The Evolution of Evil (The Blackwell Files Book 6)

by Steven F Freeman

  Chin headed into the city center. She wound her way through a fair portion of the dimly lit alleys and backstreets of Puerto Ayora, a potentially dangerous route for such a pretty woman.

  LeFlore eyed the delicious target of his interest, watching her hips sway from side to side as she walked. Chin seemed sure of herself and her route. Where could she possibly be going so late in the day, when almost everything was closed except the bars?

  LeFlore had to remind himself that Chin was a professional, a scientist. Watching her long strides, his mind drifted back to her delicate features and coal-black hair. She was a looker, no doubt. But a looker with an agenda known only to herself.

  That wouldn’t last, if LeFlore had anything to do with it. Soon, Chin’s priorities would take a radical detour, and her agenda would align to his.

  LeFlore quickened his pace, anxious to put the next phase of his plan in motion.

  CHAPTER 65

  “Did you text Cragmire back?” asked Mallory.

  “Yeah,” said Alton. “He didn’t answer. I wish he wouldn’t have been so cryptic. It makes me nervous. I’m going to call him.”

  Alton held the phone up to his ear, listening to a voice-mail greeting, followed by the obligatory beep. “Cragmire, call me as soon as you get a chance.” He hung up and turned back to Mallory. “I’m probably just being a nervous Nelly. Let’s get to the police station and see what surprise he has in store for us.”

  Alton rounded up the Gooch and called Fuentes to ensure the police captain would be there to participate in this most recent development. During the drive, half of Alton’s mind drifted back to Cragmire’s statement. You won’t believe what I’ve discovered. This case is about to be blown wide open. What did it mean? Alton shook his head. At least he wouldn’t have to wait long to find out.

  If would have been nice if Cragmire had explained himself in the first place. But after witnessing the man’s posturing when describing Summit’s work for the first time, Alton felt little surprise at the biologist’s latest flare for the dramatic.

  The NSA members arrived at the police station just as thirty minutes elapsed from the time Cragmire had sent his text to Alton. Fuentes greeted them at the door.

  “Is Cragmire here yet?” asked Alton.

  “No,” replied the captain. “I guess we will wait.”

  Alton nodded. He tried texting and calling Cragmire again but didn’t receive a response to either attempt. Despite the pain and stiffness in his leg, he began to pace across the station’s tiny lobby, walking from the battered reception desk to the window that overlooked the parking lot. “I don’t like this,” he said at last.

  “Don’t you have a GPS tracking app on your phone?” said Mallory. “Something the R&D guys at Kruptos developed?”

  “That’s right!” said Alton. “How could I forget?” He switched on his phone and typed Cragmire’s cellphone number into the app’s main screen. He waited until a double-beep heralded a result. “Crap. It says, ‘User not found.’ His phone is off.”

  “That doesn’t sound like him,” said Mallory.

  “Exactly. Cragmire is always on his phone. He’s the last person I’d expect to be off the grid.”

  “So maybe his battery died,” postulated the Gooch.

  “Could be,” said Alton. “Let’s hope that’s all it is.”

  “Anyway, he’s only fifteen minutes late,” said Mallory. “And it’s not like the guy worries about inconveniencing other people. Let’s give him a few more minutes.”

  The NSA team settled into a motley assortment of chairs in the police station’s lobby. Fuentes murmured into his phone, giving orders to those members of his team who continued the search for Quintana. The rest of the group waited in tense silence.

  After twenty more minutes, Alton tried once again to call Cragmire. He clicked off his phone in frustration. “It’s going straight to voice mail.”

  “Who knows with that guy?” said the Gooch. “He could enjoy making us wait on purpose.”

  “He seemed happy to have the center stage before,” said Alton. “I don’t think he’d pass up this opportunity, especially given his text. He was working from Summit’s lab. Let’s go back and see if he’s there.”

  They made quick time loading into a pair of SUVs and racing for the research facility. Sergeant Muro barely had time to greet his captain as they approached the building.

  “Have you seen Cragmire?” asked Alton without preamble.

  “Yes,” said Muro. “I saw him drive away about an hour or two ago.”

  “Let’s check the lab to see if there’s any indication of where he went,” said Alton.

  They filed into the lab. Alton activated Cragmire’s computer and studied it. “He was in the middle of a page of Summit’s notes. I don’t see anything here that would lead me to an epiphany, but I’m no biologist, either.”

  “I think we should spread out to look for him,” said Fuentes. “Why don’t you check back at your resort, in case he returned there without telling anyone? My men will check the hospital.”

  “Okay,” said Alton. “Let’s keep in touch.”

  After hours of fruitless searching, the investigators decided to break for the night. On the drive back to La Villa Descubrimiento, the island’s tropical serenity had transformed into an ominous, black blanket, obscuring potential danger lurking in every shadow. Alton didn’t mind a straight-up fight but was troubled by the thought of an ambush in the dark night. He would be glad to leave this place.

  Alton and Mallory retreated to their treetop loft, a snug sanctuary offering a respite of tranquility at stark odds with the chaos and uncertainty of the evening.

  “Where could he be?” asked Alton, more as a rhetorical question than one he expected his wife to answer. “We’ve checked everywhere. Cragmire never went anywhere besides here, the research facility, and wherever our team deployed as a group.” He ran a hand through his hair. “How could I let a member of my team disappear into thin air?”

  Mallory laid a hand on his arm. “He’s an NSA agent. He took this job knowing the risks. All we can do now is to keep our ears and eyes open.”

  “You’re right…as usual,” said Alton. “We still have to find Summit. And we can’t let anything including Cragmire’s disappearance, distract us from that task.”

  CHAPTER 66

  The cellphone chime roused Alton from fitful sleep. Before answering, he noted the time: five-thirty. “Hello?”

  “Can you come to the harbor?” asked Fuentes. The man’s voice possessed an ominous quality, reminiscent of Alton’s when he had been forced to tell the family of a fallen Army comrade about the death of their loved one.

  “On my way,” replied Alton. He ended the call.

  “News about Cragmire?” asked Mallory, who sat up and rubbed her eyes.

  “I think so. And it didn’t sound good. I’ll call the Gooch and tell him we’re rolling in five.”

  Half an hour later, Alton and his diminished team arrived in Puerto Ayora’s harbor, just as the sun rose above the ocean’s horizon. Alton spotted Fuentes and parked nearby. He exited the vehicle, a Rav4 borrowed from the police fleet, and limped over to the captain. He nodded hello to Rios, Torres, and Tuttle, the last of whom seemed to be in a state of shock.

  “Are you okay, doctor?” asked Alton.

  “Yes, fine.” Tuttle looked down at his plaid pajamas and shrugged apologetically. “It sounded like something important was going on. I thought I’d try to help, so I came out as fast as I could.”

  Alton nodded and turned to Fuentes. “What’s the news?”

  “Come with me.” Fuentes led Alton and his teammates down to the water’s edge and walked a few dozen yards until he reached a small fishing vessel.

  He pulled back a gray tarp, revealing the shattered body of Cragmire. The corpse’s pasty-white complexion was covered with dark, almost black, blood splatter, which had congealed on his face and stomach.

  “Oh, God,” said Mallory,
lifting a hand to her mouth.

  Alton looked to the side, forcing himself to push away memories of fallen Army friends in the deserts of Gazib. He turned back to Fuentes. “What do we know?”

  “The owner of this fishing boat found him about an hour ago, when he began to prepare his boat for the day. Of course, he called my station, and the officer on duty called me.”

  “Was he stabbed?” asked Alton.

  “Not this time. He was shot in the neck and abdomen.”

  “Have you had a chance to search for evidence?” asked Mallory.

  “We just started about thirty minutes ago.”

  “Find anything yet?”

  “Yes,” replied Fuentes. “Follow me.”

  He led the group back up the main road that led directly into the harbor’s waters. Walking a few dozen yards up the slope, he turned onto a small lane, a street running parallel to the water’s edge. A cordon of yellow tape on orange cones had been set up around an area of roadway roughly equal in size to an average car.

  “Look here,” said Fuentes, pointing. A pool of dark blood had congealed in a depression in the asphalt. A smaller pool had collected about a foot away, while smaller streaks and droplets of blood covered a broader area.

  “Holy geez,” said Mallory. “Well, we know this is where he died. With this much blood loss, he must have bled out in just a few minutes.”

  “True,” said the Gooch, who looked to be battling his own wartime memories. “If Cragmire had been shot somewhere else, he wouldn’t have had time to be transported here and bleed this much. The bleeding would have stopped long before he got here.”

  “So he was shot here,” said Alton, “and presumably the murderer either dragged or drove his body down to the harbor and hid it in the first convenient fishing boat he could find.”

  “That is what I am thinking,” said Fuentes. “We didn’t find any blood between here and the boat his body is in, so maybe the killer used your SUV to take it down there.”

  “That’s right. Cragmire was driving our rented SUV. Have your men located it?”

  “No, not yet,” said Fuentes. “They are searching for it.”

  Alton looked around. “This area is a pretty busy. Did anyone see or hear anything?”

  “The harbor is busy during the day,” said Fuentes, “but once the tourists go back to their cruise ships and resorts, all the locals leave, too. So at night, there aren’t many people around. We have found two witnesses who said they heard a sound like gunshots or firecrackers late last night, around ten o’clock.”

  “A little while after Cragmire texted me,” said Alton. “Now we know the time of death.”

  “Yes,” agreed Fuentes. “The witnesses said they heard the gunshots but couldn’t tell exactly where they came from. They said it was a loud noise that echoed.”

  “Yeah,” said Alton. “The sound of gunfire can do that.”

  Rios approached Fuentes and asked the captain a question in quiet tones.

  “Mr. Blackwell,” said Tuttle, “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to change out of these pajamas.”

  Alton nodded. As he waited to continue his conversation with Fuentes, Alton caught Mallory studying his face. Worry lines crossed her brow.

  “Sweetie, are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah. It’s just…finding Cragmire’s corpse, the gunshots. A little too much like Afghanistan.”

  She reached out and squeezed his hand.

  He smiled. “I’ll be okay.”

  Fuentes finished his consult with Rios and turned to Alton. “My men will fan out in this area to seek out any new witnesses or physical evidence.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Alton. As he turned to leave, a swath of burgundy plastic tucked underneath a nearby bush caught his eye. “Speaking of new physical evidence, we may have just found some.” He walked over to the bush, which brimmed with bright, yellow blooms.

  After donning latex gloves, Alton picked up the object from underneath the bush. “Yep. It’s Cragmire’s phone. It must have tumbled over here when he was shot. And it was off, so no one passing by would have heard it. This explains why my tracker app didn’t work.”

  “Check the text messages and call logs,” said Mallory.

  Alton activated the phone and scrolled through the messages. “He didn’t send much—just the message to us. Nothing after that. Same with the call log.” He looked at Fuentes. “Do you need this, or can I hang on to it?”

  “Yes, I would like my men dust it for prints, in case the murderer came in contact with it.”

  Alton handed the phone over to Fuentes, who sealed it in a plastic evidence bag.

  “It looks like you have the investigation into Cragmire’s murder well underway,” said Alton. “In the meantime, I need to refocus on my original mission: finding Summit. Do we all agree that Cragmire’s killer is almost certainly the same person who coordinated Summit’s abduction?”

  They all nodded.

  “Let’s go back to my office,” said Fuentes. They walked a few hundred yards to the police station and gathered around the captain’s desk.

  Alton stretched his bad leg, which tingled after the brisk walk. “The question now is the same one we had before. Are all the recent murders connected, or just some of them? Is Summit’s abductor on a rampage, killing anyone who seems to be a threat? Or are there two completely separate crimes sprees—one concerning Alzheimer’s research, the other illegal tortoises—that just happen to be occurring at the same time?”

  “I wish Cragmire hadn’t confronted the killer alone,” said Mallory. “Maybe we’d have the answer to that question already if he hadn’t. There’s no telling what evidence he discovered on that flash drive.”

  “Let’s see if we can use Cragmire’s murder to help piece things together,” said Alton. “We believe his murder is connected to Dr. Summit’s disappearance. But the relevance of the victims killed here on Santa Cruz and dumped on Isabela Island is still unclear. If all the murders are related, why didn’t the killer take Cragmire, Pavia, and Garza—the last fisherman killed on San Cristóbal Island—anywhere afterwards?”

  “If it is the same killer for everyone,” said Mallory, “maybe he—or she—had trouble transporting some of the bodies. Maybe the killer was running out of time or was afraid of being spotted.”

  “This is all quite interesting,” said Fuentes, “but I suggest we look for Quintana. Maybe he will be able to answer some of our questions.”

  “We all agree with that,” said the Gooch. “The trouble is finding the guy.”

  “I have some good news to share with you about this man. Rios has been tracking down his relatives. A few hours ago, he spoke with his sister-in-law, Monica. At first, she denied seeing Quintana since last spring. But Lieutenant Rios noticed something odd. There was a pair of large men’s pants on the floor, but her husband is a small man. There are no large men in her household. Monica admitted Quintana and his family had been staying there and just left yesterday.”

  “Did she say why he left?” asked Alton.

  “Yes, he thought the police might track him down.”

  “Did she say where Quintana was headed?”

  “No,” said Fuentes. “Monica says she does not know where he went to.”

  Alton ran a hand through his hair. “This is good information, but I don’t see how we’re any closer to catching Quintana.”

  “But there is something else,” said Fuentes. “A new occurrence, a technical challenge that could be…what is the expression?…‘right up your alley’ to solve.”

  CHAPTER 67

  “A technical challenge, huh?” said Alton. “Do tell.”

  “A few minutes ago, Quintana turned on his phone,” said Fuentes.

  “That’s great,” said Alton, “just have the phone company track his signal’s GPS coordinates—”

  “But then he turned it off again,” said Fuentes. “That is the challenge.”

  Alton nodded. “And you’re ho
ping to track him anyway.”

  “Yes.”

  Alton mulled over the question for a moment. “Any idea why he turned on his phone?”

  “Not really,” said Fuentes.

  Alton stretched his leg. “Let’s think about this. Why would he use his phone now? He just fled his previous hiding place. He may be using it to coordinate with confederates who are helping him stay on the run. And if he called them once, there’s a good chance he’ll call them again.”

  “It makes sense,” said Fuentes, “but how does this help us?”

  “I can set up a tracker program to auto-install on his phone the next time he turns it on. It’s a pretty small file, so we’d only need twenty or thirty seconds for it to fully load. He won’t even know it’s happening.”

  “What if he turns his phone back off?”

  “That’s the beauty of this program,” said Alton. “As long as the battery is in Quintana’s phone, the tracker program will report its location.”

  “Yes, let’s do this,” said Fuentes. He smiled. “I had a feeling you’d be able to help.”

  Alton activated the tracker program on his laptop, typed in Quintana’s cellphone number, and leaned back in his chair. “Now we wait.”

  “How do we know if Quintana uses his phone?” asked Mallory.

  “The program sends me a text of his GPS coordinates. The coordinates feed right into my phone’s map app, which in turn will lead us right to him.”

  “Cool,” said the Gooch. “We just have to hope he uses his phone again, right?”

  “Yep,” said Alton, “but we can’t count on that. In the meantime, we should—”

  A shrill, pulsating tone from Alton’s laptop interrupted him.

  Mallory winced. “What’s that?”

  “It’s the program,” said Alton. “Quintana’s using his phone again!”

  They gathered around Alton’s laptop. A status bar slowly transformed from red to green, indicating the progress of the installation on the fugitive’s phone.