Badwater (The Forensic Geology Series) (18 page)

Jardine was sure the female felt the same way.

The breeze quickened, moving his ponytail.

He stopped. There was a sound, in the distance. Ahead? About a dozen yards ahead, the canyon took a turn. The sound came from upcanyon, he thought, although in these narrow canyons sounds and directions could fool you. He listened. Still as post.

He tried to hold on to the female.

The sound was louder, coming downcanyon—coming straight for him—roaring now, and now he thought about the clouds, hells bells it was a flood and he was in a canyon. He looked around wildly. No way out. The walls went straight up. He threw himself against the nearest wall, flattened his skinny self until he was just a bump on the wall.

The sound was deafening. The thing came around the corner and if he had not been pressed against the wall the thing would have gone right through him. Spinning, shrieking, speeding down the canyon like it had wheels.

When he could breathe again he said her name.

He watched the dust devil whirl along the ground until it came to another turn and it pivoted and went around that corner like it knew what it was doing.

If it had been a flood, he’d be drowned.

When he could speak, he told himself: let this be a lesson. That whirlwind was a message, surprising you like that. Just like the female. The female is a whirlwind spinning your head to where it’s facing the wrong way and you better straighten it out.

W
alter said, “You’re not eating, dear.”

I lifted my fork and bit into my rattlesnake.

Soliano had been first to order the rattlesnake croquettes because he always ordered the local delicacy, and Scotty and Ballinger recoiled and ordered steak, but then Hap brought up primitive tribes who eat the enemy to absorb their power and so Walter had ordered the snake and I thought
why not
and followed suit. I swallowed. The snake seemed to stick in my throat. Bats for breakfast tomorrow?

Going a little mad, tonight, at the Inn.

I hunkered down. We sat around an oak table in the corner of the dining room. I had an adobe wall at my back and a picture window at my flank, and from my hard oak chair I could keep watch on the twilit desert outside and the mad sunburned visitors inside who kept looking our way.

We’re making them nervous.

We should have made them gone. After today’s events, Soliano had wanted an evacuation but all he got was the borax canyon roped off until the cleanup’s done. His superiors bowed to the Park Service, who bowed to the businesses at Furnace Creek who feared publicity and the loss of dollars. And so we remain the EPA monitoring team, which has discovered illness in a colony of nesting bats in the borax mines. And so the mad summer visitors who came to Death Valley for sand and salt and heat just might—if we don’t stop Jardine—get more than they came for.

Soliano laughed.

“What?” Scotty said, alarmed.

“The music.”

We strained to hear over the buzz of talk in the cavernous room—guitar licks as haunting as background clicks of the Geiger counter.

Soliano wore a dreamy look. “The piece is titled
Fantasia Para un Gentilhombre
, which translates to...”

“Fantasy for a gentleman,” Hap said.

Soliano showed his surprise. “You speak the language.”

“Some. Don’t get the funny part though.”

“No? It is you who calls unstable atoms
the gentlemen
. I hear this music and wonder what fantasy Mr. Jardine entertains for his gents.” Soliano smiled. His teeth showed white as bleached bone in the light cast from the brass coyote candlestick.

I thought, some sense of humor the FBI has.

“I’m not laughing,” Scotty said. “Add C4 to resin beads and I’m scared.”

“That what he used?” Ballinger asked. “Plastique?”

“We await the lab,” Soliano said. “The lab awaits the decontamination. A shaped charge certainly fits Mr. Jardine’s profile. He is not a wasteful man. Plastique is not a wasteful explosive. It can be shaped to fit the need. It can be placed unobtrusively. And, we will assume he attached some sort of motion sensor, which triggered a blasting cap to detonate the plastique.”

Yeah, we could assume that. I bump the cask with Lucy’s tallywhacker scoop, the motion sensor reacts—and boom. My hand, now, shook. I feared I’d drop my fork. Walter was eyeing me. There he goes again. Since this afternoon he’s taken on a watchful look, overseeing my every move. Now I know how he feels when I watch him eat a sugar donut. How many donuts is safe? How do we know? Is one donut ALARA? Two, three? One donut for him is not the same as one for me. He’s already on the list. And it’s cumulative.

Walter’s focus switched to Soliano. “Will we assume Jardine acted alone, today?”

“Or in concert with Ms. Jellinek, who is not yet located, or with another, or others, not yet identified.” Soliano glanced around the table, then flipped a hand. “Currently, I confine myself to Mr. Jardine. My fantasy is to divine where he will strike next. Thoughts, Mr. Ballinger?”

“Why ask me?”

“Because we learn today that you are the object of his attention. He airs his grievances against you at the borax mine. Where next?”

“Ask him when you find him.”

“I ask you. He demands payment, to his bank account in the Caymans. After today’s demonstration, your superiors at CTC consider negotiation. But he also, it appears, intends to get his pound of flesh. He does not appear to care who gets in the way. He has a stockpile of resins yet to unleash. And so, Mr. Ballinger.” Soliano’s voice went very soft. “I do not wish to be blindsided again. You knew about his sister. What else do you know, and do not say, that will help us identify his next target?”

Ballinger’s skull bloomed in sweat.

“There is something more? I will find it, but it behooves you to save me the trouble of looking.”

“Just the, ah, side effect of the resin spill. Nothing to do with Roy.”

“What is this side effect?”

“It’s old news.”

Soliano said, icy, “It will be new to me.”

Ballinger hesitated.

Soliano slammed his palm onto the table.

Ballinger jumped. “Okay, so the resins got spilled in the trench, trench was torn up, it rained a lot. We get a kinda monsoon season in summer. Lot of thunderstorms. Like now.”

“And so?”

“And so rainwater made leachate.”

“What is leachate?”

“Stuff in the water.”

Walter set down his fork, hard. “Milt, the man asked what leachate is. Not everyone is versed in hydrology.” Walter turned to Soliano and said—using the tone he takes when he’s explaining what gabbro is to a jury, the tone that says lack of information is not a moral failing—“Leachate is a liquid that percolates through soil and picks up soluble substances.”

Soliano gave an almost imperceptible nod. “And these substances were... What, Mr. Ballinger?”

“Radionuclides.”

“Dios mio.”

“Hey,” Ballinger said, “we reported it to the Nuclear Regulating Commission. Got a fine. Notice of violation. No big deal. We’re not the first to get fined for a leak.”

Scotty snorted. “You’re damn lucky you didn’t get shut down.”

“Well we goddamn cleaned up. Soon as we found the spill.”

“True,” Hap put in. “Two months after the fact.”

“You weren’t even there, Hap.”

“True, Milt. But like I said at the borax mine, it’s one of them stories get told to the new guy. I get it wrong?”

“We cleaned up. End of story.”

Soliano turned to Hap. “What further do you know of the story?” There was a new edge to Soliano’s voice, of grudging respect. Maybe because he’d learned that Hap understood Spanish. Maybe that was Soliano’s fantasy, to have others search for the translation.

Hap shrugged. “Just what I heard.”

“Did you hear if the cleanup recovered the contaminants?”

“Ahh...ever try to put the toothpaste back in the tube?”

“No I have not. What happened to the contaminants?”

Hap folded back the white linen tablecloth, gathering our attention. He reached for his water glass. The glass was cobalt blue and it was impossible to tell how much water it held. Hap tipped it over. Not much water, it turned out, but enough to find its preferred path in the wood grain and channel to the table’s edge and trickle down to the carpet, where it was absorbed into the deep blue pile.

I stared.

Hap righted his glass. “Water moves. And if nuclides get into the water, they move. Tritium darn near does the backstroke. Mr. Plutonium hitches a ride on clay particles and jess rafts away.”

I went cold. “You’re saying they got down into the water table?”

Hap nodded.

“At what concentration?”

Ballinger answered. “Below regulatory concern, missy.”

“Oh?” I regarded Milt Ballinger. I didn’t know if he could be found criminally negligent in the death of Sheila Cook. In the contamination of the water. What I did know was that this cocky little man was a moral pygmy. “So, if it’s below X number of parts-per-million, then everything’s copacetic? Above that line and somebody’s going to have to get upset about it?”

Ballinger’s sharp chin tilted. “Didn’t crap up anybody.”

“Ahhh,” Hap said, “we don’t rightly know that yet.” He put a finger in the little stream on the table, then touched his tongue. He made a face. “Thing is, plants take up the water from the aquifer and animals eat the plants and drink the water, and then people drink the water and eat the plants and animals. And in the process of moving up the food chain, the clides get concentrated and us apex feeders get a richer dose.” He eyed the snake on Soliano’s fork.

Soliano set down his fork.

“Fact, some of those other leaks Milt mentioned got connected to cancer clusters.”

I watched the water find its way over the table’s edge. “Cancer again.”

“Ain’t it a bitch? Everything gives you cancer these days.”

“Let us confine ourselves to this leak,” Soliano said. “Which appears to parallel the contamination of Mr. Jardine’s sister, yes? One more grievance to lay at Mr. Ballinger’s door?”

“Well he didn’t threaten
me
,” Ballinger said, “he threatened
the priceless
, remember? So why don’t we friggin drop this leak crapola?”

“Why don’t we follow the evidence,” Walter said, “and see where it leads.”

I ached, suddenly, muscles sprung from slouching through a tunnel in a sixty-pound bug suit in pursuit of mud on a cask. But I’d do it again tomorrow if I thought I’d get the evidence. Because Walter’s right, that’s what’s going to get us to Roy Jardine and I wanted that sick bastard got. As Walter taught me back when I was learning the ropes at his bench, a crime does not happen without leaving its mark. One of the golden rules of forensic geology says that whenever two objects come into contact, there is a transfer of material. The methods of detection may not be exquisite enough to find it, but nonetheless the transfer has taken place. That means if you don’t find it the first time, you hold it up to the light and look again. And you keep looking until you see what was hidden. Like a flash of mica in granite that suddenly catches the sun. And if your evidence soils are stolen and you have to start all over again, you suck it up and keep looking. Because that’s what you signed up for. Because a sick bastard has got hold of lethal shit and is playing god with it. Because I don’t want him crapping up anything, priceless or pricey or overlooked or underprotected or just plain unlucky. I had a bad taste in my mouth, redolent of rattlesnake and canned air. I said, “We’ll find the place, Hector.”

“I await. Meanwhile, let us consider
the priceless
, which he threatens to contaminate. What is it? Where might it be? What can we extrapolate from his choice of locations so far? His cask-swapping setup is in Death Valley. His first attack comes in Death Valley. Death Valley appears to be his chosen venue. Thoughts, Mr. Ballinger?”

“Christ on a crutch,” Ballinger said, “I...don’t...know. Figure it out yourself. Or ask somebody else for a change.” He turned to Hap. “Like Mr. Know-it-all here.”

“Very well,” Soliano said. “Thoughts, Mr. Miller?”

Hap cocked his head. “You asking me to speculate, Hector?”

“I am asking what attracts Mr. Jardine to Death Valley. Yes, do speculate. It may help if you use his perspective.”

I thought, that role-playing thing again, like Soliano used with Ballinger in the talc tunnel. Very effective.

Hap chuckled. “Should get me a Roy mask. Anyhoo, let’s see. I’m Roy, with a shitload of hot resins. What I have to do is find a worthy place to threaten. Think I’ll call it
the priceless
. Nice ring to it, and it’ll sure grab everybody’s attention.”

“Where, Mr. Miller, is this worthy place?”

“Well it sure ain’t the dump.” Hap sat back and laced his hands behind his head. “Sooo, what else could I contaminate? There’s the Nevada Test Site down the road—that’s where Uncle Sam buries his waste. That’s been contaminated since the atomic tests.” Hap glanced at me.

I met his look. Go ahead.

“Anybody gonna notice if I crap up NTS? Nah. Over the hill from the dump is Yucca Mountain, which is where they keep changing their minds about if they’re gonna put the spent fuel rods, if they ever quit bitching about earthquake faults. Anybody care if I crap up Yucca? Nah. Well then, how about Death Valley? Compared to the neighbors she’s a downright virgin. And if I crap up a virgin—long as she’s called a national park—I’ll get somebody to sit up and pay attention.”

“And why do you wish attention?” Soliano asked.

“Remember, I have a grudge or two against Milt. Sooo, attention’s going to come back around to Milt—like it’s doing right now—and the old news is going to leak out. Then John Q Public’s going to read about it with his morning coffee and have a cow. Holy hell, all them nuclides in the water table, that’s where I dug my well! And here’s where John Q is going to ask what Milt’s plutonium is doing in John’s coffee.”

“As you phrased it yesterday morning at the dump.”

“As Hap phrased it. When Buttercup here asked what happens if the resins get loose in the environment.” Hap shrugged. “But I’m still playing Roy, right? Sooo, once I get all this attention, with John Q screaming and all, I figure the Nuke Regulating Commission is going to have to step in again, get tougher. And then Milt’s going to get his radioactive materials license yanked, or get fired, or get drawn and quartered.” Hap unlaced his hands and folded his arms, decapitating Homer Simpson. “So whaddya think? That why Roy chose Death Valley?”