Plum Island (5 page)

She said, “I’m going back to the scene now. Someone from the Department of Agriculture is going to meet me at about eleven.
He’s coming in from Manhattan. Would you like to be there?”

“Don’t you have a partner you can annoy?”

“He’s on vacation. Come on, Detective, let’s start all over.” She put her hand out.

I reminded her, “Last time I took your hand, I lost my gun and my manhood.”

She smiled. “Come on, shake.”

I shook hands with her. Her skin was warm. My heart was on fire. Or maybe the nachos were causing reflux. It’s hard to tell
after forty.

I held her hand a moment and looked at her perfect face. Our eyes met, and the same piggy thought passed through both our
minds. She broke eye contact first. Someone has to or it gets geeky.

The cute waitress came over, and I ordered two beers. The waitress asked me, “Do you still want that bowl of chili?”

“More than ever.”

She cleared some of the dishes and went to get beer and chili. I love this country.

Detective Penrose commented, “You must have a cast-iron stomach.”

“Actually, my whole stomach was taken out after I was shot. My esophagus is attached to my intestine.”

“Do you mean your mouth is connected directly to your asshole?”

I raised my eyebrows.

She said, “I’m sorry—that was crude. Shall we start yet again?”

“It wouldn’t do any good. Turn around and watch the game.”

She turned around, and we watched the game and had a beer. At halftime with a 7–7 tie, she looked at her watch and said, “I
have to go meet this Department of Agriculture guy.”

If you’re wondering about this Department of Agriculture thing, Plum Island is officially a Department of Agriculture installation,
and they do things with animal diseases, anthrax, and all that. But rumor has it that it goes beyond that. Way beyond. I said,
“Don’t keep the Department of Agriculture waiting.”

“Do you want to come along?”

I contemplated this invitation. If I went along, I’d get deeper into this thing, whatever it was. On the pro side, I like
solving murders, and I liked the Gordons. In the ten years I’ve been with homicide, I’ve put twenty-six murderers behind bars,
and the last two guys are eligible to take advantage of the new death penalty law, which adds another whole dimension to homicide
cases now. On the con side, this was something different, and I was way off my turf. Also, a Department of Agriculture guy,
like most government bureaucrats, wouldn’t be caught dead working at night, so this guy was most probably CIA or FBI or Defense
Intelligence or something like that. It didn’t matter, and there’d be more of them later tonight or tomorrow. No, I didn’t
need this case at a buck a week, or a thousand bucks a day, or at any price.

“Detective? Hello?”

I looked at her. How do you say no to a perfect 10? I said, “I’ll meet you there.”

“All right. What do I owe you for the beers?”

“On me.”

“Thanks. See you later.” She walked toward the door and with the game at halftime, the fifty or so guys in the OTT finally
noticed that there was an incredible babe on the premises. There were a few whistles and invitations to stick around.

I watched a little of the halftime stuff. I wished they
had
taken my stomach out, because it was pumping acid into my ulcers now. The chili came, and I could hardly finish the bowl.
I popped two Zantac, then a Maalox even though the gastro-doc said not to mix.

In truth, my health, once robust, had taken a decided dip since the April 12 incident. My eating, drinking, and sleeping habits
were never good, and the divorce and the job had taken their toll. I was starting to feel forty-something, starting to feel
my mortality. Sometimes in my sleep, I remember lying in the gutter in my own blood, lying on a storm drain and thinking,
“I’m circling around the drain, I’m going down the drain.”

On the upside, I was starting to notice things like the waitress with the NordicTrack ass, and when Elizabeth Penrose walked
into the bar, my little meat puppet sat up and stretched. Truly, I was on the road to recovery, and for sure I was in better
shape than the Gordons.

I thought a moment about Tom and Judy. Tom was a Ph.D. who didn’t mind killing his brain cells with beer and wine, and he
cooked a good steak on the grill. He was a down-to-earth guy from Indiana or Illinois or someplace out there where they have
this sort of twang. He was low-key about his work and joked about the danger, like last week when a hurricane was headed our
way, he said, “If it hits Plum, you can call it Hurricane Anthrax, and we can kiss our asses goodbye.” Ha. Ha. Ha.

Judy, like her husband, was a Ph.D., a Midwesterner, un-pretentious, good-natured, spirited, funny, and beautiful. John Corey,
like every guy who met her, was in love with her.

Judy and Tom seemed to have taken well to this maritime province in the two years since they’d been here, and they seemed
to enjoy power boating and had gotten involved with the Peconic Historical Society. In addition, they were enchanted by the
wineries and had become connoisseurs of Long Island wine. In fact, they had befriended some of the local vintners, including
Fredric Tobin, who threw lavish soirees at his chateau, one of which I attended as the Gordons’ guest.

As a couple, the Gordons seemed happy, loving, caring, sharing, and all that 1990s stuff, and I really never noticed anything
amiss between them. But that’s not to say they were perfect people or a perfect couple.

I searched my memory for something like a fatal flaw, the kind of thing that sometimes gets people murdered. Drugs? Not likely.
Infidelity? Possible, but not probable. Money? They didn’t have much to steal. So it came down to the job again.

I thought about that. It would appear on the face of things that the Gordons were selling superbugs and something went wrong,
and they were terminated. Along the same lines, I recalled that Tom once confided to me that his biggest fear, aside from
catching a disease, was that he and Judy would be kidnapped right off their boat one day, that an Iranian submarine or something
would come up and snatch them away, and they’d never be seen or heard from again. This seemed a little far-fetched to me,
but I remember thinking that the Gordons must have a lot of stuff in their heads that some people wanted. So maybe what happened
was that the murder started out as a snatch job and went wrong. I thought about this. If the murders were related to the job,
were the Gordons innocent victims, or were they traitors who sold death for gold? Were they killed by a foreign power or were
they killed by someone closer to home?

I mulled this over as best I could in the OTT with the noise, the halftime crap, the beer in my brain, and the acid in my
tummy. I had another beer and another Maalox. Gastro-doc never said
why
I wasn’t supposed to mix.

I tried to think of the unthinkable, of handsome, happy Tom and beautiful, bouncy Judy selling plague to some nut cases, of
water reservoirs filled with disease, or maybe aerial crop sprayers over New York or Washington, of millions of sick, dying,
and dead….

I couldn’t imagine the Gordons doing that. On the other hand, everyone has a price. I used to wonder how they could afford
to rent that house on the water and buy that expensive boat. Now maybe I knew how and also why they needed a high-speed boat
and a house with a private dock. It all made sense, and yet my instincts were telling me not to believe the obvious.

I overtipped Ms. NordicTrack and returned to the scene of the crime.

I
t was after eleven as I drove along the lane that led to the Gordons’ house. The night was lit by a nice three-quarter moon,
and a pleasant breeze brought the smell of the sea through the open windows of my new moss green Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited,
a $40,000 indulgence that the nearly deceased John Corey thought he owed himself.

I stopped fifty yards from the house, put the vehicle into “park,” and listened to a few more minutes of Giants-Dallas, then
I shut off the engine. A voice said, “Your headlights are on.”

“Shut up,” I replied, “just shut up.” I switched off the headlights.

There are many options in life, but one option you should never choose is the “Voice Warning and Advisory Option.”

I opened the door. “Your key is in the ignition. Your emergency brake is not engaged.” It was a female voice, and I swear
to God it sounded like my ex-wife. “Thank you, dear.” I took my keys, climbed down, and slammed the door.

The vehicles and crowds on the small street had thinned considerably, and I figured that the bodies had been removed, it being
a fact of life that the arrival of the meat wagon usually satisfies most of the spectators and signals the end of Act One.
Also, they all wanted to see themselves on the eleven o’clock news.

There was a new addition to the police presence since my earlier visit: a Suffolk County police mobile van was parked in front
of the house near the forensic van. This new van was the command post that could accommodate investigators, radios, fax machines,
cell phones, video equipment, and the other high-tech doodads that make up the arsenal in the never-ending battle against
crime and all that.

I noticed a helicopter overhead, and I could see by the light of the moon that it was from one of the networks. Though I couldn’t
hear the reporter’s voice, he or she was probably saying something like, “Tragedy struck this exclusive Long Island community
earlier this evening.” Then some stuff about Plum Island and so on.

I made my way through the last of the stragglers, avoiding anyone who looked like the working press. I stepped over the yellow
tape, and this immediately attracted a Southold cop. I tinned the guy and got a half-assed salute.

The uniformed crime scene recorder approached me with a clipboard and time sheet, and again I gave him my name, my business,
and so forth, as he requested. This is SOP and is done throughout the investigation of the crime, beginning with the first
officer at the scene and continuing until the last officer leaves and the scene is returned to the owner of the property.
In any case, they had me twice now and the hook was in deeper.

I asked the uniformed officer, “Do you have a guy from the Department of Agriculture logged in?”

He replied without even looking at the sheet, “No.”

“But there is a man from the Department of Agriculture here. Correct?”

“You’ll have to ask Chief Maxwell.”

“I’m asking you why you haven’t logged this guy in.”

“You’ll have to ask Chief Maxwell.”

“I will.” Actually, I already knew the answer. They don’t call these guys spooks for nothing.

I walked around to the backyard and onto the deck. In the places where the Gordons had lain were now two chalk outlines, looking
very ghostly in the moonlight. A big sheet of clear plastic covered the splatter behind them where their mortality had exited.

Regarding this, as I said, I was glad this was an open-air shooting, and there was no lingering smell of death. I hate it
when I go back to the scene of an indoor murder and that smell is still there. Why is it that I can’t get that smell out of
my mind? Out of my nostrils? Out of the back of my throat? Why is that?

Two uniformed Southold guys sat at the round patio table drinking from steaming Styrofoam cups. I recognized one of them as
Officer Johnson, whose kindness in driving me home I had repaid by getting a little rough with him. It’s a tough world, you
know, and I’m one of the people who make it that way. Officer Johnson gave me an unpleasant glance.

Down by the dock, I could make out the silhouette of another uniformed man, and I was glad someone had taken my advice to
post a guard by the boat.

There was no one else around so I went into the house through the sliding screen door, which opened into a big living room
and dining room combo. I’d been here before, of course, and recalled that Judy said most of the furnishings came with the
rental, Scandinavian from Taiwan, as she described it.

A few forensic types were still messing around, and I asked one of them, a cute latent fingerprint lady, “Chief Maxwell?”

She jerked her thumb over her shoulder and said, “Kitchen. Don’t touch anything on the way there.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I floated across the Berber carpet and alighted in the kitchen, where a conference seemed to be in progress.
Present were Max, representing the sovereign Township of Southold, Elizabeth Penrose, representing the free and independent
County of Suffolk, a gentleman in a dark suit who didn’t need a sign that said FBI, and another gentleman, more casually dressed
in denim jacket and jeans, a bloodred shirt, and hiking boots, a sort of parody of what a Department of Agriculture bureaucrat
might look like if he ever left the office and had to visit a farm.

Everyone was standing, like they were giving the impression of literally thinking on their feet. There was a cardboard box
filled with Styrofoam coffee cups, and everyone had a cup in his or her hand. It was interesting and significant, I thought,
that this group wasn’t assembled in the mobile command post, but was sort of out of sight in the kitchen.