Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [68]
30. HERE COMES ONE NOW
The Italian restaurant was across from the mountaineering shop and just up the street from the bike store.
After we ordered, Stephanie leaned toward me, pressing her torso forward so that the table put a horizontal dent across her as if she were a foldout paper doll. She was pretty enough to be a paper doll, her hair pulled back into a loose ponytail, her pale-blue eyes full of life, a slight swatch of freckles across her nose and cheeks. She was exactly the sort of woman who never would have had anything to do with me unless forced to. “I believe I may be on the verge of finding out what happened,” she said. “At least a good portion of it.”
“And?”
“I thought it would be something we found in the hospital, you know, the results of one of the tests we did on Holly, or on you, but your tests are all coming out normal. Just like hers. So last night I got on the Internet and began trying all sorts of things with various search engines. And there it was.”
I must have done something with my face, because she said, “I’m sorry. I guess you want the Reader’s Digest version and here I am giving you the unabridged version. I’ve found three cases in Tennessee that are almost identical to what we’re seeing here. All firefighters.”
“Chattanooga?”
“Yes. Did you find that, too? Happened after a fire in a shipping facility, which just happens to be where my sister’s cargo originated the night she had the accident. Same city, different shipping facility. When I called this morning, they told me to speak to their lawyers. Their lawyers said if I had a suit, to file it; if not, they couldn’t tell me anything. I’ve left a couple of calls with their fire department, but they’re having some sort of conference, and everybody from the chief on down is out of the office.”
“I spoke to a firefighter named Drago. I think we should call him back.” Stephanie handed me her cell phone and I dialed the number from memory. It was one o’clock in North Bend, three o’clock in Chattanooga.
Drago answered the phone himself this time. I reminded him of who I was and skipped the amenities. “Tell me why you warned me about a possible explosion.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, man. Who are you?”
I ran through it all again. “Somebody called me earlier, but how do I know it was you? Start from the top. Tell me exactly what you got and how you think you got it.”
The man was off his rocker. As I spoke, he interrupted repeatedly in an effort, apparently, to make sure I wasn’t with the media or a private drug company, or an insurance company. You could tell he was nuts, not so much by what he said, although there were plenty of clues there, but by the staccato sentences and the up-and-down tone of his voice. I’d never heard anyone talk quite like that.
I told him as plainly as I could who I was and what had been happening to the North Bend Fire Department. When I gave him a list of the symptoms, he made me go over it twice, just like Santy Claus.
After I told him I was on day three of the syndrome, that my doctor thought I would be a zombie by the end of the week, that we’d just come back from a trailer explosion that could have wiped out the entire department, he said, “Lookit. Three years ago we had a couple of rigs respond to a fire at a place called Southeast Travelers. A freight outfit. They’re still running trucks not two miles from here. What makes it so tragic is we could have pissed and put it out. It was just a silly little room fire. What we did was, we ran a line in with two guys on the pipe. Within two weeks those two guys plus one of our fire investigators were in the hospital. Pretty much the same symptoms you’re describing. Brain-dead by the end of the month.
“All three had been at Southeast, and all three had moved packages and freight around. Those little shits at Southeast tried to deny it, but there was only one place it could have happened. Doctors around here thought they might have gotten into some insecticide. But that storeroom