Fault Line

by Sarah Andrews

  The first headline read SALT LAKE GRIEVES LITTLEST CASUALTY. It seemed that, after two days of valiant efforts to save him, little Tommy Ottmeier had died. The report was that his weeping parents had stood by his bedside as the life-support equipment was removed, committing him to God’s care and asking that he meet them when the day came that they would follow him to the next life. A funeral would be held. I noted that it was planned for the church at the same stake—what Mormons call a parish—as Ray’s family attended. I try not to read such things, as it seems an invasion of privacy, but this time I couldn’t help it. I had connected this infant with Faye’s, and I found myself fighting back tears.

  I read onward. The article included moving testimonials by those who had known little Tommy, and who knew and revered his parents. Mercifully, it limited its recitation about the shortsighted choice of a sleeping area that had led to the child’s death, but by the same token, said nothing about the mechanics of earthquakes, substandard building practices, or corporate greed that had contributed to the casualty. I figured that at least a summary about earthquakes ought to have been there. Pet could have dashed off a box with one hand tied behind her back.

  I scanned the page, wondering where her story had gotten buried. Above the fold, there was another pump-up article about the arriving Olympians, this time featuring their reactions to arriving at a place that had just thrown its chimneys into the garden. I was pleased to know that all the healthy young jocks from California and other places more frequently known to shake had taken it in stride, and I tut-tutted sympathetically as I read that this year’s great American hope for figure-skating gold had clutched her teddy bear tightly when she heard about Tommy Ottmeier, but overall the article left me feeling more impatient than gratified. In fact, I would have put the paper back on the front porch in disgust if I hadn’t by then opened it up far enough that I was committed to ironing it so that I could refold it correctly. As I continued ironing, I finally looked below the fold.

  In the lower right-hand corner of the front page, I found Pet Mercer’s face looking back at me.

  She was easy to recognize, since I had seen her so recently, but I had to look twice to believe it, because it didn’t make sense. It was her all right, right down to the pert hairstyle and bright, observant eyes.

  I scanned the headline over her face, thinking that she must have won some award and that her employer had decided to crow about her on the front page, but instead the headline read SCIENCE REPORTER FOUND DEAD.

  The words so thoroughly stunned me that I straightened up and looked around my small apartment to make sure where I was, and where all other solid objects were, as well.

  Everything was still right where I had left it.

  I looked back at the paper. Read the day’s date. It was correct. I had not slipped into a parallel reality.

  Finally, I read the story:

  Salt Lake Tribune science reporter Amelia “Pet” Mercer, 26, was found dead shortly before midnight Tuesday in a parking lot near the state capitol. Mercer was pronounced dead at the scene. The cause of death is believed to be vehicular manslaughter.

  Mercer had worked for the Tribune for five months. She was a graduate of the University of Utah and held a M.A. in Journalism from Columbia University.

  The owners and staff of the Tribune are deeply shocked and grieved at her loss.

  “We’re putting everything we’ve got into the investigation,” said Salt Lake City Police Department detective Arnold Haas.

  It went on from there, talking about what a promising reporter Pet had been and so forth, that she’d been destined for greatness, loved by all, but there was not a single additional bit of hard information regarding where she’d been found, why she she’d been there, what had happened, who might have done it, or when, except that it had happened some time before midnight.

  Which meant that I was probably the only person who knew anything about what had led to her death.

  I slapped down the paper, unplugged the iron, and dialed Tom Latimer’s number at the FBI.

  “SHE WAS DIGGING into Sidney Smeeth’s death,” I told him twenty minutes later in his office. “I told you that last night. So this has got to be connected.”

  Tom closed his eyes and rubbed the space between his eyebrows. “How I hope and pray you’re wrong,” he said. He opened his eyes and tried to smile, but he was not fully in control of his mouth, and he wound up looking like he was fighting off tears. Perhaps he was.

  Not a good moment to go out of commission on me, Tom, I decided, then mentally whipped myself for my selfishness. Tom was my friend, and he had a whole lot more on his mind than what happened to be bothering me.

  I got up and closed the door. Leaning with my back against it, I asked gently, “Is there something else you need to talk about, Tom?”

  He examined me distantly, as if I were something lovely and admirable but inanimate, such as a statue on display in a museum. I examined him right back, marveling at how remote a truly brilliant intellectual can be about his emotions.

  I sighed, wondering how he and Faye were going to muddle through the challenge they had created for themselves. Last week, they had been two sexually satisfied adults who seemed to enjoy each other’s companionship. Now they were like a couple of superannuated kids who’d just pushed the wrong button on their toy rocket ship and found themselves on a foreign, potentially hostile planet. He seemed to have shrunk into himself, like a little boy caught sitting in his father’s chair.

  “Tom?” I said.

  “It’s okay, Em,” he said pleadingly. “You can open the door. Please.”

  I stayed where I was.

  He got up and opened it himself, returned to his seat, cleared his throat, then pressed onward. “Now, about the Mercer case: Let’s review what you know about what she was working on.”

  I told him again about the pizza dinner Monday evening, detailing the way she had pushed for information and who had worked hardest to stonewall her, and why. Hugh Buttons, the Seismic Station’s director, had seemed pained but on the spot. Logan de Pontier had been brusque. Wendy Fortescue, the seis-miology tech, had kept her mouth shut. And Ted Wimler had been a drama queen. We reviewed our observations about how each of these people had behaved while entering the synagogue. Then I told him again about the tour of the City and County Building, and about our chat over tacos and beer.

  Tom said, “So Mercer was asking about Sidney Smeeth’s relationship with the governor, and she was interested in earthquakes. Anything else?”

  “She said something about the Towne Centre project. Does that ring a bell?”

  Tom nodded. “Yes, but I’m not going to say anything more for now,” he said. “Please don’t push.”

  I took a breath. I was beginning to get the picture now. Whatever was going on involved some kind of buy-off, some kind of cover-up. Large-scale developers and possibly high-level politicians. That old cocktail: people with a lot of money mixing it up with people with a lot of power, all interests fully vested, blinders on, no one looking out for the fact that they were building in an earthquake zone. “How did Pet die?” I asked. “The paper said ‘vehicular manslaughter.’”

  “She was run over. Twice.”

  I winced. Once might be manslaughter, but twice was murder. Accomplished by a person or persons who also threw public servants off their sundecks, or hired someone to do it, and both times managed to do so without being seen. He was right: I should keep my nose out of this one.

  Tom continued. “Thank God the murders aren’t my jurisdiction. I hate that kind of stuff. Leave me the paper trails to be followed, the nice cold brutality of fraud or the lasciviousness of interstate theft, but spare me the personal stuff.”

  I thought, Now we’re getting down to it, but I said, “Running over someone with a car in a snowstorm sounds plenty cold and brutal. And so does heaving someone off the deck of their house. But maybe it’s also stupid. I mean, the deck job might have been done on ice, where t
hey’d leave no footprints, but didn’t the vehicular job at least leave tire tracks?”

  Tom nodded. “Police say the preliminary evidence is some kind of SUV or truck, a common chassis with very common tread. Whoever did it planned ahead enough to wear gloves and put some kind of covering over his—or her—boots. And it was snowing hard. There were only the vaguest footprint impressions around her and leading up to her car, which had been systematically searched, the contents turned over, her files standing up on edge, very tidy.”

  “A cold, brutal, methodical killer. Not my idea of a dream date, either.”

  “This is of course not to be discussed.”

  I knew Tom meant that I was not to tell Ray that he had passed me the evidence. “Don’t worry,” I said, looking away. “I barely ever see Ray these days. When I do, it’s to discuss exactly that fact, not chitchat about murder cases, of which he would disapprove of my interest in the first place.”

  Now it was Tom’s turn to sigh. “Sorry to hear that, sport.”

  I glanced quickly at him, trying to discern whether this really was news to him, or if Faye had told him all about it and he was just being decent. It didn’t matter, really; the two of them were the people I trusted most in Salt Lake City, next to Ray … or perhaps now even more than Ray. I was sure they had their system about these things. Of course, I didn’t discuss Faye with Tom, and only indulged in discussing the friendship aspects of Tom with Faye, never the business in terms of our friendship. It was a matter of propriety.

  I moved back over to my chair and loaded myself into it. “So. What’s my assignment?”

  Tom tipped his head. “I can’t assign you anything else; you know that. I bent the rules as far as they would go just asking you to read files for me. I appreciate your bringing the information about Pet Mercer around, and I’ll see that it gets to where it needs to go without your having to make a trip down to the cop shop to give evidence. And of course, if you hear anything more, I’m your man. But things are heating up, Em, which is precisely the time for you to lay low, right?”

  “Right,” I said, thinking, You dirty dog, Sidney Smeeth was a stranger, at best a distant colleague, but Pet Mercer was on her way toward becoming a friend of mine. Not twenty hours ago, we were peeking out of clock towers together and comparing notes like comrades in arms. We ate together, Tom. And even if I hadn’t come to care about her you’ve just told me that whoever killed her went through her files. Her notes, Tom! She had notes from her conversations with me! And my phone number and—and now you’re telling me to stay out of it. Get real!

  As IF THE morning’s events weren’t enough to tie me into emotional knots, I had my dinner date with Ray to prepare for. I passed a long, tense afternoon trying to read about earthquakes, even though I had other schoolwork to do for the classes I was taking. As you may have surmised, I didn’t have a temp job that week, so I should have been concentrating on catching up with some advanced math and a second semester of both undergraduate chemistry and physics, which I did not take in college but needed if I ever hoped to get a master’s. My undergraduate degree was a B.A., not a B.S., so those two courses hadn’t been required. I skipped them, figuring I’d just be going back to the ranch anyway, where math and chemistry didn’t get much past counting cows and laying out a little mineral cake. This had been a bad plan, considering that my dad had died and I had been unable to work things out well enough with my mother to return to the ranch, but I valued the fact that I had instead taken philosophy and creative writing, which had helped me think more broadly and communicate those thoughts.

  But now I had to bite the bullet and strengthen my credentials. The few geology jobs that came open were going to people with advanced degrees. I had researched the idea of training as a forensic geologist, which was what I had begun to call myself, but aside from a course by that title at certain schools that happened to have a forensic geologist on the faculty, there didn’t seem to be an established curriculum. The specialty appeared to be staffed by geologists who loved puzzles and had advanced degrees, with concentrations in geochemistry and sedimentology, and minors in law enforcement. So I had a way to go, if I could stick it out. As I lumbered along trying to beef up my grade point average and correct those chemistry and physics math, I wished I was ten years younger and still on the family payroll, because those temp jobs were getting in the way of studying.

  And now I had reason to believe I was on the list of a cold-blooded killer who had murdered two women in as many days.

  And my love life, which had brought me to Utah, was getting painful enough to make me want to leave. I was beyond the point of anxiety with Ray. In fact, I was now all the way past worry to full-fledged panic. When he called at the last minute to change the restaurant, I was somehow not soothed, even though he had upgraded from a pizza joint to upscale bistro. The restaurant on the ground floor of the grand and lavishly old-fashioned Inn at Temple Square to be precise. It was newly renovated for the Olympics, all hip and “Euro,” but it was still a deeply Mormon establishment—not a Budweiser in the place.

  When dinnertime finally arrived, I put on that damned pink sweater and combed my hair, then headed downtown. I found Ray parked just down West Temple, sitting in his squad car, talking on his cell phone. Which meant it was a private call. He was smiling. When he saw me, he ended the call abruptly and his smile turned into an abstracted version of the Mona Lisa’s.

  At least he’s not scowling at me, I decided, trying to think positively. Well, up in the saddle and nose into the wind, cowgirl. It’s time for the roundup.

  Unfortunately, another part of my consciousness went over the same evidence and decided I was a fool. Right, it sassed me. What do you think you’re doing here, Em? It’s over. You’ve been bucked off this horse. You lost your grip on the saddle and landed on your butt, and you ran from his mother’s house like your boots were on fire. You were right the first time. You should have kept on running.

  This man has asked me to be his wife, I answered myself self-righteously. That’s got to mean something.

  Oh, sure, it means something, but what? Remember, he’s a Mormon. His own grandfather probably had more than one wife. He’s a widower, but he still wears his first wife’s ring. That little tête-à-tête you witnessed in the kitchen was probably an audition for wife number three. Or two, if you keep playing hard to get.

  The door to the squad car opened. Ray stepped out and strolled toward me, elegant even in his standard-issue uniform, his snug hips rolling that incredible way they did when he wanted to say hello without words. He moved up close to me, touched my cheek, smiled pensively. “Hello, love,” he said. He seemed distant and sad, almost dreamy, but the words rang in my heart.

  And I felt a tugging in those parts of me that are most female. More than a year of pent-up longing seemed to burst from my seams. All reason instantly vanished as I saw again what it was about this man that had drawn me to move clear across the Rockies to be with him. If he’d asked me to jump in the backseat with him then and there, I would have unbuttoned my blue jeans on the way.

  But he didn’t. He didn’t even kiss me hello, being out in public and all that. Instead, he took me by the elbow and ushered me down the sidewalk, around the corner, through the lobby of the hotel, and into the restaurant. I immediately rued wearing the pink sweater, even if Ray had given it to me. What had I been thinking? I tugged at the hem of my down jacket, wishing I were dressed as cleverly as the other women in the place.

  A young woman with a spine like a dancer’s showed us to a seat by the windows that looked out over Temple Square. I began to worry even more.

  We sat down and ordered dinner. Being gently raised at least as far as restaurant dinners went, I followed his lead and asked for soup and salad. It was clear that he was trying to keep the costs down. Which added to my confusion. I wondered, Why has he brought me to such a swanky place? I’m not the flowers and chocolates kind of girl when it comes to accepting apologies; a simple “S
orry” does fine. And doesn’t he know it blows the effect if he brings me somewhere expensive and then orders down? Or is this the big farewell, carefully orchestrated in a venue where I’ll feel constrained against pitching a fit?

  I had rehearsed a whole speech. It went something like this: Ray, we’ve been spending a lot of time apart lately, and I am concerned. Yesterday evening, when I went to your mother’s house, I saw you behaving affectionately with another woman, so naturally my concern increased, and I ask you to explain what was actually going on there. I am here in this town to build a middle ground with you, and I reaffirm that intention. Right now, I’d like to know if that’s still your intention, as well.

  So much for practicing in front of the mirror. Try reciting an overblown bunch of syllables like that when you’re so scared that it feels like there’s a hand closing around your throat. Instead, I said nothing.

  We waited for our salads, not making eye contact, the concussively loud music crashing around us like rocket fire. I was torn between getting up and running away and simply digging a hole through the floor and crawling into it. And all the while, Ray kept glancing at the entrance to the restaurant. It was perhaps three minutes before I cracked and started trying to make small talk over the noise. “Nice place. I’ve never been here. The menu looked good.”

  “I chose it because my brother-in-law’s supposed to be here,” Ray said.

  Well, that remark sure pushed me back over the edge between intimidation and anger. I am pleased to report that I found my dignity before I put my mouth in gear, so instead of yelling, You bastard! I said almost calmly, “Ray, that hurt.”

  He quit watching the entrance and looked at me for the first time since the sidewalk, said, “Oh. Sorry.”

  I was not going to be ignored now. “You seem more than a little distracted. Mind letting me in on things?”