“I’m just crossing the Cape Fear River Bridge now,” he said. “Gimme a data point for my GPS and I’ll join up with you.”
I gave him the address McMichaels had given me, and Tony said he’d be here in about twenty minutes, if Igor wasn’t lying. Igor was the name Tony gave every electronic device he owned. I told him I was facing a seriously padlocked gate. He said he had a cure for that in his trunk.
I got the shepherds out, and we went for a little recon walkabout. I was looking for video cameras or other signs of electronic Igors that Trask might have put out there, if this was, in fact, his place. I checked the fabric of the chain-link fence for tiny sensor wires and scanned all the logical places for cameras in high places trained on the gate area. I examined the nearest outside telephone poles for taps, but there was nothing coming down the sides of the poles except spike holes and some tendrils of dead poison ivy. The sand around the gate did not look like it had been disturbed for years, and the dogs weren’t especially interested in any aspect of the gate area.
Tony showed up right on his timeline, for which he gave his GPS unit an affectionate little pat as he got out of his SUV. He greeted the shepherds and then went to the back of his vehicle and produced what we cops used to call a master key, which was a large bolt cutter with three-foot-long insulated handles. The business end resembled that of a snapping turtle. Ignoring the kryptonite padlock, he quickly cut through the chain. I waited for alarms to sound or Dobermans to appear, but nothing happened. I then got Tony to hand-overhand the gate and fence to see if he could see any signs of alarms. He went over everything I had inspected, but then got down on his hands and knees and fished in the sand for magnetic plates under the gate. To my chagrin, he found two, one under the locking end of the sliding gate, the other under the stationary part. There were wire conduits leading from the gate in the direction of that curving drive.
“Knew you were useful,” I said, examining the shiny little boxes. They were the size of a packet of cancer sticks, and much newer looking than the rest of the gate apparatus.
“The good news is that they use the gate steel as the test probe,” he said. “As long as there’s ferrous metal above the plates, we can go ahead and open the gate.”
He put the bolt cutters down on top of the detector nearest the locking point, and slid the gate open wide enough for all of us to go through. We started down the road. I kept the shepherds in front of us but not free-ranging. The light was beginning to fade here among all the trees, but the smell of the river was growing stronger. The driveway, which bore no sign of tire tracks, turned to the left and then back to the right in a wide S-turn, and then the band of pine trees ended. Ahead was a large, U-shaped greenhouse, with the two arms of the U pointing in our direction. We stopped at the edge of the trees, stepped back into them to maintain a little cover, and studied the layout.
There were three World War II-vintage Quonset huts on one side of the greenhouse, but they had obviously been derelict for many years. On the other side was a perfectly flat but weed-infested area where potted plants had probably been stored under plastic. The pipe frames for the plastic were broken down and rusting away. Beyond the greenhouse there was a battered-looking single-wide trailer home, and beyond that, a coil of the Jellico River was visible through some swamp grass. The nose of the single-wide had fallen off its blocks, which meant that it was unlikely that it was habitable.
“Everything’s a wreck except the greenhouse,” Tony said quietly.
I’d noticed that, too. No broken panes of glass or vines climbing the structure, and there was a battery of what looked like solar panels erected along the south side, all tilted to maximize insolation. The pipes serving the panels were insulated in heavy black foam rubber, and that was also intact.
“Nice, isolated place to grow a cash crop of weed,” I said. “The nearest farmhouse has to be a mile or so from here.”
“A little obvious to the DEA air patrols,” he said. “My guess is orchids or something along those lines. The power lines terminate there, not at the trailer.”
I’d missed that fact, a reminder of why it was always better to have a partner along. “What news on Pardee?” I asked, as we continued to scan our surroundings.
“Alicia made it down there about one,” he said. “No change, either way, better or worse, which they say is good news. They’re telling her it could be a few more days before he surfaces.”
“Where is she staying?”
“Hilton.”
A gaggle of ducks blasted off from somewhere to our right and bulleted across the greenhouse area. The breeze coming off the river was turning colder. The glass panels of the center section of the greenhouse appeared to be opaque, either from some paint or possibly condensation on the glass. I wondered if the whole thing was heated, or just that long center section. We were running out of daylight.
“I think we need to get around this and check the riverbank for a pier.”
“And a boat, maybe?”
“Hopefully,” I said. “And if it’s there, we’ll need some long guns.”
“No problem,” he said, and we began to move sideways, staying inside the tree line so as not to be perfectly obvious. The shepherds patrolled ahead of us, noses down, but not alarming at anything. We walked silently across a thick bed of pine needles. Once we got around the nursery area, we could see larger, hardwood trees draped along the riverbank. The mobile home looked even more forlorn from this angle, but there was a path leading down from the trailer to the bank. The remains of a rotting pier, its decking planks twisted sideways, stuck out into the river.
No boat. Plus, the water under the pier didn’t even look deep enough to accommodate the Keeper.
“Okay,” I said. “Now we have to check out that greenhouse.”
“Let’s not and say we did,” Tony said. “I’ve just figured out what’s in there.”
I told him we needed to make sure. As we started back, I noticed a five-hundred-gallon propane tank on the back side of the greenhouse. That side faced west, and the windows were even more opaque.
To our surprise we found the back door, near the fuel tank, unlocked. Surprised until we read the little sign on the door’s window: THERE IS NO POINT TO LOCKING THE DOORS IN A GLASS BUILDING, it read. BUT IF YOU COME IN HERE, THE CHANCES ARE VERY GOOD THAT YOU’LL NEVER COME OUT ALIVE. It was signed THE KEEPER.
That’s all it said. No threats about trespassers being prosecuted or anything else. Seemed clear to me, and more than clear to Tony, who once again suggested we just spot this little expedition and get the flock out of there. I was tempted, but if this was Trask’s snake house, I had plans for it.
I put the shepherds on a long down not far from the door. I opened the door and we stepped through, guns in hand, to face a wave of warm, humid air. I found a small power panel just inside the door and threw the breakers that were not on; the third and fourth ones turned on lights throughout the greenhouse, although they were very low-wattage lights. There was a round knob on one side of the power panel box, which began to make a noise when I turned the lights on.
The space right inside the door resembled an interior screen porch, with a very fine metal mesh. There was a large water heater with three pumps clustered at its feet, from which ran insulated water manifolds that spread out through the building, or at least into the right wing where we’d come in. There were stainless steel tables and painted metal cabinets along one wall, three refrigerators or freezers, and a glass-fronted cabinet with vials of different things inside, probably antivenin compounds.