A Fountain Filled With Blood

She welcomed the change of subject. “I felt like I had to apologize to him—for dropping him. You know the state’s fired him for not reporting the PCB contamination in the quarry pool. Although I understand there are hardly any traces of it now.” She tugged at a stem of Queen Anne’s lace and snapped it off. “They’ve confirmed it was planted there?”

“That’s what they tell me.”

“Do you have any idea who did it?”

“I don’t think we’ll ever be able to tell.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I know it wasn’t my mother. If she had done it, she would have done it right, and stopped the project cold.”

She laughed.

“He’s going ahead with the construction. Did you know that?” he said.

“Who?”

“Opperman. He’s renamed the business BWI/Opperman and hired some guy from out of state to act as the general. He bought the land outright, too. No more leasing.”

“Peggy’s sisters sold it to him?”

“I guess after everything that happened, they couldn’t get rid of it fast enough.”

“Huh. What do you want to bet he got the fire-sale rate?”

He laughed shortly. “He’s one of those guys who can fall into a pile of manure and come up with a fistful of diamonds.”

She paused. The sun had dropped below the mountains while they had been eating, and the gathering thunderheads were underlined by the dull red glow of the sunset’s echo. The dogs, nosing into a woodchuck hole, were making snuffling noises. She breathed in the smell of the long, ripe grass. “It’s beautiful out here.”

“Yeah.”

“I feel so bad for her.” He didn’t ask her to whom she was referring. “It was like she was poisoned by the contamination in the water. And it spread all around her, like a sickness. Everyone lost. No one won.”

“Opperman did.”

She swished the stalk of Queen Anne’s lace through the tall grass. “Yeah, well, like you said.” She paused. “He did win, didn’t he?” She looked up at Russ. “He’s got total control now—of the business, the land, the project.”

Russ nodded.

“What you said about not knowing how Peggy knew Chris Dessaint?”

“Yeah?”

“Aren’t there any connections between his life and hers?”

“Not that we can see. He worked at Shape Industries, which had no connection to her real estate and development business, he moved in completely different social circles, and, according to witnesses, he didn’t use drugs. Wintour hasn’t confessed, but Dr. Scheeler thinks Dessaint was knocked out by a blow to the head and then injected with an overdose of heroin. The only way in which he and she intersect is that he was one of those hard-core paintball players. But even if he did use her land once in awhile, she only dealt with the league organizers. Just made arrangements over the phone. She never laid eyes on the players.”

She closed her eyes. A refreshing breeze sprang up, the leading edge of the front carrying the storm over the mountains. She shivered, and her arms goosefleshed. She opened her eyes. Looked at Russ.

“Opperman played paintball.”

He looked as if she had slapped him.

“Remember? Stephen Obrowski said so. Opperman stayed in the area lots of weekends. He played paintball.”

“Jesus,” he said. “Jesus, you’re right.”

They stared at each other. It was a horrible feeling, like opening up a nice, neatly wrapped package to find something dead and rotting inside.

Russ strode off, his head bowed. She skip-hopped to keep up with him. “Opperman,” he said. The dogs bounded beside them. “He could have seeded the pond himself before that poor sucker Waxman tested it.”

“The night of the town meeting, Ingraham said something about them being involved once before on a project that had PCB contamination. He said they were still involved with the cleanup.”

“So Opperman has access to some of that sludge. Waxman tests it, comes up with an off-the-chart level, and runs to Opperman, who offers him a job to keep him quiet. Then he makes sure Peggy knows. Maybe he even drops rumors around town.” He stopped abruptly, causing Clare to stumble to a halt. “But there really is contamination in the groundwater. That little bit in the quarry pool couldn’t have caused that.”

She caught at his arm. “Don’t you see? Leo Waxman was right. Even though he thought he was lying, he was right. The PCBs are coming from the Allen Mill cleanup.”

Russ spun on his heel and struck off in another direction. “Peggy thinks she’s about to be screwed out of her deal. Opperman—what? He whispers in her ear? Makes suggestions? If it was just the two of them, he wouldn’t back away from the project? They could split the profits two ways instead of three?”

“And then he points her to Chris Dessaint, who has already proven his mettle by beating up some unlucky soul outside a Lake George bar.”

“She does the rest. She thinks fast; we saw that. He must have known how smart she was.”

“Not smart enough to know she was being manipulated.”

He turned to her and clutched her upper arms. “She got rid of his partner for him. And then he got rid of her. In self-defense.”