Jessica?'
She nodded. 'In the basement. That's where he kept his samples and his logs.'
'Would you mind if Mongo and I looked around down there?'
Jessica Blaine slowly shook her head. 'Not at all.'
Tom Blaine's widow led us into the kitchen, opened a door in the rear of a pantry area, then flipped a light switch on the wall. Garth and I descended a short flight of wobbly, oft-repaired, wooden steps into the basement. There was a dangling, naked light bulb at the foot of the stairs, and Garth pulled a string to turn it on. The stairs bisected the damp, stone basement; to our left was an oil-burning furnace, a washer and dryer, and a floor-to- ceiling Peg-Board filled with rusting tools that had obviously been used only on rare occasions. To the right was Tom Blaine's makeshift office. There was a scarred wooden desk with a green gooseneck lamp flanked by two battered metal filing cabinets. Secured to the concrete wall directly in front of the desk was a corkboard covered with Polaroid photographs of tankers heading up and down the river. Two walls were taken up with crude, handmade wood shelving on which sat an array of labeled coffee cans, jars, and bottles containing gooey materials of different colors, and in varying states of desiccation, and which I wasn't inclined to examine too closely. There were three rows of green plastic jugs similar to the ones we had seen on his boat the evening he had towed us back to Cairn.
All of the labels on the cans, bottles, jars, and jugs were clearly marked with a date at the very top; the rest of the information on the labels was not so clear. Below the dates were a series of numbers and letters, presumably a code identifying the container's contents and where the sample had been taken. All of the containers were arranged on the shelves by date, in the order that they had been taken. Unlike the mudlike materials in most of the other containers, the contents of the green plastic jugs sloshed around when shaken. Unlike the labels on the other containers, which appeared to contain a good deal of information-including what might have been chemical formulas-the labels on the jugs carried only a date and a single letter and number code. The last three jugs on the shelf bore the dates of the preceding weekend, which meant they were probably the ones we had seen on the riverkeeper's boat. All bore an identical code: C-26Q431. The other dozen or so jugs on the shelves all bore codes preceded by the letter
'Hey, Mongo,' Garth said quietly, 'take a look at these.'
I went over to where Garth was standing. He had removed three dust-covered, leather-bound ledgers from the file cabinet on the left and was looking through one of them. I picked up another from the desk, examined its cover. There was a label that gave the dates of March 1987 to June 1989; the label on the third ledger was dated even earlier. Each entry in the ledgers listed a date, a site, a suspected violator, the nature of the infraction, action taken, and final resolution-fines, cease-and-desist orders by some court, or whatever. The ledgers I was examining contained a detailed record of actions taken against polluters in Cairn and the surrounding region over a period of almost six years.
There was nothing complicated about the entries, no codes and no key to codes. It seemed the enigmatic system Tom Blaine had used for labeling the containers had only been used for purposes of security and confidentiality until the samples had been tested in some lab and the matter resolved by the Coast Guard or in court. There was no way of telling what the liquids in the green plastic jugs were or where they came from.
'What's the date on that ledger?' I asked.
Garth closed the book, examined the cover. 'It ends nine months ago.'
'We need the latest one.'
'Indeed.'
Garth began searching through the remaining drawers of the two filing cabinets while I checked out the desk drawers. There was nothing in the desk but yellowed copies of old legal transcripts, sundry office supplies, and an ancient pack of Juicy Fruit gum. We checked all the shelves and even looked on the floor under the desk and shelving, but found nothing but cobwebs and three dead spiders. If Tom Blaine had been keeping a detailed record of his activities for the past nine months-and there was no doubt in our minds that he had-the ledger recording that activity was not in his office, and it had not been on the boat, at least not when it was found.
We turned at the sound of footsteps on the stairs, nodded as Jessica Blaine and Mary descended into the pool of light cast by the single overhead bulb at the foot of the stairway.
'Tom spent so many hours down here,' the black woman with the gray eyes and silver hair said wistfully, glancing around the dusty work space. 'I'm sorry it's so dirty. Tom would never let me clean down here-he said there were too many toxic chemicals, and he didn't want me near any of them. Tom was really a very tidy man. I just don't want you to think. .'
'There's no need to apologize, Jessica,' Garth said. 'Tom had a lot more important things on his mind than a few cobwebs in his office.'
'Is there something in particular you're looking for?'
'As a matter of fact, there is: Tom's most recent ledger. It doesn't seem to be down here. Is it possible he could have left it around someplace upstairs, and you put it away?'
The silver-haired woman shook her head. 'He always kept everything down here, and he would usually take his new journal with him out on the boat. When he didn't, he always left it right there on top of his desk.'
Garth and I looked at each other, and my brother grimaced slightly. I knew what he was thinking. We had the jugs he had been carrying on his trawler Sunday night, but knowing what was in them, or even where they had come from, wouldn't necessarily be of any value. We had to know who he'd caught, or what the riverkeeper had been up to on Tuesday night, and that record-along with any samples he might have taken before he died-had disappeared from his boat before it ran aground in Piermont.
'Mrs. Blaine,' I said, 'has anybody else been down here since Tom's death? The police, maybe?'
She looked puzzled. 'No. Why would the police want to come down here?'
A good question. Harry Tanner had made it clear that the Cairn police considered the matter outside their jurisdiction, the Coast Guard was showing no interest, the state police-assuming they were potential players-hadn't even put in an appearance, and Garth and I were the only ones who thought there might be something suspicious about Tom Blaine's death in the first place.
'Mrs. Blaine, with your permission, I'd like to take the most recent samples Tom gathered, the contents of three of those green plastic jugs, back to the city to be analyzed.'
'Of course, if you want to,' the woman replied, then frowned slightly. 'But why? Do you think what happened to Tom could have been. . caused by somebody?'
I wasn't sure how to reply. There seemed no reason whatsoever to flog the emotions of a grieving widow further with conjecture about the possibility that her husband had been murdered. On the other hand, by asking her questions and rummaging around in her husband's office, Garth and I were openly displaying our concern, if not outright skepticism, over the manner in which the incident was being treated by the authorities; the eerie circumstances of the man's death seemed to speak for themselves, even if no one but Garth and I seemed to be listening. But I had no business raising false expectations, or committing the time and resources of Frederickson and Frederickson to an investigation that should properly be handled by the police or Coast Guard. In short, I wasn't quite sure what I was doing or wanted to do;
I didn't know how far I was willing to pursue the matter, and I didn't want to further upset Jessica Blaine.
It was Garth who came up with the right reply. 'Jessica, Tom devoted his life to cleaning up the Hudson and keeping it clean, for all of us. Mary and I live on the river, and the beauty she and I enjoy every day is in no small part due to Tom's efforts. He died in the line of duty. Mongo and I would just like to find out what he was working on at the end, so that maybe we can finish his final business for him.'
The woman seemed pleased, and she nodded. 'Yes. Tom would like that. Thank you.'
Garth walked out to the car with me, helped me load the plastic jugs in the trunk. I said, 'How's it going with Mary, if I may ask?'
'You may ask.' His voice was even, but his brown eyes reflected warmth, gratitude. 'She's still a little nervous, but I think things are going to be all right now. I don't know what you said to her, but it seems to have straightened her head out. I owe you, brother.'
'Glad to be of service,' I replied, getting into the car. 'I'll call you.'
