D Carpenter - Infertile Grounds

“This is agent Derek Carlisle,” Pell said.

Derek shook Chris’ hand. His grip was weak, almost feminine. His long bony fingers wrapped Chris’ hand like tentacles. When he let go, Chris involuntarily wiped his hands on his pants.

“Chris Foster,” he replied.

The rolled up report was on the table and Derek picked it up, smoothed it out on the edge of the table and then sat down in a chair to read it.

Margaret, the receptionist, walked in. “The carpenters are here. What do you want me to tell them to do?”

“Tell them to fix the door,” Pell replied.

Margaret pursed her lips and huffed before turning and stomping out of the room.

Pell called after her, “Hey, Margaret. Can you make us another pot of coffee, please?”

The receding beat of her heavy footsteps paused, and then she continued without responding.

“She loves me,” Pell said with a smirk.

“Obviously,” Chris replied. “So what are we going to do now?”

Pell joined them at the table. He ran both hands through his hair, pulling it back so that the wrinkles on his forehead smoothed and let out a long slow sigh. Chris knew that look all too well. It would get a lot worse before it got any better.

“I don’t know?” Pell finally said. “Do you see anything there, Derek?”

Derek set the piece of paper on the table and shook his head. He rolled out his long thin index finger and tapped the picture of the young Sarah Burns. “You need to find her. She’s the key.”

Pell nodded. “I’m thinking that we should head up to the County, do a little leg work and see if we can get lucky.”

“We don’t have much time,” Chris said. “David Rose told me that it was going to happen soon – real soon. He could have meant it was only days away.”

Margaret walked in with a pot of coffee and some styrofoam cups. “There’s a call for you on line one, Pell,” she said as she set the coffee on the table.

“Thanks.”

Chris poured himself a cup while Pell picked up the phone.

“Agent Pelletier,” he said, and was silent as he listened. “Really. We’ll be there in a couple of hours.”

He replaced the receiver. “That was the state police. There was a fire up in Aroostook County last night. They think a state cop died.”

Chris stirred a creamer packet into the coffee and said, “So.”

“So, his name was Bert Nadeau.”

He stopped stirring. “That’s a mighty big coincidence.”

Pell nodded. “Too big. We’re going up there right now. Derek, I want you to start an all-out search for Sarah Burns. Get every asset we have working on it. Somewhere there’s got to be more information on her. Nobody disappears for almost twenty years, not in this day and age.”

“But our guys at Langley couldn’t find anything on her,” Derek said.

“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t exist, she’s just off the grid. We need feet on the street with pictures canvasing Aroostook County. Somebody, somewhere has seen her. We just need to find them. We need some evidence that she is alive and we need it yesterday.”

Derek nodded and left the room.

“Maybe this’ll be the break we’ve been looking for,” Chris said as he took a gulp of the hot coffee.

“It could certainly be. Bring that coffee with you. I want to get going now.”

“Sure thing,” he said as he stood up and followed Pell out of the room.

As they walked past the carpenters, who had removed the door and were patching the wall, Chris remembered the report on the desk and quickly turned back to retrieve it before heading down to the car.

Pell placed a spinning blue light on the dash. They sped down the street and once they were on the highway, Pell wound the car up to one-hundred-twenty miles an hour. The suburbs of Bangor quickly turned into the endless woods for which northern Maine was famous for. At this rate, they’d be there in no time.

Chris returned to the report. Something was here, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He was looking out the windshield at the jagged stone of Mt. Katahdin when it came to him.

Turning to Pell, he noticed beads of sweat lined his forehead, and his eyes looked glazed – foggy.

“Are you okay, Pell?” Chris asked.

He didn’t respond. Chris reached over and tapped his shoulder.

“What?” He said.

“I said, are you okay? You don’t look so good.”

“I’m fine,” he replied as he wiped the sweat from his brow.

“Let’s pull over. There’s a scenic lookout right up here. Pull in.”

“We can’t. We’ve got to make time, Chris.”

“If we get into an accident because you refused to take a breather, it’s certainly not going to do either of us any good.”

He turned and glared. “Fine.”

They pulled into a scenic lookout on a steep, rocky hillside overlooking a tree-lined, swampy lake that often had moose in it. The dark stone mountain was reflected in the still waters. They got out and walked over to a picnic table. Pell looked terrible. Chris worked the handle of a hand pump mounted next to the table, and soon cool spring water spurted out onto the ground.

“Splash some of this on your face.”

Pell cupped his hands under the spout and splashed the water on his face.

“This’ll only last for a week or so,” Chris said. “Drying out’s tough.”

Pell wiped his hands on his pants and said, “I hope you’re right.”

Chris didn’t have the heart to tell him that it would get much worse before it started to get better, and would most certainly take longer than a week – probably more like a month. They stared at the mountain in silence for a minute before Chris said, “I was thinking about that report that we got last night and I think I might have come up with something.”

Some color had returned to Pell’s face, his eyes clearer as he said, “What’s that?”

“The last paragraph about Ngamy. I think it makes perfect sense that they would pick a place like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it. If they were going to test this virus out, what better place to do it? It’s pure speculation, but there’s probably no organized medical infrastructure there to piece this sort of thing together. I bet there is a population there that could be one big laboratory – a human guinea pig farm.”

The thoughts hadn’t been completely organized in Chris’ mind, but as he spoke, it all came together. The more he heard himself talk, the better it sounded.

Pell stared off in the distance. A last drop of water fell from his chin and he idly traced his jaw with his thumb and forefinger. His head nodded in time to his caress.

“It sounds kind of far-fetched. I mean, it’s possible, but like you said, it’s all speculation.”

“Maybe so,” Chris replied. “It’s going to be difficult to check out without having someone in the area verify it for us. With it being overseas it’s going to be out of the FBI’s jurisdiction.”

“Not necessarily,” Pell said. “We do actually operate outside of the US. We have Legal Attachés attached to most US embassies doing training and information gathering. They get involved in investigating crimes and terror threats in the country as well. I have no idea if we have anyone in that area of Africa but we can check. Let me think about it for a bit. Let’s get going.”

They rode in silence for the next hour until Chris said, “We’re coming up on the Wild Bear lodge.”

They came around a turn in the road, and Pell slowed the car down. All that was left of the Wild Bear was a burnt-out shell of the building.

“What the…?” Pell said as he whipped the car into the driveway.

“Jesus Christ. Did they say anything about this to you on the phone this morning?” Chris asked as he stared at what was left of the building that was surrounded by yellow crime scene tape. He had been in there just two short days ago.