Goddamned sad state of affairs is what it was. If Sherman could get his hands around those punks who made the whole world afraid of his hometown, then that just might be the best present anyone had ever given him.
One of the funny things about all this hazardous waste stuff was that no matter how much you rationalized the problem away in your head, and no matter how hard you listened to all those suit-and-tie experts the EPA sent out to tell you just how safe everything was, it was tough not to listen to the rest of the world. When everybody thought of Newark, Arkansas, in the same light as Love Canal or Chernobyl, it was hard to stand up as a resident and say, “No, no. My home is safe!” The instinct was to listen to what the other people had to say. The instinct was to avoid the place like the plague.
Which was why Sherman hated going out there so much. He’d signed on as a cop eighteen years ago to deal with crime and criminals. God knew they could be dangerous; especially on Friday and Saturday nights when the knife and gun clubs got together after an evening of drinking and hollering. But the biggest and the baddest guys he’d ever run into on the street were visible, living creatures. Well, the winners were living, anyway, and the losers didn’t pose a hazard to anybody. Out there at Ground Zero, the worst hazards were invisible.
The suits from the EPA were very clear about that. The chemicals that were spilled out there were mostly odorless and tasteless, and the ones that weren’t were so toxic that by the time you smelled them, you were already poisoned. They’d say this stuff, and then in the next breath, they’d tell Sherman and his neighbors that they were perfectly safe where they remained. How stupid did the government think they were, anyway?
What Sherman wanted to know was how the hell could they be so sure that there was nothing wrong if there was no way to know the hazard was there in the first place? That just didn’t make any sense.
So what did the EPA do to protect the community? They built a damn fence. They start with a hazard that nobody can detect, and then they try to throw a fence around it! Like the germs or the atoms or whatever the hell you called those toxic little monsters were afraid to cross a line drawn in the dirt. Who was kidding who here?
Sherman was no scientist; far from it, and he’d be the first to admit it. But he knew that things that were invisible weren’t going to stop at any fence line. They were going to get picked up by air currents, and they were going to be spread all over hell’s half-acre, poisoning everything and everyone they came in contact with. Unless the government had come up with some special kind of force field that they hadn’t told anybody about, and if they’d done something like that, why wouldn’t they have said?
No, sir, a fence was just a fence, nothing more. It wasn’t designed to keep out anything but people and animals.
Which made him reflect that, after fifteen years of inbreeding, some mighty scrawny, mighty strange-looking deer lived inside those fences. Sherman and his buddies-avid hunters all of them-had talked about that a lot over the years. One of these days, Sherman liked to say, one of them deer was going to talk back to him, and when that happened, he was leaving town for good.
God damn he hated this part of the job.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Clayton Albricht’s closest staffers had redubbed his office the War Room. The place was bedlam as a dozen people manned fifteen phone lines, all in a united effort to save their boss’s ass.
Everyone agreed early on that staying at home and running damage control from there was exactly the wrong image for the senator to project. Illinois’s ship of state needed to look strong and steady, even as the hull leaked water by the tankerful.
Better late than never, Clayton started his day around two that afternoon. He had smiled politely and waved to the sea of reporters and cameramen as he backed his Oldsmobile out of the garage, but he refused to entertain any questions. “I’m running late,” he mouthed through the glass. Man of the people that he was, the senator drove himself, alone in his car, while his chief of staff, Chris MacDonald, and his press secretary, Julie Baker, sneaked out the back door to drive separately in the cars they’d stashed a block away.
The media motorcade was something to behold. On the drive in to Capitol Hill from his home in McLean, Virginia, Clayton felt genuine concern for the other drivers on the road. The news vans were so intent on photographing his every move that they’d forgotten some of the most basic principles of right-of-way. Entering the Beltway, in fact, an NBC truck very nearly lost a game of chicken to an eighteen-wheeler hauling gasoline. In the interest of public safety, the senator turned on his flashers and slowed to an unnatural fifty-five-miles-per-hour pace, thus allowing the camera crews to get their obligatory shots of him driving to work. He wore his blandest committee-meeting face as he navigated the right-hand lane, and tried not to think about just how much he needed to sneeze. Under this kind of scrutiny, he didn’t feel like providing easy footage for Saturday Night Live.
The parking garage under the Russell Senate Office Building proved to be the great equalizer. Security restrictions prohibited the cameramen and reporters from following him to his parking space, so, for a few minutes, he was alone again to collect his thoughts, absorbing the peace of the silent vehicle. This story was barely a day old, and already it was spinning out of control.
Clayton sighed. It was going to be a very trying couple of weeks.
The elevator ride wasn’t nearly long enough to suit him. By the time the polished wooden doors opened onto the marble hallway, the knot of reporters had re-formed, and they followed him all the way to his outer office, where Julie Baker had already arranged to have coffee and snacks brought in as appetizers for the vultures.
Finally, as he reached for the handle to his private office, Clayton turned and faced his pursuers for the first time. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, the softness of his tone forcing everyone else to fall silent, “the stories printed this morning in the Washington Post are entirely false. I have my suspicions as to what might have prompted such vicious attacks on me, but until I have more details, I truly have no more to tell you. The moment I have those details, you’ll be the first to know. Thank you very much.”
The room exploded with questions, but he just turned and disappeared through the door. The center of activity seemed to be the conference room at the end of the inner hallway to his left, so he headed that way. Activity in the War Room ceased as the door opened, and Clayton beckoned with two fingers for Chris MacDonald to follow him. Activity resumed the instant the senator turned his back to the room.
“Good morning, Senator,” Veronica said as Clayton entered her office on his way to his own. Under the circumstances of the day, she seemed far too chipper, but Clayton didn’t mind a bit. Part of her job was to remain optimistic, even when everyone else’s mood was in the sewer.
“Thanks, Ronni.” Clayton accepted the cup of coffee she’d prepared for him, and allowed her to help him off with his car coat. “How are you holding up?”
Veronica made a snarling noise and curled her lip, digging deep furrows into the already wrinkled skin around her mouth. “Those reporters make me so mad,” she fumed. “Sometimes I wish somebody would just blow every newspaper to kingdom come!”
Clayton smiled. “You know, Ronni, I’ve shared that very thought more than once this morning.”
“I’ll buy the explosives,” Chris MacDonald chimed in, filling the doorway on his boss’s heels. At fifty, Chris was the baby of the room; and at six-three, he was the tallest by six inches.
“This is where we really hope that the office isn’t bugged,” Clayton grumped. He led Chris into the inner office and closed the door behind them.