“I have no idea, but Baggetto knows an awful lot about what’s happening in the county for an army man with a big career behind and in front of him.”

I put the maps I’d been using at Everard’s right hand, away from the beer puddle. “See this outline? That’s the fifteen acres the air force took from Doris McKinnon back in 1983, after the commune burned down. They said it was too contaminated to use, and a woman from the Emigrant Bank said that’s why the silo hasn’t been sold to a private developer, the way a lot of them have.”

“Yeah?” Everard’s phone rang; he said he was off duty, turn the call over to Officer Peabody.

“Why is Sea-2-Sea planting there? Unless I’ve got the map wrong.”

Everard took the county map and the property conveyances from me and stared at them for a good ten minutes. I answered my own ever-growing queue of texts, checked for the nth time on whether Jake had been in touch.

“No, you’ve got it right. Good question. I’ll see what the scuttlebutt is around the station.” He grimaced. “Things are tense right now between the city and the county, so I have to walk softly—and definitely not wave a big stick around.”

I grunted acknowledgment and added, “Doris McKinnon did a secret nighttime digging project. I’m guessing it was on the land the air force seized. I’m guessing she wanted to check the radiation level in the soil—that’s the only explanation I can come up with. I don’t think the samples were still in the house when I was there last night—I didn’t know about her digging then, so I didn’t look for them, but a whole bunch of bags with tags showing latitude and longitude—”

“How do you know this, Warshawski?” Everard cried. “Damn it, you’re sitting on evidence—”

“An anonymous tip,” I said coldly. “You’re taking a risk talking to me, but I’m taking one as well, sharing my information with you.”

Everard scowled at his beer but finally said, “Okay. Anonymous tip. And?”

“And Sonia Kiel showed up, dancing in the field, saw Doris, screamed, ‘Fire, go away, you’re on sacred ground!’ That’s all I know. But a few nights later, someone slipped her enough roofies to damn near kill her. That connects Sonia to the McKinnon murder, at least in my book.”

“I don’t know. That’s a pretty thin thread.”