I was on the eighth floor of the Starbucks Building. Someone was already under my desk, so I held on to a post. It went on a long time. I thought I was going down.
âJon Engle, describing the February 28, 2001, Nisqually earthquake that rocked Seattle. The 6.8 quake's epicenter was thirty-five miles southwest of that city, and its focus, or actual area of slippage, was thirty miles below surface in the subduction zone between the Juan de Fuca plate and the North American plate. Hence, its destructive force was greatly dampened relative to surface structures. Luck was also with the citizens of Washington because there had been little rain recently, and the quake therefore set off relatively few mud slides. The time of day when it occurred was also important. In Seattle and Olympia, falling bricks and cornices crushed parked cars, but, because the quake hit midmorning, before patrons had migrated from their well-constructed office blocks to restaurants in precode brick buildings, no one was killed.
My orchids began to dance. I was ecstatic. I thought, I was just preparing for an earthquake this morning, and here's one now.
âSusan Oliver, describing the same earthquake, as experienced in a one-story wood-frame building in Port Angeles, twice as far from the epicenter
IN THE MORNING, I GOT MYSELF UP EARLY AND PULLED ON my thermal underwear and the tightly woven wool pants I wear
cross-country skiing. I scrambled up some eggs, guzzled down some orange juice, brushed my teeth, piled on thick socks, a turtleneck shirt, a wool shirt, and a knit cap, grabbed my down parka and a pair of mittens, stepped into my pack boots, and headed for Faye's Porsche, which was beginning to feel like home. I was gettin' real good with the shifter, as one of my father's ranch hands used to say, and I loved the way the thing got up and went.
Logan was already at Faye's house when I got there. He had Ted Wimler with him. Faye had shown them into her kitchen and had introduced them to Tom Latimer, and they were all sucking up some swanky coffee and a pile of pastries. Faye, needless to say, was eating nothing, but neither was she running to the bathroom to barf. Which was something of a relief. I had been concerned that Faye was going to say, Sorry, I'm not feeling well, and send me up the canyon alone with this gang of relative strangers. Perhaps her morning sickness knew what her overheated little brain currently did notânamely, that there was such a thing as pushing your pal Em too far.
Logan was in good humor, and I heard him laugh for the first time. It was a rich, committed kind of laughter, straight from the gut. The fact that he was wearing a crisp white turtleneck brought my eye to the rich, wavy hair that went into short, tight curls at the nape of his neck. I caught myself thinking,
Not bad.
I find that when a guy isn't quite perfectly groomed I feel closer, even intimate. I mentally slapped myself on the wrist.
You're getting too old to drown one failed relationship in another one,
I told myself,
and if you don't want the one with Ray to fail, try keeping your mind on making it work.
My heavens, I can get stern with myself.
After a couple of pastries, I decided to vent my spleen a little by bringing up a topic that was not so jolly. “So,” I said. “Did everyone read about Pet Mercer?”
Logan stared into his coffee cup. “Awful,” he said.
Ted Wimler opened his mouth. “Two deaths in just two days! I tell you, something's going on!”
“Three deaths,” Faye said in a voice suddenly gone faint.
Tom went stiff, his eyes on Faye.
Ted got out his metaphorical crying towel and said, “That's so sad. I hear there's going to be this humongous funeral observance for him. At first, the city wanted to downplay it, but the whole thing has become such a media circus that they're pulling out all the stops.”
“I suppose it will serve some good,” Logan said. “You know, publicity and all that. Even if all we can get is a few sidebars on better earthquake preparedness. With Pet gone, we sure aren't going to get the coverage we need to educate the public the way we need to.”
Tom watched them both closely.
Ted took a deep breath and was about to start in again, but Logan said, “Well, we're here to have fun. So let's talk about something else.”
I shut up. Perhaps it was just those curls at the nape of his neck, but I didn't want to annoy Logan by bringing up any more sad or contentious subjects. Which left me feeling more than a little confused. For all I knew, Logan had killed Sidney Smeeth, and possibly Pet Mercer, as well. What had Pet said? They had been involved, and something had gone wrong. And Ted was certainly a strange one, but in an idiotic way. Of course, I had no idea what either man's motivation might be for doing anything so bloodthirsty, but I was no longer an ingenue in the business of detection, having learned that the most deadly variety of murderers had a way of hiding in plain sight. So I took a nice long look at Logan, wondering what brewed beneath those fierce eyebrows of his. Could it be a killer?
That's nuts,
I told myself.
You're being paranoid. Whoever killed Sidney Smeeth probably had some connection to whatever big-time fraud Tom Latimer's digging
into, one far beyond my specialty or reckoning. It'll turn out to have nothing to do with geology. Besides, Pet told you she was going to speak with someone other than a geologist the night she died. Didn't she?
I tried to remember her words, but I could not.
“So,” Logan was saying, “ready for some gliding over the frozen medium?”
Faye seemed to be in no hurry. Logan genteelly tried to hurry her by heading out to the driveway to load her skis onto the rack on top of his vehicle. When that didn't get her through the front door, he came back into the kitchen and said, “Let's get going.”
Faye replied that we were waiting for one more person.
I gave her a
huh
? look, and was just opening my mouth to ask her what kind of crap she was up to this time, when Agent Jack Sampler pulled into the driveway in a beat-up BMW with skis on the rack.
Faye asked, “Is this him, Tom?”
“Yes.” Tom, who had been kind of lying in the weeds through all of this, led the way out into the driveway and introduced Jack to Faye and Logan and all the rest, adding finally, “Jack would like to tag along on your skiing trip. That okay with you guys?”
Okay? Well, how were we supposed to say no?
Jack was smiling like he had just been let out of an asylum for the mentally peculiar for his first field trip in twenty years. He was dressed just fine, Mr. Smooth Skier, but he suddenly seemed very big. It was a bit like being handed a large untrained dog to care for. I wondered,
What do I do with him?
And,
Does he come with a book of instructions?
Logan put on a poker face.
Faye said cheerily, “We can all ride in your vehicle, okay, Logan? Or should we take Jack's?”
This was about the breaking point for me. I had had about enough of Faye and Tom running my life for me. They were good friends, and I didn't like confrontations, but I have my
limits. I said, “Gosh, Faye, seems like you're getting really good at fancy footwork. Why don't you and Jack just waltz along behind? Hell, even Tom might like to come.”
Faye stiffened.
I grabbed Tom by the elbow and dragged him out of earshot. Keeping my voice down as best I could under the circumstances, I said, “Tom. Why is Jack here?”
“He wants to go skiing. Show him a good time, okay?”
“Nonsense!” I whispered. “You're up to something!”
Tom's smile drained into a look of sobriety. “Things are a little stirred up in your geological community just now, Em. I don't need to point out to you that these men you're about to spend the day with knew both of the women who have been found murdered in our fair city in the past few days. But don't go connecting any dots. Just go have a good time skiing.”
“The hell.”
Logan's eyebrows had risen halfway up his forehead as all this transpired. He looked over toward me and seemed to read my exasperation. He said ever so politely, “We already have most of the gear on mine,” and started opening his rack to take Jack's skis.
Logan was driving a nice functional Ford Explorer, like half the rest of Salt Lake City drove. His had Mardi Gras beads wrapped around the gearshift, a nice layer of dried mud and gravel on the floorboards, and miscellaneous rock samples in the drink holders. I felt right at home.
So, all loaded up, and with Creedence Clearwater Revival blasting out of the CD player, we headed on down the mountain front to Little Cottonwood Canyon, which is a narrow thing with DON'T PARK HERE FROM OCTOBER THROUGH MAY signs all along the road to mark the avalanche chutes. We soon arrived at Alta, which is at the top of the grade. The sun was shining, there were six fresh inches of snow on the slopes, and there was
not a cloud in the sky. I should have been ecstatic, but, as I said, I don't much like to ski downhill.
First off, there's the fitting in issue. I did not. I did not own my own equipment, and I wasn't dressed like the rest of the crowd. Faye was in a one-piece suit of some sort of expensive stuff in the color of the sky, shot with red and yellow accents. Logan, Ted, and the others from the pizza dinnerâwho were waiting for us at the lodgeâwere decked out in various sorts of modern snow gear, not a shred of which was made of wool. Only Wendy Fortescue even halfway approached my déclassé dowdiness, and that only because her gear seemed to be made up out of spare parts and because her color sense clashed with her skin.
So that was point one against downhill skiing. Point two was that I was really bad at it. But I was now committed to a day of it, so I tromped through the ski-rental shop, bought a lift ticket, and got in line with the rest of the gang to ride the lift farthest to the east.
Faye chose it. She said it supplied a good warm-up slope. Having orchestrated things this far, Faye also managed to shuffle things around enough that I rode the double chair with Logan, which left her making small talk with Agent Jack. From what I could see by craning my neck around and staring back at them, she was uncertain of his companionship and contemplating having words with Tom when she got home. Her maneuver further backfired when I took a fall coming off the top, right in front of Logan and all the others, who were waiting for us at the top of the lift. Logan said something conversational, like “Been a while?” and helped me up, then made two lovely moves to get out of the way of the gathering crowd, displaying the fact that he was a damned good skier. Quick and at ease. I followed as best I could, trying to remember what I had never known about the sport. I managed to stay upright all the way to the bottom, but wore down some tooth enamel en route.
For the second ride up the lift, I managed to maneuver my way into sharing a chair with Wendy Fortescue, figuring that as long as I was going to suffer through this day, I could at least be gathering information.
“Enjoying the snow?” I asked brightly.
Wendy twisted around in the chair and stared at me. “Are you some kind of a fruitcake or something?”
I stared back at her. “No. I was hoping to get you to talk about Sidney Smeeth.”
“Nothing to say.”
“I understand. But I have a question for you nevertheless. I'm wondering why Dr. Smeeth chose the new stadium for a backdrop when the TV stations were doing the breaking news about the earthquake. Just before she died. I was wondering if she mentioned anything to you that morning before heading down there. Anything about going down to check it for cracks, for instance.”
Wendy stared at me for several more seconds before speaking. “Okay. I guess it's no big secret. She had it in for the developers.”
“All developers in general? Or the one that built the stadium in particular?”
Wendy grunted. “That one would do nicely, don't you think?”
“Why so?”
“Aw shit, they put moment frames in that sucker. Even after that didn't work in Northridge. Fuck that shit. Real brain trusts, huh?”
I figured she was referring to the 1994 Northridge, California, earthquake, but I had no idea what a moment frame was. Trying to look like I knew all about them, I said, “So, Sidney had already decided that building was at risk?”
Wendy snorted. “At risk? Those damned welds cracked in the first high wind. It was just coincidence that she'd gotten in there and had a look the day before the quake. God, she was pissed
when she got home. I could hear her screaming into the telephone, right through the floor.”
“Oh,” I said. “You know who she was calling?”
Wendy stared at me blankly. “Some stiff or another at the county offices, I imagine. That's who she usually beat up on.”
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WE ALL STAYED together for another two runs, after which time it was clear that most members of the party were restless to go to the top of the mountain and do some real skiing, and certain others, specifically Faye, needed to head for the bathroom to vomit.