Volcano Watch

by Toni Dwiggins

  Walter’s face was savage, not his own.

  “You think it’s proof, Walter? You must, because otherwise you wouldn’t have taken it.”

  Walter did not deny it.

  “What’s it mean?”

  “This is not the time.”

  “Yes it is. I want to know if you’re looking for revenge.”

  Walter’s face was stone cold.

  I went down into the pit where I’ve been living lately, wandering in the muck of pain and rage and fear.

  Krom brought me out. “Get it off, Cassie.”

  “I am.” Damn you, I am. He lay helpless, a broken hooded thing. At my mercy. My great unplumbed depths of mercy. Only it wasn’t mercy that moved me. It was fear. If I don’t act, Walter will take up the knife and use it. I began again, at the jawline. I worked the way I work a dig, carefully removing the layers so as not to disturb what’s underneath. And now there was something new, a new texture just showing through. I had to be careful. Never dig blindly through one horizon of soil to the next. Assess it first. Understand what it is. It was flesh. The new horizon, on close inspection, was pebbly flesh embedded with pumice. Yes, I had nearly reached bottom. I got the bottle and poured more water.

  He screamed. Sound like an animal.

  I jerked back, spilling water.

  His shoulders convulsed, nearly lifting, but his blackened lips pulled back and he bit off the scream.

  “Okay,” I said, “no more water.” Without water, the cement was going to harden again. “Let me think.” I took the knife and moved to the door. Where the door must have been. My headlamp lighted a slice of foggy bald landscape. This was a world lost in time and space. We didn’t exist in the real world anymore. We were in purgatory, in limbo. I stared into the ashy fog so hard my eyes ached. Where were they? This was like being back in Lindsay’s office, waiting for the rescuers, hour after hour. But they finally came. There was a good reason it took them so long. If they were down below the drop-off, beyond the ridge, there was a good reason they were still there. Mike was hurt, Eric couldn’t leave him. Eric was probably hurt too. I understood that.

  “Give him an injection,” Walter said.

  I spun. Walter was fumbling in my first aid kit. I came over and took the vial from him and examined it. Demerol. I read the label. Morphinelike effect. Yes, that’s what I wanted.

  I knelt beside Krom. More excavation. I used the knife to slice the arm of the yellow suit at the seam, and skinned it down. I pushed the sweater and shirt up above the bicep and exposed flesh. It was shocking—the sight of his clean naked arm, brown and strong. Tattoo didn’t bother me, though, nor did the waxy hill of scar. Old friends. Circles of hell. Round and round, going down. Sacrifice and survive.

  Krom watched me through cemented eyes. Not even a face. He watched me with his head fixed face-backward upon his neck.

  I leaned close. “Did you send Mike back out to search?”

  Silence.

  “Was he scared?”

  Krom exhaled, barely a breath. “Are you?”

  There was something hard in my chest. A small hard spot, cold and unyielding. This is why we’re here, isn’t it? Stripped raw like the mountain. Lindsay did this, blew her volcano the hell up, taking us to hell and back. Poetic justice. Leaving us here in limbo with Krom. Isn’t it enough for her that he’s lost? The volcano won. Her baby triumphs. All his grand battle plans for naught. He failed. He offered himself up for the tribe and he failed. His goal now shrunk to the merely tactical—survive. Survive and do battle another day, another place. He can’t touch us anymore, Lindsay. Look at him. Big brown Adrian Krom cloaked in gray. Muck all over; must have seeped through his pores to coat him inside. Sleepy-eyed Adrian Krom who strikes with animal grace, lying here cemented and lashed to a litter. Roguish Adrian Krom who cuts a wake with the locals, his charms masked and his face good as gone. Hero Adrian Krom carted up the mountain with his tail between his legs. What more can he do? He can do nothing.

  He whispered again.

  “What?” I bent closer, ear to his mouth.

  “Walter’s not afraid.”

  I recoiled, turning to Walter to see if he’d heard. Walter was needling the Demerol vial. He grimaced in concentration. He could have been in the lab pipetting chemicals from one tube to another. I said, “Walter? He weighs two hundred seventeen pounds. What’s the dosage?”

  Walter came over and knelt. He held the syringe inverted, fully loaded.

  “Did you do the math?”

  He wiped Krom’s arm with an alcohol swab. “Yes.”

  I held out my hand. “I’ll do the injection.”

  “No, dear. Your bandages make you clumsy.”

  I let my hand come to rest on the bare arm. Walter cocked his head. We regarded one another. Two colleagues with a difference of opinion over lab procedure, neither willing to allow the other to blunder ahead. We both knew I was strong enough to stop him. We both knew I could break every remaining vial in the first aid kit. We both knew there were other ways, that Demerol was simply the kindest. We both knew I could not stay awake forever.

  I turned to Krom. “Help me, Adrian.”

  He was silent.

  “You have to say you’re sorry.”

  He made a sound. It may have been a laugh.

  “Tell him, Adrian. Isn’t there some part of you that’s sorry about Lindsay? Even if it’s only you’re sorry it came to that.”

  Walter said, “Don’t, Cassie.”

  “It’ll matter,” I told Krom. “Walter might not believe you but he’ll have to give it consideration. It’s in his bones.”

  “Stop,” Walter said.

  “You want a sacrifice, Adrian? He believes life’s inviolate. That’s his home base. He kills you, he kills himself.”

  Nothing from beneath the mask. Nothing, now, from Walter.

  A quake rocked us gently.

  “Damn it Adrian give me something that will help.”

  Whatever hell lay beneath that mask finally boiled out. “Sorry.”

  It hit me hard, although I’d asked for it, but it did not alter Walter’s set face. I said, urgent, “Make him believe.”

  “I am sorry.”

  The world did not shift. The sun did not come out. Walter did not relinquish the syringe. I did not let go of Krom’s arm. The skin had gone nearly white where I clutched it.

  “Sorry,” Krom said. “Sorry.”

  I could stand it no longer. I snatched the syringe from Walter and fled to the doorway. Krom heard me. His voice flew after me: sorry, sorry, sorry, a raven of remorse. Sorrow filling the void. And then, abruptly, there was another voice—thunder in the distance. Eruptions again. I saw Walter straighten, listening. I watched ash in my headlamp beam, particles trapped like insects. I prayed through ash. Scare him, Lindsay. Save him.

  Walter paid no heed.

  I came back across the shed, grabbing an alcohol swab from the first aid kit on my way. I knelt beside Krom. Anchoring the syringe with two fingers, I worked open the swab. Clumsy work; Walter was right. I swabbed Krom’s arm.

  He flinched.

  It took me so long to upend the syringe and squirt out a drop, to clear the liquid of air bubbles, that Walter had time to take this in, to calculate that at best I’d released a tiny fraction of the Demerol, to recall that I had not read the recommended dosages and so had not done the math myself, to understand that I was going on his calculations. He’d done the math and loaded the syringe and now I was ready to administer the injection he had prepared.

  I laid the needle to Krom’s skin and pushed. Needle found home.

  Krom flinched, again. And still, I feared him. Masked, hobbled, cuffed—it did not matter. He threatened to pull in the both of us, this black hole called Adrian Krom. And Walter wasn’t scared. I’d thought, ever since Walter had appeared like a ghost at the Inn, that I had to save Walter from Krom’s wrath. No longer. I had to save Walter from his own wrath.

  Walter watched me stonily an
d I returned his look.

  Two can play this game, Walter. Don’t forget you’ve trained me since I was a kid. I’ve aped your every move in the lab and ransacked your brain. I’m yours. More even than I was Lindsay’s. I’m yours in a way she wanted, but I couldn’t give her. I signed up with you at the get-go and I’ve never wavered. I’m with you, against the enemy. You’re my home base. And you know me. You know that whatever you have in you, whatever accommodation you come to with justice, I’m capable of that too. I’ll go as far as you will. You know that about me, don’t you? Or at least you have to give it consideration. You have to fear I’m not bluffing.

  I said, “We’re a team, Walter.”

  He watched my fingers hook under the flanges, my thumb weight the plunger.

  I hesitated.

  He said, “Trust me, dear.”

  I depressed the plunger, releasing the full load of Demerol into Adrian Krom.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  “Cassie?”

  I fought through layers of fog, swam through ash, surfaced. My eyes were glued shut. Glue of ash and saline lachrymal fluid. Glue of grief. I rubbed my lashes apart and looked around. In the shed, home.

  “Do you hear that, dear?”

  We listened, trying to fathom this growling sound. What new category of beast was this? There was no point trying to escape because there was nowhere to go. There was no time. The sound was growing louder—a phreatic, perhaps. Sounded like it came from lower on the mountain, just where I predicted it would come. We lay still, watching the sky. No terror. Way beyond that, in another realm entirely. Limbo. We no longer drifted in and out of limbo; we’d taken up permanent residence.

  Krom slept, at peace. He had a face again, of sorts.

  “The color’s different,” Walter said.

  “Of what?”

  “The sky.”

  “Must be dawn.”

  The growling magnified, clarified. Oh, so familiar. I know this beast. I sat up.

  Krom’s eyes opened.

  Walter got to his knees and began to hunt around, scattering our supplies. I pushed past him—I knew just where everything was if he didn’t jumble it up first—and I found the radio and switched it on.

  Static. Batteries had juice.

  I lifted my face again to the sky and saw what Walter meant—the color’s different. Day’s breaking and the sky is white like a dawn that promises an overcast day, a day innocent of ash.

  Voices crackled out of the radio. Voices and static. Logistics.

  The growl from the beast was closer. Plain enough, quite identifiable. Whup-whup-whup-whup, beating the air, whacking us out of limbo.

  Static receded, words clarified. “How many survivors?”

  I gazed across the shed and met Krom’s eyes—which suck dry every look I give him—but this time was different, this time he had no further need of me. This time he broke our contact first and gazed up at the new dawn. I did not care, really.

  I pressed the transmit button. “Three.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Two weeks after escaping the hospital, I was back. Visiting, this time. Stobie boomed out a greeting, sounding too healthy to be here.

  I said, “Hey Stobie.”

  “Cool ‘do, babe.”

  My haircut. Real short, real curly. There’d been so many cemented tangles the nurses nearly scalped me. Stobie’d lost some hair as well, on top, along with some pounds, giving him the piebald look of an overworked pack horse. We chatted, lurching from the weather to hospital food to Jeanine’s new gig videotaping snorkelers in Maui, and then I told him Mike had been torn up about what happened at the race.

  Stobie frowned, gathering the events. His short-term memory is patchy.

  “Afterward, Mike visited you. We all did. I don’t know if you heard us.”

  “Sure,” Stobie said. But he clearly hadn’t.

  “I’m not trying to excuse Mike but I want you to know he was really torn up.”

  “Hey Cassie? You don’t have to excuse him. Mike could be a real butthead but aside from that he was okay. I don’t hold blame, about this.” He cocked a finger like a gun at his head, then grinned. “I’m gonna miss the little butthead.”

  I had to laugh, and so did he, and for a sweet moment we went with that, but then I caught the pain in his eyes—or maybe he’d caught it in mine first—and I didn’t want to risk slipping from Mike to Eric because I didn’t want to start Stobie crying—not the Stobe. I didn’t think I was going to cry. Not now. Tonight I’ll cry, alone, like last night. I have a routine.

  Stobie and I lapsed into silence.

  Finally he said, “So what’s new with you babe?”

  I flinched. It sounded so normal. What’s new, what’s up. I reached. “My parents bought a place, here in Bishop.” Few blocks from my scummy new condo. They drew me a housewarming cartoon—me on top of a stratovolcano with my thumb in its vent. I’m sure I’ll come to love it. The way I came to love their cartoon showing Henry snug in his coffin, with Dad’s caption, and Jimbo’s, and then mine. Humor as therapy. I refocused on Stobie. “They’ve got a huge yard, so…Fourth of July, mark your calendar.”

  “Tradition.” He reached for a smile. “What about you? You back to work?”

  “Yeah.” Just let me close it all out. “Actually I, ah, came with an ulterior motive. I hoped you could help me clear something up.”

  He settled against his pillows. “Tell Uncle Stobie all about it.”

  “Remember the horse hair we found on Georgia?”

  “Sure.”

  “It was finally matched—to a horse at Sierra Ranch Stables. Where you work.”

  He took that in. He did not show surprise. He said, finally, “You think I know who took the horse?”

  “Do you?”

  “I can guess.”

  I said, gently, “Is Mike your guess?”

  Stobie worked on that.

  I said, “Eric told me he suspected Mike. Explained why he was covering. Explained why he was such a jerk on the retrieval—trying to send me and Walter back. He didn’t rat you out, Stobie, but I can guess why you backed him up. Why you reacted so strongly when he found the horse hair on Georgia. You suspected Mike, too. And—just like my brother—you let Eric handle the problem.”

  Stobie didn’t flinch. He said, “It was a hell of a messed-up thing.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. “Any particular reason you suspected Mike?”

  “You fishing, babe?”

  “I’m fishing.”

  “Then let’s reel it in.” Stobie eyed me steadily. “On the way up to the glacier, Eric told me he wanted to send you back. Told me why. And then…the horse hair…that’s when I got my own suspicion.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I knew Mike. I could believe Eric’s theory. And the horse hair fit with Mike.” Stobie shrugged. “Mike worked at the stable once.”

  I showed my surprise.

  “For about three days. Horseshit grossed him out, and he quit. But he’d know where the keys to the barn were kept.”

  I nodded. Just like he had recalled where the gondola keys were kept. That’s Mike, I thought, never forgets a detail. So it was not a leap to assume that Mike would know, years later, how to borrow a horse on the sly. “Thanks,” I said.

  “Sure.” Stobie suddenly chuckled. “Mr. Clean and the horseshit. Hadn’t thought about that in years.”

  “Mr. Clean?”

  Stobie’s face relaxed, going back in time. “Mike’s nickname, at the stable. First day there, he decides the place stinks. So he comes up with this thing—mixes sagebrush in with the drystall. You know how sage smells real sharp? It worked, but man did he get raked. Mr. Clean.” Stobie thought. “Maybe that’s why he quit. All the teasing.”

  I said, “What’s drystall?”

  “Bedding, babe. Soaks up the horse pee. Mashed pumice, basically.”

  *****

  It took me several days to make the leap from horse to cat.
>
  Under the scope—in the cramped lab space I’d secured on a back street in Bishop—the Drystall grains I’d got from a Bishop stable did not match my evidence. It was mashed pumice, all right, but only a second cousin to the pumice I’d taken from Georgia’s mouth.

  But it pointed me in the right direction.

  Through Bobby Panetta I found Ali al-Amin, with whom Mike had planned to room, to whom Mike had evacuated his cat. I knelt beside the litter box in Ali’s tidy laundry room, as Mike’s high-strung manx paced nervously. The room smelled—catshit overlain by another, familiar odor. I pulled on my winter wool glove, making Ali as suspicous as the cat, and shoved my hand into the bin of clean litter. Ali warned me not to spill because it was Mike’s special mix and Ali dreaded weaning the manx to a new brand. I didn’t spill. I withdrew my hand and inspected my glove. It was coated. I brushed it off. Litter still clung to the wool fibers. I brushed again. Not clean yet. Litter had even worked in under the cuff.

  I got out my hand lens and squinted at the grains on my glove. Crushed pumice and Jeffrey pine bark. My glove smelled faintly of rootbeer. Pumice and Jeffrey pine, Drystall and sagebrush—Mr. Clean had clearly taken an inventive pride in his work.

  Mr. Clean was equally fastidious about his cat’s litterbox. I knew because I’d been to Mike’s place once to pick up Jimbo when his car died and the two of them were in the garage looking for jumper cables, and the litterbox was next to the workbench. On a cold November day, I thought, Mike might wear gloves in the chilly garage to prepare his special litter mix, and if he subsequently wore those gloves in another context, at an old mine site handling a body, bits of that special litter mix could fall out.

  I pictured it, Mike and Georgia arguing, and then a shove, and then maybe Georgia falls and hits her head on a rock. I couldn’t see Mike wielding the rock, hitting her. Perhaps he had done, but I couldn’t picture it. Perhaps I’d become more forgiving of Mike but I could not credit him with cold-blooded murder. I was calling it an accident. In my report I’d lay out the scenario, of Mike’s horror when Georgia was knocked out, of his futile attempt to revive her. I’d mention the bruising around her mouth, where Mike had grasped her, thumb and fingers spread just so, opening her mouth to give her CPR. Only she’s not responding and in his panic he jerks his hand and the cuff on his glove rolls and the soil falls in her mouth.