Hot Water (18 page)

David frowned at what he’d written. He drew a line down the middle of the page and made a new column for questions:

Why didn’t Jeremy remember anything?

What skills were needed to incapacitate Jeremy so quickly—he was a big guy, in good shape.

How did Mr. X know about the insulin?

That one was easy—everyone around town knew about Flora’s diabetes.

What had Mr. X given Jeremy to make him pass out?

Hmm . . . he drew a line connecting this question to the first and opened his laptop, doing a quick search on “amnesia, drugs.” Wow. There were a lot, mostly called “date-rape” drugs. Rohypnol looked most promising.

Okay, but how had Mr. X (he drew a quick sketch of a bad guy with a black cape and mask in the margin) incapacitated Jeremy in order to give him the drug?

Another quick search and he quickly narrowed it down to variations of choke holds. That or a Taser-type of weapon, but best he could find, that should have left a mark somewhere on Jeremy.

So Mr. X knew where Jeremy and Flora lived, had counted on the door being unlocked—most of the people around here never locked their doors, something that still amazed David after growing up in D.C.—snuck in, and waited for his opportunity. Premeditated.

David chewed on his pencil, not liking the answers he was getting. The attacker could have been there watching them all through dinner. That was spooky—and not the good kind of spooky. More like creepy serial killer stalker spooky.

He adjusted his drawing of the attacker, morphing him into more of a ninja-type. Mr. X could have snuck up on Jeremy while the water for the dishes was running, choked him until he passed out, carried him into the living room and dosed him with Rohypnol or one of its variants, then poured the booze down his throat.

Which was bad news for Jeremy, because unless the hospital tested for it specifically, Rohypnol was almost impossible to detect once it was metabolized.

Maybe some would be left in the vomit. Gross, but it was something.

Back to the timeline.

Mr. X chokes Jeremy, drugs him, say five minutes.

Once Jeremy’s out of it, forces the booze down his throat. What, maybe ten minutes? Glug, glug, glug, yeah, ten minutes.

Leaves Jeremy on couch. Finds insulin, overdoses Flora, sets up kitchen to make it look like Jeremy had done it in a drunken stupor . . . another five to ten minutes.

And leaves. Twenty to thirty minutes tops.

Which still left the fifteen to twenty minutes needed for the insulin to start to make Flora sick.

If it wasn’t for Jeremy reacting to the alcohol and drugs and vomiting most of it up, he could have died of alcohol intoxication or maybe even aspirated. If it wasn’t for David arriving to find Flora, she could have died as well.

David gripped his pencil hard as he scribbled out the masked figure, adding layer on layer of black until his pencil snapped. He leaned back, feeling out of breath and shaky and empty and sick all at once.

Why, why, why? Who would want Jeremy or Gram Flora dead?

Because whoever Mr. X was, he didn’t care if people died. People David loved.

And no one was looking for him. No one even believed he existed.

No one except David.

NINETEEN

Morris led me to the front entrance of the plant and we walked inside. I’d been expecting something like a military installation, but instead the main lobby felt like an upscale hotel: the domed ceiling with the sunlight coming in through the glass panes, steel pillars, marble floors, a steel-and-wood open staircase leading up to offices situated above us in a horseshoe configuration. People in business attire walked along the second-floor promenade, carrying folders and looking important.

The security officer at the main desk greeted us. Unlike his compatriots outside in their uniforms, he wore a suit and tie, making him look more like a concierge than a deterrent to would-be terrorists. Of course, that was Grandel’s goal. To relax prospective investors without scaring them with thoughts of security.

“Welcome, Ms. Palladino,” he said with a smile that appeared genuine. “Please place all your personal belongings in here for safekeeping.” He slid a plastic bin across the desk toward me.

I dropped my car keys and cell phone inside. “For security, right? So no one takes any pictures?”

“Actually, it’s not so much about security as safety,” Morris said. “Some embedded controllers in the auxiliary diesel generator control rooms have EPROMs which have been known to be erased by camera flashes in the past, triggering a generator trip—”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but it didn’t sound good.

“Plus, we wouldn’t want anything to get crapped up,” he finished with a smile.

I stared at him. “That’s not going to happen, right?”

“Oh no, of course not. We’re not even going anywhere near—I was just joking. Owen says I never know when to shut up. Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you nervous or anything.”

It was clear I was the one making him nervous. “No, that’s fine. Just checking.”

He seemed relieved. The guard gave me a coat-check receipt, and Morris led me to yet another checkpoint beneath the stairs. It looked like a metal detector. I remembered the knife in my boot—maybe I should have left it with the guard? But I was already feeling uncomfortable, dressed in my Hardy & Palladino polo shirt and jeans. I hesitated, watching as Morris stepped inside the unit, put his hand on a small pad, then turned and put the other hand there.

“It’s a portal detector,” he explained. “To make sure no one is coming in with a high count.”

“You mean radiation?”

“Sure. Step inside, it’s painless. That’s right. Just put your palm there. Hold it. Now spin around and put the other hand there. Perfect. See, nothing to it.”

I guess you’d get used to it if you had to do this every time you went in or out, but I was kind of freaked, holding my breath, waiting for an alarm klaxon to sound and a red siren to go off as everyone screamed and ran for cover. Instead it was just a bored technician reading a computer screen.

“You’re clean,” she said, waving me through and handing me a lanyard with a small plastic bob that resembled a pedometer hanging from it.

“What’s this?”

“Personal dosimeter,” Morris answered, flipping a similar device that he wore clipped to his breast pocket. “See the screen? It’s just reading background now. It will change if there’s any radiation. If it gets too high that red light will blink and an alarm will sound.”

Great. I was glad they were so careful, but it was certainly a bit nerve-wrecking. Morris opened one of a pair of frosted glass doors and held it for me. I stepped into a glass-walled corridor.

“The observation deck,” he explained. “You can look into the control room where it’s all happening without disturbing anyone.”

The control room looked pretty much right out of the movies. Four curved workstations, each staffed by two technicians, filled with flashing buttons, computer terminals, keyboards, and a ton of switches. Surrounding them along the outside wall were large monitors showing every aspect of each reactor: primary coolant levels, pump flow, secondary coolant, emergency coolant, status of control rods, reactor core temperature, time until isotope extraction, and a lot of other things I had no idea about. In between each computer screen were old-fashioned analog dials, presumably revealing the same information.

“What happens if the electricity goes out?” I asked, fascinated by the power any one of those tiny buttons held, yet also thinking that it all looked very, very boring.

“Unlikely, since we not only generate our own but also have backup generators. Plus, we have two sets of manual controls for everything. One inside here and a second inside the containment area. Redundancy on redundancy, that’s the key to safety.”

Safety definitely seemed to be paramount. There were signs everywhere—I even spotted one at the exit from the control room reminding people to tie their shoes. Of course, trip on your laces, fall and push the wrong button in here and you might unleash a nuclear holocaust.

“So, how does a meltdown happen?”

He smiled. “You’re thinking about what happened in Japan. Those reactors were forty years old. With today’s technology, there’s no good reason for a meltdown—especially not with my design. Redundancy, remember.”

“But in theory?”

“In theory, you’d have to somehow let the reaction chamber reach critical mass and then fail to control the ensuing reaction. This would lead to overheating—thus the term meltdown. All that heat and pressure would need somewhere to expand beyond the containment chamber, and that would lead to an explosion.” He shook his head. “Never happen. Not here. You’d need the control rods to fail as well as both the primary coolant pump plus the secondary plus the emergency coolant.”

“In all four reactors?” I was still fascinated by the idea that somehow four reactors were safer than one. “Or would just one failing cause a chain reaction?”

“But see, that’s the problem—if any one of those highly improbable things occurred, we’d simply scram the affected reactor—”

“Scram?”

“Dump the control rods into the core. That stops all fission in about five seconds flat and lets the reactor cool down. Problem solved before it starts.”

I looked at the operators, staring at their gauges and monitors and dials and readouts. Maybe it was as simple as Morris said.

I wished I had as much faith in humans’ ability to mess with nature without leading to tragic consequences as he did.

A woman entered the glass doors behind us. “Ms. Palladino?” she asked in a bright voice. “Mr. Grandel will see you now.”

Owen Grandel’s office was on the second floor, so I had to go through the portal detector again—sighing in relief when I was pronounced “clean” once more—and then up the lobby stairs. The room looked like any other chairman of a prosperous company’s would: modern furniture, nice paintings on the walls, fresh flowers in vases, and a large picture window behind the desk. Only, Grandel’s view was into the control room.

Grandel nodded to one of the leather chairs across from his desk as he finished typing something on his computer. His assistant brought me a glass of iced tea without asking—and somehow managed to get it just right, not too sweet.

“I met Vincent last night,” I started, wanting to see how Grandel took the news.

His face filled with distaste. “Bastard is blackmailing me with that cult of his. Wants to take over my company or a large chunk of it.”

“So I heard. He asked me to find out when the next isotope shipment is scheduled for. Made me wonder if he was planning something.”

“Or if he asked you because he knew you’d tell me and we’d delay the shipment—which we can’t afford to do—or waste time and money on new security measures.” He tipped his chair back as he considered the angles.

“Could Vincent be behind the accidents?”

“Believe me, I thought of that. But we rechecked all our personnel, there’s no one with ties to him, no one showing any sudden influx of cash that he could have bought off—I don’t see how he could have orchestrated it. But I do think he’s behind the false alarms.”

“False alarms? You never mentioned those.”

“Radiation sensors are extremely sensitive—especially the ones on the perimeter. A few weeks ago we began getting a barrage of alarms but when we checked with handheld units, there was no trace of actual radiation triggering them. Morris recalibrated the remote sensors and they all now send any alarms to his handheld first so he can verify them. It seems to have solved the problem, but I still can’t help but wonder if Vincent was behind it.”

“Maybe testing your responses—but why? He doesn’t really want the plant shut down, that would defeat his purposes. He just wants to inconvenience you enough so you’ll give in to his demands.”

“Which I have no intention of doing. I’ll burn this place to the ground and start over before that happens.”

I didn’t believe that for a moment, but Grandel’s fists were clenched so tight that I thought he might well burn Vincent’s place down. Then I remembered what Noreen had said about Grandel’s parents dying in a fire.

A shudder ran through me before I could stop it. Both Grandel and Vincent were dangerous men playing a dangerous game, and I was caught in the middle. “What could he or anyone have to gain by causing false alarms?”

“I have no idea.”

I considered my next words carefully. I needed to give him a plan of action—but I didn’t want to escalate things between Grandel and Vincent. “Well, you do know that your so-called protestors are being paid, don’t you?”

That made him sit up. “Really? By who? Vincent?”

“That’s beyond me—you’ll need a PI or someone who can trace the money to prove it. I’m also certain that Vincent is behind the online campaign against you. In fact, he’s hired a media consultant named Yancey. The guy’s pretty slick—has the protestors from the church filming this morning.”

“Filming what?”

“When I saw them they were just singing a song, but Yancey likes drama, so don’t be surprised if there’s a repeat of yesterday’s fainting episode or something like it.”