The Forensic Geology Box Set

by Toni Dwiggins

  “So how about a little justice? For my sister and your mom. The victims. Let me go and I’ll tell their story.”

  “You just did,” Walter said. “You’re done. Pria, whatever Milt did, he’ll account for. But now he needs help. That’s radioactive material down there—same thing that hurt your mom. Hap did that. And he’s the only one in position to undo the wrong. So I need you to let me take care of this.”

  I went cold. Take care of this how?

  “Give me the weapon, dear.” Walter put out his hand, and when Pria didn’t pull away, he took possession of the gun. He said, “Get up, Hap.”

  Hap, wary, got to his feet.

  “Take off that belt bag. Set your facepiece. Connect your breather.”

  I said, “Walter no.”

  “I’m with Buttercup, Walter.” Hap’s face was white. “You got a conscience. Use it.”

  “I am.” Walter leveled the muzzle at Hap. “There’s human life at stake down there. Go get him.”

  Hap was rooted.

  Walter thumbed a lever, cocked the weapon, and fired. Dirt sprayed at Hap’s feet.

  Hap flinched. Then, astonishingly, he smiled—that curbed toxic smile I’d seen in the RERT van the night he warned me to go with low dose. “Guess I lose.” He unclipped the bag and tossed it to the ground. He masked up and his smile disappeared behind the polycarbon shield.

  I grabbed the belt bag and yanked open the zipper and rooted inside but there was no cell phone, and I considered running back to the mine to try to find my way to the tunnel where I’d left the pack with the satellite phone, but how long would that take on my rubber legs? And once I’d brought the phone back out and called Soliano, and Soliano and Scotty and his RERT team got themselves up here, how long would that take? Too long, for Milt anyway. I remembered Scotty’s words to me, two days ago at the borax mine: time equals dose.

  I dropped the belt bag.

  As I watched Hap trudge down toward the reservoir, my veins seemed to fill with poison. There was no clean way out here. This was the hopeless frontier between wrong and more wrong. I moved to stand beside Walter.

  Pria folded herself down to an Indian-sit, hugging her chest, watching.

  From where we stood it looked like a real rescue, a real hero in PC wading into the spent-resin pool to aid his unlucky coworker, plunging his hands into the poisonous beads to hook Milt under the arms. Sending up a new cloud of resin fines. All the while ticking off seconds and sucking up dose. If there’d been a health physicist on radiation control, counting the gammas, he would have surely screamed get out. Hap was trying. Milt was feebly protesting, not understanding. Hap tried to drag Milt to the rim but he sank with every step. It must have been like walking through quicksand. At last, he just dropped to his knees in the shit and got Milt around the waist and humped him over the shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He levered to his feet and staggered out of the tub.

  We watched in silence as Hap carried Milt up the hill, well clear of the reservoir, well clear of us. He went down on his knees and unshouldered Milt, laying him out flat. He rose and started to move away.

  Walter shouted, “You’re not finished yet.”

  Hap looked at Walter. At the gun. He turned to finish the job. He brushed himself free of beads that still clung, hood to boots. He bent over Milt. He thumbed away the resinous crust on the gash on Milt’s skull. He whisked Milt’s eyebrows and lashes. He scoured Milt’s ears. He wiggled a forefinger between Milt’s lips and swabbed inside his mouth. Milt gagged, then lay still. No protest now. Hap sat back and examined his gloves. They glistened with beads. He wiped them clean on Milt’s torn shirt.

  Pria spoke. “What’s he doing?”

  “Decon,” I said.

  Hap untaped Milt’s wrists, unbuttoned his shirt, cradled his torso, and stripped him to the waist. He laid out the shirt, stuck the tape to it, and then wiped his gloves on it. He moved down to untape Milt’s ankles. Milt’s loafers were gone. Hap rolled off the socks. He undid Milt’s horseshoe buckle and snaked off the belt. He lifted Milt’s hips, unzipped the slacks, and tugged them off. Milt’s black bikini briefs stayed snugly in place. Beads nested in the elastic waistband. Hap yanked off the briefs and tossed them in the pile.

  Pria looked at the sky.

  Hap turned to the pile of crapped-up clothing, wrapping it in Milt’s shirt. He wiped his gloves clean on his own suit. And then, scrupulously clinical, he whisked Milt’s body, head to toe. He examined his gloves. He held up his hands, showing us. The latex shone clean in the fading sunlight. Decon finished. He hooked Milt under the arms, dragged him away from the decon zone, deposited him in the uncontaminated soil, then walked away.

  “That’s far enough,” Walter yelled.

  Hap halted. He took off his SCBA gear and heaved it toward the pile of Milt’s castoffs. He untaped booties and gloves, stripped off his suit, balled it, tossed it. He turned to face us across the fall line. “Walter,” he called, “I did what you asked and I got me a dose so let’s call it even.”

  Walter held the gun steady.

  “Nobody’s life at stake this time.”

  Pria leapt up, edging close to Walter. “That’s true Grandfather.”

  Walter said, “Pria, stand back.”

  Hap shifted. “Way I see it, Walter, you’ve got no reason to shoot me now.” He lifted his hands and slowly turned and set off in a measured walk upcanyon.

  He gave us his back like he was putting his trust in us, believing we’d see it his way, and like he’d programmed me I started ticking off reasons why we had to let him go—he’s done his worst and the priority now is to undo the damage—and that was true but what got to me was Hap giving us his back, and Walter with the gun, Walter trained eons ago shooting National Guard targets only now it was a man in his sights, and Walter was going to have to shoot him in the back to stop him. I hissed, “You can’t.”

  Walter said, “We surely can’t catch him.”

  There was a moment when I calculated distance, the two dozen yards or so between us and Hap and the likelihood of me covering that distance, but now he was into a sprint and he sprinted as well as he swam. I said, “Soliano will get him.”

  “And he’s gonna get sick,” Pria said, “so it’s even-steven.”

  I said, “There’s nothing more he can do.”

  Walter glanced at the reservoir.

  I said, “We need to get Scotty here fast.”

  “And help,” Pria said, “for that hurt guy.”

  Walter grunted. “You two can save your breath. I’m conversant with the concept of appropriate force.” He thumbed the lever near the trigger until it clicked onto safety.

  I sagged. Relief, resignation, I did not know.

  “Then here’s what we’re going to do,” Walter said. “I’m going into the mine to retrieve our sat phone. And the first aid kit. Pria, we have another injured man, in there. I’ll attend to him. You and Cassie are going to wait here. If Milt revives, reassure him.” Walter considered me a moment, and then held out the submachinegun. “Dear, you’re going to keep this. Should Hap return.”

  I stared at the thing. Should Hap return, I point it at him and tell him to stay put? Should Hap not obey, I shoot him? I said, “I don’t know how to use it.”

  Walter showed me.

  And then I was left with Oliver’s subgun slung over my shoulder and Pria eyeing me skeptically. I watched Walter head up the switchbacks, and then shifted my attention to Hap’s retreating back.

  He was still heading upcanyon.

  It was raining again, the kind of storm cell that goes from drizzle to downpour in seconds. Rain curtained Hap. As he moved up the mine valley I tracked him by the orange flag of his parachute pants. He was approaching the alluvial fan. He turned to glance up at the ridge, where we’d come in. I thought, he’s going to access it from the rising fan, escape to Cherokee Canyon, maybe hot-wire our Jeep. No matter. Soliano will track him like a dog. Scotty will come and take charge of the tub full
of beads. I wished Walter would hurry. I turned to watch Walter trudging up the last switchback to the top level, where Dearing’s body guarded the mine entrance. I hoped that Oliver, inside, would benefit from Walter’s help. I shivered in my sodden clothes. And now the storm cell was passing and the rain eased off and sun shafts punctured the clouds. I looked again for Hap and found him halfway up the fan, following a deeply incised channel. You could hide in a channel like this—the way Walter and I had hidden in our deep channel on another fan. But Hap wasn’t hiding. He glanced back at me and then climbed out and crossed the fan, catching the faint trail up the canyon wall to the ridgetop. The sunlight intensified and I began to sweat. My mouth was horribly dry. I wished for a pebble to suck on. I turned to the fan yet again, studying the channel Hap had taken and then abandoned. Something was off. There were no gray pebbles. The pebbles up there were too dark. This channel was not, after all, like the channel Walter and I had hidden in. I whispered shit.

  “What’s wrong?” Pria asked.

  Me. For believing Hap had already done his worst. What was I thinking letting him go? My sweat turned to chill. I snatched up his belt bag and dumped the contents—detonator, wire spool, remote control, keys, flashlight, wristwatch. I picked up the keypad remote, the one he’d used in the mine. Wondering about lines of sight. Wondering about range. Wondering what the hell I think I’m doing.

  “What’s that for?” Pria asked.

  I said, tight, “I think he’s not done.”

  “He’s went. What can he do? If he needs that clicker he doesn’t have it.”

  That was precisely the problem. “When Walter comes out, tell him to tell Soliano if he has search teams down at the springs to get them out of the way. Tell him to have Soliano send choppers up there.” I pointed to the top of the alluvial fan, and the unseen canyon above.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Up there.”

  “Grandfather said wait here.”

  Now, she obeys. I thought, with brutal calculation, if Oliver is dead, if Milt is beyond first aid, then Walter has no reason to stay here. I said, “Just try to keep Walter from following.”

  “How?”

  “Tell him Soliano will need his guidance.”

  “Tell him yourself.”

  I watched Hap. He was nearly at the ridge. “There’s no time.”

  “If you can go, why can’t Grandfather?”

  “He’s been sick.”

  “Then if he can’t go he won’t go.”

  I met her coal-black stare. It was impenetrable, like her reasoning. I didn’t know what else to say so I just told her the truth. I told her what I suspected, what I knew. I armed her with the geomorphology. I told her to stay out of the valley, to stay high on the hillside. I gave her the keypad remote, and told her to show it to Walter. I strapped on Hap’s wristwatch, a clunky diver’s model. I put Hap’s flashlight in my pocket; Girl Scout law. I reset the subgun so that it rode tight against my flank.

  She eyed me. “You sure you know how to shoot it?”

  “Did you?”

  She shook her head. “It’s got a lot of parts.”

  CHAPTER 46

  I stood at the base of the alluvial fan, recapturing the vision I’d had staring into the dregs of Pria’s bath. I saw again the giant fan where Walter and I had been stranded. I felt again the heat thrown off by the fan rocks with their dark coating of desert varnish. I felt again the relief of taking shelter in the channel that was unvarnished, washed clean by floodwaters.

  That bathtub vision had led me to an idea that beggared belief and I’d abandoned it because logic said Hap could not summon a flood.

  I saw, now, that he could.

  Studying the dark channel on this fan, I knew three things:

  First, the dark channel was deeply incised and so it must have been carved by a significant flow.

  Second, the flow path led directly to the reservoir below. Perhaps the miners had built it there to collect runoff water. That runoff, now, was only a localized trickle.

  Third, desert varnish darkened the channel, which meant it had been many years since floods came this way.

  These things told me what had happened here. A once-major channel had been abandoned by forces unknown and now it was largely inactive. I did not know the main thing—why. Maybe a fault scarp had broached its head. Maybe an obstruction had diverted the water flow, up in the canyon above. I’d find out, somewhere up above.

  Hap, wherever he was, already knew.

  I started up the mysterious channel. As I climbed, the incision deepened until only my chest and head were above the rim. Somewhere around here, Hap had spotted me watching him and climbed out. I scanned the curve of the fan—nobody. I scanned the bowl of the sky—nothing. Not a man, not a cloud, in sight. The sun baked the dark rocks and heat boiled up my legs. As fast as my rain-wet clothes dried, I wetted them again with sweat. My spongy socks had never dried. My eyes stung in the bright sun. I wanted my hat. I wanted my shades. I wanted my water bottle. I picked up a pebble to suck on, and tasted bitter manganese. I flung it away.

  I returned my attention to what lay up ahead, puzzled. My channel seemed to lead directly into solid rock.

  Ahead, at the top of the fan, the framing ridges met to form a face of high-rising walls. I scanned that face, searching for the break in the rock that would lead to the upper canyon—the canyon that must have once fed its waters down to build this fan. I wondered if a rockfall had blocked the watercourse, if the closed rock face was the end of the line. And then my climb topped out and, suddenly, I saw what I had not seen three steps back. There was a joint in the wall, a ragged slot with its edges offset so that if you looked from any viewpoint other than dead-on, you would miss it.

  This was not the end of the line. I spent a minute staring at the slot, cataloging the things I knew:

  First, the slot fed the dark channel.

  Second, the slot, like the channel, was stained with desert varnish.

  Third, flood waters had not come through the slot in a very long time.

  Should they come now, I did not want to be here. This slot was like the nozzle on a fire hose, only the hose was obstructed somewhere up ahead. And if that obstruction was removed, this nozzle would shoot a high-pressure jet stream down the dark channel to hose out the tub of beads below. Only one way I knew to remove a geological obstruction and that was to blow it the hell up. With C4 and a remote control. And if you don’t have your remote, then you come do it in person.

  I glanced back at the cable ridge, where I’d last seen Hap. He’d been moving slowly, maybe beginning to get sick. He’d been traveling as though intent on escape but I figured he’d changed directions once out of sight, and the good thing—the main thing—was that it was going to take him some serious time to traverse the rugged terrain to reach the canyon above the slot. Actually, I knew a fourth thing. There must be another route to that canyon. Otherwise, Hap would not have abandoned this one.

  Either way, I had a head start. I wasted thirty seconds of it wondering if I had the nerve to continue. If I cut and run, if Hap completed his work, then that fire hose was going to sweep the beads down to the oasis at Furnace Creek and crap up all life that drinks there.

  My palms grew slick on the stock of the subgun.

  You’re armed, lady. He isn’t.

  I moved like I’d seen the ninjas do, leading with the subgun, and passed through the slot. Nobody was waiting in the narrow canyon, although my imagination gave itself a short run for its money. I settled my nerves scanning the rock crevices for nesting snakes.

  It was a sinuous canyon, sidewinding its way deeper and narrower with every yard I advanced. By the time I’d advanced a few dozen, the walls had risen so high they reduced the sky to a thin blue strip. At first, I welcomed the shade. I cooled, I dried, my mouth found its spit. But within another dozen yards I was straining to pierce the gloom. The rimrock, in places, blistered out to close my sky-strip, darkening the walls ben
eath the overhangs. The walls were inky dolomite, their folds so entangled I could not read the strata. They began to squeeze in. Ahead, in silhouette, the walls undulated like the bosoms and bustles of Victorian ladies. The ladies were draped in a rough brocade, pocked with erosions and studded with pebbles. As they crowded me, I had to press my arms to my sides so their curves would not slice my elbows.

  And then the canyon kinked again and I squeezed around a corner and nearly whacked my head on a tree branch wedged between the walls. It looked to have hung there for ages, stripped bare and bleached white. Hung up to dry by some long-ago flood.

  A saying came to me about floods in narrow canyons: more water than you want in less time than you have.

  I checked Hap’s watch. Eight minutes gone.

  Reflexively, I scanned the walls up to the rims, searching for escape routes. There were none to be had. The sky-strip still showed blue but what did I know of thunderstorms up ahead?

  The varnished walls gave me comfort and the will to move on.

  I passed beneath the deadwood bridge and continued up the hallway of Victorian ladies, who passed me along in stony silence.

  Lady Canyon, as I christened it, began to climb in earnest and within a few dozen yards I met the chute of a dry waterfall. The chute-rock was polished but on either side the roughened rock provided handholds and footholds. It was not much of a dryfall—six feet, at most—but I had to sling the subgun across my back and let it ride, unreachable, as I inched up the rock. Now’s the time, I thought. Nobody ever jumps out at you when you’re ready for them. Of course, Brendan From The Fiery Hill would need wings to get here fast enough to swoop down on me while I’m pinned on this rock. Nevertheless, I was glad to achieve the top. Nobody awaited me there but my ladies. I ninja-cradled the subgun and within another dozen yards came to another little dryfall and had to do it all over again.

  It was around another bend, at the foot of the third little fall, that I first heard the hiss of running water. I stood frozen in the dolomite gloom. I stared so hard at the dryfall that it seemed to flow, like dripping candle wax.