Scratchgravel Road (Josie Gray Mysteries #2)(96)

“We were using sodium hydroxide. Juan wasn’t watching what he was doing. He knocked the container onto the floor. It spilled everywhere. Our legs were protected, but we got it on our arms. We had gloves on our hands, but I still got some inside my glove as we were cleaning.” His hand was lying on the table and he looked down at the bandaged sore. “I have sores on my forearms too. Juan panicked. We both pulled our suits back on to clean the floor up before a supervisor walked in and saw us cleaning a spill with no protection.”

“You didn’t wash the chemicals off your arms first?” Josie asked.

Brent propped his head on his hand. “I panicked. We probably could have talked our way out of trouble if a supervisor had seen our hoods and tops off. But with a chemical spill? We’d have been fired. Then Skip walked into the unit as we were sweeping up the cleaner. He asked some pointless question about lunch or something. But he kept talking.”

Josie remembered seeing someone in the security tape come into the lab and talk with them.

“I could feel my hand burning. I knew I had gotten it on me by that point but we had to wait for him to leave. Juan had it all over his arms. He was already on fire by the time Skip left.”

“When did the open sores show up?” Josie asked.

“His were a day later. Mine showed up after his. I didn’t get burnt as bad. He freaked out though when they kept getting worse. We have fact sheets at the plant about all the chemicals. He started reading about cancer and side effects. That’s when he went to the county health nurse.”

“Did you advise him not to visit?” she asked.

He shrugged. “He never asked. He just went. When he told me he was going back for a follow-up visit I said he was crazy. He was going to get us both fired. He kept talking about the side effects and treatment and not having insurance. Then he decided to go to Skip Bradford and tell him everything.”

“And you told him not to?”

“It would have been my job!”

“Why not kill Juan in the desert? Why go to the trouble of taking him to the plant?” she asked.

“He asked me to take him! Practically demanded it. He couldn’t go to work with the sores like they were. He wanted me to take him to the plant that night so he could find some salve or ointment. I finally agreed.” He looked at Josie, his face imploring now. “I never set out to hurt him. He just backed me into a corner!”

“And when he tried to walk out?” she asked.

“We both realized the sores had gotten too bad for anything in the first-aid kit. He wanted me to take him to Skip’s house. To tell him everything. I wouldn’t do it so he said he’d walk. I panicked.”

“And you killed him.”

He looked at her, his face a conflicted mix of anger and sadness.

Josie looked at him for some time, taking in the facts, realizing that a few bad decisions had reduced his life to nothing. “Why did you tell me about the sores on your hand?”

He shook his head, offered a regretful smile. “By the time I talked to you I’d had them for a couple of days and they weren’t healing.” He raised his shirt sleeve to reveal bandages on his forearms. “I don’t have insurance. I couldn’t afford to see a doctor. I thought if I could get help from your CDC doctor then Paiva wouldn’t have to know.”

Josie changed directions. “So why get Leo involved? Why not dump the body yourself?”

“I just freaked out. I didn’t know where to take it.” He struggled for words, obviously still confused by his own decisions. “It was all too horrible. I called Leo because I knew he was in debt. The guy has no conscience. I knew I could talk him into helping.”

Josie let his reference to a lack of conscience slide. “What happened to Santiago’s money?”

“That was the deal Leo made. I gave him Santiago’s keys. After he left the body in the desert he got the keys and whatever money was in the apartment.”

“Did you tell Leo where the money was located?” she asked.

Brent looked up from the place on the table he’d been staring at and nodded.

“How did you know where the money was?”

For the first time the anger in his expression was replaced with pain and guilt. “Juan told me the money was in his closet. He made me promise if anything ever happened to him, that I would make sure his wife got the money.”

*

Otto arrived at the Arroyo County Jail as Leo Monaco was being booked. Brent Thyme had already been processed and led back to his cell. Josie left Maria to attend to Leo’s fingerprints and went into the hallway to talk with Otto.

“What’s the word from the CDC?” Josie asked.

“Santiago had slightly elevated levels of radiation, but it was caused from the chemical Brent Thyme gave him. Skip Bradford found a large amount of uranyl nitrate missing from the cabinet at the pilot unit.”

“The cabinet that’s visible on the security tape? The one Brent got into?”

“Yep. It’s a crystal that had been dissolved in water. It has no odor, but it’s toxic by ingestion. It’s what ate up Santiago’s insides.”

Josie grimaced at the thought. “So, the Feed Plant is in the clear,” she said.

Otto nodded. “Marta has Cassidy Harper in the conference room Leo was in. Marta’s already entered Leo’s laptop and the keys into evidence.”