The Forensic Geology Box Set

by Toni Dwiggins

  In frustration I finally asked her, “Well then what the hell does my weatherby mean?”

  She spat on the ground.

  I guessed it didn't matter. Whatever it meant, it had diverted her attention long enough for us to take her down.

  Walter said, “Do you need something for your head wound? A painkiller?”

  She shifted her venomous look to Walter.

  Curious nosy me and kind concerned Walter—neither of us could get a word from her.

  She looked from Walter up higher, up to the ridge, the fifth time she'd done so since we took her to the ground.

  I had to admit I'd been checking the ridgetop, myself. Simple prudence. Still, I was counting on the fact that Henry could have shot us, and didn't—just as he could have shot Walter and me at the grotto, and didn't. On the other hand, I hated to count on that, right now, with Henry's wounded soul and damaged mind. Perhaps we should all move to the tunnel to wait for the rangers. Take cover there. Henry wasn't likely to come stalking us in there. He didn't like enclosed spaces.

  I caught Gail checking the ridge yet again. I said, “That was Henry Shelburne.”

  She finally found her voice. “I know.” Venom in her voice, in her eyes, in the way she uncoiled from her slump looking ready to strike.

  I blessed duct tape. I said, “I guess you learned who Henry is by watching us. Overhearing us.”

  She said, “I've known him for years.”

  Words like spit.

  I looked to Walter—he'd learned more about her than I had—but he just shook his head.

  He said, to me, “She found me on the forum. That's all I know.”

  I tried to fit the pieces. “That's how Robert found you. Found us.” I tried to make the connection to Henry. “Because Henry left the laptop open to...”

  “No.” Gail Hawkins uncoiled even further, straightening her spine and throwing back her shoulders. “Henry didn't do that.”

  It took me a moment before the pieces snapped into place.

  Walter let out a low whistle.

  I said, “You're the landlady.”

  CHAPTER 45

  The chopper lifted off from the high valley.

  Brown Woman Valley.

  I could see her face at the helicopter window, looking down on us, on the high valley where she had hoped to find gold.

  I was still trying to wrap my head around her identity. Brown Woman, also known as Gail Hawkins, also known as Henry's landlady. She would have observed him, year in and year out, heading off into the wilderness in search of the family legacy, still following his grandfather's 'clue' letter, the letter his father preached. I couldn't picture Henry as much of a talker, certainly not a braggart telling tall tales at the boarding house dinner table. But, a word dropped here, a flicker of interest shown there, when the landlady perhaps brought up her own interests. And then—a month ago—Henry finds the legendary ore under the floorboard in his father's attic and brings it back to his room at the boarding house. And begins his search anew, this time following hard evidence. As for the landlady, she'd have a key to his room. She would no doubt have snooped. And perhaps she would have found that chunk of ore sitting on Henry's table. Or, perhaps, she didn't enter the room until Henry left the faucet running, three days ago, to attract her attention in order to have her find his so-called suicide note and summon his brother. And there, she would have found more than squandered water. She would have found the split rock on the table, the ore sample Henry left as the lure for his brother. She clearly knew enough to have seen it for what it was. But not enough to take it and set off on her own exploration. She wasn't a geologist. She knew that's what was needed. And she knew just the geologist to recruit. She'd been watching Walter on the forum, as she'd explained to him, and he explained to me. So she opened two windows on Henry's laptop—the forum, and our website—and left the invitation there for Robert to find. And naturally Robert thought it was Henry who had suggested enlisting the wise and knowledgeable Walter Shaws, and so Robert contacted Walter. After that, all Gail Hawkins had to do was wait and watch and follow. Whether she followed Robert to our lab, or just came there straightaway on her own, she had her own guides to the source of the legendary ore.

  Almost succeeded, too.

  I shaded my eyes to catch the last glimpse of the face at the helicopter window, and then it disappeared from view. The helicopter gained its altitude and headed west.

  I shifted my attention to the second ranger party, setting off along the ridgetop, their horses watered and fed and refreshed. Walter and I had told them what we knew about Henry's last location, about his physical and mental condition, about his abilities. About the rifle. We had done our best to offer ideas about the route he would likely have taken, but in the end we had to admit we had little idea.

  Deeper into the wilderness.

  That's all we had.

  Our own ranger escorts had gone over to the trees for a pit stop.

  “While we're waiting,” Walter said, “I'm going to nip over there for one more look.”

  Over there was the spot where he had been on his hands and knees digging through the brush, hunting for float. Where I had joined him and the woman holding him at gunpoint.

  I came along.

  I expected him to get down again at eye level with the ground, put his nose again to the scattered rocks and cobbles. Take his one more look. He didn't. He just stood there scanning the slope, head cocked.

  Finally I said, “You see something?”

  He turned a smile on me.

  I said, “Tell me this was all a bluff. You bringing Gail up here. Tell me there's nothing here of interest.”

  He swept a hand, encompassing the rimrock, the exposed seam of cemented gravel, the creek, the hillside in front of us. If there was a visible outcrop of chiastolite hornfels in this valley I had not spotted it, and I doubted that he had either, but that didn't matter, I'd pinpointed the outcrop down below in Sluiceway Canyon, and I knew how a hornfels aureole came to be. That diorite intrusion into the old channel cooked the slate country rock into hornfels, and the hornfels formed rings around the intrusive rock. So the hornfels aureole could very well extend into this upper valley. And the story I'd figured down below held true up here. The old channel got exposed and eroded and the auriferous gravels mixed with chips of hornfels and then the lot got re-cemented by river sand and clay. And then got buried again in the hillside in front of us.

  I said, “Are you talking theory, Walter?”

  He put his hand in the drooping cargo pocket on his left pant leg and pulled out a small cobble. He held it out to me.

  I didn't take it.

  “It won't bite, dear.”

  Yeah, right. One could say that about the chunk of ore Robert brought to our lab day before yesterday. But it sure did bite.

  I sighed and took the rock from Walter and held it up to the sunlight and took a long look. Smaller than Robert's specimen, but otherwise surprisingly similar. Alarmingly so. Rough and lumpy, a gravel of pebbles cemented together, quartz and diorite and black chips of hornfels. Unlovely. It fit like a plum in my palm.

  I did not need my hand lens to spy the buttery gold grains embedded in the plum. About the size of kernels of wheat. Coarse gold. Nuggets.

  Damn me, my heart leaped.

  I skipped a breath or two.

  My mouth went a little dry.

  I turned to my partner and asked, “Where?”

  He pointed in the bushes.

  “When?”

  “Before you made your entrance.”

  I went a little dizzy. “What if she'd seen? Were there more? Are there? In the bushes there? Did you find more?”

  He smiled. “Got the itch?”

  “No.” Well yes, a little, how do you look at those golden grains, those nuggets—there's that word, ripe with suggestion and promise and legend—and not experience just a tiny miserable itch? I took in a long breath. “What I have right now is a question. Why did you lead her
to it? And, by the way, how did you know?”

  “Why?” He shrugged. “She was holding a gun on me and I was running low on diversionary tactics. How?” He smiled. “More years than I care to count of study, of poking around in the field.” He added, “And the evidence of a fracture spring.”

  “But what if she'd seen what you found?”

  “I pocketed it.”

  “What if she got impatient and demanded you produce something?”

  “I would have played for time.”

  “What if she got down there with you and found one of those suckers herself?”

  “That was a possibility I kept in mind.”

  “Well shit Walter, then she wouldn't have needed you any longer.”

  “Oh, but she would.”

  I wanted to shake him.

  “Give me some credit, Cassie. I wasn't wild-ass guessing—I had a Plan B.”

  I took in another long breath and said, “This better be good.”

  “I'll allow you to be the judge.” He turned and pointed to the hillside above the thicket of bushes where he had been hunting. “Do you see that spot, about half a dozen yards up?”

  I looked. The slope there was steep, not holding much in the way of vegetation. I said, “Yeah?”

  “Do you see the slight cupping?”

  I looked. If he hadn't pointed it out, I would never have taken notice. But yeah, there was a spot on the flank of the hill, where it cupped. Like the flank of a dog lying in the sun, taking in a deep breath.

  I was beginning to get it. My mouth went dry again. I said, “Yeah.”

  “If I were a betting man,” Walter said, “I would conjecture that Grandfather Shelburne found the mother lode of his dreams up here, that he ran a glory hole into the Tertiary channel around here and hit a riffle where a dike of diorite intruded, where it formed a gold-catching pocket. And the old man took out whatever he took but the ground was unstable and at some point his one-man operation collapsed. His glory hole caved in. And he went home with his diggings, and spun tales and gave hints and played his games and wrote his flowery letter, and at some point he decided to entrust his discovery to his antisocial grandson Henry, and so he buried a chunk from his diggings under a floorboard and wrote a letter to his grandson.”

  I nodded.

  “And the only signs left here were some mined-out cobbles and the cup-shaped indentation that shows where there was once a cave-in of some past miner's excavation.”

  I stared up at the flank of the dog.

  Walter looked at me. Serious. “Plan B, if it had come to that, was to tell Gail that we had some searching to do, to go looking for evidence of an old tunnel around here. At some point I expected to be able to take my chance, to distract her. To get the jump on her. Fortunately, I didn't have to move to Plan B.” He reached out and patted my arm. “Instead, you came onto the scene.”

  Yeah. Plan C.

  CHAPTER 46

  A week after Walter and I returned from the gold country, Walter answered a phone call. His terse responses gave no clue as to the caller or the subject matter. Yes. No. I understand. Again, no. Thank you.

  He hung up and went to our mini-kitchen and returned with two steaming mugs of coffee. He set one on my workbench.

  I regarded the mug. Whatever that call was, it required coffee to deal with?

  He returned to the kitchen and brought back the nearly empty box of donuts.

  I declined.

  He chose a cinnamon coil, his favorite. He settled in at his workbench with his coffee and donut.

  My partner liked his drama. I caved. “What's all this about? The gold?”

  “No—I'm still waiting to hear about that.” Walter sipped his coffee. Then said, “That was the county sheriff's department. They're calling off the search for Henry.”

  Yeah? This wasn't really a surprise. We had already explained to the Sheriff and the Forest Service and all interested agencies that, in our considered opinion, Henry was not a threat to anyone, any more. He had saved our lives. As for the events in Enchantment Valley, in the grotto, we had chosen not to press charges for false imprisonment. Yes, Henry had held us at gunpoint, but in the end he had abandoned the Glock and walked away.

  I could not condone what he'd done. If anyone was asking.

  Neither could I hope that he would someday be found and brought to justice, justice most likely being confinement in some mental health facility.

  In truth, there was a part of me that wanted him to find a niche out there in the wild, some place far from a world where he was not an asset, some place not enclosed.

  I really hoped that the Henry Shelburne of the Old West photo, the squint-eyed teenager, had finally and fully disappeared over the horizon.

  I asked Walter, “Anything in particular cause them to end the search?”

  “They found Gail's rifle, abandoned.”

  “Her Weatherby.” She never did admit to owning the rifle, never did explain her cry of my weatherby, but the Sheriff had found a photo in her room, in her boarding house: Gail Hawkins cradling a hunting rifle in one arm, standing over a gutshot pig. The Sheriff had known exactly what sort of rifle it was. A Weatherby, he'd reported to us, with a certain air of approval. Good choice for hunting, evidently. Certainly, she was not happy to have Henry Shelburne steal it—in the process of which he had most likely struck her in the head, and knocked her unconscious. I couldn't condone that, but I thought I understood. He finds this crazy woman—his landlady, for God's sake—tracking us. Interfering with his desperate need to draw his brother to that grotto, to exact his revenge. Justice of a sort, in Henry's wounded eyes. In any case, the Weatherby ended up in the right hands. I envisioned again—not for the first time—Henry on the ridge with the rifle, drawing Gail's furious attention. Could have shot her. Didn't. Could have shot us. Didn't. Just stood there holding onto that rifle. Hands shaking, no doubt.

  “That was the clincher,” Walter said, “Henry jettisoning the rifle. They've deemed that he is not a threat.”

  Good call. I said, “And then there's the fact that they haven't been able to find a ghost of a trace of him.”

  “That too.”

  “So it's over.”

  Walter dissected another cinnamon coil. “Henry Shelburne, yes.”

  “Well Robert's dead and Gail's in jail.” I flashed a smile. Silly rhyme. Serious stuff. “I know the gold part's still pending. To be resolved.”

  “Yes.”

  He was being his maddening elliptical self. I said, “Other than gold. The people, the players—that's over. Although one could say that Henry more or less rode off into the sunset.”

  Walter fixed me with a sharp blue stare. “Henry. Shelburne. Yes. That is over.”

  I didn't get it.

  And then I did. Henry. Oldfield. That is not over. I said, carefully, “Okay fine, you need to do your protective thing, and yes I got myself a little twisted about my brother, I conflated one damaged Henry with another, and I will most likely get twisted about my brother again in the future, but you don't have worry about it in this case. Any more.”

  “Let me ask you something,” Walter said. “Why do you do what you do?”

  “You're jumping around like a frog. Okay fine, easy answer. Right the wrongs. Bring malefactors to justice.”

  “And why did you sign on, with me, to begin with?”

  “You mean, way back when?”

  Walter nodded.

  “Aside from the fact that playing Sherlock Holmes with rocks looked really cool?”

  Walter nodded. And allowed a small smile.

  “Like I just said, I liked the idea of righting wrongs.”

  He took a bite of his cinnamon coil, and waited.

  I raised my coffee but I sensed no warmth in it. I saw where he was going with this and I didn't want to follow. Back to my eleven-year-old self, babysitting Henry, ignoring his pleas to have me read him Where The Wild Things Are for the umpteenth time. Instead, I was looking out the wi
ndow yearning to join my older brother and his buddies setting off bottle rockets, paying no heed when my little brother jumped up and down on his bed to get his own look out the window, to try to see what I was looking at—jumped and fell and crashed into the table and broke his skull. If I'd been watching, maybe I could have caught him. As Robert Shelburne suggested. But I wasn't watching Henry, I was committing an act of careless inattention. I was not doing the job I'd been charged with. Sure, I was a kid, a resentful babysitter. Nobody blamed me. So I was left to blame myself. And then along came Walter Shaws and his lab, where wrongs got righted, where I sensed the chance to start balancing the scales for an act of careless inattention.

  Walter still waited. Attentive.

  “Okay,” I said, “I actually do get it. We chose not to press charges against Henry Shelburne. We absolved him. We decided where justice lay, in this case. And now you get a phone call to say that the search for Henry has been terminated. And you're thinking, Cassie is going to get all metaphorical about calling off searches for wounded souls named Henry. And you're hoping she'll call off her own search for justice in the case of her brother. That she'll absolve herself.”

  “Something along that line.”

  I thought of chiastolite, of that Maltese cross, that metaphorical symbol for Henry Shelburne of obsession, crusades. Such a cross could lodge in my own mind, if I chose to let it. Or I could just call off the crusade. I gave Walter a shrug, encompassing all Henrys, and said, “It's a work in progress.”

  Walter nodded, and finished his donut.

  ~ ~ ~

  Two days after the search for Henry had been terminated we got a phone call to inform us that Gail Hawkins had been indicted for the murder of Robert Shelburne.

  Justice, served.

  A killer brought to justice was categorically a good thing, a righting of wrongs. But in this case, I found myself unable to mourn for the victim.