Shooting Chant (21 page)

Morgan picked up the assault rifle, removed the clip, and showed her the full magazine. “Does
this answer your question? We have the right to protect this facility from criminals. Trespassers are criminals that may become a threat to our operations and destroy valuable equipment and inventory. I think a show of force usually prevents violence—when people know you can back up what you say, they’re less likely to test you. That’s also why my guards and I are armed to the hilt,” he added.

“What property in this plant is worth the price of a man’s life?” Ella insisted.

He suddenly laughed. “Subtle as a brick, aren’t you? It’s my job to protect this place, and I do it to the best of my ability. And, for the record, we do have the support of law-abiding Navajos. Your tribal council and president have visited our facility, and they all approve of the way we are handling things, including
the employment question.”

“Then you don’t think the Fierce Ones have a valid argument?”

“I’m not from around here, as you know from looking over my personnel file, and I don’t know enough about the situation on the reservation to answer that. But I do know that they shouldn’t have any beef with LabKote. We hire many Navajos. My next in command, for example, is Navajo. He supported my decision
to shoot if anyone tried to get in.”

“Who’s the guard?”

“Jimmie Herder. You may not have seen him today because he was covering the rear of our facility. We’re not the Evil Empire, Investigator Clah.”

“I never said you were,” Ella clipped.

Ella knew that with every answer she gave him, he was sizing her up just as she was doing with him. The main difference between them was that this was clearly
a game he enjoyed playing.

“Look, you’re obviously starting to feel uncomfortable about LabKote. Why don’t you let me give you a guided tour? Some of the machines we use are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each. If they get damaged, we’d have to shut down and we can’t just go to the local hardware store or Radio Shack for parts. Any downtime means big losses for this company. LabKote is
not a large operation, and we’ve been undercutting our competition to get a customer base. We make only a small profit, so we can’t afford any significant losses if we plan to stay in business. That’s why we’re so protective of our facility.”

“Are you trying to tell me that you’re operating on a shoestring budget?”

“Our financial situation is proprietary information,” he said, “but come on.
If you get a good look at everything here, it’ll set your mind at ease. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.”

Ella followed him down the hall, her gaze taking in every detail of the facility. There was a large warehouse area where the sterilized packets were boxed and prepared for shipping. Large, garage-type doors along one end opened onto a long loading dock. Shrink-wrapped
packets of plastic petri dishes and other lab supplies were carried into the packing area by a moving conveyor belt which passed through an opening in the wall. About a dozen Navajo men and women were filling orders as she was shown around.

Morgan then led her out of the warehouse and farther down the hall, stopping by a window that revealed the interior of a large room that was secured with
a steel door and an electronic lock. This looked like another warehouse, with large garage-type doors against one wall. The doors were covered with some kind of insulating material, however.

“That’s where Hansen worked. You can’t see his booth from here, but you can see it if you look up at the security monitor,” he said pointing to the far corner. “We keep that in place to make sure everything’s
as it should be.”

She could see shrink-wrapped, sealed packages moving slowly down a conveyor belt, pausing every few seconds by the large machines. “I’m assuming this is where everything is sterilized, and those are the machines responsible. Can you tell me about them?”

“I don’t know all the technicalities, I’m no scientist, but this is the place where we kill any microbes that might have survived
the earlier cleaning process and still be viable inside the sealed packages. It’s done with short bursts of gamma radiation. To insure safety, the machines are shielded and, in addition, the building’s added shielding prevents the highly focused, short-duration gamma rays from getting beyond the room. Notice the material on the doors. One of the reasons we have such tight security is because
we could have a nasty accident if some intruder walked through the processing area and into a beam of gamma rays.”

“And I suppose that the person running the machines has to have a high security clearance?”

“With our organization, yes, but this is not a top secret process or government operation. Our machine operators are critical to the operation and everyone’s paycheck depends on them, so
we make sure that they can work without interruption during a processing cycle.”

“What kind of security is there to keep a worker from wandering in there at the wrong time?”

“You’ve already seen our cameras and, since the operation beyond this door is completely automated, only the operator or his supervisors have key cards to open these particular electronic locks.”

He took her to another
window. “This is our quality control area,” he said, gesturing to the room inside. “The reason for the heavy rubber seals around the door is that we have an air lock system in place here. There are also special micropore filters. In this room our quality control people search for contaminants among random samples taken off the production line. Like the processing room, this is a restricted area. Only
lab personnel with special suits have electronic keys that allow them access.”

Ella glanced through the window. Beyond the closet-sized air lock, and through another window in an interior door, she could see people in white moon suits working. The large, stainless steel machines had openings equipped with heavy gloves that the techs would use to reach into the chambers. It looked like a scene
from a science fiction movie, not something anyone was likely to see on the Rez.

“The next room contains our incinerator,” he said, going to the end of the hall. “All waste material from quality control is turned into harmless ash with the help of a high-temperature furnace.”

“You mean the bacteria or other microbes that turned up on containers that failed the tests?” Ella asked.

He nodded.
“Finding any that actually got past the gamma rays is a rare event. Most of what’s burned is growth medium, like agar, and the containers we opened up and tested. That’s our operation in a nutshell,” he said with a smile. “You can see now that we don’t have anything to hide. It’s for the public’s sake that we keep such a tight lid on our work. We can’t have people just wandering in or trespassing.”

Ella was about to thank Morgan when a high-pitched alarm sounded. She jumped, startled by the shrill sound, and braced herself for an emergency, but seeing Morgan take it in stride, she forced herself to relax.

“Look fast, and you’ll see the gamma ray equipment power down,” he said moving to the corresponding window. “The equipment’s beam is automatically shielded when the large outside doors
open, and of course the machines shut down.” He gestured to a team of men in yellow fireman turnout gear. They were moving into the room via one of the garage-style doors, now opening. “That’s our emergency response team. Had there been a fire, they would have put it out. A spill of one of our cleaning solutions, or an electrical short would also be handled and corrected as well. Of course, as I’m
sure you realize by now, this is only a drill. We have several a week between processing runs, just to keep our people sharp.”

It had all looked very practiced and routine, but she had a sneaking suspicion that it had been staged for her benefit. What she couldn’t decide was why Morgan had felt compelled to arrange a drill for her. Was it pride, or just a way to get her to go away and not come
back?

They were going back down the hallway toward the front entrance when Ted Landreth came out of his office. “Do you mind stopping by my office when you’re finished?” he asked Ella.

“I think Mr. Morgan and I are done with the tour,” Ella said, curious to see what Landreth wanted. She looked at Morgan, who nodded.

“I’ll go log in my report,” Morgan said, leaving.

Landreth offered her a chair,
then sat down behind his desk. “I’m hoping you can help me. I need a way to show the Fierce Ones, and any other concerned group that our company is really very beneficial to the tribe. For example, in exchange for a very favorable lease agreement, we’ve made substantial donations of valuable lab supplies to the high school and college laboratories. The tribal council knows all that, but obviously
The People don’t. I think we’re due for another press release. I’ll have our public relations people come up with something.”

Ella nodded absently, then stood and walked to the opposite wall where several photos had been hung. Several tribal officials were pictured with LabKote supervisors. The photos were filled with men smiling and shaking hands, despite the fact that even casual physical contact
with a stranger was something most Navajos preferred to avoid. Morgan wasn’t in any of the photos, but silently she noted that one of the photos showed Senator Yellowhair and Ernest Ben with Landreth.

“I don’t think the Fierce Ones dispute the good you do for the tribe,” she said, returning to her chair. “They’d just like to see more of our people benefit from the higher paying jobs—like the
one Hansen had before his death.”

“Yeah, I know that, but Hansen had advanced engineering degrees in computer software design and programming. His job requires some highly technical expertise as well as a formal education. Remember that certain additions to our machinery, the safeguards that protect everyone, for instance, were Hansen’s own design. He was an undeniable asset to us. That was the
reason we didn’t fire him for insubordination months ago.”

“Are you saying he’s practically irreplaceable?”

“Just about, but I’m sure that if we look hard enough, we’ll eventually find someone who can take his place.”

“Who’s doing his job now?”

“Carl Fine. He’s one of the supervisors. But all he’s doing is running the production line according to Hansen’s established procedures, which are
installed as custom software and written up in a manual. It’s only a temporary arrangement. Carl just doesn’t have the training or expertise that Hansen had.”

“So, how do you intend to comply with the Fierce Ones’ demand that the position be filled with a Navajo?”

“I’ll ask tribal employment services for help, and at the same time conduct a regional job search through the universities in Arizona
and New Mexico. Maybe we can hire someone qualified who
is
Navajo. We’ll certainty try. If that doesn’t pan out, perhaps we can get someone to train as a tech and work alongside whoever ends up taking Hansen’s job.”

She nodded and stood. “If that’s all you had for me…”

“No, actually, I have a favor to ask you.”

She stood by the door. “I’m listening.”

“I understand from Morgan that your brother
was out there today with the Fierce Ones.”

Ella wished she had more background on Morgan. He was good.

“Can you explain to him that we’ll do our best, but Hansen’s job can’t be filled at the drop of a hat? He might be more inclined to believe you and then spread the word to the others.”

“You told all this to Jesse Woody already, right?” Seeing him nod, she added, “then it’s been said. It won’t
become more true if you tell it more often.”

He didn’t crack a smile, and neither did she. Ella stood and walked down the hall. She was surprised when Landreth didn’t follow her, since she’d been told that no one was allowed inside unescorted, but before she got ten feet, Morgan came to meet her.

“Can you come back into my office for a moment before you leave, Investigator Clah? There’s something
I’d like to show you.”

She followed him wordlessly, knowing instinctively that he already knew she’d agree. Curiosity was the founding trait of an investigator.

Ella entered Morgan’s office and saw him take a sheet of paper from the top of his desk. “Sheriff Taylor had asked us to call him if we found anything that would be of interest to him regarding Hansen’s case, so I did.” He offered her
the page. “This is what I faxed him this morning. It’s a printout of a letter we found on a computer disk Hansen hid in the middle of some papers in his bottom drawer. It took us a while to work out his password so we could gain access to the file, but we finally did.”

“What was the password?” she asked.

Morgan smiled. “We tried his wife’s name, his name, listed birth dates, and all the regular
stuff, but Hansen’s brain didn’t run on regular channels. That’s when I decided to try something more his speed. His password, as it turned out, was ‘gamma.’”

It was another sign of what kind of person Morgan was. Like her, he would keep working a puzzle until he had answers. Pure and simple, he liked to win. “Good work.”

She read the letter. It was addressed to his ex-wife. In it, he was pleading
for a reconciliation. To Ella, the letter had the sound of a work still in progress, not something he was ready to send.

“The guy sure was a whiner. No wonder his ex jettisoned him,” Morgan said contemptuously.

His assessment was so blunt and so much in line with his macho style that she had to smile.

“What? You think I’m an insensitive clod?”

“The thought occurred to me,” she said. “But,
in all fairness, I don’t much care for anyone who uses this tactic. It’s equal parts guilt and begging.”

Morgan grinned at her. “Yeah. That’s the way I see it, too.” He handed her the disk. “Here’s where we found the letter. It contains nothing else besides the printout, but I figured you’d want to have it.”

“Thanks.”

He returned with her to the gate. “We’re two wolves, aren’t we?” he observed.
“We wouldn’t beg, even if they kneecapped us.”

“Begging doesn’t do any good. If you have to, you’ve already lost,” she said as she got back into her vehicle.