Left To Die

She ignored her father and raced out the door, making sure to slam it as hard as possible as she jogged down the patio steps.

Her phone was already in her hand as she broke into a brisk walk, hurrying back toward the bus stop.

“John, meet me at Lion Pharmaceutical. I’m serious. I don’t care who you’re having drinks with. No, now. Please.”

Adele closed her phone and jammed it back into her pocket.

Someone had to have cleaned up after the disposal of Project 132z. She needed to find out who was responsible for disposing of the samples. That, she was certain, had to be the key to everything. Whoever had disposed of the samples might have also known enough to steal some of them… And use them in America and France.

Adele quickened her pace until she was nearly jogging now, racing back toward the bus stop and away from her father’s house.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

For the second time in the day, Adele burst through the door of Director Mueller’s office without invitation. Again, he was on the phone.

Mueller scowled at Adele and threw his hands to the heavens. “What?” he demanded.

Agents Renee and Marshall followed closely behind as Adele came to a halt in front of the standing desk and peered across the smooth, varnished surface, meeting Director Mueller’s glower. “Who disposes of your chemicals?” she asked.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, who handles the disposal of your chemicals? You can’t just throw them in the trash, right?”

Director Mueller frowned. “If you must know,” he said, testily, “we often incinerate, but sometimes we have contracts with agencies,”

Adele snapped her fingers, pointing one of them toward Mueller’s face. “That second part. What agencies?”

“Excuse me?” Mueller glanced back past her toward Agent Marshall. “I thought I had the BKA’s promise that I wouldn’t be harassed over this. We complied by supplying the records. You arrested one of my employees. Right now,” he wiggled the phone in his hand, “it’s a PR disaster. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to save this company before we lose contracts and go bankrupt.”

Adele studied the man, weathering his frustration with a deferential nod, polite, but firm.

“Is he saying something annoying?” said John in French, with a growl. “I can tell he’s saying something annoying.”

Adele responded, “He’s saying they do hire specialists to clean up their waste sometimes.”

After a brief, muttered exchange with Agent Marshall, which seemed to calm him somewhat, Mueller finally threw his hands up and turned back to his computer.

He glanced at a couple of things, then clicked his phone, surveyed it, and pressed a number.

“Audrey?” he said. “Yes, right now. Keep them on hold. Yes, I need you to look who was responsible for hazardous disposals for the last two months.”

Silence fell over the director’s office.

Adele glanced out the floor-to-ceiling windows, scanning the fields surrounding the gated company, on the outskirts of the German suburbs.

A minute passed, then two.

Adele gnawed on the corner of her lip, hoping she’d been right. A lot was riding on this.

Not only could the killer escape if she was wrong. But Interpol’s faith in her, faith in the collaboration between the DGSI, the BKA and the FBI, would be proven fruitless. Perhaps it would even cause difficulty arranging this sort of agency cooperation a second time.

After a few minutes, Director Mueller heaved an enormous sigh, his smooth forehead inching ever so slightly up, and he said, “Yes, two companies?” He lowered the phone. “Two companies were responsible for disposing of our chemicals these last two months.”

Adele felt her heart quicken. “Who was responsible for disposing of Project 132z?”

“One moment.” Director Mueller had the air of a man resigned to his fate. He lifted the phone again and parroted the question.

Another minute of pause, in which John tried to chat up Agent Marshall, but then Mueller returned with, “A local outfit,” he said. “Medical Waste and Sanitation. Now, if you don’t mind leaving my office… I don’t have employee records for their company, and I really do have to take another call. Audrey, my assistant, will give you the number and address for the disposal team on the way out, all right? All right.”

Then, ignoring them, he turned promptly, displaying his right shoulder toward Adele, and picked his phone up again, pressing it to his ear and ducking his head to make it abundantly clear that the conversation was over.

Adele turned toward John, her eyes glinting. “I was right; it’s a company called Medical Waste and Sanitation. They’re locals. They disposed of Lehman’s project.”

John stared at her. “You think a bunch of garbage men would’ve known what to do with those tubes?”

Adele shook her head. “I don’t think they’re regular sanitation crews. They work for a place like this, so I’m not sure they’re city-owned. I bet you one of them at the company was smart enough to know what they were looking at when they saw the disposed samples.”

“You think it’s a red-haired fellow?”

Adele shrugged. “We’ll have to find out. They don’t have employee records for the other company.”

John nodded, turning away from Adele and starting to move back toward the exit to the office.

“Marshall,” he said, “does the BKA have the ability to check records for us?”

Agent Marshall paused, chewed on her lip, then nodded. “Yes, just give me a moment.”

Both John and Marshall took their phones out, and Adele hurried after them, leaving Director Mueller to his peace.

It felt like their last shot. Adele couldn’t say why, but she knew that if this lead turned out to be a dead end, the killer would win. No other paths remained.

After this, Adele wouldn’t have any other place to go. She had to be right. Someone on that sanitation team was a killer, and she was determined to find out who.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

Sergeant Joseph Sharp reclined in his armchair, his eyes flicking from the outdated TV to the clock on the wall. Three hours had passed since Sharp’s visit.

Joseph watched a high-speed chase on the television with bland indifference, the red and blue lights on the screen pulsing and filling the room. A replay; he’d seen this one before—the no-good lawbreaker got his comeuppance. The Sergeant smiled at the thought, then, sighing to himself, he pulled the lever for the footrest and got to his feet.

“…for her own good…” he murmured quietly, continuing, out loud, a train of thought that had cycled through his mind the last three hours.

He glanced at the wall where his diploma from the police academy hung above newspaper clippings of the cases he’d been involved in. A hot flash of shame scoured his chest and he looked away in disgust, stomping into the kitchen.

Glowering, he turned on the hot water and began washing out his soup pot. On the counter, he spotted the canned soup Sharp had brought him. For a moment, as he eyed the can of soup, his movements became less agitated, and his internal monologue quieted.

“What?” he demanded of the soup can. He wagged a thick finger at the offending tin of creamed broccoli. He looked away and began washing the pot with large, agitated gestures, causing soapy water to splash against the inside of the metal sink.

Perhaps he was too hard on his daughter… But if he wasn’t hard, she’d end up like everyone else in her generation: lazy good-for-nothings, mooching off the government and their parents.