IN A
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RIBUNE MOTOR POOL CAR PARKED A BLOCK down the street from the spot where Sidney Smeeth had met her destiny, Pet Mercer sat pondering her next move. Automatically, she fished out the small pocket mirror she carried in her case next to her notebook computer and took a squint at herself. She tugged at the few strands of hair that were long enough to need combing, making no change to the arrangement she had sprayed them into early that morning. She had worn her hair this way since early adolescence; it fitted her face and her personality. It was pert and easily cared for. It was, in fact, her unchanging pertness and apparent low need of maintenance that had earned her the nickname “Pet.” Nowadays, her high school pals slapped her on the shoulder and said, “These days, you even fetch the newspaper!” Pet would flash a preoccupied smile. Such comments whipped right past her. She was too busy fetching stories for that paper to concern herself-with other peoples' opinions anymore.
She turned her head left and right, checking things from every angle.
Makeup holding, hair good. What next? A snackâkeep the blood sugar up. Almondsâgood fiber, protein, fat not a problem. About five should keep me right on plan.
She unzipped a side compartment of her case, withdrew five smoked almonds from a packet, popped them into her mouth, and began to chew quickly,
mechanically. Thus arranged, she clicked open her computer and began, breathlessly, to spew out her story. She wrote, “Today in Salt Lake City, state geologist Sidney Smeeth made an extraordinary exit from the world of the living.”
Shit!
She hit the mouse with her thumb, highlighted the sentence, and then erased it and stared at the computer, her fingers trembling millimeters above the keys.
Pet dear, that will never do!
she warned herself.
What were you thinking? We must hit this one just right! Okay, I'll write, “In an extraordinary coincidence of events, today in Salt Lake City, just hours after the largest earthquake in written history of the location, Dr. Sidney”âor no! Too dramatic still! This has to have punch, but also dignity, not a dose of P. T. Barmum.
The fingers of her right hand broke rank and wandered almost independently to the pouch on the other side of the caseâwhere a few closely hoarded raisins lurkedâlike five busy squirrels looking for a goody. Spotting this action, her left hand rose off the keyboard and swatted the right. The right withdrew into a fist, curled up defensively on her hip, and waited ⦠sulking ⦠craving ⦠. With an effort of will, Pet snapped back into focus, stared deep into her screen, and typed:
In an extraordinary coincidence of events, Utah's state geologist was killed today just hours after the largest earthquake recorded for the Salt Lake section of the Wasatch fault in almost half a century.
State geologist Dr. Sidney Smeeth died instantly following a fall from the deck of her hillside home. Ice had built up along the board flooring of the deck, making it slippery, sources said.
The fifty-one-year-old top administrator of the Utah Geological Survey was found shortly after sunrise. She had just appeared on Salt Lake television station KCTVâ
And, having been cut off in midspeech by vested interests bent on keeping her quiet,
Pet mused,
she was pissed as hell ⦠.
âand had returned home for breakfast before continuing to an appointment with gubernatorial staff at the state capitol. Dr. Smeeth served at the pleasure of Utah governor Rowdy Thomas.
In the wake of the early-morning earthquake, which measured 5.2 on the Richter scale, Dr. Smeeth faced a full day of meetings with aides to address the geologic event, which startled Salt Lakers awake at 4:14 A.M. Sheâ
She what? Pet sat back and stared at the screen. This was not deathless prose, but she reminded herself that journalism was not meant to be that. It was meant to communicate, in the quickest way possible, and in terms that any eighth-grade graduate could comprehend, exactly what had happened.
She snorted. Exactly? That was a laugh. Yeah, exactly how had that railing come to find itself torn out, and couldn't the person or persons who had done it think of a better way to bump off a busybody like Screaming Sidney than to pull the old “slippery deck with the railing out” routine?
Pet's busy fingers drummed the air above her keyboard. So
what am I going to do?
she asked herself.
Sit on my tight little butt and write lukewarm drivel about it? Or am I going do just a little tiny bit of digging, find out who killed this woman and why, and pluck me a wee Little Pulitzer this time?
Pet slapped the notebook shut. After first extracting one celebratory raisin from the side pouch, she zipped up the case and slid it onto the seat beside her, chewing happily on the concentrated sweetness of the dried grape. “Pulitzer, here I come,” she said out loud as she fired the ignition. “'Cause this little digger knows just where to dig!”
February 20 [1835]. This day has been memorable in the annals of Valdavia, for the most severe earthquake experienced by the oldest inhabitant. I happened to be on shore, and was lying down in the wood to rest myself. It came on suddenly, and lasted two minutes, but the time appeared much longer. The rocking of the ground was very sensible. The undulations appeared to my companion and myself to come from due east, whilst others thought they proceeded from the southwest: this shows how difficult it sometimes is to perceive the direction of the vibrations. There was no difficulty in standing upright, but the motion made me almost giddy: it was something like the movement of a vessel in a little cross-ripple, or still more like that felt by a person skating over thin ice, which bends under the weight of the body.
âCharles Darwin,
The Voyage of the Beagle.
This entry, contrasted to Darwin's later descriptions of the destruction of nearby Concepcion, Chile, illustrates the differences in the experience of a large earthquakes in unbuilt and built environments. In Concepcion, thousands of people were killed by falling structures.
I HAD TO TAKE A DETOUR ON MY WAY DOWNTOWN TO THE FBI office. A water main had burst, necessitating a rip-up job with an oversized backhoe, blocking traffic on State Street, right next to one of the stops on the new light-rail train. The gaping hole threw a messy black eye right in the middle of all of Utah's hard work at looking downright brilliant for the coming Olympic
Games. As the backhoe swung a bucketful of dirt, it barely missed one of the fancy banners that had been hung out to greet its sports-hungry visitors. Oh, sorry, just a burst water main here. No, nothing. Little bitty earthquake put a small crack in it. We'll have it fixed up in a minute here ⦠.
How embarrassing.
Aside from the burst main, surprisingly little damage requiring immediate cleanup had occurred along the rows of high-rise structures that constituted the main business district of Salt Lake Cityâa carved sandstone cornice was down here or there, some broken glassâbut the place had sprouted vans with satellite dishes. Reporters and guys with big shoulder-mounted video cameras were dogging the emergency crews, hungry for any little chunk of fallen masonry or broken glass that would look really horrifying on the evening news back in Cincinnati, Palm Beach, or wherever, places all but ignorant of the realities of earthquakes, where citizens were hankering for a vicarious adrenaline rush. I spotted a CNN van, which meant I should add to that list such places as Oslo, Caracas, and Seoul.
Some of the emergency crews were hard at it, checking for signs of deeper structural damage. Quite a few citizens stood around in the winter air, shivering and gawking, and, this being the center of the Mormon beehive, many more scurried about, looking for some way to be involved in doing whatever was necessary to make their apiary once again secure.
I slipped in the back door that led up to Tom Latimer's third-story office and checked in through security. The guard lifted two fingers in a salute, my face and name being quite familiar to him by this time. The training Tom was giving me was strictly private, between the two of us only, but he quite frequently had me meet him here, and the staff had long since quit noticing my comings and goings as anything unusual. I bustled in past the office manager, dumped my down jacket on a hook on the coatrack,
and slithered through the doorway into the room where Tom sat, phone to ear, his shoulders hunched up in his storm-cloud array.
He had his back to me, so I slipped in and sat down quiet as a mouse in hopes of hearing some of his phone call.
He was saying, “Right. I know that. Uh-huh. I'm going to do it anyway! Right. Your job is to get her in and out unnoticed. I know that. Right now.”
When he turned around, his first glimpse of me brought a jerk not of surprise but of avoidance, as if he was ⦠embarrassed. He dumped the phone onto its cradle and began to stare into some scene inside his head.
“Reporting,” I said, giving him my best Junior Woodchuck salute.
“Got a job for you.”
“Figured.”
“Some geology.”
“What?” I squinted at him trying to decide if it was Faye who had him off his stride, or something else, something to do with his work. As a working hypothesis, I decided it was probably both.
He chanced a bit of eye contact. “I want you to read some reports.”
“What's the case about?”
Tom took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then he said, “Information concerning this case is on a need-to-know basis. You do not need to know.”
My heart sank.
So that's the way it's going to be.
I got up in preparation to leave.
“As a personal favor, then?”
“No.”
Tom's eyebrows bashed into each other. “Listen, this isn't detective work I want done; it's geological analysis. I'd ask any
number of other geologists I know around this city to do the work, but they're allâ”
“Employed,” I said, cutting him short, throwing my hands up in frustration. “They're out there looking for ground rupture, or plotting the orientations of chimneys that fell, or ⦠orâ” My hands fell into my lap as if the life had just gone out of them.
Now Tom looked at me directly. “Right. They're out looking for earthquake damage. I need a geologist. Cah you help me?”
I could see too many of his teeth. He was getting mad. He didn't like to beg.
I closed my eyes and rubbed a hand over the lids, trying to scrub out the sight so I wouldn't feel sorry for him. “Sorry, Tom, but you've taught me too well. Your training has been all about keeping Emmy safe, and the first thing you taught me was never, never take on a job without knowing full well what I'm getting myself into. For all I know, this is just one of your tests. I do not intend to flunk.”
I opened one eye. Tom was staring at the top of his desk again. He looked worried. I began to wonder if, for the first time since I had known him, the fabled Tom Latimer was in over his head. He wanted me safe, he wanted Faye safe, but, even more essentially now, he wanted his world safe for one brand-new passenger.
“Tom,” I said. “Look, I'd like to help, really. I justâyou know me, Tom. If you don't tell me what's going on, I'm even more likely to walk right into the middle of it and really get myself into trouble. So please, let's solve two problems at once. Tell me what's going on.”
Tom turned his hands palms-up and shook his head.
Suddenly, it hit me. “Sidney Smeeth,” I said. These two dots were easy to connect: death and a geologist. I had been here before. “Murder?”
Tom nodded. “Someone pitched her off the sundeck at her house.”
I held up both hands. “Whoa! Wait a minute, Tom. You were teaching me not only to keep myself out of danger but to stay out of fights that don't have my name on them. This investigation is even outside
your
jurisdiction. I mean, she's a state employee, right? Not federal, and her home didn't just happen to be on a federal reservation or anything, right? Soâ”
Tom leaned forward onto his elbows and folded his hands tightly in front of him. “Right, but wrong. The murder is local jurisdiction, the Salt Lake City Police Department. But there's more to it than that.”
“But
“But. But there's this little matter of the Olympics.”
The Olympics. I pursed my lips into a ring that said Oh with no sound. Interlock four more and you've got the official logo. And hundreds of thousands of visitors, and hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into Salt Lake City. It was a huge thing for Utah, and for the Mormon Church: one long television infomercial showcasing the splendor of Utah tourist destinations, all with the towering spires of the Salt Lake temple forming the backdrop for the medals ceremonies.
Tom's lips tightened. “Right. Elite athletes from around the globe. Tens of thousands of athletes and press and support personnel already here, and more by the end of the month. Then the spectators start arriving. Remember Munich? Remember Atlanta?” He swallowed. “Remember New York and the Pentagon?”
I sat down heavily. Death and terror, and not from Mother Nature, but at our own hands. But how did this connect to the death of the state geologist?
Tom said, “We've been working on this for years, attending strategy meetings, setting up scenarios. Now this.”
“A murder. But howâ”
“I don't know how. That's why I need you.”
“But whyâ”
Tom's eyes grew bright with his ferocious brand of anxiety.
“You
tell
me
why.”
My mind raced. “No, wait, Tom. Unless you know something you're not telling me, which is a damned habit of yours, there is no connection between this death and the Olympic Games. Sure, it's weird as hell that the state geologist should be murdered immediately after an earthquake, and murder always has some kind of a reasonâor unreasonâfor occurring, but what's the connection?”
He looked away from me. “There may be none. Probably isn't. But I just can't take the chance.” He began to twist back and forth in his swivel chair.
I turned to make certain that no one in the outer office was near enough to be listening to us. Then, my voice down to a whisper, I said, “Come on, Tom. Spill it.”
“Spill it?” Tom kicked his desk. Hard. “In fact, I have no excuse to go butting into a police investigation. So I'm sending in my most covert undercover agent. You. They'd never suspect someone who doesn't actually work for me, would they?”
I began to make some nasty connections. “Sure, Tom. Except the someone who's dating the cop. Hoping for a little pillow talk? I should get so lucky.”
“No. My original request was legitimate. I just want you to chase down a few things that only a geologist can get for me. What I'm asking of you is this: Go to the City and County Building. Read a few files that are on public record. Read them like a geologist. Come back to me and report. Is that so risky? Hmm?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “You tell me. Sounds like you think that at least one geologist has already been killed over what those files can tell us.”
“That's why I've assigned an agent to watch over you. I've taught you well, Em. Now, will you do it?”
“You're giving me the willies.”
He pulled his lips back from his teeth like the Cheshire cat. The effect was sickening. “Please. Pretty please.”
My stomach tightened with fear: images of the fallen towers in New York lived sharp as bullets in my mind, right next to the fresh knowledge that there are no civilians in a war with terrorists. “Okay.”
Tom nodded, satisfied. “You got another pair of shoes in your truck? Those red boots of yours kind of stand out.”
Bleakly I shook my head.
Tom said, “You need to blend in with the crowd is all.”
“I drove Faye's car. My truck is high and dry by the side of the road up there, remember?”
“Ah. Well then, they'll have to do. And as to pillow talk, please do not tell Ray about this little field trip, okay?”
I shook my head as a new reality sank in. “No problem there. I haven't seen him in days, and when he does come home, he'll be too busy piloting his tribe through their earthquake jitters to be curious what I did with mine.”
Tom's eyes softened. “Okay. Well, this is Agent Sampler. He's new here.” He indicated a tall, burly man with a wide, closemouthed smile who had just appeared in his doorway.
I turned around in my chair and acknowledged the man. He had a nice, broad chest and shoulders, but as I didn't need that kind of distraction just then, I didn't smile. “Front name or back? Or is that not your name, but your function?”
His smile didn't waver. “John Walter Sampler. You c'n call me Jack. Some earthquake, huh?”
“Okay, Agent Jack,” I said as I rose from my chair. “Let's make tracks.”