The Einstein Pursuit

5

Normally this section of the laboratory would have been bathed in the soft glow of fluorescent light. Today it was filled with the blinding glare of several halogen lamps. They had been hastily erected by the Swedish police because the overhead lights had burst from the explosion and the extreme rise in temperature. The fire had burned so hot that the fixtures themselves had actually started to melt.

Despite their brightness, the halogen lamps weren’t enough to illuminate the entire space. Those who had prepped the scene had little sense of exactly what they should be focused on, so the lamps were randomly scattered throughout the floor and pointed haphazardly in different directions. The dimly lit sections that fell between the lamps only added to the sense of dread, as if every shadow might be concealing the monster responsible for this heinous act.

Eklund reached under his poncho and pulled out two flashlights, one for himself and one for Dial, who wondered what else the Swede might be hiding under there.

‘Sir, may I ask you a personal question?’

‘That depends,’ Dial said. ‘Does it involve the case?’

‘It does.’

‘Then fire away.’

‘Are you an animal-lover?’

‘I like some, not all. Why do you ask?’

Eklund shined his light toward a series of metal grids that comprised the opposite wall. ‘Come see for yourself.’

Dial raised his flashlight and climbed over the rubble that blocked his path. As he did, the acrid stench of seared flesh suddenly became overwhelming, so much so that he was forced to cover his nose and mouth as he examined the first grid. Much to his surprise, it was all that remained of a cage. A thick Lucite plate had once covered it, but that had melted away in the blaze. Inside the box, Dial could see the charred skeletons of dozens of mice.

Eklund sidestepped to the right, his light still focused on the wall.

Dial followed and saw a similar cage. This one contained something bigger. They could have been rats, they could have been hamsters — he could no longer tell. ‘Are those squirrels?’

Eklund said nothing. Instead, he stepped back and swept his beam of light down the aisle. Dial could see that the entire wall was lined with cages of progressively larger sizes.

‘Fuck me,’ he mumbled under his breath.

As they made their way down the row, Dial’s stomach churned. The burned remains of rodents gave way to larger mammals. There were cats whose last acts were to paw frantically through the metal grate, dogs whose teeth had become hopelessly lodged in the mesh as they tried to gnaw their way out of their enclosures, and primates who had died clinging to the heavy bars that separated them from their captors.

All had been reduced to little more than blackened skeletons.

Dial couldn’t help but feel for these animals. It was a sense of sorrow mixed with rage and confusion. They were defenseless, and he knew their deaths had been painful. He wanted answers as to what they had been used for. Why were they even there? And who was responsible for their demise?

‘Where are the scientists?’ he asked.

Eklund led Dial up some stairs and into a maze of overturned lab tables and scorched equipment. Stone and glass crunched underfoot. In the center of the back wall of the laboratory there was a section of the room that was deeper in width than the main floor, as if the concrete walls had been specifically laid to create two thirds of a room. What remained of the fourth wall — the wall that separated the room from the rest of the laboratory — was badly scorched.

‘We have no idea how many people worked in the lab, but so far we have found more than twenty. Most were gathered here.’

Eklund pointed his light toward the rear of the room, his nostrils flaring as he tried to stave off the pungent scent of roasted flesh. His years as a homicide detective had prepared him for many things, but not something like this. Despite the scent, he stood steadfast, as if turning away in disgust would dishonor those who had died.

Unprepared for sights and smells, the first cops on the scene had vomited in the middle of the floor — and who could blame them? The scene was horrific. Like a protective father, Eklund straddled the spot where the young officers had purged, preventing Dial from accidentally stepping in it and further contaminating the crime scene.

In truth, a pool of vomit was the least of Dial’s concerns.

He turned a halogen spotlight from the main floor and pointed it into the room, adding to the single lamp that had already been placed inside. He saw bodies piled against the farthest wall, and in an instant, he knew exactly what had happened there.

After the blast, those trapped on this floor had backed away to avoid the heat. As the fire swept through the laboratory, they huddled against the back wall — the farthest they could run from the flames. In the growing inferno, they covered their exposed skin with clothing or anything else they could find, including each other, hoping to shield themselves from the intensely radiating fire.

Dial grimaced and thought back to the wall of cages.

Down there, the fire had washed over the animals, incinerating their fur and flesh and leaving only their bones. Horrible as their deaths were, the animals were the lucky ones. The flames would have engulfed them quickly, and their suffering would have been short and merciful.

In here, it was far worse. It wasn’t the explosion, or the smoke, or the fire itself that had killed the humans; it was the heat. These unfortunate souls were literally roasted alive. Every fluid in their bodies — their eyes, their blood, the moisture in their lungs — would have slowly begun to boil. Their tissues would have broken down, causing intense bleeding from the eyes, ears and nose, and eventually their organs. Each breath would have grown more agonizing until they could breathe no more.

In a fire, nerve endings are burned away quickly. The pain is severe, but it is fleeting.

In a slow burn, the victim feels every agonizing moment. Only death brings relief.

Dial stared at the shriveled remains of the scientists. They looked like they had undergone a badly executed mummification — or worse. A few looked like meat that had been left on the grill for too long.

‘I want to know everything. What was the ignition source? What was the accelerant? Did this go down as planned, or did a small fire get out of hand?’

Eklund motioned skyward, to where the ceiling once was.

Now it was nothing but a gaping hole.

‘Best as we can tell, it started up there. They knocked out the upper two floors with a charge and let everything come crashing down. Whatever survived the blast and the falling debris was destroyed by the fire.’

‘And the accelerant?’

Eklund shrugged. ‘Possibly acetone, but we won’t know for sure until we run some tests.’

‘How long will that take?’

‘Probably a day or two.’

‘Screw that. We can find out right now.’

Eklund furrowed his brow, wondering how they would accomplish that feat in the blackened lab. He hoped it didn’t involve a taste test of any kind. Although he wanted to impress Dial, there was no way he could lick a corpse without vomiting. ‘How?’

Dial pointed at Eklund’s poncho. ‘Do you have a UV light under your skirt?’

Eklund nodded and pulled a small ultraviolet light from his utility belt. It was often used to detect blood spatter at crime scenes. He handed the device to Dial, who asked one of the cops to turn off the nearest halogen lamps.

The room quickly grew dark.

‘I learned this trick at Quantico,’ Dial said as he turned on the penlight. As if by magic, the rubble around them started to glow like the flowers in Avatar. ‘Acetone fluoresces in the right conditions. One of them is ultraviolet light.’

Eklund stared with amazement. ‘I’ll be damned.’

‘Based on this, I’d say that your theory is correct. They blew the upper floors, and the acetone fell from above like a waterfall. It burns really hot, so there was no need to bring in gasoline or any other accelerants.’

‘They used the lab against itself.’

‘Exactly.’

Dial hated to admit it, but he was impressed with the planning. He had seen a lot of creative ways to kill, but this was really ingenious. ‘Run a history of every scientist working here. I mean a full history. I want to know what their specialties were, where they went to school, what they did in their personal lives, all of it. Find out who might be targeting them.’

‘Already on it,’ Eklund assured him.

‘Good,’ Dial said as he glanced around the grisly room. ‘I get the sense these bastards aren’t done killing yet. The sooner we get to them, the better.’