The Evolution of Evil (The Blackwell Files Book 6)

by Steven F Freeman

  “So why come down here at all?” asked Alton. “Why don’t Forsberg’s lawyers just meet with Lexington’s?”

  “For the deal to move forward, we needed to secure Dr. Summit’s cooperation first. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but she is quite secretive with her research. Doesn’t even share it with members of her staff, from what I’ve heard. Once we got her on board with the plan, Forsberg was going to study the results of her research to assess its value, then make a proposal to Lexington.”

  “Forsberg was going to study?” asked Alton. “You don’t think the deal will move forward now?”

  Chin raised her hands, palms up. “Not unless we find Dr. Summit. Even if Lexington agrees, how much of her research can it access?”

  Alton shifted in his chair. “So you were here to convince Dr. Summit to agree to work with Forsberg?”

  “That’s right.” Chin folded her hands in her lap. The woman exuded no emotion, no clue to her inner thoughts.

  “Miss Chin,” said Alton, “the timing and location of Dr. Summit’s meetings with you indicated she wished to keep those meetings a secret. Why do you think she would want to do that?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows? She asked to meet late and in a different city. My job was to placate her, so I wasn’t going to argue. Besides, she seemed busy all the time. It didn’t surprise me that she’d want to meet after hours.”

  “But now she’s missing. What will you do now?”

  “Hope that you do your job—recover her—so I can do mine.”

  “So you’ll be sticking around the island for a while?”

  “Oh, yes.” The first spark of emotion flickered in her eye, then as quickly died away. “This will be an important deal for Forsberg—the kind of deal that can make my career if I pull it off.”

  “I understand. Can you tell me where you were last Thursday night?” asked Alton.

  “Most nights I just hang out at the resort. Let me see if I had anything in particular going on that evening.” She withdrew her phone from her purse and tapped a calendar icon. After scanning the screen for a moment, her eyes froze and widened just a bit. She swallowed before answering. “Nope. It was just a typical night. Watched TV and crashed around midnight.”

  “You were alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “So no one can corroborate your story?”

  “No. If I had known I’d need a ‘story,’ I would have made a point to go mingle in the hotel’s bar. As it was, I just watched the same old TV shows.”

  “Do you recall which ones?” asked Alton.

  “Yes, a rerun of ‘Elementary.’ I fell asleep just after it ended.” Chin turned her gaze from Alton to Fuentes, then back to Alton again. “I can tell you all are skeptical, but you need to believe me. I’m not the person you’re after. The sooner you believe that, the sooner you’ll find Dr. Summit’s true abductors. I’m just here to work out an agreement with the woman, not murder her.”

  Alton nodded. “Would you mind if I got a copy of your passport?”

  Again the expressionless countenance from Chin. “No, I don’t mind. I have nothing to hide.” She slipped the booklet from her purse and handed it to Alton.

  “I’ll make a copy,” said the Gooch, stealing a glance at Alton’s bad leg. He returned in a minute and handed the passport back to Chin.

  Fuentes stepped close to Chin’s diminutive figure and glared down at her. “I hope you like my island. You’ll be staying here until this investigation is complete.”

  “As you wish, Captain,” said Chin, “but you won’t find any dirt on me.” She turned to Rios. “Could you give me a ride back to my resort, please?”

  Rios glanced at his captain, who nodded. “Sí, señorita. Follow me.”

  Chin glided out of the room with a feline stealth and closed the door behind her.

  “What do you make of that?” asked Alton.

  “I checked Forsberg’s quarterly financials,” said Mallory. “They’re the world’s largest supplier of existing treatments for Alzheimer’s symptoms.”

  “Those existing treatments would all be rendered obsolete by Summit’s new therapies, right?” said Alton. “Doesn’t that mean Forsberg would have the most to lose if Summit’s therapies are brought to market?”

  “Yes,” said Cragmire, making a rare contribution, “but I wonder when the patents for Forsberg’s current drugs will expire. The sooner they do, the more it makes sense for Forsberg to try to get a piece of the next big thing—which in this case is Lexington’s research.”

  Mallory’s fingers flew over her phone’s screen. “Forsberg just came out with a new family of drugs two years ago. Their patents won’t expire for another eighteen years.”

  Alton exhaled. “That raises the question of why they’d want to cannibalize their own products, drugs they must have spent the usual millions or even billions developing.”

  “‘Cause either they will or someone else will,” said Cragmire. “If Forsberg jumps on Lexington’s bandwagon, at least they’ll share in the profits of the new drugs.”

  “Or we could be looking at the situation that’s similar to Charlie LeFlore and his employer, Beauchamp,” said Alton. “Let’s be honest…both companies have an incentive to keep an Alzheimer’s cure off the market. The most effective way to protect the profits from their current medicines is to prevent the introduction of any new drugs based on Summit’s research.”

  “But they can’t do that forever,” said Cragmire. “There are a lot of people working on this problem. Eventually, someone will make the same discovery.”

  “True,” said Alton, “but they only need to keep Summit’s work off the market until their current patents expire. Once that happens, they’d have more of an incentive to work with Lexington.”

  “That’s right,” said Mallory. “I’m looking at Beauchamp’s patents. They’re only four years old—still plenty of profit potential ahead, assuming Summit’s drugs don’t wipe them off the market. By the way…I do see one difference between the two pharmaceutical companies. You’ll recall that Beauchamp is a one-trick pony. If its drugs become obsolete, it goes out of business. Forsberg, on the other hand, makes a variety of drugs: blood pressure, cholesterol, narcotic painkillers, and a few other niche products.”

  “So Summit’s cure for Alzheimer’s would be a bummer for Forsberg, but it wouldn’t put them out of business,” said Alton.

  Mallory nodded.

  Alton turned to Tuttle. “Did you recognize Wendy Chin?”

  The allergist squinted his eyes in concentration. “You know, she does look familiar, but for the life of me, I can’t remember how or where.”

  “Let me know if you remember any details.” Alton turned to the rest of the group. “We’ve discussed Forsberg, the company, but what about Chin herself. Any impressions?”

  “She seemed pretty legit,” said the Gooch. “She didn’t seem nervous, like she was trying to hide anything.”

  “We should cover our bases, though,” said Mallory. “Let me send her passport number to my office so they can run a background check. We should have it back in an hour or two.”

  “Good idea,” said Alton, handing over the photocopy.

  “Perhaps this woman is innocent,” said Fuentes. “Maybe what she said about her new shirt and hat and sunglasses is true…but maybe it is not. I am going to assign Lieutenant Torres to follow her.”

  “That’s a good idea, too,” said Alton. “At this point, we can’t afford to trust anyone.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Wendy Chin focused on keeping her breathing steady. Only after exiting Rios’ police vehicle did she allow herself to release her breath.

  Heading directly for her resort’s guest parking lot, she climbed into her rented Porsche 911 and accelerated onto the road fronting the property. She snaked the sleek, yellow sports car around a mountain highway on her way to the harbor town of Puerto Ayora. As she drove, she contemplated her interview with the investigators. The words she had t
old them were true—at least, mostly true. She felt reasonably confident that they had not detected her unspoken truth.

  Her childhood had proven the ideal training-ground for such concealment. She certainly hadn’t considered it ideal for anything at the time. At a young age, she had found herself caught between an alcoholic father whose moods alternated between rage and uncomfortable affection and a dishpan mother incapable of standing up for her daughter. The young Wendy had soon learned the only method of placating her unbalanced father: the suppression of all emotion from her countenance. Only that approach seemed to quench the fire of his inner demons.

  She figured the police would put a tail on her. That’s what she would do if she were them. That made it all the more important to run today’s errands before the tail could be put in place.

  Chin pulled onto Charles Darwin Drive, Puerto Ayora’s primary seaside road, followed it down to the pier, and turned onto Avenida Baltra, a small street leading inland. A few glances to the rear assured Chin that no investigators followed her.

  A couple of miles down the road, she pulled into a branch of Banco Pichincha and used the bank’s ATM to withdraw a hundred dollars from her savings account back in the States. Chin scanned the printed receipt and winced as she noticed how much the last withdrawal had reduced her balance. She shrugged. It had to be done. Besides, she’d eventually be reimbursed.

  She glanced at her watch. Eleven o’clock. Good, not even noon yet—plenty of time to prepare for the evening’s activities. But she couldn’t dawdle. This was one occasion for which tardiness wouldn’t do.

  A twinge of guilt clouded Chin’s thoughts as she pulled out of the bank’s parking lot. A part of her knew she shouldn’t be doing this, but other, more compelling motivations, held sway.

  CHAPTER 36

  Alton had just booted up his laptop in his impromptu work area at the rear of Summit’s lab when his ringing cellphone forced him to stop. He answered it and wandered to the hallway outside the administrative offices. After conversing for nearly five minutes, he ended the call and gathered the investigative team around his work space.

  The mixed songs of several heron species and the play of dappled light across his lab bench provided a strange contrast to the somber news Alton prepared to share. “I just got an update on Agent Delaney. The docs here on the island stitched up her abdominal wound and stopped the bleeding, but she’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “Is she gonna make it?” asked the Gooch, his eyes strained.

  “She’s stabilized, but she’s not out of the woods, not by a long shot.”

  “So what happens next?”

  “First, they need to replace the blood she lost. The hospital gave her an infusion but ran out of O-type blood, the only kind she can receive. She also needs to be moved to a level-three ICU facility as soon as possible. To address both these needs, Vega has arranged the air ambulance he mentioned earlier.”

  “So she’s gonna be flown out?” asked the Gooch.

  “Yep. The hospital is medevacing her via helicopter to the airport on Baltra, the next island just to the north of here. At the same time, an ambulance flight from the air base in Palanquero, Colombia is also on its way to Baltra. They’ll pick her up and transport her to Miami. According to the doc I just spoke to, Delaney should be on her way within the hour.”

  “Alton,” said Mallory. “Her injuries…do they think she’ll make it long enough to reach the States?”

  “I asked that same question.” Alton glanced around the group, making eye contact with each member as he spoke. “The docs can’t be certain. On the positive side, the air ambulance is bringing more O-type blood with them, so the medics will be able to infuse her in-flight. And they’re going to start IV antibiotics and put her on oxygen. All these treatments should help. I have to think she’ll stabilize long enough to make it to Florida. Randolph Medical center there has all the life-support equipment she’ll need during her recovery.”

  The team members nodded in silence. Alton could tell they wanted to believe his optimistic assessment but continued to worry over the fate of their former leader.

  “Whenever I get any updates, I’ll pass them along,” said Alton. “In the meantime, we have an investigation to conduct, and we need to keep our heads in the game.”

  Cragmire looked nervous, but the rest of the group nodded again, this time in grim determination.

  “We all know that Agent Delaney wouldn’t let an attack scare her off,” continued Alton, “and we’re not going to let it scare us off, either. We’re going to find out who did this and bring them in.”

  “Aren’t we supposed to be looking for Summit?” asked Cragmire.

  “Yes, but think about it. Why would someone attack Delaney? Because they’re growing fearful of the progress we’re making. And the only people who would worry about our progress are the ones who took Summit. It’s a safe bet that when we find Delaney’s attackers, we’ll also find Summit’s kidnappers.”

  “Speaking of finding the kidnappers, what are our next steps?” said the Gooch.

  Captain Fuentes spoke for the first time. “Delaney’s attacker might be the man with the crooked nose. We need to look for this man. My lieutenants are busy tailing Shoemaker and Chin, so I will look for him myself.”

  “Would you like Agent Gooch to accompany you?” asked Alton.

  “No. I will be talking to the local people who know me. They might not talk so much if there is an Americano with me.”

  The Gooch rubbed a shock of ginger hair. “People like to spread gossip. Maybe I could go to the bars around here. I could pose as a tourist and say I heard about an attack, see if anyone says anything.”

  Fuentes shrugged. “I don’t think they will tell a gringo, but I guess it won’t hurt to try.”

  “Go with that, Gooch,” said Alton. “In the meantime, I’ll keep working to decrypt the next set of Summit’s lab notes. Cragmire, you can stand by to review them once I finish.”

  “I’ll call my office to see what the FBI’s background check has turned up on Wendy Chin,” said Mallory.

  “Good,” said Alton. He glanced around the group. “It’s been six days since Summit disappeared. If there’s any window of opportunity for recovering her, it’s closing fast. Let’s get to work.”

  The group scattered. Alton sat down and set to work deciphering the latest round of Summit’s files.

  Half an hour later, Mallory returned just as a flashing green light signaled the successful decryption of another batch of Summit’s lab notes.

  “Here’s the background file on Chin,” she said, holding her cellphone sideways to more easily read the densely packed document.

  “What’s it say?” asked Alton.

  She scrolled through the information. “Graduated from high school at age fifteen. Biomedical engineering degree from Georgia Tech. Spent her first four years out of college working for some company called Randolph and White.”

  “They’re a medium-sized pharma company, based in Atlanta, just a few blocks down the road from Georgia Tech, in fact. They focus on R&D more than selling FDA-approved products.”

  “If they focus on R&D, how do they make money?”

  “They develop drugs and take them through stage two or three clinical trials,” said Alton, “then sell them to the larger pharma companies.”

  “Like Forsberg?”

  “Yep.”

  Mallory returned her attention to her screen. “Says here Chin left Randolph and White and took a job with Forsberg six years ago. She’s been there ever since. Unmarried, lives in downtown Atlanta, pays her taxes every year. Interesting, but not earth-shattering.”

  “Yeah, I don’t hear anything that screams ‘kidnapper.’ Plus, we know Summit’s abductors were all men.”

  “The ones who pulled it off were men,” said Mallory, “but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have been hired by someone else.”

  “True. So is there anything else in Chin’s dossier?”

&nb
sp; “No. They’re going to run a longer scan on state and local databases and let us know if anything pops up. Same for LeFlore, by the way.”

  “You going to do any digging yourself?”

  “Yeah. Now that I have Chin’s social security number, I can review her financial activity and see if there’s anything that doesn’t fit the profile we just read. So, what about you? How’s the decrypting coming along?”

  “I just decrypted the fourth day’s notes, the ones from Sunday of last week. I’ll send the scientific sections to Cragmire. Since you’ll be occupied with Chin’s financial records, I’ll review the non-scientific parts of Summit’s notes myself.”

  The husband and wife worked side by side, each hunkered down over their respective laptops. Only the muted calls of wildlife and the clatter of keyboards and mouse clicks broke the near silence.

  After nearly thirty minutes, Alton stood up and stretched. “Found anything?”

  “Just that Chin probably owns a cat or dog,” replied his wife. “She visits a veterinary clinic in downtown Atlanta every few months. What about you?”

  “I don’t know how significant it is, but Summit didn’t use just the calendar module of her lab software. She also used the notepad module to make annotations of the day’s events and reminders of upcoming stuff—almost like a combination to-do list and diary.”

  “That might be helpful,” asked Mallory. “What did she write?”

  “All kinds of stuff. ‘Tomorrow: fisherman’s market, Puerto Ayora harbor.’”

  Mallory rolled her eyes. “What else?”

  “Let’s see,” said Alton. “‘Helen’s visit is only a few weeks away—finally. I can’t wait to show her around!’ That doesn’t help, either.” Alton looked up. “Listen to this. ‘Schedule next meetings with LeFlore and Chin.’”

  “You said Sunday, right? That means those meetings didn’t happen, did they?”

  “Not that we know of. Of course, if either one of them was involved in Summit’s disappearance, they could be lying about their latest meeting with her, especially if they met with her just prior to her abduction.”