Bury the Lead

by Archer Mayor

  “No,” Joe said evenly. “You ever see her? Anywhere?”

  “Nah. Cute, though. I wouldn’t’ve minded it.”

  Joe studied him a moment, considering, not for the first time, the company he so often kept.

  * * *

  Angie Hogencamp touched the visor of her hard hat from habit before giving a thumbs-up to the forklift operator and waiting for him to swap out his machine for a chair against the wall. She then mounted her own electrically powered, massive mobile battery puller, equipped with a steel exoskeleton frame, and quickly extracted the operator’s drained, one-thousand-pound battery from the forklift’s side, exchanging it for a fresh one she had ready to go on the platform before her.

  The forklift driver returned to his recharged unit and sped away, beeping his horn quickly as he reached the corner and vanished from sight, while Angie trundled slowly down the twin-banked aisle of stacked batteries to place the depleted cell into a charging station and swap it with a newly energized one. Once she’d checked its fluid levels, she was ready for the next exchange.

  GreenField Grocers was a billion-dollar-a-year business, impressive until compared to operations like C&S Wholesale Grocers in Brattleboro, Keene, and elsewhere, which had been quoted at up to thirty times that size. Nevertheless, GreenField employed hundreds of people, ran its own fleet of trucks, was renowned among lesser-skilled and -educated people like Angie for its liberal hiring practices, and considered a benevolent and generous financial force within White River Junction.

  That, not surprisingly, was one of the primary reasons for GreenField having chosen this site, along with the railroad junction that many believed gave the town its name—actually due to the confluence of two rivers. As a bonus, there was the small but well-appointed Lebanon Municipal Airport just across the water in New Hampshire.

  Angie, naturally, didn’t pay heed to most of this. She was just happy to have a job that didn’t involve being groped or stared at as she cleared tables or poured drinks. Here, she wore construction boots and a hard hat, had developed a limited but valued set of skills, and was mostly regarded as just another member of the general warehouse population.

  Her specific job was battery changer, whereby she maintained the health of just under 150 electrically driven floor jacks, forklifts, hi-lows, and other so-called material-handling equipment, or MHEs. They, in turn, were designed to move the never-ending flow of laden pallets that entered, were stored at, and got shipped out of the huge warehouse.

  Every one of these MHEs had big, heavy, lead-acid, deep-cycle batteries, each of which needed regular monitoring. Specifically, they needed charging, and to have their water levels checked, so that their volatile, sulfuric-acid-and-water electrolyte contents never got low enough to burst into flame. Given the size of the building—almost a half-million square feet by forty-five feet high—and its dizzying inventory—consisting of almost every item available at an average supermarket—any mishap would be disastrous.

  Angie’s job, mundane at first glance, amounted to a form of critical health insurance for every person within these towering walls.

  She paused a moment to stretch her back as she readied to swap out the next four MHEs standing in line, and caught sight of a tiny flash of color high overhead, pressed against the distant ceiling like a bright orange moth silhouetted against a dark sky.

  A “supe,” as they were called—one of the supervisory staff that patrolled the warehouse—kept track, depending on your perspective, of either the vital functions of the place, or the performance of its employees. Angie was of the latter believers, having once been caught smoking inside the building.

  She squinted at the tiny figure clad in a fluorescent safety vest, four stories above, looking down from a narrow catwalk, but she couldn’t decipher a thing about it, including its gender. The distances in this facility were just too vast. It was like working in the Pentagon, but with all the floors and walls removed.

  For his part, the supe in question was enjoying himself. You had to like heights to be up here. The catwalks were higher than even the tops of the innumerable steel pallet racks that stood like library shelves, rank upon rank, across the length of the warehouse. Indeed, the supe had only to casually reach overhead to touch the rough-textured metal ceiling.

  Adding to the drama of the yawning space below was the fact that it was always almost completely dark. There were security lights, providing a permanent crepuscule, but otherwise, the illumination came solely from thousands of motion-detecting LEDs, flicking on and off in response to the endlessly scurrying MHEs. The constant succession of stuttering lights eased the supe’s job in one way, letting him see what was moving far below, and in what direction. The small whirring vehicles made him think of lab rats in a maze, each equipped with a radio beacon.

  His primary thoughts, however, were taken by other matters today, and his focus on Angie Hogencamp went beyond any supervisory role. Right now, he was not actually a supe, but merely posing as one, using his knowledge of the plant’s layout and habits to achieve his goal, and using Angie’s unwitting assistance in the process.

  Her role was now completed, as far as he was concerned, and so he continued walking, godlike above them all, to a more centralized vantage spot. Floating up like a faint mist was the tinny piped-in music some HR dimwit had thought would placate the workers, and the endless rushing of electric MHEs on the run, accompanied by their steady chorus of nervous horn beeps.

  His tension rising as the minutes ticked by, the counterfeit supe watched the rows of lights coming on as five freshly serviced MHEs in particular dispersed to various corners of the property, like spiders checking the perimeter of a mutual web.

  Finally, he saw what he was looking for. A distant hubbub of shouts, corresponding with a cluster of overhead lights staying on in a far corner of the cavernous chamber, indicating an uptick in activity. He smiled, relaxed a bit, and rested his forearms on the catwalk’s railing, watching and waiting, the lone spectator to his own play.

  A fire alarm went off as a plume of smoke rose into view above the serried ranks of building-sized pallet racks, gently flattening against the ceiling at the supe’s eye level, although far enough away not to be a bother.

  The lights began spreading outward, mimicking the smoke. The hubbub increased and was transformed into loudspeaker announcements and alarms, making the whole mix an inchoate flood of reverberating noise.

  The supe checked his watch and shifted position, strolling along the catwalk for a better angle. In the meantime, at the source of the first fire, he heard an organized response coming together. It wouldn’t be long before the municipal fire departments from Hartford and beyond would be summoned as backup.

  He stopped where he had a sightline along the axis of one of the aisles. At the end of it, as expected, some two hundred feet diagonally down from him, he saw a floor jack parked, abandoned and askew, its operator leaping from its steering platform and backing away from where smoke was spewing from its battery compartment.

  “Come on, baby,” he said softly to himself. “Do your stuff.”

  As if heeding his encouragement, the floor jack burst into flame, causing the operator to run yelling to the end of the aisle, waving his arms for attention.

  There would be three more exothermic outbreaks, as the supe had heard them referred to in his research, and with them increasingly dangerous smoke, more firefighters, and especially, the cops.

  Disappointingly, it had come time to leave.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  Willy looked up, startled that Sam had gotten so close to him unnoticed. For a man as twitchy about personal space as he, it was tantamount to having fallen asleep at the wheel.

  He’d actually been leaning against the wall of their darkened hallway at home, immobilized by another of his paralyzing attacks.

  “I’m fine,” he managed.

  “The hell you are,” she countered. “You look like shit
and you’ve been acting like a jerk.”

  Without warning, she reached out, peeled back his eyelid, and stabbed his pupil with the beam of a small light he hadn’t noticed in her hand. He twisted away, making a grab for her wrist that she easily evaded.

  “I thought so,” she said bitterly. “Un-fucking-believable. What’re you on?”

  “Oxys,” he said in a half sob, semi-blinded and yielding to the pain by clutching his limp arm. He folded over and slid down the wall to sit on the floor, his knees tucked up.

  She stared at him, momentarily confounded, her fury blunted by his ready admission and sudden debility. This man, whom she’d known for so long and trusted so deeply, had never once exhibited such a degree of frailty.

  She reached out again, this time to comfort, putting her hand on his good shoulder and crouching beside him. “What in God’s name is going on?”

  He took a deep breath. “It’s the arm. It’s killing me. Gotta be a nerve thing. I can’t get away from it. It’s like I wanna tear it off.”

  “Jesus Christ. We have to see a doctor.”

  He shook his head violently. “You do that and I’m done. I’m a gimp. The only reason I can work is ’cause of Joe’s protection and his rep with the brass. I show up like this, that’ll be all they need to fire my ass. You can’t tell anybody about this, babe.”

  He looked up at her in the gloom pleadingly. “It would kill me. I mean it.”

  She knew he wasn’t overstating the cost of losing his job, even if his wording was melodramatic. Sam may have had her own doubts and insecurities, but she was a realist about how other people could see the world. It was a large part of how she’d gotten to where she was.

  They both heard a faint crying from down the hall—Emma, stirring in her sleep.

  Sam shifted to the balls of her feet, but grabbed Willy’s face in her hands to address him. “I got it,” she said. “I believe you. Let me deal with her. Don’t move. Don’t leave. I got you, I swear.”

  She kissed his damp forehead and jogged down the hall to see to Emma. Now a preschooler, their daughter was precocious, intelligent, and curiosity driven, sometimes given to an overly active imagination. That could lead not so much to nightmares, as dreams that needed to be talked out.

  Sam entered her bedroom, dragged a chair over to the bed, and rested her hand on Emma’s chest, instantly quieting her.

  “Tell me what’s going on?” she inquired as the little girl curled her arms around a stuffed Eeyore that her father had predictably given her.

  It didn’t last long. It never did. Emma began explaining something about animals and the desert—details from a nature show that her dreaming had transformed into something less comprehensible. But her sweet voice soon trailed off, until Sam felt comfortable leaving her with her fantasies.

  When she returned to the hallway, she was almost stunned to find Willy where she’d left him—truly a sign that things were seriously off-kilter.

  She slid down the wall beside him and passed along what she’d thought of while tending to Emma: “Susan Spinney.”

  Willy stared at her. “What?”

  “She’s our friend—mine especially—she’s inside the tent, and you know she won’t say a word, even to Lester, if we tell her not to.”

  “But what can she do? She’s not gonna steal drugs for me.”

  Sam gave him a gentle smack. “Such an idiot. You know anyone else in the medical field who could steer us the right way, off the books? She’s been a nurse for twenty years. She knows her stuff.”

  His gaze drifted to the floor between them. “I don’t know.”

  “Consider your options,” she said simply. “Tell me what you come up with.”

  Both their pagers started vibrating simultaneously. Sammie didn’t break off her gaze. “You got something better? And by the way, I know you swiped my Oxys a few days ago, just in case you thought you got away with that.”

  That brought a smile. Willy unclipped his cell phone from his belt and speed-dialed the VBI dispatch.

  “What d’ya got?” he asked a moment later.

  He listened a moment, said, “Got it,” and hung up, explaining, “Arson in White River. GreenField Grocers warehouse. Multiple points of ignition. Jonathon Michael and his crew are already headed. Apparently, they’re all dyin’ for the usual clusterfuck, even though arson’s not really in our wheelhouse. Wanna go?”

  Sam had her own phone out. “I’ll call Louise and see if she can come over.” She paused and raised an eyebrow. “Unless you want to pass and stay here.”

  He awkwardly began getting up. “Only thing better than painkillers is the job. You know that.”

  * * *

  Joe refilled Beverly’s water glass from the restaurant carafe. Neither of them drank alcohol much, and only when they were sure they wouldn’t be called to duty, so water had become their default beverage of choice. Joe had once been a Coke fan, but lately, the caffeine had been getting to him—not to mention the stern looks he’d been receiving from his physician companion.

  They were enjoying an early dinner at a quiet place in Hanover, New Hampshire, home of Dartmouth College and just across the river from Vermont.

  “Okay,” he said as he replaced the carafe, stabbed his fork into the middle of his spaghetti, and began twirling. “I’ve done a spectacular job, I think, of containing my impatience. I’ve wined you—sort of—and dined you at your suggestion, ignoring the implication that you had news to impart, and have kept my counsel as we’ve discussed the weather, the fate of the Chicago Cubs, and studiously avoided mentioning the case. Would you—could you—please tell me why we’re here?”

  She was laughing and pointed her finger at him. “We have not discussed the weather or the Cubbies. Never have; never will. That is my pledge. I am devoted to our relationship never reaching such depths.”

  He sat back. “Hey. I know lifelong marriages that have thrived on that diet.”

  She tapped the back of his hand with her own. “We can do better. I know we can.”

  Of that, he had little doubt. He had the proof of time attesting to it. They may have been a couple for only a while now, but their decades-old trust, friendship, and closeness had created a foundation most married people could envy. Most of that time, Beverly had been married to a prominent Burlington lawyer—the father of her two daughters—and Joe had been sequentially committed to a couple of women following his wife’s early death. But the dependability and ease of their connection had never faltered, finally evolving into something that could no longer be denied.

  Once during those years, they had enjoyed a romantic interlude, after her husband had left her and, coincidentally, when Joe was between relationships. It had been the equivalent of sharing a life raft during a rough stretch—fortuitous, reaffirming, restorative, and temporary.

  It had also been, unbeknownst to either of them, the planting of a notion not deemed worthy of serious consideration then—and yet which had germinated nevertheless. Whether it had been time’s steady progress, the benefits of maturation, the dawning realization of happiness being so close at hand, or a combination of all three, he wasn’t sure. But he’d never felt so settled in his heart, now that his appreciation of her had reached this point.

  “All right,” she was saying as he admired her sitting across from him. “Cards on the table. I have two pieces of news, the most exciting being that Rachel—in an undeniable demonstration of one’s youngest child growing up—has landed her first full-time job.”

  “Well done,” he replied, raising his glass. “Here’s to her. What did she get?”

  “This is the part you’re not going to believe. In fact, I’m slightly nervous about how you’re going to take it.”

  “Uh-oh,” he said, smiling but slightly apprehensive. “Well, I am sitting down.”

  “It’s a bit of a miracle, in a fashion,” she continued. “It’s rare when the very subject that so captures one’s enthusiasm in college can be pursued in the real
world. But that’s what happened. She’s been hired by the revamped Brattleboro Reformer to be their staff photographer.”

  That did catch him by surprise. The Reformer, whose Massachusetts flagship in the seventies had been mentioned as one of the outstanding small-town newspapers in the nation, had over the years slipped in prestige to become a merely average, run-of-the-mill daily.

  That had been undergoing recent change, however. A group of hopeful business retirees had purchased it from its absentee corporate owners, and—much to the mixed emotions of old-timers like Gunther—a long-retired warhorse named Stan Katz had been lured back as the new editor.

  “Holy smokes,” Joe burst out. “This whole state is like a small-world joke sometimes. The Reformer? Working for Katz? I heard they’d brought him in from the pasture. Must be part of a total overhaul.”

  Beverly’s smile faded slightly. “You know him?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Joe interpreted her expression and held up both hands. “Hold on. That’s not necessarily bad, my lack of enthusiasm notwithstanding. He’s one of the best, most tenacious reporters I know—totally at odds with what you’d expect of a paper that size. I mean, I haven’t heard hide nor hair of him in years—not since the paper was sold to some midwestern outfit. But he used to be a dog with a bone. If he’s still anything like that, he should be a terrific mentor.”

  She was clearly not impressed by his effusiveness. “You have never been so upbeat about someone, Joseph, least of all a reporter. What’re you not telling me?”

  He was amused by her use of his full name. Only his ancient mother did that, and, as with Beverly, only when he was under scrutiny.

  “Hey,” he confessed. “I’m a cop. How do you think Katz and I got along? If he was a dog with a bone, I was the bone. It was no fun at all. I was delighted when the paper changed hands and he left in a huff. That being said, his coming back’ll be the best thing that’s happened to that paper in years, and Rachel couldn’t ask for a better leg up. I also don’t doubt I’m gonna hate it.”

  He paused to take another bite and resumed with a question. “She does know her becoming a reporter is likely to put the two of us at loggerheads sometimes, doesn’t she?”