by Diane Capri
A second man jogged up, pushed in front of Jess, and waved his card at the reader. The door beeped and clicked open.
He waved his card at Jess, pointing to a blue band around it. “Production, see?”
He grabbed Jess’s card and held it up. “Red’s research. Won’t let you in here.”
He shrugged. “Sorry, lady.”
He turned and jogged into the building.
Before the door closed behind him, Jess glimpsed large tanks connected by a mass of pipework. Heat and humidity oozed out. The air had a chemical tang that irritated her nose and made her sneeze.
Jess stepped away from the door. The turnstile entrance was quieter now. The area around the building was deserted. Everyone who had entered earlier was now inside, somewhere.
She turned the card over in her hand. Keycards only granted access to specific areas, and employees helped to enforce the rules.
Which meant Kelso Products did take security seriously enough.
It also meant that Elden’s card was only good for limited access.
Why did someone want it?
And what did they use it for?
Jess looked around until she saw a sign pointing toward “Research Labs.” She walked briskly in that direction.
The grounds were vast fields. Enormous buildings were plopped here and there as if a giant hand had placed them on a game board from above. Between the buildings, deserted gravel paths wandered like wide gray ribbons.
Jess glanced over her shoulder. No one followed, but she felt exposed. Agent Remington had said there were no cameras monitoring workers inside the facility, but any curious person could look out of a window anytime.
At an angle to her left were several single-story buildings leading toward the explosion site.
All were brick, painted white. Pipes stuck up from their roofs. Enormous air-conditioning units from which condensing water vapor rose were placed along one exterior wall. Concrete separated the buildings.
The building closest to her was labeled “Lab 1.” Alex Cole’s workplace.
Large windows overlooked the concrete, but they were covered by closed Venetian blinds.
A single-story building in the front was labeled “Research and Development.” Beneath it, in large letters, was the phrase “AUTHORIZED personnel only.”
She saw through the large, uncovered windows into an unoccupied open area beyond double glass doors.
Jess took a deep breath and walked toward the entrance. She saw no card reader in place here, and when she was close enough to engage a sensor, the doors parted automatically.
She paused at the threshold. Three interior doors led from the foyer. Each had a gray card reader box. Elden’s duplicate card might not work, or worse, it could notify security immediately. Jess could be trapped inside by those automatic doors.
She took a deep breath and stepped inside. The glass doors hissed shut behind her. The three interior doors were solid wood panels. No signs identified the areas beyond each entrance. But she didn’t plan to go deeper into the building. She wanted to know whether the card would allow her to breach security.
If Jess could steal a card and get inside the building, another unauthorized person could have done so, too. Which meant that someone unknown, someone other than Alex Cole, could have set up the bomb.
Jess began with the first door on the left. She waved the card in front of the gray box. It emitted the same grating double buzz that denied entry to the production building.
She waited a moment. She heard no bells or sirens.
She took another breath and waved the card before the second reader. The same rejection buzz sounded loud enough to wake the dead.
She stepped straight to the last door with the card held out, and passed it across the sensor. The gray box offered a nerve-soothing single beep. The door’s lock clicked. The door popped open a fraction.
She grabbed the knob and pulled the door open a few inches.
A brightly lit, blue-carpeted corridor lay beyond.
Several solid doors adjacent to large glass observation windows on the right-hand side led to lab rooms, she guessed. The first door was only three feet from where she stood. Its window was another two feet beyond the door.
Her heart thumped hard against her ribs. She’d proved what she came to do. Alex Cole wasn’t the only person who could have set that bomb. Others, known or unknown, had as much or more opportunity to do so.
Debora Elden, for one. Her lanyard was hanging in her bathroom. She could easily have the card in her pocket. She’d have had access to this area even though she’d resigned and left the country three months earlier. She maintained an apartment here with an active telephone number. She could have been in town last Thursday.
Jess didn’t need to go any farther. She could turn back now.
She took a deep breath and stepped through onto the blue carpet. The door locked behind her.
Beside the first inside lab door, just below eye-level, a clipboard hung on a big hook and a pen dangled on a cord next to it. Several sheets of paper were held under the clip that looked like sign-in sheets with columns for the date, names, arrival, and departure times.
The top sheet was completed about halfway down the grid and dated four months ago. The list of names was handwritten, presumably by their owners as they entered and left this lab room.
Jess read the list quickly. Elden’s signature appeared several lines down on the top sheet.
She flipped through the sheets beneath, which were stacked in reverse chronological order. Multiple entries every day for several weeks. Each day’s sign-in sheet had Elden’s name on it, right up until the last day. Which was two weeks before Elden left Kelso.
After the last day, three more dates were listed on the top sheet, but no signatures, just a small check mark by the date. The handwriting was small, too. Like Elden’s signature, possibly. An expert would need to say for sure.
The door into the lab had its own card reader. Jess was too deep inside the plant to risk trying the door. The obnoxiously loud rejection buzzer would surely bring investigators running. But she wanted to know what was going on in that lab room.
The observation window was her best option.
She strode past the window like a woman who had every right to be there. Her head angled toward the glass, and her eyes strained to see who was working on what inside that room.
There was no one in the lab at all. Totally unoccupied. Not even a four-legged lab rat.
She stepped back and peered through the window. The room was completely metallic. The walls, ceiling, and floor were solid sheets of shiny silver metal, like highly polished stainless steel. The corners appeared welded to eliminate seams. There were two tables and several chairs, all metal. A rack against one wall was loaded with scrub suits and full-face masks. Several red and blue gas cylinders were hung on the wall.
In the corner was an open shower with a large loop of chain. A red plaque hung from the lowest point of the loop. It bore one word in black lettering on a yellow background. Drench.
At the far side of the room was a metal door with a gray card reader, requiring a card to exit. This reader was encased in a glass bowl sealed against the metal wall. Beside the door was a long set of instructions painted on the metal wall. The door was stenciled with the words, Entering BSL-3. Follow all instructions. No exceptions.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Wednesday, August 17
8:30 a.m. CDT
Chatham, Iowa
Jess shoved the keycard into her pocket. She didn’t know what lay beyond the steel door, but she wouldn’t go inside that room on a bet. She pulled her phone from her pocket and snapped a few quick photos. First chance she got, she’d send them into the cloud.
She left the same way she entered. The door didn’t require the card reader. It opened with the handle from the inside. When she approached the automatic double entry doors on the other side of the foyer, they opened to let her out and closed beh
ind her. She retraced her same path around the production building to the turnstiles and out to her car.
In mere moments she was leaving the parking lot. She called Sally Meacham to return the card, but Sally didn’t answer. Jess stuffed the card in her pocket where she imagined it burning a hole straight through to her skin.
A couple of miles down the road she stopped at a supermarket’s parking lot.
Jess made a quick search of Taboo’s databases on her phone. BSL-3 meant Bio Safety Level 3. It was a standard used by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the handling of potentially lethal poisons that are transmitted just by breathing.
Another search showed there were more than a thousand such labs in the US, and they were strictly controlled.
Her phone rang. Henry Morris. She answered immediately. “Hey, Henry.”
“How’s the reporting?”
She exhaled. “Tell me what you found first.”
“Okay.” He stretched the word out to emphasize he knew Jess was holding back on him. “First, the vehicle following Marcia McAllister was a team from Remington’s office. No big mystery there. Second, Marco Benito did apply for a visa. The text of the application was from the actual Marco Benito’s résumé, but the picture isn’t him. The photo matches an Interpol mug sheet for an Italian thug. His real name, which he hasn’t used in years, is Franco Olivetti. He holds a degree in biology, which is probably how he managed to pass himself off as the real Benito for a while. He’s also under suspicion of several violent crimes in four European countries, according to Interpol records.”
“So, what was he doing at Kelso Products?”
“Hard to tell, and we can’t ask him. He got into a fight one night with a British soldier in Johannesburg.”
“What do you mean?”
“The soldier was on vacation, apparently. According to the official reports, Olivetti mugged the soldier outside a restaurant. A knife fight. They killed each other.”
Jess whistled. “Why would a guy like that be working at Kelso Products?”
“My guess is industrial espionage. He has a long record of burglaries and assaults. I can’t see him going to the trouble of getting a visa under a false name and trying to pass himself off as a scientist for any other reason. Can you?”
Jess felt like she was drowning in tension. “I just found out that Alex Cole’s girlfriend, the one who allegedly quit her job and left the country…”
“Yeah, Debora Elden.”
“Well, her keycard that allows her into Kelso Products research labs is missing.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ll tell you later. But, she also still has a little-used apartment in Chatham and a phone number that has been diverted somewhere else.”
“Give me the number and I’ll trace it.”
Jess repeated the number from memory.
“You realize I’m passing this on to Remington?”
“You bet. He needs to know. His team has the clout to get better answers from Winter, and whoever else knows more than they’ve been telling.”
“Maybe. But I have one other piece of news. Three months ago Alex Cole drove to Detroit. Apart from a burger in Delray, he didn’t use a credit card for the whole trip. No gas stations, nothing. Must have paid cash everywhere.”
“And?”
“He visited a small engineering company there. They make specialist robotics equipment. Small-scale. Cole bought a bunch of stuff with cash.”
Jess leaned back in the driver’s seat and closed her eyes. “Incriminating stuff?”
“No.”
Jess’s ability to breathe returned.
“But the owner remembers a discussion about the manufacture of TAPT. That’s acetone peroxide. They spent some time discussing the dangers of handling it. The owner remembers the conversation clearly. He notified the police when he saw Cole’s picture and heard about the arrest on the news.” Morris paused. He lowered his voice as if he were delivering a fatal blow and he knew it. “So, the chemicals were found on his property, which is possession. And now we have someone who corroborates his interest in that type of explosive.”
“It’s looking worse and worse for Alex, isn’t it?”
“It is. Even if he didn’t act alone. It’s still not good.”
There was a long silence while Henry waited for her to absorb everything, she guessed.
“Am I wasting my time?” she finally said.
“Hard to say. You know I’d never bet against the FBI, but you have uncovered, shall we say, irregularities.”
“You think what I’ve found has nothing to do with the bomb,” she said.
He sighed. “Are you out of options yet?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll give you the advice a retiring agent once gave me. When evidence goes against your gut, work it a little longer.”
She nodded. “Can I get one more favor? Can you find Debora Elden?”
He paused for a few extra beats before he said, “I can find her air travel easily enough. I’ll email you the results.”
“Thanks, Henry. I appreciate the help. If it turns out that Alex Cole did this, Marcia McAllister will be devastated. I don’t know how much more that poor woman can take.” Jess ran her hand through her hair. “First her daughter, missing more than two years. And now her best friend’s son? A terrorist? I’m really worried about her, Henry.”
“I don’t have any doubts about what you’re doing there, Jess. Stick with it. Sometimes, even the smallest irregularity can unravel the whole thing.”
She smiled. “Thanks, Henry.”
She hung up.
She’d told him the truth. She hadn’t hit a brick wall, but promising leads were thin on the ground.
Cole might be the one. It was possible. She didn’t want to believe it, and he didn’t really seem like the type to her. But the evidence was piled high against him and getting worse.
She still couldn’t fathom why he would plant that bomb. What was his motive? Human behavior wasn’t always predictable, and people didn’t always do the smart thing. But in the absence of a mental illness, surely Alex Cole needed a reason to destroy those people with a bomb like that, didn’t he?
Then there was Elden.
She had access to a research lab that was highly controlled.
She conducted experiments at Cole’s place, hoping to enable third world countries to make Kelso’s products cheaper and easier.
She belonged to a group that approved the bombing of a whaling boat in the Far East, and Japanese kanji characters were written down with a list of usernames and passwords in her apartment.
The FBI’s evidence had piled up against Cole, but Elden’s activities seemed far more suspect to Jess.
And she’d promised Marcia McAllister. Jess couldn’t bear to disappoint Marcia again. Not while Marcia’s daughter was still missing.
Somehow, helping Alex Cole felt like helping herself, too. Or maybe Jess was trying to create good karma for the times when her son, Peter, needed it.
Whatever the reasons, Henry was right. She couldn’t give up. Not yet.
She’d work the evidence a little longer. Maybe she’d get lucky.
CHAPTER NINETEN
Wednesday, August 17
9:30 a.m. CDT
Chatham, Iowa
Jess fetched her laptop from the trunk of her car, connected it to her phone, and brought up the Local World Action website.
The background pictures cycled through the same series of images she’d seen before. She waited until the picture with Elden appeared, and took a screenshot.
After all the images cycled, the login prompt popped up again. This was the end of the road unless she could log in.
She found the photo she took in Elden’s apartment of the usernames and passwords Elden kept under the gaming console. She used every name on the list, entering each one meticulously. She had to try several more than once because the writing did not distinguish certain l
etters well enough. She skipped the Japanese writing as she had no way to enter the kanji characters on her keyboard.
After ten minutes she’d worked through the entire list. None of the combinations logged her into the site.
Nice try, but no cigar. Now what?
Jess shuffled the laptop into the passenger seat to answer Mandy’s call. “I could use a little good news. What have you got?”
“You were right. Debora Elden redirected her landline to her cell phone, and her cell is registered at her apartment in Chatham. But that’s the end of the road. I can’t get any further.” Mandy was a bigger bulldog than Jess on this kind of thing, so Jess waited for the rest. “I talked to the lawyer. He says we could get more with a court order, but it will take a couple of weeks. I told him to get on it, but I guess that’s too long.”
“Thanks for the hard work.” Jess grimaced, even though this was the answer she’d expected. “What about Winter?”
“Totally different story. Way too much information out there on that woman.” Mandy’s tone implied she was rolling her eyes. “Winter has a strong reputation as a kick-ass CEO. She turns troubled companies around, and she’s done it more than a few times. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s a stress junkie.”
“Yeah, I can see that. She was cool, calm, and collected when I met her, even though she was under fire from all sides.”
“A board member at one of her previous companies said that she has ‘a knack for spotting talent.’” Mandy was reading off a screen or notes. “She doesn’t suffer fools. Lots of disgruntled employees at all levels are more than happy to complain about her. But she does the job. She gets a company turned around in three or four years then moves on. She has three big successes to her credit in the past decade. Names you’d recognize.”
Jess nodded. “How long has Winter been the CEO at Kelso Products?”
“Two years.”
“So she came in when they were in trouble. She cuts costs and trims down. That’s when they stop the research that sends Debora Elden packing.” Jess was thinking out loud. Mandy waited for a question. “Is the company turning around? Making money?”
