had the sheriff’s attention. Any crime involving the town’s major employer was going to grab him, as it would any small town cop. “It seems we’ve got ourselves some folks who think they’re real clever.” Victor pulled back the chair in front of the sheriff’s desk and prepared to have a seat. “But they’re not clever enough, if you know what I mean?” Victor raised his eyebrows as he sat.
Mickey watched the performance with a mixture of interest and dread, a kind of loathsome fascination. He had seen it before: a pseudo-charismatic leader and his apprehensive and possibly dull assistant sent from the mother ship in Long Beach to demand some kind of private security detail from the local police. It was a tactic that curried much greater favor back when the town was not besieged by layoffs and desperation and the crime and cruelty that went with them.
“I guess I don’t know what you mean,” Mickey responded. After all, Mr. Jones had not said anything of substance, so far.
“Well,” Victor began slowly, turning slightly in the chair and scratching at his thigh. “For the last couple weeks we’ve been monitoring what we thought was an oil leak. Turns out it’s an oil theft right out from under our nose. We’re not sure how they’re doing it, yet. All we know is that we’ve got a problem out at the Monarch facility.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, what we do when we have a leak is we place some kind of radioactive substance in the oil. I don’t know exactly what it is.” Victor laughed and leaned forward, “Hell, I’m just a retired law enforcement guy myself, I ain’t no scientist. But anyway, they put this stuff in and then trace the pipeline for the oil leak. You know, looking for radiation. But in this case, we had a truck full of the stuff get delivered right down to the intake yard in Long Beach. The sons of bitches are stealing the oil and selling it right back to us.”
“How do you know it’s the same oil?”
“Because we’ve only put the radiation in the Monarch facility. It’s the only place it could have come from.”
“I understand that that’s the only place radioactive oil could have come from your facility, but how do you know the oil that was sold to you didn’t come from some other facility?”
Victor was visibly confused. The guy behind him, Tom, grinned a little as he leaned against the doorway. Mickey figured he had to spell it out for Victor. Perhaps his skills had rusted a bit in retirement.
“Look,” he began, “you said that you trace leaks with radiation. How do you know other companies don’t do the same thing? That means there’s at least as good a chance that the contaminated oil came from some other company’s facility. Unless you have something more than that, I’m afraid I can’t be much help.”
Victor scratched behind his ear like he was doing a magic trick, looking for the trump card he kept back there. When he spoke again, he did it with a smile, but not a happy one. “Now Sheriff, you don’t think I’d come in here without a better case than that, do you? Hell, I’m a retired field agent. I spent twenty years with the Bureau.”
The comment struck Mickey as an overt affront and he tried to disregard it. Any agent who was any good wouldn’t retire at twenty; and one with any sense wouldn’t mention the fact at the first opportunity. Just exactly what kind of man this Victor Jones was remained to be seen, but Mickey feared he was a pompous hothead, a man with more testosterone than sense who tended to embellish his own experience.
“Well, as an experienced agent, I’m sure you can understand that I’ll need more to go on than that.” Mickey sat back down and leaned back in his chair, studying the guy. A real asshole. Agent Asshole.
Then Mickey smiled and shrugged. “If there’s something going on, I’ll do what I can,” he said. “But we’ve had a body turn up and even a simple murder investigation is pretty taxing on the resources of a town like this.” Mickey grinned and laced his hands behind his head. “We ain’t exactly the F-B-I around here. With the layoffs and all there’s hardly any taxes being paid in this town anymore. Shit, I only have three deputies, and I can’t even afford to pay them for all the overtime they put