Eklund nodded to the men and half introduced Dial. ‘Chief Dial, Interpol Homicide.’
The men relaxed, but only slightly.
Eklund led Dial through the door, past emergency stairs that led up into the lobby. He stopped in front of the two elevators along the far wall. ‘When the first response team arrived, they conducted a thorough sweep of the area. This elevator was disabled when they got here. They pried the door open looking for survivors. They found this instead.’
Dial noticed three bodies inside, each covered by a police-issue plastic sheet.
‘The body on the far left is a security guard. The other two are suspects — and victims. We think they might have killed the guard right away and stashed him inside for safe keeping. Like I said, they knocked the elevator out of service so no one would stumble across his body.’
Dial looked at the floor. He didn’t see a blood trail from the security desk to the elevator. If the guard was killed outside and then dragged inside, it was done by someone smart enough to make sure that evidence had not been spilled to the ground.
‘Depending on how technically savvy they were,’ Eklund continued, ‘they could have even used this elevator to rig the explosives on the upper floors while it appeared to be out of service. Anyone else that arrived would have simply used the second elevator to get to the lab. We really can’t be certain. All we know is that when they were done, someone killed them and left them here to burn.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘See for yourself.’
Eklund pulled back the plastic sheets to reveal the bodies underneath. They weren’t charred; they were cooked. Their skin was swollen and blistered, a result of the fire that had raged a few floors above them. The steel walls of the elevator had served as an oven, baking the bodies in the extreme heat.
It took Dial a moment to look past the gore, but then he saw it: bullet holes in their heads and chests. ‘You’re right. These men were dead before the fire.’
Eklund nodded. ‘The elevator became a chimney, allowing the fire to go up and down the shaft. The outer doors kept the flames from reaching the lobby, but the elevator would have been subjected to unbelievable heat.’ He knelt beside the second body. It barely looked human. Using his knife, he peeled back the man’s jacket to reveal a diagonal line of polymer draped across his body like a melted sash from a beauty pageant. ‘That’s nylon.’
Dial glanced toward the floor and spotted a metal fastener with a burned end connected to the same type of melted nylon. He recognized the assembly. ‘Was this a sling?’
Eklund nodded. ‘Judging from its width, I’d say it was heavy firepower — probably an assault rifle of some kind. If I had to guess, I’d say their original plan went to shit. That’s when someone shot them dead and took their guns.’
Dial disagreed. ‘Unless their deaths were a part of the original plan. Maybe they were hired thugs who knew too much and were left to burn with all the others. Why risk a second crime scene when you can kill two birds with one stone?’
‘Trust me, it’s a lot more than two birds.’
‘Really?’
Eklund nodded. ‘We found an entire zoo.’
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.