Black Oil, Red Blood

Chapter 12



Nash decided he would escort both me and the files back to my house. He also decided he would pull an all-nighter right along with me and Miles as we went through the files.

“That’s unnecessary,” I said.

“I insist,” Nash insisted.

“I don’t want you in my house.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

I groaned. “Fine.”

Can’t win ‘em all, and even if I could, I figured it might eventually work in my favor to go ahead and let Nash feel like he’d muscled his way in on something.

Miles was already waiting for us by the time we got back to my place. I opened the door, and Nash’s guys hauled everything in and left.

Lucy was happy to see Miles. He scooped her up and she licked his face like it was made of roast chicken. But she shied away from Nash. I think she sensed his tension. She could always tell when someone was in a bad mood.

Nash whistled softly when he saw my furniture. It was all designer, all oversized, and all very expensive. It clearly didn’t belong in my shabby little rent house.

The house felt even smaller with three people and thirty boxes of documents crammed into the living room. Miles and Nash shoved the sofa and arm chairs up against the wall to make a little bit of room and scooted the dining room table into the middle of the space. It was long and heavy and barely fit in the house. I’d had to take it apart to get it through the door when I moved in.

I also hauled a couple of card tables out of the closet and set them up adjacent to the larger table. Then we supplemented them with my coffee table and a couple of glass end tables and settled down to work.

“I was thinking about the benzene statistics you were telling me about earlier,” Nash said. “What kind of exposures are we dealing with here in the city of Kettle?”

I choked back a smug smile. I had gotten to him earlier—at least a little. Good. “Take this one PetroPlex refinery.” I nodded out the window to the specter of its glowing lights. “Every single day, this one refinery turns almost twelve-and-a-half million gallons of crude oil into six and-a-half million gallons of gasoline, two million gallons of diesel, and two million gallons of jet fuel. At the end of the day, this process will have also produced over 1500 pounds of toxic chemicals, many of which evaporate into the air or leak into groundwater or otherwise get dumped. And let me remind you, that’s all just in one day.”

“Okay,” Nash said. “But people live right here. You live right here. Why would the government allow that to happen if they themselves have said it’s not safe?”

“I can answer that,” Miles said. “Congress didn’t pass The Clean Air Act until 1970. In order to get it to pass at all, they had to grandfather in exceptions for all the refineries that were already in existence—most of which already had residential neighborhoods built in their backyards.”

“And so,” I said, “once these tougher restrictions were passed, oil companies stopped building refineries. Guess how many new refineries have been built in America since 1976?” I asked.

Nash looked at me through wary eyes. “How many?”

“None.” I folded my arms across my chest. “Big oil just hunkered down and focused on getting all they could out of their older, dirtier facilities, adding on to them as needed.”

“So what you’re telling me,” Nash said, “Is that we have a whole lot of pollution regulations on the books that don’t even apply?”

“Some of them apply, but large portions don’t,” I said. “Plus, the Federal Clean Air act leaves a lot of discretion for states to pass their own clean air laws, and Texas doesn’t accept the federal act as the final authority. Don’t get me wrong. There are newer laws and other provisions that apply, but they haven’t been enforced very well. Or if they are enforced, Big Oil could care less. For example, Texas oil and gas drilling penalties for leaks of toxins into the ground water tend to be less than $3500.”

“And let me tell you how Big Oil could care less about that,” Miles said. “PetroPlex alone is so rich it makes one and a half million dollars of pure profit every single hour. You think they care about a bunch of piddly little $3500 fines? I don’t think so! It would cost them more to prevent the leaks than it would to just pay the fines!”

Nash was starting to get agitated, by which I mean “agitated for Nash.” His expression remained the same, but he got up and strolled over to the window, gazing into the night at PetroPlex’s seemingly innocuous twinkling lights. “That is outrageous,” he said evenly.

“The government knows oil and oil refineries are toxic to human life. In fact, the EPA recently reported that if you live within a thirty-mile radius of an oil refinery, you are being exposed to benzene concentrations in excess of The Clean Air Act’s acceptable risk threshold.“

“So why don’t we just move the neighborhoods away from the oil refineries?” Nash asked. “It can’t be that hard.”

“Wrong,” I said. “A full one-third of the United States population lives within a thirty-mile radius of at least one oil refinery.”

Nash turned around. “What? A third? Are you sure?”

“Yep,” I said. “And of course we can’t just move the oil refineries themselves, because they are private businesses. And they’ll never choose to move themselves since any new refinery facilities would be subject to more rigorous health and safety laws. That would cost a lot of money. They are way too invested in the status quo. Since they’re sheltered by The Clean Air Act’s grandfather clause, they’re getting away with it.”

“Big oil could clean up their act by improving their technology,” Miles said, “but again, they just don’t have a lot of incentive to actually do it. Sure, they get sued and fined all the time, but they are so rich that the settlements and fines don’t really make a dent. They barely feel the pain at all. Instead, it’s easier and cheaper for them to spend money trying to convince the public that oil is perfectly natural and safe.”

“Take the BP Gulf Oil Disaster,” I said. “The worst environmental disaster in this country’s history. The media coverage revealed some of the methods PetroPlex and Big Oil use try to pull a fast one on the American people. When BP hired thousands of fishermen to help clean up the spill, they issued plastic clothing to prevent the oil from getting on workers’ skin. But on CNN, Dr. Sanjay Gupta speculated they didn’t issue respiratory equipment because they didn’t want to create the impression that the spill was somehow unsafe. Remember, it only takes a few gallons of crude to offgass enough benzene to poison an entire football stadium. Imagine what the health risks of floating around in millions of gallons of the stuff without respiratory equipment would be.”

Nash was starting to look a little nauseated.

“Remember how everyone was getting sick?” I asked. “BP’s president tried to blame it on food poisoning. But according to Dr. Gupta, who was there on the scene at the time, most of their symptoms were respiratory. Nice try, huh?”

“And,” Miles added, “remember all the reports about how BP required all of the local fisherman they hired to clean the spill up to sign non-disclosure paperwork? Basically BP put a gag order on them that forced them to keep quiet about what they saw and experienced while cleaning up the oil. And of course they had to sign them or not work. They couldn’t fish—the waters were closed. So it was either starve or work under BP’s gag order.”

“And then at the same time,” Miles said, “we had Texas government leaders trying to convince us that because oil is a natural substance, it’s not toxic. I’ll give you three guesses where that little tidbit of conventional wisdom originated.”

“And,” Miles said, “Texas Congressman Joe Barton even apologized to BP just because the Obama administration had the nerve to ask them to clean up their own mess. What does that tell you about oil and politics in the great state of Texas? Who do you think is really running the show here?”

Nash groaned.

I could tell I had his attention, so I pressed on. “You know,” I said, “Mercury is natural too, but we don’t bathe in it. There’s not a giant mercury industry fueling our country’s economy, so there’s not a big debate about whether or not it’s safe. We just know it’s not safe and we avoid it. We don’t touch it or eat it. We worry about eating fish that have been exposed to it. And yet, we touch, drink, and breathe toxic byproducts from oil all the time. We cook and store our food in pans and Tupperware made from petroleum products, for crying out loud. We eat fish that have been swimming around in the stuff.”

“All right, but how does benzene poison people, specifically?” Nash asked. “I mean, is it poisonous to inhale, or eat, or what?”

“It’s toxic whether it’s inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through the skin,” I said. “And by the way, it is easily absorbed through the skin. So anyone who was out on the beaches during or after the Gulf Oil Disaster dragging their bare hands through the oil and breathing the vapors was exposed.”

“Wait,” Miles said. “I don’t want to derail your benzene speech, but I think you left out an important point. Remember how BP’s president initially tried to pass off the Gulf spill as a small one? Well, in the grand scheme of things, at the point in time he made that statement, he actually had a pretty good argument to back it up.”

Nash spun around, pulling his attention away from the sight of the looming oil refinery and laser focusing on Miles. “After all this, now you’re trying to tell me it wasn’t actually that bad?”

“No, no,” Miles said. “It was bad. Don’t get me wrong. But you have to consider it in the context of how much polluting and toxic exposure goes on every single day that no one seems to care about. At the time that statement was made, everyone was estimating a potential spill of around 11 million gallons, which is the size of the EXXON Valdez disaster. That seems like a lot of oil, right?”

“It doesn’t seem like it,” Nash said. “It is. By anyone’s standards.”

“Well,” I said. “Hold on to your hat, because tankers, drivers and boaters spill more oil in inland waters every year than the Valdez spilled in the ocean. According to the National Academy of Science, leaking oil from US cars, trucks, and two-stroke engines dumps almost 19 million gallons of oil in our lakes and rivers every single year. In inland freshwater alone, we spilled 120 million gallons of oil between 1985 and 2003. People fish in that. Swim in it. Drink it. It’s no wonder cancer is on the rise.”

Nash’s gaze shifted to his glass of ice water, which he regarded suspiciously.

“It’s filtered,” I said.

Nash’s expression relaxed a little bit.

“But your shower water is not,” I said. “And we know there are plenty of groundwater contaminations in this area, which means you have no idea what you absorb through your skin every day.”

Nash groaned. “This is all fascinating,” he said sourly, “but what’s it got to do with all this?” He gestured expansively at the mountains of documents piled up against my wall.

“This is all the data we have that proves toxicity,” I said. “This is what Schaeffer was going to testify about—he was going to use all this data to try to prove that PetroPlex knowingly poisoned my client by failing to provide safety equipment and failing to limit toxic exposure. My client worked in the refinery’s benzene unit for 30 years, and there were leaks all the time, according to this data. Probably most of it is stuff that is public record, or results of private air monitoring tests. Schaeffer was finishing up his report the night he was killed, so I hope to high Heaven the report is in here somewhere, because I haven’t seen the final draft yet.

“But this sounds like all standard law suit stuff,” Nash said. “PetroPlex has seen these kinds of claims before. What do you think is in here that’s actually worth killing over?”

“I don’t know. Maybe before the night is out, we’ll find out.” I smiled. “So. Who wants coffee?”

Nash sighed. “I hate all-nighters. Make mine a double.”





***





Over coffee, we hatched a plan of attack for combing through the documents. Each of us would take a stack and work for an hour. We agreed to compare notes at the top of each hour.

At 3 a.m. we stopped for our fifth break.

“Anything yet?” I asked the two guys.

“I’ve got nothing,” Nash said.

“I’ve seen it all before,” Miles said, “which I know sounds melodramatic and jaded, but really, I’ve seen this all before.”

“Maybe the reason only ten boxes were missing is because the killers got the ten boxes they wanted,” Nash said, looking pointedly at me. “In which case, you really risked a lot to break into a crime scene for nothing.”

“I only hypothetically broke in, remember?” I said, shifting uncomfortably in my chair.

This was news to Miles. “Wait, what? You broke in? You lifted all this stuff? Is that how we wound up with it?”

“Hypothetically,” I emphasized.

“Look, Chloe,” Miles said. “If you wanted to spend the night with two gorgeous guys, you wouldn’t have to break the law to do it.”

“Hardy har har,” I said. “There’s got to be something here. There’s no way that whoever took the first ten boxes and killed Schaeffer would have had time to cherry pick before police arrived. If there’s really nothing here, it’s big time sorry luck.”

“No sign of the final draft of Schaeffer’s report?”

“No sign,” I said. “Nash?”

“I’m not sure I’d recognize it if I saw it.”

“Duh,” Miles said. “It would have Schaeffer’s name on it and be labeled ‘Final Report.’ Get with the program.”

Nash remained unperturbed. “I’m just saying, a lot of this stuff is highly technical. I don’t really understand it.”

“And that’s what PetroPlex is counting on,” I said. “Public records aren’t dangerous if they’re so hyper-technical that the average Joe can’t understand them. Which is why finding a good expert witness is critical. The witness is the translator. Frankly, I wouldn’t trust myself to translate this data on the record without screwing something up and losing the case in the process.”

Exhaustion was starting to catch up with me. I took another shot of coffee to ward it off and dove into the next box. The first file I pulled out contained not a stack of looseleaf papers, but a book. An appointment book. Schaeffer’s appointment book.

“Hey, look at this,” I said, opening it up to the current week. I saw a lot of time blocked out with my name on it. But I also saw several appointment blocks labeled “C.G.”

Miles swiped the book away from me. “C.G? Who the Rita Hayworth is C. G?” he said.

“Beats me. C.G. could be anyone.”

“How could he be meeting with some secret person right under our noses?”

“More importantly,” I asked, “if it had anything to do with the case, why would he keep it secret from us?”

“Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with the case. Maybe it’s a relative or something,” Nash said.

I shook my head. “He doesn’t live here full time. He bought that house because he wanted to study the refinery. He’s only in town for a few weeks at a time. And when he’s here, all he does is work. It’s not like he’s super active in the Kettle social circles. It’s got to be related to the case.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw five simultaneous bright flashes that started small, grew larger, and ended with the sound of breaking glass and an unnaturally loud fwoooooooot!

The Molotov cocktails smashed through my windows and into the dining room table and all the surrounding stacks of paper with no more warning than that.

Miles’ hair gel was one of the first things to ignite. “My hair! They got my haaaaaaaaaair!”

I glanced frantically around for my dog. “Lucy! Save Lucy!”

All I could see were flames. Flames in my house. Flames in Schaeffer’s files. Flames on my body. My shirt was burning.

Nash was on me in an instant, using the full length of his body to kill the fire. His muscles were hard. Chiseled. Not soft enough to fully press in and douse the flames for lack of oxygen supply.

He ripped my shirt completely off and gathered me into his arms urgently.

I thought of the original Gone with the Wind poster print that was hanging in my home office—Rhett clutching a half-clothed Scarlett in a protective but intimate embrace, framed in the backdrop of Atlanta burning.

My home. Burning.

I felt no pain. Only Nash’s strength as he carried me out of the flames.

Delirious, I wondered in that moment if he would kiss me.

Unthinking, absent of any kind of rational thought, I lifted my chin and let my eyelids go slack, waiting, even hoping for, the sensation of his mouth on mine. In my diminished field of vision, I saw his lips. Strong. Hard. Steeled by heady determination and. . . something else? They moved. Sound came out.

“Miles! The book! Get the appointment book!”

Not what I had been expecting to hear.

And then the relative coolness of the night air enveloped me as Nash kicked out my front door and carried me onto the lawn, half naked. I could feel the breeze between my breasts. I could smell a mixture of smoke, early morning dew, and heavy refinery tar.

I was vaguely aware of Old Lady Ellason from next door standing in her lawn, clutching her curlers and screaming.

I heard the screech of tires speeding away in the distance.

And then, nothing.