Fault Line

by Sarah Andrews

Out on the sidewalk, as the party began to break up, the subject of recreation suddenly supplanted seismic hazards. A tall blond consulting geologist named Tim or John or something, who had joined the pizzafest late, asked Logan, “So, are we still on for our annual Seismologists on Skis adventure? Or does an actual seismic event supersede swilling beer and skiing?”

  “You’re right, I got so wound up in that shaker that I forgot.”

  He looked around at the others. “When were we going to do that?”

  “This Wednesday,” Wendy said. “Day after tomorrow. I think we’d better postpone. I don’t want to miss any aftershocks. And … you know …”

  “Hey,” the tall blond man said, “now that Pet’s out of earshot, did you hear that Frank Malone dug a trench down at the new mall site this morning?”

  “He didn’t!” said Logan, appalled. “What, did he have to get out of his truck for that?”

  “Got right down into the trench, I hear. And didn’t find a thing.”

  “Figures,” said Logan. “He couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a roadmap. Didn’t phone us, either. Wouldn’t want anything so complicated as a second opinion stirring up controversy, now, would he?”

  The blond man shook his head in disgust.

  I cut in. “Malone,” I said, thinking the name sounded familiar. “Who’s he?”

  Logan looked out from under his eyebrows. “Oh, just another engineering geologist of easy virtue. Don’t mind us. We can’t afford to cut trenches very often, but he gets the big bucks from his clients—you know, developers.”

  “You mean he digs trenches when they’re getting ready to put foundations in for big buildings and like that.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Doesn’t the state or the county require that the UGS pass judgment on things like that? I mean, doesn’t he have to call you when he’s cutting a trench?’

  “No, not usually. Not unless the Building Department gets nervous and says he has to get a second opinion, but that doesn’t happen very often. We just wish to hell the slimeball would at least give us a squint at his trenches while he has them open. Hell, we’d do half his work for him, scrape down the sides and all, but he doesn’t call.”

  “Give up, Logan,” the blond man said. “Malone wouldn’t want you looking into one of his trenches. You might see the fault his client doesn’t want him to see.” To me, he said, “It’s rare as hell to get a look underground at a downtown site. And this one was right on trend with the Warm Springs fault no less, and he cut it just hours after the earthquake. I hear he had it backfilled by lunchtime.”

  Hugh Buttons maintained a diplomatic silence. “Well then, it sounds like you ought to go skiing. The fault will keep,” he said. “Fun as this quake was, I keep telling everyone it isn’t the big one, so life goes on.”

  Ted frowned. “But we’re in mourning. Sidney—”

  Logan said, “I think Sidney would rather be remembered from the ski slopes than think of us glooming about town. Let’s go on up there and slice some powder for her, okay? Besides, if we wait until next week, all the people coming in for the Olympics will be crawling around up there like maggots. If we don’t go now, we may as well wait until March.”

  The blond man said, “Sure, but let’s give it another day. How about Thursday?” He looked around at everyone. A quorum nodded assent. “Where?”

  “Alta,” said Logan.

  “Alta?” Wendy cried in her surprisingly harsh voice. “Alta don’t allow no snowboarders!”

  “Precisely why we want to go there,” Logan informed her. “Come on, Wendy, you can raise the level of your game for just one day, can’t you? Besides, you snowboarders spend all that time in prayer. Seems your prayers should be answered by some real skiing.”

  Wendy screwed up her face pugnaciously. “What you mean prayer, asshole?”

  “I mean you’re always on your knees, darling. You got no control over that thing.”

  “Fuck you!”

  Logan flexed his eloquent eyebrows. “Is that an offer?”

  “In your dreams, frog boy.”

  “Well then,” Logan replied, wandering along the sidewalk, “off to bed, perchance to dream.”

  Wendy gave him a quick jab in the gut, then grabbed his shirtfront, pulled him down into range, imposed a kiss on his lips, turned, and strode off. Several other members of the party roared with laughter. Ted Wimler pouted and whined, “Hey, where’s mine?” unintentionally seeding more laughs.

  Logan said good night to the rest of the party and fell in step next to Faye and me, slowly strolling up toward the corner, which looks out toward the natural history museum and the University of Utah campus. “So,” he said, “anyone here for skiing Thursday? We’re supposed to get some new snow tomorrow. Should be good.”

  I said, “I don’t—” but Faye rammed me in the ribs with her elbow.

  “We’d love to, wouldn’t we, Em? What time, and where do we all meet?”

  I said, “Sorry, but I just got my leg out of a cast.”

  Faye said, “Precisely why you need to get up there and get your confidence back.”

  I opened my mouth again to object that confidence was not the issue, but Logan cut me off. “I’ll pick you both up,” he said, his eyes dancing with amusement. “Say nine o’clock. At your house, Faye, or shall I find you before that, Em?”

  There it was, the big opening, where I was supposed to give him my address and phone number. I looked into his eyes. They were interesting eyes. Another time, another place, I would have been jumping up and down like a puppy, but just then I wanted to be looking into indigo blue eyes, and from a much closer range. “I’ll be at Faye’s,” I said sadly.

  Just then, Pet Mercer came bounding up the sidewalk. “Logan, don’t run off!” she called. “I’ve got something you’re going to be interested in!”

  “What?”

  She caught up to us, not even breathing deeply. “Want to tour the City and County Building with me tomorrow? A guy from the county is going to inspect it, see how the seismic retrofit held up in the quake.” She gave him a very special smile.

  Logan looked embarrassed. “Um, well, I’ve seen it already, Pet.”

  “What part?” she asked, undeterred. “You mean the base isolation system, don’t you? That stuff in the basement. Well, have you ever been up in the clock tower?”

  Logan lowered his eyebrows and considered Pet carefully. He seemed to be trying to decide how to answer. Clearly, this was ample bait, but, just as clearly, she did not want to get involved.

  “Well, Pet, I …”

  “Oh, come on, it’ll be great. I hear it’s scary!”

  “Pet,” he said, lowering his voice, indicating that his words were for her only. “I appreciate your interest, really, but I think that after Sidney’s service tomorrow, I’m just going to go home and sit.”

  Pet refused to be brushed off. “It’ll be quick. Come on, have you ever been up in the tower? This is a terrific chance for someone in your line of work.”

  Logan’s face clouded with conflicting feelings. It was clear that he wanted to do this but felt he would be misleading Pet in a social sense. Pet was just winding up to deliver her next volley of wheedling when I did a crazy thing. I said, “Sounds really great. Can I tag along, Pet?”

  Pet looked at me and blinked. Obviously, I was not the fish for which she was angling.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I mean, I’d jump at a chance to go up that tower. I was over there today reviewing—” I snapped my mouth shut. I had nearly spilled the beans, almost told them what I’d been doing at the City and County Building for Tom Latimer. What had I been thinking? Or had I just not been thinking? Surely this was why Tom was so concerned about my chances for survival if I kept on getting myself involved with forensic work.

  Pet was quick. She had seen me bring myself up short, and for the moment, she was more interested in me than in Logan. “What was it you were doing there?”

  “Oh, nothing,�
� I said. It sounded lame even to me.

  Logan watched me, deep-set green eyes unwavering. “So much for rehabilitating your leg. That’s a long climb up that tower.”

  Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Faye twist her lips to one side, a kind of “you hopeless jackass” look.

  “Sure,” Pet said brightly. “You come, Em. I’ll meet you in the main lobby, by the guard’s desk. Two sharp tomorrow afternoon. Don’t be late.”

  14

  IT WAS ABOUT 8:00 P.M. BY THE TIME I HAD DROPPED FAYE back at her house—she insisted I keep her car again—and had returned to mine. I wanted to race inside and check my answering machine for messages, but Mrs. Pierce caught me on the front porch.

  “I’ve been worried sick about you,” she said. “Where have you been?”

  I stared at her, goggle-eyed. “Huh?”

  “You were going to check in with me after you found out what had happened in the earthquake,” she said.

  “Oh. Yeah. Well, I did come back, Mrs. Pierce, but you were out, I guess.”

  Mrs. Pierce raised an eyebrow, letting me know that my guess was wrong.

  “Well, anyway, I found out that there’s really not much to worry about,” I said, wondering how true that statement was. “I talked to some geologists from the Utah Geological Survey, had dinner with them. The head seismologist for the Seismic Station at the university was there. They all seemed to be digesting their dinners okay. So I think everything’s pretty much okay.”

  Mrs. Pierce wasn’t ready to let it go that easily. “Well, did you hear about that poor little baby?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Pierce. It’s awful.”

  “Mm-hmm. I knew his grandmother in school. I feel so sorry for his family.”

  I wondered what it would be like to belong so deeply to a city that could so easily think like a village.

  Leaving my landlady to contemplate her connection to her cosmos, I hurried upstairs in search of a message from Ray. There was none. I lifted the receiver to make sure my phone was getting a dial tone. It was.

  Ray had always been a man of few words, but his silence had always before held deep communication. I thought of all we had been through together in the year and a half we had known each other—two murder investigations, travel across three states; he had saved my life and I had saved his; we had thus flowed into each other’s lives and psyches, filling in each other’s lonesome spots, sharing a quiet that had come to mean more than words—so why did the silence now seem so heavy, and fill me with such foreboding? I thought of the gentleness with which he enclosed my hand in his, the scent of his breath as he leaned near to kiss me, the sound of his heart beating each time I leaned my head against the broad, warm expanse of his chest.

  About there, I began to lose control. Gone was my last shred of dignity, my carefully planned program of waiting for Ray to call me. I picked up the phone and called his house, knowing that I would sound pushy and petty, and knowing also that if he was indeed sick, I risked waking him and just plain pissing him off. But when the line connected, I heard only his answering machine, with his terse recording: “This is Ray. Please leave a message.”

  I almost didn’t. Instinctively, I knew that I was already in a cat and mouse game, and I wanted to run to the nearest hidey-hole: good old silence, but reminded myself that I was an adult having a relationship with another adult, and briefly found the courage to say, “This is Em. I … haven’t heard from you, so I’m wondering if you’re okay. Please call.”

  I hung up the phone, lay down on my bed, and managed to stay there all of five minutes before phoning Faye. It’s hard to stay mad at a woman when she’s the only true pal you’ve got in town.

  She said, “Why don’t you call Ava? I mean, it was his mother he was traveling with this weekend, right? You can say you’re concerned because you haven’t heard from him. Which is true.”

  “Okay,” I said weakly.

  “Confront it,” Faye said, her tone communicating both sadness and frustration. “Ava’s a decent sort. She won’t dump on you, will she?”

  “Right. No. I don’t think so.”

  I hung up and dialed. The phone rang once, twice, three times before someone answered it, but instead of the solidity of Ava’s mature, brisk, measured tones, I was greeted by Ray’s sister Katie. “Hello,” she drawled breathlessly.

  I was startled to hear her voice, but then I remembered that the previous week she, her husband, and her children had moved in with Ava. They had been renting a house not far from her while they built their own house, a very large one. Ray had told me that there had been unexpected delays, but I suspected that Katie’s lavishness had simply run them out of money. I said, “Oh, hello, Katie. You sound out of breath.”

  “I’ve been out jogging,” she said. I could hear a small voice in the background, a child calling, “Maaaa-meee!”

  “Hush!” Katie snapped. To me, she cooed, “What can I do for you?”

  “May I speak with Ava, please?”

  “Oh, is this Em?” she purred.

  I knew she’d known it was me, so why was she asking? Had I missed some social nicety that she could now rub in? “Yes,” I said, starting over. “Hi Katie, this is Em. As I said, I’d like to speak with Ava, please.”

  “Well, she’s here,” she said, again drawling. “And so’s Ray … .”

  I froze. What was she up to?

  “We’ve just had Family Home Evening,” she informed me, stressing the “we.” It was an insinuation, as in: And you weren’t here.

  “Oh.” I had in fact forgotten, given the events of the day, that it was a Monday, the day each week when the Raymond family gathered for dinner, prayer, religious study, and what have you.

  “So you couldn’t make it,” she continued, managing to make it sound like an indictment of my non-Mormon status. “Are you taking another of your little classes?”

  I took a deep breath, trying to quell my acute sense of not belonging. I decided that ignoring her question was the best policy, much as I wanted to take her accusations apart piece by piece and feed them to her with vinegar. “So you’re done now. May I speak to Ray, then?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice level.

  Katie giggled. If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought she was drunk. “No, Ray’s in the middle of something, Em,” she informed me in a voice as stealthy as a cat slithering through tall grass. “But why don’t you just come on up? We have plenty of cake, and I’m sure he’ll be ready for you by the time you get here.”

  IDIOT THAT I am, I got back into Faye’s Porsche and drove to Ava’s house. It’s a big spread up on the east side of Salt Lake City, southeast of the university. All the way there, I argued with Katie in my head, explaining to her why my relationship with Ray was none of her business. Wishing I would pass a gas station so I could stop and do some nervous peeing. Praying that I was doing the right thing. Certain that I was not.

  By the time I reached Ava’s house, clouds had begun to gather, obscuring the moon. I got out of the car, hurried up through the icy darkness past the family fleet of bright, shiny new SUVs and minivans to the bright beacon of the porch light, and rang the bell.

  Katie opened the door almost instantly, as if she had been waiting for me by the door, ready to spring on little rabbit Em. She greeted me with a big smile and a little half hug. If I hadn’t figured out by then that something was up, that would have been a tip-off; in all the months since we had met, she had never once favored me with even the slightest physical touch.

  “Uh, hi,” I muttered.

  Two small tow-headed kids ran up to her, one chasing the other with a headless Barbie doll. “Get away!” one screeched at the other. “Maaamy! He’s hitting me again!”

  Katie eyed her children, her lips drawn into a straight line. “Children, you behave or you’ll answer to your father when he gets home!” she hissed.

  “He never gets home!” the doll-wielding child wailed.

  Katie slapped the child soundly on the bott
om. “Go to bed,” she ordered.

  The child turned white and disappeared around the corner, holding the doll across her rump.

  Horrified, I began to step away from the fracas.

  Katie stepped toward me, snatching me up like a hovering mosquito. “Come right this way,” she said, slipping her hand behind my elbow and all but dragging me toward the kitchen. My stomach turned to clay, and I began to doubt even more strongly whether coming had been a good idea. Then halfway to the kitchen, I heard a sound I had not heard in weeks—or was it months?

  It was the sound of Ray laughing.

  I stopped in my tracks.

  Katie drew me onward. I yanked backward. Katie smiled and caressed my arm. I now heard Ray’s voice, soft, kidding with someone—he who was so serious, he who seldom spoke. His voice was playful, teasing, almost giddy.

  I faltered, uncertain what to do. I wanted to see Ray, to run to him, to take refuge in his embrace, but simultaneously knew that that kitchen was, just then, a dangerous place. I braced my feet.

  With one more tug, Katie drew me through the archway into the kitchen.

  There stood Ray, his back to me, an apron tied around his waist. He was drying a plate. Now he set down the plate, tossed the dishtowel casually over his shoulder, and slipped his arm around the waist of the young woman next to him.

  Drew her to him.

  Put his lips to her soft pink ear.

  I turned and ran.

  15

  George Hungerford, foreman at Hebgen Dam, and Lester Caraway, his assistant, were awakened by the major shock and within moments recognized it as an earthquake. With their wives, they hurried to a water gage downstream from the dam to see if the river flow showed that the dam was leaking. As they neared the gage, Hungerford heard a roar. He glanced up to see a wave of water about 4 feet high moving down the river. Fearing that this meant the collapse of the dam, he returned to his house on the highway above the gage and tried to telephone a warning, but the line was dead. The two couples then drove toward the high ground near the dam and arrived there at about 11:55 P.M.