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.’
6
When Mattias Sahlberg first arrived in America, he had every intention of settling in one of the few communities in Pittsburgh with a recognized — albeit small — Swedish population. Friends who were familiar with the city’s ethnic composition had suggested Homestead, Munhall or Braddock: all Monongahela riverfront communities east of the city. There he had hoped to find a pocket of his countrymen, people he could turn to if he ever felt homesick or craved Swedish delicacies like köttbullar (meatballs) or inlagd sill (pickled herring).
But his new employer had other ideas.
They wanted him to focus on his research.
To encourage his loyalty and to reward his talents, they bought Sahlberg a nice house in the hillside community of Duquesne Heights. With sweeping views of Pittsburgh’s skyline, its three rivers and dozens of bridges, the house was far more expensive than anything he could have afforded on his own. Having grown up in squalor, he jumped at the chance to live there, even though he was the first and only Swede in the neighborhood.
Not that it really mattered.
Once he’d settled in, he realized that Pittsburgh was an exceptionally friendly city, filled with immigrants who had left their war-torn countries for steady employment in the steel mills and, more importantly, a chance to pursue the American dream. Before long, he had made dozens of friends from around the world, most of whom had thick accents and calloused hands and a burning desire to give their children a better life than they’d ever had. And even though he had none of those things — thanks to his first-rate education, his job in academia, and his relative youth — he felt comfortable with those that did.
So much so that he had lived there for nearly six decades.
Sahlberg’s day started as it almost always did. After a restless night, he rose late to a tangle of sweaty sheets. The noonday sun was waging war against his air conditioner and was temporarily winning the battle. He adjusted his thermostat and waited for the ageing compressor to fight back. A few seconds later, he felt the rush of cold air on his face as he combed his hair and brushed his teeth. It reminded him of the winter winds that used to seep through the thin walls in his childhood home in Sweden.
Sahlberg headed to his kitchen, where he made a sandwich and poured himself a glass of iced tea before carrying both to the living room table, where he would eat his lunch while surfing the web. It was all part of his daily routine. First he looked at the weather. Then he checked the headlines on several scientific websites. There were a few tidbits about the Human Genome Project, but nothing that really kept his interest.
Finally he turned his attention to his homeland.
Sahlberg had come to embrace modern technology in a way that few others of his generation had. Much of that acceptance had come through his work, but it had trickled down to other aspects of his life as well. He carried an iPhone. He owned an iPad. More importantly, he knew how to use both. He streamed music through his computer, downloaded movies frequently, and even kept a hard-to-find folder on his hard drive labeled ANATOMICAL STUDY — only the images had less to do with physiology and more to do with naked bodies in motion.
But his favorite technological advancement was his ability to peruse Swedish newspapers the instant they were published. He would read everything from sports to obituaries to the latest social gossip. He always started at the website for the Dagens Nyheter, one of Stockholm’s two daily newspapers, and then followed links from there.