I would have thought it was birdseed but for the dead rats that lay about. All except for one that still nibbled hungrily at the grain. I pulled out my own small flashlight and shone it on the bags. No wonder so many rodents were dead. They’d eaten Temik, one of the most potent pesticides on the market. I’d come across it out West, where some ranchers had illegally used the poison to kill coyotes, eagles, and wolves. The question was, what did DRG need it for?
“Why does Drapkin have all this Temik around?”
“Maybe it’s ’cause he don’t like rats and mice?” Eight-Ball answered my question with one of his own.
I was pondering that when the rat eating away at the grain suddenly froze. Then its rear leg uncontrollably twitched. From there the tremor rapidly spread to the critter’s torso, gripping its entire body in a seizure. Relief came only when the rodent lay dead.
My body reacted just as quickly, breaking into a cold sweat, as a wave of nausea swept through me. The scene had been all too visceral, a sharp reenactment of Gary’s own final moments. There was no controlling what happened next, as I abruptly turned away and threw up.
“Maybe we oughta forget about this for now and go home,” Eight-Ball suggested, handing me a tissue. “Something tells me this ain’t such a good idea.”
I looked over at Eight-Ball to find he’d turned pale as a ghost. I wondered what had scared him most—my reaction, or realizing just how toxic this place really was. Maybe his painkiller was wearing off. I felt bad for the man. But we’d both have to tough things out. No way would I give up now. Not after what I’d just seen.
“Do you have your pain pills with you?”
Eight-Ball nodded.
“Okay, then. You’ve done more than enough by bringing me here. Why don’t you take another pill and wait for me in the car? That way you can give your leg a rest.”
“It ain’t my leg that’s bothering me,” Eight-Ball obstinately retorted. “I got a bad feeling, is all.”
I had a bad feeling, too. I was now convinced that Drapkin was responsible for Gary’s death. Harry had said as much, himself.
Eliminate the biologist and nobody can say that DRG is causing the marsh any harm.
“Anyway, it’s not me that I got a bad feeling about, Miss Rachel. It’s you.”
An icy hand clenched my stomach, twisting hard as a wave of nausea tore through me again. Even worse, I could swear that a tremor now sped through my limbs. I held my breath, wondering if I might be next, and how it was that I’d come to be a victim. But the sensation quickly passed, leaving me more determined than ever to nail Drapkin. Besides, anything was better than the news I feared could be waiting for me at home.
“Don’t worry, Eight-Ball. I’m like a cat with nine lives.”
“Oh yeah? What number you up to now?” he smartly retorted.
“I don’t believe it’s quite nine yet,” I tersely joked.
“That’s close enough. Might as well tell me where you plan to go next, cause you ain’t going alone.”
Cell Building Two loomed dead ahead. I pointed to it.
“Let’s head there.”
It was as though I were pulled by an invisible cord past the outfall pond and weir to the man-made lake. I paused for a moment, remembering this was where Gary had taken his last sample. Then steeling myself, I headed toward the entrance of Cell Building Two, when five bony fingers latched onto my arm.
“Hold it, Miss Rachel. You can’t go in that way.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll see soon enough. Follow me.”
However, rather than proceed, I illuminated the area with my flashlight, curious as to what the problem might be. A trickle of liquid seductively caught its rays. Reflected in the light was fluid seeping from under the cell door. I aimed the beam along the ground and followed where it led.
A fresh batch of silver mercury bubbles lay percolating in the mud. They gurgled and squirmed like newly evolving life forms, leaving me with an uneasy feeling of dread. Soon the mercury would become gaseous and easily inhaled—a disturbing sign as to what awaited us in the building.
“Miss Rachel?” Eight-Ball called out again.
I hurried to catch up with him. Rounding a corner, I found Eight-Ball climbing a set of stairs. Our footsteps echoed hollow in the night, swallowed by the marsh, as we made our ascent skyward along the side of the building.
Each tread reverberated within me like a death knell as my mind strayed to Santou. I wondered if he was alive, trapped inside a metal coffin somewhere deep in the swamp. Drops of rain now fell, nipping at my skin like diminutive bits of steel as if the night were crying, its tears fragments of Santou’s plane plummeting from out of the sky.
I began to climb faster now, desperate to escape the vision. But my demons had hold and refused to let go, reveling in my anguish. I prayed this would all prove to be nothing more than a bad dream. I’d almost begun to believe it was so—until Eight-Ball’s voice shattered the spell, jerking me back to reality.
“You gotta put these on. Otherwise you can get burned real bad inside,” he said, handing me rubber boots as we reached the top of the stairs.
I donned them, while he slipped a pair onto his own feet.
“If that happens, make sure to take a shower right away over there.”
My eyes followed where his finger led—to a small structure standing off by itself.
“What about face masks?” I asked. “You must have to wear those.”
Eight-Ball stared at me as though he’d never heard the words before. Then he reached into a box near the cell door.
“You mean these things?” he asked, pulling out a couple of flimsy paper masks.
I took one and put it on. The mask loosely covered my nose and mouth, offering no more protection than a placebo.
He unlocked the metal door and flicked on the lights, as we stepped inside a space the size of a football field. The first thing to hit me was that it was hot as hell in this place. A thermometer on the wall confirmed I was right. The temperature hovered at one hundred and ten degrees of sweltering heat.
It’s funny how information from the past chooses when to come wafting back. I now remembered something an old science teacher had taught me. Haze, smoke, and gas rise under such conditions. That lesson reaffirmed Harry’s recent words of warning.
Breathing in all those mercury vapors can cause irreversible brain damage.
I could already feel my IQ begin to drop. The trick was to snoop around, see what I could find, and get out.
One look established that there were at least fifty electrolytic cells on the top floor, each the size of a large dining room table. I could only imagine how hard it was to keep them clean and running. Eight-Ball must have read my thoughts, as he now began to walk toward them.
“See here, Miss Rachel? This is part of the problem.”
I bent down, took a good look, and nearly plotzed. Problem didn’t begin to describe the situation. Disaster was more like it. A number of cells were steadily leaking mercury that puddled on the floor.
“What happens is the mercury rolls toward those support columns and then escapes down through the cracks,” Eight-Ball explained, pointing to the large concrete pillars around the room.
I listened closely and imagined I could hear the drops plink, plink, plinking onto the ground below. Stepping back, I held my breath, wondering how many brain cells I’d already blown.
“But where we got bad trouble is on the bottom floor. You sure you really wanna go down there?” he asked. His shaky fingers wiped a trickle of sweat off his brow.
I hadn’t come this far just to wimp out now.
“Absolutely,” I said, hoping I sounded braver than I felt. My legs had begun to tremble from the heat, which made me feel weak.
Buck up, I told myself. You’ve still got plenty of brain cells left. So what’s a few more?
I followed Eight-Ball down a flight of metal steps, and instantly realized why the lower door had to remain
closed. The bottom floor was flooded with a good eighteen inches of corrosive water. Even more frightening was that this was where the control valves, electrical panels, and circuit boxes were housed.
I stared in disbelief at all the exposed wires dangling loosely from electrical pumps. Then I flashed my light onto the liquid below. Glistening strands of mercury lay strung across the floor, where they hypnotically swayed like long silver snakes.
“There’s lotsa bad stuff in that water,” Eight-Ball spoke above the sound of running motors. “So just try not to get it on you.”
That was the general idea. “Workers don’t have to wade around in it, do they?”
“Sure,” Eight-Ball confirmed. “How else we gonna fix things? Mr. Drapkin had catwalks put in a while back. But a lotta pumps sit on the floor and there’s no other way to get to them.”
No wonder those DRG employees had died after receiving bad shocks. What had their wives thought when they’d seen the singe marks? Had they realized their husbands had been electrocuted? I now understood why Drapkin had paid to shut them up.
“Besides, there’s not always water down here. We vacuum up mercury that’s lying around when the floor ain’t so wet. Mr. Drapkin likes us to try to put it back in the cells and re-use it.”
Drapkin really was the ultimate miser. The best I could wish was that he’d wind up in prison and his wife would sue his ass off—at least, for a start.
“Where can we walk?” I asked, wanting to get off the steps and take a better look.
Eight-Ball pointed to the catwalk below. Constructed of large railroad ties, it stood three feet above the cement floor jutting into wharves that wove their way between the equipment.
“Are there hard hats we can wear?” I asked, dodging a tumbling drop of mercury.
“There used to be a couple, but Lord knows where they are. Mr. Drapkin said we don’t really need them.”
I added another black mark onto Drapkin’s growing list of misdeeds.
“Here. You can stick this on your head.” Eight-Ball handed me what looked like a rainbonnet of heavy plastic.
I felt like a Jewish grandmother as I tied its two ends under my chin. Then evading the falling raindrops, I stepped onto the makeshift platform. If I’d thought my legs were shaky before, they were definitely wobbly now.
I looked down at the water below. The caustic liquid lapped at the railroad ties, patient as a gator awaiting its next meal. I began to take a step, only to hesitate. The entire surface of the catwalk was dotted with shiny, silver beads.
Stop being such a wuss and get on with it, commanded the maniac living inside me.
Taking a deep breath, I placed one foot in front of the other, careful not to lose my balance.
Eight-Ball pointed to a group of corroded motors all sitting together. “There’s some stuff that needs to be fixed.”
I imagined down-and-dirty workers slogging through this water, trying their best to keep it from splashing. Black or white, it made no difference. All of the workers were disposable.
“How much water do you suppose is down here?”
Eight-Ball tilted his head and squinted hard, as if that might help him to think. “I seem to recall someone saying this area holds two hundred thousand gallons. That’s when it’s usually released. Looks like there’s just about that much now.
Release caustic water? Where the hell did it go? Then I remembered the lake just outside. The only thing standing between all that water and this flood was the steel door.
I aimed my flashlight at the barrier and took a closer look. Whadda ya know? The door had been built so that it didn’t touch the floor. Instead, the bottom was an enormous mound of dirt that rose about two feet high and a foot wide. The building had been transformed into a man-made lake.
“Is that how the lake out there was formed?”
Eight-Ball nodded his head and chuckled. “Yep. We call that Lake Mercury. Ain’t nothing to do but open the door, break that dirt berm, and let the water run out when the room gets like this.”
I gazed around, barely able to believe what I’d just heard.
And all of this is going into the groundwater, I silently realized.
“None of us like it. But what else can you do when there’s no money to fix the place?” Eight-Ball questioned.
There would have been plenty if Drapkin weren’t so greedy. But what I still couldn’t figure out was how this witches’ brew was reaching the marsh so quickly.
“Eight-Ball, is there any other way in which DRG gets rid of excess liquid?”
“Well, we got sewers that drain into six underground pipes. Sometimes we dump a bunch of the waste down there.”
“And where do those pipes lead?” I carefully questioned.
“They run into the marsh and Purvis Creek.”
Bingo! Drapkin was getting rid of corrosive water every which way that he could.
Eight-Ball cocked his head and glanced toward the second level. “Sounds like one of the cells upstairs might need to be checked. Let me see what’s going on, and I’ll be right back.”
I paid little heed, my attention fully focused on the nightmare around me.
“Sure, no problem.”
I found it mind-boggling that Drapkin had gotten away with this for so long. Plenty of palms must have been greased, and knowing eyes discreetly turned. Equally troubling was that my Regional Director, Bob Montgomery, seemed to be part of it all.
“Do you think the Reverend will testify as to what he knows?” I asked, upon hearing Eight-Ball’s footsteps return down the stairs.
I received a fierce whack across my back in response, followed by a sharp jolt of pain. My first thought was that I’d been electrocuted. My second was to wonder what had happened to Eight-Ball as I started to lose my balance. I couldn’t stop my body from leaning forward too far. I just prayed that I didn’t fall in face first as I continued to slip, all the while struggling to keep the world from turning topsy-turvy. Guardian angels must truly exist, for they now came to my aid. Though I fell into the water, I managed to land on my feet.
Nineteen
A mixture of laughter and tears exploded within me, duking it out in a hodgepodge of emotions. Though I was relieved to be alive, I was angrier than ever at the world for possibly taking Santou from me. I opened my mouth to scream, only to have all thoughts swept away as my legs began to tingle. Pinpricks of heat pierced my skin with the intensity of miniature smart bombs, and I swiftly glanced down to find that my jeans were soaking wet. A shot of cold fear gripped me by the scruff of the neck, and my survival instincts kicked into gear. I had to get out of here and head for the shower immediately.
Turning around, I placed my hands on the catwalk, only to find a pair of boots planted on the railroad ties before me. Why was Eight-Ball just standing there and not bothering to help? I received my answer as I looked up to find Howard Drapkin sneering down at me. Gripped in his hands was a wooden board, which he swung back and forth like a baseball bat.
“I thought for certain you’d be smarter, Agent Porter. You should have realized that your friend’s death was a warning.”
I stared at the man with his perfectly coiffed hair, and every ounce of my rage found its target.
My hand slowly reached around to grab the 9mm tucked in the back of my pants. Suspecting Drapkin of having killed Gary was one thing. Hearing the admission was quite another. I’d never fatally shot anyone before. However, if there had to be a first time, Drapkin was the perfect candidate.
No longer was I aware of the sting in my legs, only of the itch in my trigger finger. Drapkin represented everything that I’d come to hate—power, greed, and corruption. Who knows? Maybe by killing him, I’d stifle the blind ambition that had begun to eat away inside me. But more than anything else, I’d be exacting revenge for Gary.
I knew I’d never be able to kill the bastard, even as my fingers wrapped around the gun. Still, I didn’t see the harm in maiming him a bit. And there were such an int
eresting array of places for which to aim. What the hell. I’d be helping Venus out and settling a score for his wife, while I was at it.
“You’re no genius yourself, Drapkin,” I responded, feeling pretty damn empowered as I swung my weapon around.
But Drapkin’s reaction surprised me. Instead of being cowed by the sight of my gun, he appeared to be absolutely delighted.
“Now!” he shouted at the top of his lungs.
I wondered if Drapkin was a lunatic with a death wish. However, that was as far as I got when the exterior steel door flew open, and I realized he had an accomplice. After that, everything happened with lightning-fast speed.
A metal shovel glinted where it was raised high, suspended against the moonlight. Then a pair of arms flung the tool down, deftly ripping through the thick berm of earth. There was no time to think, much less act, as a solid wall of water came hurtling behind me. The liquid locomotive knocked me off my feet and onto the ground, tearing the gun from my grip. Falling onto my hands and knees, I lifted my head while closing my eyes and mouth in an attempt to protect myself. But the flood cynically laughed as it roared past with a fluid shriek.
The caustic water tore through my clothes and into my flesh, setting my arms and legs afire. Hot quivers morphed into a mob of angry throbs, and I knew that my skin would soon begin to blister. If that weren’t enough, the force of the water now propelled me forward. My body was carried along like so much flotsam in the direction of Mercury Lake, and out of Drapkin’s sight.
I could see him laughing in my mind at what he felt was my just fate. Screw him! I refused to knuckle under without one last fight. No way would I give Drapkin, Williams, and Montgomery the satisfaction of believing they’d so easily won. Instead, I focused on trying to find a way out of this mess.
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