The Perennial Killer: A Gardening Mystery (3 page)
Read The Perennial Killer: A Gardening Mystery Online
Authors: Ann Ripley
Tags: #General, #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction
“But something’s happened to us. I feel so apart from you—it’s just plain scary. I feel like more of my own person, and that’s a good thing, isn’t it, for a person to feel strong—independent—not afraid to succeed? But I’m so worried about
us
. It’s as if the bottom were falling out of my life.” She was on the verge of tears.
He squeezed her shoulder with a gentle hand. “I’m damned proud of you, Louise—and don’t you ever forget that.” Then he got up from where he was sitting and moved to the windows to stare out at the foothills. Seldom had he been this uncomfortable. His new casual clothes, stiff and strange. This place, Colorado, too bright, too barren of trees. Relations with the wife he loved better than himself, perilously strained. He had better say this right.
“There have been too many changes,” he said, “too fast. And I’ve sent you mixed signals, telling you I wanted to quit my job, then reneging. I apologize.” He turned around and his face was grim. He crossed the room in two big strides and crouched in front of her.
“They need me again.” He whispered the words. “I just can’t walk away when I can help with something that affects all of our futures. Can you understand that?”
“But it will always be like that, Bill. Next, they’ll need you back in Europe. I spent twenty years being a foreign service wife while you were leading your double life. Now I have a career of my own; what am I supposed to do, give it up?”
“Let’s just take it one step at a time. Louise, the situation out here has to be resolved or there’ll be hell to pay. I hate to overemphasize it, but
each
situation we’re finding has terrible potential consequences. Think of Chernobyl. As for moving to Vienna, it would not be a covert job. It would be wide open for all the world to see and know about. Working on disarmament, and—”
“Chasing nuclear pirates,” she finished.
His eyes pleaded for understanding. “Could we put off talking about that until this emergency is over?”
She reached out and grabbed his hand. “Of course. Just tell me you won’t make any more decisions without talking to me first.”
He heard Louise’s words, but he couldn’t quite understand how they’d come to this, and why she was so desperate. It used to be that the exigencies of his job came first, no questions asked. Now, he realized, with some of the same emotion that Louise felt, that the whole equilibrium of their lives had shifted, leaving them both unsettled and anxious about the future.
“Louise,
this
time, I had no choice in the matter.” He looked at her, waiting for his words to sink in.
“My God, Bill, I thought we could get out of this…”
Then they heard Janie push aside the sliding screen doors and burst into the room, her eyes bright with excitement. “Guys, come outside! We have a real farmer for a neighbor. Horses. Sheep. Even a llama—it spit right in my face! What a curie! It makes me not want to go off to a wilderness camp in Estes Park. Why, it’s wild right here in our backyard.”
Then she noticed her parents, huddled together, and she self-consciously brushed her long blond hair back from her face. “What is it, Dad, are you proposing to Ma one more time?”
By the time they went to bed, Louise’s headache was gone, and Bill pulled her into his arms. They made love, rapturously, as lovers do when they have had a quarrel and then reconciled—at least for the moment. Afterwards, they lay together in quiet repose in the dark room. Then he turned and talked close to her ear, telling her a little more about his assignment as a peace offering. “We’ve received information that someone is planning to hijack nuclear materials coming out of the Stony Flats nuclear plant.”
“The one near Boulder.”
“Yes. It’s always been dangerous. It’s upwind from Denver, and there’s been a release of plutonium at least once, if not more than once, over the years. You know that plutonium is the deadliest substance known to man. A fire they had at the plant in 1969 nearly caused a nuclear criticality situation that could have contaminated the entire population of Denver. Now it’s a hot potato, a useless plant with tons of hot material that needs to be dealt with.” His arm around her tightened a little.
“How could someone steal materials from it?”
“Right now, stuff from the plant rides its way west to California, to be turned into a less lethal form. We think a high-level person on the inside plans a switch before it gets on the road. What we’ll do is open a window of opportunity for the two parties—buyer and seller—so they think they’re getting away with it. And then…”
“You’ll spring the trap?”
“Yes. And that’s all you need to know now. Be careful, darling. And while you’re remembering poems, recall that old story about Psyche.” He hoped she wouldn’t take offense at his words. “She was what you might call a prying woman—”
“Are you calling
me
a prying woman?”
“Now, wait—not really. I was just trying to make a little joke about the trouble Psyche got into from prying.…” He was silent for a moment. “On second thought, a little prying on your part might not be amiss.…”
“What kind of prying?”
“Just keep your eyes and ears open around Boulder, but don’t
act
. You already realize it’s a pretty sophisticated place—”
She couldn’t resist being flip. “You mean it’s not Hicksville?”
It was lost on him. “Not by a long shot,” he answered. “Boulder has lots of scientists, experts on rockets, weather, time, archaeology. It has high-tech industries, cutting-edge biological labs, that kind of thing, in a corridor between Boulder and Longmont. So there’s NIST, NOAA, NCAR, IBM, Ball Aerospace, StorageTek—and the university, of course. People—especially scientists-come here from all over the world. But if you see anything abnormal around here, anyone doing anything that seems out of the ordinary…”
“Let’s see: I should not be suspicious of people who act normal, only those who skulk around in a suspicious manner.”
“Louise, you’re making jokes—and I like that. It means you’re back to normal. But this is not exactly fun and games.”
“I know that. And I’ll be happy to help. I’ll keep my eyes open, and I’ll give you a report when I get home each day.”
“Oh.” He paused. Her defenses went up again, and she pulled to her side of the bed. “I’m not going to be
here
, because the action isn’t only here. It’s … well, never
mind the details. I leave early tomorrow. But I’ll call you from my next destination, which I can’t tell you about.”
She lay quietly in the bed. He leaned over and brushed her lips with a soft kiss. “I guess that’s as close as you’re coming right now.” Generally, they slept spoon-style, both facing the same way.
“That’s as close as I’m coming right now,” she said in a muffled voice, her head practically buried in her travel pillow.
“I’m sorry if all this is upsetting, Louise. I’ve probably told you more than I should. Maybe we’d just better go to sleep.” He turned on his side. “And one more important thing. Please don’t go overboard—you know what I mean? It wouldn’t do at all for you to, say, visit the Stony Flats plant, which does allow the public in for tours. You see what I mean?”
“Yes, I see,” she said, and there was a sad tone in her voice. He knew she was frustrated: his sidekick again, asked to do simple favors, hut told very little about what was going on. She tossed and turned beside him for what seemed like hours. Nor could he relax and sleep, with the thoughts tumbling around in his head.
The terrible irony was that Louise had valuable skills—and a peculiar talent for ferreting out criminals. And yet he had no authorization to enlist her help, especially into this current dangerous assignment.
It had felt good to have her back in his arms and to be able to talk about the things that were driving a wedge between them. Too bad there would be little opportunity for romance on this trip. Instead, there was danger ahead for him—but, fortunately, none for Louise.
I
N VARIOUS PARTS OF THE
world, it is called open space, open land, nature preserve, greenbelt, wilderness area, greensward, community garden, or park. It’s undeveloped land set aside for people’s enjoyment. As numbers of the world’s least-endangered species—mankind—continue to multiply, open space vanishes. The consequences are great, affecting the psychic and spiritual well-being of people, as well as the very existence of animal and plant species.
Here in the United States, more than 1,200 land trusts make gigantic efforts to preserve land from development. In some communities, voters are asked to foot the bill for open space. (An example: a twenty-five-million-dollar program to save land and farms in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, just ninety miles from New York City and Philadelphia.) Unfortunately, such tax proposals sometimes fail.
Meantime, people fight over existing open space
. It may be a pocket park in New York City; a five-acre chunk of space in a fancy Denver suburb that residents thought would remain their private enclave; or historic garden allotments that are being plowed up for housing in a British city. In the booming American West, gargantuan struggles have erupted among municipal officials with different agendas: Some want to buy up all the land they can to keep it out of “development,” while others argue that development helps keep the lid on taxes.
The people concerned about this include both the big guns, such as the international group that helped fight a plan to mine gold at the edge of Yellowstone Park, to single individuals with a mission. Environmentalists climb redwoods and make their homes
there to keep the woodcutters away. Environmental terrorists destroy parts of a plush ski resort, allegedly to save the endangered lynx. The U.S. president earns both praise and blame for touting open space, and setting up projects such as the Grand Escalante National Monument, which take vast acreages out of private use.
Is there enough room for animals and plants?
Even with these conservation efforts, what is to become of us and our environment as people’s need for housing space continues to grow? And what of the plants and animals that must try to exist in skimpier habitats? In the world, one of every eight plant species, ten percent of bird species, and more than twenty-five percent of mammals are threatened with extinction. Speaking for preservation of species and conservation of resources are organizations such as the National Park Service, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Fish and Wildlife Service; plus the many land trusts, The Nature Conservancy, the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, and The John Muir Society. Congress, on the one hand, may limit the scope of the Endangered Species and Clean Water acts; and yet it is highly sensitive
to public concern for the environmental. In the 104th Congress, it voted more money for the 514 parks in the national wildlife refuge system. Each has a specific mandate to preserve an endangered species or a critical habitat for waterfowl or animals, including certain songbirds, swans, panthers, white-tailed deer, and crocodiles.
The conservator:
The Nature Conservancy adds its efforts by purchasing tracts of land in all the fifty states, and certain foreign countries as well, carefully going about its work while avoiding confrontation with private landowners. The Conservancy, with more than 800,000 members, holds three million acres of land, the largest private conservation holding in the U.S. It claims to have protected 9.3 million acres since its foundation in 1951.
In the end, the using up of open space will be at the price of more plant and animal species. Protection has brought some, such as the bald eagle, back from near-extinction. Unprotected, so far, is the prairie dog, and debate over this tan rodent has become a metaphor for the clash between rural and urban value systems. It even made the cover of an issue of
National Geographic
. The animal gives headaches to
wildlife experts in western states, as they try to preserve it in the face of growing public objections.
A nice meal for a raptor.
The prairie dog is called a “keystone” species, that is, a prey base for many other animals and birds, including the raptor. Some people keep them as pets. Tan, with an unprepossessing countenance, the “dog” has a fetching habit of standing on its hind legs, reaching its tiny paws heavenward, and barking like a puppy. It sends twenty distinct calls to its companions in neighboring burrows. But most astoundingly, scientists have shown that it can recognize people by their clothing. That must be why this rodent has fan clubs of people willing to carry them bodily from the harm of others to new safe havens. (Sometimes they even gently vacuum the little fellows out of their holes.)
Once, prairie dogs proliferated widely in North America, companions to the vanished buffalo. They beat down and smoothed the ground, a good thing for herds of buffalo—though not so good for domestic animals. They now occupy only two percent of their former range, and their numbers and habitat continue to shrink, as they are routinely poisoned, shot, and driven from their homes. Enemies
are not only the bulldozers that come through the fields plowing up their underground homes, but also farmers and ranchers who consider them a pest. Though they enrich the soil, they also eat the ground bare, and are competition for cattle and sheep for grazing grass. Another admitted downside is their penchant for picking up the plague. The disease will rush through a colony, quickly obliterating it, but the idea of “plague-ridden prairie dogs” makes some people think of these innocent creatures as dangerous to the environment.
The prairie dog’s place in nature’s plan
. The people willing to go out with cages and move whole populations of prairie dogs are environmentally aware folks who know this verbose creature is part of nature’s plan. Ironically, one of the animals that depends on prairie dogs for food is the endangered black-footed ferret, which is the object of a multimillion-dollar recovery program of the Fish and Wildlife Service. Others besides ferrets and raptors that feed on prairie dogs are coyotes, burrowing owls, and mountain lions. As long as there are these other wild beasts still among us, surely the prairie dog has its place, too.