Craig Kreident #1: Virtual Destruction (42 page)

After emerging from their respective change rooms, Paige and Craig met at the glassed-in security portal for entrance to the RMA.
 
They passed through the metal detectors, and the PSO handed them each nuclear accident dosimeters to clip onto their own badges.

“Busy day,” the guard said.
 
“We just escorted through a dozen kids from the Coalition for Family Values.
 
Now the FBI?
 
Place feels like Grand Central Station.”

Craig continued to cling to Paige’s arm to keep his balance.
 
He still felt weak and shaky, and his thoughts were muddled—but he needed to see the soap dispenser, the rest room where Hal Michaelson had unknowingly met his death.

“Guess I shouldn’t talk about my rough day,” the PSO said. “You look like you’ve been through hell already this morning.”

Craig looked up at him with a wan smile.
 
He knew his eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot.
 
“I think that sums it up fairly well.”

They entered the Radioactive Materials Area only seconds before a loud alarm warbled through the intercom.
 
Craig tried to identify it from the confusing series of sounds he remembered from the training videotape.

The guard sat up startled.
 
“Holy shit, that’s a radiation alarm!”
 
Inside the glass cubicle, the second PSO called for backup and other guards stationed in the Plutonium Facility rushed to the location of the disturbance.

“What’s happened?” Craig asked.

The first PSO turned to Craig, trying to make light of it.
 
“The Superblock has alarms going off all the time, security alerts usually.
 
Our systems are set so tight that any time two birds sit too close to each other on the razor wire it sets the system off.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” said the second guard inside the glassed-in cubicle.
 
“Maybe those kids on the tour group touched something they shouldn’t have.”

“I don’t feel good about this,” Craig muttered to Paige, shaking his head again.
 
“I want to go check it out.”

“Can’t go in there,” the first guard said.
 
“The alarms are on.
 
No one gets in or out of the RMA.”

“We’re already in,” Paige said.

Craig fumbled between the buttons of his orange lab coat and pulled out the FBI badge from his suitjacket and flashed the intimidating-looking Bureau seal at the PSOs.
 
“This is my authorization,” Craig said and grabbed Paige’s arm, pulling her through the swinging double doors.

The FBI identification had no particular authority here at all, but the sight of it befuddled the guard just long enough for them to pass through.
 
Beyond the second set of double doors they ran into the white hallways laced with metal conduits and pipes, fire extinguishers, and metal lockers.

“Do you know where the alarm was tripped?” Craig asked.
 
“Which increment the guard was talking about?”

As Paige shook her head, her blonde hair flipped back and forth.
 
“This place isn’t that big.
 
If it’s a high-level alarm we should be able to learn what it is.
 
Besides, you wanted to find that one and only rest room, right?”

The set of airlock doors swung open at the far end of the hall.
 
Four people ran toward them; behind them came a stream of fleeing children each wearing a visitor’s badge.
 
Many of the children cried, and even the escorts themselves looked panicked.
 
A burly Plutonium Facility worker with a stormy expression on his face scuttled along, looking as if he wanted to ball his hand into a fist and punch through the cinderblock walls.
 
He smelled of potent aftershave.
 
Craig recognized him as Ronald Cobb, the man he had talked to on his last interview in the facility.

“That little turd,” Cobb was saying to one of his companions.
 
“I can’t believe what a royal screw-up he is.
 
Could you see what he was trying to do to me?”

Ronald looked up and saw Craig.
 
“Hey, it’s that FBI guy.
 
Don’t go in there, man.
 
There’s a crazy dude waving around radioactive material.”

Craig and Paige shot a look at each other.
 
“Thanks for the warning,” Craig said, then pushed forward anyway.

They passed through the airlocks into an empty corridor beyond.
 
The alarms continued ringing.

Then, in the far corner slumped next to one of the metal lockers, Craig saw a wispy middle-aged man about forty-five, with limp pale brown hair, thin at the top, and a face that looked like a wad of crumpled tissue paper.
 
His body sagged on its bones just outside of the swinging greenish doors of a glove-box laboratory.
 
The man was a mound of despair.
 
Tears streamed down his cheeks.
 
On the floor beside him lay four dull metal hemispheres where he had discarded them, each about two inches across.

“You’d better stay back,” said the man.
 
“I didn’t want to hurt anybody . . . who didn’t deserve it.”

 
Craig knelt and motioned with a hand for Paige to step back.
 
“My name’s Craig.
 
I don’t think I deserve it.
 
Who are you?”

“Duane . . . Duane Hopkins.
 
I’ve worked here for about fifteen years.
 
Bodie . . . a man named Bodie contaminated me ten, twelve years ago, right when I was married.
 
Stevie was born, and he had cerebral palsy.
 
Then Ronald kept picking on me, making my life miserable.
 
Now Stevie’s dead.
 
I was going to make Ronald pay.”

“You were going to expose him to radiation?” Craig asked.

“The radiation caused everything,” Duane said.
 
“It caused Stevie to be sick, it made Rhonda leave me.
 
I tried to get back at Ronald by putting some acid in the bathroom.
 
I wanted to burn his hands—but nothing ever happened, so I had to do something bigger.
 
And now I—”
 
His breath hitched in sobs.
 
“I almost hurt all those kids.
 
Innocent kids.
 
I didn’t want that to happen.
 
I just wanted Ronald.
 
He
deserved it, not them.

Craig froze.
 
“You put acid in the soap dispenser?
 
You're
the one?”

Before he could say anything else, the swinging airlock doors at the other end of the hall slammed open; two Protective Service Officers dressed in dark blue uniforms charged through, their guns drawn as if expecting to encounter a terrorist army.

“Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt!” one shouted, like a line from a TV show.

The other PSO glanced from Craig and Paige to Duane Hopkins on the floor, assessing the situation.
 
He saw the plutonium buttons scattered on the linoleum a few feet away from Duane.
 
He pointed his weapon at Duane.

“Get to your feet, sir, and step away from those.”

“I’m already dead,” Duane said.
 
“I’ve been holding those things.
 
I’ve been exposed to all that radiation.”

“We need to get him to the hospital,” Paige said to the PSO.
 
“He’s not armed, and he seems to be having quite a few personal problems.”

“Yeah, don’t we all,” said the PSO, still pointing his gun at Duane.
 
The small man rose slowly to his feet and staggered away from the plutonium on the floor.

“Let’s get someone suited up and in here!” the PSO shouted into his walkie talkie.
 
“Rubber gloves so we can get that stuff locked up.
 
The whole building stays closed down until we get this taken care of.”

The two guards escorted Duane out, standing as far away from him as they could, as if afraid that radiation would continue to shower from his body.

Paige and Craig also backed out, following them.
 
“Anything else we need here, Craig?” she asked.

“What I need,” Craig said with a weary sigh, “is a long nap for the rest of the afternoon.
 
And then I’ll meet you back at that place for a beer, just like I promised.”

EPILOGUE

Friday

Lyon’s Brewery

Dublin, California

Friday night, and the band played louder than ever.

Craig worked his way through the crowd at the staggered tables and set down two pints of a reddish beer topped with creamy foam.
 
He nudged one across to Paige.

“Red Nectar Ale, right?” he said.

Paige took a long sip and let out a contented sigh.
 
“Best beer ever made.”
 
She smiled at him with a little mustache of foam on her lips.

He took a long drink, then shrugged off his suit jacket.
 
He loosened his tie and, after hesitating a moment, pulled it off entirely.
 
He unbuttoned the top button of his whjite shirt, stuffing the tie into the pocket of his suitjacket.

“Case over,” he said to Paige’s surprised expression.
 
“I can relax a little now.”

“Don’t you have to write up a report?” she said.

Craig waved his hand.
 
“That’s just busy work.”

“You came in here to look into a mysterious death, and you managed to shake up everything.
 
Are you always like a bull in a China shop when you do your investigations?”

Craig snorted.
 
“It’s not my fault everybody we had under investigation was doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing.
 
The hard part wasn’t finding a guilty person—it was finding the person guilty of the crime
I
was interested in.”

He looked into Paige’s blue, blue eyes.
 
“I still can’t believe that of all the people we were questioning, none of them killed Michaelson.
 
It’s unbelievable to think that a big important man with so many enemies could have been killed by . . . by
accident
.”

Paige shrugged and automatically lowered her voice as the band stopped playing and fell into a break between songs.

“Remember those freeway shootings down in LA, when bored gang members took potshots at cars driving by on the freeway?
 
Pointless mayhem, senseless violence,” she said, then raised a slender finger.

“But suppose, just suppose some kid goes out with a rifle and shoots into a random car.
 
Say he doesn’t like rich people, so he targets a Mercedes or a Porche.
 
Pow!
 
He ends up killing the head of a defense corporation.

“So what happens?
 
Nobody assumes random violence, even though it is.
 
The kid got lucky and hit somebody important.
 
But the homicide investigator will start out with the assumption that our defense contractor was assassinated.
 
It throws everybody off on a wild goose chase.”

“Good comparison,” Craig admitted.
 
“What about Duane Hopkins.
 
How is he?”

Paige looked down at the table, tracing water stains on the dark wood.
 
“He obviously didn’t know what he was doing.
 
People like that really bother me.”

“What do you mean?” Craig asked.

“Those plutonium buttons he picked up were nickel plated, warm from secondary decay—but they weren’t high-level radiation sources at all.
 
He’s got a dose, of course.
 
He might have some superficial burning on his hands, and he’ll have to be watched for the rest of his life to see if he develops cancer.
 
But he thought he had fireballs in his fists!
 
Sheesh!
 
How can somebody work in the Plutonium Facility for fifteen years and still not have a clue what he’s working with?”

“What about the alarms?” Craig interrupted.
 
“The radiation detectors were set off.”

Paige answered him with an exasperated expression. “Everything is set so sensitive in that room, if you had a luminescent watch it would probably trigger something.
 
As I told you before, we are very, very touchy about radiation exposures.
 
Hopkins is like one of those people terrified that their home electricity comes from a nuclear power plant, afraid of radiation leaking out of the light sockets.”

“Radiation is dangerous stuff,” Craig said.
 
“You can’t treat it lightly.”