smiled. “Nope. What’s with the pipe?”
He picked up a potato and rammed it down into the pipe. “The potato seals the end. Then I hook up the propane at the other end of the pipe. It mixes with air in the chamber, then I light it. Want to watch one? The sound shakes things up on your insides.”
“I was actually hoping to get some information from you. Do you have a minute?”
He smiled a wide, toothless grin. “For you? Anything. Let’s go inside and have a sip of cold tea.”
Sauly asked her to carry the potato bag and he picked up the propellant along with the pipe. They walked through the wet grass to the back of his house and placed his toys underneath the green-and-white-striped awning that covered a deep back porch.
Josie followed him inside, through a small mudroom and into the kitchen. Sauly had picked a series of fifteen differently sized square windows and built them into the elevator’s sides at differing angles. The effect was somewhere between sophisticated architecture and fun-house carnival, and Josie loved it. His kitchen was outfitted with two such windows. Josie sat at the kitchen table, in front of a four-foot-square window turned sideways to make a diamond shape. From the table, the Rio appeared to flow directly from one corner of the window to the other, splitting the outdoor scenery in half. Josie was certain the placement of the window was no accident and she was amazed at the precision.
As Sauly poured their tea and chatted about building his potato gun, Josie looked around the room. It was painted a deep maroon with buttery yellow cabinets and sage green trim. On the table was a collection of cactus plants arranged around the inside of a twelve-inch snapping turtle shell. Black-and-white photographs of the Rio were framed in old barn wood and hung around the dining room.
He placed two glasses of tea and a small glass dish with sugar cubes and spoons on the table.
“So, here’s the deal,” Josie said. She dropped several sugar cubes in her tea as Sauly sat down beside her. “We found a body out in the desert. It looks like murder. No identification on the body. We tracked him down through his work boots to the nuclear plant. We think his name is Juan Santiago. He worked on the cleanup crew.”
Sauly leaned back in his chair, startled, and rubbed his bald head. “Yes, ma’am. I know who you mean. I worked with him about a year before I left.”
“I need to know anything you can tell me about him.”
Sauly made a low hum. “Can’t give you much. It’s been two years since I worked with him. And he never said nothing to anybody. Earned his dollar and left.”
“That’s what everybody said. Surely he connected with someone. You don’t remember him hanging around anyone? Maybe sitting by someone at lunch?”
“Not a one. He wasn’t unfriendly, but he just didn’t make friends. You get my meaning?”
Frustrated, she stirred her tea and watched the sugar at the bottom of the glass. “What was your job at the plant?”
“Same as Santiago. Safe cleanup. That’s what the bosses called it.”
She nodded. “What made you leave?”
“They found me out. Fired me.”
She laughed at his abrupt answer. “Fired?”
“Walked me to a room, took my clothes and boots. I tried to keep my Geiger counter for a souvenir but they caught me. They kicked my ass all the way to the parking lot. Gave me a personal escort.”
“What did you do?”
A conspiratorial grin lit up his face. “Sabatoge.”
Josie was shocked, but only mildly. She smiled at his grin. She could never keep a poker face with Sauly. “How so?”
“They were cooking soup.”
“What’s soup?”
“Nuclear soup. That’s what we called it. The chemicals were in big silver vats and we always said they were cooking the soup.”
“I thought you were working cleanup?”
“New soup. Blow-up-the-world stuff. I knew nobody would listen to me. So I pissed in the soup,” he said.
“Literally?”
He gave her a look as if she should have known better. “Figuratively.”
Josie decided not to pursue the sabotage line of questioning. Some things she preferred not know.
“What made you think they were making new stuff?” she asked.
“You need to mix chemicals to tear a building down?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I never worked at a nuclear plant.”
“The answer’s no.”
“Who was doing it?”
“Beacon! The cleanup company.”
“How do you know it wasn’t something legitimate? I talked with Diego Paiva this week.”
Sauly rolled his eyes, obviously not impressed.
She continued. “He said