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“You think this guy has had . . . what, practice?”
“I don’t think anything, at least right now.”
“Did you notice the highway here is all concrete?” said Jamison, glancing out the window.
“Asphalt apparently doesn’t hold up well in the extreme elements they have up here,” noted Decker. “Although I’m not sure how durable the concrete is, either.”
“Well, aren’t you a wealth of information.”
“I can Google stuff just like anybody else.”
“How much longer do we have to go?” asked Jamison.
Decker glanced at his phone screen. “Says forty-five minutes, nearly to the Canadian border.”
“So I guess that was the closest airport back there.”
“I think that was theonlyairport back there.”
“This has already been a long, exhausting day.”
“And it promises to be a longer night.”
“You’re going to start the investigation tonight?” she said, a little incredulously.
Decker gave her a stern look. “Never hurts to hit the ground running, Alex. Particularly when someone is dead who shouldn’t be.”
“WHAT ARE THOSE?” asked Jamison as they neared their destination.
She indicated fiery gold plumes that winked in the darkness like ghoulish holiday lights as they zipped past.
“Gas flares,” said Decker. “Coming off the oil wells. Natural gas is found with oil. They drill for both up here. But they sometimes vent the gas off and ignite it at the end of the oil wellhead. I guess it costs too much to do anything else with it in certain situations and they don’t necessarily have the infrastructure to pipe it out of here.”
Jamison looked stunned. “Do you know how much gas we’re talking about?”
“One stat I read said each month the gas they burn off could heat four million homes.”
“Four million homes, are you serious?”
“It’s what I read.”
“But isn’t that bad for the environment? I mean, they’re burning pure methane, right?”
“I don’t know about that. But it probably is bad.”
“All those flames are eerie. I’m conjuring images of zombies marching with torches.”
“Better get used to them. They’re everywhere, apparently.”
And as they drove along, they did indeed appear to be everywhere. The landscape was like an enormous sheet cake with hundreds of candles.
They passed by large neighborhoods of trailer homes, along with paved streets, road signs, and playgrounds. Vehicles, most of them jacked-up, mud-stained pickup trucks or stout SUVs, were parked under metal carports in front of the trailers.
They also drove past large parcels of land on which sat the flame-tipped oil and gas wells along with metal containers and equipment with imposing security fences around them. Hardhatted men in flame-resistant orange vests drove or rushed around performing myriad tasks. From a distance, they looked like giant ants on a crucial mission.
“This is a fracking town,” said Decker. “Only reason there still is a town. Thousands of workers have migrated to this part of North Dakota to suck up the shale oil and gas found in the area. ‘Bakken’ shale rock, to be more specific. I read there’s about a hundred years’ worth of fossil fuel in the ground here.”
“Okay, but haven’t they heard of climate change?”
