Джеффри Дивер - The Final Twist

The empty boats, with high drafts, would then return to the dismantled ship works for another load. Shaw wondered where the waste he was looking at was bound for: What competitor did Devereux have in his sights? How many employees and residents living nearby would be poisoned? How many animals? How much land would be tainted for decades to come? He wondered too if the idea of using waste as a weapon had come from the CEO of Banyan Tree himself? Or, like the Urban Improvement Plan, had it been the brainchild of Ian Helms?

Russell braked to a stop near the office and the men climbed out.

They had come back to the waterfront because of Shaw’s thought after reading about “dredging” up waste, which is usually performed by a boat. That meant that the word crew in the text authorizing the killing of SP probably did not mean crew as in gang, despite the fact that there were plenty of those in Hunters Point. The word was meant in its original sense: those operating vessels.

Confirmation from Hunters Point crew.

6/26, 7:00 p.m. SP and family. All ↓

They walked over the parking lot of inky, newly laid asphalt to the office. Shaw noted on the side of one of the trucks was the name of the company, along with the tagline:

Shaw wondered about the ellipses at the end. That form of punctuation sometimes was meant to suggest forward motion: Now get out there and live that clean life! But ellipses also were used to indicate that something had been omitted from the sentence. Like: “Making the world a better place to be... for our company, our shareholders and our illustrious CEO.”

They looked through the window into the office, where a woman sat at a desk and several men in gray uniforms and orange vests stood in a cluster, sipping from coffee cups. The pier itself held a dozen workers.

“There,” Russell said. He was glancing toward a man in a navy-blue windbreaker, matching slacks with a stripe up the side and headgear you rarely saw: a real captain’s hat, the sort sometimes sitting atop lean and fake-tanned women in short blue skirts and tight white blouses, on the arms of rich businessmen.

The man was out of sight of the office and the pier, on the other side of a large rust-scarred fuel tank, where four empty flatbeds sat. He was scanning their license plates with a tablet, then tapping in notes. On his chest was a BayPoint Enviro-Sure Solutions ID badge.

They bypassed the office and, when no one was looking their way, stepped over a gray-painted chain and walked along the stone wall at waterside toward the man. The smell was of white gas — kerosene — and diesel fumes, generic ocean, and some truly foul chemical. The rocking water beside the dock was coated in concentric blue and purple and red circles of oil.

The grizzled man in the captain’s hat made a call on his walkie-talkie, then strolled to another truck. He glanced back, seeing the brothers. He looked them up and down. “This’s private property.” The voice was a growl.

Shaw and Russell continued forward and stopped when they were about fifteen feet away.

His weathered face soured. “I said, case you didn’t hear, private property. You get the fuck out of here.”

Russell said, “We have some questions.”

“Leave! Or you don’t know the kind of hurt you’ll have. I’ve whipped Somalian pirates, I’ve put down mutinies. I whaled on a carjacker so bad he needed his jaw rebuilt. Now!” The head, beneath its jaunty hat, turned toward the exit.

Russell said, “There’s an employee—”

“What’s with that beard? Are you some kind of Amish person?” His face grew even more fierce. “Or a Muslim?”

Shaw: “An employee at BayPoint Enviro-Sure. His—”

“I’m not telling you again.” His cheeks reddened; his temperature must have risen a few degrees. Soon the shade was actually livid.

“—initials are S.P. He has some connection with this facility. We need his name and address. It’s important. We’ll pay you. A thousand.”

“Why would I care what you need and don’t need? Fuck-fancy. Get off this property now.”

Fuck-fancy. Not a phrase Shaw was familiar with. He kind of liked it.

He continued, “I’m a spit away from calling security.”

The expressions got better and better.

“All right. That’s it.” Up came the radio. Apparently the old salt hadn’t whipped those pirates without backup.

But before the call went out, Russell smoothly drew his silenced pistol and blew a nearby rat to eternity.

Not the approach Colter Shaw would have taken.

Then again, as he’d learned very well over the past few days, it wasn’t unusual for two siblings to solve a problem in significantly different ways.

At 6:45, fifteen minutes before the family was to die, Colter Shaw was sitting, alone, in the front seat of Russell’s Lincoln Navigator. He was looking over the house of Samuel Prescott, the BayPoint Enviro-Sure Solutions whistleblower. Shaw watched the garage door rolling down, hiding from view the family’s sedan, a red Volvo.

Trevor Little — the belligerent pseudo captain on the Hunters Point dock — had glanced in horror at Russell’s gun and quickly told the brothers Prescott’s name. It seemed the employee and his family had been out of town at a funeral but were due back today.

This would be the reason for the specific time and date of the hit in the kill order; the murderer would have to wait until the family returned to their home from the airport. Karin had checked passenger manifests and flight schedules. The Prescotts were due back at about 4:30 and would be home about fifty minutes later — the time it would take them to collect luggage and travel from San Francisco International Airport to their home in Forest Hill, a suburb of San Francisco.

Shaw, Russell and Ty had met the family’s flight.

A scheduler at BayPoint Enviro-Sure Solutions, Prescott was in his forties, stocky and tanned, with sandy-colored hair. His wife, Bette, was blond and willowy. Their son and daughter were twins and had their mother’s pallor and hair, freckled both. They were twelve.

At SFO, Ty had displayed an ID card, which Shaw caught a fast glimpse of. He saw the initials U.S. and a round emblem similar to, but not the same as, the Justice Department’s. Shaw wondered if it was real. In any case, it took no convincing for Prescott to believe that he and his family were in danger.

Prescott had been surprised Devereux had learned of his espionage. He’d taken care to hide the fruits of his spying on his computer with sophisticated encryption.

He was not, however, surprised that the CEO had issued an order to have him killed. “He’s murdering people with toxic waste. Why not kill somebody with a bullet?”

Explaining to the brothers how he’d discovered Devereux’s toxic waste scheme, Prescott said, “The numbers, always the numbers. They never lie. I’m a scheduler, right? I keep an eye on transport down to the hour, the minute . I noticed that the timing of some of our trucks was off. When they went out and when they came back wasn’t right. I knew how far they had to travel to the sites — the legitimate ones — and they were coming back to the dock too soon.

“Not a huge time difference, but it was suspicious. I called in sick one day and followed one of the trucks. It didn’t go to the site it was supposed to. It went to a vacant lot in Oakland. The waste was pumped into an unmarked tanker. I followed it to a factory owned by one of Devereux’s competitors. These men got out — like special forces, all in black. They dumped the waste into a creek downstream from the factory. I got pictures and samples. I was going to the EPA and the U.S. attorney this week. I just wanted to find a few more target locations.”