That, I have definitely heard of: IDEM works directly with both local monitors and the feds. Just my kind of girl.

Dev Agerwal hangs up after taking down my e-mail address, with a promise to send me Lilian McMann’s contact information. And a few minutes later he makes good.

Actually, he makes great. The e-mail, sent from a personal e-mail address—not the state government server—also includes several attachments and a short note.

Hope this is helpful.

When I open the attachments, I nearly fall out of my chair. He’s included a copy of the check stub written from Associated Polymer, Optimal’s parent company, to the Campaign for Pulaski, as well as several e-mail exchanges between an Optimal employee and a campaign aide. The e-mails are carefully crafted, but the subtext is clear.

The most damning of them, sent from someone in Gifts, expresses hope “that our support will spark a new era of cooperation and mutual support between the nominee and one of Indiana’s most successful homegrown businesses.”

On Wednesday, Joe, the snake charmer, works his magic on the local superior court. Unbelievably, our petition passes, and after we nudge Optimal’s legal counsel by dangling the threat of a much bigger problem down the line, we float an unofficial list of document requests. Now that we’ve gone ahead and filed, a deposition will be coming soon enough. After some hemming and hawing, Optimal agrees via their ancient-sounding lawyer to provide five years of financial records related to any third-party payments before the week is out.

Not totally ideal. I was hoping to go back further, ten years, to the complaint the Mitchells, Allens, Baums, and Dales dropped, and for bigger scope—investments, subsidiaries, the whole deal. But I know better than to say so to Joe. Still, he reads it on my face.

“You should be kissing my feet right now,” he says.

“I’ll let Raj do that for you,” I say, and he smirks in a way that doesn’t quite hide a genuine look of happiness. I feel a sharp stab of jealousy, and then another of disgust. When did other people’s happiness start feeling like assault?

But the answer comes quickly, and brings a bad taste to my mouth. Always. I didn’t ever stop feeling excluded. I just started to wear it and pretend it was my choice. Maybe that’s why I was drawn to the law of poisoned things, and hurt people, and scabby chemical earth. Maybe toxic is the only thing I really understand.

—

More good luck: that very afternoon, less than twenty-four hours after Agerwal directed me to her, Lilian McMann returns my call. I get out a hello and half of an introduction before she interrupts to suggest we meet in person.

Her office is about forty-five minutes out of town. Locals call this “uptown,” even though there’s nothing “up” about it. This is Anytown, strip malls and chain stores, and as a kid this is where we would come to hit the big grocery store when we wanted to buy in bulk. The storefronts have turned over but the structure is the same.