Occam's Razor Read Online Free PDF Page B

unit, filled it with the tires, and walked away with over a thousand bucks in profits.
    “Given the load I just sampled, though, I’d say we’re dealing with someone working between those two extremes, where the money’s in the midrange. Which still ain’t too bad, by the way—medical waste is more expensive than low-level nuclear stuff nowadays. I know one legitimate operator who gets about five hundred dollars to dispose of a single fifty-gallon drum of it. Even cocktailed, there might’ve been several of those drums in that truck.”
    We ended up on a dirt lane, winding up a steep hill with woods on one side and fields on the other. Vermont is one amazing, lumpy, crazy quilt of highways, roads, paths, and trails, all heading off somewhere, often with authority, sometimes just to peter out for no apparent reason.
    In this case, we came to a gate held shut by a piece of wood stapled to a loop of barbed wire. I got out, let Mason drive through, and closed the gate behind us. Over the top of a cleared hill and to the right eventually appeared a broken-back barn with one wall caved in, standing drunkenly next to a sagging wooden house that seemed to be sinking into the earth beneath it.
    A bent, leathery man emerged from the house as we approached, our car slowly lurching over the pits and ruts of what was little more than a grassy path by now.
    He waited for us to get out of the car, his gnarled hands empty by his sides, a mournful, bitter look on his face. We both showed him our credentials. I let Mason do the talking. “I’m Patrick Mason, of the Agency of Natural Resources Enforcement Division. This is Lieutenant Joe Gunther, of the Brattleboro Police. Could we have a few words with you?”
    The man paused before answering, looking disgustedly from one of us to the other as if deciding who was the lower life-form. “You already have.”
    “You own this property?” Mason asked, unfazed.
    “Not if you count the bank.”
    “How many acres do you have?”
    “Hundred seventy.”
    “All under cultivation?”
    “Some.”
    “But not enough.” Mason assumed. “Must be tough to make ends meet.”
    The farmer didn’t answer, but his expression made it clear he wasn’t in the mood for sympathy.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Norm Blood.”
    “Well, Mr. Blood, we’d like to see where you’re letting those trucks dump their loads, especially the one about four or five nights ago.”
    His tone of voice did the trick—as if this conversation were just the latest in a long string they’d already had on the same subject. It left no room for guile.
    Norm Blood shifted from anger to resignation. “You bastards. What do you give a damn?”
    Mason, unrepentant, merely answered, “We can use my car.”
    · · ·
    I placed my portable radio on the kitchen table without a sound, as quiet as I’d been while negotiating the building’s collection of locks. The security lights had come on when I’d nosed into the driveway, as always, but Gail’s office faced in a different direction, and from the lack of any sounds upstairs, I assumed she hadn’t noticed.
    I was saddened by the small surge of relief that gave me. There had been a time when I’d have pounded upstairs to find out what she was up to, or when she’d have kept an ear peeled for my arrival, so we could share a late-night snack.
    But there’d been little of that lately. The early novelty of living together had fallen prey to a distracting metamorphosis I wasn’t sure she’d even noticed.
    Gail and I had met more years ago than I could remember, at a political rally for one of our Washington senators. She’d been an enormously successful Realtor for years by then—a big change from the New York hippie who’d come to Vermont to explore her soul in a marijuana daze. But the transition hadn’t undermined her fundamental beliefs. She’d maintained an ideological anchor line to her wealthy, liberal upbringing, getting on the boards of most of the