Kevin Anderson - Lethal Exposure

“And what would that be?” Craig asked. “And who is your enemy?‘’

Dumenco feigned a smile. “Come now, Agent Kreident, that would be tempting fate. Others may suffer retribution for my indiscretions. Innocents. I would rather die without having to atone for that guilt.”

Craig drew a breath, frustrated. Was the man hiding something, and who was he protecting? “Do you want us to solve this case, Dr. Dumenco?”

“Indeed, I do. But I also want to understand why my final experiment seems critically flawed. And I don’t wish for anyone else to get hurt. Perhaps these goals are mutually incompatible.”

He turned back to his papers, finished with the agents. “I am finding it difficult to think straight. What if the Nobel committee hears about the flaws in these results? It calls into question my previous work.”

In frustration he pounded his fist against his forehead and left an astonishingly clear bruise. He seemed to be battling a growing terror and helplessness as moments slipped away from him. “I need every minute remaining, Agent Kreident. Just make sure no one steals any more hours from me. The person who did this may be too impatient to let me die on my own time… though I am doing it as fast as I can.”

Dumenco spat into a hospital cup. “Let me know what you find in my apartment,” he said, “but please, I have to think. So little time… so little time.”

Batavia was one of numerous suburbs that spread out from Chicago like ripples in a pond. The sprawling suburbs exhibited the Midwestern elbow room so different from the crackerbox California houses with their micro-yards. Even the low-rent districts had grassy yards and long driveways.

With his Fermilab salary, Dumenco could easily have afforded one of the spacious ranch homes complete with a lush green lawn and a brick pedestal around the mailbox out by the road-but for some reason the physicist had chosen to live near the center of town in an apartment building four stories high, faced with red brick.

Perhaps, Craig thought, the older structure reminded Dumenco of community barracks housing he had lived in back in Kiev under Soviet rule.

“Repeat after me,” Craig said. “No comment. No comment. No comment. Good, now we’re ready for any reporters.”

“None standing outside at least,” Jackson said as they climbed out of the gold rental Taurus. Jackson had driven, pushing the seat back as far as it would go. Goldfarb, much shorter, had been the previous driver.

“By now they must have realized nobody’s home,” Craig said. “Dumenco lived alone-who would be there to talk to? He was a workaholic, so the neighbors wouldn’t know him well.” Craig withdrew the key from his pocket. “Third floor,” he said. “ Apartment 316.”

They hadn’t been able to find Trish again that morning, but Craig supposed she needed to sleep occasionally, too, especially after her long vigil with Dumenco. He had retrieved the keys himself from the hospital’s personal possessions lockers.

They climbed the stairs rather than taking the elevator and emerged onto the landing, looking down a carpeted hall of closed identical doors. As they walked along, Craig heard the reverberations of televisions behind some doors, children crying or playing, mothers yelling.

When they reached 316, Craig was relieved to find no reporters there either, although the business card of someone from the Chicago Sun Times lay on the floor as if it had been stuck between the crack but then fallen loose.

Jackson bent down to scrutinize the lock in the door. “Have a look at this,” he said, keeping his voice low. Small wiry scratches made a faint starburst around the keyhole. “Looks like not everyone uses a key to get in.”

Craig frowned. “That might not be fresh, but watch it.” He slid the key into the lock, and the door swung easily inward to a large apartment suite. Craig stepped inside, feeling dust motes stir around him. He could always tell when a place had been sealed and abandoned, as if time had stopped.

Soft sunlight drifted through drawn ivory blinds onto dark green carpeting. Shelves full of knick-knacks, painted Russian eggs, and gilt-edged religious icon paintings adorned the walls next to framed photos of onion-domed Ukrainian cathedrals. A gilded cross stood atop a small old-model color TV set. The extended rabbit-ear antennas were canted at an odd angle.

He drew in a breath and called out, “FBI-don’t move.” Silence answered him. Nothing stirred inside. Maybe he was being overly cautious.

Craig smelled an odd, exotic, cinnamony smell, cuisine he’d never before tasted. But deeper and sharper, overlying the spices he smelled an acrid tang… smoke, smoldering plastic. He looked around, curious and quiet. The dim apartment seemed to be holding its breath.

They walked carefully across the spacious living room, sniffing, searching for the source of the odor. Moving in tandem, they turned right, following the acrid smell down a short hallway, past a bathroom and a musty guest room, then to Dumenco’s small bedroom.

His computer had suffered a violent internal meltdown. The plastic slumped in on itself. Curls of brown-orange smoke oozed from the interior. His entire box of diskettes had likewise been slagged. Blackened and bubbly, melted polymers oozed across the desk, steaming on the surface.

Craig ran forward, waving his hands to clear the pungent smell from the air. “That’s acid. I remember that stink from chemistry class,” he said, covering his nose. It was already too late to prevent further damage. “Whoever sabotaged this wasn’t taking any chances.” The FBI had ways to find ghost phrasings from even the most carefully erased disk drives; but to Craig, it looked beyond hope.

“This was very recent,” Jackson said quietly. He suddenly stood up straight, listening. With his other hand he flapped his fingers together in a gesture for Craig to continue talking.

The tall dark agent crept out of the room, following the noise he had heard. Feigning nonchalance, Craig spoke out loud as if Jackson were still beside him, “I’ll check out the dresser. Dumenco could have hidden secret notes in the underwear drawer. Here, you take those over there.”

Pulling out his weapon, Jackson remained outside the door, poised and ready to spring.

Craig opened the drawers, ruffling around in the clothes to provide a diversion for Jackson. Someone with very unorthodox methods had been here in the past hour, and they might not have finished their job.

Jackson inched down the hall, past the small bath and guest room. Still buying time for his partner, Craig opened another drawer and looked down into it. Under a spare set of bed sheets he found a framed photograph.

Curious, Craig pulled out a small, old snapshot of a young woman in her late twenties and two young children, both girls. Another photo showed a young man with the aquiline nose and facial features of Dumenco himself but subtly different-a son, perhaps?

Craig pocketed the photos, sure they might give him some lead to Dumenco’s mysterious past. Jackson inched further down the hall. Craig slammed another dresser drawer. “Nothing in that one.” Without another word, he trailed after Jackson.

Now he also heard a stealthy movement from the kitchen. Reaching into his pancake holster, Craig withdrew his handgun, wishing he still had his smaller caliber Beretta for these close quarters. They moved forward together in silence.

Sliding around the corner, he bumped one of the low pictures of an onion-domed cathedral. The frame smashed to the floor with a loud noise.

Knowing they had blown their ploy, he and Jackson sprinted for the kitchen. “FBI!” he shouted. “Remain where you are.”

Instead, they heard a loud splashing noise, something dumped into a bucket of water, then breaking glass in the kitchen window.