Fatal

CHAPTER 5

It was a gray, blustery day — a day totally befitting a funeral. Matt was one of just twelve mourners at the graveside service for Darryl Teague. The other eleven were relatives of one sort or another, all of whom lived in the hills north of town. The irony was hardly lost on Matt that in clear view of the dreary, overgrown cemetery were the tall hills that housed the BC amp;C mine.

But the day held another irony.

It wasn't until he stepped off his Harley and approached the rectangular pit that he realized this was the first funeral he had been to in nearly four years. The last one was his wife's. Matt recalled that day with painful clarity — the crowd, the limousines, the flower-bedecked hearse bearing what remained of the woman he had all too happily pledged to love until death did them part. Only death hadn't ended his love for her. Not at all.

The ill-kept cemetery, bordered by an irregular row of shrubs, was at the center of a broad, rolling, treeless field. Teague's grave, on the far west side, was marked by a hastily erected, rough-cut chunk of marble with the initials "D.T." crudely chiseled into it. Nothing more.

Virginia McLaren Rutledge

Beloved Daughter, Sister, and Teacher

Beloved Wife of Matthew Rutledge

Matt stopped by his mother's house three or four times a week, but he visited Ginny's grave nearly every day, often leaving a leaf or sprig of her hawthorn tree, sometimes a flower. Sometimes he would stay only a few minutes, but others he would sit for an hour or more by her stone, reading or just staring off across the valley. Each visit seemed to strengthen the bond he felt with the only woman, save his mother, he had ever truly loved. Of his friends and family, only Mae Borden knew how often he went to the Saints and Angels Cemetery.

"Matthew," she had said several times in one way or another, "we all miss her and love her, but we love you, too. It is time for you to pick up the pieces and move on. You have room in your heart for Ginny and for someone new. I know she wouldn't have wanted you to spend your life this way."

Matt would respond with a shrug or a grunted acknowledgment, and head off. There was no sense in discussing something that simply wasn't going to happen.

The gaunt preacher performing the ceremony for Darryl Teague had little to say. To his credit, he made no attempt to lie. He called Darryl a carefree, playful child who had grown away from God and had become an angry and troubled young man at the time of his death. He read some bible passages, and issued appropriate words of consolation to Darryl's parents and sister.

"God works in mysterious ways," he said as four men grasped heavy ropes and prepared to lower the plain pine box into the gaping maw in the earth. "God works in mysterious ways."

There were rumblings around the hospital that Matt was the last person known to have been in Teague's room before his heart stopped irretrievably. But no one could come up with a sensible explanation for why he might have saved the man's life one day and taken it just a few days later, so natural causes became the consensus around town.

Hal Sawyer's autopsy contributed little to solving the mystery. As Matt suspected, Teague's cracked sternum was the cause of the torn vessel that had resulted in his near-fatal tamponade. Beneath that fracture, the heart muscle was bruised. It was certainly the sort of injury that could have caused electrical instability and irregular rhythms in his heart. Hal signed the man out as a fatal arrhythmia secondary to a cardiac contusion secondary to accidental blunt chest trauma. The lumps over Teague's face and head were nothing more than neurofibromas. The brain itself was grossly normal, leaving Hal with no immediate explanation for Teague's coma. Full toxicology studies would not be available for another week or two, but a preliminary screen had shown none of the depressants Matt had wondered about.

A sharp gust of wind whipped across the field, swirling dust around the small assembly of mourners, who were singing a hymn Matt vaguely remembered from his youth. He found his thoughts drifting to his father. BC amp;C had been found blameless in the cave-in that killed Matthew Rutledge, Sr., but Matt, only fifteen then, had heard rumors of safety funds diverted, corners cut, and even men paid off.

"We will close our service with the twenty-third psalm. Pallbearers may lower the casket as we recite, 'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…'"

No one except Matt had even suggested that Ginny's bizarre cancer was tied to the mine.

"You yourself said that there are several hundred of these types of lung cancers around the country every year," BC amp;C president Armand Stevenson had said to him. "And with each of those cases, I am sure there's a factory close by, or a lab of some sort, or even a mine. I know you're frustrated, Dr. Rutledge. Your wife has just died. I know you're angry and want to blame us. Well, BC and C is not to blame. I repeat, the company is not to blame for your wife's death any more than it was to blame for your father's."

" '… He restoreth my soul…' "

Matt watched as the casket was slowly lowered down onto the floor of the grave.

Someone from the mine killed you, Darryl, didn't they?… Why?… What did you know?… Had you stayed alive, what could your body have told the world about them?

" '… Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…' "

Matt forced his careening thoughts aside and joined the others in the final lines of the psalm. When the service was over, he accepted heartfelt thanks from Teague's family for having tried to save his life, then took a long, slow walk out toward the hills and back. Ginny would have wanted him to keep pushing for answers. Now she was joined by Darryl Teague and Teddy Rideout. Their conditions were different, but maybe the toxins responsible were different, too.

Well, don't worry, Gin, he thought. Sooner or later, one way or another, we're going to nail them.

The one way or another clearly did not include the offering of a $2,500 reward. Matt had printed three hundred of the magenta fliers. Mae had posted half of them around Belinda, and he had tacked up the other half in the adjacent towns. Within twenty-four hours, nearly all of them were gone. There had not been one response. So much for the Healthy Mines Coalition. Another battle lost, Matt thought, but not the war. Not the goddamn war. He swung the Harley around and headed back to his office. Patients were waiting.

As it turned out, there was a message waiting for him as well — a message from Armand Stevenson requesting that Matt come to the mine offices to meet with him and some of those in the company responsible for health and safety. Mae was smiling as she passed the note over.

"Yes!" Matt exclaimed, pumping his fist.

"I thought you might be interested in going, so I cleared you for tomorrow afternoon," she said. "You're due out there at one."

"It seems a bit presumptuous of you to assume I was interested in going," he said.

"I know, I know," Mae replied.

Matt kissed her on the cheek and settled in his office to await his first patient of the day. Not a minute later, his uncle called.

"Hey, Hal, we are officially off dead center. I'm going out to the mine tomorrow to meet with Stevenson."

"I know. That's why I'm calling."

"What do you mean?"

"I just ran into your friend Robert Crook. He told me Stevenson had invited you out there. Crook's going to be there, too, as the head of the physician advisory committee for health and safety."

"Any idea what they want?"

"None, but I'm calling to urge you to keep your cool no matter what."

"You mean you think I shouldn't tell them up front that they killed my father and are probably responsible for my wife's death as well, and now they're poisoning miners?"

"Something like that. Matt, you've got a reputation with those people as a hothead. Try not to give them any reason to fire back at you."

"Not to worry. I'm going to be just like Mr. Rogers. 'Oh, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine?'… See, I'm practicing up."

"Seriously, Matt, those people hold all the cards in this community. I should think by now you would have figured that out. I just want you to go easy — have them view you as a responsible man."

"I'll do my best, Hal. I promise. Listen, thanks for calling. Give Heidi a hug for me. And don't worry. Responsible is my middle

name.

At twelve-thirty the following afternoon, Matt placed his two overstuffed BC amp;C files into a gym bag, strapped it onto the Harley, and headed west out of town. Hal only wanted what was best for him, but he was a worrier. This meeting was, perhaps, the first real break he had gotten. He wasn't about to screw things up.

Next to medicine and motorcycles, the thing Matt knew most about in the world was coal. He had learned about it at the knee of his father, and later on the Internet and in the library. He knew that the Belinda Coal and Coke Company, and indeed the town itself, owed its existence to a huge deposit of semibituminous coal, first discovered in 1901 deep within the tall hills west of the town. Semibituminous coal, also called smokeless coal, was found at only three sites in the state. Smokeless coal was relatively free of impurities, making it the choice for generating steam and also for producing coke. The founders of BC amp;C had the foresight to construct coking and chemical plants near the mine, as well as a rail spur to speed their products wherever they needed to go.

The entire BC amp;C operation was located on a vast, dusty plateau, and was completely surrounded by several miles of nine-foot-tall chain-link fence, much of it topped with barbed wire. Matt had been to the mine just once since his father's death, on a guided tour he and Ginny took shortly after he started work in the ER.

Today, he was an anticipated guest. The uniformed guard at the visitors' gate greeted him by name before he could introduce himself and directed him to the sparkling two-story cedar and glass headquarters. Elaine LeBlanc's assistant, Carmella Cassetta, was waiting for him in the carpeted reception area. A former coal-face miner herself, she was attractive in a hard-featured way, and had married one of the execs in the company. Over the years, Matt and she had met on a few occasions and had gotten along reasonably well.

"Matt, it's so good to see you," she said warmly, extending her hand.

He tried unsuccessfully to read something into her being the one chosen to greet him. He gestured at the spectacular six-foot-square photos of BC amp;C scenes — historic and modern — that adorned the lobby walls.

"Thanks. This is quite the building."

"It makes a good first impression. We do a lot of business here — national and international. Well, we should hurry on over to the conference room. They're waiting for you. I think you'll be very excited with what they have to say."

You mean they're going to let me live?

"I'm looking forward to whatever it is."

As they neared the door to the conference room, an elderly black woman approached from the other direction pushing a linen-covered cart with coffee and Danish.

"They'll only be four, Agnes," Carmella said. "I won't be joining them."

Matt thought he detected a pout in her voice at the prospect. Agnes drew back a few steps as Carmella knocked once, motioned Matt and Agnes in, and left. Three men were waiting at the far end of a glossy mahogany table that had seating for twenty or so — Elaine LeBlanc, Robert Crook, and Armand Stevenson, the CEO of the entire company. Stevenson was five-seven if that, with thinning sandy hair and very quick, engaging blue eyes that remained fixed on Matt from the moment he stepped into the room. BC amp;C was one of the largest privately owned companies in the state, and Stevenson was something of a legend for the aggressive tactics he used to keep every component of the empire profitable.

After peering curiously at the gym bag, LeBlanc greeted Matt with a single pulse of a handshake, then released him as if trying to avoid a communicable disease. His tense expression had Matt wondering if whatever was about to transpire was not of his choosing. Crook avoided a handshake altogether, substituting instead a curt nod, a grunt that might have been Matt's name, and a momentary clash of his caterpillar brows. Armand Stevenson, on the other hand, was smiling, cordial, and very much in charge of the proceedings.

"Please sit down, Matthew, if I may call you that," he said after his offer of something stronger than coffee was declined.

"Matt'll do."

"And Armand for me. We appreciate your being able to come out at such short notice, Matt. I understand your father worked here?"

"He was a shift foreman."

"And he died in an accident?"

"An explosion, yes."

"Is that where your hard feelings toward the mine and our company stem from?"

Stevenson was firing straight from the hip. No wasted motion. Matt reminded himself that people like Stevenson didn't become gazillionaires by not knowing what they were doing.

"Perhaps that's true," he replied. "Some of the things I was told by my father's friends and co-workers led me to believe that the explosion and cave-in that killed him might have been preventable. Remember, I was only fifteen at the time."

"Plenty of what I went through at age fifteen still influences my life," Stevenson said, sipping at his Perrier. "How long has it been since you returned home to practice?"

Matt wanted to demand he get to the point, but remembered his uncle's caveat. Besides, Stevenson hardly seemed like the sort one could push around.

"About six years," he said, realizing that his inquisitor undoubtedly knew the answers to all the questions he was asking.

If the point of these preliminary questions was to put him at ease, they failed miserably. Stevenson opened his briefcase and set a thick file on the table.

"Matt, these correspondences are all from you to MSHA, the Department of Labor, the EPA, Senator Alexander, Senator Brooks, or Representative Delahanty."

He slid the file across, but Matt held his palm out to indicate that wasn't necessary.

"I have copies myself," he said, patting the gym bag.

"At one time or another without, to the best of my information, ever setting foot in the mine, you have accused us of substandard ventilation, antiquated and dangerous equipment, working hours in excess of the collective bargaining agreement with the UMW, toxic emissions from our processing plant, toxic waste dumping, illegal waste disposal, and just about every other violation imaginable short of not enough toilet paper in our rest rooms."

"Actually, I think one of the miners I speak to from time to time did complain about that as well."

Stevenson's laugh seemed genuine.

"And now you're posting notices and offering rewards," he went on. "Well, as I know better than anyone, your charges and allegations are groundless. And as you know better than anyone, all this paper you've generated hasn't amounted to more than a spit in the ocean."

"Then why am I here?"

"Elaine?"

The head of mine safety and health's attempt at a smile lacked any semblance of warmth. He cleared his throat and took a gulp of water. Whatever he was about to share wasn't coming easily.

"Well, Matt," he managed finally, "as Armand said, you haven't been the least bit successful in goading MSHA or the EPA or any of the others you've contacted to run an inspection on BC and C other than the routine ones they always do. But that doesn't mean you haven't been a pebble in our shoe. We have wasted a fair amount of time responding to your allegations, and in fact we have invited the MSHA people here two or three times just to prove we're on the up-and-up. But all that has taken up valuable time. So Doc Crook here made a suggestion."

Matt glanced sideways at Crook and saw nothing other than disdain and maybe even a hint of despair. Whatever was about to be laid out was Armand Stevenson's doing, not Crook's or LeBlanc's.

"That's right," Crook muttered.

"So," LeBlanc went on, "we're pleased to be able to offer you a position on our health advisory board. That way you can be right up close to the action here, and you can see for yourself how we do things. You'll be required to attend meetings every four months, and of course, to submit your concerns for the whole committee to evaluate rather than the vigilante way you've been doing it so far. The stipend for being on the committee is a nice round fifty thousand a year."

Fifty thousand! Matt wasn't sure whether he had merely thought the words or shouted them out. Given the limitations imposed by managed care, and the socioeconomic status of his patients, he still wasn't earning much over that annually.

"Of course," Stevenson added proudly, "the money will be paid to you in such a way — absolutely legal, I assure you — that you will incur little or no tax burden."

Matt was speechless. He knew a bribe when he heard one. But this was bribe with a capital "B." Money had never been a big deal for him. If it had, he would have been much more adept at generating it. As things stood, he was managing okay. But fifty thousand a year extra would enable him to start some sort of retirement fund, as well as enable him to give more to those causes he supported.

"I… thanks, but no thanks," he suddenly heard himself saying. "I appreciate your offer, really I do. But I find my hands are more useful when they're not tied down."

"You're a fool, Rutledge," Crook blurted out. "I tried to tell them that, but they wouldn't listen. A troublemaker and a fool."

Stevenson glowered at the cardiologist, then made one last attempt to save face.

"Perhaps you'd like to think over our offer for a few days," he said, his smile now tight-lipped, his eyes darkened.

Matt shook his head.

"What I want is free rein to bring in a group of my choosing to inspect conditions in the plant and the mine, including a review of your records of how and where every drop of toxic waste is disposed of. What I want is for you to step back and stop paying off whoever you do at MSHA and EPA."

"You're out of your mind!" LeBlanc shot out.

"No, you're out of your mind!" Matt could feel the blood rushing into his face. He usually had a fairly long fuse, but at the end of it was an explosive temper. "You're out of your mind to think that any decent doctor" — he punctuated the words with a glare at Crook — "would turn his back on cases like Darryl Teague and Teddy Rideout."

"Tell me, Dr. Rutledge," Stevenson asked, now clearly peeved, "is it your wife's death that makes you so vindictive? Do you blame us for her as well?"

Matt went off like a Roman candle.

"As a matter of fact, I do!" he shouted, "You're damn right I do! Lung cancer. You should try living with someone who's dying of it sometime! Yes, I blame you. I blame you for every single thing that's bad and sick around here! You're a sleazebag, LeBlanc! And you, Crook. Christ, how can you call yourself a doctor when you turn your back on death and pain? Screw you! Screw you all and your goddamn bribe!"

Armand Stevenson must have pressed a button beneath the table, because in seconds, two mammoth security men in BC amp;C-monogrammed sport coats and ties were in the room. Stevenson's order was a nod of the head. One of the behemoths took hold of Matt's arm.

"Let go of me, jerk!" Matt screamed. He wrenched away and grabbed his gym bag. "Touch me again and you'd better have a spare set of nuts!"

In spite of himself, the guard checked out Matt's heavy motorcycle boots. Armand Stevenson saved him from having to find a way around them.

"Follow him outside and make sure he's off the property," he said. "You've made your choice, Doctor. Now you'll have to deal with the consequences. You're threatening to take jobs away from folks. That sort of thing isn't looked on very kindly around here. Not kindly at all. Now, get out!"