“She would, if she’s part of Trask’s plan.”
“Cam, what’s her motive? What’s anyone’s motive to fuck around with the moonpool, for that matter?”
“I don’t know, Ari, and I can’t help you anymore. But here’s a suggestion: Fill in Petrowska’s timeline for the past three or four days. Account for her every waking moment, because the tie-in might be between her and the guy in the moonpool, not Trask. Especially now that you are pretty sure it’s not Trask in your lead-lined cask.”
Ari didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he told me to keep in touch, and that he’d let me know when they actually sat down with Trask. I was being dismissed, and possibly so was the threat to Helios.
“Ari?” I said.
“Yes, Cam?”
“Remember what happened the third time the kid cried wolf.”
I hung up. I recalled what Sergeant McMichaels had said about Ari. If the technical security officer at a nuclear plant had a loan shark on his tail, would he take money to let a terrorist cell in the back door? I didn’t want to think about that. I made one more call.
“Federal Bureau of Investigation, Wilmington resident agent’s office,” the voice recited.
I identified myself and told the robot I needed to speak to Special Agent Caswell. As usual, he was not available, and could they take a message. Standard routine. I was tempted to tell them there was a bomb in the office, but I didn’t. Tony would have.
“Tell him I called, and that I have information on the upcoming meltdown at the Helios power plant.”
“Say again?”
“You heard me,” I said, “and you’re taping, I presume.” I gave him my number and hung up.
Creeps called back in five minutes. “You unsettled our desk operator,” he said.
“Did you know Carl Trask contacted Helios this morning?”
A moment of silence. “No,” he said finally. “I was not informed of that. Who told you?”
I thought I heard a change in the background noise of the phone, although on a cell phone it was difficult to tell. Other people picking up muted extensions? “I need ten minutes of your time, especially if the upper management at Helios is no longer keeping my Bureau in the loop.”
“Clock is running, Lieutenant.”
Along with the tape, I thought. Fair enough. And he’d called me lieutenant, not mister. That meant he thought I might be useful, at least for a few minutes or so. I took them from the initial call from Trask all the way through my dismissal from the director’s office last night. Ironically, Creeps asked the same question the director had.
“No,” I said. “I never actually saw him. But I’m pretty damned sure it’s Trask, and the people he called this morning think it’s him, too.”
“Very well,” Creeps said. “Then this should be fairly straightforward. I will inform my counterpart at the NRC that we will be present at Helios for this meeting.”
“You might want to watch for that boat, too,” I said. “Whatever he’s got in mind, it involves the boat.”
“This is something you know?”
“It’s how he gets around,” I said. “You see that boat parked at the power plant this evening, I’d recommend staying upwind.”
“You seriously think he’s going to create some kind of nuclear incident at Helios, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, I do,” I said, “and since all the attention has been focused on the moonpool, I’d say watch the reactors. They’re shut down right now, and that might have changed the security equation.”
“The body in the moonpool was a diversion?”
“Have you or any of your people ever been over to the reactor side of the plant?” I asked. They had not. Neither had I. Nobody was looking in that direction. If Trask had orchestrated all these previous incidents, he was certainly capable of an even bigger diversion. Creeps said he’d think about it, and then asked the one question for which I had no answer: What if nothing happens?
“Then I’m going after him for the boat collision and for what he’s done to Pardee Bell,” I said.
“Evidence, Lieutenant,” he prompted. “You have no evidence.”
“I will once I can get my hands on that boat,” I said. “There’s also his little fun parlor over in the container junkyard.”
“I assume you haven’t turned the television on, then,” he said. “The container junkyard went up in flames last night. Major fire, attributed to homeless vagrants who were known to nest there on cold nights.”
Shit, I thought. I should have expected that. “So what’s that tell you, Special Agent?”
“In an evidentiary sense? Nothing. But we’ll see what develops when Mr. Trask makes his appearance.”
“Hopefully not a mushroom cloud,” I said. “You’ve got my number.”
“Indeed we do, Lieutenant,” he said. “Have a nice day.”
I said something impolite, but they’d already hung up. The shepherds were sitting in the kitchen, looking at me expectantly. Important business needed immediate attention: They hadn’t been fed yet.
At four thirty that afternoon I pulled the Suburban into an overgrown driveway some fifteen miles upriver from the Helios power plant. According to my map, the Jellico River, a tributary of the larger Cape Fear River, was a quarter mile beyond the dense stand of white pines I was facing. The sun was slanting westward on a cool, clear day. There was a breeze whispering through the tops of the pine trees, and I could smell the earthy scents of river bottomland. The forecast had predicted high forties for this night, and the temps were on their way down.
It had eventually occurred to me that an eighteen-foot-long Burmese python probably did not live on Trask’s boat, which meant that he had to have a base of operations on land somewhere. I’d run into Sergeant McMichaels at the deli at noon, and we’d had a sandwich together. I told him enough about what had happened to my arm to inspire some assistance at the county seat. I needed to know if Trask owned property somewhere nearby. He thought Trask lived exclusively on that boat he kept over at Carolina Beach. I pushed a little, wondering if there were any county records that could tell me more. I said I needed to get up with Trask, to find out once and for all if it had been him piloting the boat that ran over ours out in the river.
Apparently, McMichaels had gone back to the office and done some checking, because he called me back a few hours later with an address of some riverfront property that could belong to Carl Trask. He dutifully lectured me about not seeking revenge or otherwise indulging in illegal acts, and I’d solemnly sworn never to do such a thing. With that necessary formality out of the way, he’d said the property was recorded as an abandoned nursery and landscaping complex on the Jellico River, which had been bought for investment purposes by a privately owned company called CCT Enterprises. The attorney of record, when queried about a fictional tax matter, had come up with Trask’s name and cell phone number as the principal point of contact for CCT. And was any of that information helpful at all?
I told him it was very helpful indeed and that I owed him one, if not more than one. He told me to save it for any occasion wherein the Helios power plant might pose a threat to humanity in the Southport community. I had to hand it to him: McMichaels kept himself very much in the loop when it came to matters involving Helios. His interest might have had something to do with all those concentric circles drawn on all the maps I’d seen of Hanover County, centered on the nuclear power plant. I asked him if there were known loan sharks in Brunswick County. None that he knew of, he said.
I pulled off the two-lane and drove down a narrow, weedy driveway through a stand of spindly pines until I came to a chain-link fence. It was nearly ten feet high, which was surprising for private property, and it stretched back into the trees. It wasn’t a new fence, but it did look intact. There was a single slide-back gate, which was securely padlocked, and signs warning people to stay out. The signs were badly rusted, as was a larger sign indicating that this was, or had been, the location of the Ashlands Nursery, wholesale only. There were power poles leading into the property, and the overhead wiring appeared to be functional. The entrance drive bent around to the left inside the gate, and I couldn’t see anything beyond that bend because of the pines. My cell phone stirred in my pocket. It was Tony, who wanted to know my twenty. I told him.