I scanned Cassandra Lillo’s office.
File cabinets. Overstuffed bookshelves. Scuba gear on the floor.
Lowlying desk covered with papers and research findings. Nothing seemed out of place.
A dog-eared medical journal lay on the file cabinet. I flipped through some of the highlighted pages. Cassandra seemed to be very interested in a new technology that I wasn’t familiar with called magnetoencephalography. I skimmed the article and found that magnetoencephalography, often known as MEG, is a way to measure the magnetic fields that are caused by the electric impulses of the neurons firing in your brain.
Hmm. Just like sharks.
The article contained a picture of an MEG machine. The eight-ton beast looked like an MRI or a CAT scan machine but was designed for someone sitting up. It was located inside a chamber with thick protective glass walls. Apparently, there are only a few dozen of the nine-million-dollar machines in the world. And according to the article, four of them were located here in San Diego. That might be something to look into.
I memorized the issue number, set the magazine down, and touched the spacebar on Cassandra’s keyboard to wake up her computer screen. A small window hovered in the corner: “Welcome, Cassandra Lillo. You are logged on to the Drake Foundation Network. Log-in time: 5:03 a.m.”
So, the Drake Foundation Network… that would explain why Victor Drake received such glowing praise in the aquarium’s brochure.
Unless someone else knew Cassandra’s password, she must have arrived before dawn and logged into her computer at approximately the same time I went jogging. It also confirmed my theory that she hadn’t been abducted by her car, but had most likely been attacked while inside the aquarium.
I checked the CD drive to see if she’d been transferring files.
Empty.
I started searching through her file registry to see which documents she might have accessed this morning, and that’s when I overheard Lien-hua talking with Maria just outside the office door.
“Maria, do you know anything about Cassandra’s family?”
“Her parents are divorced. Her mom died around Thanksgiving, murdered, I think. Her dad lives out East somewhere, but I think he got remarried a couple more times. Cassandra told me once she’d kept her mom’s last name. She never mentioned any brothers or sisters.”
“What about her boyfriend?”
“Which one?”
“She has more than one?”
“There’s this one guy from New England she used to see, but lately it’s this guy named Hunter-I don’t know if that’s his first name or his last name. It’s just what she called him. They met at a beach party a few months ago. Both of them are into triathlons.”
Just as I came across a folder of encrypted files, I heard Lien-hua ask, “Maria, do you know anything else about Cassandra’s work?
Anything at all? Maybe someone who was envious of her grant?
Someone at the aquarium who was angry with her?”
Maria was silent for a moment and then said, “There was one thing she said to me once, but it’s probably nothing.”
OK. That kind of comment always gets my attention.
“Anything you can tell us would be helpful,” Lien-hua said.
“I really don’t want to get into trouble.”
And that one’s even better.
I could check these files later. I didn’t want to miss what Maria said right now. I stepped to the doorway in time to hear Lien-hua encourage her, “Please, Maria. We just want to talk to her. If she’s in any kind of danger you’d want to help her, wouldn’t you?”
Maria bit her lip. “OK, but I didn’t tell you this.”
And that’s the most enticing comment of all.
“OK,” said Lien-hua. “You didn’t tell us anything.”
Maria took a deep breath and lowered her voice, even though we were the only people in the animal husbandry area. “Cassandra comes over to my apartment sometimes. We party together, you know? And when she has too much to drink, she… well… one night she told me she was helping make some kind of top-secret weapon for the government with her shark research.”
I’d been hoping for something a little more helpful. Cassandra’s comment sounded exactly like something a drunken aquarist might say. “A top-secret weapon with sharks?” I said.
“Yeah. Some kind of killer ray gun or something like that. I don’t know.”
I tried to retain my professional objectivity, to keep an open mind. “A ray gun,” I said.
“A killer ray gun.”
“Sorry. And she was making this for the government?”
“That’s what she said.”
Fact. Fiction.
Fiction. Fact.
Sometimes it’s hard to hold them apart. But in this case, whatever Cassandra was involved in, I was pretty sure it did not involve helping the government create a shark-based killer ray gun. I impatiently scanned the animal husbandry center again as Lien-hua asked Maria a few polite follow-up questions about the comments Cassandra had made while she was drunk. I rubbed my forehead.
Stay on track here, Pat. Get back to the basics. Timing. Location.
Sight lines. Entrances and exits.