Sleeping Beauty (73 page)

“Well.” Ann smiled. “I won't ask you to let me see them because I know you wouldn't break the rules. But it would help me a great deal if you could give me some background.”

“I might could do that. I'd be glad to.”

“Well, then, how did all this start? All the mountain states have old mines under them, and I suppose most of them are leaching chemicals into the soil from underground water.” She waited until Kantor nodded. “Well, then, why Tamarack? It wasn't the biggest of the mining towns, so I don't see how it could have been the worst.”

“Well, we never claimed that, Miss Garnett. We just looked at it, you know, and decided—”

“You did that simultaneously in several towns?” Anne asked.

“Absolutely. That's how we do it.”

“And they all needed a cleanup?”

“Well, there were different time scales. Some were so bad we were real worried. You know, like Love Canal or Times Beach? You find things that bad, you don't wait.”

“But Tamarack wasn't in that category.”

“No, no, nothing like that. Tamarack didn't have sick people or a history of higher rates of cancer or anything like that.”

“Then what did it have?”

“Well, there was a possible danger from the lead buildup in the soil. We can't ignore that, Miss Garnett; that's what
the superfund is for, to give us the tools to do our job and keep the planet clean.”

“Possible danger,” Anne repeated. “Didn't the initial report sent to Tamarack say something about ‘imminent danger'? Am I wrong about that?”

“Well, I'd have to check—”

“I don't think you have to check,” she said evenly. “I'm sure you remember every part of every report that goes out of this office, because you're conscientious and you care deeply about what you're doing. I think that report was exaggerated, and I think the time schedule was speeded up. I'd like to talk about that, since you won't let me see the file.”

There was a pause. “We don't do things like that,” Kantor said. “We're straight with people. But in this case, I was worried that the people in Tamarack might be complacent; you know how mountain towns are, they don't think anybody can tell them how to do things.”

“You know that for a fact? You've been to a number of mountain towns?”

“Well, no, unfortunately, I never have been. But Senator Chatham told me about them; he knows a great deal about them. So we felt it was important to make the problem sound a little more urgent than it really was. I didn't lie—I'd never lie to people—it's just that these things might could get terribly dangerous if they're ignored. So I thought it was essential to get people moving.”

“Senator Chatham told you about mountain towns,” Anne said.

“He was worried about Tamarack. Of course the decision was made by the whole department, but Senator Chatham was the one who first brought it to my attention. It's his state, and he was afraid for the safety of the people, so he asked me to look into it.”

“And to exaggerate the danger.”

“To alert the people. I explained that. We didn't exaggerate; we used language that would get their attention. That's our job, Miss Garnett. Of course you understand that we
take senators' requests very seriously—they certainly know the needs and the dangers in their own states—and when Senator Chatham suggested we emphasize the danger, we were quite satisfied to convey that urgency to the people of Tamarack.”

“And the time scale?” Anne asked.

“Well, we might could've waited, that's true, but the senator was very worried that if we put it off, it'd get put on the back burner and nothing would happen, maybe for years—that does happen, you know—and then people might could start getting sick or dying and then the cleanup'd cost a lot more.”

“So he insisted on its being done right away?”

“He urged me to consider it very seriously for the well-being of everyone. I agreed it was the good, cautious thing to do, and I sent the recommendation to the department.”

And he is a monster.

“Did he press you on it?”

“Oh, no,” Kantor said swiftly. “Nobody
presses
the EPA. He made known his concerns to me, and I did what I thought was necessary to avoid a dangerous situation developing.”

“What would you have done if you thought you had more time?”

“Well, like I say, we would've done a full study—”

“More complete than the one you did?”

“Well, longer, but not necessarily more complete. And we would've had more meetings with the people in the neighborhoods; we do try our best to accommodate them. Now you people went and got that injunction, and I must say, Miss Garnett, if they'd had a life-threatening situation there, what you did would have been downright irresponsible.”

“But if you had convinced the judge that it was life-threatening, there would have been no injunction.”

Kantor gave a short nod.

“It seems it was not life-threatening, so you really had no reason to be in such a hurry. And you had no reason to
exaggerate the danger to alert them, since their well-being was not threatened, at least in the near future.”

“Well, now, that's too strong—”

Anne returned the papers to her briefcase. “You did this because Senator Chatham was worried about the health of the people.”

Kantor's worried frown smoothed out. “He was and I was. That's exactly it. We respond to danger, Miss Garnett, and Senator Chatham was concerned that his constituents might be in danger. He wasn't worried about his own self; he doesn't live there. He was worried about families up there in the mountains. He's an amazing man, the senator; he never stops thinking, looking ahead, making plans; you wouldn't think he'd have the time for a small town with a problem that hasn't even got near the crisis stage, but he always makes time; he's never too busy to pay attention to details. And I was grateful for his pointing out the problem, because we rely on that kind of information, and we believe in the cautious approach. Ignoring danger signals is the worst thing we could do.”

“I agree with you,” Anne said, standing up. “You should never ignore danger signals. Thank you for your time.”

He frowned again. “I don't know how I've done you any good.”

“You've given me information. I'm grateful for that.” She went out into Washington's pale, wintry sunshine, her anger a hard knot within her. Whatever her father and her family had done, to her or to anyone else, they did not deserve this.

She took a taxi to the airport. Josh was in Tamarack; she was to meet him there. They had to decide what to do next.

*   *   *

“Keith checked it out,” Leo said. He and Josh were sitting on a bench on the mall, watching a few skiers walk toward the lift a few blocks from the silent gondola. The mall was almost as silent. Local people shopped for bargains in the sales at all the stores, but it was a halfhearted kind of browsing, because the empty town, and closeout sales in January, meant a disastrous season. “As soon as we saw the drainage ditch was broken, we figured it had to have been a
slide somewhere up above, so Keith climbed up and checked it out. He said it was an ordinary rock slide. They happen all the time, and there wasn't any way we could have predicted it. Pieces of the mountains are always breaking off, you know, and the ground shifts all the time; we have a few earthquakes a year, minor ones, but they loosen a lot of rock. After you called the other night I talked to Bill Clausan about going up there. He said he'd do it sometime this week.”

Josh tapped a rolled-up newspaper on his knee. “One of the problems of being a scientist is you can't rest until you see for yourself. And I'm only here for a couple of days. Where do I find Bill Clausan?”

Leo gave him the telephone number. “I'd like to go along.”

“But you won't. You've done your three hours at the office today. You've got a tough head, friend, but it still needs time to recover. I'll see you later.” Josh left him there, brooding at the sky and the too-quiet town, and that afternoon he and Bill Clausan drove into the hills east of town, above the reservoir, to the road that climbed close to the drainage ditch.

“The ditch is that way,” Bill said, gesturing to the right. “We figured the slide came from up there”—he pointed to the cliffs above them—“and Keith said he found the slide area just above the base of the cliffs. It's not too steep, but walking through this stuff is like treading molasses. You sure you want to try it?”

“Sure.” Josh tightened his snowshoes, pulled on his gloves, and took up his ski poles. “Lead the way.”

It took them forty minutes to hike through the brush and snow. They took long strides, then short ones, shoved snow aside or walked on top of it, lost their balance on the rocks and wavered before getting their footing and moving on. The only sound was their heavy breathing. “Damned hot,” Bill grunted once; that was all. They reached the base of the rock cliffs at the top of the hill and turned, traversing along them, until Bill stopped. “Probably right about here,” he said. “The ditch is straight down the hill.”

He took a shovel with a telescoping handle from his backpack and began to shovel and push the snow to both sides of the rock face, clearing a wide area and exposing a layer of autumn leaves, some of them still showing traces of bronze and russet. Beneath them were long blades of crushed grasses and dried flowerheads amid tumbled rocks. “Nothing here,” Bill muttered, and moved to sweep a larger area. Josh dug with his own shovel, and the two of them moved the snow outward, their breath rasping in their throats. Josh's dark glasses kept sliding down his nose, wet with perspiration; his hands were clammy inside his gloves. Bill took off his hat and unzipped his jacket. And they kept enlarging the cleared space.

The sun was lower in the sky; Bill zipped up his jacket and put on his hat. Josh took off his dark glasses. “About half an hour more?” he asked.

Bill nodded. “You sure you know what you're looking for?”

“Yes.” Furiously, Josh pushed the snow away, and in another five minutes he stopped. He was looking at an area free of autumn leaves and grass. Just above it, at the base of the cliff, a section of rocks looked pale against the dark gray rock around it, as if it had been newly washed.

“Bill,” he said, “I want you to be part of this.”

Bill looked at the pale rock. “It broke off, not so long ago. It's not weathered like the rest of the cliff.”

Josh nodded. “Look here.” His finger traced a star pattern of fractures radiating from the pale rock. “That's from a blast.”

“Some damn fool playing around up here; why the hell won't people learn to leave things alone?”

Josh ran his fingers lightly over the area at the base of the star pattern, and found a few pieces of broken wire. “Fuse wire,” he said, and put them in his pocket. He took his camera from his backpack and photographed the pale rock, focusing on the star pattern. He had seen that pattern all over the world, in archaeological sites where workers were blasting. He stood and photographed the area of the drainage ditch below, and then their location, from several
angles. “We've almost lost our light,” he said. The sun was just touching the ridge of mountains on the other side of the valley.

“Got enough?” Bill asked. “Let's get out of here.”

Josh stowed his camera and shovel. As they walked back along the trail they had made at the base of the cliffs, he spoke over his shoulder to Bill. “This should be kept quiet for a while.”

“Why? I'd like to print it in the paper, that people are fooling around up there, around the drainage ditch, and they oughta—” He stopped. “The drainage ditch. That's what you're saying? Somebody set off a blast to break the ditch?” He thought for a minute. “Shit. Somebody fouled up the reservoir? Nobody'd do that.” He shook his head. “Nobody'd do that.”

“Will you keep it quiet for now?” Josh asked.

“Sure,” Bill said. His voice was subdued. But when they reached the jeep, he said, “Listen, why not just blow up the reservoir if that's what they wanted to do? It doesn't make sense to go through all that rigmarole, dynamiting some rocks so they slide into the drainage ditch so the reservoir gets poisoned.”

Josh tossed his backpack into the back of the jeep. “You all thought it was an accident, didn't you? An act of nature that couldn't have been predicted or avoided. But if the reservoir had been blown up . . .” He looked at Bill as he got in the jeep.

“We would've had a manhunt,” Bill said slowly. “We would've torn this place apart to find the son of a bitch that did it.” He backed the jeep out onto the highway. “You got any idea who did it?”

“No. I hope to find out. That's why it has to be kept quiet.”

“Gotcha.” They drove toward town. The air had turned cold, and Bill turned on the heater. At the outskirts of town, he stopped at an intersection and turned to Josh. “Why the hell would anybody do that? It hurt all of us, the whole town, is what it did. Why would somebody want to do that?”

“Whoever did it never thought about the people,” Josh said. “Or if he did, he didn't give a damn about them. I'd guess that all he thought about was himself and whatever he wanted.” He glanced out the window. “My car is in Leo's parking place at his office; would you let me off there? I have to get to the airport.”

“Leaving town?”

“No.” He looked at the clock on the dashboard. In less than an hour, he would be with her. “I'm meeting a plane.”

*   *   *

They sat around the long pine kitchen table, finishing dinner, waiting for Robin and Ned to go to their rooms so they could talk. “You've been very quiet tonight, Ned,” Leo observed. “Something bothering you?”