Unlimited by Davis Bunn Page A

locked. Simon used the key on the chain around his neck and unlocked the door. He was instantly confronted by all he had lost.
    The first thing that met him was the smell of cherry-flavored pipe tobacco. Vasquez did not often light up. The occasional pipe was his way of marking a truly good day. And by the strength of this cold odor, Vasquez had known many good moments recently.
    Pedro asked, “How do you have a key to this house around your neck?”
    “Vasquez made every lock work to just one key. Lab, filing cabinets, clean room, home. The works.”
    “But how is it . . . ?”
    “Later, okay?” Simon moved deeper into the house. There was no way he was going to be drawn into that discussion.
    The place was an utter wreck. Vasquez had never been neat and tidy. On the best days, his office resembled a tsunami zone. Which was hardly surprising. Many great scientists were abysmal housekeepers. What made Vasquez unique was how precise and methodical he was when it came to records. Which was why Simon was here. Vasquez would have been keeping records to the last possible moment, to his dying breath.
    If Simon was going to make any headway, he needed to find out not just the professor’s final entry, but the last established pattern.
    Vasquez’s latest research had undoubtedly taken a different turn. Simon had no idea what that was. In order to continue, he first had to determine which course of action to follow. Hundreds of possible variances existed. Thousands. Simon kept tossing up different potential avenues of research, unexplored directions that could have potentially resulted in success. But he had no idea which one Vasquez had identified. That was why he came. To find out.
    Pedro walked through the foyer and whistled softly. “Who did this?”
    “Your friend and mine, most likely. The guy in the leather jacket.”
    “But why? The professor did not have an enemy in the world.”
    “Apparently Vasquez had at least one.” Simon continued down the narrow hall that led into a living-dining area. The L-shaped room had an array of windows fronting a back porch. All the windows framed spectacular views of the mountains.
    The room had not merely been searched. It had been completely torn apart. Holes were banged in all four walls at odd intervals. The sofa and padded chair had been ripped open. The carpet had been peeled off the concrete floor. The wallpaper fell in ragged strips. The ceiling was gouged like the walls. Every light was shattered.
    “I have a bad feeling about this,” Pedro said but did not retreat. Instead he turned to the right off the front foyer rather than following Simon into the living room. Pedro’s feet scrunched over glass. “Simon.”
    “What.”
    “Come take a look.”
    Through a side door, Simon spotted what looked like Vasquez’s office. “In a minute.”
    “Simon. Now.”
    Reluctantly he retraced his steps down the central hall and entered the kitchen. “Whoa.”
    The cabinets and fridge and stove and tiled floor were all porcelain white. Every cupboard was smashed beyond repair. The fridge door hung on one hinge. Again, every light was shattered.
    The door leading from the kitchen to the rear veranda had an upper portion of glass. The smoked glass was impact resistant, two panes with thin wire crisscrossed through the central seam. The glass on the floor came from the ceiling lights and a second window, narrow and long and set above the stove.
    The second window was framed by iron bars. No doubt the hunter had tried this one first, then realized he could not pry back the bars so he turned his attention to the door. What made the scene almost ludicrous was how the door was now shut. No doubt the hunter still had some childhood habit of closing the door behind him. Under different circumstances, Simon would have laughed out loud.
    Pedro looked aghast at a red stain that swept like an evil rainbow over the wall and the stove and the sink and the fridge. “They said Vasquez had a