After watching me silently for a moment, Roberta put down her pipe cleaners and left the market. She came back about ten minutes later. She was carrying a bundle that opened up into a set of waist-high waders, arm-length rubber gloves and an industrial face mask.
“We used to keep cows, until it got to be too much work. I kept these from when I went in to clean out the waste tank. You’re a bit taller than me, but these things are built generous.”
I thanked her, without feeling any real gratitude. Still, I knew if I didn’t go into the pit, I would be haunted back in Chicago by the thought that I’d let an important clue go begging. I tried on the waders, just to be sure. She was right, they were built to cover layers of clothes and shoes. They went on over my jeans and running shoes with room to spare.
When I carried them out to my car, Frank was waiting for me. “You know how to drive a stick? Figured you would. Take the pickup. It’s got a winch, case you need to haul up something heavy.”
I looked at him narrowly. “You got something specific in mind, like a body?”
He laughed, a rusty, hooting sound. “Nah, but Bobbie saw ’em throw chairs and such in there from time to time. They’d get high, who knows what they thought it was funny to toss around.”
He climbed into the passenger seat of the pickup and watched while I fumbled with the clutch and the stick. The truck was old and the gears were well worn. Even so, I killed the engine a couple of times before I got it going.
Frank rode with me to the end of the drive. I thought he was checking on me, but he wanted to show me a path across the field that lay between his house and Schlafly’s.
“Not that it matters, with the corn crop destroyed by the drought, but there’s always a track alongside a field so you can drive equipment across without hurting the crop. You follow that, you’ll get to Schlafly’s back fence. The hole the killers cut is wide enough to drive the truck through.”
He pulled an old receipt out of the glove compartment and found a pencil stub. “This here’s my cell phone. You’d best not drive the truck into the tank, since it’s got my winch on it. If you get in any other kind of trouble, give me a shout. Leave me the keys to that little Mustang of yours and I’ll drive over to get you.”
I bumped the truck along the track he’d pointed out and drove through the hole in the fence behind the Schlafly house. Before putting on all the heavy rubber gear, I pulled out my gun and made a tour of the house. I’m not often afraid, or even very squeamish, but it took a lot of effort to go inside. I was sweating by the time I’d forced myself over the kitchen threshold, but the Rottweiler’s body was gone. All I found were cockroaches and a pair of starlings who’d taken advantage of the open door to build a nest on the light fixture in the front room.
I did up the bolts to the front door so that anyone wanting to interrupt me would either have to break down the door or come up the side to the hole in the fence. Leaving my gun on the floor of the truck, with the door open next to me, I pulled on the waders, hooked the suspenders around my neck so the pants would stay up, and pulled on Roberta’s industrial shoulder-high gloves.
The drought had mostly dried the bottom of the pit, which was about the only good thing to be said about it. I kept on the high waders, though, not just because my feet still sank into sludge patches, but to protect my legs from the ether, Drano and the rest of the revolting soup.
Whoever had given the crime scene a once-over had tossed the murdered Rottweiler into the pit along with the towel I’d used to cover him. Insects had eaten most of the flesh; fur and bones fell out of the grappling hook as I tried to use Frank’s winch to lift him.
“I’ll bury you later,” I promised him. “Even if you did go for Frank Wenger’s throat, you were only trying to please the people you were unfortunate enough to love.”
I’d forgotten to bring my water bottle from the Mustang. After an hour in the September sun, I was thinking more about water and less about the stink and the toxins I was handling.
As the morning wore on, I pulled out enough empty jugs and ether canisters to fill a large tarp that I’d found under the porch. As Frank said, the Schlafly menagerie had also tossed in chairs (two), two-by-fours (eleven), beer kegs (three) and dressers (one).
I kept cooling my head and neck under a garden hose, but I couldn’t bring myself to drink any water connected to the meth house. Around one-thirty, I took off Roberta’s gear and drove the truck into Palfry. I stopped at a convenience store on the outskirts of town for two gallon jugs of drinking water. I sat in the car, resting, drinking, then remembered Lazy Susie’s BLT. Just what I needed to restore my salt balance.
The lunch crowd had taken off; only one other person was at the counter.
“You want that BLT?” Susie asked. “How’s it going at the death pit?”
“And you know this because I stink like a chemistry lab?”