Murder Theory Page 22

  Sharon T. Neeve, Wayne L. Grehan, Trenton F. Hall, and Edward T. Forrester. They’ve collaborated on five published research papers. The first one is from 1998: Forensic Evidence of Behavior-Altering Pathogens in Canines. The second one was in 2000: Paleontological Evidence for Behavior-Altering Pathogens. The other three papers are follow-ups on those two. The last paper was published in 2004—right before they started getting funding from the Department of Defense.

  The papers show an interesting evolution. In the early ones, they were looking at brain tissue of dogs to find evidence of a violence-inducing pathogen. In particular, they were examining the brains of dogs that had been put down by animal control.

  This is actually a very clever way to start the search. Even though dogs have been bred for thousands of years to be obedient, sometimes they snap and display violent behavior. If you were looking for a version of Hyde contagious to humans, studying dogs would be an excellent place to start.

  SIV, simian immunodeficiency virus, helped us understand HIV, and the two versions of HIV we’ve found today appear to be offshoots of SIVsmm and SIVcpz. While transmitting a virus from a dog to a human is harder than from one species of ape to another, there are often parallel viruses with similar factors. Dog Hyde, or the aggression-inducing pathogens they were searching for, apparently yielded positive results.

  While their lab work wasn’t able to isolate a specific virus, they were able to find evidence in some cases of localized tissue damage and a presence of viral antibodies similar to what you see with rabies—but none of the dogs had rabies.

  Things get really crazy when they move into the next phase. This is where they start to work with archaeologists and test tissue samples from hunter-gatherers who died violently. They were able to secure samples from South America and Papua New Guinea and even some several-hundred-year-old tissue from Bulgaria.

  I’m not sure if the sources were chosen by design or whatever they could find. Either way, in these studies, they appeared to find something. Again, not conclusive, but the shadow and impact of something that looked like a heretofore unknown virus.

  The last study was a collaborative effort with a group of Russian researchers to look for pathogens in corpses found in Siberian permafrost.

  The frightening thing is that this isn’t that improbable. Scientists were able to revive a sample of Pithovirus sibericum after thirty thousand years. There’s no real limit to how long a virus can lie dormant—frightening news for future Martian explorers and people working unprotected with ancient human tissue samples.

  The Russian paper is kind of odd. They claim that they weren’t able to isolate a virus and found that there was no evidence of a pathogen in the samples taken from a proto-Evens-people massacre in Siberia—while that itself isn’t too weird, the photographs of the tissue samples look exactly the same as the controls from an earlier study.

  Either someone screwed up, or this is scientific fraud. My guess is it’s the latter. They found something, possibly dormant virus cultures, inside the frozen tissue. Then hid it.

  Faced with telling the Russian scientists that they’d found a violence-causing pathogen and running the risk of it being weaponized by the Russian Federation, they chose to fake the data and say that it was a failure.

  Maybe that was the plan all along. The end result is that, a year later, they’re getting funded by the DoD and no longer working at their respective universities.

  This deception screams Hyde virus to me. And that means that one or more of them is Jekyll . . .

  Okay, time to narrow it down. Let’s start in order of importance based on how their names are listed on the research papers. This order also happens to be Neeve, Grehan, Hall, and Forrester.

  Sharon T. Neeve published five more papers, then stopped in 2007. Wayne L. Grehan stopped publishing in 2005, along with Trenton F. Hall. And Edward T. Forrester’s last published paper was the Russian study.

  Okay . . . what happened to them next?

  I put “Sharon T. Neeve” into a news database . . . and damn. She died of pneumonia complications in 2009.

  All right, how about Wayne L. Grehan?

  The first item that pops up in a news database is that he was murdered in Brazil during a hotel robbery . . . with Trenton F. Hall. Also in 2009.

  What the hell?

  Okay, how about Edward T. Forrester? Still alive. Suspiciously.

  I do some Googling on the murders of Hall and Grehan.

  It turns out that they were in Brazil for a conference on virology and epidemiology. A hotel guest reported seeing a man in a mask running down the hallway from their room. Inside were the bodies of Hall and Grehan. Their wallets and laptops were missing.

  I’m going to cut to the chase on this and assume Forrester is my strongest suspect.

  The authorities don’t even take the idea of a murder pathogen seriously, so there’s no way they’re going to accept that or my chief suspect without an overwhelming amount of evidence.

  And even if they did, in the best-case scenario, they’d send investigators around to talk to him—which would tip him off and let him permanently erase his tracks or vanish.

  I need to do this alone. Again. Sigh.

  Conveniently for me, he never left this part of Virginia.

  His last known address is two hours away. Time to pay him a visit.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  MILTON DRIVE

  On Google Maps, Forrester’s house appears to be a bit of a compound set back behind a forest on the edge of an unincorporated township. His closest neighbors include a dog breeder, a horse farm, and a small group of houses built in the 1970s.

  Forrester himself is even more interesting than I realized.

  He originally majored in abnormal psychology, even going as far as interning at psych hospitals before taking a radical turn into biology and then virology.

  I found a few of his papers concerning environmental factors and adolescent behavior, including some references to lead exposure.

  I’m not sure what caused the change in careers, but it may have been that he started to suspect that some psychological issues had physical causes.

  While his published papers don’t reveal a lot, the fact that he was able to go from one prestigious school to another suggests that he must have been brilliant enough to impress the right people.

  In 2002, he married an Estonian grad student named Silja Jaanaka. Birth records show that they had a son in 2005. I can’t find any graduation records for Silja or anything about their son.

  Like me, Forrester probably works hard to keep his family life private. I’ve done my best to insulate Jillian from my world, even going as far as using shell companies to pay for our house and her bakery.

  I wait until an hour after full dark, then pull my car onto the side of the road that runs parallel to the property, parking under the cover of a tree line that spreads out over a wire fence. The woods around Forrester’s place are made up mostly of oaks and chest-high bushes in sporadic clusters.

  I climb over the fence and follow a straight path through the trees, using my mental map of his property to navigate.

  About fifty feet in, I encounter a rusted chain-link fence running through the forest. Barbed wire runs along the top, discouraging visitors.

  Already committed to trespassing, I use my multitool to cut through the fence. Instead of closing it back up, I leave the gash open in case I have to make a fast exit. I’ll fix it later if I’m horribly wrong about my assumptions.

  The woods continue for another fifty feet and then stop at an overrun lawn. Forrester’s dark house sits on a small rise. It’s one story but appears to have a basement. There’s a large wood porch in back and a small barn at the rear of the property.

  I take a step out of the tree line, and my ears twinge at the sound of a metal chain—like the sound of a dog collar.

  A second later, shapes start barking and racing at me from underneath the porch.

  I catch a
blurry glimpse of German shepherds displaying their teeth as they fly at me with hateful fury.

  Sadly, I was prepared for this. I take out the canister of pepper spray and trichloromethane that I keep in my adventure bag and spray it in the direction of the animals, keeping my own mouth shut and holding my breath.

  The dogs get plastered in the snouts as they get close and veer off at the last minute to whine and rub their noses into the grass as the pepper spray burns their sensitive membranes.

  The whimpers grow softer as the trichloromethane begins to kick in and they lose consciousness.

  Poor guys. I really do feel bad for them.

  I watch the house for ten minutes, waiting to see if a light goes on. The only thing stirring is the guard dogs twitching around at my feet.

  I step past them and walk toward the front to get a view of the driveway. It’s empty.

  It appears that Dr. Forrester isn’t home. Well, that makes things easier.

  I go back around the house and step onto his porch. The back door has a Theo-size dog door. Although it’s blocked with a sliding panel, I’m able to use my opposable thumbs to lift it and slide inside the kitchen.

  The house is completely dark. I turn on my flashlight to the lowest setting and inspect the interior. The floors and counters appear spotless.

  The Forrester family runs a tight ship.

  I step into the dining room. The table is completely clear. I run my finger along, checking for dust, just in case the place had been abandoned. It comes back spotless.

  I go back into the kitchen and check the fridge. There’s not a lot of food in there. No milk, no eggs, and only a smattering of vegetables, but they’re all fresh.

  I check the cupboards and only find oatmeal, cans of soup, and a few other staples.

  I guess they eat out a lot.

  Past the living room lies a family room with a leather couch and a recliner. The coffee table is spartan, and the bureau below the flat-screen TV on the wall only has hardcover novels. Most of them are Stephen King—not an encouraging sight.

  I poke my head into the master bedroom. The bed is empty. There’s an office next to it with a desk, computer, and shelves full of medical and scientific books.

  I find another room that looks like a guest room. Banker boxes fill up one wall. A scan of the titles on them suggests they’re tax records. Another shelf has board games and a bunch of role-playing-game manuals.

  I go down the hall to the last room on this level and push open a door to a child’s room.

  A small bed sits against the far wall. Transformers bed sheets are neatly made, and the rest of the room is in perfect order. I walk along the shelves, examining the toys. He’s got the usual little-boy toys—Cars, Transformers, Ben 10 . . .

  Something is odd about the room—besides the fact that it’s the most well-kept room any fourteen-year-old ever had. For starters, these toys seem a little young for a teenager, unless he has some kind of developmental disability.

  The other thing that stands out is what isn’t here. There are no Star Wars toys and no Marvel movie characters. Maybe the kid hates Disney . . .

  I slide open a desk drawer. It’s filled with the kind of junk a kid would save. Small toys, movie tickets, foreign coins, comic books. A Nintendo DS.

  I’m not seeing anything later than 2009 or 2010. I go back to the master bedroom and open the closet. It contains men’s shirts and suits, but no women’s clothing.

  I check the bathroom. No sign of any feminine products, and the one by the son’s room doesn’t look like it’s been used in years.

  Did Forrester and his wife separate? Then why keep the kid’s room the same way, even if it was for visitation?

  I go back to the kitchen and find the door that leads to the basement. A large industrial lock secures the entrance.

  Fortunately for me, the hinges are on the outside. It takes me three minutes with my multitool to move the door out of my way.

  I take the dark stairs down into the basement and flash my light around.

  The hair on the back of my neck stands up as I see all the laboratory equipment and the massive freezer built into the wall.

  There’s even a clean room with a protective suit hanging on a hook.

  I go up to the glass and shine my light inside. There are dozens of empty cages, including some suspiciously large ones.

  I’ve found the secret lab. I’ve found my Dr. Jekyll.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  DEBRIS

  I feel a sense of unease as I realize that this was all a little too easy. Jekyll . . . Forrester didn’t go to any great lengths to hide his lab or his guilt, in my opinion. If one were to suspect him and take a glance at this lab and the suspiciously large cages, they’d know that something not right was going on here.

  I need to leave.

  I go back up the stairs and push the door back into place, sliding the dead bolt into the slot and restoring the pins. In my haste, I push too hard and hear a cracking sound come from the frame. If Forrester looks, he’ll know something is up.

  No matter, as long as I’m gone by then.

  I slide back through the Theo door and stand on the porch, letting my eyes adjust to the dark. Forrester’s guard dogs are lying belly up where I left them. They’ll have a few more hours of sleep, followed by a very bad headache.

  I check around the corner of the house and freeze when I see headlights, but they pass by the end of the gated driveway and keep going. I’m across the grass and into the woods before the drowsy dogs can even muster the strength to raise their heads.

  Now the question is, should I fix the hole in the fence or not? If I don’t, the dogs might get loose, tipping off Forrester sooner than later that he’s had a visitor.

  Better not to leave it like this. I use some plastic ties to keep the fence pulled together enough that the dogs will have a hard time getting through.

  I spot my car through the brush, wait to make sure there aren’t any other cars on the road, then unlock it and toss my backpack into the passenger seat. I place the 9 mm pistol I’ve been carrying in my lap.

  Now what?

  My plan kind of ends here. I’m positive that Forrester is Jekyll; I even found his secret lair. The only problem is that there’s no Forrester there, and I’m not so sure what I can do when and if he returns.

  Calling the local police or the FBI is going to get me laughed at. I need to put Forrester onto Gallard’s radar, but what will that accomplish?

  There’s no cause for a search warrant, let alone questioning Forrester, if Gallard’s the only one on board with my suspicions. I wish this were like television, where warrants, probable cause, and case backlog aren’t a reality.

  Moreover, how can I prove my case without admitting to some rather illegal behavior of my own?

  Besides creating my own fake serial-killer crime and committing what could be seen as several felonies to photograph Forrester, the only way I was able to connect him to Hyde—and theoretically at that—is through some top-secret government funding and the casual recollection of a parking space by Hailey.

  There are so many leaps there, it’d take a dedicated prosecutor years to build a case—if at all.

  Back in 2001, twenty-two people were infected with anthrax when packages containing the deadly bacteria were mailed to the media and politicians. Five people eventually died from the attack.

  The investigation proved to be a very complex one.

  Initially one specific scientist, a researcher with the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, was named as a person of interest.

  The FBI raided his house multiple times and even ran over his foot with their car when he tried to confront them.

  Ultimately, they dropped their case against him and he went on to sue, winning several millions of dollars.

  The bureau then moved on to another suspect, Bruce Edwards Ivins, another United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases resear
cher. Ivins was never charged but died of an overdose of Tylenol and codeine when he heard that he was going to be tried in connection with the attacks.

  The really crazy part of the anthrax investigation, besides the fact that they never formally charged Ivins or anyone else with the crime, was what happened early on in the case.

  The FBI went to anthrax experts to try to identify the strain of the bacteria that was used in the attack. ABC News ran stories claiming that a well-placed insider had told them that bentonite was found in the samples. Bentonite was a known trace material found in Iraqi anthrax samples.

  The bentonite story disappeared, and the government decided Iraqi involvement was unlikely. Later on, the source of the bentonite angle became evident, despite ABC refusing to name its sources, when it was revealed that one of the main experts the FBI went to for help on the case was none other than Bruce Edwards Ivins—the man they would go on to name as their main suspect.

  In the other biggest FBI case of 2001, not related to September 11, the bureau arrested Robert Hanssen for spying for the Russians. In what was considered the worst intelligence disaster in US history, Hanssen turned out to be the intelligence leaker the FBI had been searching for for decades. The chief investigator charged with finding the mole was perfectly qualified for the hunt; the only problem was, the chief investigator was Hanssen himself.

  As with Ivins, the FBI had to rely on an expert who was actually the suspect they were searching for.

  None of this gives me any hope that legally connecting Forrester to Hyde is going to be easy. It’s such a complicated case, from the biology to the sequence of events. I can only imagine trying to walk a conference room through this.

  I glance down at the gun in my hands.

  How sure am I that Forrester did it?

  Confident enough to put a gun to his head and demand that he confess. While putting a bullet in his skull might be justifiable and would probably save lives, there’s still an outside chance that I’m missing something.

  What if he made Hyde for someone else? What if he is trying to track down the virus like I am, and isn’t the one who placed it in the Pale house or infected the others?