Nick’s eyes flashed. “They’ve been chlorinating it for weeks. They didn’t ask anyone’s permission. They just went ahead and started their experiment, using the entire city as their test subjects.”
“And it’s been working,” she said. “That glass of water is safer than the water from any other city in the United States.”
“That’s your theory,” Nick bit out. “We don’t know for sure, and you had no right to barge in and start that illegal test without permission.”
The judge set down the glass and folded his arms as he gazed out the window, a quizzical expression on his face. He didn’t seem troubled so much as intrigued. “Actually, there’s no law against it.”
“There darn well ought to be!” Nick exploded. From a distant room, the toddler started crying at the outburst.
Judge McLaughlin looked annoyed. “Then I suggest you return to New York and pass that law. But don’t expect New Jersey to kowtow to it.”
Nick stood with a look of stunned disbelief on his face, his jaw hanging open as he stared at the judge. “You’re not going to do anything? They ignored your ruling! They barged ahead without permission—”
“My ruling gave them ninety days to make their case. I confess, I didn’t expect them to proceed in such an unconventional manner, but there’s no law against it.”
Rosalind stared in amazement, so overwhelmingly relieved that she felt dizzy, but Nick was snapping mad.
“This won’t end here,” he bit out. “I’ll go to the press. I’ll make sure everyone in the country knows what’s going on here. I’ll find some way to shut this down. They’re not going to get away with this.”
“He stole my notebooks,” she said. It was a harsh word to use, but the results of their experiment were locked in the glove box of Nick’s car. The judge could get them back.
“I’m turning them over to the press,” Nick said. “They’re evidence of a crime.”
“Not if that ‘crime’ took place within New Jersey state lines,” the judge said. “You have no authority here, Mr. Drake. I am ordering those notebooks returned.”
Rosalind could scarcely believe her luck. Judge McLaughlin had been in the courtroom for two years of testimony and government reports. He had a firm grasp of both sides of the issue and obviously had been at least partially swayed by Dr. Leal’s testimony about chlorine. He never would have authorized the ninety-day extension otherwise. And he’d just thrown them another lifeline. She kept any hint of triumph from showing, for Nick had a right to be enraged.
He was silent and motionless, but a muscle bunched in his jaw, and his eyes were fierce as he worked through the problem. His clenched fist held the automobile’s key to the glove box, and it would be impossible to get it without his consent. He looked mad enough to explode, but he managed to hold on to the fraying ends of his temper.
“I don’t accept your claim that no law was broken,” Nick finally said. “I am a commissioner of the State Water Board in New York. What you do in New Jersey affects us too. If you put poison in your water, sooner or later it leaks over to us. And groundwater doesn’t respect state lines.”
The judge gave a quick snort of laughter. “Ha! Good point. I will take custody of the notebooks until the matter can be decided.”
Nick agreed. Rosalind and the judge followed him to his automobile. His steps bristled with anger as he strode across the lawn. She stood a few feet away as he leaned into the open carriage and unlocked the compartment beneath the driver’s bench.
She swallowed hard as he emerged with the notebooks. The temptation to snatch them away made her hands tingle, but she clasped them together, still feeling mildly sick as her notebooks, each page a priceless trove of information, were handed to Judge McLaughlin.
“These will be secured in a locked storage room at the courthouse,” the judge said. “Once tempers have cooled, the possession of these notebooks will be handled in a lawful and orderly manner. And now, I would like to return to a very fine roast prepared by my loving wife. Good evening to you both.” He headed up the path to his house, her five notebooks tucked into the crook of his arm.
She waited until the door closed behind the judge. “Nick—”
“Don’t say a word,” he growled.
“Nick, I’m sorry.”
“How can you live with yourself?” he demanded, and the contempt in his eyes made her flinch. At first she’d suffered plenty of doubt over the decision she made, but as the weeks unfolded, her sense of certainty had grown.
“I can live with what I’ve done, and my family will live. Everyone on this street will live. I know that because we’ve figured it out. Nick, it’s working—”
“Shut up,” he said. “You’ve lied and hidden and evaded. Everyone on this street has been your lab rat, and you’ve got the nerve to justify your actions.” He slammed the glove box closed, then turned around to face her again. “And you know what the worst thing is?”
She swallowed hard, bracing herself for another searing assault.
“The worst thing is that for the past two months, I imagined myself in love with you. I thought because you were pretty and smart and feminine that it somehow meant you were perfect. I let myself imagine getting married, welcoming you into my family.”
“I was thinking the same thing—”
“Well, quit thinking it. It’s over.”
He stalked to the front of the car to turn the crank. The sudden roar of the engine made her jump, but she didn’t back away. He ignored her as he rounded the car and got inside. “Nick, please . . .”
“Not another word, Rosalind. I don’t ever want to hear from you again.”
She stood motionless as he drove away, knowing she had just lost something very precious.
Chapter
Fifteen
Rosalind went straight to her bedroom after returning from Judge McLaughlin’s house. When Gus tapped on her door at dinnertime, she apologized and begged to be left alone, for it would be impossible to talk with Gus or Ingrid without cracking. She lay awake most of the night, knowing that she needed to confess the theft of her notebooks to Dr. Leal.
By morning, she was calm enough to tell Gus what had happened, and he helped her put the problem in perspective. Ingrid prepared breakfast only a few yards away and listened to every word.
“Dr. Leal is the one who brought Nick into your business in the first place,” Gus said. “He can hardly blame you for what happened.”
“I still feel responsible. A third of our data has been seized and might never be returned. I would pull out my own eyeteeth if I could avoid having to tell him.”
“Why are you so afraid to stand up for yourself?” Gus said. “You’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.”
Ingrid huffed as she sliced apples atop a bowl of muesli. Rosalind pretended not to hear, but there was no point in delaying the inevitable. She drew a sobering breath, murmured a prayer for strength, and set off for the lab.
Rather than reveal the terrible news in front of a dozen students, she asked Dr. Leal to step outside, where they spoke beneath the spreading branches of a linden tree. As much as she’d feared a terrible fit from Dr. Leal, he was the epitome of logic and reason.
“We will proceed at full speed with our experiment despite the gap in the data. The judge may rule in our favor, in which case we can quickly plug the gap.”
“But what if he doesn’t?” she asked in a trembling voice.
Dr. Leal’s smile was grim. “That’s something over which we have no control, so we’ll do our best with what we have. It’s all God asks of us.”
It was as though a weight had been lifted from her. She would continue working toward their goal with all engines running at full steam, refusing to let external threats slow her steps or discourage her commitment. It was all that God asked of her.
Nick intended to blow the lid off the illegal experiment. Maybe it wasn’t any of his business, since his authority ended at the boundaries of New York, but his c
onscience didn’t know how to turn itself off when crossing a state line. He’d lain awake all night wrestling with his options. Most frustrating was the fact that his thoughts kept straying back to how he could protect Rosalind from the firestorm he intended to create. She’d hidden from the limelight ever since what happened in Germany, but he didn’t know how to insulate her from this. Or why he should even care. She’d knowingly embarked on this reckless and unethical experiment and deserved any public retaliation she got.
Nothing rivaled the power of the press for stoking public anger, and luckily he knew two people highly placed in the newspaper industry.
It was only eight o’clock in the morning, a little early to be calling on his sister on the weekend, but he was glad he hadn’t left it any later. As he was about to board the elevator, the doors slid open to reveal Colin and Lucy on their way out of the building.
“We’re heading off to Central Park for some bird-watching,” Lucy said. “Want to come?”
He could think of nothing as mind-numbing as being stuck outdoors watching birds. “No,” he said abruptly. “Can I pick your brains for ten or twenty minutes first? It’s important.”
Lucy looked a little taken aback. It was Saturday morning, after all, but she nodded and guided him to the secluded courtyard behind their building. Enclosed by ivy-covered brick walls, they took a seat at the wrought iron table.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
The quiet setting contrasted with the turmoil roiling inside him. Colin and Lucy both knew about his work on the Jersey City court case, so he was able to get to the point quickly. He told them how Dr. Leal had abused the judge’s trust by proceeding with chlorinating the water supply.
“I want every newspaper in the country to report on this story,” he said. “The judge will be forced to act if picketers and protesters make his life miserable.”
Colin shifted in his chair. “We can point a few reporters in your direction, but we can’t force the newspapers to print anything. That’s not how news agencies work.”
“I know how news agencies work,” Nick snapped. “I also know that you could bang on a few doors to help me out, Colin. I need to sound the alarm.”
Then Lucy asked the question Nick had been dreading. “Where is Rosalind in all of this? Didn’t you say she was involved in the Jersey City case? Maybe she could help.”
“Rosalind can’t help,” he said bluntly. “I need to know how to get as many newspapers on the case as fast as possible.”
“What do you mean Rosalind can’t help?” Colin asked. “I should think she is perfectly placed to contact all sorts of people who live in Jersey City who are concerned with water purity.”
“Could you please forget that woman’s name?” Nick tried to mask the tension in his voice, but given the way Colin and Lucy both stilled, he hadn’t done a good job of it.
“Oh dear,” Lucy said. “Was Rosalind part of . . . part of the—”
“Yes. She’s up to her eyeballs in it, so please forget she and I ever shared any kind of association.” Or that he’d fallen hard for her within five minutes. Or that he’d imagined she was the perfect woman for him.
“Look, I don’t think the press is the best way to go,” Colin said. “Once you turn the story over to a journalist, you have no control over how it plays out. They may share your outrage, but it’s just as likely they will give Dr. Leal a platform to make his case. Jersey City has spent a fortune on lawyers and litigation. They are your natural ally, not the press.”
Colin had a point. Over the next few minutes, they outlined the various lawyers and municipal officials Nick could marshal in the case against Dr. Leal.
He stood to leave, and Lucy put her hand on his arm. “Nick, I’m sorry about Rosalind. I know you had—”
“Lucy, would you please just drop it?” he snapped, then felt worse for grousing at her when it was Rosalind he was mad at. He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead. “Sorry, Luce. I’m in a mood, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
Too many lives hung in the balance for him to ignore what Rosalind had done, and Colin’s recommendation was sound. If Nick played his cards right, he could be in Jersey City within the hour and have the lawyers and municipal officials gearing up for battle first thing on Monday morning.
Monday morning dawned like any other. Rosalind rose early and played with the baby to give her sister-in-law a few moments to herself. For most of the past six months, Rosalind had taken over minding the baby while Ingrid bathed, dressed, and sometimes read the morning newspaper, all in hope of winning a little warmth from her sister-in-law.
It hadn’t worked so far, and the temporary thaw that happened after the burglary had been just that: temporary. Ingrid seemed to take it for granted that Rosalind would mind the baby for an hour each morning. Normally that wasn’t a problem, but since her notebooks had been seized, she and Dr. Leal needed to come up with another way to compile their data. She didn’t have time to finish feeding the baby today. Gus had gone to the library to study in peace, but Ingrid still lingered in the washroom.
Rosalind tapped on the washroom door. “Ingrid? I am late for work. Can you finish feeding Jonah?”
“I’m in the bath,” came the shout from behind the closed door.
“Yes . . . can you hurry? I’m late.” She had less than ten minutes to get to the streetcar stop. It would be another twenty minutes if she missed it.
Three minutes later, Ingrid emerged to take Jonah, not bothering to hide her frustration at having her bath disturbed. Rosalind ran the five blocks to the streetcar stop and had to wave her hand madly to get the driver to wait for her to sprint the final block and spring aboard.
She still felt a little disheveled as she arrived at the laboratory. She finger-combed her hair as she drew closer, because good heavens, who were all those people outside the lab? Had Dr. Leal failed to arrive early to open the building? It would be a disaster if the entire team was late getting started because they’d been locked out.
But these people weren’t her lab assistants. There were women in the mix, plus a lot of older people she’d never seen before. One of them held a camera, and two others had notepads. They hovered in small groups and showed no interest in stepping aside as she approached the front door.
“Pardon me,” she said as she angled through a cluster of people blocking the door.
One of the men with a notebook perked up. “Are you Rosalind Werner?”
“I am,” she said. Had she missed a meeting?
All of a sudden the mood grew chillier.
“I’m a reporter for the Evening Star. Would you care to comment—”
“Dr. Werner, I need to speak with you immediately,” a bald man interrupted. He wore a fine suit with a pricey gold watch chain. She recognized him. He was one of the lawyers for Jersey City during the trial. He grasped her elbow and tried to tug her off the path.
She jerked her arm back. “I need to get to work.”
“We need your testimony regarding the flaunting of Judge McLaughlin’s orders. Failure to speak with us could be considered an obstruction of justice.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“I am reminding you of your responsibility to the citizens of this city,” the lawyer pointed out.
“The ones you’ve been trying to poison,” a red-faced woman accused. “How much poison have my three children drunk because of you?”
“When were you planning on telling us?” someone from the back of the crowd shouted. A bright flash momentarily blinded her as the photographer took a picture.
She whirled away, reaching for the front door, but it was locked. Panic clouded the edges of her vision as people bumped into her from behind. She had a key in her reticule, but her hands shook, and she dropped it on the pavement. As she reached down for it, the hailstorm of questions continued. How much chlorine is in our water? Were you ever going to tell us? Are you really a doctor? She tried to insert the key in the lock, but she w
as being jostled so much by the people behind her that she missed.
As if an answer to her prayers, the door suddenly opened and Dr. Leal pulled her inside. A howl of protest rose from the crowd, and the lawyer tried to push in after her, but two of the college students shoved him back out the door.
The instant they were all inside, a student leaned against the door to slam it shut.
“What’s happening?” she asked in a shaky voice.
Dr. Leal was astonishingly calm. “What’s happening is that we’re going to return to the lab and finish compiling the city water report. Outside we have a handful of reporters who have already been provided with a written statement outlining our activities and the success of the plan. We have no obligation to speak to them further.”
“What about the lawyer?”
“We especially have no need to speak to the lawyer. Don’t let him bully you into thinking otherwise.”
She followed Dr. Leal and the others down the hallway to the laboratory, where students filled every station and dutifully conducted tests. It was a wonderfully reassuring sight. The structure and logic of science would continue to be played out in this room. Science was a rational discipline, not like the whirlwind of angry emotions whipping up outside their door.
“Let’s go into my office to discuss the state of affairs,” Dr. Leal said.
Far from being upset by the commotion outside, Dr. Leal was almost levitating with excitement. “I don’t know how the reporters were alerted to the issue, but I suspect it was Nicholas Drake, as he is the only man from the opposition team who knows what is going on. Given the publicity, the judge can’t wait until the ninety-day deferment ends to address what we have done. A hearing has been ordered for next week. I am the principal witness.”
She sucked in a breath. “Are we going to be punished?”
“Doubtful. Based on what you told me about Judge McLaughlin’s reaction, he is curious but not insulted. In any event, the city’s lawyers are in a twist over it and are going to try to shut us down. I doubt they’ll succeed.”
A Daring Venture Page 18
