Hell's Bay (29 page)

After watching a few minutes of the general public of DeSoto County, Sugar felt the same sense of doom.

Fast-forwarding over several rambling rants, he was about to shut the whole thing down when C.C. Olsen climbed onstage. Olsen was a rangy man with long swept-back hair, a hawk nose, and a Pancho Villa mustache, like some renegade biker from the 1960s.

His voice was subdued, almost shy as he introduced himself to any who might not know him. The hubbub died away and the room stayed silent until he finished his talk. In the dozen rows the camera captured, nearly every person was leaning forward to catch Olsen's words.

First, he roll-called the names of eighteen locals who'd died of various diseases within the last few years, mostly cancer, a few respiratory ailments Sugar had never heard of. After Olsen pronounced each person's name, their age at death, he gave the number of years they'd spent in the classrooms and hallways of Pine Tree School.

Only two of the eighteen were cigarette smokers.

In his calm, deep voice C.C. Olsen said, ”If these eigh-teen folks, all of them friends and neighbors of people in this room, if these eighteen human beings don't count as a cancer cluster, then I don't know what would.”

Then he read off the EPA's official report on radon in that region. How government investigators found that concentrations of uranium and radium in gypsum samples taken locally were ten times the average background levels in soil for uranium and sixty times the background levels in soil for naturally occurring radium-238.

Radium-238 decayed into radon gas, which was colorless and odorless. In about four days radon decayed into polonium-218, which gave off alpha particles. These high-energy specks could penetrate to the nucleus of a cell and permanently change DNA. So if radon gas was inhaled into the sensitive tissues of the airways and lungs, over time the cells could be permanently damaged and the chances of contracting lung cancer or other respiratory ailments were greatly increased.

Sugarman saw how challenging it was to make the science clear to such ordinary folks. But C.C. was patient and slow and kept things mostly to one and two syllables. A teacher teaching.

Radium showed up in high strengths in the waste of phosphate mining. And when that radioactive clay and sludge was stacked two hundred feet high, it didn't take a genius to see how easy it was for particles to be kicked up by prevailing winds. Those particles settled onto nearby ponds and trees and agricultural areas, and got trapped inside buildings, where they built up the way grease will film the walls of a restaurant from years of deep-fat frying.

On the upper crust of the gypsum stacks the radioactive clay collected rainwater that grew into scummy ponds. That standing water evaporated and the fumes spilled down the sides of the harmless-looking mountain same as fog descended hillsides and gathered in valleys. But you couldn't see radon like you could see fog. The only means to measure the stuff was with detection meters that monitored exposure over extended periods.

And in the first video, that's all C.C. was asking for. Funding from Bates International to pay for a few dozen radon detectors. Sounded like a no-brainer to Sugarman.

When C.C. Olsen was done, Carter Mosley stepped to the podium amid scattered catcalls. With a half-smile, he waited till the noise died away. Though Sugarman had met him the night before, he hadn't paid much attention. He took him to be a quiet, unassuming man.

The Mosley he saw on the TV screen was something else. In denim shirt, khakis, and scruffy moccasins, he'd dressed the part of some disheveled poet just back from a ramble through a fairy-tale forest. But his expression was anything but blithe.

Sugarman froze the video, then advanced frame by frame till he got a focused image of Mosley's face.

Black reading glasses were perched on the tip of his nose and Mosley's sharp blue eyes squinted above them at the audience. White Scandinavian skin, expertly barbered silver hair, eyes a deep blue. On first glance his smile had a bemused air, but the longer Sugar looked, the more it resembled a sneer.

Sugarman punched the play button and watched Mosley continue to smile as the hoots and grumbling subsided. When the room was completely hushed, Mosley seemed to count off a whole minute before he began, as if letting the air clear of the fumes of their childishness.

When he spoke, he echoed Olsen's slow delivery and folksy manner and seemed perfectly at ease before the crowd. After only a sentence or two, though, Sugarman's bullshit-detector was jiggling fulltilt.

“I want to compliment Mr. Olsen on his skillful presentation. I can certainly see where he came by his fine reputation as a teacher. I'm sorry to admit I'm not in the same league as C.C. when it comes to eloquence. So bear with me, please.

“He paints a gloomy picture, and to be honest it gives me the shivers. I'd be terrified for us all if what Olsen claims turns out to be true. That's why Bates International has decided to commit substantial resources to examine these accusations of Mr. Olsen.

“Starting this week we're bringing to Summerland the best scientific minds available, men and women from all over the United States, and they'll be setting up their monitors around the perimeter of the gypsum stack, examining the data and statistics these devices capture. Bates International, and in particular Abigail Bates, is fully committed to tracking the source of any airborne migration of radon gas. Absolutely committed to being good citizens in this community where we live.”

Sugarman fast-forwarded. Listening to Mosley's patronizing twaddle was giving him a headache. It was a typical gimmick, letting some corporate-sponsored lackeys handle the scientific investigation. Fox and the henhouse. Amazing that citizens still fell for it.

He rolled past a couple of minutes, then froze another frame. Worked it forward till he had another focused image. And there it was again, that smile that was not a smile, but a smug grimace, faintly predatory.

It was an expression Sugar associated with grown men who'd once been victimized by school yard bullies and never got over it. Such men rarely openly confronted their adult antagonists. They were wilier than that, using their smarts and fake charm to gain advantage. But the anger and hurt and vengefulness born of long-ago humiliations were still burning hot, just below the surface. He knew that was a lot to pin on a half-second facial expression, but somehow Sugarman knew this guy. He was sure of it. A mean-spirited little shit.

He zipped to Mosley's exit line.

As to the radon monitors C.C. was asking Bates to purchase, well, that sounded like a reasonable request, so Carter Mosley promised, right then and there, to take the appeal directly to Abigail herself and report back to the assembly promptly.

Most of the folks in the audience knew a dodge when they heard it. The rustling grew to a growl and somebody started stomping on the gymnasium floor, and soon the stomping spread to the bleachers and grew in volume until Mosley had no choice but to step away from the microphone. As the noise increased, he waved a stiff good-bye and ambled away.

The next two videos were more of Olsen's unhurried, commonsense science, including a list of readings from the radon monitors newly installed in the classrooms, and a progress report on the ventilation system the county had grudgingly agreed to install. Then more of Mosley's pie charts and mealy-mouthed arguments, the preliminary results of the various scientific studies that Bates International was funding.

Abigail Bates made an appearance at the end of the third meeting. She was booed for a full minute before she began to speak. During the razzing, she stood impassively, scanning the audience row by row as though taking names.

When the heckles finally died away, she cleared her throat and gripped the edges of the podium and spoke in a voice that brooked no contradiction.

“I'm older than dirt. Older than anybody in this room. Eighty-five, about to be eighty-six. And nearly every one of those years I lived within two spits of phosphate mines and gypsum stacks. So if you folks want to see what radon does to someone, take a good long gander at me.

“I've already spent more money on your complaints than I consider reasonable. That's money I worked hard for. Money I earned from my own sweat, and the backbreaking labor of my daddy and his daddy. I'm nearing the end of what I'm willing to pay. So right here and now, you've got fair warning. If these attacks on Bates International continue, I'll just have to start looking elsewhere for employees.

“I'll fight this nonsense till my last breath. And that's a long way off.”

She proceeded to suck down a huge lungful of air, then puckered her lips and let it go like a dope smoker treasuring the last of her joint. She meant it as a taunt, of course, but watching this old dame who would soon die of drowning, Sugarman couldn't shake a creepy sense of foreboding. With that public display of scorn, it was very possible Abigail Bates, Thorn's feisty grandmother, had just sealed her death sentence.

 

 

 

 

When I emerged from the sheltered creek mouth into the open bay, I wasn't ready for the north wind. It slammed me from the starboard and tipped the kayak halfway over. I wind-milled for a second, fought the wild dip and rise of swells until I finally found my balance, and thought for half a moment I was under control, then got jostled sideways by another wave and almost capsized a second time.

There was no yielding to such wind, no answer for it but to quarter into it, paddle hard, stay low, cut into the belly of the waves, make my way forward with a zigzag tack, and hold on tight to the paddle's rubber handgrips.

I hunched down and dug my way toward the Mothership, a mile of open water that looked like a hundred leagues of wind-ripped sea.

My sixty-horse skiff would have skimmed that sloppy bay easily, maybe slamming now and then in a trough and taking some dousing spray, though nothing it couldn't handle. But settled low in the kayak's seat, riding with only the thin plastic skin separating my butt from the bay, that chop felt like the mother of all tempests. Before I'd gone twenty feet, my arms and back and shoulders were aching and my nicked and bleeding hands were sending jolts to the base of my skull.

The slate sky started to spit rain as the fringes of the front collided with the warm, moist atmosphere we'd been enjoying. I'd been neglecting my first mate's duties and hadn't monitored the weather channel, so I had no idea of the strength or duration of the system that was slamming us. It could be an all-night event, or might be only a small cell and last a few intense minutes.

In my defense, I'd been somewhat distracted.

Half blind from spray, I ducked my head and tried to find a rhythm. But that proved nearly impossible. All I could manage was to react to each new thump, moving ahead in spurts of a foot or two, then pitched sideways, clipped from behind by another breaker, hammered by two more. Soaked and dripping, I recovered and corrected my heading as best I could. Two strokes forward, then one slam cockeyed.

I kept my bearings by focusing on the rooftop of the Mothership, which was the only section of her I could make out above the whitecaps and spray. Even that was blurry, and no amount of blinking could clear my vision. The Mother-ship seemed to be riding badly in the seas, pitching more than I would have expected.

At least the squall was providing me cover as I passed into the section of bay that left me most exposed to the inlet where the shooter was. Mona had called the woman Sasha. Even through the radio's distortion, Mona's tone was chilling, one accomplice speaking to another.

For the moment, I had to put that aside. This next mile was about focus, endurance, and balance, about tipping points and reaction time, about staying loose but not too loose, and it was about digging one stroke after another into water that was pitching and bucking like some hell-bent rodeo ride.

By the time I'd progressed several hundred yards closer to the Mothership's stern, the wind had dropped by half. Though the bay was still choppy, it had smoothed enough for me to take a breather without fear of tipping over. It was entirely possible that the black squall that brushed by was an outer band of something larger still on its way, so I couldn't dally long.

I took two deep strokes and drew my paddle out and lay it across my lap to shake the cramps out of my arms. My legs were numb, and my spine felt like it might be locked into a permanent hunch.

After a minute's stretching, I picked up the paddle to get going again and it was then I noticed at my right elbow that part of the plastic kayak was missing, a ragged chunk roughly matching the bull shark's bite print. I checked my sleeve on that side and found a five-inch rip. Beneath the ragged tear my skin was untouched. No blood, not even a scrape.

Which suggested that in some shadowy corner of the bull shark's brain, she'd mistaken the kayak for my flesh and found that first swallow too dry and bloodless for her taste. I felt my pulse throb in my throat and a fist opened and shut in my bowels. If the shark had taken slightly better aim, or had one more inch of thrust in the swish of her tail, my body would still be back in that lagoon, reduced to morsels only minnows would find appealing.

I straightened up and peered across the sloppy bay. The Mothership was no longer rocking, but she didn't look right. Worse than that, she looked stricken. Maybe I was delusional. Circuits overloaded by surge after surge of adrenaline. Buddhists claim the world springs from the mind and sinks again into the mind. Perhaps that's all it was, a topsy-turvy hallucination I was projecting outward.

It took me several seconds to absorb the situation, put it into an orderly sequence my mind would agree to. What I was seeing was impossible, yet it was happening. The Mothership had sunk.

Or more precisely, she had half sunk. All that tonnage, all that splendid engineering and design, intricate mesh of aluminum and fiberglass and oak veneer, custom cabinetry and high-tech instrumentation, all of it was slanted to port by around forty-five degrees. The starboard pontoon was cocked ten feet in the air; the other side was submerged. Which could mean only one thing: The entire port pontoon had filled with water and was resting on the bay floor.