Death Climbs a Tree (11 page)

Not to mention repairing these babies, Fred thought. “You'll want to file the police report with your insurance company.”

“No way. They'd hit me with a rate increase you wouldn't believe.”

Fred couldn't argue with him. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“I've already told those two.” He jerked a thumb at the uniforms.

“It's a nuisance, I know, but I need to hear it directly from you.”

“We were supposed to start work at six, on another job. I've been storing my equipment here overnight.” The thumb jerked again.

“Yes.”

“First we saw the graffiti. Then nothing would start—we saw right away they cut all our fuel lines. God only knows what else they did that we can't tell yet. I called 911 immediately, and I've been waiting ever since. If they'd set fire to them, instead, it would've been worth filing with our insurance. We would've lost the whole damn woods by now. Of course, the kid in the oak tree would've gone up with them.” The thought clearly didn't bother him as much as the money he was losing.

Maybe that's why they didn't, Fred thought, but he suspected EFF would be more concerned about trees than about Andrew. He climbed up and peered at the severed diesel fuel lines to each cylinder of the massive engines. Presumably EFF was on the same side as Andrew and Sylvia. But he didn't trust the judgment of whoever had immobilized the earthmovers. Who knew what they'd pull next time?

“We were here in five minutes, Lieutenant,” Jill said when he climbed down from the equipment.

“We secured the area and took statements from all the workers,” Kevin said.

Secured the area was a joke, Fred thought. The construction workers were still walking around freely, and their tracks and the many tracks left by their vehicles and by Andrew and Sylvia's supporters on previous days, not to mention Joan's and his own visit yesterday, would give the crime scene people fits.

“This is gonna cost me anyhow a day, even if there's no more damage than we can see and we can get replacement parts right away,” Walcher said. “You still need my guys? It's Saturday—I'm paying them overtime for doing absolutely nothing. I need to send a couple of men up to Indy for the parts. I can't afford to wait until Monday, if the parts we need for these machines are even in stock—they're not exactly new. It'll end up costing us more time if we have to order them.” He tightened his mouth and shook his head.

“They've all given their statements, Lieutenant,” Kevin said. “And we have their names and addresses.”

“Sure,” Fred said. “They can go.”

Walcher charged off toward his crew.

Time to talk to Andrew. Fred pulled out his phone and walked into the woods.

A tousled head poked out from under one of the side tarps, cell phone to its ear. “Fred? What's going on?”

“Haven't you been listening?”

“You woke me up. What did I miss?”

“Someone sabotaged the bulldozers.” He gestured toward the letters.

“All ri—” He peered down at the graffiti, and his tone changed. “Oh. That's going to make trouble, isn't it?”

“We already had trouble, but up until now, you've been okay, even if you were trespassing.”

“A little paint changes that?”

“It's not just paint. They did real damage—cut the fuel lines. So it's time to tell me who's working with you.”

“Those guys wouldn't pull that kind of stunt.”

“You sure?”

“They'd know better than to stir up that much trouble.”

Maybe. After dealing with the hotheads marching on city hall last night, Fred wasn't so sure. And would Andrew have said it in different company?

“You know anyone in EFF?”

“Never heard of it. I'll ask around. Maybe someone I know knows more than I do.” Andrew's refusal to rat on his friends wasn't likely to weaken. “I'll tell 'em to call you if they do.”

“Right.” And I'll do some checking on Matt Skirvin.

“But hey, Fred, late last night I think I spotted something you might be interested in. That's why nothing woke me up this morning.”

“You don't mean you heard someone down here messing around?” But from Andrew's first reaction, he already knew that wasn't the case.

“I would've told you.”

“Then what?”

“I saw flashlights in the woods. At least they looked like flashlights. Maybe lanterns. Fred, I think there's a cave out there.”

“What do you mean?”

“The lights bobbed around in more or less a straight line, or as straight as you can walk when you have to dodge trees and rocks and stuff and go up and down those hills. Then they disappeared, all of a sudden. After a while, they showed up again at the same spot and went back the way they came. Sometimes it was one light, sometimes more, but they all did the same thing at about the same place.”

Could be a cave. This limestone area was, after all, full of them.

“You think they've got a still or something out there?” Andrew asked.

“More likely ‘or something.' Like a methamphetamine lab. They've found them farther out in the county. Exactly where were these lights when you saw them?”

Andrew sat up and pointed into the woods. “Over that way. Want me to draw you a map?”

“Could you see that clearly?”

“It's all different at night. But the moon was full, and some of those big trees over that way are easy to spot when you've been staring at them long enough. They make good landmarks. Hang on a minute.” He ducked down where Fred couldn't see him.

Looking back over his shoulder, Fred saw the crime scene techs pulling into the clearing. Good.

Andrew sat back up. “This is the best I can do. Pretty rough, but it might help.” He flipped his phone shut and fed down a light rope from which a basket hung, a twin of the one Sylvia had smashed.

Reaching up for it, Fred took out a map, cleanly drawn in ink on notebook paper. Immediately the basket rose beyond his reach.

He looked up. Andrew was waving his phone again. “The
X
marks this tree, see?”

Fred nodded, still not oriented.

“The wiggly line is the creek over that way.” Andrew pointed. “I don't think you can see it from down there, but trust me, there is one. There's a house on the other side of the creek that I'm sure you can't see. You can probably see the big old sycamore on this side, though. Splotches on the bark make it stick out. I marked it with an
S.
”

Fred spotted the tree and turned the map. “Got it.”

“The dotted line is where I saw the lights. Where it stops, in the middle of the map, is where they suddenly disappeared. If there's a meth lab, that's where it's hiding. It was so sudden, like a cave.”

“That's great. I'll see that it's followed up on. Probably by the sheriff.” Andrew was thinking like a cop. He might do more. Couldn't hurt to ask. “Any chance you'd be willing to watch the construction equipment tonight, in case the vandals return?”

“Why would our side want to help their side? I mean, I wouldn't do that myself, but you can't expect me to be sorry someone else did.”

Fred scuffed his toe in the leaves. “Think about it, would you? If I could tell Walcher you were keeping your eyes open, he'd be a lot less likely to come after us to get you down.”

Silence in his ear. He wished he were close enough to read the expression on Andrew's face.

“If you put it that way…”

“Call 911. Or me.”

“Maybe. If I get enough sleep today. I sure didn't get much last night.”

“Good enough. How late were you awake last night, watching those lights?”

“I didn't shine a light to check my watch—didn't want them to notice me—but it must have been two or three by the time I fell asleep.”

“And you didn't hear anyone in the clearing during that time?”

“No. If they were trying to be quiet, though, I might not have heard them.”

“Maybe not, but you'd probably have seen lights around the equipment. Odds are good they came after you fell asleep. I'd go with the odds, Andrew. If you can, watch for them during the second half of the night.”

“I'll try.”

Better than he'd expected. Fred waved at him and walked back to the clearing.

“Anything?” he asked the two techs.

“We took scrapings of the black paint,” one said. “Sorry to disappoint you, but it looks like the kind of stuff you can get in any hardware store.”

Probably was. “Prints?”

“Nothing by the graffiti. They're wiped clean. Otherwise, the machines are covered with 'em.”

“Mostly just smears on the fuel lines, but we got a couple of partials.”

And they had partials from the Petoskey stone. Not likely to match, but worth checking.

“About a million footprints. Some in the diesel on the ground.”

They'd do their routine, but Tom Walcher's crew had been tramping all over that ground this morning. Any recognizable boot prints were bound to belong to them. Fred didn't hold out much hope of finding the saboteurs by any physical evidence they'd left.

*   *   *

On the way to the station, he wondered, Would whoever merely cut some fuel lines be likely to kill as well? And why Sylvia? Unless they planned to blame her attack on the construction people? It was a stretch. Worth keeping in the back of his mind, though.

Even if they hadn't gone after Sylvia, what if Andrew asked the wrong person about EFF? Had he put his stepson at greater risk?

Or was he already at risk from watching the lights in the woods? Is that what Sylvia had done? If people cooking meth out in the woods realized they had a spy in the sky, had they also cooked up a way to get rid of her? And wouldn't they monitor the tree for the next sitter?

Back at the station, he called Andrew's cell phone again. “I was wrong, son. You're not a cop. It's too dangerous. Come down.”

“No.”

“What you're doing—”

“What I'm doing is peacefully protecting these fragile woods. I'm not hurting anything.”

“You're watching bad guys who don't want to be watched.”

“I told you, I won't turn my flashlight on.”

“People know you're up there. Come down, Andrew. I shouldn't have asked you to stay up there and keep watch. It's not worth it.”

“I'll watch EFF, the way you asked, but it doesn't make any difference. I'm staying until they drag me down.”

Or knock you off, Fred thought.

“Then promise me you'll let me know the minute you see anything suspicious, no matter who's doing it.”

“I promise.” He said it almost too quickly.

“That means anyone, Andrew. Even if it turns out to be a friend of yours.”

“I don't have friends cooking meth in the woods!”

“You don't know.” Skirv had been helping him—Skirv, whose store catered to college kids and maybe sold drug paraphernalia. If he wasn't cooking meth in the woods, that didn't mean he wasn't picking some up there to pass on to the age group that used it most. Skirv was worth keeping an eye on.

“All right, I promise.”

Fred hoped he would. Had Sylvia recognized someone and kept a silence she should have broken?

12

The mystery of the EFF attack on Walcher's construction equipment was only slightly less mysterious by the time the senior center's board of directors met that afternoon. Most of their meetings were held during the ordinary workweek, but Alvin Hannauer, their president, had asked to postpone this week's meeting to Saturday. With no one else in the building, Joan felt free to attend in jeans.

The noon radio news had read a statement by Earth Freedom Fighters, a new organization, it seemed, that claimed credit for “stopping the forces bent on destroying our fragile environment in their Caterpillar tracks.” The overnight damage at the construction site was only the beginning, EFF asserted. It promised to do by stealth whatever was necessary “to free Earth's environment from the terrorist ravages of greedy capitalism.”

“I'd like to give them greedy capitalism!” Annie Jordan, newly elected to the board, said. “If they met Cindy's grandchildren or Diane's Bert, they'd have to think twice.”

“Who are they, anyway?” board secretary Mabel Dunn asked. “The announcer said they took responsibility for messing up those machines, but I don't hear them taking any responsibility at all. Seems to me they're just hiding behind speeches.”

Mabel generally wasn't so outspoken. For her, this amounted to a passionate outburst. And Joan had to agree with her.

“They want the credit, not the responsibility,” Alvin Hannauer said. “You're not going to see any of them coming forward in person, not like the tree sitters. Whatever you think of that protest, those kids let you know who they are. I have to respect them for that.” He smiled at Joan.

Joan thought he was probably right about EFF, but she was particularly grateful for what he'd said about the tree sitters. Did he know Andrew had taken Sylvia's place? When Joan's old teacher, Margaret Duffy, had proposed her to the board, Alvin had voted to hire her. A retired Oliver College professor, he was an anthropologist, as her father had been. They'd even worked together briefly. Alvin probably had fatherly feelings toward her, but she didn't think they'd cloud his judgment in this case. Still, he didn't need to say anything. And the smile gave him away. He must know about Andrew.

“You're right,” Mabel said. “And they don't damage other people's property.” She, too, smiled at Joan.

The whole board probably knew, or soon would. Andrew might want them to, but Joan felt shy about telling the group, especially after what Mabel and Alvin had said. She'd thank them later for their support.