GD00 - ToxiCity (18 page)

Chapter Thirty-six

Stone threw the Mars light on top of the unmarked, turned on the siren, and drove Ricki up north. Traffic had thinned and the reversible lanes were open. They pulled up to Lake Forest Hospital thirty minutes later. The morning sun had dimmed, and the temperature had plummeted. Ricki jumped out and ran in to see her father. Stone got out of the car and blew on his hands.

“You think we should call Lake Forest PD?” Matt’s expression was grim.

“Let’s hold off,” Stone said, “until we know what’s what.”

“Do you think—?”

“I’m trying not to.”

With landscaped grounds, a bricked driveway, and graceful columns, the hospital looked more like an ante-bellum mansion than a hospital. They strode past concrete urns of yellow mums and pushed through a door with brass ornaments. Inside a receptionist directed them to the ER. They went down the hall, Matt a few steps in front.

“Hold on.” Stone trotted to catch up. Matt slowed. “That bodyguard—Dorman—is for shit, you know.”

“Is that why you told her to call me?”

“Huh?”

“Didn’t you suggest I should moonlight as her bodyguard?”

“Why the hell would I do that? You’re already working two homicides.”

Matt slowed more. “So you didn’t?”

“No way. Why?”

He looked puzzled. “Nothing.”

A sliding door ahead opened into the ER. Before they went through, Stone stepped in front of Matt, barring the way. “Singer, I gotta say something.”

Matt tensed.

Stone leaned against the door. “To be a good Detective, you need your ‘Third Eye.’ To pick through all the details, and not get distracted. That’s how tough cases get solved. It isn’t something you just develop. It’s gotta be there. I’ve worked with you long enough to know you’ve got it, Matt. In spades.”

Matt cocked his head.

“But here’s the thing. You’re having problems. What they are aren’t my business. But you’re my partner, and you’re not using your eye like you should. That’s a problem. For both of us.”

Stone waited. A muffled voice on the PA system asked Dr. Stern to call surgery. An aide rolled an empty gurney down the hall. Finally, Matt ran his tongue around his lips. “You’re right. It won’t happen again.”

Stone searched his partner’s face, dissatisfied with his reply. He hadn’t expected True Confessions, but—what had he wanted? He pressed his palm against a metal wall plate. The ER doors slid open, revealing a room with multi-colored chairs. A nurse sat behind the intake desk. The waiting room was empty. Apparently people didn’t get sick in Lake Forest. He identified himself to the nurse, who offered to check on Feldman and disappeared.

They sat on the chairs. “Help me out here, Matt,” he said, trying to draw Matt out. “You think our killer worked for Feldman at the same time as Romano and Landon?”

“Could be,” Matt said. “Maybe he was fired—or thought he was—because of them.” He paused. “But where does Simon fit in?”

“I don’t know. Stay with this for a minute.”

“Maybe the killer was a vendor that Feldman stopped using. Or never paid. Actually, wouldn’t Romano have paid the bills?”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

Matt almost smiled. His head was back in the case. Stone felt relief.

“What’d you find out from Landon’s wife?” Matt asked.

“It was a clean break. No kids. She hasn’t heard from him in over a year.”

“She have an alibi?”

“She was on a sailboat with her boyfriend.”

Matt gazed through the window. An ambulance was pulling away from the building. He twisted around. “Damn. I just remembered something. Feldman showed up at Simon’s funeral.”

Stone’s stomach pitched. “Say what?”

“Feldman was one of the mourners at Simon’s funeral. Came out of the synagogue with his arm around Charlene Simon and helped her into the limo.”

“Friends, huh?” Stone frowned. “You think they’re more than friends?”

“I suppose it’s possible.” Matt’s brow furrowed. “You don’t think Feldman had anything to do with—”

“I guess that’s a question we’ll have to ask him.”

But not today. The nurse returned, followed by Ricki, who looked pale. Her father was in the ICU. He had suffered a stroke, but his vitals were stable. They’d know more in a day or so. The good news was that his blood was clean. No infectious agent or pathogen had shown up in the tests. Yet.

“He was lucky,” Ricki said.

Stone crossed his arms. “So were we.”

***

Back home Matt was greeted with the sight of several bags in the hall. He went into the kitchen. Georgia was putting bowls into a cardboard box. She twisted around. Her eyes were swollen, but she looked sober.

He pulled out a chair and sat down.

She closed the box and carried it into the hall. When she came back, she said, “Did I ever tell you what my favorite Jewish holiday is?”

He shook his head.

“Purim.” She faced him. “And not because you’re allowed to drink.”

She disappeared into the bedroom, coming back with her flowered toiletry bag. “Esther married King Ahashuveras, knowing he wasn’t Jewish. She didn’t care. She loved him. She was willing to take a chance. And it paid off. When Haman persuaded him to kill all the Jews—her husband, the king—didn’t go along and saved her life. He even had the bad guy killed.” She gave him a sad smile. “I’d say that’s a mixed marriage that worked.”

He reached for her hand. “Georgia. Don’t go. We can beat this.”

She shook her head. “You shouldn’t have to clean up after me.”

“That’s not—”

“Let me finish. I’ve been thinking a lot the past few days. God knows I don’t have much else to do.” She looked around the kitchen, as if the walls attested to her actions. “The thing is, Matt, I need to be a cop. And I’m going to do whatever it takes to be one again.” She took his hand. “You’re a good man, Matt. Probably the best I’ll ever have. And I’m probably a fool to walk.”

Matt opened his mouth to say something, but she touched a finger to his lips. She pulled her hand away.

“Take care of yourself, Matt,” she said softly and walked out of the room.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Three Years Earlier

Nothing mattered after TJ died. The sun might have come up in the morning; it might have set at night, but Maggie didn’t care. She wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. She wanted to shout but the screams died in her throat. She wanted to die, but a punishing God condemned her to life. Most of the time she sat in the white wicker rocker she bought when TJ was a baby and rocked. After a year of rocking, Greg gave up and moved out.

One day she went to the playground and sat on a swing. Dusty found her at dusk and brought her home. Another time he found her at the Church pre-school, the one TJ would have gone to, studying the children’s faces so hopefully that Dusty told her later he knew she had no idea where she was in space or time.

Afterwards, she didn’t know how they managed. It must have been Dusty who went out for food, threw a load of clothes into the washer, and changed the sheets every now and again. Almost sixteen, with earrings in both ears and tattoos on his arms, he had evolved from a responsible kid to an overburdened teen. She came to feel guilty about robbing him of his youth, but during the dark days, as she referred to them afterwards, she was only dimly aware of the sacrifices he’d made.

Over the years he developed a talent for drawing, but he hid his sketchbook, only bringing it out once in a while. She forced herself to look at his charcoals: detailed illustrations of the woods, small animals, plants. She tried to lavish what she hoped was high praise. He’d done some pen and inks of TJ too, but she couldn’t bear to see them.

While Maggie struggled, Art Newell, the lawyer they’d met with months earlier, got his seed money and filed suit in the circuit court of Will County. The suit charged that environmental contamination caused the cancer and subsequent death of TJ and Tracy Yablonski, who died a year after TJ. Illinois Edison, Prairie State, and Feldman Development were named as co-defendants. The families sought millions in damages.

The lawyers asked Maggie if it was okay to talk to TJ’s doctors. She must have said yes, although she didn’t remember. They asked her to go through the entire timeline of TJ’s illness. She must have done that too, but had no memory of it.

The lawyers talked to experts in toxic waste, leukemia, and neuroblastoma. Their argument was that the tank with the coal tar residue had been leaking for years and had deteriorated so badly that it was an accident waiting to happen. To prove it, more tests were conducted at Meadow City. Engineers and scientists took samples of soil, the water in Maggie’s home, and just about everything else in or on the ground. Experts rendered opinions, but through it all Maggie seemed on the periphery, hazily operating on autopilot.

Awareness finally kicked in during her deposition, almost two years after TJ died. It started when she drove into Chicago on a cold, gray morning. She hadn’t been downtown since TJ was at Children’s. As she walked from the parking lot to her lawyer’s office, one of those fancy places on LaSalle Street, she passed the SGF Development building.

Fragments of long-buried memories surfaced. The book-keeper who had come on to her; the pretentious woman who told her how lucky she was to be living there; the architect who wouldn’t listen to anything Greg had to say during construction. Tremors shook her body as she headed to court.

Art had warned her the deposition would be tough, but the first part went smoothly. She managed to keep it together as Art led her through events from the time they moved to Meadow City until TJ died. Then it was the other side’s turn. A young, well-dressed attorney with moussed hair and a silk tie rose. A cool confidence radiated out from him.

Wasn’t it true, he began, that prior to marrying Greg, she’d been into drugs, booze, and gambling? Maggie’s eyes widened. That was none of his goddamned business. But her lawyer nodded, a signal they’d arranged when she was unsure how to respond. So she told them about the track, the plant, and the way it was with Richie. No big deal, she said. It was the Sixties.

Next the lawyer zeroed in on her life with Greg. Wasn’t it true that visitors who came to the house were largely smokers, boozers, druggies? And didn’t Maggie smoke over two packs a day herself? She told him that she quit when she was pregnant with TJ, but the lawyer shot back that hadn’t been until her fourth month. Didn’t she know that the first three months were critical to the health of the fetus?

Maggie’s pulse throbbed. The cords in her neck grew taut. The lawyer was trying to make TJ’ s cancer her fault. He asked about the chemicals and sprays she used to clean the house. Whether she knew that her new carpeting, the carpeting TJ crawled around on during his first year of life was filled with potentially carcinogenic substances. He confronted her with Greg’s background, demanding to know whether she was aware that Greg’s father died of stomach cancer and that heredity plays a significant role in the disease. By the time it was over, Maggie had a lump in her throat and a twitch in her eye. She asked Art who the lawyer was. Art said he worked for SGF Development.

The case ground on for two more years, years in which more motions were filed, more depositions conducted. Studies were done, the results analyzed and re-analyzed, then debated again by both sides. Maggie went to work waiting tables at Al’s Steak House. Dusty finished high school and started as an electrician’s apprentice. He moved into a trailer with his girlfriend.

Art Newell called regularly to update her. Though the seed money had run out, he remained optimistic. When the families first brought the tort action for negligence against Feldman, he explained, the developer’s attorneys fought it, arguing that Feldman had exercised all due care to such a degree that there could be no question of fact or material law. In plain English it meant that Feldman claimed to know nothing about the problem when he bought the land from Illinois Edison. It was only when they were digging the septic tank at Meadow City that he discovered the coal tar underground. Once it was found, Feldman immediately contacted Prairie State to clean it up, like the good corporate citizen he was. The accident and subsequent contamination thus were the responsibilities of Illinois Edison and Prairie State.

“Isn’t he just trying to pass the buck?” Maggie asked.

“Even if Feldman wasn’t to blame, the accident happened on his watch, so to speak. It was his land. Environmental law says he’s still liable But that’s not the issue. I just found something that will blow this case wide open!”

What?” Maggie asked breathlessly.

Newell said he’d found a source who claimed Feldman
did
know the extent of contamination at Meadow City, but “convinced” regulators that the problem had been solved. Feldman couldn’t afford a long-term clean up as the law required– it could have taken thirty years to do. He wouldn’t have been able to build on the land; his plans for Meadow City would have been scuttled. He had to limit the clean-up operation—get it over with as soon as possible.

So, his source alleged, money—and lots of it—found its way into the pockets of state environmental officials, who then produced documents that gave the site a clean bill of health, even though it wasn’t and wouldn’t be for years.

Newell’s witness, who worked for the state, had overheard a clandestine meeting between a Feldman attorney and a state official during which specific amounts of “persuasion” were discussed, and was willing to testify about it. This would blow the case sky-high, Newell predicted. It was criminal now. Feldman would go to jail.

Maggie smiled for the first time in years.

***

On the eve of the trial Newell called with bad news. “You might want to sit down.”

Maggie wound the phone cord around her fingers.

“Our witness was in a bad accident last night. She’s dead.”

“No!” She gasped.

“I’m sorry, Maggie.”

Hunched over the table, she covered her face with her hand. “What are we going to do?”

Newell swallowed. “I’m not sure. But it gets worse.”

She pulled on the phone cord, watching the black rubber spirals straighten and grow taut.

“She was our only shot. With the Feldman camp and the State denying everything, no one will come forward to testify for us. I tried for a continuance so we could try to find somebody else. At least put our ducks in a row. But the judge won’t grant it.” And then he dropped the bomb. “He granted a motion to dismiss SGF without prejudice. Feldman’s out of the case.”

Maggie collapsed in a chair. “I don’t get it. How can that happen? We have her deposition. Isn’t that as good as testimony?”

“The judge won’t admit it. He says it’s hearsay.”

“What do you say?”

“I’m not in a position to accuse anyone of anything at this point.” Newell cleared his throat. “But there is one piece of good news.”

“What’s that?” Maggie said, her voice laced with doubt.

Newell explained that Illinois Edison, the defendant with the deepest pockets, had nonetheless filed a cross-claim against Feldman and Prairie State to keep them in the case, mostly to share costs. The judge hadn’t released Feldman from that suit, so, indirectly, he was still liable.

But Maggie was unconvinced. Legal bickering among the defendants was nothing compared to the death of a child. She and the other parents had been relegated to bothersome petty whiners to be weeded out and dismissed.

Her misgivings proved to be prescient. By the time the case finally went to trial, Feldman had settled with Illinois Edison, and was out of the case completely. Frannie Yablonski had moved to the West Coast, Greg and Maggie had split up, and Joan Stewart elected not to testify. Maggie weathered a rough cross on the stand, similar to her deposition. And while Newell did the best he could, the jury’s verdict was pre-ordained.

No one was found liable for the children’s deaths. Not the utility that created the mess, or the company that cleaned it up, or the realtor who had developed it. What happened at Meadow City was tragic, the jury concurred, but it was a sad sequence of events that couldn’t be blamed on any individual or institution. Everyone had tried to do the right thing; everyone had behaved lawfully. Justice had been served.

Nearly eight years had passed since Maggie moved into Meadow City. TJ would have been six.