Somewhere above it a dog was barking. It was a hoarse and monotonous warning, the distress signal of an animal facing constant threat. When I stepped to the chain link fence surrounding the landfill, a sickly sweet scent wafted through the humid air. Seagulls perched on the waste, pecking open plastic trash bags. Minutes later Harrison Fielding zoomed down P Street in a black BMW. He parked two feet from the crumbling curb, careful to keep his alloy wheels from the broken glass that sprayed across the pavement like petrified tears. DeMott drove up behind him in a rattletrap Ford truck, climbing out as his father walked to the locked gate, flicking keys from a leather pouch. He popped the chambers of three massive Schlage padlocks and turned to his son. "DeMott.” Pulling the heavy chains through the diamond-shaped fencing, DeMott lifted the gate and slid it open. The steel wheels chattered across the pebbly concrete. The texture told me the cement was poured quickly and had set improperly.
