Authors: Dana Mentink
B
ill drove to Heather’s before the sun came up. The house was still and dark, the land around it showing no sign of life except for the rustling of creatures in search of their last feed before the dawn.
Tank cracked a bleary eye from the passenger seat.
“I know it’s early. You can nap later.”
With a grumble, Tank rolled over and went to sleep.
Bill turned the situation over again in his mind. There was some way to locate Oscar and he would find it, before the man unleashed any more violence against the people in Bill’s life. Heather’s stark expression rose in his mind again and he remembered the feel of her in his arms. He’d felt a stirring of the old emotions, the old Bill, the one who had loved and laughed and lived. It hurt too much, reminded him of too many emotions that had begun to wither when Leanne was killed and ended when he’d let Johnny die.
He pictured Leanne, the pride on her face when she announced she’d finished her drug rehab program.
I’m going to do it this time, Billy. I’m going to show my girls that I can be a mom to them.
Then it was Johnny’s voice echoing in his memory, his laughter, his enthusiastic “Morning, boss.”
When the pain reached an unbearable level he muttered only one word.
“Lord …” he began. The word startled him and he clamped his mouth closed.
No.
He would not go there ever again.
The Lord had been blown out of his life by the same explosion that killed Johnny, the same tidal wave of addiction that took his big sister.
He was startled at the beep of his phone.
Crow’s voice boomed across the line. “Hey. Figured you’d be up. Where are you?”
“Outside Heather’s place. She’s bent on working a story about that uranium pit mine. I’m keeping tabs on her.”
“On old man Brown’s property? He’s got fangs. I’ll come along in case you need backup.”
Bill knew it wasn’t old man Brown Crow was thinking about. “It’s your day off, isn’t it?”
“No days off until Oscar is brought down. Anyway, Rudley is bringing in people and making sure we Tribal Rangers have nothing to do but write parking tickets.”
Bill sighed, familiar with the conflict between the Feds and local cops. He was about to ask a question when Crow answered it.
“Your aunt Jean is visiting the Tribal Council this morning to lobby for her preschool idea. She’ll be in a crowd all day and we’ve got people looking in on her.”
Bill felt a surge of relief. “Any new tips coming in from all those wanted posters?”
“Nothing. All’s quiet.”
“Too quiet.” He disconnected, watching the first blush of sun top the massive cliffs. Where was Oscar? He had to be somewhere close, somewhere with access to the internet in order to have hacked the
Blaze
website.
Fifteen minutes later, Crow pulled up next to Bill’s truck. He was dressed in jeans and a faded T-shirt. “Good thing I’m a morning person.”
“Thought you’d bring your Falcon.”
Crow looked away. “Loaned it out.”
Bill raised an eyebrow. Crow’s old Ford Falcon was a source of pride. He started to comment when the front door opened and Heather stepped onto the porch, her hair pulled back into a neat ponytail.
“Are you guys going to come in for coffee or sit there talking to the dog?” she called to Bill.
Crow grinned. “She’s got your number, all right.”
Bill climbed out and went into the house. Tank trotted off to give Choo Choo a thorough sniffing. Both men accepted mugs of steaming coffee and Crow walked to the far window, gazing out as he sipped.
Shadows smudged Heather’s eyes, marking a poor sleep. Bill noticed some paper on the table, printouts of articles about Oscar. “I told you—”
She cut him off. “I know what you told me, but first, I’m a journalist, research is my life, and second, I’ll never be able to make a living with a police detail following me, so I figured I could try to help out.”
Was there a third reason? Did the strange flicker in her eyes mean she was afraid for him? He took a gulp of coffee and burned his tongue in the process. He looked around for Margot, lowering his voice. “How did things go last night?”
She flushed, leaving two high spots of color on her cheeks. “She was … honest. Having a baby, having me, was a punishment of sorts.”
He did not know what to say. No words would ease the terrible sting of that revelation.
She fiddled with the pitcher of cream. “But she kept tabs on me, which I didn’t know. And I think …” She shook her
head suddenly, setting the ponytail bobbing. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Crow rejoined them for a refill. Egan arrived at the same time Margot emerged from the bedroom, dressed and wearing a brimmed hat. She had a small pack strapped around her waist.
“Good morning, everyone,” she said. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting. I must have been more tired than I realized.”
Bill could see the fatigue in her lined face and wondered if she’d regretted sharing so honestly with her daughter. Heather busied herself throwing items into her own bag. “I need to talk to Mr. Brown and get his side of the story, shoot some photos of the abandoned uranium pit and his well.”
Margot nodded. “I can take water and soil samples.”
Egan held up a box. “Got the supplies right here. I’ll have the lab run the tests, if you’d like.”
Margot nodded. “Thank you. Are you sure it isn’t an imposition?”
Egan sighed. “Frankly, weekends are pretty wide open for me and I can’t think of anything more interesting than doing a little fieldwork.”
Margot laughed. “Spoken like a true geologist.”
They made arrangements to split up into two cars. Bill felt Heather’s hand clutch at his arm. She didn’t speak, but he read the anxiety in her face.
“Heather can come with me. Dr. Egan and Margot, you can ride with Crow,” Bill said.
Heather gave him a thankful squeeze that sent tingles up his arm.
As they headed for the door, she stopped short. “In going over the old clippings, I thought of something. What about the purse?”
Bill nearly plowed into her. “What?”
“Hazel’s.”
Crow stepped closer, forehead creased. “Hazel Birch? Oscar’s wife?”
“Yes. If she was planning to leave town, she’d have brought her purse. I thought of it when I saw the picture of the abandoned car. There was a lipstick there on the ground. Most women carry that kind of thing in a purse.” She turned to Crow. “Was there a purse with the body?”
“No, no purse. Nothing like that.”
“That’s strange,” Heather said.
Crow’s face darkened. “Are you saying I didn’t do my job? That I missed finding a purse? You don’t think some dumb Indian can do sophisticated police work?”
Bill put his hand up. “Hey. She didn’t say anything like that. She’s asking a question, that’s all.”
Crow’s gaze shifted from Heather to Bill and back again. “Yeah, okay. Sorry. I guess I’m feeling the heat, with the Feds calling all the shots around here.” He shrugged apologetically and headed for the car.
Heather’s eyes were round with surprise. “I didn’t mean to suggest he wasn’t doing his job.”
“I know. He’s just wound up. We’re all wound up, which is why I still think—”
“I’m going to get my story. Don’t even try to talk me out of it.” She bent to pat the dog. “You stay here, Choo. Mama will be back soon.” Shouldering her purse, she walked out.
With a deep sigh, Bill followed her.
The drive to the old uranium mine took them over ten miles of twisted, dusty road that climbed gently until they reached a wide prairie studded with stretches of scrubby grass and odd-shaped clusters of bleached rock. As they traveled upward past the gullied ridges and eroded hills, Heather was reminded of a moonscape. Here and there were some wild buckwheat, clinging in wiry tufts to the rock, growing ever
sparser until they arrived at the pit, a sprawling crater that shone silver in the morning sunlight.
Margot shaded her eyes with her good hand as she peered in. She pointed to the west. “If I’ve figured it right, this pit lies above the far edge of Charlie Moon’s property, doesn’t it?”
Heather frowned. “True.”
“Has Charlie ever voiced a concern about his water quality?”
Dr. Egan started. “As a matter of fact, he hasn’t, but the water was tested anyway. I don’t know why I didn’t remember it. Shortly after I came here, the lab was making plans to buy a parcel of land to build some employee housing. Charlie was interested in having his property considered, so a team of USGS guys went to do some sampling and map the area. I was asked to consult.”
Bill gestured for him to continue. “So what was the outcome?”
“No problems, I think, but the economic situation changed the plan. The lab postponed buying any more land.”
Bill sighed. “So Charlie’s got no way out.”
Heather felt like taking his hand. She knew he felt a terrible burden of responsibility for Charlie and Tina Moon. A lucrative offer on their land would have at least ensured a future for the little girl. She knew Bill felt powerless about the situation.
Unable to think of anything helpful to say, Heather got to work. She took some pictures of the gaping hole, which had been abandoned, according to her research, when the supply of mined uranium began to exceed the demand in the mid-1960s. Many mine owners had simply walked away, leaving the question about radioactive contamination unanswered.
Heather noticed her mother scraping some soil samples into test tubes and almost smiled. Thorough. She hardly knew
anything about her mother, but she had already learned the woman was meticulous. She had vague memories from Miami when the Fernandes family would collect shells at the beach and her mother would help her carefully organize them into neatly labeled collections. If only life were so easily put into an orderly arrangement.
Margot shaded her eyes and glanced out along the sprawling acres and the rising cliffs beyond. “There are caves here, I’d imagine,” she said, a dreamy look on her face. “Reminds me of my undergraduate work.”
Dr. Egan laughed. “Mine, too. I spent months helping at an excavation site of a sinkhole. The professor in charge was certain it was the perfect spot to find mammoth fossils.”
Margot’s eyes widened. “And?”
Crow snorted. “I’ll bet he found nothing better than some rusty hubcaps.”
Margot shot him a look. “The desert is rich in paleontological history.”
He sighed deeply. “This town is rich in nothing.”
Margot and Dr. Egan exchanged quizzical glances as Crow walked away.
“What did you find at the excavation site, Dr. Egan?” Margot asked.
“Some fossils of short-faced bears and some nicely preserved wolf bones, but nothing more exciting than that. He’s wrong, though,” Egan said, pointing at Crow’s back. “The research we’re doing at the DUSEL, it’s priceless. It’s so deep there you get no interference from cosmic rays. We’re already conducting some experiments in geology and hydrology at forty-eight hundred feet.”
“Dr. Egan,” Heather began, eager to build a conversational bridge with the man she needed in order to resurrect her career. “I’d love to—”
“Later,” Bill said, in spite of the annoyed look she shot him.
Bill hustled them back to the truck and they drove the half hour to Mr. Brown’s property, crossing a sturdy bridge that spanned a river gorge gouged deep into the red earth. The water, some fifty feet below, was reduced to a sliver snaking below them as they rolled across the wooden structure.
When they got out of the cars, Heather asked the question that had been burning in her mind. “Dr. Egan, was Mr. Brown’s land included in the USGS testing? His groundwater comes from the same aquifer, doesn’t it?”
Dr. Egan wiped his brow and laughed. “Yes, it does, but Mr. Brown has proven to be somewhat unreliable. He’s a bit of a conspiracy theorist and he decided the team was part of some plot to pour poison in his well to shut him up. I heard he chased them off the property with a shotgun.”
Great, Heather thought. Her chance at a real story was going to be touted as the babblings of a lunatic. No wonder her editor had been so eager to assign it to her.
Mr. Brown did not answer her repeated knocks. Heather left a note under his doormat with her cell number. They found the well, and Dr. Egan and Heather’s mother drew samples, sealing the water into stoppered bottles.
Dr. Egan went to the car to get a kit for taking soil samples.
Margot frowned. “You said Mr. Brown is afraid the uranium pit mine has polluted his well?”
Heather hesitantly drew near. “Yes. I did a little research and it’s plausible. There was a lot of in situ leach mining around.”
Margot nodded. “Meaning water was pumped into the ground to pull up uranium. After it’s extracted, the water is eventually injected back into the aquifers. Unfortunately, when these pit mines are abandoned without proper care, the runoff can seep into rivers before it’s cleaned up.”
Heather noticed Bill was not interested in the sampling
or conversation. His eyes were focused on the tree line, the nearby rock pile, anywhere he thought Oscar Birch might be hiding. Crow had disappeared for the moment and Heather suspected he was checking the property, as well.
Margot looked up from her work and Heather was caught at the change on her face. She looked years younger, her eyes infused with light. A lump formed in Heather’s throat at the eagerness she saw there. If only her mother felt that way about her.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” Margot asked.
Heather blushed. “Oh, you just look different. Happier.”
Margot smiled. “I haven’t had a purpose for a very long time, since I had to quit my clerical job at the university. It was all I could manage, but it filled the hours. It feels wonderful to be doing something again, something worthwhile.”
There was a shimmer in her mother’s eyes that made Heather wonder if she was speaking about something other than work. It was a ridiculous thought and Heather put it out of her head.
Bill shot them a look. “If you’re done here, let’s get moving. The less time we spend out in the open, the better.”
Tank, who had begun to pace in small circles, let out a whine. The hair on the scruff of his neck stood up. Bill pushed Heather toward the truck. “We’re leaving now.”