Opening the chain-link door, Ellerton stepped in and gestured for Marla to join him.
He’s going to kill me with his bare hands and leave my body down here, she thought, freezing in her tracks. Somehow she was able to keep her voice even when she said, “I want to know what this is about.”
“For God’s sake, Ms. Hollis, please come in here so I can show you what this is about.”
With her heart pounding, Marla stepped into the tiny space, feeling crowded by Ellerton, especially when he reached past her to close the door. She sucked in a quick breath, but he did not touch her. Then he turned his attention to a support pole for one of the sets of shelving.
Wrapping his giant hands around the pole, he twisted, producing a distinct mechanical click. Grasping the shelving, he swung them as one unit to the left; Marla realized immediately that the shelves were actually a kind of gateway. Moving with a slow and graceful ease, like the door of a bank vault, it revealed only darkness.
Ellerton reached in and flicked several switches.
The lights came on.
Marla gasped.
She moved forward slowly, her body numbed by disbelief.
Before her was what she recognized as a small decontamination chamber — the doors, made of some heavy transparent material, were pressure-sealed and riveted into titanium frames. What was stored in the cavernous chamber beyond startled her into wordlessness: rows of weather-stained concrete canisters, each at least fifteen feet high. A few had split at the seams; the material oozing out looked like soft ice cream that had turned to iron.
She looked at Ellerton, “Is that what I think it is?”
He nodded. “Dry casks for spent-fuel storage.”
“The missing ones? All twenty?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Twenty-nine? That’s impossible!”
“Not if you know how to hide them.”
Marla shook her head. “Even if you did, the Nuclear Regulatory Agency would still have a list.”
“Accountants aren’t the only people who cook books, Ms. Hollis. Finance isn’t the only area where numbers are massaged and manipulated.”
She labored to get her mind around the idea. “How many fuel assemblies are in each cask?”
“On average, around twenty.”
Marla’s brain raced through her research. “There are about two hundred rods in each assembly, and maybe twenty-five uranium pellets in each rod.”
“Right.”
“That’s certain death in there. If I walked in unprotected…”
“You wouldn’t make it to tomorrow,” Ellerton finished her thought.
“How did the Corwins keep this hidden?”
“Not ‘the Corwins.’ It was Leo, the father. Andrew didn’t have anything to do with it,” Ellerton said. “Leo made it happen a little at a time, starting in the early nineties, I think. I wasn’t here back then, and neither was Andrew.
“The NRC suspected something was going on, but they couldn’t prove it, not even during the 2012 audit. But the audit scared the old man into playing it straight — sort of. After that, he accounted for everything, paid for all spent fuel to be transported away and stored properly. It was expensive, though, and he screamed about it.” Ellerton gestured toward the casks with his chin. “He saved a fortune by hiding all this here. Millions.”
“In spite of the fact that it was illegal beyond description,” Marla pointed out, “not to mention unbelievably dangerous to his employees and the surrounding community.”
“Yes, in spite of all that.”
“What about the workers who did this? I’m assuming he didn’t carry these down here by himself.”
“Simple,” Ellerton said with a shrug, and Marla’s fear of him began to recede slightly. “He lied and told them the spent fuel was only going to be put here temporarily. They’d signed confidentiality agreements when they were hired, on the basis of public safety and security, so they couldn’t talk about it. Plus, once they did the work, they could be held liable if there was any investigation because they’d helped out willingly. I suspect Corwin paid them off, too. He had them trapped — bribery, conspiracy, criminal liability…”
“God Almighty,” Marla said.
Disgusted, fascinated, and even a little excited, she took a step forward. One good photo would shut this place down and put the Corwins behind bars for a long time. One blog entry would turn the media world on its ear and send the Feds charging in.
“Andrew has to know about this,” she said.
“He didn’t at first,” Ellerton said. “But shortly after he took over, his father told him.”
“He didn’t report it, so he’s just as guilty.”
Ellerton took Marla’s iPhone from his pocket and handed it to her.
“Do what you came here to do,” he said.
“What, just like that?”
“Just like that.”
She was good at reading people, had a natural gift for it that had became sharper and more refined with experience. But this guy was a clean slate.
“And then, what, you shoot me while my back is turned?”
Ellerton undid the Velcro flap on the holster and removed the weapon with the same leisurely tempo he did everything else. For just a moment, Marla was sure he was going to aim it at her and fire. She would hear only the roar of the barrel before free-falling into darkness.
Instead, he turned the gun on its side, thumbed a button on the grip, and caught the magazine as it fell free.
“It’s not even loaded now, okay? I couldn’t shoot if I wanted to.”
He walked to one of the other shelves and set the magazine down, then walked to a shelf on the opposite side and put the weapon there.
“Now they’re not even near one another. You’ve got your phone back, and I’m unarmed. How’s that?”
She tried to calculate again; it was the mental life-preserver she always reached for whenever a situation didn’t add up. This guy works here. He’s paid by the Corwins. I see a wedding ring, so he at least has a wife. Probably children, too. And there’s no doubt he’s signed all sorts of nondisclosure forms. So he’s putting not just his job but his financial future and maybe even his personal freedom on the line by showing all this to me. He’s essentially cutting his employer’s throat — and most likely his own, as well.
“Let me ask you something,” she said.
“Sure.”
“Why are you letting me see all this? Why me, and why now? How come you aren’t—”
Then it struck her, like a rocket out of a clear summer sky.
“Oh, my God,” she said, “you’re my source.”
Ellerton stood ramrod straight, his face as blank as a freshly washed chalkboard. Then he nodded.
“But… why?” she asked.
“Is that important?”
“In an age when right is wrong and wrong is right, when there are countless examples of people being punished for doing good and rewarded for doing bad, yes, I think it’s important to understand why certain people do what they do.”
Ellerton reflected on this for a moment, then said, “My Uncle Butch used to work here. He was a systems engineer until 2002, when he died of throat cancer.”
“And you think he got it because of his job?”
“He was certain he did, but we could never prove it. There was no family history, but none of his coworkers got it. Butch thought there was some leaking radioactivity that Corwin never told anyone about. But even if my uncle tried to sue, Corwin was a pro at suits like that. Dozens have been thrown at him over the years, and he successfully deflected all of them. If he couldn’t beat you on the facts, he’d simply outspend you or wear you down until you didn’t have any fight left.”