An Epithet for Rose
an excerpt

An Epithet for Rose

Blake Mullmann sat by the window of the gateway house at the entrance to Robin Hood Bay dump and watched the cars and trucks piling up outside. A young man with a shaved head in a cream-coloured Ford Expedition had stopped opposite the window, but Blake was resolutely ignoring him as he tried to count how many vehicles were waiting to get into the dump.
“Come-on. Snap it up! I ain’t got all day,” called the man in the SUV.
Brock smiled to himself and turned to the man who was now revving his motor.
“What kind of materials do you have?”
“Materials? I dunno. Garbage. Stuff from the house.”
“Would that include any hazardous wastes?
“Hazardous?” The young man looked puzzled. Brock wondered how anybody with such an expensive vehicle could not understand English
“Paint, motor oil, gasoline,” Brock said.
“Naw, none of that.”
Brock nodded and considered going outside to look in the back of the truck, but then decided against it. “Section A,” he said, meaning the young man would have to drive to the furthest part of the dump to unload.
“Section A? Why can’t I go to Cars?” The car section was closer and had the smoothest road to it and the garbage tended to be small stuff and the ground firm.”
“Section A,” Blake said again.
The young man scowled and accelerated viciously, causing it to rain pebbles and dirt on the gate house. Blake stared after the speeding vehicle which was leaving a rooster tail of dust, then he picked up his cell phone and dialed Betrand’s number. Bertrand was looking after Section A this morning, telling people where to dump their trash.
“Bertrand, Blake. There’s a cream coloured Ford SUV coming your way. See what it is he’s dumping. If it’s paint or old oil, don’t let him.
“Gottcha,” Bertrand’s voice cracked and then he hung up.
Blake put the phone down on the counter and waved the next vehicle forward, a young woman in a red Mazda with a Christmas tree sticking out of the trunk. It looked incongruous in July with the woman wearing a t-shirt and scarce a cloud to be seen.
“ Bit late, aren’t you?” he said and grinned at the woman.
“My husband has been promising to take this tree to the dump since January. I got tired of waiting.
“Go straight ahead and follow the signs to Cars,” he said. He watched her wave and pull ahead noticing as she drew away a tail of a Retriever waving out the back along with the tree. He hoped she wasn’t planning to dump the dog along with the tree.
Brock turned away from the window and looked into the interior of the building and began to count to 20. There was nobody else in the building, but that didn’t matter. He just wanted the people in the cars and truck outside to believe there was somebody else there talking to him. He reached 20 and turned again to the window where a large, green city garbage truck was blocking out the light. The noise of its motor shook the hut and the smell of exhaust crept over the window sill. The driver, an older man with a few remnants of black hair covering his sunburned scalp, climbed down from his seat and walked around to the window with a permit in his hand. He poked his hand through the window and slapped the permit down on the counter and looked up at Blake.
“You’re new. Where’s Jed?
“Jed doesn’t work here any more,” Blake said.
“Who are you?”
“Jake’s replacement, Blake.”
“Jed retire?”
“Yeah, sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“Yeah, you’d have to ask him for the details.”
The man grunted as Blake stamped his permit then walked back to his truck without a word. Blake took a deep breath and turned away from the window again and began to count to 20. The problem was, he had been told when he took the job two weeks ago, is that it’s a lot easier to let vehicles into the dump than to get them out. If you let them in too quickly it caused bottle necks down at the dump sites. There was only so much space for vehicles to maneuver, dump their load, and then get out of the way of the next car or truck. Space them out, he had been told.
The gauge on the wall of the hut swung round almost completing a 360 degree arc. It was attached to the weigh scale which was right outside the gatehouse and weighed every vehicle entering the site. Blake peered at the needle: 78,000 pounds. That was a heck of a weight. He tried to guess what kind of vehicle it might be. Certainly it was big enough to block all the light from the hut, and the smell of diesel was strong. He looked up. It was a flatbed carrying a Caterpillar tractor. The driver came around to the window, a burly short man in blue coveralls with a red beard.
“I’ve got Abe’s dozer,” he said. “We had to change a track. Where’d you want it put?
That explained the weight, Blake thought. It wasn’t one vehicle but two. He wondered where Abe was and picked up his cell phone. Abe answered right away.
“Your tractor’s back. Where’d you want them to put it?”
“It is? That’s great. What’s she look like? Did they wash her?
Blake looked up at the hulking big tractor with its yellow sheet metal and shiny steel rods and pins.
“They might have. Where’d you want her?”
“I’m by Site B. Have them bring her out.”
Blake looked up at the man in the coveralls. “You know where Site B is?”
He nodded.
Abe’s there. He’ll tell you where to put her.
The man returned to his flatbed and pulled himself up into the dark blue cab. With a roar of its motor, he took off. Blake heard him change gear at least four times before he reached the turn off for Site B, 25 yards away.
Blake glanced up the road; the traffic was backed up around the bend. He imagined the impatient driver fuming in their hot cabs, but the regulars he knew had grown to expect it. About half the vehicles were large commercial vehicles, like the green Chester Dawe truck belonging to a local hardware chain that proudly bore the legend “Now Open on Sundays!” in bright yellow paint above the cab. He wondered how proud Chester Dawe’s employees were now that they were having to work seven days a week to fend off competition from the big box stores that had recently moved into St. John’s. Many of the cars were towing small trailers filled with old furniture and swing sets and mattresses and wood scraps from renovations and mouldy carpet, old newspapers and dead branches. He had never realized how useful a small trailer could be since he had started work at the dump. Nor had he realized how much trash people had. The average house seemed to be swimming in stuff, and it seemed to be that people acquired new stuff far faster than they could get rid of it.
A sudden whoop of a siren and a flash of lights announced the arrival of a police car which appeared at the head of the queue and pulled up outside Blake’s small window. A slim, white-haired officer in a cap was sitting in the passenger seat and he turned towards Blake as the car braked to a halt. It was inspector Drew, Blake recognized him immediately.
“Who’s in charge here?” Drew said as he stepped out of the cruiser and approached the window.
“I am, sir.”
Drew paused as he recognized Blakes’ voice. “Constable Mullmann. Is that you?”
“Ex-constable Mullmann. Yes sir.”
“Of course, yes. How are you?” Blake didn’t really believe Drew wanted to know or cared. He had been the person that had seen Blake ejected from the force six months ago.”
“You’re in charge of the city dump?” Drew asked a little incredulously.
“Yes, I’m the superintendent here.”
“Really?” Blake imagined Drew was trying to determine whether it was a step up of a step down from being a constable. Blake himself wasn’t sure. The work wasn’t hard, but he didn’t enjoy his colleagues very much, and they plainly resented him. He’d got the job through family connections. His father knew the mayor.
“Is there something I can help you with,” Blake asked.
Drew looked around. “Is there somewhere more private, where we can talk?
“You can come in here, the door is round the side.”
Blake looked at the line of traffic waiting behind the cruiser and then thought, they can wait. People are used to waiting for police cars with flashing lights. It’ll give them something to speculate about. He climbed off his chair and walked over to the door.
“It’s like this,” Drew began. “There was a murder downtown a couple of nights ago. Woman killed by gunshot in a house. Husband says he discovered her. We couldn’t find the murder weapon in the house. In fact, the house was amazingly clean; there wasn’t a thing in it, not even any garbage. And then it struck us that the evidence we are looking for might be in the garbage.”
“So have you checked? Blake asked
Drew fingered his hat which he was holding in his hands. “That’s the problem. We think the garbage was picked up while we were at the crime scene. Nobody thought to stop the garbage man.”
“Oh, I see. And you would like to see that garbage I suppose?
“Yes.”
“So when would this garbage have been picked up?
“Yesterday morning. I understand the garbage would come here.”
Blake nodded.
“Is there very much?”
“Well, you saw the line-up outside, and I didn’t see any city garbage trucks among them. They city sends 30 to 40 truckloads a day here.”
Drew pursed his lips. “That is a lot. Is it all in one pile?
Blake looked at Drew. He really didn’t have a clue about garbage, but then neither had he until two weeks ago. “No, it’s not all in one pile, its spread out and layered with fill. And it’s not all in one place; it’s in several places.”
Drew looked disappointed and Blake almost felt sorry for him, until he remembered how Drew had found him sleeping in a cruiser early one morning, snoring off the effects of one two many drinks the night before and then had him kicked off the force. Actually, Blake was beginning to enjoy being the bearer of bad news.
“Take me to it,” Drew said, standing suddenly and pulling on his hat.
“I’ll have to call someone to cover for me,” Blake said as he reached for his phone.
“No you don’t. This is a police matter now. The dump is closed until I say so.”
Blake looked at Drew. “Even if we close the gates, there are about 50 vehicles in the dump already dropping off stuff. What about them?”
Drew turned and left the office. Blake saw him talk to his driver and then the pair of them walked down the line of vehicles each one talking to a driver in turn until all the vehicles inside the gates had turned around and driven back through the gates. Blake followed along. Some of the drivers looked bewildered, especially an old man in a Buick trying to back up a trailer and turn around. Others looked annoyed.
“Would you close the gates now? Drew said to Blake who with the help of the police driver dragged the gates shut and padlocked them across the remaining line of trucks.
“When are you re-opening,” one trucker yelled.
“Ask him,” Blake said, pointing to Drew. But Drew ignored the yells and marched back to the cruiser and Blake followed, climbing into a back seat. He noticed when he was inside there were no handles on the inside, so he could not get out.