Badwater (The Forensic Geology Series) (27 page)

“Under your feet,” I said, “in the brush.”

Oliver, just behind Walter, jerked back.

But it was not a snake. Walter toed aside the brush and bent to examine the thing. It was a metal spike, looking like a large needle with a rusted eye. Walter tugged but the spike was anchored in the bedrock. It looked like it had hung on there for a very long time, longer than the creosote bushes.

“Um,” Dearing said, “you gonna let us in on the secret?”

Walter stood. “It’s a guidepost. For a cable.”

“Do we care?”

Walter would not say and so we pushed on and within a few dozen yards came upon another spike, also scaled in rust. I began to care. We passed more and more spikes and then finally a length of cable rusting along the ridge. My interest stirred. I glanced down at the Cherokees, up to our ridge, down the other side. I saw a tunnel burrowing into the far wall of Disappointment Canyon, and the scar of a road running from the tunnel across the canyon and up to our ridge. I saw the knobby heads of rusting spikes, along that road scar. I let my thoughts run. Roy Jardine comes to dead-end Cherokee canyon and parks and now he faces a steep climb to get up to the ridge and onward. A climb hauling whatever equipment he needs to build his own little waste dump, and then hauling the casks to fill it. But the casks are large and very heavy. As were the ore containers the long-ago miners presumably hauled up and down these ridges. I eyed the old cable remnant. Jardine would have had to bring his own. I recalled the winch and cable drum mounted on the front of his offroader. So Jardine parks, unhitches the trailer, winches it up the ridge, cables it however far he’s going, then lowers it down the other side. Winches up an extra drum and engine, if gravity alone won’t get the stuff where it needs to go. I proposed my theory.

“You gotta be shittin me,” Dearing said, peering down the steep wall.

“It’s doable,” Walter said. “Gold miners used to fill Mack trucks with their ore and winch them up walls steeper than this.”

“You gotta be shittin me.”

We weren’t. Down we went, Oliver and Dearing securing the way. Down there, however, the geology said no. I phoned Soliano and told him that Disappointment Canyon had yet again justified its name.

W
e followed the cable spikes and Chickie’s soil along the ridge. I watched for gouges in the earth that would say something was hauled along the cable line here, but any and all markings had been erased by days of rains.

We reached an intersection of sorts. Below, Cherokee Canyon dead-ended. Ahead, our ridge bent northeast and arched across the head of Disappointment Canyon to reach the drainage of the next canyon east.

Cable spikes led the way. Old road scars crisscrossed the canyon.

This new canyon, at its head, was broad where an alluvial fan spilled down between the framing ridges from an upper canyon I guessed at, but could not see. Below the fan, the main canyon narrowed as it descended the Funerals, its skinny body slipping into shadow. The canyon walls gleamed where rain had slicked outcrops of green and silver schists. Get enough rain and that skinny part looks like a flood waiting to happen. My eye traveled back upcanyon, just shy of the fan, and came to rest on the steep northeastern hillside. Pockmarking the flank were black-eyed hollows. Heaps of ore tailings spilled across the slope. Below, scattered across the valley, were the tumbledown workings of the mine camp.

“I got a name for this one,” Dearing said, arching his back. “They-Don’t-Pay-Me-Enough Canyon.”

We shifted into the routine.

Oliver and Dearing went first to secure the area. They followed the cable road down the canyon wall and across the valley floor to the mine camp. Now Oliver unholstered my Geiger counter and took the lead, sweeping the wand the way I’d taught him, the way Scotty taught me. Dearing looked more comfortable with his weapon. They sidestepped quartz tailings and rusting rail tracks. They probed collapsing buildings and an iron tank. Dearing peeked into a big stone oven, while Oliver disappeared into the rotting mill that climbed three stories up the hillside. Finally, they signalled, and Walter and I trudged down to the Town of Wood and Iron.

We sampled a patch of ground and found it not inconsistent with Chickie’s boot soil—good enough to want to sample the mine entrance.

There were three entrances, actually, climbing the hill. The lowest opened onto a long wooden ore chute, which dumped into the slope-hugging mill. The second was obscured by rubble, perhaps a past collapse. The third was deeply recessed, with overhanging outcrops like Walter’s eyebrows.

Cable roads made separate ascents to all levels.

We switchbacked up the steep hill to the sturdy ledge of the lower entrance. We ran the scenario: can he winch a trailer up here? Check. Can a telehandler, or some similar beast, fit into that tunnel? Check. Is there room on the landing to transfer a cask in and out of the trailer—and for tires to spin and spatter mud on the cask? Check. Check—this site fits the criteria, as did three other sites before it.

This was clearly the business entrance. Rail tracks came out of the tunnel and ran over the edge on an elevated bridgework that ended in mid-air. The way inside was barred by a locked gate. We’d brought the master Park Service key but it didn’t fit.

Oliver said, “Rangers could’ve changed the lock.”

Dearing said, “Or the perp did.”

They gripped their subguns while Walter and I sampled the soil, which proved inconclusive.

As we resumed the climb, it began again to rain.

The second-level entrance—once we’d skirted the rubble of the old collapse—was gated, locked, and inconclusive.

We switchbacked up. I scanned the valley below. Nothing moved but rainfall.

The topmost entrance was the most inviting of the lot, a horseshoe arch bored through blue-gray schist. I eyeballed the quartzite-schist soil and envisioned it attaching to the crevices in Chickie’s boots. Walter, already sampling, grunted. He liked it too.

My pulse quickened. If she indeed walked here, then how had she got inside? I moved to the gate inset in the tunnel walls. I took hold of a crossbar and leaned into it.

The gate swung open.

W
alter shined his flashlight. “That’s worth a closer look.”

We stood at the open gate. His beam had caught a bull quartz vein, creamy and white, deep in the throat of the tunnel. Where the tunnel took a turn, a streak of silver intruded the white.

“Look all you want from here,” Oliver said. “Soliano says you don’t go in.”

Walter waved his flashlight. “I believe he meant, don’t go exploring. I don’t believe he’d say, don’t nip in there and collect a critical mineral sample.”

I said, “I’m willing to stipulate that’s a telluride.”

“You’ll stipulate? When the answer’s fifty yards away?”

I said, “We don’t have a gas detector.”

Walter shifted his beam to illuminate a shaft that cut through the ceiling like a stovepipe. “It’s ventilated.”

“I don’t care if it’s air-conditioned,” Oliver snapped, “you don’t go in.”

“Mr. Oliver,” Walter said, “my feet hurt. I’ve been running around all morning. So you’ll understand that I want to sample that vein, and if there is any justice to be had we will ID this place and turn it over to Scotty so he can clean up the damnable mess and we can go back to the Inn and soak our
feet
.”

“Amen,” Dearing said, lifting the toes of his boots.

Walter opened his pack and retrieved his headlamp.

I sighed and got out my own headlamp.

Oliver stiffened. “Hold on just a goddamn minute.” His obsidian face turned rock-hard. “Why am I here? I’m here because you’re looking for the mess. You go in there, I’ve gotta go too.”

Walter shook his head. “I’ll just nip in and out.”

“I’ve seen guys like you. They make it personal.”

Walter fitted his headband.

“You’re not the goddamn bad guy,” Oliver said. “You got nothing to do with the mess.”

Walter considered. “Strictly speaking, I do.”

“The hell’s that mean?”

I fitted my headband. It means Walter makes it personal. It means he’s Walter. I said, “He consumes power. Nuclear’s part of the nation’s power grid.”

Oliver just shook his head. He told Dearing, “Take the watch and call Soliano.” He switched on the flashlight built into the forward grip of his submachinegun. He shoved around Walter to take the lead. “So you wanna live in the Stone Age?”

No we don’t, I thought. They didn’t have French press coffeemakers and scanning electron microscopes in the Stone Age.

Or Geiger counters. I took it out, just in case. We’d brought it along because Scotty told us to monitor outside every mine and if the count rose above background to get the hell away. We hadn’t expected to be going
into
a mine, which was why we hadn’t brought hazmat suits. And even if we’d wanted to bring that heavy equipment we’d have needed a couple of RERTs to schlep it, and RERT was tied down at the Inn.

Well, we’ll just nip in and out.

We entered the tunnel, abandoning day for night. At first the rain-gray light seeped along with us but within a few yards it yielded to the dark. We traveled on three thin beams. My hair stirred as we passed the ventilation shaft. As we penetrated deeper into the tunnel, I glanced back. The entrance seemed to have shrunk, like the mine was shutting down for the day. Closing time, everybody home to soak their feet. I turned to peer ahead. Maybe half a minute to the bend, couple minutes to sample, then another couple to get the hell out. That Clementine song started up in my head. In a cavern, in a canyon.

“Here we are,” Walter said.

Oliver pointed his light and his ammo uptunnel while Walter inspected the silver-flecked vein and I sampled a stretch of thin ground soil. I did not take the time to search for grains of sylvanite in the decomposed quartz. I did think mechanics. Chickie comes in here with wet boots and wet soil plugging the waffle soles. She is a walking glue stick.

Walter peered over my shoulder. “Well?”

“Maybe.”

“Good.”

“We’ll see.”

“Outside.”

“I think...”

“
Shut up
,” Oliver snapped. “Listen.”

We listened. I could hear nothing but my breathing. Walter’s and Oliver’s breathing. And then, a thudding. Thud thud thud thud. Silence. Thud thud thud thud. Rhythmic. It was not the sound of somebody walking. Nobody walks like that. It came from around the bend. Deeper within the tunnel. Thud thud thud thud.

“
Out
,” Oliver hissed, “
now
.”

We tried to move on cat feet so as not to telegraph our position but then we just gave in and ran. Oliver followed, covering us, and I would have to say they don’t pay him enough.

I thought, running, heart pounding, it had sounded like some kind of machine with some moving part that caught every so often on something it shouldn’t—thud thud thud thud—and then it worked itself free until it caught again, but if there was a machine running somewhere in this mine, that said there was somebody who started it, only why didn’t he hear the thuds and come fix it?

Walter reached the entrance first and stopped short, blocking me.

Not, however, before I saw what he had tried to stop me from seeing.

First I saw the feet, the boots toes-up, and then I moved and saw the rest of Dearing. He had come just inside the mouth of the tunnel. Maybe he’d tried to get free. His arms splayed, like he’d been startled. His head tipped, sunburned nose in the air. Mouth open to argue. Chin jutting. The cut was neat, wide and deep, splitting the band of white muscle. Blood still ran, leaking at the corners. The soil beneath his neck was saturated with red leachate.

I fell to my knees and held my head.

I saw Oliver’s boots, rooted.

When I looked again, I saw the satellite phone. Dearing must have begun to unpack it from its protective case, to make the call to Soliano. The caved-in sat phone lay against the gate post. A grapefruit-sized rock lay nearby.

Dearing’s submachine gun was missing.

Oliver said, voice thick, “Bro.”

O
liver shoved us. And then we found our footing and ran ahead of him back the way we’d come, back down the throat of the tunnel toward the thudding machine.

“I’m carrying an MP-five submachine gun,” Oliver bellowed, “and I’m prepared to open fire on anyone who does not announce his presence loud and clear and he goddamn well better announce it on his knees with his hands in the air.”

Air air air
echoed down the tunnel.

I ran sickened. Walter in front of me ran hunched over and I knew as well as I knew anything what he was carrying. A load of guilt. And that psycho outside was carrying a blade and that’s what I fixed in my mind, instead of the memory of Dearing’s peeling nose.

We came to the ventilation shaft and Walter abruptly stopped to peer up but there was no ladder and no one larger than a child would have fit.

Oliver crowded me up against Walter. “
Shut off your lights
.”

We killed our lights and listened. No thudding. No footsteps. Just heartbeats. And then there was a shusshing sound.

I went queasy with fear.

Walter grasped my arm.

Oliver’s light flicked on and his subgun swung up and steadied on a timber bracing the air shaft. A small figure clung there, wings hanging like an open coat. Its eyes gleamed milky in Oliver’s light. We backed away from the air shaft. No need to bother analyzing the telluride soil. Bat’s telling us what we want to know. Its nesting ground is fouled. It found the mess.

The bat shrieked and its teeth suppurated blood. Like Soliano, I knew I was going to have dreams of teeth.

The thuds began again.

Oliver muttered a curse and took the lead. We advanced uptunnel toward the rhythmic thudding, which was only slightly less insane than retreating downtunnel and exiting to the ledge where the blade-wielding psycho had perhaps settled in.

If he hadn’t already come into the tunnel.

We passed the telluride vein and turned the corner and Oliver led us into a side tunnel that ran leftward. He stopped us there and shut off his light.