Extreme Exposure (10 page)

“No, I guess not.” Kara slipped her card back into her pocket.

“Come on in. Don’t worry about Yukon here. He’s a big chicken. I’ll get my wife.”

In short order, Kara was seated in another living room, this time with a couple of aging hippies, a large marijuana plant, and a snoozing wolf-dog, listening to an almost identical story. Dust clouds that blew in through the windows, stripped the finish off cars and houses. Dust that coated peonies, tomatoes, and apples. Dust so thick it drifted across the landscape like a suffocating fog.

Two years after moving into their home, Dottie and Carl Perkins had both been diagnosed with asthma, which they blamed on the dust but which their doctor blamed in part on their penchant for smoking ganja. They disagreed with their doctor, of course.

“We’ve called the county health department at least a hundred times to complain about the dust, but they say they have to see it themselves in order to fine Northrup,” Dottie Perkins said. “We’ve taken pictures and showed them, and they always say they’re going to investigate, but somehow nothing ever happens.”

“They think we’re just a couple of kooks who like to complain.”

“Really? May I see the photos, perhaps borrow them?”

Carl Perkins nodded. “Sure. They’re not doing us any good.”

“What about the water? Are you on well water?”

Dottie shook her head, her long, graying flower-child hair swaying around her waist. “Oh, no! We quit drinking our well water years ago. It tastes funny. We drink bottled water.”

“Would you mind if I took samples?”

They both looked at her, surprise on their faces.

Yukon, who’d been a snoring ball of fur a moment ago, sat up and watched her through wary, dark eyes, apparently sensing the shift of mood in the room.

“You think there’s something in there, don’t you?” Carl looked almost excited at the prospect.

“I can’t say for certain, but it’s worth checking, isn’t it? The paper will pay for it, of course, and I’ll let you know what we find.”

“Fine by me. Dottie?”

By late afternoon, Kara had spoken with three other families, faced down an overly protective pit bull, and enjoyed a cup of Southern sweet tea prepared by an insistent displaced South Carolina belle. All the people she’d spoken with complained of wafting clouds of chalky dust. Some had told her of funny-tasting well water. All said they’d contacted the health department at one time or another and had gotten nothing but reassurances and promises.

As she drove south on I-25 back to Denver, Kara ran down her growing list of questions. With evidence as clear
as photographs, why had officials at the health department, whose job it was to protect people from polluters, done nothing about the dust problem? How could dust from a gravel mine strip the finish from a car or a house? Could the dust be responsible for Ed’s lung disease or the Perkinses’ asthma? Could the chemicals Northrup was dumping in the ditch water be the cause of the funny taste in people’s well water?

Lab tests might give her the answer to that one. She’d taken samples from three separate wells and would get them sent off before heading home this evening. As for the rest of her questions, she would simply have to keep digging.

“C
OME ON
, Reece. Out with it. Who is she?”

Reece glanced over at Miguel, who was running on the treadmill beside his. “What makes you think it’s a woman?”

“Oh, please,
amigo
. When a man is as distracted as you have been all day, it can only be a woman. Some lovely
muñequita
has you tied up in knots.”

“It’s that obvious?” He didn’t like that.

“It’s not that lobbyist again, is it?”

“Give me a break! I wouldn’t touch Alexis Ryan if I were wearing latex gloves.”

“Well, that’s good. Who is it, then?”

Reece hesitated for a moment and realized he actually wanted Miguel’s opinion. “She’s a reporter.”

“A journalist? Who? Do I know her?”

“Everyone knows her.”

“Who? You’re killing me!”

“Kara McMillan.”

“Kara McMillan?” Miguel’s voice seemed to carry across the entire gym. “You’re kidding!”

“Would you pipe down?”

Miguel’s sweating face split in a big grin. “You’re dating Kara McMillan?”

“No. We went out once. That’s all. One date is not dating.”

“But you wish you were dating.”

“I guess you could say that. She thinks the two of us shouldn’t see one another, says it’s a conflict of interests. But I think there’s more to it than that. I’m not sure she likes men.”

“You think she’s a lesbian?”

“That’s not what I said! And, no, she’s not a lesbian. She just seems . . . hesitant. Ambivalent.” Hot and cold was a better description.

“About men or about you?”

This was the crux of what had been eating at Reece. “I don’t know. Men. Me. Both.”

Miguel shrugged. “We all have our ghosts.”

That was certainly true. And at least two of Kara’s ghosts were men—her absent father and her son’s absent father. “I hoped she would come to the press conference today.”

“Maybe it’s a good sign that she didn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, perhaps by choosing not to cover your bills she’s trying to put enough distance between the two of you on the job so she can get closer to you after hours.”

Reece hadn’t thought of it that way. He liked that idea.

Then something on the television caught his eye. His press conference. He hated watching footage of himself on TV and was about to look away when the image of him at the podium vanished and was replaced by Drew Devlin’s smirking face.

It took a moment to sink in. For the first time since he’d entered office, he and Devlin were sponsoring the same piece of legislation. Behind Devlin stood Galen Prentice and a beaming Mike Stanfield.

“What the hell?” Reece was so surprised that for a moment he quit running and was almost thrown off the back of the treadmill.

Miguel laughed. “I guess there really is a first time for everything.”

“I don’t believe it.”

What kind of game was Stanfield playing?

T
UESDAY WAS
as frustrating and unproductive as Monday had been productive. Kara paid a visit to the county health department and got a refresher course in mindless bureaucracy when she spoke with the air-quality director, a middle-aged woman who smelled like cigarette smoke.

Yes, regulations did, indeed, require them to see dust emissions themselves before they could charge Northrup with a violation. Yes, it was at least a forty-five-minute drive from the office to the Northrup site. No, they had never actually witnessed these clouds of dust the neighbors had reported. Yes, they took such reports very seriously, but sometimes people just liked to complain. Yes, cement kiln dust could cause lung disease, but, no, they’d never done a health study of the area downwind from the plant. They simply didn’t have the money for that sort of thing.

Then Kara moved on to air-pollution emissions. But the county health department air-quality division didn’t actually deal with emissions from smokestacks.

“That’s EPA,” the director told her. “But the EPA leaves it up to the state air-pollution control division to handle most in-state cases.”

“So the state health department makes regular inspections?”

“They come out twice a year just like we do.”

“Do you make unannounced inspections or schedule an appointment with Northrup?”

“We make an appointment. They know when we’re coming. But you need to understand that a plant that size can’t be cleaned up overnight. If there are problems out there, we’ll find them whether they know we’re coming or not.”

“Do inspectors verify a company’s self-reporting, do air testing, make sure the company is telling the truth?”

“No. They wouldn’t do that sort of thing unless the company was up for a new permit or had reported problems.
Besides, no company would lie about their emissions. They’d be in big trouble if they got caught.”

“But it sounds to me like it would be hard to get caught if no one’s checking.”

The director glared at her openly.

“What about water pollution? How often does the county check well water?”

“We only check residential wells when someone requests it or when there’s evidence of contamination.”

“Have you ever had reports that Northrup is dumping toxins in the irrigation ditch that runs through their property?”

“Not that I recall. We would have referred the caller to the state water-quality people anyway. Something like that is the state’s jurisdiction, maybe even EPA.”

The flow chart Kara had drawn in her notes ended up looking like a knotted ball of yarn, and at the end of two hours of questions, she was certain only that no one was keeping an eye on Northrup. EPA left it up to the state, which left most of it up to the county, which, in turn, left the important stuff up to the state and the EPA. Inspectors visited the plant twice a year, taking Northrup’s records at face value and being escorted on what was surely a canned tour of the facility. Based on the documents Mr. Marsh had provided, it was pretty clear that Northrup was laughing all the way to the bank.

On her way out of the director’s office, Kara asked one more question. “Why would dust from a gravel mine wear the finish off a car or ruin the paint job on a house?”

“Northrup crushes the gravel, heats it, and turns it into cement. Any dust coming off their property would probably be CKD.”

“CKD?”

“Cement kiln dust. It’s got a very base pH, so it’s caustic. It can strip the paint off a car or burn the skin, particularly if the skin is damp.”

Kara digested this bit of information and then met the director’s gaze full on. “If you know this, why haven’t you
paid any attention to the ruined paint jobs on cars and houses downwind from Northrup? Wouldn’t that, together with photographs and eyewitness accounts, be sufficient evidence for some more in-depth investigation?”

The woman’s face turned bright red. “As I’ve already explained, we need to see the dust ourselves to write a citation. How do we know what ruined the finish on their cars?”

Kara didn’t bother to hide her disgust.

It wasn’t until she’d reached her car that she realized she’d actually gone most of the morning without thinking of Reece.

K
ARA LISTED
some of the chemicals found in the chunk of ice she’d taken from Northrup. The lab results had been waiting for her—together with about a zillion e-mails, many of them offering to enlarge the size of her penis—when she’d arrived at eight-thirty. She’d just had time to read through the report before the I-team meeting.

Typical Wednesday morning.

“Borated polyisobutenyl succinic anhydride nitrogen, ethylene-propene copolymer, and methyl ethyl ketone—these are common components in engine oil, the kind one uses in heavy industrial machinery. They’re in the water in high concentrations.”

Tessa smiled and spoke with her lazy southern drawl. “Soak your teabag in that.”

Tom twirled a badly gnawed pencil in his fingers, a thoughtful scowl on his face. “So they’re dumping waste oil in the water instead of paying to have it removed or recycled.”

“That’s my guess. But there’s more. The water has dangerously high levels of methylene chloride. Methylene chloride is an extremely toxic substance found in solvents used to degrease industrial machinery. It looks like Northrup is changing the oil on their machinery, cleaning up, then dumping everything—oil and solvents—into the water.”

Sophie shook her head in disgust. “That’s got to be criminal, even a felony.”

Kara nodded. “If it could be proved that Northrup’s management was willfully dumping these chemicals in the water, it would definitely be a criminal violation of pollution laws. Northrup could be looking at a fine of millions of dollars, and management might face prison time. It’s proving intent that’s tough. They can always plead ignorance.”

“You’ve got the whistleblower,” Matt offered. “Does he or she know where the order to dump came from?”

“No. The source was asked by a shift manager to help with the dumping a couple times but has no idea if the supervisor is the only person behind it or whether the orders come from higher up.” No one but Kara knew the whistleblower’s name, and she was careful not to reveal his gender. It was part of the game, and everyone understood, though speaking without using pronouns could be awkward.

Tessa took a sip of her designer latte. “It would be the source’s word against that of Northrup’s legal team and their management. And unless this individual witnessed a manager giving the order, this individual’s testimony would be little more than hearsay. A judge might rule it inadmissible.”

“The big question is whether Northrup’s criminal activity has resulted in groundwater contamination. We should get the lab results on the well water by Monday.” Kara shifted to the topic that had kept her awake most of last night. “I’ve put the whistleblower in touch with the folks at OSHA. Unfortunately, they can’t really help our source unless or until our source is threatened or faces some kind of retaliation. But the whistleblower is afraid retaliation will come with a bullet or car bomb. If that happens, of course, OSHA will be too late.”

Tom waved his hand in a gesture of impatient dismissal. “That’s not going to happen. Every whistleblower gets nervous. Sounds like you just need to do some hand-holding.”

Kara knew Tom was probably right, but something about Mr. Marsh’s very real fear gave her pause. “What if the
whistleblower is right? I’ve promised the paper will do everything it can to keep everyone safe. If there were any immediate threat—”

“The source would have to call the cops. We’re not the goddamned cavalry.” And just like that Tom changed the subject. “Speaking of cops, Novak, anything new on the Gallegos shooting?”

Sometimes he could be an insensitive ass.

Kara could only imagine what he’d say when she told him that she needed Friday morning off so she could help take a bunch of preschoolers to see dinosaurs.

“T
HIS IS
politics, Senator Sheridan. We’ll take support wherever we find it.” Stanfield sounded defensive, even through the telephone.