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and brandished the overcoat I was carrying in my hand. “We might as well start with the truck. It’s still parked where we found it.”
    We traded small talk on the drive to Bickford’s, and I discovered that Pat Mason had much the same background ascribed to his much-maligned colleagues on the non enforcement side of ANR—privileged upbringing, environmental studies in college, some Greenpeace-style early political activism. Yet he held those very colleagues largely in contempt. He described them as gung-ho at inventing new rules and regs, tucked away in their offices but having no idea how or whether those edicts were working—and having little sympathy for the tiny squad trying to enforce them. I also found out he was in his late thirties and had been investigating for ANR for over ten years. He’d just been transferred from the northern part of the state, which explained why we’d never met.
    Mason brightened when we pulled up next to the battered Mack truck, however, seeing in its appearance, I guessed, something of what a doctor must detect in a sick patient—the opportunity to get down to some real work.
    “How long’s it been here?” he asked, reaching into his back seat and pulling out a bulging canvas briefcase.
    “Several days. We don’t know for sure.”
    We slid out of the car’s warm embrace and approached the truck.
    “You know why it was abandoned?”
    “It broke down.”
    We both stopped by the puddle under the Mack’s rear gate, where Mason, apparently unimpressed by the sharp odor, crouched down, placed his case on the ground beside him, and opened it up. Inside were a variety of vials and small bottles, stoppered test tubes, and packs of swabs. He rummaged among them, selecting what he needed, and collected a sample from the dark ooze before him.
    After several minutes of this, he rose and glanced up at the dump body’s rim. “Anyone been inside that?”
    “We looked over the headboard from the cab, just to see what was there. That’s as close as any of us wanted to get.”
    Mason smiled grimly and returned to his car. “Smart.”
    He quickly outfitted himself in a billowy white jumpsuit, booties, gloves, and a respirator, speaking as he did so. “Pretty toxic stuff, so far. Probably a cocktail mix of solvents, oils, and God knows what. The lab boys’ll have to sort it out. My guess is it was either in drums or more likely, crushed bales, which would explain how it got mixed together. Course, some of it’s just old-fashioned engine oil. It’s that time of year.”
    “Meaning what?” I asked.
    “When they carry these loads in winter, a lot of it sticks to the bed if they don’t coat it with oil. Even these idiots know enough not to want to wade in there kicking it loose.”
    He finished suiting up and waddled like an albino penguin back to the truck. With surprising dexterity, he scaled its side, paused on the rim, and vanished from view. I heard him land with a hollow, resonating thud on the inside.
    “You okay?” I shouted, worried about the oil he’d mentioned.
    His voice sounded distant and muffled through the respirator. “Okay.”
    Half an hour later, from the relative warmth of Pat Mason’s car, I saw him reappear, his white suit smeared and dripping, holding several more samples in his fist. He disrobed standing on a small cloth square and then stuffed both the square and his suit into a clearly labeled, red plastic bag, which he carefully stowed in his trunk.
    “What’s the verdict?” I asked him as he went through this much-rehearsed ritual.
    “Well, whoever they are, they’re guilty as sin. They even had remnants of medical waste back there—worth its weight in gold when it comes to disposing of it. And I was right about the load being baled. That’s why there was so much leakage. They bundle up all sorts of junk—construction debris, motors full of PCP, medical waste, you name it, and then they pour additional liquid waste all over it. During the trip,