Lethal Exposure Page 3

  Craig scowled. “We’ll find out as soon as we get there. I’ve arranged to meet her at the Fox River Medical Center in Aurora, Illinois. It should be about an hour drive.”

  “I already rented the car,” Goldfarb said. “The best I could get us was a Ford Taurus, gold. Hope that doesn’t shatter Trish’s image of you.”

  Craig brushed the comment aside. “She goes by Patrice now. And I’m not concerned about my image with her. Just here to help out, that’s all.”

  “Whatever you say, boss,” Goldfarb said. He was quiet for a moment, as if there was something else on his mind. He scratched the back of his head. “Say, didn’t Paige Mitchell get assigned here too?” He raised his eyebrows in an impish expression.

  Craig nodded brusquely and headed off to the rental-car pickup with Goldfarb close beside him, surrounded by airport crowds.

  Goldfarb pulled their rental car up to the Fox River Medical Center, a brick-walled hospital built sometime in the late 1960s, surrounded by grass and tall oak trees. The medical center butted up against the languid Fox River, which meandered across the flatlands of Illinois, through the old city of Aurora. Tree-lined walkways sliced across the hospital grounds, interrupted by scattered benches and a few drinking fountains. The trees were spotted with yellow, red, and gold leaves, showing the first signs of the coming winter.

  Inside, Craig paced the lobby, glancing up too quickly every time the elevators dinged and the doors opened. He caught Goldfarb watching his reactions in bemused silence. “What?” demanded Craig.

  Goldfarb spread his hands. “Nothing.”

  When Trish finally emerged from the elevators, she wore a neat, white uniform, moving with confident grace. Craig froze. He suddenly forgot all of the clever opening phrases he had intended to say.

  Trish spotted him instantly and came right over, tossing her short, dark hair. She always moved in a straight-line path, never deviating along the way.

  “Craig!” she said. “So good to see you again. Thanks for coming.” She gave him a quick formal hug, which he returned stiffly. They backed apart, perhaps more quickly than was necessary, and she looked at him through subtle, wire-framed glasses that showcased her sepia eyes.

  “Good to see you again, too. Your call was quite a surprise.” He fumbled for words. “Um, I’ve brought Ben Goldfarb with me. You might remember him.”

  “Of course I remember Agent Goldfarb.” She reached out a slender hand to grasp his.

  “If you’re going to call me Agent Goldfarb, do I have to call you ‘Doctor LeCroix,’ or can I just go back to calling you Trish, and you call me Ben?” He grinned at her.

  Trish laughed. “All right, first names then,” she said, “but you may as well call me Patrice. Trish was from a long time ago. A kid’s name.”

  Goldfarb glanced at Craig and shrugged. “Whatever you say, ma’am.”

  Trish turned all business. “I’m sorry we had to get together again like this. It’s been a very difficult few days for me, Craig, as you’ll see in a minute. You’ll need to get moving before it’s too late.”

  “Too late for what?” Craig asked. “And why were you here in Chicago? I thought you were at Johns Hopkins-”

  Trish was already marching toward the elevators. “Come on, I want you to meet the victim.”

  “Great way to start out my day,” Goldfarb said as he trailed along.

  Visiting hours had not yet begun, but the three had to contend with orderlies and nurses on the early morning shift. They found a spot in the next elevator, but instead of going down to the morgue as Craig had expected, Trish took them to the third floor and down a corridor through doors marked “Intensive Care.”

  “I’m here because of my work in the PR-Cubed, Craig,” she said. “You know I’m very active in the Physicians for Responsible Radiation Research.”

  Craig nodded, stifling his distasteful expression. PR-Cubed was all she had talked about for months, but to him they seemed to be a bunch of blowhard Chicken Littles screaming that the sky was falling.

  “We were here for a conference and seminar, and we met with the Director of Fermilab. He’s very anxious to make a good impression on us.”

  “Did you know the victim?” Goldfarb asked.

  “Yes, I know him. I met him in the Ukraine when I went over there to do my Chernobyl follow-up. That’s why I called you, Craig. I need to cut through the telephone-tag games and get somebody on this right away. He doesn’t have much time.”

  She led the way to a room where the lights were on. A patient lay on the bed, a man with shaggy salt-and-pepper hair, long sideburns, and a sharp aquiline nose. A telemetry monitor, hung from a bracket in the ceiling, was connected to him. Four round, sticky patches on his chest held small clips to wires that led to a single cable plugged into the monitor. The man received oxygen through nose prongs, and an IV line snaked from a plastic bag marked 0.9% NaCl.

  The man was half dressed, scribbling equations on a piece of scratch paper. In frustration he crumpled the paper, struggled to a sitting position, and tossed the wad toward the wastebasket He looked up, startled to see them at the door.

  “Georg, you’re supposed to be lying down!” Trish scolded. “You’re only making things worse.”

  “Worse?” he said in a rough, scratchy voice. “I am wasting time-and that makes things worse.”

  Trish sighed and introduced them. “Georg, these are two FBI agents, Craig Kreident and Ben Goldfarb. They’re here to look into your case. This is Dr. Georg Dumenco, one of the most prestigious scientists at Fermilab. He’s on the short list for this year’s Nobel Prize in physics.”

  Craig frowned, then lowered his voice. “I thought you said we were going to see the murder victim. Are you playing games with me?”

  “He’s your murder victim,” Trish said, crossing her arms over her chest in challenge. “At the same time as the explosion at the accelerator, Georg was working in one of the experimental target areas. Something triggered an emergency beam dump, and Dr. Dumenco received a massive radiation exposure, more than fifteen hundred rads. Definitely lethal.”

  “Ah, the scientist who received the radiation dose,” said Goldfarb, nodding. “But the Chicago office said he wasn’t anywhere near the blockhouse explosion. And… aren’t murder victims usually dead?”

  Dumenco listened, unaffected, but Trish’s flat statement of the facts made Craig uncomfortable. He knew that bedside manner had never been one of her strong points.

  “The explosion is irrelevant, Craig. This is about a lethal exposure. Georg has only a few days left to live- even less time than that before he degenerates so badly he won’t be any help at all.”

  “Any help at all?” Craig raised an eyebrow at Trish.

  “To find out who murdered him. Dumenco’s convinced his exposure was no accident. And I believe him. Someone did this to him intentionally, and he’s going to die for it.”

  “Whoa!” Goldfarb said.

  “Why didn’t you report this to the Chicago FBI office?” Craig said. “They’ve already got a team here investigating the explosion.”

  Trish shook her head. Her short hair swung from side to side, catching the fluorescent lights. “I did. But their official position is the same as Fermilab’s-Dr. Dumenco’s exposure was an unfortunate accident, pending further investigation. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. They’re putting together a review board to study the matter, but it’ll take weeks to go over all the details, and Georg will be long dead by then. That’s why I need you to get on the case right away.”

  Craig looked at Dumenco. The man’s skin had a ruddy appearance, as if he had been severely sunburned. The eyes were bright and intelligent, but shadowed with worry.

  “Please do it, Craig-for me?” Trish said, reaching out to touch his arm. If anything, the gesture had the opposite effect, and Craig resented the fact that she played on his emotions.

  But then Goldfarb spoke up. “Come on, Craig. Think of it as a challenge. It’s not often
we have the murder victim himself still around to help us solve our case.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Tuesday, 10:11 a.m.

  Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

  Batavia, Illinois

  Fermilab lay only a dozen miles from the Fox River Medical Center in Aurora. Craig sat back in the passenger seat of the rental car as he watched the farmland and the suburbs roll by. Overhead, the October sky had become a leaden gray that threatened no storm, just sunlessness.

  Goldfarb insisted he knew the way just by “ Chicago instinct.” He had the radio set on a local station, and aside from hearing the latest news about the Nobel Prize in medicine, Craig tuned out the early morning chatter, instead spending his time pondering Trish’s unusual request. He wanted to get more background on Dumenco’s accident and the substation explosion, wanted a second opinion on the case…

  He wanted to talk to Paige.

  He still knew very little about the actual crime, or accident, or whatever had happened Sunday night. Apparently, Dumenco had been working in a small alcove in the experimental target area, which was like a “runaway truck ramp” to dampen a rush of energetic particles. When the Tevatron became unstable, an emergency shutdown dumped the beam into the target chamber where the scientist had been standing, instantly showering him with a lethal dose of high-energy particles.

  At the same time, one of the dozen concrete substations along the mounded perimeter of the accelerator circle had exploded. But the blockhouses contained no explosive materials, no volatile chemicals, nothing that should have caused such a blast.

  An FBI team had gone to Fermilab the previous day to begin their official investigation, since the explosion had taken place on Federal property. But they had quickly dismissed Dumenco’s “murder” as an unfortunate accident. Trish and Dumenco thought otherwise.

  Before he could even begin to form an opinion, he needed to see the place with his own eyes. Craig yanked out his cellular phone and found Paige Mitchell’s work number in his pocket notebook. “I want to double check the arrangements before we get there.”

  Goldfarb raised his dark eyebrows. “You have some kind of pull with Fermilab just because you know somebody in the Public Affairs Office?”

  “Just drive, Ben,” Craig answered.

  As the phone rang, Craig glanced at his watch. He hadn’t slept well on the plane and they had gone directly over to the hospital. His body felt achy, his eyes dry and sore, giving him the illusion that he had been working all day, though it was barely midmorning. He hoped Paige was in.

  She answered the phone, cheerful and professional as usual. Her voice made Craig’s heart skip a beat. “Office of Public Affairs, this is Paige Mitchell.”

  “Hi, it’s Craig. Want some company this morning?” he said, smiling. He enjoyed being able to take her off guard for once. He turned his face away from Goldfarb.

  “Craig?” She recovered much more quickly than he had expected. “As in Special Agent Craig Kreident of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?”

  “That’s me,” he said.

  She finally laughed. “What do you mean, do I want company? Are you here in Chicago? Did you come to investigate the explosion? We’ve had your FBI Evidence Response Teams crawling all over here since Monday morning, not to mention our own people from the Department of Energy.”

  “It’s a… a related case. Maybe. One of your scientists received a lethal radiation exposure Sunday night. Ben Goldfarb and I are heading out to Fermilab right now, from Aurora. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “Dr. Dumenco? But that was just an accident. The DOE made that call right away, otherwise the whole lab would have been shut down.” Her voice became stern. “That’s not just a PR line, Craig. As far as I know, it’s the total truth.”

  “I’d rather not talk about it on an unsecured channel,” Craig said. “Just give me directions on how to find you, and we’ll discuss it at the site.”

  Before she hung up, Paige said, “It’ll be good to see you again, Craig.”

  “Same here,” he answered, then ended the call. He smiled to himself. Glancing over, he saw Goldfarb staring at him with a broad grin on his face.

  Craig snapped, “What are you looking at?”

  The main entrance to the giant accelerator laboratory lay on Kirk Road and Pine Street, where the landscape opened up to a broad, flat expanse of grasses more than waist-high, dead and brown with the snap of autumn. A few surrealistic, modern-architecture buildings seemed to spring up out of the prairie.

  The Fermilab site looked more like a college campus than a government research facility. It reminded him of the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, where he had first met Paige-but without the ever-present security.

  As Goldfarb drove to the main entrance, they passed under a bizarre metal sculpture, a three-span arch that straddled the road. Craig stared out the window, noting how the blue-painted arches looked extremely off-balance but perfectly symmetrical when viewed from directly beneath.

  “Modern art,” muttered Goldfarb.

  “It was ‘modern’ in the sixties,” Craig answered. “Now I think you’re supposed to call it ‘high-tech nostalgic’.”

  Passing the white-lettered blue sign-UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, FERMILAB, OPERATED BY UNIVERSITIES RESEARCH ASSOCIATION, INC.-Goldfarb headed toward the main sixteen-story administrative building, Wilson Hall, which stood like a monolith on the flat terrain.

  “At least we won’t have to go through security procedures to reach the scene of the crime,” Goldfarb observed as he approached the single tall building. A ring of colorful flags fluttered from poles, as if they had been transplanted from the United Nations building.

  “We haven’t proven it’s a crime,” Craig replied. “And technically, we don’t even have a murder. ”

  “Yet,” said Goldfarb.

  In front of the cathedral-inspired architecture of Wilson Hall, a stainless-steel obelisk rose thirty feet out of a reflecting pond, sleek and streamlined with mathematical precision, like the gnomon of a gigantic sundial. The admin building itself was composed of two gently sloping concrete towers that curved toward each other as if they were snuggling up. The center gap was framed in glass.

  “Looks like we’ve stepped onto a movie set built a few decades ago,” Goldfarb said, craning his head to look through the windshield.

  Craig looked around and saw that all of Fermilab’s buildings, experimental structures, and lab complexes carried a militantly modern feel of someone too-consciously trying to make the place look futuristic: all concrete and metal and precise curves.

  Goldfarb pulled up in the guest parking area, and they both stepped out of the Taurus. Craig adjusted his sunglasses, straightened his jacket, and combed his hair. He gave Goldfarb a quick warning look before the curly-haired agent could tease him about being meticulous. His attention to personal detail had nothing whatsoever to do with seeing Paige again.

  “Her office is on the first floor,” he said, “on the west side.” They trotted upstairs to a concrete courtyard, then through glass doors. The Office of Public Affairs was just off the lobby.

  Before they could head to her office, Paige hurried down the corridor toward them. “Hi, Craig!”

  In a single, intent glance Craig took in the details of her appearance like a dry sponge doused with water. She wore a tight-fitting raspberry chenille pullover, a trim black skirt, and dark panty hose. Her blond hair had been done up in a French braid.

  He waved to her, and she stepped forward to shake hands with Goldfarb before she also greeted Craig formally. Her smile was warm, and her eyes flashed in the bright lights of the lobby as she gently took Craig’s hand. She lingered, and Craig didn’t want her to let go.

  Goldfarb cleared his throat; releasing Craig’s hand, Paige became all business again. “In light of your investigation, I made a quick phone call and set up a meeting with Dr. Nels Piter. He’s the Director for High-Energy Physics-the same department Georg Dume
nco worked for. He can answer questions about the scientist’s work and show us where the radiation exposure occurred. In the meantime I’ll take you on a quick tour over to the Tevatron.”

  “Can we see where the explosion happened, too?” Craig asked. “I really should check in with the agent in charge.”

  “Right on the way,” she agreed. She snagged the keys for a government car and led them out to the rear parking lot. A fountain splashed around a rotating, welded metal sculpture of a Moebius strip, flashing the cloud-dimmed sunlight. Small, curved buildings stood spaced symmetrically behind the towering admin building, like giant stereo speakers. Signs on the structures labeled them as Antimatter Storage Rings.

  Paige pointed to the sweeping, grass-strewn prairie. Craig saw power lines, trees and farm buildings in the distance, and the thin line of the highway. “From here, you can see a few Fermilab structures around the four-mile ring-the Collider Detector, the Dee-Zero detector, the Feynman Computing Center, as well as some of the concrete blockhouses and beam-sampling substations.” She climbed into the car and adjusted the seat and mirrors as she continued her canned speech.

  Nearby, connected to the main underground ring, a large construction site was like a scab on the prairie, earth cleared, big machinery rolling about in the dirt, excavating, moving huge concrete tubes. Craig had read about the adjacent accelerator under construction, the Main Injector, a new loop that would increase the energy of particle collisions. Seeing all the heavy machinery and earth-moving trucks, Craig wondered how such a huge and disruptive project could be compatible with delicate diagnostics and subatomic particle tracings.

  “Seems weird to have such a high-tech island in the middle of farm country,” Goldfarb said.

  “For the most part, the accelerator is low-impact, environmentally. We’re very conscious around here about taking care of nature. In fact, on our Web Page, the article about Fermilab’s buffalo herd and the tallgrass prairie restoration is longer than any piece about high-energy physics.”