The Forensic Geology Box Set

by Toni Dwiggins

  Because he’d have to go through Dearing, the monolith with the Sig Sauer.

  But still, why go after Pria? Does Roy Jardine know Pria from Adam?

  Well, it’s my room and he knows me.

  I heard Soliano and Walter stampeding through Walter’s suite and then I heard Walter’s door crash open and slam shut.

  I stared at the bathtub. How long had she soaked? I feared I was going to be sick. I moved for the toilet. I had to kick aside the wet towels humped on the floor. The toilet seat was up. There was no paper left on the roll. I changed my mind and went to the sink for a tissue to wipe my face. There were none left. Soiled tissues papered the counter. Her used bandaid clung to the mirror. I turned away. The tub was worse. Gels and shampoos drained their last and made a purple slick along the bottom. The drain was plugged by a nest of black hairs.

  She’d used everything. She’d gorged. She’d finally got a room at the Inn.

  Pity convulsed me.

  I stared into the tub. I could see the path made when the water drained. It had cut a channel through the purple slick. My vision suddenly jumped, to the giant fan Walter and I had hiked after being stranded. I saw again the fan rocks coated in black desert varnish and I felt again the heat they threw off. I felt the relief when Walter and I took shelter in the coolness of the channel that was unvarnished, that had been washed clean by floodwaters. I saw how the unvarnished channel ran down the fan and then snaked out onto the saltpan. My legs cramped, now, like I was wading again across the white floodplain.

  And then that vision morphed into another that beggared belief.

  I ran out the door.

  ~ ~ ~

  Soliano and Walter and Scotty were lined up like ducks at the stone ledge, looking down at the pool. As I sprinted across the lawn I heard Soliano shout “break the lock.” Down below, I saw Andre’s team on the hunt. They were armored and padded and helmeted and booted, hugging submachine guns. Full ninja.

  “Yes?” Soliano said, spotting me.

  I lifted a hand, panting. I felt, suddenly, unsure. This was an absurd idea. But they were waiting so I began. “What if this is a diversion?”

  Soliano held up the rolled map. “Until you find me another target, I am diverted.”

  Walter eyed me. “Diversion from what?”

  I waved at the clouds. “This is all an offshoot of that hurricane off Baja California. Right?”

  They glanced at the sky. Scotty turned, stiff in his suit.

  “According to the weather report, the storms were forecasted to start hitting us Monday and continue through the week.”

  They waited.

  “What if the forecast was a trigger? So Monday night Jardine’s ready to go. He does the last swap. But Beltzman gets cold feet—maybe he doesn’t want to go offroading with major storms on the way.” I took in a deep breath. “But major storms are just what Jardine needs.”

  Soliano stared. “Why does he need storms? For cover?”

  I saw Andre’s team, below, fan out to the pool house and the fireplaces and the banquet room. They were cautious, mincing their way, big ninjas on tiptoe like they didn’t want to find what Soliano had dispatched them to find. Unlike the ninjas, I plunged ahead. “How about for a delivery system?”

  Scotty’s phone rang.

  I clarified. “A flood.”

  Soliano frowned. “He needs storms to create a flood? And this flood will deliver the resins to...his target. This is what you are saying?”

  “Yes. He’s been waiting for a flood. And now the storms from the hurricane are going to give him one.”

  Walter’s eyebrows lifted. “No dear. A flood is not predictable. At a set time. In a set place. He has to have chosen his site a good long while ago.”

  “Okay but what if he checks out the Park Service Doppler radar system every time there’s a storm? And he gets a pattern, where the risk index is high. And he maps out likely areas. Then all he has to do is wait until a big enough storm hits.”

  Walter was shaking his head.

  “He’s got to move the resins from the mine to the target. How’s he do that?”

  “He releases them in situ,” Walter said. “And your rains wash the resins down into the groundwater. Toward the aquifer. As we discussed.”

  “There’s a better target.”

  “Hector.” Scotty closed his phone. “That was Lucy. My RERT, with your man Andre. She says we got hit.”

  ~ ~ ~

  We took the service road that ran up behind the Inn. RERTs and their vehicles formed a wall. Ninjas hovered. I couldn’t see anything. Scotty barreled ahead.

  I tried to hold on to my bathtub vision. I had carried it like a cup of smoke and already it was curling away. I caught a glimpse of a RERT edging toward a field of black vinyl. The ninjas backed up. Somebody swore. I heard beads. I heard crapped up. And now I could see that the vinyl overlaid a water tank sunk into the ground. The vinyl was ripped. The RERT dipped his tallywhacker through the hole. Like ice-fishing. Crazy ice-fishing in the desert in a pool of crapped-up water.

  My mind raced, inventorying. What did I have to drink?

  Scotty joined us, unmasking. “This tank’s an auxiliary.”

  Soliano opened the map. “For?”

  “For watering the lawn.”

  I gaped. So this tank’s not the main water tank on the diagram Soliano found in Jardine’s truck. This tank doesn’t supply potable water. We didn’t drink the water from this tank. Pria didn’t take a bath in this water. We all gaped at the auxiliary tank. All that worry. Out it went. Gushing out. Soliano expelled a breath. I sagged. Walter put his arm around me.

  “And,” Scotty added, grim, “it’s piped to the swimming pool.”

  It took us a long moment, to move from relief to horror. From us to them—the lap swimmers who got in the pool in all good faith for a little exercise, a little fun. And what they got was a big taste, courtesy of Brother Roy, of what’s to come. My skin crawled. But beneath the skin, beneath my outrage and my horror, I still swam in my own relief.

  “Scotty,” Soliano said, “check it all. Re-check. Every place the water flows.”

  “We’re already on it,” Scotty said.

  I stared at the exposed water in the auxiliary tank. Water water everywhere. Not really. I looked down at the dry fanglomerate soil. The rain squall of half-hour ago had left no liquid trace. The world again steamed dry. I watched Scotty run his hand through sweat-plastered hair. Blond filaments dried before my eyes. I turned to look at the service road, which ran from the Inn uphill to where we stood, and thence further up to the main water storage tank. Water water everywhere. Now you see it, now you don’t. The sun glared. My bathtub vision came back so strong I had to squint. I spun to Soliano. “It is a diversion, Hector.”

  “This?” Soliano glanced at the tank.

  “This is a bucket. He’s going to poison the well.”

  Walter understood. He turned to look upfan, up toward the Furnace Creek Wash. We couldn’t see it from here but we’d sure seen it yesterday. The mounds of travertine. The stands of mesquite, dotted along the fault trace for nearly a mile. The thrust fault that channeled water up from the aquifer, through the alluvium, spitting out that line of bighorn-attracting springs.

  I said, fierce, “Springs.”

  Soliano looked directly at me, for the first time. “They supply water to the Inn?”

  “Yeah. And the Ranch and the rangers and the Timbisha and the golf course and the campgrounds and all the rest. The whole village. And the bighorns and the coyotes and the bats and the snakes and the mesquite and these amazing little daisies that pop up when it rains and... The whole ecosystem, Hector.”

  “I see.”

  Not yet you don’t. I said, “How about if he craps up the water supply for national park headquarters? How’s that for a symbol?”

  “Of what?”

  “The virgin.”

  “Yes, I see.” Soliano swept a hand. “An oasis.”

  N
o you don’t see. My tongue seemed to harden, down to its roots. “Do you know how hard it is to find water out there?”

  “I have not had to look.”

  I looked at Walter, whose jaw was working like he was sucking on a pebble.

  “I see,” Soliano said, this time like he did.

  “You see what?”

  “The priceless.”

  “Yes.”

  “No,” Walter said, finding his voice, “he can’t hit the springs.”

  I knew. We had a map that said he didn’t, that said the geology took his offroader only as far as point D, well upcanyon from the springs. But Pria changed my mind. Pria in her bath. The draining water had carved a channel through the purple shampoo slick that coated the tub bottom. That bathtub vision reminded me of the giant fan where Walter and I took shelter, and how floodwaters had carved a channel through the desert-varnished fan. Pria’s bath had left me a demonstration—the power of a channeled flood. I said, “Maybe he could hit the springs if he had a damn delivery system.”

  Soliano said, “The flood again?”

  “I hope you’re wrong,” Scotty said. His hand was at his neck, at the medallion. “Because if you’re right, we’re S-O-L.”

  Soliano frowned.

  “Shit-out-of-luck,” Walter translated.

  “You gotta remember,” Scotty said, “they’re dewatered resin beads.”

  I went cold. He’d never mentioned that.

  Soliano’s frown deepened. “What are dewatered beads?”

  “Dried out, for disposal. Locks in the rads.”

  “Locks in? But I thought the beads were dangerous.”

  “They are—nasty hot. But at least when they’re dry, they keep the nuclides from escaping.” Scotty’s face tightened. “Put the beads in water, they rehydrate.”

  “And they do what?” Soliano asked. “When they rehydrate?”

  “They swell. Maybe crack. Degrade.”

  Walter said, alarmed, “Aren’t the radionuclide ions chemically bound to the beads?”

  “Bond’s weak.”

  “This means what?” Soliano asked.

  “Means keep the beads away from materials that can break the bond.”

  I got a sudden taste of the water in the hole beneath the mesquite. I thought, Badwater. It’s why they call that water bad—it’s saltier than the sea. But then all Death Valley water is high in sodium. Even an oasis like the springs has some salt. And that’s how he turns an oasis into bad water. I said, “Sodium breaks the bond?”

  Scotty nodded. “Get the beads in this groundwater and they...”

  “They do what?” Soliano asked.

  “They release ‘em.” Scotty rubbed his rad-weathered face. “Every damn nuclide.”

  And then, I thought, the nuclides raft away in the water, and the plants suck them up and the animals eat the plants and drink the water, and then the animals creep and crawl and wing their way out of Death Valley, carrying the radionuclides into the wider world.

  CHAPTER 36

  It’s a diversion Hector.

  Hector you’re not taking me seriously. Hector I’m not just an airhead female.

  And then she’d made some sound that Jardine could not identify—since it was too risky to get close enough to watch he’d had to listen in remotely. And so he’d had to use his imagination. When the female geologist said Hector in that pissy tone of hers, and there had been that sound, Jardine imagined the female was stamping her foot.

  He liked that. Hector’s ignoring her and she’s just so pissy about it. What she needs is a good spanking.

  He saw he was still twisted up about the female. He thought he’d taken care of that. He wished he could take care of it the right way. Her and him in a meadow. Out in the open. He didn’t mean out in the open where people could watch, he meant open like no shame. She’d have grass in her hair because they’d been rolling around.

  Instead of the meadow he’d had to embarrass himself in the privacy of the mine.

  So excuse him for making fun of her now.

  He needed to remember who had truly loved him. Jersey. And look what he’d been forced into. A dude could love his dog and with a heavy heavy heart put his dog in a safer place. A dude could do the hard thing when he had to.

  He took the pistol out of his pack.

  The timetable was speeding up. Watering Hole was a great victory. Put the fear right inside them. Pinned them down at the Inn. Jardine didn’t know how much time this diversion would buy him. Going on what he’d overheard, plenty. Hector, you’re an idiot. Your people are idiots. I outfoxed you all. My pickup sat in the parking lot half the night and half the morning before you found it. Took you half an hour to find the tank. Take you hours to check out all the vulnerable points in the water system. Hector, you’re an...

  Jardine stopped himself. “Stop it Roy.” Don’t count on hope. Count on a good plan. And practice.

  He put the pistol in the holster. The holster sat low on his skinny hips. That’s the way gunslingers wore it. Looked ace. Yeah—the ponytail and the shirt and the jeans and the boots, and now the holster with the pistol butt sticking out. If only somebody could see him. Dudes, females. Any females. They wouldn’t even notice his face.

  He held his hand loose, near the gun butt. One, two, three...

  Hector was saying something in his earbuds about the pipeline. Hector was asking somebody where all the access points were. Hector obviously never held a crap job like plumber’s assistant.

  Jardine listened to the ignorance. He wondered if anybody was going to find the little radio transmitter he’d planted last night in the scrub brush near the water tank. Didn’t matter. He’d heard plenty. He smiled.

  One, two, three... Slap the butt, close his hand, draw—and now the gun was in his hand and he was aiming it at the tin can. It was already full of holes. Not much of a stand-in for a live target but it made the point. Firearm’s a serious weapon. He wished he had one of those FBI shooters but what he had was plenty. He liked the pistol because of the holster—he could admit that. He liked firearms in general better than the knife but the knife was in his pack for a reason. Redundancy, the lesson he’d learned in job eighteen. Never count on one layer of safety.

  A lesson he’d give that Bastard Ballinger.

  The female was talking again and Jardine got sucked in again. She sounded worried. Jardine was glad that cad Miller wasn’t there to tell her to get naked in the shower or something. Miller deserved a lesson in manners. A lesson he was going to get.

  Lessons. Jardine needed one right now about the female. He needed to remember that she was coming after him. He needed to remember why. She was doing her job. She was doing it so good she was dangerous. So was the old fellow. That’s what he needed to remember.

  Because he had come to the Grand Finale. Nothing must interfere.

  Jardine ripped out his earbuds and holstered his pistol. He had things to do. He had to go check on the progress of the trigger event, in preparation.

  Stage One of the mission, at the borax mine, had been The Trial and Ballinger was found guilty.

  Stage Two was going to be the mission climax. The Grand Finale. It would be a full and deserved punishment. The name for Stage Two said it all: Death Penalty.

  CHAPTER 37

  We sat with the engine running at the mouth of the parking lot. Walter snapped off the satellite phone. “She’s taken her aunt’s truck.”

  Relief hit me. “Where’d she go?”

  “Aunt Ruth won’t say.” He grunted. “Perhaps because a fourteen-year-old is behind her wheel.”

  “You taught me to drive when I was thirteen.”

  “That was in the Von’s parking lot.” He looked out the window. “That was then.”

  And this is now. Now I’m the designated driver. He cleared his throat and, for a micromoment, there was the chance that he’d ask me to swing the wheel to the right—downfan to the Timbisha village, down to interrogate Ruth Weeks and give chase to Miss
Alien Underage Driver—but he simply said “shall we?” I swung the wheel to the left onto highway 190, upfan to go to work.

  The highway took us past the Inn and up into the trough cut by the Furnace Creek Wash, and as the Black Mountains closed in on our right and the Funerals reared up on our left, I shifted my worry to what lay ahead.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Which spring,” Walter asked, “would your flood target?”

  My flood? I let that pass. My theory, after all.

  But I’d fact-checked my theory on the map and plotted the line of springs that extends for nearly a mile. I glanced, now, at the riparian outposts along that fault line. “Maybe he’s not targeting just one. All he has to do is hit the alluvium. So some of the beads go directly into the springs and some go into the gravel—both here and upgradient—for a later round.” I wiped the sweat off my neck. “The gift that keeps on giving.”

  “If we knew which spring, we could work our way upcanyon from there.”

  “Oh.”

  We reached the turnoff and I nosed the Cherokee off highway 190 onto the ragged road up the fan. As we entered the canyon mouth, I peered up the wall at the reddish mud and cobblestones caught in the declivity some twenty feet above. Some flood that had been.

  Walter was looking too. He phoned the Park Service Doppler radar guy for an update and learned that the precipitation pattern had not changed since the last call, in the parking lot.

  The gunmetal sky had not changed, either.

  I slowed, and the FBI behind us slowed, and we turned into the branching side canyon where we’d sampled yesterday and turned up the telling chalcedony. Point D. From here, we’ll be entering an unknown neighborhood. From here, we’ll be following the soil Walter extracted from Chickie’s boots.

  I said, “Want to call Hector and let him know we’re here?”

  “Let’s wait,” Walter said, “until we have something to say.”

  Instead of: you’re wasting your time, Hector. Thing is, we couldn’t prove that. If we hadn’t lost a day to sabotage and wandering in the desert, we might have found our way here earlier and maybe Jardine wouldn’t have had the chance to pull that stunt at the Inn. But he did. And Soliano’s now busy with the target at hand. So don’t call unless we can offer him another.