8.4

by Peter Hernon

  “He was a geophysicist. He studied weather systems, climate.” Elizabeth could hear her voice, but felt detached from what was happening outside herself.

  “Could I ask what you do?”

  “I’m a seismologist.”

  “You study earthquakes?”

  “I try to,” Elizabeth said.

  The sergeant frowned. “Were you here for Northridge?”

  “I was out of the country. I was doing some fieldwork in Chile, near Santiago. I missed it.” Elizabeth bitterly regretted her bad luck. She’d been in dozens of small shakes before. But she’d never experienced a bad one, and then when it finally happened in the L.A. suburb of Northridge in 1994, almost in her backyard, she wasn’t there.

  “I was with a traffic detail,” the sergeant said. “They sent us out to the I-10 freeway at La Cienega. One of the overpasses had collapsed, broken in two. We took fifteen bodies off it, most of them pretty badly mangled. There were a couple of young kids.” He hesitated. “I was born in this state. Earthquakes never bothered me much until Northridge.”

  Elizabeth had studied the quake in detail. A magnitude 6.7, it had struck around dawn on January 17, jolting much of Southern California, especially the Simi and San Fernando valleys. It killed fifty-seven people, injured more than nine thousand, and left another twenty thousand homeless. It was the most costly earthquake in U.S. history. And yet they’d been exceptionally lucky. The quake’s strongest seismic energy was directed away from Los Angeles, out toward the sparsely populated San Fernando Valley. If it had gone the other way, the results could have been catastrophic.

  “Was he despondent?” The sergeant’s question broke her trance. He was asking about Prable’s telephone call, how he’d sounded.

  “He said he had cancer and that his wife had begged him to do something. Can I please see them?” She was certain that someone who’d known and admired the doctor and his wife should be with them at a time like this.

  The sergeant left the room and returned a few moments later.

  “You can go on back,” he said. “If you’re not used to something like this, it can hit pretty hard. Don’t be afraid to sit down if you feel faint.”

  Elizabeth walked down a long hallway lined with framed photographs of New Mexico. The sergeant led her into the master bedroom.

  Joanne Prable wore an expensive blue-and-white dress. Later, Elizabeth remembered how the pleats were crisply folded, how the white pearls and black patent leather pumps looked so carefully selected. She was crumpled on the floor in front of a chair. Her head was turned to the side. Part of her forehead was missing.

  “Is that Mrs. Prable?”

  Elizabeth nodded, wanting to look away, but unable to.

  “She was probably sitting in the chair when he shot her,” the sergeant said.

  Prable lay on a large bed with a mahogany frame. He was wearing a navy suit and tie. A clear plastic bag was pulled tight over his face.

  “Is that him?” the sergeant asked.

  Elizabeth nodded. It was the second time in her life that she’d seen a dead man. The first had been her grandfather, who’d lived with her family. He’d collapsed in the bathroom while shaving. An aneurysm had burst deep in his brain, killing him instantly. He’d struck his head on the washstand when he fell, and Elizabeth mainly remembered coming into the bathroom and seeing him sprawled in the narrow space in front of the bathtub with a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. She was a senior in high school. He was seventy-six when he died. He’d given her her first rock collection. She still missed him dearly.

  The sergeant wanted to know whether Prable had said anything about a note, a will, or any personal papers.

  Elizabeth remembered that he’d said he sent her a package with a videotape and some papers and that he didn’t want her to tell anyone about it until she’d examined the materials.

  She took a final look at her former professor.

  “No, he didn’t,” she said, recalling the desperate sound of his voice over the telephone. “He didn’t say anything at all about that.”

  If Prable was so secretive and desperate to get some kind of information to her, then she felt the need somehow to see it for herself before she mentioned it.

  NEAR BOLIVIA, TENNESSEE

  JANUARY 9

  1:40 P.M.

  WHEN HE LEFT KENTUCKY LAKE, ATKINS DIDN’T know what to make of it—first the rats, then frogs clawing their way out of the mud. Still skeptical this had anything to do with earthquakes, he had to admit that if they wound up having one, some excellent research material would be available.

  More than ever, Atkins was looking forward to his meeting with Walt Jacobs. Following the short-cut directions Lauren Mitchell had given him, he made the drive to Reelfoot Lake in less than an hour. It was in the northwestern corner of Tennessee, 120 miles due north of Memphis. The Mississippi made a sharp S-bend a few miles to the west.

  Atkins had arrived at the lake’s visitor center before Jacobs. He had a lot to think about as he sat in the Jimmy, which rocked lightly in the parking lot against the buffeting wind.

  The day before, he’d arrived at the Center for Earthquake Studies at the University of Memphis. He’d dropped by Jacobs’ office on Central Avenue, hoping to catch his friend off guard, but he was teaching a graduate class. The center shared space with the USGS. Atkins found the agency’s part of the building and was going to introduce himself when he passed a partly closed office door. He heard two geologists talking to each other.

  They were discussing him. They had some of the biographical details right, but not all of them.

  Atkins had been to more earthquakes than anyone else on active service with the USGS, experienced more temblors, seen more of their massive destruction. No other natural force on earth compared with earthquakes. He was haunted by them, obsessed by their power. As a consequence, he was almost constantly on the road, which was how he wanted it. He had no relatives. Both of his parents were dead. His father had been a high school math teacher at a small school in northern Illinois. He’d taken him on extended hikes in the Tetons and Wind River Range, where Atkins had caught the geology bug. He was fascinated by the big mountains and the dynamic forces that had shaped them. He was still in grade school when he knew what he wanted to do with his life.

  He’d inherited his father’s love of the outdoors as well as his rugged build and thick, dark brown hair. Atkins was six-foot-two and after the trip to Peru, where he’d battled an intestinal bug for weeks, he needed to put on some weight. He’d dropped nearly twenty pounds and it still showed, especially in his face.

  “The guy’s a legend,” Atkins heard one of the geologists say as he stood in the hallway listening. “He’s been to every magnitude 6 or better going back fourteen years. Colombia, 1987. Nepal, 1988. Burma that same year. Armenia, 1988. Luzon, 1990. Kobe, Japan, 1995. And those are just some of the highlights. I don’t know if the guy’s even got an apartment in the States.”

  “You can have that,” the other geologist said. “That’s no kind of life.”

  How true, Atkins remembered thinking. Not much of a life at all, but the only one he knew.

  They’d missed one of his trips. The big one. Even now, he could run through the scenes in his head like a movie. He remembered every image, every detail.

  On September 19, 1985, at precisely 7:17 in the morning, he’d been in Mexico City.

  As he sat in the Jimmy at the Reelfoot Lake parking lot waiting for Jacobs, Atkins closed his eyes and let it play again.

  HE felt the tremor hit, a strong one. The ground swayed sharply, right to left. Then it happened again, only more violently. He rolled out of bed and glanced at his watch to check the time. It was like trying to keep his balance on a pitching surfboard. His legs almost buckled. He had to lean against the wall to steady himself.

  The bed started sliding across the floor as if pushed by invisible hands.

  A lamp toppled over.

  A closet door flew op
en.

  The glass shattered in the large window that offered a view of the skyline.

  The small hotel trembled. Atkins tried to force himself to think clearly, not to get rattled. The earthquake’s tremendous power stunned him. He’d often wondered how he’d react, whether he’d be scared and freeze up. He had his answer. His stomach tightened, and he had to fight back what he knew was fear.

  He checked his watch as soon as the heavy shaking ended. The peak intensity had lasted about forty seconds. That was way up at the upper end of the scale. Definitely a major earthquake.

  “That’s a 7.5 for sure,” Sara said, slipping into her jeans. She’d been knocked over when she tried to get out of the moving bed.

  Atkins shook his head. “More. Maybe a magnitude 8.”

  Barely thirty years old, Atkins had earned his doctorate in seismology from Stanford University. He’d led a team of geologists who’d just finished setting up a network of seismographs and accelerometers in a thirty-mile loop that ran into the mountains north of Acapulco in the Mexican state of Guerrero. Prime earthquake country, the Guerrero Gap, as it was called, was due for a major quake.

  They’d just returned to Mexico City the day before and had had the good luck to find rooms in a low, two-story hotel outside the damage zone. Atkins and Sara had been living together for the last nine months and were engaged. They were traveling with Brad Garvey, another USGS geologist.

  The Mexican capital had taken a pounding. The main damage zone was the bed of old Lake Texcoco, which had been drained. Many of the newer skyscrapers and hotels were located there, built on the lake bed’s thick deposit of soft, high-water-content sand and clay. Hundreds of buildings were severely damaged or destroyed. Atkins, Sara, and Garvey went out to survey the damage.

  They slowly worked their way through frantic crowds on the Paseo da la Reforma until they came to a new six-story apartment building. The facade, tan brick with large picture windows and recessed balconies, looked untouched, but the entire back end had caved in. It stood there like a Hollywood prop. Rescuers were bringing out the victims on stretchers or carrying them by the arms and legs.

  The first aftershock was barely noticeable, a gentle swaying of the ground. Little more than a nudge. The second one, which immediately followed, was much stronger.

  “Look!” Sara cried. The apartment building slowly rotated on its foundation, a twisting half turn. One of the side walls bowed out and the upper floor collapsed with a sickening crash. At first there was an eerie silence. The screams followed, coming from deep in the rubble.

  Atkins, Sara, and Garvey ran toward the building. They were still able to enter through the front door, which had been pulled from its hinges. They followed two cops into the lobby. Broken timber and drywall blocked the lobby. Plaster dust kept falling. The police quickly retreated. They’d seen enough.

  Atkins and the others started picking their way single file up a broken stairway to the second floor. Inching forward, Atkins heard a whimpering voice. A child.

  Atkins lost sight of Sara and Garvey as he made his way toward the child, following the sound of her cries. A girl, he thought.

  He found her pinned under a table in a smashed apartment. Atkins froze. Something large and heavy crashed down into one of the upper floors. He figured another section of brick wall had toppled. They were on borrowed time.

  He smelled smoke. The smell was faint but getting stronger. Atkins inched his way back into the hallway. The odor was more pungent. He could taste the smoke.

  The building was on fire.

  Atkins shouted for Sara and Garvey. Sara called to him. Her voice sounded far away, muffled.

  He nearly tripped with the child, caught himself, and kept going, groping his way back down the hallway, ducking under fallen I-beams. Black smoke started pouring in on him. He began coughing.

  “Sara! Brad! Get out of here!”

  He heard Sara. Her voice louder, closer.

  “We’re all right,” she said. “We’re trying to find a way out.”

  She was behind a collapsed wall, which must have come down in the last aftershock. Trapped in one of the apartments, they couldn’t get back out to the hallway.

  Atkins tried to fight his panic.

  Sara and Brad were cut off.

  “I’ll be right back!” he shouted.

  “I love you.” He heard Sara clearly. “Please hurry.”

  Atkins managed to get out with the child, stumbling into the bright sunlight. Two men in blood-splattered uniforms, paramedics, ran forward and took the little girl. Atkins looked up at the apartment building. The top floors—what was left of them—were engulfed in flames.

  Atkins started back inside.

  “¡Señor, no es posible!” A cop grabbed him, pulling him by the arm.

  Breaking away, Atkins entered the lobby and stopped in his tracks. In the intense heat, his hands instinctively came up to protect his face. He screamed Sara’s name and heard wood crackling in the fire. A series of small explosions popped like firecrackers on the upper floors, probably canisters of propane gas going off.

  Still shielding his face with his hands, he tried to climb the stairs. The cop, a heavily built man with a strong grip, pulled him back.

  The building moved. Two men were holding Atkins, the cop and a soldier. Gripping him by the shoulders and neck, they got him outside and pushed him away from the building.

  “Sara!”

  He kept screaming her name as the burning building folded in on itself.

  John Atkins sank to his knees and wept. He was crying when the next aftershock hit, the strongest yet. Two streets over, a ten-story building fell down in a roar of grinding steel and shattering glass. Atkins didn’t notice. He was cursing himself for not having the courage to crawl back into the flames.

  NEAR BOLIVIA, TENNESSEE

  JANUARY 9

  1:50 P.M.

  A RAP AT THE WINDOW BROKE HIS TRANCE.

  Atkins turned and saw Walt Jacobs smiling at him. Jacobs was a round-faced man with an easy manner who liked to smoke a pipe outdoors. He was smoking one now, a bent briar.

  Atkins got out and shook his friend’s hand.

  “So how did it go?” Jacobs asked. “Did any of those reports check out?”

  “I never got that far,” Atkins said. He described his experiences with the rats and dead frogs.

  Jacobs frowned. Unmistakable worry showed on his face. “What do you think about that, John?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Atkins said. “I figured it was something we better talk about.”

  Jacobs put his pipe in his pocket. His shoulders were hunched in the wind, his collar turned up. “Let me show you something first,” he said. With Atkins following, he walked to a tourist overlook that offered a sweeping view of Reelfoot Lake.

  “Where’s New Madrid from here?” Atkins asked.

  Jacobs pointed to the northwest. “About twenty miles as the crow flies.”

  The small town across the Mississippi in Missouri was near the epicenter for the three monster earthquakes of the last century. The original settlement lay buried under the river.

  Atkins found it incredible that the quakes had created the lake. The gray water spread out before them as far as the eye could see.

  “The lake’s twenty miles long and a couple miles across,” Jacobs said. “Covers almost a hundred square miles.”

  They stood on a wind-blasted hill. Shivering in the cold, Atkins dug his hands deeper into his pockets. He didn’t know why Jacobs had insisted on the walk. They could see the lake just fine from the front seat of the Jimmy, and he was eager to hear Jacobs’ thoughts about the chances for an earthquake.

  Atkins was aware that the New Madrid Seismic Zone was overdue for a magnitude 6 or greater earthquake and that his soft-spoken, cautious friend was worried about seismic data suggesting the fault was becoming unusually active. The New Madrid System included six, possibly seven intersecting fault segments.

  “It�
�s only in the last couple years we’ve been able to piece together what happened up here,” Jacobs said of the 1811-1812 earthquakes. “The last one in the sequence happened on February seventh around three in the morning. It was strong enough to cut across the Mississippi in three places. This ridgeline we’re standing on is actually the fault scarp from that last quake. It crosses two major bends in the river over by New Madrid.”

  He handed Atkins a map showing the locations of the epicenters and their dates and the maximum range of magnitudes.

  Using more conservative analysis, the first megaquake at New Madrid was between a magnitude 8.1 and 8.3. Other studies put it as high as 8.6. It was the largest quake in the series. All were a magnitude 8 or greater.

  The open-ended Richter scale used a logarithmic progression in which an increase of 1 in magnitude represented a tenfold increase in strength. Magnitude 8 quakes were exceptionally rare. Only nine had been recorded in the twentieth century. The largest, a magnitude 8.6, occurred in 1964 in Alaska.

  The short, seven-week time frame for the New Madrid quakes left Atkins in awe. A seismic triple play. In recorded history, nothing compared. He was well aware that, after the West Coast, the New Madrid Zone in the nation’s heartland provided the greatest earthquake risk in the United States.

  Atkins tried to imagine the tremendous force of a cataclysm powerful enough to cut across the biggest river in the United States and, in the process, create a lake. The earthquakes had literally ripped the landscape apart. He’d never seen country like this. The topography was almost eerie: flood plains stretching out for miles, steep bluffs looming in the distance, the twisting river.

  Jacobs pointed out a dark line of tree stumps in the water, not far from shore.

  “Those are cypress trees, what’s left of them,” he said. “The quake snapped them off like matchsticks.” Each tree was broken off cleanly at approximately the same place.

  “Reelfoot was the name of a Shawnee chief,” Jacobs said. “The Indian name for this country is Wakukeegu, ‘land that shakes.’”