Scratchgravel Road (26 page)

“Did he have those sores on his arms when you last saw him?” she asked.

“Juan had some sores, but nothing like this.” He stared at the last picture for several moments and appeared to consider Josie’s question. He finally passed the photos back. “The last day he was at work I saw them. Just some red blisters on his arm. I saw him in the cafeteria, but he didn’t talk to anyone. Most days he sat with us. That day he didn’t. He went off by himself and ate. I saw the sores though when he went through the line. I wondered, you know? But it could have been a hundred different things. Then, we didn’t see him again.”

“You didn’t mention the sores to anyone else you worked with?”

He shook his head.

“Why didn’t you bring this up at the meeting we had in the cafeteria?” she asked.

He gave a cynical laugh. “In front of Paiva?”

“This information could be critical to the investigation. It helps establish a timeframe. It could help the coroner determine a cause of death.”

His expression had changed, but she couldn’t read it.

“We have a radiation specialist from the CDC coming to talk to us tomorrow. I would like for you to tell him what you know about the sores on Juan.”

His face clouded over with anger.

“They’re coming to help us, Brent. They want to make sure no one else ends up like Santiago.” She stared hard at him, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze. “You know more than you’re telling me,” she said.

After a moment, he held his right hand toward her, palm down, and pulled a bandage away from his skin. A blister, the size of a dime, was in the middle of his wrist.

Josie tried to hide the shock she felt. Her skin burned at the sight of it and she flashed back to the horrible images she’d just shown him of Santiago’s arms.

“Sarah doesn’t know. She thinks I burnt my hand on the iron.”

“How did you get the sore?”

He shrugged, his eyes frightened. “I don’t have any idea. When I saw the sores on Santiago, I didn’t talk to him about them. I wondered. But, like I said, it could have been anything.” He looked down at his hand and replaced the bandage. “Then I woke up this morning with this sore. It scared the shit out of me. Then you come here with these pictures and they’re way worse than what I saw.”

“Does anyone else at the plant have these same lesions?”

“I don’t think so. No one has said anything.”

“You need to tell all of this to the CDC tech. Show her the sores and tell her everything you can remember about the work you were doing.”

He nodded, his expression sober and frightened. “If Paiva thinks we had an accident, and I didn’t follow reporting procedures, I’ll lose my job.”

“Did you have an accident?”

“No! But he’ll assume we did if he finds out I’ve been affected too!”

“If you didn’t have an accident, then other people could be involved. You need to get checked immediately.”

“You don’t have kids. You don’t have a family and a house payment.”

Josie ignored his comment. “You say you don’t know where the sores came from. Give me your best guess. Do you think it was exposure to radiation?”

His gaze was steady, but Josie was certain the internal struggle was seismic. He said nothing.

“I know you’re worried about your job and your family. I’m not judging that. I respect it,” she said. “But sometimes you have to be willing to look beyond your own self for the greater good. If this was a radiation accident, there could be other people affected. I touched Santiago’s body. The coroner has worked on his exposed flesh for hours on end. There may be others at the plant who were affected that you don’t even know about. And we don’t know what kind of internal damage this could be causing to any of us.” Josie could feel her face getting red, and anger creeping into her voice.

His expression never changed. “I’m telling you, I don’t know how it happened.”

“It’s no longer a suggestion.”

Brent bent over in his lawn chair and held his head in his hands for a long while, staring at the ground. He finally sat up, his expression resolute. “I’ll meet with your CDC expert tomorrow. I’ll give them everything I know.”

SEVENTEEN

When Josie left Brent Thyme’s house it was 5
P.M.
She called Dillon and explained the radiation scare. She tried to cancel their plans for the evening, but he told her she was being paranoid and she agreed to a late dinner. Next, she called Cowan. He answered his cell phone on the first ring.

“It’s Josie. I have some disturbing news.”

“That’s the only kind I get. Go ahead.”

“I talked with another worker from the Feed Plant this evening. I just left his house. He found a sore on his wrist this morning when he woke up.”

Cowan exhaled loudly. “Anyone else know yet?”

“No.”

“Has he been to the doctor?”

“No. I’m the only person that knows about it. He’s afraid if he talks about the plant he’ll lose his job.”

“I’d say the fellow has bigger issues than his job to worry about right now.”

“I forced the issue. He’s agreed to meet with the CDC in the morning to explain everything. I’m sure there will be an internal investigation at the plant, but I want him to talk with the CDC first.”

“Good.”

Josie drove toward home not seeing the road or the landscape. Her skin felt cold and damp. “You’re still comfortable waiting until tomorrow before we make this public?”

“We can’t let this information out without facts, Josie. The last thing we want is for people to panic. I should be back in my office by noon tomorrow with the tech. Just give me a little more time.”

She hung up with Cowan feeling no better about their situation. The media thrived on stories like this, and they never ended well for the authorities. If the police spoke up too soon there was a mass panic. If the police waited too long they were hiding potentially deadly information.

Josie drove home, then fed Chester and gave him fresh water. He wandered into the living room and curled up on his rug. She took a hot shower, and in the bright light of the bathroom, looked over her body carefully for any bumps or blisters or sores. She knew she was being paranoid. She had read enough about radiation on the Internet to know that second- or thirdhand exposure was most likely not dangerous, but the worry nagged at her. After all, it was enough of a concern that the CDC was flying a technician to Texas the next morning.

She changed into a pair of ancient Levis and a soft pink T-shirt. When she was ready, she loaded Chester in the back of her jeep. He lay down on the backseat with his head on his paws. His eyes were closed before she made it back around to the driver’s side, like a baby conditioned to sleep as soon as the buckle clicks on the car seat.

Dillon lived north of town in a small, trendy subdivision. His neighbors were primarily young to middle-aged career couples with at least one of the partners making a weekly commute to a larger city. Two of the houses were second homes for couples who spent winters in West Texas and summers up north. Dillon enjoyed the neighborhood and the eclectic mix of people and participated in the occasional block pitch-in. He could small talk and charm at a dinner party with ease, and Josie enjoyed people-watching while he carried the conversation. The
opposites attract
rule had worked well for her through the years, and was especially true with Dillon.

She pulled up his paved driveway and stopped in front of the garage. The house was a limestone-and-glass structure with long sloping sides and expansive windows. Even his sleek, stylish home, with its neutral colors, contrasted sharply with the warm colors of her little adobe in the foothills.

She knocked once and opened the front door. The air was cool and smelled like clean linen. Eggshell white walls and minimal gray trim were used throughout the house. The focus was the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room and dining room that faced a landscaped garden Dillon had designed and planted. Smiling and breathing deeply, she felt the serenity of the space settle around her. She gave Chester his bone and he lay down in front of the couch, not even making it all the way to the kitchen to visit Dillon. She marveled at the dog’s laziness.

Josie walked through the living room and found Dillon whistling along to classical music that filled the kitchen. His head was bent over a cutting board where he appeared to be slicing cabbage into thin strips. He looked up and smiled when she entered, then laid his hands on the cutting board and gave his full attention to her. She had encountered very few people in life who ever gave their full attention to anyone.

She crossed the kitchen and stretched up to kiss him lightly on the lips.

“You taste like Merlot,” she said.

“You taste delicious.”

She patted him on the back end. Dillon turned the music down and told her to dip the cabbage into the sauce in a bowl behind the cutting board. She dipped, and moaned at the taste.

“That’s amazing. Sweet and tangy and creamy. Just a little heat. Where did you come up with this?”

He winked. “You set the table. We’re almost ready.”

“Hmm. What else?” she asked, scanning the kitchen.

“Apple sage pork chops. Wine in the fridge. French bread in the oven.”

“You are the best,” she said.

Dillon washed and dried his hands on a dish towel, then came over and wrapped one arm behind her back, and slowly ran the tip of his finger under each of her eyes. He leaned his face next to her ear and whispered, “You need sleep.”

She shivered and smiled as he turned his head into her neck, running goose bumps up her spine.

“Maybe you can feed me and then tuck me into bed for the night.”

Dillon trailed kisses from her neck, along her jawline, and finally to her lips. Her knees were weak before he finally pulled away and whispered, “My chops are burning.”

She followed him outside where he opened the grill and poked a meat thermometer into the thick chops.

“How’s Teresa? Think she learned a lesson?” he asked.

Josie looked doubtful. “I don’t know. For a while, maybe. She’s a tough kid with a lot of anger.”

Dillon took the pork chops off the grill and they walked back inside. Josie pulled plates and glasses out of the cabinets, set the table, and poured wine as Dillon cleaned off the countertops and talked about his work and his ongoing frustration with government bureaucracy.

“It used to be red tape. Now it’s policy written in such overwrought language you have to hire an attorney to interpret,” he said.

Once they were seated, the dinner conversation eventually turned to Josie’s work and Dillon’s investigation into Beacon Pathways.

“You didn’t need me. Sauly was right on it. Everything is out in the open. Much of what they do with small towns like Artemis is an image game. They portray themselves one way publicly to disguise the bigger picture. It’s all completely legal and companies do it all the time.”

“Give me an example,” she said.

Dillon spooned sautéed apples over his pork chops and cut more French bread as he talked. “It’s like the large companies with plants overseas. They pay their workers paltry sums so we get cheap clothing. They portray themselves as companies taking care of the little guy, but the
true
little guy gets screwed in the sweatshop. Or the companies who climb into bed with quasi-terrorist groups because it’s the only way they can get to the bananas, or the coffee beans, or the spices they want.”

Josie frowned, not sure she understood the connection. “Beacon is a little different, though. They aren’t misrepresenting themselves as much as they are drumming up business.”

Dillon sipped at his glass of wine and cocked his head. “On one level. But they don’t make it clear their real profit doesn’t come from the cleanup. It comes from developing new technology. They just submitted a patent this past year aimed at cleaning up spent fuel rods—some of the most radioactive of all waste materials. If the technology does what they claim, they stand to make billions.”

“Which means they don’t want to clean up the plant too fast if they can test new products in the meantime, and get paid to do it,” she said.

“Exactly.”

She sat back in her seat. “And what happens if a little radiation slop-over takes place and an employee gets burned? Would they risk a billion-dollar profit on a possible lawsuit?”

“Or the end of the company’s impeccable safety record?” he asked.

“Maybe we know why they have such an impeccable safety record.”

“Because they dump their mistakes in the desert?”

Josie hesitated. “You haven’t heard the rest of it yet. I didn’t give you all the details when I called this afternoon.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“This goes no further.”

He gave her a quizzical look. “That’s a given.”

“I talked with one of the other workers today from the Feed Plant. He woke with a sore on his wrist this morning. The same type of sore found on Santiago’s arm.”

Dillon looked up in surprise. “Did he get it from the plant?”

“He doesn’t know.”

“Have you told anyone?”

“Mitchell Cowan. He talked with the CDC today. They’re flying someone in tomorrow morning to help us figure out what’s going on.”

He frowned. “Should this guy be quarantined?”

“I talked with Cowan. He thinks it’s radiation. Santiago and the other man both worked in the same building together before Santiago came up missing. Now, it’s a matter of calling in the right help to narrow down the cause. Cowan doesn’t want to panic people before we have some answers. We at least need to get some direction.” Josie drank her wine, glad for its bitter dryness. “There’s another problem for the guy with the sore on his wrist. He’s got a wife, son, and a mortgage, and he signed a clause on his contract that strictly forbids him from sharing any information about the plant.”

Dillon was quiet. He was cutting his meat, studying it as if deep in thought.

“Hey. Do you want me to go home? Are you worried this could be contagious? Because it’s crossed my mind too.”

He looked up at her, surprised. “No, of course not! I’m just thinking. Nagasaki is about the extent of my knowledge of radiation sickness. But it sounds horrible. It just makes me wonder how many other employees might have been exposed.”