I thought about it for a moment. Why not tell him? Why wouldn’t the Bureau want that information to get loose? I told him what little we knew, or at least surmised, and he whistled in surprise.
“But there’s no positive ID?”
“Nope, and there may not ever be one. The fella who runs the marina where Trask keeps his boat told me he goes off into the night all the time, so maybe that’s what he’s done, and it’s somebody else who went dunking for neutrons.”
“But you don’t think so?”
I shook my head, remembering the shape of the body and that boot knife. “I think it’s Trask. His boss at Helios thinks it’s Trask.”
“He’s got a hidey-hole somewhere back in the jumble,” Houston said, “but he’s not there. I checked.”
A pair of headlights surprised us, coming around the adjacent stack. I hadn’t heard a vehicle, and neither had the dogs. Then I saw why: It was an electric golf cart that rolled up to where we were standing. The two men inside acknowledged Houston and then gave us a pointed once-over. The driver seemed to be especially interested in the dogs. They weren’t in uniform, per se, but they had the look of federal officers.
“They’re cool,” Houston told them. “Tell Hanson I’ve got word on the colonel. I’ll be on the air at the regular time.”
The driver nodded, and they went humming away into the night without having said a word. At least they had recognized Houston, scruffy clothes, long hair, and all. He looked at his watch. “We need to get back,” he said.
“You out there in that jungle all by yourself?”
“No, I’ve always got one backup. The kid with the face metal? They rotate people through the homeless network once a month or so. The real derelicts are clueless.”
We started back for the fence. “Any of those people ever cotton to who you really are?” Pardee asked.
“Occasionally,” Houston said, lifting the chain-link so we could get through. “But then I tell the colonel. He takes ’em somewhere in that steel jungle over there, and they don’t come back.”
“He’s killing people?”
“No, I don’t think so. There was one guy, a real whack-job, way off his meds, heard voices all the time. He started going on about spies, narcs, other wild shit, and aiming some of it at me because I kind of control the campfire. The colonel showed up one night, took him off for a little talk. We saw the guy again, maybe three days later, at the fire. Dude couldn’t speak a coherent word.”
“A suddenly mute schizophrenic-that would be a relief.”
“Scared-out-of-his-squirming-gourd mute,” Houston said. “Sat there, shaking like a leaf, and babbling about monsters and snakes out there in the container jungle. Freaked the rest of ’em out. Hell, it freaked me out. He wandered off after a coupl’a days, never saw his ass again. After that, somebody acts out, all I have to do is mention that I’m seeing the colonel that night, and all the regulars get big-eyed. Nobody fucks with me.”
“How long you been under?” I asked, as we re-entered the container tunnel.
“Going on two years,” he said.
“Damn! Hope you’re not married.”
“Not anymore,” he said. “But, looking on the bright side, there’s a ton of overtime.”
It was after midnight by the time we got back to the beach house. We sat out on the front porch having a beer and some leathery leftover pizza, kicking around the next steps. I still wanted to focus on Allie: I needed to develop a detailed timeline of her visit to Wilmington. She’d made that single report back to the office the day after beginning her surveillance of the dallying lawyers. Got the goods, will be back tomorrow. But what was that personal business she’d gone to do? Who’d seen her? Who’d she talked to? How’d she end up at that convenience store? She hadn’t filed a report, and I actually hadn’t seen her videotape, which I now remembered I’d promised to share with the Bureau people. It might be in her car-maybe get ahold of that, see what it showed.
Tony amplified that idea. See how many miles she’d burned up on the trip. My people always set their odometers when they go out on assignment so they can log and then later write off the business mileage on their personal vehicles. See if there was any paperwork, bridge tolls, ferry tickets, hotel parking stubs, anything to indicate she’d left Wilmington. I said I’d call Bernie Price, find out what they’d done with her vehicle, which they’d supposedly recovered from the gas island at that convenience store.
“In other words, we need to do some scut work,” Tony observed.
“It’s what we do,” I said. “It’s usually what pays off, too. Any better ideas?”
No one had a better idea, so we went in. It was late, but I wasn’t ready for sleep yet. I got a jacket out of the closet, poured a glass of Scotch, and went back out to the front porch with the shepherds. It was cold and damp enough for fog, but there was just enough of a sea breeze coming in from the estuary to keep the fog at bay. All the neighboring houses were dark. Channel buoy lights blinked here and there out there in the light chop on the river, and a large container ship slid soundlessly across my view, bound for the Atlantic and away.
A Southport cop car came along on a slow roll through the neighborhood. It went past our rental, stopped, and then backed up. The shepherds got up to watch from the top of the steps. A fifty-something uniformed cop with an Irish face, a prominent belly, and sergeant’s stripes got out and put his cap on. He then walked casually up the front walk. He stepped up to the porch, patted each dog on the head, and asked if he could have a word. I pointed to one of the wicker rockers, and he sank into it with the sigh of a man who does not like to spend time on his feet.
“Sergeant Lloyd J. McMichaels, at your service, sir,” he said pleasantly. “And aren’t those lovely shepherds.”
“They are indeed, Sergeant,” I said. “Can I offer you a coffee or something?”
He eyed the Scotch briefly, smiled, and said thank you, no, on duty and all that. I then asked how I could help him.
“You would be the retired Lieutenant of Police Cameron Richter, would you not, sir?”
I nodded.
“And your two associates, also retired police officers, from up in the Triad of North Carolina?”
“Correct again, Sergeant. We’re actually all retired from the sheriff’s office in Manceford County. I formed a private investigations company when I got out, and several of my cohorts joined me when their time was up.”
“Lovely, lovely,” he said, nodding. “Sounds like an ideal setup, it does-cops working with other cops. It must save a lot of bother, not having to work for or with civilians.”
“That was the point,” I said. “We wanted to be around people who knew how to act, as it were.” The shepherds were back to lying down again, obviously comfortable with a uniformed policeman on the front porch. They always reacted well to confident people.
“Would you be so kind as to share with me your reasons for being here in our little village?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “And I apologize for not stopping by the House and making my manners. I actually didn’t think you’d care.”
He gave me a droll look over the bridge of his spectacles.
I explained who we were working for and a little bit about the case, focusing mostly on Allie’s death by radiation poisoning. He nodded when I was done.
“It was the presence of all those fierce-looking G-men in town which provoked my interest,” he said. “Southport is a touristy place, of course, although at this time of year, not many of them, to be sure. So seeing federal officers lurking about our streets, without so much as a squeak from the Wilmington office, by the by, piqued our attention.”
“I guess we all forgot our manners,” I said. “But this doesn’t involve Southport, as best I can tell. Helios is where the action is.”
“Ah, Helios,” he said. “The land of the captive suns. Does this action perhaps include a homicide, as I’m being told?”