by Gregory Kay
“Do you think this is related in some way to me being here to do this story? It must be; someone wants to silence me!”
“It’s either that, or he’s a stalker that has an obsession with you. Are you sure you’ve never seen this subject before you came to town?”
“I’m positive,” she told him definitively, “There’s something about him that’s so freaking weird, I'm sure I’d have noticed. The first time I saw him was that evening I told you about, in front of the hotel...unless...”
Seeing her hesitation, Luke asked, “Unless what?”
She shook her head.
“It’s nothing; just my imagination.”
“Then give me your imagination. It could be vital to finding him.”
“Promise you won’t laugh at me.” Suddenly it was very important to her that he not do that.
“I promise; now tell me.”
“Well, remember when I hit that deer? It was right after that. It was weird, but I could swear I saw the dark figure of a man back in the trees where the deer came from.”
“Was it the same one who’s been stalking you?”
Secretly pleased by the dead seriousness in his tone, Fiona shook her head.
“I don’t know. It was just a silhouette, and I only saw it for a split second. I was probably just shaken up from the wreck.”
“Probably so, but after this, I’m not taking anything for granted, especially not as far as your safety is concerned.”
“There’s more. Again, I only saw him for a second, but...Luke, I swear, I think he was the one I saw standing in the brush at the turn-off.”
Luke’s eyes went wide.
“Son of a – “
“Excuse me,” the Sheriff said, “Luke, I need to talk to you for a minute.”
Luke recognized that tone and stepped off with his boss, and, even though they were several yards away and their backs were to her, she could tell the whispered two minute conversation was more than a little intense, and, from their postures and short, quick gesticulations, not particularly pleasant.
Finally they parted, each of them a little redder in the face than when they began, with the sheriff walking back to his cruiser and Luke back to her. Seeing his expression, it was her turn to ask if he was okay, taking his hand while she did so.
“I guess. You might do me a favor, though, and look behind me to see if I’ve got any ass left; I think Pete just chewed most of it off.”
“What on earth for?”
“For allowing you out alone and un-escorted in the middle of the night.” He grinned ruefully. “While they’re very glad you’re alive, I think him, the County Commissioner and the Mayor are all about to have a hissy over how bad this will make the town look when you write your article, and everyone is looking for someone to blame. Crap rolls downhill, so...”
Fiona didn’t know for sure what a ‘hissy’ was, but she knew that all too well from her own experiences, and knew just how it felt to be at the bottom when it all came down from up top. She also knew full well who was responsible this time.
“I’m so sorry, Luke; I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”
“Hey, I know that,” he told her with a reassuring smile and a gentle stroke of his fingers on her cheek, “I mean, this is Point Pleasant; you had no reason to think some crazy would try to kill you.” He squeezed her hand and winked. “And I’ll forgive you for the standard fee once we’re alone, although I’m of two minds about how I feel about it.”
“What do you mean?” Thankful he wasn’t angry with her, she tentatively returned his grin.
“Well, I’m really sorry you were frightened, and I’m really pissed that anyone would try to hurt you...but I’m not in the least bit sorry you turned up on my doorstep this morning. That was the best thing that’s happened to me in a long, long time.”
Ignoring the melancholy pang of grim anticipation for the pain she knew would come to both of them because of that decision, her smile grew.
“Thanks. By the way, that would be three minds, not two, wouldn’t it?” and he laughed out loud.
“Alright, Miss Smarty Pants. Get in the car; we’re going to go do something important.”
Out a seldom-used dead end gravel road off Route 62, past an ancient, long-neglected cemetery with mossy, tilting stones and sunken, overgrown graves, and across the railroad tracks, the police shooting range was little more than a couple of wooden benches in a field near the river bank. The night’s chill had passed and the sun had warmed the day, already sending the temperature well into the forties. In fact, it was still climbing, and made the morning’s frost an almost-forgotten memory. Still, the wind had picked up, and Fiona was glad of her jacket, even as she tied her curly hair back in a ponytail to keep it out of her eyes and give her an unobstructed view of the human silhouette target just over ten feet away.
“I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with this,” she told Luke, gingerly holding his backup gun, the vintage .38 Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special he had loaned her before, but he only shook his head.
“After last night, I’m not comfortable with the thought of something happening to you, especially when the means are available to prevent it. Now do it the way I told you; you’re not aiming right now, you’re pointing at the target’s center of mass just like you’d point a finger, and then squeezing.”
She licked her lips, looked at the black-on-white silhouette on the target’s paper, and swallowed hard. She’d never held a gun in her hand in her life until she arrived in Point Pleasant, let alone fired one; she’d always been taught that guns were evil, and yet her father carried one every day of his adult life and she knew her Uncle Pat had kept a big automatic in his desk drawer at all times. She also absolutely hated being told what to do, but she knew Luke was doing it for the same reasons her parents and her uncle had sometimes been hard on her: because he cared and because it was, at least in his opinion, for her own good.
Oh, what the hell? Everyone ought to try new things, right?
Fiona pointed the snub-nosed revolver and squeezed the long double-action pull he’d already made her dry-fire several times, and, although the gun bucked harder in her hands than she'd expected, the report was muffled by the ear plugs he had given her.
Luke, standing directly behind her, immediately put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Good job! Look where you hit.”
Fiona obeyed, and it felt really strange to see a hole in the lower left side of a man-shaped target’s abdomen.
“You’re a natural,” he said, then handed her five more cartridges, “Reload; we’re going to be firing two shots at a time now, one right after the other as fast as you can.”
“Why two?”
“Because the first one might not stop him. It’s called ‘double-tapping; if two shots don’t work, go for three.”
That thought set off a swarm of butterflies in her stomach.
“Luke, I really don’t want to kill anybody...”
“And I don’t want anybody to kill you. Besides, you’re not shooting to kill; you’re shooting to stop.”
“Bullshit!” she exploded, thinking he was patronizing her, “I’m shooting a man through the body!”
“That is because it is the best way to stop him. Yes, he may very well die; if he does, that’s his problem, not yours. You simply intended to stop him from attacking you, because defending yourself is the only time you’ll use this handgun. That is clear, right?”
“Yes sir, Deputy Carter, sir,” she said sarcastically, and he responded with an equally sarcastic, “That’s better.”
Sarcastic or not, he insisted on continuing until she could put all of her rounds on-target at close range before cleaning and reloading the pistol and handing it back to her, along with a handful of cartridges.
“I want you to carry this with you at all times.”
“Isn’t that illegal?” she asked with a frown, and Luke nodded as the corners of his mouth quirked mischievously.
�
��Yes, absolutely. Here’s the holster; put it where it’s concealed but comfortable and you can reach it easily.”
“I’ll put it my purse.”
He shook his head emphatically.
“No you won’t. I know what the inside of the average woman’s purse looks like; by the time you undo a snap, two zippers and three buckles, and reach that .38 buried under a foot of makeup, tampons, and cell phones, it’ll be too late. Try your jacket pocket.” She did, and he told her, “Looks good; actually, on you, it looks great. Now, if you want, we’ll get in a brief tour of the TNT by daylight, then grab some lunch.”
The weight of the gun in her pocket made her feel self-conscious, but...
Whatever makes him happy, I guess. Of course, he might be right, but God, I hope not!
“That sounds like a plan. Will I have time to get in anymore phone interviews?” She’d already done two, both of them with owners of mutilated cattle, one of whom who had already taken a couple of pictures of his dead animal with his cell phone and sent them to her. Still, she had several more to go.
“Probably not; we’ll be there in about five minutes. Maybe you can catch a few more of them on our way to lunch, and, after that, we’ll still have a couple of hours before Allie’s out of school, so we can try to actually visit one or two of the nearer ones, if you want.”
Shaking her head, she told him, “You are a really rare man, you know that? Are you always this helpful?”
“Not really; you just bring out the best in me.”
CHAPTER 18
“Look over there; that field behind the fairgrounds is where the old power plant used to be. There was another on the other side of the road, behind the Farm Museum, but this one is where the first reported Mothman sighting in Mason County took place, back in 1966.”
They had already passed this spot once, but Luke insisted Fiona would better understand what he was talking about if they had a map; accordingly, they drove to the McClintock Wildlife Station office first, and collected one, along with a brochure describing the general history of the reserve, before returning. After seeing it, and just how big the area and its maze-like network of roads were, Fiona was thankful he had done so.
“Can we go over and look at it? I’d like to get some pictures for background information.”
“Sure.”
There was no traffic, so Luke stopped and wheeled the Jeep around in a tight U-turn before pulling into the narrow side road with the fairgrounds’ western fence to one side, and a brush- and tree-choked ditch on the other. Swinging into a nearly invisible pull-off to the right, Luke pointed straight ahead.
“Right here, directly in front of us, was the parking lot,” he told her as they got out, “You can still see patches of cinders and slag through the grass.”
“So the plant that sat here powered the complex then?”
His pointing finger turned ninety degrees to the right, and her gaze turned to follow it.
“Yes, it and the one on the opposite side of the road we turned onto this one from, sitting about the same distance back behind the Farm Museum: that collection of buildings over there. If they hadn’t torn it down too, you’d easily be able to see it from here, but it never figured into any of the sightings, at least as far as I know.”
She began snapping photos, and Luke took another opportunity to silently admire her.
I don’t know what it is about her, but...man!
“What were they making out here again?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Trinitrotoluene – TNT. This place was purpose-built just for that, and turned out millions of tons of it during World War II. As soon as the war was over, it was closed down, but the damage had already been done.”
“Damage?”
“Pollution.” He waved a hand around, indicating the general area. “That was wartime, and pre-environmental consciousness to boot; the soil out here is loaded with asbestos, PCBs, dioxin, toluene compounds, explosives residue, acids, God only knows what all. They just dumped it here as they went.”
Fiona curled her lip in disgust as she looked around her.
“It sounds like a toxic wasteland!”
“It is; it’s one of the EPA’s top ten Superfund cleanup sites. Back in the 90s, they put in two big buildings as pump-houses, to bring up and filter the groundwater before returning it, and they even dug up big patches of land, sealed the subsoil with rubberized, metal-armored mesh, and covered it back up.”
“Why armor?”
“They said it was to keep animals from digging through it and exposing the more polluted soil underneath, but that sounds like overkill to me.”
“Me too.” She filed that anomaly away in the back of her mind while she looked around, scanning the area. “So, are any of the original structures still left out here?”
“Sure; come on, I’ll show you.
Over the next two hours, they busied themselves moving from spot to spot, then getting out and tromping though brush, tall grass, and occasional patches of woods. Whether the Mothman turned out to be a hoax or not, Fiona found the experience utterly fascinating.
It was not just the natural terrain, but the remnants of war-time industry that dotted it here and there, sometimes so dilapidated and blending in so well that you had to look twice to see if it was actually man-made. The mossy culverts and bridges, and the water-filled foundations were obvious, of course, as were the massive concrete cradles that once held giant vats of toxic chemicals high overhead, but now supported only birds’ nests and vines. Other structures were less-noticeable, like manholes, bits of machinery, and even a fire hydrant, flaky and reddish black with rust, standing alone in the middle of nothing.
While Luke provided the travelogue, Fiona took photo after photo, changing the memory card twice.
“This is a photographer’s goldmine! Anything I don’t use for the article, I’ll keep for stock photography,” she explained, “because there’s no place I’ve ever heard of this eerily picturesque, other than maybe Chernobyl. It’s like some kind of post-apocalyptic landscape in a science fiction movie about the end of the world!” Looking at Luke, she suddenly winked. “You’re an interesting date, Deputy Carter; I’ve never had anyone take me exploring ruins in a toxic waste dump.”
He responded with the exaggerated gesture of curling his fingers and blowing on his nails before polishing them on his jacket front.
“Well, you know how it is; I try not to be predictable.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” she told him sincerely before glancing over his shoulder. “What’s that over there, that pile of dirt?” Remembering something she had read on one of the informational display cards on an artifacts case at Tu-Endie-Wei, she ventured, “Is that an Indian mound?”
Turning in the direction Fiona indicated, Luke immediately saw what she was looking at: a miniature mountain maybe fifteen feet high sitting a hundred feet away along the edge of an overgrown road, and covered with brush and small trees.
“No, that’s an igloo; it was part of the industrial complex.”
“Igloo?” That didn’t make any sense. “As in...Eskimo?”
“Sort of; that’s what they call them due to the shape. Would you like to go see it?”
“Is the Pope Catholic? Let’s go.”
Walking in front of the igloo revealed a large square doorway on the front of the mound, as well as two feet of reinforced concrete with about a yard of overgrown soil on top. The little square room inside with two rusty pipes sticking up out of the floor was the size of a small jail cell.
“What were these used for?”
“This one was probably for a pump of some kind; it’s a little one. The bigger units were used for storing the TNT itself.” He reached out and tapped the thick concrete. “This is to contain any explosions inside, and also to camouflage it and protect it from bombing raids. It would take a direct hit to breach it.”
Fiona’s head snapped around to look at him with surprise.
/> “Bombing raids?”
“Oh yeah. This was World War II, remember? The continental US was never bombed, but everyone knew it could conceivably happen. As a major cog in the defense industry, this entire installation out here would have been a prime target, either for that or for sabotage.”
While she squatted to get a picture from a different angle, Fiona asked him, “Did anyone ever try?”
“Not here; at least, not as far as I know. The place was heavily guarded, and they took a lot of precautions. Many of the workers were even hauled in and out in buses with blacked-out windows, and they evidently swore them to secrecy about what they did know, because it’s almost impossible to find information on activities here during that period. Even after the war and the plant’s closing, most of the old timers who worked there never talked much about it, they say; I guess they'd been thoroughly indoctrinated into the ‘loose lips sink ships’ mentality. About all that’s known is from rumor and declassified records.” He paused, deep in thought. “One thing I do know is that the whole system out here – all the major buildings, anyway – were connected by a network of tunnels. They even had some big underground chambers of some kind here, maybe bunkers or bomb shelters or something.”
Looking very interested at that particular revelation, Fiona asked, “Is that rumor or records?”
“Events,” he said with a smile, “One of them caved in back in the nineties. I think that may have been what sparked the EPA Superfund cleanup. At least, it was about then that they started sealing the ground and building facilities to filter the groundwater.”
“Like that big gray building we saw near the fairgrounds?”
“Yes; that’s one of the two. The other one is over on Potter’s Creek road.”
“Any chance I could see one of those tunnels or chambers?”
“Not unless you want to cut through steel-armored rubberized ground coating and several feet of toxic soil; that’s where the EPA did the work.”
Fiona laughed at that.