Dead Dry

by Sarah Andrews

  “No, it did not. Whoever flew that plane paid cash for the tie-down. And I couldn’t make McWain stick, because I haven’t put McWain’s mug shot in front of the ground crew, have I, because I don’t have a picture of what he looked like alive, do I? Upton too accurately pointed out that ‘white male in hiking boots’ was a rather broad categorization. So now I’m cooling my heels at the Motel No-Tell again, waiting for daylight, a judge, and the hope of subpoenas, so I can get at that airplane. I just hope he doesn’t have any football buddies on the bench, or I could be here awhile.”

  “Tough luck.”

  “Yeah. But of course if he was a whiner I would have had him last Friday at the Sedalia Grill. So anyway, can you come out here? The longer this takes, the colder the trail and the more time Mister Wonderful has to cover his tracks. Maybe you can subpoena his shoes and get some damned clay off of them.”

  “What you’d want is some gravel from Point of the Mountain Quarry.”

  “That would do nicely. Can you do that?”

  I shook my head at the phone. “I think you’re getting things backward here. Remember, I’m a scientist at heart. I like my evidence straight up, not cooked.”

  Michele growled, “I wasn’t suggesting that you salt him.”

  “But you were thinking it.”

  “You try sleeping in this motel. The walls are as thin as cardboard. I can hear the couple next door—”

  “Spare me! And you want me to come sleep there, too?”

  “Well, I thought a smart scientist like you could crack this case before lunchtime. You’ll be home for dinner with that pilot of yours.”

  “Leave Fritz out of this.”

  “Give me my dress back.”

  “Sorry. I meant to launder it first.”

  “Keep it awhile. It might help you get lucky. And try smiling once in a while, it makes you look human.”

  I realized that I was grinning. Michele and I were having fun cussing each other out. “Okay, firebrand, I’ll see you there as soon as I can get a flight.”

  “I already made a reservation for you. It’s the red-eye. You can just make it.”

  “You think of all the amenities.”

  “Rent a car at the airport, and get your butt down here. I’m going out for a while to keep Attabury under surveillance. If I’m out when you get here, call me on my cell phone. If I’m here, I’ll no doubt be awake unless Mister Olympus on the other side of the wall runs out of steam.”

  THERE’S A BIG FIVE-POINTED STAR ALL DONE UP IN lights that glows on the top of the butte that Castle Rock is named after, and when it hove into view later that night I began to feel my fatigue. It was not only the hour but the year. I had seen that star so many times as I drove to college and back again that it was like a splinter in my psyche digging deeper with every year.

  I pulled into the lot by the motel at 2:30 A.M. under a starry sky that had faded under the pollution of too many security lights left on around too many buildings.

  The light was on in room 201, so I tapped on it softly and Michele opened the door. She was not only awake, she was still dressed. “Thanks for coming,” she said.

  “Think nothing of it.” I yawned. “I left messages for my old friend Carlos Ortega of the Denver homicide squad before I got on the plane, as well as Tim Osner, who’s another kind of forensic geologist, just to give them a heads-up. In case we need some mystery moves. You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah. We could use a magician right now. Bet you dollars to doughnuts our boy’s gone in the morning.”

  “You think your pigeon will fly the coop?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then why aren’t you parked by Centennial Airport where you can get a photograph of him leaving? Didn’t you give him the old ‘Don’t leave town’ lecture?”

  “I did. I dropped by Centennial on my way down here and the smart boy had already moved the plane somewhere else.”

  “And let me guess. He didn’t file a flight plan.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “So it could be anywhere. In any of half a dozen private airstrips around here, tucked into a hangar where you’d never see it, or even across the border in Mexico by now.”

  “Yeah, with him in it. He did a real nice job of giving me the slip half an hour after I called you. That boy knows escape and evasion driving.”

  “No shit.”

  “None whatsoever. I lost him on I-25. He pulled the old on-off trick.”

  “Down one ramp and up the other to see if you were following him.”

  “And I was. And there’s all that construction. And a stoplight that he hit just as it changed, and some old biddie between us slammed on her brakes like the good citizen she was. He’s good.”

  “Damn.”

  “Douglas County put an APB out on him. Hopefully, the state patrol will spot his car.”

  “So where was your backup?”

  “We’re out here in the tules, it would seem. I thought we were close to Denver, but this is a different county altogether. I was following him in the rental car. He was driving a BMW.”

  “Well then, they’ll spot it easily enough.”

  “Oh yeah? You want to know how many assholes drive that make and model along the Front Range of Colorado?”

  As common as cow flops on a feedlot came to mind, but I said, “Well, get some sleep.” I went to my room, locked and chained the door, and got into the T-shirt I liked to sleep in. The air conditioner was noisy, so I turned it off, but then the highway noise started to grind on me, so I turned it back on. I turned out the lights and stared into the dark, or should I say half-gloom, considering all the light that was leaking around the curtains. After half an hour contemplating how correct Michele was about this motel, I switched on my cell phone to see what time it was and saw that there was a message waiting for me. I punched in the code to listen to it.

  It was Fritz. “Hi, Em. Hey, Faye just phoned to tell me you were on your way back to Colorado. T-revor Rex wants me to fly him there tomorrow evening, so if you’re still around, why not give me a call? You know where I’ll be. In fact, please give me a call. Thanks. Good-bye for now.”

  I listened to the message again, then turned off the phone and closed my eyes. The light and noise didn’t bother me half as much now. I fell asleep quickly and rested well.

  THURSDAY MORNING, HUGO ATTABURY WAS NOWHERE to be found. He had not returned from his drive the evening before. He was not answering his home phone, his office phone, or his cell phone. His wife had not seen him. His office manager had not heard from him. His cell phone rolled over to its messenger service instantly, indicating that it was not even switched on.

  “This won’t help his case,” Michele said.

  “If you find him,” I replied. We were eating breakfast at one of those archaic places just off the interstate that serve overcooked eggs, dispirited hash browns, greasy toast, and burnt coffee to people with too much inertia and too little gastronomic insight to drive a block further off their route. “So I’ll get to work anyway. I thought I’d give Julia a call and ask her if she can fill me in on some of the politics around the Arapahoe aquifer.”

  “Just don’t tell her anything she could repeat. We don’t want that angle out on the grapevine. Understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am. And what about Gilda? Where is she in all of this?”

  “I forgot to tell you. She’s disappeared, too.”

  “What is it with these people? You mean disappeared disappeared, or just not at home?”

  “I’ve been up to the ranch looking for her, and her golf cart’s there, but she’s not. And no one’s seen her, or at least, no one who’s seen her since Tuesday is talking.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  Michele shook her head. “I can’t quite figure it. She told you—not me, I don’t rate—that she wasn’t going to sell the ranch for development, but I don’t believe that for a minute. But if she wants to win her lawsuit that would make her the heir, then you
’d think she’d be sitting on that place like it was the golden egg.”

  I said, “Well, what about all the rumors that organized crime is behind all this? The moves they make don’t always make sense to people like you and me.”

  Michele made a gesture like she was swatting flies. “Everybody keeps saying that, and yes, the FBI has been looking at the Wildcat Estates development project, but that’s because they were looking at that earlier development project that was voted down, and they’re thinking that some of the same money is behind this one. But still I think it’s the local muscle that killed McWain. They’re all covering for each other, and we’ve got Attabury red-handed saying he wasn’t in Utah when we know he was. So how complicated does this have to be? Attabury flew him there and killed him and flew home. Gilda’s probably racked out in a health spa somewhere getting her cellulite gold-plated. She’ll be back.”

  Fatigue settled in around my brain like lead. I was not feeling as positive about things as I had been the night before. I looked out the window to the sky. “Well then, leave a message on her cell phone and wait for her to come to you. You don’t want to go out to that ranch in anything less than a four-wheel-drive today. It’s not looking good out there. The clouds are building up.”

  “So it might rain. So what?”

  “The soils are riddled with bentonite. That’s a swelling clay. You get it wet, and it turns to grease.” I pointed south along the mountains, as if we could see past the buildings. “And it’s too early for the thunderheads to be building. These mountains form what’s called an orographic high. The way the air rises and condenses around them, they seed their own clouds. You can about set your watch by the afternoon thunderstorms around Pikes Peak, which is less than fifty miles away. But this is different. These clouds are rising too early; it looks like some kind of front, which can make things messy, eh? So wherever you or I go today, we should keep in touch, because it won’t take very much rain to turn that road to snot and spin you into a ditch. Check in every hour by cell phone, okay?”

  “Whatever.”

  I stared at her. Had she slept at all? “Why didn’t the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Department send someone out here with you?” I asked.

  “You’re here.”

  “That’s not enough, and you know it. They sent you out alone last Friday, too. Is that standard procedure?”

  “No. My partner’s in the hospital, and the other two detectives are on that big LDS case. The one with the missing girls. The church finds it embarrassing and—”

  I nodded. “Wants it solved fast. So a wayward gentile geologist from Colorado isn’t considered all that important, and they sent—” I managed to shut my mouth before I said any more, but Michele finished my sentence for me.

  “The rookie. Not to put too fine a point on it.”

  “Sorry. Well, where are you off to?”

  Michele glanced at her watch. “The county courthouse opens in five minutes. I’m off to find a warrant.” She grabbed the check and headed to the counter.

  I dialed Carlos Ortega again but got his answering machine. I tried Tim Osner’s office, which was the only number I had for him. He was not in yet. I left a message saying that I was in Castle Rock wondering if he was up for a red clay hunt. As long as I had some waiting to do, I figured I might as well do what I was actually trained to do, collect trace evidence and analyze it.

  Then I phoned Julia.

  “You sound like you’re on a cell phone this time,” she said. “Does that mean you’re back in Colorado?”

  “I’m in Castle Rock,” I said.

  “What are you doing there?”

  “I have some forensic samples to try to match. I was wondering if you could tell me how to find a few things.”

  Julia seemed hesitant. “What did you have in mind?”

  “I figured to drive out near the ranch, get my samples, and then if I follow the creeks out toward the canyon, I can find out where the Arapahoe outcrops, and—”

  “You are no doubt driving a rental car,” she said irritably. “You can’t go where you need to go with that. I’ll bring the Jeep. Just stay there in Castle Rock. Where I can find you? I’ll be there in an hour.”

  THE SUN BEAT DOWN ON MY HEAD AND SHOULDERS like a renegade masseuse as Julia and I climbed the odd, conical hill known as Wildcat Mountain. The air was stifling hot and weirdly humid and still. A few miles to the west, the clouds continued to rise along the peaks like a great, gray fleece, growing darker by the hour. The birds had stopped singing. I made a mental note to get off the high, rocky protuberance of Wildcat’s summit before the tops of the clouds blew over into thunderheads.

  Julia led the way up the trail through chokecherries and wild plum trees, her long legs carrying her with an elastic stride. She wore an old pair of boots with hand-sewn welts of the same make and vintage as her departed former husband, beat-up khaki pants, and a short-sleeved cotton shirt, and her hair was tucked up underneath her cap to leave the back of her neck open to the scant breeze she made by moving through the air. “This is the key to the whole mess,” she was telling me. “Right here. See how big the pore throats are in this stuff?” She pointed at the red sandstone that outcropped all along the top of the hill, which was in fact a hogback like so many other ridges along the mountain front, but in this case a hog with a very short back.

  As we reached the summit, we could see the long train of hogbacks that ran all the way up to Dinosaur Ridge. I said, “What I don’t get is why this hogback doesn’t go very far. It’s just a point instead of a long ridge.”

  Julia gave me a tight smile. “You always were observant, Hansen. You’ve asked the hundred-million-dollar question.” She swept her arms out to take in the trend of the mountain front. “Here we stand at the end of the Cretaceous. The Rocky Mountains are rising, and the rivers are eroding the granites and carrying all that nice, fresh, coarse sediment downhill to the east. Right here, a river breaks out of the mountains and onto the flats, just like today, right out of a nice, narrow valley, say.” She raised both arms to form a V. “So now tell me, what are we standing on?”

  “We have the apex of the fan,” I said. “Are you telling me that this is the original morphology of this sandstone? I thought it had been eroded into this shape.”

  Julia dropped her arms to her sides. “Bob Raynolds figured this out. He came down here with his wife and his kids and their pet potbellied pig and saw all the thrust faults along here between Wildcat and the foothills, and he saw the stacked channel deposits, and he said, ‘Must be synorogenic deposition!’”

  “Syn …”

  “Synorogenic. It means ‘sediments deposited same time as the mountains were building.’”

  “As opposed to …”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know … sometimes there’s erosion going on but the sediments are washed clear away to some other place.” She began to gesture with her hands. “See, as the mountains came up to the west, the fan was able to grow and grow and grow to the east, stacking up on top of itself like books loading onto one of those spring-loaded carts under the book-return chute in the public library.” She dropped her hands and looked around at the scenery, remembering earlier visits. “Bob brought Afton down here, and Afton brought me and the kids.”

  “Then is this where the water recharges the aquifer?” I asked. “The snow-melt from the mountains, seeping down into the sandstone right here?” I knew the answer to this, but wanted to hear what she would say.

  She shook her head. “That’s where the whole thing falls apart, see. It’d be a great system if that were happening, but people take water out in human time spans—damned quickly—and it seeps back in geologic time—slooooooowwwly. It’s the tortoise and the hare story all over again. Except this time, nobody wins.”

  “And this is the best aquifer in the Denver Basin,” I said.

  “It’s certainly the best one in Douglas County. It’s what’s filling all the bathtubs around here. Round numb
ers? About 200,000 people living on the south side of Denver here—Douglas and Arapahoe counties—depend on ground water for their water supply. The engineers have calculated that those people are pulling 53,000 acre-feet per year out of these rocks.” She patted the stone. “Do the math. That’s over seventeen billion gallons—375,000 boxcar loads—”

  “Boxcars don’t hold water,” I said ironically. “They’d leak like a sieve.”

  “Don’t mess with me, Hansen. One and a half boxcars per year for every man, woman, and child—and that’s a conservative calculation. Others double the numbers. She swept a hand out toward the eastern plains. “And the developers want to build and build and build.” She stared out across the dry landscape that was baking in the sun. “We’re in the middle of the worst drought in recorded history, and the speculation is that the population of this county is going to triple in the next forty years. Things have sure changed around here since we were in college.”

  “Yes, they have. There weren’t as many of us, not by half, and we didn’t feel we needed such fancy homes. We didn’t have as many private swimming pools, or have as many clothes to wash, or … or anything else that goes into the luxury developments like Wildcat Estates,” I said, beginning to fish for information about the local developers.

  “Why is it that developers want to build such water-intensive fantasies?” Julia mused.

  “Because that’s what people will buy? Because we’re all feeling so crowded that we need to isolate ourselves in a fantasy life of luxury? Because we’ve always preferred to pamper ourselves rather than contemplate our frailty? I guess we all try to find our space one way or another.” Before she could get going on Afton’s death and her losses, I asked, “What do you know about that development, Julia?”

  Julia picked up a pebble and threw it out over the hillside, where it dropped noisily into the low, scrubby oaks. “Wildcat will be voted down. It has to, like they voted down that other development.”

  “Where was that other one?”