The Stars Shine Bright (49 page)
“And what is it you expect from me?” he asked.
“The truth.”
His smile was even stranger.
“I know, I lied to you. And everyone else. But I promise to level with you from this point forward. And I'd appreciate it if you did the same. We can start with you telling me what information you have.”
He turned, watching a boozy crowd that milled around the beer garden. The grandstands were thinning. A hot dog vendor counted bills. But the flickering views gave me vertigo. I wanted to close my eyes. And sleep. And wake up to find none of this had ever happened.
But Mr. Yuck continued to watch the images, unblinking.
“You can leave now,” he said.
“What about my offer?”
“It's under advisement,” he said.
I
n the parking lot, I stumbled for the Ghost, rolled down both windows, and closed my eyes. Within seconds, I was gone, gone, gone, dreaming of DeMott and my mother and the SAC who somehow melded with Dr. Freud and told me I had many problems. I woke up with a gasp. But even after realizing it was only a dream, another bolt of panic hit me. My firearm. If that didn't get back to the Bureau, the suits would come after me.
I turned the key and roared toward Black Diamond Road.
Walter Wertzer was standing alone in the fire station's lunch room, waiting by the microwave and blowing his nose. When he turned toward me, I couldn't tell if he had allergies or a cold, but the red bulbous nose combined with the sprouting gray hair and broomy gray mustache made him look like an ash heap with one coal burning in the middle.
I said, “My name is not Raleigh David.”
The microwave dinged, as if awarding points for the correct answer. Wertzer tore open the door, sloshing the contents of a bowl. I smelled salt and gummy starch, that heavy scent of my grade-school cafeteria. Chicken noodle soup. He carried the bowl to a small table. I followed him. But I didn't sit down.
“I was working undercover for the FBI,” I said. “Now I'm not.”
“You were playing games with me the whole time?”
“I was doing my job. I regret that it meant lying to you.”
He threw a plastic spoon into the soup. It floated, which seemed to make him even madder. “Do you have any idea how much money I spent on that polygraph? It might surprise you, Miss David, but I've got a budget.”
“Harmon.”
“What?”
“My name is Raleigh Harmon.” I opened my purse and tore a page from my notebook. I wrote down the ten digits. “Call this number. Ask for Allen McLeod. Head of the Violent Crimes unit. You can send him the gun. It doesn't belong to me. Not anymore.”
I offered him the note. He picked up the spoon instead, chuckling coldly.
“Nice try. You're a liar. Whoever you are.”
“You're right. I'm a liar.”
The spoon stopped in midair. His mouth waited. But his bloodshot eyes had the narrow focus of the physically ill, when even the simplest functions required too much concentration. One eye was watering. He closed it, then slurped the noodles off the spoon.
“I have another confession,” I said. “I manipulated that lie detector test.”
The spoon hesitated again.
“I ate a lot of salt. Enough sodium to juice my blood pressure. I made sure my heart pounded on the supposedly factual questions. And I knew what Deception Indicated meant.”
I had his full attention now.
“It's not an excuse, but I was trying to protect my undercover identity. I wanted to keep my job, and I didn't know what you planned to do with the information. But I didn't set that fire. And if you want to re-administer the test, I'll take it.”
“You already wrecked my budget.”
“Ask me. Now. Anything. I promise to answer truthfully.”
He picked up the pepper, shaking it over the greasy surface. I waited, figuring he was trying to load his best shot. A question that would surprise me, catch me off guard.
“What about the smoke detectors?” he asked.
“Pardon?”
“I knew you couldn't answer straight.”
“What smoke detectors?”
He tried to chuckle and ended up coughing. It was a cold, I decided. Not allergies. A summer cold. The kind that ignited the worst self-pity. Winter's misery always had company, but summer colds were singular sufferings in a world that was sunny and warm and completely unfair. He pressed a finger against the bushy mustache. With a hernia, every sneeze probably felt like a knife.
I tried again. “What smoke detectors?”
He started eating. His bitterness filled the air, heavy as the salty broth. But it didn't work on me. Not now. Not after what I'd just been through. With Ortiz. With the FBI. Jack. Felicia. Claire. I stared at him until every noodle was gone. And when he finally looked at me, his bloodshot eyes seemed annoyed. And just a little bit sad.
“You really don't know,” he said, “do you?”
I
n his sterile office, a long table had been added. It was covered with a mountain of white plastic disks. Smoke detectors.
I did a rough count and stopped before one hundred.
“When the track refurbished the barns,” Wertzer sniffed, “they put in new smoke detectors.”
The plastic covers were loose, hanging on their hinges. Wertzer picked one up. I could see the inside mechanisms. Every smoke detector had three parts: a printed circuit board, an electronic horn that resembled a small bicycle bell, and a brass cylinder.
“May I?” I held out my hand.
He handed me the detector. I touched the brass cylinder.
“That's the ionization chamber,” he said.
“I know.”
The cynicism was back. “You know?”
“When the smoke gets inside the cylinder, it knocks an electron off the oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the air, ionizing them. The negative electron gets attracted to a plate that has a positive charge, and the positive atom heads for the plate with the negative voltage.” I touched the bell. “Then this goes off.”
He stared at me.
“I worked as a forensic geologist. For the FBI. Before I was an agent. Which I'm not anymore.”
He rolled his eyes. “I wish I could run another polygraph.”
“And this time I'd pass it.”
He gave a weary nod, as if to say this last story was so preposterous it was probably true.
I picked up another plastic disk, checking it.
“We dusted them for prints,” he said. “They were clean.”
“All of them?”
He nodded and sniffed.
An idea was ticking at the back of my tired mind. Nobody would wipe down a bunch of smoke detectors unless . . . The batteries. Nine-volt batteries. There were hundreds of nine-volts powering that tube under the starting gate. I lifted the plastic cover.
“Oh rats,” I muttered.
“What's the matter?” he asked.
I opened another disk. And another. All the nine-volt batteries were snapped into their cap buckles. The red and black wires snaked to the circuit board.
“Were any batteries missing?” I asked, just in case.
“Not that I saw.”
“And why was the track getting rid of these?”
“They were too sensitive.”
I looked at him. “I was in that barn fire. Sensitive smoke detectors are a good thing.”
“Sure. For smoke. But that heavy stink in those barns? It tripped up the really good detectors. They can't tell the difference between smoke, hay, dust. All of it interrupts the electrical current. One horse with bad gas could set off the whole barn.”
I looked down at the disk in my hand. The only thing that looked different from a standard smoke detector was the ionization chamber. It was dented, only that didn't seem like something done by the manufacturer. I picked up another disk. Its chamber was dented too, and scraped at the bottom. Pried open.
“By the way,” he said, “I found all of these piled up near your aunt's barn.”
“Really,” I said.
Dogged
. The man refused to give up. He was still testing my story. “She's not my aunt. And again, for the record, I had nothing to do with lighting that fire.”
He sighed and blew his nose.
I lifted the chamber's metal cap, and suddenly that tickling idea ran down my spine. The upper ionizing plate was undamaged, but the lower plate caught my attention. It was wobbling, wrenched off its base. Although batteries provided voltage, most detectors' ionization chambers were run by a different power source. Alpha particles. When I was in the FBI lab, the smoke detectors often wound up in mineralogy for forensics. Radioactive minerals provided the alpha particles. And most manufacturers used Americum 241. A thin layer was deposited on a piece of foil that was encased inside the metal shield to prevent any radiation leakage. One detector usually contained one microcurie of radiation, which the brass casing could easily block. The danger came when the ionization chamber was breached or disturbed.
When airborne, Americum 241 was deadly.
I yanked off the lower plate.
“Hey!” Wertzer said. “What are you doing?”
“It's gone.”
“What?”
“The alpha emitter.” I pointed to where the foil should be. “The ionizing strip. It's gone.”
“So?”
I picked up another detector. “Are all the bottom plates loose?”
He grabbed one, checking for himself.
“You handled these?” I asked.
“Why?”
Because I was looking at his watering eyes. The red nose. The way he leaned against the table, as though standing required too much effort. His “cold” could be a sign of a weakened immune system. “Who else touched these?”
“Two guys from the station. They helped me load the truck.”
“Where are they?”
He hesitated. “Out. Sick.”
I placed the disk on the table and backed away. “All three of you need to get to the hospital. Have them test you for radiation exposure. And call a HazMat team. Get these to the state lab.” I looked around for something to wipe my hands on. “Tell the doctors you were exposed to Americum 241. The half-life isn't short.”
“How long?”
Plutonium and radon were more well known, but Americum 241 had a half-life that was lodged in my memory because of its clean arithmetic. Roughly double its name. “Five hundred years,” I said.
Wertzer stared at me for a long moment. Then he said, “I almost wish you were lying again.”
I
washed my hands three times at the fire station, then climbed into the Ghost and headed straight back to the track. My mind raced over new speculations. About Handler and the tubing mechanism. Smoke detectors and Cuppa Joeâhow did the kidnappers get that bellicose horse into the trailer? Ashley's “morning sickness” provided an alibi, but that didn't mean she wasn't involved somehow. But with so little sleep, my mind struggled to focus, and I forgot one detail. Coming down the Valley Highway, I glanced in the rearview mirror.
The black Cadillac was three cars back.
I stepped on the gas and threaded two lanes of traffic. But he stayed close, all the way to the track. I downshifted, ready to make a U-turn and catch him, but he was already pulling his own about-face, speeding away. I wanted to chase him down, but right now he wasn't my biggest problem.
I parked the car in the private lot and jogged across the backstretch to Mr. Yuck's bunker. His guard offered me a blank look.
“It's urgent,” I said.
He murmured into the radio. But the reply was loud.
“I'm busy. Tell her to come back later.”
“There might not be a later,” I said. “Tell him. Now.”
