“No!”
Jake Simpson banged his gavel. “You’re out of order, Senator Ballard. You’re well aware that this is not a court of law. The rules are quite different here.”
Ballard glared at his colleague and continued.
“Mr. Peterson, you testified that Dalton Research spent some sixty million dollars over a ten-year period. How was that money spent?”
“It was spent on research.”
“I understand that. I mean specifically, aside from salaries, of course.”
“Well, the research was centered on the town of Hollister, California. Hollister is very active in terms of seismic activity. It sits right on the San Andreas fault line. Various pieces of equipment were installed, including a number of probes that were installed in holes drilled into the ground.”
“How many holes were drilled?”
“About a hundred.”
“The San Andreas fault lies close to the surface of the earth, does it not?”
“In a way, but it’s not quite that simple. The effect of the plate movement can be seen from the surface, but the actual plate movement takes place beneath the surface. Quite far down, in fact. In order to take proper measurements, you need to explore the substructure with probes. Some of them go as deep as three miles. It’s very expensive.”
“So … a hundred holes were drilled and equipment installed. That works out to about six hundred thousand dollars a hole. Less administrative expenses, of course. That is very expensive, just as you said.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Now … this measuring system … is this the normal way things are done?”
“Sir?”
“Well … by that I mean, all of these holes were drilled in Hollister, a rather small town. And sixty million dollars was spent on one small section of the San Andreas fault. Wouldn’t it be prohibitively expensive to examine the entire length of the fault?”
“Yes, it would.”
“Well … if that’s the case, what was the point? Isn’t it true that earthquakes occur all along the fault line?”
“Yes, they do, sir. But the purpose of research is to study various techniques. Hollister was picked because of its seismic activity, which is more prevalent than on other sections of the fault.”
“I understand that, Mr. Peterson. I’m still trying to get a handle on this. Please bear with me. My point is that sixty million dollars is a lot of money. Even if you were incredibly successful in Hollister, the cost of carrying on the research would preclude taking the research elsewhere. Isn’t it a fact that even if earthquake prediction was precise and proven science, the cost of implementation is so high as to make it totally impractical? Isn’t that a fact?”
Peterson gulped and said, “I’m not an accountant, Senator, I’m a scientist. All I know is that sixty million dollars was spent in Hollister. I can’t speak to anything else.”
“I understand. But, aside from that, just as an ordinary person, wouldn’t it appear to you that this research was heading for a dead-end? That the cost of employing the knowledge acquired in Hollister would be so prohibitive as to make the entire research effort redundant?”
“No research is ever redundant, Senator.”
Ballard leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Of course you’re right, Mr. Peterson. Knowledge is a wonderful thing.” He stroked his chin and asked, “Was all of the money spent in Hollister?”
“Well … not exactly. There were facilities in Menlo Park and others in Los Angeles.”
“Field work was done there?”
“No. The field work was confined to Hollister and Palmdale.”
“There was no field work done in Los Angeles?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“You should know, shouldn’t you?”
Peterson hesitated for a moment and then answered, “Yes.”
“So, if you didn’t know of any field work being done in Los Angeles, we can assume there was none. Would that be an accurate statement?”
“I guess so.”
“I see. Now … you’ve testified that it was the insurance industry’s desire to get out of the earthquake insurance business altogether, for a while, at least. Is that not so?”
“That’s right.”
“How do you know that to be a fact?”
“I was told that by my boss.”
“Your boss? That was Daniel Dalton?”
“Yes. Daniel Dalton. He was the president of Dalton Research.”
“I see. And Mr. Dalton told you directly that the intention of the industry, insofar as the members of AAIS were concerned, was to get out of the business of protecting individuals and corporations against earthquake damage, is that your testimony?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And since Mr. Dalton was being funded by AAIS, you took it for granted that he spoke for them, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And … to the best of your knowledge, Mr. Dalton has flown the coop. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And you have testified that the insurance companies were aware of the fact that it was impossible to accurately predict earthquakes.”
“Yes.”
“And you have testified that while the insurance companies are making it appear as though they want out of the earthquake insurance business, the opposite is true. Is that not so?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve testified that they are setting the stage, so to speak, for higher premium costs, at the same time as they are trying to pressure the federal government into sharing some of the risk.”
“That’s right.”
“But isn’t it also true that the actions of the insurance companies would make a lot more sense if they actually knew that a big earthquake was coming?”
“I told you,” Peterson replied, “that they wanted to give that impression.”
“Yes … but impressions aside, their actions would make more sense if they were acting on some information not available to us at this time. Information that appeared to indicate they would suffer an inordinate number of claims in the very near future. Isn’t that right?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“You are a geophysicist, are you not?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Is it not true that most people in your profession are convinced that a major earthquake is expected to strike either San Francisco or Los Angeles within the next twenty years?”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“And what is that assumption based on?”
Peterson took another drink of water. “The assumption is based on the fact that a major earthquake takes place along the San Andreas fault every 100 years or so. That’s not an exact figure, but more of an approximation. The last major quake occurred in San Francisco in 1906, which would indicate that any time in the next twenty or so years we can expect another. It takes a number of years for the pressures to build up along the fault line and then it snaps, causing an earthquake.”
“Do you believe that such will be the case?”
Peterson hesitated for a moment and then said, “Yes, I do.”
“Although most experts say it could happen within the next twenty or so years, it could actually happen tomorrow, couldn’t it?”
“It’s possible … yes.”
“And that belief is based on sound scientific data? No horoscopes, no soothsayers, but solid, reasoned analysis, is that not so?”
“Yes.”
“All right, then. If you were running your own insurance business, where you were insuring individuals and corporations against possible damage from an earthquake, you would want to ensure that you were taking every possible step to protect yourself, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
“Oh … I think you do, Mr. Peterson. The fact is that we have thousands of buildings in California that are not constructed in a way that protects them from possible earthquake damage. Isn’t that
so?”
“I don’t know. I’m a geophysicist, not an architect.”
“Of course. Let me put it another way. If you were selling life insurance, would you sell a policy to a man diagnosed as having cancer … cancer that would kill him within six months?”
“I’m not a doctor either, Senator.”
“Of course not. You don’t need to be a doctor in order to answer the question. It’s simply a matter of common sense.”
“Out of order!”
It was Simpson, banging his gavel again.
“Senator,” the chairman intoned, “it would be helpful if you would confine your questions to the matter at hand. There are a number of others who wish to ask questions.”
Senator Ballard turned to face the chairman and said, “I don’t see the need for haste here, Senator. The man said he was unemployed. Just where is it he needs to be?”
Senator Simpson shot him a hard look and said, “Senator, we are dealing with very weighty matters here. I think your levity is inappropriate at this time. If you have no further questions of this witness, I suggest we move on.”
“I have only one or two more questions, Senator.”
“Please proceed.”
“Mr. Peterson, is it your contention that someone connected with AAIS was responsible for murdering Thomas Wilson?”
Without hesitation, Peterson replied, “I’ve already answered that, sir. They were the only ones with a motive, as far as I can see.”
“But the FBI is investigating, you said.”
“Yes. And so is the Menlo Park Police Department. I understand that they wish to testify at this hearing.”
Ballard jerked back in surprise. “Really? They consult with you on these matters?”
Peterson shook his head. “Not at all. I gave them a deposition at the same time as I gave one to the FBI. They told me that they wanted to appear in passing. My understanding is that testimony is being presented at this very moment to the Grand Jury.”
The redness had left the face of Senator Ballard. The anger had been replaced with something closer to disbelief.
“I see. We’ll look forward to hearing that testimony. One final question, Mr. Peterson.”
The man waited impatiently.
“You have testified that the report being circulated here today is a true copy of a report originally prepared by one Thomas Wilson, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And the report being submitted has not been altered in any way, shape, or form?”
“No. It is exactly as he wrote it.”
Senator Ballard smiled, nodded, and said, “Thank you, Mr. Peterson.”
Twenty-four
* * *
It was a small bar in downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico. The two men sitting at the bar seemed oddly out of place, their expensive suits standing out in a room that was filled with people in blue jeans, plaid shirts, and boots.
The two strangers were engaged in a heated conversation. It wasn’t an argument. It was simply a situation where two very agitated men were agreeing with each other, both nodding their heads as each man made his point.
Beside them, another man dressed in western attire leaned over, extended his hand and introduced himself. He offered to buy them a drink and they accepted. Within minutes, he was nodding his head along with the men in the suits, as he commiserated with their problem.
* * *
Rusty Coleman had been at it for almost five hours, working with the “morgue” computer, sifting through the list of articles and features on earthquakes that had previously appeared in the Globe, some of them going back as far as fifteen years.
Before “earthquakes,” he’d looked under “drilling,” hoping there’d be some item relative to strange people drilling deep holes in the ground in the middle of the night. No such luck. He’d then turned his attention to earthquakes.
The articles were all stored in the morgue computer, where everything ever written in the paper was retained on hard discs, all cross-referenced and indexed according to the subject matter. That made it somewhat easier than in the old days, when thousands of index cards had to be sorted through by hand. But because earthquakes were a topic often in the minds of Californians, the Globe had run literally thousands of articles related to their happenings.
Rusty was looking for something special. Something other than just a report of another earthquake. It was one of those times when he didn’t really know what he was looking for, but knew that when he saw it, he’d recognize it.
He read most of the items’ headlines and then moved on to the next one. It was tedious work, like most real reporting, or any other investigative work, for that matter.
Already his eyes were becoming sore and itchy. Item after item flashed by as he scanned the headlines, looking for … what?
And then … he saw a headline that seemed to be exactly what he was looking for. He felt his heart skip a beat as he read the entire piece. It was a short article, less than eight hundred words, concerning two very small earthquakes that had occurred just days apart from each other, in the same section of the city. A section of the city that contained the Whittier Narrows fault line.
A fault line that was unknown at the time the article was written.
According to the piece, written ten years earlier by a reporter long since dead, a scientist named Walter Scollard had claimed that the two quakes had been caused by the activities of an oil company. The oil company engineers had been pumping water, under extreme pressure, into two small oil wells that had been yielding less than five barrels of oil a day.
At a time when the price of oil was at an all-time high, the oil companies had taken to trying to reactivate some of the thousands of small wells dotting the Los Angeles landscape; wells that had ceased to be profitable when oil was selling at five dollars a barrel. But at the time the article was written, oil was bringing thirty-five dollars a barrel.
The oil company had determined that, at that price, even five barrels of oil a day was worthwhile, when the well had already been drilled and the oil could be brought up by using a technique that had proved effective in improving the yield of other almost-forgotten wells. By pumping water into the wells under pressure, they had forced the oil to rise to the surface of the cavity where it could be brought up without additional costly drilling. It was cost-effective and quick.
But the scientist, Scollard, had claimed that the pressure was forcing water into small cracks in the rock surrounding the cavity, causing the rock itself to swell. He further claimed that the rock had exhibited evidence that it was actually a fault line. The swelling, in his opinion, had caused a temporary stoppage in the normal movement of the plates.
The plates were alternately locking and releasing, creating small earthquakes. Because the location of the wells was miles away from the San Andreas fault, the scientist claimed that the small earthquakes were proof that there were scores of other, yet-to-be discovered fault lines all over the Los Angeles basin, and that the activity around the well sites was the key to finding them.
According to him, the earthquakes were a direct result of the new techniques being employed by the oil companies, techniques that could be used by geophysicists to seek and find other potential fault lines. On that issue, he stood almost entirely alone.
But it was an idea that struck Rusty like a hammer-blow.
He searched through the files for follow-ups to the story. There were several.
In one, the scientist had been roundly criticized, his theories disclaimed by other scientists. In another, the oil companies had recapped several of the wells as being nonproductive, even with the new system.
And a third article had mentioned that the leases on some of the wells had been returned to the federal government; the leases surrendered in exchange for options on other, more potentially profitable leases that might or might not be granted at some future date. Rusty made notes furiously and then headed for the district courthouse to take a look at som
e old records.
As he headed out the door of the building, he saw Darlene Yu coming in.
“Well,” he said, brightening, “how’s it feel to be back in L.A.?”
She threw him a big smile and said, “Wonderful! It’s great to be able to taste the air again. That metallic flavor is something my taste buds have craved for years! Bill in?”
Rusty jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Yeah, he’s in. I’d watch my step, though. He’s been a grizzly bear for the last three days.”
She grinned and said, “Don’t I know it. Does he still think there’s going to be a big earthquake?”
“More than ever. Especially after that one yesterday in Hollister. He’s convinced the feds are trying to cover something up.”
She shook her head. “Where does he get these crazy ideas?”
“May not be so crazy.”
She looked stunned. “You found something?”
Rusty quickly bit his tongue. “Naw,” he said. “This is a wild goose chase if there ever was one. All I meant was … well, you know Bill. He’s done this before. He gets us going on something we all think is impossible and then … well, you know.”
“Yes, I do,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “Where are you off to?”
“Oh, I’m just doing some follow-up on yesterday’s quake in Hollister. See ya later. Welcome back!”
“Thanks,” she said.
The courthouse search proved fruitful. A careful search of the records showed that more than a few wells in the same area had been surrendered to the government over a period of six months. In all, over three thousand dormant and semi-dormant wells had suffered the same fate. All of them within the same ten-square-mile area.
Rusty went to the custodian and asked for surveyors’ maps of the area. Then he took some blank paper and drew a rough sketch of the location of many of the wells. Finally, he drew a line around the well field indicating the outside borders of the affected wells. When he was finished, he rushed back to his office, went through the computer files again and printed an old sketch of the Whittier Narrows fault line. He headed to the photocopier and had the sketch sized to match the sketch he had made of the oil well sites. Finally, he made new, larger prints of both items on transparent film.
The Big One Page 23
