Austin demonstrated a reassuring ability to multitask, taking Kenia in one arm and holding her against his chest while dialing 911 on his phone and calling in a home invasion, reporting that the assailants had fled and that both were armed.
“Did they have guns,” Kenia asked when she could muster a moment of calm, her entire body still shaking.
“Not that I saw, but it will bring the cops faster and keep them on their toes, just in case Tweedledee and Tweedledum are stupider than they look.” He reached out one arm to flick on the lights in the room. The recessed lighting illuminated a scene of chaos: splinters from the door spread across the floor, the sofa knocked out of place, a kitchen chair overturned.
“Please don’t go,” Kenia said.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He didn’t. Instead he remained seated on the table, holding Kenia against him until the sound of sirens and walkie-talkies neared, and uniformed deputies came up the stairs and into the apartment, guns drawn.
First time in my life I’ve been glad to see the police.
The third officer in the door was a female, and she radioed in that the property was secure. Austin still did not leave Kenia’s side while the female officer sat her down and questioned her. His arm over her shoulders was reassuring, and she reached up and held his hand as she recounted what had happened.
It was not long before the Corrigans were outside trying to figure out what was going on and why a half dozen squad cars had converged on their property. One of the officers asked Kenia if it was all right if they came upstairs.
“Of course, it’s their house,” she said.
Only when Margaret, and now Sandra, having returned from her girls-night-out, were there, did Austin step aside, allowing the women to gather on either side of Kenia. Officer Farrcroft arrived around the same time, his expression a mix of professional focus and paternal concern.
“You all right, Kenia?” he said, kneeling down next to her. Margaret and Sandra had moved her to the couch and sat close to her.
“Yeah, well, sort of, thanks to Austin.”
“I know you are shook up, but did you give a description of the two men?”
“Yes, I did,” but she relayed it again to him. Austin repeated his version as well.
Kenia was sure the effort was fruitless until Austin said, “I’d suggest you start with a visit up to Arnold Reynolds and Reed Baxter. They both live up on Manahoac Ridge and do odd jobs for Harold Bridgewater. From the looks of what I saw, they would fit the bill.”
“Noted,” Officer Farrcroft said, before pulling the walkie-talkie fastened to his shoulder and dispatching units up to the Reynold and Baxter residences.
“How can you be so sure?” Kenia asked.
Sandra laughed. “Honey, it’s a small town. We all went to high school together. You tend to know who’s who.”
“Even if they have a ski mask over their heads,” Austin said, sitting on the arm of the couch. He looked ready to say something else, but was distracted by the phone buzzing in his pocket. He checked the caller ID and decided to answer, turning away as he said, “Hailey, we need to talk . . . .”
But if Austin was going to update Hailey, he would have to wait. Kenia could hear the panic in Hailey’s voice, even if she could not understand the words.
“Which—wait—what? Hailey, slow down. They said they were from the FBI?” Austin turned to Officer Farrcroft, his face the picture of puzzlement. The officer frowned at the mention of Federal law enforcement. The room grew quiet as Austin listened further before hanging up. “Keith, I think we have a problem.”
“What is going on?” Kenia asked, wondering how the FBI had responded so quickly. “What does any of this have to do with the FBI?”
“It doesn’t,” was Officer Farrcroft’s flat-out answer.
Austin shook his head, his knuckles growing white as he clutched his phone. “They’re raiding our property. Hailey said they just served a warrant accusing us of distributing child pornography on the internet.”
Officer Farrcroft made for the door, calling out to some of the other officers. “Carl, you have any word on the Feds serving a warrant on the Pennel property?”
“What is going on?” Margaret asked, her face blanched.
“I think we might have kicked up one too many rocks today,” Austin said. “Kenia, I need to go home.”
Kenia stood up. “I’m coming with you.”
The Corrigan women made noises of protest, but Kenia had already grabbed her keys and phone and was following Austin out the door.
Austin followed Keith through the neighborhood in his Jeep, but soon fell behind as Officer Farrcroft turned on his siren and lights and sped through red lights and four way stops.
“The way this day is going, I’m not giving anyone anymore reasons to ticket or arrest a Pennel,” Austin said letting off the gas and slowing to just five miles above the speed limit, his fingers clutched in a tight fist around the wheel and the gearshift.
“Austin, what were you doing back at my place?” Kenia asked, trying to make sense of all that had happened.
“I came to tell you that I think the explosion at the plant was deliberate, and I had stumbled upon proof.”
“What?”
“I didn’t want to say anything until I knew more, but it hit me when we were at the plant today. The coal stacks were so far from where the tanker had been parked. I was wondering how the fire could have ever reached it.”
“I wondered that myself.”
“Then I was thinking: ‘well maybe it was just the radiant heat from the flames, maybe the garage where it was parked got hot enough that it would blow.’”
“Sure, that was what I figured the official story would be.”
“But that didn’t work either,” he said, taking a corner with a hard right. Kenia steadied herself on the roll-bar overhead. “I had to check to make sure, but from what I remembered of my training, chlortrofluorine has a really high flashpoint. It was one of the reasons it was supposed to be so much safer than chlorine-tri-fluoride—Substance N.
“But it’s still a controlled substance and that information is classified. So I had to make a couple of calls to my buddies still in the service. One of them got back to me and confirmed my hunch. Chlortrofluorine has a flash point of 1,300 degrees Celsius.”
“That’s really hot.”
“Oh yeah, and here is the thing: coal and coal products, they burn at about half that temperature.”
“Could the fire have gotten hot enough at the plant that night in ’53 to ignite the chlortrofluorine?”
“It’s doubtful. I mean, maybe if you had a kiln and you were trapping all that heat, but that was not the case. It would have been radiating out into the sky. That was why chlortrofluorine was supposed to be such a breakthrough—it was hard to ignite. It was not as volatile as its base chemical compound. DuPont knew what they were doing. You would need a special type of ignition source to set it off and those are hard to come by, even today. Harder even, back then. The technology was still new and tightly controlled.”
Austin took another turn leaving downtown behind. He downshifted to begin climbing state road 521, the road leading to his home.
“Could an electric short, a downed power cable do it?”
“A high voltage line might do it, but when I looked at the specs of the plant from back then, the lines ran through transformers and substations first, outside of town, off the island even, so the voltage was already stepped down a notch when it fed into the plant. It was higher than the voltage in a home, but it was not the ultrahigh voltage in powerlines. The lines at the plant in the 1950s could not have produced an arc hot enough. Everything is pointing to the blast being deliberate.”
They pulled up to the edge of the Pennel property, but the traffic was stopped in both directions. Special agents had set up roadblocks. Officer Farrcroft and other Selah Station officers were arguing with the them while folks whose cars had been stopped in a long line in front of the roadblocks had gotten out and were making phone calls, or standing and watching the drama unfold. Austin pulled the Jeep to the shoulder of the road, slammed the door behind him, and started into the woods.
Kenia followed. They crossed what she guessed was Martha Andersen’s property—Kenia wondering for a moment what Martha would have thought of the flashing lights and commotion outside her home—and followed trails Austin clearly knew well enough to navigate in the dark. They emerged halfway down the Pennel driveway, at which point Austin broke into a jog. Kenia followed as best she could, but discovered she was somewhat sore from her assault. Moving and focusing on something besides the horror of her experience, however, helped keep the flashbacks and anxiety at bay.
The farmhouse was lit up with floodlights from government vehicles. Lights were on in every window of every room, where Kenia could see figures moving back and forth with boxes piled with the Pennels’ personal possessions. Red and blue dash lights blazed from the interiors of a dozen black SUVs and sedans with government tags. Men with uniformly short haircuts and blue windbreakers with FBI in yellow letters across their backs marched in and out, carrying the electronics ripped from the Pennels’ studio.
Austin came as close as he could before an agent stopped him. He was a mature-looking white man in his fifties, but with a build that indicated he still worked out regularly. A gun was holstered under his arm.
“Get back, this is a crime scene.”
“This is my house,” Austin said.
Shane, Stan, and Hailey heard his voice and called Austin’s name from where they were sequestered, sitting at their fake-news set in the front yard while a Latina agent watched over them, her nose and mouth curled in disgust at the Confederate and Don’t-Tread-on-Me flags.
Austin ignored the orders from the other FBI agents and ran over to his siblings. Kenia, a little astounded by his confidence around law enforcement, reminded herself that he was white. She was not. Much more slowly, she followed, keeping her hands visible and at her sides. For all her precautions, she seemed to go unnoticed, approaching the circle of the Pennels and the Latina agent.
Austin wanted to know if any of them were under arrest.
“Are you their legal guardian?” the agent asked.
“I am.”
“They are persons of interest, at this time.”
“So what does that mean?” Shane asked. He was seated on a log that served as their anchor’s chair. Hailey sat next to him, her face the picture of stony defiance. Stan was on the grass, looking pale and scared.
“It means you are free to go, whenever and wherever you choose,” Officer Farrcroft said, appearing out of the glare of three Selah Station Police cruisers that were pulling up the driveway. “Who is the agent in charge here?” he asked.
“I am,” the Latina woman said. “Agent Saavedra.”
Officer Farrcroft did not wait to start in with her. His face was sheened with sweat, the veins in his temples full and pounding. “What kind of investigation is this where you don’t contact municipal law enforcement?”
“We had reason to believe the suspects might be notified that a warrant had been issued and would destroy evidence.”
“On what grounds?” Officer Farrcroft said.
Kenia could not follow the details of their discussion. She was more interested in her friends. The entire scene, the entire night, had taken a turn into the surreal. Austin gathered up his brothers, his arms around them protectively, as he had done with Kenia earlier. Kenia followed suit and put her arm around Hailey. They all moved into an open space behind the police tape, between cruisers. Stan was crying silently. Shane cursed under his breath as he watched agents dump their cameras, flat screens, and servers into the backs of their SUVs. Hailey was shaking, but her jaw was set and her fists balled in anger. Kenia felt it was more likely she would have to restrain her than comfort her. One of the agents slammed the hatch of the SUV, slapped the back window, and the driver sped off down the road.
Shane collapsed on the bumper of the nearest cruiser, his head in his hands. “What are we going to do?”
Kenia had no answer. Stan looked at his oldest brother. “Austin, who would do this?”
Austin said nothing in reply, but he looked at Kenia. She had the sense he was making some of the same connections in his mind that she was. The timing with her own attack had to be more than coincidental.
Officer Farrcroft stepped into their midst, grinding his jaw. “They can’t hold you, not in the least. Unless they find something.” He looked down at the ground. “You all think they could find anything against you?”
“Who knows at this point,” Shane said. “Something could have been planted if we were hacked.”
“What my brother is saying, Officer Keith, is that we’re being framed,” Hailey said.
Farrcroft pressed his lips together hard, rubbed his neck, and shook his head. “This is getting out of control. Fast.”
“Can you help, Keith?” Austin said.
Officer Farrcroft sucked a breath in between clenched teeth. “Not in an official capacity. Not as an officer of the law. I can tell you to get a good lawyer.”
The Pennels, as a group, drew inward, their faces falling to the ground.
“But as a friend,” Officer Farrcroft said, “I’d say that sometimes, when the Man is tightening the screws on you, it’s worth letting him know that you know him and that you see him. Look him in the eye. Throw some heat in his face while you still can. These guys are used to sitting behind layers of others who do their dirty work. Maybe he’ll rattle if confronted. Maybe he’ll make a mistake. He might have already overreached, sending those bozos after Kenia.”
“What? Who was after Kenia?” Hailey asked, her voice strident.
“We’ll explain on the way,” Austin said, starting down the driveway, leaving them staring at his back.
“Where’re you going?” Shane asked from the car bumper.
But Austin was already out of earshot. It was Officer Farrcroft who answered. “I think he is on his way to pay Harold Bridgewater a visit. Be a shame if there was a disturbance up at the mansion, with all our units engaged tonight here and at the Corrigan place.”
It took a moment for the hint to land. It was Kenia who rallied the Pennels, pulling and pushing them to follow after Austin. “Come on, we can’t let him go alone.”