The Evolution of Evil (The Blackwell Files Book 6)

by Steven F Freeman

Shoemaker looked puzzled. “And who might that be?”

  “Senator Grayson Leach.”

  “What?” came a burst from Alton’s cellphone. So much for Senator Jackson staying quiet. “If you’ve done anything with my wife, I’ll have your balls, Shoemaker!”

  “Easy, Senator,” said Alton. “We discovered the connection between Shoemaker and Leach earlier in our investigation, before all of the facts came to light.”

  “I know one fact,” said Jackson. “Leach has hated me and my family for years. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he arranged some kind of foul play against Jan.”

  “That was one of my suspicions,” said Alton. “What’s the old quote? ‘Politics makes strange bedfellows’? This one was about as strange as it got: a borderline eco-terrorist teaming up with a US senator. But it made sense. They both wanted your wife’s research stopped and have been working diligently towards that goal, Shoemaker by sabotage and Leach by pressuring the Senate to end our investigation here. And with the senior Shoemaker acting as a go-between, a partnership between the two seemed conceivable.”

  “By God—” began Jackson again.

  “Senator Jackson,” said Alton, “I don’t have all the facts surrounding your wife’s disappearance yet, but I am confident of one thing. Neither Robb Shoemaker nor Grayson Leach had anything to do with it.”

  CHAPTER 75

  “If they weren’t involved with Jan’s disappearance,” said Senator Jackson, “who was?”

  “I’m confused, too,” said Fuentes. “You’ve told us about Charlie LeFlore’s prior sexual-stalking convictions, so I understand now what you meant when you said Mr. Quintana isn’t the only criminal here. But I still don’t see how we’re any closer to finding Dr. Summit than we were when this meeting started.”

  “Yep,” said Alton. “You’re sharing the exact, confused state of mind I had, up until I was halfway back to my resort last night.”

  “What happened then?” asked Fuentes, still craning his neck to study Alton as he spoke.

  “I realized that something funny happened at Cragmire’s murder, something that didn’t seem right, something that suggested the real criminal. Once my suspicions were roused, I went online to do some fact-checking. The records confirmed my initial conclusion. There’s no doubt, now.”

  “What was this funny thing about Cragmire’s murder?” asked Fuentes.

  Alton leaned forward in his chair and spoke in a steady voice. “It was what Dr. Tuttle did.”

  At the mention of his name, the allergist cocked his head in surprise but didn’t say anything. He looked on with curious eyes.

  “I don’t understand,” said Fuentes. “He didn’t do anything.”

  “Exactly,” replied Alton. “He was asleep.”

  “Okay, maybe I am slow today, but why is that a problem?” asked Fuentes, cracking his knuckles. “It was late at night.”

  “Tuttle has told me on two separate occasions—when describing the night Summit was attacked and the night I chased Quintana—that he’s a light sleeper. He woke up at the sound of glass breaking and a dog barking from a quarter-mile away. When I chased Quintana, the mere sound of shouting and a fire extinguisher from that same quarter-mile distance was enough to wake him up.

  “But when Cragmire was murdered, several locals testified they heard a loud noise, like gunshots or firecrackers. The noise was so loud, they couldn’t even tell what direction it came from, due to the echoes. Tuttle slept in the police guest house, at most a hundred yards from the scene of Cragmire’s murder, yet he remained fast asleep.”

  “Yes, I slept through it,” said Tuttle, “but I don’t see what difference it makes. I was exhausted. We’ve been spending long days on this investigation, and I’m not as young as you, Mr. Blackwell.”

  “For such a supposedly light sleeper,” said Alton, “that’s a remarkable change in sleep patterns.” He turned to face the crowd in general. “But of course that doesn’t prove anything. A person would need solid evidence to draw any firm conclusions.”

  “But this is so crazy!” protested Tuttle. “I was attacked along with Dr. Summit the night she was abducted. You saw the injury to my face. And the medical examiner established Dr. Gromov’s time of death as the same time all of us, including me, were at the tortoise farm, trying to track down Quintana. And what about—”

  “Spare us,” said Alton. “I’ve done my research, and I know the truth.”

  “What truth?” said Fuentes.

  “Dr. Martin Tuttle has never been on the Galapagos Islands.”

  CHAPTER 76

  The room exploded with the loudest chorus of confusion yet.

  “If that’s not Dr. Tuttle,” said Fuentes, motioning for quiet and pointing to the man claiming to be Tuttle, “who is it?”

  Alton waited for the group to quiet down. “The man sitting there is Hank Tuttle, Martin Tuttle’s incorrigible brother.”

  Tuttle laughed. “Now I know you’re reaching.”

  Alton turned to Fuentes. “I recommend you station two men behind Tuttle. He acts the part of the elderly doctor, but he’s ex-military, and he’s already put that background to lethal use on your islands more than once.”

  Fuentes paused for a moment, then nodded his head in the direction of Tuttle. “Rios, Torres.”

  The two lieutenants moved on either side of the accused and stood guard.

  “I’m going to tell you all a little story,” said Alton, “about how a desperate man saw his chance to escape the US courts and took every measure possible to make sure he could stay away forever. Some of what I’m about to tell you is conjecture, but most has already been validated by hard data.

  “When Mallory and I had dinner with Tuttle on one of our first nights here, he mentioned that his ‘brother’ Hank left the Marines, helped in the practice for a few years, got into a little trouble with the law, and moved to Indiana. Some of that was true, and some wasn’t.

  “According to Pentagon records, Hank 4 served as a pharmacy technician in the Marines but was dishonorably discharged after being convicted of selling narcotics during a tour of duty in Iraq. When he returned to the States, his brother Martin, the real Dr. Tuttle, hired him at his practice, presumably to help him make a fresh start. Hank worked at his brother’s allergy clinic for four years but apparently had a falling out with his brother and left the practice. A few months later, Hank landed in more trouble when he got into a fight with a crack dealer in downtown Washington. The crack dealer died, and Hank went on trial for second-degree murder. Martin must have felt a little guilty for firing Hank, because he posted his brother’s bail.

  “While Hank was waiting for his court date, his older brother Martin received an invitation to work as the site’s doctor and Summit’s personal allergist in the Galapagos Islands. Martin accepted the offer but died before he could travel here. Hank saw his brother’s death as opening up the perfect opportunity to escape the US with a rock-solid alias, one that would not only render him almost impossible to track down but also provide a means of support.

  “Hank gathered a bunch of medical supplies and traveled here to Santa Cruz at the appointed time. After working in a Marine pharmacy and his brother’s practice, Hank had quite a bit of experience with pathology and treatments, enough to fool everyone here for months.”

  Alton arched backwards, stretched his bad leg, and tucked it back under his chair. “Once Hank arrived here, it wasn’t difficult to help the staff or Summit. If a routine medical case went beyond the first aid skills he acquired in the military, he could claim he didn’t have the right diagnostic equipment and refer the patient to Puerto Ayora’s clinic. And Summit had already diagnosed her condition: severe asthma, triggered by heat and humidity and possibly local pollens. Like Hank told us when we arrived, Summit just needed him to keep her supplied with the proper medicines and to intervene with more aggressive techniques in case her condition grew worse, since she would be too sick to deal with it herself. He had plenty of experien
ce doing tasks that simple, as long as nothing went wrong. Hank’s situation seemed ideal. Not only was he out of the States, but he was drawing a doctor’s pay and living a pretty easy life to boot.

  “And then things started to fall apart—and Hank started incriminating himself. First, Summit announced that she was close to making a breakthrough.”

  “Why would that be bad for Hank?” asked Chin.

  “What happens when Summit finishes her research here?” asked Alton. “She returns to the States. And once she leaves, Hank Tuttle’s income and justification for remaining here disappear, too. So he started doing all he could to delay her research.”

  “How would he do that?” asked Chin. “He’s not part of the research team.”

  “Mallory and I have both found instances in Summit’s research notes where she complained about higher levels of contamination in her lab samples than she would have expected,” said Alton. “That contamination was no accident. Remember how Hank said he stayed late almost every night? A few times, when Summit worked in her office, he intentionally contaminated the samples. He knew Summit would have to toss them and start over.”

  “How could you possibly prove that?” said Tuttle with an uncharacteristic sneer.

  “Once we leave here,” said Alton, “we’ll be shipping off one of the contaminated samples to the FBI lab for analysis of the contaminating agent. My guess is that we’ll find plain old dirt, something that would never make it into the lab’s clean-room section under normal conditions.”

  “That still doesn’t prove anything,” said Tuttle.

  “Bear with me,” replied Alton. “Despite Hank’s delay tactics, Summit’s project neared completion. In fact, Gromov told us our first day here that one of her jobs was testing the compounds Summit had devised to make the tortoise proteins more stable, so they could be shipped to the US rather than having to be studied here. Gromov told us—in Hank’s presence—that she and Summit were getting close to stabilizing the proteins. None of us knew at the time that she had just put a target on her back by saying that.”

  “Because that would allow Dr. Summit to leave, right?” asked Fuentes.

  “Yes, exactly,” replied Alton. “Once the protein is stabilized for transport, Summit would no longer have to remain here in the Galapagos. She could return to Washington to work, which means she would no longer need Tuttle—not here, at least. And once Summit returned home, the staff here would disperse. There’d be no more need for a site physician.”

  “I see,” said Fuentes.

  “Then the next problem set in,” said Alton. “Summit mentioned that her friend Helen Tate was coming for a visit. Helen was a former patient of the real Dr. Tuttle. In fact, she’s the person who recommended him to Summit in the first place. Once he learned of this impending visit, Hank knew he had to act. Helen knew the real Martin Tuttle, so her arrival would blow Hank’s cover. He hired local fishermen to conduct Summit’s initial kidnapping.”

  “You’re forgetting I was injured in that attack myself,” said Tuttle. “I guess I arranged for that, too?”

  “Sure,” said Alton. “It was the perfect cover story for throwing suspicion off yourself. As a former Marine, you’d probably experienced worse injuries lots of times. What better way to make yourself appear innocent?”

  Alton turned back to Fuentes and the others. “Remember how the attack on the research compound seemed so well-coordinated and equipped? Tear gas grenades launched at just the right spots, and gas masks for all the attackers? Doesn’t it seem odd that a trio of fishermen would know how to supply and execute a mission so expertly? The answer is…they didn’t do it on their own. They had the direction of a former Marine, one with combat experience. For him, supplying and planning the attack was child’s play. He used his military background to instruct the fishermen on using the gas masks and carrying out the attack.”

  The attendees sat in stunned silence. Perhaps they, like Alton, needed a minute to internalize the magnitude of Hank’s deception.

  Alton continued. “Hank had his lackeys pull off Summit’s abduction, but he still had a problem. Sooner or later, Lexington would pull up shop, and he’d be left with his original problem: where to go next? So he applied for a job with Dr. Salazar on San Cristóbal Island, hoping his claim to be a doctor would be taken at face value. But Salazar asked for his medical license, so Hank had to abandon that effort since, of course, he couldn’t produce any documentation of medical credentials. Salazar told me he never heard from the applicant again.”

  “In that case, how could you possibly conclude the applicant was me?” asked Tuttle.

  “When I was on San Cristóbal,” said Alton, “Salazar told me the applicant’s name was McCorkle. Of course, that didn’t mean anything to me at the time. But once I became suspicious last night, I did a little genealogical research. It turns out McCorkle is the Irish equivalent of Tuttle. Kind of coincidental, don’t you think? What happened, Hank? Couldn’t think of something more original?”

  Tuttle looked to be suppressing a surge of anger but said nothing.

  “Once the NSA team arrived and the scope of the investigation increased,” said Alton, “Hank had yet another problem. Any one of the three fishermen involved in the attack on the research facility could finger him as the coordinator. And one of them, Diego Soto, started spending the money Hank paid him in a conspicuous way. It probably seemed like a matter of time before one of them revealed his secret plan.”

  Alton took on a more somber tone. “So you killed them. One at a time, you waited in ambush. Diego Soto, Héctor Urbina, and Alejandro Garza—you murdered all of them so they wouldn’t talk.”

  “Wait,” said Tuttle. “Didn’t you say the murder victims were involved in the trade of illegal animals? I thought that was a whole different crime.”

  “It was made to look like a different type of crime,” said Alton, “but you and I know that’s not true, don’t we?”

  Tuttle started to speak, then silenced himself.

  “I remember Captain Fuentes telling Mallory that taking a small piece of shell—the kind found near the bodies, for example—doesn’t hurt the tortoises. On the way here, I swung by the tortoise pen behind the research facility. Sure enough, three of them have a small, punched-out section on the rear of their shells. I’m betting the fragments found near the murdered men will match those punch-outs like puzzle pieces. And who would have easier access to those particular tortoises than Summit’s personal allergist, who both works and lives on-site?

  “While living here in Santa Cruz, Hank had learned about the killing of an Argentinian tourist a few years ago. The tourist was suspected of illegal animal trading, and his body was eventually found on Isabela Island. What better way to sell the idea that his murder victims were also involved in this trade? He used the same MO to make his victims’ murders appear to be the work of the same killer from several years ago. But he made some mistakes during this time, mistakes I should have caught.”

  “For instance?” asked Fuentes.

  “We know that the murder of Héctor Urbina, the second fisherman, occurred about a day and a half before we found Gromov’s body. I didn’t think anything odd about Tuttle wearing a bandage the day after Urbina’s murder, considering he was still recovering from his injuries sustained on the night of Summit’s abduction. However, when Tuttle joined us to travel to Isabela Island, I noticed his injury had actually grown a little worse. Tuttle explained that infections often flared up in tropical climates. But in truth, he had sustained a brand-new injury when he killed Urbina. Dr. Melendez, the medical examiner who study Urbina’s corpse, saw scrapes on the victim’s knuckles, as if he had hit something…or someone.”

  “Again, just conjecture,” said Tuttle.

  “Not for long,” said Alton. “Now that we know whose DNA we’re trying to match, we’ll be reviewing the bodies again for organic evidence: skin under the victims’ nails, transferred skin cells on their clothes, that sort of thing. What do
you want to bet we’ll find at least one match to your DNA on their bodies? And what are the odds the little girl back on Isabela Island didn’t talk to us about what she saw because the victim’s murderer stood fifteen feet away, glaring at her?”

  Conflicting emotions flickered across Tuttle’s face. He shook his head and looked at the floor in apparent frustration.

  “So let’s wrap up the curious tale of Hank Tuttle,” said Alton to the assemblage. “While in the middle of eliminating the three people who carried out Summit’s abduction, another problem popped up. Gromov started to worry about what would happen to Summit without her asthma medications. She started to ask Hank detailed questions about Summit’s condition.

  “Now, Hank could pass as an allergist and GP most of the time, but Gromov’s questions required a true doctor’s scope of knowledge, something Hank didn’t possess. He knew it was a matter of time before Gromov started questioning Hank’s qualifications as an allergist, and who knows where those questions might lead? So he decided to kill Gromov before she could expose him as a fraud.”

  “Sorry to ruin your theory,” said Tuttle, “but the medical examiner determined she was killed when all of us, including me, were on the tortoise farm looking for Quintana.”

  “Based on the core body temperature you provided,” replied Alton. “You used a temperature reading that would establish your alibi, that the murder supposedly occurred while we were on the tortoise farm. The true temperature was higher than you told us. That higher temperature would have proven Gromov was killed well after we returned from the tortoise farm, a time for which you had no alibi.”

  “You give me too much credit,” said Tuttle. “I thought you said I’m not a doctor. How would I know what temperature reading to use?”

  “I remember your being glued to your cellphone on the way over to Isabela Island. At the time, it surprised me, considering you’re prone to motion sickness. But now I understand. You had to know what fake temperature to give. I’m betting that if I review your phone’s search history, I’ll find queries about how quickly a dead body cools.”