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Dr. Clayton’s land?” I asked.
    “Yeah. I’m pretty sure the doctor owns all of the land up that way. That’s what all the signs up there say anyway—Clayton Farms.”
    “I still don’t see the link to Jake’s falcon,” I said.
    Wylie brushed a strand of hair back from his forehead. “Don’t you get it? Maybe Toronto here was getting a little too close to somebody’s illegal operation. Maybe the bird landed on their dumping station or something and they freaked when they saw that stuff you put on its legs.”
    “You mean the leather jesses and tail transmitter.”
    “Yeah, whatever.”
    Toronto leaned forward in his chair. “Okay. We’ll look into it,” he said. “Do you think we could get this guy to give us directions to where he dumped his load?”
    “I’ve done you better than that.” Wylie fished into the front pocket of his blue jeans. “Before I came over here just now, I got him to draw this out for me.” He pulled out a crumpled packing list for construction supplies and spread it on the table. A crude map was drawn in blue ink on the back.
    “You know if we find anything, your friend may have to talk to the state or federal authorities,” Nicole said.
    “Yeah, well, when you guys showed up this morning, I got to thinking about that. If there really is anything bad going on here, I figured maybe you folks were better able to look into this kind of stuff than me.”
    “And take whatever heat comes down,” she said, staring at him.
    Wylie looked back at her for a moment. I wondered if he got the fact that in Nicole’s estimation he’d just dropped a peg or two. If he did, he wasn’t about to show it. “Pretty much,” he said. “I don’t want this guy to lose his job over giving me this information . . . me neither.” He turned and looked at Toronto and me.
    “If what you’re saying is true, Mr. Wylie,” I said. “Losing your job may turn out to be the least of your worries.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Dr Clayton seems like a civilized guy. But illegal haulers generally don’t look too kindly on whistle-blowers.”
    “Hey. That’s why I came to you people. This is the kind of thing you do for a living, isn’t it?”
    Toronto, Nicole, and I all exchanged glances around the table.
    “It is indeed,” Toronto said.

12
     
    A small sign marked the turnoff from the main highway onto the dirt road shown on the truck driver’s crudely-drawn map. Posted signs hung at intervals along a wire fence told us we were still on Clayton Farms land. The early afternoon sun baked the earth like a brick oven. Nothing moved in the woods but insects.
    The road ended at a small storage building beside which stood the capped drainpipe the truck driver must have been talking about. No one was dumping water now. The place looked deserted. It didn’t exactly look like the type of enterprise someone would shoot a bird over, no matter how motivated they might have been to prevent discovery.
    The three of us climbed out of Toronto’s Jeep as we pulled up next to the building.
    “Not much here,” Toronto said.
    I watched as he examined the door to the building. “I’ve always admired your facility for understatement.”
    He continued looking over the door. “It’s locked and it’s alarmed.”
    Nicole stepped up beside me. “Any way to disarm it?”
    Toronto frowned. “Not easily.”
    They started talking about circuit boards and digital mumbo-jumbo.
    I stepped back and took a look around. Was a dead bird, the sketchy testimony of an unseen truck driver, and a lock and alarm in the middle of the woods probable cause enough to call for help? Not really.
    “Hey guys. How about this for an idea?”
    Toronto and Nicole turned to look at me.
    “Let’s just break-in and trip the alarm,” I said.
    “What?” Nicole looked horrified. “You give us enough time, we can probably disarm this thing.”
    “ ‘Probably’ isn’t good enough. I, for one, don’t care to sit around here all day.