In the moment of silence that followed, Jim watched his mother — the girl his mother once had been — pull a handful of tissue from a box and dry her face. “The battle keeps me sane,” she said.
“Everyone needs one.”
“Now... let me tell you about Annie.”
“First of all, she thought that someone was watching her.”
“When did she tell you this?”
“Twice. The first time was months ago-late February, say. You know how Ann liked to walk the peninsula, late at night sometimes, just walk around and look at things? Well, she’d stopped by the Locker before going to the preschool. I remember clearly, she got a cup of coffee, poured in some milk, and told me how nice the sky was the night before, how many and clear the stars were. It was right after a storm, and the wind was coming out of the east, dry and colder than hell. And she told me that when she was walking around the neighborhood, she felt as if someone was behind her, but when she turned around to look, there was nothing.”
Jim considered. It was not like Ann to imagine things, or to say something was happening before she was sure it really was. Ann would not say someone was walking behind her unless she believed there was.
“When was the second time, Mom?”
“It was three weeks ago. I’d taken off around two to go help her with snack time. When I walked up, she was standing in the yard area, surrounded by all the kids. She stood still while the breeze whipped around her, looking out toward the water. She was kind of white. She looked like she was in a trance or something, until I came up and she broke into a smile. And she said, ‘Mom, it’s the strangest thing, but I feel like someone’s watching me.’ She hadn’t seen anything or heard anything — just a feeling this time. I wouldn’t even think much of it, but Annie’s not the type to make up those kinds of things, I’m the paranoid in this family. Besides... the same thing happened to me.”
“The following?”
Virginia nodded. A wisp of yellow hair, much the same color as her jacket with the marlin on the back, unwound and settled across her face. She blew on it, then positioned it behind an ear with her fingers. “I walk from here to the Locker every morning, right? There’s thirty feet of alley I go through, to the back door. Three mornings in the last two months, I saw someone standing at the corner, watching me head for the café. It’s still dark that early, so I couldn’t see much. At first, I thought it was Mackie Ruff or someone like him. He had the shape and the stillness of a waiting man. Then, two weeks ago, I went out with the Lady Anglers on twilight boat. We were all on board, weighing anchor, and I looked back toward the Locker and there he was. Same shape. Same attitude. It was him.”
“Did you recognize him?”
Virginia shook her head, then leveled her sun-paled blue eyes at Jim. “My belief is he’s one of Dennison’s men.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Stay here.” Virginia rose and disappeared into the kitchen. He heard the outside door slam, then silence. She’s going to the Locker, he thought. A few minutes later, she was back, with a heavy cardboard crate in her hands, one of the wax-sealed ones the frozen burgers arrived in.
Virginia set in on the floor, took a seat again, and pulled off the top. Inside were rows of test tubes, all labeled in her handwriting, each poked into foam to keep it upright. “This is your bay,” she said. “Someone’s been dumping in the ocean and the stuffs coming in on the tides. I’ve got samples here for three months running — starting back in late February.”
“When Ann thought she was followed.”
“Exactly.”
“What is it?”
“Seawater, with a twist — 1,1,1-Trichloroethane. It’s a solvent that kills things when you dump it in the sea. I’ve collected all these myself. Annie helped with a few. Most of them are in the Locker walk-in, but I’ve got some here at home, and Annie had three, too. We spread them out so they couldn’t all be taken at once.”
“By one of Dennison’s men?”
“That is correct. By whoever was following your sister and me. Let me tell you what’s going on here, Jim. This city is about to have the most important election in its history. The outcome will effect us more profoundly than that of any vote we’ve ever had. On one side are people who want to sell and exploit every last inch of what’s here; on the other are people who think that what’s precious should be protected. Brian Dennison’s run at mayor is being financed by the developers — mainly by C. David Cantrell of PacifiCo. It is no secret; you can read about it in the papers. Well, one of the things Cantrell wants to do is ‘redevelop’ this whole peninsula. It goes way beyond our neighborhood. The city can acquire property from anyone who won’t sell — from me, for instance, or Becky — by exercising their right of eminent domain. Dennison, as mayor, would exercise it. According to State Health and Safety Code, he’s required to close access to any public beaches when the toxic levels of TCE hit fifty parts per million. If the beaches close and stay closed long enough, people will be ready to give up and leave. This ocean here is everybody’s livelihood — directly or indirectly. My personal belief is that Dennison wants to let the levels rise until the city has to close the beaches, which will shut down this whole peninsula. Mayor Brian would tell the world what a polluted sinkhole it’s become. He’ll get council to condemn the structures. When that happens, Dave Cantrell’s redevelopment plan is going to look awfully good to the city council, especially with the value of the land way down. Basically, they’re shitting in our bay so they can buy it up cheap.”
Weir tried to grasp the magnitude of Virginia’s latest conspiracy theory. It was one in a long line that stretched back as far as he could remember. His favorite had always been the idea that the Beatles’ music was being used by Moscow to undermine the youth of America. There had been a booklet entitled Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles, which Virginia had bought and distributed among peninsula parents back in the early sixties. There was also fluoridation of drinking water, LSD as government-supplied, and something about UNICEF as a way of draining U.S. dollars into the Communist bloc. These beliefs had left Jim, even as a boy, more worried about the theories than the conspiracies.
“So Dennison is using his men to shadow you, and Ann? To worry you about taking the samples.”
“Exactly. Maybe even to get the samples themselves, or tamper with them. You see, he can’t let the bay pollution become a campaign issue until it’s gotten bad enough to do him any good — otherwise he’d have to stand up and do something about it.”
Jim remembered Brian’s unease about the feds. “And he’s afraid you’re going to blow the whistle early.”
“Yes.”
“Why haven’t you?”
Virginia placed the top back on the box. “All we have is trace. So far. Eight parts per million under the Coast Highway Bridge on May 3 — that was the highest.”
Jim sighed and shook his head. “Damn, Mom. You’ve got a pollution theory and no pollution. And cops running around after you to keep you from collecting evidence you’ve already got that doesn’t show anything.”
She looked at him and waited, clearly an admission that there was more here than met Jim’s eye. His mother had always been fond of watching Jim swim upstream into her silences. It took him a minute, then it was clear.
“Dennison doesn’t know you’ve only found trace. He thinks you’ve got more than you do.”
She nodded.
“How’s he know all this in the first place?”
“I’ve got one friend on his department — the Toxic Waste officer. He’s a good man, and he’s... well, intimated that I’ve been collecting data.”