Agent Parker wedged himself into the temporary headquarters of the Division of Environmental Assessments, Toxins, and Hazards (DEATH), which happened to be located in the police station. As soon as DEATH agents began descending upon the town, they had demanded a temporary base of operations, suspecting that the slick might occupy them for some time, and enjoying their ability to commandeer a workspace. As if taking over a conference room in the police station wasn’t enough, the agents also had a massive mobile lab parked crossways in the parking lot and surrounded with ominous police tape. Of course, the lab didn’t have very much work just yet, because, thus far, no one had been able to figure out how to take a sample of the slick, but the scientists didn’t really mind, since it meant that they could go surfing, sit in the coffee house and argue with each other, or engage in various other vacation-like activities.

Agent Parker had rather been enjoying himself back in Washington, where the tapas were abundant and there were a myriad of professional theatre companies offering an assortment of tantalizing offerings, but as soon as the slick emerged, he was dispatched back to the town, under the rationale that because he had been going through paperwork which might be related to the issue, he would be more effective there.

In what the FBI politely termed an “interagency loan,” Agent Parker found himself working under the head of the DEATH strike team, which apparently required sitting through interminable meetings like the one which was about to begin. In fact, the meeting was simply a practice for the meeting which would be held later, in the town hall, to discuss the issue of the slick and its silently growing menace. An assortment of chairs were scattered haphazardly around the room, and the central table was mounded with electronics, reams of paper, pagers (which didn’t seem to work here, for some reason), and disposable biohazard suits. At a far corner of the table, a secretary had cleared a space to assemble brightly colored poster boards which said nothing in particular, apparently common practice for public information meetings.

Agent Parker wasn’t quite sure what his purpose at this meeting was. He had already been informed by his superior at the FBI and the head of DEATH that he would not be allowed to speak publicly, for fear that someone might draw conclusions about the FBI’s involvement. He was to cooperate with the investigation and stay silent the rest of the time, apparently, but the thought seemed to be that he should sit in on the city meeting anyway. Despite his pleas to be dismissed from the prepping meeting, arguing that he didn’t really need to be briefed on the material for a fourth time (once on the plane, once in the first day’s strike team meeting, and again in a meeting with the Governor’s aides), he was forced to attend.

He hoped that no one would notice that he was doodling in his notebook during the meeting, as was his wont during interminable meetings of all flavors, and as he lost interest in the meaning, his doodling began to turn into a list of issues which seemed to be related to the slick, although no one had proved the link just yet.

To wit:

• Where was Amy Tilly?
• What had this journalist from the Post gotten his hands on?
• Where had McInroe been, and was Brad Whittaker still there?

The Amy Tilly case seemed a bit disorganized at the moment, but now that she had officially been declared a missing person, Agent Parker suspected that he could do a bit of investigating without attracting too much attention, and he made a note to go to the high school the next day to do just that, after talking with the police chief. Since he didn’t see himself doing much good on the quest for the origins and nature of the slick, he thought he might as well dedicate his energies to something reasonably productive.

What Agent Parker and the strike team had not counted upon was the ability of a small town to mobilize extremely effectively within hours, thanks to a brilliantly organized phone tree and local communication network. The community hubs of grocery store, post office, and library had been humming all day, and by the time the team arrived at town hall to set up, a milling crowd had assembled outside, barely held back by the efforts of a single policeman who was patiently explaining to a bewigged woman, for the third time, that the doors would open shortly.

The crowd was greatly mixed, running the gamut from cadaverous mill officials in suits to tie-dye clad hippies with hand-lettered signs. Agent Parker noted a contingent of high school students, most of whom were carrying notebooks, except for a single boy clad in black, who was carrying nothing. Other figures whom he’d seen about town were there as well, as was the Post reporter, sprawled out on the pavement with a bulky camera, taking photographs. Representatives of the local paper were there as well, looking askance at the competition.

The DEATH representatives slipped in with their posterboards to set up and talk with the mayor before their presentation, and Agent Parker drifted through the crowd, feeling very conspicuous in a neat suit and polished shoes until he encountered a plump man in an equally neat suit, also with polished shoes, whom he recognized as one of the residents of Lamprey Street.

“Henry Makepeace,” the man said, stretching out a hand to Agent Parker. “Some crowd, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” Agent Parker said, glancing at the policeman, whom he vaguely remembered was named Kevin, or perhaps Kelvin. The policeman was standing under a decorative vine which was waving gently in the breeze, and despite the fact that there was only one of him, the crowd seemed to be fairly respectful, although it jostled against the doors anyway, almost reflexively. Agent Parker marveled at the abilities of a single policeman to control a crowd that large without losing his cool.

When the doors to town hall opened, the crowd burst in, dividing itself into loosely allied camps which were scattered around the room. To the casual eye, of course, the arrangement of the people in the room would have had no over-arching logic, but to those in the know, it was extremely telling, from the mill officials seated up front to the high school students standing quietly in the back of the room. Agent Parker set up camp in a corner, joined, to his surprise, by Henry Makepeace and the policeman, and the head of the strike team called for quiet before turning proceedings over to the mayor, who announced that the meeting would start with a briefing, and end with a question and answer session. Those who wished to stay afterward, he informed the crowd, could examine the posterboards and meet individually with members of the strike team, along with himself and the members of city council, who were scattered about the room, embedded in various factions of the crowd.

The officials were careful to be cagy in their briefing, admitting only that a “slick of unknown origin appears to be spreading in the Callomet River,” and advising the crowd that the matter was under investigation. As a matter of routine, the river was closed until further notice, and the crew was working to identify the chemicals involved to determine the best course of action.

With that, he opened the floor up to comment, and the questions started flying fast while the sign-wavers shifted in their seats. What was the slick? Where did it come from? Was it from the mill? Why were the mill officials there if it wasn’t from the mill? Were the mill officials admitting culpability? Why was it taking so long to figure out what was in the slick? Why were the DEATH scientists at the beach all the time? Was the beach contaminated? Did the slick cause cancer? If it didn’t cause cancer, then why did so many people in town have cancer? Why was the FBI involved? Had someone dumped chemicals into the river? Buried chemicals? Was the slick natural?

Slightly taken aback, the officials attempted to answer the questions, mostly with “I don’t know,” “no,” or “I cannot confirm that,” and the crowd began to settle back down, as crowds always do, in the end. Notes were taken, heads nodded wisely, and the question and answer session seemed to be winding to an end when the young high school student in black stepped forward, prodded by the other students. As he did so, an expectant hush fell over the crowd, and Agent Parker wondered if he had missed something.

“What about my sister,” he said, staring at the floor as he did so.

“Your…sister?”

“My sister,” he said again. “Sarah. Sarah Harper.”

“Ah, yes, well,” said the official. “I am under the impression that her case is being monitored closely, and if we have reason to believe that it is associated with the contamination, we will take any steps necessary.”

“Any steps necessary?”

“To determine the best action in her case, yes,” said the official. “We don’t have enough information to classify it as contamination-related.”

Agent Harper must have looked puzzled, because Henry Makepeace leaned over to explain that the young man’s sister, Sarah, had been in the group of students who discovered the slick, and she was very ill in the hospital. Although he spoke in a low voice, it must have carried to the group of students, because the young man glanced at Agent Parker, and then to the head of the room, and said:

“Sick? Sarah’s not sick. She’s dead.”