“Nice column today,” Julia said, setting aside the folded Washington Post and grabbing her cruller.
“Careful, you’re starting to sound like a fan.”
Julia stopped short of telling her that she intended to be a fan for a very long time.
A news alert came over the television screen and both mother and daughter shushed her even though Julia wasn’t talking. She smiled and simply took her seat.
Julia saw Mary Ellen Wychulis take the podium. She didn’t look the least bit uncomfortable replacing her boss. Her new title appeared in a graphic below: Undersecretary of the Food Safety and Inspection Service. If Julia didn’t know better she would have thought the woman had been in this position for years.
Wychulis explained what they believed had happened in last week’s outbreaks at two separate schools. A supplier for the National School Lunch Program had not reported an internal contamination before shipping out ground beef. She insisted that all the ground-beef products were being recalled and to be on the safe side, no ground beef would be used in school lunches for the next several weeks.
Julia was impressed, although she thought the tall, willowy woman who used to be Benjamin Platt’s wife sounded too much like an easily manipulated government employee. An opportunist who was ready to step up, maybe even step over whomever she needed to, all in the name of business as usual.
Remembering that late-night meeting with the USDA, Julia wondered if everything really would be taken care of. Had the real person responsible been caught or would Irene Baldwin be blamed for a contamination that had been in the making long before she even showed up. But that was politics. If Julia remembered correctly, the secretary of agriculture was a crony of the president. Just several days ago the man was more than happy to erroneously blame a poor kitchen worker for this entire mess.
Julia tried to concentrate on the press conference. Wychulis was saying that she wouldn’t take any questions.
Of course, they won’t take any questions.
But then Wychulis told the crowd of reporters that she would introduce the person who would. The administration’s newest cabinet member. The president had just made the appointment official this morning to replace his longtime friend, who was suddenly retiring.
“No,” Wychulis insisted, it had nothing to do with this latest recall effort. The timing was totally coincidental.
Then she waved to someone at her left and introduced the new secretary of agriculture: Irene Baldwin.
SEVENTY
ST. JOHN’S CATHOLIC CHURCH
HALSEY, NEBRASKA
Several hundred people had crowded into the small church and yet when Maggie entered she could swear all eyes were watching her. She tried to hide her surprise at seeing Johnny Bosh laid out in his casket right inside the entrance. He looked peaceful in a blue suit and red necktie. Then she saw the football tucked in beside him and the earbuds, the cord and iPod tucked into his pocket. Suddenly she felt tears threatening to well up.
Five teenagers were dead. It was too big a toll for any community. They’d be having funerals all week. She made herself go to this one, despite Lucy’s insistence that she stay in bed and get some rest. Griffin had grazed her scalp. It’d leave a scar under her hair—that is when her hair grew back. Today she was able to cover most of the stitches by parting her hair on the opposite side.
She had two broken ribs, some scrapes, and plenty of bruises, but she had been through worse in the past. The physical wounds would heal, adding a few more scars. The rest she would try and tuck into a new compartment in her mind. Later there would be plenty of time for rest. Kunze was giving her the week off. There had been no lecture, no punishment, no suspension—in fact, no explanation other than to tell her he didn’t want to see her until the following week. She didn’t want to think about how much Kunze may have known about the cattle mutilations when he sent her to the Sandhills. No one would probably ever know the whole story.
As it turned out, Mike Griffin wasn’t just an engineer. After Desert Storm he signed on with the U.S. Department of Defense and became a bioengineer. But several years ago he left to work for a Chicago-based research firm. His new employer had contracted with the federal government to use the field house for growing, testing, and developing hybrid strains. The project seemed harmless, so why did Griffin and Frank Skylar go so far to keep Griffin’s stepdaughter and her friends away?
“I just wanted to scare them” was what Griffin had told Maggie. But he didn’t explain why. Nor would he explain the huge tanks inside the field house that were filled with floating bovine parts, how those parts had gotten there, or what they were being used for. Despite the tanks, Maggie realized that there would probably never be enough evidence to connect Griffin and his employer to the cattle mutilations, but she suspected Wesley Stotter’s fantastic story about black ops helicopters and secret government testing may not have been so crazy after all.
Griffin’s boots matched the prints left at the scene and in the hospital. He was being charged with attempted murder of Dawson and Maggie. Both he and Skylar were being questioned in the deaths of Kyle and Trevor as well as Wesley Stotter.
Dawson Hayes had told Maggie that the teens had wanted to film their drug-induced experience for YouTube, however no camera had been found by investigators. Late Sunday evening the video had shown up on YouTube. State and federal investigators were still trying to find who posted it. The grainy quality made it impossible to identify anyone but it caught the laser rifle in action and explained the light show the teenagers had experienced.
The smell of burning incense filled Maggie’s nostrils, bringing her back to the present. Inside the huge double doorway she caught a glimpse of old women, a group of about a dozen with their heads bent, fingers holding rosary beads, lips barely moving as they led the congregation in prayer. Maggie remembered little of the service, which included processions, lighting of candles, and hymns sung by a choir of Johnny’s classmates.
Sitting between Donny Fergussen and Lucy Coy, she tried to close her mind off as she gazed at the stained-glass windows. The morning sunlight burned through the orange and red and purple stained glass, transferring rainbows of color onto the walls. She couldn’t help thinking about the irony of how this tragedy had started with a light show and would now end with one.
As for Courtney and Nikki and Johnny—Maggie believed they were victims of Amanda’s bullying. She was the one— not Johnny—who had staged the drug parties. It was her way of controlling anyone she wanted to keep in her life and getting rid of those she did not. Donny Fergussen had also found text messages between Courtney, Nikki, and Amanda just seconds before the car crash.
Maggie glanced across the aisle at Dawson and his father. He still looked pale and weak. She wished she could pack up Dawson and send him somewhere safe.
Lucy had asked her to stay for a few days and Maggie had agreed. Last night when she talked to Platt he sounded worried about her injuries, the doctor trying to take care of his patient. He’d even asked to talk to Lucy to make sure Maggie was being taken care of. But Maggie didn’t want to be his patient. She didn’t know how to tell him that all she really wanted was for him to be with her. Just the thought of it seemed too needy, too vulnerable, and she ended up telling Platt that she was fine, that she’d see him when she got back to D.C. at the end of the week. She explained that it’d take her a couple of days to drive back. She had already decided that Jake would be going with her and they would not be flying.