Blind Eye (17 page)

Nuclear Fusion Test Facility

F
inally figuring out the name of the facility she was sitting in was a huge help. Now, she had pages and pages of information and drawings right in front of her.

Marion carefully pored over the folded maps that displayed a detailed view of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plan facility. The first drawings showed the building above ground as well as the small rooftop crane she'd seen when first arriving here. The elevator shaft was directly beneath the crane.

Curiously enough, the underground lab they were using was only a small fraction of the total footage of the facility. According to the drawings, on the far side of the elevator, a long series of sealed tunnels led to another entire wing. From the sketches, it appeared that the elevator had doors that could open into either facility.

Marion tried to remember those doors now. She'd only traveled down the shaft once. Unfortunately she had paid little attention to that kind of detail, but it was on the plans.

She adjusted the light and opened another folded section of the drawings.

The main tunnel running to the other underground section was labeled Test Drift. The tunnel opened out onto acres of subterranean vaults and storage areas. Though she could see scores of separate chambers, the entire facility was clearly connected by one continuous hallway.

She unfolded another section and her heart jumped. At the extreme end of the Test Drift, a second shaft appeared on the drawing. The shaft was circled and marked as a revision. They'd added another means of access for the other area.

Marion looked closer on the revision block. The change had been signed off in 1999.

“They have to have built it,” she said loudly. “And that means there's another way out of here.”

But she had to get there. The elevator wouldn't work without power and a half-mile climb, feeling the way she was, seemed impossible. But maybe she could get out through the Test Drift tunnel.

She thought about what the facility on the far side of the elevator shaft might have been used for. It certainly didn't appear to be an underground lab. There was nothing on the drawings that indicated living quarters…only storage areas and machinery spaces.

Marion thumbed through the pages again, this time searching for anything she could find on Test Drift.

The index at the back of one of the books directed her right to the answer. As she read it, though, her heart sank. She felt a chill run down her spine.

Waste Isolation Pilot Plan.

Test Drift accessed a disposal area for high-level radioactive waste. Her worst nightmare was now a reality. The pictures she'd seen over the years of past nuclear disasters paraded through her mind. The victims, the
long-term effects, were no longer just vague statistical references.

Dr. Lee's last words rushed back into Marion's mind. He'd told her to activate cementation procedures in their lab.

He
knew
what lay next to them down those long tunnels. She looked down at the pages again. Waste Isolation Pilot Plan, located 2,150 feet beneath the surface, was designed to house radioactive waste material.

Dr. Lee knew that an explosion in their lab could easily start a chain reaction that would lead directly into the Test Drift. With all the potential fuel there, the resulting nuclear explosion would be powerful, so horrifically devastating, that the Chernobyl blast, in comparison, would look like a firecracker in a can.

She could no longer worry about just her own life. The number of casualties would be in the tens of thousands. And there'd be no warning. No chance to get away. Not that anyone
could
get away.

Real people would die. Real babies would be born with birth defects so horrifically debilitating that parents would give them up to special facilities built specifically to care for them. Never had something like this ever happened in the United States. Never.

Now, more than ever, it was critical to know how much time was left before the first test containers would start leaking hydrogen. Marion still didn't know how to stop the accident from happening. But she had to know when the end would be.

She had her notes with her on the clipboard. It took some adjustment to shift her mind back into the scientific mode. It felt like ages ago that she'd been doing these kinds of calculations. Normally, they would be done on a computer. The answer wasn't something that
stared her in the face, either. There were variables. She had to estimate how advanced each container had been in the testing cycle when the power had gone off.

Her mind still worked. She was happy to know that at least she remembered the basics of what she'd been studying for so many years.

The numbers began to accumulate beneath the tip of her pencil. Calculating, checking, rechecking. She changed the results to days, hours, minutes.

“Five days, sixteen hours, thirty-two seconds.”

Marion didn't know where she was in the countdown. She searched for her cell phone and turned it on. It took a long time for the device to come to life. The red bar warned her that there was practically no charge left. She looked at the date and time on the screen and wrote it down.

“Forty-two hours,” she said aloud. Only forty-two hours remained before so many lives would change forever.

Deer Lodge, Montana

K
im Brown was overwhelmed by the words of sorrow and respect she received during the Sunday-morning service. People whom she'd never spoken to in her life stopped her in the parking lot of the church to convey their condolences. The minister even paused after his sermon, leading the congregation in prayer for the Brown family during this difficult time. A women's ministry had already set up meals they were planning to deliver during the coming week. There were offers by people to come and stay with Kim's elderly housebound father when she had to go to California to make the final arrangements for Marion's things.

It changed things…all of this.

Kim had always considered herself an outsider after the divorce. There had been plenty of talk, too, after Amelia's disappearance, and not much of it good. Still, this was her hometown; it was where she belonged. She worked at the prison forty to fifty hours a week. She attended church every Sunday. She volunteered her talents, baking or sewing, anytime they were doing any kind of fund-raiser at church. She never socialized
because whatever free time she had was spent looking after her father.

The past couple of years, especially, she'd felt about as special as flowers on faded wallpaper. She was hardly, if ever, noticed. But these people were now treating her differently.

For the first time, Kim walked down the stairs to the social hall after the service and had a cup of coffee with the other parishioners. Everyone had questions about Marion. They wanted to know what Kim had been told about what had happened to the scientists. None seemed too happy about what they'd been watching on the news.

Kim didn't have many answers, but whatever she said was accepted as absolute gospel truth. She mentioned that she had a lawyer. And there would be lawsuits filed. Someone's negligence had to have caused the tragedy. She told them how she was supposed to be interviewed by Katie Couric…maybe even Oprah.

Everyone was impressed. For the first time in her life, Kim felt important.

As a result of all the hoopla, she was a couple of hours late getting back home that Sunday. She didn't think her father would even notice it, so she didn't call to let him know.

Ed Brown was only seventy-two but he looked ninety. Two strokes and the loss of his wife to lung cancer—all in the past two years—had left Ed unable to leave the house. He needed a walker to get around, and he occasionally needed help just to move from the bed to the chair or the bathroom. He had partial paralysis of his left side, and he'd developed difficulty speaking after the second stroke.

The doctors at the hospital recommended physical and speech therapy, as they thought Ed could make im
provements if he worked at it. But that meant he would have to travel to Butte, thirty miles away, for treatment. Kim worked every day, but there were vans for the elderly that traveled the route from Deer Lodge to Butte almost daily. Ed just didn't want to bother with it.

The living arrangements for her father suited them both. A bathroom had been added to a bedroom off the kitchen after her mother was diagnosed with cancer and the stairs had become too much for her. Ed had stayed there after she died, and now he simply lived between that bedroom and the living room…with occasional stops at the kitchen and bathroom. Kim lived upstairs.

Kim wasn't surprised to find her father in the living room, sitting in his worn brown faux-leather recliner when she got home. The walker lay on its side next to the chair. She'd moved most of the furniture out of the room to make it easy for him to get around.

She
was
surprised, though, to find the television off.

“Are you okay, Dad?” she asked.

She stared at him. The TV, with the volume cranked up high, was constantly on. So often, when Kim was working in the kitchen or doing laundry in the basement, she could hear Ed having full conversations with whatever show happened to be on at that time. In fact, she was the only one who ever turned the TV
off
in the house.

His color seemed good. The lunch dishes sat empty on the TV tray next to the chair, so she figured he'd eaten. He was just staring at the gray screen.

“Are you okay?” she asked again.

He didn't say anything. His gaze never wavered from the screen.

“Fine. Be that way.” She took off her jacket and hung it in the closet near the front door. There were more and
more days lately when he was in too sour a mood to deal with at all.

She decided his mood might improve if she told him about church. It was the same parish that he and her mother had belonged to.

“After the service, I went downstairs for cof—”

“Why din…you…tell…me?”

“Why didn't I tell you what?” she asked, alert to the sharp tone.

“About daughter…my gran…daughter.”

Kim looked at the phone sitting on the floor next to the food tray. Somebody from their church must have called home to pass on their condolences directly to Ed.

“I did tell you about it. And you've been watching the news on TV every minute of the day since it happened.” She shook her head and walked over to pick up the tray. “Dad, you're forgetting things.”

“Not…for…forget.” He managed to get the words out. “You…never…”

Kim wasn't going to argue. She picked up the tray and started for the kitchen.

“A…melia…” he shouted at her.

Kim froze with her back to him in the doorway.

“You…di…din…tell…about…A…melia.”

She gathered herself and walked into the kitchen.

“Kim!” he shouted.

She hadn't told him about Amelia. There was no point. She was mad as hell at that lawyer. He must have called back and talked to Ed when she was at church. That was the only way her father could have found out. She'd told him not to call.

“
Kim!
” he shouted louder.

He was going to have another stroke if he kept this
up. She put the dishes in the kitchen sink and decided to go back and face it.

In the living room, her father was already on his feet, the walker in front of him. He was coming after her.

She stopped and leaned against the doorway. “Who called?”

“Why?” he asked, letting go of the walker and sitting back heavily in the chair.

“There was nothing to tell. I didn't think you needed to hear more bad news.”

“Bad…news?” he asked, shaking his head and looking at her with hurt in his eyes.

“Yes, bad news,” she told him. “I don't know who the big mouth was that called you today, but the news is just bad. The only way news about Amelia
could
be. If you really want to know, Amelia is a vegetable. She's been that way for six years now. She doesn't talk. She can't move. She can't take care of herself. She can't even eat on her own. A vegetable, Dad. Are you hearing me?”

Kim looked past him at the window. She could see the tears that immediately gathered in the old man's eyes. She tried to remember the last time she'd seen him do that. It certainly hadn't happened when they'd received the phone call about Marion's death.

What was the use? she asked herself. Each of them had their favorite. That was the way it had always been. Kim and her mother had doted on Marion, and Dad had always supported Amelia, no matter how much trouble she caused. To this day, Kim believed that her father was responsible for how Amelia behaved. She didn't have to listen to her mother. There was always a higher authority in the house to go to.

Kim remembered her father had been the most upset of any of them when Amelia had run away, except
maybe for Marion. The old bastard had gone looking for her, for all the good finding her would have done. Amelia would have just run away again.

“Tell…me,” he said.

Kim crossed her arms. Still looking out the window at the leafless gray tree in the side yard, she forced herself to push aside the hard feelings she had kept hidden inside over the years. He was her father. She loved him, she supposed. It made her sad to see him like this. He was the only family she had left. The two of them were it.

“I've already told you most of what I know. A lawyer called me yesterday. He says Amelia was in an accident a couple of years after she left here. Bad head injury that left her a vegetable. She had nothing on her so they didn't know who she was. She's been kept in some kind of nursing place in Connecticut.”

He seemed to be processing everything. His gaze turned to her. “They…fo…found us. Th…this number. She must be…be…better.”

“I don't think so. The lawyer who called me had a name for her condition. I can't remember it exactly. But it was definitely a vegetable. She needs constant care. He said that. He also said the state would keep taking care of her there.”

The conversation with the lawyer was all a haze in her mind. When he'd phoned and first told her the reason for calling, Kim felt like she'd been kicked. There was no end to the bad news. She couldn't deal with it. She didn't want to think about it at that moment. She didn't really want to think about it now. Last night, she couldn't wait to get off the phone. She couldn't remember exactly what she'd said. Thinking about it now, she'd probably sounded heartless. Cold.

With an effort, she shrugged off the thought. She didn't care what that lawyer thought of her.

“Who called this morning?” she asked. “What did they say?”

“A…melia…an…Marion…”

“You're not making sense, Dad. What about Marion?”

“He…called to say…” Ed touched his forehead. “A…melia…hears…Ma…Marion.”

Kim came into the room. She understood what he was trying to tell her now. She sat down on the edge of her mother's chair and stared at her father. She hadn't thought about this for years. But there'd always been a connection between the girls. From the time they were infants. One cried when the other one got a bee sting. Earaches were a joint illness, even though only one of them had the infection. Accidents, bumps and bruises. Never one experiencing anything without the other feeling it.

There were dozens of instances, probably more, when they were growing up. Kim couldn't recall all of them. But she'd stopped doubting what they had between them a long time ago. Kim's parents had witnessed it all, too. They all knew.

When Amelia ran away, Kim feared that the police would find the teenager's body in some ditch, raped and murdered. She knew what animals men were. Marion kept telling her, though, that her sister was okay.

“Mark…Mark…Sh…aw,” Ed Brown said. “He…he's fr…friend of Marion. He…called.”

She looked up at her father. “Where is he? Where was he calling from?”

“Con…Conn…”

“Connecticut?” she asked.

He nodded. “With…A…melia.”

There were important questions that Kim had forgotten to ask the attorney last night. Things like what had changed and why was it that they now knew who Amelia was. Kim had never heard of this Mark Shaw. But that didn't really surprise her. Marion never shared anything personal like that when they talked on the phone.

Kim noticed her heart was racing. She didn't know what the phone call meant. What did it mean that Amelia hears Marion? Did it mean that the twins were in contact? Marion was dead. How could that be? And how was Amelia telling anyone?

Kim jumped up, started for the kitchen, then came back.

“Did he leave a number for me to call him back?”

Ed nodded, reaching for the pad of paper sitting on the end table next to the chair. He slowly picked it up and she snatched it out of his hand.

Her father's handwriting was nearly illegible from the stroke. Kim read the number out loud to make sure she had it right. She started for the kitchen again. That was where she'd left the lawyer's number from last night. She planned to call both men.

“Kim.”

Her father's voice turned her around.

“A…melia…com…coming home?”

“I don't know. They're giving her good care where she is. And if she's improving, then it's best to keep her where the best hospitals and doctors are.”

He looked away. Kim looked at him suspiciously. He was a stubborn, cagey old bastard. He wasn't arguing. This would certainly be a first when it came to Amelia.

Ed fixed his gaze on her again, forming his words carefully. “Then…wi…will you take m…me…to her?”

Her father didn't want to leave the house. The last time, when he just had to go downtown for a blood test, it'd been war…and Kim had lost
that
one even. She'd needed to get a lab technician to come to the house to draw blood.

“I'll try.” She couldn't help but smile. “Maybe we can both go and see her.”