Deadly Waters

by T. Alan Codder

  Fish grinned as he rose from the chair. “That’s what I understand. I’ll keep you in the loop on this, and thanks for doing what you can on the security video.”

  “Any time you need something, come see me. I’m here to help you do your job.”

  -oOo-

  Sean called the waste treatment plant, but Maggie had already left for the day. He decided not to try to pull the video and gate logs without her okay, as a courtesy.

  He worked on his proposal until his eyes told him it was time to quit, then copied the document to his office computer so he could send it through the city email system. There was no sensitive information in the document, and no reason he couldn’t send it through his private email, but that was a bad habit to get into. If the city council approved his upgrades, he would be able to securely send and receive email from anywhere, but until then, the tired old XP machine sitting on his desk would have to do.

  After sending the document to the four members of the city council and the mayor, he tossed his glasses onto the desk and leaned back in his chair while rubbing his eyes.

  His department was at least twenty-five years behind the times, and he had a lot of work ahead of him dragging the department into the twenty-first century. The first step was computers, both on the desks and in the patrol cars, then he wanted to begin keeping electronic documents so his officers had access to the information they needed, when they needed it. Once that was in place and working smoothly, he wanted to begin converting all their old paper records into the electronic format for easier access.

  If this were a police force the size of Boston, it would take a decade or more to accomplish all of that. Brunswick was a small department and he thought they could do the bulk of the work in only a year or two. If he could get the funding. The hardest, and most time-consuming part, would be converting all the old documents. He smiled to himself. He could have his 9-1-1 operators doing that when they weren’t working calls, starting with the most recent and working backwards through the old cases. It would take time, but they would eventually get there, and at least going forward they would have their case information available without having to dig though paper files.

  With a groan he put his glasses back on, snapped the lid closed on his laptop, and then stuffed it into its case. It was time to call it a day.

  “See you tomorrow, Michelle,” he called as he stepped into the lobby. Michelle smiled at him through the glass and raised her hand in acknowledgement.

  He really didn’t feel like going to the gym but he forced himself to stop at Fat2Fit. He wasn’t a hardcore body builder, but he did try to stay in shape, so he spent an hour doing reps for his arms, chest, core and legs. He didn’t push heavy weight, and did the same sets Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

  After a quick shower, he redressed in his police uniform of tan pants and a black shirt with Brunswick PD embroidered in gold letters on the left breast. His patrol officers wore the classic black police uniform, but as chief, he chose to dress more casually, hoping to come across as more approachable. If he was on official business, he clipped his badge to his belt so it could be seen.

  Feeling tired and relaxed, he pulled into his apartment complex and parked his car in his reserved space. He hadn’t bothered to bring his daily driver from Boston, and sold the rusting Honda Accord when he accepted the position in North Carolina.

  Planning on using the city provided police car as his primary means of transportation, he’d brought only his 1966 Jaguar E-Type with him, and was looking forward to being able to drive his toy nine or ten months of the year. Until he bought a house, the Jag was in a self-storage building, waiting for its new home.

  Slinging his gym bag over one shoulder, his computer over the other, he walked the short distance to his apartment door. He was actively looking for a house, but the only ones he’d found so far were either too big or too small, on too big of a lot or too small, were outside the city, or in need of too much work. Since it was just him, he could be patient until the right property came up.

  As he opened the door to his apartment, his fat orange tabby met him, weaving between his legs as it meowed.

  “Hey, Marmalade,” Sean said, moving carefully to avoid stepping on the animal. “You miss me?”

  Marmalade meowed that he had, purring as he rubbed against Sean’s leg.

  Sean reached down and gave the cat a scratch between the ears. The cat had belonged to his daughter, until she left for school, and now the beast was his.

  He stepped around the cat and walked to the bedroom, Marmalade trotting along behind him. He tossed his gym bag and computer on the bed, and then removed his sidearm from his belt. He laid it, along with his badge, on the dresser before he returned to the kitchen.

  Sean’s apartment was a small one bedroom that offered few amenities, though the units in his building were renovated just before he moved in. There was no pool or gym on site, but he needed little. The complex was quiet and the buildings and grounds were well maintained, which was all he cared about.

  He’d brought only the basics when he’d accepted the position in Brunswick. He’d loaded a rental truck with his bedroom furniture, a couch with a couple of matching chairs and complementing end tables, the breakfast table with its four chairs, the larger of the two televisions, and a few pictures and lamps. His clothes, linens, dishes and kitchen utensils rounded out the load. Everything else had gone into a garage sale.

  He first opened a can of cat food, scraping it into a bowl for Marmalade. As the purring cat ate, Sean prepared his own meal of chicken breasts seared in olive oil with garlic and minced onion, with a side of steamed cauliflower coated in a healthy sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.

  As he ate, he read over the medical examiner’s report. He avoided looking at the pictures, and the rest of the report was so dry and clinical he didn’t lose his appetite.

  When he was leading the cybercrimes task force in Boston, his team didn’t have to deal with rapes and murders. Money laundering, credit card fraud, and in one case, child pornography, were the types of investigations he was used to conducting.

  In theory, solving a murder was no different than any other crime. You investigate and take it one step at a time. He was the big city cop, the former leader of the team that had made a big splash with a couple of major busts. Even though he was a sworn officer, he’d worked most of his career in an office and didn’t actually make arrests. The CTF was responsible for piecing together evidence that lead to the arrests.

  He closed the folder containing the ME’s report with a sigh. He’d started out as a patrol officer, just like Fish and Chips, and the rest of Brunswick’s police force, and he’d seen a few dead bodies before he was scooped up for the task force. He hadn’t missed that part of being a police officer, and wasn’t looking forward to getting back into it.

  Andy Taylor never had to deal with a murder, but it was a different time back then. He smiled to himself. That, and it was a television show.

  As he cleaned up from dinner, he continued to turn over in his head the puzzle of how Thacker had gotten into the plant. He had no doubt Fish had been thorough and careful. Assuming Fish was right, and it wasn’t someone at the plant, he couldn’t figure out how Thacker had gotten into the facility without someone noticing.

  He sighed and tried to let the problem go, but every time he pushed the case out of his mind, a few minutes later he found himself thinking about it again. With a growl, he grabbed a bottle of Samuel Adams from the fridge and sat down to watch television, determined to forget about the problem for now.

  Three hours later, as Marmalade slept in his lap, the local news came on. The lead story was the finding of the body in the Brunswick wastewater treatment plant, and as the news reader droned on, Sean realized he didn’t remember a damn thing he’d seen since he sat down.

  The report was long on the backstory of Thacker, the fish kills, and the city of Brunswick, but ended with the video of him and Rudy. They came across like a Laure
l and Hardy act, causing him to grind his teeth in annoyance.

  Five

  Sean crept his car through the throng. A crowd of about fifty people were standing along both sides of the road leading to the wastewater plant, waving signs that accused Brunswick of a cover-up for the fish kills and demanding justice for Boyd Thacker. He stopped at the gate and pressed the call button. He’d called Maggie before he left the station to let her know he was coming, and why.

  “Sean McGhee,” he said when a voice answered.

  Seconds later the gate began to trundle open and he pulled through, the gate closing behind him. Maggie was standing just inside the door as he pulled to a stop in front of the admin building.

  “You’re popular today,” he said with a grin as he entered the building.

  “Yay for us,” she said, her lazy delivery making him chuckle. “I’ll bet you a cup of coffee it’s the same group that was out there waving signs around after our spill. Don’t they have jobs?”

  “Just ignore them. In a few days, they’ll get bored or have some new outrage somewhere else, and then they’ll go protest there.”

  She continued to watch the crowd a moment then turned and look at him with a soft grunt. Sean snickered. It was amazing how much could be communicated with such a simple sound.

  “Yeah, okay. So, you’re here to get the video and the gate logs, if you can find them?” she asked.

  He hefted his laptop. “If you’ll point me in the right direction.”

  “Right in here.”

  She turned and led him into the operations room where a heavy-set man with thinning black hair was reclined in a chair, watching a computer screen.

  “Rick Egerton, this is Chief McGhee.” Rick nodded in greeting as Maggie continued. “Rick is one of our operators.”

  “Nice to meet you, chief. I hope you catch the guy who did this. My wife, she freaked out last night when I told her we dragged a body out of the ditch. I’ve pulled a lot of crap out of the drink and off the screens, but that’s a new one. It’s not every day you find a dead guy floating in your plant.”

  “I’m sure we’ll get him,” Sean said. “It just takes time to piece it all together.”

  “Right over here,” Maggie said, jerking her thumb at a computer sitting in the corner. “This is where the feed from the cameras are recorded. There are three cameras: one on the front gate, one on the front of the admin building, and one on the truck dump.”

  “Where’s that?” Sean asked as he pulled a chair over in front of the computer.

  “The dump pit? At the top of the hill, right in the curve before you come down beside the oxidation ditch.”

  “Why’s there one there?” he asked as he pecked on the computer.

  “It’s where the city’s vac truck, and the few industries that bring in waste, dump. Basically, we have cameras in the three places where non-employees would normally be found.”

  He swiveled to look at her. “Could the body have been dumped there?”

  “No. It’s in front of the screens, and the hole is too small for a body anyway.”

  “How often is the truck dump used?”

  She shrugged. “It depends on what’s going on. If we’re having to pump out a lift station, it may get used three or four times a day. If not, maybe once every couple of weeks in the summer, less often in the winter.”

  “Anyone use it in the last week?”

  She shrugged again. “I’d have to check the dump logs.”

  “Can you do that while I work on this?”

  “Sure,” she said, nodding as she turned and walked away.

  Using the operating system’s built in search, it took Sean only moments to locate all the archived video files. The system kept a rotating ninety-day archive, all neatly stamped with the date and time, with the videos broken into one hour chunks. Best of all, the videos were in mpeg4 format. That meant they would play on almost anything and he wouldn’t have to convert them or find some funky video player to watch them.

  He copied the last week of video to his thumb-drive, and then transferred them to his laptop. When the copy was complete, he removed the files from the flash-drive before repeating the process for the previous week. While the second week was copying to his flash-drive, Maggie appeared with a book.

  “In the last two weeks, we had LoCoste Adhesives in. He unloaded three-thousand gallons, and the city vac truck was in twice, unloading twenty-five hundred gallons each time. That’s it.”

  “What does the vac truck do?”

  “Pumps out lift stations, backed up sewer lines, stuff like that.”

  “And LoCoste Adhesives?”

  “That’s owned by Steve Locoste. He comes—”

  “The councilman?” Sean interrupted.

  “One and the same. He comes in every couple of months, or so, and dumps a load of diluted adhesives. They make adhesives for the furniture industry. He and a few other industries have an agreement with the city so they can dump their organic waste into our influent stream.”

  “Handy.”

  Maggie grinned. “They get charged for it. LoCoste and Prickle Dyes are beyond our lines, so they truck the stuff in. There’s also Instant Porta-Potty and three… no, wait… four, septic tank service companies that come here. They show up more often in the summer than they do in the winter.”

  “What does Prickle do?” he asked as he pulled the thumb-drive out of the security computer, plugged it into his laptop, and started the copy process again.

  “Stains and dyes. After they dump, the water can turn the prettiest red, blue or green you’ve ever seen.”

  “So, nothing out of the ordinary?”

  She looked at the logs again. “Nothing that I see.”

  “Okay, thanks for looking. I have the video. Is this the same computer that controls the gate?”

  “Yes,” she replied as she nodded.

  “Can you show me how it works?” he asked, and then kicked backwards, rolling his chair out of the way.

  Maggie stepped up beside him. “We open this program here, and then enter the code, along with the days and times it’s valid. That’s all we do.”

  Sean nodded as she stepped out of the way.

  It took a little digging, Maggie watching for a while before she left him to it, but he finally found a couple of text files that had all the information he was looking for.

  “I have what I need. Thanks,” he said, sticking his head into her office.

  “You’re welcome. Have you seen the circus?” she asked, standing to look out her window.

  He stepped into her office and then joined her behind her desk to see what she was looking at. There was an ABC11 news van parked on the side of the road. He couldn’t see very well because there was a berm blocking part of his view, but it looked like the crowd was giving an interview.

  “Isn’t there something you can do?” she asked.

  “So long as they’re not blocking traffic or damaging property, no. They have the right to be there. If they threaten, harass or damage property let me know and I’ll run them off. Otherwise, just ignore them, or, if you really want to get to them, take them some coffee. Kill them with kindness and get that on the news.”

  Maggie’s face lit up with the suggestion. “I like that idea! I’ll start brewing some right now.”

  “If you go out there, you’ll be doing me a huge favor if you don’t talk about what happened here.”

  She giggled. “I saw the news last night with you and the mayor. What a mess. Okay, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  “Thanks. Also, the county forensics team will be out in a day or so to examine the plant vehicles. Work with them as much as you can.”

  She sighed. “Okay. The yard trucks and the Gator are no problem, but the maintenance trucks, that’s a bit harder. How long on each vehicle?”

  “Not long I wouldn’t think. I just asked for a cursory check on the Gator and all the trucks, except for Harbaugh’s. His, I asked for a detailed exam. Mayb
e thirty to sixty minutes per vehicle on all of them except Harbaugh’s. His will probably be longer.”

  “Kevin’s? Why?”

  “He admitted he’d been up there in the last few days.” He smiled at Maggie, trying to reassure her. “Don’t worry. Nobody is accusing him of anything.”

  Her mouth hardened. “Kevin is the nicest guy you’ll ever meet, and he’s been one of my most reliable maintenance guys for years. I can’t see him being involved in anything like this.” She paused and sighed. “I guess we can work around it. If they could do the maintenance trucks after three-thirty, that would be helpful. That’s when the maintenance guys go home.”

  “Tell them that. Maybe they can work something out. We’re really digging for a place to start.”

  “We’ll work with them as much as we can,” Maggie said, but she didn’t sound very enthusiastic about the idea.

  “Thanks, Maggie, and don’t freak out on Harbaugh. This is what we do.” He paused and looked out the window again. “It looks like the news crew is packing up, so I’m going to go. Thanks for the help. I’ll stop on the way out and let the hooligans know what they can and can’t do.”

  Sean drove to the gate and, after it opened, pulled through and stopped among the protestors, stepping out of his car and clipping his badge to his belt.

  “Who’s in charge here?” he asked, looking over the crowd.

  “Why?” demanded a thin and angular woman with a hawkish face. Her blonde hair contained streaks of red so dark they were almost black, with her eyeshadow and lipstick almost the same hue. She was wearing an artfully ripped jean jacket with straps and buckles over a brightly rainbowed shirt, along with an equally torn pair of jeans, and a pair of loosely laced combat boots.

  “I’d like to speak to them. Unofficially,” he added when nobody moved.

  The crowd muttered and looked at each other, but no one stepped forward.

  “No one organized this? Everyone just happened to show up at the same time?”

  “I guess I did,” the woman finally said.