Scratchgravel Road (Josie Gray Mysteries #2)(60)
Frustrated, she stirred her tea and watched the sugar at the bottom of the glass. “What was your job at the plant?”
“Same as Santiago. Safe cleanup. That’s what the bosses called it.”
She nodded. “What made you leave?”
“They found me out. Fired me.”
She laughed at his abrupt answer. “Fired?”
“Walked me to a room, took my clothes and boots. I tried to keep my Geiger counter for a souvenir but they caught me. They kicked my ass all the way to the parking lot. Gave me a personal escort.”
“What did you do?”
A conspiratorial grin lit up his face. “Sabatoge.”
Josie was shocked, but only mildly. She smiled at his grin. She could never keep a poker face with Sauly. “How so?”
“They were cooking soup.”
“What’s soup?”
“Nuclear soup. That’s what we called it. The chemicals were in big silver vats and we always said they were cooking the soup.”
“I thought you were working cleanup?”
“New soup. Blow-up-the-world stuff. I knew nobody would listen to me. So I pissed in the soup,” he said.
“Literally?”
He gave her a look as if she should have known better. “Figuratively.”
Josie decided not to pursue the sabotage line of questioning. Some things she preferred not know.
“What made you think they were making new stuff?” she asked.
“You need to mix chemicals to tear a building down?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I never worked at a nuclear plant.”
“The answer’s no.”
“Who was doing it?”
“Beacon! The cleanup company.”
“How do you know it wasn’t something legitimate? I talked with Diego Paiva this week.”
Sauly rolled his eyes, obviously not impressed.
She continued. “He said they’re combining waste product with glass, melting it down, and making new material where the nuclear waste can be stored while the radioactivity wears off.”
Sauly ignored her explanation. “I’ll tell you a secret. Guess who blew the whistle to the EPA?”
She looked at him skeptically. “You mean the Nuclear Regulatory Commission?”
“That’s the one.”
“I thought it was the group of women from Artemis. The ones who first suspected the higher cancer rates.”
He grinned widely. “That’s what they want you to think. Beacon blew the whistle. They go around the country scouting out old sites, getting their numbers in order. Then they feed a bunch of green-loving mamas some figures and coach them how to file a lawsuit.” He threw his hands in the air. “Wha-la! The government knows they have to clean up the mess before they get hammered with another lawsuit. Pretty soon, Beacon has a new multimillion-dollar contract.”
Josie shook her head. “Is this Sauly theory, or do you have something to back this up?”
“Dig around on the Internet. You’ll find it all.”
Josie turned her line of questions back to the reason for her visit. “So, you were in the room where they were cooking the new soup?”
“They caught me there twice. Second time they fired me.”
“You didn’t have clearance to be there?”
“Nope.”
“Seems reasonable, then, that you got fired.”
“I never said it wasn’t. I didn’t really need the money anyway,” Sauly said.
“Did you ever see anyone hurt working there?”
He rubbed his head again and considered her question. “Not that I can remember.”
“No one ever got radiation poisoning from working with the chemicals?”
Sauly turned his chair away from the table and stuck his legs and arms out in front of him and studied them. “I think I got a green glow at night, but that’s about it.”
*
Sauly sent Josie off with a loaf of zucchini bread he pulled out of his freezer. She sat in her jeep in his driveway and called Lou on her cell phone to check in.
“Cowan called,” Lou said. “He wants to meet with you, Otto, and the county health nurse today. I already scheduled you all at the Trauma Center at three o’clock.”
“That’s perfect. Thanks, Lou.”
“Otto and I got a lead on Santiago’s family. Otto’s running it down.”
Josie could hear Otto talking in the background and Lou finally put him on the phone.
“I need sustenance. I haven’t had a Coke all day. How about the Hot Tamale?”
“I need to run by Dillon’s office first. I’ll meet you in thirty minutes.”
Josie drove back into town with the radio off, trying to sift through the details. It wasn’t the information she expected to get from Sauly, but then again, it rarely was with him.
She pulled her jeep up to the curb in front of the office of Abacus and left her car running. She entered the office and found Miss Christina Handley sitting at her desk looking radiant in a silky white shirt and cream-colored skirt. She smiled broadly and said how nice it was to see Josie again. If Dillon’s secretary was the least bit uppity Josie could have hated her, but she seemed genuinely kind. And, Dillon claimed she was an excellent secretary, which did nothing to help Josie’s struggle with the lovely Miss Handley.