Gina Cresse - Devonie Lace 03 - A Deadly Change of Heart (11 page)

Craig drove us to the police station.  I asked him to stop and let me out before he parked when I saw Sam escorting Ralph Campbell toward the door.  He let me out and agreed to meet me inside.  I trotted across the street after Sam.  “Would you wait up?” I demanded.

He motioned for the other two officers with him to take the prisoner inside, then waited for me to catch up to him.

“Go home,” he ordered.

“No!” I replied.  “You wouldn’t have that guy if it weren’t for me.  That is Ralph Campbell, isn’t it?”

“Yes it is.  Thank you for your assistance.  Now, go home,” he insisted.

“I absolutely will not.  You owe me, Sam.  I know you’re going to question him.  I want to hear what he has to say.”  I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him through eyes that delivered my message.  I was not going to take no for an answer.

I waited for Craig at the front desk, but he must have had trouble finding a parking spot.  I left a message for him and followed Sam down a long corridor. 

Ralph Campbell could not see me on the other side of the two-way mirror.  He was informed of his rights and knew his lawyer was on the way, yet he opted not to remain silent.

Sam sat across from him at a table and took notes with his stubby pencil as he interrogated him.

“Where did you get the plutonium?” Sam asked.

“Work
—
but I didn’t really steal it,” Ralph answered.

“Whether you stole it or not isn’t the issue, Mr. Campbell.  It’s illegal to possess plutonium.  San Onofre never reported any thefts,” Sam reminded him.

“Of course they never reported it.  They never knew it was missing,” Ralph pointed out.

“You want to expand on that?” Sam asked.

“I tried to tell them when they put that new computer system in three years ago, but no one would listen,” Ralph said.  The level of frustration in his voice rose with each word.

Sam continued taking notes.  “Go on,” he said.

“I told my boss there was something wrong with the numbers the new program was reporting.  They were sometimes off by as much as a quarter pound.  He told me to take care of it, so I called the people who wrote it,” Ralph explained.

“Wait a minute.  Slow down.  What numbers?” Sam asked.

“The inventory output numbers.  It kept saying we had produced less by-product material than we’d actually measured,” Ralph continued.

“By-product material?” Sam questioned.

“Yeah.  Plutonium.  It’s a by-product of the fission chain reaction,” Ralph said.

“So you reported this as a problem?” Sam asked.

“I did.  I called the vendor.  They told me it looked like a calculation-rounding problem and that I should post an adjusting entry to correct the discrepancies.  I told them there was no way the company would go for that.”

“And what did they say?” Sam asked.

“They said they’d look into it and maybe correct it in a future release of the software, if it proved to be a serious enough problem.”

Sam wrote furiously in his notepad.  I sat on the edge of my seat and waited for him to ask the right question.  Surely he would ask.

“So what did you do then?” Sam asked.

“I told my boss.  He told me to take care of it.  He didn’t care how, but I was not to bother him with any more computer problems again.  I tried to do what the vendor told me to do
—
post an adjusting entry to correct the errors.  That just made it worse.  The adjustment ended up being stuck in a phantom inventory location, and when I tried to get it out, it understated the original inventory even more.  It was a nightmare.”  Ralph wiped his sweaty brow with his shirtsleeve.  “Since I couldn’t make the computer number match the inventory, I decided to make the inventory agree with the computer.  It was easier to smuggle plutonium out in my lunch pail every day than it was to get that computer to come up with the right number,” he admitted.

I wanted to shout through the wall to get Sam’s attention.  “Ask him what the name of the software is,” I whispered to myself, hoping the subliminal message would make it to Sam’s conscious mind.  I knew Ralph Campbell’s attorney would be making an entrance soon and Ralph would be hushed up just as effectively as if he’d been gagged.  I tiptoed over to the glass and meekly tapped on it.  Sam stopped writing in his notebook and shot an irritated glance at the mirror.  He looked at it for a moment, then continued writing.  I tapped, again.  His jaw clenched.

“Excuse me,” Sam said as he shoved his chair away from the table and stormed out of the interrogation room.

“What!?” he hissed, getting his face within three inches of mine.

“Ask him the name of the software,” I said.

“Why?” he demanded.

“Can you just ask him, before his lawyer shows up and he stops singing like a bird?  I’ll explain later,” I pleaded.

I pictured my delicate little neck in the clenches of Sam Wright’s big hands.  I think he had the same picture in mind.  He took my arm and sat me back down in a chair.  “Don’t touch that glass again,” he ordered, pointing his finger in my face.

I watched as Sam returned to his seat across from Ralph Campbell.  He put his pencil back to the paper.  “What was the name of the computer program?” he asked.

“It’s called Voltage.  That’s V-O-L-T-A-G-E,” he said, watching to make sure Sam spelled it correctly in his notes.  “I even tried to get the newspaper to write about it, but
—
“

The door to the interrogation room burst open at that moment.  A middle-aged man in tennis attire stormed in.  “Don’t say another word, Ralph!” the newcomer exclaimed.

Sam stood up.  “I take it your Mr. Campbell’s attorney?”

“That’s right.  What the heck do you think you’re doing interrogating him without me here?” he demanded.

Sam smiled.  “Mr. Campbell was informed of his rights.  He volunteered the information freely.”

Ralph watched the two men spar for a moment, then interrupted.  “It’s okay Harv.  He’s right.  I wanted to tell them.”

Ralph’s attorney was furious.  “You’d better not say another word, Ralph.  You have no idea what you could be getting yourself into.  You have more than yourself to think about, you know.  You have a wife and kid.  You’d better listen to me before you open your mouth one more time,” Harv instructed.

Ralph seemed shocked.  Had he forgotten he had a wife and son?  Didn’t he know he could actually go to jail?  He must have been concerned about who would take care of them if he went to prison.  He looked at Sam.  “Where are my wife and son?”

“We’ve evacuated your house until the hazmat team determines it’s safe.  Your wife wanted me to tell you they’ll be staying with your next-door neighbor tonight.”

Ralph never said another word. 

Chapter Eleven

S
am marched me down the hall to his office and sat me in the chair opposite his desk.  He rolled up his sleeves, reached into his drawer and removed a bottle of aspirin.   

“Okay.  What’s the significance of Voltage?” he demanded, popping two tablets into his mouth.

“Bradley Parker had a connection with Voltage.  He was selling it for a while.  That’s what all those law suits against him were about,” I explained.

Sam tapped his pencil on the desk.  I could see the wheels turning in his head.  “Okay.  So if we find out Parker sold the program to SONGS, we may have a reason to take a closer look at him, especially if Diane found out about the lost plutonium inventory.  Campbell did say he went to the paper.  If she threatened to expose the program, Bradley would have been hit with yet another law suit.”

I nodded in agreement.  “There’s an even bigger problem here, you do realize.”

Sam waited for me to continue.

I reached across the desk, picked up his pencil and started scribbling calculations on his notepad.  “Ralph said they installed Voltage three years ago.  Right?”

“Right,” Sam agreed.

“And he said it lost as much as a quarter pound of plutonium with each transaction,” I continued.

“Right,” Sam repeated.

“He also said he removed plutonium every day,” I said, as I did the math.  “That’s over two-hundred and seventy three pounds.  We know the Lawrence boys took about twenty of it, so that leaves somewhere in the neighborhood of two-hundred and fifty.  Your Hazmat team recovered, what, fifty pounds from Campbell’s garage?”

“Fifty-two point five pounds, exactly,” Sam confirmed.

I circled a number on the notepad.  “That leaves about two-hundred pounds.”

“Two-hundred pounds of plutonium unaccounted for,” Sam noted.

“Oh, it’s accounted for, all right.  It’s in that new motor home, those fancy cars in Campbell’s garage, the Harleys, all his expensive toys that he shouldn’t be able to afford on his salary,” I said.

“He’s selling it,” Sam concluded.

I nodded.  “You bet he is.”

Someone other than Ralph Campbell’s attorney arranged bail, and he was released before Craig and I left the police station.  Sam assured me every available resource would be digging up whatever there was to find on Campbell, and any connection he may have had with Bradley Parker.  He sent me home and made me promise to stop playing Sherlock Holmes.
  Yeah, right.  Like that was going to happen.

Craig and I
planned to have
dinner at Angelina’s that night.  As we drove to the restaurant, I gave him a rundown of Ralph Campbell’s interrogation and my conversation with Sam.  He listened intently until I finally had nothing left to report.  By that time, we were at the restaurant and ready to be seated.

The waiter put us at a quiet table in the back corner of the dining room.  Craig took a sip of wine and shook his head, chuckling.  “Missing plutonium.  Kids building nuclear bombs in their garage.  Women being thrown off cliffs.  You think we’ll ever have a conversation about something as mundane as what to plant in the flowerbeds or what color to paint the kitchen?”

I laughed, kissed him on the cheek, and whispered in his ear, “Gladiolas in the flowerbeds and white on the kitchen walls.”

A parade of restored 1930
s vintage roadsters cruised down the boulevard past the restaurant.  I admired them through the window.  The last one had passed, but my gaze remained on the street, watching nothing in particular.

Craig noticed my blank stare.  “What are you thinking about?” he asked.

I turned my attention back to him.  “That car in Campbell’s garage.  If you’re right about how much it’s worth
—
”

Craig gave me an injured look.  How could I doubt him?

I started over.  “I know you’re right about the car.  And all that other expensive stuff he had.  He’s not the CEO at San Onofre.  He can’t be making that much money.”

“I wonder what the going rate for plutonium is these days?” Craig pondered.

“I don’t know, but I bet if his lawyer hadn’t shown up, Ralph would have filled us in on the details.”

“Sounds like Ralph’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer,” Craig commented.

“I don’t think he’s stupid.  I think he’s suffering from a guilty conscious.  It’s like he wanted to unload the heavy burden he’s been carrying around.  You know what they say about the truth.”

“It’ll set you free, except in this case, it’ll probably buy seven years in the pen,” Craig said.

I pushed a ravioli around my plate before I finally stabbed it with my fork.  “Ralph wants to talk.  I can tell,” I said, then popped the cheese stuffed pasta into my mouth.

Craig set his glass of wine down and gave me the same look my father gave me the day I announced I was considering dropping out of college to
pursue a career as a commercial
jingle singer.  It wouldn’t have been a bad choice for someone who could carry a tune. 

When Craig dropped me off at home, I supposed he thought I would be staying there for the rest of the night.  I guess I shouldn’t have assumed that.  He knows me too well.  I couldn’t get Ralph Campbell out of my head.  He wanted to tell his story.  His attorney shut him up, but I wondered how much convincing it would take to get him to open up again.  Maybe he’d talk to me if I passed myself off as a reporter, trying to expose the mismanagement at San Onofre.  I was sure he’d go directly to his wife and son when he was released.  I remembered they were staying with the neighbor.  I jumped into the Ford and headed for Ralph Campbell’s neighborhood.

The house was dark and, like the Lawrence’s house, completely surrounded by yellow crime-scene tape.  Lights were on at both neighbor’s houses.  I watched the houses for a minute, wondering which was the temporary housing for the Campbell clan.  I was about to take a chance on the gray-and-white two-story when I saw the garage door begin to roll up on the other neighbor’s house.  I cranked my
head around and watched as Ralph Campbell thre
w a duffel bag into the passenger seat of a blue Volvo, jump
ed
into the driver’s seat and back
ed
slowly out of the driveway. 

“What are you up to, Ralph?” I whispered to myself as I started my engine and pulled out into the street behind the Volvo.

It looked to me like Ralph was on the
run
.  He was on his way out of town.  I stayed on his tail.  He must have sensed he was being followed because his driving became fast and erratic.  He wove in and out of traffic and I worked to keep up with him.  I wanted to call Sam on my cell phone to let him know it looked like Ralph was trying to skip town, but I couldn’t take my attention off the road long enough to make the call.  We were well out of the congestion of the city and Ralph was running like a scared rabbit.  I was having a tough time keeping up with the car.  His lights disappeared from view when he rounded a curve.  I pushed the gas pedal to the floor and gripped the steering wheel tightly
, but then
slowed down before I reached the curve to keep from rolling my short-wheel-based SUV.  When I straightened out the wheel, Ralph’s taillights came back into view.  I pushed the accelerator to the floor.

My heart sank when the red lights at the railroad crossing started flashing and the bells began their alarm.  Ralph had made it through before the crossing gates came down, but no such luck for me.  I eased my foot down on the brake pedal, hoping I could stop before I broke through the gates.  I left a short set of skid marks as my anti-lock brakes helped me stop straight without losing control.  I banged my fist on the steering wheel and cursed under my breath as I watched those annoying red lights flash, alternating from left to right.

I could see the light from the train headed down the tracks.  I thought for a moment that I might try going around the crossing gates, but it was difficult to judge the speed of the train.  I watched the taillights of Ralph’s car disappear on the horizon.  The annoying bright lights of a vehicle reflected in my rear-view mirror as it rolled up to my bumper.  I adjusted my mirror to deflect the glare
, then
reached into my purse and rummaged for my cell phone.  Now would be a good time to call Sam with the bad news.  The Explorer jerked a little and felt as though it had been bumped from behind.  I glanced in my mirror.  I could no longer see the headlights of the car behind me.  Not because it was gone, but because it was pushed right up against my bumper.

“Hey!” I shouted as it continued to push my Explorer toward the red-and-white striped crossing gates.  I shoved my foot down hard on the brake pedal.  The crossing gates splintered and gave way to the grill of my Ford.  My seat vibrated.  I couldn’t tell if it was from the friction of my locked wheels being shoved across the pavement, or the rumbling freight train barreling down the iron rails toward me.  My eyes fixed on the bright strobe light headed my direction.  At that moment, I knew the fear of a deer, frozen in the headlights of a speeding truck as it stands in the center of the road, unable to move.  A voice in my head said, “Think, Devonie!  Think!”  I snapped out of the trance, pushed the clutch to the floor, shoved the gearshift into first and jammed my foot into the gas pedal.  Tires spun and smoke billowed from under the wheels as I crashed through the set of crossing gates on the other side of the tracks, just as the speeding train blasted through the intersection.

I stopped to recapture my breath.  I cranked around in my seat and watched the rail cars speed past.  The lights of the murderous vehicle flashed off and on as the gaps between the cars allowed the beams to pass through.  I tried to judge the length of the train in the dark.  I wanted to be long gone before the last car rolled through the intersection and allowed my attacker to resume the assault.

With a death grip on the wheel, I accelerated down the highway, the speedometer gauge pegged.  I ran the events of the last twenty minutes over in my mind.  Someone must have seen me at Ralph Campbell’s house
—
someone who didn’t want me f
ollowing Ralph.  Maybe Ralph had
a partner in crime.  Maybe Bradley Parker didn’t want me to talk to Ralph. 

I checked my rear-view mirror.  Lights from several cars were behind me.  I made a turn and waited to see if any of them followed.  They all continued on the main highway.  I pulled to the shoulder of the road and cut the engine.  The copies I’d made of Diane Parker’s address book were sitting on the passenger seat next to me.  I’d never taken them out of the Explorer.  I powered on my cell phone and started calling every number.  I asked to speak to the person from Diane’s book, and once it was confirmed that person was home, I feigned phone trouble and disconnected the call.  Then I crossed the name off the list and went on to the next.  I didn’t know who just tried to kill me, but I could start eliminating possibilities.  When I finished, I’d only confirmed ten people were home and could not have been in the vicinity when I had my close-encounter-of-the-Southern-Pacific-kind.  Bradley Parker wasn’t one of them
—
he never picked up his phone.

Traversing the roadways, I
managed to make my way back to the city limits.  As far as I could tell, no one followed me, but I still didn’t want to go home.  I drove to the police station and called Sam’s house from my cell phone.  He didn’t answer, but I left a frantic message on his machine.  I eyed the lights in the windows of the building I was parked in front of
and
wondered if he could be working late tonight.  I called his desk and was greeted by another recording.  I blurted the highlights of my thrilling evening into his voice mailbox and begged him to return my call as soon as he got the message.