The Enclave (25 page)

Cam was steered leftward along the upper level, away from the well of monitors to a second set of glass doors. These led into a baffle-walled corridor lined with knobless panels, one of which Jablonsky opened to reveal a small briefing room with a table, two chairs, and a long window of darkened glass on the inner wall.

Herke pushed Cam down into the chair on the table’s far side. Shortly they were joined by Assistant Director Slattery and Colonel

Paul Nevins, head of security. Slattery set his laptop on the table across from Cam, and sat down before him. As he opened it and set up a small microphone, Colonel Nevins dismissed Jablonsky and Herke. When the door had shut and locked itself in their wake, Slattery asked Cam to state his full name and security clearance code for the record, then tell them what had happened.

Cam did so as simply, clearly, and unemotionally as he could. From time to time Slattery interrupted him, pressing for more detail than the guards had, particularly with regard to the intruder’s appearance. When he was finished the AD leaned back in his chair and scowled. “So tell me, why in the world were you down there at one in the morning?”

“I often go down late. And you know I was at the presentation.”

“The presentation ended at ten.”

Cam told him how he’ d listened to a sermon in his room, and then gone down to the AnFac to check on his projects, seeing as he wouldn’t be doing it in the morning.

If anything, Slattery’s scowl deepened. “Or perhaps you were just waiting for a good time to confront Espinosa.”

“Actually, I hoped not to see him at all.”

“So that you might eliminate him and try to blame it on our intruder. If there is one at all.”

Cam frowned at him. “Why would I want to eliminate Manuel Espinosa? And with your security cameras and microphones, you must know I didn’t.”

“Our cameras have been going in and out all night, not just on the animal floor but everywhere. We have the audio of what we believe to be Espinosa’s death, but no visual. Here. Have a look.”

He spun the laptop around so Cam could see the screen where Manny stepped out of the elevator into the animal facility’s main corridor and headed for the prep room. As he entered, the screen shifted to view him heading across the room to where Harvey the Hamster ran madly on his squeaky hamster wheel in his Lucite cage. At that point the screen went solid blue, but as Slattery had said, the audio continued. They listened to the sounds of water running and splashing, the squeak of the handle as it was cranked off, a rustling of paper toweling, more squeaks of doors and drawers, implements rattling, glass clinking. Then a deep, harsh voice, surprised and a bit imperious: “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

The words were followed by a bang, a curse, and an extended rustling attended by thumps and grunts. There was a loud cartilage-cracking sound, then a few moments of labored wheezing. A drawer rolled open, then closed again, and all went quiet. Presently the faint
thump-slap
of footfalls sounded, faded to silence, then returned in sudden loudness as new microphones picked them up. Cam heard the familiar squeal of the frog tank’s metal lid being lifted and finally a great gonging thud as the intruder apparently dropped Manny’s body into the empty tank.

More silence, then a faint erratic squeaking that Cam finally identified as a marker being used to write on the wall. Again the footfalls faded and sharply increased as the spinning hamster wheel became loud again—the intruder had returned to the prep room. Various unidentifiable sounds ensued, then the
ping
of the elevator and the shouts of the guards. At the same moment the screen flickered from blue back to imagery, showing Cam racing for the stairwell doorway as the guards shouted behind him. He vanished through the door, and moments later the guards followed—except Jablonsky, who stood at the doorway. At that point the image froze.

“Now what do you have to say?” Slattery asked smugly, turning the laptop back to face himself.

“I’d say you have a big problem on your hands,” Cam replied. “Because it wasn’t me, and the man you’re after is not only still out there but has somehow acquired clearance to enter places even I can’t.”

Slattery’s dark brows drew together. “You were right there, obviously running from the guards. There was only one ping of the elevator—that which sounded when Captain Jablonsky and his men arrived.”

Cam stared at him. “No doubt because the microphones were focused on the action in the prep room.” Or perhaps because some audio technician had taken it out?

“I was still on the fifth floor when this happened,” he added. “You must have surveillance footage from the corridor and elevator lobby showing me there. Compare the time on those to that on the audio and you’ll see I wasn’t there.” He paused. “Besides, why would I ask Manny who he was, if it was me coming through the door?”

Slattery and Nevins exchanged a glance.

Cam frowned at them. “You both know it wasn’t me. I could never have turned that tank over the other night, and don’t pretend you know nothing of that. He was very strong, very fast, and he had a wild look in his eyes. Not quite sane, I’d say. Which his actions confirm.”

“And yet,” Slattery said, “you survived. Why did your mysterious intruder kill Espinosa for no apparent reason other than a chance encounter with him, and not you?”

“He killed Espinosa because Espinosa was there instead of Lacey McHenry. Which is obvious from the words on the wall.”

“Well, you were there, too, instead of Ms. McHenry.” Slattery poked at the keys on his laptop. “And you said that he did, in fact, attack you. A man as strong and fast as you say he is—”

“He wasn’t that adept at fighting,” Cam cut in.

“And you are?” Slattery asked sarcastically.

Cam said nothing.

Slattery frowned at his computer, typed something briefly into it, and pushed Enter. “It seems to me that if he’s as strong and fast as you say, your intruder should have easily overpowered you regardless of the level of his fighting skills.” He looked up from the screen. “I don’t think there was any intruder. I think you are the one who’s been staging all of this. I think you are the one who has disrupted our surveillance network, and that you are responsible for Manuel Espinosa’s death. Out of jealousy and fear that he would supplant you, given his superior credentials.”

Cam stared at him, struggling to believe he was serious.

Slattery stood up, Nevins punched in the code to open the door, and the two men departed, leaving Cam alone with whomever was on the other side of the glass.

He sat rigidly, fighting down the incipient panic with long, slow breaths. Of course, that was Slattery’s intent. They didn’t have a case. Their surveillance records were admittedly compromised, unreliable.

If the intruder had been able to disrupt transmission, who knows what else he was able to do? Slattery might pretend to believe Cam was guilty of murdering Manny, but Cam was nearly certain he knew the truth. Probably knew exactly who the intruder was and was covering, as he had been covering from the beginning.

The question was, what was he covering? And why?

Presently Captain Jablonsky returned to escort Cam through a maze of corridors to a small elevator lobby. Jablonsky swiped his card through the adjacent slot, opening the elevator’s doors. Cam entered the wood-paneled car alone. The doors closed and the car lifted, gathering speed quickly. Cam barely had time to realize that there were no observable internal controls, when the elevator slowed and came to a gentle stop.

As he stepped out into another small, shadowed lobby, he realized he’d just ridden the director’s private express elevator.

An unlit paneled corridor led him past several closed doors to one that stood open, light gleaming off its polished wooden surfaces, inviting him into a modest-sized meeting room with a long window along its outer wall. It was furnished with several overstuffed chairs ranged in a U-shape around a low rectangular table. A huge abstract painting of a stern-faced Native American warrior swathed in a robe of watery colors hung on the wall at the end of the table, lit by a recessed ceiling lamp.

Other Native American art forms graced the adjacent walls—flat baskets, black pottery plates, war hammers. A tall cabinet of roughhewn mesquite hulked on the wall opposite the painting. Swain himself, as before, stood at the window, awaiting the arrival of his guest. As Cameron drew up beside him, he did not speak nor glance aside, but continued staring at the quiet campus and the bright stars overhead. The low light of the various table lamps scattered about the room cast enough illumination that Cam could clearly see the director’s face, which was calm and placid.

Below them the Institute’s inner park lay in a well of darkness scattered with pools of warm light from the security lamps. Above, the dark bulk of the Santa Catalinas loomed beneath a vast star-spangled sky in which Cam easily picked out the three-star belt of Orion hanging directly over the mountains.

“They tell me you claim not to be the murderer,” Swain said, “but to have chased him down a stairway.”

Cam eyed him, certain Swain had seen the interview himself, if not from the other side of the one-way glass, then from monitors in the room.

“I chased him right up to a door he went through easily, but to which I was denied access.”

“So of course you couldn’t capture him. A convenient excuse.” He paused. “Do you think you could have held him had you caught up with him?”

“I knew the guards were behind me.”

Swain turned to look at him, eyes piercing, expression inscrutable. Then he stepped from the window and gestured toward the chairs and table. “Please, sit down. I’ve something to show you.”

As Cam went to the chairs, Swain strode to the mesquite cabinet and opened its doors to reveal shelves of liquor in exotic bottles. He pulled a squat-bellied red one from his collection and set it on a tray, added two small glasses, a silver bowl of some sort of crackers, and what appeared to be a remote. Closing the doors with a faint snick, he brought the tray to the table, then sat in the chair at the table’s end, kitty-corner to the seat Cam had chosen. “I suppose your theory is that he found his way in through one of the service access ports,” he said, using a napkin to pull the glass stopper out of the liquor bottle.

“Why would he need to do that when he has security clearance beyond mine?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say he has that.” He poured deep amber liquid into one of the glasses, then glanced up. “Brandy?”

“No, thank you,” Cameron told him.

He smiled. “I knew you’d say that.” He set the carafe back on the tray, replaced the stopper, then picked up his drink and settled back in the chair. “The door you reference leads only to one of the physical plant floors—electrical tunnels, drains, fans, vents, that sort of thing. Your card isn’t coded for that floor because you’re not one of our maintenance personnel. Coding is always on a need-to-access basis.”

“So this man has a keycard that admits him to the animal facility and to the physical plant.”

Swain shrugged. “It’s your story, Cameron.”

“It is
not
a story. It’s the truth. There was a thumb-pad device by the door. Why would that be on a stairwell entrance to the physical plant?”

“A thumb-pad device?”

“I jammed my thumb into it.”

“Most likely some sort of electrical housing. You’re lucky you didn’t get electrocuted. . . .” He smiled and sipped his drink, watching Cameron sharply.

After a moment he said, “Actually, I do believe you.”

“You know who he is, then.”

“Not specifically, no. None of our cameras has yet been able to capture his image. What we’re trying to understand here is why he’s suddenly resorted to murder. As you must have guessed, professional technology thieves do not develop sudden, irrational crushes on random lab technicians they happen to run into.”

“You think the messages on the walls are meaningless, then?”

“Diversions, yes.”

“That still doesn’t explain why he’d resort to murder.”

“Manny must have seen him doing something compromising.”

“The audio tape certainly doesn’t indicate that.”

Swain cocked a brow at him. “So then, what? You think he’s a lovesick vandal?”

“I do think he’s sick. He certainly didn’t look well.”

Swain went suddenly still and alert. “You mean, ill? Like sweating, chills . . .”

“Flushed, dripping sweat, rank odor, wheezing . . .” He fell silent as it occurred to him that one of the symptoms of genetic therapy gone awry was the sudden onset of flulike symptoms. Fever, body aches, vomiting, diarrhea. . . . He looked at Swain in horror.
By all that’s holy,
Director, what have you done?

Swain shook free of his paralysis. “Well, I guess we can find that out once we capture him.”

“Capture him? Don’t you think you should wait until the police get here? I mean, you’re going to mess up evidence, and they may have this guy’s profile in their database.”

Swain regarded him steadily. “You know what I think about calling the police, son. We’ve already had this discussion.”

“That was when the subject was a relatively harmless vandalism. This is murder.”

“The police aren’t going to do anything we can’t. And they’d bring those jackal reporters. Then we’d have another Andrea Stopping mess on our hands, and—”

“But it’s murder.”

“Indeed it is. Which means you, of all people, do not want the police here.”

“What?”

“Think it through, son. . . . Who will be their most likely suspect?”

A chill crawled up Cam’s spine as he stared at the other man. “I didn’t do it, sir. And you just said you believed me.”

“I do, but given the available evidence, it appears as if you are guilty. You had motive and opportunity. We have all the records of your many arguments with Manuel Espinosa, which they would request and we would have to supply them with.” He paused. “I’m sure you can imagine what the reporters would do with that: the white German star scientist versus the poor minority student.”

“Manny was as much a star as I am, and you well know he wasn’t remotely poverty-stricken.” His parents owned a vast ranch in Argentina. “Furthermore, I’m not German—I’m American!”