But then time passed, he grieved, mightily at first, too mightily because he came close to losing everything, including his own life. Then more time passed and his days and nights were taken up with doing his job, interacting with others, even making new friends. The loss was still there, it would always be there, but the phrase “Life goes on” appeared to be an accurate one.
And from time to time Decker would feel guilty that he was becoming so absorbed in his work that the memories of his family were receding into a little box in his head, only to be taken out from time to time and wept over. And for him that equated with forgetting about his wife and daughter, or at least allowing other priorities in life to supersede what they had meant to him while alive. And this after he had promised them faithfully, while standing over their graves, that they would be the center of his life until he joined them. A sense of betrayal steadily crept over him.
A tear from his right eye fell onto Molly’s photo. He very carefully brushed it away from the picture, fearful that it would mar her final captured image.
He had told himself back in Burlington when he had been visiting their graves that he could live in the past or live in the present, only he couldn’t do both. Although part of him desperately wanted to.
So what’s it going to be, Amos?
He supposed all who had suffered such a loss struggled just as he did. That notion didn’t console him at all.
We all feel alone. We all feel unique in our pain.
He slid the photos back into his wallet and put it away.
It was then that he noticed the bulge in his jacket pocket.
He slowly put his hand in there and pulled out . . . a phone?
The answer hit him a second later.
Robie.
The man had slipped this phone into his jacket when he had helped Decker up in that alley. He had said he would figure out a way for them to communicate, and this must be it. He looked more closely at the device. It both looked and did not look like a typical mobile phone.
He punched in the number of his own cell phone to see if it would go through. It didn’t.
He looked down at the phone, then simply pushed the green talk button.
The phone made a small buzzing sound and then the voice came on.
“I expected you to be a little quicker on the uptake,” said Robie. “I’ve been waiting for your call for an hour.”
“I just found the phone and figured out how to work it.”
“Anything up or are you just checking in?”
“The latter. So if I push the green button you come running?”
“No. If you push the red button I do. But I don’t have a cape and superpowers, so don’t expect me to be there in seconds.”
“So it’s like a panic button, then?”
“And only use it when you are indeed panicked. Now if there’s nothing else, I’m going to get some shut-eye.”
“Sorry to bother you,” said Decker brusquely.
“I don’t mean to sound like an asshole, Decker. But this is a job. A critical one. We’re not here to make friends.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Good.”
“One more thing.”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for saving my butt tonight.”
“You’re welcome.” Robie clicked off.
Decker stood, put the phone on the nightstand, stripped off his wet clothes, and changed into dry skivvies. He lay back on the bed, suddenly wanting to be anywhere other than here. That was surprising, shocking even, because normally he wanted to be wherever there was a crime that needed solving. And right now that was squarely in London, North Dakota.
The first victim, Irene Cramer, had a mysterious past and might not have been who everyone thought she was. She was a teacher by day, and doing something else entirely at night. She had been murdered and a postmortem performed on her body, presumably by her killer. Something had perhaps been taken from her stomach or intestines.
The man who had found her, Hal Parker, was looking for a wolf that had killed some cattle owned by Hugh Dawson. And now Parker was missing. And Pamela Ames was dead. Had Parker killed Cramer and Ames? But if he had, why pretend to find the body and call the cops? That put him right in the middle of the investigation, which made no sense.
Now Decker came to Will Robie’s involvement. He only had Robie’s word for it that he worked for the federal government. But Robie had saved his life. And the man who had tried to kill Decker? Where had he come from?
And finally, Decker came back to what his brother-in-law had said the man from the Air Force station had told him about sitting atop a time bomb. Did it tie into the row of ambulances at the facility, and did it explain the reluctance of the station’s commander, Colonel Sumter, to cooperate with them? They had to find the man who had uttered those words. And he would need Baker’s help in learning more about this fracking business. In Decker’s experience, when there was money to be made, big money as here, that provided an excellent motive to kill.
As if humans really needed a reason to hurt other humans.
With that thought, he fell into a troubled sleep.
“THIS LOOKS LIKE a command center,” said Jamison.
She and Decker were inside a roomy trailer staring at a series of computer screens set atop a long, laminated desk. They were at an oil rig site that was in the process of being fracked. Baker sat in a swivel chair in front of the desktop units, his gaze flicking alertly over each screen. The trailer had a bathroom and an AC window unit and was quite comfortable inside.
“That’s exactly what it is,” said Baker. “We actually call it the data center because that’s what all this is,” he added, pointing to the screens. “Data.”
Jamison indicated a Maxwell House coffee can sitting on a table with its plastic lid on. “You’ve got a Keurig over there, so what’s that for?”
“Don’t open that top,” warned a grinning Baker. “It’s the other supervisor’s spit can. You can’t smoke anywhere around a rig, so nicotine addicts chew tobacco instead.”
“Great, thanks for the heads-up,” said Jamison, looking disgusted.
Baker pointed to one screen. “This monitors the barrels of fracking fluid we pump in the hole by the second.”
“Is it important to monitor it that closely?” asked Jamison.
“Oh, yeah, because things can go sideways fast and people might get hurt, and you could end up wrecking a wellhead site. Nobody wants that to happen. Now, we’re just beginning to frack this well. The drilling and piping have all been done by a separate crew.”
“How does all that work?” asked Decker.
“The initial well bore is drilled. After that’s done the drill pipe and bit are taken out. Then a steel tube, which we refer to as a surface casing, is put in the hole. That makes the sides of the well rigid and stable and also prevents stuff from leaking out. Then cement is poured in to secure the casing tube. We pressurize the shaft to make sure it’s holding okay, sort of like testing a plane fuselage. Then the drill pipe and bit goes back in and the drilling continues vertically. When that’s completed the horizontal drilling starts up. We continuously lower in more casing and cement to make sure everything is secure. When that’s all said and done, then comes the insertion of the fracking fluid. It’s all done in stages. And each one takes about two hours.”