Salvaged to Death

by Vanessa Gray Bartal

  “You know him?” Laurel whispered with even more longing than she’d revealed for Hal.

  Sadie had an inspiration, an evil, vindictive inspiration. Those were always her best kind. “You know we’re staying with Fiona. Bo and I have become good friends. Let me introduce you.” She stood and tugged Laurel’s hand and then stopped short as if suddenly remembering something. “He’s sort of standoffish after getting out of a bad relationship, you know the type. What I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t be deterred if he seems unresponsive. Don’t take no for an answer. He’s going to try to shake you, but you hang in there. Dogged determination is the key to Bo’s heart.”

  Laurel nodded and squared her shoulders.

  “Hey, Bo!” Sadie called, adding a friendly wave with the hand that wasn’t grasping Laurel’s. He backed up against the bar and put his hands in his pockets, probably keeping his gun handy in case he felt the need to use it on her. His eyes turned wary and suspicious as they darted between Sadie and Laurel. “You should have told me you’d be here when we talked about this place earlier. We could have come together. This is my friend, Laurel.” She dragged Laurel forward and presented her with a flourish. “You two have a lot in common, probably. I need to go, but don’t let my absence make things awkward. Sit. Talk. Drinks are on me.” She turned to the bartender. “Another beer for Laurel and what was your drink, Bo? Wait, I remember. An appletini for Bo. Add some grenadine to make it pink, if possible. No, no, I insist,” she hurried on when he tried to speak. “You can pay me back later.”

  “Oh, I will,” he said.

  She waved him away, turning her focus to Argus. The time for casual games was over, time to be direct. Maybe she would have stuck with subtlety if not for the appearance of Bo. He was encroaching on her territory, and nothing spurred her to action like competition. She wanted to be the first to solve Johnny’s murder; she wanted to find whatever Bo wanted and beat him at his own game; mostly, she wanted to win.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, Luke’s voice was trying to signal danger. You know what happens when you decide to win at all costs, Sadie, he was saying. You lose your head. You don’t think. Slow down, take a breath, think it through. She paused two feet away from Argus’s table. He looked up at her with a smug smile that did nothing to tamp down her competitive spirit.

  “Well, it’s about time you made your way over here after staring at me for so long,” he said.

  Sadie smiled and Luke’s voice disappeared. Game on, she thought, and took a seat at the table.

  Chapter 12

  “Bad news: I wasn’t looking at you. I was looking at your hat and deciding on the best way to tell you that someone pulled a practical joke and changed the Chevy logo to a Ford.”

  The circle of cronies at his table—who somehow managed to make him look like the smartest one—guffawed and punched each other in the arm. Sadie felt like she had taken a step back to high school. This was the kind of gathering she had attended often in Atwood. Though she had long ago moved on to bigger and better fish, there was something slightly nostalgic about the idiotic little game of one-upmanship.

  “What’s your name?” Argus asked. He had a slight southern accent. In their border state of Virginia, one could either choose to identify with their more historical early settler roots, as Abby did, or one could go southern. With the advent and popularity of country music, more and more people chose to identify themselves as southern. Tonight, Sadie chose to go that way, too. She was just a simple country girl. “Sadie,” she said, allowing a bit of her natural twang to take over. She hadn’t realized she’d had an accent until she went into broadcasting and her producer beat it out of her.

  “What are you doing in Bateman, Sadie?” Argus asked, as if he didn’t know, as if everyone didn’t know more about her and Hal than they did.

  “I came with my cousin on business,” she said, nodding at Hal. She spoke slowly, giving in to the illusion that she was just another dizzy blond. “It’s real pretty here.”

  “I could show you some sights that are really neat,” Argus said.

  Neat, Sadie thought. Either Argus wasn’t too bright or he willfully chose to adapt the vocabulary of Frankie Avalon, circa 1960. “Maybe in a bit,” Sadie said. “My cousin told me not to go anywhere.” Hal had told her no such thing, but she guessed that the “neat” sight Argus wanted to show her was the cab of his pickup truck. If she drove into the middle of nowhere with him, he would immediately perform his best octopus impression. As much as she hated to admit it, she couldn’t take him. At least not physically. In a battle of the wits, she was practically an Olympian in comparison, as proved by the fact that he was now sucking the salt off a bowl of twisted pretzels. To her left sat a bowl of bald, wilted pretzels--his refuse. She thanked whatever urge had kept her from reaching for one when she first sat down. Time to get down to brass tacks.

  “You know my cousin found the body of that dead kid,” she blurted. She twisted her still-full glass of whiskey as if mentioning such an unsavory topic gave her misery. “It was horrible.”

  Argus was quiet for a minute. “Johnny was a friend of mine,” he said, his tone quiet but important.

  Sadie gasped. “I’m so sorry. I’m such an idiot for bringing it up. It’s the drink.” She swished the liquid, sloshing it. “I can’t handle my liquor.”

  He smiled, an oily, unsavory sort of smile that revealed his glee over that information. She wondered if a careful search of his possessions would yield a cache of rohypnol. Surely somebody somewhere had been roofied by Argus. Was that the kind of trouble to which Laurel had been referring? Had she been roofied by him? She needed to talk to Laurel again, but a quick glance in her direction showed her literally hanging on Bo’s arm, purring pleadingly in his ear. Bo wore the expression of a cat that was being loved to death by an enthusiastic toddler. His eyes narrowed on Sadie. She blew him a kiss.

  “You know Bo?” Argus asked.

  “We’re pals,” Sadie said.

  Argus’s brow furrowed. “Pal” and “Bo” weren’t words that went well together. “He works for Fiona’s husband. I’ve seen him a few times,” Sadie amended.

  “The women around here like him,” Argus said, his tone turning petulant.

  “Not me,” Sadie said. “Beards are gross. I prefer a more groomed look.” She touched her finger to his cheek. It was so baby smooth she doubted he could even grow whiskers. He puffed importantly at having the preferred appearance.

  “Beards are itchy,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said. He laughed hard as if it was the cleverest thing he had ever heard. Maybe it was. “So, what do you think happened to the guy? You know, the one we found in that trunk. Do you think it was an accident? Like maybe he fell in, couldn’t get out, and suffocated?”

  Argus gave her a look of pity. “No way, Sadie. It was definitely murder.”

  Sadie set down the glass and mashed both hands to her mouth, stifling a gasp. “Really? I mean, they arrested that guy, but I was in shock, so I wasn’t paying a lot of attention. What happened? Do you know?” She shook her head. “What am I saying? You don’t know. No one knows what happened.”

  “I know,” he said a little too loudly. “I mean, my dad’s the sheriff, so I sort of hear all the inside stuff.”

  Sadie leaned forward, wide eyed, resting her elbows on the table. Argus took his time setting up his story, enjoying the limelight. “He was shot in the back of the head.”

  “With what?” Sadie asked, half joking.

  Argus paused, perplexed. “A gun, I guess.”

  “Why do you think?”

  He shrugged.

  “I mean, you were friends, right? What was he like? Was he the kind of guy people wanted to kill?”

  “No. At least he didn’t used to be. He was different after he came back.”

  “Came back from where?” Sadie asked.

  “He had some big time job.”

  “If he had a good job, why did he c
ome back?”

  “I don’t know. Homesick, I guess. He and his grandma were real close, and he missed his other friends and stuff.”

  “Where was the job?” Sadie asked. She had to work hard to make her interest sound casual. Thankfully Argus seemed too intent on reminiscing to notice her keen anticipation of his answers.

  “New York.”

  “Like New York City? Was he trying to be an actor or something?”

  Argus laughed, a hollow sound tinged with bitterness. “That’s what I thought when I heard. The guys and me used to rag on him about it, but he said it wasn’t in the city. It was off the coast at some super secret facility. I started to think maybe he really was into something good, but you know what he did?”

  Sadie shook her head, not trusting herself with words. She wanted to shake him to hurry the story along.

  “He cleaned up after animals. He tried to pretend he was better than us, and he was nothing more than a stable boy.” He did the laugh again, the one that said he was secretly glad Johnny got what he deserved. Glad enough to have been the one to mete justice? Maybe. There was a lot of resentment in Argus. Sadie could feel it simmering under the surface. Argus was large enough to subdue, kill, and stuff a person into a trunk. He had motive and means, but what about opportunity?

  “You guys weren’t friends anymore?” she asked.

  “No, we were. Things were different between us, but we still hung out a lot. Whenever his girlfriend wasn’t getting in the way.”

  Sadie’s ears pricked. “Girlfriend? Who was his girlfriend?”

  Argus pointed. Sadie had a sinking feeling as she followed his finger to Laurel. Laurel potentially had vital information and she had offered her up on a platter to the enemy. And if looks were any indication, Bo had suddenly realized that Laurel might have a lot to say. Sadie jumped and turned back to Argus when she felt his hand land on her knee and slide up. She bumped her glass, dumping it into his lap.

  “Oh, no, I’m so clumsy,” she slurred as he jolted up and began dabbing at his jeans. “I think I’m a little drunk.”

  He abruptly stopped dabbing and reached for her hand. “C’mon, I’ll take you home.”

  “I need to check with my cousin. I’m s’posed to be helping him with work.”

  “He doesn’t need you tonight. It’s too late to get any work done. C’mon.” His hand turned into a vise on her wrist as he hauled her to her feet. She looked around helplessly for Hal who appeared at her side with the timeliness of a superhero.

  “We were just going to go,” Argus explained to Hal. “I’m giving Sadie a ride home.”

  “No way,” Hal said, his tone matching that of a stern schoolmarm. “Sadie promised to help me transcribe some research I found on pumpkin surveillance. I can’t do it without her because I don’t know Sanskrit. Come on, Sadie, I’m not paying you to party with the locals. Do that on your own time.” He clamped on her free wrist and dragged her away.

  “Sorry,” she called helplessly to Argus. “He’s so mean,” she added in a stage whisper. Hal jerked her outside and tossed her against the car.

  “You enjoyed that a little too much, I think,” Sadie said.

  “Playing the bad guy is way more fun,” Hal agreed. “I wish I had a mustache so I could twirl it while laughing with sinister intent.”

  “You could rub your freckles while squinting suspiciously,” Sadie said.

  “That doesn’t look scary; that looks like an allergy attack,” Hal said.

  “What did you learn?” Sadie asked after they were safely tucked in her car.

  “The farmers didn’t like Johnny. Or Argus. Or Fergus. Or anything that happened after 1980. John Deere rules, and people should smoke more because all this science about tobacco being unhealthy is a bunch of bunk. Thank goodness for Asian countries where the demand is skyrocketing or they’d be out on the street. What did you learn?”

  “Laurel was Johnny’s girlfriend,” Sadie said.

  “The girl you were talking to when we first arrived?” Hal asked.

  “Yes.”

  “But you sent her to talk to Bo.”

  “I know. I stupidly let my bloodthirsty need for vengeance cloud my judgment.”

  “It happens to the best of us,” Hal said. “What else?”

  “Argus is still suspect number one in my book. He likes to think of himself as king of the mountain, literally, and has an untold amount of anger and resentment that Johnny went off and got hisself a high-falootin’ gubment job.”

  “You clearly have a talent for foreign languages. What else did you learn? In English please. Yokel hurts my ears.”

  “I’m still not clear on Johnny’s job. He thought he was important because it was some secret government thing, but he swept up after animals. And it wasn’t in DC; it was in New York, the state, not the city.”

  Hal let that process for a minute, repeating the words over and over as if they meant something to him. “Animals. New York. Government. Secret.” Over and over he muttered the words until at last he slammed his hand on the dashboard. “Stop the car.”

  Sadie screeched to halt and stared at him in amazement while he pulled out his phone and held it aloft. “I need a signal, find me a signal,” he commanded.

  She drove down the mountain for a long time. They were almost halfway to Atwood when he finally yelled for her to stop again, and then he began furiously typing something into his phone. “This is when having geeky friends pays off,” he said as he handed her his phone.

  “Plum Island,” Sadie read. “You think that’s where Johnny worked? That doesn’t seem very interesting. It says they do research on animal diseases. What’s exciting about that?”

  “What’s exciting about that?” Hal repeated, incredulous. “Oh, Sadie. You know how Luke and I are always having these conversations that you say make you infertile because they’re so boring your eggs commit suicide rather than risk being born into a world where they’re going to have to listen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stay tuned.” He pushed a button on his phone and Luke answered. “Plum Island,” Hal said. “Go.”

  “Plum Island,” Luke repeated, his tone switching immediately from sleepy to exuberant. “No way!”

  “Clue me in, Leonard and Sheldon,” Sadie said.

  “What?” Luke asked.

  “Some other time. What is the big deal about Plum Island?”

  “Plum Island is an animal research facility,” Luke said. “Initially, they were charged with the task of overseeing foot and mouth disease, something that threatened the entire livestock population of the world at one point. That’s why they were placed on an island, because federal law prohibits studying foot and mouth disease on the mainland. It’s extremely contagious. Any wild animals that happen to make their way onto the island are executed. They have their own fire department, water department, and security.”

  “That’s a little intense, but why would that be secret?”

  “Because they also cover diseases that are transmitted from human to animal. Swine fever, cholera, polio. They create vaccines to combat animal diseases,” Hal said.

  “All right, I see the need for high security, but I still don’t get the secrecy part,” Sadie said.

  “Anthrax, Sadie,” Luke said. “Think bio-warfare.”

  “Oh,” Sadie said as the weight of what they were saying began to settle in.

  “They have a BSL-3 clearance, or so they say,” Hal said.

  “De-Spock it for the non-scientist,” Sadie said.

  “Bio Safety Level, it refers to the types of chemicals and diseases they’re allowed to handle. Level three allows them to deal with animal diseases. Level four is for bio-warfare. They claim there’s none of that going on, but no one believes them. The sight is shrouded in secrecy.”

  “Would they really let a guy like Johnny sweep the floors?” Sadie asked.

  Hal and Luke laughed, sharing some insider nerd joke. “Conspiracy theorists believe that Lyme Disea
se and the West-Nile Virus came from Plum Island after an accidental leak. None of that can be verified, but a compelling case can be made for anyone willing to believe that the government would go to any length to cover its mistakes. We know for a fact, though, that there was an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in 2004, a direct result of a leak from Plum Island. They were dinged for lax security. If it happened once, isn’t it possible that it could happen again?” The two men talked for a while about the implications of lax security at a BSL-3 or BSL-4 sight. Sadie tuned them out as she usually did until snippets of what they were saying began to register.

  “Uh, guys,” she interrupted their theoretical debate about the possible outcome of such an event.

  “Hm,” Hal said, using maximum effort to tear himself away from the compelling conversation with Luke.

  “You know that what you’re talking about might actually be happening right now and we’re in the middle of it?” she said. “Johnny took something, something a DHS agent has spent the last six months working undercover to search for.”

  “If it were something scary, why would he be undercover?” Hal asked. “Why not send in the storm troopers and grab whatever got out?”

  “Because they don’t want another ding on their record,” Luke said. “They want to retrieve it quietly before whatever it is gets out.”

  “Assuming that our hypothesis is true and Johnny stole something from Plum Island, how bad is it if whatever it is gets out?” Sadie asked.

  Hal and Luke were quiet for a minute, but it was a conspiratorial sort of silence. “The truth,” she prompted. “I can handle it.”

  “If whatever it is gets found and returned undisturbed, then it might be okay,” Luke said. “If whatever it is falls into the wrong hands or breaks, then whoever comes in contact with it might die. If whatever it is spreads to the surrounding population and gets off the mountain, then it might be the end of the world as we know it.”

  “Can we go back to when you were clamming up to protect me from knowing how bad this is?” Sadie asked.