Lethal Exposure Read Online Free PDF Page A

me?”
    “ He’s your murder victim,” Trish said, crossing her arms over her chest in challenge. “At the same time as the explosion at the accelerator, Georg was working in one of the experimental target areas. Something triggered an emergency beam dump, and Dr. Dumenco received a massive radiation exposure, more than fifteen hundred rads. Definitely lethal.”
    “Ah, the scientist who received the radiation dose,” said Goldfarb, nodding. “But the Chicago office said he wasn’t anywhere near the blockhouse explosion. And . . . aren’t murder victims usually dead?”
    Dumenco listened, unaffected, but Trish’s flat statement of the facts made Craig uncomfortable. He knew Trish’s bedside manner had never been one of her strong points.
    “The explosion is irrelevant, Craig. This is about a lethal exposure. Georg has only a few days left to live—even less time than that before he degenerates so badly he won’t be any help at all.”
    “Any help at all?” Craig raised an eyebrow at Trish.
    “To find out who murdered him. Dumenco’s convinced his exposure was no accident. And I believe him. Someone did this to him intentionally, and he’s going to die for it.”
    “Whoa!” Goldfarb said.
    “Why didn’t you report this to the Chicago FBI Office?” Craig said. “They’ve already got a team here investigating the explosion.”
    Trish shook her head. Her short hair swung from side to side, catching the fluorescent lights. “I did. But their official position is the same as Fermilab’s—Dr. Dumenco’s exposure was an unfortunate accident, pending further investigation. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. They’re putting together a review board to study the matter, but it’ll take weeks to go over all the details, and Georg will be long dead by then. That’s why I need you to get on the case right away.”
    Craig looked at Dumenco as the scientist stood up, wearing only a hospital gown at his bedside. The man’s skin had a ruddy appearance, as if he had been severely sunburned. The eyes were bright and intelligent, but shadowed with worry.
    “Please do it, Craig—for me?” Trish said, reaching out to touch his arm. If anything, the gesture had the opposite effect, and Craig resented the fact that she played on his emotions.
    But then Goldfarb spoke up. “Come on, Craig. Think of it as a challenge. It’s not often we have the murder victim himself still around to help us solve our case.”

CHAPTER 4
    Wednesday, 10:11 A.M.
    Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
    Batavia, Illinois
    Fermilab lay only a dozen miles from the Fox River Medical Center in Aurora. Craig sat back in the passenger seat of the rental car as he watched the farmland and the suburbs roll by. Overhead, the October sky had become a leaden gray that threatened no storm, just sunlessness.
    Goldfarb insisted he knew the way just by “Chicago instinct.” He had the radio set on a local station, and aside from hearing the latest news about the Nobel Prize in medicine, Craig tuned out the early morning chatter, instead spending his time pondering Trish’s unusual request. He wanted to get more background on Dumenco’s accident and the substation explosion, wanted a second opinion on the case. . . .
    He wanted to talk to Paige.
    He still knew very little about the actual crime, or accident, or whatever had happened Sunday night. Apparently, Dumenco had been working in a small alcove in the experimental target area, which was like a “runaway truck ramp” to dampen a rush of energetic particles. When the Tevatron became unstable, an emergency shutdown dumped the beam into the target chamber where the scientist was standing, instantly showering him with a lethal dose of high-energy particles.
    At the same time, one of the dozen concrete substations along the mounded perimeter of the accelerator circle had exploded. But the blockhouses contained no explosive materials, no volatile chemicals, nothing that should have