by Mike Markel
“Is there anything else you want to say?” Eberly’s complexion was a little pale.
Ryan and I slid out of the booth. Ryan folded a five-dollar bill and slipped it under Eberly’s phone.
“You gonna eat that piece of toast?” I said.
Chapter 21
Back in the Charger, I pulled out my phone to retrieve the message. It was from headquarters. I put it on Speaker. “Bill Rossman is being medevaced to Rawlings. ETA ten forty-five. No word on his condition or what happened to him.”
Ryan looked at his watch. “It’s ten forty-five now.”
I headed out of the lot at the diner. It was five minutes to the Rawlings Regional Medical Center. Both Ryan and I were scanning the sky, looking for the helicopter, but no sign of it.
As we got closer, Ryan spotted the tip of a blade on the helipad on top of the hospital. “I think the chopper’s already arrived.”
I pulled into the horseshoe at the Emergency Room and put down the visor with the Official Police Business sign. There were two squad cars parked in front of the big glass doors, and an officer standing there.
We got out of the car and rushed up to the uniform, Officer Hicks. I had my shield around my neck. “What’s going on?”
“Not sure, Detective.” He was a big black man with a gentle manner. “Something about a chemical contamination.”
“The patient they just medevaced in?”
“That’s my understanding,” Hicks said. “They’ve got a decon unit in the hospital they use when it’s only one or two patients. That’s all I know. I’m supposed to keep civilians out. We’re setting up an operations center in the main entrance.” He pointed to the other set of doors.
“Thanks, Hicks.” Ryan and I hurried to the main entrance, where another officer, Ellen Reynolds, greeted us. “You can get to the ER down this hall, first right. There’s personnel there to brief you.”
We made it to the side entrance to the ER and up to the desk.
“What’s going on?” I said to the nurse on duty. “Where’s the patient? Bill Rossman.”
“He was deconned, then sent into the ER. They stabilized him and sent him to surgery.”
“Is he in surgery now?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Go to Post-Op, on the third floor. There’s two paramedics there, from the medevac. The police department asked them to stay so you could talk to them. That’s all I know.”
We got on the elevator and rode to three. “What the hell is going on?” I said to Ryan.
He shook his head and exhaled.
We followed the signs to Post-Op, a large room with a reception desk and a bunch of soft upholstered chairs and couches. The two EMTs, young guys in uniforms, looked alert when they saw us, as if they wanted to tell us whatever they had to say, then head back in the chopper. On the other side of the room, on a dark blue loveseat with oak arms, sat Florence Rossman. She was crying, her head in her hands.
“Ryan, go over and interview the EMTs. I’ll talk to Florence.” He nodded and walked over to the two guys.
I went over to the couch and sat next to Florence. She didn’t look up to see who I was, but she sensed someone there and slid a few inches over to her own side of the loveseat to make room. She was way out of control, sobbing, her shoulders hunched and rocking. I waited a few minutes, watching Ryan take notes as he talked with the two EMTs. They had an easy camaraderie, three strong young men doing their jobs.
I got up and walked over to the reception desk. “Do you have any idea what happened to the patient?”
“I know we did a decon on him before the ER sent him up here. That’s all I know.” She looked at her screen. “I have the surgeon coming out soon to tell you the patient’s status.”
“Was it some kind of accident?”
“I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “You’ll just have to wait.”
I walked back over to the loveseat. This time, Florence Rossman looked up and, after a moment, recognized me. “You’re the detective.” She was still crying.
“Karen Seagate.” I nodded. “I’m very sorry to hear your stepson’s been hurt.”
With that she started crying more, covering her face. After a minute, she spoke. “What are you doing here?”
“We got word that Bill was hurt. We don’t know if it was, you know, some kind of accident at the rigs … Did they tell you anything?”
“Nothing.”
“My partner and I, we’re here …”
“You think he was attacked?”
“We don’t know if it was anything like that. But if there was a crime—out in Marshall, I mean, we need to determine if it was related …”
She looked up at me, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. “What is happening? First, Lee.” Her hands started to shake. “I don’t know if I can take this. I need Lee now.” Her breathing was shallow and rapid. I had trouble making out what she was saying.
I took Florence’s hand. It was hot and clammy, wet. But the shaking started to subside. “We’ll just have to wait for a doctor to tell us what’s going on.”
We sat there. The two EMTs left, and a few minutes later I heard the muffled thwack-thwack sound of the chopper lifting off and felt the vibrations coming through the seat cushions.
Fifteen minutes passed. Twenty minutes. I held Florence’s hands. We were sitting next to each other on the loveseat. At times, she pressed against me. We were silent.
Ryan stayed off to the other side of the room, as if he thought Florence Rossman might start talking to me, and he didn’t want to distract her. But she didn’t talk. Occasionally, she stared into the distance. Other times she closed her eyes, locked in her own private hell.
In the silent, sad room, the fatigue started to catch up to me, and I think I nodded off once or twice. I awoke when I heard a door open and a doctor walked in.
It was the surgeon. She was about forty, medium height, wearing blue scrubs and a little hat that held her hair back. The front of her scrubs was stained with blood and other fluids I couldn’t identify. “Ms. Rossman?” the surgeon said, not knowing which one of us it was.
Florence Rossman stood up, gathered herself, and walked over to the surgeon. “I’m Florence Rossman.”
“Would you come with me, please?” The surgeon started walking toward a little alcove off to the side of the room, the place where the doctor tells you what’s going on.
I followed them, a few feet behind. As Florence disappeared into the little room, the surgeon looked at me. I touched my shield, and the surgeon nodded.
When Florence was seated, the surgeon said to her, “Do you mind if the police officer listens in?”
Florence Rossman shook her head. “I don’t care.”
“Let me tell you where we are,” the surgeon said. “My name is Dr. Winwood, and I did the main surgery on Bill.”
Florence looked petrified. “The main surgery?”
“Ms. Rossman, let me talk to you. Bill is going to be okay. He’s a strong young man. But we needed to do several procedures today.”
“What happened to him?”
“The EMTs reported to us that he had been attacked. He sustained many bruises, a few broken ribs. A broken leg and pelvis. All of those things we’ve got under control.”
As the surgeon listed each of the injuries, Florence Rossman let out a little cry. I came over to her side, knelt next to her, and put my hand on her shoulder.
“Bill also sustained a ruptured spleen, and we had to remove it. But that will be okay, too.”
“Doctor,” I said. Florence Rossman seemed unable to talk. “Why did they have to decon him?”
The doctor’s expression was serious. “When the patient was brought in, the EMTs told us he’d been found near a wastewater pit at a drilling rig. His clothes were wet and smelled of diesel and other industrial agents. The EMTs reported that he vomited several times during the flight here. He vomited, too, here in the hospital. It was orange, oily. We assumed it might be the wastew
ater. Our protocol is to decontaminate him. We got him into the decon room, got him out of his clothes, washed him up. We pumped his stomach, sent the contents to the lab immediately, and contacted the CDC.”
“And?”
“The CDC is sending people over now.”
“Do you have lab results?”
“The full analysis will take some time, but the preliminary findings are that the fluid from his stomach contained some chemicals that we’re concerned about. The EMTs brought with them the MSDS from the—”
“The what?”
“Material Safety Data Sheet. It’s the list of all the chemicals on the site. In this case, it’s all the stuff in the fracking fluid.”
“So, can’t you match that with what you found in his stomach?”
“Yes. To some extent, yes. We’ve identified some heavy metals, radioactive materials, volatile organic compounds. BTEX—benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene, and xylene. A lot of oil, salts, sand. Some hydrochloric acid. Plus they identified some radioactive tracer isotopes used in the mining.”
Florence was staring off into space, as if she could no longer listen to the surgeon. I stood up and gestured for the surgeon to follow me out of the alcove. When Ryan saw us come out of the alcove, he drifted over to us but stayed in the background.
“What are you saying?” I said to the surgeon.
“Listen, I’m not a pathologist. I took out his spleen, and we’re taking care of the other injuries. The breaks and bruises. But I’m just not qualified to talk about all the stuff in his stomach.”
“So you can’t say what’s gonna happen to him?”
“No, I can’t. It depends on exactly what it was, plus the concentration and the length of the exposure. We did the best we could to get it out of his system as soon as we determined that some of it was toxic.”
“But at least you know what it is, correct?”
“Most of it is pretty easy to identify, chemically, I mean. Some of it isn’t specified on the MSDS.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, some of it is naturally occurring, got washed up from underground in the drilling process. And some of it the company doesn’t have to list.”
“What?”
“The EMTs told us this. Don’t know if it’s true. But the company doesn’t have to list all the stuff in the cocktail.”
“You’re shitting me.”
She shrugged and just looked at me, like she wanted to get back to whatever she was doing.
“These chemicals could mess him up, is that right?”
“He’s going to have to be monitored.”
“How long?”
“The rest of his life.”
“Can you tell how he got all this shit in his stomach?”
“I have no idea.”
“But there’s no way he would’ve drunk that shit voluntarily.”
“It smells like a gas station. Nobody would ingest it.”
“What do you think happened to him?”
“Listen, Officer, I don’t feel comfortable speculating on what happened. It’s your job to figure that out.”
“Doctor, I understand what you’re saying. And I’m not asking you to make any kind of formal statement. But you know who this guy is, right?”
“Yes, I do.” Her mouth was set in a scowl. “His name is Bill Rossman.”
“And you know who his father is?”
“Officer,” she said, “I don’t have time for this. I don’t know who his father is, and frankly I don’t care. My job was to take out his spleen—”
“His father was Lee Rossman, the oil man. The guy who was killed two days ago.”
The doctor furrowed her brows and took a breath. “Oh, my goodness, I had no idea.”
“So you understand what I’m trying to do? We got the father murdered here in Rawlings, then two days later his son gets choppered in from the oil rigs, with a gut full of fracking chemicals and the crap beat out of him. You understand what I’m asking you to help me with now, right?”
“Yes,” she said, “yes, I understand.”
“Okay, great,” I said. “Now, just between you and me, what the hell you think happened to him?”
“From the injuries, I’d say three or four guys beat him up, poured the fluid down his throat.”
“All right, thank you. Can you tell when he got beat up?”
“Within the last three or four hours, I’d say. From the bruising. He looks like hell. There isn’t a square foot of flesh that isn’t bruised up.”
“They could’ve killed him, right?”
“I think they decided not to.”
“Can we talk to him?”
“He’s still unconscious.”
“How long will he be out?”
“Can’t say.” The surgeon glanced up at a clock on the wall. “Talk to the nurse. She’ll set it up so we notify you when he’s conscious.”
I heard a phone ringing in the little room where Florence was still sitting.
“Okay, Doctor, thank you very much.”
The doctor nodded, then turned and disappeared through the door that led to the operating rooms.
Florence walked over to me, full of energy.
“Ms. Rossman,” I said, “I’ve had a chance to talk—”
I didn’t see her right hand come up and slap me, hard, on the left side of my jaw. I started to stumble, and I felt Ryan grab me on my forearms and keep me upright.
She pointed her finger in my face. “You’re dead.” She turned and walked away, her chin in the air.
I turned to Ryan. “That call she just got? I’m thinking maybe it was from Ron Eberly.”
He nodded. “That would make sense.” He leaned in and looked at my face. “You okay?”
I opened my jaw, moved it left and right to see if it still worked. “I’d be good without getting attacked any more today.”
Chapter 22
The chief paced back and forth in the incident room. I’d never seen him as agitated as this. “What the hell is going on?”
Ryan was standing, hands in his pockets, looking at the floor. I was sitting on a table. We looked at each other. “We have no idea, Chief.”
“Can you tell me where Lee Rossman was killed?”
“No,” I said. “Just that his body was recovered here.”
“And Bill Rossman? Where was he attacked?”
“I think he was attacked out there, at the rig. In Marshall.”
“Because that’s where the fracking liquid is?”
“Yeah, most of it, anyway,” I said. “There could be some here in town. At the company, maybe at the university.”
The chief stopped pacing for a minute and stared at the board. He rubbed at his forehead. “Can either of you link the two crimes? Ryan?”
On the whiteboard, the photo of Bill Rossman was beneath the photos of his father and his step-mother. When we had set it up, we were working just the one crime: the murder of his dad. Now we didn’t know if the attack on Bill Rossman was part of the same crime, or even if it took place in our jurisdiction.
“Except for the last names of the two victims,” Ryan said, “I’m not seeing anything. Lee Rossman knew his killer, trusted him. The killer was able to get close enough to him to stab him without a struggle. No defensive wounds. Bill Rossman—from what the surgeon told us—was stomped on, probably by a bunch of guys, then presumably they poured the fracking liquids down his throat. The MOs couldn’t be more different.”
“Karen?”
“Like Ryan said, I’m seeing two unrelated incidents. At the moment.”
“What do you want to do?” the chief said.
“I’ve been in touch with the Marshall PD,” I said. “Talked with the detective. He said if we wanted to come on out, he’d show us the crime scene, open the file for us, whatever we want.”
“You want to take a drive?”
“I don’t want to take a drive, but I think we should.” I looked at Ryan. He looked resigned as he n
odded.
“Catch me up on where you are with Lee Rossman,” the chief said.
“Lee Rossman was having an affair with a stripper here in town. Name of Susan Warnock. They talked about art. He bought her a nice car. Meanwhile, Florence Rossman was doing a guy named Ron Eberly, who’s a landman for the company. He and Lee go way back. Cheryl Garrity, the woman who runs the company day-to-day, used to be Lee’s mistress and was not happy when Lee married Florence.”
“Jesus.” He closed his eyes slowly and kept them shut a moment. “You interviewed Bill Rossman before he got beat up?”
“That’s right,” Ryan said. “He keeps to himself. Hard to figure out where his head is, but he was alienated from his father and didn’t think much of his step-mother. He likes his Aunt Cheryl, though. Mostly, he drinks beer and sleeps with girls he picks up in bars.”
“When you were out there, did you see anything that would help with the attack on Bill?”
“No,” I said. “We interviewed an unhappy rancher, guy named Mark Middleton. Thinks the company polluted his well water. He’s the one who shoots at the company’s vehicles at night. He resents that Lee didn’t stop by his place when he complained. And he’s pissed at Ron Eberly, who wrote the contract he signed.”
“You don’t like the rancher for beating up Bill.”
“No, that’s not at all his style. Besides, I’d be surprised if he knows Bill exists, or that he’s working on a rig.”
“And Eberly, the landman? He’s fooling around with Florence. He had motive for killing Lee.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but not for attacking Bill.” I turned to Ryan. “My impression is that Eberly saw himself as a kind of uncle to Bill. Did you get that, Ryan?”