Badwater (The Forensic Geology Series) Read online

  Walter said, “What did it look like?”

  “What?” Oh, my thing on the saltpan. “I only got a glimpse. Just a...shape.”

  “A mirage, dear.”

  “No, it was moving.”

  “Temperature turbulence makes the image vibrate. And you superimpose your own thoughts upon it.”

  My thoughts had just been on Hap and I didn’t see Hap vibrating out there now. So what was I thinking of five minutes ago, when I first saw the shape? The thing that’s been in my mind, upfront or lurking, since I saw the drawing on the radwaste truck last night: the running man. I tried, now, superimposing that stick figure on the shape I’d glimpsed on the saltpan. Heat rays shimmer down like fallout and the stick runs and the salt underfoot crackles like a carpet of resin beads. No. What I’d seen was something else. Something creeping. I almost wished it was my stick. He seemed, now, an old friend. Don’t worry, old stick, we’ll find the missing beads and see them buried and no scumbag’s going to unleash them on you. So you can stop running. Sit down. It’s hot out there. You must be tired.

  “Of course,” Walter said, “the scientific explanation doesn’t capture the charm of a mirage.”

  Charm? All right. I said, “When were you last here, mirage-watching?”

  “Eons ago.”

  “Back when the desert was a lake?”

  “Before that. Back in the Precambrian.”

  “Cool. You do predate the dinosaurs.”

  He smiled.

  I smiled, and relaxed into the Death Valley summer.

  The road curved to round the apron of an alluvial fan, a fan so perfect it drew an ahhh from Walter. Rainwater washes earth out of the mountains and the debris comes to rest at the canyon mouths, fanning onto the valley floor. Here’s the heart of Death Valley: a mammoth basin, faulted and dropped deep below sea level, bordered by knife-ridged mountains which spill their guts, here and there, in coquettish fans.

  It is a huge bathtub. Things flow into it. Nothing flows out.

  I began to think about water.

  Water wet the soils that spattered up and pasted themselves beneath Roy Jardine’s offroader fenders.

  We’d spent a good three hours in our makeshift lab in Scotty’s RERT van with our noses in the fender soils, trying to patch together the layers. Some layers were defined. Some weren’t. The soil map at this point was a roughed-in outline. Our map, actually, resided in specimen dishes in the little ice chest in the back seat.

  I said, “Let’s talk about the itinerary.”

  Walter grunted, unhappy with the thinness of the itinerary.

  “So,” I said, “Roy Jardine starts up his offroader rig and...”

  As if Walter could, after all, resist. “Well. The first layer says he proceeds along the dirt road, or roads, near the talc mine. And then a break—pavement.”

  I waved a hand at the West Side Road. “Or an oiled road.”

  “Keep your hands on the wheel, dear. Yes, a hardpack surface. However, he could have driven a few miles, or hundreds of miles, before leaving the hardpack to pick up layer two. Coarse-grained alluvium suggests he drives upon an alluvial fan.”

  “So somewhere in the Basin and Range.” This was all Basin and Range country, valley and mountain, on and on like waves from the Sierras to the Rockies.

  “Today we’ll confine ourselves to Death Valley, considering the proximity of the talc mine. And it fields a few lovely candidates.”

  I nodded. I was liking Death Valley more and more.

  “Now,” Walter settled happily into it, “layer three narrows Jardine’s trail a smidge. It’s fine-grained alluvium, playa mud and sand. Hence, we have him crossing a riverbed or a canyon wash.”

  Water. I nodded.

  “Layer four is more forthcoming. A grayish soil, weathered I believe from a Cambrian marine dolomite.”

  “The canyon we’re heading for? One of your candidates?”

  “The closest.”

  “And layer five?”

  “Layer five, layer six...” He grunted. “We need more time.”

  I was feeling it myself. Time. Jardine killed his partner. He was on the run. He might still have the resin cask with him. “So why’s he heading up your canyon?”

  “There are mines.”

  Of course. He based his swap in a mine. Makes sense that he chose another mine to hide his stolen radwaste. A mine would provide the shielding. Surely, he would think about shielding. I pictured him, his scar, his long horsey face. So sad. So sick.

  I shook him off. Focus on the itinerary. I had my own reservations, beyond the sketchiness of the map. Oh, we’d been meticulous, if rushed, in analyzing the soils. But something didn’t sit right. And I couldn’t put my finger on it. Like our map had an unconformity, a crucial missing piece. Like the road had been cut and below was an abyss.

  Walter cranked up the air-conditioning to freeze.

  I punched the outside-air-temp button and the reading showed 119 degrees. The sun was trending westward toward the Panamint Range alongside us. Sink, I urged it. But then, of course, we lose our light.

  Walter said, “Up ahead. How about that?”

  A massive fan spilled from the Panamints. There had to be a canyon up there but it was not visible from down here because the fan looked to extend a good two miles from toe to head and rise several hundred feet.

  I stopped the car and we got out. The heat slammed me. Chilled by Walter’s freezer, I thought I was going to crack.

  We were at the intersection of two stitches in the basin floor: the West Side Road and the rough route angling up the giant fan. I knelt and scooped samples of the alluvial deposits. If we were on the right track, they’d match the evidence dish marked Layer Two in the ice chest.

  “What’s that?” Walter suddenly said. “You hear something? A car?”

  I listened. Nothing. I scanned the West Side Road, officially closed in summer. Nothing.

  “I’m certain I heard a car,” Walter said.

  I’m seeing things, he’s hearing things. Well, my young eyes may have 20/20 vision but Walter’s old ears have never plugged in an iPod. He hears like a twenty-year-old. We’re both certain.

  But all was silent and still.

  Even so, I couldn’t resist another look at the saltpan. I noted the channel that drained our canyon into the basin, curving like a sidewinder’s path. No mysterious shapes out there. Nothing moved but the ground, liquid with heat.

  I turned back to the Blazer, liquid with heat myself.

  “Did you check the radiator,” Walter asked, “before we left the mine?”

  “Did I?”

  He said, “It’s the driver’s responsibility.”

  “It’s always been you who takes care of the car.”

  “Always been?”

  Yikes. You nag somebody out of the driver’s seat, you better take on the rest of the job. Forget mirages. Pay attention to the real threats, like an overheated car in the desert. I gathered my dignity and went to open the hood.

  15

  The radiator drank a pint. We came to an accord. Shut off the air conditioning and roll down the windows.

  I turned the Blazer onto the road up the fan toward the rugged front of the Panamint Mountains. The twisted strata were weathered into pinks and purples and winey reds. The fan was a gray gravelly tongue, cracked by dry stream channels. We bumped along, sending up a rooster tail of dust. I checked my rearview mirror—the West Side Road was empty. At the canyon mouth, the fan road dropped into a wash. We paused to grab a sample and then pushed on. As the road roughened into the canyon, the Blazer gave a lurch and I wrestled the wheel and Walter folded his arms and looked out the window.

  Out the window, rock formations lined the walls like shelved books. We passed a few million years of history and a couple of branching side canyons, and when we’d plunged still deeper into the geological record and come to the gray and orange banded dolomites of the Bonanza King formation, I stopped the car.

 
We got out. Wicked hot but the canyon walls threw shade and my bones were no longer rattling. I felt, suddenly, giddy. “Hey pardner,” I said, “you fixin to rustle up a piece of that geology?” Walter chuckled. As he opened the field kit and laid out his tools, he broke into song: “In a cavern, in a canyon, excavating for a mine...” I joined in. “Lived a miner, forty-niner, and his daughter Clementine.”

  He knew all the verses. We filled our specimen dishes, exhausting Clementine.

  A coyote screamed.

  I was casting about for a coyote tune—and the thought was forming that it’s too hot and too early for coyotes—when Walter said, “Someone’s in trouble.”

  We went rigid, listening.

  It came again, unmistakable this time. Help.

  The thought was forming that it’s Roy Jardine up there somewhere—stewing in his vat of radionuclides and hearing us—but the cry was high-pitched and he surely wasn’t looking to be found.

  Help, again, urgent.

  The sound came from above. Over the rim into the next side canyon? Sound in a canyon is a tricky thing.

  “Which way?” Walter said.

  “I don’t know. I don’t like it.” I got my cell and dialed Soliano. Roaming. Nothing. In a cavern in a canyon, got no service for my phone. The cry came again. Walter tried his phone, which proved as useless as mine.

  Help. A scream.

  Walter yelled back, then started downcanyon.

  I stopped him. “What are you doing?”

  “Let’s try that side canyon.”

  “Okay, let’s drive.”

  “We can’t drive up that side canyon, Cassie.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  He said, “What if it’s snakebite?”

  Lord. Snakebite. Walter’s only real fear. The canyon floor was sparsely haired with sage. Do sidewinders hole up in sage? I got the first aid pouch from our field kit, grabbed a water bottle, and we started downcanyon.

  I recalled two side canyons, one branching off in each direction. We rounded a bend and came to the fork. We yelled, and waited for the cry that could not be pinpointed. Silence, now. Walter plunged into the north canyon. I followed. The canyon was narrow, sage climbing its slopes, and as we gained elevation it steepened and twisted. We yelled, rounding every twist. All I heard in reply was blood pounding in my ears.

  Walter stumbled. I caught his arm. “Slow down.”

  He didn’t, but it didn’t much matter because within a few minutes the canyon dead-ended in a wall of trilobite-speckled shale. Walter’s face was beet red. Mine felt on fire. I drank then passed the water bottle to him. His hands shook. I thought, there’s things worse than snakebite. There’s the mini-strokes, which have hit Walter twice these past two years, numbing his legs and slurring his speech, making him ask silly questions. He said, now, “Shall we go?” which was not in the least a silly question.

  We retraced our route in silence.

  In the main canyon, Walter glanced at the south-branching fork.

  “We’re going back,” I said, “and turning the car around and when we get onto the fan we’ll try the cell again, and if it doesn’t have service we’ll drive all the way into Furnace Creek and find a ranger.”

  “All right.” His voice was dry as sandpaper.

  We trudged upcanyon, my worry deepening. Snakes, strokes, surprises.

  I thought, there’s hundreds of old mines in Death Valley so what’s the chance the first canyon on our list is the right one? Tiny, minuscule. Point oh five percent.

  We rounded the bend and I saw that I was wrong.

  16

  The hood was up on the Blazer and the doors were open. It looked like the car had come into the canyon for a tuneup. But the mechanic was a vandal.

  Our things littered the ground. Field kit, packs, cell phones, maps, my purse. Stomped, smashed, dumped, ripped. Our gallon-jugs of water were knifed open. The soil was still wet.

  Walter bent over the exposed engine. “Wires are cut.” Voice drier than sandpaper.

  There came a sound, somewhere downcanyon, of an engine.

  I hissed “she carries a shotgun” and we tumbled into the Blazer. I turned the ignition key. Nothing. We flattened ourselves onto the hot vinyl seats.

  “She?” Walter whispered.

  ~

  At last, it became too hot to breathe.

  Seventeen minutes gone, by my watch. “Shall we?” I said.

  Walter nodded.

  We sat up. Nothing moved outside. We opened the doors, and that movement did not draw gunfire. We got out, wobbly. We stumbled to the wedge of shade cast by the canyon wall and collapsed on the baking ground.

  I offered water.

  Walter shook his head. The quart bottle was half-empty.

  I said, “Does us no good in the bottle.” Don’t argue, old man. It’s water in the body that’ll keep us alive.

  In the end, we drank.

  ~

  Ten more minutes gone. I thought about moving.

  Walter whispered, “Why do you think it was her?”

  “Purse.” My voice, like his, was sandpaper.

  We studied the purse, lying beside the front tire. Walter gave it to me last Christmas—a creamy leather backpack purse, feminine and practical. Now it was gutted from flap to bottom, contents dumped.

  Walter said, “Could have been Jardine.”

  “Look at my compact.”

  Shattered, the pressed powder cratered. My face prickled, where she’d run her wet finger. Ever wear makeup? It hadn’t got that personal, with Jardine. Had it?

  Walter said, “The compact could simply have broken.”

  ~

  “Shit,” I said. “Shit.”

  The back seat was empty. I went cold in the overheated air. The perp had taken the ice chest, which meant the perp knew what our business was. And the only people who knew what was in the ice chest were the people at the talc mine. Nearly everyone at the mine knew because we’d spouted off about fender soils and maps and following the trail of Jardine’s offroader.

  “He has what he wants,” Walter said. “He’ll leave us alone now.”

  “He?”

  “Or she. Take your pick.”

  “She,” I said. For now.

  ~

  I made an inventory. We had less than a third of a quart of water. We had a granola bar that had dropped under the seat, the first-aid kit, stuff from the violated field kit—scalpels and tweezers seeming the most useful. I was thankful that we’d left the valuable equipment, the spectrometers and the scopes, in Scotty’s van.

  Walter picked through the kit. “My knife’s gone.” He stared at the sliced water jugs, and then the exposed engine where the wires were cut. With his knife.

  We returned to the shade and slumped against the wall.

  Minutes passed, then Walter spoke. “We’re vulnerable here.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Take another side canyon,” he said. “Find a place to hide.”

  “How long?”

  “Until we can walk out under cover of darkness.” He wetted his cracked lips. “Until it’s not so damnably hot.”

  “What about Soliano?”

  He blinked.

  “Walter? Shouldn’t we look for Soliano?”

  He said, “I hadn’t thought that far.”

  I sagged. How could he not think that far? Soliano had called while we were on the West Side Road. Walter had put his cell phone on speaker. We’d told Soliano our plans, that when we’d finished here we planned to catch the Greenwater Valley Road and check a couple of candidates over there, and then rendezvous when it got dark at Furnace Creek. Unless we phoned to say otherwise. How could Walter not think of Soliano?

  He cleared his throat. “Of course. We must get down to the road. We must be visible.”

  I relaxed an inch.

  ~

  We sat five minutes more, gathering ourselves.

  I wondered when Soliano would take note that he had
n’t heard from us, whether he’d check his watch and calculate that we must, by now, be over in Greenwater Valley, in which case the most direct route from the talc mines was not via the West Side Road. If he didn’t find us elsewhere, though, sooner or later he’d surely come this way. Two people on the West Side Road would stick out like sore thumbs.

  That is, until it got dark.

  I roused myself and got the flashlight from the tire-changing cubby.

  Walter rose, gathering our meager belongings. He stuffed them into my emptied pack.

  I took my field knife and Hap’s bandana from my pocket. I sawed the cloth in half, then dipped the halves in the radiator water. The red cloth darkened to hematite. I gave Walter one half and he understood. We squeezed the water over our heads and bodies, repeating the process until the radiator was dry, then draped the wet bandanas around our necks.

  “You are a genius,” he said.

  “Girl Scouts.”

  We had to laugh.

  He recovered his hat and shades.

  I put on mine. I cleared my throat. “Well, pardner?”

  “Let’s vamoose.”

  I scooped a handful of dolomite-weathered soil and put it in my pocket. We’d come up here for samples and I was not leaving without a sample.

  17

  We headed downcanyon.

  At the fork there were scuffed prints heading into the south canyon. Further down, around a gentle bend, there were tire tracks. Not ours. Smart place to stop, because there was room enough to turn around.

  I said, “You did hear a car on the West Side Road.”

  “We should have waited.”

  Wouldn’t have helped. The perp, tailing us, wanted to remain unseen. She comes around that curve, sees our car stopped beside the saltpan, backs her car up. Rolls down her window. Waits until she hears our engine start again. Then creeps around the curve, sees our rooster-tail going up the fan. Follows when it’s safe. Comes just shy of the bend, gets out to walk. Takes the south fork and climbs its ridge. Maybe she sees us; maybe she just hears us. We don’t hear her because we’re singing our fool heads off. She gets inspired. Yells for help. We head downcanyon. And she scrambles down from the ridge and does her business. Then, while we’re up the north fork, she escapes downcanyon with her prize: the ice chest, the soil map, all our work. She gets in the pickup, does her three-point turn, and exits the canyon.