Critical Judgment (1996) (16 page)

As she listened to Kelly describe her life, Abby thought about herself and her own situation. If the separation with Josh became permanent, it was doubtful she’d last long in Patience alone.

The research wing was deserted save for a security guard and one scientist. It was a huge rectangle with a central glass-enclosed atrium, which Kelly explained was for work with any toxic or potentially toxic substance. It was superventilated into a complex series of filters. The air emerging from those filters was perfectly safe to breathe.

“We’re very much aware of the toxicity of some of the substances we work with,” Kelly said. “With cadmium, for instance, which is one of the more toxic, we exceed OSHA and EPA standards for air quality by a good margin.”

“That’s reassuring,” Abby responded with no enthusiasm.

“Perhaps it would be
really
reassuring if I told you what those standards are. Essentially, the maximal acceptable ambient-air content for cadmium would be equivalent to pulverizing two aspirin tablets and blowing the dust into the air in the Astrodome.”

“That
is
impressive.”

Surrounding the atrium were a dozen or more individual laboratories, each featuring the sort of organized clutter Abby had come to expect in any busy research space.

“This is Josh’s unit,” Kelly said. “It’s the most demanding area of the business, because the competition from other manufacturers is so fierce. From what I’ve seen, he’s standing up to the pressure pretty well.”

Look again
, Abby thought as she inspected the equipment and quarters. Every inch of the vast space looked spotless and carefully maintained.

C Concourse featured a fifteen-foot billboard that proclaimed:

The manufacturing wing was as carefully maintained as research and development. All cadmium, nickel, and other toxic metals were handled by robot arms controlled by workers in mask, gloves, and jumpsuit. The huge vats in which the metals were mixed and prepared for injection into the battery casings were covered and sealed. Ventilation and air filtration were high priority.

In spite of herself, Abby was impressed. Colstar seemed to have safety precautions built upon safety precautions.

“I do have a couple of questions,” Abby said as they glided back up the concourse. “First, do you know anything about a stream that once ran beside the plant?”

“Of course.”

“What happened to it?”

Kelly smiled.

“I don’t know if anyone outside the company has ever even seen this,” she said. “But Lyle has given you the run of the place, so here we go.”

She drove Abby to the very rear of B Concourse and then used a key to open a large metal door. Inside was a spacious natural-rock swimming pool, complete with a corkscrew water slide and waterfall. An extravagantly created jungle paradise. The vaulted ceiling was a massive opaque skylight. One wall was clear glass, behind which was a glittering health club.

“This space is reserved for Mr. Ezra Black and the rest of the officers. I’m part of the club, though I don’t use it. They tolerate women in management here as long as we don’t get in the way or try to act like men. The truth is, I’m a little embarrassed that we have such a thing at Colstar. If Josh isn’t a key holder yet, he will be.”

“The pool is fed by the stream?”

“Yes, but the water’s heated to eighty-three. The excess from the stream and outflow from the pool drop down nearly fifty feet into a filtration plant located outside on the south wall of the mesa. From there it flows into the Oxbow River, which runs along the north side of the valley and empties into the quarry. The outflow water is monitored frequently for coliform bacteria and other toxins, and I test it personally every two weeks.”

An executive swimming pool!
Lew and the others were going to be sharply disappointed by the solution to the case of the vanishing stream.

“I’ve seen enough,” Abby said, glancing at her watch. It was two-thirty. “And you must be exhausted. I appreciate the tour.”

Kelly drove them back to her office.

“It was a pleasure to meet you,” she said. “Perhaps we could go out for dinner sometime.”

“Perhaps,” Abby said. Then she realized that her response was unreasonably cool. Not once during the hours they had just spent together had she felt Kelly Franklin was hiding something from her. “Listen,” she added suddenly. “I’d like very much to get together. I’ll call you here in the next day or so and we’ll set something up.”

“Terrific.”

Kelly paged Quinn, then stacked all the computer printouts together and passed them over.

“Thanks,” Abby said. “I’ll cadmium myself to sleep the next few nights.”

“Have fun. Is there anything else?”

Abby tried to think of what Lew might want her to ask. Then she remembered the shadows on the cliff face below the plant.

“One last question,” she said. “Are there any other floors beneath the basement?”

“None at all. The basement level rests on solid rock. The filter house is the only thing below it, and as I said, that’s built outside.”

“There are no openings cut into the face of the cliff on the northeast side?”

“No. Why? Do you have reason to think there are?”

For a few moments Abby studied the woman’s expression, searching unsuccessfully for any hint of evasion.

“No. I was just wondering,” she said.

A
bby set aside the reading she had been doing on cadmium toxicity and packed her things for another trip up to Samuel Ives’s hillside home. She recognized her anticipation at seeing the eccentric again and realized that he was one of the bright lights in the loneliness and isolation that had been engulfing her since moving up from the city.

The early morning was cool and already bright. In an hour and a half she would be starting the day shift in the ER. With any luck the twelve hours there would be interesting and hectic enough to be totally engrossing. Her mind certainly needed a break from the outside world. It had been a week since Josh had moved out. He had come back three days ago for some things, but she’d been working at the time. All she found on the dining-room table when she returned home were a ragged bouquet of wildflowers, and a letter.

I believe I know who is responsible for my problems
, the rambling note read, in part.
Once I am CERTAIN, I will act Then, and only then, will I be FREE. I PRAY that you are not one of them
.

The bizarre note brought a heavy dose of reality.
Over the days she and Josh had been apart, memories of the way things had been between them over their first eighteen months together had begun bidding for space in her head. Now, she realized, Josh Wyler was no longer someone she could count on for anything. Worse, he might actually have become someone to fear.

With time to fill, Abby had started taking an aerobics class and had even begun jogging. As a result, the hike up to Ives’s place was getting easier. She made it this morning without even breathing hard.

As she suspected, the germ causing Ives’s chronic leg infection had been identified as a slow-growing fungus called aspergillus. The treatment was amphotericin B, a potent intravenous antibiotic. To accommodate the hermit’s adamant refusal to return to Patience Regional Hospital for any reason, Abby had reluctantly inserted a short, indwelling catheter in a vein in his forearm. On the days when she could not get up to see him, he administered the medication himself. And she had to admit that in spite of her doubts about the treatment approach, day by day the deep-seated infection was improving.

“Ives, don’t shoot, it’s me!” she shouted as she reached the clearing.

He looked up at her from his workbench.

“No shooting today, Doc. Just polishing my bow.”

“It’s so beautiful.”

The hermit admired his handiwork.

“It’s getting there,” he said. “Another year, maybe.”

“Then what?”

“Then I’ll make another one, I guess.”

Abby motioned toward the straw-dummy target.

“So, tell me—blindfolded or not?”

She had asked the question before several times and still had not gotten a straight answer.

“If I can see,” Ives said this time, “what does a rag tied across my eyes mean?”

The lacerations on his face were healing nicely, and the bruising was all but gone.

“You’ve got great healing powers,” Abby said.

Ives reached down beside his bench and held up a can of Chef Boyardee spaghetti.

“It’s all in the diet.”

“Ives, tell me something,” she said as she re-dressed his leg. “How long have you been up here?”

“I don’t really know. Nine, maybe ten years.”

“I have a question about Colstar.”

“Try me.”

“I saw a slide of the plant taken about eight years ago. It was shot from a distance, and the quality really isn’t that good, but on the face of the cliff it looks as if there are three long slits in the rock.”

“But they’re not there now.” Ives finished the thought for her.

“Exactly.”

“They were windows of some sort, eighteen inches, maybe two feet across, and five or six feet high. Almost looked like the ports in medieval castles that were used to shoot arrows through without getting shot yourself.”

“What happened to them?”

Ives shrugged.

“One day they were just gone—filled in, I guess.”

“Can we see where they were from here?”

“We can try, but I think they did a pretty thorough job of sealing them up.”

Ives retrieved his burlap sack and an army blanket and led her to his observation point. She hadn’t been out there since the first day she had climbed up to the camp with Josh. Looking out across the valley now, she wondered where he was, what he was doing, and whether or not he had kept the appointment with Garrett Owen. She
had
called the neurologist and gotten him to move it up two weeks.

The sun was beginning its ascent, and the Colstar
cliff glowed amber in the light. Ives spread out the blanket and lay prone next to Abby.

“I can never get over how huge the place is,” she said.

“It’s a fortress all right.”

Ives focused his field glasses and passed them over. Having been inside the plant, Abby found it easy to get oriented. First she scanned down to the roof of the hospital, and then the adjacent professional building. Next came the narrow field of wildflowers, and then the high barbed-wire-topped fence that essentially separated the valley from the plant. Beyond the fence was a broad, undulating rocky meadow, and then the almost-sheer cliff. Abby located the filter house Kelly Franklin had told her about. Next she panned across the face of the cliff. Nothing.

“Exactly where were those slits?” she asked.

Ives checked through the glasses and then handed them back.

“Look at the name Colstar on the side of the building. Believe it or not, those letters are each eight feet high. Now go to the
S
and head straight down the rock. I think that should be about it.”

The resolution of the binoculars was magnificent. Abby studied the cliff carefully from top to bottom. Then again.

“Hey, Ives,” she said excitedly, “I think I can see where they were. If you stare hard enough, you can tell that the shapes are still there, only it looks like they were sealed with cement or painted wood.”

Ives examined the wall himself.

“Some sort of plywood with small stones glued on, I’d guess,” he said.

“What’s behind them? That’s the question.”

And why doesn’t the health and safety officer know the answer?
That was an even bigger question.

Ives set the binoculars aside.

“Well, doesn’t that just beat all,” he said. “Here I’ve been lookin’ at the place all these years, top to bottom, side to side, and you come along and show me something I’ve never noticed.” He grinned over at her. “So am I blindfolded, or not?”

T
he headache began, as all the others had, with the strange chemical taste at the back of his tongue. His anger had been building, even between the attacks, but now he felt as if a fuse had been lit somewhere deep inside him, and he was powerless to stop the explosion. He didn’t deserve this. All his life he had tried to do what was right. He didn’t deserve to be going insane. Three years in the Corps. Two rows of ribbons. He should have stayed in a few more years. Hell, he should have stayed in forever. If he had known what lay in store for him, he would have. First the failure with the diner, the goddamn bankers who wouldn’t wait, then job after job. Then two jobs at once just to stay even, three when he could find the work. And now he had been let go at the plant. And for what? For taking too many sick days. But who in the hell could work thirty feet up on a ladder with cannons exploding in his head?

He felt the throbbing begin behind his eyes—the horrible, pulsating pain. The taste in his mouth grew sharper, more unpleasant. This one was going to be a bitch. He took a drink of water, then spit it out. There was no sense swallowing it. Before long he would be throwing up anyway.

He raced into his bedroom and tore the dry cleaner’s plastic off his dress uniform. The Marines might not approve of his wearing it for this, but what the hell. They had spent all those years teaching him to kill. Now he would find out how much he’d learned.

His hands were shaking so badly, he could barely fasten the buttons on his jacket. But even after nearly fifteen years, it still fit damn well. It had been wrong to blow up at his boss for suggesting that he was faking the headaches, and wronger still to have sucker punched him. But he was only underlining what everybody already knew—the man was an asshole. Mr. Country Club Snob.

The throbbing became an electric drill, boring holes into his brain. He sank to the floor, squeezing his temples, then stumbled to his feet and out of the house. Straightening his dress uniform hat, he lurched to the car.