‘What have you got for me this morning, Claire?’ he asked, trying to ease his strained nerves and forcing himself to breathe calmly.
Claire Montgomery, Oppenheimer’s personal assistant of the past two months, strode across to the glass desk and leaned forward. Oppenheimer gazed down her blouse as she passed him a file, catching a glimpse of the pendulous breasts dangling within.
‘From Donald Wolfe, sir,’ Claire said with a smile that suggested she either hadn’t noticed the direction of his stare or was too professional to mention it. ‘He requested that you look at it immediately, it’s extremely important.’
Oppenheimer dragged his gaze down to the file.
‘Sit down, stay a while.’ He gestured to the chair opposite without looking at her. Claire sat down obediently.
Within moments of opening the file, Oppenheimer had forgotten Claire’s charms and was completely engrossed.
Donald Wolfe had used his position at USAMRIID to obtain information on the events surrounding the Glorietta Pass shooting of three days previously. Bizarrely, the government had not dispatched a single official person to investigate either the disappearance of the body of Hiram Conley from the county morgue, nor had they officially supported the county sheriff’s investigation into the disappearance of Lillian Cruz. However, what was intriguing was the two out-of-towners who had been given the lead in the investigation, apparently with the blessing of both the state police and the sheriff’s office.
‘Who the hell are these two?’ Oppenheimer wondered out loud as he read.
Ethan Warner, a former United States Marine turned bail bondsman and private investigator. Nicola Lopez, formerly a detective with Washington DC’s finest, now partnered with Warner. Oppenheimer frowned. Donald Wolfe’s contacts had been unable to figure out who Warner and Lopez were working for, but so far had managed to rule out DEA, FBI and even the CIA as interested parties.
Whoever Warner and Lopez were working for, they could be of little consequence if they were hiring two low-life bondsmen to investigate. Warner & Lopez Inc. operated out of Chicago, which meant they were a long way from home. The will to travel meant that they needed the work, which meant they were most likely poor themselves, and Oppenheimer knew the power of hard cash to change allegiances. They could of course refuse, in which case he knew exactly the kind of men who made their own living disposing of people on Oppenheimer’s behalf.
An accident would be arranged, quickly and quietly.
He pressed a button on his speakerphone, and the voice of his events coordinator replied efficiently.
‘Yes, Mister Oppenheimer?’
‘Have my car and driver ready. I wish to leave in the next thirty minutes or so.’
He needed to clear his mind and rid himself of the latent irritation infecting him in William Hancock’s wake. His gaze drifted up to Claire sitting expectantly opposite him. She smiled softly, one leg crossed over the other to reveal a perfectly shaped thigh and flawless skin. Nerve endings he hadn’t thought about in months tingled evocatively.
Oppenheimer stood up from behind his desk and beckoned to her with one gnarled finger.
‘Come here, Claire.’
His assistant got to her feet and walked slowly round the table to him, a flicker of apprehension passing like a shadow across her immaculate features.
‘What can I do for you, Mister Oppenheimer?’
He smiled, putting his cane to one side and pressing a button on his table top. Instantly, the windows in the office turned opaque.
‘Just like last time, Claire, understood?’
Claire’s beautiful face was now furtive and she refused to meet his eye. Oppenheimer took her thick blonde hair in one fist, turning it firmly in his bony digits so that she was forced to look at him. A pair of wide blue eyes stared into his, the same eyes that had glittered excitedly a month ago when he had discreetly offered to double her salary after working for the company for less than five weeks.
‘Your pay rise was performance-related, Claire, remember?’ he rattled. ‘Everyone has to fulfill their commitments if they wish to remain part of SkinGen. Targets, my dear, are everything.’
Oppenheimer released her hair and gripped her shoulders, turning her to face away from him before pushing her forward and bending her over his desk. He reached down and yanked her skirt up, reveling in the sight of her sublime ass while with his free hand he began hurriedly unhitching his pants before it was too late.
He knew that Claire wouldn’t last much more than a month or two before she finally quit, but then none of his assistants ever had and the change did him good. This time, she didn’t even whimper as he penetrated her.
As he gripped Claire’s narrow waist in his gnarled hands, grimacing as he shunted his bony hips vigorously against her prostrate body, he reflected that everybody had their price. Even Warner and Lopez.
17
‘Seriously, the place was wiped clean, not a trace.’
Lopez nodded wearily, mentally scratching another avenue of investigation off her list. She was standing in the foyer of a laboratory that handled all forensic investigations for Santa Fe’s law enforcement agencies, and had been responsible for the investigation of the morgue from which Hiram Conley’s apparently mummified remains had vanished.
‘Any ideas of who might have had a motive for abducting Lillian Cruz?’
The lab technician, an elderly guy by the name of Rodriguez, shook his head.
‘I worked with her a few times out Albuquerque way when she ran the morgue there. She was the best, no doubt about it, been working in the department for as long as I can remember. What she couldn’t tell you about rates of decay and infestation wasn’t worth knowing. Point is, everyone liked her, never heard a bad word said.’
‘And she never had any contact with Tyler Willis?’
‘The Tyler Willis?’ Rodriguez repeated. ‘No way, that guy is stellar, something to do with genetics out Los Alamos way. I’ve read a few of his papers. The high priests don’t have much time for us guys down in the morgues.’
‘Okay,’ Lopez conceded finally, ‘thanks for your time.’
Lopez walked out of the foyer, pausing on the sidewalk and breathing deeply in the warm air. The mountains in the distance, faded as they were in the haze beneath the flawless blue sky, reminded her again of home, as did the occasional road sign in Spanish and the little stores selling Aztec-style trinkets.
She sighed as she cut across a street to where she’d parked. Almost a third of her meager salary went on supporting her increasingly frail parents. She knew that the rest of her family were doing their best, but there was no substitute for American dollars in Guanajuato. Sometimes she’d even thought about…
She froze. A man walking down Camino Entrada toward a nearby steakhouse caught her attention. He was sauntering along the sidewalk with his face shielded from both the sun and from observation by a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. Lewis Delaware III. Twenty-nine. Possession with intent to supply. Released on an eight-thousand-dollar bond signed by his own legal representative, the creep had vanished right after he’d walked from Cook County Jail.
Lopez turned, letting her long black hair fall half across her face in the breeze as she walked across the street, deliberately not walking toward Delaware but veering to one side to avoid attracting attention — forgetting that she was wearing leather boots and a black vest that hugged her breasts above a pair of tight jeans. It was like trying to hide candy from a kid: any guy within a hundred yards couldn’t miss her.