Chapter Eighteen

On Tuesday morning, my ass has barely touched the chair before my phone rings: an upbeat clerk announces that Dev Agerwal, the county prosecutor, is on the line for me.

I unroll the same song and dance I gave when I spoke to his junior prosecutor Dani Briggs just a few days before, and he listens patiently and without interruption before politely telling me that Ms. Briggs had already filled him in. I like him for that; he’s the type who likes to get the same story from different angles, more journalist than lawyer.

“But I don’t know how much help I can be,” he says carefully, and though it’s exactly what I expected him to say, my chest deflates. “My predecessor never announced a formal investigation into Optimal’s business practices.”

“But he spoke about it in interviews,” I counter.

“Off the cuff, sure.” He sighs. “Look, Ms. Williams, I’ve built my career on trying to take big business and big money out of local politics. But unfortunately, it’s mostly a gray area. Optimal has done a neat job of blurring the line. And corruption has to be provable.”

“Only if you plan to prosecute,” I say. “We just need a reason to open up the books. A subpoena would be a slam dunk, but right now, you’re the one with the best shot at a case.”

Agerwal is quiet for a while. Then, abruptly: “Have you thought of speaking to Lilian McMann?”

I scribble the name on the back of a coffee receipt. “Never heard of her.”

“She might have some things to tell you about Optimal, and about their relationship to the…political climate. She used to work at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. She was at the Office of Water Quality.”

That, I have definitely heard of: IDEM works directly with both local monitors and the feds. Just my kind of girl.

Dev Agerwal hangs up after taking down my e-mail address, with a promise to send me Lilian McMann’s contact information. And a few minutes later he makes good.

Actually, he makes great. The e-mail, sent from a personal e-mail address—not the state government server—also includes several attachments and a short note.

Hope this is helpful.

When I open the attachments, I nearly fall out of my chair. He’s included a copy of the check stub written from Associated Polymer, Optimal’s parent company, to the Campaign for Pulaski, as well as several e-mail exchanges between an Optimal employee and a campaign aide. The e-mails are carefully crafted, but the subtext is clear.

The most damning of them, sent from someone in Gifts, expresses hope “that our support will spark a new era of cooperation and mutual support between the nominee and one of Indiana’s most successful homegrown businesses.”

On Wednesday, Joe, the snake charmer, works his magic on the local superior court. Unbelievably, our petition passes, and after we nudge Optimal’s legal counsel by dangling the threat of a much bigger problem down the line, we float an unofficial list of document requests. Now that we’ve gone ahead and filed, a deposition will be coming soon enough. After some hemming and hawing, Optimal agrees via their ancient-sounding lawyer to provide five years of financial records related to any third-party payments before the week is out.

Not totally ideal. I was hoping to go back further, ten years, to the complaint the Mitchells, Allens, Baums, and Dales dropped, and for bigger scope—investments, subsidiaries, the whole deal. But I know better than to say so to Joe. Still, he reads it on my face.

“You should be kissing my feet right now,” he says.

“I’ll let Raj do that for you,” I say, and he smirks in a way that doesn’t quite hide a genuine look of happiness. I feel a sharp stab of jealousy, and then another of disgust. When did other people’s happiness start feeling like assault?

But the answer comes quickly, and brings a bad taste to my mouth. Always. I didn’t ever stop feeling excluded. I just started to wear it and pretend it was my choice. Maybe that’s why I was drawn to the law of poisoned things, and hurt people, and scabby chemical earth. Maybe toxic is the only thing I really understand.

More good luck: that very afternoon, less than twenty-four hours after Agerwal directed me to her, Lilian McMann returns my call. I get out a hello and half of an introduction before she interrupts to suggest we meet in person.

Her office is about forty-five minutes out of town. Locals call this “uptown,” even though there’s nothing “up” about it. This is Anytown, strip malls and chain stores, and as a kid this is where we would come to hit the big grocery store when we wanted to buy in bulk. The storefronts have turned over but the structure is the same.

I get lost, circling several times around the address she provided before giving up and phoning again.

“There’s nothing here but a sports equipment store and a Chinese restaurant,” I say. “I must have written the address wrong…”

“You didn’t. We’re behind the restaurant. Just circle around to the back and you’ll see a sign.”

Inside, she’s done everything she can to smooth the cheap edges into something elegant and professional. She’s almost succeeded.

Lilian comes to greet me herself. The secretary, if there is one, has abandoned her post. There is no other word for Lilian than manicured. She is practically uniformed in an earth-tone pencil skirt, blazer, and kitten heels. Her makeup is flawless, albeit a little heavy on the eyeshadow, her nails are done, and her hair is sleek despite the heavy must of the office, which is chasing the heat by means of a whimpering window A/C unit.

Her office is small but very orderly. She takes a seat across from me and I look for something to compliment—a kid, a husband, a dog—but find nothing personal at all. It’s bare.

“Thank you for seeing me,” I say. “I know you must be busy.” This is so obviously untrue, to both of us, I feel immediately embarrassed.

“You’re looking at Optimal?” she says, with careful politeness. And with those simple words, I understand she has given me permission to short circuit at least a half hour of painstaking bullshit.

I could kiss her feet.

“I’m with the Center for Environmental Advocacy Work, based in Illinois,” I tell her, and explain what brought us into town in the first place. “Before Optimal moved to Indiana, the company had to settle a case that involved chemical leaching. It seems to us like they’ve bought their way out of trouble several times—and not just to skirt environmental regulations, either.” She doesn’t blink. “The county prosecutor’s office dropped an investigation they were planning—for labor violations—after Optimal cut a check. I don’t like the pattern.”

Still, she says nothing. She doesn’t act surprised, either. I can’t tell how much of this she already knew.

I clear my throat. “You were the compliance branch chief at IDEM, is that right?”

“Co-chief,” she corrects me immediately. Then she smiles. Even her smile is deliberate. “There were two of us. Colin Danner was my partner.”

I can tell she has more to say. But again she just sits there. I try a different tack. “What brings you to the private sector?” I ask. “That’s quite a shift—going from public policy to contracting for the private sector.”

“You mean quite a downgrade,” she says calmly—and though that is exactly what I meant, I feel another rush of embarrassment. “It’s all right,” she says. “I’m happy enough.” She uncrosses her legs and leans forward, practically pouring her words in my direction. “Look, I didn’t choose to leave. I was forced out. I’ll say it, and they would say it, too, though not for the same reasons. One day I was co-head, and the next day I couldn’t take a step that wasn’t crossing some kind of line or violating public policy or abusing my position. They buried me under an internal audit—I had to dig up duplicate receipts for all my expenses for the tenure of my time with IDEM. Random monitoring, they said. Bad luck.” She shakes her head and allows a look of rage to surface before she harnesses it. “I got shut out of all the big projects. Then, when I missed deadlines—deadlines I didn’t know existed—I was threatened with termination. I left instead.”

“What happened?” I say.

“Colin sold me out,” she says matter-of-factly. “I’m not sure exactly what he said, or what complaints he filed, but I’m sure he was the one who launched the audit.”

“Why would he do that?”

Now she looks at me as if the answer is so obvious she hates to have to point it out. “Optimal,” she says. “Of course.”

A buzz of excitement notches up my pulse.

“We butted heads almost from the start on how and when the environmental review should take place. I thought it was just his usual shit. He didn’t like that they appointed a co-head. He especially didn’t like that they appointed a woman.” She says this with no inflection at all, not even a catch of anger in her voice, as if it had nothing at all to do with her. A true pro.

“So he steamrolled you?”

“That’s what I thought at first—he always challenged my recommendations, questioned my reports. But this was different. It was as if he didn’t want to look at all. But that didn’t make sense. The compliance branch of OWQ had done an inspection, several years earlier, before I arrived. An inspection every two years is standard, unless issues of permitting or expansion make it necessary to test even more. So he wasn’t against it in principle. But when I checked the report, I knew something was wrong. Plastics manufacturing uses some of the most toxic chemicals in the world—and a lot of them. But there wasn’t a single fine. Not a single notice, zero safety concerns. No infractions at all. That never happens.” Her voice hangs there, climbing toward a peak. “There’s always something. I’ve never seen a report that clean, in my whole career. It isn’t possible.”

My pulse has turned into a joyful shout. Yes, yes, yes. “You think Colin was ignoring whatever he’d found in the inspections? Only one inspection was submitted into ICIS from your office,” I say. I’ve read through the same stack of briefs so many times I could probably tell her exact dates. “The other two inspections were subcontracted.”

She shakes her head. “Sure. But we depend on a third party to input reports into the system. A liaison who flows state information back to the federal level.”

“You’re saying even if the inspections were originally legit, they might have been changed afterward?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Both reports were actually entered by the same person. An agency coordinator named Michael Phillips. Lives in Indianapolis now.” Her eyes flare with a warning. “But he’s from just outside Barrens originally. I looked him up. He and Colin were together at the University of Indiana.”

Click. Another piece comes together. But it’s not enough—not nearly enough. Everything I learn makes the picture clearer, but also bigger—like climbing out of a ditch only to find myself at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. “I don’t understand why you didn’t report him.”

“The fact that they went to school at the same place at the same time doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” she says. “IU is a big school. And a popular one. Besides, their education wasn’t a secret. It obviously hadn’t raised flags before.”

“Sure. But in combination with the inspections, it looks suspicious. It is suspicious. If regulations are as strict as you say, you had more than enough, at least to launch an audit.”

She looks away again. She’s silent for so long I start to get uncomfortable. And then, finally, just as I’m about to thank her for her time, a shock rolls through her and she begins to laugh. Little bursts of sound, like hiccups—like she’s choking on the laughter.

“Sometimes I think I went crazy,” she says, and when she finally turns in my direction I see she’s crying and I’m so shocked I can’t say anything. “Do you have any children, Ms. Williams?”

I shake my head. She gets control of herself, finally, stands up and moves to the desk. She comes back with her phone and passes it to me: on the home screen, a beautiful girl, a teenager—as dark as her mother, with the same large eyes and bone structure.

“That’s Amy,” she says. “She’s a junior in high school this year.”

“She’s pretty,” I say, after a quick look, and hand back the phone. I feel oddly resentful of her for unraveling in front of me. That’s the agreement we make with strangers, that we’ll pretend, and they’ll pretend, so we can slide away from each other quickly and with no guilt.

“She’s doing great now.” She slides the phone into the pocket of her jacket. “During the audit, I was stressed. Working all the time. Trying to keep my head above water. She was on her own a lot. Her father only has her on the weekends.” She closes her eyes and opens them again.

“I see,” I say, even though I don’t.

“She was a freshman,” she goes on. “Sneaking around, drinking, nothing crazy, but she needed attention and I wasn’t there. She spent a lot of time online, talking to people she’d never met. I didn’t know any of it, of course. I only found out…after.”

“After what?”

“One of her online friends…” Her voice breaks and she takes a breath. “He asked her to send some pictures. She did. Like I said, she wanted attention.”

The image comes to me again of a girl, calling for help, floundering in the water, her voice nearly buried by the pitch of laughter.

“The next day, the pictures were all over school. Sent through a class e-mail blast. Even her teachers got them. Even the principal. I—” But she stops, overwhelmed.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and I really am. “That’s awful. Teenagers can be awful. Believe me.” I try and force everything I know, everything I’ve carried, into those two words. “But you can’t blame yourself. It wasn’t your fault.”

She looks up sharply. “I know that,” she says. “It was Colin’s fault.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Colin’s son is in school in Crossville. They play against Barrens all the time. They share friends on Facebook.”

“That’s hardly evidence of…” I trail off, unsure exactly of what she believes. That Colin pressured his son into getting pictures from Lilian’s daughter? All to keep her from pushing on his connection to Optimal? “What you’re talking about…I mean, that’s a felony. She was—what? Fifteen at the time?”

“Fourteen. I know it sounds insane. It is insane. I never would have made the connection. But then…” She stands up abruptly and moves to her desk. Slides open a drawer and fumbles for something out of sight.

“In the pictures, Amy was wearing socks. Nothing else. They were argyle. Pink and green. I always buy her at least one pair for Christmas.”

She straightens up. Comes around the desk. Suddenly I don’t want to know, and wish I hadn’t asked, hadn’t come, hadn’t ever heard of Lilian McMann.

Mutely, she extends her hand, letting the socks hang loose as if they’re a corpse that might still come alive. Argyle. Pink and green. Unworn, and still tagged.

“He gave them to me when I left,” she says. “He left them on my desk with a note. Great socks make a great outfit. Hope these keep you warm through cold nights ahead.”

Her words trigger a long-buried memory: Jake Erickson, one of Brent’s friends, elbowing into my lab space during senior year chemistry. He was always messing with me, switching my chemicals, knocking over my test tubes, turning off my Bunsen burner so I could never finish in time, but that day he was too busy bragging about feeling up a sophomore behind the Dumpsters between classes.

She’s totally fucked in the head, he said, and I could tell he knew I was listening. The crazy ones are always the easiest. They just open up for business the second you even look at them.

“He wanted me to know.” Now her voice leaps to a note of high anguish. “Not just that he’d seen the photos. But that he’d gotten them from her in the first place.”

We can do anything we want with them. Jake Erickson’s voice fills up my head. They let us. And why not? It’s not like they’re going to complain afterward.

I stand up, suddenly dizzy. “I’m sorry,” I say, without knowing exactly what I’m sorry for.

For her daughter, for her job, for that sophomore behind the Dumpsters, men who get to do anything they want, and the people who are taken advantage of.

Because isn’t that, ultimately, what the case comes down to?

There are the people of the world who squeeze and the ones who suffocate.