They Needed Killing by Bill Fitts

Author:Bill Fitts [Fitts, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bill Fitts

From the dock I could see where the creek I’d heard entered the lake—a break in the cattails marking the deeper, faster-flowing water.

“So Rufus George thinks I might have killed Trina Dawson. Interesting.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That’s why you’re out here isn’t it? The provost’s detective. He’s worried that I might have gotten myself into some really serious trouble this time.”

“Serious trouble?”

“Being accused of ecoterrorism isn’t quite the same as being on trial for murder. I might have ended up in prison for acts of terrorism but hardly on death row. Heck, I might have gotten to do my time at one of those minimum security prisons alongside Wall Street criminals and corrupt politicians wishing I’d taken up golf.”

“You’re an ecoterrorist?”

“Isn’t that the rumor that you hear about any ardent environmentalist? That after a while they get so frustrated with rampant pollution that they finally take the law into their own hands? Why would I be any different?”

I shrugged. “Can’t get your reputation as an environmentalist and as an ultralight enthusiast to jibe with terrorism. You been making bombing runs? What kind of payload can you deliver?”

Sparrow’s laugh was a bark, short and explosive. “More powerful than you’d think. I might want to drop bombs on strip mines and logging sites but I get more effective results with photographs. Legal results—injunctions, fines, cease-and-desist orders—things like that.”

“And no trespassing charges.” I was impressed.

“It’s one of the reasons I got into ultralights—besides the sheer fun of it.” He nodded toward the old canoe. “Easy enough to tell the water you’re paddling through is polluted—but to find the source you’re better off in the air. Pictures make it easy to show just whose retaining ponds are leaking. Where the runoff is coming from.”

I nodded. “Throw in date/time stamps and GPS data and you’ve got irrefutable evidence.”

“You might be surprised at the denials we get. PR flacks for coal mine owners won’t even admit their product burns, much less that it pollutes. Lawyers are just as bad.”

“What about real estate developers?”

Sparrow froze.

“Might be interesting to fly over some of those student housing developments they’ve been throwing up in Shelbyville, don’t you think?”

He lifted his shoulders and then dropped them. “Could be.”

“Give you a real good idea what’s happening on the ground when you can see it from above, wouldn’t it? Much better than what somebody would get just walking around the site. Somebody like a city inspector.”

The old man gave me a cold stare and, after a pause, a nod of cautious approval. “I always thought Provost George was a better judge of people than most.”

“I read in the Shelbyville News a while back that Fairmont Drive—that old subdivision just off Hinton Road—floods now every time it rains. Never used to—that I remember. And I’ve lived here all my life.”

“Coffee?” He pointed at the cabin.

“Sounds good.”

It hadn’t escaped me that Sparrow hadn’t answered my questions. Maybe he was an ecoterrorist. Maybe he wasn’t. And I’d been half-joking when I’d asked about the kind of payload his ultralight could deliver but he hadn’t answered that one either.

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