Deadly Waters Pt. 06

"Maybe. I have a question." He nodded his head down the hall. They stepped inside her office and closed the door. "Why would Steve have weights on his truck? Can you think of a reason?"

"What kinds of weights?"

"They looked like the same weights that were on Thacker, the kind that go on a barbell."

Maggie stroked her cheek as she thought. "I have no idea."

"He also told me the zip ties he uses to hold the pipe on the truck are required by law. Is that true?"

"I don't know for sure, but I know everyone does something, so I would assume that's true. I've seen the city truck guys wrap theirs with duct tape."

"And you can't think of a legitimate reason for Steve to have a pair of weights on his truck?"

"The weights weren't very big, were they?" she asked.

"No. The ones on Thacker were only ten pounds each."

Maggie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "The obvious reason would be to hold the discharge pipe down for some reason, but why?" she mumbled, almost talking to herself. He watched as her eyes became distant for a moment before they refocused on him. "Okay... assuming your right, if he's dumping into the river, his waste would create a slick. That's something you can see, so maybe he's using the weights to hold down the end of the pipe so that he's injecting the waste deep under water. That way, if the stuff rises to the surface and is seen, it's well away from where he's dumping." She shrugged. "That's just a guess, though. Why didn't you ask him?"

"I didn't want to tip my hand just yet. I found a couple of places that were out of the way enough he could probably get away with dumping without being seen. It only takes him what, twenty or thirty minutes to unload? Not a lot of window to get caught. If he were to do it in the middle of the day, when most people are at work..."

"You really think it's him?"

"I do now. The weights that looked like those found on Thacker being on the truck, the zip ties, and seeing the handle he uses to open and close the valve on the truck, it all fits. Now I just have to prove it."

"Can't you arrest him based on what you found? Or at least get a search warrant?"

"Maybe," he said, drawing the word out. "It would be iffy at best. I really need something more concrete than he happens to have the same zip ties and weights as those found on Thacker's body on his truck. Especially since they are such common items and have legitimate uses."

"That's not enough? What else would it take?"

"Someone seeing the truck somewhere it reasonably shouldn't be, or someone saying something that is contradictory to what Steve is saying. Something like that. Something that makes for a reasonable suspicion that Steve is the man we're looking for."

"Sorry. I can't help you. The only thing I've got is he's showing up more often than normal."

"Yeah, I asked him about that. He said they're having production problems."

She made a face and waved her hand dismissively. "There you go."

"Yeah. If he did do it, he's damn clever."

"What are you going to do?"

He smiled. "Be more clever than him."