Then she understood. “Cryonics,” she said. “Delores planned on being frozen after death in hopes of being resurrected later, when medicine could take care of whatever had killed her.”
“That’s usually the purpose of people’s choosing to be kept in cryogenic-storage facilities. There are many arguments about whether there would be too much damage to the body from the freezing or the chemicals injected. It appears that Montez may have been able to solve those issues.”
“He did? How do you know?”
“I studied cryonics at one time. Preservation of life always interested me.” He shrugged. “But then I gave it up and went another direction. Too sedentary for me. I prefer to extend the life of the living, not the dead.”
“But Montez came close enough so that it would have had an instant appeal for Delores and Santos?”
“I couldn’t confirm that without experimentation. But his calculations are definitely more promising than anyone else’s work I’ve studied.”
Excitement was surging through her as she realized the possibilities. “He would have been a dream come true for Delores. An advanced embalming cosmetic procedure that would have preserved her youth and beauty. A cryogenic innovation that might bring her back from the dead someday. Still young, still beautiful.” Her lips tightened. “Still the monster she was when I killed her.”
“All of the above,” Hu Chang said. “Santos probably promised Montez a fortune for setting up Delores’s last resting place.” His lips twisted. “Or perhaps not only Delores. Santos has sufficient ego and desire for self-preservation himself. Maybe it was also for him.”
“But where did Montez set it up?” She was frowning. “Montez said that he didn’t know where Santos had set up his new headquarters. Yet I’d bet that Santos would have wanted his Delores near him.”
“Montez lied?”
“I don’t think so.” She reached for her phone. “But preparations would have had to be made immediately after Delores’s death, so there would be no deterioration. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“So Santos wouldn’t have let her be taken to the morgue.”
“As I recall, he was relatively helpless at that particular moment.”
“Maybe not.” She remembered Montez saying that Santos had begun wheeling and dealing the moment he was arrested. She hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. She began dialing her phone. “I’m calling Venable and asking him just how helpless Santos was that day.”
“Don’t you ever sleep?” Venable asked sourly when he picked up.
“Listen. Directly after Santos was arrested, was he making deals with the police and political bigwigs?”
Silence. “Maybe.”
“You know. Tell me.”
“It wasn’t a bad deal. I’d have taken him up on it, too.”
“What was the deal?”
“He offered up the location of two warehouses with close to a billion dollars in drugs and the names of the distributors. The only thing he wanted was for them to immediately release the body of his dead wife to Dorgal. He said he wanted her cremated. Of course, they took the deal. What good was a dead Delores Santos to them?”
“And no one checked to see if she’d been cremated?”
“Why? She wasn’t important to anyone but him.”
“She’s important now. Thanks, Venable.” She hung up and turned to Hu Chang. “She was turned over to Dorgal immediately. Supposedly to be cremated. So if there were injections to be given, it could definitely have been done. He paid very highly for the privilege of making sure Delores didn’t lose her chance.”
“But Montez had to be involved at that point. Preparation of the body. Insertion into the cryogenic coffin. Even if all the advance preparations had been made, Santos would have insisted Montez do the final.”
“I know all that.” She rubbed her temple. “Or maybe I don’t. I’m not certain about anything about this. The only one who can give us the answers is Montez.”
“And he won’t do it.”
“He’s got to do it. He’s my only hope. I’ll have to talk to him again.” She grimaced. “Without Cameron. Cameron and he are not compatible.”
“And are you and Montez compatible?”
“More than Cameron. But I don’t understand him. He should fight Santos.”
“In a way, he is fighting him. Just by not doing as he wishes, by opting out of the deal he made with him. Not everyone is a warrior like you and Cameron.”
“Cameron calls him a pacifist.”
“Or merely a man struggling to keep his soul.”
“What?”
“The third advanced degree. Theology. A strange major for a man who is fascinated by science and chemistry. Or maybe not so strange when you think that bringing back the dead could be breaking God’s laws. A religious man might have a struggle to balance his ambition to strike new ground against his sense that he had sinned and could lose his soul.”
His words hit home. Yes, Montez had exhibited all the signs of a man in the throes of crisis. Not only the guilt of the killings of those close to him but the agony of wrestling with his conscience before God. “You believe he was trying to find moral answers even as he was working on Maggi?”
“Don’t you?”
“I guess I do.” She lifted her chin. “But I can’t let it matter to me. He’s got to help me any way he can.” She stared Hu Chang in the eye. “I asked him to let Santos capture him so that I could track him. I told him I’d keep him safe.”
“If you could.”
“I’d find a way to do it.” She moistened her lips. “I won’t let any more of the people I care about be killed by Santos. Even if I have to risk Montez. Let him wrestle with his demons after I kill the biggest demon of all.”