by Nick Pirog
I came right out with it. “Did you know Neil Felding?”
Her eyes doubled in size, but she didn’t answer.
“You knew him, didn’t you? You worked with him?”
She glanced around, then slowly nodded.
“How long did you work with him?”
“Six years.”
“Did you guys get along?”
“Yeah.”
I waited for her to elaborate, to say how nice a guy he was, that he was brilliant. She didn’t.
“Why was he fired?”
She stirred her salad around but said nothing.
“What was he working on?” I prodded, loud enough the two men at the opposite table both glanced over.
“Um—” she began to answer, but was interrupted by a loud clomping.
I turned and gazed over my shoulder.
Striding into the cafeteria were five people: Allison the executive and four gentlemen. Two of them were my friends from the security screening, Old Gray and Young Wispy. The third man was tall, at least 6’5”, with a thick frame to match. He had a shaved head and a well-trimmed gray beard. He might be wearing a suit today, but I could tell he’d spent the better part of his life in combat fatigues. He might as well have been wearing a sticker that read “Hi, I’m Dolf. I work for Blackwater.”
As for the fourth man, he wore his suit like a second skin. He was my size, but had the build of a distance runner. His white hair was perfectly coifed, and small rectangular glasses were held snug against the best rhinoplasty had to offer. Though he could easily pass for a man in his fifties, he was actually seventy-three years old.
Lunhill CEO, David Ramsey.
According to what I’d read on the internet, David Ramsey had become the majority shareholder of Lunhill in the late eighties after making a small fortune working as a top executive at Exxon for two decades.
I stood as the five approached, but not before Sheila uttered a single word under her breath. The word meant little to me, but I didn’t have time to inquire further as Female Executive, Old Gray, Young Wispy, Dolf, and Vader had closed to within mere feet.
“You need to come with us,” Old Gray barked.
“Okay,” I complied. Well, I complied verbally. Physically, I sat back down in my seat.
Young Wispy stepped behind me and gave me a little push in the back. I turned and shook my head. “Don’t.”
He slipped a stun gun off his hip and held it at his side.
The stun gun wasn’t what stopped me from putting my elbow through his face. It was Dolf. He looked on with a cold stare. If I so much as flinched in Young Wispy’s direction, I had no doubt my next memory would be of a hospital bed.
I stood up and walked forward.
“Impersonating an FBI agent,” David Ramsey said dryly, “trespassing, corporate espionage. You’ve had a busy day, Mr. Prescott.”
I was tempted to ask him how he found out my real name, but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of telling me how easy it was.
I did say, “Good thing I ate my Wheaties.”
He shook his head ever so slightly, like a father might at seeing his child’s B+ on a report card, and said, “The police are on their way.”
“Bullshit.”
He glared at me.
“The last thing you want is me getting arrested. My name carries weight, and if it leaks that I impersonated a dead FBI agent to infiltrate your headquarters and that it was ridiculously easy, it’s going to get a lot of conspiracy theorists talking.”
He was silent a beat, then said, “You’re right. There will be no record of this.”
The way he said it, I think he was hinting at something more sinister. That maybe if I was to go missing or get my head blown off, there would be no record of that either.
He gave a nod to Old Gray and said, “See him out.”
The two security guards began ushering me toward the cafeteria entrance. When I was halfway there, Brian walked through the doorway on his return from the bathroom.
He looked on in bewilderment.
I smiled at him and said, “Find me on Facebook.”
When I was just steps from the door, I turned around and glared at Ramsey and the mercenary. “I know what you did to Neil Felding!” I shouted.
I watched them both closely, waiting for either of them to react.
But neither of them so much as blinked.
Simon Beach was an hour drive south.
I had to see it for myself. I had to see the destruction the evils of Lunhill and its co-conspirators had wreaked.
I followed the directions on my phone until I came to the town limits. Spray painted on the road was a white line. Just beyond the line was the word “DIOXIN” in thick ominous lettering.
The meaning was obvious: once you cross over the white line, you have entered into a new world, one of contamination and destruction.
I slowly rolled the Range Rover over the line. I continued on for several blocks. It was a lost world. Trees, brush, and weeds had overtaken most of the roads. What was left of the houses and businesses were in shambles. The flood waters that had besieged the town had weakened the buildings to the point of failure. No reconstruction efforts were made. They were left alone. Left to die. It reminded me of the opening shot of any post-apocalypse movie.
A few more blocks inland there was a giant water tower. It listed slightly to the left and had “Simon Beach” etched around its circumference in black letters. Underneath this, in red graffiti, was a skull and crossbones.
It was all very eerie.
I crept along the road. After a couple blocks, a river came into view. The water swept by, taking whatever poison still lay in the soil with it downstream.
I drove for another half mile, then slowed to a crawl. On the left side of the road, hidden in a thicket of brush, was an abandoned school bus. I wondered how it had ended up there. Had the floodwater deposited it there? Had it been abandoned by a sick driver? Had it been the bus Ronald Reagan’s Simon Beach Task Force arrived in?
Just past the school bus, there was a large sign next to the road. It read “Heavily Contaminated Area. Stay in your car. Keep your windows up as you drive.”
Uh, no thanks.
I put the car in park.
Lunhill was not entirely to blame for what happened to Simon Beach, but it had all started because they were trying to save a buck. They had no longer wanted to shell out the money to send the dioxin barrels to Louisiana where they could be properly disposed of.
They had been found responsible. Forced to pay $200 million. They had paid for their sin.
But what other secrets did they have?
How many other Simon Beaches had they gotten away with?
I knew one thing for certain: whatever one of these secrets was, Neil Felding had found out. And that’s what killed him.
I thought back to what Sheila said when I asked what Neil had been working on.
She’d only said one word.
Terminator.
Chapter Twenty-One
“It’s okay,” I said, rubbing May’s shaking body. “They’re just fireworks.”
There was a loud explosion and May’s pink-and-ink-spotted body jerked. She let out a loud whine. Harold, who was curled up under a pile of hay, lifted his tan head slightly and squealed.
Earlier in the day, I’d driven into town to check out the Fourth of July festivities. Half the town was blocked off as the high school marching band, several fire trucks, and a stream of different floats paraded down Main Street, then wended their way through the many side streets. The sidewalks were cluttered with residents in lawn chairs, drinking beers, not to mention little kids running amok with sparklers in hand.
It was all very celebratory, but I wasn’t in the mood. I was too preoccupied with analyzing everything I’d learned at Lunhill HQ three days prior. There was no doubt in my mind that Neil Felding had stumbled onto something he shouldn’t have. It could have been any number of things to
do with Lunhill: dioxin, GMOs, fraudulent political practices, something to do with the EPA or the FDA, or possibly something that Neil had been working on—something that had to do with the movie Terminator.
I had stayed in town just long enough to watch the parade, then I’d headed back to the farm. That’s when I noticed the front door to the farmhouse was ajar.
At first I thought of Caroline, but unless she’d teleported off the float she was riding on in the parade, then it wasn’t her. And it couldn’t have been Randall; he and his family were spending the holiday at a lake a few hours north. It possibly could have been Wheeler, but her truck was nowhere to be seen.
After combing the house and half the farm for the two piglets, I finally found them hunkered down in the far corner of the barn.
My best guess was that someone from one of the neighboring farms had been shooting off fireworks, and in their angst, the piglets had pushed up against the front door of the farmhouse and somehow gotten it to open. Then they’d made their way into the barn.
I’d been trying to coax them back into the house for the past several hours without much luck.
A series of fireworks exploded, and after May recovered from another shaking fit, I asked, “You sure you guys don’t want to go back in the house?”
I tried lifting Harold out of the hay, but he dug himself even deeper.
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll stay in here.”
I fluffed up some hay until I was comfortable, then I pulled out my phone and hit play.
I’d watched so much television the past six months that the thought of spending two hours staring at a screen disgusted me. But I had to watch it. I had to know what Neil Felding’s coworker, Sheila, meant when she uttered the word “Terminator.”
Two hours later, I was no closer to understanding.
Was she saying that Neil Felding was the Terminator? Or that Neil Felding was John Connor? Or Sarah Conner? Was Lunhill Skynet? Had Lunhill been working on time travel?
What did it all mean?
But maybe I hadn’t heard all of what Sheila said. Maybe she actually said, “Terminator II.” Or maybe even “Terminator Genesis.”
How many movies were there?
I did a search on my phone.
There were five.
Five fucking movies!
“I’m not watching the one with Christian Bale. I’m just not,” I said out loud.
I put the phone down.
The fireworks had fallen silent an hour earlier and both the piglets were asleep.
A few minutes later, I was too.
“Welp,” I said. “That’s a lot of chickens.”
There were probably close to fifty running around, squawking, flapping their wings at one another.
It was July 6th and Randall had returned from his little vacation. He chuckled and said, “I told you I had a good chicken guy.”
I grinned, then asked, “So will the chickens just go into the coop on their own?”
“Yeah, just watch, they’ll play around for a little while out here, but they’ll find their way into the coop eventually.”
“Where are the roosters?”
“Roosters?”
“Yeah, you know, the birds that knock these chickens up so they start laying eggs.”
He slapped me on the shoulder. “You don’t know shit, do ya?”
“What?”
“Chickens don’t need to get knocked up to lay eggs.”
“They don’t?”
“No. They do that all on their own. Now if you want those eggs to actually turn into little chicks, then ya got to get a rooster.”
“Oh.”
He glared at me for a long second then said, “You want a rooster, don’t you?”
I did. Mostly because there was a rooster in the picture I colored. I didn’t dare tell Randall this.
“Don’t worry,” he said, giving my back another nice hard slap. “I got a rooster guy too.”
Unlike the Brush Hog, which was pulled behind the tractor, the tiller was attached up front.
Randall had been behind the wheel for the past thirty minutes, and we’d already tilled close to an acre. This would be a far easier task than the brush removal.
According to Randall, the purpose of tilling was to break up the hard crust of the dirt and to oxygenate the soil.
The tractor did a tight turn, and from the passenger seat of the tractor, I gazed across the several rows of tilled dirt.
I took a deep breath and shouted over the rumble of the tractor engine, “What do you know about Lunhill?”
The tractor slowed, then came to a halt. Randall turned and asked, “Lunhill?”
“Yeah, what do you know about them?”
“Bunch of gutless sonsofbitches.” His eyes narrowed and it felt as though he were looking through me, almost as if he were glaring at their headquarters ninety miles due east. “Remember how I told you I lost my farm?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Well, the reason I lost it was because those assholes sued me.”
“They sued you?”
He cut the engine.
“Yeah, this guy comes onto my farm, dressed in a suit, carrying a briefcase. Tells me he’s there to audit my seeds.”
“Audit, like the IRS?”
“Shit, I wish it had been the IRS. I would have stood a chance against them.”
I gave a slight scoff. Lunhill was scarier to these people than the IRS. “Did you let him?”
“I told him in so many words to piss off.”
Thatta boy.
“So he leaves. I didn’t think anything of it, and another month passed. It was now August and I was doing a harvest. Great year. The best year I’d ever had. Little guy comes back. Has some paperwork signed by a local judge, and get this, he’s got the police with him.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Chief Eccleston?”
“How’d you know?”
“Just a hunch.”
“Well, they said they had probable cause. That someone had turned me in.”
“Turned you in? For what?”
“For using Lunhill seeds.”
“Those Spectrum-H things?”
“Spectrum-H(R)—means they are resistant to Spectrum-H—so when you spray it, all the weeds die, but the corn, or soy, or whatever doesn’t.”
“And you weren’t using these seeds?”
He leaned back an inch, like I visibly slapped him.
“Course not. I’m all organic. I don’t spray shit, least of all, those assholes’ poison.” He lay on the word poison. I was tempted to ask him to elaborate, but I didn’t want him to lose focus.
“Sorry.”
He shook me off like a pitcher shaking off a pitch. “Don’t worry, I just get a little riled up.” He took a long breath. “Anyhow, I had to watch while this sonofabitch went through my fields taking samples of all my plants.”
“What is Eccleston doing during all this?”
“Just sitting in his car like a dumbass.”
“And then they just leave?”
“They said they were gonna run some tests and get back to me.”
“Were you worried?”
“Not really. I mean, I wasn’t using their seeds.”
“So then what happened?”
“Six months later, I got served papers. Lunhill was suing me for patent infringement. Sixty thousand dollars.”
“What’d you do?”
“I hired a lawyer, hired a bunch of independent researchers to test my seeds…” He paused, then added, “and thirty thousand dollars later, I got the same results. I was using GMOs.”
He said GMOs the way a doctor might say syphilis.
“How is that possible?” I asked.
“Cross-contamination.”
“What?”
“All the farmers around me were using Lunhill seeds. They must have blown over in the wind and cross-pollinated with my seeds.” He shook his head. “I should have known when I had such a goo
d year. I was growing those Frankenseeds.”
“Did you still go to trial?”
“Had to. I was in too deep. Only way I would be able to recoup my lawyer fees and research costs was if I won.”
“But you couldn’t prove the cross-contamination?”
“Nope.” He sighed. “I lost at trial. The sixty thousand-dollar fine on top of the thirty grand I spent on my own and I couldn’t make the mortgage. Bank foreclosed on the property a few months later.”
“Shit.” I shook my head, then asked, “You ever find out who turned you in?”
“No.”
We switched seats, and I took over the tilling.
Randall didn’t speak the rest of the afternoon.
I could color between the lines like a pro—I had two adult coloring books to prove it—but when it came to freehand drawing, I was a five-year-old with carpal tunnel.
I looked down at the picture I’d drawn on a piece of computer paper: big round head, receding hairline, droopy jowls. I added some peeling skin to his forehead and scribbled “Chief Eccleston.” Then I taped the picture to the bedroom wall.
After what Randall had told me about Eccleston accompanying the Lunhill man to his farm, I didn’t have a shred of doubt that at some level the Chief was connected to Lunhill.
I’d drawn pictures on several more pieces of paper and taped them to the wall as well. “David Ramsey” looked like the character from Guess Who with the glasses. “Neil Felding” was a stick figure with a lab coat. He had a whistle in his mouth and was blowing it. “Lowry Barnes” was a circle face with a single arm coming out of it holding a gun. I was especially proud of that one. Then there was a picture of a big gorilla, or what I intended as a gorilla, but looked more like a huge rabbit. This was “Dolf,” the Blackwater goon.
Then there was a picture with five circle faces with X’s for eyes. On this, I wrote “Save-More Murders.” Then there was a single face with the same X’s. On this I wrote “Mike Zernan.”
These six pictures encircled a final piece of paper. On the page were two words: “Cover-up.”
I knew everything was connected. I just didn’t know what they were covering up or how the pieces fit together.