But it’s possible they’ve done it at the expense of the poorest people, the ones who always suffer the most: the people who live closest to the reservoir, or farmers like Gallagher who depend on public water supply for their livelihoods.
Even if we do find something on Optimal, litigation will be a nightmare—like going after the most popular boy in school for stealing money from the church donation box. Optimal has been busy courting locals and state politicians up the chain. The contributions, if not the amounts, are listed proudly on the company’s Corporate Sponsorship page, beneath Barrens Little League and the Veterans Health Fund.
I dig up an old interview with a guy named Aaron Pulaski, the old Monroe County prosecuting attorney. The interview, published by a regional newspaper with a circulation of maybe a few thousand, if they’re lucky, focuses on Pulaski’s determination to clean up corrupt business interests in the county, and to make sure that Indiana tax dollars were flowing back to homegrown businesses.
He mentions Optimal by name—not for environmental violations, but for skirting labor union laws and hiring mostly foreign workers in its distribution centers throughout the Northeast.
Still, it’s something.
But if his office conducted an investigation, it has disappeared down an online sinkhole. That bothers me. It’s standard practice for the county prosecutor’s office to announce criminal investigations against major public figures—or against corporations. And announce it big.
An idea takes shape.
Weak spots.
After a little more digging, I learn that only six months ago, Aaron Pulaski hopped from the county prosecutor’s office to a state congressional seat, running on an anticorruption, antiestablishment platform that easily handed him the vote. And though Pulaski doesn’t appear on Optimal’s list of corporate donations, a quick visit to the financial disclosure section of the Indiana state legislature confirms my suspicion.
Only a few months after Pulaski was quoted in a newspaper saying he would investigate Optimal for labor violations, and a few short months before he landed his congressional seat, Associated Polymer, Optimal’s parent company, wrote a $100,000 check to his campaign.
A bribe.
Has to be.
But more important: a way in. We’ll need help, and luck, and a really friendly circuit court. But Optimal might turn over their finances to us even before we’ve filed if the alternative is turning them over in a criminal case.
It’s a long shot—but at least it’s a shot. Finally. Something.
My whole body is humming with something something something by the time Joe throws open the door with his shoulder. I’ve almost forgotten the nagging doubt that tailed me all morning, that something terrible happened at the bonfire.
“It’s a Saturday.” Joe smiles at me.
“Exactly. What are you doing here? Couldn’t resist the Barrens social scene?” I say. A joke—until I realize, from his just-got-laid grin, that he probably spent the day with Raj. Joe can’t do one-night stands. The sex always unrolls into brunch dates and trips to the farmers’ market, Saturday-night Netflix binges on the couch. Joe is one of those people who can be around other people all the time. He doesn’t need solitude to recharge, like I do.
He’s just easy and malleable and he can make a home everywhere he goes.
Some of us are out of place even when we are home.
“I figured I’d have a better shot at going door-to-door on a Saturday.” He shook his head. “But it seems we’ve already overstayed our welcome.”
“What do you mean?”
“Most people wouldn’t even open their damn doors. Not used to a queer black man showing up on a weekend, apparently! One asshole—Paul Jennings, I think? Or Peter?—came to the door with a shotgun. I kid you not. He apologized and said he was jumpy because his wife never came home last night. I wouldn’t, either, if I was married to him. And then a woman named Joanne Farley tried to convince me that—”
“Wait.” In the flow of his complaints washing over me, alarm bells have started going off. Misha. “What did you say?”
My pulse is so hot in my ears, I miss Joe’s reply.
“More important,” he’s saying, “the guy slammed the screen door in my face—my tie almost didn’t make it out alive. So much for small-town hospitality.” He stops when he takes in the expression on my face. “Are you okay?”
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Inside, fear sharpens.
Misha Jennings didn’t come home last night.
But I did.
Wearing her pink shoes.
Chapter Fifteen
Brent lives on the opposite side of town, past the Westlink Fertilizer & Feed store and the new community center that’s going up, past the newer area that’s been built up to accommodate for what Barrens counts as a population explosion. Ten years ago this was rural open countryside and now it’s all new construction, contemporaries slotted onto pancake-flat plots of land. The houses are bigger and upscale by Barrens standards: two-story, generous lawns, U-shape driveways.
Brent opens the door almost immediately. Even in slippers and jeans, he looks put together, well rested, and not hungover at all. He’s standing there as if the doorbell has summoned him out of some J.Crew catalog.
“Hey, Abby. You survived.” He grins at me, but not quickly enough—for a split second, I thought I saw him wince. I think again of the body in the water…a nightmare. Has to be. Surely, if anything bad had happened, if something awful went wrong at the party, there would be signs of it—chaos, tension, maybe even police.
Unless I’m the only one who knows.
“What happened last night?” I ask him. My voice sounds distant, as if it’s coming from someone else’s throat.
“What didn’t happen?” He leans the door open a little wider. “I think I’m off vodka for the rest of my life. Come on in.”
His ease, his flirtation, the way his eyes sparkle: all of it confuses me. His hallway is clean. Light-filled. Running shoes laced neatly by the door, a key dangling from a peg on the wall, beneath framed photographs of Brent at various stages of his life: Brent trout fishing with his dad, Brent suited up in his football uniform giving a thumbs-up to the camera, Brent getting head-knuckled by a curly-haired guy dressed in a flashy suit against a backdrop of cornfields.
“I don’t remember getting home,” I say. I meant to ask straight away about Misha, but fear closes my throat. Brent speaks before I can.
“Really? You weren’t even weaving.” He glances over his shoulder to smile—a slay-them-where-they-stand look I remember from high school, though then it was never directed at me. “Erickson drove us both. He’s on the wagon. I asked you if you wanted help getting inside but you seemed to know what you were doing.”
It’s a small relief. I hate the idea of Brent seeing all my clothes disemboweled from my suitcase, my mess in the kitchen, the unmade bed. That amount of vulnerability is just too much to bear.
“This way.” Brent gestures for me to follow him. I take in the muted colors of his house, the orderly lines and the faint medicinal smell of the air conditioner. It’s a grown-up house, nicer even than my condo in Chicago, which looks clean only by virtue of having hardly anything in it. “Misha’s in the back.”