Mike moved off, saying to Farrington, “Just keep him from jumping.” He took out his phone, called Wright with the DEA team.
“We’re just getting set,” Wright told him. “We got a guy going in now, using a UPS truck, gonna have a look around Chapman’s property.”
Mike explained the situation with Petrov. “Oh boy,” Wright said. “Yeah, he’s shitting his pants because he got in with these guys. Maybe Pritchard was trying to work the end with this family farm of his. Expand, maybe get a little closer to Truenol, who knows.”
“Keep me posted.”
“You still think this ties into your vic, or what?”
Mike used a hand to shield his face from any more debris – even though he’d backed away from the tree – and looked up at Petrov. Obviously, Petrov didn’t fit the narrative of a disgruntled, dejected parent or someone coming back around on DSS with this salvo of attacks. Maybe he was in over his head in some meth operation – maybe he’d even been the one to first talk to Pritchard about the use of Pritchard’s family farm downstate. But was he a murderer? Or was he just scared?
It was getting late, the daylight turning salmon, the sunlight blinkering through the trees as Mike walked back to where Farrington stood looking up at Petrov. The barefoot man had at last gotten as high as he could climb. Mike heard more people walking through the woods, saw two Lake Haven cops step into the clearing beside the old foundation, giving everything a look, their eyes wide, breath coming hard. “Jesus,” one of them said.
From up in the tree, barely audible: “Think I am stuck.”
* * *
Finally back on the ground, his bare chest scratched and bleeding, leaves in his hair, Petrov agreed to cooperate as long as he stayed protected. Farrington arrested him with the local cops stepping in to assist. They led him out of the woods like an old-time posse who’d finally caught their quarry.
Mike walked slower, lagging behind, and clicked on his flashlight since it was almost full dark. He and Wright updated each other again by cell phone. Wright said their undercover UPS guy had a good scout, saw that the silo was definitely active, the door equipped with a huge padlock, tire tracks everywhere, signs of people coming and going.
“This is a major piece,” Wright said. “Chapman has got grain production going at his elevator, looks like he’s been up and running from everything we’ve seen. We’re still chasing the paper trail, but at first blush, he’s subcontracting for Truenol.”
It sounded like Wright was driving, road noise in the background. “They can process up to 40 million bushels of grain a year. And so that turns into something like 100, 110 million gallons of ethanol, dry distiller’s grain with solubles, and we’re thinking a shit ton of meth.”
“So, Chapman is sending down the grain. In what? Barrels?”
“Well, yeah. Corn. A bushel of corn weighs fifty-six pounds. We’re going to set up at the weigh station in North Hudson. We’ll have a good look at what’s inside the next truck Chapman sends down.”
“That’s my old stomping ground,” Mike said. He pulled a cobweb off his face. Almost out of the woods now, feeling good. “Hey, Wright, I got another call.”
“I’ll talk to you later.”
Mike picked up the other call. “Nelson here.”
“So while you were chasing Dmitri Petrov up a tree,” Lena said, “I was humbly cross-referencing away. Mike – Trevor Garris drives a dark blue, late-nineties model Buick LeSabre. I called the witness, the one who was camping and came back and saw the car the night of. I had her come down to the station, and she officially IDed the car.”
Mike thought it through. “But Garris is staff. He’s their IT guy. We did background checks on all the employees.”
“Not in this case: Garris was hired on a contractual basis, so no civil service exam, none of the typical background checks; physical, drug screening, nada. Apparently, their own IT people couldn’t do what was needed for the big upgrade, so they brought in Garris.”
Mike tried to picture Trevor Garris in his mind. Big guy, prematurely balding. Or receding hairline, was the right way to put it. “Shit. Bobbi Noelle told me that Lennox Palmer and Trevor Garris were friendly.”
“What’re you doing?”
“Getting out of the woods. Back to my car. Coming to you now.”
* * *
Mike pulled out Trevor Garris’s picture in Lena’s office, slapped it down on the table. Then he went rummaging around for something else in the file, mumbling. “The kid…”
Lena cautiously approached from behind her desk. “What kid? Durie? I had Stephanie run a check, like you asked, but he’s nowhere in the system.”
Mike found the class picture he’d photocopied from the school, and pointed out ten-year-old John Durie. “Look at him.”
“Alright. I am.”
“Now look at Garris.”
Mike put the pictures side by side on her desk and waited. He said, “Stephanie found out that the mother died about six months after that bust. Melissa Clay. She’d gone right into rehab as part of the sentencing for the charge – not jail. She comes out, gets her kid back at this point – her son, John Junior. But then she starts using again, this time heroin, and little John finally gets taken away. Then she O.D.s; dies in a bathtub in South Burlington. By then the kid was already in foster care – we just don’t know where. Two months later, the father completes a suicide in jail. So, this kid, John Durie, he’s an only child, has some brain damage maybe from the ammonia hydroxide, drug bust puts his father in jail, Child Protective Services takes him from his mother, who O.D.s. Now he’s an orphan.”
Lena took a couple of steps back from the table, her eyes on Mike, then she glanced away. “Ah shit, Mike.”
“They look similar, don’t they? In the eyes, the nose there. You see it?”
She nodded, unspeaking.
Mike went for the phone on her desk, picked it up. “Where is the contact information for DSS employees?”
She came around behind him, clicked through files on her laptop, and pointed out Trevor Garris’s cell phone. Mike punched in the number, waited, got a voicemail. “Mr. Garris, Mike Nelson with the state police. Give me a call back if you can – just have a few questions for you… Need your technical expertise. Thanks.”
Mike walked back to the file on the center desk. “If I can just find this Durie kid’s trail, where he went… Because he just disappeared.”
“Foster parents have to be licensed by the State of New York,” Lena said. She pecked at the keyboard. “Once a DSS investigator gets a call and determines that there’s cause to remove a child from a home, they contact local county agencies to place the child and have them work the case. Right?”
“That’s my understanding.”
“Okay, so… Family Court matters are handled by court circuit – the 20th judicial circuit services Pierce County. If he lived here…” She squinted, looking at the screen, and Mike moved beside her. “The county where the child lived would handle the dependency case – the parents would be seen in that courthouse for all judicial reviews, and have to deal with DSS in that county, if there was one.”
“And there is one.”
“Yes,” Lena said. “But the child might not wind up placed in that county – maybe there’s not enough homes. So, foster homes can be outsourced, and on any given day a prospective foster parent can get a call from one of several local agencies with a child that they urgently need to place, adoptive parents too. Okay, I’m looking at the adoption actions we’ve got, hang on.”
Mike moved to the window, looked out at the main street, thinking. It all meant that if this was some kid who’d grown up with a chip on his shoulder, had snapped and gone after DSS caseworkers perceived to have ruined his life, he could have gone just about anywhere.
Lena said, “Got something. H. Garris in Saratoga.”
“Jesus, Lena… Saratoga… What if John Durie was adopted by someone down there, the Garrises? You got a number?”
“But,” she said, “different names?”