Deadout (28 page)

“So that's why we're in the woods?”

“Mostly so my mom doesn't see us, because she's terrified they're going to find out and come after us. Take the house away from us, or come after me. I honestly don't care about the money. I just want to know what happened to my sister.”

“Are you scared?” I said quietly.

“Scared of Stoma?” She laughed bitterly. “Of course I am. You should be, too.”

*   *   *

We each walked out of the park the way we had come in. I was in a daze, processing what she had told me. But as I cut across the grass, I realized what had struck me on the way in: bees. Not a lot of them, but enough. Half a dozen as I looked around me, floating, zipping, meandering. They wouldn't have been noteworthy in any way except that they were alive, and it made me realize how starkly absent they were on the island.

 

49

As I drove out of Providence, I called Annalisa. A line of dark clouds had formed low on the southern horizon. She was quiet when I told her about my conversation with Beth Osterman.

“Did you know Claudia well?” I asked her.

“Hardly at all,” she said in a whisper. “But it's still sad. And scary. What does it mean?”

“I don't know.”

“Did they kill her?”

“I don't know. Maybe. Beth said Claudia never took off her Saint Christopher medal. That says to me, whatever happened, they didn't want anyone seeing her body.”

“We probably shouldn't talk about this on the phone. I have some news, too. Can you meet me at my place, when you get back?”

“Sure. I'll let you know when I get off the ferry.”

Before I left the Impala in the parking lot, I opened the trunk and the safe and took out my Glock. I held it in my hand for a moment, enjoying the feel of it before putting it into its holster and wrapping it around my ankle.

I gave the Impala an apologetic shrug, feeling vaguely guilty leaving it behind once again. I don't think it expected anything more from me. I liked the car fine, but there was no pretense to anything more.

The line of dark gray clouds had followed me back to Woods Hole, creeping a little bit higher. By the time the shuttle dropped me off at the terminal, it was a solid gray wall taking up a quarter of the sky.

I waited outside the ferry terminal next to a large planter of pansies. A lone honeybee was going from bloom to bloom, doing the nectar and pollen thing. I watched with new fascination, wondering if it had any notion of what was going on in the world around it.

A few minutes before we boarded the boat, a car pulled up next to me. A misty-eyed middle-aged couple got out of the front and their twenty-something daughter got out of the back, holding a bouquet of flowers. The dad lifted a couple of small suitcases out of the trunk and the daughter tucked the flowers into a side pocket of one of the suitcases. They all hugged and stood together awkwardly until boarding was announced a couple of minutes later.

The parents drove away, and as we started moving forward I noticed that the bee had finished with the pansies and succumbed to the temptation of the bouquet, thorax-deep in some kind of lily. The flowers shook as we moved, and I expected the bee to fly away, but it hung in there as we ascended the gangway. I wondered if I should warn it that it might be headed to its death, or if somehow this bee was the island's last hope. When we got onto the boat, the girl made her way to the dining area and I lost sight of her and the bee.

Up on the deck, the wind was already picking up, so I headed back inside. As soon as I sat down, the sound of Archie Pearce's Outback Steakhouse accent caught my attention, and I turned to see his face on the television next to the snack bar.

“We're deeply saddened by the turn of events,” he was saying. “Our hearts go out to this disturbed young man, Teddy Renfrew, and to his father, Darren Renfrew, and the rest of the Renfrew family, and everyone at Thompson Chemical Company. Obviously we condemn any destruction of property, but while we were not directly harmed by this senseless act, we were its target, and we will be increasing security accordingly. But I want to make a pledge to the farmers on this island, who depend on honeybees for the pollination of their crops: while this act of vandalism has hastened the decimation of honeybees on the Island of Martha's Vineyard, we at Stoma Corporation are prepared to make our Bee-Plus bees available to any farmer who asks, at no charge. And to the farmers facing this plight across America, who are asking when Bee-Plus will be available to save their farms, the answer is: just as soon as possible.”

I texted Moose:
ARE YOU WATCHING THIS?

He called back less than a minute later. “Can't believe it,” he said. “Leave it to Stoma Corporation to take advantage of a catastrophe and turn it into a PR coup.”

I wasn't so sure it was a coincidence, but I kept that to myself.

“The island's going nuts,” he said. “The farmers are in a panic, half of them desperate to get on Stoma's waiting list and the others trying to figure out any other way to take care of their crops. A couple days ago people were just worried about the early crops, but now they're freaking out about everything. And no mainland beekeeper in his right mind is going to bring his bees here now.”

“No?”

“Are you kidding? Something just wiped out the island's entire honeybee population. A few weeks ago, we were keeping the mainland bees off the island so we didn't bring in the colony collapse disorder or whatever it is. Now whatever is happening here is a hundred times worse than anything out there. They don't want whatever happened to our bees happening to their bees.”

We were both quiet for a moment.

“Have you talked to Nola?”

He sighed. “Yeah. She's freaked out. She's trying to run Teddy's farm for him while he's locked up. I mean, she knows what she's doing, she's a good farmer, but it's not her farm, and now she has to maintain the whole thing by herself, the chickens and everything, and she has less help than he did.”

I called Nola as soon as I got off the phone with Moose, but she didn't answer. As I put away my phone, I saw helicopters coming in from the south, headed toward the island. There was no swooping or banking; they were headed in a straight line, rising just enough to maintain their altitude as they crossed over the land. They stayed low and immediately disappeared over the trees. The phone rang in my hand. Nola, calling me back.

“Sorry I missed you,” she said breathlessly. “I was trying to get a few things done before dark.”

As she spoke I could hear the sound of the helicopters growing on the phone.

“Helicopters?” I asked.

“That's the third time today,” she said.

“I just saw them.”

“They're headed to Katama. Stoma is setting up another staging area for Bee-Plus. Protesters are there already. Are you back on the island?”

“I'm on the ferry. Are you okay?”

“Things are getting weird here.”

“Weird how?”

“The island feels like an armed camp. People are uneasy, and wherever you turn, there's some Darkstar goon with an ear piece and a strange bulge under his jacket. Stoma is pulling out the stops, security wise.”

”Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I'm fine. It's just creepy.”

“You should get out of there.”

“Doyle, I can't just get out of here. I made a commitment and I need to take care of this place.”

“You didn't make a commitment to do all of it yourself. Teddy should have made arrangements if he was going to go off and do something stupid. He should have planned for contingencies.”

She sighed. “Well, he didn't. And it's not the chickens' fault, so they shouldn't suffer.”

“Then I could come over,” I said.

She sighed again, but this time with maybe a hint of a laugh in there. “Not yet, all right? I'm okay.”

At least I made her laugh.

 

50

Jimmy answered on the first ring. “Hey, Doyle. Kind of in the middle of something.”

The background noise sounded like the thing he was in the middle of was an all-out riot. “What's going on there?”

He laughed. “I got reassigned to the Eastern Front. Stoma's bringing in more of those bees, and they're setting up a staging area near Katama airport. Lots of knuckleheads from both sides.”

“Any sign of Benjy?”

I heard the muffled sound of the phone coming away from his ear, his voice yelling, “Hey, get down from there!” Then he came back. “No, but he's probably okay.”

I wasn't so sure. “I need to trade notes with you on some stuff. Can we touch base after your shift?”

He snorted. “Sure, whenever that is.”

*   *   *

It was dark when I got off the ferry. Walking back to my rented Jeep, I immediately noticed the vibe, just like the lobby at the Wesley Hotel. It was like
Invasion of the Body Snatchers,
only instead of being transformed into aliens, half the population had been transformed into hard-faced, muscle-bound private soldiers. It was like a Darkstar corporate retreat.

It felt like prison yards I'd walked through, dead-eye stares blowing around like dandelion fluff in the air, like a piece of it could just land on you and all of a sudden you'd be in the middle of trouble. Not what you'd expect on the gentle streets of Vineyard Haven. A couple of the men looked at me as I opened my car door, and I looked back at them blankly. Just another asshole, just like them.

I texted Annalisa, told her I'd be there in a few minutes. She was waiting when I got there, watching through the tiny window in her front door. She came outside and locked the door behind her as soon as I pulled up.

I kept the engine running, because it seemed like we might be going somewhere. She got in the passenger side and fastened her safety belt.

“Can you drive me to the lab?” she asked. “And can you break into it with me?”

“What are you talking about? Why would you need to break into your own lab?”

“Not my lab. Sumner's.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The fudged data on those data sheets is not just for external consumption. That's the data Sumner has been sending to Stoma. Whatever he's hiding from the world, he's hiding from Stoma, too. Without the original data, we're never going to know why, or why they seem to think it's worth killing someone over. But Sumner is a scientist, and that data is extremely valuable, so I know he won't have destroyed it. I'm pretty sure I know where it is on his secure server, but it's going to take a little while to get at it, too long to try to sneak it during the workday.”

“We should go to the police,” I said, feeling very mature and responsible saying it.

“Well, that crossed my mind, too. But we have two things here. One is the faked lab sheets, and yes, if we can prove Sumner has submitted them in some official way, then, yes, he could get into trouble. But it would take years and the result would probably be a small fine, if anything. And by then any damage will have been long since done.”

I stayed quiet.

“The other thing is whatever happened to Claudia Osterman and Lynne Nathan,” she said quietly. “But that's just a suspicion on our part, a suspicion of two murders with no bodies, that might have taken place on international waters, that have already been accepted as workplace accidents. Which they may have been.”

I looked at her for a moment. This was the kind of reality check I was more used to giving than receiving.

She took a deep breath. “I'm already into this,” she said, like it was taking a great effort to keep her voice steady. “If we stop now, without knowing what's going on, I'll spend the rest of my life worrying I'm going to end up like Lynne or Claudia.”

“Okay,” I said, “where are we going?”

*   *   *

As it turned out, we had a stop to make first.

“The gym,” she said. “In Vineyard Haven.”

“The gym?” I said. “Do you usually have to warm up before committing a felony?”

She gave me a look that was the opposite of laughter. “I have to pick something up.”

She directed me to the Mansion House, a venerable grand dame of a hotel, right in the middle of Vineyard Haven.

“This is the gym?”

She nodded. “Gym/spa/hotel. Keep the engine running,” she said as she got out of the car. “I'll be back in a minute.”

I was double-parked in the middle of one of the busiest intersections on the island, preparing to commit one crime while acting as an accessory to another. It wasn't much more than the minute she promised, but sitting there so conspicuously, it felt excruciatingly long. As she got back in the car and I pulled into a knot of slow, congenial “Oh, no, I insist, after you” traffic, I crossed “getaway driver” off the mental list of occupations I might try if the whole police thing didn't work out.

“What was that all about?” I asked, compulsively checking my rearview as if we had just pulled off a bank job.

She held up a white plastic swipe card with a red Stoma logo on it. It looked almost identical to the one I'd seen around her neck. Except this one said Julie Padulla. Sumner's assistant.

I raised an eyebrow.

“She'll be swimming for another half hour, then forty minutes in the sauna and the whirlpool. The place is open till nine, and she closes it every Tuesday and Thursday. We just need to be sure I have this back in her locker before she's done.”

“This is a side I didn't know you had.”

She shrugged and looked out the window. “I didn't know it either.”

 

51

Sumner's lab was on the back end of Johnny Blue's Farm, directly across the road from Annalisa's lab. A half-dozen protesters remained, but they looked tired and fed up. A few of them looked like they'd been drinking, their eyes heavy with beer and belligerence.