Badwater (The Forensic Geology Series) Read online

  Point D, end of the line for Roy Jardine’s offroader.

  From there, he’d borrowed a team of mules to drag the trailer or strapped on a jetpack and flown, and in another moment I’d turn my attention to the fact that we had no way to complete the map. We did have the glop from the trailer tires but it was an unilluminating mix. In another moment I’d admit we were in the neighborhood but had not found the address. Meanwhile, I enjoyed this moment.

  Walter glanced up from the polarized light scope.. “You’re not busy?”

  I pointed out the chalcedony.

  He came over to study the map. He breathed on my neck, smelling of lemon drops. At least it wasn’t donuts.

  “Well?” I said.

  He smiled. “Why don’t I give your minerals a gander under the polarized scope, and why don’t you go collect Hector and tell him we’re narrowing it down.”

  I left Walter’s refrigerated suite and plunged into the morning furnace, on the hunt for Hector Soliano.

  ~

  Soliano answered his door with the phone at his ear and mouthed wait.

  I nodded and headed for the nearest lawn table. And then I saw the table at the far end of the lawn where two people were, to my astonishment, taking morning tea.

  I changed course and walked past an abandoned croquet set to the linen-set table. Hap had his nose in his sketchbook and Pria stared stolidly at her clasped hands. Big hands with broken nails and a dirty bandaid on the right thumb. Brown hands on white linen. He could title his sketch Fish Out Of Water.

  “Morning Buttercup.”

  “Morning.”

  “Sit yourself down.”

  I took a chair, nodding to Pria. She nodded back. Progress.

  “Cherry coke?” Hap indicated the pitcher I’d thought contained iced tea. “Or might we tempt your palate with those croissants? Do, howsoever, leave the chocolate eclairs for Miss Alien. I’m bribing her.”

  I stared. He was Hap again. “Is everything okay? With the, ah...”

  “The mash note from Roy?” Hap kept sketching.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hector’s checking into it.”

  “You figure out why Jardine’s targeting you?”

  “Boy’s real touchy. Never joined in the banter at work. Never appreciated my humor.” Hap shaded in Pria’s bandaid, adding the dirt. “Might have pissed him off. Might be he aims to settle all his grudges.”

  “You don’t look too worried now.”

  “That’s because I ain’t stuck in a car going down ambush canyon.” He threw me a grin. “Hector and I are confining me to quarters. Safe and sound, here at the Inn.”

  Pria said, “Are we safe here?”

  Better be, I thought. This is heaven. I bypassed the cherry coke and poured from a sweating pitcher of water into a cobalt-blue glass.

  Pria watched. “It’s okay to drink?”

  I hesitated, glass in mid-air.

  “What if the water’s not happy?”

  I set down the glass.

  “Like, we were chasing it yesterday?” She lifted a hand and pointed. “Like, here’s where it comes?”

  Hap groaned. “Nooo, don’t move, I’m not done with your pattycakes.”

  She dropped her hand but I stared in the direction she’d pointed. Up toward the Funerals, highway 190.

  “That’s better,” Hap said. “Clasp them like before. Bend in that pinkie.”

  I said, “The thing about the aquifer is...”

  “Okay fine.” She clamped her fingers. “So drink it. You guys up here hog it anyway with your big fancy glasses just sitting around and then nobody even finishes it, and your fancy grass and all like you can’t even walk on the regular ground like normal people, and them down there,” she broke the clasp, ignoring Hap’s protest, and pointed downfan toward the village, “with their swimming and their golf—and they even got lakes to golf around—and in their campsites they got running water and they wash their hair in it.”

  Hap had given up drawing. He just listened.

  I thought of the flume we’d seen yesterday, paralleling 190, running down the Furnace Creek Wash toward the Inn. I hadn’t noticed any other piece of the water collection system but it had to be there. I said, “Doesn’t the water system serve the Timbisha, too?”

  “We don’t have grass.” Her high voice pitched higher. “We don’t have a pool.”

  Hap gestured to the pool on the terrace below. “Jump on in. Buttercup’ll borrow you a suit.”

  I wanted to fling my water in his face.

  She hissed, “I don’t know how to swim.”

  “Well I’ll teach you!”

  I stared down at the pool where the lap-swimmers had taken over, where a bronzed blond man swam a beautiful butterfly, and I remembered a pale redheaded man doing a more beautiful butterfly, and a less-pale brunet treading water, preparatory to making a fool of herself.

  “The water doesn’t even want to be in your fancy pool,” Pria said.

  Hap widened his eyes. “Where does it want to be?”

  I made a guess. “It wants to be watering the mesquite and the bighorn.” Instead of the palms and the midnight swimmers.

  She shrugged.

  I picked up my glass. “You said the water’s not happy. Why’d you say that?”

  “The bad guy’s putting atoms in it.”

  “He is?”

  “Well yeah, I’m not stupid, I know why you’re all so weirded about the aquifer.”

  She got that right. We’re definitely weirded. If Jardine wanted to mimic the leak at the dump, all he had to do was dump his stolen resins every time he made the swap for a new cask. Dumping them where is of course the question—somewhere within the vicinity of Point D, I’d say. Spill the beads into some hidden ditch or glory hole and then every time it rains, the beads are washed down into the groundwater. Toward the aquifer. I’d say that’s how Roy Jardine is getting into the virgin.

  Pria said, “And what if the atoms get pissed off?”

  I regarded my water glass. I wished it wasn’t tinted, although if there was something to worry about in the water I wouldn’t be seeing it. I said, careful, “Travel time of a contamination plume in groundwater is measured in years. Lots of them. So this water’s safe to drink.”

  “Buttercup speaks truly.” Hap stuck his pencil behind his ear and passed the sketchbook to Pria. “You like?” He poured himself a glass of water and tipped it to us. “To your health.”

  ~

  Soliano joined us and I rose to lead him away, to tell him about Point D in private, but he paused behind Pria’s chair for a look at the sketchbook.

  I leaned in to see what had caught his eye. It was not the sketch of Pria’s hands. She’d flipped the pages to another sketch, another pair of hands. She was studying it, feathery hair brushing the page.

  Soliano said, “You know these hands?”

  “Maybe the ring.”

  I came alert.

  Soliano took a seat, gingerly, the way you’d move around a skittish cat. “Tell me about this ring.”

  It was the sketch of Jardine’s hands, the one Hap had made two mornings ago in Walter’s suite. I looked anew at that puzzling Rorschach ring.

  Pria said, “That Badwater race.”

  Hap peered anew at his sketch. “Well I’ll be darned.”

  Soliano’s face sharpened. “Tell me about this Badwater race.”

  “It’s a bunch of fools what come here in the heat of the summer,” Hap said, “and for no good reason under the blistering sun they runs theyselves from Badwater halfway up Mount Whitney.”

  Reflexively, I looked. I couldn’t see it because the Panamints were between my line of sight and the Sierra Nevada, but I knew it was there. Mount Whitney had to be more than a hundred miles from here.

  “Big deal is, Badwater’s the lowest elevation in the continental states,” Hap said, “and Whitney’s the highest.”

  Soliano frowned. “That is a feat, but...”

  �
�It’s stupid,” Pria said.

  “But you have seen the race? You know the ring. What is this, a prize?”

  “My cousin got one. He didn’t win. He just ran. He’s stupid.”

  Soliano turned to Hap. “I find this odd. Roy Jardine allowed you to draw his hands, and he was proud enough of his feat to wear this ring, and yet he did not tell you about his race?”

  “Boy ain’t a braggart. One of his endearing qualities.”

  Soliano’s gaze fell to the sketchbook. “What does this tell us about him?”

  I said, “He’s into extremes.”

  “Worse than that,” Hap said, “he’s into irony. Badwater. Baaaad water.”

  32

  “There is a saying I learned my first year at Quantico.” Soliano glanced at his watch. “Close counts in horseshoes.”

  I said, “Only.”

  Soliano’s attention shifted to a woman in a peach uniform coming our way across the lawn. I recognized her. Gloria. Tiny, pretty, looked about twelve. I’d borrowed a tiny swimsuit from her.

  “What?” Soliano said to me, eyes on Gloria.

  “Close counts only in horsehoes. But there’s another saying, one I learned my first year in the lab...”

  “Que?” Soliano said, to Gloria.

  She halted. She spoke fast.

  Soliano leaned forward. “Aqui?”

  She pointed beyond the terraced edge of the lawn.

  We both looked. There was nothing.

  “What is it?” I asked Soliano.

  “Somebody is hurt.”

  I looked around. I saw Hap and Pria, artist and subject, once again engrossed in her hands. I saw no one else.

  Gloria raised her palms to the sky. “Por favor.”

  Soliano and I headed toward the far end of the lawn where a stone monolith rose from the stone wall. Beyond the monolith were more walkways. My foot struck something hard. I looked down. A green croquet ball was camouflaged in the grass.

  Soliano did not slow. “What saying did you learn?”

  It took me a moment. “You don’t get there unless you get close first.”

  He laughed.

  “Alli,” Gloria called, behind us.

  From behind the monolith, a shoulder and stretch of leg came in and out of view. Someone was approaching, jerky. The lower arm bent inward. Someone was hurt and cradling a wound. And then she lurched so suddenly out from the monolith’s shadow that it seemed she’d been tossed. She doubled over, face to knees.

  “Dios mio,” Soliano whispered.

  She looked up grinning.

  There was no wound. The only marks on her white shirt and white jeans were streaks of dirt and something yellowish that reminded me of the egg yolk stain on my shirt before Hap sent it to be laundered.

  She was grimacing, not grinning. The lax skin bunched around her mouth.

  “What’d you do, Chickie?” Pria was suddenly beside me.

  Hap joined us. “Hold onto the girl.”

  I circled her waist. She twisted and yelped. I glimpsed, beyond the struggling Pria, Walter rushing out of his room. He came up on the other side of her. I let her go and she tunneled into him.

  Chickie made an animal sound.

  “Hector,” Hap said, “you better call Scotty and tell him to get his RERTs on the scene.”

  Soliano was already dialing. He kept his eyes on Chickie, the same way he’d fixed on the radiation-sick bat on the garden lawn. “Might she carry contaminants? On her person?”

  “I’m sure gonna assume that.” Hap picked up the croquet ball and tossed it a couple of feet in front of us. “Listen up, boys and girls, that’s the do-not-cross line. Y’all know about the inverse square concept? That’s the one where just a little distance from a point source makes a big difference in dose. Give the gents some space.”

  Pria said, “She’s moving!”

  Chickie was struggling to get to her feet.

  “Miss Chick,” Hap said, “you’d best stay put and we’ll fix you up.”

  I didn’t think so. Her eyes widened, lifting the loose lids to show the bloodshot whites. She crumpled and retched yellowish stuff into the emerald lawn. I didn’t think we were going to fix her up.

  “Yuck,” Hap said, pulling on latex gloves.

  Soliano said, “Wait.” His gaze settled on Chickie. “Ms. Jellinek. What happened to you?”

  She spat. Yellow spittle webbed her chin.

  “Ms. Jellinek. You have been where?”

  Hap said, “Uh, Hector, interrogating a subject who’s woofin her cookies is kinda a no-no in this country.” He snapped his gloves down tight. “Ain’t it?”

  Soliano said, icy, “This is not the flu.” He made another phone call and I caught the word “lockdown.”

  I felt the heat. The sun was out from behind the clouds, sucking me dry. The smell of Chickie’s vomit washed our way. I gagged. I noticed that nobody was in sight but us. The swimmers had left the pool. Gloria had disappeared. Where were the gardeners? Where were the sunburned Germans? Had everyone abandoned ship but us? Or maybe the lockdown was already in force. Chickie was on her haunches. Her mouth squirmed and she doubled over again only this time there was no egg yolk, just dry heaving. And here we stood staring like we’d stopped at the scene of an accident. All we could do was wait for Scotty with his shower and long-handled brushes. I recalled how that shower felt, only I’d worn protective clothing. Chickie wore white cotton and raw skin. She straightened, hands braced in the grass, like some fat white bulldog.

  Soliano said, “You went where, Ms. Jellinek?”

  I said, “Do we need to do this now?”

  “If this will move us closer.”

  “It’s not goddamn horseshoes.”

  Walter said “Cassie” and when I looked he mouthed boots. I got it—her boots were caked with mud, and there’s geology to do. Still, I waited for something more, like, after she’s been deconned and treated and she’s not disintegrating in front of us let’s by all means get hold of those boots, but Walter only lifted his eyebrows and tightened his grip on Pria. His concern, I saw, was for the child and not the disintegrating mother.

  Soliano tried again. “You encountered some...beads...Ms. Jellinek?”

  I looked then at Chickie’s boots and like it’s been bred in the bone I thought, maybe we’ll get lucky and find distinct mud layers preserved in the waffle soles.

  “Help us,” Soliano said, “and we will be able to assist you.”

  Chickie extended her middle finger.

  Pria hissed, “Stop it, you.”

  Chickie faced the lawn and retched.

  Hap fished a syringe and small brown bottle from his kit. He tore the plastic wrap off the syringe. He needled the the bottle and sauntered across the croquet line.

  Soliano snapped, “Stop, Miller.”

  Hap threw us a grin. “Time equals dose. I’ll be quick.” He caught Chickie’s right arm and yanked up her sleeve.

  “Stop. I do not wish her sedated.”

  Hap froze, needle raised.

  And then all at once as if it had been choreographed Hap let go of Chickie and retreated across the croquet line and Scotty came running and a Beatty sheriff chopper slipped out of the clouds and ranger trucks appeared on the road below and began the climb up the fan.

  Chickie collapsed in the grass. For a moment I thought she’d died. Then her eyelids flickered and reddened eyes gleamed through slits. She spoke, just audible above the incoming grumble of the chopper. “I got somethin you fuckers want.”

  33

  Rain came along with RERT, big fat drops that panicked Scotty because if there were resin beads on Chickie’s person he did not want Mother Nature washing them into the lawn, and so Lucy in her suit held a big Wal-Mart umbrella over Chickie.

  The rest of us huddled under the roof of the walkway while rangers and deputies patrolled the perimeter.

  RERTs in hazmat rushed in equipment and raised the decon corridor. They started the pump and the yellow
plastic unfolded itself into a shower. They connected the hose to the PVC pipe and ran it into Soliano’s room, to the bathtub faucet. They ran the outflow hose across the grass past the monolith in the direction of the parking lot. Two of them began to meter the walkway, should Chickie have left a radiation trail. Another turned to Chickie and ripped open her shirt.

  Pria gasped. Walter escorted her to his room.

  Chickie fought feebly. It took three RERTs. They yanked off her boots. They unzipped her pants. They stood her up and peeled her to the skin. She hung between two of them. The third lifted her feet and they high-stepped into the yellow catch basin. The water went on. The nozzles sprayed all four of them, the RERTs in their slick white suits and Chickie in her loose white skin.

  Soliano, decorous, turned away.

  Hap watched, matter-of-fact.

  I sank against the wall and studied my boots.

  When it was finished Scotty came over, skinning off his hood and mask, blond hair spiking every which way. “Okey-doke, Hector,” he said, grim, “you get ten and then she’s on a chopper to Vegas. They got doctors trained for this.”

  “No,” Soliano said, “you will fly your doctor here. In the meanwhile, Mr. Miller will render medical assistance.”

  ~

  It was hot in Soliano’s room. The air conditioner was off because Chickie had the chills.

  She lay on the bed. The blanket covered her from the neck down but her naked arms and doughy shoulders were exposed. The skin of her arms was reddened, raising in patches like crackling pastry. Her eyes were shut. Beside her pillow was an aluminum bowl.

  Hap eased the needle into her arm, then massaged the IV bag.

  I was waiting my turn for a closeup under her fingernails. I heard Walter, just outside, arguing with Scotty about a shielded box of contaminated clothing and boots. Although the decon shower had not flushed any observable beads, Scotty—and the rest of us—were not taking any chances.