Critical Reaction (8 page)

“Hanford’s that direction.” He pointed as he sat down in the shade. “The nearest building’s probably twenty miles.”

Emily settled beside Kieran, aware of a heavy dampness covering her forehead and shirt. She listened to the hissing of a light breeze through hillside grasses. It was quiet and peaceful. This was truly beautiful. But lonely, she thought. Like Kieran seemed today.

As they cooled in the shadows, they finally talked about what they’d each done the past years since they’d lost touch. He’d taken a series of odd jobs after his father died until he’d landed one at Hanford. “It wasn’t my first choice, but the pay is incredible . . . for somebody who never got a degree,” he explained. “Especially to save enough to get my mother, my sister, and me out of town.”

Emily wondered at that last statement, but Kieran pressed her again, and she told about the back-breaking studying in law school; landing the clerkship with Judge Freyling; then on to the Public Defender’s office. Did she like it, the pace and all, he asked. It was hard work, she answered—but she drew satisfaction from representing people who really needed her.

Kieran smiled. “That’s the Emily I remember.”

Kieran tried once to steer onto the ground of her loss, but Emily wasn’t sure she wanted to go back there, and the personal conversation faltered, drifting into silences just long enough to be awkward. She began to ask herself whether the bridges that used to link them were lost or fallen. It saddened her—she’d believed they were built of much sterner stuff. Still, she shied away from defaulting to talk about the explosion and lawsuit, the impersonal ground of lawyer to client. That
would taste too bitter, like a final surrender of their friendship. Besides, there would be plenty of time for that over dinner with her dad.

The breeze began to pick up again just as Kieran looked at his watch.

“We’d better get going,” he said. “I told Ted I’d have the horses back in a couple of hours.”

Back in the saddle, Kieran took the lead as they headed away from the slope, back the way they’d come. The sun was throwing long shadows to their front when Emily recognized the approaching hills as they neared the ranch. In that moment, she heard a sound that drew her attention back to Kieran.

He raised a hand to his chest, then suddenly lurched forward in his saddle and plunged into deep, violent coughs. Emily watched with growing concern as the stallion halted and the spasms crescendoed—growing so powerful she thought he might fall out of the saddle. She nudged the mare next to the stallion and reached out, grasping Kieran’s shoulder.

The coughing relented, tapering to silence. Kieran sat quietly for a moment, sucking in deep breaths, his face red and his eyes watery. At last he weakly nudged the stallion forward again.

“You okay?” she asked gently.

Kieran nodded.

“How often does that happen?”

“That bad, every couple of days,” he said with a raspy voice. “It builds up.”

The horses were walking side by side now. “You know,” he said, “the cough isn’t why I sued. That’s chemical stuff and it’s bad—but they tell me it’s getting better, and at least I know what it is. It’s not knowing how much radiation I absorbed that made me sue. I watched my dad die of leukemia. I couldn’t go through the next ten years wondering what the chances were of that happening to me.”

They passed over the stream and into the valley. Emily felt
the mare pick up the pace, sensing the approach of home, but she reined her back to keep the horses close.

She saw the barn. Waiting beside the open door was Ted, his hat pulled low and hands thrust into his jeans pockets.

She sensed Kieran stiffen at the sight of the man. Then he kicked his horse hard. She nudged the mare to follow, though the more powerful stallion kept pulling away.

It seemed a fitting reminder, she thought as the mare gathered speed, of how the men in her life always seemed to leave her behind.

CHAPTER 6

The corner booth table at the Atomic Café was carved with decades of initials and names, artifacts preserved beneath thick layers of polyurethane. Over the tables, black-and-white photos lined the walls. Ryan saw that the nearest ones depicted nuclear reactors B and D under construction, workers smiling at the perimeter of a huge cooling tank, and a Cold War era billboard reading “Loose Talk—
A
Chain
Reaction
for
Espionage!
” A little further along, the wall was festooned with pennants and team photos from the Sherman High School athletic teams, depicting their mascot: a blossoming mushroom cloud.

Ryan shook his head. He only wished the food had been half as interesting as the décor.

Emily sat at Ryan’s side, looking at Kieran and his sister across the table of empty plates. Emily was too quiet. He wondered what she could be thinking: after the boy’s description of the explosion over dinner, she didn’t look the least deterred about his case.

Could she really be blind to the pitfalls? Nothing he shared seemed to faze her.

Kieran was all right, Ryan admitted. A good-looking kid. A lot smarter than Ryan had expected. Careful with his words. Clearly trying hard to not seem overly anxious about Ryan’s interest in his case. He liked him—he really did. But he had no interest in restarting his practice on the back of this case.

Kieran’s teenage sister, Laura, seated at his side with black hair draped across her shoulders, was less subtle than her brother. “So are you going to take Kieran’s case?” she asked Ryan over an unwavering stare.

Ryan nodded congenially at the young woman who so clearly adored her brother. The loyalty he could admire, but the question he chose to ignore for the moment.

The waitress came and cleared their dishes. As she moved away, Ryan thought about this aging restaurant at the southern extreme of Sherman, where the last businesses and homes gave way to the desert. From his seat, Ryan could see through the front window the fading road sign declaring Atomic Café, arced over a blue mushroom cloud. It fronted this building that was so sun wearied it could’ve been built out of wood scraps collected from the surrounding desert.

This place was a world apart from the drizzling rain Ryan had left in Seattle that morning. He’d driven up into the foggy landscape of rocks and trees in the Cascades, broken by the occasional white flush of a stream. The peak was marked by a sudden break from the fog into bright sunshine—like bursting through a curtain. Then he descended into more green and gray that finally gave way to the yellows and browns of the foothills east of the Cascades. He’d passed the city of Yakima, then Union Gap—a narrow pass between tall cliffs leading west to the Yakama Indian Reservation. Then east again through hard, unyielding land only occasionally spotted with vineyards and hops fields.

This was Hanford country: dry flats with only a few isolated ranches challenging the natural loneliness of the landscape. Four hours and a galaxy of change from the lush, populous seaboard of the West Coast, where he’d grown up. Vacant and lonely.

Until the town of Sherman. Within a half a mile of the freeway he was surrounded by a sprawling suburb. On each side of the road were fast food restaurants, hotel chains, movie theaters, and even a regional airport. An unexpected oasis in a desert
on the Columbia River over a hundred miles from the nearest major city.

Ryan looked at his daughter again, with her studied calmness, and felt a small anger kindle in him. She absolutely refused by word or expression to acknowledge the obvious faults with Kieran’s case. His patience was slipping away, and with it his last restraint.

Okay. Emily wasn’t interested in seeing the obvious. Was it because of the boy? He’d just have to make it
more
obvious.

“So, trial’s coming up in a couple months,” Ryan finally asked Kieran.

“Yes,” Kieran answered.

“And your attorney wanted out of the case.”

Kieran nodded.

“Well, I read the Complaint. You claim Covington was responsible for keeping that vat in LB5 safe. You claim the explosion exposed you to chemicals and radiation.”

“That’s right.”

“Do you know what caused the vat to explode?”

Kieran blinked. “No.”

“What does Covington say.”

“They say the chemicals in the vat I was near became reactive from evaporation and exploded.”

“Anything else?”

“They say it’s not their fault.”

“I understand there was an investigation by Covington.”

“Yes. My attorney . . . my former attorney has a copy of their report.”

“What’s it say. Exactly.”

“I don’t know. She hasn’t sent me a copy.”

“Has your lawyer hired experts who say the explosion was Covington’s fault?”

Kieran nodded. “Pauline said she’s got some expert help, yes.”

“What has she told you about your expert’s opinions.”

“Not much yet. Just that her expert says Covington’s responsible.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“Alright. And LB5 wasn’t the place you usually worked.”

Kieran nodded. “That’s right. My supervisor and I were moved to LB5 from our regular station for two weeks just before the explosion. We were covering for the regular stabilizing engineers out there.”

“Where were the regulars?”

“They were on a training exercise. DOE requires an ongoing rotation of tests and monitoring, so sometimes we get shifted to another building to cover when a regular crew isn’t available. The explosion happened on our last night shift at LB5.”

“‘We’ means you and your supervisor?”

“Yeah. Taylor Christensen.”

“You still work with Taylor?”

“Yeah. We’re back at our regular station, Research Center 12. With my headaches and cough, I’m only out there half time right now.”

“And this Taylor’s got no coughs, no radiation-related problems.”

Kieran shook his head. “No, but he had his mask on that night.”

“And you say they did a whole body count on you after the explosion—for radiation. Which was negative.”

Kieran shifted in his seat. “Yes.”

“And the blood and urine testing—for chemicals—showed no exposure to chemicals with long-term health effects.”

“Well, eight months is pretty long term.”

Ryan raised his hands. “I mean carcinogenic chemicals.”

Kieran nodded. “That’s right.”

“And you’re convinced you were exposed to damaging radiation because . . . ?”

“Like I said when I described the explosion, the radiation monitors in the hallway were lighting up like pinball machines.”

“You saw that while you were falling to the floor.”

Kieran nodded defiantly.

“In the middle of an explosion that knocked you out.”

“That’s right.”

“And they’ve told you your dosimetry badge showed no radiation exposure, either.”

Kieran was fidgeting now. From the corner of his eye, Ryan could see the same irritation in his sister.

“No.”

“But you don’t believe them about that, either.”

Kieran’s hands were clenched on the table. “If LB5’s half as crapped up as the rest of the plutonium processing buildings on the reservation, an explosion like that should’ve shaken it up like a snow globe. They didn’t tell me I got a safe dose; they told me I got
no
dose. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Any reason you think they’d lie about these things?”

“I don’t know,” he said, his eyes cautious.

“Has your lawyer got experts to prove you’ve been exposed to radiation?”

Hands clasped tightly. “I think so, yes. I think she said the same expert was working on both.”

“And your lawyer withdrew because . . . ?”

Kieran’s voice dropped a notch, his eyes wavering from Ryan’s. “She said it was better if I found a more experienced trial lawyer.”

The large air conditioners that cooled the place were the only sounds beyond their table in the nearly empty restaurant. Emily sat as quiet and frozen as the gray scenes in the photos filling the walls. There was still no sign that she was getting it. Ryan’s frustration mounted another notch.

“You grew up here, did you?”

Kieran nodded.

“Went to high school in Sherman?”

“Yes.”

“Kind of like a small town, isn’t it.”

“Yes. I suppose.”

“Hanford’s pretty much the only major business around here, I’d guess?”

Another nod.

“I’d bet most people work out there, is that right?”

“Many.”

“Or at businesses that support the place.”

“That’s right.”

“You ever know anybody that’s sued Hanford or its contractors?”

“No.”

“Ever know anybody win a verdict against Covington?”

Pause. “No.”

His daughter’s face was taut. Her eyes never left Kieran’s face, never acknowledged her father at her elbow or the holes he was boring in her friend’s case.

All right. Then how about this.

“Emily told me about your father. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks.”

“He worked at Hanford?”

“Yes.”

“And what did he die of?”

Kieran stiffened. “Leukemia.”

“Do you think Hanford or Covington was responsible for his disease?”

“What are you asking?”

“It’s a simple question, Kieran. Do you think Hanford or Covington lied about your father’s death? Like they’re lying about your injuries? Are they responsible for your injuries like they were for your dad?”

“You don’t have to answer that,” Emily said quietly.

The sound of Emily’s voice startled Ryan after her long silence.

“Yes you do,” Ryan shot back.

“No you don’t.” Emily slid from the booth and headed toward the restroom.

The moment broke the mounting pressure in him. He saw confusion replacing the anger on Kieran’s face. The sister looked close to crying.

Ryan stared after his daughter, suddenly aware of how tight the muscles of his back and arms had become. He knew she wasn’t coming back. “I guess we’re done,” he said.

“I don’t get it,” Kieran answered, bewildered. “Look, I’ll answer the question if you want.” His façade of indifference was replaced with desperation.