Quillen squatted to inspect the severed pipeline in the hole.
Walter and I turned to our own work. The blast was written in the soil, which looked like it had been raked by a crazy man.
I felt the sun on my neck, wishing I'd worn a bandana but it was still early, and I was calculating the timeline—how long it would have taken Reid to borrow a car or hitchhike to get here and set his bomb—and I was finding that timeline difficult to reconcile.
“Here's good,” Walter said.
I joined him. Yeah. The reason we were here was clear to the naked eye. Gypsum. Nevertheless, we lensed it, and gathered soil samples.
And then we went over to join Quillen at the blasted hole.
The hole was half-filled with scummy water, which gave off a tangy smell of brine. One edge lipped like a ladle toward the river, and there was a wet trail where the brine had found its way into the water, where it still trickled. I wondered how long it had taken after the alarm sounded in the operations room of the facility we'd seen a week ago, before the plant operator shut down the system. How long had the pumps kept bringing up subsurface brine from the extraction wells, how long had the brine flowed through the pipeline and vomited into the soil? Into the river.
Walter told Quillen, “The soil's heavy in gypsum.”
“Tell me what that means,” Quillen replied. “Tell me how that amplifies the effect of the brine flow. Why blast here, and not somewhere else along the pipeline?“
“Gypsum is ubiquitous. Here, elsewhere along the pipeline...” Walter shrugged. “A drop in the bucket, for the super-saline brine.”
One of the agents, the curly-haired one, called out, “Detacord smear. Pyrodex trace.”
Quillen folded his arms. “Pyrodex and protest. The fuck-the-dam guy. Wes Hawthorne.”
I said, “This is a long way from Glen Canyon dam.”
“This is the hometown of Hawthorne's girlfriend.”
“So...you're thinking it's some kind of emotional thing?”
“As I understand, the two of them could be described that way.”
I said, “Don't rule out Reid Lassen. He has a connection here. Not just hometown. He found that shark-tooth fossil in the cave above the brine plant.”
“I didn't find Lassen particularly emotional.”
I thought, Reid's a showman. He'll show what the audience requires. I said, “Try this. He stores the components and the Pyrodex somewhere on the Lassen property. When he's ready, he brings the stuff here, wrapped in a towel. He sets up the explosive. He goes back to the boathouse and replaces the towel in the bin—which explains how the granules got into the second towel.”
“Motive?” Quillen asked.
I shook my head. I didn't know.
“This is a long way from his presumed site in the Shinumo area.”
I nodded. My jaw ached.
Walter said, “Charlotte Lassen has an obvious motive. She blames the facility for the quakes.”
“She sets a pipe bomb now? While under scrutiny? But we'll talk to her.” Quillen glanced at me. “To Mr. Lassen, as well. I don't rule out suspects.”
I took his point. And I had to admit, as long as Wes Hawthorne and Becca Warren remained missing, it was damned hard to rule them out.
“Hey,” the heavyset agent called. “Over here.” He was standing at a thick clump of brush, hands on hips, shaking his head.
We all moved, but Quillen got there first.
He said, “We've got our bomber.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
QUILLEN ASSESSED THE body on the ground. “Thrown by the blast.”
He wasn't asking my opinion, but I took note of the shirt ripped open and the abrasion that stained the chest red and raw, and the large grain of reddish siltstone that sat like an island in the center of the abrasion.
I knelt to get a closer look.
Just eyeballing the soil, I'd say that was a match to the grain.
The body sure appeared to have hit the ground hard. There were scrapes and cuts on the chest, on the face, on the arms, on the knees, although not on the feet, which had been protected by boots. But it was the hands that held my attention. I fisted my own hand, blasted by the memory. My hand had healed, and it was all but impossible to relive pain, but it was entirely possible to remember the barbwire.
Come on. Focus.
“You seeing something?” Quillen asked.
I looked up at the agent. “Got a mineral deeply embedded in the chest. Body-slam into a rock or the hard ground and the impact could stop the heart.”
Quillen nodded. “So, thrown by the blast.”
I offered my opinion, pointing out the bruised knuckles. “Or by a fistfight.”
THE ONLY SIGN OF GRIEF on Charlotte Lassen's stony visage was a tic around the eyes, a tightening, as if short-stopping tears.
The gangly deputy who had phoned her—who knew her and had taken it upon himself to alert her—stood back, along with the rest of the personnel.
Farther back, the Devil's Nose Lodge van was parked next to the Medical Examiner's van.
Quillen and Walter and I stood on one side of the gurney. Charlotte stood on the other, staring down at the battered face of her son.
Quillen reached across to touch her arm. “My condolences.”
She flinched away.
He said, “I'll need you to formally confirm the identification.”
“My daughter is missing and I just lost a son. I don't care what you need.”
Quillen proceeded, implacable. “I also need to know what Jeff Lassen was doing at the scene of a bombing. And who else might have been here.”
She was silent. Her eyes shone, with those incipient tears. Her slate hair was in disarray, and I imagined she'd raked her hands through it, and I felt a measure of sympathy—for her loss, even the loss of a man as unlikable as Jeff Lassen.
I'd raked my own hair in grief at the loss of a man a thousand times more likeable.
Walter spoke. “Cassie and I are deeply sorry for your family's loss.”
She pivoted to Walter. “My family? What's left.”
“We all hope your daughter turns up.”
“Damn your hope.”
“You also have a brother.”
She just snorted.
“Ms. Lassen,” Quillen said, “I need you to answer a question. You're trying to get the brine plant shut down—did your son join that campaign?”
“No.”
“Took it too far?”
“No.”
Walter said, gently, “Perhaps you didn't know. Back at your boathouse, he didn't want us filming. Keeping a low profile?”
Charlotte Lassen narrowed her eyes and crossed her forearms, as if cradling her shotgun. “You doing a damn documentary on the Lassens?”
Walter repeated, almost to himself, “Documentary.”
I stared at my partner.
He said something under his breath.
I believed he said the key.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“GNARLY RAPID COMING up,” Wes said.
I saw it ahead, where the river surface went from wind-chopped to chewed-up.
Everybody saw it. Everybody was looking.
Our small raft was crowded with gear and we passengers perched where we could. Ranger Pete Molina was up front atop a duffel bag, with a clear spotter's field of view. Behind Pete, the rest of us sat on the duffel piles that held our gear: Agent Quillen and our guest of honor Reid Lassen, side by side, and behind them, Walter and me.
All of us wearing our PFDs.
I twisted to look behind me—across the long aluminum storage box that segregated the passenger area from boatman territory—at Wes Hawthorne in the driver's seat. He was approaching that rapid with a steady hand on the tiller. Wes, rather than Ranger Molina, was in the boatman seat because Reid needed to see that the ranger and the FBI agent were putting Wes in a position of trust. Reid needed to worry about Wes. Indeed, Reid had shown noticeable surprise at seven a.m. thi
s morning when our chopper dropped us off at the beach upriver, seeing Wes in the search-and-rescue boat. Pete had arranged for this SAR raft to rendezvous with us there.
The rendezvous beach was several river miles short of the Shinumo, which was what we needed. We needed to assess every possible anchorage along the three-mile stretch of Shinumo shoreline from east to west, and we didn't want to miss a candidate.
The only real obstacle came between the rendezvous beach and the beginning of the Shinumo: Serpentine Rapid.
Serpentine was a Class Six, on the Grand Canyon scale of rapids intensity, Class Ten being the gnarliest.
No worries, Wes had said. He'd run this sucker hundreds of times. Nevertheless, he braced his free hand on the motor mount.
Special Agent Quillen appeared worried. He kept inspecting the sporty snout-rig raft, as if taking in just how small this boat was. He'd said he drove a ski boat on Lake Powell, but whitewater was clearly not his habitat. Nevertheless, this raft, this party of rafters, was his job.
Walter, next to me, was silent, grimly focused on his job, and yet I suspected there was a part of him that thrilled to this, to being on the river, to the prospect of a gnarly rapid—his bucket-list wish come true.
Reid, directly in front of Walter, sat loose-limbed, relaxed. He wore a red PFD borrowed from Pete's team, his own vest having been chewed up in his ride through the river two weeks ago. He appeared at home in the snout rig—indeed it was the same style raft he'd used to take his fishing buddies down the Colorado. I wondered how many times he'd run this river. He certainly had to have run Serpentine at least once.
You style yourself a champion of the river, Reid. We'll see about that. This is your day.
Yesterday, Walter had completed his exhaustive records search and found what he'd been trying to remember—the key.
Reid's head was cocked so that I saw him in profile. I stared at the cover-model handsome man who had aged so well, who had planned so well, who had gambled everything. This is the documentary of your life, Reid.
He sensed me staring. He swiveled fully and flashed me a smile, showing those big white teeth.
Even now, I had to stop myself from smiling in return. He had his own gravitational pull.
He still wore a cast. Waterproof, good not only for showering but for river rafting as well. The arm and hand were still slightly swollen, the visible flesh with a sickly tinge of yellow.
Walter said, “Thanks for joining us, Reid.”
Reid replied, “Thanks for inviting me.”
Special Agent Quillen, keeping close watch on his seatmate, said, “We wouldn't be here without you.”
They'd all raised their voices to be heard above the hum of the wind and the hiss of the upcoming rapid.
And now it was Serpentine that commanded everyone's attention.
Wes called, “Get down,” and as previously instructed the five of us in the passenger area slipped down to the padded mat that covered more storage space below, and we took hold of the cross-strapping that tied down the mat, that would tie us in place as well. Even Ranger Molina took the position. I braced against the duffels that were now a back rest, and tightened the chin strap of my river hat, and double-checked the buckles of my PFD, and, for good measure, glanced back to see the boatman now on his feet, in position to run this raft through the rapid.
And then I faced the river.
We were in shadow, with the morning sun still working its way down the canyon walls. The gusty wind shredded the water surface, spritzing us with the cold Colorado.
I focused fiercely on the river-level rock, walls of foliated granodiorite that we were speeding past, and I focused on the canyon that mouthed onto the river and had no doubt dumped its share of rocks and boulders into the Colorado to make trouble, to make standing waves and keeper holes and whirlpools, and then the hydraulics came to life as we hit a small wave and frigid Colorado River water washed into the raft, washed over us, washed into my face like a slap, and I had hold of the grab strap with a rictus grip and I was yelling and I was running Serpentine.
The raft was running Serpentine, making its own noises, pontoons slapping against water, tie-down straps stretching and groaning, D-rings and carabiners grinding against metal storage boxes, the raft screaming its own river song.
“Wave train coming!” Wes shouted.
Quillen's shoulders, showing above the duffel pile in front of me, lifted and tensed.
Coming up was a wave that could eat a truck and somehow we crested it but the wave slapped back at us, the water churning and foaming into the raft and I was drenched again. I couldn't see. I opened my eyes and blinked and wished I hadn't because I was staring far down into a trough of swirling whitewater. We crashed into the trough and I was nearly lifted off my seat on the floor mat but we stayed afloat and I silently praised Wes's skills.
And then we did it all over again, up and down another big standing wave.
We joined the river, the rapids took us and flooded us and nearly submerged us, and Pete's and Quillen's and Reid's heads in front me looked for a moment like there were no bodies attached, and then the river flowed out of the raft and somehow we were still afloat.
I stole a glance at Walter, who wore a huge grin.
I was beginning to believe in survival when we came to the third wave, the biggest wave, a monster. Crazy Wes climbed our raft up the wall and we crested the wave and I saw the pontoons bend over the back of that monster and the river was attacking us with a force of water that tore open my mouth and filled it, that tore off my hat and my chin strap was now around my neck and I was choking and gasping and I heard laughter, Reid's laughter, a gurgling watery laugh like a man who was drowning.
At the edge of the drop we seemed to pause, to hang suspended in space, as if there was choice to be had here, go back the way we came or go forward, down into the churning whitewater below.
No choice. We dropped and I felt my stomach lift. We dropped and I saw the mouth of a hole, the river flowing down and endlessly back onto itself spewing whitewater, and I suddenly felt the pull, heard Wes yelling “Keeper!” and my arms flexed to paddle hard right, but of course that keeper hole was on the Lassen run and this hole was on the mighty Colorado on the gnarly Serpentine, and I couldn't even do my puny bit to help. The only thing keeping us out of this keeper was the boatman behind me.
We dropped into the trough and Wes squirreled the raft away from the hole and then before I knew it we were into the smaller tail waves—nothing at all after the wave train we'd just gone through.
But it still took me a good half-minute to slow my heart rate enough to unclench and twist to look up at Wes and give him a thumbs-up.
Wes gave me a nod and thumbs-up in return.
It was easy, in that adrenaline-drenched moment, to believe that he had forgiven me. For reporting him to Agent Quillen.
We were certainly working together now.
I straightened and watched the river ahead. We were back into calmer water, the wind-driven chop a minor thing. Nothing at all.
“Coming up on the Shinumo,” Walter said.
In the near distance, framed by the V of the canyon walls, rising to the sky, the forested Powell Plateau stood like a sentry just below the North Rim. The Plateau was faced in white limestone, and below it the familiar rock layers were countable, were color-coded—the white Coconino and the red Hermit and the multi-hued Supai and then, red again, the Redwall, and then the silver and green and brown Tonto Group rocks below. And below that, the rocks of the Shinumo turned squirrelly, the orderly horizontal layers sitting upon a tangle of faulted and tilted rocks called the Supergroup.
The view from the river was a geologist's dream.
The memory, now, was a nightmare. Up there in the Shinumo, Edgar Easton had captured his last footage.
My gut clenched.
I stared at Reid.
He was facing dead ahead.
Walter leaned forward to tap his shoulder. “That ride jog your m
emory?”
“Stirred it,” Reid said softly, words nearly lost to the wind.
There was no more talk as we passed cliffs of twisted dark rock, black as night, lightless, rock forged in the bowels of the earth by terrible pressure and heat, deep-time rock nearly half the age of the planet, unyielding rock, contorted with edges sharp as knives. Vishnu Schist—basement rock of the Grand Canyon.
It struck me as grand.
And then the shoreline softened and Ranger Molina said, from his seat at the bow, “Popular anchorage ahead. With a trailhead into the Shinumo.”
“Reid?” Wes called. His voice was neutral, as if this was any raft trip, as if Reid was any passenger who knew of a good beachy spot to stop and have a swim or set up camp and then go for a hike.
“I'll let you know,” Reid answered, before bothering to look.
The beach coming up on river right was understandably popular, with one big raft anchored there right now. It was a long stretch of sand dotted with shrubs. Rafters were finishing breakfast, breaking camp, wading in the shallows—where the sand shelved right into the river—to ferry gear to the boat. I took note of the raft's anchorage. The bow line snaked across the sand and was tied off on a steep cliff face. I envisioned Walter in the lab, examining the looped line laid out on the coffee table. He'd found no fresh sand embedded in the weave.
Reid was finally giving the beach a once-over. He shook his head.
Believe him? Don't believe him? How to read that head shake? How to differentiate between this isn't the place and this is but I'm saying it isn't?
Walter leaned closer to Reid. “You'd bet on it?”
Reid half-turned. “I'm betting Megan on it.”
We were all betting Megan on it—on being able to tell when Reid inadvertently identified the anchorage. We'd been hunting for it ever since finding Reid's empty raft caught in that eddy. The anchorage where something alarming happened, where rafters panicked and went into the river without their vests. Where rafter Megan Schrader maybe—just maybe—didn't go into the river but instead went for a hike. Possibly wearing her vest, losing it along the way? Which left one too many abandoned vests in the raft. And that argued, instead, that she went into the river, or she went for a hike without her vest. Which meant the PFD we'd found at the bypass around Tapeats Gorge belonged to somebody else. To the other missing woman, maybe—to Becca.
River Run Page 17
