by Stan Jones
She looked accusingly at Active, who shrugged too. She shook her head, pulled off the sunglasses, and motioned him into the tent.
The only furniture was a wooden folding cot with an air mattress and sleeping bag on it, so he spread a copy of the schematic on the sleeping bag. "This look familiar? I think maybe it's from the Gray Wolf."
Kathy Childs bent over the drawing. "The label doesn't mention the Gray Wolf. What's the connection?"
He was silent until she twisted to look at him. He turned his eyes away and said, "I can't tell you."
She turned back to the drawing. "Well, it says 'Sewer System' but . . ." She traced a finger through the jumble of symbols on the paper, and along the line with the break in it.
"But what?"
"But we have drawings of their sewer system and I never saw this one before. And I got pretty familiar with the file after the fish started dying up there." She moved her finger to the stippled area, studied it briefly, then turned the blue X-rays on him again, somewhat accusingly.
"This the leach field you were asking about the other day?"
"Could be. What do you think?"
"Could be almost anything, since it's not labeled." She studied the diagram again, then shook her head. "I don't know."
"What?"
"Something's not right here. This looks like a piece of the Gray Wolf, but not really. The layout is different. Like maybe it's the sewer system of some other mine and they were using it as a model for the Gray Wolf system."
He looked down at the diagram. It didn't make any more sense than before. "Well, thanks for taking a look."
"Sorry."
"No problem. It was just a hunch I had, that you might be able to figure it out."
She led the way out of the tent and blinked in the sunlight for a moment, then put on the sunglasses again. Cowboy had fired up the Coleman camp stove after all, and was perched on a five-gallon Blazo can, eating out of the stew pot with a big wooden spoon.
"Nathan, you gotta try this," the pilot mumbled around a mouthful of stew.
"No, thanks," Active said. "We need to get back."
"Sure you don't want to stay a while and shoot some caribou?" she said. "You knock down five apiece, I'll be all set. I can leave tonight, and I'll give you a couple hindquarters each."
Active shook his head. "We do have to get back. And I don't even have a hunting license."
"Fucking A," she said. It was plain Kathy Childs could not imagine a grown healthy man in the Arctic without one.
She turned to the pilot, still dipping stew from the pot on the camp stove.
"Cowboy, you want to pop a few before you go? I can only shoot five a day myself, and there's all kinds of wolves following the herd. I think they might drag the meat off faster than I can shoot it, unless I can figure a way to stay awake all night."
Decker looked as if he might be figuring a way to stay awake all night with Kathy Childs. "It's Nathan's charter," he said. They both looked at Active.
"Sorry, guys. Business is business."
Decker sucked in a last spoonful of stew, pushed a piece of pilot bread in after it, then stood up and they walked down to the plane. Kathy Childs watched as Decker pulled off the engine cover and stowed it, then she returned to the tent as they climbed in.
As Decker started the plane, Active saw her come out of the tent, the schematic in her hand. He thought of stopping the pilot so he could retrieve it, but decided it didn't matter much if she kept a copy. He watched as she held it up to the sky and studied it.
Decker pushed the throttle forward and the Super Cub rolled in a wide turn, the blast from the propeller kicking up a small snowstorm. "I'm going to taxi back up the bar and take off the same way we landed," he said through the intercom. "She'll roll better if we use the tracks we made before."
Decker backtracked about a hundred yards, pivoted the plane around the left wheel, and roared towards Childs's camp. They lifted off a few yards before the camp and were just abreast of it, perhaps ten feet in the air, when Active saw Kathy Childs sprint down the slope towards the plane, waving the schematic over her head, her mouth moving in what was obviously a shout.
Active slapped the pilot's right shoulder. "Hey, Cowboy, put her down again. I think Kathy wants to talk to us."
Decker shook his head, but he dutifully brought the plane around for another landing on the now well-worn path on the snowy sandbar. Kathy Childs was waiting when he pulled up beside her camp and cut the engine.
"Macho Man, look at this." She held the schematic up to the sky, the back side of the sheet facing her, as they flipped open the Super Cub's two little half-doors. "The damned thing..."
She stopped talking as Active frowned and jerked his head toward the pilot in the front seat. "Let's go to the tent."
"All right then, come on; fuck, what are you waiting for?" She rolled the schematic into a tube and swatted him when he was too slow climbing out of the plane.
She galloped toward the tent and waited in the doorway as he walked up the sandbar. Once they were both inside, she unrolled the drawing and handed it to him. "Hold that up to the south wall of the tent there, where the sun's hitting it."
He shrugged, knelt, and placed the drawing along the top of the tent's low side wall, then looked up at her questioningly. She grimaced. "No, not that way. Turn it over and look at it from the back."
He flipped the schematic over and spread it against the luminous canvas again. The drawing on the other side showed through clearly.
"See?" she said triumphantly.
"See what? It's even more confusing backwards, if that's what you mean."
"That's the point." She squatted beside him, grabbed the drawing, and held it against the wall of the tent. "They reversed the damned thing. I knew there was something funny about it, so I turned it over and held it up to the sun and, voila! I'm back home at the Gray Wolf!"
"You mean it's the Gray Wolf sewer system after all?"
"It's the Gray Wolf all right, but it's not the sewer system." She jabbed a finger against the jumble of symbols where the pipeline originated. "This is the Gray Wolf watertreatment plant, where they clean out the junk that comes out of the ore."
He studied the symbols again. "I thought they just dumped the water in their settling pond."
"Yeah, but when the solids settle out, then they pump it into the treatment plant, clean it up, and pump it into Gray Wolf Creek. At least that's what they're supposed to do." She ran her finger along the pipeline. "Looks like some of the water is bypassing the treatment plant and going through here, toxics and all."
Her finger stopped at the stippled area, where the pipeline ended. "And if this is a leach field, it's flushing those toxics into that Swiss cheese of a mountain."
"Why would they bypass their own system?"
She straightened up and looked down at him. "Maybe the treatment plant can't handle all the crud they're getting. So they have to get rid of it some other way."
He rose to his feet again too. "Couldn't they just expand the treatment plant?"
"Maybe they're too cheap. This is a multinational corporation we're talking about here, Macho Man." She sat on the cot, spread the schematic on her lap, right side up, and poked the stippled area. "Anyway, if this is a leach field, it's gotta explain the kills, huh?"
He jumped a little and swiveled to stare at her. "What do you know about. . ." He cut himself off when he realized she meant the fish kills. He started to turn back to the schematic but the blue eyes had already locked on to his.
"This isn't about fish kills at all, is it?" She grasped his wrist, tightly enough that it hurt a little. "The troopers don't investigate pollution. You think somebody killed Aaron Stone and George Clinton, don't you? And this leach field had something to do with it."
"I can't talk about it."
"I knew it! Fucking GeoNord."
He wrenched his gaze from hers and his wrist from her grasp and turned to the drawing. He pointed to the line leading
to the leach field. "The wastes in here, that would be the stuff you were talking about before—arsenic, sulfur, what was the other one?"
"Antimony."
"That's it, antimony." He felt her eyes on him as he studied the drawing. He tapped the stippled area. "Where would they put a leach field?"
She squatted and ran her finger along the line to the stipples again. "Let's see, this runs off to the southwest. You got the road running by there, then you're pretty much on the airport, and past that it's tundra."
"Would it make sense to put it under the airport?"
"It might." He watched over her shoulder as she studied the schematic backwards. "There's always some kind of work going on at the airport, so nobody would notice if they did put in a leach field. And if they got some subsidence once it was in, it would automatically get filled in with gravel without anybody having to give an order because it was at the airport. They're always getting sinkholes up there from all the disturbance to the natural ground cover, anyway. Yeah, one of the parking areas at the airport would be a pretty good place."
Active took the diagram and folded it in quarters. "Thanks. You really came through."
"We at the Department of Environmental Protection live to serve." Kathy Childs rose from the cot and made a mock bow, then looked serious. "What now?"
He shrugged, still avoiding the blue probes.
She shrugged too. "Good luck, then. You get the bastards."
He reached for the door, then turned, forcing himself to look into the blue eyes finally. "Maybe it would be better not to mention this to ..."
"To Shotwell and that crowd? Fat fucking chance. But if you need me for a witness, just whistle. I'll put on a business suit and carry a briefcase and wave my Ph.D. at the jury and they'll fucking fry those GeoNord assholes."
ON THE way back to Chukchi in the rear seat of Cowboy Decker's Super Cub, Active thought long and hard about what he would say to Fortune when he got the lawyer on the phone. He finally decided four words would do the trick.
It was after dark when Decker pulled the plane into its tie-down. Active jumped out, started the chilly Suburban, and drove to his office.
First, he called the Arctic Inn, where the desk clerk told him Fortune had just checked out to catch the evening Alaska Airlines flight to Anchorage. Then he called the Alaska Airlines terminal and had the lawyer paged.
Finally, the languid, confident voice was in his ear. "This is Alex Fortune."
He said the four words. "I have the schematic."
"What? Who is this?" The voice sounded less confident.
"It's Nathan Active. I have the schematic of the leach field."
There was a long silence. In the background, Active heard the "now boarding" announcement over the terminal's public address system, first in English, next in Inupiaq. Then, from Fortune, "Where did you get it?"
"Never mind that. I want to interview your client again."
"I understood you had, ah, terminated your investigation."
"Now that I have the schematic, it's open again. And I want to talk to Jermain."
Fortune was silent again. "And if we decline?"
"I'll arrest him for the murders of Aaron Stone and George Clinton."
"We can see you at three o'clock tomorrow."
"No, tonight."
"It'll have to be tomorrow," the lawyer said. "Michael Jermain went up to the mine this afternoon. I'll have to arrange a charter to get him back."
"That won't take till three P.M."
"Sorry, that's the best I can do."
Jermain and Fortune would no doubt spend the whole day plotting strategy, perhaps even on the phone to Europe, Active knew. But he couldn't think of a way to budge the lawyer.
"All right, three o'clock then."
"Three o'clock. And Trooper Active? Don't waste our time again, or I'll make another call to my friend Bill Felix. And you'll end up playing rent-a-cop at a mall in Anchorage."
CHAPTER 16
Tuesday Afternoon, Chukchi
ACTIVE SLID A COPY of the schematic across the conference table. Jermain stared at it as if it were an animal trap that would snap off his fingers if he touched it. Fortune put on his gold rims and bent over the drawing, exuding the same relaxed assurance as always.
"I don't see anything here about the Gray Wolf," he said finally, straightening to look at Active. "Or a leach field."
He took off the glasses and dropped them onto the drawing. "I'm starting to wonder why we're here."
"Turn it over."
"What?"
Active made a flipping motion with his hand. "Turn it over." The evening before, he had taped the drawing to the window of his office door, trained a gooseneck lamp on it, and traced the diagram onto the back. Now it showed the watertreatment plant, pipeline, and leach field in their normal relationships, not reversed.
Fortune put the glasses on again, turned the drawing over, and looked at the back. Did he pale slightly? "Backwards, forwards, what's the difference? At most, you have a drawing of what may be a sewer system connected to what may be a leach field. If it is at the Gray Wolf, so what? Putting in a sewer system is hardly a crime."
"I have a witness who will testify this area here"—he traced it out on the schematic—"is the watertreatment plant, and this is the pipeline carrying off the wastes, and this is the leach field where you're flushing it into the ground so it can kill fish in the Nuliakuk."
"A witness?"
"A government employee."
"Your witness has seen this pipeline and leach field, I take it?"
"No, but she's seen enough to get me a search warrant and a court order to dig up your airport till we find it."
"She?"
"He, she, what's the difference?"
Fortune tilted his head back and closed his eyes, as if searching a mental filing cabinet for the name of a female government employee who might know something about the Gray Wolf. He opened his eyes and looked at Jermain. "Michael?"
Jermain shook his head.
"Maybe you'll get your search warrant, maybe you won't," Fortune said. "Maybe you'll find something, maybe you won't. But you'll have a fight on your hands."
"Fine, then. I'm arresting Michael Jermain for murder right now." Active stood up and pulled a set of handcuffs from his belt. "You have the right to remain silent..."
"Really, Trooper Active, you're being melodramatic again."
"Put out your arms, please, Mr. Jermain. Anything you say can and will..."
"Trooper Active, you hardly need handcuff a man of..."
Jermain cut the lawyer off. "Fuck this, I'm going to talk to him."
"Michael, shut up," Fortune said. "I'll do the talking."
"Fuck you too, then," the engineer said. "I never liked this from the start and I'm not facing murder charges for anybody. You're fired as my lawyer. You and GeoNord go your way, I'll go mine."
"Will you excuse us for a moment, Trooper Active?" Without waiting for an answer, the lawyer motioned for Jermain to get up and they walked to the office door. "Marie, will you give us a moment of privacy?" Active heard Fortune say as the door closed. Distantly, he heard the outer door to the suite open and shut, presumably as the receptionist left.
Active heard muffled voices in conversation. Once he heard Jermain shout, "I told you I hate this shit. I'm through with it. I don't care ..." and then the voices became unintelligible again.
In less than five minutes, the office door opened and the two came back in and took their seats at the table. They stared at him as if they didn't know how to begin.
"Shall we start Mr. Jermain's statement now?" Active asked.
"There'll be no statement," Fortune said in a strained voice. "But, very much against my advice, Mr. Jermain is willing to have an off-the-record conversation about what he might say if he ever does make a statement. An offer of proof, you might say." Fortune glanced at Jermain, who grimaced in disgust but nodded.
Fortune turned the browless eyes and rad
ardish ears back toward Active. "And, of course, we need to agree on the conditions under which Mr. Jermain might make a statement. If he ever does."
"What conditions?"
"Immunity from criminal prosecution for GeoNord and Michael Jermain in any matter relating to the deaths of George Clinton and Aaron Stone."
"That's ridiculous. You know I think he killed them both. Why should he get immunity?"
"You don't have to give him anything till you've heard what he has to say. Why not just listen?"
"You know I can't give immunity," Active said after a long pause. "I'm not a prosecutor."
"We know that," Fortune said. "But unless your district attorney has far more time and investigators on his hands than any Bush D.A. I ever knew, he's likely to follow your advice."
Active turned the offer over in his mind. If he said no, the case would turn into a slow, slogging search-warrant duel. What would a judge say if he asked for a warrant to search the soil under the Gray Wolf for a secret leach field? "And what's your probable cause, Trooper Active?" "Well, Your Honor, 1 heard it from a drunk woman at the Dreamland. Also, a Depart' ment of Environmental Protection employee who just got demoted thinks there might be something to it."
And if they did get a warrant, what would it cost to search the airfield? And what would they use, now that the ground was frozen hard for the winter? An oil-drilling rig? Dynamite? God, where would the troopers get the money? What would Patrick Carnaby and Bill Felix say, assuming they said anything other than "You're fired"?
"Naturally, any promise of confidentiality I make is off if you lie to me," he said.
"Naturally," Fortune said
Active was silent again. "And what if I hear you out and then decide to recommend prosecution anyway?"
"Once you listen to Mr. Jermain's story, I'm confident you'll see you can't crack this case without his help," Fortune said. "You know Mr. Jermain can't be compelled to testify if he's under indictment."
"Then why talk to me at all?"
"Because Mr. Jermain has become convinced you won't give up," Fortune said. "I'm less certain of that, but I have to acknowledge a substantial likelihood that Mr. Jermain, not to mention GeoNord, will needlessly and unfairly incur substantial damage if you continue under your present mistaken theory of the case."