Run, Girl, Run: A Thriller

by Alex C. Franklin

  Jacques backed inside and slammed the door. His entire body trembled. He bent his head and ran his fingers through his hair.

  Not only did he not trust cops because of what happened to Zack. Sitting in four different bank accounts in Ottawa were thirty thousand reasons why he wasn’t eager to talk with the police.

  Parker sighed and walked briskly back to his jeep. He had struck out with the kid. Now, he would have to take the riskier step of broadening his inquiries.

  It was a long shot, but he knew some people tended to be chatty when getting their alcohol; maybe someone out there who knew Eric Tremblay could confirm his belief that Tremblay would never drink at the camp, at least not when Osgood was supposed to be there with him.

  The LCBO liquor store was almost empty. Parker milled about, picked up a wine carrier, and waited till he was the last in line.

  “That would be four-twenty please.” The cashier looked harried and in no mood to chit chat.

  “Lots of bad news around town this weekend, eh?” Parker rifled through his wallet.

  “Uh huh.”

  “That guy who drowned, Eric Tremblay, you knew him?”

  “Tremblay, you say?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Hmmm…. Nope. Don’t think I know any Eric Tremblay.”

  Parker slapped down a five-dollar bill on the counter. “Don’t worry about the change,” he said.

  Strike two. Yeah, it was a long shot.

  He made it into The Beer Store just before closing. This time, a baseball cap served as his prop.

  “Lots of bad news around town this weekend, eh?”

  “You’re telling me!” The man behind the counter shook his head while scratching his stubbly cheek. “Who’d think Osgood would of done himself in like that? And for Eric to up and drown the same day? Man, that’s some kind of weird.”

  “You knew Eric?” Parker patted his body as if searching for his wallet, buying himself some talk time.

  “Sure. He was in here all the time.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. He’d come in on a Friday night, pick up a six-pack of Canadian and he was good to go.”

  “Canadian, huh? And what about Labatt?”

  “Not a chance.” The man laughed. “It was Molson Canadian for him all the way. Used to say Labatt sold water, not beer.”

  “Hey, Labatt’s got Maximum Ice. That’s pretty strong.”

  “Nah, he never went for that stuff. Eric was one of those guys who’d settled the Molson versus Labatt debate in his mind long ago. Beer for him was a bottle of Canadian. Now, mind you, if somebody offered him something else, he wouldn’t refuse. But when he was buying, it was one thing and one thing alone.”

  “Sold any of that Maximum Ice this past weekend?”

  It was a dumb question. He knew it from the moment it left his lips, and he wished he could have taken it back.

  “I’m sure we must have,” the man said slowly. His eyes passed over every inch of Parker’s face, now, as if studying him. “What’s with all the questions?”

  Parker shrugged. “Just curious.”

  He paid for the cap and left quickly.

  After he had a light dinner at Tito’s, he pulled up at the graffiti-covered payphone at the entrance to the parkette in the middle of town. It would be his last effort. He didn’t want to use his cell, or his home phone; and he certainly couldn’t place the call from the station.

  The morning they had discovered Osgood’s body, the first thing he had searched for was a suicide note. Kennedy, when he had recovered his composure, insisted on helping with this task. They had come up empty-handed.

  Parker had shown Kennedy a scrap of paper he had found on the floor. It had four numbers scribbled on it. He had no idea what Kennedy made of it.

  He, however, had memorized the numbers. Since he had found the scrap near the phone, he had a hunch they were the last four digits of a phone number.

  There were just five prefixes used for phone numbers in Syron Lake. Parker had jotted down all five possibilities.

  A reverse lookup search on the Internet had given him a name for only one number. But that didn’t mean the four didn’t exist.

  He could be wrong about it being a phone number. Or if he was right, it could be an out-of-town number, not a local one. And even if it was a local number, it may not lead anywhere. But he had nothing else to go on.

  Something, no matter how remote, was better than nothing.

  The first number returned the screeches and whistles of a fax machine.

  He scratched that off. On to the second.

  “Hello, Stella Jacob here.”

  The sound of her voice sent a jolt to his chest.

  “Sorry, wrong number.” He quickly hung up.

  His heart pounded and the middle of his palms suddenly itched and felt clammy. He shook his head at his reaction.

  He looked around at the empty streets and felt somewhat sleazy, speaking to her while standing in the graffiti-riddled booth, under a pool of light from the nearby streetlamp, with the stench of urine in the air.

  Two more numbers to go. He would regain his professional demeanor and carry on, even if what he was doing was sneaking around his boss.

  The third and fourth numbers were not in service.

  Now he tried the last number, the one for the person whose name he had found through the reverse lookup.

  “Gerry Wayman speaking.”

  “Hi, Gerry. My name is Paul. Marcus Osgood was a friend of mine. I just–”

  “Sorry, you’re a friend of who?”

  “Marcus Osgood.”

  “Osgood, you say.”

  “Yes, Marcus Osgood, who ran for mayor.”

  “And what of it? What’s this all about?”

  “I’m calling because I understand you might have known him.”

  “I know of him. Or knew of him, I should say. Heard he shot himself in the head the other day, God rest his soul. What did you say your name was again?”

  “Sorry, looks like I mixed you up with somebody else. Sorry to bother you.”

  As Parker hung up, it dawned on him that it made sense that it was Stella Jacob’s number on that paper. He had seen her approach Osgood at the meeting of the Field Naturalists Club. And, again, at the mayor’s debate, the Friday night before the election.

  He knew where she lived; she walked everywhere, and, the other day, it had been no problem to cruise along in his jeep to see where she would end up. He’d been curious, that’s all.

  Well, after work the next day, he’d just have to swing by and knock on her door….

  Chapter 40

  Dromel’s eyes followed the movement of her hair as it brushed against her shoulders. He was surprised to see that his “face” was the busybody who had written in at the last minute, demanding to be allowed to speak at the hearing.

  She took a seat in the middle of the long, empty presentation table. Behind her, the lawyers, low-level executives and experts from mining companies, one or two of whom he knew well from other hearings, looked on with varying degrees of dismissive expressions, or occupied themselves with their laptops or files from their briefcases. The Syron Lake Resources contingent whispered among themselves and threw contemptuous glances her way.

  Brave girl, Dromel thought.

  Chapter 41

  I pulled the microphone closer and drew my chair up, so my ribs pressed against the table. That gave me a connection to at least one thing that felt stable, because no part of me felt that way.

&
nbsp; The pages of my speech shook visibly in my hands; I lay the sheets flat and pressed my palms over them. That helped somewhat with the trembling.

  “Good-morning, Mr Chairman, members of the panel.” My mouth was dry; my tongue, heavy. I could almost hear every beat of my overactive heart.

  “I’m not an expert on uranium mining. If you asked me three weeks ago about uranium tailings management, I probably wouldn’t have been able to string together a full sentence.

  “But I don’t think you need any university degree or depth of experience in this field to come to the conclusion that the system is failing the people of this community who live in the shadow of all this radioactive waste.

  “Our sense of well being — and, if we can get unbiased test results they may even show that our physical well being, itself — has been dealt a blow by the recent release of millions of gallons of toxic waste within a few miles of where we’re now gathered.

  “The system is failing taxpayers of this generation and of generations to come.

  “It’s riddled with loopholes that lead to us being forced, in perpetuity, to bear the financial burden of trying to keep these toxic garbage heaps safe. Meanwhile, shareholders of the mining companies who created this mess, get to ride off in the sunset and enjoy the enormous profits that the mines generated.

  “And the system is failing the planet.

  “Even if the recent spill was contained at the mining site and didn’t encroach on Crown land or the private property of others, it posed a danger to animals that roam these forests; to birds that are oblivious to Man’s artificial boundaries; to plants and trees; and to fish and other aquatic life in the lakes….”

  I made it through one page, then another, and another. The trembling subsided; my breathing returned to something near normal.

  My presentation conjured up the horror of the prospect that, ironically, a company could be rewarded for its poor performance because it could claim that cleanup costs were beyond it, prompting an early transfer of responsibilities to the authorities.

  “Common sense and basic human decency would dictate that those who reaped enormous profits from mining endeavors would directly contribute to fixing the problems they created, even if that meant they had to put every penny back in. But the system has been woefully short of both common sense and decency.

  “Look at what’s happened, for example, on Navajo lands in the US – in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. Over five hundred uranium mines were exploited and then abandoned. Those mines made money. But the US government can only find owners for a few dozen of them. Where the owner can’t be found, it’s taxpayers who have to pick up the tab for any cleanup costs.

  “Three years ago, a hearing, something like this one, resulted in the US Government coming up with a five-year cleanup plan to spend $110 million in federal funds. And how much did the mining companies have to pay toward the cleanup costs? A measly $17 million.

  “Think that kind of craziness happens only in the States? Think again.

  “Over here in Canada, we have the Gunnar Uranium Mine in Saskatchewan. In that debacle, the private company that made millions of dollars also made itself disappear. And since the corporation has ceased to exist, it has escaped all of its responsibilities.

  “That has forced the government to shell out $20 million to clean up the radioactive waste that the company left behind.

  “And that’s just to start the process. Cleanup costs are likely to run into hundreds of millions of dollars – taxpayers’ dollars.

  “That’s money that should have gone, instead, to fund schools, and hospitals, and social programs.”

  My pulse raced, partly out of the terror of speaking in public, but mostly because I was getting worked up about the unfairness of the situation.

  I was breathing too hard and reading too fast. I paused, swallowed slowly, then tried again, at a calmer pace.

  “We can’t let that, or anything similar, happen here. Syron Lake Resources shouldn’t be allowed to simply pass on the burden to taxpayers.

  “We don’t want to see them give up their license and escape responsibility to reverse the damage they’ve caused by claiming this cleanup is beyond their means.

  “That would only result in the government taking over and using our tax dollars to do the company’s job.

  “And we don’t want to hear, that like Gunnar, Syron Lake Resources ceases to exist, meaning we, the taxpayers, have to bear the costs of cleaning up this spill.

  “This panel has the obligation to ensure no such outrage occurs with Syron Lake Resources, or any of the mining companies that have left their toxic waste behind in this area. All loopholes must be closed.

  “This community and taxpayers across this province and all across this country are looking to the Canadian Nuclear Regulatory Authority to protect us today, and to save our children and their children from burdens that should rightly fall on the shoulders of those in the mining companies who exploited these lands. Thank you.”

  It was over!

  I sat back and my lungs collapsed in an involuntary sigh. I was startled to hear the sound amplified over the speakers.

  “Thank you, Ms Jacob.” The chairman smiled. “I don’t have any questions for you. But perhaps one of my colleagues on the panel might.”

  Reading the written presentation had been hard enough; now I had to answer questions?

  My armpits itched and I felt a lump in my throat.

  “I followed what you were saying with great interest.” The panelist sitting behind a nameplate that read “Victor Rigby” played with a paperclip as he glowered at me. “What I haven’t heard is what, specifically, you believe is the harm that’s been done that you think we should take into consideration.”

  “That goes to the heart of the problem, Commissioner.” I bent forward to the microphone, again. “We don’t know exactly what happened during that spill. We don’t know how bad that spill was for the environment or for us, in the short or the long term. And we don’t have any means of finding out, either. We have no access to the site.

  “All the information we have is what’s being fed to us by Syron Lake Resources.

  “The company is telling us to trust them when they say the spill was nothing serious. Well, all this time they were saying we should trust that they were competently managing this toxic waste, and look how that’s turned out.”

  Some snickering rose from the audience. The chairman looked up and frowned.

  Rigby continued. “Yes, but in your presentation you called on the CNRA to impose, and I’m quoting here, ‘any and all punitive measures available,’ in addition to holding Syron Lake Resources to its financial responsibility for management of the tailings. Certainly you must realize that if there is to be punishment, there first has to be a crime identified, so to speak.”

  I shook my head. “That’s what I’m trying to point out is wrong with the system. We — the people whose health and wellbeing may be affected by this — we don’t have any means to arrange the kind of independent testing that would uncover the crime, to use your term.”

  “The CNRA is doing its own investigations and tests in addition to the company, Ms Jacob,” Rigby said.

  I shook my head again. “In an ideal world, we, the people who are affected, would be able to send in our own investigators who we could be sure would be looking out for our interests, and whom we could rely on to look under every last rock to find every danger that might be lurking.”

  Rigby bristled. “You can rest assured that the CNRA’s investigative staff are competent and thorough.”

  “It’s all well and good to say the CNRA is doing its own testing,” I said. “But people are aware of
a thing called ‘regulatory capture,’ where regulatory bodies, these so-called watchdogs, end up in the back pockets of corporations. And so, they turn out skewed reports and issue lopsided decisions, and end up protecting the very entities they were set up to police.”

  Murmuring broke out in the room.

  I pursed my lips and cringed. I had unintentionally insulted the very people whose help I had come here to seek.

  All through this question period, words had been tumbling out of my mouth without first being processed by my brain. And now, this.

  I had a sensation of sinking deeper and deeper in quicksand as the seconds ticked on.

  Rigby cleared his throat. “Mr Chairman, I have no further questions.”

  “Thank you, Ms Jacob.” The panel chairman gave a shallow nod. “That brings the morning session to a close. After lunch, Syron Lake Resources will have the floor.”

  I kept my head bent as I gathered up my papers slowly, delaying as much as I could at that lonely table. I felt too embarrassed about my performance to speak with anyone.

  I hadn’t been confident that my presentation would have been all that convincing in the first place. But if I’d made even a little headway with the panel, surely it had been undone by my hasty responses to Victor Rigby.

  I had let down Osgood; I had let down myself; and I had let down anyone else who had wanted to see Syron Lake Resources get its comeuppance.

  When I finally left the hall, I walked down the empty corridor toward the washrooms with the hope that splashing cool water on my face would revive my spirits.

  As I passed the men’s room, the door swung open. The panel chairman appeared. Six feet tall. Dark, elegant suit. A shinning pate.

  Our eyes met.

  He smiled.

  He winked at me.

  Then, he walked away.

  Chapter 42

  The Syron Lake Resources team was led by a paunchy lawyer with salt-and-pepper hair and a matching beard, who went by the name of Goran Stanko. The fourteen men and one woman with him filled the presentation table and occupied most of the chairs in the front row.