"Or you have been reading too little," Mooncrow countered, standing and beckoning to him. "Come. Jennie has your clothing, and the car is ready. It is time to go."
And that, so it seemed, was that.
Except for the thoughts that ran through his head while they drove him home, fed him, and put him to bed. Thoughts that kept him silent, danced behind his closed eyes, and percolated through his dreams, a welter of Deer and Bear, space fighters and ancient warriors-
His dreams took a turn they never had before. He found himself wandering in a virgin wilderness, watching, listening, and then-
Then hiding, from a strange black beast that was neither human, bird nor animal, that walked upon two legs and left the land waste behind it. ...
This time Smith had called Rod Calligan, rather than the other way around, calling him at home. Rod took the call in his home office, after making certain that Toni couldn't pick up one of the other phones without him knowing. And the question the man asked him rather surprised Rod.
Brusque, blunt. "Are you getting anywhere with the Talldeer chick? How close are you to getting rid of her?"
"I haven't actually seen her once," Rod said, carefully, not mentioning the trap the girl had sprung and then taken. "She hasn't been out to the site that I know of, and she hasn't personally questioned anyone who's still on the project. I think I've thrown her a couple of fastballs, and at least she hasn't been actively interfering. No one's called me from your company. Why?"
"Because I have an idea," Smith replied, 'cautiously. "I want to be certain she's out of the picture before we do anything about it. It's a way to capitalize a little further on that land of yours."
As Smith outlined his "idea," Calligan began to smile.
Once the mall project was dead, Smith would come in with a phony holding company, and some cash; Rod would supply the rest. Smith's company would buy the land for next to nothing-land already cleared and waiting, ready for any purpose they cared to put it to. Rod would use his leverage with the county commissioners to get the area opened for a landfill. He would look like a good guy, making sure that the land was used for something that would produce some county tax revenue. And there would be plenty of clean dirt and rock going in there--with all the flood-control work going on, the dirt dredged up had to go somewhere, after all. Even the tree-huggers would be happy, if Smith's company promised to build a park on it once the landfill was full.
"That's what'll go on during the day," Smith said. "And I know, there's not much profit there. But after hours, we'll be doing something else-"
Because John Smith had a contact at a drilling company, and his contact had a lot of friends just like them. Wildcatters and independent oil drilling firms were having a hard time keeping their heads above water as it was-and all the piddly-shit regulations about disposing of the chemicals that came out of wells were driving a lot of them under. "You know anything about drilling?" Smith asked. "Not much," Calligan admitted. The fetish-bundle in his pocket seemed to draw his fingers to it. The soft leather felt comforting.
"Well, they have to force water, sometimes steam, down into slow wells to force the oil up," Smith told him, while he listened intently. "The water that comes up out of wells along with the oil is full of chemicals, from cyanide to polycarbonates, many of them very dangerous. The old way was to bury or dump the chemically-loaded water, but new regulations say the water has to be cleaned, the chemicals removed. The marginal drilling firms just can't afford the cost of running an 'environmentally correct' drilling operation. That's where we come in."
So by day the big trucks full of river sand and construction rock would come in, and leave piles of sand that would be bulldozed to cover up the barrels of chemicals John's "buddies" had left there at night. There'd be big money all around for everyone, and by the time anyone found out what was being dumped there, he and John Smith would be long gone. And no one would even be able to prove that they had even known about the illegal dumping in the first place. The chemical barrels would be unmarked. Everything would be in cash; no way to trace the payoffs, no way even to prove where the chemicals came from.
It was a beautiful scheme. It was no less beautiful, in that John had tentatively picked out another site, although he had done nothing about acquiring it yet.
"That one would have cost a lot more," Smith said. "It would have been a legal hazardous waste site, although it wouldn't have been rated for the welded barrels my people were going to bring in. The EPA would assume those fancy leakproof barrels, not welded steel."
When Rod asked him about the second site, he discovered he had another reason to buy into Smith's plan. The other site was very near Rod's subdivision-
That would not have been possible to keep under wraps for very long. Smith said candidly that the operation would be a short-lived one; six to eight months at the most, before someone found out and pulled the plug. It meant high profit, but high risk; people watchdogged those sites all the time, and sooner or later, someone would have started asking questions about the trucks coming in after normal operating hours.
Certainly word would have leaked out long before Rod was ready to sell his house and pull up stakes.
Word would leak out about the same time the cyanide did, he thought, amused at his own cleverness.
"It sounds good to me," he told Smith. "Tell you what, if the bitch gets out of hand, you think you can give me some help with her?"
"I didn't intend to, when it was just you and this bankruptcy scheme, but if we add in the dumping, that makes it worth my time," Smith replied, as Rod smiled. "Just say the word. I have-contacts."
The next day, it was business-as-usual, although Jennie didn't seem to be lobbying for him to move out of the spare room and back to his motel. In fact, Mooncrow suggested he go check out of the motel-"for a while, at least"-and stay with them, to further his education in Medicine. He didn't need a second invitation; it took him less than an hour to get everything moved into the guest room; Jennie didn't say anything, and she had to have noticed. '
It was business-as-usual, except for an incredible lightness of spirit, despite the strange dreams of last night. He just couldn't get angry at anyone for anything. He ran a few more checks for Jennie after he'd stashed his stuff in the room, while she took care of some smaller cases, tracking down spouses who'd split and were not paying alimony.
And he watched, and listened, to her and Mooncrow. Maybe he was seeing things more clearly now, but-
-but under all the teasing, the things that seemed like sniping, there was a very deep and abiding love between Jennie and Mooncrow. It kind of surprised him, in a way; he hadn't known they could have a teacher/student relationship and still have that kind of emotional bond.
He noticed something else, as well. Mooncrow was worried about something-about Jennie-but was keeping very quiet about it. Was it because he respected Jennie's ability to take care of herself? Or was it simply to keep from appearing to be an interfering old man?
If it had been anyone else, David would have said it was the latter. But not with these two.
And Jennie was beating herself over the head about something, something that had nothing to do with any of her current investigations. What it was, he had no idea, but as he watched her all through that day and the next, there was at least one thing she was doing that he figured he might be able to cure.
It was a trap he'd fallen into himself often enough to be able to see the same fault in her.
She was being way too serious, all the time; it was one thing to make sure the work got done, but it was another to let the work take over your life. She probably hadn't taken any time out just to have fun in years! There was a little tension-crease between her eyebrows that he wanted badly to smooth away, and he wanted to do it because he was her friend, and not for any other reason.
Well, mostly not, anyway.
Finally, he just couldn't take it any more. He had to try something. Otherwise he could see her turning herself into a knot in no time flat.
It was about nine; she typed a few things into her computer with the decisive clicks he'd come to associate with her finishing for the night.
"There," she said, shoving the keyboard drawer back under the desktop. "That's as far as I'm going to get with this Calligan thing tonight-"
"Then let's go," he said, quickly, before she could say anything about a sauna, or early bed, or catching the news.
She blinked at him, as if she had forgotten completely that he was there. "Go?" she said, puzzled. "Go where? Why? What's open at this time of night?"
He grinned. "You like techno," he stated. He knew he was right; he'd seen the CDs on her shelf, and he'd heard her listening to the techno-industrial alternative-rock radio program from Rogers College-or at least she had, before the college administration in their infinite wisdom shut it down.
"So?" One eyebrow lifted.
"So trust me." Before she could object, he came around to the side of her desk and held out his hand. She took it, dubiously. He pulled her to her feet, and led her out the door. She got into the passenger's side of his car with an expression of puzzled patience. It changed to an expression of disbelief when he headed downtown, since most of the downtown area locked up by 5:30 at night.
Most of it.
He took her to a rave, at a "club" that hadn't been there a month ago, and might not be next month, in a building that had been everything from a factory to an art gallery.
They were probably the oldest people there; it was hard to tell. The lighting was not particularly conducive to taking a good look at peoples' faces. Interesting thing about techno; the heavy beat was not all that dissimilar to drum-song. He hadn't done any fancy-dancing in a long time, but when the beat caught him up and he found himself gyrating as if he were wearing his old costume, he simply let his body do what it wanted to. Jennie clapped her hands and grinned like a maniac; she recognized the moves, even if the kids there didn't. He wasn't dancing for them, anyway; he was dancing for her, parading like the buck deer before the doe, and they both knew it, and both were delighted by the sheer silliness of it.
He drew a crowd anyway, a little circle of admirers, and when that piece ended and another began, Jennie got into the act, leaping into the circle and matching him beat for beat. He'd forgotten she used to compete in the shawl-dancing; maybe she had forgotten too, until that moment. Now it was a kind of competition between the two of them, but a competition of display, where it didn't matter who won, or even if there was a winner at all.
The band gave up before they did. But the moment the music ended, they tossed sweat-soaked hair out of their eyes, and traded a look of agreement.
This was enough for one night.
It took a little time to work through the crowd to get to the door and the parking lot. David was a little surprised when he stopped under a lot-light and looked at his watch to see that it was already midnight.
Beside him, Jennie paused to glance at her own watch. "Wow!" she said in a tone of awe. "I have more stamina than I thought!"