‘They’ve found Tyler Willis’s body.’
34
Ethan rode in the passenger seat of Zamora’s patrol car as they drove up to the police cordon. Two ambulances and a pair of squad cars were parked, their strobe lights flashing in the night and reflecting off trees and bushes lining the side of a lonely track. Behind them, the main road ran north past the Los Alamos National Laboratory, not more than two hundred yards away, where Ethan had first met both Tyler Willis and Saffron Oppenheimer.
‘Keep your heads down,’ Zamora said. ‘Let’s not upset anyone.’
‘Are USAMRIID on site already?’ Ethan asked in amazement, spotting a large vehicle bearing the department’s distinctive badges parked further down the track.
‘They were already in Santa Fe,’ Zamora said, winding down his window as a police officer approached them on foot. ‘Wouldn’t have taken them long to get here.’
The officer recognized Zamora and waved them through. They parked before getting out and walking toward the scene of the crime.
‘Not far from the research center,’ Lopez said uneasily. ‘You think that maybe we were wrong and Saffron Oppenheimer got her hands on Willis?’
Ethan shook his head.
‘No, but maybe that’s what the perpetrators would like us to think.’
They had almost reached the cordon when Butch Cutler saw them coming, turning from looking at what was obviously a body lying in the dirt to stride toward them, one hand pointing at Ethan.
‘I’m not surprised you’ve turned up,’ he snapped. ‘Trouble seems to follow you.’
Ethan ducked under the cordon along with Lopez and Zamora.
‘Think you’ll find it’s the other way round,’ he said, not letting Cutler intimidate him. ‘When was he discovered?’
Cutler glanced over his shoulder.
‘Two hours ago by a local resident out walking her dog. The mutt found the body, she called the police.’
‘What happened to him?’ Lopez asked.
Cutler turned his fearsome gaze in her direction.
‘Looks like a mugging or similar,’ he replied. ‘He’s been beaten up and stabbed, no cash or belongings on him.’
‘You got any idea who might have done this?’ Zamora asked, rubbing his temples.
Butch Cutler nodded slowly. ‘Some.’
‘Jeb Oppenheimer,’ Ethan said to Cutler, trying to control the surge of fury now coursing through his veins. ‘We were in the SkinGen building when Tyler Willis was there and you had us pulled out.’
‘You had no damned right to be there,’ Cutler shot back, jabbing a finger into Ethan’s chest.
Ethan reacted without conscious thought, swatting Cutler’s hand aside and whipping his left palm up toward the USAMRIID chiefs jaw. Cutler spun aside from the blow and was about to counter when Lopez leapt between them.
‘Cut it out!’
Ethan stood, fists clenched, looking over the top of Lopez’s head at Cutler.
‘Sooner or later, this screw-up is going to bring you down,’ he hissed.
Cutler smiled coldly.
‘Just as your deft handiwork is getting you thrown out of the county?’
‘This is getting us nowhere,’ Zamora said, trying to ease the situation. ‘Can we see the body?’
Cutler scowled, but reluctantly gestured for them to pass through. Ethan walked past him, Lopez deliberately keeping herself between them as they moved toward the body lying on the soil nearby.
Willis lay on his back, his shirt stained with blood from what looked like an incision in his chest. His eyes were closed and his features seemed peaceful, but his eyes were heavily bruised from what appeared to be blunt-force trauma, his left temple a bloody mess and one of his teeth missing.
‘We know he was at SkinGen,’ Lopez said. ‘One of Oppenheimer’s men could have done this to him. The cut’s too clinical, too clean to be a stab wound.’
Ethan looked at the remains for a few moments and then across at Cutler, his rage now withered.
‘Have forensics been called?’
‘On their way,’ Cutler said.
‘This was done purposefully,’ Ethan said, gesturing to Willis’s corpse. ‘Somebody wanted to send a message that anybody doing research into aging could end up like this.’
Butch Cutler winced.
‘Only if you’re assuming SkinGen’s involvement, which we’re not right now. This has no bearing on Jeb Oppenheimer whatsoever.’
‘This man was in his hands when he died,’ Ethan insisted.
‘So you allege,’ Cutler said, and turned to face him. ‘But what is an absolute fact is that the last people known for sure to have seen Tyler Willis alive is the pair of you.’
Ethan frowned.
‘We interviewed him,’ he said. ‘Then Saffron Oppenheimer and her band of merry men tried to blow up the Aspen Center. We’ve been working with Officer Zamora here ever since.’
Cutler shook his head.
‘Taking a blade to a corpse wouldn’t take long,’ he growled. ‘What’s to say you didn’t do it, if circumstantial evidence is enough for you to accuse SkinGen of corporate homicide?’
Zamora raised a placating hand toward Cutler.
‘That’s pushing it, Chief. There’s no motive.’
‘There’s always a motive,’ Cutler replied, still glaring at Ethan. ‘Or a reason to cover your tracks. Warner here could have committed the crime in that apartment, then had it blown to pieces. Would have destroyed any biological evidence. You said it yourselves: it would have taken someone with professional knowledge, an outdoorsman or a soldier, to have incinerated that apartment with so little evidence as to the cause.’
‘You’re forgetting,’ Lopez snapped, ‘that it was Ethan who realized how it was done. Pretty damned stupid to commit a perfect crime and then reveal to investigating officers how you’ve done it.’
‘Or cunning enough to throw the investigators entirely off your scent,’ Cutler mused out loud before looking directly at her. ‘As for motive, money’s always a big draw for two-bit bounty hunters looking for their next quick buck.’
Ethan was about to reply when Lopez suddenly whipped round and cracked Cutler high across his cheek. The USAMRIID chiefs head flicked to one side as he grabbed his face instinctively before lunging for Lopez, one thick hand shooting out to close around her neck.
Ethan leapt in and slammed his elbow down through Cutler’s arm, breaking his hold on Lopez. Ethan twisted at the waist and swung his forearm across Cutler’s face, batting him backward a couple of paces.
‘You touch her again,’ Ethan snarled, ‘you’ll wind up sucking your dinners through a straw.’
‘That’s enough,’ Zamora shouted, stepping between them. ‘Cutler, you’ve got jurisdiction here. Either start acting your age or I’ll have you forcibly removed from the scene. Warner, Lopez, with me, now!’
Ethan, realizing that he was in danger of completely losing it, turned and walked away with Zamora. The lieutenant ducked under the cordon and turned to face him.
‘Okay, Tyson, listen up. You pull any other stunts like that, I’ll arrest you my goddamned self.’
‘We’re wasting our time,’ Ethan said. ‘Whatever’s really going on here, we’re never going to find it with Cutler blocking our every move. We need to find the men in that photograph and get them to tell us why this is all happening.’
Zamora glanced back at Tyler Willis’s corpse.
‘My guess is that Cutler’s right and money has a role in all of this. You don’t abduct somebody unless you’re trying to find something out, and whatever Willis knew was obviously worth a lot to someone. Enough to kill him.’