Quicksilver (The Forensic Geology Series, Prequel)

by Toni Dwiggins

  “We can...” Robert spat, “...play this game all day.”

  Henry recovered himself. He lit the next match. “I’ll see you, brother.” He let the match fall. This time it stayed alight. The little flame kindled a spray of mountain misery. It crackled to fiery life. Henry kicked it aside.

  Robert stared.

  The brothers locked onto one another, a poisonous face-off, waiting it seemed for someone to make the next move.

  Henry did. “And raise you.” Henry pulled the Glock from his holster and tossed it into the pool.

  20

  I thought it must have been a mistake.

  Even as I watched the gun rise with the toss and then fall with gravity—dropping into, no, onto, the surface of the pool—even as I watched the game change I thought it must have been a mistake.

  They thought so, too.

  Henry’s head tipped up and then dipped to follow the arc of the gun as if someone else entirely had tossed it.

  Robert’s mouth opened, an O of surprise.

  Walter grunted, a sound of disbelief.

  And then the Shelburne brothers upped their game.

  Henry took another match from the box. The fire he had kicked aside was already consuming itself but the main pile of kindling awaited the next match.

  Robert’s free hand stretched, reaching for the gun.

  Henry smiled.

  It was too late but I did the only thing I could think to do, went back to raking my hands through the rock debris, hunting for that shard, my mind racing—what the hell Henry?—and the ugly answer came. Suicide by brother.

  Walter whispered, “Use your nail.”

  It took me a very long time to get it, to understand what Walter meant, and then for a hysterical moment I almost hooted at the beautifully absurd genius of it, but Walter was watching me with such fierce hope that I wanted to cry. Sure, it could work, but Robert was about to shoot the shit out of his brother and Henry was about to turn that mercury stream into vapor and we were relying on my fingernail?

  He lifted his bound hands, clasped. “I’ll buy you the time.”

  I gaped. You will?

  ~ ~ ~

  Walter sat up straight and bellowed, “Your grandfather was here.”

  I was taken aback all over again. And had to stop myself from actually turning my head to look around. The Shelburne brothers were doing just that. Henry’s head swiveled, the match in his fingers forgotten for the moment, but still at the ready. Robert looked right, looked left, although his field of view from inside the grotto was severely limited. My field of view was just damn good enough to see the top of the mercury pool, to see his fingers kiss the handle of the Glock.

  “Right here,” Walter bellowed. “Look at this.”

  I looked.

  Walter held his bound hands high. Unclenched now. His right hand commanded attention. He pinched a small rock between his thumb and forefinger. “This is what you came for.”

  Henry peered at Walter. Robert cocked his head. I looked back and forth, from one brother to the other, from the brothers to Walter. Surely they could not see what I could see. Could not make out the details.

  I could make out the details. It was a largish pebble, rough and reddish, lumpy, bits of rock cemented together. A conglomerate, if anyone was asking. I wondered, could it be?

  Walter shot me a look. Shot my bound hands a look.

  Use your nail.

  And then I understood, staring at the pebble pinched between Walter’s fingers, staring now at his fingernails, a man’s good-sized hands and a man’s good-sized nails. His nails were too large. Unlike mine, which just might fit into the locking bar of the cable tie. Yes, Walter. I get it.

  You do your bluff, I’ll do my best to unlock this sucker. And then what? And then we’ll see.

  “Listen to me, boys,” Walter said, voice gone soft now, so soft that we all had to strain to hear. “Your grandfather saw that hillside. Look at it.”

  They looked, scanning the walls, and while they looked I bent to my work. The heavy-duty cable tie binding my ankles had a big wide slot. And I had small unclipped fingernails. Doable?

  “I give you this,” Walter said. “A workable hypothesis. Follow me. A, you have a source of trapped mercury in that hillside. B, it is likely trapped in a bedrock basin. C, something created that basin. D, a long time ago a dike intruded a Tertiary gravel channel and acted as a giant riffle. It created a giant pocket, in which gold collected. That ore specimen you brought to the lab, Robert, originated in there. In that hillside. Right behind you.”

  I began to think it wasn’t a bluff. As my mind followed the geology lesson, my fingers worked. I worked my right pointer fingernail into the cable slot and pressed down on the locking bar. Astonishingly, the lock opened. Not astonishing. The right tool for the right job, hey? I nearly laughed. A crazy-ass laugh.

  I stole a glance at Walter, gave him the slightest nod.

  He returned it.

  “In that hillside,” he said, “there is what geologists call a fracture spring. It charges with winter rains that percolate through the soils. Over the years it eroded the material in the riffled pocket and some of it flushed out here.”

  Eroding the trough where we sat. I thought, it’s really not a bluff. I held my breath and very very slowly backed the loose section of the cable tie through the slot. Sound like a clock ticking.

  “Some bits larger than others,” Walter said, loud again, “and at least one a large enough specimen that it caught the eye of your grandfather. Most so small they would catch nobody’s eye. Unless one knew where to look.”

  Henry turned. “How do you...?”

  “Know?” Walter glanced at me.

  I held the opened tie in a loop around my ankles. I held it like a prize.

  “How do I know?” Walter boomed. “I deduce. I look at the geology, Henry. I analyze. I make a hypothesis. And because I understand what I am looking at, I know where to look.”

  “Is there...”

  “Yes.”

  Henry came out of the grotto, pausing at the entrance, eyes fixed on Walter. Robert leaned forward, his bound hand straining against the cuff. His unbound hand had captured the Glock. He held it loose, upended, and a thin silver necklace slid out of the barrel.

  I thought, chilled, could the thing work?

  “Come here, son,” Walter said.

  Yeah, I thought. Step away from the grotto. Step away from the kindling. Step away from your brother.

  “Look,” Walter said, “right in my hand is a bit of that gravel. The same stuff your grandfather found.” Walter angled his bound hands. Showing a different face of the tiny rock. “Look here. There is a visible grain of gold. You can see it but you’ll have to come closer.”

  I stared at the pebble. There was color. Could be a flake of gold. Could be a grain of pyrite. Fool’s gold. Either way, my pulse leapt. With a tremendous effort I yanked my gaze from the pebble to look at Robert. His face was keen. Avid. His gun hand had gone slack.

  I moved my feet. Just slightly to the side, in preparation. Keeping them together as if they were still bound.

  “Come on, son,” Walter said. “You should have a look at this.”

  Henry whispered, “No.”

  I heard the yearning in Henry’s voice before I turned and saw it in his face. No? You don’t believe Walter? You, the amateur geologist, don’t believe the evidence before your eyes? Then come the fuck closer and look. Because I saw. Because I believed. Because Walter was talking geology. Not legend. Not wishful thinking. For the love of your soul Henry come and take the pebble from Walter and see for yourself. This is what you’ve hunted since your father fed you the legend with your morning cereal. This is what Camden Shelburne promised. Lured you with. Taunted you with. This is it, Henry. This is where you prove yourself to your father. To the dead man. Alive, I fear, in your mind. You found this mine site. You got here, you got us all here. You pointed a gun at us and hired yourself a couple of geologists.
All you have to do is take the pebble that the gold-minded geologist found. And then you can say you won. All that shit with your father and your brother over the failed cleanup company doesn’t matter. You can win now. Take it. You earned it Henry. You really did. You spent your life force hunting this. You want it. I see it in your face. You’re squinting to see what Walter is offering. Come get what you came for. You look like the kid in the Old West photo. You look like a kid.

  An aching memory washed over me, a kid in a red cowboy hat playing hide-and-seek.

  I shut it down.

  “Henry,” Robert said. “My God. We can do this. Together.”

  The hesitation was tiny, a clenching around Henry’s mouth.

  ~ ~ ~

  And then Henry stepped back into the grotto and struck the match and flung it into the kindling.

  I heard it before I saw it. Heard the crackling, like corn popping. Smelled it before I saw it. Smelled the bitter odor of mountain misery, just curling into the air. And then I saw a black resinous tendril of smoke, and then an orange tendril of fire. The smoke rose thinly, up up up the chimneyed grotto. The fire spread laterally, licking along a plank, probing the jumbled pile of splintery old wood.

  Henry squatted and blew on his fire. A fresh match in his hand.

  Robert raised his gun hand.

  Time turned squirrely. Stretched and slowed.

  I was scrambling to my feet, ankles free of the cable tie, hands still bound, swinging my legs behind me to lever myself up, and stumbling up the trough, legs rubber, stampeding into the grotto, a madwoman surprising Robert in the act of aiming the barrel of the Glock in the direction of his brother.

  Time turned so stretchy that I had all the time in the world to glance at Henry in the corner and see him smile.

  To glance behind me and see Walter struggling to get onto his knees, ankles and hands still bound, an impossible task.

  To hear Walter shout, “Blast.”

  To stop myself at the edge of the pool and wonder if there was room for me.

  To assess the growing blaze, to see the flames heighten, to feel the heat cast off, to swear I could smell the iron pipe heating.

  To yank up my parka to cover my mouth, my nose, and collapse into position with my boots over the edge.

  And then whoosh I scooted into Henry Shelburne’s pool, crushed between Robert and the bedrock edge.

  For a moment all the familiar workings of things were suddenly cast aside.

  I sat on top of—on top of—the silver sea.

  My knees were bent, my heels cupped into the liquid, and I braced my arms behind me, hands clutching the mercury like I’d clutched the silver heart back at the South Yuba River. Cold and clammy and alien.

  The heat from the fire was almost welcome.

  Robert’s face was inches from mine. His eyes bitter green. We just gazed at one another, me thinking is this how you gazed at your father as he fell into the river?

  I was dizzy. Short of breath from my exertions. Breathing into my parka, re-breathing that air but it was sweet in comparison to the grotto air that was about to go bad.

  I hissed, “Cover your mouth.”

  Robert could not, not with one hand bound to the spigot and the other holding the Glock aloft.

  There came a sound like a gunshot, another match striking.

  Robert aimed.

  And time that bitch speeded up. The velocity of a fired bullet. The speed of liquid mercury heating and particles vibrating faster and faster until they escape their fluid bonds and form a gas. I cried out stop and the speed of sound beat me to it, reached Robert’s ears and made him curse before I could reach him myself. And then at last I hit his chest, threw myself upon him, losing the grip on my parka in the process, my parka mask slipping down leaving my face naked, my nose and mouth unprotected as I sent Robert spinning, me spinning with him, together we spun on the mercury it seemed forever without friction, Robert’s free arm whipping out, and at last Robert’s hand opened like a flower and lost its hold on Henry Shelburne’s weapon.

  ~ ~ ~

  Walter shouted.

  Walter was on his elbows and knees crawling, bound feet lifted, an eternity to go before he reached Henry.

  Henry the kid playing with matches.

  “The gold, Henry,” Robert shouted. “You and me. We can do it.”

  Henry didn’t answer. The only sound was the thunder of the fire and the hiss of streaming mercury.

  I yanked my parka back up. Yanked Robert’s Club One fitness T-shirt up over his mouth, his nose, because Robert was desperately yanking his bound hand trying to get free.

  I fumbled at the cargo pocket of my pants. Fumbled it open. Fumbled out my field knife.

  It took forever to move to the spigot, it was like a dream where you’re swimming through molasses, where your feet run but your body remains in place, and damn me but I calculated the time, how long it was going to take me to cut Robert free, for the two of us to slither our way out of this hideous pool and escape the fire and the heating quicksilver. And I thought, hey lady you could slap the knife into his hand. You could leave him to it, you’ve opened the knife yourself one-handed and surely Mister Gearhead can open a knife one-handed so just get yourself the hell out and tackle Henry and stomp out the fire, no, stomp out the fire first and then tackle Henry because all he could do was light another match and if you got the fire out first he could do no....

  There came a sound like salvation. Henry stomping out the fire, kicking apart the pile of wood.

  And then another sound, a broken sound that was Henry’s own. “No we can’t, R.”

  ~ ~ ~

  By the time I cut Robert loose, by the time we fumbled ourselves out of the quicksilver pool, by the time I stumbled to meet Walter and cut his ties loose, Henry had walked away.

  By the time we reached the campsite and found our day packs and retrieved our water bottles and filled them in Skinny Creek, in order to douse the embers of the dying fire, Henry was nowhere to be found within Notch Valley.

  He took his backpack. Left behind his tent.

  EPILOG: elements 79 & 80

  Henry Shelburne vanished.

  A search party was organized.

  Of course I hoped they’d find him—as Search and Rescue nearly always does. Find him and bring him home, well not home, not to the boarding house, not to his father’s house, home most likely being some mental health facility.

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

  It was romantic, no doubt, to wish the Henry Shelburne of the Old West photo, the squint-eyed teenager, to disappear over the horizon.

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

  In time I would bury the pain, a technique I was perfecting. Encompassing all Henrys.

  ~ ~ ~

  Robert Shelburne returned to his own gold country.

  Even if Henry could be found, even if Henry testified as to what he saw that day on the Yuba, Robert Shelburne saw it differently. He panicked. There was no legal penalty for that. End of story.

  Still, there was harm. There was a foul.

  Robert had watched his father have a heart attack, watched him fall into the river. He’d just watched. And then he’d left. And then, the animals got to Camden Shelburne. If Robert Shelburne had, say, experienced a measure of guilt and come back to retrieve his father’s body, it would have been way too wild kingdom for him. But he hadn’t. Rangers found Camden Shelburne.

  No wonder Robert concocted the story of being in Sacramento the day his father died.

  I supposed it was analogous to concocting a ‘front’ company, a dog-and-pony-show green cred for the money guys.

  A couple of weeks after the conclusion of the Shelburne case, as Walter was at his workbench analyzing a feldspar from our current case, I suggested a coffee break. Walter was up for it. I poured two mugs and Walter g
rabbed the pink donut box and we settled in at the map table.

  “I’ve been thinking,” I said, sliding the day’s newspaper closer. I opened it to the business section.

  Walter’s eyebrows lifted. “Since when did you start following the stock market?”

  “Since today.”

  Actually, since several days ago when I’d googled it and found the salient abbreviation. They ID stocks with numbers and letters, like elements on the periodic table. But when it came to following the market Walter was still an ink-and-paper man—he liked newsprint on his fingers to go with the donut crumbs—and so I did it his way. I pointed out the salient abbreviation.

  He read. “Deep Pockets?”

  “Yup.”

  “You’ve been tracking it?”

  “I figure I might buy a share. Attend the next shareholder meeting. They let you ask questions, right?”

  “They do,” he agreed.

  “Tells them the shareholders are paying attention, right?”

  “It does.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’ll have a few questions about AquaHeal.”

  “Such as?”

  “Along the lines of, do you intend to invest enough to get the technology right, and if not, why don’t you get out of the way?”

  He rubbed his chin.

  “Because if you let AquaHeal fail, you’re souring this market for clean tech.”

  Because I’d become a numbers chick, googling to find the salient number—how much mercury was deposited into the watersheds of the Sierra during the gold rush. Because that number blew my mind. Fifteen point two million pounds. Because I’d grabbed hold of fifteen or so of those pounds, cupped on the ledge in the crevice, that day on the Yuba. Looked like a river cobble, felt like a heart.

  Walter reached for the newspaper. “What was today’s quote...”

  “Hundred and twenty-four dollars and thirty-one cents. Per share.”