O’Dell imagined everything inside would be lost to the flames. Everything including the body and the severed hand. Every piece of evidence of what may have happened at the government facility that once sat up on the mountain.
And O’Dell couldn’t help thinking it was no coincidence that this should happen only hours after she had told Peter Logan about the strange bruising and rash that covered the dead man inside. The man whose body was now being incinerated.
61.
You think Logan started the fire?” Creed asked Maggie and watched her face in the flickering light of the blaze that engulfed Ralph’s Meat Locker.
Her eyes had been wild with adrenaline just moments ago when they pulled the woman from the building. Now he worried as she stared, almost hypnotized by the dancing flames.
Rescue crews who had been coming in from a day of working the landslide had joined the firefighters. They were hosing down the neighboring buildings, hoping to keep the fire from spreading. A second explosion inside the brick structure prevented them from entering.
Creed felt the spray of cold water raining down even as the heat from the flames felt like it would scorch his skin. He and Maggie stood in the back alley, guarding the old woman’s body, now covered by a tarp.
Earlier, one of the medics had taken over, shoving Creed aside. But he knew it was too late. The blood had been warm on his hands but there was no sign of life. No fluttering eyelids. No beat of a pulse under his fingers. Not a single gasp or breath.
Maggie had told him the old woman was Dr. Gunther, the medical examiner. And then she went silent. Now she stood, arms crossed over her chest, looking angry and annoyed that the firefighters had asked them to keep back and stay with the body. Maybe it wasn’t anger as much as frustration. That’s what he was feeling—frustrated that there wasn’t anything more he could do.
But then out of the silence, Maggie said, “Logan did this.”
It was almost as if she was telling herself. She didn’t even seem to have heard his question.
Just when Creed was about to ask again, she said, “You don’t think he’s capable of doing something like this?”
“If he thought it might save his own skin, I think he might be capable of doing just about anything. But why would he do this? Especially after being such a pain in the ass about recovering those bodies?”
Now Maggie’s eyes darted around. Was she looking for Logan? Or was she worried they’d be overheard? No one was paying attention to the two of them. People were rushing by, once even bumping a hose over the tarp, not noticing as Creed pulled it up and readjusted it.
“The body we dug up yesterday had a strange bruising all over it. At first Dr. Gunther thought it looked like chemical burns.”
“There’s a lot of weird stuff that leaked into the mud.”
She shook her head, moved closer to him, and turned so that she was facing him. “They weren’t postmortem.”
“She was sure about that?”
“The skin had bubbled up in places. We discounted burns. It almost looked like a rash, except that it was deeper. More like a bruise. And in some areas the skin practically fell away with the slightest touch.”
“Fell away? Not from decomp?”
“He wasn’t dead long enough for that kind of decomposition.”
He realized that she had quieted her tone. Anything less and she’d be whispering.
“What did she think it was from?”
“She hadn’t been able to make that determination. I’m guessing that’s what brought her back here tonight.”
“Why come at night? Wasn’t she hired to process the bodies we recovered?”
“Someone padlocked the front door. Ralph gave her a key to the back door. Otherwise she wouldn’t have had access until Logan allowed it.”
“So Logan didn’t really want anyone examining the bodies?”
“I guess not. But here’s the weird part. I told him about the condition of the body, and he seemed surprised. He knew about the bullet hole in the back, but he pretended not to know about the strange bruising.”
“So you think this is how he prevents anyone else from knowing?”
She was biting her lower lip when she nodded this time.
“Only one problem,” she said. “He knows that I know.”
62.
Creed hadn’t noticed in the last twenty-four hours whether or not Maggie was carrying a weapon. Now as she sat on her cot and peeled off her sweatshirt he saw the shoulder holster snug against her side, just under her left breast. There was an unsettling nervous energy about her. Even the dogs sensed it.
All the way back she had been obsessed with her cell phone, leaving messages, then checking every five minutes. She had it beside her. Creed sat down opposite her on his cot, so close their knees brushed.
“Maggie, what’s going on?”
“I’m trying to find out.” Her eyes were on the phone, waiting. “Logan told me recovering the bodies was only part of their mission. He said the facility had samples of Level 3 and Level 4 pathogens.”