Tortoise Soup (Rachel Porter Mysteries)

by Jessica Speart

  I tried another approach. “What about the fact that Annie had staked so many claims? Maybe she really did find a stash of gold and the wrong people found out about it.”

  Sam touched up a brush stroke on Maizie’s muzzle. “Those claims ain’t worth the fees she paid for them. Any fool knows that.”

  “Then what about those imprints of tortoises that I found both at the Center and at Annie’s?”

  Sam squinted at the painting and added a dash more blue to the sky. “Don’t see no basis for a murder case there.” He put down his brush and turned to look at me. “Forget about Annie McCarthy. That’s Metro’s business. What have you got on those missing torts?”

  I let the subject of Annie drop for now and filled him in on my meeting with Cammo Dude.

  Sam chuckled as he wiped spots of paint off his hands. “That crazy old codger runs around dressed in camouflage trying to make everyone think he was napalmed in ’Nam. Truth is, he used to run a meth lab up in an old shack back in those hills.”

  I must have looked puzzled.

  “You know, the fifty-fifty drug?” Sam continued. “Take it and you got a fifty percent chance of living and a fifty percent chance of dying. Well, Cammo got a dose of both. He had a batch of meth cooking up there one day when the damn shack blew up on him. The fumes knocked him down to his knees and he hit a meth oil spill. Burned the skin right off his face.” He lit up a Marlboro and studied his boots. “What wild goose chase did he send you on?”

  I suddenly felt foolish. “He told me about a group of burned-out scientists up in the pass. He thought they might have something to do with the tortoises’ disappearance.”

  Sam’s head jerked up. “You been out there yet?”

  His interest caught me off guard and I was suddenly cautious. “I was out there early this morning.”

  “Who’d you meet?” An ash from his cigarette fell onto the tip of his boot, but Sam barely noticed.

  “A wildlife biologist who used to work with Fish and Wildlife by the name of Georgia Peach,” I said, gauging his reaction.

  Sam looked away, as if judging how much to reveal. “The boys back in Washington fired her a while ago.”

  Georgia had made it sound as if she’d left on her own. “Why was she fired?”

  Sam picked at his plaid shirt, his finger twisting a piece of loose thread on one of the buttons. “She didn’t agree with the Service’s decision to put the desert tortoise on the endangered list. She made it enough of an issue that they asked her to leave.”

  Something didn’t strike me as quite right about Sam’s explanation, but I decided to let it slide.

  “I also met a man by the name of Noah Gorfine.”

  Sam’s eyes instantly locked onto mine. “Stay away from him, Rachel. The man’s nothing but trouble.”

  I was surprised. “Why? What has he done?”

  Sam’s attention traveled down to his boots, where he brushed away bits of cigarette ash. “I just know he’s considered a pariah by all the government hotshots. He used to work for the Department of Energy until he threw a monkey wrench into something big they were doing. Since then, anyone interested in a government career has been told to steer clear of him.”

  Sam walked out to the Mr. Coffee machine in the hall. Bringing back two cups, he handed me one. “If you want to keep your nose out of trouble, forget you ever met the man. If you want to get ahead in this job, keep with the program.”

  Keeping with the program was like asking me not to eat, sleep, or breathe. I learned early on that part of my problem as a Fish and Wildlife special agent is that I don’t fit into the mold. Higher-ups within the agency consider me one of those rare mutations that somehow manage to slip by without getting caught, bobbing and weaving, sliding in from the rear to kick down the door while no one’s looking. At first I had taken it as a compliment, proud that I had proven myself to be so exceptionally wily. But all I’d accomplished by kicking the door in so hard was to land myself ass-smack in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Assignment-wise, it was the equivalent of being sent to Hard Rock, Alaska.

  I had just begun to sip my coffee when my phone rang. Leaving Sam’s office, I sprinted to my desk, knocking over a pile of unfinished paperwork as I reached for the receiver. I found myself faced with silence and then the sound of breathing. Along with no love life, I hadn’t had many dirty phone calls of late. I somehow doubted that my luck had changed.

  “Anybody there?” I asked.

  I was just about to hang up when a woman’s voice stopped me. “It would be worth your while to pay a visit to the Golden Shaft mine.”

  “Who is this, please?” I questioned.

  “All you need to know is that birds and tortoises are dying there every day and nothing is being reported,” the woman informed me.

  It was my turn to be silent for a moment as I processed this information. “How are they dying?”

  The voice on the other end snapped, “How the hell do you think? Birds drink from the cyanide pits. Haul pak drivers don’t stop to pick up desert tortoises that wander into their way. They’re being run over. Or even worse, they’re buried alive.”

  “If you tell me your name, I promise that it will be kept totally confidential,” I offered.

  The woman snorted. “Right. And good whisky is still a buck a shot. I need to keep my job, lady. You want to do something with the information I’ve given you? Be my guest. You want to sit on your ass like the State wildlife boys? Well, I can’t do nothing about that. Let it be on your head.”

  Before I had a chance to respond, the phone clicked dead in my ear.

  The Golden Shaft was the same mine Noah had complained about, and my mystery woman obviously worked at the mine.

  Mines in Nevada ran on a self-reporting system that Sam likened to a fox declaring how many chickens he’s nabbed in a henhouse. All wildlife deaths connected to mining activities were supposed to be reported directly to the Nevada Division of Wildlife. It seemed that few were. And when they were, nothing was done. It was only when endangered critters were involved that Fish and Wildlife stepped into the fray.

  “In Nevada, mining gets what it wants. It’s political suicide to go against the industry.” Sam had pounded that into my head since my first day on the job.

  It was well known that the mines greased State palms to turn State heads the other way. That was one of the reasons Fish and Wildlife was so disliked in Nevada: so far, the Service had managed to remain incorruptible.

  I filled Sam in on the call and told him that I planned to drive over and take a look around. It would be the first mine that I had officially visited since being out here.

  Sam wiped off his brush and scrutinized his latest painting. “That should be quite a treat, though I don’t think you’ll find the Center’s missing tortoises there.”

  Standing up, he took hold of his canvas and hung it on the wall behind his desk right below a sign that read, “The Golden Rule in Nevada is: He who hath the gold rules.”

  Five

  I decided to play it politically correct and head over to the Nevada Division of Wildlife, the state agency that is locally referred to as NDOW. Not only was it time that I introduced myself to the head honcho of the division; I also hoped that a courtesy call would smooth any feathers that might be ruffled over my impending visit to the Golden Shaft mine. Sam warned me that I would be greeted with about as much enthusiasm as a hooker on a sex strike.

  Monty Harris, head of the Las Vegas division, immediately ushered me into his office upon being informed of my arrival. A man as thin as a whippet, Harris sported a pair of muttonchops that looked like two dead coon tails slapped onto his face. A nervous twitch controlled the left side of his body, causing his hand and foot to jerk in unison as if he were about to breakdance. Brown polyester pants hung unevenly on his frame and his fingers picked at a tan rayon shirt that covered a concave chest. A utility belt was wound twice about a waist that I would have killed for, its zippered pockets secreting hidd
en treasures. Dark sunglasses masked Harris’s eyes, and a mono-brow extended itself in one straight line above the bridge of his nose.

  His breath whistled between his teeth as he aimed his body at the chair and nearly crash-landed. “What is it that I can do for you today, Miss Porter?” he asked.

  The smell of stale sweat wafted toward me as I took a seat in the hard wooden chair facing his desk. Obviously Monty Harris was a nervous man. “I received a call about wildlife violations over at the Golden Shaft mine. I thought I’d go and check into it.”

  The tip of a pink tongue flicked out from between Harris’s lips and his eyes blinked behind their dark curtain as he looked me up and down before responding.

  “And just who was it that gave you that kind of information?”

  I had the distinct impression that Monty Harris would have liked me to be anywhere but in his office.

  “It was an anonymous call,” I replied.

  The quick rat-a-tat-tat of a laugh escaped Harris’s lips, ricocheting around the room like a bullet. “I’m afraid someone is playing a joke on you, Miss Porter. The Golden Shaft is an exemplary mine. In fact, the governor is about to bestow on it an award for environmental awareness and protection of the land. So you see, it appears that someone is pulling your leg.”

  The bony fingers of one hand lewdly played with a zippered pocket on his utility belt, then pulled the zipper open and rooted around inside. After a moment they latched onto their prey, a slim Tiparillo. Harris rolled the tiny cigar slowly between his lips and licked the filter, savoring the taste.

  “I’m glad to hear Golden Shaft is setting such a good example, but I think I’ll take a run out and check into it anyway,” I responded.

  Harris puffed on the Tiparillo as though it were a fine Cuban cigar. “If I were you, I wouldn’t bother. You’re just wasting your time. Of course, it might be that you feds have nothing better to do. But since you’re new to this state, let me explain a few things.”

  I had become mesmerized by the tiny, coarse black hairs that poked their way out from beneath his shirt, and snapped my attention back up to his face. “Explain away. I’m always happy to learn something new.”

  “Everything pertaining to wildlife and the mines goes through this office. That means me.” Harris hawked up a wad of phlegm, holding it in his mouth while he unzipped another pocket on his belt. Pulling out a wrinkled handkerchief, he spat into the fabric, wadded it up, and stuffed it back in its lair.

  “What that means is that any bird or critter turning up dead is held for my agents.” Harris leaned forward. “We’re the only ones who do autopsies on dead wildlife for the mines. That’s the rule. Comprende?"

  I shifted in my chair, noticing the scorpion embedded in a glass paperweight that held down a pile of documents. “Do you happen to have a list of dead wildlife turned over by Golden Shaft to your agents in the past year?”

  Harris’s eyes narrowed and his nose flared, exposing tiny hairs that bristled like miniature porcupines on alert for attack. “There were none.”

  “So what this amounts to is nothing more than a crank call?” I persisted.

  “That’s right. That’s just what it was,” Harris replied. His sunglasses resembled two large, impenetrable black holes.

  All my senses told me to stop right there. Which is exactly what made me barge ahead. “Would you happen to know how much NDOW has received in donations from Golden Shaft in the past two years?”

  Monty’s jaw hooked forward and the corners of his mouth curled tightly down. “You’re treading on dangerous ground here. Let me tell you something, girlie girl. You ain’t home. What you’re up against is history. Mining is what built Nevada. It’s what built the West.”

  I looked past the sunglasses into his eyes, and knew I should consider this a warning. I hate warnings. They’re an unspoken challenge begging to be answered.

  “In other words, don’t bite the hand that feeds you?” I asked as innocently as possible.

  Harris stared at me darkly. “Not unless you’re prepared to be bit back.”

  I heard the mine before I actually saw it. The roar of trucks carrying one hundred ninety tons of ore apiece filled the air like thunder. I parked on top of a butte and pulled out a pair of binoculars to survey the scene below.

  Long gone are the days of the small independent miner with pickax and shovel. Mines are now run by multi-million-dollar corporations complete with high-tech computers, earth moving equipment, and an arsenal of chemicals, all in search of microscopic flecks of gold.

  For a while I watched the steady stream of trucks carried on tires that stand twelve feet in diameter, running twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, their engines never dying. The shrill wail of a siren periodically pierced the low, steady rumble. Getting back in the Blazer, I wended my way down to the mine.

  The closer I got, the more I realized that I was approaching a fortress that appeared to be more military installation than gold mine. Razor-sharp barbed wire surrounded the compound’s perimeter, with guards carrying M-16 rifles posted at intervals. From the security alone, it appeared to be the mother of all mother lodes. The Fort Knox of the West. A posted sign appeared near the mine’s entrance, warning “Use of Deadly Force Authorized.” They needn’t have worried. I had already taken it for granted that the armed guards were there for more than show. Still, it was nice to know they at least had the courtesy to inform me that I stood a good chance of being blown away if I made the wrong move.

  I drove up to the front gate, where I was stopped by an unsmiling guard cradling an M-16 in his arms. I stated my business and waited expectantly for the guard to wave me inside.

  “Are you one of the good guys or bad guys?” he asked.

  I looked at him and cracked a grin, sure that he had to be joking. But he stared back at me with all the warmth of Godzilla.

  “Fed or state?” he impatiently asked, his fingers twitching along the stock of his rifle.

  “I’m with Fish and Wildlife,” I replied, wondering whether that made me friend or foe.

  He pointed to the office dead ahead. “Pull in there. Someone inside will help you.”

  I checked my rearview mirror as I drove away. My unfriendly guard was busy conversing into a walkie-talkie.

  I walked into the main office, where a receptionist sat in wait.

  “State your business, please,” she said, barely bothering to look up.

  I had the feeling she already knew, but I went along with the game.

  “I’m with Fish and Wildlife. This is my first visit to the mine and I’d like to take a look around,” I replied.

  “You’d think we were running guided tours out here,” she mumbled, picking up her phone and punching in some numbers. “Fish and Wildlife is here,” she announced to the person on the other end. Hanging up, she glanced briefly in my direction. “You’ll have to wait for the foreman.”

  I had no problem with that. At least it was cool inside the small room. I sat down on a gold vinyl couch and viewed the reading material on the table in front of me. Mining Today and The Gold Review. I passed up the magazines and studied the wall, where framed photos portrayed the wonders of gold mining technology at work.

  Mines dot the landscape of Nevada, holding as much allure and promise as the main strip of Vegas does to a gambler on a roll. But few people realize what mining entails. One of the aerial photos showed a maze of roads and drilling activity on denuded land. The next photo zeroed in on a mountain that had been ground up into heaps of fine powder. Next to it was an explanation of the magic of cyanide, which is sprayed over these hills of dust. Cyanide percolates through the low-grade ore and then slowly trickles out, carrying with it specks of gold into fifty-acre collection ponds.

  What was left out of the caption is cyanide’s lurid history. Best known as the main ingredient in Jonestown’s deadly Kool-Aid with a kick, cyanide was also the chemical of choice in the rash of Tylenol poisonin
gs a few years back. More recently, it had been responsible for the deaths of thousands of migratory birds that stopped to drink from cyanide-laced pools as they passed by. Sam liked to refer to these chemical water holes as “hotter than a pistol—a bird flies in, it don’t fly out.”

  With nothing else to look at I turned my attention to the receptionist, who was digging her hand into a can of peanut brittle.

  “That’ll kill your teeth,” I advised.

  “Yeah, like nothing else won’t,” she answered as she shoved a piece of brittle into her mouth.

  Her nameplate said Dee Salvano. I had a feeling that was the only introduction I’d get.

  “Have you worked here long?” I asked.

  “Too long,” she blurted. A small shower of peanut pieces flew out of her mouth, landing on her desk.

  “Does that mean you’d rather be doing something else?” I inquired.

  Dee fixed me with an evil eye. “In Nevada, if you don’t work for mining, you’re punching the register at a 7-Eleven, shimmying on a pole for a bunch of drunks with your boobs bobbing up and down, or kissing the government’s ass as one of their toadies. Take your pick.”

  I decided it was best to end the conversation. I passed the long wait daydreaming about Santou’s hands caressing my long-neglected body. A slow, sultry kiss was abruptly interrupted when the foreman of the mine planted his feet in front of me.

  “Feds don’t usually come here. What is it you want?” he demanded.

  I glanced up at the man dressed in work boots, jeans, and a khaki shirt with a Playboy insignia sewn on the pocket. He didn’t appear to be big on introductions, so I skipped over formalities.

  “I’d like to take a look at your operation,” I responded.

  “What for?” he asked, his eyes narrowing in on me.

  The name John was tattooed on a bicep that glistened with sweat. Since no hearts or roses surrounded it, I took it for granted that the name was his own.