Scratchgravel Road: A Mystery

by Tricia Fields

  “It isn’t safe for you to be walking around without someone who works here. That’s why we have No Trespassing signs posted. If you want to see someone, call ahead.”

  “I understand. I called too late tonight to meet with Mr. Paiva. I’ll call in the morning. Sorry for the problem. We’ll head back out.” Josie waved and turned and walked away. The door closed immediately behind her, but she was certain they were being watched.

  “Did you smell that place when he opened the door?” Dillon said. “I felt like the smell alone would be enough to burn my insides.”

  “Like sniffing battery acid,” she said.

  “Don’t you think it was odd he didn’t ask what you were talking about? You mentioned a murder investigation and he didn’t even acknowledge it.”

  “I’m sure the news of cops showing up spread like wildfire.”

  When they climbed back in the jeep Josie said, “Let’s make one more detour before we leave.”

  “We’re already busted. Why not?”

  “I’m pretty sure you have latent criminal tendencies,” she said.

  He squeezed her thigh as she turned the engine on and drove the jeep toward the back of the plant with the headlights still off.

  “Wait till you see this,” she said. Josie pulled in front of a lot the size of a football field, filled with black barrels, some of them double-stacked. She turned her headlights back on so Dillon could get the full effect. “This used to be the back parking lot when the factory was in full production. As the waste started to pile up, the back parking lot filled. The number of workers decreased as the waste increased, until the barrels eventually took up the entire lot.”

  They both sat in the car for some time, staring at hundreds of barrels, most of them rusted and corroded. “It’s one thing to read about this in the newspaper. It’s entirely different to see it in your town’s backyard,” she said.

  “They didn’t actually make the bombs here,” Dillon said. “This plant was just a part of the bigger process?”

  “The Feed Plant took raw uranium ore and turned it into uranium metal. They shipped it east to factories where they fed the uranium into reactors for nuclear weapons. See the numbers painted on the outside of the barrels? They tell the plant operators what kind of waste is inside each one. Enriched. Remelt materials. Whatever.”

  “How the hell do you know all this?” he asked.

  “After lunch today I spent some time on the Internet. While you were checking Beacon’s financials, I looked into their so-called safe-cleanup operations. I have to admit, they have a pretty good record. They seem to have a good reputation in the field.” Josie looked to her right and saw the miniature headlights from a golf cart approaching fast. “Damn.”

  “I hope you have bail-out powers. I don’t want to spend the night in jail,” he said.

  The golf cart stopped and a very angry Diego Paiva exited and approached the jeep. He was wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt, leather sandals, and a Cincinnati Reds ball cap.

  “I believe you just informed one of my employees that you were leaving, not continuing to trespass.” His voice was controlled but angry.

  Josie nodded slowly. “You’re right. I apologize. We’re on our way out now.”

  “Who is this man?”

  “This is Dillon Reese, a local accountant. He’s doing some pro bono work for the police department.”

  “What exactly does an accountant have to do with Beacon Pathways?”

  “This is a murder investigation, Mr. Paiva. The police ask intrusive questions from every possible angle. I understand what you’re feeling.”

  “I doubt you do.”

  “Investigations often make innocent people angry at what feels like an invasion into their privacy.”

  He pursed his lips and looked as if he were trying to calm his temper before speaking. “I assume that as an investigator, you are not given carte blanche to wander private property aimlessly? I believe that’s what warrants are issued for. I also believe you are way out of line.”

  Josie looked away from Diego and out across the barrels, and tried to phrase her response without cynicism, but he beat her to the punch.

  “Let’s not cloud your murder investigation with what appears to be your bigger issue.” He nodded his head toward the barrels. “I’m not sure what you expect here. Over two billion pounds of waste were my inheritance when I took over cleanup. Two billion pounds. That’s not waste you can take to a landfill. You can’t burn it. You can’t dump it in the ocean or bury it. So what do you do? People expect companies like Beacon to come in and clean things up with a broom and dustpan, but this is what I was left with.” He nodded again toward the barrels. “It doesn’t help when the police and media snoop around trying to find conspiracy when there is none. I’m not trying to hide anything here, Chief Gray. I’m trying to safely and effectively process this waste so you and I can raise our grandkids on this land without worry.”

  “I didn’t go looking for a conspiracy theory. Juan Santiago showed up in the desert with open wounds on his body.” She paused to gauge his response. His face remained impassive. “Preliminary findings are consistent with some form of radiation poisoning. He didn’t have cancer. That leaves one rational explanation.”

  Diego crossed his arms over his chest and smiled slightly, as if her explanation was amusing. “If this happened anywhere but here you wouldn’t even consider radiation. It would seem like a ridiculous idea.”

  “But it did happen here.” Josie could feel Dillon tense beside her and hoped he would remain out of the conversation.

  “There are a million different reasons a person might have open sores on his arms.”

  Josie caught his response. She had said Santiago’s sores were on his body. Diego obviously knew about the sores.

  “I have a few follow-up questions. Mind if I ask them now?”

  He said nothing but didn’t turn to leave, so Josie continued.

  “I’m wondering about worker safety. When workers go home at night, do they leave their work clothes here at the plant?”

  “Of course. We have strict safety guidelines. You’ll find Beacon’s safety record to be the best in the business. We have lockers where workers change into coveralls when they arrive. They wear something similar to a Geiger counter while here, and it is monitored by staff at the plant. They don’t leave before changing back into their civvies.”

  “But when we found Santiago’s body, he was wearing your company boots.” She paused for a moment. Diego said nothing. “It means his dead body was either carried out of the plant, or the safety rules aren’t followed as carefully as you imagine.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Friday morning Josie woke early. She lay on her side, staring at her open closet door in the moon’s predawn light, trying to find the detail that would connect the Santiago case. Finally, at a little before six she took a quick shower, dressed in her uniform, sent Chester out the kitchen door to lope back to Dell’s house, and left for work by 6:45. Sprawling gray clouds covered the sky and blocked out all traces of the morning sunrise. It was a dismal day, and Josie intended to make good use of it.

  When she arrived at the station, Brian Moore, the part-time night dispatcher, was hunched over a thick college-level textbook at the dispatcher station. He looked up with bleary red eyes and gave her a feeble smile. Brian had finished his law degree last year and was studying to take the bar exam for the second time. He had huge college debt and was working two part-time jobs to clear it. He was a nice guy who deserved a break.

  She smiled and pointed at the page. “There’s more yellow than white. Aren’t you supposed to narrow that down some?”

  His smile disappeared. “This will be the death of me yet. How do you highlight when every detail is important to the case?”

  Josie nodded. “Wish I could answer that myself. Any action last night?”

  “Nope. All’s quiet.”

  “Good news. Can you hand me the evidence key?�
��

  Brian fished the key out of the drawer in front of him and passed it across the desk to Josie. She wished him luck and headed for the evidence locker, where she signed her name on the clipboard hanging to the right of the door and flipped on the fluorescent lights. She found the Juan Santiago/Cassidy Harper document box on the shelves labeled 2012–2014. She left the larger box with the bowling ball and college textbooks on the shelf, and carried the shoebox-sized container over to the examination table.

  She looked at the paltry evidence through the plastic bags, fingering the wallet, the loose change, and the Case knife. She finally sat down at the table and aimed the desk lamp on the official inventory sheet that she had typed up. It listed all the items that were associated with the crime scene and that were either stored in the evidence room or were currently quarantined. She noted the clothing, the boots, the items in Santiago’s pocket, and tried to find anything amiss. She considered the wallet found in Cassidy’s car with no identification, but twenty-four dollars left behind. Had anything else been taken from him before he was left for dead?

  And then it hit her like a bump to the head. He had no keys. Otto had told her he picked up the keys to Santiago’s apartment from Junior Daggy. Otto had said the door was locked and the partial fingerprints he collected from the apartment all matched the set Josie had taken from the dead body. So, where were Santiago’s keys? Did Cassidy Harper have the keys, same as she had his wallet?

  Josie quickly packed the box back up, replaced it on the evidence shelf, and signed out on the log-in clipboard. Otto was just walking inside the front door of the department as Josie was giving the keys back to Brian.

  “Morning all,” he called.

  “Same to you,” she said.

  “Son. You need a bed and a pillow,” Otto said to Brian.

  He nodded. “Lou will be here any minute.”

  Josie walked beside Otto toward the back stairs. “I studied the evidence list this morning for the Santiago case. We missed something. What about the keys to his apartment?”

  “I know. I had to get them from Daggy,” Otto said.

  “If the keys are gone, what else might be gone?”

  “I didn’t find anything out of place. No stray fingerprints.”

  They reached the top of the stairs and Josie unlocked the office door and turned on the lights. She walked to the back of the office to make coffee and continued talking while Otto started his computer. “What was Santiago’s sole motivation for being here?”

  “He wanted to get enough money to buy a parcel of land,” Otto said.

  “And you didn’t find a dime in his apartment?”

  He shook his head. “Not a dime. No checks. No credit cards. Which I considered, but dismissed. He drove his money back home.”

  “We need to confirm what we heard from the workers at the Feed Plant. They claimed he made a trip to Mexico once a month to visit and take money home. We need to talk to his wife. How much did he bring home at a time? When was the last time he sent it?” Josie measured two heaping scoops and slid the basket into the coffeepot. “Maybe we’ve been so hung up on the radiation poisoning that we missed the real motivation for his killing. Maybe someone killed him for a shoebox full of money.”

  “Doesn’t explain the sores. Or the wallet with twenty-four dollars left in Cassidy’s car,” Otto said.

  Josie sat down at her desk and turned her chair toward Otto. “It’s driving me crazy. I feel like we’re missing something. A detail that’s right there.”

  “That means we’re close,” he said.

  “I had an interesting night last night.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to hear this,” he said.

  “Dillon and I drove over to the Feed Plant and snooped around.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You get caught?”

  “Yep. We found the pilot unit up and running. Men in white suits hard at work behind black-tinted windows. They caught us peeking in the door. They ran us off and we took a side trip to check out the barrels in the back lot. That’s when Paiva showed up on his golf cart to run us off.”

  His eyebrows went up again. “That guy must live there.” A smile spread across his face. “Got run off by the big dog. He give you grief?”

  She nodded. “He gave me a lecture on their safety record. The precautions they take, like changing into the company uniform when they arrive. Back into civvies before they leave. He acted surprised when I told him about Santiago wearing the company boots. I haven’t told him yet about the plant gates that were both unlocked to anyone wanting entrance.”

  Otto looked puzzled. “Hang on. Let’s think about the timeline.”

  Josie rolled her chair back over to her desk and found her notebook. She opened it to a blank page, propped it on her lap, and turned back to Otto.

  “Let’s work backwards from the time his body was found,” he said.

  “The body was found on Monday, the fifteenth. Cowan believes Santiago was killed late Saturday night or early Sunday morning,” she said.

  “We have nothing Friday or Saturday. Thursday was the last postmark on the mail I found on his table.”

  “Wednesday was the first day he didn’t show up to work.” Josie looked up from her notebook. “And it was the day he visited the nurse.”

  They both stared at their notes in silence, formulating their own questions.

  “First thing I want to know is Santiago’s work duties on Monday and Tuesday last week. I’ll call Skip and ask him to e-mail a detailed list,” Josie said.

  Otto was leaned back in his chair with one arm resting on his stomach, the other elbow resting on his forearm as he rubbed his chin. Josie had seen the pose countless times through her years of watching him puzzle through various cases.

  He said, “I want to know what he did on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. When I call his wife about receiving the money, I’ll ask if she knows what he did in his spare time. She said she hadn’t spoken with him for over a week on the phone, but that wasn’t unusual. They each had a disposable cell phone with limited minutes.”

  Josie squinted at Otto, trying to remember the details. “What was the situation with his cell phone?”

  “We haven’t found his phone, although his wife says he had a throwaway model. She told Lou the minutes were gone on her phone and her grandson took it. He’s now lost it. She claims the whole family is trying to track her phone down. Hoping he left them one last message.”

  “I want to visit Cassidy again too. See if she found a spare set of keys.” She stared at her notebook for a moment. She finally said, “I’ll check out Santiago’s place again. Maybe I’ll find a shoebox full of money we can send to his wife. I’ll stop by and see Diego Paiva on my way back. I’m sure he has an earful for me.” Josie stood and picked her jeep keys up off her desk. “Call me if you learn anything.”

  * * *

  Santiago’s apartment was barely illuminated from the gray morning seeping inside one curtainless window in the kitchen. Josie pulled a pair of latex gloves from her back pocket, pulled them on, and flipped the living room light switch.

  She broke the one-room apartment into quadrants to make sure that she didn’t overlook anything. She started with the bathroom, which was a quick search. She found a shower stall that allowed no storage of anything except shampoo and a bar of soap, and a medicine cabinet over the sink that held a few over-the-counter medications and shaving supplies.

  The kitchen area took more time. Josie checked each cabinet, top and bottom, the refrigerator, the oven and the drawer below it. Everything was neatly organized; the cans lined up with the labels facing out and three pasta boxes in a row. She checked under the bed and mattress, behind the headboard, and then tried the closet. She rifled through his clothing, arranged with shirts on the left, pants on the right. She checked the pockets for any stray papers.

  When she bent down on her knees to check the bottom of the closet, the shoes caught her eye immediately. A pair of tennis shoes an
d a pair of inexpensive loafers were lined up under the pants. A pair of cowboy boots were lying on their side, half on top of each other. A beige hand towel, the same color as the carpet that covered the entire apartment, lay partially over the boots and the loafers. She pulled her flashlight off the clip on her gun belt and shined the light on the floor. In the corner of the closet, behind a slight imprint made by the heels of the cowboy boots, was another flattened area. A space, roughly twelve inches by eight inches, was pressed into the carpet. Josie was certain a box had once been kept in the closet, covered by the towel: someone had knocked the boots out of the way and made off with Santiago’s money.

  * * *

  After Josie left, Otto sat at his desk and rifled through his notes until he found Abella Santiago’s phone number. It would have been better to have Marta call and talk with her, but she wouldn’t be on duty for several hours. Abella answered on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Santiago?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Officer Podowski. Could I speak with your daughter?”

  After several minutes the same daughter Otto had spoken with during his last phone call came on the line.

  “Yes. You have news?” Her voice was soft but anxious, her speech heavily accented.

  “I’m sorry. Just more questions. I’m hoping you can help me track down some information that may help us better understand what happened to your father.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll try and help you.”

  “From information we’ve gathered from people your father worked with, it sounds as if he was in the U.S. to save money to send home to his family. Would you agree with that?”

  “That was why he went to Texas.” Her voice broke as she continued. “He worked so hard for us.”

  “Can you tell me when he last sent you money?” Otto asked, his voice gentle.

  “Oh, he never mail money. He never—” She paused, obviously trying to come up with the correct words. “No banks in America. No mail. He was afraid of jail, then the bank would take the money.”