She was not surprised when his gaze dropped away, his eyes suddenly reluctant to meet hers.
“I don’t know why you’re asking me these questions,” he said. “Why don’t you believe the police report?”
“Because either they got it wrong, or they were bribed.”
“You know this, do you?”
She tapped the photo. “Look again, Dr. Banks.”
“I’d rather not.”
“These aren’t just human corpses burned here. The goats were slaughtered and burned as well. So were the chickens. What a waste—all that nutritious meat. Why kill goats and chickens, and then burn them?”
Victor gave a sarcastic laugh. “Because they might have had leprosy too? I don’t know!”
“That doesn’t explain what happened to the birds.”
Victor shook his head. “What?”
Rizzoli pointed to the clinic’s corrugated tin roof. “I bet you didn’t even notice this. But Dr. Isles did. These dark blots on top of the roof here. At first glance, they just look like fallen leaves. But isn’t it strange, that there are leaves here, when there don’t seem to be any trees nearby?”
He said nothing. He was sitting very still, his head bowed so that she could not read his face. His body language alone told her he was bracing for the inevitable.
“They’re not leaves, Dr. Banks. They’re dead birds. Some kind of crows, I believe. Three of them are lying there at the edge of the photo. How do you explain that?”
He gave a careless shrug. “They could have been shot, I suppose.”
“The police didn’t mention any evidence of gunfire. There were no bullet holes in the building, no recovered cartridge cases. No bullet fragments found in any of the victims. They did report that several of the corpses had fractured skulls, so they assumed the victims were all clubbed to death while they slept.”
“That’s what I would assume, too.”
“So how do we explain the birds? Surely those crows didn’t just sit on that roof, waiting for someone to climb up there and whack them over the head with a stick.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at. What do dead birds have to do with this?”
“They have everything to do with it. They weren’t clubbed, and they weren’t shot.”
Victor gave a snort. “Smoke inhalation?”
“By the time that village was torched, the birds were already dead. Everything was dead. Birds. Livestock. People. Nothing moving, nothing breathing. It was a sterilized zone. All life was wiped out.”
He had no response.
Rizzoli leaned forward, getting right into his face. “How much did Octagon Chemicals donate to your organization this year, Dr. Banks?”
Victor lifted the cup of water to his lips and took his time sipping it.
“How much?”
“It was in the . . . tens of millions.” He looked at Crowe. “I could use a refill of water, if you don’t mind.”
“Tens of millions?” said Rizzoli. “Why don’t you try eighty-five million dollars?”
“That could be right.”
“And the year before that, they gave you nothing. So what changed? Did Octagon suddenly develop a humanitarian conscience?”
“You should ask them.”
“I’m asking you.”
“I really would like some more water.”
Crowe sighed, picked up the empty cup, and walked out. Only Rizzoli and Victor were left in the room now.
She leaned even closer, a frontal assault on his comfort zone. “It’s all about that money, isn’t it?” she said. “Eighty-five million dollars is one hell of a big payoff. Octagon must have had a lot to lose. And you obviously have a lot to gain, by cooperating with them.”
“Cooperating in what?”
“Silence. Keeping their secret.”
She reached for another file folder and tossed it on the table in front of him.
“That was a pesticide factory they were operating. Just a mile and a half away from Bara village, Octagon was storing thousands of pounds of methyl isocyanate in their plant. They closed down that plant last year, did you know that? Right after the village of Bara was attacked, Octagon abandoned that factory. Just packed up all their personnel and bulldozed the plant. Fear of terrorist attack was their official explanation. But you don’t really believe that, do you?”
“I have nothing more to say.”
“It wasn’t a massacre that destroyed the village. It wasn’t a terrorist attack.” She paused. Said, quietly: “It was an industrial catastrophe.”
TWENTY
VICTOR SAT UNMOVING. Not looking at Rizzoli.
“Does the name ‘Bhopal’ mean anything to you?” she asked.
It was a moment before he responded. “Of course it does,” he said softly.
“Tell me what you know about it.”
“Bhopal, India. The Union Carbide accident in nineteen-eighty-four.”
“Do you know how many people died in that event?”
“It was . . . in the thousands, I believe.”
“Six thousand people,” she said. “The Union Carbide pesticide plant accidentally released a toxic cloud that rolled over the sleeping town of Bhopal. By the next morning, six thousand were dead. Hundreds of thousands were injured. With so many survivors, so many witnesses, the truth couldn’t be hidden. It couldn’t be suppressed.” She looked down at the photo. “The way it was in Bara.”
“I can only repeat myself. I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it.”
“But I’m sure you can guess what happened. We’re just waiting for Octagon to release a list of their employees at that plant. One of them is eventually going to talk. One of them is going to confirm it. It’s the night shift, and some overworked employee gets careless. Or he falls asleep at the switch, and poof! Up goes a cloud of poisonous gas, to be carried off by the wind.” She paused. “Do you know what acute exposure to methyl isocyanate does to the human body, Dr. Banks?”
Of course he knew. He had to know. But he didn’t answer her.
“It’s corrosive, and just touching it can burn your skin. So imagine what it does to the lining of your airways, your lungs, when you breathe it in. You begin to cough, and your throat hurts. You feel dizzy. And then you can’t catch your breath, because the gas is literally eating away your mucous membranes. Fluid leaks through, flooding into your lungs. It’s called pulmonary edema. You drown, Dr. Banks, in your own secretions. But I’m sure you know that, since you’re a doctor.”
His head dipped in a defeated nod.
“That Octagon factory knew it too. It wouldn’t take long for them to realize they’ve made a terrible mistake. They know that methyl isocyanate is denser than air. That it will collect in low areas. So they hurry out to check the leper village in the valley, just downwind of them. The village of Bara. And what they find is a dead zone. People, animals—nothing left alive. They’re staring at the corpses of almost a hundred people, and they know they’re responsible for those deaths. They know they’re in trouble. There’ll certainly be criminal charges, and possibly arrests. So what do you think they did next, Dr. Banks?”
“I don’t know.”
“They panicked, of course. Wouldn’t you? They wanted the problem to go away. They wanted it to vanish. But what to do with all that evidence? You can’t hide a hundred bodies. You can’t make a village disappear. Plus, there were two Americans among the dead—two nurses. Their deaths weren’t going to be ignored.”
She spread the photos across the table, so all were visible at once. Three views, three separate piles of corpses.
“They burned them,” she said. “They got to work covering up their mistakes. Maybe they even cracked a few skulls, to confuse the investigators. What happened in Bara didn’t start off as a crime, Dr. Banks. But that night, it turned into one.”
Victor pushed back his chair. “Am I under arrest, Detective? Because I’d like to leave now. I have a plane to catch.”
“You’ve known
about this for a year, haven’t you? But you’ve kept quiet, because Octagon paid you off. A disaster like this would have cost them hundreds of millions of dollars in fines. Add in lawsuits and stock losses, not to mention criminal charges. Buying you off was the far cheaper option.”
“You’re talking to the wrong person. I keep telling you, I wasn’t there.”
“But you knew about it.”
“I’m not the only one.”
“Who told you, Dr. Banks? How did you find out?” She leaned closer, gazing across the table at him. “Why don’t you just tell us the truth, and maybe you’ll still have time to catch that plane to San Francisco.”
He was silent for a moment, his gaze on the photos spread out before him. “She called me,” he finally said. “From Hyderabad.”
“Sister Ursula?”
He nodded. “It was two days after the . . . event. By then, I’d already gotten word from Indian authorities that there’d been a massacre in the village. That two of our nurses had been killed in what they believed was a terrorist attack.”
“Did Sister Ursula tell you otherwise?”
“Yes, but I didn’t know what to make of her call. She sounded scared and agitated. The factory doctor had given her some tranquilizers, and I think the pills were adding to her confusion.”
“What did she say to you, exactly?”
“That something was all wrong with the investigation. That people weren’t telling the truth. She’d spotted some empty gasoline containers in one of the Octagon trucks.”
“Did she tell the police?”
“You have to understand the situation she was in. When she got to Bara that morning, there were burned bodies everywhere—the bodies of people she knew. She was the only survivor, and she was surrounded by factory employees. Then the police arrived, and she took one of them aside and pointed out the gasoline cans. She assumed it would be investigated.”
“But nothing happened.”
He nodded. “That’s when she got frightened. That’s when she wondered if the police could be trusted. It wasn’t until Father Doolin drove her all the way to Hyderabad that she felt safe enough to call me.”
“And what did you do about it? After that call?”
“What could I do? I was half a world away.”
“Come on, Dr. Banks. I can’t believe you just sat there, in your office in San Francisco, and let it drop. You’re not the kind of man who’d hear a bombshell like that, and not do anything about it.”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“What you ended up doing.”
“What would that be?”
“All I have to do is check your phone records. It should be there, somewhere. The call you made to Cincinnati. To Octagon corporate headquarters.”
“Naturally I called them! I’d just been told their employees burned down a village, with two of my volunteers.”
“Who did you speak to at Octagon?”
“A man. Some senior vice president.”
“Do you remember this man’s name?”
“No.”
“It wasn’t Howard Redfield, was it?”
“I don’t remember.”
“What did you tell him?”
Victor glanced at the door. “What’s taking that water so long?”
“What did you tell him, Dr. Banks?”
Victor sighed. “I told him there were rumors about the Bara massacre. That employees from their factory may have been involved. He said he didn’t know anything about it, and promised to check into it.”
“What happened then?”
“About an hour later, I got a call back from Octagon’s CEO, wanting to know where I’d heard that rumor.”
“Is that when he offered your charity a multimillion dollar bribe?”
“It wasn’t put that way!”
“I can’t blame you for cutting the deal with Octagon, Dr. Banks,” said Rizzoli. “After all, the damage was already done. There’s no bringing back the dead, so you might as well use a tragedy for the greater good.” Her voice dropped, and turned almost intimate. “Is that how you saw it? Rather than hundreds of millions of dollars going into the pockets of lawyers, why not put the money directly to good use? It only makes sense.”
“You said it, Detective. I didn’t.”
“And how did they buy Sister Ursula’s silence?”
“You’d have to ask the Boston archdiocese that question. I’m sure a deal was made with them, as well.”
Rizzoli paused, suddenly thinking of Graystones Abbey. The new roof, the renovations. How could an impoverished sisterhood of nuns hold onto, and restore, such a valuable piece of real estate? She remembered what Mary Clement had said: that a generous donor had come to the rescue.
The door opened, and Crowe walked in with a fresh cup of water, which he placed on the table. Victor quickly took a nervous gulp. The man who had started off so calm, even insolent, now looked wrung out, his confidence destroyed.
Now was the time to squeeze out the last drops of truth.
Rizzoli leaned closer as she launched her final assault. “Why did you really come to Boston, Dr. Banks?”
“I told you. I wanted to see Maura—”
“Octagon asked you to come. Didn’t they?”
He took another sip of water.
“Didn’t they?”
“They were concerned.”
“About what?”
“They’re the target of an SEC investigation. It has nothing to do with what happened in India. But because of the size of the grant One Earth received, Octagon was concerned it might come to the attention of the SEC. That questions might be raised. They wanted to make sure that we were all reading from the same script, in case we were questioned.”
“They were asking you to lie for them?”
“No. Just to stay silent. That’s all. Just not to . . . bring up India.”
“And if you were asked to testify? If you were asked directly about it? Would you have told the truth, Dr. Banks? That you took money to help cover up a crime?”
“We’re not talking about a crime. We’re talking about an industrial accident.”
“Is that why you came to Boston? To convince Ursula to stay silent as well? To maintain a united front of lies.”
“Not lies. Silence. There’s a difference.”
“Then somehow, it all gets complicated. An Octagon senior vice president named Howard Redfield decides to turn whistle-blower, and talk to the Justice Department. Not only that, he produces a witness from India. A woman he’s brought back from India to testify.”
Victor’s head came up and he stared at her with genuine bewilderment. “What witness?”
“She was there, at Bara. One of the lepers who survived. Does that surprise you?”
“I don’t know about any witness.”
“She saw what happened in her village. She saw those men from the factory drag bodies into piles and light the fires. She saw them smash the skulls of her friends and family. What she saw, what she knew, could bring Octagon to its knees.”
“I don’t know anything about this. No one told me there was a survivor.”
“It was all about to come out. The accident, the cover-up. The payoffs. You might be willing to lie about it, but what about Sister Ursula? How do you induce a nun to lie under oath? That’s the trick, isn’t it? One honest nun could bring it all crashing down. She opens her mouth, and there goes eighty-five million dollars, right out of your hands. And the whole world sees Saint Victor fall off his pedestal.”
“I think I’m finished here.” He rose to his feet. “I have a plane to catch.”
“You had the opportunity. You had the motive.”
“Motive?” He gave a disbelieving laugh. “For murdering a nun? You might as well accuse the archdiocese, since I’m sure they got paid off quite nicely.”
“What did Octagon promise you? Even more money if you came to Boston and took care of the problem for them?”
“First
you accuse me of murder. Now you’re saying that Octagon hired me? Can you see any executive personally risking a murder charge, just to cover up an industrial accident?” Victor shook his head. “No American went to jail for Bhopal. And no American will go to jail for Bara, either. Now, am I free to leave or not?”
Rizzoli shot a questioning glance at Crowe. He responded with a dispirited nod, an answer that told her he had already heard back from the Crime Scene Unit. While she was questioning Victor, CSU had been searching the rental car. Obviously they had turned up nothing.
They did not have enough to hold him.
She said, “For now, you’re free to go, Dr. Banks. But we need to know exactly where you are.”
“I’m flying straight home to San Francisco. You have my address.” Victor reached for the door. Stopped, and turned back to face her. “Before I leave,” he said, “I want you to know one thing about me.”
“What’s that, Dr. Banks?”
“I’m a physician. Remember that, Detective. I save lives. I don’t take them.”
Maura saw him as he left the interrogation room. He walked with his gaze straight ahead, not even glancing her way as he drew near the desk where she was sitting.
She rose from the chair. “Victor?”
He stopped, but didn’t turn toward her; it was as though he could not stand to look at her.
“What happened?” she said.
“What do you think happened? I told them what I know. I told them the truth.”
“That’s all I was asking from you. That’s all I’ve ever asked.”
“Now I’ve got a plane to catch.”
Her cell phone rang. She looked down at it, wanting to fling it away.
“Better answer that,” he said, an angry bite to his voice. “Some corpse might need you.”
“The dead deserve our attention.”
“You know, that’s the difference between you and me, Maura. You care about the dead. I care about the living.”
She watched him walk away. Not once did he look back.
Her phone had stopped ringing.
She flipped it open and saw that the call had come from St. Francis Hospital. She’d been waiting to hear the results of Ursula’s second EEG, but she could not deal with that right now; she was still absorbing the impact of Victor’s last words.