by AJ Newman
I told her I couldn’t lose her, and there wouldn’t be any charge for Jere. Jane’s head was spinning. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you. Can I go and take a look at the building and people this morning? You can dock my pay for the lost time.”
“I don’t dock pay. People have issues, and I need good people. You’ll find me to be a very demanding boss who expects your loyalty and the best work you can do. Everything else is just small details.”
I put Cindy and Jane to work and took Jere into the conference room. I played tic-tac-toe and other games with him on my laptop until Ann arrived to pick him up. I caught Ann at the door. “Please take care of Jane and Jere.”
“Glad to, boss. You always take good care of all of us.”
“Is cabin four available yet?”
“Not really. It needs to be cleaned up and the rooms painted. I plan to get that done next week.”
I smiled. “Could you find a way to offer it to Jane and cut the rent down if we provide the paint, and she cleans it up and paints the rooms?”
“You really like her, don’t you?”
“She was my top student and needed some help. I have plans for her to work for Mike and Beth. No, I’m not involved with her.”
Ann sneered. “Oh, I wasn’t thinking you’d replace that crazy-assed Meagan this fast.”
Damn, everyone knew Meagan was a crazy assed bitch but me. Apparently, I must have appreciated her other qualities.
Jane followed Ann down to the island and daycare center. While she was gone, I took Cindy out to the floor with Brunner a few steps behind us. He didn’t like to see us on the floor, but I didn’t give a crap what he thought. They’d finished recharging the reaction vessels with raw materials and fresh catalysts. It would only be a few minutes before they were ready to begin the chemical reaction.
I wanted Cindy to pump Ken for any new info, so I took Brunner over to the equipment and kept him busy discussing my observations. Cindy faded back toward the warehouse, where the old man was working that day. Cindy joined us a few minutes later and shook her head when Brunner was looking the other way.
“Joseph, we’ve had two days with one hundred and ten percent of the goal for production. Why does the reaction work when we’re here, but fails when we’re not here?”
“I’m embarrassed and don’t know. I suspect my second shift crew wasn’t cleaning the vessels adequately, which left contamination and slowed the process. They know you’re watching and doing a much better job.”
Darn. He had a reasonable point. “Who’s responsible for making sure the vessels are properly cleaned?”
“Jose, my second shift lab manager.”
“When he gets in, I’d like to talk with him. I think our company can make the cleanup process much more thorough and a bit faster.”
Brunner didn’t smile and welcome the help as I’d anticipated.
Jane arrived just before lunch and joined me in the conference room. “Doctor Logan, I appreciate your help with the babysitter, but offering the cabin at a reduced rate worries me.”
My head shook before I realized. “How so?”
“This is difficult, but I’ll spit it out. I’ve had men try to buy me before, and it makes me feel cheap. I’ll pay the full price after the first month’s rent. I’m pretty sure you told Ann to help me out. I don’t want to be beholding to any man.”
“Jane, how long have we worked together?”
“Four years, and why does that matter?”
“Have I ever made a pass at you or touched you inappropriately?”
“No, but everyone knows about the young hottie you lived with. It just seemed strange to me you dropped her like a hot potato just as I began to work for you.”
“Jane, that young woman threw herself at me right after my divorce, and yes, I had a lot of fun with her for over a year. I’m not ashamed of the relationship. She needed my money and a place to live, and I needed companionship.”
“Then explain ditching her, if you enjoyed her company so much.”
“You do know that I don’t owe you anything but pay for work done. … Oh, crap! If you have to know, Doc caught her stealing from the grill and fired her. She kept pressuring me to marry her before I found out she was stealing me blind and had a boyfriend on the side. That’s enough of my personal business. Take or leave the help with the cabin, but I have no desire to ravage you.”
That might have been a white lie.
I was pissed but calmly walked out of the room. I told Cindy to grab Jane, and we were going to lunch. I was mad as hell and didn’t know why. Jane and I had been close over the years, but I never thought about crossing the line. Well, thought but didn’t do it. I should have laughed it off, but it stuck in my craw.
I walked down the hall to Brunner’s office and asked him to join us for lunch. He declined as I expected, so I went to the men’s room, which was next to the conference room where we worked. I was shocked to hear Cindy and Jane talking.
“What’s wrong with Dad? He was a bit poopy when he told me to fetch you and join him for lunch.”
“I might have screwed up and accused him of trying to get into my pants.”
“Shut the front door. You’re shitting me.”
“Well, he had a girlfriend younger than both of us. She disappears just when he offers me a job that saves my ass. Then he solves my babysitting fiasco and gives me a cabin at a reduced rate. What would you think?”
“I’m not the best person to answer the question. My physics professor charmed me, and we spent two years together ducking whenever university folks were around. It was great sex, and I got all As. He wanted to get married, so I ran away in a heartbeat. But I don’t want to think about my dad’s sex life.”
“How could you be in a class with a professor you were sleeping with?”
“Easy. I liked him, and we had fun. We even had a few quickies in his office.”
“I like your Dad, but never had time or energy to date. I had a bad experience a while back that soured me on all men.”
Cindy chuckled. “You do know that under all that professionalism, you are a beautiful woman, and most men would make a pass at you if you gave them half a chance. Has Dad ever made an advance toward you?”
“No, he’s always been kind but professional around me. We joked around in the lab, but never went out for a beer alone.”
I could hear Cindy chuckle. “Swallow your pride and let Dad help you. That’s what he does. He has two traits. One is good, and one’s bad. He helps people, and he stirs up crap.”
“I’m making too much of this. I like your dad a lot, and if I hadn’t been his student, I probably would have made a pass at him. Damn, I said that out loud. Please don’t tell him what I said.”
“Tell him what? I’m still hoping Mom and Dad get back together, but I might be tilting at windmills. Mom can be a bitch. She screwed around on Dad and broke his heart. She also cost him half of J&M many years ago.”
“Again, I’m sorry, but I had a horrible experience with a man in power who’s Jere’s father. He didn’t rape me but took advantage of me. I was too damned naïve and trusting back then. I can’t trust men even when they’re decent people.”
“Is Jere’s dad still in the picture?”
“No. He doesn’t know Jere exists. I went to pieces, left my baby with my mom, and joined the Air Force to getaway. His dad is a horrible person.”
“I’m sorry. Hey, come on, I’m hungry. Let’s go find Dad.”
“What I told you was in confidence.”
“Of course.”
Lunch was cordial, and I didn’t let on that I’d heard their conversation. We discussed pumping Ken, the black janitor, for more information and then began eating. We were in the middle of lunch when I caught a slight movement out of the corner of my eye and then heard a slight buzzing sound. I wrote a message on a napkin and scribbled some equations as a cover for the note. I passed it on to Jane.
“Ladies, take a look at my cal
culations. I think we can remove a few bugs and improve the operation.”
The note read, “We have some bugs. I propose to do the following …”
The following part was gibberish, and Jane answered. “I agree. Some of the bugs are very similar to the ones discussed at our meeting the other night.”
“Yep, you got it. So, please be thinking about what to do about the bugs.” Now, we knew someone was surveilling us with tiny drones. I started thinking back about some buzzing around my head a few times this week.
Chapter 17
Mobile Aeroplex at Brookley
We finished lunch, and I asked Cindy to drive around the area while we talked. I carefully passed a note telling them that we might still be bugged. I wasn’t sure what to do to gain some privacy. Jane wrote a note. “Faraday cage! There must be a receiver close by. Look for a car following us.”
I gave Cindy directions to leave Brookley and head over to the battleship. Damn, now I felt like this was beginning to take on a tinfoil hat conspiracy feeling. Where could we find a metal-lined room to have our meetings? I spotted a red Dodge van that made every turn Cindy made. Jane was right. The mini-drones were perfect for surveillance but needed a receiver very close by to receive its transmission. The drones were too small to have recording capability. That gave me the ideal solution for privacy without the tinfoil hats or metal-lined room.
“Ladies, thanks for indulging me during my little tour of Brookley field and the Battleship Park, I appreciate your patience. I’ll let Mike know that I’m pleased with the progress, and we might be able to end our work and move on to our next project.”
We arrived back at New Wave to find two police cruisers and an ambulance. They parked and walked to the front door to see what had happened. One of the workers told them that one of the janitors had collapsed on the floor. I asked one of the officers what had happened.
“An older black man apparently had a heart attack or a stroke. They’ll bring him out after the ME finishes taking pictures.”
“The police aren’t investigating the death.”
“Nope, no reason to investigate. He dropped in his tracks according to witnesses.”
“Did anyone mention a buzzing sound just before he died?”
“Nope, sorry, I got to get to work.”
Apparently, work meant arresting a half dozen donuts and stuffing them down his pie hole. There would be no investigation unless someone stirred the pot.
I made a quick call to the mayor’s office and gave the Deputy Mayor an earful about this death being linked to the other dead men in Mobile. A few minutes after I called, the sergeant in charge received a call. He walked into the building, and the other cop started putting up crime scene tape. The Crime Scene Investigators showed up thirty minutes later. One of them caught me to the side, and I told her my suspicion about the man being killed by tiny drones. She looked at me as though I had just escaped from the looney bin.
I went into Brunner’s office, and he wasn’t there. I found him in the employee breakroom, attempting to console Ken’s fellow workers. He wasn’t succeeding. There were a couple dozen men and women gathered around Dr. Brunner. A few were crying, but more than a handful were mad as hell.
“Doctor Brunner, how do we know it’s safe to work here? We don’t know what happened to Ken and several other janitors have disappeared.”
Brunner fumbled around the topic. “I know it’s safe and well, he had a heart attack. He clutched his chest before he died.”
“Then why is the CSI unit here? We won’t know how he died until there’s an autopsy. We’re not working until we know it’s safe. OSHA is on its way, and they’ll tell us if it’s safe.”
I hadn’t noticed, but one of the Russians walked between Brunner and the man speaking for the group. “You will get back to work, or I’ll fire all of you now.”
That was too much. I walked up to the man and said, “I don’t know what country you’re from, but people have rights in this country. J&M is going to stop production until OSHA and the CSI clears the place safe to work.”
The man confronted me. “This man doesn’t speak for New Wave. He can’t shut us down.”
I stuck a finger in his chest. “But I can shut our equipment down and leave it down until we know it’s safe to work here. Brunner, call your dog off before I call the police.”
Brunner moved between us and said something to the Russian who glared at me and promptly left the room. I pulled Brunner off to the side. “Brunner, you don’t have a clue about employee relations. You’d better make these people happy now, or they’ll get a union on your ass, and you’ll be shut down until they get what you could have delivered without the fuss.”
Brunner’s face was ashen. “Doctor Logan is right. We’re shutting down until we know it’s safe to work. All of you will receive full pay until we start operations back up. Now, go home and mourn for poor Ken. I want a safe operation and my apologies for not doing the right thing earlier. I’m under pressure to get this operation up to full speed. That’s my problem, not yours. I’m sorry.”
Then I addressed the employees. “New Wave employees, I’m certain the chemical process here did not cause the man’s death; however, since we don’t know the cause of death, caution is the rule of the day. My team will run tests for any chemical fumes or any possible issues from the chemical process in addition to what OSHA conducts. We’ll make the results available to you. Now would be a good time for a silent prayer for Ken and his family.”
I told my assistants to gather samples of the air and the batch in the reaction vessels to eliminate the process as a cause of Ken’s death. While they gathered the samples, I watched as several men came to meet with Dr. Brunner, who wasn’t happy with the visit. I noticed the men’s room was between the conference room and Brunner’s office. I thought it was worth a try.
I excused myself and walked into the men’s room. I could barely hear a murmuring that increased as I moved to the back men’s stall. I could now hear the voices and could make out most of what was said. One phrase mentioned bugging cars. Another said something about the human syndrome. I didn’t like what I heard. What the hell is the human syndrome?
I calmly left the bathroom and rounded up my team, and left without speaking to anyone. We stopped at a gas station before the bridge to the island, found a transmitter, and wrapped it in aluminum foil. I waited until we were at the top of the bridge with no one in sight for a mile to chuck it in the ocean.
“Girls, the fix is in with the ME and OSHA. I didn’t hear anything from the CSI. The death will probably be ruled a non-workplace death due to a heart attack on Monday. Today is Thursday, and that gives us three days to figure out what the hell to do. I sent the samples into Mike’s lab up in Mobile, but we won’t get the results until Monday at the earliest. OSHA won’t get back to us until early next week. We need to regroup and then take a short rest before hitting it again next week. I sent a text to Mike, and we’re joining him for some fun on the water as soon as we fetch our bathing suits.”
Cindy and Jane started to protest the need to go boating, but I said, “Trust me on this.”
Cindy saw Jane’s expression. “Don’t worry; I have several swimsuits that should fit you.”
Just as we were driving away, the EMTs brought out a stretcher with a body in a body bag and took it to the ambulance. Cindy whispered in my ear. “The bastards have killed our snitch. What do we do now?”
I whispered, “We need to regroup quickly.”
Chapter 18
The Gulf of Mexico off Dauphin Island
Lucky for us, Mike was about to leave on a three-day vacation and was at home. He met us at the dock, and we quickly got on his long thin boat with powerful engines. We brought nothing but the bathing suits we wore onboard. Mike fired the engines up, and we broke several laws racing away from the dock. The high performance boat flew along at well over 90 miles per hour over the glass-smooth water. Beth supplied hairbrushes, and a couple of han
dheld vacuum cleaners I told everyone to brush themselves off and brush their hair in the breeze.
Cindy caught me staring a bit too long at Jane and her Bikini. She whispered. “Dad, you’re being a bit obvious, aren’t you? Your tongue is hanging out.”
Darn, busted again. I even thought I’d resisted looking at Jane. She was stunning in the white Bikini with her dark complexion and black hair. “Thanks, but she is gorgeous.”
Mike brought the boat to a stop about ten miles off the coast of Gulf Shores, and we all took a long dip in the water while Mike sprayed the boat with water from the Gulf, hoping the salt water would kill any drones. Mike and Beth joined us in the water as we clung to a blow-up float Mike had bought after I called him. We paddled a hundred feet from the boat and were able to talk in private.
“I doubt if any of the little boogers could keep up with the boat, and there can’t be any transmitters nearby,” I said.
Jane crossed her fingers. “Keep an eye out for carrier drones. One can hover a hundred yards from us and release some barely visible drones to spy on us or …. kill us.”
Mike patted a waterproof bag on the raft. “I have a few surprises for the bastards if they show up. I guess we don’t want them to know that we know they’re spying on us.”
Cindy laughed. “Then we’d better talk fast and start enjoying the boat and water. We look stupid huddled around this raft ten miles from shore.”
We filled Mike in on Ken’s death, and the Russian’s attempt to force Brunner to keep operations going. Mike and Beth didn’t appear to be surprised. I’d thought they’d be astounded and balk in disbelief. No one knew what the human syndrome was.”