Fault Line (Em Hansen Mysteries)

by Sarah Andrews

  —Publishers Weekly

  “[A] fine mystery with an edgy and vulnerable heroine … There’s action and passion, introspection and suspense. Em is smart company, and we learn her mind and heart along with her.”

  —Booklist

  “In the fourth book in the series, Andrews moves away from the rig to issues of mothers, daughters, and ranch life. But she continues to tell a good story.”

  —New Orleans Times-Picayune

  “A slick, endearing heroine … We tore through this novel.”

  —Seventeen

  “Em Hansen is one of the most interesting characters in recent mystery fiction—a strong woman with believable weaknesses and none of the smugness or coyness which bog down other, better-selling series heroines.”

  —Amazon.com’s Mystery Editor

  “One of the finest elements of an Em Hansen mystery is female characters who are strong, independent and intelligent … [a] marvelous mystery.”

  —Douglas (Wyoming) Budget

  MOTHER NATURE

  “Complex and engaging … Snappy dialogue and fully realized characters, especially the immensely appealing Em, turn the field of geology into a fascinating background for a mystery.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Mother Nature is an intriguing who-done-it. However, what turns this into an interesting tale is the deeply developed characters (especially Em) and the brilliant insight into geology. Surprisingly, the geological aspects of the story are … extremely fascinating.”

  —Midwest Book Review

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  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  There’s an unwritten rule against preaching personal politics within the text of a mystery novel, or there should be. That’s why I try to present the various sides of the issues du jour in the Em Hansen stories and leave judgment to the reader. But I do have opinions. So I indulge in writing an author’s note. Please bear with me and allow this old geologist/mystery writer a word or two on a topic that I hold near and dear.

  The issue is the need to support scientific research; for example, investigations into the locations and activity of fault planes. To persuade you of the importance of pure scientific research (not to be confused with corporate-sponsored research, which has a product-oriented agenda), I must state that the plot of this book was derived from a true story. In that true story, no state geologist was actually killed, but one was compelled to quit his job when he was told to keep his mouth shut regarding the construction of a public building over the possible—many would say probable—location of a geologic hazard. The names and particulars are herein changed to protect the geologist—whom I consider an ethical hero—from a slander suit. I find it frightening to note that those who muzzled this man got their way and built their building. If a large earthquake hits Salt Lake City within your lifetime, you’ll witness the results of that folly.

  It is an established fact—not a theory—that geologic hazards such as earthquakes and resultant tsunami are real and much, much bigger than we are. We cannot control them, we can only plan our lives around them by preparing for them and by trying to mitigate their effect. On a slightly different front, we find that we have exacerbated natural hazards such as climate change and disease-carrying intercontinental dust clouds, and we have not as yet fully identified all of their causes or been able to predict their effects.

  So what are we to do? My urgent recommendation is that we publicly underwrite the careers of as many honest, independent-thinking geoscientists as we can find. This means supporting public and private institutions that employ these persons. I am talking about colleges and universities, certainly, but more specifically the federal and state geological surveys.

  My first job in geology was with the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, Colorado. I was paid almost nothing, but had the finest apprenticeship available. There were a few idiots there, to be sure—deadwood on the taxpayer’s dole—but most of my colleagues had extraordinary minds, and some were bona fide geniuses. All exchanged much handsomer incomes for the government’s modest ones just so they could spend their time advancing the science. The most important thing they did was think independently of special interests. If they had a major flaw, it was that they fell short on educating the nation on the magnitude of the contribution they were making. As a result, their budget was cut, and they can no longer do anywhere near as much for us.

  Perhaps, before reading this book, you were not aware that the geological surveys existed. We need to recognize that our geological surveys are a precious resource, and we need to act lest they be marginalized and budget-cut out of existence. In order for them to be fully effective, we need to protect their mandate to report their findings in the public arena regardless of the agendas of special interest groups. Yes, this means tax dollars, and to some special interests, lost opportunities, but this is truly one place where dollars spent up front are earned back one-hundredfold as they spare lives, homes, businesses, and the ecosystems on which we all depend.

  With thanks for your attention,

  Sarah Andrews

  August 8, 2001

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  Jack came alive in my senses. I saw him roll towards me, all warm and naked, a cresting wave of perfect masculinity. He had me in his hands, all rough but gentle, and I reached out and touched the place where golden wires of hair curled tenderly above his heart, all moist with sweat. I smelled the perfume of his maleness, the separate scents of sweet clean skin and acrid sexuality entwining in my nostrils, more intoxicating than the exhalations of fresh hay, more riveting than the arrow of first light across the prairie on a clear, crisp morning. Now I tasted his kiss, a mixing of vital juices served up in the glass of life. I heard his breath, a long, shuddering exhalation that bore my name like a leaf on a river that flows out of the mountains: “Em.”

  He came to me with the force and surrender of the ocean meeting the shore. He was smiling, and yet his hands trembled as if with fear. Again he whispered my name, and again. “Em. Emmmmm …” It became a hum, a rumbling from his deep interiors, a cat purr, an earthquake. He was in love, now kissing my neck, my throat, the place between my breasts. In the clarity of those moments, I was real only where he touched me, a taut-line of existence that ran from my head clear through to my crotch as one burning wire. I squirmed on the sheets, unable to process the chaos of sensation.

  Our promise thus offered to the changing winds of the Fates, we fell asleep, long months of courtship settled at last. He had loved me that night so long and so intensely that although I now lay quietly, I still felt the rolling of his hips in the muscles of my own, much as (I would soon come to know) a sailor still feels the sea for hours after she walks onto land. Even the arrival of sleep came in waves, now submerging me in inchoate dreams, now lifting me to the clarity of peace and happiness. It was dawn, and the last thing I remember before falling into sleep was the roll of dust motes all golden in the first light of the dawn.

  The damned telephone woke us not two hours later. How I wish he hadn’t answered it.

  “Hello?” he said groggily, one hand clutching the instrument to his ear, the other sliding down my belly in proprietary exploration.

  It was my turn to roll towards him. I nuzzled up under his chin, worked one thigh between his, licked his neck. I heard a tiny voice coming out of the phone, squeaky, all quick and agitated. He said, “Yeah, you woke me but—okay—no, give me a moment, will you?” And t
hen he got out of bed. I watched him walk away, thinking playfully, He’ll come right back if he knows what’s good for him!

  But he didn’t. I suppose I fell back to sleep, because the next thing I remember was the shower running, and then the scent of bacon frying, and the breakfast tray landing gently on the bed. He was already dressed, and not in his customary Saturday sweatshirt and jeans but in chinos and a pressed shirt, ready for work.

  “You’re kidding,” I said. “Tell me this is some kind of joke.”

  Jack blushed, which was rare. He’s blond enough that after it rises past his receding hairline, I can watch the redness transit his scalp. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I do have to go. You can stay here, of course, as long as you like. Make yourself at home.” Then, slipping into his most Southern of Southern drawls, he popped me on the nose and said, “I got to go fer a while, cupcake. Bum timing. I’ll be back. Don’ chew fret.”

  “When will you be back?”

  He cleared his throat. “I’m, really, truly sorry to tell you, you succulent little treat,”—here he took my chin in his and bent to kiss me—“but it could be days. I’ll be in touch as often as possible. Come on, eat up, this is getting cold.”

  Getting cold? No shit! But I put a lid on my temper and ate. There’s no excuse for wasting good eggs and bacon.

  So that was it. We had just one night together before he left on his unspecified assignment. Just long enough to catch me like a thorn, just short enough to make me doubt my heart, and my sanity. Either way, enough to send me looking for him. To Florida, of all places.

  You say, Florida? Em Hansen, renegade Wyoming cowgirl, itinerant geologist, in Florida? This person who regards water with something akin to morbid fear? That’s right, I packed up and headed off to a state that is almost completely surrounded by it, and the parts that aren’t chin-deep swamp are undercut by limestone solution cavities, so the ground might collapse at any moment and eat your Buick and drop you into a brand new lake. Yes, I did all that and I’m still here to tell the tale.

  As usual, it’s a long story, and one that taught me a thing or two. I went there with the standard brands of ignorance—that Florida doesn’t even have any geology, for starters, and that instead of cattle ranches they farm alligators, when in fact they have all three. Geology, I mean, and cattle ranches and alligator farms. Reptiles, for heaven’s sake. We have reptiles in Wyoming—snakes and lizards, to be precise—but you can whack them with a shovel if you have to, and like as not you’ll never even see them, the both of you going your own way and having a nice life, just as things were meant to be. You don’t have to worry that they’re going to walk up across your lawn and eat your pet dog. Not that we have many lawns in Wyoming, or keep dogs just as pets, but I’m trying not to get sidetracked here.

  So in summary you might ask if I had taken leave of my senses. On the contrary, going to Florida was entirely a thing of such awarenesses; as I said, I went to find Jack Sampler, who had come to live precisely in the fields of the senses, closer than instinct, closer than thought. It was a haunting, pure and simple: having caught my heart, he had vanished like a ghost, and I was left with all the agony of being fully corporeal, stuck in a body that longed for his. You just don’t do that to a woman. Or at least, not this woman.

  I had waited too long for him. The middle of my thirties had come and were quickly leaving. That made me old enough to value life and too young to be philosophical about it.

  Each time I thought of him, and each time the wind brushed my cheek, and each time my nostrils caught the scent of a flower, he came to me all over again, and the day-to-day sanity of the ordinary world would dissolve into a thing of the senses, of memory more real and riveting than the moment, so intoxicating that wherever I was, I’d stop, and grab a railing, or touch a wall so I wouldn’t fall over. Eyes closed, I’d be right back in that place where all things came together in the moment.

  Just like him rolling towards me, it would come over me like a wave. Overpowering. Compelling. Debilitating. Enough to make me, who feared water, long for it as the nearest substitute for the completeness of the experience. Eyes closed, hand groping for some solid object, I was gone in memory again, both loving it and terrified. Half the time, I couldn’t decide between a hot bath and a cold shower.

  He called the first night. “Hi there, Love Bunny.”

  “Jack! Where are you?”

  A sigh. “Sorry, but I can’t tell you. I’d like to set up a time each day when I can phone you. I don’t want you to have to hang around if you’ve got something else to do.”

  “Well, that’s all very nice and considerate of you, but … does this mean you might be gone more than a couple of days?” I tried to keep the edge out of my voice. I told myself, This is how it might always be, Em. The man works for the FBI. He’s a security specialist. A spook. He goes to places he can’t admit to being and does things can’t talk about. You knew this going into the relationship.

  Yeah, but before last night, the phone calls weren’t calling him out of my bed.

  It wasn’t your bed, it was his.

  Don’t get technical!

  So we set up a time when he’d call.

  And then he didn’t.

  I told myself to relax, that he’d call when he could. Bereft of contact, I ran my sensory movie, or should I say it ran me, running again and again through the best parts, the most astonishing parts, bringing me to a place of longing that put my heart way out in front of my head. Thus he haunted me, always just turning toward me, memory forever reenacting those incredibly tender first moments until the urgency of remembering had worked its way deep enough to drive me into foolish action.

  I went to see Tom Latimer, the man who had introduced us to each other. At first I promised myself that I’d just ask a few questions, and try not to make a pest of myself. Just drop by and say hello. Maybe ask if he had heard from Jack, real casual-like.

  I stared at the carpet in Tom’s living room, fighting back the latest wave of longing, reminding myself that it was broad daylight, that I was in a nice neighborhood in Salt Lake City, that it was warm out and that life couldn’t possibly be that desperate. Get over it, Em, I kept telling myself. Grow up. Quit being a drama queen.

  Out of the corner of one eye I saw Tom’s wife, Faye Carter (who was lounging back on the couch in an attempt to get comfortable) move her legs to a new position, wince, then try another. She looked down at her belly as if having a conversation with it. The baby was getting big in there. Her lips curved in a private smile. Was the baby kicking her?

  They had been married and formally cohabiting only a handful of months, and what with its pictures leaning against the wall waiting to be hung and its randomly stacked books, the living room still had a look of impermanence and all-too-recent attempts to weave two lifestyles into one.

  Isolating himself within this chaos, Tom observed me as abstractly as if he were watching a dog sniffing something on the sidewalk across the street. In his usual austere fashion, he sat sideways in a straight-backed chair, supporting his grizzled chin in one hand. Since marrying Faye and taking early retirement from the FBI, he seemed to have gone slightly out of focus. On this occasion, he had forgotten to shave, or perhaps had decided that such matters of outward concern could wait. The salt and pepper stubble made him look older, old enough to be Faye’s father (which was very nearly the case), even though he still kept his long, lean body rock hard. I almost wished he would return to work. Then, I would have a clue what was going on in the remote vastness of his mind. Clearing his throat, he said, “Jack won’t be gone all that long, Em.”

  “He said maybe just a few days.”

  “Right, and it’s only been, what? Four?”

  “Six. And I haven’t heard from him in five, even though he said he’d call every day.”

  “Not even a week. That’s nothing. It’s like this in the Bureau.”

  Faye grunted derisively.

  He shot her a look, considered the stin
k-eyed stare she had fixed on him, then said, “That’s one reason in so many that I was willing to quit, Faye. It’s not much of a life when you get sent out of state. Adventure, maybe …” He sighed, then turned his words toward me. “Em, you’re forgetting that Jack was sent here from out of state to begin with. It was just as long as we were working on that project together that he got to stay here. Now he’s off on some other ops. Or something.” His gaze suddenly turned inward, like a sea creature retracting a tentacle when poked. What had he just said to himself that had triggered that reaction?

  I said, “Where out of state, Tom? What state, for instance?”

  Tom did not answer.

  I said, “Have you heard from him?”

  Without looking at me, he shook his head.

  I glanced over at Faye for support. She gave me doe eyes and pursed her lips sympathetically. She knew my little fact, that Jack Sampler and I had just had sex—slept together, patted the pillows, hit the rack … made love, right?—for the first time the very night before he had taken off.

  From the close examination Tom was now making of his fingernails, I knew that he knew this fact of my personal history, too. Faye would not have exactly told Tom, but he had, after all, been an FBI agent, one of the best, and damned good at reading between the lines. As it were. In a manner of speaking.

  I began interpreting ambient data a little bit myself, such as the fact that Tom was choosing his words carefully and avoiding making eye contact with me. I wondered for a moment if this was an unspoken judgment of the predicament in which I found myself, and thought: Tom, you social dinosaur, but then told myself, Don’t project this on Tom, Em. He is for once just trying to stay out of your business. And your business is legitimate. Jack’s a good man and he loves you. And he’ll be back. People walking out of your life and you walking out of theirs is a thing of the past.