Poison Town (32 page)

“I’m back.” Jack listened again. “Okay. When are you going to be there?”

Jack looked at his watch, then eyed Pamela. “Tell you what, I’ll meet you there. Then my family and I need to decide what we’re going to do for the night.”

Pamela was numb.

Jack hung up. “Dennis is heading to Randalls’ place right now. They’re supposed to meet with Demler-Vargus tomorrow for a settlement. Dennis wants to wire them and do a sting operation.”

Pamela dropped her head. She was beyond overload.

“You follow me to the Randalls’ place, and we’ll decide what to do from there.”

“Jack, I am not taking the girls and my mom to the Randalls’ at this time of night! They’ve been through enough!”

“Believe me, it’s the safest place in town right now—”

“If we have to go, we’ll wait in my car.”

“Okay, fine. I’m just trying to do what’s best for everybody.”

“I know. I just don’t want to upset the girls anymore.”

Jack nodded. “I understand. Look, follow me over there. I’ll run in and get DeVry’s advice on what we should do.”

“Fine.” Pamela just gave in. “Mom … girls, let’s go.” She looked at Jack. “I don’t know how to get there, so go slow.”

“I will. Come on, I’ll get you guys in the car.” Jack reached for Pamela’s hand. “We
are
going on that date. Soon—I promise.”

She sighed and did her best to manage a smile.

But she was not smiling on the inside.

On the inside, she was doing her best just to breathe—and keep going.

Chapter 36

Derrick’s left headlight wasn’t working, and he was quite certain the left front of his car was badly smashed, but those were the least of his worries. His main concern was the single headlight several hundred yards back. After the fray in Columbus and maneuvering on and off several different highways, he’d lost track of the BMW and couldn’t tell if that was it back there or not.

Derrick’s right headlight lit up snowflakes and a long, black stretch of Interstate 161, which would get them back to Trenton City within thirty minutes. He’d seen no cops or flashing lights—maybe because he had gone outside of the Columbus police district? If that
was
the BMW back there, why weren’t they coming after Derrick and Amy with all they had?

What are they waiting for?

Amy was sitting up and looking dead ahead with glassy eyes and crossed arms.

Tension filled the car.

“You holding up okay?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Warm enough?”

“Yes.”

“In much pain?”

“I’ll live.”

It was a weeknight in the dead of winter. There weren’t many cars on the road. Derrick glanced into the backseat and felt around inside his leather shoulder bag until he found his tape recorder.

He checked the rearview. The single headlight remained way back.

“If they’re back there, why aren’t they coming?” Amy said.

“They’re either going to follow us right into town, or that’s not them.”

She noticed the mini recorder, looked out her window, and rubbed hard at her forehead with the palm of her left hand.

“If it
is
them, where will we go when we get to Trenton City?” she said. “I have no place to go.”

“I’ll call Jack. He was either going to a hotel or to Randalls’ place. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you’re safe. We need to get you to a hospital or a doc-in-the-box, or something.”

“I’ll be fine. What’s with the recorder?”

They made eye contact.

“I want you to tell me all you know about Demler-Vargus.” He held it out to her, but she didn’t move.

Some thirty seconds passed.

She looked down at it and snatched it, wincing as she did. “How do you turn this sucker on?”

* * *

“Brrr. It’s gonna get into the teens tonight for sure.” Travis stomped the snow onto the rug in the kitchen and shut the door behind Claire. He was trying to keep things light, knowing she was worried about Spivey’s girls.

“I’m calling over there again.” She handed Travis her coat, kicked her shoes off, and walked in her stocking feet for the phone.

“Honey, they ain’t there,” Travis said. “There’s a million places they could be after losing their daddy.”

“Something’s not right,” Claire said.

“They’re probably mourning with relatives somewhere in town.” Travis hung their coats.

“But all the lights are on. There are cars there …”

“We don’t know which cars belong to who. I’m sure they’re with family. Now don’t get all worked up.”

Travis stopped in his tracks when he got to the TV room.

Big old, bandaged-faced Ralston Coon was nodding at him from the couch, bulky briefcase on the coffee table in front of him.

“Well, looky what the cat drug in,” Travis said. “I do believe that face of yours is looking worse.”

“Travis.” Coon nodded. He was not smiling.

“Man, that was one heck of a fall.”

The lawyer didn’t reply.

Claire came in from the kitchen. “All I get is the answering machine.”

“Leave a message and be done with it,” LJ said.

Bo was still on the floor, polishing the guns with an oily rag.

Coon’s phone vibrated on the table. He picked it up, read for a second, and began texting, one letter at a time with his chubby index finger.

The house still smelled like sausage. The fire was burning steady.

Coon set the phone down. “You boys look like you’re loaded for bear.”

He chuckled, but Travis could tell he wasn’t happy.

“We need to talk, gentlemen.” Coon looked twice at Claire. “And ladies.”

The dog barked out back.

“Mr. Coon, we’re not going to meet with those crooks tomorrow, if that’s what tree you’re barkin’ up.” Daddy was sprawled out on the recliner in his pajamas, blue robe, and ratty old corduroy slippers, which were almost worn through on the bottoms.

“Now, now, Galen, I need you to hear me out on this.” Coon stood. Rusty was howling outside. “You gentlemen have an opportunity before you that will never come your way again, I promise you—”

Travis went through the kitchen, turned the overhead light off, and peered out the back door. One, two, three sets of headlights lit up the snow falling in the parking lot. His heart slammed into his rib cage.

“Git the guns, boys. We got company!”

* * *

Jack swung his car into the Randalls’ parking lot, and Pam pulled in right behind him. They parked side by side. Jack got out and hustled over to her car, careful not to slip on the snowy pavement. She rolled the window down and looked up at Jack with tired eyes and a deflated expression that said she was at the end of her rope. Margaret sat beside her and the girls in back; their eyes were open wide, as if in a trance, and they wore blank expressions.

“Okay, there’s Dennis,” Jack said as the officer wheeled up in a dark, unmarked squad car.

“Don’t be long. We’ve had it,” Pam said. “Really. I just want to go home.”

“Okay. I’m thinking maybe I’ll just stay up tonight, keep watch. That way everyone can sleep in their own beds,” Jack said.

“Good. We can just go now—”

“No. We’re going together,” Jack insisted. “Just let me talk to Dennis—”

“What on earth!” Margaret said. “Those men have rifles. Girls, get down!”

They all looked toward the Randall house at once.

There stood the silhouetted figures of LJ, Bo, and Travis, steam rising from their mouths, guns and shotguns trained on Jack and company. Even old Galen was leaning in the doorway, pointing a pistol down at them.

“Who’s there?” LJ called. “Whoever it is, you just found trouble!”

Chapter 37

Derrick drove toward Trenton City in stunned silence. Amy had finished recording everything she knew about Demler-Vargus and had fallen asleep with her head against the foggy passenger window. The car that might or might not be following them remained way back but was locked steady on them.

Derrick stared at the snow-dusted highway, shell-shocked by Amy’s confessions. She claimed that she, Cecil, Nigel, and Pete were all paid various five-digit sums of cash on the first day of each month for keeping negative Demler-Vargus news suppressed. Her job was to nix and cover up anything that had to do with employee and citizen health issues; complaints and cases against the corporation; OSHA and EPA violations; and, especially, any mention of the fiberglass product known as Streamflex. She suspected that at least two EPA officials were on the Demler-Vargus payroll.

Even though Demler-Vargus knew full well that the manufacturing process to create Streamflex was, in essence, a killer, they produced the high-priced, high-demand sheets of fiberglass like clockwork eight times a year. Each of those production cycles lasted ten days, but Streamflex was only manufactured from nine at night until three in the morning during those ten-day spans. It was shrink-wrapped and trucked off in the middle of the night to buyers and distribution centers across the country and beyond.

Jack was much closer to Cecil than Derrick was and had always looked up to the editor as a role-model journalist. So much for that, Derrick thought. Not only had Cecil slowly brought the others onto the Demler-Vargus payroll, he was the one who’d thought of sending Amy away under the guise of pregnancy—but not before she had amassed a lethal amount of inside information.

Amy had learned from Emmett and Barb Doyle that Barb had undergone extensive medical testing, which determined, although tentatively, that her chronic illness had been caused by extreme levels of Fenarene.

Derrick looked over at Amy and back at the road, contemplating what the money had gotten her. A crevice was chiseled between her eyes, even while she slept. She looked bulimic. She had no friends. Her career was finished. She’d lost her family. And now she would be going to jail.

He checked his rearview. The one-eyed car had inched closer and was probably only a hundred yards back. His stomach soured. The recording in his bag would bring down the giant. He knew they wanted Amy Sheets—and him.

Amy had fought back tears when she told details about the longtime Demler-Vargus nightshift employee, Merv Geddy, who passed away from the effects of lymphoma. As it turned out, his attorney son had had an autopsy performed on his father. Catastrophically high levels of Fenarene were found. Oliver had been in the midst of filing a lawsuit against Demler-Vargus on behalf of his father when his little plane got sabotaged and slammed into the Sawtooth National Forest.

Derrick checked the rearview again.

Uh oh.

The car behind him had shifted lanes. It was coming—and coming fast.

* * *

Travis sat next to Claire on the couch in the TV room, listening to Officer DeVry as he paced the room, explaining his idea for a sting operation the next afternoon at Demler-Vargus.

Coon refused to look at DeVry. Instead, he sat smoldering because the Randalls had given up on their chance to milk two-point-five million bucks out of the cash cow. Jack had convinced them they would be walking into a death trap. But DeVry was certain the Trenton City PD could protect them well enough and long enough to get key evidence on tape.

Coon’s phone vibrated for the gazillionth time. He read for a second and began pecking away. Travis wondered if clients were contacting him at this time of night, or maybe he had a mad wife at home. Nope, it wasn’t that; Coon was not wearing a wedding ring.

“Tomorrow morning we can get LJ, Travis, and Mr. Coon wired with two-way recording devices,” DeVry said. “Galen, we don’t expect you to be in on this—”

“He’s got to be there.” Coon glared at DeVry. “They made that clear.”

“I’m in.” Galen’s stubbly face was like stone. Travis was sure he was thinking about Momma, how they shortened her life, took her from them too soon.

It was time for payback.

“Fine, but we’re not going to wire you; it would be too confusing,” DeVry said. “We’ll let your sons and Mr. Coon deal with the voices in their ears and the recording equipment.”

“Are they going to be armed?” Claire said. “Can you promise they’ll be safe?”

DeVry shook his head. “They won’t be armed, but our SWAT team will be fully engaged. We’ll have the place surrounded. Sharpshooters will be stationed wherever we can possibly put them. The building where we assume you’ll be meeting has plenty of windows; we canvassed it today.”

“And you’ll have them on GPS, right?” Jack said.

“Yeah, oh yeah. We’ll know where each of you is in the building, every second.”

The room fell silent except for the crackling of wood burning in the fireplace and the gray cat scratching a piece of firewood leaning in the corner.

“Remember, if at all possible,” DeVry said, “we want you to get them to admit aloud what they are paying you for—to quit pursuing them, to stop trying to prove they were responsible for Mrs. Randall’s illness.”