The Grid (12 page)

- CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX -

Sarah’s head feels like it’s in a bucket lined with steel studs and somebody’s banging on the outside. The Starbucks latte she’s drinking tastes bitter despite the milk and sweetener, and it makes her stomach queasy.

Fucking tequila. Never again.

Dylan stirs in her hospital bed. Sarah puts the coffee down and takes her daughter’s hand.

It’s nine o’clock in the morning, the day after her drunken encounter with Elias.

In a few minutes, Dylan will head off to surgery for her leg.

The nanny dozes in an armchair across the room.

“Mommy, I don’t feel good.” Dylan’s voice sounds tiny.

The pain meds are making her tummy upset.

“It’s okay, baby. The doctors are gonna make everything better.”

Dylan wipes a tear from her eye. “Where were you last night? I missed you.”

Sarah hesitates, the old, familiar self-loathing washing over her. She doesn’t want to lie. Nor does she want to say that she was drunk, just like her own mother had been the night before Sarah had her tonsils out.

Six-year-old Sarah, alone in a hospital room much like this. Her mother passed out at home. Her father shacked up at some hotel with his latest pretty boy.

Papa, her grandfather, had been with her, however. He’d spent the night in the hospital room, sleeping on a recliner, one hand grasping hers through the bars on the bed. The old man had fully comprehended the weakness of his son, Sarah’s father. He’d known that no adult would be present for what was sure to be the most traumatic event up to this point in his granddaughter’s life.

Rosa walks over, yawning. “Your mother, she was sick. That’s why she wasn’t here.”

Dylan looks aghast. “Are you all right, Mommy?”

“Mommy’s fine.” Sarah strokes the child’s head. “Just a touch of the, um, stomach flu.”

Rosa’s and Sarah’s eyes meet. The nanny’s expression is blank.

“Where’s Daddy?” Dylan asks.

Sarah doesn’t know. Walden had picked her up after Elias left, driven her home in silence. Sarah had passed out on the bed, fully clothed. This morning, the other side hadn’t appeared to be slept in.

“He had to go to Houston,” Rosa says. “Business.”

“Today?” Sarah tries not to sound incredulous. “He’s not going to be here for her surgery?”

No one speaks. Dylan whimpers softly, plucking at the IV in her arm.

“That’s what mothers are for, yes?” Rosa heads toward the door. “I’m going to get breakfast.”

Sarah doesn’t respond.

“Mommy, I’m scared.” Dylan fidgets in the bed.

“When will you be back?” Sarah calls out after the departing nanny.

No response. The door shuts, and Sarah is alone with her daughter.

Dylan looks up. “If I die, will I go to heaven and see Papa?”

- CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN -

I started the government Suburban Whitney Holbrook had provided and cranked up the AC. When the cold air started blowing, I called the Texas Rangers and relayed the information gleaned from the deputy’s computer. Told them to get an IT specialist to the dead man’s office as soon as possible and to check the cell phone at the McLennan County morgue. Gave them the username and password to the website.

Then I left town, driving in the general direction of Louisiana, away from the stony hills and scrub brush that most people associated with the Lone Star State, heading toward the thickets of East Texas.

Two hours later, I arrived at McCarty, a tiny town between Palestine and Lufkin, deep in the piney woods, not far from the Davy Crockett National Forest.

The town was not much more than a cleared patch among the trees—ten, maybe twelve blocks in either direction. Old wood-frame houses topped with satellite dishes. A Dollar General store and a Dairy Queen.

Not counting the power plant, I figured the town’s three biggest industries were food stamps, bass fishing, and diabetes.

The McCarty Creek Generating Facility was located on the eastern edge of the metropolis, just past a mobile-home park that looked like it had been recently hit by a tornado.

The plant was smaller than Black Valley, only one tower—what’s called the boiler, according to Whitney Holbrook.

Four guards were at the gatehouse. All of them were in their twenties, fit and alert. They were carrying machine guns and wearing black tactical vests marked on the back with lettering that read,
S
UDAMENTO
S
ECURITY
.

I stopped at the gate as the head guard stepped in front of my SUV, one hand held up even though I wasn’t moving. After a moment, he walked around to the driver’s side.

“May I help you?” He stood about two feet from the window, fingers on his gun.

I displayed the FERC badge. “I need to speak with the manager.”

He gave me and the Suburban a long look and then disappeared into the gatehouse. A moment passed, and he came back out, handing me a visitor badge and a one-page map of the facility. The gate swung open.

I thanked him and drove down a gravel road toward the boiler tower.

The terrain was rolling, covered in native grasses that were dormant from lack of water, the color of dried sand. Most of the trees had been cleared from the site, allowing for an unobstructed view of the boiler and the surrounding equipment, as well as the small lake that served as a cooling source for the plant.

The road forked at the entrance to the boiler compound, an area separated from the rest of the facility by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and an open gate.

I took the road to the right, which led to the administrative office, a low metal building about three hundred yards away.

A man in his forties wearing a plaid shirt and a hard hat stood by the visitor parking slot. He held a second hard hat in his hand.

I parked.

He walked to the passenger side, tapped on the glass, a cheerful smile on his face.

I rolled down the window.

“Chester Lewis.” He stuck his hand inside. “Plant manager here at McCarty Creek.”

“Hi. How are you doing?” I shook. “Special Agent Jon Cantrell.”

Chester didn’t say anything else. He glanced back toward the admin building a couple of times.

“Let’s go inside where it’s cool and talk,” I said.

He turned his full attention my way. “Inside?”

I nodded.

He looked back toward the building again.

“You rather talk somewhere else?” I asked.

He opened the passenger door, hopped inside the SUV. “Let’s take a spin, Special Agent Cantrell. I’ll give you a tour.”

“Call me Jon.” I put the transmission into reverse, turned around.

“How about we check out the boiler?” He pointed toward the tower. “That sounds like a good plan, doesn’t it?”

I drove the way I’d just come. A few seconds later, we left the admin area and were back on what constituted the main road of the facility.

“Maybe I could give you a little lesson on power plants.” He fastened his seat belt.

“I need to ask you some questions first.”

“There’s this talk I give to schoolkids,” he said. “It’s very informative.”

“How come you wanted to get away from the admin building?” I asked.

No answer.

“It’s a beautiful day,” he said. “Great to be outside.”

I didn’t argue even though the temperature gauge on the Suburban read ninety-six degrees.

“Park over there.” He directed me through the gate leading to the tower, to a spot between two tanks at the base of the structure.

I did as instructed, and we both exited the SUV. I put on the hard hat he gave me and followed him to a superstructure built as an outside layer on top of the boiler.

Right by the boiler, the air was hot and humid, much warmer than ninety-six degrees. Heat radiated from the massive structure, and a whooshing sound made conversation difficult. What looked like dirty talcum powder coated all the surfaces.

A freight elevator was attached to the outside of the superstructure.

Chester pushed the Up button, and the doors slid open. We stepped into a square room with plywood walls and a faded sign that read
S
AFETY
F
IRST
. The temperature was hotter still, like the inside of an oven. He punched the button for the top, and a few very long and very hot seconds later, the doors opened, exposing a metal catwalk at the crown of the boiler structure.

We exited the elevator, and he directed me to a spot that was farthest from the boiler, an observation perch offering a view of the entire facility.

Up this high, there was a breeze blowing, and the ambient temperature felt like the North Pole compared with the enclosed sweatbox of the elevator.

“Great view from up here,” he said. “Don’t you think?”

I didn’t say anything, just stared at him.

He pointed to the east. “That’s the Crockett National Forest over there.”

A blanket of green as far as the eye could see, the texture appearing as smooth as velvet from this distance. In the other directions, the green was marred by gray strips of highways and brown patches of buildings.

I decided to take a stab in the dark. I said, “Somebody leaning on you, Chester?”

No answer.

“Maybe telling you not to talk to the five-oh?” I asked.

A gust of warm air ruffled his short-sleeve dress shirt.

“The wife,” he said. “She’s in a bad way.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Ovarian cancer. The prognosis, well, it’s not looking real good.” He turned away, pressed both hands on the railing and stared out over the lake.

“Sorry to hear,” I said. “That’s a tough road.”

We were both silent for a moment.

“You know how we make electricity here?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Steam,” he said. “The inside of the boiler—it’s a bunch of steel tubes about as big around as my thumb. Maybe one inch total on the outside by a hundred feet.”

I looked back at the structure behind us. The exterior was aluminum paneling crisscrossed with various wires and conduit.

“The tubes, they’re welded together to form a forty-foot square, which makes up the inside of the boiler, and are then filled with water,” he said. “At the bottom, we shoot coal dust into a flame. That boils the water, which makes steam that shoots out the top.”

He pointed to a two-foot pipe wrapped in insulation. The pipe emerged from over our heads. It cut across the catwalk and then traveled down.

“Sounds like everything’s under extremely high pressure.” I tracked the steam outlet to a large structure that looked like a rocket lying on its side.

The structure was orange. On the top in large letters was the word Westinghouse.

“That’s the turbine,” Chester said. “That’s what the steam turns to make the electricity.”

Beyond the turbine lay a series of high-voltage wires feeding into metal buildings, similar to what Whitney had pointed out at the switching station.

“Steam by definition is under a lot of pressure,” he said. “By the way.”

“I wasn’t talking about the steam, Chester.”

“Oh.”

“Those are transformers, aren’t they?” I pointed to the metal buildings.

He nodded but didn’t speak.

“The attack, Chester. Tell me what happened.”

He looked off into the distance for a long moment, thoughts clearly churning in his mind.

“I’m not supposed to talk about that,” he said.

“According to whom?”

He pursed his lips and stared at the canopy of trees.

A few moments passed. Then he said, “Somebody shot one of the main transformers.”

I surveyed the area, an easy task given our height.

The tower and the turbine/transformer area were in the middle of a large open space, thousands of yards from the plant’s perimeter and any possible sniper location.

“Do you know who?” I asked.

He shook his head.

The closest structures or likely hidings spots were the administration building, which was located in a slight depression, and a lake house on a hill about a hundred yards past the admin building.

“What’s that place?” I pointed to the house.

Chester didn’t respond.

“Is that where the shot came from?”

He nodded, a slight look of displeasure on his face.

“Is that part of the plant property?”

He pushed himself off the railing and patted his hands, and a small cloud of dust drifted off into the air. I wondered what was in the dust, what kind of pollutants were produced by burning coal.

“I don’t want to lose my insurance, Jon. Not with my wife the way she is.”

“I hate to be a hard-ass, but I’m a federal agent and you kinda have to talk to me.”

He nodded but didn’t speak.

“I represent the government of the United States, Chester. If anybody threatens you for talking to me, there’s a world of hurt I can bring their way.”

He took several deep breaths and said, “They told me it was a redneck who shot out the transformer. Told me not to worry about it.”

The same story that Whitney Holbrook was peddling about Black Valley.

“Who told you that?”

No answer.

“Was it Price Anderson?”

His shoulders tensed for just a moment, and I knew the answer was yes.

“Tell me about the lake house.”

“Back in the fifties,” he said. “The man who started the company used it as a vacation spot. Great fishing right by the hot-water outflow.”

The home was brick, overlooking the lake and a small dock. At the back there appeared to be a patio area with a barrel smoker and a couple of picnic benches. It was a pleasant setting.

“Nobody comes out there much anymore,” Chester said. “Management uses it every now and then—fishing, I guess.”

“Is there a record of who comes and goes?”

“There’s separate access. From a different road. Requires a code.”

“So someone could get in there without you knowing it?”

He didn’t reply. After a moment, he nodded.

“Someone who had the right code, one they got from management?”

He started whistling softly, what sounded like the theme from
The Flintstones
.

We were silent for a moment. Chester said, “You want to see the rest of the plant?”

I shook my head. “No. I want to see the lake house.”