“What did they do?” Duncan asked.
Chuckie’s dad took a long knife from the toolbox, walked up to the head of the pig. The two girls held the dangling body still as he slit the pig’s throat and blood gushed out. His son said, “Idiots were too lazy to gut and clean the usual way, so they cut open their pig in the back of their pickup truck. Least the damn thing had a plastic liner. Anyway, they went down to South Turner—they have a car wash—and they thought it’d make sense to clean out the guts and such by going through the car wash with the pig in the back.”
Cameron laughed. “Fuck you say.”
“Seriously, no, that’s what they did. What a Christly mess, blood and guts and pig fat everywhere in the joint. Man … .”
Duncan said, “I’ll never look at bacon the same way again. Say, if you don’t mind, we’d like to take a look at the far barn.”
“Guys, you pay rent there, that barn is yours.”
“Want to come up with us?”
Chuckie looked over, smiling. “Duncan, that’s a fine invite, but I’m gonna decline. You want to know why? Ever since you wild Injuns have started rentin’ my barn, I’ve kept me and my family on this side of the fence. Don’t know what you’re doing in there; I can guess what you’re doing in there, but it ain’t my business. So don’t take offense, but if I don’t go up there with you, then I can always say to you and anyone else, I’ve never been in or near that barn. Is that all right, then?”
Duncan reached up, gently squeezed the man’s left shoulder. “Nice and clear. Not a problem at all. We won’t be long.”
Chuckie shrugged. “Take as much time as you like.”
Up at the barn, Cameron led his brother to a side door that had a metal doorknob with a numeric keypad. Cameron punched in the numbers and opened the door. He followed Cameron in, past a canvas wall blocking the way. Cameron closed the door and pushed the canvas away.
“Keeps the inside from being looked at, in case someone’s peering in from the tree line,” Cameron explained.
Duncan looked in, liked what he saw. Row upon row of metal troughs with leafy green vegetation growing up, reaching towards overhead lamps. A complicated system of irrigation hoses and drains snaked in and around the troughs.
“Nicely done,” Duncan said. “How soon before harvest?”
“About another month. A couple of weeks later for drying and preparing. Then we’ll start up all over again.”
“Good, good,” Duncan said, fingering a leaf from the nearest plant. “You trust Chuckie?”
“Near as I trust anybody. But he gave me a great bit of advice, before we started.”
“What’s that?”
“Chuckie knows his way around electricity, lighting, and wiring. When we set up the Gro-Lux lamps to boost the growth cycle, he said PSNH might be suspicious to see a spike in electrical usage, so he worked a way out of bypassing the central meter. A bit clunky, but it works.”
“Thought Chuckie said he didn’t know what was in the barn.”
“He doesn’t,” Cameron said. “All he knows is that we needed extra juice. We could be running aquariums in there for all he knows, though I’m sure he has his guesses.”
Duncan took in a deep breath, enjoying the intoxicating and thick smell of green things growing under a roof. But that was the only intoxication he allowed himself. Never, ever, under any circumstances, did he ever sample the merchandise.
“Good, glad to know it,” Duncan said.
“Maybe so, but we’re still vulnerable.”
“How’s that?”
Cameron said, “DEA or State Police ever get interested in picking things up a pace, they might send helicopters overhead at night, check thermal readings. The power use might not raise eyebrows, but if a helicopter hovers overhead with a thermal imaging device and finds this place glowing like Chernobyl, it won’t end well.”
“I guess setting up surface-to-air missiles would be an overreaction.”
“Yeah, it would, but we could do two things, both expensive. First is to install shielding up under the roof, block the bulk of the thermal heat going up here. Second thing is what I’m going to show you after lunch.”
“Something to look forward to,” Duncan said. “All right, looks great, looks like Chuckie is happy, but for Christ’s sake, he offers you something, refuse, okay?”
“What’s that?”
Duncan couldn’t help himself. He felt queasy. “If he wants to give me ham or bacon from poor Pearl, politely turn him down. Couldn’t stand the thought of eating something I saw walking around just a few minutes ago.”
nine
In her sixth-floor office in the Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. Federal Building in downtown Boston, Tanya Gibbs was getting ready for tomorrow’s staff meeting when there was a hesitant knock on the door. She looked up and Walter Dresden was gingerly stepping in. He was overweight, with thick blond hair that looked ridiculous on his plain face. He apparently thought he was in the military, for every day he wore a uniform: black shoes, black trousers, white shirt, and narrow black necktie. On the rare casual Fridays, Walter would go wild with a narrow dark blue necktie.
“Ah, Tanya, ah, if I can just bother you for a moment,” he stammered.
She went back to her paperwork, trying to keep calm and friendly. “What can I do for you, Walter?”
He stepped from one foot to another, like a grade-school student looking for permission to use the boys’ room. “It’s like this, ah, I made a mistake when I put you on that raw intelligence distribution list, especially, ah, about that matter in Quebec. The, er, missing shipping container. I was just hoping that, well, I hope that—”
Tanya quickly worked through the number of responses that she had available to her, feeling the first stirrings of her temper. She tried to squash it.
She lifted her head, smiled. “Walter, I appreciate that. I know you made a mistake. You’re one overworked public service employee, just like everybody else in this building. You spend so many unappreciated hours doing what you can to protect America and its people. We both know that some of these raw intelligence reports, if they were to be made public, like the Quebec matter, would cause panic and disorders. That we don’t need.”
Walter still shifted his considerable weight, leg to leg.
She went on. “So as far as I’m concerned, the matter is closed. Don’t worry about it.”
She smiled, lowered her head again, hoping the knucklehead would get the message.
But he pressed on. “But, ah, if I may, Tanya, I feel a duty to pass this along to the Regional Administrator, as a matter of procedure, you know, I mean, based on your past experiences and job history, you must know that—”
Ah, yes, job history. She wasn’t much for being on the street but she loved being behind the scenes, doing paperwork, working intelligence, compiling statistics, going into the New Jersey State Police after a couple of years on the street and being a comfortable, quiet drone in the background at headquarters in West Trenton.
Until 9/11. Until she saw the buildings fall during that longest of all long days. Until she had found out about the last desperate hours of her dearest friend, having to join at least a hundred others who leapt to their deaths from the doomed buildings, falling and falling and falling, seconds dragging by, knowing only pain and obliteration was waiting for you.
So she had gone into Homeland Security, an agency with an amorphous name, tentacles in everything from Secret Service to Coast Guard to border security and lots of openings and opportunities for someone like her. Someone with skin—or blood—in the game. Someone who wanted to make it right.
Her hands grew warm. “Walter.”
“I mean, this was a mistake on my part, and I feel—”
“Walter, do me the favor of listening to what I have to say.”
He did just that. She leaned over her de
sk and lowered her voice. “If you say one word about this matter to Gordie, that means I’ll get dragged into what was a serious mistake on your part. In fact, Gordie may investigate and reprimand me for not officially reporting this when I had a chance.”
“Tanya, I’m just saying—”
She kept on rolling, hating what she had to say next, knowing she had no other choice. This pudgy man was not going to get in her way. “That happens, I swear to God I will make it my personal mission in life to destroy you. Your career here will be finished. With a termination from Federal employment, that black mark against you—in this endless recession—means the best job you’ll get will be scooping ice cream in Revere Beach. But I’ll only let you have that job if I’m in a good mood, because if I’m not, I’ll have your records hacked to show your future employers that you’re a suspected pedophile. Now. You’ve angered me by threatening to go to Gordie. So I’ve changed my mind about this matter being settled. I know you have your chubby little fingers in a lot of information streams in the Region. Correct?”
“Ah, yes, that’s true but—”
“So Walter, if you want to keep your position, and not be identified as a pedophile—you can’t believe how easy it is to make an accusation like that stick—I want to know everything and anything you learn about the Quebec shipping container. I don’t care if it’s something as small or as stupid as somebody seeing it orbiting Venus. You will inform me instantly, or I swear to God, I’ll hammer you. Don’t think that I don’t have other sources here in this building to know if you’re holding out on me. Have I made myself clear, Walter? Do you have any questions? Do we need to discuss this any further?”
He shook his head so violently it was amazing that his blond hair didn’t fly apart. He backed out of the office, bumped into a potted plant, and then scurried down the hallway.
Tanya sighed, looked out the window at all the nice tall and sleek buildings of downtown Boston, feeling nauseous at how she had treated poor Walter Dresden. This wasn’t how her parents raised her, this wasn’t how she usually conducted business. But there was a threat out there, a serious threat, even if she was the only one to see it, and she wasn’t going to let that threat go unnoticed.
That’s what happened more than ten years ago. There were hints, arrests, even reports of Arab men attending flight schools, and rumors of terrorist plots involving hijacked aircraft … and what happened?
Nothing. Until that beautiful Tuesday morning in September.
Now it looked like it was going to happen again. The raw intelligence came in about a mysterious half-sized shipping container in Quebec, one that got the interest of a lot of law enforcement authorities, and now …
Ignored. Just a mistake. A false alarm. Nothing to worry your pretty little head over.
She glanced over at the little bookcase in the corner of her office, noted the framed photo of her dear Emily, taken at her office at Colby Consulting in the World Trade Center. Now there was no Colby Consulting, no World Trade Center, and no Emily. All burnt, shattered, destroyed, reduced to their base atoms and molecules. Next to her was a framed photo of a woman with glasses and a mane of blond highlighted hair, wearing a US Customs uniform. Diana Dean, who helped foil the Millennium Plot to blow up the Los Angeles airport on the night of December 31, 1999. Dean had been working at the Port Angeles Customs station in Washington State, checking out the last ferry in from British Columbia. One of the drivers—later revealed to be an Algerian terrorist named Ahmed Ressam—was smuggling bomb-making materials in the trunk of his car.
And why had Customs Agent Dean given this man extra scrutiny? Had a threat warning been issued? Were rumors of a bombing plot passed around? Had Ressam been wearing an “I Heart al-Qaeda” T-shirt?
No. Agent Dean thought the driver had been acting “hinky.” So she acted on her gut, on her hunch.
Emily and Agent Dean. Her daily overseers, back over there on the bookshelf.
Tanya took a deep breath, tried to ease the knot in her gut, looked away from the bookcase. In one corner of her office were a sledgehammer and a canvas bag that held a two-hundred-foot rope ladder. If this building were ever hit, she’d go through that supposedly unbreakable window with the sledgehammer and use the rope ladder to get out.
That was for her. And what she was doing now, with the help of that brooding and clear-eyed Coastie up north, was to make sure nobody else would have to worry about being trapped in a burning and collapsing building.
“Not going to happen again, Emily,” she murmured. “Not if I can help it.”
ten
For the rest of the morning, Duncan directed his brother up and around a number of rural roads, again making sure they weren’t being followed. Twice he had Cameron stop at one of the convenience stores he owned: one on Route 16 and the other on Route 115. The one on Route 16 looked fine and the Indian family that ran the place for him was smiling with pleasure at having him stop by. About the only thing he didn’t like was the Indian food they were prepping—no offense, but he didn’t really like the smells—but Cameron told him out in the parking lot that the locals really liked the Indian family and their food, making it one of his most profitable stores.
Outside the store, he had an unexpected encounter: an older man who stepped out of a green Subaru Forester parked at the gas pumps and said, “Duncan? Got a minute?”
Duncan tried to keep a friendly look on his face. It was Hubert Conan, his wife’s uncle and newspaper stringer, who wanted to do a story about the Crowley business. He had on brown shoes, tan slacks, and a white shirt with snappy blue bow tie. A white fringe around his bald head made him look like an elder medieval monk. But his eyes were filmy and bloodshot, and his hands trembled.
“How’s it going, Uncle Hubert?” he asked.
Hubert smiled. “Just fine, just fine. Listen, I was wondering if you were still thinking about me doing a feature story about you and your companies. I mean, you’re the only real thriving businessman up in this part of the state. I think it’d be a great feature story.”
“Tell you what, Uncle Hubert,” Duncan said, reaching for the Pilot’s door handle. “I’m still thinking about it. I’ll let Karen know, soon as I can.”
Hubert nodded, looked like he was going to say something, and then trundled into the store, shoulders slumped.
Inside the Honda Cameron laughed. “Thinking about it my ass.”
“Family,” Duncan said. “It’s just family.”
At the Route 115 store, Duncan went into the men’s room, found the concrete floor slimy and old shit caked on the toilet bowl. Jaw clenched, he didn’t say a word, just went back to the store, grabbed a pail and started scrubbing out the men’s room. The store manager, a thin woman with large bug-eyes, was practically crying with apologies as she saw Duncan clean the bathroom.
When he was done, he said, “You’re Elaine Doolittle, right?”
“Yes, Mr. Crowley.”
He passed over the bucket. “Being a manager has its duties and responsibilities. Cleaning up other people’s crap isn’t fun, but it has to be done. Even I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty when I have to. Have I made myself clear?”
She just nodded, took the bucket, and tried running back into the store, water slopping over the edge of the bucket.
Back in the Honda Pilot, Cameron quietly said, “Do you want her fired?”
“What’s her story?”
“Single mom of two boys.”
“Think she’s overworked, or lazy?”
“I’d guess overworked,” Cameron said.
“Then leave her be,” Duncan said, fastening his seatbelt. “But I want you to check the place a week from today. If it’s clean, fine. If not, get rid of her.”
“All right, then.”
They drove for a few minutes. Duncan said, “Another thing. On this import-export matter coming up in the next few d
ays, I’m concerned about our manpower. Especially if our Quebecois friends decide to come back for a more enthusiastic visit. How are you set?”
Cameron said, “Push comes to shove, bro, I think I can only rely on one or two members of the club. The rest are good for providing security or getting one-up in a bar brawl, but something like this … I just don’t know. Luke Munce did some time in the National Guard, he’d be good, but the rest would be a stretch.”
He sped up the Pilot as they passed a logging truck heading to a mill down south. When Cameron re-entered the lane he gave a quick glance to his younger brother. “Of course, if I knew what was coming across, I could plan better.”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“When?”
“Soon enough. So let’s get back to personnel. Any suggestions?”
“Story in the Union Leader last week said the Washington County sheriff’s department is cutting back on OT for the deputies. I suppose we could think about hiring a couple of the more desperate ones.”
Duncan looked out on the road, passing yet another single family home or trailer, with an ATV or snowmobile in the front yard that was for sale. Lots of yard sales went on in this part of the county, for those who had no jobs or whose welfare benefits had run out. “That just might work.”
“Bro, I was joking.”
“Good on you,” Duncan said. “I’m not.”
Lunch was in a tiny strip mall in Turner where Karen Crowley had a hair salon, and a small office in the rear that handled the bookkeeping for his legitimate businesses. The other stores in the mall included a Citizens Bank branch, Turner Subs & Pizza, and an Ace Hardware store. Cameron went off to run some personal errands—“lucky for you, you have a wife to do the shopping and pick up prescriptions”—and Duncan walked into Karen’s Cut & Curl.
His income stream was such that she didn’t have to work, but she had made it clear, early on, that she wasn’t going to be a stay-at-home wife. “Loved one,” she had whispered into his ear one night, “I plan to be your kept woman for the rest of my wenchy life, but I’m going to be a kept woman who works and contributes to the household.”
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