Scratchgravel Road: A Mystery

by Tricia Fields

  “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 mor
ning. 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.”

  * * *

  After dinner was finished and supper cleaned up, Dillon went through a stack of information he had printed for Josie on Beacon Pathways. The information included their current holdings, profit margins, even a mission statement and ten-year business plan.

  “Honestly? It’s the kind of information that makes me want to buy stock in their company,” Dillon said. “Beacon is opening another plant in California. They have a crew there now, taking stock and running environmental tests.”

  Josie frowned and scooted her chair away from the dining room table. She stared out the glass at the cactus and agave plants in Dillon’s backyard. The sun had slipped below the horizon and left a purple haze across the desert floor. The whole situation bothered her on some level that she couldn’t express. She felt jilted. It was the angry taxpayer syndrome. As a kid she used to listen to her grandpa rant and rave about people abusing the system. She’d just thought of him as an angry old man, but she’d been paying taxes long enough now that his words seemed less angry and more rational.

  Dillon smirked. “Okay. What’s your issue?”

  “Where are the boundary lines? Beacon seems to be benefiting on all sides by dragging their contracts out as long as they can.”

  He shrugged. “Not against the law.”

  “Here’s my issue. We’re dealing with material that is so dangerous Paiva talked about burying it for thousands of years. I don’t want him dragging his feet on this. I want this mess out of my backyard!”

  “You’d have to prove negligence on their part,” he said.

  “That’s just it. Who would do that? They’re so specialized, and insulated out here. Who’s keeping tabs on them?” she asked.

  “I don’t really know. I guess the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”

  “The whole operation makes me feel helpless. And I hate that.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “You in the mood for a late-night drive?”

  He looked surprised. “I figured after your foray into Mexico last night that you’d get to bed early.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “How about a late-night trip around the Feed Plant?”

  Dillon laughed. “You’re serious. Right now?”

  Josie nodded. She was wearing down from the previous night with little sleep. She knew she ought to go home, but curiosity had her. She wanted to see the Feed Plant on her own terms, away from Diego’s careful watch.

  He finally shrugged. “Let’s do it.”

  * * *

  Just five minutes outside of town, all other civilization disappeared. The night had cooled down to a comfortable eighty degrees, and the wind from the jeep’s open windows felt like silk on Josie’s skin. A smattering of stars shimmered around clouds that stretched down south into Mexico. By the time she reached the gravel on Plant Road, they hadn’t seen another car for several miles. She stopped the jeep and turned off the engine. The chain-link fence that stretched around the perimeter of the plant appeared like a solid wall in the dark. Josie unclipped her Maglite from underneath her seat and shone it on a large rectangular sign that loomed in front of the gate. The sign read PRIVATE PROPERTY: BEACON PATHWAYS: TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

  Dillon pointed to a darkened gate shack. “They still use that?”

  “No, there’s a microphone and gate.” Josie was looking through her night-vision binoculars and spotted a security camera at the top of the gate. She hadn’t noticed the camera when she and Otto checked in. Diego had said the cameras were mounted at the gates but that they weren’t monitored, only checked if a problem arose. She hoped that was true.

  Dillon placed a hand on her thigh and whispered, “Listen.”

  They could hear the yips and barks of a distant pack of coyotes.

  “Sounds like a bunch of drunken kids at a party,” he said.

  “The Christo Ranch connects to this side of the plant. I read an article in the Sentinel last week. He’s got coyotes tearing up his calves,” Josie said.

  She got out of the jeep and shone her Maglite on the eight-foot-tall gate in front of them and was surprised to see it was unlocked and slightly ajar.

  “There’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.” Josie looked at Dillon, who had followed her to the fence. “Either the security guard is really lazy or there’s a reason they leave it unlocked.”

  Dillon pushed open one of the sides far enough to allow Josie to drive through. Leaving it open, he got back in on the passenger side. She eased the jeep forward, leaving the headlights off.

  “I feel like I have a free pass to break the law when I’m with you,” he said.

  “Explain that one?”

  “I’m forty-two years old, and I’ve never trespassed. At least not intentionally. And, as far as I can remember, I don’t think I’ve ever driven at night with my headlights off.”

  “You’re such a city boy.”

  “I grew up living in a house off a busy interstate in Los Angeles. I played at the Boy’s Club, not outside.”

  “Why not outside?”

  “My mother’s biggest fears were baby-snatchers and smog.” He lifted his hands straight up to the night sky. “It’s why I love it out here. You get a sense of what eternity is.”

  Josie grinned. “It’s a rush, isn’t it?”

  Leaving her headlights off, she drove slowly down the narrow gravel lane until they reached the second set of gates into the factory. Josie pulled her jeep off the gravel path and drove through rocky sand, around to the right of the fence.

  “I noticed when Otto and I were out here, there was a gate the maintenance guys used.”

  Three hundred feet down the fence line they came across the gate and found the padlock hanging unfastened on the fence. Josie made a mental note to tell Diego about his lax perimeter security and drove through the opening and down a rutted, muddy path that led to the main area of the plant. She pulled to a stop and killed the engine. They sat and listened to the silence, then slowly picked up the humming of various machinery and engines running throughout the plant.

  She pointed to a building to the right of where they were parked. “See the sign in front of the building? That’s the pilot unit. That’s where the experiments are taking place. That’s the last building where Juan Santiago worked before his arms became full of sores, and he ended up dead.”

  “You sure you want to go over there?”

  “We’ll just poke around.”

  “Maybe that’s what got Santiago dumped in the sand,” Dillon said.

  Josie ignored the comment and opted to walk inste
ad of starting the engine again. She had counted five cars in the front parking lot when they drove around the fence. She didn’t know if they were security or night-shift workers.

  A security light was posted in front of each building, but the muddy courtyard area between the buildings was dark in shadows. There was no rain forecast for the night, but the ground was still a mess. She stopped and pointed at the ground.

  “It looks like a stream running through here,” she said. “The rainwater is funneling in and washing out a path through the center of the plant.”

  As they approached the crane and dump truck that she and Otto had seen on their visit, she said, “Those haven’t moved. Look at these buildings. Beacon has been here for over ten years. Even if they are working on new technology, you’d think they would have dismantled some of the buildings.”

  He pointed upward, toward the skyline, where the exposed beams of one of the larger buildings looked like a giant metal erector set. “They’ve obviously done some work. The outside walls are down.”

  “There were ten units when it was in full production. Count them now. Still ten. Actually eleven with the new building. They’ve expanded the plant!” Josie said.

  They approached the pilot unit from the right side in order to stay out of the security light. Dillon caught her hand before they reached the side door. “You’re sure this is safe? We don’t have any protective gear.”

  “We wore hard hats the other day. That was it. Same as Paiva. With his experience, I can’t imagine he’d walk around outside if things weren’t safe.”

  As they approached the side door, Josie realized the door’s window was blacked out with a tinted film, but light was visible around the edges. She placed her head against the glass and saw lights on inside the building and the vague outline of several men in white suits working around machinery.

  The door opened suddenly and Josie faced a man wearing a full hazmat suit and helmet.

  “Who the hell are you?” he yelled. The sound was muffled from the headgear, but his voice was loud and angry.

  After the initial shock of getting caught, Josie pulled her badge from her back jeans pocket. Dillon stepped back into the shadow of the door. “My name is Josie Gray. I’m chief of police in Artemis. I’m investigating the possible murder of an employee of the Feed Plant.”