Black Oil, Red Blood

Chapter 4



Nash drove me to the nearby town of Rosethorn, which was slightly larger than Kettle and had a better variety of restaurants. We needed to leave town for dinner, seeing as how the exhaustive list of places to eat in Kettle included Dairy Queen, McDonald’s, Grandma’s Fried Chicken, and a place called Caliente, where the only flavor of food is jalapeno. I love jalapenos, but I haven’t eaten at Caliente, mainly because I haven’t been able to afford it lately. I’ve heard they serve jalapeno-flavored goat, and you can even get jalapeno-flavored rattlesnake there if you want to. (Apparently, some people actually like to eat rattlesnake—a fact I find hard to comprehend.)

When we got to the restaurant, Nash pulled out my chair and unfolded my napkin. I was just on the verge of thinking some nice things about him when he sat down and pulled a pen and small notebook out of his pocket.

An interrogation. Not a dinner date. Wow, how naïve was I? This guy was a real pro. He had gone out of his way to put me off balance so that he could ask me questions. Not the other way around.

Of course he would want to question me. I had been working with Dr. Schaeffer the day he was killed. As stupid as I had felt earlier, I felt infinitely more moronic now.

“Really?” I eyed his notepad pointedly. “You could have just taken my appointment request and asked me what you wanted to know down at the station.”

“Frankly,” he said, “I really didn’t have time to see you today. I had just gotten back from the crime scene when your office called, and there were more important people to talk to.”

“Like who?”

“Like people who actually had a motive to kill Dr. Schaeffer.”

“Such as?”

“The details of the investigation are confidential.”

“But here I am. So what changed?”

“Certain other people were unavailable. And you did show up in very skimpy clothes.” If he were resisting the urge to leer or grin, he didn’t show it. “And I’m hungry. A man has got to eat, and there’s nothing wrong with multi-tasking.”

I folded my arms across my chest defensively. “Are you always all work and no play?”

“Would you accept an invitation to find out?”

I rolled my eyes. “Stop it. We both know this is not a date. I want information, you want information, so let’s have at it. Ladies first.”

“By all means.”

“What happened to Dr. Schaffer?” I knew he’d been murdered. I just didn’t know how.

“The details have not been released to the public yet.”

“I’m not the public.”

“That’s right. You’re worse. You’re the deceased’s hiring attorney. My turn.”

This guy was really a piece of work. “You don’t get to insult me and then ask me questions.”

Our waiter arrived, asking us what we’d like to drink.

“Two margaritas,” Nash said, without hesitation.

“And you don’t get to order for me either,” I said through gritted teeth.

The waiter, sensing my agitation, hesitated for a moment before turning to me and asking me what I’d like to drink.

“Margarita,” I said. “The big one in a glass that’s the size of a human head. With Patron and a sangria swirl.”

The waiter nodded and walked back toward the bar.

Nash looked at me with one raised eyebrow.

“And you don’t get to look at me like that, either.” In the looks department, he was adorable, which was seriously killing my game.

“When you are finished telling me everything I may not do, I’d like to know why you’re so anxious to get inside Schaeffer’s house.”

I blinked, surprised. How could he possibly have known that? “Who says I want in his house?”

“Police Chief Scott. According to his buddy Judge Delmont, you haven’t got a case unless you can get your hands on his laptop.”

I frowned. “Not his laptop. His file boxes. Everything we had was in cardboard boxes at his house. I was supposed to pick up a lot of it the morning before the hearing. Then I got to his house and the whole place was a crime scene, and nobody would let me in.”

“Imagine that.”

“I need in,” I said.

“And I need to figure out who killed him, preferably in less than a week, and I can’t do that if you’re tromping all over my crime scene.”

I groaned. “Come on,” I said. “Don’t you get it? We can help each other.”

“I doubt that our interests line up precisely.” Nash fingered the frosty base of his margarita glass thoughtfully. “What would you say if I told you his laptop was missing?”

“I’d say there’s nothing on it worth stealing. He was low tech.”

“Everything was in the file boxes?”

I nodded.

“How many were there?”

A little shiver went up my spine. “Were?” I said. “As in past tense?”

“There weren’t any file boxes in the house.”

“There had to be,” I said. “Unless you’re telling me somebody committed a brutal murder and carted out forty boxes of documents without any of the neighbors noticing.”

“Forty?”

“Yeah,” I said.

Nash leaned back and scratched his neck. “I will admit that’s unlikely.”

“They’re there,” I said. “Maybe you just didn’t know where to look.” Schaeffer’s house was full of hidden nooks and crannies. And I knew where at least one of them was—a little nugget of information Nash didn’t seem to have. For the first time today, I felt like I was one step ahead of him.

“Maybe you can tell me what I missed,” Nash said.

“Only if you let me in.”

“Not gonna happen.”

I sat abruptly back, exasperated. I had to get in. Some way, somehow. “Why not? I read detective novels! I watch Castle! I know I’m not supposed to touch anything! I will step where you step, touch only what you touch, et cetera and so forth. I swear.”

“It would be a complete break of protocol.”

“Sometimes you have to bend the rules,” I said. “Sometimes it’s just necessary.”

Detective Nash narrowed his eyes. “It’s never necessary,” he said. “The rules are there for a reason.”

“Give me a break,” I said. “The people who have the money make the rules, which means the rules are not always in the interest of the greater good.” This was a fact about which I had to thoroughly convince myself before deciding to go through with blackmailing Judge Delmont. Now that that deed was done, I refused to believe otherwise. And I would take anyone else I could get down that little mental path with me. Especially local law enforcement.

“Go on,” Nash said.

“For example, did you know the oil refinery safety statutes which apply to refineries in the Houston area do not apply to the refinery in this town?”

“I did not know that.”

“Well they don’t, and here’s why. There are only four-thousand people living in the shadow of our PetroPlex refinery, whereas in Houston and the surrounding areas, there are millions. The law dictates that more safety measures are required in places of higher population. In other words, the law says that the life of somebody who lives in Houston is more valuable than your life or mine. And all because some bigshot oil lobbyist funded some local representative’s campaign in exchange for a vote to relax regulation in the area.”

“You can’t prove that.”

“Maybe not, but it wouldn’t shock me if Dr. Schaeffer could.”

“So what you’re saying is that it’s okay to bend the rules in this case because PetroPlex bent them to start with?”

I took a deep breath. “It wouldn’t be bending the rules. It would be returning to me what is mine. I’m saying I can help you in return. I’m saying we can help each other. Do you really feel like your life is worth less than that of someone who lives in Houston? Do you really believe your value is dictated by your geographic location? Help me show PetroPlex that your life matters, too.”

Nash laughed—so not the reaction I was hoping for. “I can see how you’d be a threat in front of a jury. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m saying that two wrongs don’t make a right, so I can’t break protocol and let you in. Meanwhile, if you have a problem with the current legislation, make sure you vote for someone who hasn’t taken campaign contributions from Big Oil in the next election. That’s how you right that wrong.”

“Right,” I said sarcastically. “Because it’s that easy. Listen up, because I’m about to tell you how the system really works.”

Nash raised his eyebrows.

“It’s like this. Crude oil and gasoline contain dangerous hydrocarbons like benzene. The government has known that benzene causes cancer since about 1900, and the EPA has had it listed as a known human carcinogen for over thirty years. It is a Class A carcinogen, which is the most toxic designation the EPA hands out. It means we know benzene causes cancer. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.”

“Okay,” Nash said. “It’s not like anybody thinks oil is actually healthy to be around. This is not news.”

I ignored him and continued. “Benzene is so toxic that if you filled up one measuring cup and let it evaporate in a football stadium, ambient air levels would still be 3.3 times higher than the OSHA safe-air standard, and 6.6 times the NIOSH standard. Think about that for a minute. A single cup of benzene is enough to expose everyone in a football stadium to air that is six times more toxic than the legal limit. But a cup of benzene is nothing. Benzene is everywhere. This stuff is a natural part of crude oil and gasoline, and it’s also found in all oil refinery waste products, which are rarely disposed of properly.”

Our waiter arrived with the fajitas. I inhaled the scent of char-grilled bliss and stuffed my face with the meaty goodness.

“In fact,” I said, not even caring that I was talking with my mouth full, “benzene makes up 1% of crude oil and accounts for up to 5% of gasoline vapors, which means you can also essentially poison everybody who is sitting in a football field with only six gallons of unsealed crude oil, or one and a half gallons of an uncorked bottle of gasoline. And yet, Corpus Christi, the U.S. City with more oil refineries than any other city except for Los Angeles, dumped seventy tons of benzene in 2007 alone. Seventy tons! That’s way more than a single cup.”

Nash’s eyes went wide as he processed those numbers. Clearly this was news to him. “Seventy tons. . .” Nash’s gaze went to the ceiling as he did some quick mental math. “That’s. . . what? Almost 18,000 gallons, assuming a gallon of benzene is roughly equivalent to a gallon of water?”

“Or if you break that down even further into cups,” I said, “enough to expose three-hundred-thousand football stadiums full of people to toxic air. Maybe my math is not perfect, but you get the idea. That’s also the equivalent of benzene exposure you’d see in a twenty-nine million gallon oil spill, which would be almost three times the size of the Exxon Valdez. Data from the Texas Department of State Health Services reveals a birth defects rate in Corpus Christi that is 84% higher than the rest of the country. So if you’re feeling romantic and want to settle down and have children, don’t do it in Corpus Christi.”

A strange look passed across Nash’s face. I wondered briefly what his romantic ambitions might be, but I didn’t dwell long on that thought. He was good looking, but what woman would ever be able to crack his shell?

“Meanwhile, our politicians allow this to happen. Both parties. They’re both so beholden to Big Oil for campaign contributions they don’t care who gets hurt. Everybody who lives in this town—and countless other towns just like this one—is exposed. A lot of people have died—including Gracie’s husband. I work my butt off every day trying to hold these polluters accountable, and I get virtually no help. I’m asking you for help. Help me get justice for Gracie. Let me in to Schaeffer’s house, and I’ll help you get justice for Schaeffer.”

Nash stared down at the table for a long moment, drumming his fingers on the polished wood surface. When he raised his eyes, he almost looked sad. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just can’t. But if you really want to help me get justice for Schaeffer, you can tell me where you think he stashed all those files.”

The fajitas I’d just inhaled felt like they had turned to rocks in my stomach. I snatched the napkin off my lap, wiped my hands on it, and tossed it on the table as I stood up. “I’m sorry,” I said, putting all the ice I could muster into my voice. “I just can’t. Dinner’s over. Take me home.”

Nash paid the bill, and we drove back to Kettle in silence.