The Rivers Run Dry

by Sibella Giorello

  Only one geologist disagreed with the theory of gradual erosion. His name was J Harlan Bretz, an individualist who rejected punctuation with his first initial. Bretz held a PhD in geology from the University of Chicago and spent years studying eastern Washington. In 1929 he concluded that the coulees could only have been formed by a catastrophic flood because the sides were almost perpendicular and the bottoms were wide and flat, not narrow winding channels produced by slow trickling water. Bretz thought the flood came quickly and carved the solid basalt within days, maybe even hours.

  By all accounts, Bretz was not a professing Christian—he never mentioned Noah—but every scientist in the world suddenly characterized him as a crackpot, heaping peer-reviewed abuse on his flood theory. But decades later, when aerial photographs were taken of the area, engineers noticed how the solid land rippled. The waves in the rock couldn’t be seen from the ground, but from the sky the evidence was obvious. A lot of water crossed the Columbia Plateau, all at once. When the engineers calculated the hydraulics necessary to cut several hundred feet through solid rock, one solid estimate was a million cubic feet of water—per second. Water that could toss forty-foot boulders like Ping-Pong balls.

  Bretz’s evidence, it turned out, was impeccable, and geologists started putting the pieces of the puzzle together. A massive glacier once blanketed what is now western Montana, but the glacier had melted suddenly—nobody knew why—and now they realized where all that melt went. It was as if a giant bucket had been tipped on its side, a flood bursting across the Columbia Plateau, cutting basalt like a buzz saw.

  And it happened in hours. Not millions of years.

  J Harlan Bretz was ninety-six years old when he was awarded the Penrose Medal, geology’s highest honor, and now as I stared out my windshield, watching sagebrush tumble across a desert with no evidence of moisture, I was reminded of the crucial characteristic linking my science work in the lab to my work as an agent in the field. Preconceived notions were not my friend; they were my avowed enemy; they blinded me to the truth. Six days had passed since anybody had seen Courtney VanAlstyne, and I no longer discounted any theory about what happened to her, including her parents’ idea that she could have been kidnapped.

  At the exit for Eastern Washington University, I drove past an empty football stadium, circled behind it, and parked outside a corrugated steel building. Inside, I offered my ID to the guard at the front desk and walked under exposed air ducts that ran along the ceiling. Beside the door marked Microanalysis Unit, a tall man with a black moustache waited. He wore cowboy boots and offered his right hand. It was the size of a baseball mitt.

  “Howdy, I’m Peter Rosser,” he said. “How ya doin’?”

  The lab was filled with the natural weapons of enemy-occupied territory: samples of minerals, tree barks, leaves, seeds, pollen, animal pelts, paw prints, and a series of ropes that hung from the ceiling made of cotton and hemp.

  “Nice lab,” I said.

  “When your state gets to tax Microsoft and Starbucks, you wind up with a surplus on the books.” He grinned. “For a while, at least.”

  We walked toward the back of the lab, passing a stainless steel table with a car door propped against sawhorses. The door was riddled with bullet holes, and plastic straws had been shoved through the holes to show ballistic angles of entry and exit. Behind the door, a crash test dummy sat on a vinyl bench seat wearing a beanie.

  “Let’s see what ya got.” Rosser threw me a raft of paper.

  I signed the custody and release forms, telling him which samples were urgent. He opened each bag, marked the contents and case numbers, then poured each sample into a separate stack of sieves before locking the canisters together. They looked like brass wedding cakes. Opening a door under his desk, he slipped the first stack into the shaker, then flipped the switch. He turned to me.

  “Eric Duncan says you’re a forensic geologist.”

  “I was. I went to Quantico, now I’m a special agent.”

  “You’re still a rock head.” He grinned. “Most people gawk at the ropes. I saw you rubbernecking the minerals.”

  “Guilty.”

  “Why’d you leave the lab?” he asked.

  “There were good days, when I couldn’t believe they paid me to look at rocks all day.” I hesitated.

  “But?”

  “But the stories behind the rocks got to me. I decided to help find some happy endings.”

  “So how’s that working?” He tugged on the end of his moustache.

  Before I could answer, the sifter beeped and Rosser turned, opening the door. He took out the canister, replacing it with another, turning the machine on again. He was lost to the puzzle before him, no longer needing a reply. I waited as he carried the soil to a picture window on the north side of the room, writing down corresponding colors and textures, before extracting one sample and placing it on a glass slide. He slipped it under the Polarizing Light Microscope. Since the scope was attached to his computer monitor, I could see the minerals forming a reverse view of the night sky, black stars sparkling against a white background. Rosser wrote down the details.

  When he finished, he carried the torn fabric into a small back room. It was filled with peculiar sounds—whirs and squeals of refrigerators working overtime—and he cut a small piece from the cloth and placed it on a stub of carbon adhesive no wider than a pencil eraser. When he slid it into the Scanning Electron Microscope, the Gateway monitor jumped to life. A colored bar graph, the X-ray analysis, showed various chemical elements divided into relative ratios. The chemicals were S, Fe, and As.

  “Sulfur, iron, arsenic,” Rosser said. “Hey, check out that arsenic ratio. You got longitude and latitude for this stuff?”

  “No, but I can show you the quadrant on the map. I was on Cougar Mountain.”

  Back at his desk, he pushed aside blood splatter samples turning brown from oxidation, and opened a map drawer, pulling out the Issaquah Quadrangle. He ran his finger down the right side, where the text explained the rock formations.

  “Yep, what I thought.” He looked up. “Bituminous coal, which accounts for the high sulfur content. And a trace of arsenic.”

  “Trace,” I repeated. “That wasn’t what I saw on the X-ray. The arsenic ratio was pretty high.”

  “You see the problem already. There’s enough arsenic on that fabric to poison a Clydesdale. The stuff on Cougar Mountain usually isn’t that potent.”

  I stared at the DMV dummy, sitting behind the shot-out door. Somebody had drawn hair on the cottony chest. “Any idea where the arsenic might come from?”

  He twirled the ends of his moustache. “There are some old mine shafts up there.”

  “Mine shafts.”

  “Cougar Mountain had a lot of coal mining, way back at the turn of the century. But the shafts are all closed.”

  “Anything else?”

  He shook his head. “I wish I could give you an answer, but . . .”

  But the truth exceeded an easy reach.

  “You want me to run this other sample now?” he asked.

  He meant Jack’s evidence, the rocks and gunpowder from Mount Si. I told him yes and waited for some of the preliminary findings, enough information to get Jack off my back for a while. The other tests—tracing the manufacturer of the plastic, sourcing the gunpowder—that hunt would take more time.

  Before I left, I asked Rosser for a piece of the fabric.

  “You want to send it to the Bureau lab in DC?” he asked.

  “I trust your analysis,” I said.

  He twirled the moustache, watching me. “Hoping to find some match in the field, that it?”

  I nodded.

  “You never know,” he said. “You never know.”

  On the drive back to Seattle, I tried to think of all the ways arsenic could creep into ordinary life, anything that might explain how that much arsenic got on a piece of fabric tied to a tree on the mountain where a girl had gone missing.

  Back in the old days,
arsenic was used for rat poison. Today, ammunition factories added arsenic to bullets, fortifying the ammo. What also bothered me was the sulfur. Left alone, arsenic wasn’t terribly poisonous. But the mineral paired up in some of the most toxic marriages on Earth, and if arsenic combined with sulfur, even small doses were deadly.

  When my cell phone rang, I was grateful for the distraction.

  Until I flipped the phone open. Jack.

  “Harmon, where are you?”

  “I’m on my way back from Spokane.”

  “Spokane, who told you to go there?”

  “I took the soil samples to the state geologist. He gave us an expedite. I’ve got trace evidence on your Mount Si material.”

  He paused. I thought that would shut him up.

  Not for long. “How far are you from Seattle?” he asked.

  “The last exit said something about Lake Chelan.”

  “You’re hours away.”

  “So?”

  “So what’re you doing—taking the scenic route?”

  “No, Jack, I’m driving a car. Wonder Woman’s invisible plane wasn’t available. What’s so urgent?”

  “It’s Felicia.”

  I waited. A green Suburban passed on my left. I flicked on my blinker, stepping on the gas, slipping in behind the speeder because Felicia had done something horrendous and it would get pinned on me. I watched the speedometer hit 65, then 70, then I realized how long it had been since he’d said anything.

  “Hello, Jack? Are you there?”

  “Yes.” His voice sounded as flat as the desert beyond my windshield.

  I felt a stab of panic. “Let me have it, Jack.”

  “She’s gone.”

  I leaned forward, gripping the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles turned white. Another exit washed past my right window.

  “Gone where?” I said.

  “She’s just gone, I don’t know where.”

  When it hit me, when I realized what was happening, I felt a wave of relief—followed by a mean temptation to torture Jack.

  “Wait, Jack Stephanson cares? You’re worried about her. That’s what this is about?”

  “Knock it off, Harmon.” His voice still sounded flat, but now there was something mean beneath it, like molten magma ready to blow. “We need Felicia for appeals, that’s all. Find her. Tonight. Don’t bother coming into the office unless you locate her.”

  Then he hung up.

  chapter ten

  I decided Jack was serious about finding Felicia and when I reached the town of Snoqualmie, I pulled off the interstate and followed the big neon signs that filled the dusky sky with a strange orange light.

  If there was one thing I knew about addicts, it was that their habits exerted supernatural force over their lives. It was the dinner hour when I walked into the casino, and men in oversized T-shirts clouded the poker and blackjack tables, leaning their elbows on the green felt, their eyes glazed with interior motives. I circled the area twice before heading over to the slot machines. They ran in phalanxes of chrome and glass and ringing bells, and when the long levers were pulled they sounded like trapdoors opening. Brass tokens tumbled through the machinery in metallic waterfalls, pooling in hollow steel baskets that amplified the sound of money. I found Felicia in the third row.

  With one arm, she clutched a white paper bucket, her plump bottom swelling like pillows on either side of the chair. I waited for her to finish a losing bid, then tapped her on the shoulder.

  She didn’t turn. She reached for an empty glass beside the machine and held it out, eyes fixed on the rolling figures. “Rum and coke with a cherry,” she said.

  When her glass wasn’t taken, she turned around.

  “Oh. It’s you.” She went back to the machine, setting down the glass, staring at the bright triptych of loss. “What’re you doing here?”

  I told her Jack wanted to talk to her.

  “The last person I want to talk to is Jack Stephanson,” she said.

  I understood the sentiment but held my tongue. “Felicia, he just wants to know you’re okay. Are you?”

  She took one brass token from the white bucket and rolled it into the machine. I didn’t even bother watching. I glanced along the row where an elderly woman three stools down was pulling the long lever with an arthritic hand. She let go and covered her mouth, coughing wetly, a deep rheumy cough that didn’t sound finished. Her silver and turquoise rings depicted ancient tribal symbols—the Thunderbird, the Raven—and when her spin came up empty, she rolled another coin into the machine.

  “How’d you find me?” Felicia asked.

  I held up the plastic disk. “Remember? You gave it to me in the courtroom. You were going to quit drinking and get your kids back.”

  She sucked in her lower lip and yanked the lever, hard. It swung up, calm and slow.

  Ace . . . Ace . . . Ace.

  A red siren on top of the machine ignited. The light whipped crimson beams around the room. And brass tokens tumbled, plummeting into the hollow tray. Felicia’s eyes were bright as cut gems, her lips pulled back into a smile that revealed all her missing teeth. But the other players weren’t smiling. Their faces held level expressions, like people sensing betrayal.

  “Yeah, baby!” Felicia cried.

  She scooped the tokens into the bucket, the coins hitting the paper bottom with a sound like a snare drum, then slithering over each other like glittery chimes. Lifting herself off the stool, she walked down the aisle, head held high, and carried the bucket to a bullet-proofed kiosk at the far end of the casino. An emaciated Native American man dumped the tokens into a mechanical counter that spit out a paper receipt. He extracted $25 from a drawer, sliding the two bills toward Felicia under a thick partition of bulletproof Plexiglas. His bony fingers did not release the bills until Felicia picked them up.

  She turned to me, grinning. “I’m going to buy you a cheeseburger.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “But I want to.”

  “Hang on to your money.”

  Her smile evaporated. “You’re too good for it?”

  The restaurant had brown vinyl booths, and from where we sat I could see the gambling floor and hear the parabolic ticking of the roulette wheels. The menu was a laminated sheet between ketchup bottles and a wood-paneled wall where Chilkat blankets furred with dust.

  “What happened to getting your kids back?”

  Felicia shrugged her narrow shoulders. The waitress came. “Two of my usual,” Felicia said.

  I put the menu back.

  “My new usual,” she said, as the waitress left. “Cheeseburger, fries, chocolate shake. That’s what I can thank the FBI for. And that’s all.”

  “Jack helped you out of a bad situation,” I said. “Believe it or not, he actually cares about you.”

  “Yeah? Bookman’s got people waiting to kill me if I show up anywhere near the house. The lady down at social services told me I gotta get a job before I can see my kids, and every job has drug testing. My cell phone got shut off because I can’t pay the bill. How stupid do I look to you? I saw how Jack helped me.”

  I glanced across the gambling floor.

  “Get my kids back,” she continued. “Where am I gonna raise them, in here?”

  The cheeseburgers arrived. Pink grease filled the buns, the bread disintegrated in my hands. The lettuce was wilted, the French fries arced flaccidly. And I ate everything. When the check arrived, I got there first. Felicia didn’t protest; I didn’t think she should. Buying Felicia Kunkel one bad meal before she went back to the casino floor didn’t seem anywhere near sufficient. I fought the sudden urge to grab her small hand and lead her back to social services where we could set up visits with three children who wondered what happened to their mom.

  But the road to hell was paved with good intentions. Once upon a time, I had raised chickens in our backyard, a ten-year-old girl who thought the anticipation of eggs hatching surpassed the emotion on Christmas Eve. As soon as one
egg showed hairline fractures, as soon as I heard the cries inside that shell, I reached into the coop and flicked away the hard pieces, coaxing the blind and bleating chick from their casing. A swelling benevolence filled my heart, so powerful that I helped all the scrawny birds from their shells. They came out pitching beak-first into the dry sawdust, their triangular bony wings covered with wet down that trembled at their sides. I set the baby chicks under the warm red heat lamp and went to bed.

  The next morning, every chick was dead.

  Struggle had its purpose. Struggle exercised some crucial muscles. It prepared young life for the world outside a shell, a world full of even greater challenges.

  But knowing the rules of hardship did not silence the howls wailing through my heart as I walked Felicia back to the slot machines and watched her sit at a new spot, cradling another paper bucket, this one full of fresh tokens. She held the bucket as though it were a baby, and when I gave her another of my cards, I wrapped both of my hands around her palm. She nodded absently, slipping the card into the back pocket of her jeans.

  I wormed my way across the gambling floor. A frown collected on my forehead. My eyes wandered the room. Perhaps I was searching for one small signal of hope, one item that might convince me Felicia’s life would improve, eventually, at some point. I sent up one of those wordless prayers, the kind where you resign yourself to not having all the answers, and the green felt tables seemed to open like fans, the people seated on the ends suddenly appearing like abstract ornamentation. That’s when I saw the cocktail waitress moving among them. She was a dark-haired girl who wore a white blouse tied at her slim waist, and she held a raft of drinks on a round tray, smiling happily as a man handed her a twenty dollar tip and patted her rear end.

  I stopped. The chill running down my back seized my breath.

  Her lithe figure bent to set another round of highballs beside men seated at the next poker table. An older man with an unnatural shade of black hair handed her a twenty, and just like the last guy, patted her rear end. Stacee Warner gave him the identical smile.

  I watched her walk back toward the bar, her steps springy even in black stilettos.