CHAPTER 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 hit Walter twice in the last six months, 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.
CHAPTER 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 hadn’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.
CHAPTER 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.
At least I had to hope she’d exited.
We followed her tire tracks out of the canyon. At the head of the fan we paused, scanning the landscape below. No white pickup. No FBI-RERT convoy, either.
We started down.
The giant fan was veined with channels, some several feet deep, in which a person could flatten herself and her shotgun and not be seen from the road that cut down the center. I did not brood on that for long. I did not have the strength. I brooded instead on the heat that rose from the desert pavement and sucked the radiator water from my clothes. The ground was paved in rock chips mortared with sand. We could fry an egg on that hot smooth pavement, had we an egg. We could bake a quiche—the rock surface had collected a coating of iron and manganese oxides and that black desert varnish reflected heat like a convection oven.
Frying eggs. Egg McMuffin. My stomach turned
We tramped down the road until our faces were varnished red and then Walter croaked “need a break” and I croaked “okay.”
We left the road and cut across the desert pavement to the nearest channel. It was blessedly unvarnished, washed clean by floodwaters. We climbed down into the sandy gravel bed and huddled against the southwest wall, which cast a lip of shade. We could see just over the rim. The Badwater basin spread below us. If I saw a car anywhere in the basin, other than the white pickup, I planned to get up and wave.
We drank the water down to a trickle.
When my saliva had thickened, I put a pebble in my mouth. I passed one to Walter. “Suck on it.”
After a time, Walter mumbled, “Could’ve shot us. Didn’t.”
I thought that over. “Good.”
He was silent. I turned. His Sahara hat was pulled low and all I could see was his jaw working.
I said, “So you do think it’s her? Shotgun.”
He removed his pebble. “Men carry guns too.”
True. But whoever it was evidently got what he wanted. She wanted. Therefore we didn’t have to worry any more? I spat out my pebble. “Perp might still shoot us.”
“Then I’d be wrong.”
We had no more heart for talk.
Five times, we saw cars on the Badwater Road across the saltpan and I roused myself and stood and signalled. The sixth car, I didn’t bother. We sat until shadows reached the head of the fan. The sun dipped behind the peaks above, reddening the clouds. We removed our hats and sunglasses and brooded on the nuclear sunset.
“We must go,” Walter finally said.
I nodded. Going to get dark. Nobody going to see us up here.
We rose, shaky. I shouldered the pack. We crossed the desert pavement to the fan road. There came a hot breeze that lifted the sweat-plastered hair from my scalp. The breeze went away. My feet swelled with each step. The ventilating mesh did not ventilate enough. I feared my boots would burst. We descended and, astonishingly, reached the West Side Road.
We collapsed and sucked the last drops from the water bottle.
An eternity passed. Three more cars passed on the other side of the basin.
I tried to speak but my tongue had stiffened. I elbowed Walter, and pointed across the saltpan at the Badwater Road. We rose, shakier than before. I tried to estimate the distance. Couple of miles? Five? More? Who knows? Everything looks closer than it is out here.
We broached the saltpan.
Life clung at the edge. We bypassed bristling shrubs and scuffed through sand and silt and then passed onto blisters of salt. Still, there was life. Rubbery plants, here and there. Pickleweed. Stems like stacked pickles. You want to break one off and pop it in your mouth. We Girl Scouts tasted it. Puckery. Walter fingered it, in passing. Adaptable, he mouthed. I nodded. My mouth was sealed. Nothing to say. No spit to say it with. No sound out here but the crackle of salt beneath our boots. We walked on meringues awhile and then the ground hardened and smoothed. Floodplain. White and flat, a frozen lake. Looked like hell froze over.
Not even pickleweed out here. Nothing adaptable enough to live out here.
My tongue quilted. We were in a giant bathtub but there was no water. Too hot. Water had evaporated and left bathtub rings. Rings of salt. Saltpan shimmered in the dying light. Looked like water. My throat swelled. I thought I might drown.
I thought of the thing I’d seen from the car, eons ago. Well, hours ago. Hotter than hell on the saltpan then. What living thing would be out here? Creeping through hell.
Must have been a mirage.
“Rest,” Walter croaked.
We sank onto the hard pan. I touched the salt and licked my finger. Sodiu
m chloride. I giggled. If I had an egg I’d salt it.
“Look.” Walter was pointing back to the West Side Road.
I looked. It was so near. We’d come through rings of salt—carbonates and sulfates and now we were in the zone of table salt and yet we hadn’t come far at all. Salt rings. They rang around my head. Telling me something. I reached for the rings and they shattered. Grains of salt now. What was it I was reaching for?
“Look,” Walter said, still pointing.
The road. That’s it. We’re mired in salt rings and we haven’t come far at all. I would have cried if I’d had water for tears.
“Plants.”
I did not care.
“Faults,” he said.
It took me a very long time to process this, to look again where he was pointing and see the dark smudges at the foot of the fans, here and there. I projected the line of the smudges upfan, to the offset of the fault scarps. I thought this over. Faults grind rock. Faults build dams. Faults trap runoff. Faults make springs.
Smudges grow around springs.
I licked my lips. What kind of smudges? Salt-loving smudges? No. Not that salt-loving or they’d be on the pan.
I rasped, “You are a genius.”
We rose, on hope. We angled southwest, aiming for the closest smudge. By the time we’d waded back across the floodplain to the pickleweed, night had edged in. We left the saltpan. The smudges resolved into shrubby trees with droopy branches. They gave off a smell in the hot night air.
My nose pinched. Fourth of July. Mesquite. Dad grilling burgers. Beer and sodas and sparkling waters in a trash can of ice.
We reached the stand of mesquite. I stared at the sandy ground. There was no beer. No sodas. No Evian or Arrowhead or Crystal Spring. There was no spring.
Walter fell to the ground and began to dig.
I came down beside him.
The sand grew damp. I ransacked the pack and then we dug with spatulas, seeing by flashlight. And then when it took more energy to dig than we had to spend, we sat back and waited for the seep to percolate through the sandy soil and find our hole.
After a time, Walter slumped.
Digging digging digging and then in wonder I was unearthing diamonds. They winked and disappeared. I dug harder and now I saw white worms among the diamonds, and now I laughed recognizing my own white fingers. Just keep digging. Greedy for diamonds. And now Walter was beside me, and I was willing to share with him but he got greedy too and scooped up diamonds and brought them to his mouth and sucked them up and I thought, oh Walter that is so crude. But then I was sucking diamonds too, crude as Walter, sucking up the salty wet diamonds until our fortune was spent.
The Forensic Geology Box Set Page 27