“Mmm,” several people said at once. So many of us had now sampled Carl’s cooking that we understood exactly what Luis meant.
Doug sat up straight in his chair. “Anyway, about last Monday night.”
“Yeah. I finally fixed the problem on Phil’s computer. He’s the one who had told me to stay late. He said it had been acting up all day. The guy constantly abuses his computer, and then he gets upset when it doesn’t work right. Drives me nuts.” He scowled at the memory of Phil’s abuse. “So it was maybe eight o’clock. The plant was empty except for maybe a cleaning person or two; there was a vacuum cleaner running somewhere.”
I glanced around. Everyone’s eyes were riveted on Luis, except for Adam’s, which were fixed on Camilla; he smiled slightly. Of course, he was appreciating the fact that she got to sit up front at a real-life mystery. Adam was always looking for gifts to give Camilla, and he hadn’t even had to arrange this one.
“How did you know it was a bullet that broke the glass, and not something else?” Cliff asked.
Luis focused in on him. “When my brother and I were kids we sometimes got to take my dad’s shotgun, under supervision, and shoot stuff in the woods. One time we shot an old window from a shed we tore down. The hole looked just the same. The window in that shed was pretty thick, to keep out weather and varmints. And the window in this door at work was a pretty good thickness, too—it’s an older building and stuff was built to last back then. So it’s not hard to see when a bullet hits glass like that. You get the central hole, and then a lot of webbing effect around it. And of course there’s that sound, that little chick sound. I never had a doubt. I bent over, I heard it and then saw it, and my brain said run.”
Doug leaned in. “Did you have the sense that someone was chasing you?”
“I did. You know how, when your adrenaline is high, you just know things? I knew two things: that someone was shooting at me, and that that someone didn’t want to be seen. So I mostly ran, but a couple of times I dared a look backward. I never saw a thing, except one time I thought I caught a shadow as it darted behind a pillar. That was when I was already on the factory floor. There were a couple night-shift guys down there, so I think the person chasing me gave it up at that point.”
Cliff scratched his head and blinked in a sudden sunbeam. “Anything happen that day that made you suspicious? Any interactions with people that might make them hold a grudge?”
Luis nodded. “Nothing I thought would get me killed, but yeah. First of all, when I worked on Phil’s screen there was a weird e-mail. He told me straight up not to read his e-mail, just to fix the computer. But he also reminded me that all of his stuff was privileged administrative information, blah blah, and I could be fired for sharing anything.”
“Way to be subtle, Phil,” Joe Piper said. “There’s no doubt that guy is up to something; I just don’t know what.”
“What did the e-mail say, Luis?” Camilla asked.
“It was from a guy at Crandall Construction. They’re building the waste disposal system for the new plant. Our quality control guy, Gino, was looking at the blueprints a couple weeks ago. But this e-mail seemed to be about something else. The guy said something like ‘I know you have a timeline for inspection, but if you’re trying to avoid the Feds and Blue Lake officials, we’re going to have to work at night.’”
“Work at night,” Camilla murmured.
“That’s interesting,” Doug said. “Anything else?”
“I had talked with Joe in the past about the fact that Phil seemed to be shady. We had agreed that if we got wind of what he was up to we would go to Ed. But Ed was gone for more than a month because his wife died. Then he came back and he looked kind of thin and sad, and we didn’t want to bother him unnecessarily.”
“It hasn’t been a great situation,” Joe said. “Gino is on the verge of quitting. He’s supposed to guarantee the safety of everything and he said that lately he’s basically not even consulted.”
Luis took a sip of his coffee. Carl studied the side of his face, absorbed in his story. Luis smiled at him, then looked at Doug. “So even before I saw the e-mail I noticed that Phil was looking at some alternative chemicals; they had gotten in trouble in Chicago for some of the stuff they used in production, and Ed’s goal was to move toward less toxic materials.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
Luis looked at me. “Well, we—sometimes additives can be incorporated into polymers, if you have the goal of improving the basic quality of your plastic product. They had used one chemical, I guess, that the local health board in Chicago didn’t like. So Phil had samples from some companies, and I know he and his team had done some limited testing on a few of the new products. I jotted down the names—this was maybe three, four weeks ago. Then I went home and researched them. As far as I could see, none was an improvement on what we had gotten in trouble for in the past, and one was really bad. It was called Dythnocan HT. If you look it up you can read stories of people having terrible reactions to it, just breathing it in. People having asthma attacks, people vomiting. In one case someone died. You could imagine if somehow it was ingested, although I guess in smaller doses it wouldn’t have an obvious effect. Except that you’d probably eventually die.”
“So of course they wouldn’t choose that one,” Adam said.
Joe snorted. “The company line is, lots of chemicals are toxic. We use them in a safe, controlled environment, so they’re fine. Do you know there are laws that protect companies from having to reveal all the toxins in their products?”
“It’s disgusting,” Elena said. “When Luis was reading this research, he was getting really mad. He said he had to look for a new job.”
Luis held up a hand. “But first I wanted to make it clear what was happening. I went to Ed. He was just back, still looking kind of out of touch and pale in his office, and I felt bad bothering him. But he’s the president, for gosh sakes. And besides, his wife was an environmentalist. He was concerned about stuff like that, because of her.” Luis shook his head for a minute, thinking back. “So I went to him and put some of my research on his desk. I said, ‘I know this is a bad time, but we’re going to be in production in a few months, and this stuff is toxic.’”
“Was he on board? Did he acknowledge your concerns?”
Luis picked up his coffee and held it in both hands. “He looked surprised. He was sitting there, reading the articles like he hadn’t ever heard this stuff. I mean, he has guys he pays to do all this research. I think he was just dialed out—he probably shouldn’t have come back so soon. I said, ‘Ed, you and I both know that if you put this stuff in water it would be deadly.’ He sat there for a minute kind of frowning at the articles, and then he asked me if Phil knew. I said I didn’t know, but that I wasn’t privy to the meetings Phil Enderby attended.”
Joe cracked his knuckles, scowling. He looked at Doug and Cliff. “I was privy to a lot of them, but believe me, those guys weren’t talking about public health concerns,” Joe said. “Luis was stirring things up more openly than I was, but I had been looking into things, too. Our plant is pretty equally divided, I think, between employees who care about people and employees who care about profit. Those top guys seem to care about profit. Even Ed, although I think he cares about the average Joe.”
I looked at Belinda and saw that she felt my distress. Blue Lake, our Blue Lake! What if it were sullied by the chemicals from the monstrous Plasti-Source? The executives within could take their money and run, but we had to live here. We frolicked in the lake in summer, and there was our water to consider, Blue Lake water, fresh and delicious. It all came back to the water, in the end. Could we as people manage not to contaminate our basic source of life?
“Lena’s getting depressed,” Sam said, holding my hand.
“It’s all so unbelievable. That people could be so crass and callous. So uncaring about the welfare of others. So
irresponsible,” I said.
“Hey, we don’t have evidence of anything,” Doug said. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
Cliff said, “Let’s get back to the timeline. They shot at you, what, a week ago?”
Luis thought. “More than that. It’s been nine days.”
“Then you came home and told your wife.”
“He was really shaken up about it, as you can imagine,” Elena said. “I told him no way was he going back to work.”
Doug looked sternly at the screen. “Funny thing is, Luis, I have no record of a police report about the shooting.”
“No, you don’t.” Luis lifted his chin. “This might be paranoia, but when I was driving out of the parking lot, a cop car was driving in. Really fast, but with no light on. I tore out of there and never looked back, but it got me thinking: Did whoever was inside call a pal on the police force? Did he ask him to come and hunt for me? Why else would that car have been speeding to an empty Plasti-Source parking lot?”
Doug and Cliff exchanged a glance, then laughed. “Because Chip Johnson is an idiot,” Cliff said.
“What?” Luis looked at him blankly.
“Chip is young and hungry. He likes action. Sometimes he goes to parking lots to practice his driving. For when that big chase comes along.” Cliff glanced at his watch. I wondered if he had arrangements to make for his big date. “Okay, that explains why you didn’t call the cops. You were paranoid. And it explains why you didn’t go back to work. What was your plan, then?”
Luis sighed. “I talked it out with Elena that night. Once things settled down, and my heart rate went back to normal, I started thinking, it couldn’t have been what I thought. Why would someone shoot at me? In a place of business? And why would I never see that person chasing after me?”
Elena turned to look at us. “I believed Lu when he came home; he was obviously terrified and traumatized. But the more we talked, the more we said—it just doesn’t make sense. We figured we’d have him call in sick. Meanwhile, he called Carl and asked him to take a look at the window in that first-floor office.”
“I just told Carl I thought I noticed it was broken, and I asked him to tell me if it was.”
“I knew you were lying,” Carl said. “But I thought you broke the window.”
Luis let out a bitter laugh. “If only my problems were that simple. Carl called me back the next day at lunch. He left a message the window was intact, no break at all. So either I was totally losing it, or someone had worked to make sure that window was repaired before any employees got to work. Which suggested either someone in charge, or someone with keys.”
“It was a new window,” Carl said.
“How do you know?” Cliff asked.
“The smell. It had that glue smell of whatever they caulk it with. It didn’t smell that way before.” Carl looked out at us with his canny green eyes and I felt a chill, even in a room full of warm bodies.
“Who all has keys?” Doug asked.
“Not me or Carl,” Luis said. “I guess all the top guys. Ed, Gino, Phil, Joe. Some other executives.”
Everyone pondered the information for a moment. I said, “I have a question. When Luis disappeared, Carl said that his bosses weren’t concerned about it because Luis had a reputation for this sort of thing. But we know that Luis doesn’t. So who started that rumor? Or was one of the bosses just lying to Carl?”
Joe Piper cleared his throat, looked at Elena, and raised his hand. “I did that.”
The attention of those assembled shifted to him. “I didn’t want anyone looking for Lu, so I told his boss, Gary, that Luis had a reputation at his previous job for just not showing up for weeks at a time. I said I had warned him not to do it here, but apparently he was up to his old tricks.”
“And Gary believed that?” Doug asked.
“He did. So much so that he complained to his bosses about it. I told him on Tuesday—the day Luis didn’t show up—and they started interviewing other IT people a day later.”
“But at least one person probably knew why Luis was gone,” Camilla said. “Luis, I have a question, too. Why did you go to Blue Lake Games if you were in hiding?”
Luis shrugged. “Saturday morning, I had calmed down a little. Elena said no way was I going back to Stafford, but we were both starting to think it was an isolated thing. Maybe a security guard was drunk, or maybe I surprised a burglar or something. We really couldn’t believe that anyone would be shooting at me personally. Even though that’s exactly what we thought the night before. And I realized I couldn’t just hide in my house forever. So I went out and about. I got groceries and brought them home. I raked some leaves. I kept an eye out on my street, but nothing was unusual. Then Carl called and asked if I wanted to go the game store. I said sure.”
“Why did you talk about Uriah Heep at the store?” Camilla asked. “Were you still thinking of Phil Enderby?”
Luis’s eyes darkened. “Yeah, I was feeling bad vibes about the whole situation. How some of the bosses were probably corrupt, and how I still felt weirded out about the whole shooting thing. And the police car. So, yes, corruption and fakery were on my mind.”
“And after you left?” Doug said.
“Carl and I talked for a while on the sidewalk. We said good-bye, and he walked down the block to where his car was. I looked at some games in the window of BLG, and then I started to cross the street to my car. I heard it coming.” He looked right into the camera, his eyes wide with the memory. “I felt it, you know? That it was bad. And I heard the guy hit the gas. So I dove, and he missed me by about a foot.”
“He came home shaking like a leaf. That’s when we decided we had to be drastic, and to kill him. We had no idea who we could trust,” Elena said.
“That must have been so scary.” I sent her a sympathetic glance.
She nodded; then she folded her arms and looked at Doug and Cliff. “What do we do now? How do we get Luis out of hiding? How are you going to get these guys?”
Doug sighed. “It’s not as simple as storming the plant and shutting it down. We need to have some reason either to search their premises or investigate their records. I’ll certainly be talking to the top guys again, and Cliff and I plan to look more deeply into Crandall Construction. But the problem is, the people at Plasti-Source are going to lie to me, the way they’ve been lying to me all along. I need something to use as leverage. Something to pry them open with some honest information.”
“This could take forever,” Elena said, clearly on the verge of tears.
Belinda had been quiet for some time, tapping on her phone. “I have an idea,” she said.
Everyone turned to look at her. “I get Plasti-Source e-mail alerts; at some point I signed up with them so I could keep track of the plant’s progress. There’s a new alert this morning saying that there’s an open tour at the Stafford plant tomorrow evening. Apparently, it’s for all those citizens concerned about safety. They’re going to take people through the plant and answer questions. Blue Lake residents are welcome as well.” She read this off her phone, but now she looked up at us and pushed her glasses up on her nose.
I stole a glance at Doug, who looked besotted.
“Brilliant,” said Cliff. He stood up and looked at his watch. “Who wants to go to an open house?”
Everyone in the room raised a hand.
Doug shook his head. “Elena, you’re not going. That would raise suspicions—people there know you. That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but since they don’t know what happened to Luis, they might assume you’re there with a grudge.”
Elena looked at Joe, who nodded. “They’d certainly have questions about me being there. I guess we’re out.”
“The rest of us have valid reasons to be there. We’re either law enforcement officials or members of the community. Even if someone at Plasti-Source has been k
eeping tabs on some of us, they have no reason to think this wouldn’t just be an innocent fact-finding mission.”
“You’d be surprised,” Camilla murmured. “But as a newly married woman, I can certainly say that my husband and I would like to ask some questions at the Stafford plant.”
“What?” Doug said. He stared at Camilla, his face shocked. “What did you say?”
Camilla’s eyes widened. “Oh, Doug, I’m sorry—I thought Belinda or someone would have told you. Adam and I were married a few days ago.”
Doug stood up, grinning from ear to ear, and went to embrace her. “Congratulations, Milla! I am really happy for you.”
“Thank you, dear.”
Doug shook Adam’s hand, still grinning.
Adam said, “Where Camilla goeth, there go I. We can certainly look the part of concerned retirees at this tour, rather than sleuths looking for dirt on Plasti-Source. Should I smoke a pipe?”
Doug barked out a laugh. “We don’t need anything out of central casting. Let’s just go, be ourselves, listen to questions, and look around. And when I say look around, I mean poke into things. If anyone complains, we can say that we thought open house meant we could look at whatever. Right? Peek into offices, jot down serial numbers of machinery, whatever you feel like doing.”
I had been mulling things over. “I’m just wondering—why have this open house at all? Didn’t they just have a meeting in Blue Lake that was meant to answer residents’ concerns? It was written up in the paper, right? And the Stafford plant has been around a long time.”
Doug lifted his shoulders. “In response to complaints, maybe. People in Blue Lake who still aren’t thrilled with the idea.”
Sam raised his hand. “Lena and I saw a sign protesting the new plant. It was signed by some group. What was it called, Lena?”
“Something with ecology,” I said, trying to remember.
“That’s it. The Blue Lake Ecology Commission. It sounded like a fancy name for just a few ticked-off townies. But maybe this group is putting pressure on Plasti-Source,” Sam said.
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