Deadly Waters Pt. 05

Amy reviewed Officer Brady's complaint and had clearly and unequivocally stated that the policy Danny was referring to was for disputes over bonuses, raises, and overtime, not disciplinary actions, and he should be thankful he wasn't fired. The rest of his officers had offered to help pick up the slack until Danny came back on duty. Whether the officers were making a quiet show of support or looking for the overtime, he wasn't sure, but the support made what he was doing tolerable. He hadn't taken them up on their offers, but he hadn't started working the graveyard shift yet, either.

Rudy had called after Amy made her ruling to offer him a half-hearted apology for trying to meddle, and Sean had accepted. The only thing that wasn't going his way was the damned Thacker case. With nothing else to work with, and his plate full covering for Danny, he'd sat the case aside. At least the news of Thacker's death was off the front page, and Rudy had relaxed considerably.

He was sitting at his desk, sipping his coffee to snap himself awake, when his phone rang. "Sean."

"Sean, it's Maggie. How are you?"

"Hanging in there. How can I help you?"

"I remember way back at the beginning of this Thacker thing, you kept talking about how you were looking for patterns, or breaks in existing patterns. You remember that?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Would you be interested in a change in an existing pattern?"

"You have something?"

"Steve Locoste is here, dumping."

"Okay. So?"

"He was just here three weeks ago."

"I'm sorry, I must be dense today. I'm not following."

"It's only been three weeks since he dumped his last load. Before he was in every six to eight weeks, sometimes longer."

He smiled as the proverbial lightbulb clicked on. "Okay, now I see. Could this be an anomaly?"

"Could be. When I saw him come through the gate, I sent Alex out to collect a sample. We're analyzing it now."

"Are you looking for something?"

"No. It's been a while since we've sampled him, and with all the stir surrounding him coming in the last time, I figured we should pull a sample, just in case."

Sean thought about his next step. "Have you got the results in from your first set of river tests?"

"I have. You want to come see them?"

He grinned. "That was just what I was thinking. I'll be there in ten minutes."

"Better make it quick. He's been here for a few minutes already, and it only takes him twenty or thirty minutes to unload."

"I guess I'd better hurry then," he said as he rose, his sleepiness and coffee forgotten.

Sean pulled through the open gate and could see Steve's truck still in the dump pit. He thought about pulling into the admin parking lot, but decided he needed to take the bull by the horns. He proceeded along the road before pulling into the grass and stopping beside Steve's truck.

"Councilman," Sean said as he stepped out of his cruiser.

"Chief. What brings you out here?"

"I'm having Maggie run some tests on the river, watching for spikes in... whatever it is she's looking for. I can't remember all this stuff. Anyway, it's part of the Thacker case. The first of the test results are in and she called me. I came down so she could explain what the results mean. I'm learning way more about wastewater treatment than I ever wanted to know."

Steve grinned. "Believe me, I know how you feel. I joined the city council right at the end of the approval phase of the plant upgrade. What a mess. I had no idea what I was doing. Gordon Bollinger, the plant manager at the time, was helping us make decisions on what he had to have and what would be nice to have. Even then, he didn't get some of the stuff he said they had to have because we just couldn't afford it."

Sean watched the viscous liquid run out of the hose and into the hole at the end of the pit. "That's some nasty looking stuff. What is it?"

"Mostly water. The rest is our various glues and acetone. When we start and stop the manufacturing process there's some waste, and then there is the cleanup of the lines after the run ends. Until the city gets the sewer line run out to us, I have to store it and bring it here to dump."

"And the stuff can go down the drain... so to speak?"

"Yeah. We don't use animal-based proteins anymore, nobody does, but this is still, essentially, an organic compound. Now we synthesize the polymers and tackifiers instead of getting them from animals, oil, or wherever."

"Tackifiers is what makes glue sticky?"

"More or less, yes."

"And that's why horses were sent to the glue factory?"

Steve nodded. "A long time ago, yeah. Too expensive to do it that way now."

Sean grunted. "Learn something new every day. What kind of glues do you make?"

"Several different kinds. We make a very nice wood glue. When fully cured, it's stronger than the wood itself. We sell a lot of that. We also have a line of fabric glues we've developed that we're trying to get into the market to replace tacking. We have big hopes for it, but it's taking longer to ramp up than we expected. I thought the stuff would sell like gangbusters, but the industry has been slow to accept it." Steve gave his head a quick shake as his lips thinned in exaggerated frustration. "Furniture making is a business steeped in tradition. Sometimes it's slow to adopt new ideas."

"I know how that is. You should try being the computer guy in a large police department. How often do you have to come dump?"

Steve shrugged. "It varies. Depends on production. Every few weeks."

"That has to be a hassle. Why hasn't the city run the lines out to the industrial park? You're neighbor out there, what's his name?"

"Bob Willis?"

"Yeah, that's it. Willis was giving me an earful about it."

Steve chuckled. "You should hear him bend my ear. So why haven't we done it? Why do you think? Money. It's still on the drawing board. We're having to replace failing sewer pipe at the moment. The whole system is between fifty and seventy-five years old and it's falling apart. This project should have been started years ago, and now we're behind the eight ball, trying to stay ahead of the major failures. I'd love to extend the lines out there, but for now, that money is better spent keeping what we've got in the ground working. When we start working on that end of town, that's when we'll extend the lines and hook the park into the system, but that's at least three years away."

Sean nodded. "So, until then, you get to play with your truck."

"Yeah!" Steve said with a big grin. "It's the best part of my day, and it gets me out of the office for a couple of hours."

Sean chuckled. "You sound like a kid with a new toy."

"Hey, you have to take your wins where you can find them," Steve said with a smile.

Sean nodded. "I know how that feels, too."

Steve glanced at the trickle of liquid flowing from the large gray hose. "I think I'm empty. Anything else you want to know before I start cleaning up?"

"No. I actually came to see Maggie, but I saw your truck out here, so I thought I'd stop by and say hi."

"If you want to hang around, you can help me wash the truck off," Steve said as he used wire cutters to snip a pair of long zip ties.

There were two ties, one for each of the two handles. Each of the ties wrapped around a handle and then around the chrome plated mechanism on the end of the pipe that secured it to the valve on the truck.

"No, I need to get back to work. Thanks anyway." Before he turned away he nodded at the back of the truck. "What are those for?"

"The zips? DOT regulation. Even though those handles lock the pipe to the truck, the Department of Transportation, in its infinite wisdom, says you have to secure the locking handles in place. It's stupid, but it's the rules. I guess it prevents you from accidentally knocking the handles open or something, but that's all they'll do. If the pipe is going to blow off, those little zips aren't going to prevent it, but rules are rules. I don't want to get fined because I was too lazy, or cheap, to put a quarter-cent zip-tie on there."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"Don't try. It doesn't have to make any sense... you just have to do it. I'm sure someone makes a fancy lock to do the job, but I use zip ties. Other people use duct tape. It's stupid, but so long as you have something," he made tick marks in the air with his fingers, "securing the locking handles in place, you meet the requirement of the law."

"Our tax dollars at work."

"That's it," Steve said with a short chuckle. "Good luck with your investigation."

"Thanks," Sean said, and then turned and walked back to his cruiser.

As he sat down in his car, Steve was pulling the large diameter hose back from the hole. Sean sat and watched for a moment as Steve began to spray the pipe and back of the truck down with water from a garden hose attached to the nearby spigot. With a slight shake of his head, he started his car and drove around the plant and back to the admin building.

"I saw you out there talking to Steve. Everything okay?" Maggie asked as Sean entered the offices.

"Yeah. Nothing seemed unusual. I hinted around about him being back so early, but didn't learn anything. If he's up to something, I didn't want to spook him by coming on too strong and then have him try to hide it. How unusual is it that he's here so early?"

"He normally dumps every six to eight weeks. Could he be back in only three? Sure, I guess. I know he has a storage tank and if he is drawing that down for some reason, or if his production is up, sure, he could be here again. I called because it's something that had changed, and that's what you were going on about at the beginning."

He gave her a sideways grin. "Thanks for letting me know. It may turn out to be nothing, but at least it's something. Right now I'm at a standstill."

"So, Harbaugh is off your list?"

"Not off, but farther down. Everything he said, and you said about him, checked out. Unless he killed Thacker while he was on the clock..." he shrugged.

"Who do you think did it?"

He smiled again. "I couldn't tell you even if I knew, but to be honest, I don't have any idea. There isn't anyone I can point to and say, 'I think it's him, I just have to prove it.' Nobody seems like a good suspect. Now, about the tests?"

"Nothing," she replied, her tone saying more than the word.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing. Not one thing looks out of whack to me."

"You know that doesn't help me at all, right?"

She grinned. "Sorry. The numbers are what they are."

He slowly scratched at the side of his face as he thought. "Okay, thanks. Can you keep it up for a little while longer? It's only been a week."

"Sure, but for how long? My lab crew is griping about the extra work."

"I don't know. At least another few weeks."

She rolled her eyes. "We'll do it, but you realize it's a lot of extra work for us, right?"

"I know, and I'm sorry. I'll bring in a couple dozen doughnuts tomorrow as a thank you. Will that help?"

She giggled. "It couldn't hurt. Make some of them chocolate glazed."

"Chocolate glazed. Got it," he said. "Tell them thanks for me. They're helping, even if it doesn't seem like it."

"Throw in some of those junior detective badge things, and I think they'll get over it."

"Two dozen chocolate glazed doughnuts and a stack of junior detective badges. Anything else?"

She giggled again. "Nope! That ought to do it."

"Jeez... you're bankrupting me," he muttered in a dramatic stage whisper, and then grinned.

"Sean," he said after picking up the handset of his phone.

"Chief, Mayor Klinger is here to see you," Terri said.

"Send him back."

He wondered what the mayor wanted. After the spat over the stew festival, and then the suspension of Danny, Rudy hadn't bothered him much.

"Chief McGhee, why are you questioning Steve Locoste?" Rudy asked the moment he stepped into Sean's office.

"What are you talking about?"

"Today, at the wastewater treatment plant. Why were you questioning him?"

"Slow down, mayor. I wasn't questioning him. I was at the plant to talk to Maggie about some tests she's running for me. I saw Steve was there and I stopped to say hello. Did he say I was questioning him?"

"Not exactly, but you made him uncomfortable with all your questions. Steve is a member of the city council for Christ sake!"

"All I was doing was talking to him. I asked him about his truck, and a little bit about what he made, and how often he dumped. That's it. I don't know why he'd be upset about that."

"I'm telling you, Steve didn't have anything to do with Thacker's death."

"I didn't say he did."

"Then why are you questioning him?"

"I just told you I wasn't. Is there something going on here I need to know about?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know. You tell me. Why are you so defensive?"

"I'm not!"

Sean's right eyebrow tried to crawl into his hair. "You're not? Then why are you in my office questioning me?"

"I don't understand why you are wasting your time on Steve. Almost since you got here, it's like you're trying to prove something."

"I am trying to prove something. I'm trying to find out and prove who killed Boyd Thacker."

"That's not what I'm talking about."

"What are you talking about then?"

"First you didn't take care of the protestors like I asked. Then--"

"They were within their legal right to protest if they wanted to," Sean interrupted. "I'm not going to start arresting people on some bullshit, trumped up charge, just because you don't like what they have to say. There's this thing called the First Amendment. I can get you a copy if you want to see it."

"This is what I'm talking about!"

"What?"

"You seem to be going out of your way to stir up trouble!"

"By refusing to harass people who are not breaking the law, I'm stirring up trouble? Are you serious?"

"It's not just that. You refused to do anything to help get the town out of the news, and--"

"By refusing to arrest a woman with no evidence of wrongdoing? That's what you're talking about?"

"And now you're harassing a member of the city council!"

"You do realize Steve Locoste and Kevin Harbaugh are the only people we've been able to find with opportunity to dump the body in the ditch, right?"

"And Maggie!"

"No, Maggie may have had motive, but not opportunity."

"Well it had to be Harbaugh then," Rudy said, his voice firm.

"His story checked out, just like Steve's."

"So, you were questioning him?"

"Not today, but yes, I've talked to him."

"And?"

"And nothing."

"So why are you still harassing him?"

Sean took a moment to collect himself. He was about fed up with Mayor Rudy Klinger's meddling. He stood up from behind his desk so he could look Rudy in the eye. "I'm going to say this one last time, mayor, so listen good. So long as I'm the head of this department, my officers and I are going to go where the evidence takes us, no matter where that is. If the evidence leads to Kevin Harbaugh, then that's where I'm going to go. If it leads to Steve Locoste, then that's where I'll go. Do I make myself clear?"

"Investigating a member of the city council on a murder charge is bad shit, Sean! Can't you see that? We'll be in all the newspapers and on the news!"

"To be honest, mayor, I really don't care. If Steve is Boyd Thacker's murderer, I have absolutely no qualms about throwing his ass in jail. My question is, how would anyone know who I'm investigating? I haven't talked to the press. Have you?"

"No, but that's beside the point."

"No, that's exactly the point. I don't talk about active cases. That seems to be what you do."

Rudy flinched. "I made a mistake. It won't happen again."

"Then what are you worried about?"

"I don't like you questioning members of the city council. Are you going to be questioning the other council members next? Do you think I did it? I don't understand why you aren't out looking for the real killer."

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that."

"Sean, look, I know you're from a big department in a big city," Rudy began in a placating tone. "Maybe things work differently where you come from, but this is Brunswick, North Carolina. City council members don't go around killing people. That's all I'm saying."

"You're implying Boston council members do?"

"I didn't say that! Why do you keep putting words in my mouth?"

"I'm trying to figure out why you're always in my office, or on my phone, trying to tell me how to do my job. You want to be the chief? You know how to make that happen."

"This is what I'm talking about!"

"What?"

"You're always so confrontational!"

"You're saying I should just try to get along?"

"Yes!"

"And not worry about where the evidence points?"

"No! Dammit, Sean. Do you have an axe to grind with me?"

"No, but I'm not going to let you tell me how to run this investigation, either. Having you in here trying to warn me off Steve only makes me wonder what you know that I don't."

"You think I'm covering for him?" Rudy asked, his eyes opening wide.

"I don't know. Are you?"

"No!"

"So, you have no problem with me arresting Steve if he turns out to be guilty?"

"I'm telling you, he didn't do it!"

"But if I find evidence he did, are you going to be in my office telling me to cover it up?"

"No!"

"That's all I wanted to hear. I don't care if the murderer is someone who works at the wastewater plant, is on the city council, or someone else. Eventually we'll find and apprehend him, and if you try to interfere with that process, you're going find yourself sitting in a cell alongside them. Have I made myself abundantly clear?"

Rudy gaped at him a moment. "Are you threatening me?"

"Not at all. I'm simply stating that anyone who interferes with a police investigation is going to face the consequences, no matter who they are."

Rudy glared at Sean a moment. "I think we have an understanding," he growled before he pivoted on his toe and stomped out.

Sean sat down and leaned back in his chair with a deep sigh, wondering what he'd gotten himself into. He'd never had to deal with stuff like this before. In Boston, his captain had acted as a buffer between himself, the politicians, and the press. He glanced at the clock on the computer screen and sighed again. It was only four, but Rudy had spoiled any desire to work in the office. He picked up the keys to Danny's cruiser. He was using a regular patrol car instead of his own unmarked car, for higher visibility when on patrol, and walked out to start his shift.

Officer Limbrose requesting assistance with a 10-73 at the Shell station on Main, Paul's voice came over the radio.

"McGhee responding," Sean said into the mic, flipping on the strobes and putting his foot down, the Dodge Charger roaring as it accelerated.

He hadn't learned all the codes for the city yet, but having Paul call for help was all he needed to hear. He gave the siren a yelp, and then weaved around traffic at a stoplight as he turned onto Main, the Dodge bellowing as it once again strained for speed. He could see the emergency beacons on Paul's car flashing in the road ahead. He pulled into the parking lot of the Shell station, leaving his strobes flashing as he stepped out of the car. Paul was talking to a disheveled man with long greasy gray hair. Blood was oozing from a cut on his chin, and the man kept putting his hands up in a warding off gesture as he slowly backed away from Paul.

"What seems to be the problem here," Sean said, using his cop voice as he approached Paul and the man.

"Where's my dog?" the man asked, still slowly backing away, his hands out in front of him, one of them bleeding from scratches on the palm.