Part 13 (1/2)

”How'd you know about that?”

”She 'pologized. Told me not to tell you. She said she was going through a rough time when she left.”

”When did this conversation take place?”

”On the phone at Easter. She said she would give anything not to have left us. Said if she had to leave us with anybody in the world, she wanted it to be you.”

”You made that part up.”

”Well, yeah. That last.”

”You scamp,” I said, running my fingers through her hair.

”Daddy. Morgan just fixed it.”

”Looks nice.”

”It would look nicer if it was like Audrey Hepburn's.” A couple of nights earlier the girls had seen Roman Holiday Roman Holiday and, like filmgoers everywhere, had fallen in love with Hepburn, as well as with her gamin hairstyle. I was still trying to decide whether they would regret cutting their hair. and, like filmgoers everywhere, had fallen in love with Hepburn, as well as with her gamin hairstyle. I was still trying to decide whether they would regret cutting their hair.

On the drive into town on I-90 we pa.s.sed the accident site where Stan Beebe lost his life. The only reminder that there'd been a fatality was a swatch of small trees his truck had knocked down. I imagined Marsha would come out and put up a white cross to mark the spot. Or maybe some members of the department would do it. Anyway, I wouldn't be around to see it.

At the fire station Ben and Karrie quickly took all three girls under their wing, while I went into the watch office and used my last few minutes before the noon meeting to glance at the s.h.i.+pping manifest I'd picked up at Continental.

The manifest sheets were all copies, but Cleve had handed me several other pieces of paper that were originals. I hadn't bothered to look at any of it on the way home or at the car dealers.h.i.+p. Some sort of procrastination thing. Trying to hold back my own demise. It's harder to investigate your own end than you would think.

Holly's load had originated in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she'd made several stops to pick up merchandise. I wasn't good at reading things like trucking manifests with all their columns and abbreviations, but I did manage to scribble down a list: 26crated bicycles-Spears Bicycles Partners, to Seattle 44boxes of bicycle accessories-Spears Bicycles Partners, to Seattle 32boxes of paper towels-Bounty, to Seattle 16boxes of hot sauce-Tamale Brothers, to Seattle 10containers of Coca-Cola ”product”-Coca-Cola, Inc., to Seattle 4boxes books-Canyon View Systems, to Redmond 3boxes miscellaneous-JCP, Inc., to San Jose via Seattle 3bales comic books and a.s.sorted magazines-Spencer Publis.h.i.+ng, to Bellevue 6large boxes clothing-the Gap, to Seattle 8small boxes miscellaneous-DuPont, Westinghouse, to Seattle 12boxes a.s.sorted goods-Pacific Northwest Paint Contractors, to Tacoma

”Hey, Jim,” Ian Hjorth said, peeking into the office. ”The meeting next door is about to start.”

”Sure.”

What caught my eye on the list was that three of the boxes marked miscellaneous had been s.h.i.+pped from Tennessee to Seattle but were ultimately destined for San Jose. The s.h.i.+pper was JCP, Inc., which most likely stood for Jane's California Propulsion, Inc. But I'd already called them and they'd denied s.h.i.+pping anything through the Northwest last February.

”Jim?” It was Hjorth again.

”I'm coming.”

When I'd called Jane's earlier, I'd wondered how Mr. Stuart could have been so certain without checking. People that c.o.c.ksure, in my estimation, were frequently wrong.

I was now certain that our woes had originated in Holly's rig, not the chicken truck.

Surely we wouldn't have been the only people to contract this had our problems originated with the chicken truck. Wouldn't we have heard about zombie chicken stranglers at the local chicken plants?

As far as I knew, all the chicken stranglers were still wrenching heads.

At five minutes before twelve, I walked next door to the city offices, where a crowd of officials had gathered. It was almost intimidating to see what I'd triggered.

I was under immense pressure to sway these folks to my viewpoint, yet I had no physical evidence to present, nothing but stories and speculation that now began to seem outlandish. I would have felt a whole lot more secure in my arguments if Stan Beebe had allowed events to unfold on their own, so that we knew what would have happened to him. It was a selfish thought.

I couldn't help having misgivings about the outcome of this meeting. For one thing, Stephanie Riggs hadn't shown up yet.

Also, I'd been counting on the s.h.i.+pping manifest to include some exotic chemical or biohazard, had been hoping the Department of Defense had been s.h.i.+pping germ cultures for their latest secret weapons. That would have at least given our search for an antidote some sort of direction. I could hardly claim we'd been poisoned by bicycle parts or hot sauce. I wasn't happy that the guy at Jane's had lied about s.h.i.+pping in February, but there could be other explanations for that.

I was stuck with Stan Beebe's story, our fire department victims, and, of course, my own symptoms, which I was not planning to put forth for public review. Tell these people I was a goner, and inside of thirty minutes every busybody in town would know. Who wanted all the neighborhood biddies bringing over ca.s.seroles? People would want to pray with me. Could you imagine? The Toyota dealer would repossess the car. My phone wouldn't stop ringing.

Besides, I was still trying to figure out how to tell my daughters, and I certainly didn't want them to hear it through the grapevine.

Karrie, the two Bellevue medics on duty that day, and Jackie Feldbaum's common-law husband were all in attendance. I mingled with the fire personnel from other departments, making small talk until Steve Haston asked everyone to gather upstairs in the meeting room, where we found a long table surrounded by folding chairs. Latecomers, of which there were over a dozen, were forced to stand against the wall. Me included.

Mayor Haston took his place at the head of the table. He'd never been much of a commander, but he'd taken this task upon himself, his somber mood and height dominating the room. Introspective, p.r.o.ne to being overly fastidious in small things, when he did take charge of something Steve Haston was known as a control freak, so that city council meetings became almost unbearable as he fl.u.s.tered and quibbled endlessly over trivialities. He'd been like that as a volunteer firefighter, too. Had driven everyone nuts.

After Lorie and Gloria skipped town together, local gossips told me he'd been a domineering husband, that he'd thrown a fit when Gloria wanted to work outside his office, that he'd controlled family expenditures with an iron fist and hadn't allowed her to have her own friends, that every major decision concerning Karrie had been his. Without a shred of proof, I'm ashamed to say I believed every word of it. Which made me wonder what people believed about me and Lorie.

After introducing each of the princ.i.p.als and reading off their credentials from notes typed up beforehand, Haston thanked everyone for coming and introduced me.

24. BURY ME SLOWLY; I MAY HAVE A FEW LAST WORDS.

By nature I was not a public speaker, yet I'd had enough experience in front of groups at Six Points that it didn't bother me.

What made it troublesome today was that I was trying to talk these citizens into saving my life.

I knew it. They didn't. And wouldn't.

I told the group about Chief Newcastle, about the autopsy report and the discovery that his hands were coated with an unidentified white substance that looked like candle wax but did not come off. I detailed the events and symptoms surrounding the accidents that Stan Beebe, Jackie Feldbaum, and Joel McCain all had. Using the grease board in the front of the room I listed the seven-day progression of symptoms as Beebe and Holly had delineated them. Anybody who noticed my hands were blemished was circ.u.mspect enough not to mention it. I told them about Holly, the truck accident, the fact that the only place all of these people's paths intersected was on I-90 in February.

Sadly, I could tell from the looks on their faces my discourse had not won them over. At least, not all of them.

Dr. Brashears spoke after I did. Brashears was a heavy man, balding, with a wide, flat, florid face and eyes windowed by black-framed gla.s.ses. After equivocating about doctor-patient privilege, he confessed he'd had two patients recently, Jackie and Stan, both members of the fire department, whose symptoms had not been dissimilar to the symptoms on the list on the board, that one of them had sustained ma.s.sive brain damage that had presented very much like a stroke. One of Joel McCain's doctors spoke next, had discovered the same basic symptoms pertained to Joel and confirmed that his fall had not caused his brain injury. This doctor left for an appointment as soon as he finished speaking.

Through contacts he had at the University of Was.h.i.+ngton, Haston had brought an environmental chemist to the meeting, a wisp of a woman named Esther Mulherin.

When she wasn't at the University of Was.h.i.+ngton, Mulherin worked for Electron Laboratory Research in Kenmore. She'd previously made a name for herself researching polymer membranes for studies of ion selectivity characteristics. Ms. Mulherin wore wire-rimmed gla.s.ses and had a self-effacing demeanor and manner of dress that I felt sure made her next to invisible in any crowd. She was the only speaker who remained sitting, explaining that the Chem Sources book for this year listed 155,000 chemicals in use in the United States, that most of these had not been tested on humans. In other words, the list of possibilities for this particular offense, if it was chemical in nature, was boundless. One thing that puzzled Mulherin was the lag time between what we believed was the date of the contamination and the onset of symptoms.

Mulherin expressed a strong desire to be part of the core group studying this, saying she felt it was a wonderful opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a potentially deadly breakthrough. As ghoulish as it sounded, I had the feeling the more people got sick, the better she was going to like it.

When this one dragged on, I began to remember why I hated meetings. Some of the attendees were convinced we had a problem. Others remained dubious. What everybody did agree on was that if we did have a problem, it would affect other fire departments in the region as well as the public at large. On that basis it was decided to set up a committee to study and follow the events in North Bend, to make findings, to come up with recommendations, and, if any more cases came to light, to alert other state and county departments and the public. Everyone agreed it was too soon to make a media announcement.

No one wanted to spread needless panic.

No one but me.

I tried to argue the point. If we went to the media, maybe we would find somebody out there who knew something. I could have tried by myself, but I wanted the imprimatur of this group behind me. In the end, the panic argument won the day, as if the public were going to run screaming out of their houses and jump off cliffs when they saw this on the evening news.

Click and Clack, aka Ian Hjorth and Ben Arden, came in late and raised the possibility that our meth lab in the woods back in May might have triggered this. I didn't think so, but I couldn't stop them from talking it to death.

We'd responded on the North Fork of the Snoqualmie River, driving up a steep road used mostly by logging trucks. After a quarter mile of climbing, the road turned into gravel and dirt.