Badwater (The Forensic Geology Series) Read online

  Soliano said, “Ms. Jellinek?”

  She lifted, and the blanket slipped to reveal stringy breasts as she twisted to bury her face in the bowl. She retched loudly then collapsed onto the bed.

  Hap adjusted the IV tubing then pulled the blanket back up to her neck.

  “Mr. Miller,” Soliano said, “how long does this...indisposition...last?”

  “It’s the prodromal phase, Hector. Lasts couple days or so. Then she goes latent for awhile.”

  Soliano moved closer to the bed, gazing down at Chickie. “Ms. Jellinek, the quicker we proceed, the quicker you can rest through this difficult phase. You say you have something we want?”

  He put me in mind of a raptor examining its prey.

  She glared. “What you fuckers do to my desert?”

  “You refer to Mr. Jardine?”

  She was silent so long I thought she’d said her last.

  “Help us find this man who threatens your desert.”

  She held up two fingers.

  “Two men?”

  I thought, she doesn’t know that Ryan Beltzman is dead.

  “And you are what?” Soliano asked. “A partner?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Just sold ‘em my talc.”

  “And attacked my geologists.”

  She grinned. Grimaced. Then twisted, this time clutching the blanket, and retched into the bowl. When she lay back there were tears in her eyes.

  The sympathy I’d been feeling evaporated in the overheated room.

  Hap held up a bottle and syringe. “Anti-emetic, Hector. Stop the vomiting.”

  “And make her drowsy, yes?”

  “Could.”

  “We will delay medication.” Soliano shrugged. “Ms. Jellinek, help us and then we will help you.”

  She whispered, “Get Pria.”

  Soliano smiled. When he’d left the room I watched Hap massage the IV bag and my skin puckered where he’d run saline into me, and then Chickie caught my eye and licked her finger and mimed touching my cheek, and then Soliano opened the door and ushered in Pria.

  Chickie raised her head to nod at her daughter. The blanket slipped slightly, revealing the fibrous roots of her breasts.

  Pria’s brown skin went crimson. “God.”

  Chickie jerked up the blanket. “Pree.” Her voice was raw. “A million bucks, you an me. I’m sellin—he’s buyin.” She jerked a thumb at Soliano. “You make sure he don’t weasel.”

  Pria wrapped her arms around her chest.

  “Ms. Jellinek,” Soliano said, “this is not taking us where we need to go.”

  Chickie’s tongue flicked out, wetting her cracked lips. “Awright. There’s pellets.” She cleared her throat. “Lot of em.”

  Soliano said, softly, “They are loose?”

  “Fuck yeah.”

  A current seemed to run through the room.

  Soliano said, “Where are they?”

  “Ain’t gonna tell you, am I?” Chickie winked at Pria. “Not till you pay up.”

  “Perhaps you do not know.”

  “Callin me a liar?”

  “I am calling your bluff.”

  She grinned. “Well I took some of them pellets. Whole pack full.”

  I went cold. The thought that tripleX resin beads were accessible, that this woman had found her way to Roy Jardine’s depot and simply helped herself, made the hairs stand up on my arms. I was simply agog at the ease with which the beads had passed from the jurisdiction of one thief to the hands of another. I suddenly wanted Soliano to tighten the screws.

  “Where is the pack now?” was all he asked.

  “Took it to Vegas.”

  Hap whistled his falling skyrocket. Ooops.

  “Where,” Soliano asked, dialing his cell, “in Vegas?”

  She rubbed her thumb against her fingers.

  “In a public place?”

  “Hid it in the closet in my room. Vegas is full of fuckin thieves.”

  I sat stunned, listening to Soliano relay the information to his agents. Not only does she help herself to Jardine’s stash, she then takes that pack of hot beads to Las Vegas. Which room? Which maids? Which motel, hotel, of the hundreds in Vegas? What if she didn’t register under her own name?

  She let it run, then said, “Hey dimwits, pack ain’t there now. Go look in your fuckin parkin lot. White pickup. Under the seat.”

  Soliano gave her a long look, then phoned Scotty.

  Chickie’s lips skinned back. Grin, grimace, hard to say.

  Hap leaned in. “How long since you took the beads?” He looked her over. “I’d say your exposure started in the last twenty-four hours or so.” He studied her blistering arms. “You load the beads by hand?”

  “That why I’m sick?”

  Hap rolled his eyes. “Ooooh baby. Yowza.”

  She swallowed. “Wore one of their fuckin moonsuits.”

  “Just the suit?”

  “The whole thing, tank and all. An I know how to use a fuckin air tank cuz I took a mine safety course so I knew what I was doin so why the fuck am I sick?”

  “It’s not enough,” Hap said, almost gentle. “Unshielded beads—you got too close. For too long.” He studied her face. “How about the facepiece? You seal it up tight? Breathe in anything that felt like dust?”

  I cut in, “Beads can be inhaled?”

  “Yowza. Small ones can go aerosol. Don’t wanna inhale Mr. Alpha—he’s partial to the lungs.” Hap smiled a pained smile. “Tell me, Miss Chick, how long’d you wear your moonsuit?”

  “Long as I had to, loadin the pellets.” She looked, suddenly, a little desperate. “But I wrapped my pack in one of them silver sheets they had for...whaddya call it?”

  “Shielding,” Hap said. He did not add: it’s not nearly enough.

  Soliano closed his phone and moved back in. “Ms. Jellinek, how far did you carry the pack?”

  Her eyes filmed and I thought, she’s calculating. You don’t have to calculate distance if your car is nearby. She walked a good ways. And she’d worn her moonsuit only to load the pellets, which means she’d removed it before leaving the place, which means she’d removed booties as well, which means that’s good clean uncontaminated mud caked in her boots. I wanted to read it.

  “How far, Ms. Jellinek? From the place you got your pellets?”

  “You tryin to trick me, Mr. Fucker?”

  “I am trying to get through to you,” Soliano snapped. “You have no time for this childishness. You are going to get sicker.”

  Pria sucked in her breath.

  “Hang on, Pree.” Chickie’s inflamed eyes slitted. “We’re negotiatin.”

  Soliano grew a thin smile. “Then give us something. When did you see the two men?”

  “Long time before you fuckers came.”

  “Who did you see? Mr. Jardine?”

  “Fuck him, yeah, Jardine.”

  “Who was the second man?”

  “Blond fucker.”

  “Was the blond man named Ryan Beltzman?”

  “Didn’t get introduced.”

  “How did you come to find the place with the pellets?”

  “Followed the blond fucker once.”

  “Why did you return? This time.”

  She let out a snort.

  Greed, I thought. Jardine paid her for talc and the use of her mine, Jardine no doubt paid her to strand us in the desert, so after gauging the interest of the FBI, why not see if she can sell something else?

  “Was Jardine there?” Soliano asked. “This time?”

  She snorted again.

  No, I thought, or she’d already be dead. Then where was Jardine?

  Soliano pressed. “Did you see anyone at the place where you found the pellets? This time?”

  She rasped, “Elvis fuckin Presley.”

  “You act the fool.”

  “Fuck you.” She grinned. “You all gonna get fucked. A real ranger-fuck. Enough play-dough for it.”

  “What does this mean? Play-dough?”
>
  Pria spoke. “Stuff to blast tunnels.”

  Plastique. I recalled its effect on the cask in the borax tunnel. If there was enough explosive to reach us and the rangers, what did that mean? It’s nearby? Or maybe she just meant any of us who get too close. FBI, RERT, sheriff, cops, geologists—we’re all rangers to her, we’re all fuckers trying to shut down her mine.

  “Ms. Jellinek. I repeat. Where is this place?”

  She shifted her bulk to point to her rear.

  Pria turned for the door.

  Chickie hissed, “Wait girl. I’m countin on you. Your daddy’s mine ain’t gonna pay a nickel. Fuckers won’t let it. This is our due.” She extended her hand. “I ain’t never hit you. Do it for me.”

  “You’re acting stupid, Chickie.”

  Chickie rolled onto her side and put her face in the bowl, dry heaving.

  “Stop her,” Pria said, “make it stop.”

  Hap said, “She’s going downhill, Hector. For the love of your soul let me stop it.”

  Soliano brought his hand to his forehead, that gesture of his. “Mr. Miller, you have perhaps Pepto-Bismol in your satchel?”

  “The cheapo generic. If she can keep it down.”

  “Give it to her.”

  Hap brought out a bottle. “Here you goes, Miss Chick, courtesy of Doctor Hap.” He put a pink tablet to her lips. “Tastes jess like bubble gum.”

  Chickie took in the tablet.

  “Give it a minute or two, Hector.”

  Soliano checked his watch, then turned to me. “You wished to inspect the nails? While we wait.” He hiked a shoulder at the bed.

  I did not know if Chickie was worn down by her ordeal or just trying to digest the tablet, but she watched dully as I knelt beside her with my kit. I opened a specimen dish and placed it on the bed. I told her I was going to scrape under her nails. Her eyes narrowed but she made no objection. I took her right hand. She had a wide flat hand and skinny forearm that brought to mind a ping-pong paddle. Her puffed skin felt tender as a baby’s. Her fingertips looked as though they might pop. The ragged nails sat deep within the reddened flesh. Scotty had scrub-brushed those nails but the decon left a thin line of dirt. Maybe old dirt, from her mine. Or maybe newer dirt. She’d been a busy desert rat, what with sabotage and theft, and maybe a telling grain or two stuck with her. Maybe not. But my fingers, as they say, itched. I chose the pointed file from my kit—a tool I’ve used to pry grains from a nail hole, mud from a knotted rope—and now, aptly, a tool made expressly for its job. I popped out a crescent of soil from her thumbnail.

  Hap said, “Y’all makes a good manicurist, Buttercup.”

  I glanced up.

  He was examining Chickie’s hand in mine as if he’d like to draw us.

  34

  The doctor had come and Hap had left. The rain had stopped. The shower and hoses and pump were gone. Out here on the lawn it looked as though nothing untoward had happened. Scotty and his team had disappeared, to the parking lot I assumed. Walter was nowhere to be seen so I guessed he’d claimed Chickie’s boots for analysis.

  Ballinger was here, though, rooster-pacing the walkway. “She talk?”

  Soliano shook his head and squatted in front of Pria, who sat against the wall hugging her knees. “Miss Weeks, help your mother by helping us. Tell her we agree to pay. Tell her you will watch out for her interests.”

  Ballinger halted. “Pay?”

  “Five minutes, Miss Weeks. To think. And then please I will need your help.” Soliano headed back to his room, saying to me as he passed, “Talk with her.”

  I took in a deep breath.

  Ballinger sidled close. “How much the old lady want?”

  “One million.”

  “Getting expensive.”

  I glanced at Pria, to see if she’d caught that. Of course, she might not know that Ballinger was the radwaste dump manager, that his company had already been extorted once this week, that he himself had no authority to pay out any million of CTC funds. As if Soliano, for that matter, did. The FBI was, in the end, a bureaucracy and certainly a field agent—even one as hotshot as Soliano—was not allowed off-the-cuff to dispense one million dollars. It was a bluff. And the girl Soliano was trying to bluff might be a fourteen-year-old from the rez but I’d bet she’d been raised by her daddy and her Aunt Ruth on tales of promises and threats and bluffs from generations of government agents who said let me help you but first you help me.

  I didn't know how to get through to her. Maybe if I'd practiced on other kids, but I'd been pretty much tied up in my own angst, which kids could smell on me like bad cheese, and this kid more than any kid I'd ever run across made my head want to explode. But minutes were passing and Soliano was waiting. I said, “I’m sorry about your mom, Pria. I know you’re upset.”

  “I want Grandfather.”

  “Grandfather’s busy looking at your mother’s boots so we can find out where she went. Where she got into the radwaste. You don’t need Grandfather.”

  Pria got up, leveling on me a look of closeup hate.

  Just that quickly, I flipped. I became Soliano’s creature. “You know what, Pria? You can save us the trouble. You get your mother to tell us where the stuff is and we can send the experts to clean up the mess.” I waited. I was not reaching her. “What you have to do, Pria, is go in there and tell her she’s going to get what she wants. And I can’t tell you she is. So you’ll be telling a lie. And that sucks. Believe me, I work with a man who will cut out his tongue before he’ll tell a lie—unless it’s going to prevent a greater sin. You know, like murder? Or like crapping up your desert? Once this stuff gets loose, you know, it hangs around. You know what a half-life is? That’s the time it takes for half of a radioactive element to decay—to throw off half its radioactivity. So let’s see, Scotty says we’ve got cobalt-60 in the resins. Nasty stuff. Got a half-life of five and a half years.” I realized I was doing a Hap on her. Well sure worked on me, sure got me reviewing my radionuclides table. “Or maybe you’ve heard of plutonium-239? Hangs around a little longer. Gives up half its radioactivity every twenty-four thousand years.” I waited. “Let’s put it this way. How about your water? You want it to stay happy? Then get in there and tell your mother whatever she wants to hear.”

  Her black eyes went flat.

  It began to rain again, thunderstorm loud, as if I’d called in special effects. Water please, lord, and make it hard and loud.

  Ballinger spoke. “Look here, I can maybe arrange for the company to pay a reward. You know, if everything turns out. If we get the material back.”

  I doubted that. He can’t have much credibility left with CTC. And if word of his diddling Jardine’s paperwork hasn’t yet reached them, it will in the end. So what’s Ballinger doing? Helping out Soliano? And then, quid pro quo, Soliano helps out with his ethical and legal dilemmas?

  Ballinger said, “Not a million, but...” He seemed to calculate. “Thousands?”

  Pria shook her head.

  I said, “No? No, you won’t help? No, it’s not enough?”

  “Her,” Pria said. “She wants the money now.”

  “Look, she knows we don’t have a sack of money under the bed, that’s why she got you into this. She thinks if we make a promise to you we’re more likely to keep it.” Yeah, and I’ve got a treaty for you to sign, too. “So you have to decide if you want to help us or not. I know you don’t want someone else getting contaminated.”

  She compressed her mouth. The ultimate daughter decay product.

  “What do you want, Pria?”

  “I want you to leave me alone.”

  Alone alone alone. The word buzzed in my head, like we were back up the echoing canyon, an echo of me, stiff-necked teenage me with my mom—you don’t care, you hate me because I’m alive and Henry isn’t, leave me alone alone alone. Good job, Oldfield. And now you can tell Pria to go to her room.

  She was already moving. She started down the walkway toward Soliano’s room.

&nb
sp; I said, startled, “You’re going to help?”

  “I’m going to the rest room.”

  She was heading toward the main building—the lobby—not Soliano’s room. I reached in my pocket and brought out my key. “Use mine.”

  She looked at the key as if it were crafted of cobalt-60. She looked out toward the lawn, and the walkway that led to the lobby. Raindrops bulleted onto the concrete, and bounced. Her face closed. She took on an almost crafty look. Another echo. I nearly put my key away. She snatched it before I could.

  ~

  I turned my hopes from the girl back where they belonged, to the geology. I found Walter in our lab examining a plug of boot soil under the scope. He grunted. I knew that grunt—an expression of interest, if not quite satisfaction.

  Half an hour later we heard a door slam and footsteps pounding and, distinct, a curse. Dios mio.

  We went out to investigate and saw Soliano loping toward the parking lot.

  35

  The blue Ford pickup stood alone at the far end of the parking lot.

  It was washed clean. The body rain-washed, the fenders scrubbed. There was no mud to sample; Walter didn’t even open the field kit. Scotty pronounced the vehicle not contaminated and put away his meter. Soliano didn’t need to call in the plates because he’d memorized Roy Jardine’s license number.

  Now we just stared.

  What got to me was the hose. The pickup was parked beside a planter box and a coiled hose. I pictured Jardine pressure-washing under the fenders, in the tire treads. No worry, then, that the geologists would build themselves a soil map. Hosing made sense. What didn’t make sense was that he’d taken the time to neatly coil the hose after use. That, I found creepily obsessive.

  Walter broke the silence. “This truck wasn’t here yesterday when we returned from the canyon.”

  I agreed. “So it arrived sometime in the night.”

  “Or this morning.” Soliano checked his watch. “Prior to Ms. Jellinek’s arrival.”

  We looked, as one, down the parking lot to the white pickup in the yellow hot zone. Suited RERTs were examining Chickie’s truck. FBI agents, sheriff deputies, and park rangers milled—all keeping well clear of the coned-off zone.