“How much waste can you hold on site?”
“About fifteen thousand gallons, but we normally try to keep the tank between a quarter and half full. If we empty it, the stuff sets up in the valve and then somebody has to go in there and clean it out.”
Sean could tell if he asked many more questions, Frank was going to start balking. It was also clear Frank recognized the weight and knew it went on the truck. He desperately wanted to ask what the weights were for, but couldn’t figure out how to work it into the conversation without tipping his hand that Steve hadn’t actually left the weight behind. He decided not to press, not wanting to spook Frank any more than he already had.
“Amazing operation you have here. I like to see companies keeping jobs in the states.”
Frank smiled and nodded in agreement. “Yeah. Us too.”
“I’ll let you get back to work. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just wanted to drop that off.”
“No problem, officer.”
“Nice talking with you, Frank.”
“Same here.”
Sean walked back to his car, giving Frank a friendly wave as he drove past. Sean kept an eye on him in his rearview, wanting to see if the welder was immediately going to report that he’d been there, but Frank returned to his task.
Something was going on. Steve and Frank’s accounts were wildly different and it was the first real proof, circumstantial though it was, that Steve’s story was off.
He drove until he was out of sight of the plant, and then stopped on the side of the road, glancing at the clock and flipping on his strobes. It was 3:46, but maybe Maggie was still in the office. He dialed her number, the phone ringing until her voicemail picked up.
He hung up, not leaving a message. He’d contact her in the morning and get the dump records. If they showed Steve dumping every six to eight weeks prior to Thacker’s death, as Maggie said, he may have enough for a warrant.
He returned to his office and added his observations and Frank’s comments to the Thacker file. The case was starting to jell and the pieces were slowly falling into place. He was convinced now that Steve had been dumping illegally for some time, Thacker had finally caught him in the act, and Steve killed him for it. He’d damned near gotten away with it, too.
Sean leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes under his glasses. He was going to have to be sure. Evie said the city council would back him, but when it came right down to it, he was accusing one of their own of murder, and that probably wouldn’t sit very well with any of them. He had no solid proof, no smoking gun to point to. All he had was circumstantial evidence and a gut feeling.
He sat up. It didn’t matter if Steve was a member of the city council, the mayor, or the Governor of North Carolina. If he could find proof Steve was guilty of the murder of Boyd Thacker, he would bring him down, and let the chips fall where they may.
He checked the clock on his computer. His day was done. He’d had a major breakthrough on the case that had been kicking his ass, and he was in a mood to celebrate and share a beer with a friend. Unfortunately he didn’t know anyone well enough to call and hang out with.
It would be him and Marmalade tonight, and they would have their own little celebration. He’d open a can of tuna for Marmalade, the lucky little shit, and he’d have a beer while they kicked back and watched something on Netflix.
He grinned to himself as he rose from behind his desk, wondering how many forty-year-old men were jealous of his wild and carefree lifestyle.
Twenty-Six
“Sean? What are you doing here?” Maggie asked as he stepped out of his car.
He’d arrived before her, and he’d seen her face twitch in curiosity as she pulled her car to a stop beside his.
“I need to talk to you, privately.”
“Okay,” she nodded. “I need to check in with the night operators. Give me a few minutes to get settled.”
He waited in her office for ten minutes while she scurried about, getting her day started.
“Okay, what’s so important?” she asked as she entered her office and sat down behind her desk.
He pushed the door shut without rising from his chair.
“I’m almost sure the man I’m looking for is Steve Locoste.”
She stared at him a moment. “How can you be sure?”
“I stopped by his plant yesterday afternoon and snooped around a little. I spoke to one of his maintenance men and he told me LoCoste Adhesives has been trucking out a load of waste every two or three weeks for a long time. I didn’t ask how long because I couldn’t figure out how to do it without making the guy even more suspicious and cause him to clam up, but I got the impression it’s been going on for a while, not just the last few weeks.”
“Okay, what’s that got to do with me?”
“I want all the dump records for as far back as you have them.”
“You’ll have to go to city hall to get that. Most of that stuff, the billing records and whatnot, are archived there as part of the public record. You’ll only be able to go back five years, though, because that’s all the law requires us to keep. The previous log book might go back a little farther because we can usually get three or four years out of one book.”
Sean grunted. “I don’t need the billing records, just the log of what’s been dumped. How far back can you go and still get your hands on them reasonably easily?”
“A few years probably. Whatever is in the dump book by the front door.”
“The one I saw him filling out yesterday?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I look at it?” he asked.
“Sure, but I thought you had a copy already.”
Sean shook his head. “Not of the whole thing.”
He sprang from his chair and returned a moment later with the ledger in his hands. He flipped it to the first page and checked the initial entry.
“Looks like this goes back about three years. Can I make a copy of this before I leave?”
“All of it?”
“Unless I can have the book.”
“No, you can copy it. As sure as you take it, someone will show up to dump a load of something.”
“Okay, thanks,” he said. “Now, if he wasn’t bringing the loads here, where could he be taking them?”
“Legally, you mean?”
“Yeah. I want to make sure all my bases are covered.”
“I suppose he could take it to Raleigh or Fayetteville. Maybe Goldsboro. We’re the closest, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility he could take them to another site.”
“Can you check on that for me?”
She shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”
She dug around in her desk a moment before pulling out her contacts book.
“I’m going to go copy this,” Sean said, waving the book.
“Okay. There are two plants in Fayetteville and Raleigh. Do you want me to check both, or just the closer of the two?”
“Both please. Better to be sure.”
“Okay, you got it. I’m going to go make some coffee then I’ll start making phone calls.”
He stepped out of the office, and spent the next twenty minutes copying pages out of the book. When he finished, he collected the papers, returned the book to its location by the front door, and then stepped back into Maggie’s office.
“I’m on hold with E.M. Johnson,” she said as he returned to her office. She was rocked back in her chair and swiveling slowly, as if bored, the phone held loosely to her ear with her hand covering the mouthpiece.
“Where’s that?”
“Raleigh,” she said and then immediately perked up, tipping forward in the chair. “Jenson! Maggie Neese, how are you this morning?”
Sean settled into a guest chair and listened. He could only hear Maggie’s side of the conversation, but he didn’t need to hear it all.
“That’s good. Listen, I have a question for you. Are you accepting waste from LoCoste Adhesives?” She paused and rolled her eyes. �
��Nothing to worry about. It’s a bookkeeping thing. We’re accepting his waste and there’s some confusion over here. I’m trying to make sure we’re charging him properly.”
She was quiet as she listened. “You’re sure?” There was another pause. “Okay, Jenson, thanks.”
She hung up the phone. “Nothing at Neuse River either.” She flipped through her book. “I’ll try South Harnett next.”
“That’s in Fayetteville?”
She nodded as she ran her finger down a page, and then dialed. “Lee Ord, please.” She paused a moment. “Maggie Neese, Lizard Lick Creek WWTP.” Another pause. “Thanks.”
She turned her attention back to Sean. “I would be surprised if he’s using Fayetteville, since they’re the farthest away,” she explained as she waited for Lee to pick up.
They sat in silence for a long moment.
“This early in the morning everyone is running around,” Maggie added with a grin, filling the growing silence.
Sean was beginning to wonder if Lee was going to answer the phone when Maggie suddenly stiffened.
“Hey, Lee. Maggie Neese. How are you this morning?” Pause. “Good. Listen, I’m hoping you can answer a question for me. Are you accepting waste from LoCoste Adhesives?” Pause. “You’re sure?” Another pause. “Okay, thanks.”
“Nothing?” he asked.
“Nope. Who’s next? Goldsboro or Spring Lake? You pick.”
“Spring Lake is in Fayetteville? Might as well try them.”
She dialed again, and as he listened, she gave the same song and dance, and then repeated the procedure at Goldsboro.
“Nothing at Goldsboro,” she said as she hung up. “They typically don’t accept outside waste, but they’re the closest, so I thought I’d check, just to make sure. If he’s not dumping illegally, he’s driving a lot farther than he needs to, which makes no sense. Actually, going someplace other than here makes no sense, period. We’re giving him a better deal than he’s going to get anywhere else.”
“Thanks, Maggie. Anything you can think of that I’ve missed? Any question I should have asked but didn’t?”
She paused as she thought it over.
“You’re sure this sudden increase in dumping isn’t just a fluke?”
Sean pulled his lips tight and gave his head a quick shake. “I don’t think so. I made sure he knows you’re monitoring the river. He’s trapped. He can’t dump in the river, and he can’t store it on sight. I’m kind of surprised he hasn’t started going somewhere else to try to cover his tracks. Of course, that wouldn’t explain what he was doing before Thacker’s death.”
“It’s not that easy. You can’t just roll into a wastewater plant and dump a load. There’s a lot of paperwork and testing that has to be completed first. He probably thought nobody would notice, or he could explain it away, and then go back to dumping in the river after a couple of trips. If he’s dumping. I still have a hard time believing he would be that stupid.”
“If he is dumping, he’s been getting away with it for a long time.”
Maggie shook her head. “Yeah, but he had to know that eventually it would catch up with him. Wouldn’t he?”
“That’s not how people think. The jails are full of people who thought they were going to get away with it. And think about it, if Thacker hadn’t been such a bulldog, he’d still be getting away with it.”
“I guess. I don’t understand it myself. It seems like a lot of risk for not much gain.”
“A quarter of a million dollars is a lot of gain, Maggie.”
“Going to prison for illegal dumping, and now, murder, is a lot of loss, too.”
“I can’t argue against you there.” He stood. “I’m going to the station to look through these entries. If I want the rest of the records, I’ll have to go to city hall?”
“Yeah.”
He made a face. “I’m not exactly popular there at the moment. Hopefully these are enough. Thanks for everything, Maggie.”
“You’re welcome. Do you want me to keep testing the river?”
“For a little while longer, if you can. I don’t want something to slip past now.”
“Okay. I just wanted to check. It’s squeezing my lab a little.”
He grinned. “I guess I better bring another couple of boxes of doughnuts. Chocolate glazed, right?”
She giggled. “It couldn’t hurt.”
“Consider it done.”
-oOo-
Sean placed the stack of papers on his desk and sat down, dragging his laptop over in front of him. He spent the next hour finding all the entries where Steve had logged a load, entered the date into a spreadsheet, and then marked the line with a yellow highlighter pen so he could make sure he didn’t miss any. When he flipped over the last page, he rechecked the pages, looking for entries he missed, before he quickly wrote a formula to calculate the number of weeks between each entry.
The results were clear. Over the past three years and two months, excluding the last eight weeks, Steve was dumping a load on average every 7.62 weeks. For the last two months, that average jumped to a load every 2.23 weeks. He was disposing of almost four times the waste he was previously, and that matched what Frank, Steve’s maintenance man, said was normal.
“I’ve got you,” Sean muttered to himself. He printed the spreadsheet off and added it to the file, along with all the copied pages from the log book.
“Claire, I’m going to the magistrate’s office. Be back later,” he said as he stepped through the lobby, the Thacker file in his hand.
As he drove to Faulkner, the county seat for Siouan County, he went over in his mind everything about the case, trying to make sure he had all his facts straight and wasn’t overlooking something obvious.
He didn’t want look like an idiot in his first meeting with the magistrate by having him ask a question he didn’t have an answer to.
-oOo-
“Magistrate, nice to meet you,” Sean said as he stepped into the office.
The magistrate’s office wasn’t large but it was nicely appointed, looking like a scaled down court room without a jury box. On the oak paneled section of wall behind the desk was the Siouan County seal, with the American and State of North Carolina flags flanking it.
To complete the courtroom like setting, a silver haired man in a black robe sat behind an imposing wooden desk. At the front edge of the desk was a wood and stainless-steel name plate with the magistrate’s name, Henry Vison, engraved in bold black letters, with the words Siouan County Magistrate below in slightly smaller letters.
Henry might be going gray, but he appeared to be alert and energetic, even in the ceremonial robe of his office.
“Call me Hank. Nice to meet you, chief. How can I help you?”
“I need a search warrant for LoCoste Adhesives and Locoste Trucking.”
“On what grounds?”
“I have reason to believe Steven Locoste is engaged in the illegal dumping of industrial waste. Further, I believe in the course of the illegal dumping, he performed or contributed to the murder of Boyd Thacker.”
Hank leaned back in his chair and tugged at his bottom lip. “What is it you want to search for?”
“I want to seize his accounting records, computer files, and his tanker truck to obtain evidence to substantiate the illegal dumping claim as motive for the murder.”
“You want accounting files to try to prove this Steve Locoste murdered Boyd Thacker?”
Sean could tell that the magistrate hadn’t made the connection between the accounting files, the illegal dumping, and Thacker’s murder.
“Yes, sir. I intend to show Steve is, or was, performing illegal dumping of industrial waste. If I can ascertain that, I will have a clear motive for the murder of Boyd Thacker. That, along with certain items I witnessed on his truck, I believe I can show the district attorney that Steve Locoste is the likely murderer of Thacker.”
Hank leaned forward. “Show me what you’ve got.”
Sean spent
the next twenty minutes reviewing the case file with the magistrate.
“And you witnessed the weights on the truck yourself?” Hank asked.
“I did.”
Hank nodded. “Okay. I’ll issue a warrant. I’ll include the truck because it is material in the illegal dumping case, even though that’s not why you want it.”
“Thank you, magistrate.”
“I’ll have it for you soon. When do you want it dated?”
“Tomorrow, please.”
Hank nodded. “Wait outside please.”
-oOo-
Warrant in hand, Sean bounded down the steps of the county court house. He knew he was going out on a limb, but he had to push this. He had opportunity, and with what he saw on the truck, means. If he could establish motive, it should be a slam dunk for an arrest warrant.
This was what he did, what he was good at, the piecing together of a case from computer files and accounting information. If the information was there, he’d find it, and then he’d hang Steve with it.
He smiled as he opened his car door and dropped into the driver’s seat. He was going to enjoy watching Rudy’s face when he found out his buddy Steve Locoste was a murderer.
Twenty-Seven
“Fish, Chips, follow my lead. We’re taking all the computers from accounting, all the paper ledger files, and we’re going to lock down the tanker truck. Make sure you get the power cords, but we don’t need keyboards, mice, monitors, speakers, or anything like that. If you’re not sure, ask me. Clear?” Sean explained as they stood by their patrol cars in the police station parking lot.
“Yes sir,” Chips replied, swallowing hard.
Sean grinned, trying to project calm confidence. This was Fish and Chips first evidence seizure, and while Fish seemed calm, Chips appeared to be on edge.
“While you collect all that, I’m going to use Locoste’s computer to pull all the accounting files off the server, if they’re using one, and then we’re taking his computer too. We’re going to do this calmly and professionally, okay? If they refuse to accept the warrant, we’ll begin arresting them, but we’re not kicking in doors or anything like that unless I give the order. We clear on that?”
Deadly Waters (A Sean McGhee Mystery Book 1) Page 22
