Abducted: Reconnaissance Team (Texas Rangers: Special Ops Book 1) (30 page)

I had read only eight of the eleven pages of the
Eyes Only
report when I got the call. Two minutes later, I stood outside the closed office door of Dr. Leonard Heinrick, stopped by the smell of cold blood seeping from the room. A lot of blood. What stopped me wasn't the heightened sense of smell that aroused boyhood memories of the way my father smelled when he returned from the slaughterhouse where he worked, but the stomach-churning odor of decaying blood.

I fought back a rising panic. Why the hell hadn't Lopez caught a plane an hour later? As head of security, he should be standing here instead of me. At the very least, he should have locked down the lab and given me authority to run my own investigation. Instead, he'd tied my hands and left me waiting for information from the eggheads.

Movement on the other side of the door's frosted glass startled me from the dread and I recognized the blurred form of Officer Of the Day, or OOD, Colonel McHenry. I opened the door. He stood near the desk in the cramped office and turned, revealing the mutilated body of Leonard Heinrick. He lay on his back, arms at his side as if at attention. Blood had pooled in his right eye socket. Crimson stained the front and sides of his starched white shirt where his throat had been cut, and over a quart of blood had puddled on the floor under his head.

A chill snaked up my back. The precision throat slice reminded me of the way Lawrence 'Lucky Larry' Fiato liked to kill—when he had the time to enjoy his work.

"You didn't touch anything?" I asked in reflex as I forced my legs to carry me forward. The stench of dead blood made me want to vomit. Week-old hamburger would smell better.

McHenry marched to the door, quietly shut it, then faced me, hands clasped behind his back. "I secured the crime scene, then called you from the office next door."

I didn't know what
secured the crime scene
meant—the Army wasn't known for doing things like the Chicago PD. I swallowed back rising revulsion as I unbuttoned my suit jacket and squatted beside the body. The disease flowing through my veins made me crave warm, living blood.
Dead
human blood made my gut roil as if I'd taken a nosedive in a Douglas A-24 Banshee.

I made as close an inspection of the body as possible without disturbing anything. Nothing obvious was missing. Heinrick's wallet bulged in his front pants pocket and the Prexa Swiss-made Chronograph Manual watch he wore was still strapped to his left wrist. No other wounds were visible, but forensics would have to tell me what his backside looked like. The rotting odor I knew Colonel McHenry couldn't smell forced me to choke back a gag. I'd seen my share of blood and death. At fifteen years of age, my six-foot height and sprouting beard got me into the Army during the Great War, where I saw enough death and dismemberment near Maginot Line in France to last a lifetime. Now I couldn't get past the violent aversion to cold,
dead
blood.

But I'd have to deal with my loathing in order to find the killer. The stabbing to Heinrick's eyes indicated torture and the slice to his neck was professional. A trained killer had infiltrated the sterilized ranks of Chicago Pile One. I had to work fast. Espionage, torture, and murder mounted a greater problem than being out of communication during the midday hours when I lay unconscious.

We couldn't afford to draw attention to the lab with the kind of security found on military instillations, so we kept security light. I'd strapped on the Colt .45 General Groves had insisted Lopez and I keep in our desks in case of emergency, but neither McHenry, nor any of his civilian-dressed officers—we had to make the daily business look like a typical university operation—carried weapons. A policy that had to grate against McHenry's military mind. Yet strangers didn't enter Eckhart Hall without notice. So how had someone waltzed into Heinrick's office noticed?

I stood and walked a circle around the corpse. More important than the how was the why? Scientists had reasons to be jealous of one another: status, projects, publications, and occasionally romance created friction among them. But these motives seldom led to murder. Was Heinrick's murder related to the security breach or another matter altogether? The easy answer was that Heinrick had passed on the priceless U-235 information, then outlived his usefulness. But I had a feeling there'd be no easy answers.

I steeled myself against the nausea, squatted again, and drew the stench deep into my nostrils. In two seconds, I knew Heinrick had been dead approximately four hours. "You were killed around quarter after six, Heinrick," I murmured.

"How can you tell?" McHenry asked.

I looked up, having forgotten him. "Hypostasis." I drew an imaginary circle around Heinrick's eye with my forefinger. "See how pink his skin is here? That's an indication the blood is settling in the lowest parts of his body. The pinker the skin, the earlier the time of death." I glanced at McHenry, not adding that hypostasis commenced approximately six to eight hours
after
death and isn't fully pronounced for eight to twelve hours. Truth was, I couldn't explain how I knew the age of dead blood, and I'd grown tired of trying to understand the strange ability.

I dropped my gaze back to the bloody neck. "Just a guess. The coroner will have the final say."

"Security is on full alert," McHenry said. "We're on lockdown. If the killer is still here, we'll find him."

I nodded, not saying,
If he isn't one of the staff or military personnel.
Inside jobs were the hardest for military police to accept. Traitors in the midst of patriotic zeal hit hard.

I rose. "I assume none of the evening staff are missing?"

"No."

"You have someone checking on the day crew?" If the murder turned out to be an inside job, he could be in Canada by the time the day shift showed up and we discovered him missing.

"Banks is on it," McHenry replied.

"How about the office?" I asked. "Anything missing?"

"Don't know. Security still has to inventory the contents of the safe."

I glanced at the combination safe by the desk where Heinrick stored his classified documents. What McHenry called a safe was a fortified steel file cabinet with a combination dial about the size of my fist with a sturdy lever type handle. Every scientist had a similar safe. Some had two drawers like Heinrick's, others four. If the thief had accessed the safe, he wanted us to think otherwise: the drawers were closed and the cabinet looked unmolested.

I took two steps to the safe and pulled my handkerchief from my back pocket. Using the handkerchief to cover my fingers, I jiggled the handle and yanked. Locked.

"I'll have the contents inventoried and dusted for prints," McHenry said.

Spies preferred photographing documents instead of stealing them. Missing documents were always assumed to be in foreign hands, and steps taken to discredit, invalidate, or obfuscate the secrets within. The killer had made no efforts to hide the fact he was a professional, so why hide the fact he'd stolen documents? Now everything in the safe would be considered compromised. My gut said because he hadn't been interested in the safe's contents.

"Who found the body?" I asked as I scanned the sides of the safe.

"Dr. Nichols."

Dr. Gladys Anne Nichols, thirty years old—seven years younger than me—had four degrees from Vassar, Wellesley and Cornell. I had reviewed her personnel file a week ago when she arrived, but hadn't met her. I thought she worked dayshift.

"Where's she now?"

"Roma's office."

"I'll have a chat with her. Let me know when the Chicago PD arrives."

"General's orders are he talks to you first."

I jerked my gaze onto McHenry. "Chicago PD hasn't been notified?"

"You have to talk to General Groves first."

The implacable set of McHenry's jaw said he wasn't saying more, but I wasn't in the habit of leaving dead bodies lying around.

"You haven't reported the murder yet?"

"The Army doesn't report to local police."

"This isn't a military installation," I said.

"You were going to talk to Dr. Nichols." He turned to the side, indicating I should precede him out of the room.

I stared for a long moment, but knew he wasn't going to budge until I left the crime scene. I strode from the room, McHenry closing the door behind us and taking up guard in front of the door as I kept going. "Damn Army by-the-book-board-up-their-asses attitude," I muttered as I turned the corner in the hallway. I used to like that about the Army when I served. I guess I was young and dependent back then.

A moment later, I halted in front of the closed door where Dr. Nichols waited. The name painted on the glass read: Dr. Enrico Roma, the alias of the great scientist and Nobel Prize laureate Enrico Fermi. The alias didn't fool anybody but the ignorant. Light shone through the milky glass window. I blew out a breath. The last thing I wanted to do was interrogate a hysterical woman.

I opened the door and stopped dead at the sight of a shapely blonde leaning against Fermi's mahogany desk. I stared as realization sunk in that the Veronica Lake look-alike standing there was the same egghead pictured in her personnel file. The glasses she'd worn were absent and, despite the red-rimmed eyes and drawn expression, the single overhead light warmed the creamy complexion that had looked bland and colorless in the photo.

Thick blond hair slid across her face in a broad wave and flowed down slim shoulders. Suddenly, I understood the reasoning behind the functional bun in the picture. Despite the legs that mesmerized a man all the way down to the high heel straps, the tweed skirt and blazer she wore emphatically stated the bombshell figure was off limits. But the moment a man laid eyes on her luxurious hair all bets were off. My breath caught with bloodlust as I drew in her scent from across the room.

Gray-blue eyes stared from behind the drape of blond hair. Her gaze flicked to my waistband and I realized she'd glimpsed the colt holstered beneath my suit jacket.

"You wear your gun like a gangster," she said.

I startled. Her voice, low and sultry, held a shaky note, but I knew the remark was payment for my staring.

"This incident requires I carry a weapon." My drill sergeant used to berate any reference to the word gun. "
Your gun is between your legs, son. Your pistol or rifle is called a weapon
."

She continued to stare and guilt stabbed at me. She'd discovered a colleague who'd been brutally murdered, and I stood in the doorway gawking at her. I swallowed, feeling like a school kid.

"Dr. Nichols, I'm Agent Pierce, head of nightshift security." Her fingers tightened around a lace handkerchief gripped in her right palm. I didn't want to step closer, but had to. Her pheromones were making my blood, or what was left of it, crave an infusion from her veins. "What happened?"

Her gaze dropped to the hankie and she began working the fabric with both hands. "I was working late and needed Leon to come to the lab. I couldn't get the Geiger counter to calibrate. I knocked. When no one answered, I opened the door and…" Her eyes swung up to meet mine. "So much blood." Her gaze remained locked with my eyes as if demanding a response.

"I'm sorry," I offered. "I thought you were assigned to dayshift."

She swiped at the corners of her eyes with the handkerchief. "I switched shifts yesterday so Leon and I could calibrate the new equipment."

I nodded. The scientists worked a twelve hours on, twelve off schedule seven days a week. We were in a race against Nazi scientists while men died in Europe, North Africa, and the Pacific. "Did you notice anything unusual tonight?" I asked.

"Nothing."

"Hear anything strange on the way to Dr. Heinrick's office, pass anyone in the hall?"

She shook her head. "Maybe he's still here."

Something in the way she stared at—through—me, searching for answers and fearing what she might find, threatened to tip me off balance. "The murderer is gone," I replied in a level voice.

"How do you know?"

"A hunch," I said, and meant it.

"Why kill Heinrick?" she said. "Why not Compton or Fermi? But Heinrick…" Her voice trailed off.

"Are you saying Heinrick didn't know anything worth killing for?"

"I suppose we all know
something
worth killing for. Each scientist on this project is top in his or her field. But the project will go on without Heinrick. If we lost Oppenheimer, or Fermi, the project would be delayed, if not brought to a standstill."

"Did you enter Heinrick's office?"

"No, I took one look and ran."

The response, given without hesitation, or guile, made me wonder if this woman ran from anything.

"This was the first office I came to," she said.

Her story made sense, and my instincts said she was telling the truth. I had learned to trust my sixth sense, especially the last eight months. This ability was another one of those things I couldn't explain, like being conscious of the way her pheromones where working on me double-time.

"Are you staying in the dorm?" I asked.