The Forensic Geology Box Set

by Toni Dwiggins

  “No. There’s still a loose end. Regarding the other case.”

  “Let’s confine ourselves to the case at hand.”

  “Can’t. The one leads to the other.”

  He worried his cup.

  I said, “Jimbo took charge of our packs and things, from the mountain, when we were in the hospital. When I got out he dumped it all on me.”

  “I don’t see...”

  “Your pack. The volcano monitor.”

  He took a moment. “I see.”

  “Yup. I recharged the battery and ran it all, data and video. Whole nine yards. Sure explains why Adrian wanted it back.”

  China scraped wood, Walter’s cup circling and circling.

  “My guess is, Len Carow told Lindsay that Adrian was monitoring the volcano. And that pissed her off. So she decided to take it. Adrian was supposed to fly to LA, so there’s her chance. I figure she used that credit card trick she showed you to force the lock of his office. She took the monitor back to her office. Played the recordings. And she must have been shocked, like I was. It was truly damning stuff. So she put it in her safe. Planning to go to John Amsterdam in the morning, I would hope. But Adrian got snowed in and came back. Stopped by his office, found the door unlocked, or the storage cabinet open. He found something amiss, because he telephoned her, about an hour before she died. I had John pull Adrian’s phone records.” I paused. I could see it. Krom phones her, really pissed, and she tells him to take a hike. Or maybe she invites him over so she can crucify him in person. Not considering, in her arrogance, his response.

  Walter anchored the cup.

  “So, Walter,” I said, “the loose end. When were you in her office? When did you find the monitor in the safe? Was Adrian there? On the floor, under the bookcase?”

  “That’s some loose end.”

  “Did you leave him there, to the mercy of her volcano?”

  Walter gave me a hollow blue stare. “Do you think I did?”

  I took a very long time to answer. “No.”

  “Let me ease your mind, anyway.” He gave a thin smile. “I spent the night of the evacuation in her office. I was not in a good state. In the morning, before leaving, I wanted a keepsake. I thought she might have kept my letters in her safe. The two of us wrote one another, when we were off on assignments.”

  My heart twisted. “So you were looking for love letters?”

  He nodded. “They weren’t there. Most likely she kept them at home. What was there was the monitor. I had no idea of its significance. I was not in an analytic frame of mind. But she’d valued it enough to put in the safe, and so I took it with me when I went up to the Inn. Before the eruption.”

  Relief ran through me. “So you didn’t know Adrian was in town?”

  “No.”

  “So Adrian must have gone to her office after you’d left. But why?”

  “I believe I left the lights on.”

  I gaped. “That’s what he said.”

  Walter shrugged. “He spoke the truth, when he had no need to lie.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “Then it was just chance.”

  “Indeed. Chance I forgot to turn out the lights, chance I left the safe open. I suspect when he came into the office and saw that, it gave him cause to worry. He believed she had his monitor, he’d not found it the night he killed her, and now he saw where she’d kept it. He must have had a difficult few moments, wondering who took it.”

  I had to smile. “I doubt he wondered long. Who else would know about her safe, but you?”

  Walter smiled then.

  I said, “So he’s in her office, freaking out, and then the quake hits. And the bookcase falls.”

  Walter said, evenly, “I’d offered more than once to anchor that bookcase for her.”

  “When did you figure out what the monitor meant? What it could prove—the motive for Adrian to kill her.”

  “At the Inn. Battery was dead so I used the AC adapter. I played the video.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  All at once, Walter sagged. His chamois shirt appeared too broad in the shoulders, too loose, the weight he’d lost in the hospital suddenly apparent. He said, softly, “I was afraid of what you would do with the knowledge.”

  I flinched. Like he’d slapped me. And my thoughts spiraled down into the pit. If I’d ended up alone on the mountain with Adrian Krom—if Walter hadn’t been there for me to worry over—what would I have done? Knowing Krom killed Lindsay, knowing he sent Mike out to his death, knowing he might as well have sent Eric—what would I have done? Knowing we might die there anyway. I said, finally, “I would have done what you did. Give him the correct dose. Put him to sleep.”

  “Thank you,” Walter said. “You’ve eased my mind.”

  Just as he’d eased mine. Neither of us willing to take that final irreversible step. But we’d each thought about it, and we’d each wondered if the other was capable of it. I shifted my gaze outside, to the snowy peak of Mount Tom—a new skyline to get used to, although all high Sierra peaks will forever remind me of my home base, of Mammoth. But home was gone. Along with a few illusions about the people I loved. About myself.

  Walter said, “Is that it, dear?”

  I came back. “Yeah, that ties it up. If you agree, we’ll close out Georgia. Geology nailed it, all the way.” The reality is, it’s DNA or prints more often than the geology that places the perp at the scene. Not this time; we did well by Georgia. “And we may as well close out the Nash case. I’ve done the report. I didn’t mention the monitor—as John told me last week, it may be motive for murder but there’s no hard evidence to tie Adrian to the scene.” No fluids, no fibers, no prints. Crinoid’s speculative. “So—bottom line, casewise—we’re batting fifty-fifty.”

  “You could look at it that way.”

  “I’ve tried. But the fifty percent on the failure side of the column is just too painful.” I placed the second envelope on the table.

  He opened it and read for a full minute, long enough to have committed my resignation to memory.

  No other way out.

  CHAPTER 55

  We returned to Mammoth as we had left, in convoy. This time it went without a hitch. Long line of vehicles herding home, four months and six days after we all hightailed it out of town, the mountain in our rearview mirrors.

  Now the mountain looms before us: long time no see.

  Jimbo and I, in Jimbo’s heap, followed Walter in his new Explorer. Fire-engine red, like the one he’d lost. Walter had already put the mileage on it, wandering hither and yon for weeks at a time. He’d send postcards. I’d write letters. Other than that, I slept, ate, socialized when pressed, read, watched more videos than I needed. Boxed up lab equipment, put it in storage.

  It took Resident Visitors Day, and its prospects, to rouse me from my torpor.

  The Army Corps of Engineers had plowed a road across the ash-and-pumice tuff, following highway 203, and the cars raised a haze of ash. Erupted ash and pumice had filled in the gash across 203, the handiwork that had rerouted our evacuation. We passed a forest of gray tree stumps, stripped of bark, splintered. The intervening ground was wormy with charcoal. Just ahead was the hilly plateau on which the town had stood, and above that naked shelf was the mountain.

  Landforms laid bare, a geologist’s dream.

  “Man,” Jimbo said.

  I glanced at Jimbo, barely visible behind the wings of his hair. First I’ve spent time alone with him since the hospital. He’d visited faithfully while I was laid up, jiving with the nurses, but we hadn’t found much to say to each other. Eric was always there, and behind him, Mike. Ghosts aren’t white, they’re tropical neon yellow. Except for Lindsay, who is a winter and whose best color was always gray.

  The road leveled and we came to that juncture where we’d always gained the first glimpse of town through the screen of Jeffrey pines. No screen now. In my dreams, nothing has survived, not a single shard to indicate that anything but ash ever existed on t
his plateau. In my memory, it’s a mountain ski town in deep forest. But in reality the town looked like a beach, with mile after mile of sand castles eroded by the poundings of high tide.

  Jimbo’s head snapped right. “That the ranger station?”

  I looked. Rubble, unidentifiable but for the fact that the ranger station is the first building on the right as you come into town. Didn’t matter which way I looked. All buildings were the same, reduced to trace evidence. All tree stumps were the same, as though only one kind of tree had ever grown here, a barkless gray splintery species.

  We drove on and I saw in the distance the ash trails of two Geological Survey vehicles heading for the Lakes Basin.

  Halfway up Minaret Road a flagman directed us into a bulldozed parking lot.

  It was a warm summer day and doors slammed and neighbors sieved among the cars. It was like countless occasions—concerts, races, barbecues, parades—which invariably began with greetings in the parking lot. We were a silent bunch today, going in the direction we were flagged.

  Walter set off at a brisk pace ahead of everyone.

  “What’s up with you two?” Jimbo asked.

  I strapped on my belt bag. “He’s giving us some time together.” Who knows when we’ll hang out next? From here, Jimbo’s off again on the summer roller-ski biathlon circuit.

  My brother and I walked Minaret, arm’s-length apart, like probers crossing an avalanche field. We came to the boxy perimeter of a foundation and Jimbo speculated that we had stumbled upon the Ski Tip. Hard to say. I found myself looking for curlicues of wood, for the kitschy soul of Bill’s establishment, but of course that had not survived. Jimbo traipsed into the rubble to poke around.

  I waited, resting my hands on the pouch at my waist.

  Jimbo turned and the sun caught him full on, and I felt a shock. He’d aged. In my memory his face is still a boy’s face—soft curves to the cheeks, the brush of thick blond lashes. In reality, his lips were thinner than I recalled, his forehead faintly lined. He stood fixed, solitary customer of the Tip today. He looked like he didn’t have even ghosts for company.

  I did, although their company brought me an unbearable ache.

  I came over to Jimbo and punched his arm. “Let’s go.”

  He looked down at his arm, as if I had left a mark. The shock of it. His dweeb sister trying for cool. Cool, the state he desperately needed to return to. “Hey,” he said. He hooked his arm through mine. “Hey, you sure left the place a mess.”

  We abandoned the Tip and followed the crowd. Resident Visitors were making too much noise, stirring up too much ash, and the gray bones of the town seemed to shrink from us.

  Not ours anyway. The Town of Mammoth Lakes is now home to scientists, engineers, and government agents and it’s become a boomtown of trailers and behemoth vehicles. We came to the new town hall—seven motor homes parked in a U around stepped rows of metal picnic tables. A blue plastic canopy tented the area. There was a table with thermoses and platters of sandwiches and fruit, a table stacked with FEMA bulletins, a huge corkboard of photographs, and three wheeled carts with video displays.

  Jimbo said “there’s the Stobe” and headed for the food table where Stobie was hovering as his mom, Lila Winder, unwrapped a tray of cookies.

  Always the female who does the food.

  “Cassie!” An arm enveloped me and a tall form bent. Hal Orenstein raised a camera. “For the Mammoth Times? I’m putting out an issue.” I smiled and he shot. He whispered, “The biggies are here today,” and nodded at a plump woman shouldering a minicam with the CNN logo.

  Good, I thought. I unzipped the belt bag. Very good.

  I passed into the throng, which under the blue canopy took on an underwater feel. The displaced citizenry seemed not sure what to do, where to look—at the videotapes of faintly familiar steaming landmarks, at the densely captioned photo montage of their volcano’s evolution, or at the real-time mess it had made. Many simply made for the food table. The place had an unreal air, a mix of science fair and refugee camp.

  I wormed deeper, on the hunt.

  Phil Dobie found me and we huddled. He wore his USGS jacket with the Volcanic Event Response Team logo. Very visible, very smart. He leaned in and his beard tickled my ear as he whispered, “you ready?”

  “I need Walter.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re a team.”

  Phil and I jostled on until we bumped into Walter, who had been hunting through the throng for me. I said “now?” and Walter nodded so I took the package from my pouch and passed it to Walter to give to Phil. A little team ceremony.

  Phil set off.

  “Over there,” Walter said.

  I looked, and caught sight of Len Carow’s sharp profile and FEMA jacket, and beyond him the rest of the biggies—Council members and agency reps and reporters—and there of course was Adrian Krom.

  Impossibly, Krom is smiling. He’s bald, that glossy brown animal pelt gone, but it gives him a drop-dead cool air like some massive shaved-head athlete. The skin of his face is marred, and he’s in shirtsleeves and the scar on his arm magnifies the effect, as if he’s undergone ritual scarification for admission to some secret tribe. He moves haltingly, his right leg apparently braced beneath his slacks, but you get the impression he could cover the distance in a lunge should the need arise.

  He smiles as if he’s untouchable. He’s been untouchable since the chopper evacuated him to the hospital, untouchable through the months of rehab. In a Huffington Post piece titled Road Back From Hell, he swears the real heroes were Eric and Mike, but the gist of the article is that he got caught in the eruption because he’d stayed behind to be sure everyone was safely out. And he did indeed succeed. The only ones to die were those who came in after the evac: some crazy sightseers who’d come by dog sled, three Japanese volcanologists and their chopper pilot—and the two volunteers, the heroes. Walter and I get a mention, as well: I nursed Krom like an angel; Walter stood fast. The upbeat ending: Krom survived, and now he’s ready to return to duty, to challenge another volcano and save the day anew.

  He did not notice me or Walter in the milling crowd.

  Phil’s voice suddenly carried over the noise, “...and if you would direct your attention over here, we have some footage that...” and I didn’t catch the rest, undoubtedly lost in Phil’s beard, but it was all right because the crowd began to shift toward the video displays.

  Walter and I buffeted our way through to the show.

  There were two displays, and on each screen a different disaster movie. Here was a Mammoth Mountain montage—from treeless slopes to bald summit. Here was the fissure on Red Mountain, belching up steam.

  People did a double-take.

  It took them a moment to realize that while the Mammoth Mountain video was post-eruption, the Red Mountain fissure footage was pre-eruption.

  Compared to the aerial views and tracking shots on the other screens, this fissure video was dull stuff. Single fixed camera angle. The only thing that changed was the buildup of snow—and, at the top of the screen, the date. And, for those science wonks in the crowd, the data crawl at the bottom showed daily fluctuations in mag field, strain rate, gas emission. Phil had started the video a couple of minutes ago, so we’d come in partway through.

  “I don’t get it,” Lila Winder said.

  Walter said to Lila, and to everyone within earshot—which was a good number of Resident Visitors and biggies—“Ask Adrian. It’s his video.”

  Andy DeMartini bellowed, “Yo, Mr. Krom.”

  I watched the display start again at the beginning, January ninth, and run to its end, February thirteenth. From the day after the Inn meeting to the day I found Gold Dust.

  The day after the Inn meeting, Krom had taken me and Len Carow down to Hot Creek to see the activity, and Krom had showed off his specially-designed monitor. And then I’d left in a huff, and Len Carow had left to join Lindsay, and Krom had taken a ski up to Gold Dust to install the device so that
it could monitor the fissure. And there it remained until Mike followed me to Gold Dust. He saw I’d found the place, he retreated to the parking lot, and after our confrontation, after I’d gone home, he’d skied back up to Gold Dust to retrieve the monitor. And then Krom stored it in his office. And then Lindsay came and took it. And then Walter found it in her safe. And then, at last, it came into my possession. After we were rescued, I’d opened Walter’s pack and learned what all the fuss was about.

  I’d become something of a video junkie in the time after that, and this was one I watched again and again. Admiring the cleverness of the little microprocessor-controlled videocam he’d built into his monitor. Admiring the quality of the picture. It’s like you’re there. You can almost smell the sulfur. I could admire his solution to his timing problem. How easy. The monitor was his personal record of the fissure’s progression. It told him he had time—time to champion his evac route, time for me to find the fissure. He didn’t have to ski up there every day, he had the scene telemetered to his computer. How fucking easy.

  I expect Krom admired it, as well, enough anyway to keep the data and video and not erase it. He couldn’t frame it and hang it on his wall of merit, but I expect he had liked to replay it now and then. Lift a margarita, make a toast. His triumph over Lindsay. Private celebration. Certainly, he never expected her to break in and steal it. Certainly, he never expected Walter to find it in her safe. Certainly, he never intended it to go public.

  And here he came, disbelief on his scarred face.

  For just a tick, I felt fear—fear that he would find a way to survive this—but Lila caught him. She got right into his face, and she’s big enough to do it, and she said, “You knew.” She’d evidently gotten it now, she’d seen on the video how Krom had been able to foretell the future on Red Mountain. “You knew,” she said, “you shabby excuse for a man.”

  Len Carow, still glued to the tube, grew a thin smile.