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other
thing to find is the samples Sheldon must have taken. I’m convinced
that was really what he’d come for. Hacking into the computers was
just a means to an end.”
    “But why the hell would he want to
steal some stupid corn or whatever?” Richards asked, exasperated.
“Industrial espionage?”
    “Could be,” Jack admitted. “New
Horizons is pulling in nearly six billion dollars a year in
profits, and I’m sure whatever they were working on in that lab
would probably be worth a fortune to a competitor. But I can’t see
Sheldon as a player in something like that. And the MO of his
murder seems a tad extreme if he was double-dealing.”
    “Don’t be naïve, Dawson,” Richards
said flatly. “People have sold out their country for peanuts, and
almost everybody has a price, if someone makes the right offer. You
know that nobody joins the Bureau to get rich on our government
salaries. As for the MO, I’ll grant that it’s definitely out of the
ordinary, more like a ritual killing than something that even a
pissed off mafia hit man would come up with.”
    Jack suppressed
his anger at Richards’ remark about almost everyone having a
price. Sheldon would never have sold
out , he told himself. No way . “It doesn’t matter,” he told
Richards. “I don’t know why he wanted the corn samples, only that
he did. They have to be there somewhere.”
    “Yeah, right,” Richards said sourly,
and Jack could picture him standing in the lab, looking around at
the sea of sample containers spread across the floor, each and
every one of which could potentially be evidence. “Well, there are
plenty here, that’s for sure.” He paused. “We’ll look. But the
forensics guys went over every inch of the service tunnel where we
found Crane and there was nothing. We’re still going over the lab,
but–”
    “No,” Jack interrupted. “He wouldn’t
have had time to hide it in the lab. If I’m right, he would’ve
hidden them in the service tunnel, or maybe somewhere along the way
from the lab. But I’m betting on them being near where his body was
found.”
    “Okay, we’ll look again, but I’m not
holding out much hope.”
    “Is there anything else you’ve found
that hasn’t been reported yet?” Jack asked him, hoping for some
additional clues.
    “We found his cell phone, smashed in
the lab. That’s being written up now. What was left of it was under
one of the pieces of lab equipment that was knocked over during the
fight that went on in here. We also found a stun baton with Crane’s
fingerprints on it. Is that something he normally
carried?”
    Jack shook his head as he answered.
“No. He only carried his regular service weapon and a Glock 27 in a
leg holster for backup. He never carried a stun gun or a Taser that
I know of.”
    Richards was silent, and Jack got
the feeling there was something else. “What is it?” he asked. “What
else did you find?”
    “The coroner found it a little while
ago before they took Crane’s body away for the autopsy,” Richards
said quietly, and Jack knew they were both thinking the same thing:
the coroner’s work had already been done for him. “There was a
piece of paper, rolled up and shoved down Crane’s
throat.”
    “What did it say?” Jack asked,
wondering at this last insult that his friend had
suffered.
    “It’s a banner for something called
the ‘Earth Defense Society.’ Ever heard of it?”
    “No,” Jack told him, shaking his
head, “but it sounds like some sort of eco-preservation group or
something. Any idea who they are?”
    “Not yet,” Richards said grimly.
“But I intend to find out, because I don’t need your fancy
intuition to tell me that they’re probably the ones who killed your
buddy Crane.”

CHAPTER THREE
     
    After Jack hung up with Richards, he
did a search for “Earth Defense Society” on the web and came up
with over eight hundred hits. The first one, amazingly enough,
appeared to be a very professionally maintained web