Dee turned me loose two beers and an hour later with a list of better places to eat and directions. Just as Dee had said, I found a heavy parcel wrapped in an almost clean grease rag beneath the seat. That Cambell provided not only a sidearm but a silencer to match removed any doubt as to the nature of the people involved. The truck herself rang sweet: not quite new, so powerful the throttle behaved like a trigger. I was glad she wasn't a local. One Saturday night in the hands of Ricky Racer and her picture would be decorating either the watch room's most wanted or the chief’s trophy wall. Definitely a bootleggers' favorite girl.
The directions took me to the parking lot of the campus hotel, a three level affair opening onto a street of coffee shops and campus watering holes. I marked the entrance as grid double-aught, and found a sheltered spot on the second level. Cambell had done me right on reservations, my third floor window looked out over the garden quad between buildings. I resisted the temptation to try out the bed on arrival, opting for coffee and thought instead.
The conversation with Dee had been a mental workout, full of innuendo and subtle probes. The thick sealed packet she had handed me as I was leaving held more promise than my imagination. I laid it out on the table by the window, and settled to study.
The first page introduced me to Dee by her full name, complete with a trailing string indicating a long and successful university career. An impressive string for someone working surveillance. Masters in both psychology and criminal justice. A profiler without a doubt. No doubt just another convenient coincidence she’d known Cambell the younger. Pages two through fifteen rapidly became a blur of factoids revolving around the Zanchem plant in Kansas. The company history, product line, employee count, the like. Nothing of immediate use, not without looking up the chemicals. I flagged the thought, and started on section two.
The police files were dry, the photos graphic. Whoever had killed the boy had been in no hurry. I read to the end without allowing myself an opinion, storing the material in places built for casualty reports. When the last page flipped face down I went to the window and stared out over the manicured lawns, giving imagination limited license at putting motives to the facts.
Two scenarios led the pack: either the killers had a taste for medieval revenge, or the boy knew something they wanted. You don't take hours to kill a man if you simply want him dead. Either he had known something to cause immense trouble for someone, or a someone was very afraid he might. This someone could call on the ugly side of humanity without fear of reprisal. The only real information in the police double talk was no mention of a simple psycho. Anywhere else they would have pinned the crime on a sadistic crack head with a vendetta and ducked behind the blue wall when pressed. That they hadn't made me think there was a detective somewhere doing the best he could from beneath the thumb of a local power broker.
Where tree huggers tend to be peaceful people, although loud at times, major money is the opposite: violent as a downtown pimp, and quiet. And the scene as painted reeked of major money, the kind that kills as a matter of habit. My gut told me Zanchem was the stage, not a player. So put them as an unwitting accessory in someone else's game and start around the perimeter. First order of business: what perimeter? I dropped the box on the hotel line and set about searching the news.
Two hours later I gave up. No hint of scandal had broken the public horizon within a hundred miles of Cordlin. Zanchem checked clean, aside from an OSHA fine for a paperwork lapse. The Cordlin Chamber of Commerce yielded nothing beyond the same photos I'd looked at before. I was securing stations when the door chimed.
Doorbells in strange rooms do nothing good for my peace of mind. I let it ring a second time before answering, shirttails covering the Colt in my belt.
Dee hardly waited for me to say hello before slipping in. She scanned the room in one sweep, heading for the chair I hadn't been sitting in. "Looks like you took an early start," she said, nodding down at the table.
"I suppose so," I said, kicking my chair around. "What brings you here?" I asked, noting that she didn't respond in the least as I laid the Colt on the table rather than try and fold myself around the automatic while sitting.
"I had an errand to run anyway," she answered noncommittally, "so I thought I'd pop in and get your first thoughts on the matter, now that you know the official side of the story."
I bought time offering her a cup of the hotels coffee before offering my thin gleanings. "One thing is for sure," I began, "there is very bad ju-ju around Cordlin. Whoever they were they wanted something from the boy. I read outsiders with an outside interest, not Zanchem itself."
Dee cocked her head, and gave me a look that pulled like thirty inches of vacuum leading her favorite pointy word. "Why?"
"Risk to reward, mostly. Zanchem would have a god-awful lot to lose in sponsoring a murder of anyone, much less an environmental consultant they had under contract. Even if they were pushed to kill they'd have a professional make it look like an accident, something quick and clean. That boy's body was left to be found as a warning to someone."
Dee nodded. "I concur so far," she said, rolling back in her chair, hooking an ankle over the far knee. "Go on."
"The police report interests me. Not one of the standards for such a case. No mention of dope, no gangs, no adultery. Almost like the detective was trying to say something without saying it. Like he was operating under constraint from a local politico."
"She," Dee corrected me. "The B stands for Bonnie."
"Anyhow," I said, filing the factoid, "it makes me think the perps were there before Zanchem. The plant moved in and disturbed something already in progress."
“So the question becomes what could be going on in rural Kansas that a chemical plant would disturb.” Dee said, and somehow I had the feeling this was not the first time she'd asked the question.
I had to shrug off the question, having no good answer. “Something bad running down to nasty. Beyond that I have not a clue. Not yet.”
“But that's what you’re here for, right?” Dee said, sarcasm dripping.
I held back the impulse to stick my tongue in my cheek. “That’s what they tell me,” is what I said. “In the meantime, what can you tell me about this seminar I’m supposed to be attending?”
“Well, it starts day after tomorrow at nine in the morning. Conference room on the fourth floor next door,” she said. “Bye the bye, when you get there you don’t know me,” she added, with about three stars worth of rank pinned between the words. “I’d rather we fished from separate boats, if you get my drift.”
“Absolutely clear, ma’am. What’s the best bait for these waters?” I parried back.
It was Dee’s turn to shrug. “Not a clue, not yet. As soon as I get a make on the Zanchem contingent I’ll give you a guess.”
“Contingent sounds like more than one,” I said, recalling Cambell’s briefing.
“Four in all, if the roster I borrowed was accurate.”
“Borrowed?”
“Only for casual reading in the can. I put it right back,” she said, the grin and half wink only confirming what I’d already thought. “They list one maintenance manager, the personnel man and two supervisors. No mention of anything else.”
“How many total? I asked, wondering how many would be there for the same reasons I was.
“Twenty eight. Counting you and me, that is. Four from Zanchem, you and me, a couple of fellows from over Tulsa way. The rest are split between Oregon and Iowa.”
“No one from South Carolina by any chance?”
Dee stretched herself out of the chair and stood beside the window, taking care not to show herself to anyone looking up from the walks. “Why South Carolina?” she asked, peeking out from behind the drape.
“Police listed Charleston as the boy’s previous address.“
“No, by way of answer. Nothing southeast at all. You were hoping for something?”
“Not really,” I said.
Dee checked her watch, and headed for the door. “Class will be out in about two minutes. I think I’ll just mingle with the crowd on the way out. Call me tomorrow, twenty hundred or so.”
“Tomorrow at eight,” I said as she closed the door behind her.
The wakeup call felt late. It wasn’t, but shifting time zones will do that to you. I thought about calling room service for coffee, but thought better of it. My plans for the day called for breakfast in Cordlin. Plenty of time for coffee on the road.
The truckers were just dousing the running lights as I turned north on I-35. I set the cruise to run with the traffic and settled in to think while the truck earned her keep. I learned early in life there is more information in a public library than most folks ever guess. The downside of libraries is that you have to be there to read it. And small town librarians generally share two traits in common: they know everything about everyone, and they love to chat. Something about living in a library I suppose.
Studying maps of southern Kansas had brought one fact into clear focus. Cordlin, courtesy of the railroad, was a rather old town. Never large, but well over a century. So I decided to take up genealogy. Great grandpa Smith, if that was his real name, had been a railroad man. Family legend held there was a branch of the family somewhere in Kansas that never got mentioned. And devout Mormon I would be for today I simply had to know if there had been polygamy in the family. Certainly not after God and national politics said men shouldn't have more than one wife in the promised land. Or innuendo to that effect, depending on what would keep the librarian interested. All of which made it vital no coffee get on my white shirt.
Kansas road signs have flowers. I was ten miles into the state when this fact dawned on me. Most states have medieval looking shields and seals, but not Kansas. Sunflowers. And they keep their roads in pretty good repair, even the secondary farm highways. I’d reigned in leaving the interstate, but when the fourth farmer blew by without slowing I let the bootlegger’s girl stretch her legs a bit. Cordlin popped over the horizon in a scant twenty minutes.
A pair of tall scrubber stacks is the first thing Cordlin shows approaching from the east. I pulled down to the speed limit and took a look on the way by. With the exception of the stacks it looked like the front gate of any number of bases. Shiny new fence tied to the guard shack, a sign directing truckers to the next road to the west. Blue shirted gate keepers with badges. Deep culverts just inside the fence line between a double row of young trees. With five years growth the facility would be hidden behind the Aussie trees. The west fence bordered a few non-descript buildings and a freight depot, mostly empty lots presided over by a large sign carrying the Cordlin City logo, complete with the mayor’s name in type to be read from the road. The sign told me more than the name of the industrial park, it shouted that Cordlin was a little city with at least one major league ego at work. Mayor Mulhall had presided over a major expansion, and wanted everyone on the road to know he was proud of the fact.
I toured the town east to west, counting store fronts and cars. The store fronts said downtown Cordlin was like main street in most small towns slowly losing in a duel to the death with the goliath supercenter on the outskirts. But the caddy count said Cordlin was not lacking for wealth in certain quarters. What was new was very new, and what was not ran from old to ancient. Few of the parked cars were anywhere in the moderately new, moderately nice category. All the signs of a dying middle class. No doubt plenty of desperation on both sides of the boundary. I looped back to the diner with the most pickups.
If you sit in a place where folks feel at home they’ll feed you a billboard streamer of information, and all of it around the edges. I did a little deliberate listening over a final go at the coffee pot. Three butts and two cups later I was ready to leave. I’d heard enough to smell an old boy network with teeth. When the same name passes across three tables in differing contexts it is wise to mark the name. It was not a new name, he had been mister second from the left in the chorus line of locals at the groundbreaking. In the picture, but not to near the front. Nothing so obvious.
I left Cordlin eight hours later not happy at all. Not only was the depot over a hundred years old but most of the town seemed to have an attitude from before it was built. The library was a bust, the coldest old woman I'd met since the clerk at the draft board. I'd toured the bars as they opened, asking the barkeeps about work. I found a Confederate battle flag in every one. The Cordlin I met was a mean town, narrow minded and dirty. The kind of town where a liberal boy from back east could get himself killed just doing his job. The only friendly man I met was the pawn broker, peddling assault rifles and surplus ammo. I didn't see one hunting rifle on the rack. Allowing for what was being sold to the citizens of Cordlin the Colt was beginning to feel light. Real light.
I added in the new facts on the road back to Stillwater. A town that stank of low brow Aryan fascism. A steel curtain between the classes. Ignorance and desperation, with attitude left over from the civil war. A brand new state of the art chemical plant where someone didn't want an outside environmental man. Where someone beat him to death rather than simply shooting him and calling it an accident.
The state line was ten miles behind when the obvious dawned on me. There are two streams leaving any plant, one product and one waste. And no one has more control over the waste than who ever is in charge of meeting EPA regulations. Suddenly every stripe on the interstate had a possible motive attached. The easy ones involved syndicates, and money. The others got scary, and they all had very jagged edges.
The sun was solidly on the horizon as I put the bootleggers girl to sleep in the parking lot. It was twenty minutes till eight, I spent fifteen of them stretching my legs strolling the quad before I called Dee to check in with my suspicions.
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