62. Pre-Heraclitus
Sally and Liam ran in silence through the rain, over the sopping artificial grass and back to the squad car. By the time they'd gotten in, Liam barely seemed any calmer.
"That was a complete waste of time," he said, starting the engine.
Sally just grunted. She wasn't sure. There were too many pieces in the air still. Liam reversed the vehicle, a hard half-circle through the mud that shot water to either side, then gathered speed to shoot up the incline to the coast road.
The rain lashed down as they flew toward Dymchurch.
"Coffee?" he asked. "I'm starving."
"Sure." Just a few minutes along they stopped by the Martello Tower, parking on a single yellow line. Sally said nothing. Liam was different, more reckless, and she wasn't sure if she liked it.
They found a coffee shop in the shadow of the tower. There were seats inside; it was humid but at least warm.
"You're quiet," Liam observed. "Latte?"
"Yeah, thanks."
He went to order. Sally sat, thinking and surfing the menu. She wasn't really hungry, she realized, though she hadn't eaten anything yet today. Probably she should. She picked out the blandest thing she could find and went up to place her order at the counter.
"Egg-white omelet?" Liam repeated.
"And dry brown toast."
The coffees came in a few minutes. Sally sipped it but hardly tasted anything.
"OK, say it," Liam said.
Sally looked at him. There was a lot to say, and she wasn't really sure what should come first.
"You didn't like it," Liam went on. "The way I went at him."
"You actually went at his hot tub," Sally said. "Took it apart."
"Right. Well, you don't need to worry. Those things I ripped off, they were just safety caps. Like, totally unnecessary. If I actually ripped out the spark plugs, the whole kit would have just packed up working, and I would've had the electric shock. I just said all that to spook him."
Sally sipped her coffee, considering that. It helped. It didn't feel great to be on the outside without that knowledge, but at the same time, it didn't bother her too much. "You spooked me. And the arcing?"
Liam waved a hand. "It's real, but the current's never going to make that jump, especially with the tarp overhead. You'd need exposed wiring getting directly hit by a whole mess of rain, neither of which was true."
Sally grunted.
"So, is that it?" he asked. "Or is there more?"
Sally put her coffee down. That was a starting point. "I guess you're giving me a lesson, now? What it's like to be in the passenger seat when someone's acting crazy?"
Liam tilted his head to the side slightly. "I don't know. Is it a lesson for you, or for me?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It worked, didn't it? We got what we wanted from him. Like you always do."
"We can't do that again," she said, firmer now. "It's not OK."
Now Liam laughed. "Really? So when you do it, I've got to cover for you. But when it's me, it's totally no-go?"
"No! It's nothing like that. It's just…" She stopped. She didn't know what it was just.
"Figured," Liam said, and sipped his coffee. Sally sipped hers too. There had to be a way to navigate this, but she couldn't see it.
"How about this," she began. "Just, give me a little warning, next time? It can be a mutual thing. I'll play good cop and it'll work better. You won't have to go as far."
Liam eyed her. "Give you notice, like you gave me notice in the car?"
"Noted. We're both meeting in the middle." She held out her hand.
"Fine. Deal."
They shook.
Her egg whites came. Liam turned up his nose. "That looks disgusting. What happened to Full Englishes?"
"I'm really not hungry." She dug in with her fork and forced the first bite down. Lightly salted. Mostly flavorless. Just the way she wanted it.
Liam let her eat, looking out at the rain. Minutes passed.
"So, the seal thing," he said at last. "You believe any of that?"
Sally chewed and swallowed. "I don't know.
If it's true, and Bledd saw Richter doing that?
I buy that he would have killed him. I even buy that he'd leave him on display, right in front of the reactor, as a warning.
" She sighed. "So maybe we've been sidetracked this whole time?
The reactor, the lighthouse, Heraclitus.
Maybe all that's just a coincidence. Maybe that spot's just where Richter tortured his seal, or where Bledd thought the body would most easily be found. "
Liam frowned. "What about the B107 carving, though? That's got to be the Heraclitus fragment."
Sally considered that. "Good point. They didn't find that on the original body, did they?"
"No. So, maybe the first kill is pre-Heraclitus? The recent killings came after Bledd had time to think through the theory."
"Yeah." Sally kept on chewing her omelet. "If it's Bledd."
"You still don't buy it."
"I don't know. Sure, with the seal, he could have done it.
But that doesn't match what Cagen told me; maybe the reason she ended up dead.
She said nothing about a seal or about Bledd.
She thought it was Reg Rook killing Richter for something he saw.
So why would Bledd go after her now? It makes no sense. "
"Well, one thing's for sure. Spate's never going to tell us anything."
Sally kept eating.
"You think there's nothing to act on here?"
Sally waved a fork in the air. "Mayhew's already hunting for Bledd, so that's covered. And all Spate gave us was hearsay anyway. So, no, I don't think so."
Liam sipped. The rain beat down outside. Sally couldn't shake the feeling that they were spinning their wheels on the periphery of something real. Something just out of sight, buried in the slack tide.
But how to get it out?
They finished up and left silently.
"On to Meeks next, then?" Liam said over the rain, sitting in the squad car. The Gray Lady clashed on the beach beyond Martello 24; the one invasion this stretch of coastline frequently fought back, with its sea walls and shingle mounds.
"Meeks, sure. We can raise the seal thing. See if it goes anywhere."
"OK. He lives just up this way. Lympne. It's got a safari park. Pretty nice."
They pulled out. Sally picked up the file and dug back in while Liam navigated narrow marsh roads. Sewer ditches either side ran black and swollen. After a few minutes she shuffled the papers.
"So, Crawford Meeks. 59, currently on his third marriage to a much younger woman, Stacey Meeks. She's 31, a TV weather girl for the local station, KMTV. He's got five children from previous marriages, only one of them living with him now. Madrigal, 11."
"Maddie for short, I heard," Liam supplied.
She leafed deeper into the wallet. "Looks like a long list of business interests, though tax records suggest he divested from all Rook connections a year or so ago."
"Right around the time Roarke Rook threatened him with the digger."
"He's still heavily invested locally, though. There's got to be a mountain of paperwork somewhere. Intricate financial finagling I can scarcely begin to follow."
"That was my take, too." Liam tapped the wheel. "Anything stands out to you?"
Sally skipped more pages. "It all looks suspect. Investment in three barber shops in Hythe, when Hythe has a population of only 15,000? That's got to be too many barber shops, unless they're all walking around with hairstyles like yours."
Liam chuckled. "They should be so lucky."
"Also a raft of local vape shops that keep popping up and getting shut down, mostly for selling nitrous. There's a real estate agency that specializes in brownfield sites. A few nail salons which follow the same pattern as the barber shops, then a dry cleaner's, and the list goes on."
Liam looked at her. "He's washing money. Right?"
"Looks that way."
"Maybe money for the Rooks. Maybe even for Gerald Spate?"
"They'd all need somebody like that," Sally said. "I doubt the trafficking gangs pay by Venmo."
Liam looked blankly at her.
"Wireless transfer," she supplied.
"Right. But nothing actionable."
"Nothing." She kept scanning. "All this financial jiu jitsu, seems he's kept himself just clean enough. No charges or convictions anywhere."
"Cream of the sludge," Liam muttered. "But they do say the money man knows where the bodies are buried."
"Amen to that."
They continued north until they crossed the Royal Military Canal. The water was swollen and black, edging up to the lip of bank.
"Looks like the marsh is flooding," she observed.
Liam snorted. "They need Bledd at Scots Float on a day like this."
The road ascended up a steep hillside, and halfway up they turned onto a narrow, stone-walled private access road labeled 'Queensmead Farm'.
At the end of a long driveway lay a beautiful old farmhouse, just visible through the boughs of a large weeping willow.
Ivy climbed to the gables and dormer windows peeked out through the red tile roof.
"He's doing better than Spate," Sally observed.
"But he's still scum," Liam said, and got out of the car.