Scratchgravel Road: A Mystery

by Tricia Fields

  Josie laid an ace of spades in the middle of their rows of cards. “What do you see yourself doing after you graduate high school?”

  Teresa rested the cards in her lap and shrugged.

  “You’re young. You have plenty of time,” Josie said. “Just find something other than law enforcement.”

  “I want out of here. I want to live in a city, away from the desert. Somewhere nobody knows me.”

  “Don’t you have something in school you love to do?” Josie asked. “A hobby?”

  Teresa looked at Josie for a moment too long and she could tell Teresa was struggling with something she wanted to say. Josie laid her cards on the bed, ready to listen.

  Someone knocked on the door and a woman said something in Spanish, her voice urgent but unclear.

  Josie and Teresa looked at each other, confused. It was after ten o’clock and the nuns locked up the church at nine.

  Josie stood from the bed and automatically looked for her gun, then remembered she hadn’t brought it.

  The woman spoke again in a hoarse whisper, still banging on the door frantically. There was no peephole in the ancient door. Josie motioned Teresa to stand against the wall so she would be hidden behind the door when it opened. The girl looked terrified.

  When Josie opened the door, Sister Agnes rushed inside. She wore a full-length white nightgown and her short gray hair was tousled. She stood in front of the door for a moment and took a long stilling breath. In a much calmer voice she gestured toward the door and said something in Spanish.

  “No hablo Española,” Josie said, and looked to Teresa, who was fluent. Her face had gone pale. “What is she saying?”

  “She says the Federales are here. They’ve come to take us out of the city.”

  “Why?”

  Teresa shook her head no and Josie feared she would go into shock.

  “Teresa! Ask the nun why they want to take us! What have we done?”

  The nun walked over to Teresa, who still stood with her back against the wall. The nun put her hands out and held both of Teresa’s hands in her own. She spoke slower and Teresa nodded, calming down some.

  “She doesn’t know anything. There’s a Federales van behind the church, waiting. She wants us to go now before there’s trouble.”

  “Tell her I have to talk to Sergio.”

  The nun pointed to their bags on the floor and spoke rapidly.

  Teresa said, “She says go now. We can’t make them wait or they’ll enter. She doesn’t want attention drawn to the church.”

  Josie felt the blood rushing to her face and knew she needed to keep her calm. They had no choice. They threw their belongings into their backpacks and followed the nun across the courtyard and through the front doors of the church. They walked quickly down the center of the darkened sanctuary. The pews were barely visible from oil lamps lit on the altar. The nun slowed slightly and spoke, then stretched her hand out to Teresa. She motioned for Josie to hold Teresa’s other hand and opened a door behind the altar.

  “She says it’s dark. To hang on to my hand and trust her.”

  Holding hands, they were plunged into complete darkness. The hallway smelled damp and musty and the floor turned to a ramp sloping downward. They walked slowly; the only sounds were their footsteps and the nun’s reassuring whispers. Josie realized Sister Agnes had made this night trip before, and she wondered if the nun had imagined herself living a life of danger when she took her vows.

  Josie ran into Teresa, who had stopped suddenly. They listened as the nun jiggled a metal key into a padlock, opened it, and then finally pushed a heavy wooden door open into the night. In front of them were three grim-faced men wearing black SWAT-style Federales uniforms. They spoke quickly to the nun, then grabbed Josie and Teresa roughly by the arms and pulled them to the back of the van where they were shoved inside and the doors were closed. In less than a minute they were moving down the road, and Josie and Teresa were sitting on the floor of a cargo van with no idea where they were going or why. Josie reached out and grabbed Teresa’s hand and the two sat in silence.

  * * *

  After a fifteen-minute ride, with no explanation from the officers, the vehicle slowed and Josie felt Teresa’s grip on her hand tighten. They listened as the men talked quietly in the front of the van, but Teresa couldn’t hear their conversation enough to translate. Josie thought they were headed northwest but there were no windows in the back of the van and she wasn’t able to hear other cars.

  Once the van stopped the rear doors were yanked open and two officers pulled Josie and Teresa from the back. Once they were standing on the side of the road, the men slammed the back doors, said nothing more, turned, and got back in the van. Teresa began yelling as the van completed a U-turn and started back the way they had come. Josie grabbed her, wrapped her in a tight hug, and finally placed a hand over her mouth to get her to calm down.

  “Stop. Teresa, you have to quit. There may be houses we can’t see.”

  Teresa finally calmed somewhat and Josie tried to get her bearings. It was almost impossible. The sky was covered in clouds: the night was completely dark.

  “Just stand here a minute. I need a sense for where we are.”

  Teresa began to cry, and Josie found her patience wearing thin. At that point, she had no desire to comfort the girl. She was exhausted and frightened herself, with no plan how to proceed.

  Teresa grabbed her shoulder and Josie turned to see far-off headlights coming slowly down the road.

  “What do we do?” The girl sounded terrified.

  “Hold my hand.” She pulled Teresa across the road. “We’ll stay on this side so I can see the driver.” They felt their way down a slight embankment off the side of the road, but could feel nothing to hide behind.

  “Just lie flat and keep your head down. Don’t do anything until I tell you to. If I tell you to run, you get up and run straight out into the desert. You run like hell for as far as you can. Then find something to hide behind until daybreak. Just don’t run until I say so. Got it?”

  Teresa murmured yes and lay flat, her hands under her face to keep the sand from her eyes.

  Flat on her stomach, Josie watched as the car approached. All she could see were the headlights until the car rolled past them with the windows open. The interior light of the car was on and Josie recognized Sergio. She leaped up from her position and yelled his name. The car stopped and Josie and Teresa ran to it. Josie climbed in the front, Teresa in the rear, and Sergio sped off.

  “Everyone all right? Teresa, you’re okay?” Sergio asked. His voice was taut with stress and he reached an arm out to Josie’s shoulder.

  Teresa wasn’t talking and Josie turned around. She shook her head yes, and fell into a slump against the backseat.

  “We’re okay. But I have no idea what just happened back there,” Josie said.

  “It was paranoia, nothing more. One of my fellow officers checked on the church this afternoon. A routine stop. One of the nuns told him who you were and he went straight to our commander. I am sorry to say, your name is connected with Medrano. He was afraid the Medrano cartel would find out you were staying in the church and take revenge.” In the dim light from the dashboard, Josie saw Sergio turn toward her, his expression full of sorrow. “He ordered you out of the city.”

  His words stung. It was a terrible thing to hear as someone who had spent her life trying to uphold the law. When the Medrano cartel had invaded Artemis last year, and she had killed members of the clan in a battle for territory, she had lost her ability to move freely in Mexico.

  “We live our lives preparing for disaster, trying to avoid it,” he said.

  Josie nodded. She understood but it didn’t ease the sting.

  “It isn’t you. It’s the idea there could be trouble. We’ve made some improvements in the city since the blowup in Artemis, but we can’t afford to risk anything. Yes?”

  “What do we do now?”

  Sergio looked at her again and smiled
. “We drive to Juarez. I’ve already arranged your crossing and there’s a rental car waiting in El Paso. It will be two in the morning before we get there. It will be a long night.”

  FOURTEEN

  The metal roof on Mitchell Cowan’s one-story ranch home thrummed over his bed as he lay staring at the ceiling, imagining the black swirling clouds above him. The rain had started again sometime during the night, and he had awoken to booming thunder at 5 A.M. He rolled over and felt around in the general vicinity of his night table until he found the pull switch for the lamp. He sat up and arranged his pillows behind him, put his reading glasses on, and then opened the book he had started the night before.

  Before leaving work that night Cowan had searched his professional library, and then drove home and pored through his extensive collection of books and scientific journals, gathering anything he could find concerning radiation poisoning. Having no wife or kids, he looked forward to a night spent deep in the pages of medical research—his favorite place to be.

  At nine thirty he’d climbed into bed with a peanut butter and honey sandwich, milk, and a stack of books. At one in the morning, he finally forced himself to turn the light off. He thought he might have cracked the case. And it was a doozy.

  In the book he was currently reading, he had found a fascinating story involving former Russian KGB leaders all related to some nasty business of poisoning a rogue agent who came too close to the truth. Cowan had no interest in the “truth” the young agent was attempting to expose, nor in the conspiracy theories being spun out in detail, but he was very interested in the man’s grisly death.

  Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned by a highly radioactive isotope called polonium-210. The drug can be touched with no danger done to the skin; however, once ingested, it destroys the tissues inside of the victim. Pictures of the former KGB agent, the only person known to have been intentionally killed by a lethal dose of polonium, were frighteningly similar to Juan Santiago. Both men showed augmented signs of aging, and had obliterated digestive tracts.

  At six A.M., Cowan took a quick shower in order to be in his office by seven. Atlanta, Georgia, was just an hour ahead of Artemis, and he wanted to catch his contact before he got caught up in meetings.

  Mark Preston was a research scientist at the CDC and Cowan had attended graduate school with him. Cowan remembered little of him, other than that he was friendly and studious, and his dream in life was to work on communicable diseases. Cowan knew Preston was working for the CDC because he had seen a paper co-published by him several months ago in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

  Cowan cleared off a place at his desk in the coroner’s office and put his notes in front of him. He didn’t plan on bringing up the Litvinenko case for fear of being taken for a quack, but he needed some basic information on radiation poisoning. After speaking with an operator and receptionist he was finally connected to Preston.

  “Of course I remember you. You went back to Texas, is that right?”

  “That’s right.” Cowan smiled, pleased Preston had remembered him from so many years ago. “I’m the coroner for a small West Texas town. Our resources are limited, but it doesn’t keep us from getting the occasional odd duck case. That’s why I’m calling.”

  Preston laughed. “Odd ducks are my favorite. Fill me in.”

  Cowan spent several minutes explaining the basics of the case, from the body’s exposure to the elements, to the lesions and internal decay.

  “Well, that’s a unique one,” Preston said. “Do you suspect radiation exposure, meaning body penetration? Or are you thinking internal or external contamination?”

  “Possibly both. The intense desert heat will obviously speed up putrification, but I’m still concerned about contamination by ingestion. The deceased’s digestive tract is destroyed, more so than his other body systems. But the lesions on his arms appear unrelated.”

  “Do you know what kind of dose the deceased may have received?”

  “No.”

  “Here’s the truth. Radiation exposure is typically not that deadly. The amount of radiation exposure, even from a dirty bomb, would typically not be enough to cause immediate danger. Years down the road, the people directly hit would probably be at greater risk of certain types of cancer, but that doesn’t sound like what you’ve got.”

  “I’m not referring to terrorists. There is a nuclear weapons plant that is currently being dismantled and cleaned up. The deceased worked on the cleanup crew at the plant. I’m concerned the company’s practices could have led to contamination.”

  There was silence on the other end for several moments. “The name of the company?”

  “Beacon Pathways,” Cowan said.

  Another pause. “Do you suspect ARS? Acute radiation sickness?”

  “That’s my fear,” Cowan said.

  “A telltale sign is a day or two of intense vomiting and diarrhea. Next, the patient makes a recovery for a few days and feels good. Then it hits again with a vengeance. Fever, no appetite, exhaustion. Does that fit the profile of the deceased?”

  “I can’t answer that. It’s all speculation. We found the body and we’re still trying to track down information. He lives by himself. He’s a loner. We don’t have any medical information for him.”

  “Do you have a dosimeter set up in the morgue yet?”

  “No.”

  “So, you don’t have any radiation readings on the body?”

  “No, I’m just now starting to put together a picture of what might have happened. And even that is speculation,” Cowan said.

  “We need to establish low-dose and high-dose rates. You keep everyone out of the lab until you get some readings. That’s your first task.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s critical you get a baseline reading to see what kind of radiation the body is emanating. If you’ve got someone who died within a week of contamination, then he was hit with a massive dose. You need to get your office checked immediately.” Preston paused on the phone and mumbled something to himself as he wrote a note, then continued. “We’ll need to get you several meters. It’s critical to find out the type of radiation that was used. Without knowing that it’s hard to know what kind of danger you might be in.”

  Cowan rubbed his forehead. He was feeling completely overwhelmed.

  “You need dose rate readings for everyone who’s been in contact with the body. You need a pancake probe to check your equipment and lab. Survey the remains tub, the body bag, everything. Are you wearing a Tyvek suit when you’re in contact? Checking your feet when you leave the lab? Those kinds of precautions?”

  “Somewhat.” Cowan wrote down notes as Preston talked, but he knew he was missing details. Worse yet, he had no idea how to get the necessary equipment Preston was referring to. Cowan finally broke in. “I’ll be completely honest. Radiation is not my area of specialty. I’m not sure where to even begin. I don’t have any equipment, or any money to purchase the equipment. We’re on a nonexistent budget.”

  “Ah. Understood. Let me put you on hold a minute.” Preston was gone for almost five minutes before returning and apologizing for the delay. “I have good news though. I’m going to send you a certified hazardous materials technician. Her name is Diane Patel. She’ll be able to help you put together a plan and get things moving quickly. This is exactly what she’s trained for.”

  “That would be much appreciated.” Cowan sighed, the relief immense. “I can work with Beacon to see what kind of equipment we have available.”

  “Diane will bring the necessary equipment. Without knowing Beacon professionally I’m hesitant to trust their monitors. Diane will get a flight out first thing in the morning.”

  “Here is my worry,” Cowan said. “I don’t think there is a public health menace. The body was discovered several days ago, and I haven’t seen any indication that anyone else was involved. My bigger worry right now is for the officers who came into contact with the body.”

  “Absolu
tely. Those officers must be checked immediately. As well as yourself.”

  FIFTEEN

  At six thirty Thursday morning Josie called Teresa’s name, and woke her from a deep sleep in the backseat. Through the night Josie had finished two cups of cold McDonald’s coffee that she had stocked up on in El Paso, and drunk on the long ride home. She had spent an hour on the phone with Dillon, who had forgiven her for taking the trip, and then told her stories from his childhood to keep her from falling asleep at the wheel. Now, her eyes felt as if someone had sprinkled sand in them, and although she was exhausted from driving and the stress of the night, she was also thoroughly satisfied.

  Josie pulled into Marta’s driveway, turned the rental car off, and stretched her back after the long ride. It was a bleak morning. They’d had a one-day reprieve from the rain. Now, it was back and forecast to stay for several days, dumping another several inches. Josie sat for a moment, watching the rain streak down the car window.

  Marta opened the front door to her home. She was wearing jeans and a loose-fitting striped T-shirt, her face filled with worry. She looked confused when she saw Josie exit the rental car. From the front door of her home she couldn’t see Teresa in the backseat, and Josie could see panic fill Marta’s face.

  “It’s good news, Marta. I’ve brought her home. She’s getting her stuff together in the backseat.”

  Marta’s eyes widened and she ran through the rain to the car as if she wouldn’t believe the news until she could see her daughter herself. She peered through the back passenger window and covered her face with her hands. After a moment she walked around to the other side of the car and approached Josie.

  “You, my friend, I will never be able to repay.”

  Josie hugged Marta, who pulled away suddenly and said, “I just checked the Internet an hour ago. They don’t expect to open the International Bridge today. The flooding is too bad. How did you?” She motioned to the car.

  “It’s a long story. Let’s get out of the rain. Teresa can fill you in. I’m headed home for a shower and few hours’ sleep.”