Sheriff Timmy Whalen led Sugarman into the school, down a long stuffy corridor, to a room in the rear wing. The sign above the door said media center. The room was full of chrome-and-pressed-wood school desks. A television set was perched atop a rolling stand, and a padded chair was positioned a yard in front of the screen. One large window looked out at the steep grassy slope.
“Those plaques out front, along the entrance drive,” Sugar said. “What’s that about? Somebody a Thoreau fan?”
“A former teacher here, C.C. Olsen, was an admirer of Thoreau. They’re a memorial to Olsen.”
“Memorial.”
“You’ll be seeing Olsen in the videos. He passed away a year ago. Not quite fifty. Had lots of admirers in this community.”
“How’d he die?”
“Small-cell broncogenic malignancy.”
“That’s lung cancer?”
“As aggressive as it gets.”
Sheriff Whalen cleared her throat. She walked to the TV cart and switched on the DVD player on the shelf below the television. All brisk and bustle, keeping her distance.
“The video is a collection of the four public meetings. They began two years ago after much urging from Mr. Olsen, and took place in the gymnasium, which seats about two hundred. It was over capacity every time. Bates International was kind enough to send reps to try to assuage the community’s concerns. Lots of charts and smooth talk. Not much assuaging.”
“Concerns about what?”
Timmy switched on the TV, then turned to face him.
“Oh, come on, don’t be coy. You know what.”
“Concerns about what?” Sugarman said again.
“About that.” Whalen stepped from the TV stand and pointed toward the window, at the steep green hillside beyond. “It’s a gypsum stack, where they dump the leftovers of phosphate mining. About seventy million tons of acidic, radioactive sludge. The one you’re looking at happens to be twelve times the mass of the Great Pyramid at Giza.”
“Whoa.”
“You’re telling me you didn’t know about this?”
“I still don’t know.”
She looked at him suspiciously.
“I heard about the Peace River and Horse Creek, the flap about the watershed. A lot of people are pissed off about Bates strip-mining sensitive land, the impact it’s going to have downstream. I know a little about gypsum stacks, but nothing about that one in particular.”
Timmy Whalen walked over to the window, stared out at the grassy mountain. It wasn’t exactly an invitation, but Sugarman walked over and stood beside her, within the aura of her perfume. Something flowery. Jasmine maybe. Not strong, but noticeable enough to suggest she’d spritzed herself in the last hour or so. More mixed signals.
She turned her head and burned him with a reproachful look as if she’d read his thoughts. Sugarman took a step back.
“Okay,” she said. “Here’s the deal. Bates wants to increase the size of that gypsum stack by a third so they can dump more tailings. It’s a cost-cutting measure. They own the land that borders school property, and evidently it’s a lot cheaper to increase the size of one stack than start fresh with another.
“After a lot of back and forth, Mona Milligan worked out a compromise, a list of concessions: restore native habitat on some acreage they own near here, do odor testing and try to find a solution to what’s causing the bad smell, all kinds of sleight-of-hand mitigation bullshit. Finally Bates wore everyone down, or paid them off, and county, state, even the Environmental Protection Agency signed off. Everybody but the folks with kids in Pine Tree School. There was a great hue and cry. C.C. was the point man. He claimed the stack was already a serious health hazard. Increasing its size would only make matters worse.”
“Health hazard how?”
The sheriff glanced around the room, then marched over to the window and unhooked a small box that hung from a nail on the wall.
She brought it to him and Sugarman looked it over. It was the size of a cell phone, and 23.4 flickered in red LED lights on the small screen.
“There’s a meter in every corner of the school. C.C. Olsen paid for most of them out of his own pocket.”
“Radon detector?”
“That’s right,” she said. “Measures units of radioactivity per volume of air. Picocuries per liter. According to the EPA, a four is cause for alarm. You get an indoor reading above that, you’re supposed to have your building ventilated. You probably didn’t notice those air ducts on the roof of the school.”
“I noticed.”
“Well, that’s what they’re about. Cost the county forty-eight thousand bucks and only lowered the average readings from a thirty-six to what you see there. Some help, but it didn’t fix the problem. A reading of twenty is about a hundred times the average outdoor level. Or, in down-and-dirty terms, breathing the air inside this building is equal to smoking two packs of Marlboros a day.”
Sugarman looked around at the walls of the bare room.
“Kids are still going to school here. How does that happen if the building is contaminated?”
“For one thing, there’s conflicting science. Two sides to every coin. You know that old game.”
“Experts contradicting each other.”
“Yeah, and for another thing, this isn’t Miami or Sarasota. The county’s dirt poor. We’re talking tens of millions for a new school, land, construction costs, which means a major bump in property taxes unless the state kicks in, which it refuses to do. A couple of years back, Olsen did a petition drive and got a bond issue on the ballot, but the good citizens of the county said no thanks. Fixing something like this, it’s not as easy as snapping your damn fingers.”
“Hey, calm down. I’m not the enemy.”
She gave him a long look like she wasn’t so sure.
“Watch the video,” she said. “Get an education. You want some suspects, you’ll see a few hundred of them.”
The sheriff handed him the TV remote and walked to the door.
“One more thing,” he said. “You got a time line? How Abigail Bates spent the hours before she went canoeing?”
Her jaw muscled up, then relaxed. She traced a finger along the curve of her right eyebrow as if buying a moment to get her face under control.
“She drove from her condo on Longboat Key to the canoe rental place.”
“No stops along the way?”
She heaved a sigh. A woman not used to being cross-examined.
Sugarman waited while her eyes roamed the wall above the window.
“You know I’ll find out,” he said. “One way or the other.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m beginning to see how you work.”
“Where’d she stop, Sheriff?”
She shook her head and showed him a rueful smile.
“According to Ms. Bates’s secretary, she was scheduled to swing by her lawyer’s office in downtown Sarasota. Drop off some papers.”
“Carter Mosley?”
Her lips parted a fraction, then she caught herself and closed her mouth.
“My, my, you’re such a sharpie. Hard to believe you’ve only been here since breakfast.”
“I met Mosley last night in Islamorada. He flew the Milligans down.”
She was silent, looking out the window at the steep green hill.
“So Ms. Bates stopped by Mosley’s office,” Sugar said, “which means he may have known she was headed off on her canoe adventure.”
“Apparently she changed her mind. She never made it to Mosley’s.”
“That’s what he said?”
“That’s what he said.”
“You double-check his story? Interview his secretary, his staff?”
Sheriff Whalen stared at him, her eyes flickering with shadows and her lips moving distractedly.
“Listen, Timmy, I’m sorry, maybe I’m out of line.”
“More than likely.”
“But I have this sense you need somebody to open up to. That’s how you’re coming across.”
“And I bet you’re volunteering.”
“I’m a fairly good listener.”
She chuckled at his audacity. Reaching out to the window, she ran a finger down the edge of the pane as if checking its seal.
“Let me ask you something, Sugarman. Philosophical question.”
“Shoot.”
“Is everything always black and white to you? Justice, I mean. You ever find yourself puzzled, struggling to sort out right from wrong?”
“It’s happened, sure. More than I’d like.”
“For instance?”
“Okay. I have this friend down in the Keys, he’s a good guy, but shades of gray are his specialty. He’s spent his life slogging through one moral muddle after another. So, yeah, from all the bullshit Thorn dragged me into over the years, I know things aren’t always as clear-cut as we’d like them to be.”
Her body hardened, head lifting.
“Your friend’s name is what?”
“Thorn.”
She blinked. All the shadows were gone from her eyes.
“He’s a longtime buddy. Why, you’ve heard of him?”
“The name came up recently. Long-lost relative of the Milligans.”
“I didn’t realize it was public knowledge.”
“Not public, no,” she said. “But I’m a cop. We have our sources.”
She looked out at the green slope blazing with sunlight.
“Look, I’ve got some rounds to make,” she said. “Watch the videos. I’ll be interested in your take on things.”
When she was out the door, Sugarman stared out the window for a while. The woman was gaming him, but he still couldn’t decide just how. He shook his head, then pulled out his phone and redialed the cell number Thorn had been using but got the same woman’s robotic voice: “This number is not available . . .”
Sasha knew it was down to minutes. The invisible filaments joining her heart with Griffin’s told her that his hour had come around at last. His breath was slow and smooth. Beyond the reach of pain, he was smiling quietly, the way she’d seen them on the battlefield. Bodies torn open, limbs blown away, yet the dying soldier flushed with an eerie exhilaration.
She held him in her arms and savored his scent, his warmth. Imprinting it all, storing it deep. From time to time he opened his eyes and looked at her. He had nothing to say and neither did she. So she cooed to him, a wordless song she’d invented when he was born, half hum, half hymn.
For years it put him to sleep and it seemed to ease him now, as they lay in the shade, the water rocking the boat in rhythm with Griffin’s departing breath.
A wind from the north had begun to drive thunderheads before it, the northwest sky turning into a curdle of darkness. Tree limbs flexed, the foliage swelling and heaving as the wind prowled the nearby island.
She fingered away the bubbles from his lips and looked down into his half-open eyes. It was nearly done.
So goddamned unjust. She’d never asked for much. Just the simple things. Nothing extravagant, no wild dreams of riches or knights on white horses. All she wanted was the husband she had and the son that came to her.
That was more than sufficient. Her cup overflowed.
For years she lived her dream—the uncomplicated routines with C.C. and Griffin. Cooking, doing laundry, a garden out back, a view of the woods, one close friend she loved like a sister, classes at the junior college. Seeing the boy flourish. Watching him become a man, become more than Sasha ever was, smarter, funnier, happier. Watching him embrace his rural life while quietly yearning as his father once had for challenges beyond. An orderly rotation of the planets and the seasons and the moon and all things natural. It was more than Sasha ever expected, more than she believed she deserved. A gentle man who loved her. A boy who made her proud.
Griffin tapped her on the hand.
“What, baby? You need water?”
He motioned behind her, a drowsy wave.
She swung around, drawing the .45 from her hip holster, bringing the pistol up with both hands, panning back and forth across the empty inlet. Spooked by her own spookiness.
Griffin patted the deck. She came back around, lowering the weapon.
He pointed at his blue knapsack. Five feet away near the console.
She got up, retrieved it, brought it over. The sound of his breath was the rattle of seedpods in a parched desert breeze.
She held the backpack close and he tucked his hand inside and came out with a can of lighter fluid. Sasha set the backpack aside, feeling the weight of other cans inside.
She had a vision, a quick gut-kicking memory of C.C. and Griffin lighting up the charcoal for weekend burgers. A pyramid of briquettes, the flicker beginning to take hold, and the two of them, being silly, flaunting good sense, standing side by side taking turns squeezing from a can just like that, trying to outdo the other by shooting streams of fluid at the grill and laughing at the blue-yellow whoosh of flames.
Griffin pulled himself up against the transom. He drew the can to his chest, and looked past her eyes. His head wavered from side to side like a man drifting off at the wheel. He flicked the red button top loose, raised the can, tipped it on its side and closed one eye as if aiming down the sights of a sniper rifle.
He squirted a stream onto his sneakers, coated them good.
Sasha moved aside. The boy knew what he wanted, always had, and it wasn’t her place to manage this. He’d known with some certainty that he wasn’t coming home from this journey and had hauled along the cans. Who was she to say he couldn’t have the end he’d pictured?
She kept away from the splash of fluid till he’d wet both legs of his jeans and settled the can on his lap. Tired now, breathing heavy, wincing with the effort, his shoulders squeezing forward as if he meant to fold his wings closed across his body.
She took the can from his shaky hands and set it on the deck and kneeled to him.
“There’s two more,” he said. “In the bag.”
“Okay.”
“Do the rest,” he said.
“I will.”
“You promise me. Say it.”
“I promise you.”
He held her eyes and she saw their withering light, and behind her own eyes was the flapping and swirling of dark wings, the caws of angry crows.
“Thank you,” he said and got another breath. “Thank you, Mama.”
He closed his brown eyes on that thought, his cracked lips smiling. She watched the air torture him. His spindly chest rose and fell, and he managed it again, using all his concentration, and yet again another breath filled him and let him go.
Sasha Olsen was no more. Whatever she’d been was lost. She was out of body, out of mind, out of humanity.
She rocked her boy in her arms and looked out at the gray paradise of the Everglades. Her mission now was simple. Good death, noble death, useful death, taking as many with her as possible. Find out whose side God was on.
She crooned the song she’d made up long ago. A hum, a hymn, and now a dirge.