Badwater (The Forensic Geology Series)

by Toni Dwiggins

It will tell me if I’ve found the source.

  I mixed my sample with a pillow of indicator compound then inserted it into the SP. I recorded the numbers that came up on the window. I repeated the process with my evidence talc. Same numbers came up.

  I sat back to savor it. This was what I dreamed of, when I dreamed of work, which was more often than was probably healthy. The moment of capture, the moment when I’d grab hold of a piece of the earth and give it an identity. A name, a set of vital statistics, and—the holy grail of forensic geology—an address. I tracked you down, pal. I know where you hang. You’re mine.

  I told Soliano, “We’re here.”

  He produced his cell phone. While he talked, demanding every piece of data recorded on the Serendipity Talc Mine, I opened my water bottle and drank long and deep. Not cold lemonade but it would do.

  ~

  Scotty went down to the RERT vans and returned with two team members, the three of them dressed out. They paused at the mine entrance to set their facepieces and breathers, then lumbered in.

  I saw Walter come out of a van and start up the hill.

  Hap Miller sat down beside me. He lifted his sombrero and poured water over his head. His hair darkened to hematite, a match to the red bandana tied around his hat. “Hot enough for you, Buttercup?”

  “Buttercup?”

  “Nickname I picked out for you. Now, you ask why I’d name a brunet with gray eyes after a yellow flower?”

  I bit. “Okay, why?”

  “It’s due to the egg yolk you dripped on your shirt.”

  It took all the will I possessed not to look down.

  “And please do call me by my nickname. Hap, short for Happy. Happy to look out for your well-being, ma’am.”

  For all his joking, he didn’t strike me as particularly happy. Well, I didn’t strike me as a yellow flower, either. “Thanks,” I said, “Hap.”

  Walter topped the trail and made a beeline for us. I studied his face. Red, but so’s everyone else’s. Streaming sweat, but sweat’s good—he’s hydrated. I said, “Where are you going?”

  He tried to speak, then lifted the little ice chest. It had come with the Blazer; we were putting it to work.

  “Beer?” Hap said.

  “Soil samples,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “No problemo. At least I got snacks.” Hap unshouldered his day pack and pulled out a bag of chips.

  Walter joined us and Hap offered the chips. They were greenish-brown.

  “Seaweed,” Hap said. “Taste like Doritos only they’re good for you. Full of alginic acid, which binds itself with any strontium-90 we mayhap pick up in the course of our travels.”

  I stared. “How about just not picking any up?”

  “How about being prepared? Boy Scout motto.”

  “I know the motto. I was a Girl Scout.”

  Hap grinned. “Guess that means we’s meant for one another!”

  Walter slid me a look; Walter thought not. Walter already disapproved of my flighty love life. And Walter, frowning at me, was clearly thinking the last thing I needed right now was to take a fancy to an ex-Boy Scout warning me about the risks of radiation. But it wasn’t Walter’s call. I slid my own look at Hap Miller. Never met anyone quite like him. I said, “What’s up with strontium-90?”

  “Just a for-instance.” Hap shrugged. “For instance, it’s a nuclide that resembles calcium. Get yourself a dose and your body sucks it to the bone, like it’s calcium. And it sits there happy as a clam emitting radiation for its entire half-life. Y’all know the half-life of strontium-90, mayhap?”

  I said, “Not offhand.”

  “Twenty-eight point nine years. I’d guess that’s close to your own age.”

  Twenty-nine point three, actually. I saw where Hap was going with this. I didn’t want to follow. I didn’t need a health physicist to tell me what excessive radiation could do to the reproductive system. I was well-versed in that lesson.

  “Mr. Miller,” Walter said, “you might limit your advice to the strictly useful.”

  “Shore thang. So might it be useful to point out that a man your age is at special risk? Your cells are already in the decay mode, if I’m not taking too much liberty to say so.”

  I said, “You trying to scare us?”

  “Just encouraging you to pay attention.” Hap held out the chip bag. “And Walter, please do call me Hap.”

  Happy to look out for our well-being. Fine, I guessed it could use looking out for. I took a chip. The brine puckered my tongue. It wasn’t Doritos but I urged Walter to try one. He did, and made a face. I wondered how many radioactive isotopes Walter had absorbed over the years. A good deal more than I had because he’d been around a good deal longer. I offered him another chip.

  ~

  We were finishing off the seaweed when Soliano joined us. “We have a development. We have an owner. She lives in Shoshone, that previous town we passed through. She will be joining us,” he glanced at his watch, “within the hour. In the meanwhile, I have obtained a telephone search warrant for the Serendipity.”

  It took me a moment. “This is an active mine?” I’d been thinking the perp chose an abandoned mine, where he could take what he wanted and go about his business in private. But we had an owner.

  “That is not all,” Soliano said. “We also have a primary suspect.”

  We waited for it.

  “Roy Jardine.”

  11

  “Criminy,” Milt Ballinger said, “Roy’s the knothead?”

  “Suspected knothead.” Soliano did not smile. “My agents report that he left work approximately four hours ago, shortly after our own departure. Taken sick. He is not at his home, or at Beatty’s medical facilities.”

  I felt suddenly sick myself. The heat. The McMuffin I’d wolfed. The memory of Roy Jardine. It was a tactile memory, his hazmat sleeve swish-swishing against my nylon shoulder as he tracked my hunt for talc.

  “Left sick?” Ballinger said. “That’s all?”

  “No, that is not all. My agents have learned that Mr. Jardine’s maintenance job includes the calibration of instruments. He spot-checks meters, on an on-going basis. He is the only maintenance worker with this expertise. His co-worker reports that he volunteered for this duty, which often required overtime. Presumably, on a day of his choosing, he could choose to spot-check the meter of the person monitoring an incoming dummy cask. He could, for that moment, become the key player.” Soliano regarded Ballinger. “You did not know the scope of his job?”

  Ballinger wiped the sweat from his skull. “I got over a hundred employees. Don’t have time to get into everybody’s nitty-gritty.”

  “I have the time,” Soliano said. “I have issued a be-on-the-lookout for a blue Ford pickup registered to Roy Jardine. From you, I will require his work records.”

  “You got fingerprints or anything?”

  “Unfortunately, the perp, at the crash site, appears to have been a fastidiously careful man. He wore booties. He perhaps also wore a full suit, since my techs have recovered no prints, hair, fiber, or DNA—other than the driver’s. Nevertheless, we will do a collection at Mr. Jardine’s residence.”

  Ballinger shrugged.

  “You appear reluctant to accept him as suspect.”

  “Nah nah, it’s just...that’d mean Roy’s a killer.”

  “Anybody’s a killer,” Hap said, “if they’re pushed.”

  Walter said, “That’s a fallacy.”

  I recalled Jardine’s offended reaction when Hap teased him about helping the ‘purty lady.’ I wondered if Hap was worrying about having pushed Roy Jardine.

  ~

  The dented white pickup peeled around the parked vans and gunned up the hill and jammed to a stop in an eruption of dust.

  A woman swung out and stumped toward us. She was barrel-shaped and dressed in white—white shirt, white bandana, white jeans, white cowboy boots—a white barrel cactus of a woman. She wore a white straw cowboy hat akin to Soliano’s and she carried,
clamped by one arm, a shotgun. She barreled up to Soliano. “This is private fuckin property, what the hell you people doin here?”

  Soliano showed his ID. “Christine Jellinek? My name is Hector Soliano, I am FBI, and you will if you please place the weapon on the ground.”

  She didn’t budge. “I got a fuckin permit.”

  “If you please.” Soliano’s hands flexed. “Now.”

  She spat. She turned and stumped to her pickup and stowed the shotgun. She came back, whipping off her hat to wipe her brow.

  “Whooeee,” Balllinger whispered, “she won’t win no beauty contest.”

  Her face was like unfired clay that’s been left in the sun. Her eyes were nearly hidden under slumping lids. Her cheeks sagged to saddle at her jawline. Her nose was a defiant pug that seemed to pin her slumping features in place. It was hard to tell her age but her hair was yellow-streaked gray. Her skin, desert-varnish brown, looked like it might crack at the slightest touch. She caught us staring and clamped her hat back on, yanking its brim low.

  My own skin scorched. I wouldn’t welcome scrutiny, either, not after all my days in the field.

  She halted in front of Soliano and said, “Now you can all fuck off.”

  “I am afraid not, Ms. Jellinek.”

  “You wanna address me, you address me by the name I go by which is not la-dee-da miss anything. I go by Chickie.”

  What is it with all the nicknames? I wondered. Is it the heat? Is it the solar radiation? Do people around here forget who they are?

  Soliano watched her intently. “You are not curious about us?”

  “You’re all fuckin rangers far as I care. This here’s my property and you got no right to go in there.”

  “I am curious about you. How is it that you are allowed to mine in a national park wilderness area?”

  Walter cleared his throat. “Actually, Hector, she couldn’t stake a new claim here but if her claim is pre-existing, it’s valid.”

  Chickie nodded. “Damn right.”

  “Providing,” Walter added, “that she meets Park Service conditions.”

  “Fuckers’re killin me with their conditions.”

  “Then perhaps,” Walter said, “you’d best abandon your claim.”

  Perhaps she’d thought she had an ally in Walter, but she was damn wrong. Walter loves to poke around old mines and he finds the geology of precious ores an absorbing hobby—and, once, key to a case—but he prefers to see the geology left in place in national parks and wilderness areas.

  “Old man,” Chickie said, “you’re uglier’n me.”

  I wanted to rip out her throat, for that. I said, instead, “You have a colony of nesting bats in your mine.”

  “So the fuck what?”

  “You start blasting, you’ll disturb them. Aren’t they protected?”

  “Lotsa mines in the park got bats.”

  “Yes but does the Park Service know about yours?”

  Her eyes narrowed. And then suddenly widened—she was looking past me to the mine entrance, where Scotty and his team had appeared. They looked like some kind of futuristic miners from the depths.

  Scotty came our way, shaking his head.

  Soliano turned to me—they all turned to me—and I said, “All I can tell you is, this is as perfect a match for the talc as I could want.” I watched Chickie. She didn’t ask what I meant, didn’t ask about the hazmat suits and the Geiger counters, and she didn’t, oddly, ask what Scotty and his team were hunting in her mine.

  I would have asked, in her place.

  Soliano said, “Ms. Jellinek, talc has been found at the scene of a crime. Our geologist has identified it as originating here.”

  Chickie glared. “She’s wrong.”

  “Do you know a man by the name of Roy Jardine?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  Soliano took out his cell phone and showed her a digital photo. “Do you know this man?”

  “Never saw him.”

  “Did you sell your talc to this man?”

  “Can’t sell it to nobody.”

  “You are having difficulty with the approval process?”

  She spat. “I got a fuckin mine’s not bringin in a fuckin cent cuz the fuckin backpackin whale-watchin bat-lovin assholes got the government by the short hairs and they’re stealin my rights. So somebody wants to pay me for my fuckin talc I’ll fuckin well sell it.”

  Soliano pounced. “Then someone did buy talc from you?”

  “No, someone didn’t. Maybe your fucker stole it. I can’t afford a guard, I can’t even afford to fix up this old shit.” She jerked a thumb at the crumbling ore chutes and bins. “But I will. I been workin other people’s mines for twenty years.” She jutted her chin. “You see this face? Think I was born this ugly? I got this face workin sunup to sundown and I earned it. This face is a mine owner’s face, now. This is a proud face, fuckers.”

  I’d sure give her that. And I wondered what role pride might have played. If Jardine chose this mine because it was easier access here than to others nearby, he likely would have assumed—as we had—that this place was abandoned. And then the woman in white showed up with her shotgun. A woman whose mine, and pride, were not to be trifled with. I asked her, “If you caught someone stealing, would you report him?”

  Her venomous look swung to me.

  “Or, you could tell him to pay or you’ll call the cops. A market of one is better than none. Right?”

  She studied me. “Don’t need no thief money, girly. I got a big market lined up. Know what it is?”

  Sweat sluiced down my back.

  She came closer, tipping her hat brim back, bringing her face up to mine. “You wanna know?”

  I could not look away. She had that effect, like a desert sidewinder. You wouldn’t want to turn your back.

  She raised her index finger. She opened her mouth, emitting an overripe odor like fruit that has turned. She licked her finger. It glistened in the sun. It hit me like a snake strike, scoring my left cheek, and then withdrew.

  My skin shriveled where the wet trail evaporated into the triple-digit air.

  Chickie examined her finger. “Dirt,” she said.

  I stiffened. What’s wrong with dirt?

  Her own face was shiny clean. “Ever wear makeup?”

  I said, tight, “Yes.”

  She bared her teeth, white as her hat. “Then stick your nose down out of the air, girly. You’re my market.”

  Hap gave me the bandana from his sombrero. I wiped her touch from my face. I wanted to disinfect it. I tried to return the bandana but Hap put up his hands: a gift.

  And then I thought, maybe this was not a market question at all. Maybe Chickie was an accomplice. Maybe Chickie was counting on another source of income while waiting for Park Service approval to sell her talc.

  “Ms. Oldfield,” Soliano said, “you are certain the talc originates here?”

  “You want certain, go with DNA. I can give you probability. I can tell you the proportion of tremolite to talc, down to parts per billion, in the evidence talc. I can tell you it’s consistent with the talc here, and it’s inconsistent with the three other mines I sampled. I can’t promise there’s no other location it could have come from. Maybe there’s a mine out there with talc as good a match as this one.” I pocketed the bandana. “And maybe pigs can fly.”

  Soliano turned to Scotty. “Let us look again here.”

  Scotty groaned.

  Walter said, “In the meanwhile, I have soils to sample around here.”

  I nodded. It was, actually, within the realm of possibility that our evidence talc did not come from this mine—leaving flying pigs aside—and I’d be a whole lot happier if Walter could match the mud samples from Ryan Beltzman to this place. I moved to follow Walter, to lend a hand. I caught Chickie watching me. Her hooded eyes had slitted to emit a whitish gleam. It was, I thought, a truly pissed look and it was directed at me, the fucker who’d claimed to trace the talc to her mine.

&nb
sp; That look convinced me I’d found the right address.

  12

  Walter and I followed the geology and our noses around the hill to the backside of Chickie’s mine. Here was another entrance, a back door. Just outside this tunnel, white mine tailings spilled to mix with the native soil.

  Walter knelt to sample.

  It didn’t take a forensic genius to read the story. Marks in the dried mud—knees, elbows, one unmistakable butt print, bootprints hither and thither—showed one hell of a fight and chase.

  Walter agreed. “Preliminary,” he said, peering through the hand lens, “but I suspect the driver acquired his mud here.”

  I glanced at the rough road that ran down to join the road our convoy had taken. Not fit for the radwaste truck but a more nimble vehicle could navigate it. In fact, there were faint tire tracks. I looked back to the tunnel. Gated, with a padlocked chain. I wondered if Roy Jardine had a key.

  ~

  Chickie was astonished that some fucker changed the lock on her gate and she grudgingly gave permission for Scotty to use bolt cutters.

  It didn’t take Scotty long to meter the tunnel. “Not hot,” he said, “but you won’t believe what’s in there.”

  I swallowed. What’s in there?

  Soliano went in. Then he summoned Walter and me, Hap and Ballinger.

  The tunnel was wide and straight and dead-ended in a large room, like a driveway into a garage. A two-car garage. The vehicle on the left looked like it belonged here. It was dented and scratched and mud-spattered—a high-clearance offroader with a winch and cable drum mounted on the front bumper. All four tires were flat.

  Soliano shined his flashlight at the right front tire, illuminating a ragged hole.

  I registered the tire damage, and the mud, which I was going to want to sample, only right now the tires were not the main event.

  The main event was the trailer behind the offroader.

  It was a brutish beast. Big enough to haul a hefty payload. Tough, clearly, with big-knuckle bolts and beefy tires, now flat. Built for crazy guys on testosterone weekends hauling their gear where the pavement doesn’t go. Built for a crazy guy hauling stolen resin casks. The back of the trailer was gated with a fold-up steel ramp. A vaulted steel cover hung open and wide, like a clamshell.