Badwater (The Forensic Geology Series) (22 page)

He was at a stage where the risks were coming at him fast.

Yesterday afternoon, the risks came way too close. He’d been up on the ridge above the canyon, as usual, keeping watch. He’d hoped the geologists wouldn’t recover enough to do their job. But they did. And they came with a whole party. Miller the cad. Some girl—who was she? And two FBI men—what else could they be?—with FBI submachine guns. If Jardine had had one of those weapons he could have opened fire right then and there.

He had his Buck knife and his pistol. Not a fair fight.

Watching, he’d gotten distracted again with the female. Look how she paid attention to her details! Even though she was tracking him, he had to admire her. In fact, he’d wanted to have her. He could admit that. He wanted her to admire him but even if she didn’t he still wanted to have her. He’d even have her right down there in the dirt. By the time the enemy left the canyon he was all tangled up. Worried about being tracked, retreating like a dog to his hideout, thinking about the female so much that he got way ahead of himself. In the privacy underground he’d had to abuse himself to get her out of his head and that was humiliating.

But it worked.

He’d cleared his mind and considered his situation. He’d lost his breathing room but he couldn’t hurry things up. The trigger event had not yet come and he could not launch Stage Two of the mission without it. What he needed now, he saw, was to throw something big at the enemy. And he had that something big waiting in storage at Vegas. He got to work. He’d sat at his makeshift desk with his notepad and pencil for hours and when he got up he had a detailed plan. It was—no reason to be modest—brilliant.

It was also risky.

First had been the risk of hiking down to the Ranch and getting into his rental car. It was almost midnight Thursday by then and the only people around was a couple arguing about if they should complain about the torn screen door in their room, and they hadn’t cared about him. The next risk came in driving to Vegas. That went good too. The next risk, parking at the self-storage and driving away in the pickup, had given him a headache. All that adrenaline. But it went good. Driving back with his cargo had been both scary and exciting. Every time he’d seen headlights—five times—he’d nearly died. Every time the headlights disappeared, he’d howled.

When he’d turned onto the service road behind the Inn, he’d actually prayed.

When he’d backed his pickup right up to the target, he’d gone calm. That was a surprise. Here was the biggest risk of all. Him out here in his suit. No way did he look like a post. And when he’d unhooked the lead-curtain tarp in the bed of his pickup, the cask stood out like it wanted to be seen. It was mostly buried in talc but even some tourist who didn’t know a cask from his ass would look at that and say what the hell? Jardine remained thoughtful. Anybody came along now, he’d have to use the knife. He’d already used it to cut through the polyvinyl of the target and it lay blade-open on top of his pack.

He returned his attention to the plastique. He unwrapped it. He moved to the bed of the pickup. His next moves had to be fast, to keep his exposure down.

That’s the way he’d done it back in the borax mine—attaching plastique to the cask in that dark cramped tunnel. Fast fast fast.

That’s the way he moved now. First he attached the plastique to the cask and then he stuck the blasting cap into the plastique. Fast fast fast. Next he ran the wires to the detonator. Then he got in the cab and turned on the engine, cringing at the noise. He pushed the lift button. He got out to watch the pickup bed rise—he wouldn’t miss this sight for a million bucks—well yes he would but nobody was offering. He watched the talc spill out. He watched the cask tumble out and hit the target. He moved to the detonator and pushed the button. There was a muffled sound, far quieter than the engine noise.

The great thing about the target was that the noise of the explosion was muffled and the concussive effect was increased.

He wished the female could be here to watch with him. He wasn’t ashamed to think about her now. She would see his handiwork and even though she was working with the enemy she would be impressed, and that was enough for him.

Of course, the whole point of this target was to surprise the enemy. He pictured them, right now, sleeping like they didn’t have anything to worry about. They didn’t have a clue. Come tomorrow, they would find out that the Long Lean Dude could strike right in their own backyard.

Even though this operation was not part of the primary mission, he thought it was worthy of naming. He put on his thinking cap and then he took it right off again. The name came to him that fast:
Watering Hole
.

He edged close for one last look. He thought the beads in the water looked like fish eggs.

F
riday morning dawned bright and clear and hot.

Three days ago I’d seen dawn break at the radioactive waste dump.

Now, over a room-service breakfast, Walter and I began our fourth day. We’d nearly finished analyzing the soils we collected in yesterday’s journey. We’d worked through a room-service dinner until midnight and then we’d slept and then at dawn we put our eyes back to the scopes.

And now, under the twin lenses of the comparison scope, I reached Point D.

The layer-six samples we’d taken in the canyon had slight variations and there was one in particular that stood out. It contained a yellowish chalcedony that matched the yellowish chalcedony of the fender soil. Hue for hue, chroma for chroma, a dead-on match according to Walter’s Munsell color chart.

With some reverence, I moved the Point D specimen dish to its place at the end of the line of dishes I’d laid out on the coffee table. Then I slouched in the wicker chair to admire the map we built. It took us from the talc mine all the way to the echoing depths of a funereal canyon and then it branched into a side canyon and came to an end.

Point D, end of the line for Roy Jardine’s offroader.

From there, he’d borrowed a team of mules to drag the trailer or strapped on a jetpack and flown, and in another moment I’d turn my attention to the fact that we had no way to complete the map. We did have the glop from the trailer tires but it was an unilluminating mix. In another moment I’d admit we were in the neighborhood but had not found the address. Meanwhile, I enjoyed this moment.

Walter glanced up from the polarized light scope.. “You’re not busy?”

I pointed out the chalcedony.

He came over to study the map. He breathed on my neck, smelling of lemon drops. At least it wasn’t donuts.

“Well?” I said.

He smiled. “Why don’t I give your minerals a gander under the polarized scope, and why don’t you go collect Hector and tell him we’re narrowing it down.”

I left Walter’s refrigerated suite and plunged into the morning furnace, on the hunt for Hector Soliano.

S
oliano answered his door with the phone at his ear and mouthed
wait
.

I nodded and headed for the nearest lawn table. And then I saw the table at the far end of the lawn where two people were, to my astonishment, taking morning tea.

I changed course and walked past an abandoned croquet set to the linen-set table. Hap had his nose in his sketchbook and Pria stared stolidly at her clasped hands. Big hands with broken nails and a dirty bandaid on the right thumb. Brown hands on white linen. He could title his sketch
Fish Out Of Water
.

“Morning Buttercup.”

“Morning.”

“Sit yourself down.”

I took a chair, nodding to Pria. She nodded back. Progress.

“Cherry coke?” Hap indicated the pitcher I’d thought contained iced tea. “Or might we tempt your palate with those croissants? Do, howsoever, leave the chocolate eclairs for Miss Alien. I’m bribing her.”

I stared. He was Hap again. “Is everything okay? With the, ah...”

“The mash note from Roy?” Hap kept sketching.

“Yeah.”

“Hector’s checking into it.”

“You figure out why Jardine’s targeting you?”

“Boy’s real touchy. Never joined in the banter at work. Never appreciated my humor.” Hap shaded in Pria’s bandaid, adding the dirt. “Might have pissed him off. Might be he aims to settle all his grudges.”

“You don’t look too worried now.”

“That’s because I ain’t stuck in a car going down ambush canyon.” He threw me a grin. “Hector and I are confining me to quarters. Safe and sound, here at the Inn.”

Pria said, “Are we safe here?”

Better be, I thought. This is heaven. I bypassed the cherry coke and poured from a sweating pitcher of water into a cobalt-blue glass.

Pria watched. “It’s okay to drink?”

I hesitated, glass in mid-air.

“What if the water’s not happy?”

I set down the glass.

“Like, we were chasing it yesterday?” She lifted a hand and pointed. “Like,
here’s
where it comes?”

Hap groaned. “Nooo, don’t move, I’m not done with your pattycakes.”

She dropped her hand but I stared in the direction she’d pointed. Up toward the Funerals, highway 190.

“That’s better,” Hap said. “Clasp them like before. Bend in that pinkie.”

I said, “The thing about the aquifer is...”

“Okay
fine
.” She clamped her fingers. “So drink it. You guys up here hog it anyway with your big fancy glasses just sitting around and then nobody even
finishes
it, and your fancy grass and all like you can’t even walk on the regular ground like normal people, and them down there,” she broke the clasp, ignoring Hap’s protest, and pointed downfan toward the village, “with their swimming and their golf—and they even got lakes to golf around—and in their campsites they got running water and they wash their
hair
in it.”

Hap had given up drawing. He just listened.

I thought of the flume we’d seen yesterday, paralleling 190, running down the Furnace Creek Wash toward the Inn. I hadn’t noticed any other piece of the water collection system but it had to be there. I said, “Doesn’t the water system serve the Timbisha, too?”

“We don’t have
grass
.” Her high voice pitched higher. “We don’t have a
pool
.”

Hap gestured to the pool on the terrace below. “Jump on in. Buttercup’ll borrow you a suit.”

I wanted to fling my water in his face.

She hissed, “I don’t know how to swim.”

“Well I’ll teach you!”

I stared down at the pool where the lap-swimmers had taken over, where a bronzed blond man swam a beautiful butterfly, and I remembered a pale redheaded man doing a more beautiful butterfly, and a less-pale brunet treading water, preparatory to making a fool of herself.

“The water doesn’t even want to
be
in your fancy pool,” Pria said.

Hap widened his eyes. “Where does it want to be?”

I made a guess. “It wants to be watering the mesquite and the bighorn.” Instead of the palms and the midnight swimmers.

She shrugged.

I picked up my glass. “You said the water’s not happy. Why’d you say that?”

“The bad guy’s putting atoms in it.”

“He is?”

“Well
yeah
, I’m not stupid, I know why you’re all so weirded about the aquifer.”

She got that right. We’re definitely weirded. If Jardine wanted to mimic the leak at the dump, all he had to do was dump his stolen resins every time he made the swap for a new cask. Dumping them
where
is of course the question—somewhere within the vicinity of Point D, I’d say. Spill the beads into some hidden ditch or glory hole and then every time it rains, the beads are washed down into the groundwater. Toward the aquifer. I’d say that’s how Roy Jardine is getting into the virgin.

Pria said, “And what if the atoms get pissed off?”

I regarded my water glass. I wished it wasn’t tinted, although if there was something to worry about in the water I wouldn’t be seeing it. I said, careful, “Travel time of a contamination plume in groundwater is measured in years. Lots of them. So this water’s safe to drink.”

“Buttercup speaks truly.” Hap stuck his pencil behind his ear and passed the sketchbook to Pria. “You like?” He poured himself a glass of water and tipped it to us. “To your health.”

S
oliano joined us and I rose to lead him away, to tell him about Point D in private, but he paused behind Pria’s chair for a look at the sketchbook.

I leaned in to see what had caught his eye. It was not the sketch of Pria’s hands. She’d flipped the pages to another sketch, another pair of hands. She was studying it, feathery hair brushing the page.

Soliano said, “You know these hands?”

“Maybe the ring.”

I came alert.

Soliano took a seat, gingerly, the way you’d move around a skittish cat. “Tell me about this ring.”

It was the sketch of Jardine’s hands, the one Hap had made two mornings ago in Walter’s suite. I looked anew at that puzzling Rorschach ring.

Pria said, “That Badwater race.”

Hap peered anew at his sketch. “Well I’ll be darned.”

Soliano’s face sharpened. “Tell me about this Badwater race.”

“It’s a bunch of fools what come here in the heat of the summer,” Hap said, “and for no good reason under the blistering sun they runs theyselves from Badwater halfway up Mount Whitney.”

Reflexively, I looked. I couldn’t see it because the Panamints were between my line of sight and the Sierra Nevada, but I knew it was there. Mount Whitney had to be more than a hundred miles from here.

“Big deal is, Badwater’s the lowest elevation in the continental states,” Hap said, “and Whitney’s the highest.”

Soliano frowned. “That is a feat, but...”

“It’s stupid,” Pria said.

“But you have seen the race? You know the ring. What is this, a prize?”

“My cousin got one. He didn’t win. He just ran. He’s stupid.”

Soliano turned to Hap. “I find this odd. Roy Jardine allowed you to draw his hands, and he was proud enough of his feat to wear this ring, and yet he did not tell you about his race?”