Ethan stared at Jarvis.
‘That’s not possible. A hundred forty years?’
‘The tests must have been contaminated,’ Lopez said, opening the file. ‘If the wound had been opened to extract the bullet, anything could have gotten in.’
‘The bullet was lodged firmly in the bone,’ Jarvis said, ‘the medical examiner’s pictures show it clearly. And the tests were run three separate times, once by the state laboratory and twice by specialists on my own team at the DIA when we took over the case. All the tests confirmed the age of the wound.’
Ethan forced himself to think clearly.
‘We should get in touch with the medical examiner first, find out everything we can about where the body was found. The troopers who shot him need to be questioned too.’
‘Already done,’ Jarvis said, ‘and all parties signed nondisclosure agreements. However, the medical examiner has vanished and we need her found. Fast.’
‘What happened?’ Lopez asked.
‘An attack on the facility at the morgue. The lab assistant got the musket ball out of the lab for tests, but by the time she’d returned the medical examiner had disappeared, as had all of the evidence. The gurney and the surrounding work surfaces had been completely cleaned-out, not even trace evidence remained.’
‘A professional job,’ Ethan murmured, his interest now piqued.
‘We have camera footage but it’s grainy, shot from a nearby building. Whoever did the job was smart enough to take out the medical facility’s own cameras before they went in. Four men: black jump suits, Halloween-style face masks. Somebody wanted that body real bad,’ Jarvis said. ‘The DIA has an interest, but there’s no way we can send a team down there without the Pentagon signing off on it, and with the budget the way it is they’ll shut us down before we can do any good.’
Ethan nodded, glancing out of the sedan’s windows at the cemetery outside.
‘So what do you think this is? Some kind of freak ghost story?’
Jarvis smiled thinly.
‘I’ll leave the detective work to you both, but for what it’s worth this guy Conley shot his way out of the Pecos wilderness wearing Civil War era Union battlefield dress and speaking in what was described by the troopers as an archaic dialect.’ Jarvis glanced at the file. ‘Whatever’s going on down there it’s in the interests of the United States Government to understand it.’
Ethan nodded and looked at Lopez.
‘You did say you wanted something decent to go after.’
‘New Mexico,’ Lopez murmured thoughtfully. ‘Closer to home, and there’s at least two bail-runners from Illinois thought to be holed up somewhere down there. Multi-tasking. We’ll do it.’
Jarvis eyed her for a long moment.
‘Good, although I need to know that the DIA can count on you, Lopez, after what happened out at Cedar Lake.’
Ethan glanced at his partner, waiting to see her response. They had agreed to keep her indiscretion on the South Shore between themselves, but clearly Jarvis’s reach went further than Ethan had realized. A lot further.
‘It was a one-off,’ Lopez said, refusing to be cowed. ‘Deal’s a deal; it went down, went wrong and then went away, okay?’
Jarvis nodded, letting it go. The fact that Lopez, having taken a low-life drug dealer and bail-runner called Adam McKenzie into custody had then accepted a bribe for releasing him, hadn’t bothered Ethan as much as he’d thought it might. Lopez was supporting herself in Chicago as well as sending much of her meager salary back home to her family south of the border in Guanajuato. Her parents were, like so many people in Mexico, crippled by poverty and reliant upon Lopez’s generosity to sustain their home. Without it, they would join the legions of beggars groveling on the streets, and at their age they wouldn’t last long. Cash was cash and Lopez needed a lot. Ethan hadn’t realized just how badly until that day.
She gave him an accusing sideways glance, but he ignored her and looked instead at Jarvis.
‘I’m almost afraid to ask, but what support will we have?’
‘Limited tactical and law enforcement,’ Jarvis replied. ‘Local police know that you’ve got jurisdiction in this case — I can help indirectly, but the DIA will retain deniability in all eventualities. The President won’t want investigations like these all over the media if word should get out, and the Pentagon would rather have the conspiracy theorists chasing after your agency than ours.’
‘Convenient,’ Lopez said as she closed the file. ‘Anything else?’
‘Conley was involved in an argument with a man named Tyler Willis, who he then shot, starting the whole fracas. I’d start there if I were you.’ Jarvis handed Ethan a clear plastic bag which contained a yellowing slip of paper. ‘Hiram Conley’s social security details, found on him when he died. They check out, but they’re identical to those of an alias we think he was using previously, Abner Conley. We didn’t have access to records going back that far at the DIA, so you’ll have to chase them down in Santa Fe. Whoever this guy really was he used multiple identities, and there’s always a reason for that.’
6
The broad waters of the lake, surrounded by the soaring heights of the Jemez, Ortiz, Sandia and San Pedro mountain ranges, glittered beneath the sun.
Jeb Oppenheimer sat upon the quarterdeck of a vessel that dwarfed the tiny cutters and fishing boats in the nearby quay, the pearlescent white hull of his yacht almost painful to look at in the bright sunlight.
‘Cigar.’
His voice was gravelly from decades of smoking a dozen a day of Cuba’s finest, but as with everything else in life Jeb Oppenheimer didn’t give a shit. Likewise he didn’t care that the yacht upon which he sat was far too large for the lake or that there was no exit to the ocean, the lake itself being a mere aberration in the flow of the Santa Fe River. Jeb had bought the vessel and had it transported there so that he could enjoy the water without the cumbersome irritation of lakeside neighbors on the shore.
A white-suited crewman walked out of the shade of the yacht’s interior with an expensive-looking silver box. He opened it for Oppenheimer, who foraged within with a wiry hand laced with purple veins. He waved the crewman away and opened the cigar, lighting it and inhaling the aromatic fumes deeply. As he sat enveloped in a cloud of blue smoke another of his crew appeared.
‘Donald Wolfe is here to see you, sir.’
Oppenheimer polluted the air anew with a cloud of pungent smoke and waved impatiently. The servant bowed and turned, gesturing to a man waiting inside the yacht. The man walked out, his ink-black suit stark against the pure-white deck. Oppenheimer turned his head fractionally, acknowledging his guest with a barely perceptible nod and pointing to one of the chairs opposite.
Donald Wolfe was a full colonel who had been attached to the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID. Wolfe sat down, regarding the old man from behind wrap-around sunglasses, the mirrored lenses reflecting the sky above.
‘Why do you wear those?’ Oppenheimer pointed at them. ‘You look like one of those teenage morons who waste their lives surfing and catching diseases from whores.’
Donald Wolfe’s smile betrayed no warmth.
‘Better to be young and stupid than crumbling with senility.’
Oppenheimer laughed, slapping one spindly leg beneath his white trousers. The effort provoked a sudden spasm of membrane-tearing coughs that caused Wolfe to wince. Oppenheimer brought what was left of his lungs under control, reached for a handkerchief on the table beside him and wiped a glob of mucus from the corner of his mouth.