Fiction

When Toxic Rivers Flow Part 1

A Sunny Alexander-Johnson and Henry James Series By P.G. & Sharon Barnett

My name is Sunny Alexander-Johnson, and I’m Henry James, and we’re writers for Dark Sides of the Truth Magazine.

Mondays at Dark Sides are tough enough with the threat of being the target of the editor-in-chief Rick McDonnell’s more infrequent but still probable, tirades. But this Monday, we’d barely had a chance to grab some coffee from the breakroom and fire up our laptops before the wheels fell off of the bus.

What was worse, this deviant, evil sort of irony happened to be delivered by Rick. Instead of already being in his office before everyone else arrived, we saw him step out of the elevator and head in our direction.

“Uh, I don’t think I like the looks of this Henry.”

“What?”

“You want to pull your head up from that laptop and turn around? Rick’s just getting here.”

“No shit?”

“No…”

“Johnson, James. I just came from a one-hour meeting with Charlie Alvarez and the district attorney. That Forbidden Love story we were going to feature this week? The DA says we have to pull it until the trial’s over.”

“Ah, hell no, Rick. They can’t do that.”

“They sure as hell can Henry, and they did. You ought to know how stuff like this works. We go to press with this article in Dark Sides, people read it, and before you know it, we’re sitting in the middle of a ton of shit because our piece caused a mistrial.”

“How long before we can go to print with it?”

“Like I said Sunny, we hold it until the trial’s over. A couple of weeks, maybe more, I don’t know.”

“That’s pretty crappy news on a Monday, Rick. Even for you.”

“I didn’t make this call, Sunny. The D.A. did. Look, I’m late for a meeting with Rice and De La Cruz. We’ll discuss this later.”

We stared at the back of our editor-in-chief who’d just yanked the rug out from under us as he nodded at Tim Rice and Roberto De La Cruz, who stood flanking Rick’s doorway waiting for him to enter. When the two men disappeared into Rick’s office, we swiveled in our chairs and stared at each other.

“See what I mean, princess? That’s the number one reason I don’t like doing shit with the freaking police.”

“Damn old man. We helped solve six cold cases. Take a chill pill.”

“And nobody’s going to know about it until we run that story.”

“Let’s just let it be and start poking around for another story Henry. It’s what we normally do anyway.”

“Yeah, guess so…”

“Johnson! James! My office!”

“Ah, Christ. Hasn’t the man messed up our day enough?”

“I have a feeling he’s just getting started, Henry. Let’s not keep the man waiting.”

When we walked into Rick’s office, Roberto De La Cruz, an ex prizefighter now turned journalist and Tim Rice, probably one of the best political and industrial investigative reporters on staff were sitting in the two chairs in front of Rick’s desk. We took opposite ends of the couch and waited.

We knew Tim pretty well and Roberto even better, but it was odd how well they worked together. Roberto stood almost a foot taller than Tim, and where Roberto, a retired professional boxer, continued to exercise and stay physically fit, we were confident with Tim’s above-average intelligence he could spell physical exercise, but we were pretty sure to this day he’d never done it.

Tim had one of those Revenge of the Nerds thing going on, replete with a permanent cowlick he incessantly tried to tame, a set of overlarge black-rimmed glasses and his Mr. Rogers sweaters he unabashedly wore every day.

But both had two admirable qualities which made them good at what they did. They could sniff out a story and they were both damned fine writers. All the more reason it seemed strange we were all sitting in Rick’s office together. One of us opened our mouth to ask, just as Rick started talking.

“Okay, which one of you two are going to tell them? Roberto? Tim? Let’s go gents, we’re wasting the morning here.”

“Tim, you take the lead on the story, then I’ll tell them about the body.”

“Oh shit, you two found a body?”

“Hang on Henry. Let us get there.”

“Roberto and I covered this at the last storyboard session, but you two were already on assignment with that Buchanan woman’s story.”

“Don’t remind us, Tim. We can’t print the story until the trial’s over.”

“Oh, sorry Henry. So do either of you know anything about Uttar Industries U.S.?”

“No, Henry?”

“Nope.”

“Uttar Industries U.S. is one of the largest textile processing companies in the USA. It’s an affiliate to its mother company in India and has been operating here in the states since the early seventies. Over the years, they’ve had their dust-ups with more than their share of environmentalists. In fact, back in the eighties, three of their plants were shut down until the EPA received assurances they’d put stringent processes for containment in place.”

“Containment? Containment of what?”

“Henry, with the production of textile products, comes tons of waste produced during the desizing, mercerizing and bleaching and dyeing of the textiles. Usually, it’s in some form of effluence.”

“You want to speak English Tim?”

“Water, Henry. The waste is usually in the form of liquid.”

“Okay, Roberto, so what about the body?”

“You too Sunny?”

“Hey, not our fault you led with a body when you started this story.”

“So, Tim and I got a lead from an inside source at the Uttar plant just south of Brownwood. According to this source, Uttar was dumping small amounts of waste into the Colorado River.”

“Why the hell would they do that?”

“Henry, the cost of containment, treatment, and proper disposal of the waste byproducts are huge. To maintain a competitive edge and capture market share, the costs of production have to be trimmed somehow. This wouldn’t be the first textile company that tried to do this.”

“So let me guess, Tim. You two were supposed to meet up with “inside dude” and get proof?”

“Exactly. And that’s where the body comes in.”

“We found our inside man floating face-up in Colorado River twenty miles south of the plant site we wanted to investigate. He’d been shot in the back of the head execution-style.”

“And you know this how Roberto?”

“Well, we were supposed to meet him at an overlook next to the river. His car was there, but he wasn’t. We thought maybe he had the urge.”

“The urge? What the hell are you talking about the urge?”

“Well, you know. Sorry Sunny, he had to, well, you know.”

“Roberto, I’m a grown assed woman married with six-year-old twins. He had to pee, right?”

“Uh, yeah. So anyway, Tim and I went down the bank and spread out looking for him.”

“And that’s when I found him. I have to say, it took both of us almost ten minutes to get him off the branch he was hooked on and up that bank.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Tim, you and Roberto moved the body? You screwed up an active crime scene and totally moved the body?”

Both men were silent for what probably seemed to them an eternity. Finally, Tim twisted around and stared at us.

“Henry, this is not our style, neither of us work the kind of stories you and Sunny do. We weren’t thinking straight.”

“You damn straight you weren’t.”

“Give it a rest James. That’s why I called you two in here. I want you and Sunny to give Roberto and Rice a hand on this one.”

“Gonna be a hell of a byline, Rick.”

“We’ll talk about that later. Besides, you two already have a story sitting in the queue remember? Now everybody, get the hell out of my office and bring me back a decent story this magazine can actually print without legal entanglement.”

After walking back to the bullpen we sat and stared at Roberto and Tim as they sat and stared at us.

“Well, princess? What’s it going to be?”

“Not like we have a choice, old man. We may as well get involved before they screw something else up.”

Read On — When Toxic Rivers Flow Part 2