The Forensic Geology Box Set

by Toni Dwiggins

  As for Adrian Krom as a killer... I didn’t like to consider it. We needed to be able to rely on him. It was one thing to blame him for what happened to Stobie. But Georgia? That’s an order of magnitude beyond.

  My eyes suddenly stung. Shampoo leaked down from my hair and I had to stick my face into the hot water flow to flush the contaminants.

  Tension drained along with the Pantene.

  By the time I was toweling dry I had pretty much deconstructed the lovers quarrel.

  I still liked the idea of a hot spring, though, as a source for the sulfur. Some other hydrothermically active area, someplace else. Some place where people had been discharging firearms.

  I opened the bathroom door to release the steam and heard the doorbell ringing. Once, twice, three times, four.

  ~ ~ ~

  I wrapped in my robe and went to answer.

  Eric stood on the porch. He seemed surprised to see me. Or, maybe it was my robe, decorated with grinning trout. Old boyfriend; Fish and Game; didn’t work out but this was one fine fleecy robe. Eric stared until I flinched.

  I said, “Hey Eric.”

  He said, “Jimbo here?”

  I thought, that’s a little abrupt. How about, hey Cassie, good to see you—is your brother around? I regarded Eric Catlin—the guy who simply by standing there made me feel very naked in my trout robe, the guy I’d trust with my life if it ever came to that, the biathlete and cop who posts bullseye targets on his office wall—and I said, “You know that gunpowder in the evidence boot soil? Nearly half of it’s Fiocchi.”

  Eric stiffened. It was the way he had recoiled, ever so briefly, when he missed the third shot in the 20K. He had recovered to ace the fourth shot and now he brought himself around as quickly. “No shit?”

  “Jimbo says you guys shoot at Casa Diablo and Lake Mary. Anyplace else?”

  “That’s where we shoot,” Eric said.

  “Does Stobie shoot too? I mean, he’s the armorer and...”

  “He shoots too. In practice. At least, he did.”

  “Got any theories that explain where Georgia picked up all that gunpowder?”

  “No theories.” Eric’s voice was rough. “When do you expect Jimbo back?”

  I shook my head. “Should I give him a message?”

  “Yeah. Tell him he’s a real...” Eric considered. “Jerk.”

  Before I could ask, he thrust a folded newspaper at me then pushed down the steps and when he’d been fully consumed by the night he called back, “Didn’t mean to take it out on you, Cass.”

  Mystified, I went inside and turned on the hall light. I read, standing against the doorjamb.

  It was the local rag, the Mammoth Times. The headline grabbed me first, as headlines are meant to do. And then the photo—Hal had run a very large photo above the fold. I studied it with the same scrutiny I’d given the cliff face today, and when I’d fully absorbed it, a very cold hand took hold of my heart and squeezed.

  I ran for the phone.

  CHAPTER 19

  I sat at a window table in the Ski Tip Cafe across from Jeanine Povorenko, who was the girl most envied by other girls from preschool all the way through high school. Jeanine does sports promos now on local cable, a gig originally arranged by Georgia in a fit of brilliant PR. Jeanine has a blond ponytail to the waist and broad Slavic curves and I hated her for a month when I hit adolescence.

  Jeanine said, “Now he is a hunk.”

  I looked. The Ski Tip pulls in a young hungry crowd, skiers and boarders who’ve spent big bucks on lift tickets and are looking for a feed that is cheap and filling. Guys come back from the slopes like jungle cats with a burn in the muscles and a shine in the eyes, strutting. Almost any of them could have caught Jeanine’s attention.

  Any but Jack Altschul, my high school history teacher, by himself at the counter, or Bobby Panetta and the DeMartini twins in a back booth. Not so much because these guys didn’t meet Jeanine’s definition of hunk but because none of them—or the other dozen or so locals I spotted in the room—had anything resembling a shine in the eyes. Watchfulness was more like it. When they took their eyes off their plates it was to search the room for something, and not seem to find it. Lost hope, maybe. The story in the Mammoth Times must surely have shaken faith.

  We were a crabbed bunch of worried locals watching the visitors like they’re from another planet.

  Jeanine reached across the booth, nudged my arm, and leveled her gaze two tables away. A dozen guys wearing National Guard fatigues shouldered around one of Bill Bone’s huge family tables.

  She slouched back and gave me a slow wink.

  This, I supposed, was why it was Jeanine and not some other female who was in the newspaper photo: her knowing take on men, and theirs on her.

  “Soooo...Caaasie.” Jeanine ran her hand down her ponytail, working it like a pump handle, drawing up the words. Jeanine’s the laid-back queen. “What’s the deal?”

  I searched her face for the pinch-eyed look we’d all taken on. I didn’t find it. She was looking good. She had a high-altitude tan and her winter blond was whiter than last summer’s, her ponytail embroidered into a French braid. She was framed by the curlicue cutouts of Bill’s wooden booth, and if I hadn’t known her I would have taken her for a Nordic biathlete. Well, no. The set of her face had the unfazed air of a snowboarder. American all the way.

  In the booth behind us someone growled, low and long.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said.

  She grinned. “Free food.”

  “Uh-uh, gotta sing for your supper.” I smiled. We’re not exactly friends; our lives just intersect a lot. She teaches Jazzercise where I pursue last year’s fitness, she used to date my brother, I bought my used Subaru from her. We get along because she’s always blunt and I’m always easy. I wasn’t sure about tonight. I said, “I need to know what happened at Hot Creek.”

  She took a drink of her Coke. “Read the paper. Everybody else has.”

  “I did. I need the details.”

  “Jimbo won’t tell you? He’s been braggin his ass off.”

  Then Eric was right, my brother was in on it. I took a long drink of my own Coke. Knot by knot, my hometown was coming undone. “Jimbo’s not home. You’re the one in the paper so I’m asking you.”

  “Why do you wanna know?”

  “It scared me.”

  “Yeah?” She hooked a thumb at Bobby Panetta and the DeMartinis—Jimbo’s buddies—in the back booth. “Guys said it was cool.”

  Bill Bone appeared at our booth, red-faced and harried, and set out mammoth bowls of chili heaping above the rim with red onions. The food here is straightforward; Bill believes in an honest serving for your dollars. The ambiance is mountain-resort kitsch. The place used to be called Little Switzerland and it’s painted blue and white and most exposed wood has been carved. When Bill bought the cafe he changed the name; every New Year’s he resolves to redecorate. He unloaded a basket of breadsticks. “Chili’s under-spiced,” he said. “You’ll be disappointed.”

  I tasted it. It was under-spiced. I didn’t care.

  Jeanine called after him, “Your chili’s always hot, Bill.” She turned her grin on me. “Hey, birthday idea—let’s get him a certificate for Great Expectations. The dating service? They find your soul mate? You know?”

  I didn’t, clearly.

  “So, Cass, what d’ya wanna know?”

  “How you and Adrian Krom ended up in the creek.”

  “Started at the Bear Pen. He hangs there when he’s not here.”

  He went to the breweries with the locals. He became their best friend. “And...”

  “And I sit down. And he likes that. And we order drinks.”

  “He didn’t wonder why you joined him?”

  She hooted, a spoonful of chili halfway to her mouth. “What, he’s gonna ask if I know what I’m doin?”

  Somebody should have. “What did he have to say?”

  “He told me how hot I was.” She ate the spo
onful. “Well, what he said was beguiling.” She wiped her mouth. “Same thing.”

  He cut a wake with the Tacoma ladies. He beguiled Georgia. I wondered if Jeanine knew he’d beguiled Georgia into Hot Creek, but if she didn’t know, I wasn’t going to spread the gossip. I said, “What else?”

  “Bar talk. You’ve been in a bar?”

  “What’s your hobby, that sort of thing?”

  “Sure, Cass. That sort of thing.”

  “Well, then, what’s his hobby?”

  She selected a breadstick and bit off an end. As she chewed, she gazed overhead at the heavy beveled rafters where Bill had hung antique skis with cracked leather straps. Maybe the answer was up there, and if it was, I gave her the space to find it. She came back to me. “His hobby is mind-fuckin this town.” Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Shock you, Cassie?”

  It did, actually. Like the swim in the creek. “How is he mind-fucking this town?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Okay, so we were slammin margaritas—only mine were virgins but he didn’t know that—and we’re talkin about getting crazy and I was working around to, let’s...get...crazy and go down to Hot Creek.”

  “You mean it was your idea?”

  “To start. She reached for her braid, then dropped her hand. “So he tells me the creek’s off-limits now. Road’s gonna get fenced.”

  “By him?”

  “Guess so.” She shrugged. “Anyway, he gets really weird about it.”

  I sat forward. “How?”

  “One minute I’m thinking I don’t have to work very hard to convince him. You know?” She trailed a hand down her shirt, flicking the buttons between her breasts. “And then he kind of turns off. He’s got those bedroom eyes but one minute he’s looking at me all hot and the next he’s, like, cold. He says that shit about it being off-limits and I’m like so? You’re the man. And he doesn’t get off on that, he just gives me this cold look and says it’s dangerous down there. And I was getting a little nervous.”

  “But you went.”

  “He made me.”

  “He forced you?”

  “No. He just...turned things around. I’m supposed to be the one getting him so wasted he’ll go down to Hot Creek. Only he’s not drunk. He’s had three fuckin margaritas and he’s stone sober. He’s putting it to me. Creek’s dangerous, gases, a bunch of volcano talk. And I’m like, that’s okay, I know where it’s safe. And he jumps on that. It isn’t safe. And he wants to know if I fully understand that.”

  My head began to throb. “Did you?”

  “Said I’d sign a release if he wanted so let’s get on with it.” She looked hard at me. “He says if we go down there he’s responsible for my safety. Like he’s my father? Then he says... ‘he’s unpredictable’. So I ask who he means. And Krom says—get this—the volcano. And so I say whoa, it talks? I’m trying to be funny, you know, lighten things up cuz the situation is getting a little creepy.”

  “Did he laugh?”

  She widened her eyes, the whites stark against her tan. “Yeah. So we went.”

  At the Guardsmen’s table, Bill was trying to place the correct plate in front of the right guy, and the Guardsmen were laughing and shooting plates across the table to one another as fast as Bill could put them down.

  “We took his car. He drove and you couldn’t even tell he’d been drinking. When we park and get out he asks me again if I’m sure about this. Like he’s in charge? So I just went along with him since I had other plans.”

  “You and my brother.”

  “And Bobby Panetta.”

  I stole a glance at the back booth, where Bobby was pouring a beer for Matt DeMartini. Bobby caught me looking. His face showed nothing, beyond its mask of freckles. I had a deep affection for these guys—we’d grown up together—but I had to say they’d not grown much beyond high school. Neither, evidently, had my brother.

  Jeanine said, “So we get out to the creek. It’s about midnight. I lead him to a spot and we strip off. He’s not bad, you know?” She gave me a half-lidded look.

  I nodded. I’d seen.

  “Except for the scar.”

  “Scar?”

  “Yeah, big one on his arm. All white and raised, but he’s got a cool tattoo over it. A spiral like one of those Indian swirly things? And then you see it’s all made out of words.”

  So that’s what I’d seen, my night at the creek. “What did it say?”

  “Too dark to read. And I’m, like, a little busy? It’s cold, I’m freezing my butt off. So’s he, I guess, but he’s too macho to show it. I’m trying to get him into the water—cuz the guys are waiting—and then he gets weird again. Gets all...courtly. I mean he holds out his hand like I’m too—what?—scared to go in first and he’s gonna lead me. And he’s looking at me the way he did in the Pen, that cold look, I mean it was dark but not so dark I couldn’t feel it. And then he says—the way you say something you got memorized—” she lowered her voice, “abandon all hope, you who enter here. Well I heard that back in school.” She gave a short laugh, a bark. “Sure as hell what I did when I went into class.” She threw a glance at Jack Altschul at the counter. “His class, for sure. You remember it? The saying I mean.”

  “Dante,” I said. Ye, who enter.

  “Oh yeah.” She held up her hand, took a bite of chili and a swallow of Coke.

  I said, “And that didn’t spook you, Adrian quoting that?”

  “It weirded me out but then he smiled like he’s joking, and anyway if he did anything I didn’t like all I had to do was yell and the guys would be on him.”

  “Jimbo and Bobby.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, we only go in ass deep. The whole idea is to keep near shore, I mean the location was important. So I stop and give him the chance and for a minute there I’m thinkin the guy’s wasted after all cuz he’s just not takin the bait. But that’s not it.” She stopped.

  “What is it then?”

  “He wants us to swim.”

  The knot formed, behind my breastbone. “What’d you say?”

  “I’m like, no way. It’s steaming, where he wants to go.”

  “Where did he want to go?”

  “The bench—that big slab of rock where everybody used to hang on, drink beer and grab ass. You know?”

  I nodded.

  “I say the fuckin volcano’s made the water squirrelly out there. I say let’s just stay right here, it’s nice and warm, let’s do it here. Know what the dude says? Says what do you think’s making the water warm right here? Like I needed to hear that. Then he smiles. Says, how far will you go? Will you go out there?” She took on an almost thoughtful look. “It was like he was giving me the choice? Where you put someone on the spot and see what they’re gonna do? And there’s a good choice and a bad choice?”

  I said, mouth dry, “What did you choose?”

  She gave me a flat look. “He wasn’t giving me the choice after all.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He says yes, real soft, and he takes my hand and starts pulling me. We’re going in. And he knows I’m freaked cuz he leans real close and says you think I’ll let him win?”

  We stared at each other. Him, again. The volcano.

  Someone in the room began to sing My Old Kentucky Home and the Guardsmen picked it up. Jeanine suddenly grinned. She tapped her index finger on her chili spoon, keeping time, the grin fixed. Her eyes stayed on mine.

  “And?” I said.

  “I got him.”

  “You got him how?”

  “The plan.” Her finger stilled. “I mean, I’m not gonna go where he wants to go, so I just jumped him right where we were. Just wrapped myself around him and he’s still trying to pull me out there—and he’s got his hands all over me so the guys think this is it...and kapowie!” She sat forward, face alight. “Now we got him. The lights go on. Big spots, Jimbo’d snagged a couple of those emergency lanterns from the road crew and he’s on one bank and Bobby’s on the other. I mean the creek is lit, lik
e we’re on stage. God did the guys get pictures.”

  I said, “What did Adrian do?”

  “Nothing. Just stands there watching me, and I’ll tell you I got out of there fast.”

  “And then?”

  “Then nothing. He does nothing. We got him. You saw the paper.”

  Oh, I saw it. In the photo, Jeanine has her back to the camera. We see her long ponytail wetted halfway, snaking down her spine, and the spreading of her hips, slick with creek water. We see Krom’s big hand hovering, like it’s heading for her behind but her behind is submerged and there’s nothing patently obscene at the moment the shutter closed. We can see just a hint of Jeanine’s left breast. Over her shoulder is Krom’s naked torso, his groin obscured by Jeanine’s round hip. This is what makes the shot so perfectly composed—it’s printable, and we think we know what’s going on. Krom’s face is quite identifiable. The camera catches him at the moment of understanding. He’s looking coldly toward the camera but he has yet to let her go. And then, lifting the photo beyond the realm of a grab-ass party in the creek, is the sign. We can see it at shoreline, a slab on a post just beyond the nudes in the foreground. It has replaced the old sign Lindsay had installed, warning that swimming is inadvisable. This new sign is blunter. Extreme Danger! it says. Hot Creek Geological Site OFF-LIMITS.

  It’s the sign Krom had installed, as the accompanying text points out.

  I said, “Didn’t it occur to you he might try to finish what you started?”

  “You mean, like, rape? Nah.”

  “What about the guys?” I asked, tight.

  She reached into her shirt front and pulled a lipstick from her bra. “What’s he gonna do, beat ‘em up? Land his ass in jail? He doesn’t want any more bad press than he’s got.” She glossed her lips.

  “One more thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Whose idea was it?”

  She put a finger to her lips.

  A secret? Her bare ass is on the cover of the hometown paper and my brother’s bragging his ass off, so who’s ass is she trying to cover for now? I said, “Tell me who fucking planned it, Jeanine.”

  She eyed me. “Your guru.”