Sleeping Beauty (72 page)

Anne hesitated. Up to now, it had been an exercise in reasoning; suddenly, it was becoming a hunt. And Vince was the quarry. She shrank from it. She wanted nothing at all to do with him; she could not bear the idea of being connected to him even through something as tenuous as asking others about events that might revolve around him. Leave it alone, she thought; it's safer to stay away. Don't get involved.

But she was involved. This was not six months ago; she had a family now, and perhaps someone was deliberately trying to ruin them. And she had the friendship of Josh Durant, and he was in trouble and had come to her for help.

It was past the time when she could retreat to the cocoon of her apartment. Whatever happened from now on, she was part of her family, and somehow, part of Josh's life, and she would have to take what came with having found a place among them.

“I can call now, if you don't mind,” Josh said.

She nodded. “Call him.”

He signaled to the waiter and asked him to bring a telephone. “What else can we do?” he asked while they waited. “How about the EPA? Can we call someone there? We could find out how that cleanup idea got started.”

“It would be better in person,” Anne said. “Could you get away for a couple of days, to go to Washington?”

“Not now; I've got to get ready for my classes. What about you? Could you go?”

“I don't think . . . Well, I will; I'll find the time. And while I'm there, I'll try to talk to somebody on the Public Works Committee.”

“A good idea. I'm sorry I can't go with you.”

“So am I.” I really am sorry, she thought. It's much better to work with someone than to work alone.

The maître d' brought them the telephone. Josh took a small address book from his pocket and opened it to Leo and Gail's listing. He dialed the number and looked at Anne as the telephone rang in Tamarack. “Here we go,” he said.

S
enator Zeke Ruddle of Utah, short and cherubic, longtime member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, walked around his desk to greet Anne as she came toward him across the expanse of his office. “Delighted,” he said, shaking her hand and holding it a moment too long. “I've read about your exploits, Miss Garnett; you have your opponents quaking in their shoes. We politicians could learn from you.”

“It may be that we learn from you,” Anne said with a smile.

“Ah.” His tiny mouth stretched wide in appreciation. His eyes, hard as agate, and unblinking, did not change. “Please,” he said, gesturing toward a leather chair, and they both sat down. “What can I do for you?”

“I have a client—you understand, I won't be able to give you too many details—”

Ruddle nodded sagely. “I do understand. But you know, we in government know better than anyone else how to keep a secret.”

“True,” Anne said thoughtfully. “Perhaps, after all, I could give you some of the background.”

Ruddle leaned forward, his arms folded on his desk. “I assume your client is well known.”

“He's one of those men whom reporters follow around; they camp outside his house; it becomes quite difficult for him. That's why I've come here in his place.”

“Reporters. Turds. But a necessary nuisance; those of us who work for our country have learned to live with them. Movies or television? Your client, I mean.”

“I can't tell you that. I can tell you that he deals on an international scale with enormously valuable materials and properties, some with a value almost beyond calculation.”

“Most interesting,” Ruddle murmured.

“Now, we have a conflict in this case that is extremely sensitive,” Anne said. “What is at issue is a large segment of land northwest of Chicago that is owned by Chatham Development, a Chicago corporation. As I understand it, at one time the intention of Charles Chatham, the president of the corporation, was to develop it, to build an entire town there, called Deerstream Village.”

Ruddle frowned. “That's Vince Chatham's brother. I've met him a couple times. Deerstream? Never heard of it.”

“I believe this goes back a couple of years. What is at issue here, Senator, is that opposing sides are interested in that land, and its potential for development seems to be in doubt.” Anne took a sheaf of papers from her briefcase. “This morning I read the proceedings of the Environment and Public Works Committee in its discussion of a proposed highway from northwest Illinois into Chicago. The chairman was absent that day; you were acting chairman. The committee voted to recommend to the Appropriations Committee that the Illinois highway be postponed indefinitely and the funds go instead for a new highway across Colorado and Utah along the edge of Mesa Rosa National Park.”

“Oh, that one,” Ruddle said. “Hard to remember all the hearings we have, you know. Well, what can I tell you? You read the proceedings; that should give you the whole shebang.”

“I'm curious about the way the funds were shifted from one project to another. I didn't find anything in the printed proceedings that tells me where the idea came from in the first place.”

“Oh.” He looked at her blankly. “I don't know. It's been a while you know.”

“Yes,” Anne said. She had heard that answer, truthful or not, too many times on the witness stand to let it give her pause. “I assume, if it had been your idea, you certainly would remember it.”

“Well, I don't remember all my great ideas, but most of 'em I do, and that one I don't. It most likely wasn't me, anyway; I don't pay much attention to what's happening with highways in other states once we recommend funding.”

“Do you mean that something was happening in Illinois that made it impossible to fund the highway? And that was why this person, whoever it was, had the idea to switch the funds?”

Ruddle gazed past her, his tiny mouth pursed in concentration. “Seems to me somebody said something about they couldn't figure out where to put it, you know, the best route for it. Squabbling over it, somebody said. So we figured, if they didn't want it enough to get it laid out, and they'd already had a long time, years, now that I think of it, then we'd put the money where the people really wanted it and were ready to use it.”

“Yes, that was in the hearings,” Anne murmured.

Ruddle's gaze swung back to her. “Well, if you already knew that, why'd you ask me?”

“I was hoping it would help you remember what went before that. You said ‘we figured, if they didn't want it enough.' Who was ‘we'?”

“The committee,” Ruddle said.

“But who suggested it to the committee?”

Ruddle shook his head. “You got me.”

Anne let a silence go by. “You were acting chairman that day, Senator. Why was that?”

“Right, I was. Let's see. Well, I don't know. Vince—that's Vince Chatham, the chairman—was sick or out of town or whatever, and I took over.”

“Had he left instructions for you about questions to ask or how to handle the discussion?”

“Instructions?
Vince doesn't give me
instructions;
we understand each other. We're on opposite sides a lot of the time, but we have the greatest respect for each other; the
greatest respect. He's told me more than once that he trusts my instincts and relies on me . . . oh, now I've got it. Vince thought of it. We had a meeting, breakfast, I think, and we talked about Mesa Rosa and the problems of building a highway through a national park, lots of opposition, you know; people don't understand the real value of highways; they're the veins and arteries of our country and without them we'd die, and the more we have the healthier we are; it's as simple as that. Vince understands that. He said he'd be just as happy with a highway straight through the middle of the park, but he knew we'd have all these folks chaining themselves to trees, things like that, to stop it, so he got the idea of running it along the edge of the park so everybody'd be happy. But that meant more money, you've got to figure a million dollars a mile for a highway these days, and when I said there was no way we could get it out of Appropriations, he remembered Illinois and said they were still messed up there and going nowhere. He said he'd been working with them for years, trying to help them decide on routing the highway; he said he'd kept demanding new drawings, but they couldn't get their act together. But around here you know, if there's anything Vince Chatham is really a champion at, it's finding ways to get things moving when they're stuck in dead center. So we got it going. Damned good solution; I told him so at the time.”

There was a pause. Slowly, Ruddle frowned. “Did you say his brother owned land up there?”

“Yes,” Anne said. She was sitting very still, stunned by the enormity of it. When she and Josh had been speculating, it was like a puzzle, some pieces fitting, others not. But now this part of it was whole. Vince had manipulated events so that Deerstream would fail. So that Charles would fail.

“Along the highway route?” Ruddle asked. “And he was going to build a town there?”

“Yes,” Anne said. “Called Deerstream.”

“Deerstream. The name never came up. All we were talking about was a highway from northwest Illinois into Chicago. But Charles Chatham had a thing going there? How about that.
How about that.
You know, I remember
telling Vince at the time that I was damned impressed that a senator would give up a highway in his family's state for the good of another state. But you're telling me he even gave up a highway that would have helped his brother! And never told me he was doing it! By God, can you believe it? Now that does take the cake!”

“It certainly does,” Anne said. She returned the photocopied pages to her briefcase. “Thank you, Senator; that gives me a much clearer picture of what happened. I gather there's still a chance the highway could be built.”

“Always a chance. The committee's always looking at highways, past, present, and future. 'Course money's tight, but then it's always tight, isn't it? But if your client wants to put a high figure on that land because it could have a highway going smack through the middle of it, feel free. If it comes up again, we'll look at it objectively, the way we do all of them, and we'll do the best thing for the state and the country.”

Anne stood up and he walked with her to the door, nodding and smiling. But she felt sick and angry as she pictured Vince having breakfast with Zeke Ruddle, and cheerfully doing his best to ruin his brother.

It's monstrous. It would mean Vince is a monster.

But he is a monster.

I have to call Josh, she thought. But she had no time; she had another appointment. And a few minutes later she was walking into Bud Kantor's office at the EPA, holding out her hand, preparing her questions.

“I'm glad to see you,” Kantor said. He was young and earnest, with a round, rosy-cheeked face that was his despair because he thought he looked like an eighth grader. He had a small mustache, and short hair, like a Marine, to look older, and he always wore dark suits and blue-striped ties, to look like a diplomat. He shook Anne's hand, admiring her unabashedly. She wore a houndstooth suit and an ivory blouse with lace on the collar, and it was obvious that she was not what Kantor had expected when she had called for an appointment and said she was an attorney from California. “We don't see the public very often here,” he said as
they sat down in his small, spare office. “I mean, we work behind the scenes, you know; we don't talk to the public like the senators and representatives do.”

“You do research for legislation?” Anne asked.

“That's it. Whatever they want us to check out. But it starts a long time before there's legislation; months, sometimes years. You can't ask Congress to spend money until you're truly sure you know what the downside is, you know, risks to the environment.”

Anne watched him intently, amused at his attempts to look older. “You have a tremendous responsibility,” she said.

“I do,” he replied solemnly. “We all do.”

“That's why I knew you'd be able to help me.” She opened her briefcase and removed some papers. “As I told you on the telephone, I've been trying to find the history of the proposed cleanup in Tamarack. I found your name on several of the later reports, but I can't find any studies that go back to the beginning, when the soil was first analyzed.”

There was a pause. “That goes back a ways,” Kantor said slowly.

“It seems to be ongoing,” Anne said gently.

He nodded. “True. These cleanups do tend to go on and on. The fact is, Miss Garnett, a lot of that file's still in my office. Those people in Tamarack—are you representing them, is that it?”

“No, but I'm working on behalf of some of them in another case, and the cleanup might have a strong bearing on it. I need all the information I can find; as a professional, you know how essential that is.”

“Right. But we haven't even started a cleanup there, you know; they got an injunction . . . Were you involved in that?”

“Yes.”

“Well. Well, I don't know . . .”

“Mr. Kantor, you and I aren't necessarily on opposite sides here. Right now I'm just looking for information. That shouldn't give you any trouble, should it?”

“Well, no, I always believe the more information the
better. An informed electorate can't do anything without information. Well, you know what's happening in Tamarack; they've stopped us for the time being. They've had a lot of other problems, and they haven't wanted us digging up part of their town while they're dealing with everything else. And I'm not blaming them; I can understand how they're worried about their town, and now on top of everything else they've got this gondola thing; that could really be bad for them. Anyway, Miss Garnett, they stopped us—I guess I should say
you
stopped us, shouldn't I?—and we're deciding what files we can make available to them, and until we do, I'm keeping them here.”