Quicksilver (The Forensic Geology Series, Prequel) Read online

  Oh boy, get a grip Cathy.

  I watched Henry’s hands on the Glock. Shaking again. One twitch and his finger trips the trigger and then he shoots his brother. Or Walter. Or me. Accidentally, on purpose, doesn’t matter, shot is shot.

  He said, “How did your brother...”

  “Accident,” I snapped.

  “What more did you find?”

  Short attention span, Henry? My mind raced. I gave him the only thing I had. I jerked a thumb, pointing uphill. “I found an outcrop of chiastolite hornfels.”

  “Is that all?”

  Well that answered that. He’d already seen it. And it wasn’t enough. Okay then, I’d make it enough. “Somewhere around here, Henry, you’ve got hornfels intersecting an auriferous channel. Maybe near the existing tunnel, maybe a deeper or parallel channel. Maybe somewhere out here.”

  Henry listened.

  Walter jumped in. “That’s right, Henry. The channels were laid down in different ages. You can have later channels intersecting earlier channels, channels occupying different positions laterally as well as in elevation—all in the same general area. You understand the geology, son?”

  Henry shifted his fevered gaze to Walter. “Not like you do.”

  “Nevertheless, you’ve had a couple of days to look around.”

  Henry said, “A couple of weeks.”

  ~ ~ ~

  A couple of weeks?

  Walter and I exchanged a look. Had we misremembered Robert’s story, back at the lab? I could have sworn Robert had told us that his father died a month ago, and then a week later he and Henry got together to go through their father’s things. Which was when they’d found the ore specimen in the attic. And then—two-plus weeks after that—Henry had gone off hunting, leaving the so-called suicide note.

  Robert had not said what Henry was doing in those two-plus weeks in between finding the rock and setting out to find the source.

  Shit.

  Robert gaped at his brother. Surprised as we were.

  Henry stared back.

  “Hey Bro,” Robert said, finding his voice. “What the hell?”

  “What the hell,” Henry echoed.

  “You want me to put two and two together?” Robert looked at the sky, looked at the ground, taking the time to do the math, struggling to catch up. And then he faced his brother. “Well shit, Henry, looks like that equals four. You went looking for the source right after we found the rock. Right? And you found it. You found this place. You spent a couple of weeks at it. And then three days ago you went home and left me a note and half the rock and then you took off again. You left me clues and expected me to follow.”

  “You followed,” Henry said.

  “Damn straight I did.”

  “You found me.”

  “How could I miss? I read you loud and clear. Found the bandana on the hike in. Smelled the mountain misery—you build a little campfire up top? I assume kicking the rocks over the edge was an accident. And then down in the pit, I found the dime. I played it out. And then that flask in the river. I understand. It’s all cool, Henry. I’m here now. I’m listening to you.”

  “And I’m listening to you,” Henry said.

  I thought, this is isn’t going anywhere good.

  “Why didn’t you just talk to me, Henry? That day in Dad’s attic. We could have talked.”

  “No we could not.”

  “Meaning what? We need to play games to talk?”

  “That’s how we roll.”

  Robert gave a short laugh, a bark. “Where’d you pick up that phrase?”

  “From the movies.”

  “It’s a little cliched. I wouldn’t use it if I were you.”

  “How should I talk, R?”

  “R?”

  “You call me Bro, I call you R. It’s cool.”

  “You’re playing games with my head, Henry.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So what’s this game called? Bro.”

  “It needs a name.”

  “How about brothers?” Robert said.

  “That’s good.”

  “How does it start?”

  “You apologize.”

  ‘No problem,” Robert said. “I apologize.”

  “Do you know for what?”

  Robert said, “For whatever I did to offend you.”

  Henry’s hands began to shake. He shook out his arms, gun bobbing in his clenched fists like a jackhammer. He pressed his hands back onto his knees and steadied himself. Steadied the gun. He repeated, “Do you know for what?”

  “I just said I...” Robert lifted his own hands, spread them wide. “Sure, I know. For being a bully of a big brother. All the times I put you down.”

  “That’s when we were kids.”

  “I don’t recall being a shithead to you as an adult.”

  “Do you know for what?”

  Robert said softly, “Not just being a bully. Enabling you to mess around with the mercury. I’m truly sorry Henry.”

  “That’s when we were kids.”

  Robert blinked. “Then I don’t know what you want me to apologize for.”

  “Think.”

  “If I was a shithead as an adult, I apologize for that too. We good?”

  Henry didn’t answer.

  “Henry,” I blurted, “your brother came to us to help you.”

  Henry turned to me. “Thank you Cathy.”

  And then he looked beyond me, beyond us all, to the hillside that bordered the mine works canyon.

  17

  I looked where Henry was looking. Thinking, what’s over there?

  I’d come down that way, following the sluiceway path down the slim canyon from the mine works—albeit on the opposite side of the sluiceway. Seems that canyon now deserved a name. Sluiceway Canyon. Up top, I’d found the hornfels. Down here, in Notch Valley, the hillside met the high southern wall that caged the valley and rose to a ridge far up above.

  I stared hard but could discern nothing remarkable about that hillside.

  Henry stood and, with his gun, urged us to stand.

  It seemed we were going to find out what was over there.

  He steered us to the bottom of the sluiceway where the climb upcanyon began. This was the side without an established path, and the ground was rough. We carefully hiked a short distance and then Henry turned us to walk toward the hillside. We halted just short of it. The footing was uneven, the slope gradient noticeable.

  We stood in a line, ducks in a row, me at the uphill end, Henry at the downhill end, with a fine position in which to cover us with his gun.

  I examined the hillside. Now that I was facing it straight-on, I saw that its gravelly face appeared to have been eroded, perhaps by a hidden spring, some long-ago finger of flowing water. Indeed, a shallow trough ran out of the cavity and cut the slope between Walter and Robert. The cavity itself looked to be about twenty feet deep and twenty wide and ran a good twenty feet high. It was nearly overgrown by vegetation. It looked like a grotto. It looked like a good place to hide.

  It looked, actually, like the miners had claimed it as a storage space. Old timber was piled in there, castoffs from the sluiceway.

  Robert spoke. “Got a pile of dimes in there, Henry?”

  “No.”

  I shifted. What, then? Not certain I wanted to know.

  “It’s under that... That...” Henry frowned.

  “Bracken,” Walter said.

  “Bracken,” Henry repeated.

  I didn’t know if this was another word Henry had forgotten or if he simply didn’t know the proper name. I would have just said fern. Tufted ferns sprouted in crevices on the back wall of the grotto. It was a day for ferns, lacy mountain misery and spreading bracken and I could live happily for the rest of the day without encountering another variety of ferns.

  “Look under the bracken,” Henry said. He added, “R.”

  Robert didn’t move.

  Henry adjusted the aim of his Glock so that his bro
ther was squarely in his sights.

  Robert Shelburne gave a shrug, as if he had no real worries—no expectation, certainly, of finding anything of note in there under the cover of the ferns. Gold nugget, snake, turkey baster. Whatever. Robert strolled over to the grotto and stepped inside.

  “Push the bracken out of the way, R.”

  The bracken was about chest-level. Robert yanked a fistful of ferns clean out of their crevice. For a long moment he looked at what he’d uncovered, and then he turned to face us. Uprooted ferns in his fingers. “What’s up with that, Henry?”

  I angled for a look but I could not see what Robert had found.

  “Move out of the way,” Henry said.

  Robert gave a tight smile and stepped aside.

  I didn’t understand the meaning of what I saw. Sticking out of the hillside at the back of the grotto was a length of rusted pipe. A spigot was fitted to the end of the pipe. It looked for all the world like a tap in a garden wall for a hose. Given the lush vegetation, I wondered if it was indeed a water source tapped into a fracture spring in the hillside.

  I said, to Henry, “Is it for water?”

  “Turn it on.”

  Actually, I didn’t really care to do that.

  “It won’t bite, Cassie.”

  Robert stood very still, very quiet.

  Walter said, “I’ll do it.”

  Henry leveled the gun at me. “Cassie asked first.”

  I moved stiffly to the grotto, trying not to stare at the garden hose bib, instead scanning the walls and the floor, getting the lay of the land. It was like a roomy walk-in closet. Make that a roomy tool shed. Splintery sluice box planks and riffle blocks were stacked against the back wall and an overturned metal bucket lay in a corner. The walls sprouted bracken, brush, greenery I could not name. There was no ‘roof’ to speak of. The cavity simply chimneyed up until it became flush with the face of the hillside. The floor was bedrock—the Shoo Fly Formation, I noted, including the now familiar spotted slate. In the middle of the bedrock the floor was gouged, like a water-eroded pothole in bedrock exposed to the elements. I stepped down into the pothole. It was a couple of feet deep. I scuffed a boot across the rock. It was rough, not erosion-smooth. I wondered if it had been manually gouged. I stepped out and moved to the spigot. My homey comparisons died. I evaluated my task. The pipe extended maybe ten feet out of the compacted gravel wall. It was supported by a brace, a metal stand driven into the bedrock at the edge of the pothole. The pipe was rusted. The spigot at the end of the pipe was rusted. Perhaps it would not turn. I’ve tried that before—straining to open a corroding faucet. Might need a stronger hand here than mine. How about Robert’s? I recalled his hands gripping the sluice box back at the pit when he’d seen the dimes. Big strong hands. I glanced over my shoulder. Robert’s face was white, pinched. As was Walter’s. Henry’s face was pink with the cold. With the poison. He gave me a nod. I turned back to the spigot and I feared that this was not a water source. I gripped the handle. Praying it was rusted shut. Prayer went unanswered. The spigot turned. I let go like it had come alive.

  Liquid metal began to flow. Thin as a necklace.

  Holy hell.

  “Open it all the way,” Henry said.

  I twisted the handle. All the way.

  I should have retreated then. Instead, I stood rooted. I grew a little dizzy, the way you grow a little dizzy standing on the edge of a cliff staring down at the sea. You know you should back up. Instead, a primitive part of you wants to jump.

  A primitive part of me wanted to reach out and catch the flow.

  Not smart, although in this cold air there was little risk of the quicksilver giving off vapor. Still, the flow was thicker now, more like a snake, and it poured into the pothole.

  So that’s what that pothole’s for, I thought.

  “Cassie Cassie Cassie,” Henry said. “Move out of the way.”

  Yeah.

  I turned and headed back to my place in line. As Robert and Walter gained the view into the grotto, their faces mirrored mine. Mesmerized. Spooked.

  Robert found his voice. “Did you do that, Henry?”

  “It was here.”

  “How’d you find it?” I asked.

  “In the supply room.” He pointed. “There’s a ... There’s a ... It shows where things are.”

  A diagram. I looked up Sluiceway Canyon, up where the bunker was, the room with the old mining equipment, the room with the flasks. I looked back to the grotto, to the spigot. “So where’s the mercury coming from?”

  Walter glanced up to ridge above the grotto. “Was there mining up there?”

  “Everywhere,” Henry said.

  I got it. Mercury loss, from the sluices. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of the stuff, over the years. And mercury being so very heavy, it leached down through the soils. The soils were saturated. And the miners came across the seepage and drove the pipe into the hillside to capture the free supply. And it’s still there today. But in that case the stuff would still be oozing out of the hillside. I didn’t quite get it. I said, “Hillside’s not oozing mercury.”

  “Sequestration,” Walter said. His place in line bordered the trough. He stepped down into it, scrutinizing it, no doubt running the hidden spring scenario. He looked up and scanned the entire hillside, examining the terrain with that look he gets in the lab when he’s considering the provenance of a chunk of evidence on his workbench. “Most plausibly, the mercury has sunk down to an impermeable bedrock layer and collected there. A basin of sorts within the hillside.”

  I nodded. “Makes sense.”

  Henry said, “What do you think, R?”

  “Why ask me?” Robert said, cautious. “I’m no expert.”

  “You sounded like one. That day on the Yuba.”

  ~ ~ ~

  We went silent. So stone silent that I swore I could hear the hiss of the mercury straining through the spigot.

  I took a few steps upslope, angling for a better look into the grotto, to judge the size of the growing pool. It came nowhere near to filling the pothole. But still, it grew. The silver snake kept sliding out, the pool kept swelling. It was like watching a faucet left running in the kitchen sink, and the person who left it running didn’t notice the sink beginning to fill. I noticed. I’d left it running. My hands went slick with sudden sweat, with the need to turn off the damn spigot.

  Robert finally spoke. “You want to help me out here, Henry? What day on the Yuba?”

  “The day I saw you and Cam.”

  Robert stiffened.

  “Who is Cam?” Walter asked.

  “Camden,” Robert said, tightly. “Our father.”

  My attention snapped fully to the Shelburne brothers.

  “You were there together,” Henry said. “I saw you. You sampled the water.”

  I went cold. The steel clip, the wide-mouth water bottle. Robert sampled the water. With his father. What day on the Yuba?

  Henry said, “I overheard you, R. That’s how I found out you and Cam went partners.”

  “Wait wait wait just a goddamn minute,” Robert said. “Are we talking about a company Dad and I had going? What’s that got to do with anything? That’s something Dad came to me about, that was a deal I helped Dad put together, that’s a technology he came up with, that was business, that was...”

  “That was my idea,” Henry said.

  I went colder.

  “Hang on.” Robert put up his palms. “I’m blindsided here. I had no idea. And it’s a great idea, Henry. Christ, you of all people would know what needs to be done. You’ve lived the stuff. And Dad, okay, you knew he had the mechanical skills.” Robert dropped his hands. “He didn’t tell you he came to me for financing, did he?”

  “No.”

  Robert shook his head. “Camden Shelburne’s game. Play one brother off the other.”

  Henry was silent.

  “I apologize,” Robert said.

  “Do you know for what?”

  “For do
ing business with Dad behind your back.”

  “You need to go into the quicksilver now,” Henry said.

  ~ ~ ~

  I thought, fiercely, it’s symbolic. You’d float, not drown. I wondered how long the mercury would continue to snake out of the spigot. That depended on whatever the hell the pipe tapped into. That basin. However big that basin was. I looked at Walter, who was scrutinizing the grotto, face set in severe concentration.

  Robert Shelburne simply turned his back on the grotto. He fully faced his brother. He took off his parka and dropped it on the ground.

  “What are you doing?” Henry asked.

  Robert didn’t answer. He pulled off the next layer, a fleece sweatshirt. Dropped it on the ground. He was stripped down to his green Club One Fitness T-shirt.

  “You don’t need to do that,” Henry said. “Clothes don’t get wet in quicksilver.”

  Robert lifted the green shirt.

  Walter shot me a warning look but there was no need. I wasn’t going to speak, move, do anything at all. It was all I could do to stifle my sudden hope. I’d forgotten that Robert was wearing his brother’s belt. I stared at the big silver belt buckle with the curlicue lettering. Back at the lab, his display of the Quicksilver buckle was sure effective, sure worked on Walter and me. Sure got us to the contract-signing.

  I watched Henry, wondering if it was working on him.

  Henry’s face was closed. Unreadable.

  “Our father had the heart of a snake,” Robert said. “It’s just us now, Henry. Look, I’m wearing your belt. I’ll take on every burden of Quicksilver.”

  Henry was silent.

  “Or, you want me to take it off?” Robert began to unbuckle the belt.

  “Keep it on,” Henry said. “It won’t get wet.”

  18

  Robert Shelburne stood at the mouth of the grotto.

  His hands were on his hips. His green fitness T-shirt showed bare arms, muscles flexed. He looked ready to run. Or fight.

  “I don’t want to shoot,” Henry said.

  Robert said, over his shoulder, “You don’t need to.” He went in.