Badwater

2

Scotty Hemmings held open the top of the coveralls as if he were holding an evening coat.

I’d already got the suit up to my waist but it was cramped quarters inside the RERT van and the material was stiff. I wormed into the arms and then started to pull on a latex glove.

“Whoa Cassie,” Scotty said, “inflate it first. You don’t want a blown-out glove.”

No, I didn’t want that. I listened intently to Scotty Hemmings, wishing to dress exactly as the RERT chief dressed. He had an easygoing air with looks to match — shaggy blond hair and a big square dimpled smiling face — and we were already on a first-name basis. But there was nothing laid-back about his instructions. Walter, I noticed, was taking exquisite care in the assembly of his own suit. I blew my gloves into fat balloon hands and checked for leaks.

Scotty handed me rubbery overgloves. The bar-code sticker said Wal-Mart.

The RERT chief shops discount? I took a closer look at the equipment racks. Indeed, much of this stuff would be at home in Walter’s garage: brooms, shovels, hoses, portable vacuum. Some belonged in an anal-retentive kitchen: fancy scrub brushes, bottles of sodium carbonate and trisodium phosphate. And then there were the defensive items: suits and tanks and probes and meters, the only one of which I recognized was a Geiger counter.

There was also a thermos of coffee but Scotty warned against a full bladder in hazmat.

The van door opened and a white-suited red-haired man came in. He held up a meter with its battery compartment open and Scotty jerked a thumb at the shelves. The logo on the man’s suit said CTC. Then he wasn’t with RERT. He was with another set of initials. My head ached.

The red-haired man gave Walter and me the once-over, then spoke to Scotty. “Pinch me, coach, am I dreaming or are you sending civilians out there?”

“The name’s Scotty,” Scotty said, “and what business is it of yours?”

“Funny you should ask. It is my business. My gig’s radiation protection.” The man made us a little bow. “Hap Miller, chief health physicist with the CTC radioactive waste facility — known in the vernacular as the dump. Shipment outside was headed for my facility. Which is why I respectfully asked Scotty here why he’s sending y’all out there.”

Walter introduced us and explained our business.

For a long moment Miller’s deep-set blue eyes held steady on us, and then he said “not my call” and turned back to the shelves.

I looked at Scotty, whose call it was.

“Hey,” Scotty said, “we got some weirdness going on with the truck outside and everybody’s jumpy.”

“What weirdness?”

“I’m gonna let the FBI fill you in on that. Hector Soliano’s running the show and antsy to get you going. My job’s just to get you ready.” Scotty ripped yellow tape from a wide roll. “I will tell you that the truck was carrying radwaste — radioactive waste.” He taped my gloves to my sleeves. “So we need to button you up real tight.”

“So,” I said, “like…irradiated hospital wastes? Booties and gloves and such?”

“Fraid it’s more than that,” Scotty said. “According to the manifest, the load is ion-exchange resin beads. Cleans radionuclides from the cooling water at the nuke plant. Beads absorb the rads — that’s why this load was on its way to get buried. I mean, these beads pick up some pretty active puppies.”

“Such as?” Walter asked.

“Well, the reactor gets whacked by stray neutrons and you get, say, cobalt-60.”

Cobalt-60? That vein started up in my neck again.

“And, you get leaks from the fuel rods. Fission products.”

Walter looked at me, and I looked at him.

“You know, the cesiums and the strontiums…” Scotty bent to tape my rubber booties to my coverall legs. “And americium, plutonium…”

Hap Miller turned. “Also known as oh-my-god-iums.” His thin mouth turned down in a curbed smile.

I wetted my lips. “Just how hot are these resin beads we have out there?”

Scotty glanced up at me. “We’re not talking booties.”

Walter was watching me. He wore the solicitous look he used to throw at me when I was a kid doing scutwork in his lab and he’d take me out to a real crime scene, the look he’d wear when I’d signed on officially after grad school and the scenes became more gritty. The look he still gives me, when it gets truly nasty. Although it’s the geology that brings us to the crime scenes, often enough the evidence is lodged on a body — we’re not spared the impact of human mayhem. As for this case, it wasn’t courage I needed, just clear thinking.

Scotty took his tape and moved to Walter.

I threw Walter a look of my own. Two years ago he had a transient ischemic attack — a starter stroke, as his doctor bluntly put it. A sign of things to come if he does not knock off the donuts and pace himself at the scenes, and the risk grows with increasing age.

Walter rotated his wrists so that his gloves could be taped to his sleeves.

And this isn’t just another day at the office, is it?

“Okey-doke,” Scotty said when he’d finished taping Walter, “to be on the safe side you’re gonna used canned air.” He helped me, then Walter, into a tank harness and then passed us facepieces. “Kinda like scuba gear. Either of you dive?”

I said, “I’ve snorkeled.”

“Hey, that’s cool. Me, I surf. Learned on the swells at San Onofre State Beach.” Scotty dimpled. “In front of the old nuke plant.”

I noticed the Saint Christopher medallion around Scotty’s neck. Patron saint of surfers, as I recalled from my beach days at UCLA, worn to protect the wearer from harm.

“Last thing,” Scotty said, “we’re gonna slap dosimeters on you. Keep track of any exposure to radiation. Anybody asks for a reading, hold it up to the light and sing out the millirems.” He passed us the pen-like objects. “Clip it somewhere between the neck and the waist. Over the heart’s good.”

Easy to find my heart, since it was drumming. “We might be exposed?”

“No worry, procedure. We’ve metered the area you’ll be going into and it’s just low-level background rad.”

“Where are the casks?”

“Still rounding them up. But they’re in another area — not the one you’re going into. You don’t go near the casks. Even though they’re shielded, some gammas leak through. And this is a hot load.”

Hap Miller snapped a battery into his meter. “Hotter than you think, coach.”

“The name’s Scotty and what the hell’s that mean?”

“Means it came from a real nasty cleanup site, Scotty.”

I spoke. “How hot?”

Miller regarded me. “You eat salsa?”

I nodded.

“You like it hot?”

“Medium-hot. Is that some kind of health physics metaphor?”

“Should be. Resins, metaphorically, work like salsa. They come mild, medium, hot, and…” Miller blew on his fingers, “tripleX.”

“Christ,” Scotty said. He turned for the door.

“Well then, ever hear of Fukushima Daiichi?”

Scotty froze. Surfer dude whose waves just went flat.

Walter said, “The Japanese nuclear plant?”

“Yowza.” Miller nodded. “Plant that got hammered by the quake and tsunami. Reactors going Godzilla. Spent-fuel pools leaking.”

Scotty said, “What’s that got to do with this?”

“Frame of reference — for those who don’t eat salsa.” Miller gave me a wink. “Resins used to clean the Fukushima contaminated water were hot as can be.”

I said, faint, “And the resins we have outside?”

“That hot.”