She’d also investigated a clinic in Alabama, trying to determine if patients were getting all the medications they needed or if members of the staff — including the hospital’s president and CEO — were selling most of it to the Asian black market. That had kept her around the terminally ill for weeks. And the one thing they’d all had in common was an open acknowledgment of their fate. She sensed similar resignation in the man sitting across from her now, but she still couldn’t quite get her mind around the implied nobility of it and the man she believed him to be. This conflict still made her wonder if the guy had some kind of plan in place. A way, perhaps, of halting the leak while only making it appear as though he had valiantly put his life on the line.
“If you’re successful,” she said, “you’ll be a hero. They’ll write poems and sing songs about you.”
She waited for a reaction that she could read and analyze, but none came.
“All that stuff about the radiation-sickness cases and the lawsuits—” she went on, “it’ll all be erased, and you know it. Worst-case scenario, some people might say, ‘Yeah, some of the things he and his father did caused the accident, but at the end of the day he did the right thing.’ And that will forgive all offenses.”
Again no response, like she wasn’t even in the room.
Time to take a gamble, she thought, and cut right to the truth. “Is it possible you’re just being a coward? Just trying to find an easy way out?”
Corwin stopped yet again, and when he faced her this time there was none of the anger that seemed to be swimming just below the surface before. There was only hurt now — and deep hurt at that.
“Marla, please,” he said wearily. “Please let me finish.”
Her mind was reeling now, struggling to recalculate the situation. There was no way his anguish was manufactured. She had seen enough suffering for a thousand lifetimes and had developed a strong sensitivity to its counterfeit. Corwin was not faking.
How can that be? How can a man in his position, who willingly hid all the things I saw today…
Then the realization struck, and all the pieces came flying together like reversed footage of glass breaking. And in that instant, she saw everything.
“It was you.”
The pause in Corwin’s typing was so negligible — as if he felt he was about to sneeze, but did not — that Marla almost missed it.
“My God, Ted Ellerton was your front man. Of course…” Her voice was rising as her thoughts gathered steam, “There’s no way he could have gathered all that information on his own, even as a security guard. He would have needed help from someone at a higher level. Much higher. He first contacted me last December, about leaks that were covered up the previous year.”
“The last such incident on my father’s watch,” Corwin said.
“You gave Ellerton that information and told him to give it to me.”
“Yes.”
“So that story about his uncle working here, that was just—”
“No, that was the truth. His Uncle Butch worked here for more than twenty years. A model employee and a wonderful man.”
“And the throat cancer?”
Corwin nodded. “He developed it here. I have the paperwork proving it — paperwork my father hid during the investigation. And now you have it as well.”
Marla opened her mouth to say more, then closed it again. A dozen other questions were jockeying for priority in her mind.
Finally, she said, “Why did you do all this?”
Corwin printed the document and then stood. He retrieved the sheets with shaking hands, tri-folded them, and slipped them into an envelope. Then he wrote a name on it that Marla couldn’t see.
“There isn’t time to explain,” he replied, “but take this…”
He reached toward a column of other envelopes that lay on his desk, arranged like louvered blades. He set the one he’d just finished at the top. Then he selected another somewhere near the middle and held it out. Marla’s full name was written across the front in his neat print. She glanced at the names on the other envelopes and recognized two: Corwin’s ex-wife, Gloria, and Ted Ellerton.
“Everything you need is right here,” he said. “The answers to all your remaining questions.”
“That’s it?” she asked as Corwin reached over and turned off his computer.
“Excuse me?”
“Now you just go out there and… that’s it?”
He sighed. “That’s it.”
She got up quickly, shaking her head. “No, come on. There must be another way. There has to be. There are always options.”
“Not today.”
“Andrew…”
He put a hand up defensively. “Please, this is… it’s hard enough.” A tear slid down his cheek. “It has to be done. It has to be. So I’m doing it.”
As he turned to go, she held up the letter and said, “Whatever it is you want me to do, I’m sure I can do it a lot more effectively with your help.”
Corwin stopped at the door, his body so limp she wasn’t sure how he was remaining upright. Marla would remember this pose of complete resignation for the rest of her life.
“Just make sure you tell the public everything,” he said, turning back. “Promise me. I know it’s your job to do that, and I know you’re good for your word. I just need to hear it for my own peace of mind. Promise me.”
Marla nodded. “You have my word.”
“Thanks,” he said. Then he was gone.
26
Sarah sat at her desk with the cordless phone to her ear, but her attention was focused on the cellphone that lay stubbornly silent nearby.
“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking out of her trance. “What was that, Sergeant?” Sergeant Pitt, she had come to learn.
“I said we’re finished with Barrett Street,” came Pitt’s young voice. “We’re now turning onto Porridge.”
“Okay…” She yanked the cap off the highlighter and drew a thick line over Barrett Street on the map in front of her. “Got it.”
“Ma’am? Are you sure this connection is good?”
“Hmm?”
“That’s the fourth time you’ve asked me to repeat myself.”
She didn’t need an interpreter to catch the subtext—Do I have your full focus? Because if I don’t, that’s a problem that’ll require a call to the general…
“I’m sorry, Sergeant, there does seem to be an intermittent breakup of your voice. But since I don’t know if the cause of the problem is on your side or mine, and given how jammed the lines are right now, I’d rather not risk trying a new call. Let’s just do our best, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She wasn’t sure if he believed her, but she was sure she didn’t give a hoot. She couldn’t remember the last time this many hours had passed without some kind of contact from Emilio. I’m sure he’s busy, particularly now that the evacuations are in full swing. But still.
She forced her thoughts back to the map and, more to the point, the master list of Silver Lake residents she’d printed earlier in the day. She was amazed both by how many names she recognized and how many she did not. Many now had lines through them; people who had already been picked up and shipped out by the evac trucks.
“First family on Porridge is the Mendhams,” Pitt said. Sarah could hear a big diesel engine chugging in the background. “House number eight on the east side.”
She flipped to page sixteen. “The Mendhams, okay… family of three — Robert, fifty-one, Jane, fifty, and a son, Paul, seventeen.”