* Adult men and women—murdered. Links? None known.
* Adult men and women—violent deaths. Murders? Links? None known. No proof of crime.
* Jurisdiction: Waterton. Attempt to cover up murders. Stated reason: to control possible panic situation.
* Jurisdiction: Maysburg. No further follow-up known by Tennessee authorities after liaison with federal and Missouri authorities.
* Jurisdiction: county (Missouri)—No further follow-up.
* Jurisdiction: federal—FBI agents investigate two crime scenes. Request other lab work. No follow-up known.
* Suspicious element: initial approach by Christopher Sinclair for mysterious holding company's nonexistent front.
* Suspicious element: ecological research & development center/theme park building in remote Missouri small town. (Reasons such as ‘underdeveloped real estate within easy driving distance of several major population centers, ready regional pool of inexpensive skilled/unskilled blue-collar labor force, acceptable climate factors, etc., not convincing.) What is reason for location?
1. Mineral rights? Oil? Gold? Other?
2. Low density of population: toxic waste dump? Missile silo? Nuclear power plant? Other?
3. Cover for government-sponsored production or manufacturing of some type?
* Suspicious element: the lack of available information on violent mutilation murders—a multijurisdictional ongoing investigation of deaths and perhaps related disappearances in a community of less than seven hundred persons has generated only gossip and street rumors. Yet World Ecosphere, Inc., was able to investigate privately and conclude that a serial murderer was operating in the Waterton-Maysburg area. ‘Has targeted the Waterton area’ were Joseph Fisher's exact words. Slip of the tongue or did he have reason not to say ‘Maysburg-Waterton area'? Same conversation: Fisher said he wanted to help us, ‘but I've been asked by the chief of police not to divulge certain information our investigator obtained from another law enforcement agency.’ Is this the Maysburg police department or a federal agency such as the FBI?
Conclusions: Based on the known facts, it appears that ‘World Ecosphere, Inc.’ and their hush-hush land development project could be responsible in some way for at least elements of Sam's disappearance, such as the subsequent cover-up of related information. The big question is—what is their motive?
Best guesses as to possible motives:
(a) They have learned about the serial killer and are afraid that adverse publicity about such a widespread spate of (unsolved) murders might have an unfavorable effect on public's acceptance of the proposed theme park.
(b) They have learned about the killings and abductions and fear a possible adverse effect on whatever is really behind the land deal, such as creation of a nuclear dump, strip mine, or whatever (possibly a government- funded. project).
(c) They themselves are directly responsible for the disappearances and/or deaths. The least likely possibility.
Bottom line: the project itself must be investigated further. We need to know if Ecoworld is what the company purports it to be.'
She went over and sat down on the dusty bed, suddenly quite cold.
On the way to town, they were both in their own world. Royce was concentrating on playing detective, telling himself he was paying Mary back—for a lot of things—and Mary was trying to sort out her weird emotions.
Her world was upside down, yanked inside out. She was hiding—from what, she wasn't completely sure, a serial murderer, she supposed, trying not to second-guess the man beside her—sequestered in the Perkins vacation cabin at Whitetail. It was all too strange, and a no-win cruise for all hands aboard. Nothing good could come out of this mess.
Royce had spoken with Cullen Alberson, and they were going to see him today. The man had been open and seemingly unguarded, which was more than one could say of most of those involved even peripherally in the land deal. They'd gone by the Alberson house and he'd left for town already, and Royce had used their phone to call the hardware store and left word for Cullen to wait for them there.
Horvath's, one of the town's thriving all-purpose “general stores,” was located under the Waterton water tower, a distinctive silver and green onion standing tall above the north edge of the city limits. They pulled in to the parking lot and saw Cullen standing near the bed of his pickup, in animated conversation with another farmer. They waited until the other man walked away. Then they got out and said hello.
“Thanks for letting us pick your brain about this, Cullen,” Royce said.
“Sure ‘nuff. Still no word about Mr. Sam?” He looked at Mary and she shook her head, making a face of sadness. What would everyone say when they heard she'd been hiding out with Royce Hawthorne in the family's cabin? That would give the town plenty to talk about. It was the least of her troubles—what people thought of her.
“I know you've already answered a bunch of questions and so forth, but I was talking about the deal Sam had been working on—talking to Mary, you know?—and we wondered if we could ask you, in confidence, when the contract was signed, were there any riders or changes to this contract? This is the copy from Sam's files.” Royce handed a photocopied sheaf of legal-size papers to Cullen Alberson, opened to the page where it told what the “Community Communications Company” was getting for its money.
Alberson, a man close to retirement age, took his spectacles out and started reading, holding the document rather far from him and squinting, even with his bifocals on.
“We noticed that you didn't sell off any mineral rights, at least in the contract we saw,” Royce said.
“Oh, no. I wasn't about to sell no mineral rights. That was the first thing me and the wife talked about when Mr. Sam told me about the offer. I figured a—whaddyacallem?—geologist ... somebody'd done some testing and found something valuable. I made that clear from the start. He said no—I could retain all mineral rights. They just wanted that little bite out of my corner ground. At the time, I never could understand why they'd throw that kind of money on the table—but, hey, I wasn't going to look no gift horse in the mouth neither.” He shook his head, chuckled, and looked at the contract some more.
“But you never got a direct explanation out of them why they were paying so much for a small piece of farm property?'
“Yeah.” He looked up. “I felt like they were honest enough about what they wanted it for. You know how these big corporations are, they got more money than sense. They take it in their heads they want to do something, it's got to be the way they want it. Somebody out East drew a circle on a map, and I was just lucky enough to be part of the circle.” He smiled and handed the copy back. “Who'd turn down money like I was offered?'
“Not me. We just thought maybe—like you said—they'd found something like a rich gold ore deposit, or oil, or whatever. And when I couldn't find anything about you selling the rights—'
“It was the same with Lawley, ya know?” He meant his next-door neighbor to the east, Weldon Lawley, who'd sold his entire farm to CCC and the parent holding company. “He said—'Shoot, I'd gladly sold them mineral rights for reasonable money, if that's all they wanted.’ It was part of his package deal, but they didn't seem ‘specially interested in that. According to what he said to me.'
The three of them talked some more, and Royce and Mary left, checking in with Mary's answering service from a pay telephone. She phoned Alberta Riley, and they made a couple of other calls, including one to Luther Lloyd's home, trying to see if anything had changed with respect to the missing persons. Mrs. Lloyd was no longer stonewalling it for the cops. Mary spoke with her, at Royce's suggestion, and the woman confided in her.
“They tol’ me not to say anything about Luther being gone and such—said I'd just be making folks panic. They're all in a panic now any which away. There was more killed yesterday—Kenneth Roebeck and Dub Olin and a feller that worked for him. Shot down in the middle of—” She caught herself, and Mary thought she'd decided she was overstepping her place to say these things. But she was weeping. Soft, muted snuffles into the telephone.
“It's all right, now. It's okay there.” She didn't know how to comfort the woman. “I've done plenty of crying,
