Recycle, Ltd. was about two hundred yards ahead as evidenced mainly by the single light they had near the office door. It had started to snow with large flakes that settled like feathers in short swooping arcs.
Charles opened the trunk and collected his gear: a Polaroid camera, a flashlight, and a few sample jars. Then he crossed the snow to the shadow of the empty brick mill and started to trudge toward Recycle, Ltd. After leaving Cathryn at the hospital, he had tried to sort through his confusing emotions. He could not come to a decision about Michelle’s treatment although intuition still told him that the child was not going to go into remission. He couldn’t get himself to deny her treatment, but he couldn’t bear to see her suffer more than she had to. He felt trapped. As a consequence, he welcomed the idea of heading up to Shaftesbury and trying to obtain some hard evidence of benzene dumping. At least that satisfied his emotional need for action.
As he came to the end of the building, he stopped and looked around the corner. He now had a full view of the factory that had taken over the last abandoned mill building in the long row.
With the Polaroid and flashlight in his coat pockets and the sample jars in his hands, Charles rounded the corner and headed toward the Pawtomack River, initially moving parallel to the hurricane fence. Once he could no longer see the light over the factory entrance, he cut diagonally across the empty lot, reaching the fence close to the riverbank. First the flashlight, then the sample jars were gently tossed over to land in the snow. With the camera slung over his shoulder, Charles grasped the mesh and began to climb. He teetered on the top, then leaped for the ground, landing on his feet but tumbling over onto his back. Fearful of being seen in the open lot, he gathered his things and hurried over to the shadow of the old factory.
He waited for a few moments, listening to the familiar sounds coming from inside the building. From where he was standing, he could look across the mostly frozen Pawtomack River and make out the trees on the opposite bank. The river was about fifty yards wide at that point. When he had regained his breath, he struggled along the building, heading for the corner facing the river. The going was difficult because the snow covered all sorts of trash and debris.
Charles reached the side of the building facing the river and, shielding his eyes from the lazy snowflakes, he looked down at his goaclass="underline" the two metal holding tanks. Unfortunately, they were close to the opposite end of the building. After a short pause, Charles set out climbing through the rusted and twisted remains of discarded machinery, only to find himself barred from further advance by a granite-lined sluice about ten feet across and five feet deep. The sluice came from a low arch beneath the building and ran toward the river bank where it was dammed with wooden planks. About midway in the opposite masonry wall was a connecting channel to a large lagoon. The fluid in the sluice and in the lagoon was not frozen and it had the unmistakable acrid smell of discarded industrial chemicals.
Immediately adjacent to the factory, Charles saw that two stout planks had been laid across the sluice. Putting his sample jars down, Charles flipped the planks over to rid them of their veneer of snow and ice. Then, with great care, he struggled across the makeshift bridge holding the sample jars under his right arm and using his left to support himself against the building.
On the opposite side of the sluice the ground sloped down and Charles could approach the level of the lagoon. From the makeshift appearance of the setup, particularly the incompetently constructed dam, Charles knew that the discarded chemicals in the lagoon continuously made their way into the river. He wanted a sample of that syrupy fluid. He bent down at the edge and, holding on to the upper lip of one of the jars, collected a pint or so of the slowly bubbling sludge. Using a bit of snow, Charles wiped off the jar, capped it, and left it to be retrieved on the way back. Meanwhile he wanted a photo of the dam, which kept this chemical cesspool from totally emptying itself into the river below.
Wally Crabb had taken an early dinner break from the rubber ovens with the two guys he played poker with: Angelo DeJesus and Giorgio Brezowski. Sitting at one of the picnic tables in the lunchroom, they’d played blackjack while they absentmindedly consumed their sandwiches. It hadn’t been a good evening for Wally. By six-twenty he was down about thirteen dollars and it didn’t seem like his luck was going to change. And to make matters worse, Brezowski was teasing him by flashing his toothless smile after every hand, silently saying “so long, sucker.” Brezo had lost his front teeth in a barroom brawl in Lowell, Massachusetts, two years ago.
Brezo dealt Wally a face card and a four of spades. When Wally asked him for a hit, Brezo socked him with another face card, sending him over twenty-one.
“Shit!” yelled Wally, slamming the cards down and swinging his massive legs from beneath the picnic table. He pushed himself to his feet and lumbered over to the cigarette machine.
“You out, big boy?” jeered Brezo, resuming play with Angelo.
Wally didn’t answer. He put his coins in the cigarette machine, punched his selection, and waited. Nothing happened. At least nothing inside the machine. Inside Wally’s brain it was like snapping a piano wire stretched to its tensile limit. With a powerful kick he jarred the machine, moving it back on its supports to thump the wall. Cocking his hand back to follow up with a right cross to the coin return, he saw a light flash outside the dark window.
To Brezo and Angelo’s disappointment—they had been hoping to watch the destruction of the cigarette machine—Wally’s cocked arm sank and he pressed his face against the window. “What the fuck, we going to have a thunderstorm now?” asked Wally. Then he saw the flash again, but this time caught a glimpse of its source. For an instant he saw a figure, arms to his face, legs slightly spread.
“It’s a goddamned camera,” said Wally, astonished. “Somebody is taking pictures of the lagoon.”
Wally reached for the phone and dialed Nat Archer’s office. He told the super what he’d seen.
“Must be that Martel nut,” said Nat Archer. “Who are you with, Wally?”
“Just Brezo and Angelo.”
“Why don’t you three go out there and see who it is. If it’s Martel, then teach him a lesson. Mr. Dawson told me that if he showed up again to make sure it was his last visit. Remember the guy is out there illegally. He’s trespassing.”
“You got it,” said Wally, hanging up the receiver. Turning to his buddies and cracking his knuckles, he said, “We’re going to have some fun. Get your coats.”
After photographing the dam, Charles worked his way over to the metal holding tanks. With the flashlight he tried to make sense out of the profusion of pipes and valves. One pipe led directly to a fenced-off area at the edge of the parking lot and obviously served as the off-load site. Another pipe coursed away from the tanks and with a T-connector joined the roof drain conduit on its way to the river bank. Using great care to keep from slipping down the embankment, Charles managed to get to the edge, which was some twenty feet above the surface of the river. The roof drain ended abruptly, spilling its contents down the embankment. The smell of benzene was intense and below the pipe was a patch of open water. The rest of the river was solidly frozen and covered with snow. After taking several pictures of the pipe, Charles leaned out with his second jar and caught some of the fluid dripping from the end. When he thought he had enough, he closed the jar and left it next to the first one. He was almost finished; his mission was more successful than he had hoped. He just wanted to photograph the T-connection between the pipe from the storage tanks and the drain conduit and the feed pipe from the storage tanks back to where it emerged from the factory.