The Black Silent by David Dun Page A

looking for papers about DNA. About genes."
    "What about DNA?" Sam asked.
    "Something that would slow aging."
    "I'd like to talk to Haley a moment," Sam said to Crew. "If that's okay with you."
    Crew nodded. "Just don't touch anything, and don't take long. I need her help."
    Sam moved with Haley a little farther away from the deputies, near an open window.
    "Are you all right?" Sam whispered.

    She nodded. "He cuffed me, gagged me, and threw me in a room."
    "Frick did that?"
    She nodded.
    "He must be desperate to take that kind of risk."
    Another nod.
    "He won't be in charge for long," Sam said. "Soon the undersheriff or the regular sergeant will probably show up and I have a hunch things will change. He let me in only because he thought he might get more information that way."
    "Frick says Ben's dead," Haley said. "He said I was part of the murder. He's going to put me in jail for something, maybe murder, maybe some kind of unlawful entry pending a bail hearing. He even said he'd kill you. Unless I cooperated."
    "Wait, now. What did he say you did?"
    "Let in the killers. A lab tech is dead as well."
    "And he threatened to kill me?"
    She nodded. "And he was serious. So I signed the paper and he totally changed his tune."
    "Yeah, he's playing his own version of good cop/bad cop. He's using Crew to get you to lead him to Ben's work. They're onto Ben's aging stuff?"
    Another nod.
    "Maybe he doesn't know any more about what Ben was doing than we do."
    "Sam—I'm scared. Do you think Ben's really dead?"
    "I don't know. It seems unlikely if Frick's got no body." Sam looked out the open window and studied the drop to the ground. "Does this building have balconies?"
    Haley nodded and explained where it was located. They walked back over to Crew and his huge stack of papers.
    "Crew . . . may I call you that?"
    "Everybody else does."
    "Did Officer Frick tell you to get Haley to tell you what Ben was doing?"
    Crew nodded. "That obvious, huh?"
    "Ben just disappeared, as far as you know?" Sam asked.
    "He called the department. Said somebody tried to murder him. We found footprints below the balcony at the end of the building. We suspect they're Ben's."
    "Does Frick know about them?"

    "Oh yeah. They're pretty obvious. Deep in the mud. We do have a dead lab tech, though.
    Found him in the bushes."
    "So Frick says Ben's dead, when he's not," Sam said. "And he wants you to talk your old friend into getting him Ben's secrets, right?"
    Crew didn't answer.
    "Aggravating, isn't it?" Sam asked. "Makes you wonder what he's really doing."
    Crew pretty much maintained a poker face, but he was an unhappy young officer.
    "You may want to have someone make a plaster cast of Ben Anderson's footprints."
    "If Frick says so."
    Sam moved to Ben's desk and began looking over the papers.
    Crew made another half-hearted stab at being Frick's errand boy. "Haley, what do you think Ben was actually doing in the lab?"
    "If you mean the organics lab," she said, "probably growing bacteria, then breaking them down and separating out the critical proteins, pro hormones or whatever he was making."
    "I mean, what was he trying to create?"
    "I don't know."
    "You're a scientist," Crew said. "You might be able to guess."
    "Ben didn't tell anyone what was going on." Sam could hear the bite in her tone.
    Crew didn't seem to have the heart to keep doing Frick's dirty work.
    Sam moved away from the desk and looked around the office. In the large photo cabinet and on a few of the shelves, Ben Anderson had displayed something of his life. Sam looked it over to see if anything had changed since his last visit. A fairly recent picture of Haley, taken by Sarah, showed her at the Special Olympics with each arm around the shoulders of a kid. The way the kids gazed at her had touched him the first time he had seen the photo.
    Aside from pictures of Haley, which were numerous, Sam saw pictures of Helen, Ben's deceased wife, and shots of various San Juan festivities, the sheriff and his