Kevin Anderson - Lethal Exposure

The dogs scratched against the metal door of the blockhouse, anxious and whimpering. “Something’s got them excited,” the handler said.

Schultz came forward, sorting through a string of keys the Fermilab Director’s Office had provided him. “One of the techs probably left a box of takeout chicken inside.”

He didn’t like being in charge of such a high-profile investigation with nothing to show for it. FBI headquarters didn’t look at that too kindly. The other two California agents were working on their own, looking into the radiation exposure case, but they didn’t have any assistance, no backup, no facilities at their disposal. Given those stumbling blocks, he certainly didn’t expect them to uncover anything he and his people had missed.

He twisted a key in the padlock, then pulled the heavy door open. The two dogs impatiently pushed their way into the small substation. One even let out a yip, and Schultz frowned at their poor training. The sheriff’s dogs should behave better than that.

But then he noticed that the lights were on. The last person in there must have left everything on, everything running. The walls were covered with diagnostics racks, oscilloscopes, computers, TV monitors, like props from an old TV show. One of the chairs had tipped over, and notepads and debris had fallen from the shelves.

Sprawled on the floor lay a man in a pool of blood.

Schultz froze, falling into his role as crime scene investigator. He recognized the dark suit, curly hair, pudgy physique. “It’s that FBI agent from Oakland,” he said, “Goldfarb.” He hurried forward, dropping to his knee as the handler tried to keep his dogs under control.

“Get out your phone,” Schultz snapped. “Call for emergency medical assistance. And get me the Chicago office. Code Red-an agent is down.”

In the Fox River Medical Center, Craig found a bank of pay phones and tried Goldfarb’s cell phone again. He had already been scolded twice by the nurses that he wasn’t allowed to use his own cell phone inside the hospital itself, because it might interfere with pacemakers or medical diagnostics-not that he got good reception inside the heavily shielded building anyway.

Along the same lines, with Goldfarb snooping around the accelerator, the tunnels and metal reinforcements might also mess up his signal. He hung up the phone and returned to Dumenco’s room.

Light spilled through a single window, where three more baskets of flowers had joined the potted plant on the sill-one from Trish, another from Dr. Piter’s division, and the third from the Fermilab Director’s office. Dumenco’s friends were indeed limited.

Wearing a white lab coat and tennis shoes, Trish studied a history of radiation accidents she had gotten from her contacts at the PR-Cubed. The medical organization had been happy to provide all the details they could find. Some members of the Board of Directors wanted to make a news event out of Dumenco’s radiation exposure, but Trish had so far held her ground. She flipped through the faxed summary documents with her back to Craig.

Stretched out on his bed and propped up on pillows, the old scientist frowned at his sheaf of papers. Craig had looked at some of the less technical articles, but they were more indecipherable than the nuclear data sheets he had perused during his case at the Nevada Test Site. At least in Nevada, accounting procedures and engineering diagrams helped explain the technical language; here, Craig found so many references to annihilation operators, production cross sections, nuclear resonances, scattering matrices , and Feynman diagrams that he was totally lost.

He prided himself on being one of the more technical special agents, but when thrown in the middle of cutting-edge high-energy physics, he was at a loss. He’d have to rely on Dumenco to help him out on this one.

But the Ukrainian was torn between his goals of solving his murder and unraveling his last great physics problem.

Craig’s cell phone in his jacket pocket rang; he flipped it open. “Hello-Ben, is that you?”

“Craig, this is Paige.” She hesitated. “Where are you?‘’

“At the medical center.” He could hear the stress in her voice. “What’s wrong?”

“I just got a call from the Director’s office. Ben Goldfarb’s been shot. He’s being rushed to the hospital right now.”

Craig stood, knocking his chair backward. “What happened? Is he all right?” Trish turned and looked up sharply. Dumenco put down his papers on the bed and raised an eyebrow.

“He was found by the FBI team in one of the beam-sampling substations. He’s alive-that’s all I know. Meet them at the emergency room. Sorry I can’t tell you more.”

Trish took a step toward Craig, questioning, but he flipped the phone shut and headed for the door. “Dr. Dumenco, your suspicions just became a whole lot more likely.”

For once in his career, Craig’s FBI badge did not magically open doors for him. The emergency room nurse stood her ground, refusing to give Craig access to his partner, and his friend.

“We’ll update you as soon as we can, Agent Kreident,” she said. “Right now, the doctors are more concerned with saving his life than answering your questions.”

A dozen people sat miserably in waiting-room chairs against the wall. They watched Craig take on the petite, redheaded nurse, but even an FBI agent could not make her budge. An old Zenith TV on a platform attached to the ceiling displayed a local talk show host interviewing a member of the PR-Cubed, who had come to Chicago for their annual conference. Anyone spouting the hazards of radiation-especially a respected doctor-made for good news coverage. Craig wondered if the PR-Cubed spokesman would be talking about Dumenco’s “tragic accident.”

Craig lowered his voice and stepped closer to the nurse. “We’re in the middle of a murder investigation, and I need to be present in case my partner says anything, especially… especially if he doesn’t make it. He might provide the only break we have.”

The nurse remained unmoved. “Mr. Kreident, from the looks of your partner, I wouldn’t count on him saying anything in there. It’s a miracle he’s even still alive. So please, leave him alone-the doctors need all the help they can get, but not from someone like you.”

Two orderlies pushed past Craig into the emergency room. Maybe he could get Trish to help him out. Or maybe he should just wait and trust the medical professionals. Like everyone else in the room was doing.

Craig turned and, spotting the bank of pay phones against the wall, dug out his contact list. He had a lot of people to contact, but first he’d make the hardest phone call of all-to Goldfarb’s wife Julene and their girls.

The voice of June Atwood, Craig’s Supervisory Special Agent, exploded over the phone as if she wanted to reach across the fifteen hundred miles and grab him by the collar.

“Craig, I can’t begin to tell you how many Bureau regulations and policies you’ve broken by starting this investigation on your own time! We can’t have our agents working freelance, putting themselves-and others, dammit-in danger, on their free time! There’s already an FBI team at Fermilab! Why couldn’t you just leave it to them?”

“Because they were investigating the wrong crime, June-”

“That’s not the impression I got from Agent Schultz. This leaks out, and the press will have a field day.”

Craig kept his mouth clamped, his emotions boiling inside. June remained quiet for a moment, as if she were going through several options in her head. Craig huddled closer to the pay phone against the activity around him- people crying while waiting for loved ones, nurses and doctors rushing to their next patient. An orderly wheeled an old man in a green surgical gown, IV lines dangling from plastic bags on a metal rack.