by Dave Daren
There was a serious edge to his tone that simultaneously worried and comforted me.
“Driving,” I said as I made yet another random turn. “I don’t think I should head back to the office, not right now, at least. I don’t know if I’m being followed.”
Brody grunted, and then I could hear the sound of paper rustling.
“I was going to advise you to do that,” he agreed with me. “Just… lead any potential people after you on a bit of a goose chase and don’t go to that damn address.”
His words hung in the air for a long, lingering moment before I cleared my throat.
“Brody, I’m going to go to the address,” I said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “We just had a lead handed to us on a silver platter. I can’t let this sort of thing go, not when every other door has been slammed in our faces. If I go, and it’s real, we can get proof that Knox is breaking the law.”
Brody didn’t say anything as I drove past a cowboy-themed restaurant, two gas stations, and a strip mall that was only half occupied.
“It could just as easily be a trap, son,” he said, but he sounded a little defeated.
“Or it could be someone tired of Knox hurting people trying to put a stop to him,” I countered. “I can’t just sit back and let something that could help people slip through our fingers because it could be a trap.”
I tapped my fingers against the steering wheel and gave a shake of my head that he couldn’t see. After a long pause, I heard Brody give a deep, exhausted-sounding sigh.
“Well, I can’t stop you,” he admitted with the sort of resignation I’d heard in my mother’s tone when I told her I was moving to Texas.
I heard a car door slam over the line and the sound of boots on asphalt. Brody must have been driving, too.
“What about you, then?” I asked. “How did things go with the public records?”
I tried not to sound too hopeful, but I couldn’t stop myself. But Brody only snorted.
“Yeah, about as well as your meeting with Torres,” Brody grumbled. “The clerk at the county office mysteriously had an incident with a paper shredder two days ago.”
I could have slammed my head into the steering wheel.
“Is it even worth it for me to point out how illegal that is?” I asked without expecting a real answer.
“Oh, please do,” he laughed. “I’m sure Knox would be appalled to know that someone broke the law on his behalf.”
I knew he had a point, but it didn’t make the entire ordeal any less infuriating. Knox thought he was completely untouchable, and it made my skin crawl. It didn’t surprise me at all, however, that a man who thought he was untouchable was the same man that thought it was perfectly fine to poison kids for a profit.
I sighed into my phone and made another turn. I wondered if I was just being paranoid, and in reality, no one was following me. I tried to rationalize with myself as I glanced in my rearview mirror again. I didn’t see any familiar-looking cars continuing after me, but my hackles still didn’t lower. Something about all of this had set me on edge, and I couldn’t shake the feeling away, no matter how hard I tried.
“Is there any way the papers could be salvaged?” I asked without really expecting much from whatever answer Brody had.
I heard him give a deep sigh and the familiar wooden creak of his preferred chair in the office as I assumed he sat down and kicked his feet up.
“They let me take the trash from the shredder, since they’d not emptied it yet, but I’m not too hopeful we can get anything from it,” he said in a tired voice. “I just figured it was better than nothing.”
I let that stew in my mind for a moment. It wasn’t the worst idea I’d ever heard. It might not have been the easiest job in the world, but there was always a chance something important could be found on the scraps. I wasn’t holding out hope that somehow, Brody and Evelyn would miraculously be able to reattach the documents with the various paper shreds like the world’s highest stakes jigsaw puzzle.
“Good thinking,” I said with a heavy sigh. “Maybe there will be something in there, like ‘I’m poisoning kids’ in big red letters on all the papers like a watermark.”
It was a joke, but it wasn’t. I was holding the faith that we weren’t yet desperate enough for something like that, but it certainly would have been nice.
Brody snorted and in the background of the call, I heard Evelyn tittering about something I couldn’t quite make out. It sounded like Brody moved the phone from his ear for a moment to yell something to her. His words were warbled and strangled by our connection, but I stayed on the line. It’s not like I had much else to do at the moment other than drive in circles and hope I shook whatever tail I might have been given as I worked my way back toward Crowley. I heard a muffled shuffle before Evelyn’s voice came over the line.
“Brody said someone left you a note?” She asked. “And that you’re planning on following the instructions on it?”
She didn’t sound exactly thrilled with the decision I’d reached, and suddenly, I was very glad to be hundreds of miles away driving in circles, because it meant Evelyn couldn’t scold me in person. For a woman so small, she struck the fear of God into me.
“Yes, Evelyn, I am,” I said. “When I was away from my car, either when I tried to get into the building or when I went after Torres, someone left a note on my windshield. They left me information about an alleged chemical drop Knox Chemicals has planned for tonight. I’m not sure where the address is, but I bet anything it’s upriver of Piney Crest.”
I felt like I had a serious case of deja vu as I explained everything all over again to Evelyn, a feeling further heightened when Evelyn huffed much like Brody had.
“That sounds dangerous, Archer,” she scolded. “But I’ve already reasoned that I can’t talk you out of it any easier than Brody could have. I just needed to hear it from you to make sure Brody hadn’t made you out to be stupider than you clearly are.”
I couldn’t quite figure out if Evelyn loved or hated me, and really, I felt like the truth was somewhere in between the two, but I could still hear the concern lacing her tone, despite how obviously she was trying to push it aside. Whether it was for my sake or her own, I couldn’t be sure, but I appreciated it nonetheless.
“Evelyn, I’ll be fine,” I assured her. “I’m being careful driving back, making sure nobody is following me. And when I get to the dump site, I’ll make sure I’m hidden. I’m not going to go out guns blazing to try and stop them. I’m not a cop, and I’m not going to pretend to be. I just want to try and get some evidence that they can’t destroy.”
I’d never driven in Houston before I had to make my way up to visit the EPA laboratory, and the traffic hadn’t improved much since my first visit a few days before. I’d have to come back, eventually, when lives weren’t on the line and angry oil barons weren’t illegally tampering with evidence. For some reason, the whole “mysterious note on my car telling me about an illegal chemical drop that’s poisoning a neighborhood” put a bit of a damper on my entire trip to the city.
Evelyn tutted on the other end of the line, and she and Brody had another quiet conversation among themselves.
“And I can respect that, but I’d prefer your head stay attached to your body,” she muttered when she came back on the line, and I was left to wonder whether or not she’d just made a joke before she continued. “To fill you in on what I learned, about half of Piney Crest sees the same doctor. Dr. Marcus Young. He owns a small family practice in the area.”
I nodded as Evelyn spoke, even though she couldn’t exactly see me. The name sounded familiar, and I assumed I’d heard it when I’d been looking for a general practitioner myself after I moved to the area.
“Did he have anything to say about the influx of serious illnesses coming from a chunk of his patients?” I asked in a way that I really prayed didn’t come across as naively hopeful.
Evelyn gave a deep, labored sigh.
“Well,
he admitted he had patients,” she said with a dry edge to her tone. “Dr. Marcus Young was a little less than forthcoming about the state of his patients’ health. And I’m not talking about HIPAA here. He tried to dodge everything, even the basic questions. I’d asked him if he’d noticed an uptick in sudden, serious illnesses in the area, and he went from jabbering on about a nasty outbreak of chickenpox at the local elementary school to making it sound like no one he’d taken care of had ever even been sick, much less seriously sick.”
I sat in the buzzing silence of the line for a long moment as I let Evelyn’s words really sink in.
“So, he’s been bought out, too?” I asked without pretending to hide the weariness in my tone. This entire case seemed designed to exhaust me, and it felt like nothing was going right.
“Either bought out, or he’s just a god,” she grumbled. “I kept pressing on him until he admitted he’d had a few patients come in claiming that they were sick, but he couldn’t corroborate their claims. He says he blames WebMD.”
She let her words hang in the air as I tried to find some sort of response to that.
“I don’t think I like doctors,” I finally managed with a desperate laugh.
“Or scientists. Or oil barons. Or public records employees,” Evelyn continued on with a snort of her own. “If you like anyone after doing this job, you’re a better man than I thought.”
I didn’t know if Evelyn had complimented or insulted me, and I sure as hell didn’t know how to accept either option. The silence continued to crackle across the line as I drove. Slowly but surely, I made my way out of Houston back onto the interstate. I’d only killed thirty minutes or so taking the scenic route through the city, and I was still about four hours out from Crowley.
“Is he the only medical professional you were able to reach out to?” I asked in an attempt to keep the conversation going.
I didn’t plan on voicing my concerns about being tailed aloud again, but I felt better talking to someone. It gave me something to focus on other than my own anxiety about the situation. Plus, I still had plenty of information I needed to gather for this case to even tread water in front of any judge with common sense. I listened as Evelyn tutted to herself and what I guessed was the flipping of notebook pages filled the quiet across the line.
“I called the residents still on board with the suit to get their practitioners’ names,” Evelyn rattled off. “Most of them saw Young, which is why he was first on the list. Two residences see specialists at Cook, and the rest see specialists at Huguley save for one residence that sees a nurse practitioner out of Dallas.”
We had a few other people to try and speak with, which was better than I’d expected. But if we had easy access to that information, I could only imagine that Knox already had it filed away somewhere for the nefarious purposes I was sure he had planned. Maybe it was blackmail or more bribery, but not a single option I thought of was anything less than worrisome. I drummed my fingers against the steering wheel and sighed heavily.
“See if you can get in contact with the doctors,” I conceded. “They may not talk to us, but it’s better than nothing. Try Cook first. Clara might have some pull there, if we have any sort of luck at all.”
I didn’t want to have to rely on Clara’s connections, if she had any, but I didn’t see many other options. We needed a medical professional to back our claims, any medical professional, really. I pursed my lips as I chewed at the inside of my cheek.
“If they brush us off, too, extend the search out to Dallas. We might find someone out of Knox’s range there,” I said, though I doubted I sounded too hopeful.
Across the phone, I heard the scratching of a pen on paper as Evelyn jotted down the instructions.
“I’ll start at Cook,” she confirmed. “Texas is a big state. We can’t be the only people on the neighborhood’s side.”
I knew she was right, but the situation didn’t feel any less impossible. I let her words simmer as I passed a slow-moving semi. I spared another glance into my rearview mirror and despite the way my nerves remained on edge, I forced the posture in my shoulders to relax. I didn’t recognize the car behind me, some ancient Toyota with a child in the back seat. As evil as Knox was making himself look, I couldn’t imagine he’d send someone after me with a child in tow.
“You’re right,” I agreed with Evelyn. “I’m going to drive out to the dump site, get a feel for the area, and wait for the time. Call me if you two need anything else.”
I lowered my phone and hung up with a little click. I breathed out through my nose then in through my mouth to try and calm my nerves, and then repeated the process as I pulled onto the main highway.
Luckily, the majority of the drive back to Crowley was a straight shot. A long, boring straight shot. I waited until I hit a patch of standstill traffic to fuss with my GPS and pulled up the address scrawled along the bottom of the note.
It was nearly three in the afternoon, which meant by the time I arrived at the dumpsite, I should have an entire hour to get a feel for my surroundings. The knowledge that I’d have some time to myself to get my bearings did calm me, and I clung to that hour like a life raft.
The rest of the drive from Houston crept by as slow as molasses. I tried to keep my mind sharp and focused on something other than the potential trap I intended to walk into by listening to a chatty FM radio show that fuzzed its way over my speakers as I continued my drive down Highway 6.
I didn’t care what they talked about and had no stakes in what song was going to squeeze its way into the top ten on the charts, but the chit-chat was enough to keep my thoughts away from the macabre.
I turned the volume on the radio down to nothing more than a faint whisper as I pulled into the familiar streets of Crowley. I needed to focus more on what the GPS said now as opposed to the radio show hosts’ disdain for certain celebrities.
As instructed by the GPS, I turned off a street that ran north of the center of town and continued along the road for a few more minutes. The pockmarked pavement led me past the residential areas and gas stations that sat on the outskirts of town and into a patch of no-man’s land marked by empty plots of land and unclaimed nature.
The road shifted from mostly smooth, semi-level asphalt to chalky gravel that spat dust up into the air under the crush of my tires. The gravel eventually turned to dirt as I crept along the GPS’ route. I didn’t recognize the area at all, and why would I? I’d never had much reason to drive through the Texas backcountry. The green closer to city limits shifted to the shades of yellow and brown of the prairie so slowly I almost didn’t realize the countryside had changed.
I glanced around to take it all in as I tried to get a better feel for the area. I didn’t want to have to plan for the worst, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this alleged chemical dump wouldn’t end well. The GPS let out a faint chime as I pulled to the address marked by the note. I rolled my car to a stop along the shoulder of the dirt road.
I arrived at the dumpsite marked by the note just as the sun started to lower in the sky.
Chapter 10
There wasn’t much in the area for me to try and park behind to obscure my vehicle, so I just prayed that the black paint would make it hard to distinguish in the dark that quickly approached. I slid out of the car and quickly sent off a text to Brody to let him know that I’d arrived at the site unscathed. I hesitated for a moment before reaching into the back seat to rifle through the emergency supplies I kept tucked behind the driver’s seat for the dark hoodie I kept there. While I hadn’t put it there for any sort of espionage, I found myself thanking my past self for the foresight. I pulled it on over my button-up and gave myself a moment to take in my surroundings.
Despite the overwhelming brown of the brush, splotches of green and purple dotted the area. I noted a few short trees and low bushes that could prove useful if I needed to hide. I felt like the world’s worst spy as I walked down the dusty road in my loafers, tie, and sweatshirt. If anyone drove b
y, I’d stand out like a sore thumb, so I just prayed no one came around as I headed up the road.
Just ahead of me along the curve of a dead+end street was a small patch of gravel coated land with a few metal tanks that more closely resembled silos gated off by a chain-link fence, and another fence that squared off a few small pieces of equipment in the center of the patch that I couldn’t quite place.
A faded, rust worn sign on the front gate of the patch read Prism Industries, and I made a mental note to look up the company later. The area looked unused, and dust covered everything that was man made. There were no discernable tire tracks in the tamped gravel, though it would be impossible to know for sure if anybody had driven in recently.
I debated hopping the fence for a moment, to get a better look at what was inside, but instead opted to walk along the narrow, dirt service road that trailed along the side of the mysterious plot of land. As I walked, I noticed what I should have been focusing on the entire time. A small lake sat at the end of the service road, ringed by low trees and shrubbery and whatever animals had made their home there.
Unlike the Prism Industries plot of land, the area surrounding the lake did have tire tracks. Thick, deep gouges left their indents in the dirt all the way up to the muddy shores of the water.
My heart hammered in my chest as I quickly realized that this was what the note had intended to lead me toward. I quickened my pace to the edge of the water as all questions about Prism flew from my mind.
I recoiled as I came to the water’s edge, though. I couldn’t place the smell, but it was pungent enough that my hand flew to my nose and pinched it closed.
“Ugh,” I choked out to myself as I waved my free hand in front of my face as if that would dissipate the smell.
I took a few shallow gulps of air through my mouth before I lowered my hand. I needed to get used to the smell and more importantly, I needed to figure out what I was smelling. I took a hesitant whiff of the air and swallowed back my disgust.
It reminded me of the air that hung over Piney Crest, with its sharp, acrid sting, but there was something else that hung underneath the chemical reek that escaped me. I frowned as I parsed through everything it could be as I started to walk around the edge of the water, where I made sure to keep away from the sloping bank. The lake looked to be natural, but the plant life nearest to the water was absent of almost any green.