It was times like these that Flint just wanted to get out, go find a job picking potatoes or moving furniture somewhere. The nature of the political system in America made him sick. Everyone was bribing everyone else, and then when the time came to call in the favors, nothing could get done. The fact was, there was a lot of money changing hands out there, and money in an election year, or anytime else for that matter, could work miracles. Whatever kind of miracles you wanted.

Hydro Development had a lot of money.

Flint spun his chair around to face the window. He had a corner office now, and the view was a hell of a lot better than the old cubicle. Views tended to be pretty lousy when the room had no windows. But he had been at the FERC now for six years, so he supposed he had earned the window, if not a better raise. He had done some damn good work, too, mostly investigating little problems like water temperature changes and silt downstream, stuff like that. If there was something more criminal going on, the investigation got turned over to the FBI sooner or later.

Flint wondered when the Jackson Hydro case would be turned over to them.

Actually, he was only guessing. Actually, he had no goddamned idea if anything was going on at all, not to mention anything criminal. But he had a hunch. Over the past year, three of the four pumped storage plants owned by Hydro Development had shut down temporarily.

One of these shutdowns had happened over a supposed “chemical spill,” according to the company, though the FERC (or anybody else, for that matter) had never found a trace of anything. After the spill was cleaned up, the plant reopened and everyone was happy. The really funny thing about it was, in all three of the shutdowns, somebody had died, at least one under strange circumstances, or so it seemed to Flint. In one case, a man had fallen to his death, and in another, somebody had been crushed by a flood gate. Tragic accidents, really. But in the third case (and this had been the one involving “the spill”), someone had gotten shot. According to the management, one of the maintenance men had downed a few too many beers one night and gone berserk, killing his best friend and partner on the night shift, and then killing himself. The FBI was involved in that one, but only briefly. It looked like an open-and-shut case, or did at the time.

Now, Flint decided, he wasn’t so sure. Something smelled funny, and it wasn’t the fish. If they could get the FBI in on it, maybe he could find out what that was exactly.