Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [73]
“Yes.”
“Headaches? Ringing in the ears?”
“Yes. How did you—”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. What does it mean?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“How could it mean nothing? Why ask if it means nothing?”
“Just please bear with me. This is a standard list of questions we’re required to go over. What other symptoms are there?”
I listed them, and he seemed to be writing it all down. Afterward, he said, “Not us. It wasn’t anything we have. We don’t work with any product that would cause anyone to go brain-dead.”
“What about the rest of the symptoms?”
“We don’t work with anything that could cause brain death.”
“What do you work with?”
“As I said before. Our work is classified. Lieutenant Swope, what if we were to send a couple of representatives up there?”
“Listen, if you have anything that might be causing our problems, tell me. There are people going through this right now.”
“We’ll have a couple of representatives up there in three hours.”
“What? You have a company jet?”
“No. They’ll be flying commercial. Good-bye, Lieutenant Swope.”
“Wait a minute. Did your company have any products in a shipping facility fire at a place called Southeast Travelers in Chattanooga three years ago?”
“I really couldn’t tell you. As I said, our representatives will be seeing you shortly.”
We hung up and I related the conversation to Stephanie, who said, “They’ve probably been sued before and have instructions not to say anything. No doubt that’s why they’re sending people up here, too.”
“It sounded to me like he knew what we had before I told him. I think these guys know what’s going on.”
“I want to talk to my aunt. If her company helped out with the investigation in Chattanooga, maybe she knows something.”
“Apparently she doesn’t know what the symptoms in Tennessee were, or she would have recognized them in Holly.”
“Canyon View is a big company. She might not know anything at all, but somebody there will.”
Stephanie picked up her cell phone and punched in a number, asked for Marge DiMaggio, and then listened for a moment and hung up. “Went to Portland this afternoon for a meeting. Staying overnight. She’s got a meeting up here at eight-thirty tomorrow morning. She’ll call beforehand.”
DAY FOUR
32. THE CURVE OF HER THIGH
With all that was happening, you’d think insomnia would have robbed me of my ability to sleep, but you’d be wrong. Once again I slept like the dead. No tossing or turning. No tottering trips to the loo in the wee hours. No memory even of having gone to bed. Just a blissful sleep that seemed to last forever. Maybe my nights were a foretaste of brain death. Maybe I was going to be happier than I’d ever been.
Thursday. By Sunday it would be over.
It occurred to me as I contemplated these things that going to sleep at night couldn’t be too different from death. Suddenly a great calm descended upon me.
I began to wonder why any of us feared death.
Last night had been a stretch in heaven.
I yawned lazily and glanced over at the clock. It was eight. I hadn’t slept this late in years.
Although it would be an hour before we got any direct sunlight, the rooms in our small house were slowly filling with the early morning June dawn. The house was quiet, motes of dust drifting in the dead air. I was filled with the sheer wonder of being alive.
Because we were almost directly underneath the west face of Mount Si, the morning sun didn’t reach us until ten-thirty or eleven in winter and not until nine-ish on the longest day of the year, which would be next week. In our stronghold under the mountain it was always a little cooler than the rest of the township, a little dewier, and in winter a little frostier.
I had slept in a pair of rumpled sleeping drawers and an oversize North Bend Fire and Rescue T-shirt, was now padding around the hardwood floors of our house barefoot wondering where everybody was. It was a small house with a living room, two bedrooms, and a dayroom that served as our family room just off the open kitchen.
They were on the futon in the family room, Britney, Allyson, and Stephanie