three

“Let me get this straight,” I said, pulling up a chair in Frank’s office at the Cold Spring Harbor stationhouse. “You’ve got two warehouses full of garbage.”

“Technically, its tech equipment,” he replied, pleased with his alliteration. “Used computers, phones, fax machines. Anything with a cord.” Frank opened a picture on his iPad to reveal a football field–sized warehouse crammed floor to ceiling with equipment. “This photo was taken at one of the storage units at the industrial park near the railroad tracks.”

The office door swung open and Officers Cheski and Lamendola, both of whom were instrumental in solving my brother’s murder, joined us.

“How about that picture, CeCe?” Cheski said, taking a seat. “It was so dense in the warehouse, we needed our cellphones to keep track of each other,” he added, pointing eagerly at his rookie partner, Lamendola. I was happy to see that Cheski, who was near retirement, had not lost his vigor for the job.

“Looks like a great place for a paintball party,” I commented.

“See? You always got me,” Cheski said as he patted my back. “I’m so glad to see you,” he added, and then turned to Frank. “Here are the files you wanted.”

He opened a folder. “The warehouses are in separate industrial parks, owned by different companies.”

“Did the owners call the police?” I asked.

“No,” Cheski said. He slid another manila folder, marked EPA Hazardous Contaminant Report in red block letters, across the table. “There’s a local environmental group called GroundSweep.”

“Sure,” I confirmed. “I know them. It’s a national organization with local chapters. Group members plan weekly hikes in high-risk areas to measure air and ground quality. I’m guessing they step up their efforts as Earth Day approaches.”

“Yeah, well apparently, one of the hiker’s meters went berserk on their tour of these two industrial parks.” Cheski tapped his phone and retrieved an app. “Can you believe this? There’s an app for metal meter readings. Anyone cruising their neighborhood can get a quick count just like the GroundSweep volunteers.”

The arrow on Cheski’s phone wobbled unevenly to the right. His face flinched. I led his hand away from the metal topped desk, and the arrow repositioned itself to zero.

“I think we’ll live,” I said, and turned to Frank. “I’m assuming GroundSweep uses something more reliable than a phone app meter?”

“They do,” Frank replied. “Their local leader reported their findings to the Environmental Conservation Board where it made its way up to the EPA.” He narrowed his eyes, picking key facts from the report. “Their chapter leader, a woman named Janice Bates, called it in and that’s when it got ugly. The EPA slapped the storage unit owners with fines upwards of fifty thousand, and Ms. Bates now claims she is being harassed by the owners for filing the complaint.”

“Those EPA guys,” Lamendola added, “it’s like they fine by the pound.”

“I’m confused,” I said. “How are the Cold Spring Harbor police involved?”

“The warehouses are within town lines,” Frank explained. “As it turns out, the storage unit owners may have been scammed. The lessee, a company called United Eco-Systems, rented space at both warehouses, paid five years in advance, and disappeared, leaving tons of electronic waste. And, Ms. Bates, also a resident of Cold Spring Harbor, is requesting police protection.” He rolled his eyes. “The last part is probably a public relations play on the part of GroundSweep.”

I flipped through the EPA report. It read like the first broadcasts from Chernobyl. I had visions of office workers fleeing the industrial park tearing at their eyes. I blinked reflexively.

“I’m sufficiently freaked out,” I admitted. The surroundings didn’t help. The last time I’d been in this room I had sketched the woman ultimately responsible for my brother’s death. Talk about a pencil-gnawing situation. I could have gone through a box of number twos faster than a team of beavers that day. The Cold Spring Harbor police station wasn’t a feel-good place for me.

“What do you want from me?” I asked as I held up the new sketchbook. “Drawing garbage is not my forte.”

“But you do have a certain familiarity with garbage,” Cheski said, referring to my Dumpster diving.

“I just need information at his point,” Frank cleared his throat. “Four days ago, I took the liberty of introducing myself to your friend Bob at the town dump. I called him, told him I knew you, and he said he’d be happy to help.”

“Was he helpful?” I asked.

“I expected he would be, but he never called back,” Frank said.

That’s not like Bob, I thought. “Did you get anything from him?”

Frank deconstructed the only phone conversation he had had with Bob.

“He asked me if I wanted to trash-talk,” Frank said, and then added, “He’s quite the jokester. Am I right about that?”

“Bob’s a pun machine.”

“I told him I just needed to understand the players in the recycling business, and he said he’d be happy to give me the lay of the landfill.” Frank smirked.

“That’s Bob.”

“I mentioned my interest was e-waste,” Frank said, “and that’s where I felt like I’d lost him.”

“The garbage business can be messy,” I said, enjoying my own pun.

“So I’m learning,” Frank replied. “Anyway, he said to give him a day or two. I’ve left a few messages, but no response.”

Now that was a disconnect I couldn’t let pass. “Bob is always at the recycling center. He’s a permanent fixture, like a hunk of non-compostable plastic.”

Lamendola grunted at the comparison.

“No, I mean it. He and his wife Barbara live about a quarter mile from the entrance.”

Frank perked up at my input. He signaled to Lamendola and Cheski. “Check it out,” he directed as they filed out.

Frank swung his chair next to me. He ran his fingers along the length of my forearms. I knew what he was thinking. My wrists were slender, my arms toned. I could have been any twenty-something addicted to yoga and herbal cleanses, but my look is deceptive. My strength and skin tone are honed from working Harbor House’s farm, jumping in and out of Dumpsters, and lugging cans of paint to my attic studio. Frank traced my fingers with his. It’s what he loved most, my hands. He knew my mind unfolded in the accuracy of my sketches.

“Hey,” he started, “I screwed up. I didn’t expect a ton of e-waste to snowball.”

“Into a missing persons case?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

I weaved my hands into his. “You get that my Dumpster diving is a ridiculously tiny piece of the larger world of garbage?”

“I do.”

“Reusing old furniture, digging up old car parts to fix the Gremlin, diving for an occasional meal.”

Frank winced at the mention of eating food from a Dumpster. It was a lingering piece of my lifestyle he couldn’t quite digest.

“That’s child’s play.” I retracted my hand. “Me, Bob, Charlie, Katrina, Jonathan—we’re simple Freegans.”

“Garbage for the greater good.” Frank confirmed his twelve-month indoctrination into my wacky world of Dumpster diving and Freegan living. “I’m aware.”

“You also know that some really bad people deal in garbage, exchanging a lot of dirty cash. The kind of people that carry weapons and have names that sound an awful lot like DeRosa.”

I thought about the last time I had seen Bob. We had discussed the lead on my “previously driven” new car last Friday, exactly a week ago. Plenty of time for Bob to get back to me. Although I now realized I hadn’t heard from Bob, either.

“So you talked to Bob on Monday?” I asked.

Frank nodded.

If something were wrong and bad people were involved, Bob had nothing more in his pocket for protection than the five-inch plastic doll I had given him a week ago. Not much of a weapon. Too bad I didn’t offer Bob a GI Joe with Kung Fu grip.

“I’m with you,” Frank replied, “and I’m equally concerned about Bob’s whereabouts.”

“How concerned?”

Frank stood up to pace. If I had a penny for every foot this guy trod, I thought. I watched as he circled the conference room at the Cold Spring Harbor station. He settled at the windows, staring at the Long Island Sound lapping against the bay beaches.

“It’s mesmerizing,” I said, coming up behind him. “I could look at it all day.”

“But you don’t.” He nodded at my sketchbook, my daily distraction.

I placed the back of my fingers at the exact point where his beard line met his cheekbone. His masculinity was palpable. I skimmed the bristle running along his jawline. “Are we going to have this conversation?” I said, referencing an issue we’d been avoiding for as long as our courtship.

“We need to find Bob,” Frank said.

“And then you’ll help me?”

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said.

Later? This could get old, I thought. Not to mention boring, frustrating, and downright maddening. Frank had been the detective on my brother’s case, and although the murderer was ultimately found, Frank had made a more gruesome discovery: My father, a DNA expert and the founder of the world renowned Sound View Laboratories, had used his own children as subjects in a long-term DNA study. When Teddy had figured out that he and I had been involved, it set off a chain reaction that subsequently led to his death. My brother and I, unbeknownst to us, were not actually related, a blow I still couldn’t process. In fact, my brother had a genetically related sibling; it just wasn’t me. My father had adopted Teddy as a twin and then separated the boys as infants. Teddy was raised with all the privileges that come to the child of a wealthy doctor. My father placed the other twin with a family of poor, uneducated immigrants. Then the good doctor waited to see if these two boys with nearly identical DNA would become products of their surroundings or their genetics.

Of course, my father, being an important and impatient man, couldn’t wait the years it would take for his multigenerational study to unfold. When Teddy hit puberty, he took a sample of Teddy’s sperm in hopes of speeding up a study of subsequent generations. At that point, he needed an egg, but human ova are tough to come by. Unless, of course, you have a daughter.

While my father was busy mixing and matching our DNA, he was also regularly observing Teddy’s twin, who was living a decent life a few towns away from the Prentice’s palatial spread on the Gold Coast of Long Island. He hoped that little boy would repeat the pattern of poverty his parents exhibited. Nurture over nature, the ability to override the genes you’re born with. But despite a challenging environment, that boy had grown up to become a damn good cop. It must have driven my father nuts.

Frank, as it turned out, was Teddy’s brother.

Frank’s face was familiar although not an exact replica of my brother. Looking at him always left me with a sense of déjà vu. It was the same feeling I got when I thought about my father’s experiment. In truth, I wasn’t even sure the product of my egg and my brother’s sperm had resulted in a baby. There was no evidence to support it, yet I couldn’t shake the idea that something familiar was close by. My father, who admitted to the experiment, insisted he had lost track of my egg and my brother’s sperm—but how could I believe the man who had concocted the bizarre experiment in the first place? I couldn’t. I was only a tween when my egg was taken. Now, at the ripe old age of twenty-eight, I could have a baby out there or even a teenager.

“I don’t want to talk about it later,” I said as I challenged Frank’s patent response.

“I don’t want to talk about it now,” he replied.

I’d never been to couples therapy, but I was pretty sure this wasn’t how good communication worked. Again, we were at a standstill.