Badwater (The Forensic Geology Series)

by Toni Dwiggins

  Scotty nodded. “Get the beads in this groundwater and they...”

  “They do what?” Soliano asked.

  “They release ‘em.” Scotty rubbed his rad-weathered face. “Every damn nuclide.”

  And then, I thought, the nuclides raft away in the water, and the plants suck them up and the animals eat the plants and drink the water, and then the animals creep and crawl and wing their way out of Death Valley, carrying the radionuclides into the wider world.

  36

  It’s a diversion Hector.

  Hector you’re not taking me seriously. Hector I’m not just an airhead female.

  And then she’d made some sound that Jardine could not identify—since it was too risky to get close enough to watch he’d had to listen in remotely. And so he’d had to use his imagination. When the female geologist said Hector in that pissy tone of hers, and there had been that sound, Jardine imagined the female was stamping her foot.

  He liked that. Hector’s ignoring her and she’s just so pissy about it. What she needs is a good spanking.

  He saw he was still twisted up about the female. He thought he’d taken care of that. He wished he could take care of it the right way. Her and him in a meadow. Out in the open. He didn’t mean out in the open where people could watch, he meant open like no shame. She’d have grass in her hair because they’d been rolling around.

  Instead of the meadow he’d had to embarrass himself in the privacy of the mine.

  So excuse him for making fun of her now.

  He needed to remember who had truly loved him. Jersey. And look what he’d been forced into. A dude could love his dog and with a heavy heavy heart put his dog in a safer place. A dude could do the hard thing when he had to.

  He took the pistol out of his pack.

  The timetable was speeding up. Watering Hole was a great victory. Put the fear right inside them. Pinned them down at the Inn. Jardine didn’t know how much time this diversion would buy him. Going on what he’d overheard, plenty. Hector, you’re an idiot. Your people are idiots. I outfoxed you all. My pickup sat in the parking lot half the night and half the morning before you found it. Took you half an hour to find the tank. Take you hours to check out all the vulnerable points in the water system. Hector, you’re an...

  Jardine stopped himself. “Stop it Roy.” Don’t count on hope. Count on a good plan. And practice.

  He put the pistol in the holster. The holster sat low on his skinny hips. That’s the way gunslingers wore it. Looked ace. Yeah—the ponytail and the shirt and the jeans and the boots, and now the holster with the pistol butt sticking out. If only somebody could see him. Dudes, females. Any females. They wouldn’t even notice his face.

  He held his hand loose, near the gun butt. One, two, three...

  Hector was saying something in his earbuds about the pipeline. Hector was asking somebody where all the access points were. Hector obviously never held a crap job like plumber’s assistant.

  Jardine listened to the ignorance. He wondered if anybody was going to find the little radio transmitter he’d planted last night in the scrub brush near the water tank. Didn’t matter. He’d heard plenty. He smiled.

  One, two, three... Slap the butt, close his hand, draw—and now the gun was in his hand and he was aiming it at the tin can. It was already full of holes. Not much of a stand-in for a live target but it made the point. Firearm’s a serious weapon. He wished he had one of those FBI shooters but what he had was plenty. He liked the pistol because of the holster—he could admit that. He liked firearms in general better than the knife but the knife was in his pack for a reason. Redundancy, the lesson he’d learned in job eighteen. Never count on one layer of safety.

  A lesson he’d give that Bastard Ballinger.

  The female was talking again and Jardine got sucked in again. She sounded worried. Jardine was glad that cad Miller wasn’t there to tell her to get naked in the shower or something. Miller deserved a lesson in manners. A lesson he was going to get.

  Lessons. Jardine needed one right now about the female. He needed to remember that she was coming after him. He needed to remember why. She was doing her job. She was doing it so good she was dangerous. So was the old fellow. That’s what he needed to remember.

  Because he had come to the Grand Finale. Nothing must interfere.

  Jardine ripped out his earbuds and holstered his pistol. He had things to do. He had to go check on the progress of the trigger event, in preparation.

  Stage One of the mission, at the borax mine, had been The Trial and Ballinger was found guilty.

  Stage Two was going to be the mission climax. The Grand Finale. It would be a full and deserved punishment. The name for Stage Two said it all: Death Penalty.

  37

  We sat with the engine running at the mouth of the parking lot. Walter snapped off the satellite phone. “She’s taken her aunt’s truck.”

  Relief hit me. “Where’d she go?”

  “Aunt Ruth won’t say.” He grunted. “Perhaps because a fourteen-year-old is behind her wheel.”

  “You taught me to drive when I was thirteen.”

  “That was in the Von’s parking lot.” He looked out the window. “That was then.”

  And this is now. Now I’m the designated driver. He cleared his throat and, for a micromoment, there was the chance that he’d ask me to swing the wheel to the right—downfan to the Timbisha village, down to interrogate Ruth Weeks and give chase to Miss Alien Underage Driver—but he simply said “shall we?” I swung the wheel to the left onto highway 190, upfan to go to work.

  The highway took us past the Inn and up into the trough cut by the Furnace Creek Wash, and as the Black Mountains closed in on our right and the Funerals reared up on our left, I shifted my worry to what lay ahead.

  ~

  “Which spring,” Walter asked, “would your flood target?”

  My flood? I let that pass. My theory, after all.

  But I’d fact-checked my theory on the map and plotted the line of springs that extends for nearly a mile. I glanced, now, at the riparian outposts along that fault line. “Maybe he’s not targeting just one. All he has to do is hit the alluvium. So some of the beads go directly into the springs and some go into the gravel—both here and upgradient—for a later round.” I wiped the sweat off my neck. “The gift that keeps on giving.”

  “If we knew which spring, we could work our way upcanyon from there.”

  “Oh.”

  We reached the turnoff and I nosed the Cherokee off highway 190 onto the ragged road up the fan. As we entered the canyon mouth, I peered up the wall at the reddish mud and cobblestones caught in the declivity some twenty feet above. Some flood that had been.

  Walter was looking too. He phoned the Park Service doppler radar guy for an update and learned that the precipitation pattern had not changed since the last call, in the parking lot.

  The gunmetal sky had not changed, either.

  I slowed, and the FBI behind us slowed, and we turned into the branching side canyon where we’d sampled yesterday and turned up the telling chalcedony. Point D. From here, we’ll be entering an unknown neighborhood. From here, we’ll be following the soil Walter extracted from Chickie’s boots.

  I said, “Want to call Hector and let him know we’re here?”

  “Let’s wait,” Walter said, “until we have something to say.”

  Instead of: you’re wasting your time, Hector. Thing is, we couldn’t prove that. If we hadn’t lost a day to sabotage and wandering in the desert, we might have found our way here earlier and maybe Jardine wouldn’t have had the chance to pull that stunt at the Inn. But he did. And Soliano’s now busy with the target at hand. So don’t call unless we can offer him another.

  I had a mining map and red marker in my pack. Soliano had its twin. Within a two-mile radius of Point D, there were eleven mapped mines and uncountable prospects and glory holes. We call Soliano when we cross a mine off the list. We call Soliano when the evidence or the Ge
iger counter says we’re there.

  And then we get out of the way.

  Of course there’s always the hope Soliano will call us first with good news—that he has cracked Chickie, or the ninjas have found Jardine hiding in the bushes at the Inn and Soliano has sweated the location of the mine out of him.

  Otherwise, we’re on our own.

  ~

  We stopped midway up the dead-end canyon, arbitrarily choosing the spot. Point D soil extended the length of this little draw. Evidence said Roy Jardine’s offroader rig had parked in here, and so did we. End of the line—by vehicle anyway.

  I stowed the sat phone and Geiger counter in my pack and shouldered it.

  Walter stowed the field kit in his.

  Dearing slung the strap of the FBI sat phone over one shoulder and wrestled his submachine gun over the other, wincing as the strap caught his sunburned neck.

  I said, “Try some aloe vera on that sunburn.”

  Oliver nudged Dearing. “Sucks to be white, hey bro?” He slipped on his own subgun like it was a ceremonial sash.

  We began the steep climb up the northern side of the canyon to the ridge above, to get the lay of the land.

  The land, far as I could see, was riven by a tangle of steep canyons and skinny ridges. In the afternoon sunlight—pencil-thin shafts breaking through the smothering cloud layer—it was a shadowland.

  ~

  Oliver and Dearing watched our backs while we put our noses to the soil.

  Weathered quartzite and schist. Consistent with some elements of the soil in Chickie’s boots—and in the glop from the trailer’s tires. Inconsistent with other elements. I wished the boot soil had shown distinctive layers, like the offroader fender soil. Then we could have said: she walked hither thither and yon in these boots, picking up soils as she went, and we are most interested in the outer layers. But boots are like tires, not fenders, and the soil they pick up gets mixed with the soil already lodged there. We couldn’t say if the minerals we were tracking had been acquired in the last couple days on her way to and from the mine where she got the beads, or a month ago tramping through quartzite and schist on her way to and from the local tavern. We couldn’t even say that the quartzite was acquired the same place as the schist.

  We were analyzing on the fly, armed with hand lenses and Walter’s encyclopedic eye for minerals.

  The one unique mineral in the boot soil—a lucky find—was a silvery flake that Walter had ID’d as sylvanite, a telluride sometimes found in conjunction with the heavy metal ores. We were hunting a mine with a streak of telluride in its veins but first we had to find our way there via quartzite and schist.

  As I pocketed my hand lens I was struck on the cheek by a pellet of rain. Within moments the ridge soil was cratered.

  I phoned the radar guy.

  ~

  The rain ceased. I looked up at the sky—where blue met the black leading edge of the next wave of thunderstorms—and I wished it would make up its mind.

  Oliver and Dearing covered the mouth of a tunnel while Walter and I sifted through the soils around the one-stamp ore mill.

  We crossed off another mine and reported in to Soliano.

  ~

  I stopped. “What’s that down there?”

  Walter glanced down at the cars.

  We were threading our way up the narrow spine of the ridge. It ran easterly and dropped precipitously on each side down to narrow canyons. To the left was Disappointment Canyon, as we’d named it after striking out at the one-stamp mill, and to the right was the canyon we’d named Cherokee where our vehicles steamed dry in a passing blaze of sun.

  “Under your feet,” I said, “in the brush.”

  Oliver, just behind Walter, jerked back.

  But it was not a snake. Walter toed aside the brush and bent to examine the thing. It was a metal spike, looking like a large needle with a rusted eye. Walter tugged but the spike was anchored in the bedrock. It looked like it had hung on there for a very long time, longer than the creosote bushes.

  “Um,” Dearing said, “you gonna let us in on the secret?”

  Walter stood. “It’s a guidepost. For a cable.”

  “Do we care?”

  Walter would not say and so we pushed on and within a few dozen yards came upon another spike, also scaled in rust. I began to care. We passed more and more spikes and then finally a length of cable rusting along the ridge. My interest stirred. I glanced down at the Cherokees, up to our ridge, down the other side. I saw a tunnel burrowing into the far wall of Disappointment Canyon, and the scar of a road running from the tunnel across the canyon and up to our ridge. I saw the knobby heads of rusting spikes, along that road scar. I let my thoughts run. Roy Jardine comes to dead-end Cherokee canyon and parks and now he faces a steep climb to get up to the ridge and onward. A climb hauling whatever equipment he needs to build his own little waste dump, and then hauling the casks to fill it. But the casks are large and very heavy. As were the ore containers the long-ago miners presumably hauled up and down these ridges. I eyed the old cable remnant. Jardine would have had to bring his own. I recalled the winch and cable drum mounted on the front of his offroader. So Jardine parks, unhitches the trailer, winches it up the ridge, cables it however far he’s going, then lowers it down the other side. Winches up an extra drum and engine, if gravity alone won’t get the stuff where it needs to go. I proposed my theory.

  “You gotta be shittin me,” Dearing said, peering down the steep wall.

  “It’s doable,” Walter said. “Gold miners used to fill Mack trucks with their ore and winch them up walls steeper than this.”

  “You gotta be shittin me.”

  We weren’t. Down we went, Oliver and Dearing securing the way. Down there, however, the geology said no. I phoned Soliano and told him that Disappointment Canyon had yet again justified its name.

  ~

  We followed the cable spikes and Chickie’s soil along the ridge. I watched for gouges in the earth that would say something was hauled along the cable line here, but any and all markings had been erased by days of rains.

  We reached an intersection of sorts. Below, Cherokee Canyon dead-ended. Ahead, our ridge bent northeast and arched across the head of Disappointment Canyon to reach the drainage of the next canyon east.

  Cable spikes led the way. Old road scars crisscrossed the canyon.

  This new canyon, at its head, was broad where an alluvial fan spilled down between the framing ridges from an upper canyon I guessed at, but could not see. Below the fan, the main canyon narrowed as it descended the Funerals, its skinny body slipping into shadow. The canyon walls gleamed where rain had slicked outcrops of green and silver schists. Get enough rain and that skinny part looks like a flood waiting to happen. My eye traveled back upcanyon, just shy of the fan, and came to rest on the steep northeastern hillside. Pockmarking the flank were black-eyed hollows. Heaps of ore tailings spilled across the slope. Below, scattered across the valley, were the tumbledown workings of the mine camp.

  “I got a name for this one,” Dearing said, arching his back. “They-Don’t-Pay-Me-Enough Canyon.”

  We shifted into the routine.

  Oliver and Dearing went first to secure the area. They followed the cable road down the canyon wall and across the valley floor to the mine camp. Now Oliver unholstered my Geiger counter and took the lead, sweeping the wand the way I’d taught him, the way Scotty taught me. Dearing looked more comfortable with his weapon. They sidestepped quartz tailings and rusting rail tracks. They probed collapsing buildings and an iron tank. Dearing peeked into a big stone oven, while Oliver disappeared into the rotting mill that climbed three stories up the hillside. Finally, they signalled, and Walter and I trudged down to the Town of Wood and Iron.

  We sampled a patch of ground and found it not inconsistent with Chickie’s boot soil—good enough to want to sample the mine entrance.

  There were three entrances, actually, climbing the hill. The lowest opened onto a long wooden ore
chute, which dumped into the slope-hugging mill. The second was obscured by rubble, perhaps a past collapse. The third was deeply recessed, with overhanging outcrops like Walter’s eyebrows.

  Cable roads made separate ascents to all levels.

  We switchbacked up the steep hill to the sturdy ledge of the lower entrance. We ran the scenario: can he winch a trailer up here? Check. Can a telehandler, or some similar beast, fit into that tunnel? Check. Is there room on the landing to transfer a cask in and out of the trailer—and for tires to spin and spatter mud on the cask? Check. Check—this site fits the criteria, as did three other sites before it.

  This was clearly the business entrance. Rail tracks came out of the tunnel and ran over the edge on an elevated bridgework that ended in mid-air. The way inside was barred by a locked gate. We’d brought the master Park Service key but it didn’t fit.

  Oliver said, “Rangers could’ve changed the lock.”

  Dearing said, “Or the perp did.”

  They gripped their subguns while Walter and I sampled the soil, which proved inconclusive.

  As we resumed the climb, it began again to rain.

  The second-level entrance—once we’d skirted the rubble of the old collapse—was gated, locked, and inconclusive.

  We switchbacked up. I scanned the valley below. Nothing moved but rainfall.

  The topmost entrance was the most inviting of the lot, a horseshoe arch bored through blue-gray schist. I eyeballed the quartzite-schist soil and envisioned it attaching to the crevices in Chickie’s boots. Walter, already sampling, grunted. He liked it too.