job to do, and he wasn’t finished yet. In fact, he had only just started.

  CHAPTER 31

  Agent Delaney rose a good two hours before the time her team had agreed to meet in the lobby. She felt determined to fit in her morning walk before the day’s schedule eliminated any chance of exercising.

  She double-knotted the laces of her worn ASICS and slipped her magnetic room key and cellphone into her pocket. Pulling her room door shut, she strode along a stack-stone path to the back of the property. She arrived at a wooden, split-rail fence delineating the property’s rear border, stopped to stretch her legs, and passed through a spring-loaded gate to the other side.

  The first morning, Delaney had identified this route, a rolling, two-mile nature trail. The resort owners had carved it through the dense forest. Heavy deciduous trees lined both sides of the path, while an explosion of ferns, wildflowers, and other undergrowth painted the forest floor in a pallet of green and primary colors. Fortunately, the sun rose early on the islands, and dappled beams of sunlight illuminated the trail. Finches, hawks, herons, and a variety of unfamiliar jungle birds filled the air with a cacophony of competing birdsongs.

  Yesterday, Delaney had spotted a giant tortoise taking shelter under an elephant-ear fern, and she scoped out the forest floor as she walked, hoping to catch a glimpse of at least one more before the assignment here ended. She couldn’t let her gaze wander from the trail too much, though. In some spots, frequent rainfall had saturated it into an unpassable bog, forcing her time and again to pick her way through knee-high grass to avoid losing a cross-trainer in the muck.

  Despite the challenge of navigating the path, Delaney felt a lifting of her spirits. The daily ritual of exercise provided a physical and mental respite she desperately needed. The combination of sights, sounds, and heavy, fecund aromas provided a surge of energy that would, she hoped, carry her through to the end of another arduous day.

  Delaney reached the far end of the loop trail and continued along the curve, heading back in the direction of the resort. Picking her way down the path, she swung her gaze from side to side, still hoping to spot the elusive tortoises.

  Ahead, a particularly dense section of the jungle’s tree-top emergent layer cast a hundred-yard section of trail into gloomy shadows. Entering the section, Delaney scanned the nearby ground. Yesterday’s tortoise had seemed to prefer shade. Maybe others would find this spot inviting.

  The birds’ ambient noise seemed to grow louder. Perhaps they, like she, enjoyed the appreciable temperature drop afforded by the organic cave.

  A rough arm grabbed her around the waist while a gloved hand clamped down over her mouth. The attacker pulled Delaney backwards, jerking her feet off the forest floor and eliminating any combat advantage she might have enjoyed from the ground.

  The attacker swiveled to the right, smashing Delaney’s forehead into a hardwood tree. Her head throbbed, and she could feel blood run along the corner of her eye and down the side of her neck.

  A bolt of pain erupted from her side and lanced out from her torso. She heard the wet sound of a blade sliding out of the base of her left ribcage. The attacker wiped the knife on Delaney’s shirt before tucking it out of sight.

  A wave of dizziness and nausea swept through Delaney’s frame. Heat coursed through her face, only to be replaced seconds later by a dull, tingling sensation. The attacker’s grip relaxed, and Delaney fell to her knees. The criminal kicked her in the back, and Delaney fell onto the saturated trail with a wheeze. A fresh stream of blood poured down her side and into the mud.

  Searing pain on her left side rendered breathing nearly impossible. She gasped for air as her vision began to blur.

  “Adios,” whispered the attacker.

  Delaney could hear footsteps receding behind her. Turning her neck slightly, she could discern a figure slipping back up the trail, away from the resort. With the declining acuity of her vision, making out any details of the assailant proved to be impossible.

  Besides, Delaney had bigger problems than making an ID. Blood continued to ooze from both wounds, and breathing seemed to grow more impossible by the second. She struggled to rise, but a spasm of pain dropped her back into the mud. She collapsed after a second attempt.

  Then she remembered the cellphone in her pocket. Employing her sense of touch more than her fading eyesight, she grasped the phone in trembling hands and pulled it from her pocket. The phone slipped and fell into a puddle of water. Delaney snatched it back out.

  Had the immersion shorted the device? If so, all was lost. She pressed the power button. The phone’s screen activated and then fell dark. She pressed the power button again. This time it stayed on. Delaney used a trembling index finger to open her phone app and touch one of the contacts in her “favorites” list.

  “Hello,” answered the voice on the other end.

  Delaney tried to speak, but her left lung screamed in silent protest. She could utter no sound. The last vestiges of light faded from her vision, and the wounded agent fell into a silent, dark universe.

  CHAPTER 32

  Alton had nearly finished dressing when his cellphone rang. “Hello?…hello? Agent Delaney, are you there?” He glanced at the screen to confirm the call hadn’t disconnected. “Hello? Delaney, can you hear me?” The silence on the other end stretched to half a minute.

  Mallory came over, worry crossing her fa
ce. “What’s up?”

  “Something’s wrong. Delaney just called me. Her call’s still connected, but she’s not saying anything.”

  Mallory’s face darkened. “That’s not normal. Let’s go to her room and see what’s going on.”

  “Wait,” said Alton. “I think I just heard a bird. She’s outside. We’ll have to track down her location.”

  Mallory slipped on her shoes. “How are we going to do that?”

  “I have an app on my phone,” replied Alton, touching an icon on his screen to open the tracker app. He stuffed his pocketknife into a jeans pocket and headed for the door.

  Mallory followed him. “So how exactly do we find her?”

  “This app uses the GPS signal of anyone calling me to track down their location. It should lead us straight to her.”

  They raced down the spiral stairs of their loft, Alton tapping rapid-fire on his phone throughout the descent.

  “Where to?” asked Mallory.

  “I have a lock on Delaney’s location,” said Alton. “She’s about five hundred yards away.” He set off with the quickest pace his limp would allow. “Call the Gooch. Tell him where we’re headed and have him contact the rest of the team. We don’t know what to expect.”

  Mallory placed the call, and Alton swiveled his gaze between the directional arrow on his phone and the rough terrain before them. He spoke into the phone every twenty or thirty seconds but never received a reply from the NSA supervisor.

  In two minutes, the Blackwells reached the property’s back fence. An impenetrable tangle of undergrowth and vines blocked their progress.

  “Down there,” said Mallory, pointing along the fence. “There’s a rear gate. That must be the access point to the exercise path Delaney told us about a few days ago.”

  They hurried down and crossed through the gate, finding themselves in the middle of a jungle path.

  “Delaney’s signal is coming from the left,” said Alton, pointing. “Stay sharp. We don’t know what happened to her.”