IT was the kind of scene one might expect to find if a jet had crashed outside of town. Except there was no jet, and the people waiting for treatment were not suffering from cuts and bruises and severed limbs.
But that didn’t make things any less chaotic.
I didn’t need long to take in the scene. Dozens of patients in various stages of distress. Some, on the floor, were clearly already deceased. People vomiting, writhing, scratching their arms and legs. Children crying, parents shouting for help.
The doctors and nurses were going flat out. I hated to stop anyone in the midst of treating all these cases, but I needed to get a sense of what was going on, and fast.
I pulled out my police ID long enough to get someone’s attention, but then I spotted someone whose eyes and glasses I thought I recognized above the surgical mask. After all, I’d seen her only yesterday.
“Dr. Moorehouse?” I said.
Hair was hanging down over her eyes and those brown-framed glasses were askew. She was looking off in another direction, moving past me.
“Clara!” I said.
She stopped, turned. “Barry.”
Even with the lower half of her face covered, she managed to look terrified, and professional, at the same time.
“Give it to me fast,” I said. “What are we dealing with?”
“Similar symptoms across the board. Nausea, headache, vomiting, severe drop in blood pressure. It escalates. Seizure, cardiorespiratory arrest. Hypotension. On top of all that, some patients are scratching their skin off.”
“Food poisoning?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, not food. But something ingested. Something they’ve come in contact with.”
“All at once? From all over the town?”
Clara looked me in the eye. “Not just all over town. All over this hospital. We’ve got current patients on every floor with the same symptoms. Started happening first thing this morning.”
“How can that be? What spreads that fast?”
“I’d look at the water.”
“The town water supply?”
She nodded. “Something got into the drinking water. Fuel spill, maybe. Chemical spill. Something like that.”
I asked, “What can you do for them?”
Her lips were set firmly before she spoke. “Right now, it appears absolutely nothing.”
“How many?”
“They’re stacking up like planes over the airport. Dozens dead. We’re likely going to be in the hundreds soon. I have to go, Barry. Get the word out. Fast as you can.”
“Have you seen Amanda?” I asked. Amanda Croydon, Promise Falls’ current mayor.
“No,” Clara said. “I have to go.”
I let her.
As I turned around, someone familiar bumped into me.
“Carlson,” I said.
“Shit, sorry,” Angus Carlson said. “When did you get here?”
“Just now. What do you know?”
He consulted a small notebook in his right hand. “No one was getting sick last night. Earliest anyone started feeling ill was around six this morning. Symptoms pretty much the same across the board. Dizzy, sick to stomach, shallow but rapid breathing.”
“It could be the water,” I told him.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice shaky. “Common element seems to be the drinking water from the tap. Even if it was boiled, like for tea. Seems like it’s hitting older people more, but that may just be because older people get up earlier.”
That made sense. I noticed Carlson’s trademark black humor wasn’t in operation this morning. No sick jokes today. The man was clearly shaken. It was fair to say neither of us had ever seen anything like this.
The water. I had to call Maureen.
“You called those close to you?” I asked. “In case they haven’t heard?”
He nodded. “I called my wife, told her.”
“What about your mother?” I’d overheard him, at the station, talking to her on the phone.
“Yes, yes, I called her, too,” he said. “Everyone’s on high alert.”
I looked beyond Carlson, saw yet another person I knew, but this wasn’t a doctor or one of the staff. It was Walden Fisher sitting in one of the ER waiting room chairs, nervously chewing a fingernail.
“Ah, shit,” I said.
“What?” Carlson asked, glancing over his shoulder.
“Walden Fisher.”
“Fisher?” Carlson said with, I thought, some recognition.
“Like he hasn’t been through enough. You remember the Olivia Fisher murder.”
“Of course.”
“That was his daughter. And his wife passed away pretty recently. I’m gonna talk to him. Keep asking around, find out anything else you can.”
I broke away, expecting to approach Fisher on my own, but Carlson chose to follow me.
“Mr. Fisher,” I said.
He looked up, blinked a couple of times, and seemed to be searching my eyes, as though trying to place me. “Detective . . .”
“Duckworth,” I said, helping him. “And this is Detective Carlson.”
“Mr. Fisher,” Angus Carlson said, nodding respectfully. “How are you managing?”
Fisher’s eyes moved slowly to Angus. “How am I managing? I feel like I’m goddamn well dying, that’s how I’m managing.”
“What happened?” I asked.
He shook his head slowly, more a gesture of bewilderment than a negative. “I don’t know. They found me throwing up in the middle of the street—nearly got run over by an ambulance. They brought me here. I’d had some coffee and then started feeling weird. Why are we all sick? What’s happening?”
“Everyone’s trying to find out,” I said. “Has a doctor seen you?”
“No. I’ve been sitting here forever.” He laid a hand on his chest. “My heart’s been going like crazy. Feel.” He reached out, took my wrist, placed my palm on his chest, and held it there. Despite his condition, his grip was surprisingly strong. I felt flannel under my fingertips, and an erratic thumping. I didn’t exactly have a medical degree, but what I was feeling didn’t feel good.
“Whaddya think?” he asked me.
I didn’t know. If I dragged someone over here to check him out, I’d just be taking a doctor from another patient who might need more immediate attention, and as bad as Walden Fisher was, there looked to be other people in the ER who were in worse shape. I rested a hand on his shoulder momentarily and said, “They’re seeing people as fast as they can.”
Good ol’ Barry Duckworth. Always knows just what to say. Turned out Carlson was better at this than I was.
He went down on one knee so he was at eye level with Fisher and said, “I just wanted to say, I was in uniform back when your daughter, Olivia, was taken so cruelly.”
Walden Fisher’s sick eyes widened slightly.
“So I wasn’t actively involved in the investigation, but I followed it closely, and it’s a terrible thing that no one has yet been brought to justice for that crime.”
“Um . . . yes,” Walden said.
“I just . . . I just wanted to say I’m sorry for your loss.” Carlson glanced awkwardly my way, as if hoping I’d rescue him from a conversation he was now thinking he shouldn’t have gotten into. He stood, gave a nod first to Fisher and then me. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything,” he said, then struck off in the pursuit of more information.
This wasn’t the same Angus Carlson I’d encountered earlier in the month. The one who couldn’t stop making corny jokes about dead squirrels. Maybe a move up the ranks, even temporarily, was actually making the man less of a jerk, because that was how he’d impressed me initially.
We’d see.
I got out my phone, saw I had no signal. It had been my experience that you could get a signal in most parts of the hospital, but not in the ER, where you needed one the most. Rather than go back outside, I went into the nursing station and found a landline. One of the nurses looked at me, but gave me a permissive nod when I flashed my badge. As if she had time to worry about me.
I needed to call Rhonda Finderman, the Promise Falls police chief. But sometimes the personal trumps the professional. I dialed home.
“Hello?” Maureen said. She must have been alarmed, seeing the hospital show up on her caller ID.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. Listen. Have you had any water from the tap today?”
A pause. “I was just making myself some tea.”
“Don’t. There may be something in the water supply making people sick. Call Trevor and warn him. Then start going up and down the street. Wake people up if you have to.”
“Is it bad?”
“It’s bad.”
“I’m on it,” she said.
“Wait,” I said. “Run some water from the tap, see if it’s giving off a whiff of anything. But don’t put your hand in it.” If there was, as my doctor had speculated, diesel fuel in the water, it would surely give off a smell.
“Hang on.”
Maureen was gone about fifteen seconds. Then, “Nothing. Ran it a good thirty seconds and nothing.”
“Okay. Now start—”
“I’m gone,” she said, and hung up.
I loved her so much.
Now I could make the call to my boss. I had her office, home, and mobile numbers in my cell. I dug it out again, brought up the numbers I had for her, and entered her cell into the landline.
Finderman wasn’t very crazy about me these days. She was the subject of the comments Trevor had heard and passed along to Randall Finley, who made them public when he announced he was running for mayor again.
I’d forgiven Trevor, but not Finley.
It all found its way back to me, and Finderman was pissed. But this wasn’t the day to let grudges get in the way of work.
She must have seen the hospital’s name come up on her caller ID, because she answered with an alarmed “Yes?”
“It’s Duckworth,” I said. “I’m at the hospital.”
“I’m heading there.”
“We have to get the word out. The town’s drinking supply may be contaminated.”
“Ferraza’s on it.” Angela Ferraza, the department’s public relations person. “She’s putting out a release to TV, radio—it’s on the Web.”
“Not enough,” I said. “You need people going door-to-door. Wake everyone up. You need every fire truck with a loudspeaker going up and down the streets. You need every person you can find getting on phones. The full emergency plan.”
The town had drafted one of those in the wake of September 11, but no one had thought much about it since.
“I get it,” Rhonda said. I was getting under her skin. She didn’t want anyone telling her how to do her job.
“And CDC,” I said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, outside of Atlanta. “The state health department. Everyone.” I had a thought. “Is Homeland Security still sniffing around town?”
They had parachuted in after the drive-in screen came down and killed four.
“They’ve cleared out. Even though the guy hired to bring it down swears he didn’t do it, they think he did. Which means there could still be charges and lawsuits galore, but it’s not a terrorism matter.”
I had no reason, at least not yet, to think what was happening now was terrorism. It could be an accident of some kind. A failure to treat the water properly. I remembered a case from years ago, north of the border, where a small town’s water supply was contaminated with E. coli from farm runoff. The people who ran the treatment plant didn’t have a clue what they were doing, and people died. But it was incompetence, not terrorism.
“You think it’s a terrorist act?” Rhonda asked.
“I have no idea what it is. I need to talk to whoever’s in charge of the treatment plant. Do you know who that is?”
“No.”
“Leave it with me,” I said, and ended the call before she had a chance to hang up on me herself.
I thumbed through the contacts on my own phone, found the city hall number, and dialed it on the hospital’s phone.
An almost immediate pickup. “Hello—”
“This is Detective Duckworth. Put me through—”
“—you have reached the offices of the town of Promise Falls. We are currently closed. Our hours are—”
“Fuck.”
The recorded voice droned on. “—Monday to Friday from nine thirty a.m. to four thirty p.m. If this call is concerning a power outage, please call Promise Falls Electric at—”
I hung up. I’d been dumb enough to think that in the middle of an emergency like this, someone would be at town hall fielding inquiries, even if the mayor was out of town. I wanted the name of whoever ran the water plant and I wanted it now. I might be able to find it by searching the town’s Web site if any of the computers around here connected to the Internet, and if they didn’t, I’d have to go outside and try to do it on my phone.
It occurred to me I might have a number on my phone that would put me in touch with someone who’d know off the top of his head.
I scrolled through recent incoming calls on my cell, found one from a couple of weeks earlier. I was pretty sure I had the right one. I entered the number into the hospital phone.
He picked up on the third ring.
“Hello?”
“Randy?” I said.
“Who’s this?”
“Barry Duckworth.”
“Barry!” he said loudly, almost cheerfully. He knew I hated him, and yet he greeted me like an old friend, the bastard. “What in Sam fuck is going on?”
“Who runs the water plant?”
“The what?”
“I’m wondering if it would be the same person who did the job when you were mayor. Who had it then?”
“Why don’t you tell me first why you need to know?”
I could almost picture him smirking on the other end of the line. Randy always had an angle. Sure, I’ll help you, but you help me first.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell him what was going on. The whole world would know what was going on in very short order. I just didn’t want to take the time. But it struck me that it would take less time to fill him in than argue.
I gave him the broad strokes—that the town’s water might be deadly.
“Goddamn,” he said. “Makes me glad I use nothing but my own springwater at home. How the hell could something like that happen?”
“A name, Randy.”
“Garvey Ottman. At least, he was in charge when I ran the show. I haven’t heard anything to the effect that he isn’t still.”
“Know where I can reach him?”
“Tell you what,” Finley said. “I’m already up and out. Heard all those sirens, wanted to find out what was going on. I’ll try to track him down for you, get back to you the moment I find him.”
“Okay,” I said, willing, right now, to accept his assistance. “I’m heading out there in the meantime.”
“Glad to help,” Finley said. “I call you at this number?”
I didn’t think I would be staying here that much longer. “No,” I said. “Call my cell.” I knew he had the number already.
“I’ll get back to you ASAP.” He ended the call.
At that moment, I happened to glance at a bulletin board fixed to the wall above where I’d been using the phone.
There were nurses’ schedules, hospital notices about handwashing, a photo of what looked to be several off-duty nurses grouped together at a bowling alley.
All smiling happily.
A promotional calendar from a local flower shop was pinned to the upper right corner, with boxes big enough that social events were scribbled on them. “Book club” and “Marta’s Bday.” For today, someone had scribbled “Bridge.”
That was when I noticed what today’s date was.
It was the twenty-third of May.