“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.”