I tried not to breathe in the noxious stuff. “I thought you were a biologist.”
“Need chem to do what I’m doing. The fields are related. Shoulda taken the philosophy of science,” he said, looking over his wire-rims.
“Taught it, doc,” I said, smiling.
“All right, gimme that stuff.” He tried to look calm, but the excitement was in his eyes as he stared at the gunk in the jar. “And you found this exactly where?”
I told him about the trip to Shark River, about the unusual noises we heard in the water, about the proximity of the oil derrick out in the Gulf, just beyond the boundary of the National Park, and about what we thought was an oil slick on the water not far from Jack’s boat.
“So I scooped up what I thought was a good sample,” I said. I waited for his reaction.
He pulled over a microscope from a group scattered around the table and spread a small amount of the goop on a glass plate he stuck under the scope.
“Jeez, this stuff stinks!” he said, as he leaned over the scope. He studied the sample for over a minute, moving it around with a thin wooden spatula, then straightened up.
“Someone’s fucking around out there!” he said, and I watched the color rise in his cheeks. His beard, bleached by the sun, shook as he said it, and the veins in his cheeks went from a fine spider web of almost indistinguishable red to scarlet. Then he hit the table almost knocking over the jar of evidence. It bounced and fell back without shattering. “Damn them!” he said, and I knew that ‘them’ were the demons he had been fighting his whole professional life—and they were destroying his home, the Swamp.
“Somebody’s fracking with my baby!”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Planning for War
We were back at my house off Midnight Drive by 2:00 a.m. We talked about nothing else the whole way, except what Graham Bell had discovered about our Shark River sample.
“What the hell have we gotten into, Coop?” said Louise. “We’re working a murder case and now we’re suddenly looking at fracking?” She thought for a moment. “Maybe Jack was helping his daughter more than she realized.”
“Uh-huh.” I turned on the porch lights so we could see where we were going. Sammy was there, his tail curled around his body and sitting erect. He padded over, purring, and wrapped himself around my leg, rubbing against my jeans. That means dinner. As I mentioned, Sammy stays outside when I’m away and keeps Herman company. Sometimes he gets to eat the scraps left from Herman’s dinner—I never wanted to know where Herman went shopping.
Sammy followed me into the kitchen. I opened a new can of Friskies—chicken livers this time—and spooned them into his dish. He was waiting for me by his water.
“You should take better care of your cat, Cooper. Your baby needs attention. Just like yous would if you were left alone all-a-time.” Richie, the sensitive one. Actually, Richie takes care of his mother who lives in a walk-up near his place on Murray Hill in Cleveland. Ma wouldn’t know what to do I don’t take care of her. My brothers could care less, Richie complained. But he loved it—taking care of Ma.
“Let’s sit,” I said, when everyone was settled. Louise had picked up Sammy and was stroking his fur, his kitty motor running smoothly.
“First of all,” I looked over at Louise who had stopped petting Sammy—his motor had stopped— “we have several things going on. There’s Jack…and his murder. Then there’s the boat shooting at us near the big oil rig—”
“And hitting Cynthia,” Louise added, “strangely enough.”
I nodded.
“And the person who was in Jack’s house when you and Cynthia went through it,” she continued. “And the Black Lotus somebody left in your bedroom,” she said.
“And the go-fast boats,” said Richie, jumping in. “Probably running drugs.”
“And Li Lung and Sun Lei showing up at the big rig,” I added. “And now the stuff that Graham Bell initially identified as chemicals that are used in fracking—”
“That he’s obviously going to have to follow up on. I mean his first look is hardly scientific,” said Louise. “And the noises—”
“Yeah, the thumping. That was weird. It was coming from below us, like a—”
“Like the beginning of an earthquake, Coop. The ground was speaking to you,” added Huck. Huck the philosopher, I thought.
“I speak from the knowledge that my ancestors received from their fathers, and from the ancestors who dwelt in the Great Swamp…”
I closed my eyes. Huck has a way of going on, too…
“Oh, shut up,” said Richie, harshly.
“I’m just saying…” said Huck.
“Hey!” I said. “Maybe the earth was speaking to us. Something is going on out there—or down there.”
“And now we have the information from Doctor Bell,” broke in Louise. “Maybe that goo we sampled is coming from a break in a pipe. But where?”
“Maybe from the rig we saw off-shore, that wildcatter rig, a mile or so out in the Gulf, near Ponce de Leon Bay,” I said. But how? I wondered.
“How?” said Louise. More ESP.
“Maybe horizontal drilling. Extracting oil from underneath the National Park.” Maybe that’s what Jack had stumbled on, I thought.
“Don’t make sense,” said Richie.
“You drill straight down, say 10,000 feet, turn at a right angle and drill horizontally—a couple of miles maybe—to extract oil from an area not reachable from above—like in an environmentally sensitive area. Like the Everglades.” I said.
And if a sparrow had lost a feather in flight, the sound of that feather hitting the earth would have shattered the silence of my house tonight.
“The basic technology has been around for a few decades,” I continued. “But the capacity for drilling horizontally has grown. The record is over six miles.”
No one said anything. I just stopped and thought.
I wondered what company owned the rights to drill just outside the boundaries of the National Park. And I wondered if there was a connection between that rig and the Zhi Zhu Nu. Huck had said the fast boat that had fired on them was coming from the north. Maybe running from the small derrick to the Zhi Zhu Nu. And if so, why? Lots of things to think about—and check up on.
I saw two visits in our future, and I didn’t need a crystal ball.
Chapter Sixty
Dreaming about Maxie
Friday Morning, December 9
We talked ourselves out by 3:35 in the a.m. according to the big red numbers on the digital clock in my bedroom. Richie had taken the bed in the guest bedroom. Huck was sacked out on the couch in the front room.
“Used to roughin’ it, amigos,” he had said. I never thought of a couch as roughing it.
Richie was good with that. “Need my space,” he said.
I was lying on my back, eyes locked on the ceiling when Louise rolled over, put her arms around me, and asked, what was the problem?
“I don’t know. I’m thinking. No. I’m dreaming—about Maxie. A lot more these days. As I told you, it’s like he’s alive and I’m living these days with him—and he’s in trouble. I swear, Louise, I can almost see where he is, feel what he is experiencing, sense his presence—physically.”
I was sweating, and she held me tighter.
“You’ve been looking for a long time, babe.” She falls into that Colombian accent of hers when she lets her guard down, that voice when she first told me about how her father, a director of the Federales in Colombia, was assassinated by a drug lord—probably with help from the police. How he was an honest man, a good man, at war with the cartels; how she saw him shot on the steps of her own home, in front of her mother and her brothers and sisters—and she watched from behind a screen door; how he had bled to death, as her mother ran out on the steps while the car from where the shots were fired sped away; how her mother had screamed. And I’ll never forget it. I was only eleven, for God’s sake, she had said.
And it was that sc
ene I was recalling when she said, “It’s perfectly natural for you to dream about your son. He lives in your memory and he will for as long as you live. And it’s okay.” She ran her hand through my hair. “We will find him,” she assured me. I loved how she said we. “And when we do, I swear, Coop, I will kill the people responsible for this thing.”
And I believed her. Since she was not able to find the men responsible for her father’s death, she would get her revenge—on the guys who took my son.
And so will I. I swear it! I thought.
Chapter Sixty-One
The Rig Near Shark River
We were all up at the smell of bacon. Richie—the cook. The Master Chef.
Back in Little Italy—in his condo, he has a kitchen to kill for. On Sundays, when he has visitors, he’s up at 3:00 a.m. cooking the sauce. Takes at least eight hours! he says. Then there’s the meatballs—Just like Ma’s, he says. When Ma’s there, she does the cooking. Her secret ingredients are pig’s feet and pork. And there ain’t nothin’ better than Ma’s, Richie insists.
Louise was out of bed before me and in the bathroom, probably for a half hour—minimum. She’s not a girly-girl, but she likes to look good, she says. Period. No arguments. But, I’m no girly-girl, she insists.
Louise is tough, physically and mentally—and beautiful. You would never expect the fire that burns inside her. Probably from what she saw as a kid: the killing of her father. And that’s why she understands—about Maxie. Nothing like experience to teach us about life. About evil.
A friend, a psychiatrist, and I were walking away from an encounter with a nasty clerk at a golf pro-shop. He didn’t seem to be bothered, like I was. “He’s got a form of autism,” my friend explained. Then, noticing my surprise, he added, “There are three kinds of people in the world: those who are ignorant—they just don’t know any better—those who are mentally ill—like our friend back there—and those who are evil.”
“Evil?” I said, shocked at the thought.
“Yes,” he said. “Evil.”
“And normal people? Like us?” I said, hopefully.
“Sure,” he admitted. “But I don’t see normal people.”
“So, what’s the plan, boss?” asked Huck. Calling me boss more and more these days. I wondered what he wanted. That PI license he told me he expected, I figured. I put in the hours, boss—working cases, he would argue. There’s that boss again.
“My thought,” and they all watched me over the bacon and eggs that Richie had laid on their plates, the whites dark brown from the butter he had spooned over them while they cooked; pancakes, steaming and covered with blueberries; and bacon, crisp, almost burned—way I like it, said Richie—“we’ll visit the derrick in Ponce de Leon Bay first. See what we can see. Somebody’s fracking somewhere and that’s the closest rig.”
“And how do you plan to find this out?” said Louise. “Board the rig, line up the big boys and torture them?” Always the Devil’s Advocate.
“Jack was killed in that vicinity. And Graham says that the substance we found near Jack’s boat appears to contain chemicals used in fracking—he expects his analysis to confirm that. And then there was that noise we heard last night near Jack’s boat, like an alligator pounding his tail against the ground.
“So right now, I’m looking at the derrick in Ponce de Leon Bay for some of those answers. That’s why we’re going to pay those boys a visit. See what we can see.”
Louise nodded. “Uh-huh. I’m still not clear on how we’re going to do that without boarding.”
“Maybe when we get there it will come clear,” I said. “Let’s get there first, and then make a plan.”
“Typical, Cooper,” said Richie. “Best plan’s no plan, right?”
I shrugged. “It’s all I’ve got right now. So, let’s eat.”
Chapter Sixty-Two
The Ponce de Leon Derrick
Late Friday Morning, December 9
We were back at the Pilot House prepping Jack’s Canyon 376. Its 350 HP Yamahas are enough to bankrupt most boat owners. The tank was half empty, so we added another 190 gallons of fuel. Figure it out. At approximately $5.00 a gallon, that would be about $900. I wondered how I would tell Cynthia as I watched the pump run up the bill. No problems, she had said. Jack had a good business. Plenty of money to find his killers. Don’t care if we spend it all! Hell with it.
By late morning we were back in the Florida Straits, passing Islamorada and entering Snake River. It would carry us to Florida Bay and eventually back into the Gulf of Mexico. We passed Snake River Marina by 11:30 and Huck had us at full throttle heading out into the Bay and east toward the Gulf of Mexico ten minutes later. We were east of Cape Sable by 1:00 and heading north toward Ponce de Leon Bay, staying well offshore to avoid the ever-present crab traps. In another half-hour we were in Ponce de Leon Bay, storm clouds pulling down the shades on the day.
“Do you think we should head into Shark River for some cover?” said Louise, looking nervously at the black stuff piling up against the horizon.
“Yes, Ma’am,” said Huck, swinging the wheel east into the bay and toward Shark River Island which lies between Little Shark River on the south and Shark River on the north. There’s shallow water near the Island where we could anchor and find some shelter.
In the distance, off to the west, maybe several miles away, was the derrick. All that was visible was the upper part of the structure, lights beginning to blink on the tower as the sky darkened. No sooner had we anchored than the storm set in, rain pouring over the Canyon like a waterfall, waves pushing up over the deck.
“Jesus,” said Huck, pulling the hatch behind him as a wall of water drove him forward, the noise of the storm blocked by the slamming of the door.
“Why don’t you drown us!” yelled Richie, glaring at Huck.
Huck ignored him.
We were anchored firmly in about four feet of water. But waves would heave the boat up, pushing the water out from under us, then we would crash, like free-falling on a tidal wave, the anchor chain screaming and grinding as the boat descended. I worried about what would happen if the floor of the river were ever completely exposed.
This went on for several hours as we took turns in the head, trying to clean it each time for the next person. That’s like riding a bronco and trying to brush your teeth.
By late afternoon we were finally able to go topside. As with all storms, there is the humidity and there is also the sun as it tries to restore the day as it was. The bay was calm again, and the rig—looking like the Eiffel Tower—hadn’t moved an inch. We moved toward it as the shadows of late afternoon began to play on the water.
“Let’s slow her down here,” I said as the platform grew in size. We were about a half-mile away.
“What are we going to do? Knock on the door and see if they’ll let us in?” Louise said, always thinking ahead.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” and I signaled Huck. He pushed the throttle ahead, the boat jumping in the water as the motors caught the surface.
The water surrounding the rig was probably about seventy meters deep. The Gulf of Mexico is like a massive water basin whose sides slope upwards and eventually form a shelf at the very top. That’s where the rig was sitting—on the shelf of that basin, where the depths average less than 100 meters, shallow by comparison to the deepest part of the Gulf, the Sigsbee Deep, where depths run over 4300 meters. That’s almost three miles. Anyway, that should give you an idea of the greater challenge that deepwater drilling faces—like the Zhi Zhu Nu that’s drilling into 1,982 meters of water.
The smaller rig would be easier to approach, its platform resting maybe ten meters above the sea, high enough to stay above the enormous waves stirred up by Gulf storms. By comparison, the platform of the Zhi Zhu Nu rises about thirty-five meters above the surface of the Straits. In either case you need a helicopter to climb aboard—unless you want to use the emergency ladder. Try either one in a storm and
you get the idea of what life on a rig is like.
“Let’s see what we can stir up,” I said, and motioned for Huck to drive the Canyon up close to the rig.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Jillie and Henry
Late Friday Morning, December 9
The winter sun was moving across the mid-day sky as Jillie stared out the window at fields that rolled endlessly along Route 40 toward Cambridge, Ohio. Highway 40 is the scenic route. Henry had thought that road would be more interesting—and romantic—his words. It was cold. Thirty-nine degrees and clouds hung in the sky—low and ponderous—like they were full of snow. The weather over the Thanksgiving holiday had been a mild, almost early fall kind of weather, a break from the normal cool, sometimes frosty, days normal for late November.
The leaves had dropped from most of the trees and were piled high against the sidewalk in front of her house, leaving the trees naked against the sky, stripped down for the winter storms that hit central Ohio regularly. Jillie didn’t like this part of the year—transition time—she was looking forward to the first big snowfall when winter would really be here, and yes, when she could build a snowman on the front lawn, just like she and Maxie had done every year when he was…alive?
A Cold Copper Moon (The Cooper Series Book 3) Page 18