Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [148]
“Freak accidents,” DiMaggio said. “One in a billion.”
“Go tell that to your niece in Tacoma General.”
I stared hard at DiMaggio.
DiMaggio stared back, basking in the confidence that science and law were on her side. I kicked the Bible that had gone unnoticed. It cartwheeled across the floor until it hit Donovan’s leg. He groaned. “You were shipping this stuff across the country in Bibles,” I said. “You had accidents in Chattanooga and North Bend and God knows where else. You lost people right here in this plant. Right under your nose.”
“Books make good insulators,” Donovan said, from the floor. We all looked down at him in astonishment. “Phil found a warehouse full of ’em. Got ’em for a song.”
“Why don’t you tell us how your husband really died?” I asked.
The room grew silent. Clarice froze. The bald man’s pate was beginning to shine with perspiration. I had the feeling they’d all bought into the heart attack story, that Marge’s hesitation in the face of my accusation was giving them pause.
DiMaggio sat down in her padded swivel chair and began tidying her desktop, as if keeping busy would fend off my interrogation. “My husband worked himself to death trying to make Canyon View a success. William Armitage was a thief and a liar.”
“Who you had killed.”
“This has all been for Phil.”
“He got some of that crap on his skin, didn’t he? Phil did. Back before you knew how it affected people. Back when it was in a more potent form. When it didn’t take five months to make someone sick.”
“Took about five days,” Donovan said, gasping for breath.
DiMaggio leaned forward, licked a finger, and turned a page on her desk calendar. “Our hands were tied. If we’d talked about it publicly, the sale would never have gone through.”
“There’s a letter on your desk says your husband died from D number fifty-six. Others in the company got contaminated, too, didn’t they?”
DiMaggio scanned the papers strewn across the top of her desk until she found what I was referring to. “Armitage was a criminal.”
I looked at Clarice and the man at the window. “I’m guessing you guys don’t know about the antidote?”
“You want the truth?” DiMaggio seemed to be speaking more to her coworkers than to me, but it was obvious from Clarice’s reaction that this was the first she’d heard of an antidote. “We had a deadline. We didn’t have time to file affidavits and watch federal inspectors crawling all over the office. Mr. Swope, I don’t expect you to understand, but whenever science makes breakthroughs, there are casualties. I warned Holly. I warned her, in the event of an accident, she was to call before she let anybody inside that truck. But by the time she called, you’d all been inside. There wasn’t enough antidote for that.”
“There really is an antidote?” The man at the window was sweating even more heavily now, his shirt stained with it.
“We’ll talk about this later.” DiMaggio took a deep breath and picked up the phone on her desk.
I said, “Did you know what they had planned for Achara?”
“Scott handles the cleanup operations.”
“That’s what you call murder? Cleanup?”
“Achara’s dead?” Clarice was dumbstruck.
“In a fire,” DiMaggio said. “The police think this man set it.”
“Donovan set it. He told me as much. He thought I was inside with my kids. He killed Achara.”
When all eyes in the room froze on something behind me, I turned slowly and saw two SWAT team members in black jumpsuits and Kevlar vests. They had rifles pointed at my chest.
“Drop it, buddy!” one of them shouted.
“Shoot him!” DiMaggio screamed. “He’s got a gun. He’s going to kill us. Shoot him.”
“Drop the gun, asshole! Drop it now!”
There was only one way I could think of to stall them and at the same time to avoid getting killed on the spot.
I pointed the pistol at my temple and pulled my swollen and bloodied mouth into the most addlepated grin I could muster. “Make a move, I’ll pull the trigger. Swear to God.”
64. DON’T BURY ME UNTIL I GIVE THE SIGNAL
It took a few minutes for the standoff to move outside, the two SWAT team members, joined by six more men and one