Gone(24)

The call had been dropped. Further attempts yielded voicemail only. To go any farther, to force Palmirotto to communicate or to pick him up and bring him back to Stock County would require the FBI. Rondeau still wasn’t ready to pull that trigger yet.

So since Addison had passed him the wrong film clip, and Palmirotto was unreachable, Rondeau decided to go to the landfill himself. It was good to get away from the office, get off the phone, get moving.

The landfill was only open three days a week, Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, so he was unlucky. It was just after nine thirty on Sunday morning, and the gates were closed.

“Shit.”

Rondeau piloted the truck around the gates anyway, bouncing over the rough terrain. Branches scraped against the side of the truck. He got back on the road and made his way to where the big weigh-in scales sat next to a small building. He started to drive over the scales when he saw someone emerge from the building, waving his arms. Rondeau rolled down the window. He held out his badge as the old man hobbled over.

“Closed,” said the old-timer.

“I know. Detective Rondeau. Just having a look around. I’m investigating a missing family.”

“Oh,” the old-timer said. He’d heard about it, it seemed. “Alright. Well, drive on through. I’ll meet you up there by the bays.”

“Thanks, but I’ll just . . .”

The old man turned and walked away.

Rondeau stuck his badge back in his coat pocket, the side of his hand brushing the wet coffee stain. He drove ahead to where the land rolled on, ventilation spouts sticking out of the ground like periscopes from submarines. A pillbox building sat beside two deep bays. He parked and got out.

He waited as the old man walked with his bow-legged hobble up the hill, then introduced himself. The man said his named was Wilfred Moore. “They call me Buddy.”

“You worked here long, Buddy?”

“Twenty-eight years.”

“Twenty-eight years,” Rondeau whistled. “Twenty-eight’s a long time.”

Buddy nodded and brought out a battered pack of smokes. He shook out a bent cigarette and lit up. “So how can I help?”

Rondeau had never been here before. His trash was picked up on Thursdays by a company called Voigt. They provided the bins for rubbish and for zero-sort recycling. Rondeau imagined Kemp sticking a small camera on one of those bins for his documentary.

“You ever see a TV crew out here? A film crew? Going around, getting shots?”

Buddy seemed to straighten his crooked spine, and thrust out his chin. “Oh sure. I talked to ’em.”

“Oh, really? When was that?”

“That? That was . . . .” Buddy rolled his eyes to the bright, cloudless sky. “That was about two weeks ago,” he said around the dangling cigarette.

“Two weeks ago,” Rondeau nodded.

“Oh yah,” said Buddy.

“They have a lot of cameras?”

“A lot? Oh, they had the one they took my picture with,” he said. “And then they had one floatin’ around.”

“A quadcopter?”

Buddy looked confused.

“A drone?”

His eyes grew big. “Yeah, oh yah. A drone. Flew it out over the fill.”

“How many on the crew?”

“Just two. Guy with the drone, other feller askin’ the questions.”

“Hutchison Kemp?”

“I can’t rightly remember.”

Rondeau nodded. So far it all lined up, name or no. “This a big landfill here?” He glanced around, wondering how it worked, who was in charge. He had Eric Stokes, among various other assignments, looking into how landfills operated, and who was ultimately responsible for the three major ones in the county.

“This is five cells,” Buddy said, with a distinguished note of pride.

“Five cells?”

“Cell number one filled up in the first year we was opened.”

“Really. How big is a cell?”

“Five acres.”

“So this is a twenty-five acre landfill?” Rondeau’s eyes scanned the terrain. There were the rolling hills with the spouts, and also mountains of various rubbish types. The low sun blazed through his view, but he could make out a pile that looked like household appliances, another that was mostly wood products, a third that was a mound of twisted metal. He thought like a filmmaker, flying the drone along in between the piles, banking through the mountains of trash, getting the most sensational shots. My God, the unsuspecting viewer would say, breathless, just look at all that garbage!

“Yep, twenty-five acres.” Buddy confirmed.

“How long was a cell supposed to last?”

“Oh . . .” Buddy dragged and the smoke drifted up from his cigarette. “We ’spected first one would give us three years.”

“Three years, really. And it was full in a year.”

“Oh yah.”

“So these,” Rondeau swept the hand holding his notebook, “are all filled up, or what?”

“Yep. All full. None of the stuff stays here anymore.”

Rondeau turned around and looked into the bays. They were actually just huge funnels, emptying into containers that would get hauled away by rigs. “Where does it go?”

“Right now? Glens Falls.”