The Forensic Geology Box Set

by Toni Dwiggins

  Good idea.

  “Here’s the man,” Miller said, waving, “here’s Mister Radwaste himself. Cassie Oldfield, Hector Soliano, I give you the dump’s own manager—Milton Ballinger.”

  A compact man with the bantam stride of a nervous rooster approached. “Put it away Hap, these people aren’t looking to be entertained, they came with a problem and I got it covered.” Ballinger was middle-aged and boyish-looking. Egg bald, smooth tan from the scalp down, jawline firm to its sharp chin. He could have been an advertisement for the uranium health cures the atomic enthusiasts used to promote.

  Miller said, “Milt himself came up with our motto—closing the circle. Made him a rock star with the honchos.”

  “We just go by the initials. You know, CTC.” Milt Ballinger’s small eyes shone bright as new pennies.

  ~ ~ ~

  Roy Jardine was having trouble paying attention to his job. Nerves. Well, he bet outlaws got nervous sometimes.

  He needed to keep up with his recon.

  He watched Ballinger come over to where Miller was. There were two strangers with Miller. A tall snooty-looking male and a female dressed like she was going for a hike. They must be plainclothes cops. That made sense. He bet they came here looking for the resin cask.

  As long as they weren’t looking for him. How could they be? None of them were paying attention to him. The cops were listening to Miller.

  He wondered what Miller was saying. Some joke. Miller thought he was so much better than everybody, so he mocked them. One time when this dude contaminated a finger on a crapped-up wrench, Miller said he’d have to meter the dude’s nose and crotch too. Ha ha.

  But Jardine had to admit, when Miller mocked Ballinger, Jardine liked it.

  Ballinger was talking to the cops now. He was probably bragging how he rushed to work to make sure no terrorists were launching an attack, or something. Mr. Whoop-de-doo General Manager. Jardine wondered what they’d think if they knew what Ballinger’s nickname was around the dump. It was the password he used online: Hot-Boy. He told his bigmouth assistant it meant hot as in rad, and she told everybody. Everybody knew that when he logged onto his porn sites he didn’t mean rad.

  Jardine watched Hot-Boy bullshitting the cops.

  ~ ~ ~

  Milt Ballinger jabbed a finger at the CTC flatbed from the crash site. “Just unloading the last package.”

  Indeed, only one of the casks recovered from the crash remained on the flatbed. The truck was parked within a coned-off zone. A crane loomed.

  Soliano eyed the cask. “It contains what it should contain?”

  “Hundred percent,” Ballinger said.

  “You know this how?”

  “Because it’s hot,” Miller put in. “Notice we’re remote-handling it?”

  I watched as the remote-operated crane attached a grappling device to the cask. Here’s where it happened, if the perp tried this before and succeeded. Here’s where the dummy cask got craned off the truck and, maybe, got jostled and, perhaps, shed grains of talc. I was going to have to get up there in the unloading zone, I saw. Up there where it’s too hot to touch. I had my own monitor—I wore the laser spectrometer slung over my shoulder like a purse—but it was not remote-operable.

  Ballinger nudged Soliano. “See that gal over there with the tallywhacker?”

  We looked at the suited figure poking a long telescoping wand into the cask lid assembly. Only way to tell she was a she was by the color of her booties, hot pink.

  “She’s not doing it long distance for grins.”

  “And what,” Soliano said, “does this tallywhacker tell her?”

  “She’s reading the surface dose rate.” Ballinger hooked his thumbs into his belt buckle, a brass horseshoe. “See, these’re high-gamma resins, gonna throw off some serious dose.”

  “How often do you receive these serious resins?”

  “Often as somebody has nasty messes to clean up.”

  I spoke. “What happens if the serious resins—the ones that are missing—get loose in the environment?”

  “Depends.” Ballinger shifted. “If they get cleaned up in time.”

  “In time for what?”

  “Before they release their rads.”

  “Into the air?”

  “Yeah. Air, soil, water, that’d be the worry.”

  Hap Miller sighed. “And then, by and by, we’d get John Q Public asking what’s your plutonium doing in my coffee?”

  I stared. “Are you serious?”

  “Now and then,” Miller said.

  “C’mon,” Ballinger said, “we got one missing cask. You find it, we’ll bury it.”

  Soliano’s face sharpened. “You are certain this has not happened before?”

  “Darn right. We keep track of every shipment.”

  “How?”

  “Gal over there with the tallywhacker matches her readings to the numbers on the shipping manifest. Manifest says what’s in the load—types of rads, curie count, tracking numbers, the whole shooting match.”

  Soliano frowned. “The manifest cannot be altered?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Even if some knothead diddled it, we’ll catch it. See, the shipper sends us an electronic copy to check against the papers that go in the truck. Got that crypto stuff, real secure.”

  “Not in my experience.”

  “Sure, fine, nothing’s foolproof but we take all reasonable precautions.” A stitch of sweat appeared on Ballinger’s lip. “This...incident...this is a first.”

  “Your facility has had no problems before?”

  Ballinger licked the sweat off his lip. “No more’n anybody else’s.”

  “Anti-nuclear agitation?”

  “Nah nah, we don’t get that crap here.”

  “Right,” Miller put in, “the locals love us. We employ them. And once a year the feds make the good citizens of Beatty pee in a cup, just to keep us honest.”

  “Listen,” Ballinger said, “I myself grew up in Beatty and there was real competition for jobs here. Course, you need serious training if you wanna go far in this biz.”

  I wondered if some local was upset about not getting a job here, if this was a question of sour-grapes sabotage. My attention caught on a suited figure checking the mechanics of a truck filled with sand. He kept glancing at us, like he expected Ballinger to come correct him. I wondered if he was new on the job. He abruptly turned his back. Name on his tape was Jardine. My attention returned to the issue at hand. I said, “Mr. Ballinger, I’d like to check the unloading area.”

  “For what?”

  “Talc. On the chance our perp tried this before. And succeeded.”

  “Missy, that’s frigging nuts.”

  I flushed. I was beat, out of my element, and not a little hungry. I said, “I’d still like to monitor.”

  “Oookay, but you’re not going out there unsupervised and you’re sure not going right now.”

  I did not really care to go out there right now. The suited figures, retreating behind a portable shield, did not care to be out there either. The sand truck guy, Jardine, threw us another glance. I fought the urge to wave. I folded my arms and watched the delicate dance of the crane boom as it lifted the cask from the flatbed. The operator directed this dance with a handheld remote, guided by a camera mounted on the boom. I held my breath. I guessed he held his.

  “What puzzles me,” Soliano said, “is why the perp filled the dummy cask with talc—the cask we found at the crash site. Why not simply leave it empty?”

  “Nah nah,” Ballinger said, “that’d set off alarm bells. Package gotta weigh what the manifest says it weighs—that’s how we adjust the crane boom angle.”

  “I see. He is clever.”

  “No he’s not. Because he’s not gonna sneak it past us. Not today, not last week, not ever. See, it’s gonna get metered and if it contains talc we’re gonna say, well that cask isn’t throwing off any gammas. Then we’re gonna sample and find out why not.”

  “Who is going to
say? The woman with the tallywhacker?”

  “Her, today. Another day, whoever on the cask team signs up.” Ballinger blew a shot of air onto his moist upper lip. “How’s it matter?”

  “You tell it to me. We have ruled out the manifest, which is possible to diddle. It is possible to spoof the weight, with talc. But it is not possible for a cask of talc to give off gammas, as you explain.” Soliano lifted his palms. “Consequently, the person metering the cask is a key player. That person could falsely report, yes?”

  Ballinger turned to Miller.

  “Moi? The site radiation safety officer god? Falsely report?”

  “You join the cask team, Hap? Criminy, just go get the roster.”

  I watched Hap Miller saunter off, feeling a little naked without the radiation safety officer god on immediate watch. And then my attention returned, like a grappling hook had got hold of it, to the unloading zone. The crane boom swung slowly, so slowly that if it were moving a bucket of water not a drop would spill. It came to a halt over the trench, bobbed, and the cask sank into its concrete coffin.

  Almost time.

  ~ ~ ~

  Jardine was doing better now. Doing the job. Handling the recon.

  He came back to the unloading zone and checked the hydraulics on the boom lift truck then gave the operator the okay, and the operator back-filled the cask caisson with sand, and Jardine watched the procedure like he cared.

  What he cared about was why Miller had suddenly left. Did something happen?

  And now Ballinger and the cops were watching Jardine and Jardine’s skin prickled and it wasn’t just the sweat inside his suit. But if they knew something they would have already come for him.

  Still, maybe it was time to go. He put his tools in the caddy and casually strolled past the enemy toward the security gate.

  “Yo, Roy!” Ballinger called out.

  Jardine nearly died.

  “Come on over here.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “Roy’s a little hoity-toity,” Ballinger confided.

  The man slowly came our way.

  “This here’s Roy Jardine,” Ballinger said. “Roy, these people are helping out with the incident. Need you to assist the lady. Go ahead and unmask.”

  Jardine unhooded and threaded the straps of his facepiece over a long braided ponytail. He pushed up the facepiece.

  I tried not to stare but... Holy moly.

  Soliano spoke, low, to Ballinger. “Mr. Jardine’s...this is significant?”

  “His face? Nah nah. See, awhile back there was a little, uh, incident with a cesium-137 source. You know, kind they use for gauges, or cancer treatments? Was a prank that went out of control.” Ballinger clapped Jardine on the shoulder. “Okay by you, Roy, I tell them what happened?”

  “You just did, Mr. Ballinger.”

  It didn’t sound okay by Jardine. He had a nasal voice that broke as it rose. And it didn’t look okay by him. He held his head high. He had a high forehead, skin pulled tight by the skinned-back hair in the tight ponytail. Wide-set brown eyes, down-turned at the corners. Flattened nose, spreading at the nostrils. Long horsey jaw in which the small mouth got lost. Large irregular oval on his left cheek, with a mottled interior and a rim that wormed around the crater.

  I was not bothered by the scar. My little brother Henry had scars. The last one, which I remember best, was a dent like a jack-o-lantern grin below his knee where the joint lining had been excised. So Jardine’s scar didn’t bother me. It was his expression that hurt. He looked so very sad.

  Soliano asked, “Who played this prank?”

  “Never found out,” Ballinger said. “Called in the Sheriff but no luck. Still, CTC officials put their trust in me to handle things and that’s what I did. Ran a lessons-learned session for all my people. Attendance mandatory. And I made dead sure the company covered Roy’s medicals. Pain and suffering, to boot.”

  Soliano turned to Jardine. “This resolution satisfied you?”

  “Yeah.”

  I watched his scarred face. I’ve seen lesser insults be motive for mayhem.

  Soliano pulled out his wallet and showed Jardine his ID. “Mr. Jardine, may I inquire as to your whereabouts last night?”

  Jardine said, slowly, “Home in bed.”

  “Alone?”

  Jardine went scarlet. He nodded.

  “And your job here is?”

  “Maintenance.”

  “Have you ever worked on the cask team?”

  “No.”

  “Do you wish to?”

  Jardine shrugged. “Takes a lot of training.”

  Ballinger nodded. “Darn right.”

  “I see.” Soliano regarded Jardine. “Thank you for your time.”

  So that’s it? I thought Jardine warranted a few more questions but I couldn’t come up with any. I agreed with Soliano that the key player was whoever metered the cask. Jardine might have motive, but not the training or the opportunity. He was likely just one of those unfortunates who swallowed the insult and collected his compensation.

  “All right then, Roy,” Ballinger said. “Lady wants to poke around out there. I need somebody to go with her. Make sure she doesn’t whack her head or trip or... Liability stuff.”

  Jardine turned to me and his gaze fixed on the spectrometer hanging from my shoulder. He said, in that nasal complaint, “What are you?”

  I said, “Geologist.”

  He pursed his little mouth.

  I didn’t really mind having a keeper, going out there. Jardine led the way, punctiliously skirting the sand truck to prevent, I guessed, me whacking into it. My attention shifted to the ground. Here’s where it happened, if the swap was run before—if the dummy cask arrived and shed grains of talc. Of course, any talc spilled here would have been scuffed into invisibility. Not, however, invisible to the laser eye of my spectrometer. I selected the chemical fingerprint for talc and began the scan. The laser illuminated the soil, scattering its constituents into their spectral wavelengths.

  Jardine closed in behind me. I saw him by the long morning shadow he cast, which dogged my every move. I grew distracted, almost missing the spectrometer’s chirp. I stared at the screen, at the jagged wavelength line. “Huh,” Jardine said, at my ear, “how’s that thing work?” It doesn’t, I thought. It doesn’t happen this way—first place I stick my nose and bingo. That’s more than luck. That’s a red flag. I said, “Give me some space.” He backed off. I reset the spectro. It scanned and chirped the news. So okay lady, you got lucky. I shook my head and expanded the searchable grid. “There it is,” Jardine said, with me again. He’d recognized the wavelength before the meter chirped. By the time I’d covered the loading zone he acted like it was his show. “Can it tell you where the stuff came from?” he wanted to know. “No,” I said, huffier than I’d intended, “that takes doing geology.”

  As we returned from the scan, Hap Miller was returning with the roster. He gave Jardine a look. Cartoon eyes. “Hey there Roy. You helping the purty lady?”

  Jardine’s face pit purpled.

  “That’s right,” I said, “he was.” Jardine had been, actually, getting on my nerves but it cost me nothing now to include the guy. “We found talc. It’s all over the place.” I waited for them to get it. I waited for Ballinger to object—nah nah, knothead can’t sneak in a cask full of talc. I waited for Miller to make a joke.

  Soliano got it first. He spun on Ballinger. “How many casks are missed from your inventory?”

  “You people are making this case bigger’n it is.”

  I bristled. No we’re not. We’d just proved Soliano’s swap theory was correct. More than that—not only could the perp engineer such a swap but he’d damn well done it before. The dump manager may not like the theory but it fit the facts. So this case was getting bigger than any of us liked.

  I stared at the logo on Ballinger’s shirt and thought, there wouldn’t even be a case if you CTC people did what that motto promised, closing the damn circle of the atom.
/>
  Just keep your plutonium out of my coffee.

  ~ ~ ~

  Jardine was choking.

  He tried to chew over what he’d just learned but he couldn’t swallow it all. The female with her meter had found the talc and now they all knew that last night wasn’t the first time and they...

  He stopped. He told himself not to get ahead of himself. How far could that meter take her? The trail stopped here, at the dump.

  He edged away from the little group, filling in the forms on his clipboard like he was interested. They didn’t even see him any more. Snooty Mister FBI had dismissed him. He focused on the others. That bastard Ballinger. Miller the mocker. The know-it-all female.

  Purty lady. His face flamed and his scar burned. She pitied him. He hated pity. Almost as much as he hated Miller’s mockery.

  Miller mocked everybody but what stuck in Jardine’s throat was the time Miller mocked about the prank. Jardine’s first day back on the job, bunch of them were in the break room and Miller told the Three Pigs joke. First little pig builds a house of paper. Big bad Mr. Alpha Wolf tries to get in but even a paper wall stops him. Then big bad Mr. Beta Wolf comes along and he blows right through the paper and fries the pig. Second little pig builds a house of plastic, shielding enough to stop both Alpha and Beta wolves. But along comes Mr. Gamma Wolf, who’s pure penetrating energy, and he goes through those walls and fries the second pig. Third little pig builds his house of thick earth with concrete siding and steel doors, which almost stops Gamma Wolf. Still, it’s not possible for Gamma to be completely stopped and so a whisker and a couple of teeth get through. Third pig doesn’t even notice the nibbling.

  Jardine had sat stone-faced.

  The real pigs were the ones who’d snuck in while he was napping—after pulling a sixteen-hour double shift!—and planted a sealed cesium source under his pillow. Source turned out to be leaking. A beta- and gamma-emitter. Nibbled a hole in his face. Unintended consequence, Ballinger’s incident report said, prank that went out of control.

  He thought, now, there are always consequences.

  He crawled out of the memory and continued his recon.

  The group shifted and the female waved and Jardine saw a newcomer approaching. Old fellow. Dressed like he lived in the desert, same as the female. The old fellow started talking but it was the female Jardine fixed on. Not fixated—that was different, that was obsessive. Fixed just meant he’d watched her work, up close, and noticed how she paid attention to her details.