Sachs took the lead. “Mr. Collier, are you familiar with the stories about the earthquakes in Brooklyn?”
“Of course. Very odd.” He unbuttoned his dark-gray suit. The American flag pin in the buttonhole of his lapel was upside down. “Speculation that somebody’s using explosives to mimic quakes. Nobody’s sure why. Maybe to get the geothermal plant shut down. That’s what the journalists are saying. Industrial sabotage.” More wrinkles folded into his creased, pale face; it was naturally patterned, not from the sun. It was as if he still worked—and even lived—deep underground. “And why are you here exactly, Detective? Is it why I think?”
“The memo. The FTC complaint against Algonquin.”
Collier was nodding. “You know, those dead birds? Nobody killed them. Our firm hired somebody to drive around and find dead seagulls. Can you imagine some intern, first day on the job? ‘Need dead birds, kid.’ Though the fact is the windmill blades do kill them. The firm just added a few extras—for effect. And the fires with solar panels? That’s a known fact. The pictures weren’t exactly of ceilings that collapsed because of the panels. But what’s a little license among capitalists? You’re thinking we’re setting the explosions to make it look like the drilling was causing earthquakes.”
“Are you? Your oppo firm researched it. That was in the memo.”
“It was in the memo. But if you heard me on TV, which I guess you did, you’ll recall I was defending Northeast and geothermal drilling.”
“That’s not answering my question. Are you sabotaging the site?”
“No. Is that enough of an answer for you?”
“What about the oppo firm?”
“Fired them a year ago. The bad publicity wasn’t worth it. A couple of dead seagulls. Died of natural causes. You should have seen the hate mail we got.”
“Which,” Pulaski said, “might have taught you to be more careful.”
“No, Officer, it taught us to be smarter—in how we deal with alternative energy. We don’t try to run them out of business.”
He dug up a company brochure from his desk drawer and dropped it in front of them. Opening to the first page he tapped a passage. Algonquin’s wholly owned subsidiaries included three wind farms in Maine and a solar panel manufacturing operation.
“We buy them.” He opened another drawer, extracted a thick legal document and dropped it with a loud smack in front of her. “We’ll keep this one secret, you don’t mind. It’s not public yet.”
Sachs looked at the front page of the document.
Purchase Agreement
WHEREAS, Algonquin Consolidated Power and Light, Inc. (“Algonquin”), desires to purchase twenty percent (20%) of the outstanding common stock (the “Shares”) of Northeast Geo Industries, Inc. (“Northeast”), and Northeast desires to sell the Shares to Algonquin,
NOW THEREFORE, in consideration of the mutual obligations herein recited, the parties hereto do agree as follows:
She didn’t bother to flip through it. “You’re buying stock in the company?”
“Eventually, if it’s profitable, we’ll buy the rest. It has to prove itself. Deep-drilling geothermal—tapping into volcanic reserves—for electrical generation is profitable. Near-surface drilling on a large scale? The jury’s still out on that. Do you have a furnace at home or a heat pump?”
“Furnace.”
“Exactly. Heat pumps’re for wimps. Geothermal’s a heat pump. But there’re a lot of ecological wimps out there. So I’m hoping our investment will pay off. We’ll see.”
Sachs’s phone hummed with a text. She looked down at it.
She stood up. Pulaski glanced her way and rose too.
“Thanks for your time, Mr. Collier.”
“Ms. Evans will show you out.” He said nothing more, didn’t rise. He opened a folder and began reading.
The assistant appeared and escorted them down the hall.
As they walked into the parking lot, out of earshot of the employees, the young officer whispered, “We just going to let it go, like that? He showed us a contract. He might’ve had it printed out in case somebody called him on the earthquake plot. How do we know he’s not behind it?”
“Because of this.”
Sachs showed him her phone, the text she’d just gotten from Lon Sellitto.
“Oh. Well. We’re going to New Jersey?”
“We’re going to New Jersey.”
Chapter 48
This is a place where earth meets water in stark and stunning beauty.
This is a place where the rocks take on the texture and sheen and contradiction of art.
This is a place where brush, bush and trees rise along sheer cliffs with the effortless ease of smoke.
This is a place where someone whose life was devoted to the earth might, fittingly, die.
The body of Ezekiel Shapiro, in a fire department rescue basket, was now being winched to the top of the hundred-foot cliff of Palisades Park.
In the chill early evening, their breath easing in visible wisps from their mouths, Sachs, Pulaski and a number of New Jersey state troopers stood watching the fire department and rescue team. They were beside Shapiro’s car, which was surrounded by protective yellow tape.
Suicide is, after all, a crime.
It had not been the police but insurance man Edward Ackroyd who’d made the discovery that Shapiro had hired Unsub 47.
When Ackroyd told Sellitto what he’d found, the lieutenant had sent patrol cars to Shapiro’s office and home but apparently the environmentalist had seen them and realized that the authorities had learned about the plot.
He’d posted a suicide note online, driven here and killed himself.
Shapiro had hired Unsub 47 for two missions. The first was to close down the geothermal drilling as environmentally unsound. The second was to single out Jatin Patel for attack and robbery. The diamond cutter was apparently known for working on stones from mines that displaced indigenous people and polluted villages and rivers. The stolen rough, Ackroyd had learned, would be sold by 47 and the proceeds given to Shapiro, who would distribute it to environmental organizations to help the unfortunates.
I don’t think tree huggers use C4 very much…or burn down buildings with people inside…
Mel Cooper had been wrong.
Shapiro’s suicide note made clear, though, that he’d miscalculated. He’d wanted to scare the city, sure. The deaths by fire were not his idea, but had been the brainchild of the madman he’d hired—somebody who shared his fury at the destruction of the earth, but who had decided, on his own, to plant a series of incendiary devices to kill and injure.
Perhaps the deaths, though unintended, had been what pushed him to take his own life.
“Hey, Amelia.”
She turned to see a tall, blond officer, about her age. He was in uniform—dark slacks with an orange stripe down the outseam and a powder-blue shirt and tie. Latex gloves and booties too. Ed Bolton was a sergeant with the Crime Scene Investigation Unit of the New Jersey State Police’s Major Crime Bureau. He now pulled off the cornflower-blue accessories and stuffed them into his pants pocket.
Knowing that Bolton had run the scene was a relief. He’d have done as thorough a job as she would have.
She introduced him to Pulaski, who asked, “How’d you get onto it?”
“Trooper saw the car here and ran the plate. There was an area-wide out after you guys found he was behind those earthquakes and murders on Saturday and Sunday.”
“Positive ID? It’s Shapiro?”
“Uh-huh. One of our tac people rappelled down. Did a field FR. It’s him. Prints were on file after an arrest at a protest rally a few years ago. Pretty crazy, faking earthquakes.”
She asked, “So how does the scene look?”
“Nothing says anything other than suicide. No wits. And he drove here from the city, so no tollbooths.”