Blowback

Once the plaster was successfully chipped away, Harvath got to work with the RAPTOR. After loosening several large blocks of stone, he removed a set of telescoping titanium poles from the duffel bag along with a block and tackle set. Jillian and Harvath both used small pry bars to edge the stones out to a point where a web harness could be slipped around each one of them and then they could be lowered to the floor on their side. It was two and a half hours before they had finally cleared a space big enough to crawl through. After packing the equipment, Harvath punched through the plaster on the Sotheby’s side as quietly as he could and crawled inside.

Using the filtered blue beam of his SureFire to light his way, Scot stepped into Molly Davidson’s office with Jillian right behind him. Rain lashed the windows and very little light from the street below found its way inside. The room was a disjointed jumble of shadows, and it smelled different for some reason. There was a mix of odors he couldn’t exactly place. It was a combination of melted plastic and something else-something not as strong, but definitely distinct. Though he didn’t know why, Harvath had a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. That little voice in the back of his head that never steered him wrong was trying to tell him something. As they moved further into the room, the hair on the back of his neck began to stand up.

Harvath swept the beam of his flashlight over the long table and noticed all of the artifacts seemed to be there. That was strange. Why wouldn’t Davidson have locked them up?

As they crept closer to her desk area, Harvath saw something that stopped him dead in his tracks. Not only did the blue filter on his Sure-Fire reduce the intensity of the light, making the beam harder to see, it also caused certain substances to stand out under dark conditions.

Harvath noticed the splatters on the wall first. It looked like someone had flicked a heavily soaked paintbrush at it. As he angled the beam toward the floor, he moved it forward and saw a large, dark pool spreading out from the direction of Davidson’s desk. Suddenly, there was a flash of lightning and the room was illuminated for just a fraction of a second. It was enough for Harvath to see a bludgeoned body and, lying next to it, the ancient war hammer.

Harvath risked flipping the hinged filter up from his SureFire to get a better look at the body as he ran over to it. The war hammer was covered with blood and little pink morsels of tissue, which could only be pieces from Molly Davidson’s scalp. The scene was horrific. Jillian choked back a scream.

Harvath took one look at the intense damage to her skull and knew there was no way she could be alive, but he reached down and checked for a pulse anyway. The body was still warm-too warm, especially considering the massive loss of blood. Whoever had killed her had done so very recently, maybe even as Harvath was in the final stages of breaking in. He didn’t like the thought that they might have been able to do something to save her, but there was no way they could have known what was going on while they were busy punching through the wall.

The other thing Harvath didn’t like was that they might have interrupted the killer midway through his work. He swept the flashlight in a slow arc around the room. There were very few places a person could hide, but he wanted to make sure they were absolutely alone.

Understandably, Jillian was extremely frightened and stayed as close to Harvath as possible. “What is it?” she asked as he lit up the different corners of the room.

“Nothing. I just wanted to make sure we were alone.”

“Who do you think did this to her?”

“I have no idea,” replied Harvath, “but-” Harvath stopped mid-sentence as he focused the beam of his flashlight on Davidson’s desktop computer and then responded, “Goddamn it!”

“What is it?” she asked, carefully stepping around the body to see what Harvath was so angry about.

“Whoever killed her was concerned enough about what was on her computer to crack the tower and burn everything inside before leaving. “Now he knew where the burned plastic smell had come from. Davidson’s blood had turned out to be the other odor.

Jillian looked at the computer’s blackened and melted circuitry. “How do you create a fire that burns something that bad without setting off the smoke alarms?”

“You need a type of fire that burns with very little smoke-a real hot one. Whoever did this must have had some sort of a handheld blow torch or soldering iron with him.”

“So much for this being a spur-of-the-moment crime of passion,” said Jillian.

Harvath couldn’t argue with her. Whoever did this had come prepared. And, as he had just pointed out, there must have been something on Molly Davidson’s computer that they were desperate to erase.

“What do we do now?” asked Jillian.