Badwater (The Forensic Geology Series) (8 page)

Soliano showed his ID. “Christine Jellinek? My name is Hector Soliano, I am FBI, and you will if you please place the weapon on the ground.”

She didn’t budge. “I got a fuckin permit.”

“If you please.” Soliano’s hands flexed. “Now.”

She spat. She turned and stumped to her pickup and stowed the shotgun. She came back, whipping off her hat to wipe her brow.

“Whooeee,” Balllinger whispered, “she won’t win no beauty contest.”

Her face was like unfired clay that’s been left in the sun. Her eyes were nearly hidden under slumping lids. Her cheeks sagged to saddle at her jawline. Her nose was a defiant pug that seemed to pin her slumping features in place. It was hard to tell her age but her hair was yellow-streaked gray. Her skin, desert-varnish brown, looked like it might crack at the slightest touch. She caught us staring and clamped her hat back on, yanking its brim low.

My own skin scorched. I wouldn’t welcome scrutiny, either, not after all my days in the field.

She halted in front of Soliano and said, “Now you can all fuck off.”

“I am afraid not, Ms. Jellinek.”

“You wanna address me, you address me by the name I go by which is not la-dee-da miss anything. I go by Chickie.”

What is it with all the nicknames? I wondered. Is it the heat? Is it the solar radiation? Do people around here forget who they are?

Soliano watched her intently. “You are not curious about us?”

“You’re all fuckin rangers far as I care. This here’s my property and you got no right to go in there.”

“I am curious about you. How is it that you are allowed to mine in a national park wilderness area?”

Walter cleared his throat. “Actually, Hector, she couldn’t stake a new claim here but if her claim is pre-existing, it’s valid.”

Chickie nodded. “Damn right.”

“Providing,” Walter added, “that she meets Park Service conditions.”

“Fuckers’re killin me with their conditions.”

“Then perhaps,” Walter said, “you’d best abandon your claim.”

Perhaps she’d thought she had an ally in Walter, but she was damn wrong. Walter loves to poke around old mines and he finds the geology of precious ores an absorbing hobby—and, once, key to a case—but he prefers to see the geology left in place in national parks and wilderness areas.

“Old man,” Chickie said, “you’re uglier’n me.”

I wanted to rip out her throat, for that. I said, instead, “You have a colony of nesting bats in your mine.”

“So the fuck what?”

“You start blasting, you’ll disturb them. Aren’t they protected?”

“Lotsa mines in the park got bats.”

“Yes but does the Park Service know about yours?”

Her eyes narrowed. And then suddenly widened—she was looking past me to the mine entrance, where Scotty and his team had appeared. They looked like some kind of futuristic miners from the depths.

Scotty came our way, shaking his head.

Soliano turned to me—they all turned to me—and I said, “All I can tell you is, this is as perfect a match for the talc as I could want.” I watched Chickie. She didn’t ask what I meant, didn’t ask about the hazmat suits and the Geiger counters, and she didn’t, oddly, ask what Scotty and his team were hunting in her mine.

I would have asked, in her place.

Soliano said, “Ms. Jellinek, talc has been found at the scene of a crime. Our geologist has identified it as originating here.”

Chickie glared. “She’s wrong.”

“Do you know a man by the name of Roy Jardine?”

“Never heard of him.”

Soliano took out his cell phone and showed her a digital photo. “Do you know this man?”

“Never saw him.”

“Did you sell your talc to this man?”

“Can’t sell it to nobody.”

“You are having difficulty with the approval process?”

She spat. “I got a fuckin mine’s not bringin in a fuckin cent cuz the fuckin backpackin whale-watchin bat-lovin assholes got the government by the short hairs and they’re stealin my rights. So somebody wants to pay me for my fuckin talc I’ll fuckin well sell it.”

Soliano pounced. “Then someone did buy talc from you?”

“No, someone didn’t. Maybe your fucker stole it. I can’t afford a guard, I can’t even afford to fix up this old shit.” She jerked a thumb at the crumbling ore chutes and bins. “But I will. I been workin other people’s mines for twenty years.” She jutted her chin. “You see this face? Think I was born this ugly? I got this face workin sunup to sundown and I earned it. This face is a
mine owner’s
face, now. This is a proud face, fuckers.”

I’d sure give her that. And I wondered what role pride might have played. If Jardine chose this mine because it was easier access here than to others nearby, he likely would have assumed—as we had—that this place was abandoned. And then the woman in white showed up with her shotgun. A woman whose mine, and pride, were not to be trifled with. I asked her, “If you caught someone stealing, would you report him?”

Her venomous look swung to me.

“Or, you could tell him to pay or you’ll call the cops. A market of one is better than none. Right?”

She studied me. “Don’t need no thief money, girly. I got a big market lined up. Know what it is?”

Sweat sluiced down my back.

She came closer, tipping her hat brim back, bringing her face up to mine. “You wanna know?”

I could not look away. She had that effect, like a desert sidewinder. You wouldn’t want to turn your back.

She raised her index finger. She opened her mouth, emitting an overripe odor like fruit that has turned. She licked her finger. It glistened in the sun. It hit me like a snake strike, scoring my left cheek, and then withdrew.

My skin shriveled where the wet trail evaporated into the triple-digit air.

Chickie examined her finger. “Dirt,” she said.

I stiffened. What’s wrong with dirt?

Her own face was shiny clean. “Ever wear makeup?”

I said, tight, “Yes.”

She bared her teeth, white as her hat. “Then stick your nose down out of the air, girly. You’re my market.”

Hap gave me the bandana from his sombrero. I wiped her touch from my face. I wanted to disinfect it. I tried to return the bandana but Hap put up his hands: a gift.

And then I thought, maybe this was not a market question at all. Maybe Chickie was an accomplice. Maybe Chickie was counting on another source of income while waiting for Park Service approval to sell her talc.

“Ms. Oldfield,” Soliano said, “you are certain the talc originates here?”

“You want certain, go with DNA. I can give you probability. I can tell you the proportion of tremolite to talc, down to parts per billion, in the evidence talc. I can tell you it’s consistent with the talc here, and it’s inconsistent with the three other mines I sampled. I can’t promise there’s no other location it could have come from. Maybe there’s a mine out there with talc as good a match as this one.” I pocketed the bandana. “And maybe pigs can fly.”

Soliano turned to Scotty. “Let us look again here.”

Scotty groaned.

Walter said, “In the meanwhile, I have soils to sample around here.”

I nodded. It was, actually, within the realm of possibility that our evidence talc did not come from this mine—leaving flying pigs aside—and I’d be a whole lot happier if Walter could match the mud samples from Ryan Beltzman to this place. I moved to follow Walter, to lend a hand. I caught Chickie watching me. Her hooded eyes had slitted to emit a whitish gleam. It was, I thought, a truly pissed look and it was directed at me, the fucker who’d claimed to trace the talc to her mine.

That look convinced me I’d found the right address.

W
alter and I followed the geology and our noses around the hill to the backside of Chickie’s mine. Here was another entrance, a back door. Just outside this tunnel, white mine tailings spilled to mix with the native soil.

Walter knelt to sample.

It didn’t take a forensic genius to read the story. Marks in the dried mud—knees, elbows, one unmistakable butt print, bootprints hither and thither—showed one hell of a fight and chase.

Walter agreed. “Preliminary,” he said, peering through the hand lens, “but I suspect the driver acquired his mud here.”

I glanced at the rough road that ran down to join the road our convoy had taken. Not fit for the radwaste truck but a more nimble vehicle could navigate it. In fact, there were faint tire tracks. I looked back to the tunnel. Gated, with a padlocked chain. I wondered if Roy Jardine had a key.

C
hickie was astonished that some fucker changed the lock on her gate and she grudgingly gave permission for Scotty to use bolt cutters.

It didn’t take Scotty long to meter the tunnel. “Not hot,” he said, “but you won’t believe what’s in there.”

I swallowed. What’s in there?

Soliano went in. Then he summoned Walter and me, Hap and Ballinger.

The tunnel was wide and straight and dead-ended in a large room, like a driveway into a garage. A two-car garage. The vehicle on the left looked like it belonged here. It was dented and scratched and mud-spattered—a high-clearance offroader with a winch and cable drum mounted on the front bumper. All four tires were flat.

Soliano shined his flashlight at the right front tire, illuminating a ragged hole.

I registered the tire damage, and the mud, which I was going to want to sample, only right now the tires were not the main event.

The main event was the trailer behind the offroader.

It was a brutish beast. Big enough to haul a hefty payload. Tough, clearly, with big-knuckle bolts and beefy tires, now flat. Built for crazy guys on testosterone weekends hauling their gear where the pavement doesn’t go. Built for a crazy guy hauling stolen resin casks. The back of the trailer was gated with a fold-up steel ramp. A vaulted steel cover hung open and wide, like a clamshell.

The vehicle parked beside it was another beast entirely.

Half forklift, half crane, all business. It had a telescoping crane boom with its grappling arms wide open, as if for a hug. Slotted into one side were attachments: hooks, fork tines, a scoop. It had pneumatic tires with deep treads. It looked like it could go anywhere.

Arrayed against the mine wall were open crates of protective gear. Gloves, booties, suits, silvery tarps.

Hap whistled—surprise, marvel. “Lookee here. Boy’s got his own setup.”

Soliano eyed Ballinger. “This equipment is from your facility?”

Ballinger gaped. “Knothead helped himself to the store.”

One thing I knew for certain—Roy Jardine was in no way a knothead. Or, despite the events of last night, a screwup. This setup showed a level of competence that put me on high alert.

Soliano made a slow survey of the room. “I believe we have found the place of the swap. Mr. Ballinger, tell me how it is done.”

Ballinger jerked. “Me?”

“Easy Milt,” Hap said, “Hector just wants you to role-play. Pretend you’re Roy.”

“No friggin way.”

“If you please,” Soliano said. “You know this equipment, Mr. Ballinger. I wish your perspective.”

Ballinger gave Soliano a cautious look, then a nod.

“And so. You steal a cask, bring it here—perhaps in your blue Ford pickup. And here you fill it with talc, using this...forklift?”

“Telehandler,” Ballinger said sourly. “Roy could’ve.”

“Very good. So now you have a cask of talc. Meanwhile, your partner Ryan Beltzman approaches on the highway—that is the radwaste truck route?”

“That little twerp,” Ballinger said, “he was in on it?”

“Difficult to make the swap on your own, yes?”

“Wouldn’t know.”

Soliano’s face incised into a smile. “Let us put it all together. It is late night, little traffic, so Mr. Beltzman pulls just off the highway so the transponder will not show anything odd. And there he waits. Can you deliver the talc cask to him?”

“Sure I can.” Ballinger’s chest roostered out. “I mean, Roy can. Telehandler holds the cask like a baby. Drives like a dream. Go right out that tunnel down to the highway. Set the talc cask on the flatbed, pick up the resin cask.” Ballinger warmed to it. “I’d do it remote for the hot load—telly’s remote-operable. Then drive it back up here and set the resin cask in that trailer. Trailer’ll handle it.”

Soliano was nodding. “And then what?”

“Then the twerp takes the dummy cask with the shipment to the dump, and the knothead takes the resin cask wherever he friggin takes it.”

“The
depot
, we will call it. Where would you site the depot?”

“With that rig,” Ballinger indicated the offroader-trailer, “I’d be going somewhere off in the wild.”

“What would you do when you got there?”

“Unload the friggin cask. With a telly. Remember, knothead stole two of my telehandlers.”

Soliano kept nodding. “And then?”

“Come back here.”

“Ah yes. Ready for the second swap, when the time comes. Last night. Which, to your dismay, went wrong.”

Ballinger snorted. “Maybe I’m not such a hotshot.”

“More than a mistake, I think. You, or your partner, shot out the tires. To stop the procedings, yes?”

“Why I’d do that?”

“Cold feet? Change of plans?” Soliano flipped a hand. “In any case, there follows the chase—Mr. Beltzman in his truck, Mr. Jardine in his pickup.”

Soliano, I noticed, had just switched to calling the perp Jardine, instead of putting Ballinger in that role. Ballinger seemed to notice too.

“And then,” Soliano said coolly, “we come to the end of the scenario. The crash, the shooting.”

“Almost,” Ballinger said, easy now. “Then Roy comes into
work
this morning. That’s just nutso.”

Maybe, I thought. But Jardine had learned something at work, hadn’t he? He learned he was leaving tracks. In talc. I’d made that plain enough, letting him know who was the geologist and who wasn’t.

“If this scenario is correct,” Walter said, “where is the resin cask now?”

We looked, as one, at the telehandler with its open arms empty. We’d seen the talc cask at the crash site. More than seen. So that meant the resin cask was here, last night, snuggled in the telly’s arms like a toxic baby. So at some point Jardine came back to retrieve it? I figured I knew when: while we were shopping and eating and going about our business in Beatty. I said, chilled, “Jardine got the jump on us.”