Instinct by Jason Hough (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📕

I look at the ladder running all the way to the top of the tower, and try to imagine the scrawny figure of Captain Tweaker scaling all the way up there with one of those big barrels under one arm. Seems impossible.

I glance at the ladder again. At the base of it are two more blue barrels of the fluoride chemical.

These are both sealed. I walk to one and put my foot at the top of it, trying to push it. It barely moves. Has to weigh forty pounds at least, I think.

It hits me, then: the frame of a backpack that dude wore, bungee cords dangling. He was strapping these barrels to his back.

This guy wasn’t cooking meth in a tent in the forest. He’s some kind of eco-warrior. Or, I suppose, maybe the opposite of one. Eco-terrorist?

One time when I bought a bottle of water at the Gas-n-Go, Kenny went on this rant about how Silvertown stopped putting fluoride in the water a few years back, after one of the town’s myriad conspiracy theories managed that rarest of feats: a majority of folks here believed it. People became convinced that fluoride in their drinking water was evil, and voted to stop adding it, despite mountains of science pointing to its benefits.

So here’s this dude, sneaking around, breaking into the town’s water supply and adding the fluoride himself. Could have been doing it for months for all I know. With the Masons letting their campsite go unused, Captain Tweaker’s little trove of supplies in the bramble might well go unnoticed until next summer, or longer.

It’s a decent theory. Holds water, I think, and almost smile.

Except, really, it doesn’t work at all. There are three problems:

He assaulted me.

He ran when I told him to stay put.

And he had a broken nose.

It’s this last fact that I find the most disconcerting. Two men have attacked me now in as many days, and both had broken noses.

If I learned one thing about police work from my partner in Oakland it is this: “Coincidences aren’t.”

The other two flaws in the theory are less disturbing, but perhaps worse in the grand scheme of things. The man’s reaction implies something quite a bit more sinister than wanting to help the town with its dental issues. Potassium fluoride could just as easily be poison. I’m no chemist, but the labeling on the barrels certainly looked dire. For that matter, the contents might not have even been what the barrels claimed. Maybe the fucker was dumping pure cocaine into the water. About a billion dollars’ worth, Mary? All right, that’s going way too far into fantasy land, but still… it could have been any one of a million white powders. Hell, it could have been something purely meant to gum up the pipes.

I look up the length of the ladder, tempted to climb up and poke around. My guess is I’ll find some kind of access hatch, its padlock also cut. But I doubt I’ll learn anything more.

No, right now I’ve got a bigger priority: find Captain Tweaker.

The road he took off on has to lead somewhere, and if I drive fast enough I might be able to meet him at the other end. There is, after all, only one road that gets you off this mountain. I picture him roaring around the last corner before rejoining the state route, thinking he’s got away with it, only to find me leaning against the side of my cruiser, smiling with my arms folded. Like something out of Dukes of Hazzard.

I pull my phone out, launch the maps application, and wait. There’s a little icon representing my position in the center of the screen, but the rest is blank. I zoom out. More of the same. It’s then I spot the little indicator at the top corner, telling me what I should have spotted already.

No signal.

I run back to the car, ignoring the thorny branches as I go. Ignoring the man’s tent, and the spilled empty barrels, the white powder on the ground.

All of it will have to wait.

In the car I grab the map from the glove box again. It only takes me seconds to find Old Mine Road, the parking lot, and even the Masonic Campground. No pond, but after a small gap I spot the line representing the disused road, which the map indicates is called Meridian Lane. I follow the line as it winds its way through the backcountry, well away from Silvertown. Finally it bends and works its way back, rejoining the state route just this side of Keller’s Bridge.

I throw the cruiser into gear and spray dirt and pebbles as I leave the trailhead parking lot.

Meridian Lane. I ponder this, sure I’ve heard the name before. After a minute I vaguely remember seeing the faded sign. There are not many roads on this mountain, and between Greg and me we make it a point to drive along each of them over the course of any given week. But Meridian Lane Greg told me not to bother with. When I’d asked about it, he’d said… what? What had he said, damn it? I feel like it had something to do with utility access, which makes sense, given the SPUD logo on the water tower, but this could just be me connecting dots that don’t exist.

You need help.

The words practically blaze at me as my left hand, curled around the Dodge’s steering wheel, comes to twelve o’clock, right in the center of my vision.

I unlock my phone and call Greg for the first time since he went on leave. But nothing happens. There’s still no signal. “Huh,” I muse. Should be full bars here, closer to town. The big fake-tree tower is just up the mountain from me, clear line of sight.

Rejoining the main road, I flip the sirens on and step on the gas. Six miles between here and the intersection