P Deutermann - The Moonpool

“Precisely the right answer, Mr. Richter,” he said with a charming if patronizing smile. “Don’t disappoint your Bureau. We’ll be in touch.”

I signaled the college-student waiter for another beer. He brought it and asked me who the weird-looking dude was. I told him that the weird-looking dude was from the Darkside, and he nodded knowingly. Awesome, he said. Totally, I replied. We had communicated, and life was, like, good. So was the beer.

I put Allie’s death out of my mind for a few minutes and just enjoyed my drink and the sight of the sun going down on the battleship’s dimpled gray hull. The setting sun turned the river into a sheet of bronze, which made everything out there pretty much invisible. My inner self was still somewhat aglow from the previous evening with Mary Ellen. We had come so close to physical intimacy in our previous acquaintance that I’d half-expected to be disappointed. Instead, she had been almost intimidating in her need. Naturally, I felt used. Used, abused, and hoping like hell she’d want to do it all again.

Then I remembered something. Allie had said she’d be back the next day after taking care of some personal business. What might that have been? I should have said something to the special agents, but then again, maybe I could tease out a few more facts before I closed that loop.

“Mr. Cameron Richter?” a deep baritone voice inquired over my left shoulder. I looked up. A stocky black man stood next to my table. He was immaculately dressed in a stylish suit, and he was holding a leather-covered notebook across his middle.

“Yes?” I said. I would have stood, but I couldn’t get up without running into him, and he didn’t look like he’d move a whole lot.

“Forgive the intrusion,” he said. “I’m Aristotle Quartermain. May I have a word, please? This concerns the recent misfortune of Ms. Allison Gardner.”

He proffered his hand, and I automatically shook it. He was in his late fifties, and his skin was not just black but blue -black. He had a glistening, oversized bald head and intense owl-like eyes. He was built like a fire hydrant under that six-hundred-dollar suit, not tall as much as broad, and his hand felt like a silk-covered vise. He sat down carefully opposite me and put his notebook on the table.

“You have the advantage of me, Mr. Quartermain,” I said. “A drink?”

“That would be very nice, Mr. Richter. I believe I have one coming.”

“That sure of yourself?”

“It’s a fault, Mr. Richter. I’m the chief of technical security at the Helios nuclear power station. I’m afraid it’s gone to my head.”

The same waiter brought Quartermain his drink and gave me a conspiratorial look over my guest’s shoulder. The Darkside was everywhere tonight. Then I realized what Quartermain had just announced.

“Ah,” I said.

“Yes,” Quartermain replied, sampling his Scotch. He unzipped the fine-grained leather binder, extracted a neck chain containing his credentials, and slid it across the table. I examined the three plastic badges, each with his picture and the logo of the power company, PrimEnergy, which apparently owned and operated the Helios atomic power station.

“I’m technical security. Another gentleman is physical security. I’m in charge of keeping the nuclear process safe. The other guy is watching for bad guys coming over the moat. Technically, he works for me.”

“Why?”

“Because if our side of the security equation goes south, physical security becomes moot. Nobody will be trying to get in to the power plant under those circumstances, if you get my drift.”

“Got it,” I said. I studied the badges and handed them back. “Those look good, for the moment, anyway.”

“I’ve been at the bar,” he said, retrieving the badges. His fingers were large and impeccably manicured. “I did not want to intrude until the FBI people left. Special Agent Caswell is a sight to behold, is he not.”

“True enough,” I said. I’d decided to let him lead. He knew who I was and why I was in Wilmington, and he knew the Bureau people by name. The pleasant, isn’t-this-a-nice-evening expression melted off his face, and suddenly I was looking at a no-shit security officer. The transformation was dramatic.

“Your associate,” he said, lowering his voice, “was killed by ingesting about a pint of highly radioactive water.”

“How high is high?” I asked.

“High enough to permanently expose twenty-seven plates of X-ray film.” He paused, looking around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “Twenty-seven plates that were stored fifty feet away from the main analysis room in that lab. She might as well have crawled into an industrial-sized microwave oven, set it on high, and spent the night in there.”

“All this from one bottle of water?”

He leaned back in his chair and it creaked. “We don’t know that, of course. What the container was, I mean. We’re assuming that she drank it thinking it was just water, since there were no indications of coercion. Right now the situation up at the state forensic lab is somewhat-chaotic.”

“I can just imagine,” I said. “And they know this stuff came from the power plant?”

“No, no, they don’t know that. The NRC-that’s the Nuclear Regulatory Commission-is involved, as is, of course, the Bureau. Needless to say, they’re both looking hard at Helios as a possible source.”

“And let me guess, the plant and the company are circling the wagons at warp speed just now.”

He smiled and shook his head. “The company understands their concerns, of course, but the NRC technical people, at least, know that there’s no way radioactive water can come out of that plant and into the community absent a major, and I mean major, accident. Even then, it would appear in the form of water vapor. Not something you could drink. No. Technically, this isn’t possible.”

“And yet…”

“Yes. And yet. The isotopic fingerprints would normally tell the tale, except for the fact that any credible analysis of residual isotopes is going to be obscured by their having gone through human tissue.”

I just looked at him. Isotopic fingerprints? He saw my confusion. “When I was in nuke school,” he said, “the professor would sometimes say something in Greek and we’d all get blank expressions on our faces. Every classroom had a whiteboard or six. In the corner of one of the whiteboards there was always a rectangle with a circle drawn inside it. Inside the circle were the words ‘I believe.’ That was the I-believe button. If the instructor realized that he’d just baffled the entire class, he’d invite us to press the I-believe button and then he’d proceed with the rest of the lecture. Sometimes the problem cleared up, sometimes it didn’t. So: Say, ‘I believe.’ ”

I did. He grinned.

“What’s funny?”

“I was thinking about Special Agent Caswell’s reaction to isotopic fingerprinting. He tried to pretend he knew what it was. So I asked if the Bureau’s laboratory could do some for us. Special Agent Myers made a note to call them. That will be an amusing, if short, discussion.”

“Back to the problem at hand, Mr. Quartermain,” I said. “My associate, as you called her, is in an autopsy drawer. The technical impossibilities aside, I want to know how this happened and why.”

“I apologize,” he said at once. “I didn’t mean to trivialize what’s happened. In fact, that’s why I’ve come to see you. I’m here to offer you a job of work.”

“Me?”

“You and your company. That’s what you people do, correct? Investigations?”

I shifted in my chair. This was going just a bit too fast. “Mr. Quartermain,” I began.

“Please, call me Ari,” he said. His voice was genial enough, but those zero-parallax eyes never left mine.