Midnight Haul

Chapter Twenty

The Mill was a late ’60s time warp. The booths were displaced church pews; stained-glass panels hung behind the bar; a folksinger was doing something by Phil Ochs. During the folksinger’s break, somebody put money in a jukebox that still had “Big Yellow Taxi” on it and when something by Sting came out, it seemed like a mistake. A waitress in sweater and jeans took an order, then spoke to her black boyfriend for five minutes before turning it in. Two guys with ponytails and facial hair sat facing each other, leaning across one of the tables scattered between the pews and the bar, making a conspiracy out of a dope deal as if anyone still cared, saying “man” a lot, like it was fifteen years ago in California, and not today in Iowa City.

Crane hated the Mill.

But his friend Roger Beatty and Roger’s girl Judy had talked him into coming along. The food at the Mill was good, particularly the antipasto salad, and afterwards they would go to the Bijou Theater for a John Wayne movie, The Searchers. Roger said it was a great movie, so Crane had consented to come. He hadn’t been out much since he got back from Greenwood. He hadn’t been out at all, really. Maybe it was time he did.

Roger was explaining some things about the movie to Judy, who was listening patiently, or pretending to. Judy usually didn’t go in for these old movies, and Crane wondered why she was here.

Judy was a thin, pretty girl with a short dark cap of hair and dark blue eyes with long lashes; she gave Crane a slow sideways look, while Roger babbled (“doorways in the film represent civilization”) and gestured with both hands, the eyes behind his thick glasses lost in themselves.

Their antipasto salads came, and they ate, Roger continuing his critique of the film they would be seeing, Crane beginning to feel uncomfortable with Judy’s eyes on him. He knew her well enough to know she wasn’t putting the make on him. So why was she staring?

Finally Roger, who liked food even more than films, shut up and ate.

Judy said, “I’m glad you’re getting out tonight, Crane. You needed it.”

He managed a smile. “Who needs to see a movie, with Roger here to tell it to you.”

Roger looked up from his salad. “I was just giving you some background.”

“Like the ending,” Judy asked, with a not unpleasant smirk.

Crane smiled at them and said, “It’s nice of you guys to ask me along. I haven’t been doing much lately except study.”

“Not that it shows,” Roger said.

Crane shrugged. “I missed a few deadlines.”

“Yeah, and had some pieces rejected.”

“What’s the problem, Crane?” Judy asked.

Roger said, “He’s going to lose his spot on the Daily Iowan, is the problem. You know how many journalism majors are lined up in back of you, Crane, wanting on that staff?”

“Just all of them,” Crane said.

“So what’s the problem?” Judy asked again.

“He’s still got his head back in New Jersey,” Roger said.

Crane didn’t say anything.

Their waitress brought the food: Roger had a small pizza, Judy spaghetti, Crane vegetarian lasagna.

Roger and Judy began to eat.

Crane poked at his food with his fork.

“Why don’t you call her?” Roger said.

“Roger. Please.”

“I know you don’t want to talk about it in front of Judy, but I already told her all about it.”

“Thanks, Roger. Confiding in you is like taking out an ad.”

Judy said, “Why don’t you call her, Crane? See what’s been happening? It’s been a month.”

“Five weeks,” he said.

“And you wrote her one letter and she didn’t answer it. That isn’t much of an effort to get through to her.”

“Who says I should try to get through to her?”

“Nobody,” Roger said. “But you better start getting with it.”

“Getting with it.”

“Yeah. Do your work. Have some fun. You know. Live a little.”

“Can I quote you?”

“Go ahead. Maybe if you use my stuff you won’t get rejected.”

Judy touched Roger’s arm and gave him a sharp look. Roger shook his head and took his frustration out on a slice of pizza.

Crane took a bit of lasagna: it was cold; he ate it anyway.

After the meal they had some wine and Crane said, “I know you two are trying to help, and I appreciate it. Really. I’m glad to be out among the living again. But your advice... well, it’s just that I’ve been over all of this in my own head so many times that...”

“Do you still think about Mary Beth?” Judy asked.

“Of course I still think about Mary Beth! I still sleep in the same bed I slept in with her, damnit.”

“From the way you just snapped at me,” Judy said, giving him her slow, long-lashed look, “I’d say you’ve got a bad case of the guilts.”

“The guilts.”

“That’s right. You went to your girlfriend’s funeral, and you met this Boone and went home with her. And you feel guilty about it, and that’s why you haven’t made any real effort to get back in touch with her. You’re punishing yourself.”

“Judy, I know you mean well, but you just don’t understand.”

“Maybe not. But I’d like to. So would Roger.”

Crane didn’t say anything.

Neither did Judy or Roger, for a few long minutes.

Then Crane said, “All right, maybe I do feel guilty about Boone and me, getting together so soon after what happened to Mary Beth...” He shook his head. “But that isn’t what... you see, what came between Boone and me was the goddamn Kemco thing. I couldn’t get her to accept that Mary Beth’s death was really suicide.”

“It probably was,” Judy said, nodding.

“What probably was?”

“Mary Beth’s death. It probably was suicide. I agree with you.”

“That sounds like an expert opinion.”

“Well, maybe it is. When Roger started talking about all this, telling me some of what you told him about the Kemco situation, I did some reading up. They make Agent Orange at that plant, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“So we’re talking dioxin, among other goodies.”

“That’s right.”

“Keep it simple,” Roger interrupted, between sips of red wine. “We’re not all science majors, here, you know.”

Judy said, “Three ounces of dioxin in the New York City water supply could wipe out the city’s population. At Love Canal — you’ve heard of Love Canal, Roger? At Love Canal, they buried 130 pounds of the stuff.”

“Judas,” Roger said.

“Here’s the point, Crane,” Judy continued. “In addition to being one terrific carcinogen, and the bearer of such glad tidings as liver disease and miscarriages, dioxin can cause psychological disturbances. And what is a suicide victim, other than a psychologically disturbed person?”

“Very few well-balanced folks kill themselves,” Roger conceded.

Crane leaned forward. “Then the depressed state Mary Beth and the other suicides were in might’ve been brought on... or anyway, amplified... by chemicals they’d been exposed to?”

“Why not?” Judy asked. “They all worked at that plant, didn’t they? Now if a non-Kemco employee in Greenwood committed suicide — particularly somebody who’d been asking embarrassing questions around town, like you had — that would be suspicious. Then I’d be inclined to agree with your Boone that people were being murdered to look like suicide.”

“There’s something I don’t get,” Roger said. “The Kemco plant is twenty miles or so from Greenwood, right? Then why the high rate of illnesses and such among the families of employees? The families aren’t directly exposed to any Kemco pollution.”

“Yet the wives and husbands and children are affected,” Judy said, nodding.

“Skin rashes for the kids,” Crane said, “miscarriages for mom, loss of sex drive for dad, fun for the whole family.”

“It really does sound like Love Canal,” Judy said. “Same kinds of things were reported there, only the reason for it all became obvious, when corroded waste drums started to break up through the ground in backyards. Did you know one backyard swimming pool popped up right out of its foundation? Floating in chemical shit. And people had pools of this stuff, oozing, bubbling up in their basements.”

“Thanks for waiting till after dinner to get into this,” Roger said, pale.

“The government moved a lot of people out of Love Canal,” Judy went on, “but some had to stay behind. Out of less than 200 homes, bordering on the condemned area, there were twenty-some birth defects, thirty-some miscarriages, forty-some cases of respiratory disease. I don’t know the exact figures, of course, but you get the idea.”

Roger pointed a thumb at her and said, “She doesn’t know the exact figures, of course.”

“I do know that there were something like twenty nervous breakdowns and three or four suicides... suicides, Crane.”

“In less than 200 homes?”

“That’s right. Wrap the national suicide rate around that one.”

“Maybe... maybe I should talk to Boone again.”

“Of course you should,” Roger said. “Go use the pay phone.”

“It’s long distance...”

Roger grinned and pulled a roll of quarters out from somewhere. “Here you go,” he said; he rolled the roll toward Crane, who caught it.

“Why do I get the feeling I’ve been set up?” Crane said, smiling at his two friends; they shrugged and smiled back at him as he got out of the booth.

He went to the phone on the wall over by the rest rooms and made the station-to-station call. He let it ring a dozen times. It was a big house, after all. No answer. He called information and got another number. He made the second station-to-station call, and on the third ring, Mary Beth’s mother answered.

He didn’t identify himself; he just asked to speak to Laurie. Mary Beth’s mother said she would put Laurie on.

“Hello?”

“Laurie? This is Crane.”

“Crane! Why you must be calling about Boone.”

“Why, yes...”

“Who told you? Did her husband call you about it?”

“About what?”

“About Boone. About her taking all those pills. Last I heard, she was still in a coma.”

Chapter Twenty-One

“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” Laurie asked.

“Yes,” Crane said.

It was dusk. The trees lining Boone’s street were skeletal, abstract shapes; the ground was white and brown, patches of leaves showing through the light covering of snow. It looked peaceful to Crane. Peaceful like death.

“I’d rather you came and stayed with us,” Laurie said. “Mother would like you to. We have the room.”

“No, thank you, Laurie, but I could never stay in that house.” He didn’t look at her as he said this; he’d been with her since late this morning, when she picked him up at the airport, but he hadn’t looked at her much. She was still too much a plumper, slightly older version of Mary Beth for him to be comfortable looking at her.

“You’ll be staying at the motel, then?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes.”

“Crane, she could be in that coma for a year.”

“Or forever.”

“Or forever. The doctor as much as said so. And if she does wake up, she could...”

“Be a vegetable. He as much as said that, too.”

“Not necessarily. He did say they got to her within the first hour. He said that was encouraging.”

“Somewhat encouraging.”

“Somewhat encouraging, he said. But you can’t stay around here forever, waiting for Boone to wake up. It’s crazy.”

Crazy. Crazy was Boone in Intensive Care with tubes in her. That was what crazy was.

“Laurie, I want to thank you for everything. Picking me up at the airport, driving me to the hospital at Fair View, sticking around till I talked to the doctor. Everything.”

“It’s all right, Crane. You were almost my brother-in-law, remember?” She smiled at him, a little.

“I remember.” He couldn’t find a smile to give her back. He tried, but it wasn’t there.

“You’re sure you want out here? Not at the motel?”

“This is where I want out.”

There were lights on in Boone’s house, in the downstairs. Two cars were parked at the curb: an MGB and Boone’s yellow Datsun. There was snow on the Datsun. Laurie was double-parked with the motor running.

Though they’d been together for some hours, he and Laurie hadn’t said much. It had seemed to him that Laurie had tried several times to say something and hadn’t been able to. He glanced at her now, as he opened the car door to get out, and realized she was trying one last time.

“Crane... you and Boone. You must’ve gotten... close.”

He closed the door and settled back in the seat.

“Laurie,” he said, “I love her. That doesn’t take anything away from how I felt about Mary Beth. I still love Mary Beth, and she’s dead. And now Boone, and she’s in a coma. I love them both, and I let them both down, or they wouldn’t be where they are right now.”

“Don’t say that.”

He shrugged.

Laurie was struggling again.

Crane said, “Say what’s on your mind. Go on.”

“It’s just... you told me you were leaving town... told mother the same thing... then you move in with Boone. You never called or anything, saying you’d changed your mind about going or anything. But I knew you were still in Greenwood, and with Boone. This is a small town, Crane, in case you haven’t noticed. Word gets around.”

She had tried to keep the resentment out of her voice, but it was there.

He said. “I didn’t want to bother you and your mother again. I didn’t want to worry either of you with my suspicions.”

“Suspicions?”

“About Mary Beth’s death.”

“Is that why you were asking questions around town?”

“Yes.”

“Then, what? You think Mary Beth was, what? Murdered?”

“Yes. I’d convinced myself that it was something else, but now...”

“Now Boone attempts suicide, too, and that’s just one too many suicides for you to swallow. Sorry. Poor choice of words.”

“Not so poor. You said this was a small town. Hasn’t anybody in Greenwood noticed that suicide is going around like the mumps?”

“Of course.”

“And?”

“People think it’s strange.”

“And?”

“They just think it’s strange. Not suspicious. Just strange.”

“What do you think?”

“I think it’s suspicious. But I don’t know what you’re going to do about it, if that’s why you’re staying around.”

“Well, I have no plans for suicide... so if I turn up some morning sleeping under an exhaust pipe, it wasn’t my idea, if anybody asks.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get into this.”

“Crane.”

“Yes?”

“What are you going to do?”

“Nothing. Go home to your kid, Laurie. I appreciate you picking me up, driving me around today.”

He got out of the car.

“If you want a ride to Fair View to see Boone tomorrow, or any day,” Laurie said, “just call. Mom can sit with Brucie.”

“Thanks.”

“Maybe she’ll wake up, Crane.”

“Maybe she will.”

Laurie drove off.

He turned and looked at Boone’s house. One of the upstairs windows was boarded up. Odd.

He knocked on the door.

Billy answered. He seemed to have grown a little.

“Hello, Billy.”

Billy looked at Crane through squinty eyes, not recognizing him at first. When recognition came, it was a wave of disgust over the six year old’s face. He turned away and yelled, “Daddy!” and disappeared.

A moment later, like a special effect in a movie, the young version of Billy was replaced by the older one: Patrick. He was in a white shirt with his collar and tie loose. His eyes behind the wire frames showed confusion, though it was clear he, unlike Billy, knew Crane immediately.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, without hostility.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Crane said.

Patrick shrugged. “I moved in the day after it happened. That’s, what? Two days ago. Come in, come in.”

Crane did, but they did not advance to the living room; they stayed right in the entryway, standing awkwardly, like strangers thrown together at a cocktail party. Or a wake.

“Don’t you have an apartment in Fair View?” Crane said.

“Yes. And I considered staying there, to be closer to Annie. Not that I could do anything for her at this point.”

“Why move in here?”

“Greenwood’s where Billy goes to school. Fair View is thirty miles from here. So I moved in to be with Billy. So his life wouldn’t be too disrupted.”

Billy was sitting on the floor in the next room watching TV.

“It’s hell to have your life disrupted,” Crane said.

“Look. I have had some rough damn days, here, you know. Yesterday I didn’t get into work at all. Today at work I had to make up for yesterday. I haven’t even had a chance to get back to the apartment to move some of my stuff here. I just packed a bag and came, to be with my son.”

“What about your wife?”

“My ex-wife. A disturbed, irrational woman. I can’t say I feel much love for her anymore. The only thing I feel is sorry for her.”

“Sorry for her.”

“Crane, what are you doing here? Somebody called you about Annie, and you came, but there’s nothing for you to do here. She’s in a coma.”

“I noticed.”

“You saw her, then.”

“I saw her.”

Patrick swallowed. Suddenly his face looked white, long. “Poor Annie,” he said. Looking at the floor.

“Who did it?”

“Who did what?”

“Shoved those pills in her.”

“Keep your voice down.”

“It’s down. Who did it?”

“She did it.”

“She took those pills herself? Voluntarily?”

“She was irrational! Troubled.”

“She was almost murdered is what she was, and I want to know your part in it.”

“My part...? Get the fuck out of here.”

“You tell me first. Who did this? You don’t have the balls to do it yourself, Patrick. Who did it?”

Patrick spoke through his teeth. “She did it. You can’t stuff a bottle of barbiturates down somebody’s throat. They take it because they want to.”

“What was she doing with barbiturates? I know how she feels about drugs.”

“Didn’t you talk to the doctor? She had a prescription. They were to help her sleep.”

“Why would she be having trouble sleeping?”

“Maybe it was because she and her new boyfriend had a spat, and he ran out on her.”

“Fuck you, Patrick.”

“Get out of my house.”

“This isn’t your house. We both know whose house it is.”

“Get out!”

Billy called from the other room. “Daddy?”

“It’s okay, Billy,” Patrick said. Then to Crane, no sarcasm, no anger: “Please. Just go.”

“I’ll go. For now.”

Crane was halfway down the front walk when he heard Patrick’s voice behind him: “I hope to God Annie comes out of it. Then she can tell you herself what happened.”

Crane kept walking.

“Crane, I wouldn’t hurt my son’s mother. I wouldn’t do that.”

That stopped him: he felt himself believing Patrick again. Goddamnit.

“What really happened, Patrick?” he said, turning.

“I told you. I told you. I fucking told you! She was troubled. She wasn’t herself. You left town, and...”

He went to Patrick. “And what?”

“Well. In a way maybe I did contribute to it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I petitioned the court for custody of my son.”

“You what?”

“I wanted Billy and I thought I could get him. Annie wouldn’t have come off too good in court, a woman who’d made no effort to get a job, instead spending all her energies trying to destroy me and the company that employed me and, indirectly, fed her and my son. Also, she’d had a man living in the house with her — you — and that wouldn’t have looked good for her.”

“When was this?”

“Last week.”

“You’d just served the papers on her? You hadn’t gone to court yet?”

“That’s right.”

“And so she took a bottle of sleeping pills? Get serious.”

“That was just a small part of it.”

“Was it.”

“Yes.”

“What was the big part?”

“Well, the fire, of course.”

“What fire?”

“Didn’t you know? Four days ago, there was a fire here. Neither she nor Billy were in the house. Some rooms upstairs were pretty badly burned; her study was gutted. The fire department, such as it is, stopped it from spreading throughout the house. We were lucky.”

“Her study was gutted?”

“Yes. That’s what set her off, Crane, I’m sure.”

Crane looked up at the boarded-over window on the second floor.

“Her book,” Patrick was saying, “her research files. Everything. All of it. Burned up in the fire.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

It was hard to tell where the overcast day ended and the smoke from Kemco began. The buildings with their aqua plastic walls and intertwining pipes seemed to suit this bleak, cold afternoon. So did the snow-flecked empty field across the way, that immense balding dandruff-spotted scalp, farmland where no one dared grow anything.

He thanked Laurie for driving him out there. She said she could wait for him and drive him back when he was done, but he told her no, he was quite sure he could find a ride back.

They’d been to see Boone again. The doctor had let him sit in the room with Boone, for about an hour. She looked pale. A little thin. But still very pretty. She seemed to be asleep. He found himself thinking of Mary Beth. He remembered the conscious decision he’d made at the funeral not to look at her as she lay in her casket. If Boone died, he knew he would see her this way, forever: forever in a coma. He knew it and hated it. But he would be here. Even as she deteriorated physically, getting thinner, thinner. Intravenous feeding could keep her alive; but she’d still seem to waste away. But he would be here. Every day, as long as it took. Sitting in her room. Till she woke up. Or not.

Soon he’d have to deal with his parents. He hadn’t called them before he left; he wasn’t up to arguing about this. He’d written them a letter, telling them he was dropping out for the semester and going back to Greenwood. They knew nothing about him and Boone; they wouldn’t begin to understand what this was about. Eventually he would have to tell them. Eventually he would have to tell them he’d drawn out from his bank account all of the school money he worked for this summer, to live on here.

But that would have to wait.

Boone came first.

Boone, and Kemco.

He walked into the building that housed the executive offices; the receptionist looked at him from her window in her wall and asked him who he was there to see. He told her Mr. Boone was expecting him. Which was nonsense, but Patrick wasn’t likely to turn him away, either.

He sat down on one of the plaid-upholstered couches. He noticed that the quote from the founder (“Industry is people”) was hanging crooked in its frame, above the other couch. He got up and straightened it and sat down again.

Patrick was in his shirt-sleeves with a dark blue tie, and slacks and face about the same color gray. He stood on the other side of the turnstile that separated the reception area and hallway, keeping it between him and Crane.

“What do you want?” he said. His voice seemed strained. The eyes behind the wire frames blinked.

Crane stood. He put on a small smile. “Just want to talk, Patrick.”

“We talked last night.”

“Patrick. Please. I came to apologize, in a way. Could we go to your office?”

Patrick studied Crane for what seemed like a long time. The smile made Crane’s face hurt, but he kept it on.

Finally Patrick motioned at him to come on, nodding at the receptionist that it was okay. Crane went through the turnstile and followed Patrick down the long, rather wide hall.

Patrick told his secretary to hold all calls and closed the door behind Crane and himself. He sat behind his desk. Folded his hands. Crane took a chair and sat across from him, not bothering to smile anymore, but keeping a neutral expression.

“I’ll go to the police,” Patrick said.

“What are you talking about, Patrick?”

“I’m just someone trying to make a living, trying to raise a son. I can’t take this harassment. I won’t be harassed, Crane!”

“Patrick. I told you. I came to apologize.”

“Right.”

“I mean it. I’ve been out of line. Finding out what happened to Boone threw me out of whack. You can understand that.”

Patrick nodded, slowly, still not quite buying it.

“Surely, you admit some strange things have been happening,” Crane said.

“Yes. I admit that.”

“Like the fire. Like the suicides.”

“I told you last night, the police and fire department agreed that there was no evidence of arson.”

“I know you did. But you can understand why I can’t get too worked up over the opinions of Greenwood’s Finest.”

Patrick shrugged. “Crane, if I believed that that had been arson, I’d be the first to complain.”

“Well, sure. I can see how you’d want to do that. I can see where a complaint might be in order.”

Patrick shifted in his swivel chair, studying Crane, looking for sarcasm, not quite finding it.

Crane said, “I came here to tell you I’m leaving Greenwood.”

“You are?”

“That’s right. I’ll send you my address and phone number, in Iowa City. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep me posted, where Boone’s concerned.”

Patrick lifted his eyebrows. “Well, of course. Why not.”

“I know it must’ve been a blow to Boone to lose all her research materials. To have her entire manuscript, months of work, go up in smoke.”

He nodded. “She was devastated. As I told you last night, I’m convinced that’s why she did what she did.”

“Took those pills.”

“Yes.”

“At least there’s one encouraging note.”

“Yes?”

“When we spoke, you and I, five weeks ago, you said Kemco itself was concerned about some of Boone’s findings... the high incidence of certain illnesses among employees and their families, for example. You said Kemco would be doing its own study into the matter.”

“That’s right.”

“How’s it coming along?”

“Well. It’s in the beginning stages. The home office in St. Louis is putting it in motion, I’m told.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Then you’re really going, Crane?”

“Yes. There’s nothing for me, here. I have to get back to Iowa and hit the old books.”

Patrick rose. “Well, then. I’ll show you out.”

Crane smiled again. “No need. I know the way.” He extended his hand to Patrick. “Sorry about our misunderstandings, Patrick. They shook hands across the desk.

Patrick smiled and said, “We might’ve been friends, under different circumstances.”

Crane kept the smile going. “Who knows?” he said.

He left Patrick’s office. He glanced back and saw Patrick had followed him out in the hall, watching him. Crane waved, smiled, went into the room marked MEN.

He went into one of the stalls and sat; he kept his pants up. He sat and looked at his watch. When five minutes had passed he left the stall. He peeked out in the hall. No Patrick.

Down the Hall from Patrick’s office was a door that said PLANT MANAGER.

Crane opened it.

The secretary looked up, a woman in her late thirties with short dark hair and glasses and a nice smile. “Do you have an appointment with Mr. Johnson?”

“I don’t need one,” Crane said, and opened the door, at the left, which said WALTER JOHNSON, PLANT MANAGER.

Johnson was a thickset man about fifty, with wiry brown hair going gray, a mustache, wire-rim glasses. He was in his shirt-sleeves and a red-and-blue striped tie, with some work on his desk and a phone receiver to his ear.

At first he smiled, just hearing the door open, not looking at Crane, assuming it was his secretary or someone with something important his secretary had sent on in; but the smile was momentary, turning to confusion on seeing someone he didn’t know barge in, turning to irritation that would’ve turned to anger if Crane hadn’t slammed a fist on the man’s desk, upsetting papers, spilling a half a cup of coffee, rattling the desk itself, turning Johnson’s expression to one of fear.

“Hang up the fucking phone,” Crane said.

Johnson said, “Excuse me,” into the receiver, softly, hung up.

The secretary was behind Crane, having come in on his heels, and Johnson motioned to her to leave and she did.

“Who are you?” Johnson said.

“Crane.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“I think so.”

“Well it doesn’t.”

“How about Anne Boone? Does that mean anything?” He then listed the other “suicides”: Woll, Meyer, Price, Mary Beth.

Johnson said, “I know those names. All of them worked for us, except Mrs. Boone. And Mrs. Boone’s husband is in our employ.”

“I know all about Patrick being in your employ. And I know all about what you people have been up to. Everything from dumping hazardous wastes in household dumps to unsafe working conditions at the plant; I know about your arson, I know about your phony suicides, which is to say murder.”

Johnson said nothing. He was looking Crane over, nervously, possibly wondering if Crane had a gun.

Crane pointed a finger at him. “I know. I know all about everything. Burning Boone’s book won’t stop a goddamn thing. I’m going to have your corporate asses. I’m taking what I have to the Hazardous Waste Strike Force, and to the media and...”

The door opened behind him. Two armed security guards, one of them a woman, came in.

“Hold him!” Johnson shouted. He was standing behind the desk, now, shaking, furious, not quite over being afraid. “Hold him while I call the police.”

Patrick came in the room. He looked briefly dismayed, then was all business.

“Walt,” he said. “Let me have a word with you.”

The guards escorted Crane into the outer office. They stood. He sat. Voices within Johnson’s office argued.

A few minutes later Patrick came back out.

“Do you have a car here?” Patrick asked Crane.

“No,” Crane said.

“I’ll drive you.”

“What about the police?”

“I’ve convinced Mr. Johnson not to bring them in. Next time, don’t expect me to bail you out, Crane.”

“What would I do without you.”

“Are you going to cause any more trouble?”

“Not today.”

For the first ten minutes of the ride back to Greenwood, Patrick said nothing; he just drove, quietly fuming, like the Kemco plant.

Then he laughed; it sounded harsh. “I believed you,” he said.

“Don’t be bitter,” Crane said. “I’ve fallen for your bullshit, on occasion.”

“What was the purpose of all that back there, Crane?”

Crane shrugged.

“Are you flipping, or what?”

Crane didn’t say anything.

Patrick shoved an Eagles tape into his dash and turned it up loud. At least it wasn’t Willie Nelson, Crane thought. He found Patrick’s little sports car comfortable enough. He settled back.

When Patrick pulled up at the motel, he said, “You better do what you said you were going to do: leave town.”

“Thanks for the lift,” Crane said. He got out.

Patrick shook his head and drove off.

In his motel room, Crane made some phone calls. Then he walked to the pizza place downtown and ate. By the time he finished, it was dark. A light snow was falling. He walked to Boone’s house. Patrick’s car, the MGB, was in front. So was Boone’s Datsun, still covered with snow. No one had touched it since her “suicide attempt,” he’d bet.

There was no one around; the street light was still out. He felt fairly safe going over to the Datsun and seeing if it was locked. It wasn’t.

He opened the glove compartment. Reached his hand in. Felt the coldness: the gun was still in there.

He put it in his belt, shut the door of the Datsun and walked back to the motel room.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Kids were bundled in their winter clothes as they left the grade school, walking into the blowing snow. Some of them got onto the waiting buses; other paused impatiently till the crossing guards let them trudge homeward. None of them were playing or fooling around, today: the wind had teeth and they wanted to get away from it.

Crane liked the way it felt on his face, the wind, the snow. There was some ice mixed in with it, and it whipped him, like a sandstorm. He stood in the playground shivering, hands in the pockets of his light summer jacket.

Billy was wearing a parka. He and two other boys passed right by Crane. Billy didn’t look at him. Crane wasn’t sure if he was being ignored or just hadn’t been seen. He did know that he had the odd urge to grab the boy, hug him, hold him to him. The feeling lasted only a moment, and Crane didn’t understand it: he genuinely disliked the kid.

Over to the left, on the same side of the street as the playground, a local cop car was parked, its motor running. The officer he’d talked to in the candy shop, five weeks ago, was sitting in it, alone, keeping an eye on the kids. Thin, dark-complected guy named, what was it? Turner. Officer Turner.

He walked over and knocked on the driver’s window and Turner rolled it down. He said, “Yes? Got a problem?” Turner’s breath was visible, like pollution.

“Just saying hello,” Crane said. “We spoke a month or so ago, about my fiancée’s death.”

“Oh, sure. Crane, isn’t it? How’s it going?”

“Not bad. How about you?”

“Can’t complain.”

“Kind of slow in Greenwood these days?”

“Yeah. Kind of. You know how it is.”

“Sure. You probably haven’t had a suicide since Thursday.”

“What?”

“Nice seeing you, officer. Keep up the good work.”

He turned his back on Turner and walked across the street and into the school. It was pretty well cleared out, very few kids, just a few teachers.

He quickly found the cafeteria. It was a big white room full of long tables with no one in it, except Mrs. Price, who was sitting drinking a cup of coffee. She looked tired; she seemed to have lost some weight. She was wearing a gray dress and little makeup and her red hair was rather mussed.

“Mr. Crane,” she said, with a perfunctory smile, getting up, sitting back down. “There’s coffee over there. Help yourself.”

He did.

He came back and sat down and sipped black coffee from a Styrofoam cup. Slipped off his wet jacket and draped it over the back of his chair.

“Well,” she said. Hands folded. “You said you wanted to see me.”

“Thank you for agreeing.”

“I didn’t think you were asking so much.”

“Mrs. Woll did. So did Mrs. Meyer.”

“Pardon?”

“I called them, too. I wanted to arrange a meeting between the four of us. Three widows of suicides, and me: the two-time loser.”

Mrs. Price winced, swallowed, said, “The other young woman... Ms. Boone... has she...?”

“Died? No. She’s still in her coma. I spent the morning with her.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Crane. I don’t know how you can hold up under it.”

“I’m holding up fine. I’m fine.”

“You don’t look like you slept much last night.”

“Neither do you.”

“Well,” she said, shrugging. “I haven’t slept terribly well for over a month. Not since you came around and started me thinking.”

“Is that what I did?”

“Of course you did. You know you did. You started me thinking about George. The second George, that is. Well, and the first George, too. They both worked at Kemco. Maybe it killed them both.”

“Bet on it.”

“You seem very convinced, Mr. Crane.”

“Aren’t you?”

“I don’t know. I know I’m not sleeping. What about the other woman... Mrs. Meyer, and who?”

“Mrs. Woll. Neither of them would see me. Either alone, or in a group of the four of us. Mrs. Woll still works at Kemco, and said to get involved would be to risk her job, and after all she has a daughter to raise, and has no suspicions in particular about her husband’s suicide. Mrs. Meyer didn’t give me a reason: she just hung up on me. I take that to mean she’s steadfast in her loyalty to her late husband’s company.”

She shook her head. “How can they ignore it? Suicide upon suicide...”

He felt a lump growing in his throat. He sipped the coffee. The lump didn’t go away. He put the coffee down. He put a hand to his face. Tears were streaming down his face. He could feel them.

“Mr. Crane...”

“I’m sorry... I’m sorry...”

Then she was beside him, her chair pulled in beside him, and she put an arm around him; comforting him. Patting him.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Price,” he said, better now. “I... I guess it just hadn’t really hit me yet, about Boone. I’m... I’m fine. Maybe it’s that I can’t believe it, that somebody else is actually acknowledging what’s going on.”

She scooted her chair away from his a bit, just to give him room, then gave him a warm, weary smile and said, “I don’t claim to know what’s going on here. But something is going on.”

“If you and Mrs. Woll and Mrs. Meyer and I were to band together, and contact the Hazardous Waste Strike Force, and any other appropriate or even goddamnit inappropriate agencies, and if we’d tell our story to the media, then maybe, just maybe something, something, would be done.”

“Yes, but about what? What really is going on here in Greenwood?”

“Kemco is killing people.”

“Be specific, Mr. Crane.”

“Boone, and the others, your husband included, stumbled onto something Kemco wanted kept quiet. The illegal hazardous waste dumping, I imagine.”

“Are you sure? That’s not the sort of crime you go around killing people over.”

“Kemco’s capable of it. Kemco’s capable of anything.”

“Mr. Crane, you’re talking about Kemco as if it were a person, an entity, a monster. That just isn’t the reality of it.”

“I used to think that way, Mrs. Price. I know the truth now. I’d blow the goddamn place up, if I thought it would do any good. If there weren’t a hundred more goddamn plants that would need blowing up as well.”

She touched his hand. “Mr. Crane. Try to keep your self-control.”

“I am. I’m fine.”

“Have you considered that perhaps Ms. Boone’s research turned something else up? I know she’d compiled disturbing statistics about diseases among Kemco employees and their families. But I understand there was a fire at her home, not long before she allegedly took an overdose of sleeping pills. Was her research material destroyed?”

“Yes.”

“If someone is killing people and making it seem like suicide, they’re doing a thorough job of it; each victim’s been a likely candidate for self-destruction. Is it true her husband had filed for custody of Billy?”

“Yes. Where did you hear that?”

“It’s a small town, Mr. Crane.”

“So everyone tells me. But nobody seems to be overly concerned about a galloping suicide rate.”

“Too many people collect Kemco paychecks, here, Mr. Crane, to get overly concerned about anything. In times like these, a paycheck comes in handy. The suicide rate — and the cancer rate — would have to go considerably higher before Greenwood would wake up.”

“I’ll wake them up. I’ll wake everybody up.”

“How?”

He smiled. “You see, I’m the next victim.”

“What?”

“I went out to Kemco yesterday. I made myself noticed. So they’ll be coming around to see me. To try to make a suicide out of me. Or accident, or whatever. Only I’ll be waiting.”

“Is that why you didn’t sleep last night?”

“I sat up in bed with a gun. And I’ll do that every night until they come. And then we’ll see. We’ll just see.”

“Mr. Crane. You’ve got to get hold of yourself. You should get some rest.”

“I’m fine.”

“I don’t think you really know what’s happening here in Greenwood.”

“Do you?”

“No. I might have an idea, though.”

“Yes? What?”

“I told you you started me thinking. It’s about all I’ve been able to do at night, is think. I drove Harry away — he’s the gentleman employed at Kemco, I’d been seeing — and I’ve jeopardized some longstanding friendships, by asking embarrassing questions of people like Ralph Foster, a local merchant who’s the part-time mayor. All because you got me thinking. It made me consider some of the research Ms. Boone has done... the illnesses. Take for example the skin rashes. I’ve seen more children with skin rashes in the last three years than in all my previous years of teaching combined. And then there’s the inordinate number of absences we’ve had at Greenwood Elementary, the past several years. Chronic attendance problems that I think have been misinterpreted. There have been PTA meetings at which parents have been castigated for letting their children play sick. At these meetings always a few indignant parents would insist that they have done no such thing: that a sick child is a sick child and a sick child stays home. But with changing mores in this country, attendance problems have naturally been considered a disciplinary problem, not a health problem.”

“I have a friend,” Crane said, “who wondered why the children and spouses of Kemco employees would be affected by negligent conditions at a plant twenty-some miles away.”

“The same thought occurred to me. Do you remember my mentioning to you that the school is built on ground donated to the city by Kemco?”

“Yes...”

“The school grounds, and the playground across the street, as well... land given the city twenty years ago by Kemco.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what the west edge of Greenwood was, twenty years ago?”

“No.”

“A household dump. A landfill. Operated by Kemco, for use by the city as its dump, and for Kemco’s own disposal of certain nonhazardous wastes. Or so the mayor told me. But a thought crossed my mind... if Kemco is engaging in illegal dumping of hazardous wastes today, a time of environmental concern... what do you suppose they were doing twenty years ago?”

Crane was shaking. He felt himself shaking. Was this what Mary Beth and the others had discovered? Was this what Boone had discovered? Why her book was burned? Why she now lay in a coma?

“So one has to wonder,” Mrs. Price was saying. “What’s buried across the street, under the playground? Last month I saw children playing over there — they picked up rocks and threw them at the sidewalk and watched the pretty colors the ‘fire rocks’ made.”

He had seen that. Crane had seen that and at the time thought nothing of it: Billy and his friends hurling that rock at the sidewalk and the flash of bright color.

“One has to wonder,” Mrs. Price said. She pointed at the floor. “What’s buried down there?”

Chapter Twenty-Four

They pulled him out of bed and onto the floor and had the tape over his mouth before he was fully awake.

He didn’t remember falling asleep. He’d watched everything there was to watch on television, which had taken him till around two. He’d read some magazines and started a paperback and had read until his burning eyes wouldn’t let him read any longer. It wasn’t like he hadn’t had any sleep: he’d slept for two hours this afternoon, after seeing Mrs. Price. When his travel alarm had woken him, he’d walked downtown to eat at that pizza place again and walked back to the room to watch TV and read and wait in bed with the reading lamp on and the gun in his hand.

The gun was in somebody else’s hand, now. It was in the hand of one of the two men who’d pulled him out of bed. The one who had put the tape on his mouth. The other man was beside Crane, on the floor by the bed, tying Crane’s hands in front of him.

They wore ski masks, red-and-black, a matched set. The one with Crane’s gun was a tall skinny guy in a green-and black-plaid hunting jacket; the other one, standing up now, pulling Crane up by the arm, wasn’t as tall, but was wide in the shoulders and wore a black quilted mountain vest and long-sleeved dirty black sweatshirt that hugged his massive arms.

The truckers.

The two men he and Boone had seen dumping drums of waste, in Pennsylvania, weeks ago.

Crane dove head first into the tall skinny guy, gun or no gun, knocking the wind out of him, knocking him down, scrambled over him, got on his feet again, got to the door, but it was closed, and with his hands tied he couldn’t open it, and by the time he thought of trying for a window to fling himself through, the bruiser was on him, grabbing both his elbows behind him and pulling his arms back like chicken wings. The pain was sharp; nearly blacked him out.

The skinny one got up, recovered the gun, went over to the lamp. Switched it off. Then he walked to the door, opened it, peeked out, looked to the right, to the left, nodded to the bruiser, who kept hold of Crane’s elbows from behind and walked him out into the motel parking lot.

The motel’s sign was off. There was no one around; it had to be three-thirty or four in the morning. Still, the two men were cautious. They walked him down to the place where the parking lot went around the back end of the building, where they had parked a battered old pick-up truck, with a couple of steel drums in the back, fifty-five-gallon barrels like the ones the waste had been dumped in.

The skinny one lowered the tailgate and climbed up on the bed of the pick-up. Then the bruiser lifted Crane up to him, like a child from one parent to another, the bruiser’s hands on Crane’s waist, the skinny guy pulling Crane up and in by one arm, which hurt nearly as much as having his elbows yanked back. He felt an involuntary cry come out of him and get caught by the slash of tape across his mouth.

Then the bruiser climbed up and locked Crane around the waist from behind and lifted him up and set him inside one of the steel drums.

Crane just stood there, the rim coming up to his rib cage, and looked back at the masked faces of the trucker; for the first time he noticed how cold it was: he was in his T-shirt and jeans and it was fucking cold.

Then the bruiser started pushing on Crane’s shoulders, shoving him down, and finally Crane got the picture: they wanted him down inside the drum. He resisted for a moment, but it was useless. He crouched within the drum, squeezing himself in, tucking his knees up between the loop of his arms, his hands bound at the wrist by rope, his knuckles scraping the steel of the drum. The steel of its rounded sides seemed to touch him everywhere, in fact, but still he managed to sit, the top of his head six inches or more from the top of the barrel, and he looked up.

And saw the lid coming down.

He couldn’t have felt more helpless. The sound of the lid being hammered down wasn’t really loud: they were tapping the lid in place with a pair of hammers, doing it easily, not wanting to attract attention; but he never heard anything louder. He never heard anything that echoed so.

He stared up at total blackness.

He sat in total silence.

No, not total silence: there was his own breathing, a desperate, snorting sound, breathing through his nose. Already the air seemed stale. Already his muscles seemed cramped. Already claustrophobia was closing in.

Then, another sound: the motor starting up.

Hearing that sound, any sound, was almost reassuring to him.

I’m not dead yet, he thought. I may be in a steel coffin, but I’m not dead yet.

He heard the wheels of the pick-up grind against the gravel of the motel parking lot, then pull onto the street, and the ride began.

Some of it — the first half hour — was on blacktop. The barrel swayed, on the turns, lifting off its bottom tilting just a bit, but never falling over, thanks to the balance he was providing. He began to feel numb. He began not to breathe so hard. The coldness stopped bothering him. He became almost lulled by the darkness, the blacktop road they were rolling over.

Then they hit gravel again, and it was bumpy, and a chuckhole sent the drum clanging into the side of the pick-up and he cracked the side of his head and the pain sent some tears down his cheeks, but the pain wasn’t so bad, really. It was something to do.

Is this what death is like? he wondered. Is it darkness? Is it lack of sensation? Coldness that stops being cold? Pain that stops hurting? Mary Beth, is this death? Boone — is this a coma?

They were pulling in somewhere, slowing down.

Stopping.

Motor still going.

The door on the rider’s side was opening. Someone was getting out. Footsteps on gravel. A gate opening, metallic sounding. Footsteps on gravel again. Back in the pick-up. Door closing.

The pick-up was moving again. Slowly, now.

Then it stopped.

Both doors opened. Footsteps on hard earth. The tailgate was lowered. He heard one of the men hop up onto the bed of the pick-up.

And tipped the barrel over. The side of his head slammed into the side of the drum, stunning him, and then they were rolling him, the barrel and him, and the metal of the pick-up bed and the metal of the drum clashed, and he held his neck muscles tight to keep his head from getting banged.

They rolled him only to the edge of the pick-up, then set him down on the ground, rather gently actually.

Then they were rolling him again, and he pulled his neck muscles in tight, but Christ, they were rolling him, rolling him, and he was getting dizzy, so dizzy...

Then he felt himself, and the drum around him, go off the edge of something.

It wasn’t a long drop. Maybe six feet. The side of him slammed into the side of the barrel, when it landed, but it didn’t hurt him. He didn’t feel it much. The drum seemed to be sitting at an angle, but he couldn’t be sure.

Then he heard one of the men talking to the other. It was the first time he’d heard them speak, but he couldn’t make out any of what was being said.

One of the men came down in the hole and straightened the barrel, so that it and Crane were sitting upright. Nice of him.

A few minutes passed. Silence. A certain calm settled over him, as he sat in his drum, in his fetal position, waiting. Waiting for them to kill him.

Then he heard it: something dropping on the top of the lid of the barrel, like rain. Then it was heavier, more like hail.

Dirt.

They were burying him.

He tried to scream, but the tape across his mouth wouldn’t let him.

Chapter Twenty-Five

He didn’t know how long he’d been buried. The truckers would be gone, by now. He was cold. The stale air seemed to cling to him; so did the darkness. He wondered how long he could last. How long before he would suffocate.

His hands were almost free. He was gradually working one hand down through the knotted loop around his now rope-burned wrists, scraping his knuckles till they bled, which felt good to him, made him feel a little less dead, and then his hands were free and he tore the tape from his lips and began to yell.

Someone would hear him. Someone had to hear.

He yelled until his throat was raw, his voice a hoarse whisper, his ears ringing with the sound he’d made that only he’d heard.

No one would hear him. Who was he kidding? The truckers had obviously dumped him in the country someplace. A landfill, maybe, judging from the sound of the gate that had been opened before the truck drove in to where he’d been dumped. And who would be around at a landfill before dawn, to hear him scream? Nobody. Whoever worked here might come around seven-thirty or eight, but that was hours away; would his air supply last that long? He didn’t suppose this thing was airtight, but then he’d heard them filling the hole around him with dirt, and he knew there was dirt over him: no, he’d suffocate before anybody found him. If they found him. Who was to say he’d ever be found at all? Just something else Kemco had buried and forgotten.

He pushed at the lid above him. It seemed to give, a little. A very little, but it did give.

They had hammered that lid down, but maybe he could push up on it and pop the seal, and then maybe he could work the lid off and push it to one side or pull it partially down in with him, and get at the dirt above him, and dig his way out. There couldn’t be that much dirt over him; he hadn’t dropped that far. A foot or two. He could do it. He could do it.

He pushed with both hands, fingers spread, putting his shoulders into it. And getting nowhere. Again. Harder. Longer.

No.

He sat trying to catch his breath, which wasn’t easy in this recycled air. He felt hot, despite the cold; his muscles started to hurt him again, his back was aching. But that was okay: it was better than numbness, and the numbness especially in his arms, was getting worked out.

He put his hands above him, flat, and tried to get his leg muscles into it, tried to stand up, in effect; he pushed up with his legs and put the back of his shoulders up against the lid and his hands slid away and he shoved upward with his whole body.

He kept trying till his body couldn’t do it anymore.

And when he sat back down, a sob came out of him, which he quickly swallowed. He couldn’t allow himself that: he couldn’t let the situation control him; he had to control the situation. He would rest, and try again.

He did, and failed.

He started to cry.

Then he began pummeling the lid above him with his fists, denting the metal. His knuckles began bleeding again. But he was in so restricted an area, a position, that his fists couldn’t do much damage, either to himself or the lid. The drum he was in ignored his efforts, his tantrum.

He lowered his head. His shoulders slumped. He sobbed. Loud. Then soft. In some small compartment in his mind, the impartial observer in him sat and recorded it all, seeing it as if from outside, as if this were an experiment he were part of, or perhaps himself conducting, thinking: so this is despair. This is how despair feels. It isn’t just a word.

He tried to think of what Mary Beth’s face looked like but he couldn’t bring the image into focus; couldn’t exactly remember. He couldn’t find her voice, either. And Boone. He tried to see Boone in his mind not in a coma but couldn’t. He couldn’t. He tried to remember what it was like not to be in this drum. He felt cold. He hugged his arms to himself. His chin touched his chest.

He slept.

Chapter Twenty-Six

He woke.

He was in a hospital: he could smell it around him. He was in a hospital bed. The sheets felt cool. He felt a little groggy. He ached a little. He looked at his hands: they were bandaged.

“Good morning,” a voice said.

Crane turned his head slowly and looked at the man seated to his right, near his bed: a guy about thirty with thinning brown hair and gray-tinted glasses; he had on a tan sport jacket with a solid blue tie loose at the neck. He’d been reading a newspaper, waiting for Crane to come around, apparently.

“What hospital is this?” Crane asked. His tongue felt thick.

“Princeton General. In Princeton, New Jersey.”

“Who are you?”

“Hart. Sidney Hart.”

Crane heard a moaning sound and glanced to his left: a plastic curtain separated him from the other patient in the room, who sounded old.

He turned back to his visitor. “You... you’re with the Task Force.”

“That’s right. Hazardous Waste Task Force. Here. Let me crank you up.” Hart leaned over and hit a switch; the bed hummed and lifted Crane into a sitting position.

Hart didn’t sit back down. “You want anything? Something to drink?”

“Uh. Some juice, maybe?”

Hart rang for the nurse.

While they waited, Crane asked, “Why aren’t I dead?”

“Because nobody tried to kill you.”

“What?”

“The manager of a landfill a few miles out of Princeton found you in a fifty-five-gallon drum, about seven-thirty this morning. The drum was partially buried in a landfill ditch.”

“Partially?”

“The drum was covered with dirt on top, and filled in around the sides, but a good fourth of it was exposed to the air. And there were some nail holes in the side, to make sure you got some of that air. Right out in the open, at a busy dumping area.”

The nurse came; Hart asked her to bring Crane some juice.

“I don’t understand,” Crane said.

Hart sat. “You better tell me about it.”

Crane did, starting with getting pulled out of bed by the truckers; he didn’t mention baiting Kemco.

“Somebody was trying to scare you,” Hart said.

“They tried to kill me.”

“No. I don’t envy you what you went through; but killing you wasn’t what it was about.”

“Oh?”

Hart shrugged. “They took precautions not to be identified, wore ski masks, never spoke. That indicates they expected you to live through it. So does providing you with air, and leaving the barrel where it couldn’t be missed.”

“You’re not a regular cop. I want to see the regular cops. What are you doing here, anyway?”

“You asked for me.”

“I... did?”

“In a manner of speaking. You were kind of delirious when they brought you in on the ambulance. But you gave them your name, and said ‘hazardous waste’ a couple of times, and that was enough to make them call us, in addition to the cops. I was the one who took the call, and I recognized your name. You’re the one involved with Anne Boone.”

“Yes. And you’re the Task Force investigator she talked to.”

“Yes. And I kept track of her.”

“Then you know where she is now.”

“In a coma, in a hospital. At Fair View.”

“They tried to kill her, too.”

“There’s no proof of that, Crane.”

“Proof! Jesus! Can’t you see what’s going on? Can’t you fucking see it?”

“I know what you think is going on. I know you think Kemco’s involved in some kind of cover-up, and that they’re having people killed.”

“And making it look like suicide.”

“Maybe you can explain what they had in mind when they faked your suicide, then. Were we supposed to believe you buried yourself in a barrel?”

“No! No. I... don’t understand it.”

“If Kemco really was having people killed, they’d have had you killed, too. Not gone to elaborate lengths to scare you off — if Kemco was behind that stunt.”

“Scare me! Scare me.” He began to laugh. Then he covered his face with a bandaged hand.

Hart stood and put a hand on Crane’s shoulder and Crane batted it away.

The nurse came in and gave Crane orange juice and a careful look, Hart a reproving one, left.

“Crane. If there’s a cover-up, what exactly’s being covered up? Some midnight hauling? Nobody’s going to get killed over that. If Kemco got caught at that, they could weather it.”

“You don’t know, do you? You really don’t know.”

“What?”

“The landfills in Greenwood! The school, the playground, they’re built on landfills that Kemco gave the city, twenty years ago. Supposed to have nothing but harmless shit in it, but you know Kemco.”

Hart pursed his lips. Then said, simply: “So?”

“You talked to Boone. You know the statistics: miscarriages, birth defects, illnesses. Maybe the groundwater’s been contaminated. Maybe some foul shit is leaching out of twenty-year-old corroded drums and is in the fucking drinking water.”

Hart shrugged again. “Possible. Landfills like that are potential hazards, all right, but certainly wouldn’t be anything Kemco would bother trying to cover up. Because you can’t cover up something like that. What you do is ignore it.”

“You can’t ignore it. It’s your job to look for, what did you call it? Potential hazards?”

“Crane, you got it all wrong. My job — the job of the Task Force — is to try to bust Kemco and other offenders in the act of illegal dumping. We got truckers who loosen their tank-truck valves and spill contaminants onto the roadsides. We got midnight haulers who steal a truck, load it up with drums, and leave it on a roadside or street. Our job is busting these guys and cleaning up after them. We’ve got today to worry about, Crane. We can’t worry about yesterday. That’s not what we’re paid to do.”

“Well, who is, then? The EPA?”

“No. In fact, their unofficial policy is not to seek out hazardous situations.”

“What? Why the hell not?”

“Nobody wants to foot the bill, Crane. We’ve had sixty years of waste dumping in this country and that’s about how many billion it would take to clean it all up. Sell that to the public.”

“That’s bullshit! The longer the wait, the more it’ll cost to clean that shit up!”

Hart shrugged again. “It’s just not going to happen. Nobody in government can afford to go looking for another Love Canal. It’s too expensive. And there’s plenty of them out there, if you go looking. Officially, there’s around 800 ‘imminent hazard’ dump sites. Unofficially it’s more like thirty times that many.”

“Jesus. Jesus.”

“Why don’t you go home, Crane?”

“No. This... this is just starting.”

“It’s not starting or stopping. I know what I’m talking about, Crane. This is an ongoing thing. It doesn’t end.”

“Everything ends.”

“Go back to Iowa. You can take your cause with you, if you want. Go to Charles City, Iowa. That wouldn’t be a bad place to start.”

“Charles City?”

“Familiar with it?”

“I have an aunt living there.”

“Charles City. That’s where a small pharmaceuticals manufacturer dumped its wastes for years, into a landfill that for some time’s been leaching out arsenic, benzene and forty or fifty other poisons into the Cedar River. Know it?”

“My parents have a cottage on the Cedar River.”

“That’s nice. They’ll have a good view of the water source for eastern Iowa getting contaminated. Nothing much is being done to stop it: that small pharmaceuticals company doesn’t have the fifty million or so it’ll take to fix. You want to help fight this fight? Go home. Fight it there. I’ll work on New Jersey, thanks.”

“They killed Mary Beth. They all but killed Boone. They tried to kill me.”

“They. Who the hell is ‘they’? Kemco? You’re wrong, Crane. Kemco’s negligent, and has been for years, and if we can’t make ’em clean up their act, we’ll shut ’em down, eventually, but they aren’t going around faking suicides. It’s silly.”

Crane made fists out of his bandaged hands. “They tried to kill me!”

Hart sighed, patiently. “Who?”

“Kemco, goddamnit!”

“Specifically, who?”

“Two truckers. The ones Boone and I saw.”

“Could you describe them to the police?”

“They... had masks.”

“Would you recognize them again?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. No.”

“Did you ever consider the truckers may have done this on their own initiative?”

“What? Why?”

“You and Boone took photographs of them, didn’t you? In the act of dumping waste illegally?”

“Yes...”

“Well? There’s your answer.”

“Don’t be an asshole! This is all related; can’t you see? The suicides. The midnight dumping. Burning Boone’s manuscript. What happened to me last night. The landfills the school and playground are on. Hart, you have got to get those landfills checked! They’re poisoning that town! Take some soil samples. Do something!”

Hart stood. “I promised Lt. Dean of the Princeton P.D. I’d call him, when you came around. You can give him your statement. It’s best it be on the official record. Then, if the doctors’ll let you go, I’ll put you on a bus back to Greenwood.”

“Why won’t you listen? Why won’t anyone listen?”

Hart shook his head and left the room.

In the bed behind the plastic curtain, an old person was moaning.

Crane closed his eyes.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

When he got back to his motel room, in Greenwood, the gun was on the bed.

He shut the door. Slipped out of the oversize green jacket they’d given him at the hospital, from their unclaimed lost and found, and walked over to the bed and sat down.

The gun lay in the middle of the bed.

He touched the barrel.

The last time he’d seen it, it had been in the hand of one of the truckers, the skinny one.

What did this mean? A warning? Had the truckers or somebody else from Kemco made a special trip to his room to leave the gun there as a reminder that they could, anytime they liked, reach out and bury him? Or had the truckers, after putting him in the drum in back of their pick-up, tossed the gun back in his room before they left last night?

If they were trying to scare him, it was pointless. After last night, he was past fear. He was past just about everything, except his feelings for Boone, and his feelings about Kemco.

He picked up the gun.

He checked to see if it was still loaded and it was.

He put the gun in his belt, grabbed the hospital’s jacket and left.

The night was overcast and chilly. There was still snow on the ground. It was only nine o’clock, but there were few cars on the street.

He knocked on Boone’s door.

Patrick answered.

“Crane?” He squinted behind the wire frames, as if not recognizing him.

Crane grabbed Patrick by the front of the shirt with both hands and dragged him off the porch and around to the side of the house and tossed him on the snowy ground against some bushes.

“Jesus Christ! Are you crazy? Crane, what’s...”

Crane got the gun out of his belt and pointed it at Patrick. Patrick’s mouth was open.

“They buried me.” Crane said.

“Crane... what...”

“I was dead. Do you want to be dead?”

“I don’t know what... I... Crane...”

“They buried me. They burned Boone’s book, shoved pills in her. They murdered Mary Beth.”

“Crane, you...”

“And you’re part of it.”

“I’m not... Crane... please...”

“You’ll be dead when they bury you. That’s something.”

“Don’t do this, Crane!”

“Why not?”

“Daddy!”

Billy’s voice. From the porch.

Patrick looked at Crane.

Crane looked away.

“Daddy, where are you?”

“Stay where you are, Billy!” Patrick yelled. “Daddy will be there in a second.” He looked at Crane. “Won’t I, Crane?” Softly.

Crane lowered the gun.

Patrick got up. Dusted the snow off him. “I’m going inside to be with my son, now, Crane.”

Crane said nothing.

Patrick went.

Crane walked back to the motel room and sat on the bed. He sat there for two hours.

Then he got up and went into the bathroom and saw himself in the mirror: he was wearing a loose-fitting green jacket, a dirty T-shirt, dirty jeans; he was unshaven; his hands were bandaged; he had several bandages on his forehead. He took his clothes off and the bandages too and had a long hot bath.

Then he got out and sat naked on the edge of the bed and dialed the hospital in Fair View to see how Boone was. Today was the first day since he’d gotten back that he hadn’t been to see her. It took a while, but finally he got the doctor and the doctor said her condition was unchanged.

He dialed Roger Beatty, in Iowa City, but there was no answer.

He called his parents. It was an hour earlier back there. His father answered.

“Hello, Dad.”

“Son? It’s good to hear your voice. We’ve been so worried about you. Your mother is so worried...”

“Is she home?”

“No, bridge club. She should be home any time. She’ll be so upset she missed you. Son, please. You have to explain what this is all about. We’ve got your letter, here, saying you’ll be in touch with us, to explain, but...”

“Dad. Don’t worry about it.”

“I... don’t want to sound like a father, but we’re not very happy you dropped out of school. It’s your money, of course, and your life, but...”

“Dad. I can’t talk about that now. Don’t worry about that.”

“Well. We’re not very happy about it, son. Your mother’s not very happy.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t really call to talk about that, Dad. I just called to let you and Mom know I miss you both.”

“Well, we miss you, son. Can you give us an address? A phone number?”

“Tell Mom I love her, Dad. And I love you, too.”

He hung up.

He sat naked on the edge of the bed.

He was sitting there with the gun in his hand, finger on the trigger, looking down into the barrel, when somebody knocked on the door.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Patrick.

Standing in the doorway of the motel room in a light tan corduroy jacket that wasn’t warm enough for this weather, hands in jacket pockets, shivering, his wire frames fogging up.

“Can I come in, Crane?”

Crane was standing there in jeans he’d pulled on, his chest bare, the gun in one hand.

Patrick noticed the gun. “That... that isn’t necessary, is it, Crane?”

He wasn’t exactly pointing it at Patrick, but to make him feel better, Crane tossed it over on the bed, where it made a thud, and said, “Come in.”

Patrick shut the door behind him, took off the wire frames and tried to polish the fog away with his shirt front.

“What do you want, Patrick?”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“You seem kind of...”

“I’m fine, Patrick. What do you want?”

“I don’t know, exactly. Can I sit down or something?”

Crane shrugged. He sat on the edge of the bed and waited for Patrick to do something. Patrick glanced around, saw the chair by the dresser and pulled it over and sat across from Crane. He leaned forward, hands clasped together, draped down between his legs; he looked nervous. Disturbed.

“What do you want, Patrick?”

“I may know something.”

Crane didn’t say anything.

“I may know who set the fire at the house,” Patrick said. It was like a child admitting he’d been in his mother’s purse.

Crane’s hands tightened into fists; he didn’t ask them to, they just did. “Who?”

“I don’t know their names or anything...”

“Who, Patrick?”

“A couple of truck drivers. Some of the neighbors told the police they saw two men, that morning, walking around with ski masks on. Dressed like hunters, is how my one neighbor described them.”

“How else did she describe them?”

“One was a tall skinny man. The other was shorter but huskier.”

Crane nodded.

“You know them?” Patrick asked.

“Sort of. They’re the ones that buried me.”

“Crane... what are you talking about? You said that before, what do you mean, buried you?”

Crane told him the story; it didn’t take long.

Patrick rubbed his forehead, held the wire frames away from his face as if he didn’t really want to see things clearly.

“I... don’t think they were trying to kill you,” he said. “They were just... trying to scare you off, I’m... sure.”

“Wouldn’t a beating have sufficed?”

“I think they must’ve thought that if they... stopped just short of killing you... really put you through the wringer... you’d give up. You’d go home. A simple beating might just spur you on. Convince you you’re on the right track.”

“What track is that, Patrick?”

“I don’t know! I’m speculating. Crane, I’m not really involved in this.”

“That’s an interesting way to look at it.”

“I don’t even know if I’m right. But... from what you say about what happened to you... the burial and all... I’m afraid I am. Right, I mean.”

“What are you getting at, Patrick?”

He let out the heaviest sigh Crane ever heard. Said, “I think these are the same guys who did some hauling for Kemco, awhile back. I paid them. Cash. All very sub-rosa, you know? But that’s the extent of my involvement. I had nothing to do with what they did to you. Do you think I’d have my own house burned? Risk my son’s life? Or Annie’s?”

“Neither one was home, at the time, conveniently enough. And it wasn’t your house, not till Boone tried to...”

“Tried to what, Crane? Don’t tell me you’ve come to believe she did try to commit suicide? What’s changed your mind all of a sudden?”

Crane said, “Who are they, Patrick?”

“I don’t even know their names,” Patrick said, lifting his shoulders, a pathetic, almost helpless expression on his face. He really was trying. “All I know is they work for an outfit called Chemical Disposal Works.”

Crane sat up. “In Elizabeth?”

That surprised Patrick. “That’s right,” he said. “They got in some trouble with the state awhile back, and that’s why we had to go under the table with paying them while they were still doing work for us.”

“Are they hauling for Kemco, now?”

“Yeah. Right now, in fact. They picked up a load tonight. It might even be those same two truckers, for all I know. It’s not a big company.”

Crane got up and went to the door and opened it; the cold air rushed in like a wave.

“Thank you, Patrick,” Crane said.

Patrick got up slowly, went to the door and said to Crane, “Yeah, well, I should be getting back to Billy. I don’t like leaving him alone.”

He went out, and as Crane was closing the door, Patrick glanced back and said, “What are you going to do?”

“Change my plans,” Crane said.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

He had nearly two hours to himself, in the car, on the drive to Elizabeth. It was about midnight when he started out, and there wasn’t much traffic on the turnpike; he was in Laurie’s car, the Buick she’d been driving him around in, taking him daily to see Boone at the hospital.

When she saw him at the door, Laurie had been momentarily excited, thinking there was some news about Boone; not happy, not frightened, just excited: any news about someone who’s been in a coma for a period of time is big news. But that wasn’t why he had come; he was there because he needed her car. She started to ask why, but apparently something in his manner had stopped her. She’d merely said, “Of course you can borrow the car,” and went and got the keys.

He’d made sure she didn’t see the gun; he had it stuffed in his belt, under his jacket, the same jacket the hospital gave him earlier that day, an oversize thing that hung on him like he’d been sick and lost weight.

Now the gun was on the seat next to him.

He wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to do with it. Maybe protect himself. Maybe something else. He didn’t have it thought out. He didn’t think about what he was going to do when he got there. He just drove. He was aware of something on his face that might have seemed like a smile, to an observer. He wasn’t sure what it was himself, when he glimpsed it in the rearview mirror; but it wasn’t a smile.

And he wasn’t sure what he would do when he faced those two truckers. He just knew he was going to face them.

He wasn’t thinking about killing them. The thought surfaced a few times that this was what he might do, but that was as far as his thought processes went. The idea of killing someone would’ve seemed absurd, impossible to Crane a month ago. A day ago. But now he was different. He had sat on the edge of the abyss and looked in.

By the time he was driving down that industrial stretch, with buildings and machinery and hovering UFO-like gas tanks on either side of him, the night giving all of it an unreal look, like an amusement park, he could hear someone laughing in the car, softly. He was a little surprised to find out it was him.

There were a couple of outdoor lights on poles near the warehouse, but otherwise Chemical Disposal Works was dark. The light from the industrial row Chemical Disposal Works was at the dead-end of, on a little peninsula reaching into an inlet of the Elizabeth River, was enough to let him see the vast city of barrels, stacked four high, at the center of which, like City Hall, was the warehouse with its windows painted out black.

He left the Buick alongside the road, half a block away, gun stuck in his waistband, and soon was walking down the cinder drive he and Boone had come down not long ago, barrels on either side, many of them corroded, leaking; he stepped in a thick puddle of something not unlike molasses in consistency, oozing from the base of one. Up ahead he could see that same tan station wagon parked to the right of the loading-dock area; next to it was a battered, dusty pick-up truck. The pick-up was the one Crane rode in the back of, in a barrel, the night before.

The other truck, the flatbed, wasn’t here, unless it was pulled inside.

He didn’t think so. It was early yet. Like Crane, the truckers wouldn’t have started out till about midnight, and, unless they were going to add to the thirty or so thousand barrels piled in Chemical Disposal’s yard, would have to dump their cargo elsewhere. Pennsylvania, maybe. But eventually, he hoped, that truck and the truckers would come home. Home to this graveyard of chemical waste.

He climbed up on the wall of barrels that ended where the side of the building, and the loading-dock area, started. He sat on a barrel with the gun in his hand, resting in his lap, and waited. It was cold, and the hospital hand-me-down jacket, loose fitting as it was, did little to keep the cold out; but Crane didn’t mind. He liked it.

He counted stars: there weren’t many to count. A piece of the moon floated half-heartedly in a sky streaked by smoke from nearby industrial chimneys. He could smell more of the river, tonight, than during his daytime visit; but the sickly perfume laced with rubber was still thick. Boone had explained to him that this was an odor characteristic of dump sites.

He thought about her. He thought about her as long as he could do it without seeing her in a coma; when that image came into his mind, he forced it out.

He counted barrels.

He’d been sitting there perhaps an hour when headlights stretched down the cinder drive, a truck rumbling after.

It was the same flatbed truck, its sides built up, its tarp flapping, that he and Boone had seen at Kemco that time. Even from here he could see two men in the cab.

He hopped off the barrels, landed hard, and caught himself with the hand that didn’t have the gun in it.

Then he walked out in the path of the truck, stopped in front of it, and it stopped, too, abruptly, brakes squealing, a good two car lengths between them, but he could see their faces behind the windshield, clearly. They were faces he’d never seen close-up before, not without ski masks in the way, but that the driver was the tall skinny man and the rider the stocky one was apparent. So was the look of fear on their faces, as he pointed the gun at them.

The stocky one looked a bit like his friend Roger, which threw him a little, and the skinny one had a long, roughly handsome face and dark curly hair and was young, about Crane’s age, and that threw him, too: he was so used to a faceless enemy, it shocked him to be confronted by two people, that it should all boil down to two young men as scared at this moment as he was.

Because his finger was squeezing the trigger, but he couldn’t make it squeeze hard enough — in his mind, he could hear their cries of pain and surprise, but he couldn’t seem to make his finger turn those mental images and sounds into reality.

Something cold crawled into his stomach; something colder crawled into his mind: he couldn’t kill these people. He’d forced this confrontation and he didn’t know what to do with it.

“Get out!” he yelled. “Get out of that goddamn truck!”

The doors on either side swung open, but neither man hopped out.

Crane heard a door open behind him, at his left, and he turned halfway and saw the man in the quilted jacket with the bushy black streaks for eyebrows who had given him that beating not so long ago. The man did not seem to be armed, though he probably wished he was. He was standing frozen in the doorway by the loading dock, looking at the gun, which Crane was now pointing his way.

“Take it easy, kid,” the man was saying.

Whether or not he recognized Crane, Crane couldn’t tell; he did recognize the gun, however, and kept on saying “Take it easy, take it the fuck easy, okay?” like a litany.

Crane heard the truck’s doors slam shut. The distraction had been just enough to give the truckers what they saw as an opportunity: the vehicle was moving, the driver aimed its prow right at Crane, the vehicle shifting noisily as it bore down on him.

There was just enough space between them and Crane for the truck to work some speed up, and it was just confined enough an area for Crane to wonder where the hell to go; the walls of barrels were everywhere, except in the loading dock, which was just another wall to get rammed against, and the cinder drive, where the truck was.

He didn’t shoot at them. He was too busy running, and then there was nowhere to go and his back was to the wall of barrels and they were coming right at him, and he dove and rolled, rolled out of the way, and the truck smashed into the wall of barrels and the explosion was immediate.

A bright orange fist of fire shot into the sky, and hung there, and shook as if in anger. Crane was blown by the force of it against the far wall of barrels, away from the flames. Behind him, the screams of the truckers were cut short with the second spasm of fire and smoke.

Crane was up and running, gun still in hand, the heat and flames to his back, but he could hear the sound of it, like heavy artillery shells going off, and when he did look back, there were barrels hurtling themselves into the air, hundreds of feet, some tumbling end over end, trailing smoke and fire, others bursting like bombs in a fireworks display of horrifying proportions.

The shape of the truck, at the base of the burning wall of barrels, was only barely discernible, the warehouse a black silhouette with windows of red-orange, its roof on fire; where the guy with the black streak eyebrows had gone, Crane didn’t know — if he ducked back inside when the truck went after Crane, he was gone, period. Flames had spread to the pick-up and were on their way past the loading dock to the adjacent wall of barrels, and Crane ran, barrels dropping behind him like bodies out of high windows; he could hear them, thudding to the ground, when the sound of barrels exploding wasn’t obscuring all else.

The Buick was up ahead, and he wondered if he could make it; if the fire spread to those silver, hovering gas tanks, so very close to the blaze, there could be a firestorm, and a city — a real one, not populated by waste drums — might die.

Then something behind him exploded loudly and the blast drove him face down, onto the cinders, scraping his face, and he suddenly realized his jacket was on fire, and he got out of it somehow, ran out of it, and it fell to the ground behind him, waving its fiery arms. He stood there looking up into a sky full of fire, from which barrels fell as if dropped from a plane, and his legs went out from under him, and darkness came.