Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [54]
The King County Executive, who’d been glad-handing on the sidewalk with some of the other participants, 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—”
“Fuck what you said!”
I turned and walked away. Nobody 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 balls 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.
“Her sister still there as a patient?”
“I believe so.”
“She okay? I’m a friend.”
“Her condition hasn’t changed.”
It was hard to realize how much hope I’d invested in Stephanie Riggs, a woman who really had no reason to help me.
She’d promised to call this morning.
Promised.
It was a bigger disappointment than it should have been. Between my dissatisfaction with the meeting and Stephanie’s failure to contact me, I was feeling as forgotten as a puppy in a locked garage.
I dug through my wallet for Stephanie’s cell phone number, but I’d misplaced it.
I sat down with the shipping manifest from Continental Freightways. DuPont was a possibility. They were a chemical company. But what bothered me more than the manifest was that I’d been lied to by the guy at JCP, Inc. I picked up the phone and called them back, asked for Mr. Stuart, was told he was out to lunch. No shit, I thought. He was out to lunch when I spoke to him. They took my phone number and promised he would call back.
In the officers’ room I looked up Jane’s on the Internet. It was a rocket fuel company, or had been. Now they were researching hydrogen fuel cell technology for all sorts of things: spacecraft, jets, automobiles, hovercraft, military vehicles, submarines. A quick glance at their literature told me they used platinum in their work. I didn’t see how platinum could have caused our problems, but then, what did I know?
While I was on the Internet, on a whim, I went to my favorite search engine and began trying out various phrases: downed firefighters, fatal firefighter illness, firefighter mystery casualty, brain-dead firefighters. After about twenty-five minutes of experimenting, I came across an obituary for a firefighter in Chattanooga, Tennessee:
Vic Swenson, former all-state tailback for the Olewah Owls and twenty-year veteran of the Chattanooga Fire Department, died yesterday after a long, undiagnosed illness, the result of the controversial Southeast Travelers Freight fire three years ago. For the past three years