Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [79]
“A doctor of medicine?”
“Yes.”
Hillburn and Dobson looked at each other for a second, and then Hillburn looked at Stephanie for a long while as Dobson directed his attention back to his laptop. Finally, Dobson looked up from his typing again and said, “We’ve never had anything even remotely like this.”
“What have you had?” I asked.
“Well, unfortunately, company policy prohibits us from discussing that.”
“Company policy,” said Hillburn.
“And company policy would also preclude you from admitting you had something like this even if you did, wouldn’t it?” I said.
“More than likely,” Hillburn admitted.
“So what sorts of previous health concerns are you prepared to admit to? And did you have any products in a fire at Southeast Travelers’ shipping facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee, three years ago?”
“Before we answer any of your questions, we’ll need to see the materials,” Hillburn said. “The actual materials from the crash site.”
“You’ve got the shipping manifest in front of you.”
“We know that. We need to look at the materials. The truck trailer and so forth.”
“We don’t have the truck trailer. I told you the accident was last winter.”
“What do you mean, you don’t have the trailer?”
“I mean all that stuff got hauled off months ago.”
“So how do you know the accident had anything to do with these health problems you’re talking about?”
“We don’t. Not for sure.”
“You sure you don’t have any of the materials?” Hillburn asked.
“Just that manifest.”
Hillburn and Dobson looked at each other; Dobson was already folding up his laptop. They were out the door before I could stop them. As the door closed behind them, Dobson said, “I guess that’s all we need then.”
“What the hell were you shipping?” I yelled at the closed door. I followed them outside.
“You have any more problems with this, give us a call,” Hillburn said as if he were being helpful.
“Wait a minute!” I screamed at their backsides, but neither of them slowed, not until they’d reached their rental. “We’ve got people who are going brain-dead here. I’m one of them. You’ve gotta damn well tell me what you think is happening!”
For half a minute they looked at me like two owls in a thunderstorm, neither willing to concede anything. Then they quickly got into their car and drove away.
“Sons of bitches!” I said.
Stephanie was waiting for me at the front of the station.
I said, “They’re assuming because we can’t pin them down on it they can skate in a court of law.”
“I’m not so sure they knew exactly what we were talking about,” Stephanie said.
“They seemed like nice guys,” Karrie said as we went back into the station. “I mean, they came all this way to help.”
“They came all this way to cover their butts. When they found out they weren’t in trouble, they packed up and left. They weren’t here to help.”
We went back to the office at the rear of the station, where Stephanie called her aunt, again without result.
Last night she’d updated me on Marge DiMaggio. After her husband died, DiMaggio took over the running of Canyon View Systems in Redmond, Washington, and put everything she had into it. Now the company was on the verge of being sold for a “staggering amount of money.” I recalled Marge had tried to talk Holly into investing in their stock, telling her that in a matter of months the value would skyrocket.
Ben and Karrie went to the other computer to look up anything they could find on chicken-related illnesses, a channel of investigation for which Stephanie still held out hope. Karrie seemed along for the ride, which was strange considering she’d been in Holly’s truck with the rest of us. I kept thinking about how abruptly Hillburn and Dobson had lost interest in us. Stephanie called an expert on industrial poisons and gathered more information on toluene. Nobody had any brainstorms.
At ten-thirty I took a call from Ms. Mulherin, the environmental chemist from the University of Washington, her voice sounding unoiled over the phone. “I understand the committee’s being disbanded,” she said.
“What?”
“I heard the committee’s been