Into The Inferno Part 13

"How'd you know about that?"

"She 'pologized. Told me not to tell you. She said she was going through a rough time when she left."

"When did this conversation take place?"

"On the phone at Easter. She said she would give anything not to have left us. Said if she had to leave us with anybody in the world, she wanted it to be you."

"You made that part up."

"Well, yeah. That last."

"You scamp," I said, running my fingers through her hair.

"Daddy. Morgan just fixed it."

"Looks nice."

"It would look nicer if it was like Audrey Hepburn's." A couple of nights earlier the girls had seen Roman Holiday Roman Holiday and, like filmgoers everywhere, had fallen in love with Hepburn, as well as with her gamin hairstyle. I was still trying to decide whether they would regret cutting their hair. and, like filmgoers everywhere, had fallen in love with Hepburn, as well as with her gamin hairstyle. I was still trying to decide whether they would regret cutting their hair.

On the drive into town on I-90 we pa.s.sed the accident site where Stan Beebe lost his life. The only reminder that there'd been a fatality was a swatch of small trees his truck had knocked down. I imagined Marsha would come out and put up a white cross to mark the spot. Or maybe some members of the department would do it. Anyway, I wouldn't be around to see it.

At the fire station Ben and Karrie quickly took all three girls under their wing, while I went into the watch office and used my last few minutes before the noon meeting to glance at the shipping manifest I'd picked up at Continental.

The manifest sheets were all copies, but Cleve had handed me several other pieces of paper that were originals. I hadn't bothered to look at any of it on the way home or at the car dealership. Some sort of procrastination thing. Trying to hold back my own demise. It's harder to investigate your own end than you would think.

Holly's load had originated in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she'd made several stops to pick up merchandise. I wasn't good at reading things like trucking manifests with all their columns and abbreviations, but I did manage to scribble down a list: 26crated bicycles-Spears Bicycles Partners, to Seattle 44boxes of bicycle accessories-Spears Bicycles Partners, to Seattle 32boxes of paper towels-Bounty, to Seattle 16boxes of hot sauce-Tamale Brothers, to Seattle 10containers of Coca-Cola "product"-Coca-Cola, Inc., to Seattle 4boxes books-Canyon View Systems, to Redmond 3boxes miscellaneous-JCP, Inc., to San Jose via Seattle 3bales comic books and a.s.sorted magazines-Spencer Publishing, to Bellevue 6large boxes clothing-the Gap, to Seattle 8small boxes miscellaneous-DuPont, Westinghouse, to Seattle 12boxes a.s.sorted goods-Pacific Northwest Paint Contractors, to Tacoma

"Hey, Jim," Ian Hjorth said, peeking into the office. "The meeting next door is about to start."

"Sure."

What caught my eye on the list was that three of the boxes marked miscellaneous had been shipped from Tennessee to Seattle but were ultimately destined for San Jose. The shipper was JCP, Inc., which most likely stood for Jane's California Propulsion, Inc. But I'd already called them and they'd denied shipping anything through the Northwest last February.

"Jim?" It was Hjorth again.

"I'm coming."

When I'd called Jane's earlier, I'd wondered how Mr. Stuart could have been so certain without checking. People that c.o.c.ksure, in my estimation, were frequently wrong.

I was now certain that our woes had originated in Holly's rig, not the chicken truck.

Surely we wouldn't have been the only people to contract this had our problems originated with the chicken truck. Wouldn't we have heard about zombie chicken stranglers at the local chicken plants?

As far as I knew, all the chicken stranglers were still wrenching heads.

At five minutes before twelve, I walked next door to the city offices, where a crowd of officials had gathered. It was almost intimidating to see what I'd triggered.

I was under immense pressure to sway these folks to my viewpoint, yet I had no physical evidence to present, nothing but stories and speculation that now began to seem outlandish. I would have felt a whole lot more secure in my arguments if Stan Beebe had allowed events to unfold on their own, so that we knew what would have happened to him. It was a selfish thought.

I couldn't help having misgivings about the outcome of this meeting. For one thing, Stephanie Riggs hadn't shown up yet.

Also, I'd been counting on the shipping manifest to include some exotic chemical or biohazard, had been hoping the Department of Defense had been shipping germ cultures for their latest secret weapons. That would have at least given our search for an antidote some sort of direction. I could hardly claim we'd been poisoned by bicycle parts or hot sauce. I wasn't happy that the guy at Jane's had lied about shipping in February, but there could be other explanations for that.

I was stuck with Stan Beebe's story, our fire department victims, and, of course, my own symptoms, which I was not planning to put forth for public review. Tell these people I was a goner, and inside of thirty minutes every busybody in town would know. Who wanted all the neighborhood biddies bringing over ca.s.seroles? People would want to pray with me. Could you imagine? The Toyota dealer would repossess the car. My phone wouldn't stop ringing.

Besides, I was still trying to figure out how to tell my daughters, and I certainly didn't want them to hear it through the grapevine.

Karrie, the two Bellevue medics on duty that day, and Jackie Feldbaum's common-law husband were all in attendance. I mingled with the fire personnel from other departments, making small talk until Steve Haston asked everyone to gather upstairs in the meeting room, where we found a long table surrounded by folding chairs. Latecomers, of which there were over a dozen, were forced to stand against the wall. Me included.

Mayor Haston took his place at the head of the table. He'd never been much of a commander, but he'd taken this task upon himself, his somber mood and height dominating the room. Introspective, p.r.o.ne to being overly fastidious in small things, when he did take charge of something Steve Haston was known as a control freak, so that city council meetings became almost unbearable as he fl.u.s.tered and quibbled endlessly over trivialities. He'd been like that as a volunteer firefighter, too. Had driven everyone nuts.

After Lorie and Gloria skipped town together, local gossips told me he'd been a domineering husband, that he'd thrown a fit when Gloria wanted to work outside his office, that he'd controlled family expenditures with an iron fist and hadn't allowed her to have her own friends, that every major decision concerning Karrie had been his. Without a shred of proof, I'm ashamed to say I believed every word of it. Which made me wonder what people believed about me and Lorie.

After introducing each of the princ.i.p.als and reading off their credentials from notes typed up beforehand, Haston thanked everyone for coming and introduced me.

24. BURY ME SLOWLY; I MAY HAVE A FEW LAST WORDS.

By nature I was not a public speaker, yet I'd had enough experience in front of groups at Six Points that it didn't bother me.

What made it troublesome today was that I was trying to talk these citizens into saving my life.

I knew it. They didn't. And wouldn't.

I told the group about Chief Newcastle, about the autopsy report and the discovery that his hands were coated with an unidentified white substance that looked like candle wax but did not come off. I detailed the events and symptoms surrounding the accidents that Stan Beebe, Jackie Feldbaum, and Joel McCain all had. Using the grease board in the front of the room I listed the seven-day progression of symptoms as Beebe and Holly had delineated them. Anybody who noticed my hands were blemished was circ.u.mspect enough not to mention it. I told them about Holly, the truck accident, the fact that the only place all of these people's paths intersected was on I-90 in February.

Sadly, I could tell from the looks on their faces my discourse had not won them over. At least, not all of them.

Dr. Brashears spoke after I did. Brashears was a heavy man, balding, with a wide, flat, florid face and eyes windowed by black-framed gla.s.ses. After equivocating about doctor-patient privilege, he confessed he'd had two patients recently, Jackie and Stan, both members of the fire department, whose symptoms had not been dissimilar to the symptoms on the list on the board, that one of them had sustained ma.s.sive brain damage that had presented very much like a stroke. One of Joel McCain's doctors spoke next, had discovered the same basic symptoms pertained to Joel and confirmed that his fall had not caused his brain injury. This doctor left for an appointment as soon as he finished speaking.

Through contacts he had at the University of Washington, Haston had brought an environmental chemist to the meeting, a wisp of a woman named Esther Mulherin.

When she wasn't at the University of Washington, Mulherin worked for Electron Laboratory Research in Kenmore. She'd previously made a name for herself researching polymer membranes for studies of ion selectivity characteristics. Ms. Mulherin wore wire-rimmed gla.s.ses and had a self-effacing demeanor and manner of dress that I felt sure made her next to invisible in any crowd. She was the only speaker who remained sitting, explaining that the Chem Sources book for this year listed 155,000 chemicals in use in the United States, that most of these had not been tested on humans. In other words, the list of possibilities for this particular offense, if it was chemical in nature, was boundless. One thing that puzzled Mulherin was the lag time between what we believed was the date of the contamination and the onset of symptoms.

Mulherin expressed a strong desire to be part of the core group studying this, saying she felt it was a wonderful opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a potentially deadly breakthrough. As ghoulish as it sounded, I had the feeling the more people got sick, the better she was going to like it.

When this one dragged on, I began to remember why I hated meetings. Some of the attendees were convinced we had a problem. Others remained dubious. What everybody did agree on was that if we did have a problem, it would affect other fire departments in the region as well as the public at large. On that basis it was decided to set up a committee to study and follow the events in North Bend, to make findings, to come up with recommendations, and, if any more cases came to light, to alert other state and county departments and the public. Everyone agreed it was too soon to make a media announcement.

No one wanted to spread needless panic.

No one but me.

I tried to argue the point. If we went to the media, maybe we would find somebody out there who knew something. I could have tried by myself, but I wanted the imprimatur of this group behind me. In the end, the panic argument won the day, as if the public were going to run screaming out of their houses and jump off cliffs when they saw this on the evening news.

Click and Clack, aka Ian Hjorth and Ben Arden, came in late and raised the possibility that our meth lab in the woods back in May might have triggered this. I didn't think so, but I couldn't stop them from talking it to death.

We'd responded on the North Fork of the Snoqualmie River, driving up a steep road used mostly by logging trucks. After a quarter mile of climbing, the road turned into gravel and dirt.

Two miles in we found a clandestine methamphetamine lab.

By the time we arrived, the cooks were long gone, although the lab was still brewing product. We called the county sheriff's office and roped off the area until an environmental cleanup company could dispose of the chemicals.

We'd hosed and scrubbed our boots thoroughly, but the possibility remained that one or more of us had dragged some poison back to the station. Holly had not been there. Nor had I seen her in person afterward. But what if, asked Ben Arden, the symptoms of exposure to a meth lab were similar to our symptoms?

The deputy chief for Bellevue said he'd researched drug labs after the Bellevue department found two inside their city limits. While the health effects of the various chemical compounds used in manufacturing methamphetamines were onerous-including, in the short term, headaches, nausea, dizziness, decreased mental function, shortness of breath, and chest pain, which none of us had experienced back in May-the longer-term reactions included cancer, brain damage, miscarriages, heart problems, and even death. The chemicals involved could range from toluene, anhydrous ammonia, and ether to even phosgene gas.

I had to admit some of those symptoms were chronicled in Beebe's seven-day cycle. All in all, though, it appeared unlikely that the drug lab was the cause of our problems.

It was suggested that there were any number of scenarios in which our loved ones might be potential victims, that our causal agent might be chemical, bacterial, or viral, that Jackie's husband, McCain's wife, and Beebe's children were at risk and should be examined. It hadn't occurred to me until that moment, but it was possible I had placed Britney and Allyson in danger. Morgan Neumann might have it, or Morgan's mother, Helen.

Was it possible I'd tracked a virus into the house on my shoes, that Allyson and Britney, who liked to traipse around the house barefoot, had picked it up on the soles of their feet? Could it be that I was going to be brain-dead in June, that my daughters would follow in July?

The thought paralyzed me.

For many long minutes I found it difficult to follow the discussion, unable to move or speak.

The fire department had been my life, as well as the source of a great deal of good in our family. It had given us the money to pay our bills and put food on the table, a roof over our heads. Now I was forced to confront the possibility that it might also be the worst thing that ever happened to us.

By the time I'd regained my senses, the discussion was waning.

A study group was formed consisting of Steve Haston, myself, a captain from Eastside Fire and Rescue, Ms. Mulherin, Dr. Brashears, and one other to be named later. Our first committee meeting would be on Monday.

By Monday I would be strapped into a wheelchair.

They could wheel me in as exhibit number one.

I don't know what I had expected. These people all had jobs and lives to go back to. I didn't have anything but waxy hands, a headache, and the dilemma of how to tell my daughters they were going to be fatherless. It was clear I was on my own here. These people weren't going to save me.

Steve Haston closed the meeting with a lengthy speech, the longest of the day, and it was while he orated that I began to suspect he had preselected himself as the next head of the fire department. Why not? All the rest of us would be over at Alpine Estates sucking mush. This was all speculation on my part, but it was so like Haston, who seemed to reinvent himself every five to ten years. He'd been a cop. A musician in a string band. An accountant. A cuckold. A mayor. Why not fire chief?

The syndrome seemed to have given me a sixth sense. Yesterday I'd known what Stephanie Riggs was going to say several times before she said it and had actually completed a couple of sentences for her. This morning at Continental Freightways I knew exactly how to terrorize Cleve. Now I knew Haston was angling for the chief's job.

As the meeting disbanded, Brashears motioned that he wanted to talk to me in private. After the room emptied, he said, "What day are you on?"

"You think anybody else noticed?"

"Not that I could tell."

"Day three."

"You seeing a doctor?"

"Yes."

"You need anything at all, get in touch. I mean that."

"I will."

The thought that he was speaking to a dead man made Brashears look at the walls, the carpet, anything but me. Then, without another word, he left.

25. WHAT WE GOT HERE IS A NICKEL HOLDING UP A DOLLAR.

Outside on the sidewalk, Ms. Mulherin cornered me. She stood so close and was so short that she had to look almost straight up at me, her neck cranked back at an angle that reminded me of a worm on a hook. For a moment I thought she'd made the same observation Brashears had and was going to talk about it here on the sidewalk in front of G.o.d and everybody.

Ms. Mulherin said, "Organophosphates. Have you thought about that?"

"I've been kind of-"

"Because they're everywhere. If you think about it. Parathion. Malathion. Pesticides are everywhere. And if you think about it, organophosphates are readily translocated in living organisms. Have you thought about this?"

"I'm sure that's more in line with your expertise than mine."

"Yes, well, uh-huh. Hmmm. I'm sure you know generally with organophosphates you see symptoms within two hours. Difficulty swallowing, loss of appet.i.te, nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, and even diarrhea. Was any of this reported?" She had a face that had seen too much sun, lines around her eyes, even around her ears. Her lips were almost nonexistent, as if she were trying to suck a straw some jokester had put a pea in. "You think I could visit your fire station with some of my grad students? We might be able to pick up traces of-"

"Be my guest. Show up whenever you like."

"Maybe at the end of the week?"

"Fine by me." She was going to write a paper on this. I could see it. She was going to gain prestige in the academic world standing on our dead bodies. To her, we were organisms to be studied, questioned, dissected, and eventually autopsied.

The King County Executive, who'd been glad-handing on the sidewalk with some of the other partic.i.p.ants, came over and interrupted Ms. Mulherin, as if interrupting was something he'd been commissioned to do by the county. He was a tall man, almost as tall as my six-three, though easily fifty or sixty pounds heavier, most of it in his belly.

"Look, Swope," he said. "A couple of the Eastside guys were talking, and they seem to think you folks probably got into some rat poison or something. Don't get me wrong. It's not that I'm not backing you. Because I am. It's just that I need to see more evidence before I can commit to anything. Right now I'm about as convinced there's an epidemic as I'm convinced cows can fly." Mulherin gave him a dry look. "You get some proof, come see me. We'll take it to the governor, you and I together."

The combination of Mulherin's detached ghoulishness and this man's coldly reasoned incredulity lit a fuse in me.

"I get some proof," I said, "I'll take it to the news, and the first thing I'll tell them is you were stalling while the public health was at risk. That people turning into vegetables wasn't something you had time for."

"Now, now, now. What I said was-"

"f.u.c.k what you said!"

I turned and walked away. n.o.body concealed what they were thinking better than a former devout follower of the Sixth Element of the Saints of Christ, so the burst of anger surprised me almost as much as it did him.

I'd cooled off by the time I found the girls in the rec room, knocking b.a.l.l.s around on the billiard table. Morgan was officiating good-naturedly. After a few words of encouragement, I went into the officers' room, where I dialed Holly's home number in Tacoma.

It rang eight times before I heard Holly on the answering machine.

The sound of her voice choked me up.

I left a brief message and dialed Tacoma General. After a few minutes, a woman informed me Dr. Riggs was no longer affiliated with the hospital.