Both of them are into triathlons.”
Just as I came across a folder of encrypted files, I heard Lien-hua ask, “Maria, do you know anything else about Cassandra’s work?
Anything at all? Maybe someone who was envious of her grant?
Someone at the aquarium who was angry with her?”
Maria was silent for a moment and then said, “There was one thing she said to me once, but it’s probably nothing.”
OK. That kind of comment always gets my attention.
“Anything you can tell us would be helpful,” Lien-hua said.
“I really don’t want to get into trouble.”
And that one’s even better.
I could check these files later. I didn’t want to miss what Maria said right now. I stepped to the doorway in time to hear Lien-hua encourage her, “Please, Maria. We just want to talk to her. If she’s in any kind of danger you’d want to help her, wouldn’t you?”
Maria bit her lip. “OK, but I didn’t tell you this.”
And that’s the most enticing comment of all.
“OK,” said Lien-hua. “You didn’t tell us anything.”
Maria took a deep breath and lowered her voice, even though we were the only people in the animal husbandry area. “Cassandra comes over to my apartment sometimes. We party together, you know? And when she has too much to drink, she… well… one night she told me she was helping make some kind of top-secret weapon for the government with her shark research.”
I’d been hoping for something a little more helpful. Cassandra’s comment sounded exactly like something a drunken aquarist might say. “A top-secret weapon with sharks?” I said.
“Yeah. Some kind of killer ray gun or something like that. I don’t know.”
I tried to retain my professional objectivity, to keep an open mind. “A ray gun,” I said.
“A killer ray gun.”
“Sorry. And she was making this for the government?”
“That’s what she said.”
Fact. Fiction.
Fiction. Fact.
Sometimes it’s hard to hold them apart. But in this case, whatever Cassandra was involved in, I was pretty sure it did not involve helping the government create a shark-based killer ray gun. I impatiently scanned the animal husbandry center again as Lien-hua asked Maria a few polite follow-up questions about the comments Cassandra had made while she was drunk. I rubbed my forehead.
Stay on track here, Pat. Get back to the basics. Timing. Location.
Sight lines. Entrances and exits.
OK.
So.
If Cassandra really had been abducted, why here? Why this morning? How did her assailants approach her? Did they lure her, surprise her, trap her? How did they control her? Through threats, force, restraints?
And if she was abducted while she was in the animal husbandry area, how did the offender get her out of the aquarium? The front door and the staff entrance were both monitored by video cameras.
I glanced past Maria to the acclimation pool and the stairwell beside it.
The stairwell.
Oh.
I hurried past the two women, jogged down the steps, and found a tight room encircling the acclimation pool. An open doorway stood on my left. Half a dozen wet suits, weight belts, and regula-tors hung from hooks behind the stairs.
“What is it, Pat?” called Lien-hua.
“Just a minute.”
I pulled out my flashlight and shone it into the dim region beyond the doorway. The sterile smell of disinfectants and the vibrating sound of the aquarium’s huge filtration motors filled the air. This was apparently the walkway past the foam fractionators to the aquarium’s water quality control center. Nearby, I saw the two filtration towers that rose toward the ceiling of the husbandry area.
My light revealed a network of dimly lit pathways that ran beneath the floor of the animal husbandry area to more filtration units and what appeared to be a vast water storage facility in the neighboring wing of the aquarium.
If I were going to try and get someone out of the animal husbandry area without being seen, this would be the place to do it. “Maria,” I called up the stairs. “Do any of these walkways lead to an exit?”
Her voice floated down the steps. “You can get to an emergency exit back by the dumpsters. But no one ever goes that way. It’s kind of creepy being down there by the filtration tanks. Everyone avoids it.”
Creepy is good. Creepy is very good. They always go for creepy.
This is it. He came through here.
I shone the flashlight against the walls, looking for fingernail scratch marks, scuff marks from shoes, other impressions, any sign at all of a struggle.
Nothing.
Next, I looked for fibers, clothing, or hair that might have gotten caught on the crisscrossed metal steps, but found none.
Finally, I scanned the floor and found that a fine, sandy grit covered the tiling. Probably some kind of residue kicked into the air by the sand-based filtration system.
At first I didn’t notice anything unusual, but when I knelt to inspect the floor more carefully, I found two streaks leading through the thin layer of dust beginning at the base of the stairs. I knew right away what those two tracks meant. I’d seen them before on a beach in South Carolina. When you hold an unconscious person’s armpits and drag her from the water, her feet leave impressions in the sand.
Or, when you drag her backward down a set of stairs and into a water filtration center.
“Lien-hua,” I called. “Come here. Maria, stay where you are.” I studied the smeared footprints beside the drag marks and realized they were unusable.
I slid my. 357 SIG P229 from its holster and heard Lien-hua’s quick, light footfalls on the stairs. “What is it, Pat?”
“Look.” I aimed the flashlight at the two streaks that disappeared away from us into the catacombs of the filtration facility. “He dragged her through here.”
She removed her weapon as well. “Do you think they might still be here?”
“It’s possible,” I said. “Let’s find out.”
With my arm flexed and my weapon ready, I led Lien-hua into the dark network of walkways before us.
When Victor Drake’s cell phone rang and he saw Warren Leant’s number come up, he cursed.
Warren Leant, that idiot aquarium manager. Just the fact that he was calling could not be good. Definitely not.
Victor answered, “What?”
“Mr. Drake, sir, it’s Cassandra Lillo. She didn’t show up for work this morning, and at first I didn’t think anything of it, but then the police started going through her car and two FBI agents showed up and wanted to look around. You told me to let you know if-”
“I know what I told you,” Victor barked.
FBI agents?
Normally, someone in Warren Leant’s position wouldn’t even have this number, but Victor had flagged two dozen researchers in his various companies and told their supervisors to call him if there were any disciplinary or supervisory problems with those personnel. After all, Victor needed to keep close tabs on everyone involved in Project Rukh.
“So, what do you want me to do?” asked Leant.
“Stall. Whatever you do, don’t let them look around her files.”
