Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [47]
“We have someone here who’s sick, and we think it’s from that accident. We’re just trying to figure out what the product is that’s making our people sick.”
“Hey, look. I’m busy here. Hazardous materials are not our gig. Why don’t you go down the street to Consolidated? They might know something.”
“It was your company’s truck. Holly Riggs was driving.”
“Just goes to show they shouldn’t be letting girls behind the wheel.” He laughed. “Call Consolidated.”
The line went dead.
“Bastard.”
“Daddy, you said a bad word.” Having led the charge through the fire station, Allyson was behind me now, trailed by Britney and Morgan, who was trying to keep her cool, although it was clear she was overpowered by both the hardware and the stark immediacy of my profession. You could still smell smoke in the station from a fire we’d had three days ago.
We could look into the chickens if Stephanie found a cause for it, but until further notice, I was going to concentrate on whatever product or combination of products had been inside Holly’s truck. I found it much more credible that a chemical had caused our problem than chickens. Our reports hadn’t included a copy of the manifest for either truck. There had been no reason for it. I remembered a few things about the contents of Holly’s rig and had been wracking my brain all day yesterday and last night trying to recall a specific logo I’d seen on one of the boxes. I knew I’d read about the company in the Wall Street Journal just a day or two after the wreck, so it had stuck in my mind. The logo consisted of a winged lion inside a black circle. Today, without further thought, the name of the company popped into my head. Jane’s California Propulsion. I looked it up on the Internet and found my memory was dead-on—Jane’s California Propulsion, Inc. In San Jose.
Dialing one of the phone numbers provided on their Web page, I found myself getting shuffled from office to office. After explaining my problem to several individuals and then waiting for almost ten minutes while the earpiece spewed out easy-listening rock, I finally managed to get connected to a Mr. Stuart in their safety division.
“Mr. Stuart? I’m Lieutenant James Swope with the North Bend Fire and Rescue in Washington State. Some of our people are having health problems we’ve connected to a truck accident last February outside of town here.”
“That’s too bad, Lieutenant, but I don’t see how that has anything to do with us. We work with rocket propulsion systems.”
“There was a box on the truck with your company’s logo on it. At least, I’m pretty sure there was. It was a big accident, and we know quite a few of the packages on board were damaged. Some of them were leaking. We’re trying to ascertain what sorts of products you might have been shipping.”
“Well, the first thing you need to recognize is that we weren’t shipping anything last February. Most all of our trans-state shipping takes place during the warmer months.”
“You sure?”
“Positive. All of that goes through our office here. Sorry we couldn’t be more helpful.”
“Sorry to bother you.”
So much for slap-shot, hit-or-miss technique. I’d do the rest of this by the book. One step at a time. Making sure of my facts before I wasted any more time.
“Come on, guys,” I said to the girls, who were still in the room. “We’re going to take a little drive.”
Seattle was thirty miles away. These days with all the new housing developments infringing on the green hills above Snoqualmie and Issaquah and with the traffic feeding off Highway 18, I-90 was a mess. Still, it wasn’t until Mercer Island that we found ourselves stuck behind a mile of vehicles, the cab of my truck filling up with the odor of exhaust. My headache was worse than ever.
So this was it.
The last week of my life.
Sitting in a traffic jam. Terrific.
23. ALL THE CHICKEN STRANGLERS
Continental was located in a dusty industrial section of town several miles south of Seattle’s core, just off of East Marginal Way on Colorado Avenue, gray, dingy