Significantly fewer file folders were present, with the result that more of the walls showed, and the many stains and scuffs on the brown and green surfaces were far more obvious. On the whole, the place looked better with the buffer of files.
Kemp was looking over his statement, nodding.
Shaw noted that the officer accepted the most important line of dialogue in his performance: “In my judgment, Ms. Parker used only the force necessary to protect her own life and the lives of her daughter and myself.”
Always good to have a version of the script ready, in case a firearm and a body were involved.
The police had turned cooperative.
It seemed that the reluctance to pursue Jon Merritt was due not really to the reputation of the Hero of Beacon Hill, but to the fact that Harmon had a captain and two detectives on his payroll. One of these was Dunfry Kemp’s supervisor, who had assigned him the Merritt case, along with the numerous others to hamper the search for the former cop and his ex-wife and daughter. All with an eye to letting the Merritt murder-suicide proceed with as few glitches as possible.
With those on the take suspended, Kemp was unleashed and he’d turned into quite the efficient law enforcer.
“We’ll need you to testify, Mr. Shaw.”
He nodded.
“Bet you’ve done that before.”
“I have.”
“So you travel around the country looking for rewards, do you?”
“That’s right.”
Kemp seemed intrigued, and Shaw wondered if he was going to ask where to submit his resume. But he said, “You like doing that, why don’t you just join up?”
Regulations and a dreaded desk.
“I like traveling.”
“Well, keep it in mind, sir. Fact is, policing’s the best job in the world.”
“I’ve heard.”
“Prosecutor’ll be in touch.” Kemp slid the statement forward to Shaw, who signed it.
The man then asked, “You heard how he’s doing? Need to talk to him too.”
“Better.”
The individual they were referring to was a prior participant in the incident, someone not expected to make a reappearance.
Frank Villaine.
Who was not dead after all.
The Twins had arrived at the man’s house just as he was leaving, intending to torture him into telling where Allison and Hannah had gone. They hadn’t expected him to be armed and he let loose with his Glock and fled into the woods. One of the Twins caught him in the back with a slug and he went down. They assumed he was dead or soon would be, and then found that they didn’t need his cooperation; they noticed that the GPS in the Mercedes was programmed with his destination: the cabin on Timberwolf Lake.
Villaine had been found by a neighbor that evening and rushed to a hospital. Allison Parker was presently with him.
Shaw rose. The men shook hands.
It was then that his phone hummed with a text. He read the words. Debated only a moment and replied.
He stood on the riverwalk, near the Fourth Street Bridge.
Beneath him the mustard-brown Kenoah muscled past.
Shaw inhaled. Harmon’s toxic cocktails were no longer being dumped into the victimized body of water, and it seemed there’d been an improvement in the odor.
Imagination? Maybe.
He was looking across the river, at the famed tourist draw, the Water Clock — the inspiration for the project that father and daughter had tackled for history class. The model of the attraction that Jon Merritt had built in prison had been recovered from the wrecked Buick and returned to Parker and Hannah. It was still in working order and was now sitting on the mantelpiece of their rental home. He wondered what had become of the bolo.
“Hey there,” came the melodic, Southern-laced voice.
Sonja Nilsson was climbing up a stone stairway from a dock twenty feet below. She’d been conferring with two men on a small craft fitted out with a bristle of scientific equipment.
Shaw nodded a greeting.
The woman was in jeans, a work shirt and a leather jacket, a far cry from the stylish outfit she’d worn when they’d first met in Harmon’s office. An orange safety vest too. Her blond hair was done up in a braid that was then swirled into a careless bun and pinned firmly to the back of her head. Looking for all the world like a Saturday morning shopper in Stockholm, about to stop for a coffee. Minus the vest, of course.
“How’s your Range Rover?”
“A couple of weeks. Quite the long pause when I told the insurance examiner that the cause of the damage was an improvised explosive device.”
Shaw peered down at the Kenoah. “And the water quality?”
The workers had been wielding yellow Geiger counters.
“We’re good. Negligible from the point of the spill to here. Downstream, it’s negative.”
So the radiation was no longer a threat.
He glanced at her face and noted her scanning about them. He had just done the same. Her jacket was partly open and he could see the grip of her weapon.
Their eyes met.
Ah, that green... Nature, or not?
He said, “Probably we’re good.” Referring to risk assessment.
True.
Nilsson would always be cautious about being on the watchlist, thanks to the larcenous government contractor. As for individuals involved in the HEP situation, though, there were none left to pose a threat.
At Deep Woods Lake, Jon Merritt had killed Dominic Ryan and one of his Irish crew. The other, wounded, was in jail and fully prepared to gab.
Tan Jacket — Desmond Sawicki — was gone, of course.
And so was his partner, Moll Frain, the man Allison Parker had set free. There was no danger of his making a shocking act-three appearance, like the supposedly dead henchman at the end of a bad movie. He was found this morning in his workshop on the outskirts of Ferrington, dead by his own hand. He was sitting in a chair made of aluminum but painted to look like rich wood. He himself had decorated it. Apparently he was quite the artist. Who would have thought?
“Is HEP shut down?” Shaw asked.
“For a spell.”
The Mason-Dixon phrase, and appropriate accent, coming from the mouth of a Swedish fashion model both jarred and was oddly appealing.
She continued, “We’ve got EPA, NRC and AEC inspectors on the way. But—” She glanced down at the boat. “They’ll find the same things we just did. And we’ll get the green light to start up again.”
Then Shaw told himself: Stop it.
Referring not to his government regulators or corporate operations but Shaw’s own debate about her eye color.
“Who’ll replace him?” he asked.
“The board’ll be meeting to make a pick. There’s talk that Allison Parker’d be a good choice. No management experience but she knows the product better than anybody. And” — a smile — “the business of atomic energy’s been a man’s world forever. It’d be good for a female to be the face of HEP. But nobody’s asking my opinion. I’m like you, Colter. Just hired help.”
Shaw noted, across the street, an FPD Crime Scene van parked in front of a gloomy alleyway on Manufacturers Row. A plain-clothed detective was interviewing some men who appeared to be homeless.
“What happened there?”
“Drug deal gone south, I heard.”
Shaw said, “Thought maybe that serial killer resurfaced. The Street Cleaner.”
“No, she’s still at large.”
Shaw’s brows furrowed.
“Oh, didn’t you know? It’s a woman. So says the DNA. Rare. But we girls can get up to bad business too, you know.”
Shaw laughed. For a brief time, he’d wondered if Jon Merritt himself might be the Street Cleaner, taking his job as Vice officer one step over the line. But he’d given the theory only thirty percent and then discarded it entirely.