The bass bellow of a steam whistle rolled through Winston, lingered, and repeated as Allison arrived back at her office. She hurried to an alcove at the end of the second-floor hall that afforded a sightline to the Ohio River. She was joined by Coretha just as the bow of the stately paddle wheel steamer Cincinnati Queen slipped into view.
“The Queen had a minstrel show back when your daddy was alive. I really looked forward to that.”
“Why on earth?”
“It was the only time I could count on seeing another black person in Winston.” Coretha turned. “I’ve had enough for the week. I’m leaving.”
“I’m going to be here a while. Lock me in.”
A stage-whisper sigh followed from Coretha.
Allison paid no attention. She had already re-immersed herself in Dunn’s trucking logs. The records didn’t show where he’d delivered the loads but they did show where he had picked them up and how many miles he had driven. During rehearsal she realized she could use fifth grade math to determine where the loads had gone.
She checked a bill of lading from the hospital and found the matching date in Dunn’s log book. Dunn had made the hospital pickup and then logged one hundred sixty-six miles to the delivery. The other hospital pickup logs showed the identical distance.
She studied the pickup logs from the auto salvage yard and from Mountaineer Mining Supply and found that the delivery distances for those loads also were identical for each trip—ninety-two miles and thirty-five miles respectively.
She switched on her computer and pulled up MapQuest. She found Columbus and zoomed in to street level. She adjusted the map so the hospital’s main building was dead in the middle. She zoomed out, creating a map with 200-mile radius, the hospital at the center. She clicked her mouse and her printer hummed into action.
She retrieved the green plastic compass she’d purchased on her way home from rehearsal. After spreading the compass to a tad over one hundred sixty miles on the map’s distance scale, she drew a circle with the hospital at the center.
She repeated the process for AA Auto Salvage and Mountaineer Mining Supply, using the mileage Dunn had driven from each location as the radius of each of the circles.
The circles came close to intersecting near the Ohio-West Virginia border. Allison studied the routes between Dunn’s pickup locations and the area where the circles almost overlapped. Adjusting her calculations for bends in the highways, she drew a circle on the map where the routes and distances came closest together—an area the size of a dime, in the hills just outside of Winston.
She noted the coordinates. The drop-off point for Dunn’s loads had to be within a few miles, assuming he’d kept accurate logs. She grabbed her IPhone, plotted a route to the coordinates and was surprised to see that she could travel most of the way on paved roads. In a few minutes, she was on the way in her Jeep.
Allison had often heard people describe the Recovery Metals facility in ways they could relate to. Instead of saying a building was five hundred thousand square feet, it was, “bigger than ten football fields.”
But as she stood beside her car and looked over the massive aluminum-sided structure at the heart of the operation, Allison realized even those everyday comparisons failed to convey the plant’s scale.
Except for a brick-faced area in the front that contained the executive offices, there were no windows in the eight-story building. Ten-foot diameter pipes topped by valves so huge they required two men to open ran in pairs along two sides of the structure, supplying fuel to the giant furnaces central to the facility’s mission.
A three hundred-foot smokestack towered over the scene. Visible from every point in town even at night with its two hypnotically blinking red lights, the smokestack was an icon for people in Winston. Particularly during Old Fashioned River Days, it appeared on tee shirts, lapel buttons and porch flags of many families who worked there.
Allison punched the Columbus hospital’s address into her phone and asked for the shortest route. One hundred sixty-miles, the device instantly told her. She did the same for AA Auto Supply and Mountaineer Mining. Ninety miles and thirty-five miles. She smiled. She’d hit the final calculation on the nose. No question about it, the plant was Dunn’s drop-off place.
She parked and walked to the entrance. A burly guard in a police-like uniform met her at the door.
“Do you have a pass?” he asked.
“I’m just here to ask personnel about a truck driver who delivered here.” Allison smiled. “I’m a physician.”
“I don’t care if you’re the Pope. You need a pass.”
Allison reddened. “How do I get one?”
The guard handed her the director of personnel’s business card. Submit a request in writing, he told her. “They’ll get back to you.”
Sure, she thought.
She went to the Recovery Metals website when she got back home. It made no mention of the plant handling radioactive material. The federal government’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission site confirmed what the radiation safety officer in Columbus had told her. There was no facility that handled high-level nuclear waste from most of the United States. The county landfill in Barnwell, South Carolina once processed low-level material but was closed except to three states. She was at another dead end.
She emailed the plant’s personnel director asking for an appointment to talk about Darryl Dunn. Perhaps there was something in his record that would shed some light on his activities and she reasoned that since Dunn was dead, she wouldn’t get an argument about violating his privacy.
Before bed, she curled up with Hippocrates and a glass of wine and examined her motives and feelings. She hadn’t planned to kiss Josh at the rehearsal, although, looking back, maybe it had been bound to happen. She couldn’t help noticing the way he looked at her sometimes. It pleased her to be desired, pleased her especially that she was desired by him.
The truth, she had to admit, was that the kiss happened because her feelings for Josh were growing. More than she’d realized. More than she wanted. And that made her care even more.
But he was so vulnerable. Was that the basis for his feelings—for her feelings—or was it something else?
And even if her feelings were real, what then? Did she even want a meaningful relationship? Relationships meant compromises and she liked being able to make all the decisions.
Beyond that, was she capable of a successful, meaningful relationship? So far, there was no evidence of that. She didn’t want to lead him on and end up compounding his hurt.
And what about Sharon?
She was dying to talk to him but that would have to wait until morning.