Part 13 (1/2)
He was nearly shouting now, attracting even the attention of Finley and the other officer who were still keeping the press away at the mouth of the alley. Duggan was also listening more intently than ever.
”Well?” O'Malley asked.
”Yes, I suppose so,” Avery said.
O'Malley was fuming, doing everything he could not to lose his cool. He paced back and forth, looking from the burned body and then back to Avery. Apparently, he noticed that he was on the verge of causing a scene and lowered his voice again.
”Why'd you go see him this time?”
It was a simple question but the answer wasn't simple at all. She also knew that it was not an answer O'Malley wanted to hear. Still, there was no sense in playing dumb or trying to throw him off. ”He's a resource,” she said. ”My past with him makes him one of the best resources at our disposal.”
”Your past with him?” O'Malley roared. ”Don't even get me started on your past with him. You know what, Black? I might regret this later but right now I just don't give a s.h.i.+t. I want you off of this case effective immediately. I can't stand for this sort of insubordination-especially when my orders were fairly well known throughout the A1.”
”You can't be serious,” Avery said.
”Oh, I am. You're d.a.m.ned good at what you do but you have to follow the rules the same as anyone else. And as a matter of fact, you've netted zero results on this one so far. I'll put Agent Duggan with Ramirez and work with them to wrap it up.”
”Sir, you can't-”
But he had already turned his back to her. The only other thing he said was ”Dismissed,” before getting on the phone again.
She knew she could make a scene and argue her point further. But she knew O'Malley well enough to know when not to push it. So instead, she figured she'd take the high road. That way she could perhaps talk some sense into him tomorrow after things had calmed down. And she certainly didn't want to seem like a sniveling brat in front of a fed.
She turned her back on the scene and headed back for her car. When she pa.s.sed by the reporters and the officers trying to keep them back, one of them asked her for information. It took everything in her to not wheel around on them and flip them off. She made it to her car and just as she was about to get in, Ramirez came rus.h.i.+ng past the reporters and to her car.
”That's it?” Ramirez asked. ”You're going to quit just like that?”
”I'm not quitting,” she pointed out. ”I'm following orders.”
”Well, if they're going to take you off of the case, I'll step off of it, too,” he said.
She was a little surprised by the offer given the way she had spoken to him yesterday but then again, that was just the kind of man Ramirez was. She sighed and shook her head. ”No,” she said. ”Don't. This is your time to s.h.i.+ne. See what you can do with this without me. h.e.l.l, you're going to have a federal agent as a partner.”
”Yeah, sure...but O'Malley can't just throw you out like that.”
”He can. And he has a right to do it. I f.u.c.ked up. I get it and I understand it. But I know O'Malley. One more day and I'll give him a call. He'll cool down and come to his senses.”
Ramirez hesitantly nodded his head and stepped back toward the alley. ”Are you going to be okay?”
”Of course I am. Now get to work.”
He grinned at her as she got into her car and pulled back out onto the street. Seeing him smile at her warmed her heart in spite of the way the morning had gone. She thought she might also need to give Ramirez a call tomorrow when things cooled down.
She turned around, trying to think of how to spend the rest of her day. Of course she wasn't going to just sit on her heels and do nothing. She was going to keep working on the case under the radar...but how?
Ahead of her and to the left, she saw a faint cloud of smoke drifting up into the sky. She followed it down and saw a thin smokestack, probably attached to the rear of a factory or mill on the eastern side of town.
This sparked an idea in her mind. Even before it had fully developed, she pulled up the number for the coroner. She didn't want to bother with calling anyone at A1; if O'Malley found out, he'd be livid. It would take him a little longer to figure out that she had contacted the coroner, though.
She made the call and was relieved when the receptionist didn't ask for her name. All she said was that she was calling with the A1 and she was put through. Then after two minutes or so, the phone was picked up on the other end.
”How can I help you guys?” the coroner asked in a tired voice.
”Well, as you know, we're up to our necks in trying to figure out this recent case with burned bodies,” she said. ”I'm putting together a list of places in the city other than morgues and crematoriums that include burning and fires in their line of work.”
”Well, there's paper mills,” the coroner said, ”but the heat generated in those places wouldn't be nearly strong enough. There's steel mills, but there are only two in the city and one of them has such rigid security that it would be impossible for someone to get in and out. The other one has been shut down for about six months. The only other place might be a garbage-burning plant. There's one of those in town and it stays pretty busy.”
”Garbage burning?” Avery asked. ”Would that process generate enough heat to burn a body to ash?”
”If it was exposed long enough.”
”Are we talking temperatures of one thousand degrees or more?”
”No idea, lady. You'd have to talk to someone at the plant. Sorry, but I never got your name...what did you say it was?”
She killed the call and looked back to the rising cloud of smoke in the distance. She pulled up the address to Boston's single garbage-burning plant and when she viewed it on the map, she studied it carefully. From first glance, the plant appeared to be exactly in the middle of the triangle of where the bodies had been discovered.
She pulled an illegal U-turn at the next light and was following the GPS directions within thirty seconds.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
The stink of the garbage-burning plant was awful but not nearly as bad as she had expected. By the time she had parked her car, walked across the lot and into the central office, she had almost gotten used to it. It smelled more like burning plastic than anything else, with a sort of spoiled and rotten undertone to it.
She'd called ahead to speed things up so when she stepped into the front office, there was an older gentleman waiting for her. His name was Ned Armstrong and he worked as the s.h.i.+ft director. When he smiled at her when she entered, he looked very happy to be doing something other than his usual job.
”Thanks for meeting with me,” Avery said.
”Of course,” Ned said. ”This is actually the perfect time to give you a quick tour of the place if you'd like. The peak burn time is about two hours from now, when most of the trucks have come back from their routes.”
”Perfect,” Avery said. ”Lead the way.”
”On the phone, you said you were more interested in the area where we burn material, correct?”
”Yes. Or, more directly, we're looking to see if this facility has the capacity to burn bodies without the knowledge of supervisors.”
”Well, I can a.s.sure you there's nothing like that going on around here,” he said. ”Come on and I'll take you to the compacting and burn center. You'll see what I mean.”
Being something of an information junkie, Avery was rather glad to find that the compacting and burn center was at the back of the building. Along the way, she was able to see most of the day-to day-operations of the plant. Ned pointed things out here and there but Avery was able to get the gist of just about everything on her own.
They pa.s.sed by a large concrete square of a room where trucks backed in and out. From there, the garbage was sorted and then carried further into the facility on a series of forklifts. There were other rooms where some heavily soiled materials such as heavy plastics, metals, and aluminum were cleansed and re-sorted. All of this then led to the back of the building, where Ned finally showed her the compacting and burning quarters.
”I think this is what you'd be most interested to see,” Ned said as he led her inside the room.