Badwater (The Forensic Geology Series) Page 23

  When I moved my gaze back up to his face, to the real eyes, I was shocked to find them moist. Like he was deeply moved, so overcome he was about to cry. His small mouth pursed. He put a finger to his lips. As if I could speak, or cry out, in my frozen state. He lowered his finger and smiled at me. A shocking smile. Full of warmth. Like he was so glad to see me here. He bobbed his head, encouraging me to agree. So glad we meet again! For a moment I was lulled. Wanted to believe in his benevolence. Wanted to be lulled. When he smiled, his tiny mouth stretched and his cheeks bunched up and the crater on his left cheek wrinkled and deepened. I followed its transformation. His mouth suddenly tightened and he moved his head leftward, just enough that the crater disappeared from view. I jerked my head so that my headlamp beam hit the wall to the right of his face. But I could still see that mouth compress to fury, oh shit he thinks I turned my light away because I can’t stand looking at him but I’d only turned out of raw fear.

  I didn’t yet fully know fear.

  The gun muzzle swung away from me. Uptunnel. It pointed at Walter’s back.

  I turned back to Roy Jardine, don’t shoot don’t shoot, please I’ll do anything just don’t shoot, and he smiled again, he saw he had me, and he put his finger to his lips again and then gave his head a jerk to the left. Instructions clear. Move on. Keep quiet. And I won’t shoot Walter.

  I wanted with my whole heart to follow those instructions.

  But I could not forget Dearing. Dearing’s neck, opened to the windpipe.

  This man with Dearing’s submachine gun would not keep his bargain. He was going to wait for me to move on, following Walter and Hap up ahead, in the dark, and wait for Oliver to finish hunting for snakes and come tiptoeing around the corner behind me. He had to wait for Oliver, who had shouted for the whole mine to hear that he was carrying an MP-five submachine gun and was prepared to open fire. Otherwise, Jardine would have already mowed us down.

  I went calm. I bought frozen seconds in which to formulate a plan before I had to move, to appear to honor our bargain. Maybe there was a better plan than the one I concocted in five seconds but this is what I went with.

  I gave Jardine one last look and a nod—yes yes I understand I’ll do as you say—and he returned to me a look of such approval, such a soft yearning smile like he wished he could embrace me to seal the bargain, that I almost honored it. I turned face-front and started to move. I heard Oliver behind me, finally, coming around the corner. Oblivious to the man in the storage bin. There were only two things that would improve the odds for Oliver. One was the flashlight built into the grip of his subgun. When he swung the gun to point it at Jardine, his light would hit Jardine in the face. Just as my headlamp had done. But it wouldn’t be a vanity thing for Jardine this time. It would be a distraction. A light in the eyes. Maybe a micromoment of blindness. Just the tiniest edge.

  The other edge I gave to Oliver myself.

  I moved my right arm—on the side facing away from Jardine—stiffly, up twenty degrees, a semaphore. Stop. At the same time I stuck out my thumb and jerked it leftward, toward the bin. Look. After that, I could do no more than put faith in Oliver’s Quantico training and trigger finger.

  As the shots came, I screamed “down down down” and hit the floor and Walter and Hap uptunnel must have caught the terror in my voice because they hit the floor too.

  41

  “Holy crap,” Hap said.

  I looked up. I’d been tugging on my boot, which was caught under a crosstie. Clumsy. Amazed to be alive.

  Hap moved to the storage bin and grasped Roy Jardine’s dangling left wrist. He fingered the pulse. He shook his head.

  Relief flooded me as blood poured out of Jardine. He hung over the lip of the bin. His arms draped down as if reaching for the submachine gun he had dropped on the rails. His head was bent, showing the crown. His black ponytail hung down, funneling blood.

  “Come help,” Walter yelled.

  Walter was kneeling uptunnel over Oliver, who lay with one knee bent. Looked like Oliver, too, caught a boot. I yanked my boot free. Hap turned from the bin and helped me up. As we rushed forward my headlamp caught a dime of blood on Oliver’s khaki shirt front. Oh no, I thought. No no no.

  Walter freed Oliver from the sling of his gun and laid the weapon on the ground. I glanced back at Jardine, at the subgun on the rails. Oliver and Jardine had shot each other.

  Walter snapped, “Do something, Hap.”

  “Don’t have my gear.”

  I came alive. “I’ve got first aid.” I unslung my pack.

  “Needs more’n first aid.” Hap knelt and put his hands on Oliver’s chest, which rose and fell fitfully. He ripped open the shirt, exposing the hole in Oliver’s gut, just below the rib cage. There was a seep of blood, almost no blood at all compared to the stream draining from Jardine.

  I knew that meant little but I held onto it nonetheless.

  Walter passed Hap gauze and tape from the first aid kit. Hap’s long fingers danced around the wound, patching it, and then suddenly traveled up to Oliver’s neck to find the carotid.

  I went cold.

  Hap’s fingers moved again, up to Oliver’s face, and pulled back an eyelid.

  I watched, fixated.

  Hap sensed me. He looked up, like he was taking my measure in preparation for a sketch. But he does not draw faces. He draws hands. I could not help looking again at Oliver’s face cupped in Hap’s hand. Hap wore a ring on his right pinkie.

  I turned to look at the storage bin, shining my headlamp at Jardine’s dangling hands. He wore no rings.

  When I turned back to Hap, he had released Oliver. “Nothing more I can do.” Hap’s hands had disappeared into the capacious pockets of his parachute pants.

  It didn’t matter. I knew what I’d seen. It was a flat-headed gold ring and the signet bore the engraving of a desert scene. I’d seen Hap sketch that ring in Walter’s room, when he drew Roy’s hands.

  “Then here’s what we’re going to do,” Walter said, getting to his feet. “We’re going to make a sling out of our shirts and we’re going to carry Mr. Oliver outside and phone for help.”

  “Okay,” Hap said.

  I thought, Hap must have taken the ring from Roy, when he checked Roy’s pulse. But why? Some kind of souvenir?

  Walter was already unbuttoning his shirt. Hap put his left hand flat on the floor, preparing to get to his feet. His right hand remained in his pocket.

  I stood, fingering my top button. I suddenly took note of Hap’s shirt. Last I saw him at the Inn, he’d been wearing Homer Simpson. But now he wore Blinky the three-eyed mutant fish that lives downstream from Homer’s nuke plant, where the water’s contaminated. I suddenly didn’t like it that Hap had changed shirts. Why’d he do that? I always change into a dress before I testify in court. Walter puts on a tie. Hap changes into Blinky. And now he puts on Roy’s ring. Why’s that? Hap caught me studying his shirt. He winked. He smoothed it out and took his right hand from his pocket and scooped up Oliver’s subgun. He leveled the muzzle up at me. “You can keep your shirt on after all, Buttercup.”

  I still gripped the top button. I could not get my fingers to move, one way or the other.

  Walter froze, half out of his shirt. “What do you think you’re...”

  “Think I’m giving y’all a chance to cooperate.” Hap got to his feet and backed against the far wall, where he could cover us both with the flick of a wrist. He ducked into Oliver’s gun sling. “Finish taking off the shirt, Walter.”

  “Hap,” Walter said, evenly, “let’s think this through. Whatever your plans, you can let us go. We won’t try to follow you. I give you my word.”

  “Don’t rightly know the worth of your word.”

  “It’s solid.”

  “Take off the shirt.”

  Walter, stiff, removed his shirt. His bare chest showed the rails of his ribs.

  “Cassie, go get it.” Hap tracked me with the subgun. “Now bring out your pocket knife and cut the s
leeves off at the shoulders.”

  I glanced at Oliver.

  “He won’t be needing it.”

  I’d been clutching the hope that we were still making a sling to carry Oliver.

  Walter said, “He could die without help.”

  “Can’t carry him,” Hap said. “Not where we’re going.”

  I asked, faint, “Where are we going?”

  Hap pointed the gun downtunnel then recalibrated it on me.

  I made clumsy work of the sleeves.

  “Now shut the knife, wrap it in one of the sleeves, and toss it to me.” My toss was wide; he had to reach. “Cassie, you want to be more careful.” He pocketed my knife and draped the sleeve over his shoulder like a tailor. “Now use your sleeve to tie Walter’s hands behind his back. Take off your wristwatches, first. Don’t want anything interfering with a nice clean knot.”

  We undid our watches. Piece by piece, we were losing our tools.

  “Make it a square knot. Don’t want no sneaky taut-line hitch. I know my knots—scout’s honor. You know your knots, Cassie?”

  I nodded. I’d earned that badge. I tied Walter’s wrists with a true square knot but I looped it loose.

  Hap moved in to check. He slid a finger into the knot. “Aw Buttercup.” He shook his head and laid the gun butt across my back.

  The blow knocked me to the floor.

  Walter swore.

  There was a thud and a grunt and Walter came down beside me.

  I lay stunned, as much from the shock as the pain, because against all good sense I’d held onto the idea that a man who’d run saline through my veins had a strain of humanity running through his, that Hap would not penalize us for trying, but I came to my senses and saw there was no scout’s honor here.

  Hap climbed onto my back and tied my wrists with a boyishly brutal knot.

  Then he moved to Walter.

  I kept stupefied watch. This EMT runs terror through the veins and cuts off oxygen to the brain. I feared the effect on Walter. Another mini-stroke. And then Walter, like Oliver, could not be carried.

  42

  Hap had to help Walter to his feet.

  We went single-file, first Walter then me then Hap. Hap had retrieved Dearing’s subgun and he wore it slung across his back. Oliver’s subgun rode in his hands, as I discovered when I slowed and its hard mouth bit into my spine.

  Walter stumbled once but all Hap said was “watch your step.”

  We came to a junction and bore left into a larger tunnel, a tunnel with a cathedral ceiling and four-square timbering and intact rails. An important tunnel.

  I oriented myself. There was daylight at the far end. We were on level two, heading for the exit where, beyond the locked gate, was the rubble pile, and beyond that was the path leading down to level one and the valley, and beyond that the ridges and then Cherokee Canyon and our waiting vehicles. And beyond that, the way back to the Inn to find Soliano and then soak our feet.

  I fought down the vision.

  We nearly made it to the exit. Hap stopped us a dozen yards short, where a side tunnel branched off. It was gated. I angled my headlamp to illuminate the metal sign wired to the bars: No entry. Hazardous. Deteriorating explosives. Broken machine parts. Hap stood us against the far wall. He brought out a keyring from his capacious pants pocket.

  I focused on the problem of the locks, desperate to occupy my mind. Hap or Roy had changed the Park Service locks because they did not want any patrolling rangers to come in here and find their stash. But Chickie turned up instead, come to find out what Jardine had been hiding, come to get in on the blackmail. Single-minded in her greed. Methodically, I ticked off the gates we’d seen, the locks we’d tried. Two entrance gates had been locked. The top-level gate had been unlocked. Either Chickie had picked that lock, or Hap or Roy had been sloppy. I didn’t much care. I cared about this gate, this lock, and what lay beyond.

  Hap didn’t need his key.

  The side tunnel was unremarkable until we passed an alcove containing a winch and a spool of neon purple cable, both on wheeled dollies. The growing knot in my stomach tightened. Up ahead was a larger intersecting tunnel. Some kind of fat snake crawled out of that tunnel, into ours—and Walter stiffened—but as we drew nearer I identified the snake as a bundle of wires. The bundle ran along our tunnel wall then snaked to the right, into a room.

  Hap directed us to follow the bundled wires.

  It was a cavernous room filled with rusting machinery. It took me some moments to sort the tangle by the light of our headlamps. I identified the twin flywheels of an old drum winch. A cable spool lay flat with its guts unwinding. Wheels and gears were scattered about, like the sprung works of a giant wristwatch. Hap followed the bundled wires to the corner where a small generator sat. It too was rusted but Hap brought it to life, illuminating a string of bare light bulbs.

  I had to squint.

  Hap directed us across the room. We skirted crates of supplies no miner would have dreamed of: bottled water, freeze-dried food, sleeping bags, hazmat suits and SCBA gear. And then there was a box of putty-like cylinders that any modern-day miner would presumably recognize. I thought, so that’s what plastique looks like—play-dough, like Chickie said. It should look scarier.

  Hap told us to take a seat on the cable spool.

  He turned to the splintery table against the wall. He removed a rotting burlap sack to reveal a machine no miner would have dreamed of: a laptop computer. Its cable joined the wire bundle. He switched on the machine. He sat on a crate in front of the table and rested Oliver’s submachine gun across his lap, snout to us. He tapped the keyboard. He angled the monitor. “Look around the corner.”

  The creepy thing was, we could.

  Around the corner was the large tunnel. The picture on the computer screen was a long shot, looking uptunnel, which was lit by bulbs that hung like bats from the ceiling. The camera, as well, must have been ceiling-mounted because we had a gods-eye view. I oriented myself, first, by locating the wire bundle which powered the room. Traversing the tunnel were rusting rails where ore carts used to run, but clearly Hap had no need for carts to haul his loads. A beastly telehandler squatted beside an ore shaft. Attachments were at the ready: tools to unbolt and detorque the cask lid, invertible forks to hook into the cask lifting lugs. The telehandler was ready to empty the next load of resins, but the swap had ended. The stockpile was, de facto, complete.

  My attention shifted to the ore shaft.

  As if Hap understood, he changed the picture. The gods-eye view closed and then a new window opened onscreen. It was a view inside the shaft, a view that brutally tied off the knot in my gut.

  Resin beads filled the shaft, lapping nearly to the top. So that’s what they look like. I’d seen them in the borax tunnel but they’d been coming at me like cannon-fire and I hadn’t paused for a good long look. I took it now. Looked more like sand than beads. Or, even, bath salts. They gave off a warm amber glow. They should look scarier. They should sound scarier—beads was too benign a word. There should be better words. TripleX shitload of mayhem carrying cell-destroying gentlemen.

  There were no words. There was only fear.

  I averted my gaze from the screen. It fell on the crate of hazmat gear, next to Hap. The lid was propped open but I guessed it had been closed when Chickie found her way in here. I guessed she’d had to fight the latches to open the lid, picking up the grains of rust I’d scraped from beneath her nails. Here’s where she’d found her moonsuit. And then, suited up, believing she was good to go, she’d gone looking for Jardine’s cache. And there, in the shaft, she’d found it. She’d known we were hunting for it, and now she could take a pack full of beads to show Soliano she’d found it, and bargain for her million-dollar reward. She certainly worked hard for it. It must have been an awkward job. She must have been on her hands and knees, reaching down into the shaft to scoop enough to fill her pack. Maybe she stirred up the beads enough to go aerosol, and if her facepiece wasn’t snugged up re
al tight, maybe she breathed in the murderous dust. I hoped not. From what I’d seen, she was already paying dearly for her crime.

  I whispered to Hap, “What do you want?”

  “Compensation for my hard work.” He swiveled to face us. “Speaking of which, you can’t get good help any more, can you?”

  I could not think what to say. Yes? No? I could feel well enough—the rough wood biting into my backside, the shirtsleeve throttling my wrists—but I could not think which answer would satisfy Hap. Nor, evidently, could Walter.

  “This tying your tongues?” Hap hefted the subgun. “We’re just going to talk. About lousy help. You paying attention?”

  I was paying exquisite attention.

  “Problem starts with Ryan when I tell him tonight’s the night.”

  My attention focused on Ryan Beltzman. What’d the radwaste driver do? Can Walter and I avoid doing it? I spoke, asbestos-tongued. “He tried to back out?”

  “He smoked too much damn dope.” Hap rested the weapon across his knees. “Too wasted to do his bit, so Roy gets incensed and then there’s the fight and the chase and the crash—y’all know that bit—and then Roy turns out damn near useless as Ryan. Sits in his pickup wringing his hands. Which leaves me no option but to take care of Ryan myself.”

  So it was Hap, not Roy, who shot Ryan. Shit.

  Walter said, “I see your point.”

  “What’s my point?”

  “Your partners botched it.”

  “You got that right. But that’s not my point.” Hap fingered his ring. All that showed now was the gold band. “After the fiasco we’ve got problems. I tell Roy to go home and stay put. Knew we’d have the Feds on us soon enough—told him I’d play along, decide when it’s safe to make our move. Afraid I didn’t anticipate a couple geologists following talc and mud and whatnot.” Hap gave us a rueful smile.

  I returned an icy look. “Who sent Chickie after us?”

  “That’d be Roy. Seems he thought I mighta been thinking of selling him out. Boy starts going freelance on me. Still, he didn’t do half-bad—stealing your soil samples, that is. Don’t rightly approve of stranding you out there. You could’ve died. I wanted you dead, I’d have taken care of that myself.”