Praise for Whitewash
“Engaging supporting characters…deft touches of humor…a refreshing read.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Whitewash is a rock-solid, imaginative thriller.”
—January Magazine
“Smartly paced, intelligent thriller.”
—Mystery Scene
“Superbly paced…an impressively imaginative departure from the conventional thriller, mixes up greed, waste treatment, and Florida’s pressured environment (take that, Carl Hiaasen), with political powerhouses and more than one surprising love story.”
—Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen bookstore
“[N]ot a book for readers with weak stomachs…[for] anyone who likes reading thrillers about corporate greed, shadow governments and international conspiracies.”
—Bookreporter
“Plenty of Kava’s staples—intrigue, plot twists at the speed of real life, interesting characters and excitement.”
—North Platte Bulletin
“Kava’s latest is relentlessly paced…. Timely, tense and thought-provoking, this one is guaranteed to keep readers up late.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
Also by ALEX KAVA
EXPOSED
A NECESSARY EVIL
ONE FALSE MOVE
AT THE STROKE OF MADNESS
THE SOUL CATCHER
SPLIT SECOND
A PERFECT EVIL
ALEX KAVA
WHITEWASH
This book is dedicated to two amazing women:
Patricia Kava, my mom, whose silent support
comes with lots of love by way of lighted candles,
delicious popcorn balls, a nod and a smile.
and
Emilie Groh Carlin (1922–2005)
My first book without you only makes me miss
our discussions, your stories and your
words of encouragement more than ever.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Most of my readers know by now that I do extensive research for each of my novels. I think it’s important to get enough of the details correct to make the story credible. If readers can’t tell where the facts stop and the fiction starts, then I’ve done my job. But sometimes it goes a bit deeper. Sometimes it’s not just about research. It’s about real life. Both my stand-alones, One False Move and now Whitewash, came out of very personal experiences.
In 2004 I bought a writing retreat outside Pensacola, Florida. Six months later Hurricane Ivan roared ashore. Nine months after that, Hurricane Dennis. I grew up in Nebraska, so I thought I was prepared, having seen tornado damage. Nothing prepared me for what I experienced.
Everyone sees the immediate devastation. Few see the months and months of the aftermath. Living amongst the ruins is perhaps the best way to describe it. We pile up the debris along the roads and the sides of our properties, waiting for their removal. For months we’re surrounded by one-to two-story mountains everywhere we go. Only, the mountains aren’t composed of just uprooted trees and boat piers, but bits of everyone’s lives.
In the first weeks, each time I drove through those tunnels of debris I noticed something equally heartbreaking, jutting out from the piles: a blue sofa, broken toys, shredded clothing speared onto a section of chain-link fence. I wondered what would become of all that debris. Where would it go?
Less than a year later the piles were gone. Most, not all, of the blue-tarped roofs were fixed. Pine trees started to grow up around those that had been snapped in half. Yet once in a while the rains dislodged an eerie reminder. On a morning walk I saw a plastic, hollow-eyed baby-doll head floating in a rain-filled ditch. I wondered, again, where all the piles of debris had gone. That’s about the same time that I saw an article in Discover magazine titled “Anything into Oil.”
The article described an incredible process called thermal conversion. TCP could take just about any carbon-based objects, including turkey guts, junked car parts, raw sewage, even old appliances, and turn them into oil. Real oil, “better than crude,” that could be refined or used immediately. The article talked about a company that already had a plant in Carthage, Missouri, a plant that was already taking slaughterhouse waste from a nearby Butterball turkey packager and turning that waste into oil.
This was amazing to me. Gas prices were on the rise. After two devastating years of hurricane after hurricane, everything seemed to be on the rise for those of us along the Gulf Coast. I couldn’t believe that this process, this company, this plant wasn’t making major headlines. Further research discovered just a few of the obstacles, including government regulations, the absence of funding, the struggle to be “officially” recognized as “renewable diesel” and even the costs of competition. Yes, competition, because turkey guts were a commodity sold for fertilizer and livestock feed. This idea as pure and simple as taking slaughterhouse waste and turning it into oil ended up being much more complicated and political than the science itself.
So I started doing what I usually do when stuff like this fascinates me. I started asking questions, running scenarios around in my mind, taking those complications and conflicts and turning them into plot twists…or what you might call turning them into my own oil. The result is Whitewash.
Though TCP (thermal conversion process) is a reality and many of the details in my novel are facts, I must note that EchoEnergy, its CEO, facility and employees are all figments of my imagination.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
1
Thursday, June 8
EchoEnergy Industrial Park
Tallahassee, Florida
Dr. Dwight Lansik refused to look down. He hated the smell wafting up from the steel grates beneath his feet, reminding him of an odd concoction—fried liver, raw sewage and spoiled meat. He knew that no matter how many times he’d shower or how hard he would scrub—leaving his skin red and bruised—he’d still be able to smell it. That’s why he usually avoided the catwalks overlooking the tops of the silver-gray tanks and the maze of pipes that connected them. He especially avoided walking over this particular holding tank, its massive lid left open like a huge, smiling mouth while the last trucks of the day emptied into it. But this was exactly where Ernie Walker had asked to meet.
That was Ernie, always wanting to emphasize whatever his moronic point might be by going to the extreme. Just last week the man had insisted Dwight meet him directly under the flash-off water pipe so Dwight could feel the excessive heat for himself. “Ernie, you could have just told me the damn thing’s too hot,” he scolded the plant manager, who had simply shrugged and said, “Better you feel it for yourself.”
As much as he hated to admit it, Ernie was right. Had he not dragged Dwight to the Depress Zone he would have never discovered the real problem, a much more serious problem than an overheated flash-off water pipe. And how would he? His job kept him down in the lab, exactly where he was supposed to be, where he preferred to be, analyzing and calculating cooking times and coking temperatures. He dealt in recipes and formulas.
His wife, Adele, used to tease him and the memory brought a sting. She’d been gone almost a year and he still missed her terribly. Yes, she used to tease him—or was it goading—that he could break down any carbon-based object, including himself, just by looking at it. To which he confessed he already had. At a lanky hundred and fifty pounds he knew he amounted to exactly thirty-one pounds of oil, six pounds of gas, six pounds of minerals and a hundred and seven pounds of sterilized water. But that was the sort of thing he was supposed to know. He certainly couldn’t be expected to know whether or not every depressurization valve was fully functional or that all distillation columns remained unclogged. That was Ernie’s job.
However, it wasn’t Ernie’s job to mess with the computer program that regulated and controlled the process—the directions and temperatures, which stage, how long and how fast the feedstock moved through the pipes, what was depressed and separated and released. No, that wasn’t Ernie’s job. It was supposed to be Dwight’s and only his. As the creator of the software program he was the only one with the authority and the access to change it and make adjustments. But those greedy bastards found a way to override it, to override him. And now Dwight hoped Ernie hadn’t discovered yet another telltale sign before Dwight had a chance to do something about it.
Suddenly Dwight grabbed the railing to steady himself. Had the steel grate beneath him started to vibrate?
He twisted around to look toward the ladder at the end of the catwalk. Would he even be able to hear Ernie climb up the wobbly metal slats? The safety earplugs muffled all the mechanical churning, the hissing and clanking of the pipes and coils that zigzagged from tank to tank, the hiss of hydraulics and the whine of rotors and pulleys, even that sloshing of the liquid below. Despite the momentary sway, there was no one where the railing ended.
He waited, expecting to see Ernie’s hands reach up over the top of the ladder that poked up toward the sky. Another tanker truck rumbled below, grinding gears and sending up a cloud of diesel fumes. And the catwalk started to vibrate again. There were no hands on the railing, no sign of anyone coming up. Perhaps it had only been the truck’s vibration. That or Dwight’s imagination.
He adjusted his safety goggles and checked his watch. End of the day. Where the hell was Ernie? Dwight had hoped to leave a bit early, but now he’d be stuck in traffic. The men at the airport Marriott would end up waiting for him. Did he care? Why should he? They couldn’t start without him. They had nothing without him. After several brief phone calls he knew they wanted any information he had. Hell, they were lucky he had decided to do the right thing.
It was his grandmother who had insisted he be named after the great general Dwight D. Eisenhower, but never once in his life had Dwight Lansik acted like a general. Instead, ever the meek, obedient soldier or servant churning out the brilliant, heroic work and letting everyone else take all the credit. It was about time he took charge. And so what if he was a little late getting to the hotel? It wouldn’t matter. These guys were chomping at the bit for the information he had, anxious vultures, ready to rip and shred and destroy everything he had worked so hard to create. They’d wait.
He forced himself to look down. The soupy glop they called feedstock sputtered and swirled beneath him in the 2,500-gallon tank, waiting to get sucked down and into the massive, sharp blades that would chop and dice and mince it all into pea-sized sludge. Putrid gases erupted from the mixture quite naturally without any electronic interference or prodding. No, this stink was not man-made, but simply the natural and inevitable results of dumping together rotting slaughterhouse waste: slimy intestines, rust-colored blood and bright-orange spongy lungs floating and bobbing alongside rotting chicken heads with the eyes still intact and staring. Surely chickens had eyelids?
Christ! That smell. His eyes burned despite the goggles. Stop looking down, he told himself, willing his gag reflex to hold out.
He glanced at his watch again, giving it a twist on his bony wrist. The Rolex was worth more than his car, a frivolous gift from the CEO when they inaugurated this plant. He wore it to remind his subordinates how vital he was to the company, when in fact, he thought it a gaudy waste of money.
Where the hell was Ernie Walker? How dare he make him wait up here in the scorching sunlight and the disgusting fumes.
Dwight leaned against the railing, hoping the sway of the catwalk would stop. He was getting nauseated. His undershirt stuck to his back like a second skin. He pushed at the carefully rolled sleeves of his crisp oxford, unbuttoning the collar and loosening his tie all in two quick motions. Nothing helped. The muffled noises blended together in a roar that began pounding inside his head. He yanked off the yellow hard hat and swiped at his forehead. He felt off balance, a bit dizzy, so he didn’t even notice the man come up behind him.
The first blow slammed him into the railing, knocking the air out of his lungs. He doubled over, his stomach wrapped around the metal. Before he got a chance to catch his breath he felt his legs being lifted out from under him.
“My God!” he yelled as he grabbed the railing.
His fingers clutched tight, hanging on even as he felt his body swing over. His feet kicked and slipped against the inside concrete. There was nothing: no ledge, no cracks. His legs thrashed and his rubber soles fought to make contact. His arms ached and his fingers gripped the metal already slick with his own sweat.
He tried to look up, tried to plead but his voice sounded small and far away, it, too, muffled by the earplugs, and he knew it was lost in the
vibration, the screech and clanking. Still he begged between gasps to the shadow above him, a hulking figure with the sun behind adding a halo effect. His goggles had fogged up. His hard hat had plunged into the soup. And the earplugs continued to make his screams sound like they were only in his head.
When the pipe came smashing down on Dwight’s fingers he was sure the bones had snapped. Despite the pain, he gripped and clawed at the metal, but his fingers were quickly becoming useless. He felt his body giving out from under him just as the pipe cracked over his head.