He gave me a look as if to say he’d cooperate but only grudgingly, and then looked down at his note pad. “We got a call a short while ago from a surfer saying it looked like a dead woman washed up on the beach. The woman has likely been dead for several days, though being in the water that long will make it hard to determine the time of death more precisely. We’ll have to wait for the medical examiner to finish his examination.”
“Do we know her name?” I asked.
The trooper consulted his notes again. “Brenda Williams, age twenty-seven. She still had her driver’s license on her. She also had a plant ID on her, which is why Mr. Prichard here was called.”
Prichard looked at me. “I didn’t really know her, but I made some inquiries on my way over here. She worked in our Health Physics Department.”
I looked back at the trooper. “Do we have a preliminary cause of death?”
“Well, she was in the water so drowning is a good possibility,” he said with no hint of the sarcasm with which it was delivered. “As I said, I think it’s best to wait for the medical examiner’s report.”
He wasn’t going to offer me any additional information. He’d answer direct questions put to him, but that would be about it. I knew the trooper didn’t want to share preliminary information with me, regardless of who I was — which I’m sure was still unclear to him.
Prichard spoke up. “It most certainly wasn’t accidental. Security logs show she was on site a few days ago and was working right up until the time of her disappearance. I haven’t had a chance to talk with her supervisor yet, as this is still just developing. But there is virtually no way she could have fallen into the water inadvertently.”
I thought about that for a moment and wondered how he came to that conclusion. “Do you happen to know if she was married to anyone on site?”
Both Prichard and the trooper looked at me, as if wondering where the hell that question came from. Prichard said, “When I looked at her a little bit ago, I saw she was wearing a wedding ring, but I don’t know yet if her husband is a plant employee or not. I’ll find out.” Suddenly, Prichard stopped, his eyes open a bit wider, and he said, “You don’t suppose…”
“I’m just thinking out loud," I said, cutting him off before he gave the trooper anything else to pursue.
The trooper looked at me, and now it was my turn not to offer any additional information. Things like this don’t happen at nuclear power plants. It was almost a sure sign that foul play was involved. In that, I agreed with Prichard.
I took the VP by the elbow and moved him away from the trooper where I could speak to him in confidence. “You said you don’t think this was accidental. Why is that?”
“Because there isn’t anywhere she could have easily gotten to, to fall into the ocean. Either Security would have seen her or she would have had to access a spot that is normally locked. Security didn’t report anything and none of the locks have been disturbed.”
“I see. Okay.” I glanced over at Pete, who was heading toward us. I didn’t want to stay there any longer than necessary. We probably knew everything we were going to know for a while. “If there isn’t anything else for us, we’re going to head out and check on a few things. I’ll be in touch with you later today.”
Prichard looked at me, probably wondering why we were leaving so soon. “Don’t you want to stay until the M.E. gets here? Shouldn’t be too much longer now.”
“No need. We have some things we need to check out. I’m sure you’ll know more later, so I’ll let you get to it. I’ll call you in a while.”
“Okay. You have my number.”
I looked over at Pete, who glanced back at me and gave me the slightest of nods as we headed back to the car. Once inside, I asked, “So, what do you think?”
“She has bruising around her neck. Looks like she was strangled before she was thrown in the water. Someone with big hands too, from the look of the marks.”
I thought about that for a minute. “Prichard said he thinks she went in the drink at the plant site. That would make sense, but he said the gates weren’t disturbed at the plant. I don’t see any plant security people around. How did Prichard know the locks on the gates hadn’t been disturbed?”
“Maybe he had a discussion with his security staff about it on the way out here.”
“Maybe, but this just happened an hour or so ago. That seems fast for Security to have checked all the gates, doesn’t it?”
Just then, a plant security pickup truck pulled up to the beach parking lot. I watched as Rob Ellingson got out and hustled over to his VP.
I started up the rental car and pulled out of the lot. “Interesting.”
“What’s that?” Pete asked.
“That we got here from town before Prichard’s own security manager.”
CHAPTER 18
Kay Street got up early. What else are you going to do when you’re getting ready for another day at Disneyland with two young kids? Madison and Brian were anxious to get up and get going on the rides. At ten years old, Madison was two years older than her brother, which in the world of kid-dom was everything. She had long, dark, curly hair like her mother and was named after the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where Kay had met her husband Dave Street.
That was thirteen years ago, before they moved out to California, and Dave got a job in the operations department at the plant. Because Dave had a college degree and the plant needed licensed operators, he was almost immediately put into a class where he earned his senior reactor operator license. He was referred to as an ‘instant SRO,’ because he hadn’t spent a lot of time working in the plant, like the union guys who, without degrees, had to. They had to have seniority before they got a shot at getting a license and working in the control room. In some cases, that caused friction between the union guys and the instant SROs. But Dave was well liked by his crew. He was very knowledgeable about how the plant worked and always went to bat for his guys when something happened. So his crew overlooked his moving ahead of most of them and enjoyed having a guy at the top who backed them up.
Having a license was also financially lucrative, as it added another $1,800 a month to his salary. With the SRO license, Dave was moved to the position of shift manager — the person in charge of overseeing the operation of the power plant from the control room. It came with a lot of responsibility, but Dave did it as easily as a duck treads water. He enjoyed the challenges and liked being in charge, where he had some control over his job and daily activities. And the money was good — far better than the norm in the area they lived in. But nuclear power plants run 24/7, and someone had to be there to run it day and night. So, every other week Dave and his crew had to work ‘mids’—that is, midnight shifts. Something of a misnomer, mids or graveyards (because of how you felt by morning) were actually 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Most guys struggled with sleeping during the day because their families had to live normal lives. Phones would ring, doors would slam, and shouts were made. So when Dave had an opportunity to send Kay and the kids to Disneyland, he thought he could get some good, uninterrupted sleep for a few days.
“Mom, get Brian out of bed so we can get going. He's such a dork! The monorail will be leaving soon, and I want to ride it into the park again!”
“Don’t call your brother a dork,” Kay chastised. “Let him sleep for a few more minutes, honey. Besides, I have to call daddy before he goes to bed. You know how he likes to go home and go right to bed. So while we’re having fun today, daddy gets to sleep without you two hooligans making all kinds of noise!”