The Evolution of Evil (The Blackwell Files Book 6)
Page 4
“That’s where I would have focused, too,” said Alton. “Our presence has simply provided an opportunity to expand the search area.”
Alton stopped and pointed to the soft earth in the spot he had examined earlier, where a clump of whitehair manzanita shrubs grew beneath palm trees. “Three perps launched the attack from this spot.”
The Gooch removed his Bass Pro Shops cap and scratched his head. “And you know that how?”
“See the footprints?” replied Alton. “There are distinct tread patterns from three different pairs of shoes—definitely three different guys.”
“How do you know they launched the attack from here?” asked the Gooch. “Couldn’t they have just been walking around the bush on their way to the building?”
“I doubt it,” replied Alton. “You can tell they massed in this spot. See the trampling of grass and these two broken branches? That would have required too many footsteps for the perps to have just been passing through. And see the discolored leaves in the middle of this bush? Lean in close and take a whiff.”
Delaney, Mallory, and the Gooch bent over and each drew in a deep breath. Mallory cocked her head in surprise.
“Smells like vanilla, doesn’t it?” said Alton.
“Yes, exactly!” replied his wife.
“That’s nitrocellulose, one of the ingredients of the propellant used to launch tear-gas grenades. It gives off that kind of smell.”
“Which tells us the tear gas was fired from here,” inferred Mallory.
“Yep. A perp standing directly in front of this bush fired multiple tear-gas grenades from an open tube. The back blast created the markings and odors on these leaves.”
“I’ll have my men check out the footprints,” said Fuentes. “I think you are right that three people carried out this attack. And at least two of them were men. I don’t think you will find women whose feet are as big as the ones that fit in these shoes.”
The group reentered the research center and gathered around a lab table on which their recently gathered evidence had been laid out.
Delaney collected the individual evidence envelopes and deposited them into a white cardboard box, which she taped shut and addressed. She handed the package to the Gooch. “Send this to the FBI forensic labs in Washington as soon as possible.”
“I’m on it,” said the angling champion. “You know…it’d be a shame if I ran across a fishing hole on the way back.” He cracked his knuckles and grinned.
“Sorry,” said Delaney. “It’s all hands on deck until we recover our kidnapping victim. If we get to a point where we’re waiting on external information to proceed, I’ll consider it. But this is a high-priority case, so don’t hold your breath.”
The Gooch’s smile faded. “Maybe I’ll take some leave when this investigation is over. Did you see the monsters hanging in the harbor’s fish market on the way here?”
Delaney rolled her eyes. “Okay, let’s break for lunch. I packed some granola bars and snacks from the States in my duffle bag. Anyone wanting something more substantial can take our rental down to Puerto Ayora. We’ll reconvene here at thirteen-hundred hours.”
Most of the group broke up. Mallory remained and cast her gaze down to the evidence table. One of the items seemed to merit her particular attention.
“What is it?” asked Alton.
Mallory picked a rescue inhaler off the table. “Remember how we saw one of these on Summit’s filing cabinet?”
“Yes.”
“When you were outside, we found more here in the lab. This is the third inhaler I’ve seen in as many rooms. She wanted to have one nearby wherever she was. Summit’s asthma must have been even more severe than I realized to require the inhalers to be spread out like that.”
“I could have told you that, my dear,” said Tuttle, who had remained by the table. “That’s one of the main reasons I’m here. And it’s why I’m an eyewitness to the attack.”
CHAPTER 8
“Can you explain what you mean?” Alton asked Tuttle.
“Why don’t we grab a bite to eat first?” replied the doctor. “When the others return, I can tell all of you at the same time.”
When the investigators began filing in just before the appointed time, Alton pulled Delaney to the side.
“Are you going to get Tuttle’s statement next?” he asked.
“That was the plan.”
“Good. Hopefully he’ll give us something useful.”
The investigators gathered in the administrative hallway.
“Dr. Tuttle,” said Delaney, “thanks for waiting on us to wrap up the forensic examination. You’re the site’s doctor, right?”
“That’s right. I don’t have the facilities here to address a serious injury or illness. I have to send patients to the clinic in Puerto Ayora for that. But I can take care of routine stuff—first aid, prescriptions, and the like. But to be honest, my bigger role here is to serve as Dr. Summit’s personal physician. Her allergist, to be exact. She suffers from asthma, triggered by heat and humidity and possibly local pollens. All of those elements are worse here in the Galapagos than back home.”
“Why didn’t she just stay in the States, then?” asked Cragmire.
“My understanding is that the secretions she obtains from the animals here don’t do well in transit, although you’d have to ask Dr. Gromov about the specifics of that. But it’s not like the Galapagos caused her problems. Her condition was growing worse in the States before she even left and requires managing wherever she is. Moving here just sped up the rate of deterioration. My role as an allergist is to manage her asthma so she can keep working.”
The Gooch scrunched up puzzled eyebrows. “If she’s a doctor, couldn’t she treat the asthma herself?”
Tuttle issued a benevolent smile. “She’s not a medical doctor, so she needs me to keep her supplied with the proper medicines.” His smile faded. “From time to time, she also needs me—or should I say needed me—to intervene with more aggressive techniques when her condition grew worse.”
“What techniques are we talking about?” asked Alton.
“Usually administering a rescue inhaler. In more severe cases, she needed the nebulizer, a piece of equipment that delivers medicine as a fine mist directly into the lungs. It’s more effective than a pocket inhaler.”
“That’s right,” said Alton, “I remember seeing a nebulizer in Summit’s office.”
“That leads to the other reason I was needed here,” said Tuttle. “If Dr. Summit became too incapacitated to reach an emergency inhaler or nebulizer herself, I could get it for her.”
“That bad, huh?” asked Alton.
“Not usually,” replied Tuttle, “but it takes only one untreated attack to kill a person. She didn’t want to take any chances.”
“Have you ever ended up actually fetching any equipment for her during one of her asthma attacks?”
“Yes, five times. Four times I helped her with a rescue inhaler, and once I treated her with the nebulizer.”
“What if she had one of her attacks at night?” asked Gooch. “Or were you two…?” He raised an eyebrow and smirked.
“Hardly,” replied Tuttle with a snort. “I live in the bungalow about a hundred yards down the road, the one you passed on the driveway on the way in here. Dr. Summit ostensibly uses the bungalow on the other side of this building, but most of the time she slept on a cot in her office. So she and I were never that far apart. She wore a device around her neck—‘the beacon,’ we called it. She pressed a button on it, and an alarm sounded in a corresponding device I wore. I could be here within three or four minutes to render aid.”
“So you were her personal ‘life alert,’ huh?” asked Mallory.
“Exactly. Two of the five times she called me, I had already returned to my bungalow for the night. She pressed the button, and I hurried on over in time to treat her. The system worked.”
“Okay,” said Delaney, “now that we understand your role here, let�
�s turn to the night of the attack. I believe I saw in Captain Fuentes’ report that you were in your quarters when you first became aware of the attack, right?”
“That’s correct.”
“Would you mind taking us over to your place? I’d like for you to walk us through the sequence of events.”
“Not at all.”
The group exited the research facility and took a right onto the paved drive leading back to the entrance to the property. After traveling a few hundred yards, they reached a small, one-story cottage fronted by a cheerful row of the same exotic white and yellow wildflowers that surrounded the main building.
Stepping around a dog’s food and water dishes, Tuttle opened the front door and ushered the investigators into a dwelling roughly equal in size to an efficiency apartment. A single, main room served as bedroom, den, and dining room, while off to the right, a tiny kitchen sat across the hall from an equally minuscule bathroom. Three small shelves in the kitchen brimmed with local produce. In the main room, magazines lay in piles on a small corner bookshelf, and a random smattering of knick-knacks lent a cozy ambiance. “It’s not much, but at this point in my life, I don’t need much.”
“It’s nice,” said the Gooch, nodding. “I could hang out here.”
“Why don’t you tell us everything that happened, start to finish,” said Delaney.
Tuttle furrowed his brow in concentration. “There’s not much to tell. Before it all started, I was already in bed. I had dozed off, but I’m a pretty light sleeper and woke up when I heard Mirka barking over at the lab.”
“Mirka?” asked Mallory.
“Sorry. That’s my dog. She started barking, which is not that unusual, so at first I didn’t think anything of it. But a minute later, I heard glass breaking, so then I knew something was up. I was only wearing boxers and a tee-shirt, so I pulled on some pants and shoes. Just when I was getting my second shoe on, the beacon sounded. At that point, I wasn’t sure if it was an asthma alert or something more sinister. I grabbed my cellphone and called the police while I high-tailed it towards the lab.”
Captain Fuentes nodded in agreement with the statement.
“Okay, why don’t we walk back to the lab?” said Delaney. “You can give us the play-by-play as we go.”
Tuttle nodded. The group exited his bungalow and moved up the road, back towards the research facility. The warm tropical sun felt comfortable on Alton’s bare skin but elicited a trickle of sweat that tracked down his back as he limped up the slight incline.
“When I got to this point,” said Tuttle as they approached the building, “I could see gas coming out of that broken window over there. And I saw a man with some kind of equipment on his head crawling through the opening.”
“Was he wearing a gas mask?” asked Alton.
“I couldn’t say for sure,” replied Tuttle with a shrug. “Maybe. It was too dark to make out many details. In any case, I reached the building. It was dark, but I could see men inside with flashlights.”
“How many?” asked Mallory.
“I’m not sure. At least two or three, maybe more. The hooligans must have crawled through the broken window, ‘cause the main door was still locked. I’m not exactly as young and spry as I used to be, so I unlocked the door and poked my head in. As soon as I did, the tear gas hit me. Have any of you ever experienced it?”
“Yeah,” said Alton, remembering his passage through the “gas chamber” during his training as an Army officer. The Gooch, a former Marine corporal, and Mallory, once an Army lieutenant, also nodded.
Tuttle led the group though the lab’s main door. “Then you know how debilitating tear gas is. I hope to never experience anything like that again,” he said with a shudder. “Anyway, I tried to look into Dr. Summit’s office, but my eyes were burning too bad for me to make out much. Plus, the lights in her office were off, so I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell even without the gas.”
“Could you see the attackers?” asked Alton.
“Somewhat.”
“What exactly were they doing?”
“To be honest, I’m not sure. They were running around. I caught a glimpse of one guy forcing open drawers and two others sprinting across the room and opening doors, like they were looking for something…or someone.”
“Jan Summit, presumably,” said Alton.
“It would seem so,” replied Tuttle. He began walking again, moving along the interior wall in which a glass window separated Summit’s office from the spacious lab. “Anyway, the thieves didn’t seem to notice me, at least not at first. And I really didn’t pay that much attention to them, either, since I was mostly concerned with finding Dr. Summit. I knew that with her asthma, if she were inside, the gas could have proved lethal. So I covered up my mouth with my arm and made a dash for her office. That’s usually where she works at night, and it’s where I found her on my previous asthma rescue missions.
“I really couldn’t see well at all. To get to Dr. Summit’s office, I was going more on familiarity with the route than actual sight. I had almost made it there when one of the attackers hit me across the face with…something.” He gestured to his left cheek and jaw, where the granulating tissue of a three-day-old abrasion surrounded a deep, purple-and-green bruise.
“That doesn’t look like it tickled,” said the Gooch, examining the wound.
Tuttle worked his jaw. “That’s putting it mildly. The man knocked me flat on my back. I was dizzy for a second, but I got up and made it to Dr. Summit’s office. It looked like the door had been broken in, so I went inside.”
“No Dr. Summit?” asked Delaney.
“No,” said Tuttle with a sigh, “but the exterior window in her office was open, so I thought perhaps she had escaped that way. I ran over and looked through it. I figured with her asthma, if she had made it through the window, she wouldn’t have gone far. I didn’t see her, so I turned back to look in the lab.”
“You weren’t worried about running into the attackers again?” asked Mallory.
“I was terrified, but I knew if Dr. Summit were still in here, she’d die in short order if I didn’t provide the proper treatment. Besides, I figured the police would be here soon and scare off the hooligans.”
“And were they?” asked Delaney.
“Yes. It seemed like forever at the time, but it was probably only five or six minutes. I tried to stay low, out of sight. I crawled around the back of the lab but couldn’t find any sign of Dr. Summit. When the hooligans heard the police sirens, they took off.”
“Out the window again?”
“No, through the door I had opened. Thirty seconds or maybe a minute later, the police cars pulled up.”
“What happened then?”
Tuttle looked at the ceiling, recalling events. “Captain Fuentes and his men started opening all the windows and the back door to let out the gas, and I told them I couldn’t locate Dr. Summit. They scoured the building and the grounds but couldn’t find her or the hooligans.”
“Did you join the search?” asked Delaney.
“I started to, but my eyes were still burning like mad.”
“Yes,” said Captain Fuentes, nodding in recollection. “Dr. Tuttle wanted to help, but he couldn’t see. He ran into the edge of the main door trying to go outside.”
“By then, the worst of the fumes had dissipated,” said Tuttle, “so I used the emergency eyewash station there on the back wall to flush out my eyes. After that, I could see well enough to join the search.”
“But you still didn’t find anyone?” said Delaney.
“Nope. You can imagine how concerned I was for Dr. Summit by this point. As I mentioned, with her asthmatic sensitivities, the tear gas could have been lethal. I looked in all the other offices and in the storage closet, but they were empty. Then I went outside and joined the police in their search. We looked all over the grounds, but she—and the hooligans—were gone.” His compressed lips quivered, as if battling a surge of powerful emotion.
“Hippocratic oath and all that,” replied Tuttle with another sigh and a shrug.
“Hello?” called a voice from the lab’s main door.
Alton and the rest of the group turned toward the direction of the salutation. They moved to the front of the lab just in time to encounter a lanky blonde.
“I am Dr. Natalia Gromov,” said the new arrival, whose accent and Roman nose suggested an Eastern European homeland. “The police captain called and said I should come talk to some Americans about the attack here.”
“That would be me and my team,” said Delaney, extending a hand and introducing herself and the rest of the investigators. “And of course you know Dr. Tuttle,” she concluded.
“Yes,” replied Gromov with a nod.
“Dr. Tuttle,” said Delaney, “I think we’re done for now. If you need to leave, I understand, but I may end up contacting you again if new questions come up. If you could stay a few more minutes, I’d appreciate it, just in case our conversations jog a memory of some other useful piece of information.”
Tuttle shrugged. “Now that my patient is missing and all the workers are stuck at home, I don’t have much to do anymore. I’m happy to stay and help in any way I can.”
“That’d be great,” said Delaney. She turned back to Gromov. “Can you explain your role here?”
“I am Dr. Summit’s research associate. She establishes the test plans and protocols, and I execute them.”
“So you’re a biologist, too?” asked Cragmire, who had spent much of the time until now transfixed on his phone.
“Yes.”
“How did you end up here?” asked Delaney as the group headed back towards the administrative hallway to avoid the possibility of disturbing the lab’s crime scene.
“My PhD thesis involved possible therapies for Alzheimer’s,” said Gromov. “I have been researching the underlying cause of this disease for over ten years as a member of the Alzheimer’s Europe Consortium. Dr. Summit heard of my work and invited me to join her research team here on Santa Cruz.”