Southern Fried (16 page)

His voice lacked the shrill accusation his wife’s had carried in our phone conversation earlier. But the implication rang clear nonetheless.

“You should have called me,” I countered. “This is what you asked me to help you with. Where are they?”

I took one step toward the factory but he held up his hand. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary. They’re going to do what they want to do. There’s not much I can do about that now.”

“Mr. Garnet, you really shouldn’t let them wander about your premises alone, search warrant or no. There are procedures.”

Mentally I ticked off the suggestions from the law library articles I’d read. Any point in educating him? But Harrison Gamet continued to try to stop me. “Avery, I think you’ve done enough already.”

His tone was tired, resigned, without the venom of Sylvie Garnet’s earlier tongue-lashing. But I’d observed the social niceties long enough. “No, Mr.
Gamet, I haven’t done enough. I started doing my job earlier this week when we met with that inspector. Now it’s time for me to carry through with that job. What kinds of things have they specified? What have they asked to see?”

“Avery, they’re loaded for bear. Asking that little twerp to bring back a warrant ticked him off. Now that there’s been a fire, they’ve moved to some notso-veiled threats about a cover-up. Avery, the shit has hit the fan and I don’t like where you’ve put me.”

“I didn’t put you anywhere. Let me finish the job I started. You need to know what they’re looking for and what they find. You won’t learn that letting diem traipse around your property while you sit here.” I found myself leaning toward him on the balls of my feet, my voice rising angrily.

“I’m going around back to have a chat with your visitors.”

He broke our stare first with a glance over my shoulder at the fire scene. Then, with a sigh, he said, “Whatever, Avery,” and gave a dismissing wave.

As I crunched along the brick and glass scattered on the sidewalk, I realized my fists were clenched. I strode along the length of the factory building, turned the comer, and found myself alone.

Other than the heavy stench of burned wood, this end of the building showed remarkably few signs of the fire. And no signs of life. I scanned the trees that edged the far side of the rough-paved lot. At least two—no, three—men stood just inside the line of trees.

I crossed the football field-size parking lot. The
men waited as I crunched across the gravel at the edge of the lot and onto the cushion of pine needles.

“Mr. Smith,” I said, my hand outstretched in Jason’s direction. “Good to see you again.”

In the South, civility is the base-level requirement for any acceptable interaction.

“Ms.—Andrews?” He took my hand, his grasp loose and slightly damp.

I nodded and turned to Jason’s companions. I offered my hand to a rumpled, heavyset fellow with wiry gray hair. “I’m Avery Andrews.”

He made a motion as if cleaning his hands on the sides of his khaki pants, then stuck his right hand awkwardly toward me. “Dawson Smith,” he said. “From Environmental Control. This is Agent Burke, with the FBI.”

Even without the navy windbreaker with the insignia, Agent Burke would never be mistaken for anything but a cop. A very large, serious cop.

“Mr. Smith. Agent Burke,” I responded. “I’m not sure Mr. Smith here”—I nodded toward Jason—“has had a chance to brief you. I do some legal work for Harrison Gamet.” Maybe that was safer than claiming to be Garnet’s counsel.

Dawson Smith nodded. Agent Burke simply narrowed his eyes.

I continued. “I happened to stop by on some other business and Mr. Gamet told me you fellows were here executing a search warrant.” Maybe it would help if Harrison Gamet and I both sounded like innocents with nothing to hide.

Agent Burke studied me in that way cops have,
memorizing distinguishing features so he could spot me in a lineup, a mug book, or on a darkened street comer in a questionable part of town. But he didn’t speak.

Dawson Smith took a step closer to me, breaking the imaginary circle that bound him to Burke and Jason Smith.

“We’ve received a complaint and are, of course, obligated to investigate.” He smiled and ducked his head almost apologetically. “You understand, we can’t tell the hollow complaints from the real scare stories unless we come look.”

I nodded. Dawson Smith looked like he’d be at horne on Luna Lake with a fishing line dropped off the end of the dock and a couple of beers in a cooler. His short gray buzz cut spiked a bit and his barrel chest strained the buttons on his light denim shirt He was shorter than Agent Burke’s six-two, and kindlier and more befuddled-looking than young Jason. At the same time he conveyed an air that said he was in charge.

“If we can answer any questions for you, Miz—Andrews, is it? Please let us know. Otherwise, we’ll just go about our business here.” He smiled and dismissed me with a turn.

“Mr. Smith, first, I’d like to see a copy of that warrant.” I tried to keep my tone polite but insistent.

“Um, sure,” he said absentmindedly. “It’s in my case. Just a sec. Jason, take that still camera and grab some shots of that.”

Dawson pointed at a spot on the ground, then scribbled something on his clipboard. Out of the
comer of his eye, he watched Jason fumble around setting up the shot while he shambled toward a nylon satchel propped against the base of a pine tree. I watched him as he watched Jason. I couldn’t see anything worth photographing. Jason had shed his suit coat, but in his taupe trousers and designer tie, he was overdressed for the day’s activities.

“Did I remember to give you back that ruler for size markings?” Dawson said, his tone helpful as he stooped over his satchel.

Jason started, looked around, then fumbled in his hip pocket, from which a banana-yellow ruler stuck conspicuously—in plain sight of Dawson Smith.

I looked at Dawson Smith with more respect. He made sure the job was done right, without unduly embarrassing Junior.

As Dawson rifled through the papers in his satchel, I ambled over beside him. The stand of trees started where the ragged edge of the asphalt lot ended, and sloped easily toward a slow creek with flat banks. The creek, broader than many around here, lay about five feet wide, slow and shallow. Mountain and foothills creeks tend to cut deeply, so that flat banks were an oddity.

Something whacked me on the shin. For a brief moment, I thought I’d caught my leg in a hunting trap. “Aoww!” I whistled breath out my nose to keep from cussing.

“Be careful there!” Dawson Smith was beside me in a bound, trying to disentangle my foot from a metal hoop I’d upended from the dirt.

“Jason, come get a shot of this. Do you mind, Miz
Andrews?” He held me by the arm so I could step back from the half-buried hoop. “Would you just stand there so your legs can give the photograph some perspective?”

Jason hunched down, fiddling with the camera’s focus until I wanted to jerk it out of his hands and take the pictures of my own feet.

“What’s your interest in a rusty metal ring?” I asked, stepping clear of it after Jason clicked a few shots and Dawson let go of my arm.

Agent Burke, who had wandered farther into the trees, rejoined us. He stared soberly at the spot where Jason focused his camera. But he still didn’t speak.

“That rusty metal ring,” Dawson said, watching Jason closely, “is what’s left of a buried barrel.” He looked up at me. ’The administrative warrant spells it out, if you’d like to see it.” I took the papers he offered me. “The complainant alleged that the parking lot and this area served as a waste disposal site for a number of years. What we’re seeing here indicates that there’s—”

He stopped talking, his attention drawn by Burke’s movement. Burke had turned toward a man in denim overalls who was crossing the creek. He’d appeared out of nowhere and seemed to walk on top of the water. With a loose-legged gait, he strode the few yards to where we stood. His boots had not a spot of water on them.

“Glad to see you fellas here, finely.” He spoke carefully around a chaw of tobacco.

Two long-eared bluetick hounds took that oppor
tunity to splash across the creek along roughly the same track the newcomer had taken. They joined us with their noses to the ground, jowls hanging and eyes full of sad. Water glistened on their spotted coats.

“I’m Born Wooten. Eubom Wooten to the IRS and the social security. Just born to ever’body else.”

Putting an age on him was impossible. His much-washed overalls puddled onto the top of mudred work boots. With his eyes sunk deep into weathered wrinkles, he peered at us over his beak like an eagle.

“I take it yore the environmental guys. I called and called and like to give up on you ever comin’.”

Dawson Smith made the introductions all around, including me. At the mention that I was a lawyer and working for Harrison Gamet, Born Wooten spent a bit more time studying me.

“I myself worked here at the plant, nigh on forty-five years. Retired a couple of years ago.” He nodded back across the creek. “But still live right there.” What he actually said sounded like
rat tar
, but only Jason Smith, junior G-man, looked like he didn’t understand the old man.

“See ya found one’a them barrel tops. Can’t tell you how many hundreds a’them things we’re standin’ on top of. I been livin’ across the crick there long as they been plantin’ ’em here. Longer’n it took those slash pines to grow. You reckon them things had some kinda piezin in ’em?”

Dawson Smith responded by joining Born Wooten in studying the ground at his feet rather than eyeing him directly. In so doing, he communicated
volumes to Born Wooten. Mountain folks usually avoid eye contact, except as a challenge.

“We can’t rightly say just now, Mr. Wooten. We’ll be taking some samples of the soil around in here. Maybe you can show us some places we should be certain to check.”

“Shore can.” Born Wooten nodded and carefully aimed a stream of tobacco juice away from the group.

“You worked at the plant. Any idea what might have been buried in those barrels?”

Born Wooten shrugged his shoulders, the puddled overalls on his bootsrising, then falling. “Stuff from the plant. Makin’ furniture, you know the kinds of stuff you have. Varnishes, stains, glues. Rags soaked in that kind of stuff, we threw in barrels, capped, and hauled out.”

“For how long?”

“Law, years. Long as I worked there. Some years back, they got a lot more careful about how they got rid of stuff—you know, govmint regulations and all. But we still kept gluerag barrels. Right up to a few years ago.”

“How many years?”

“Can’t rightly say. You know how years”—he pronounced it
ya-airs
—“all run together, without you have some sort of markin’ event. Somebody birthin’ or dyin’ or somethin’.”

“Any idea how far they go through here? Or how many deep they’re buried? Or anything else that might help us?”

Born Wooten, with his signature slouch and his
hound dogs stretched at his feet, surveyed the wooded patch toward the creek, then looked back across the crumbly asphalt parking lot.

“Not too deep, best I remember. ’Course, didn’t have to dig too deep, with this much space.” He swung his arm to encompass what we could see. “Startin’ in the ’fifties, they ’uz putting barrels in ’bout where that line of pines stands.” He nodded across the creek. “Then they worked their way back. Sometime in the sixties or so, they paved over part of the dump. Needed more parking places as folks got more cars, I reckon. I know folks, all of a family, that work here and ever’ one of ’em drives their own car to work.” He shook his head.

“So the barrels in this part”—Dawson Smith indicated the wooded area where we stood—“they’ve been buried long enough for these trees to grow?”

Born Wooten nodded. “Yep. Right here in the center, they weren’t no trees ’cause they used equipment in here to bury trash. ’Course, back then, no big trucks’d come to haul stuff off. Had to take care of it on your own. Why, I got me a trash heap back’a my place older’n that. Got ever’ can’a beans and beer I ever ate or drank buried in my backyard. Well, least until they opened the recycling centers ’round the county. That’s a more”—he paused—“responsible thing to do, don’t you think?”

Dawson Smith nodded.

“I’ll tell you who might know and that’s ol Nebo Earling. Mr. Gamet hired him to do some work on the parking lot and I know for a fact he buried
some’a the glue-rag barrels ’long in here. ’Fore he upended that backhoe in the crick. Down there where the bank’s steeper.” He pointed a few dozen yards downstream from the crossing to his house. “Nebo’d know.”

For a mountain man, Born Wooten sure talked a streak. Nebo Earling’s name made no discernible impression on Dawson Smith. But he’d sure popped up in a lot of casual conversations lately.

“Mr. Wooten, if you knew all these years that stuff’s been buried here, why’d you decide to call us now?” Dawson asked.

Born Wooten shrugged, his overalls rising and falling again. “Mostly ’cause that stuff started ending up on my property,” he said. “And I been reading, over to the library. Articles about aquifer contamination.”

That didn’t sound like a
National Enquirer
lead story.
South Carolina Wildlife
maybe. Or the
Smithsonian
.

“On your property?” Dawson Smith perked up at that. “How, exactly?”

Born Wooten spit discreetly to the side and said, “The creek moved.”

Dawson Smith turned to face the creek. Through the trees and underbrush that grew thickly on the other side of the creek, I could make out the rough outline of a white clapboard house with a small front porch.

When we looked puzzled, Born continued. “The creek moved,” he said simply. “Leaving me with
some kind of slime and a buncha those rusty tops trashin’ my creek bank.” He pointed to the metal ring at my feet.

Dawson Smith nodded. “How many have you found?”

Born Wooten shook his head. “Don’t know for sure. But you’re welcome to come count ’em for yourself. Or what you kin see.”

Dawson Smith nodded, but paused, as if deep in thought. “Glue, you say.” He said it as if to himself.