A Scourge of Vipers Read Free Page A

me?”
    â€œIt becomes the Seekonk River below the falls. Above the falls, it’s called the Blackstone.”
    â€œWhatever. It’s close to here, right?”
    â€œLess than ten miles.”
    â€œI need you to get out there ASAP.”
    â€œSoon as I find my sunglasses. I’ve been stuck behind a desk so long that my eyes are unaccustomed to daylight.”

 
    3
    The Blackstone rises at the confluence of Mill Brook and Middle River in the old industrial city of Worcester, Massachusetts, tumbles southeast through a string of suburbs and rural villages, and enters Rhode Island at the decaying mill city of Woonsocket. Then it scoots south through the bedroom communities of Cumberland and Lincoln, mopes past the triple-decker slums of Central Falls, and finally rolls into the city of Pawtucket, where Samuel Slater erected the first water-powered cotton mill in America in 1790. There, forty-eight miles from its source, it spills over a low dam into the tidal Seekonk River.
    In colonial times, the Blackstone was alive with Atlantic salmon and the lamprey that preyed upon them; but by the mid-1800s it had become an open sewer, running thick with effluent from textile mills, solvents and heavy metals from jewelry and woodworking shops, and human waste from the cities and towns along its course. In 1990, the Environmental Protection Agency branded it the most toxic river in America, and recent attempts to clean it up have been only marginally successful. Today it is designated a class C river, unsafe for swimming but suitable for boating and fishing if you don’t mind the odor and have the good sense not to eat what you catch. That doesn’t deter immigrant anglers who pull carp, one of the few critters hardy enough to survive in it, out of the murk and bring them home to poison their hungry children.
    I cruised down Roosevelt Avenue past Pawtucket City Hall, a grotesque pile of masonry that gives Art Deco a bad name, and pulled Secretariat, my pet name for the Bronco, into the nearly empty Slater Mill Historic Site parking lot. There, a uniformed cop was waving away two Mystic, Connecticut, school buses crammed with middle-school kids who were too preoccupied with their iPhones to look out the windows. No field trip today, boys and girls. Take a rain check. The docents at the Slater Mill museum will bore the hell out of you with their looms and shuttles at a later date.
    I grabbed my Nikon, climbed out of Secretariat, and flashed my press pass at the uniform.
    â€œYou’re gonna have to wait over there,” he said, pointing toward two TV vans and a clutch of reporters and photographers who didn’t seem to be doing anything.
    â€œ No inglés, ” I said. I brushed past him and hustled toward a medical examiner’s wagon and six Pawtucket police cars clustered beside a band of bare young maples that skirted the riverbank.
    â€œHey, bud! You hard of hearing?”
    â€œ No comprendo, ” I shouted and kept moving.
    Before I got there, I was intercepted by a bespectacled young man wearing a cheap suit and tie under an unbuttoned cloth topcoat. He was carrying a clipboard.
    â€œExcuse me, sir. Are you with the press?”
    â€œÂ¿Por qué?” I said.
    And he said, “¿Cómo te llamas?”
    The game was up. I didn’t know any more Spanish.
    â€œI’m Mulligan from The Dispatch . And who would you be?”
    â€œMy name is Kevin Muñoz,” he said, stifling a laugh. “I’m the new press officer for the Pawtucket PD. I’m going to have to ask you to wait back there with the rest of the reporters. I’ll have a statement for you in about an hour.”
    â€œIs Detective Sergeant Lebowski on the scene?”
    â€œYes, sir, I believe he is.”
    â€œThen trot on back where you came from and tell him Mulligan would like a word.”
    He raised an eyebrow. I raised one right back at him.
    â€œOkay, sir. Please wait right