The scenario Nikki had invented was falling apart. No treasure meant no con. Then she had gone to her uncle’s house for nothing, and her uncle hadn’t conned anybody.
How painful it must be for Nikki, realizing all her trouble had come out of a fool’s errand. She seemed to be waiting for Nina to belabor the point in standard adult fashion but Nina didn’t see any need to add to her misery.
Turning the largest stone over in her hand, Nina noted that the surface was brittle. Flakes came off readily in her hand, although the stone beneath remained intact. “Let’s move into the light,” she suggested. They did, but the lighting in the house was dim at best and a dark overhang of sky outside did not help matters.
“See here.” Nikki pointed at a place in the stone where the gray outside had fallen away to reveal glossy black. “Obsidian, maybe? I tried looking it up on the Web.”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s not very valuable, obsidian, unless maybe you’re a Native American a couple hundred years ago making arrowheads.”
“No, I guess not, although we’ll ask someone more knowledgeable about that.” In the poor light, she couldn’t see much, just the kind of thing Bob stuffed his pockets with when he was little, something with a little visual interest in the reflective sheen that peeked out of the rubble here and there, but nothing particularly exotic otherwise.
“It’s just junk,” Nikki said. She began collecting the rocks and putting them back into the fabric pouch.
“But why would he go to so much trouble to hide rocks?” Nina asked. “That’s a really unusual hiding place.”
Nikki shrugged. “I was sure they’d be something special, too, that’s why I had Bob dig them up. Thought I must have missed something the first time I looked at them.”
“But the man who chased Bob—he thought they were valuable.”
“He was just guessing, like me. The newspaper article on the hearing said that neighbor saw me take something. Junk is what I took. I’m such a loser. I ruined everything going over there. I caused the whole— it’s all over. I might as well . . .”
“Do you think you caused the whole thing?” Nina said.
“I didn’t say that! Don’t try to get me mixed up!”
“You might as well what?”
“Nothing. Don’t cross-examine me, I’m not in the mood.”
“Listen to me,” Nina said. “We are in the middle of a process, Nikki, a hard process for you, unbearable sometimes. I know you feel scared and alone, but you’re not alone. Besides your mother and aunt, you have me. I’m with you.” She took Nikki’s hand and looked intently into the girl’s eyes. “You’re going to have to start trusting me, or this will crush you.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Don’t give up hope. Let me help you through this. All right?”
“Okay,” Nikki said in a small voice.
“Promise me you won’t do anything to harm yourself.”
“I’ll stick around for the bitter end.”
“Good girl.” Nina got up to leave. “You’d better give those to me.”
Nikki was looking down at the floor. “I just wanted a fair price for the land,” she said, “so we could pay the landlord and not have to live in the car or a tent. Daria spends money we don’t have. She brought home the guitar and the amp. I can’t imagine how she got that credit card. I came home one day and she had her boyfriend of the moment installing the computer in the back room. She wouldn’t let me take it back. But the fact is, we can’t make the payments, so it is going back, and so’s my guitar, and it won’t be long. The collection agencies call to threaten us every day.”
“You had all that wrapped up in these little rocks?” Nina said gently.
No answer.
“Does your mother use the computer?”
“She can’t even turn it on.”
“So she bought it for you. And the guitar?”
“Yeah. For me. Without them, I wouldn’t be— have, I mean—anything going on.”
“It’s complicated,” Nina said.
“It sure is.”
“That guitar looks to me like somebody’s dream.”
“Yeah. I want to be in a band. I’ve been writing songs and practicing a lot. Daria never complains, even late at night, just says, ‘Follow your passion and everything else will follow.’ Life’s so easy for someone like her, just full of lucky charms and prayers that get answered. I wish it were that easy for me,” Nikki went on, handing Nina the pouch. Childlike, she had moved to a new mood. “When do I get this thing off my ankle, anyway?” she asked. “It’s a pain when I shower.”
“After the trial, Nikki. Or sooner, if we win the next hearing.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s called a 995 hearing, after the Penal Code section that describes it.”
“When is that going to happen?”
“I’m thinking mid-July. I’ll let you know as soon as the papers are filed.”
“After we win my case,” Nikki said, “I might leave Tahoe. Maybe go to the desert or maybe a big city.”
They both looked at the bag on the table.
“Did your mother decide to call the police about last night?” Nina asked.
“Sure. Made sure they got a good look at Grandpa’s unregistered, unlicensed firearm, oh, and of course rushed to tell them all about how it was shot recently. And pointed out the trail of blood out there in the woods to make ’em really jump for joy.”
The trail of blood was an exaggeration. There had been some blood but Paul said the man might have cut himself on rough bark. “I see,” Nina said.
“I’m like my father,” Nikki said suddenly, and Nina felt the lurch as the girl took an awkward step toward her. She hardly breathed, waiting for her to come closer.
“After we win,” Nikki repeated, and this time, Nina heard the hope embodied in the repetition, “I’ll be in a band, too. He’s a rocker like Steve Tyler. I have a tape of his music he gave to everybody one Christmas, and he’s really good. He played in the house band at Harrah’s here and in Vegas and all over. Maybe I’ll see him on TV one day.” She flung her hair forward onto her cheeks and hid behind the cascade of brown hair.
As she walked out the front door to her car, Nina stashed the bag in her jacket pocket. Once in the car, deciding rocks in her pocket would rapidly demote her new powder blue jacket to cheap-looking rag, she moved the bag into the so-called secret compartment hidden in the armrest between the driver’s and passenger’s seats and set off.
Of course, given the deserted neighborhood and deserted street, the one car for miles would start up immediately behind her. Looking for a place to pull over and let the roadhog hog on ahead, she slowed at the corner. The pickup pulled swiftly in front of her and came to a dead stop.
Stalled, probably, she thought, frustrated. She looked at her watch. She had an appointment in ten minutes. She unrolled the driver’s side window and looked out, then gave a brief honk. When no engine started up and no one emerged from the truck after a minute, she tried to make it around, but the street proved too narrow.
Suspicion and fear rose up in her. She hadn’t seen the pickup when she went in. She threw the gears into reverse, ready to haul out, then thought about Nikki alone in the house. She didn’t want to leave her with a potential threat. So she reached for the hammer she kept under the seat with other important items, cautiously opened the door, and approached the silent vehicle from a safe distance, ready to run.
But it was empty. She walked around the front to make sure. Now she was very suspicious. Where had the driver gone? She put a hand up to shade the tinted window in the rear, but could see nothing inside except a clutter of clothing and tools.
Returning to the Bronco, she called Nikki. “Lock your doors,” she said. “I’m about a block away, and there’s an empty pickup blocking the road here that I don’t like the looks of.”
The driver seemed to have abandoned his wheels. He could be watch
ing from the forest along the road. Nina put the Bronco in reverse and wound her way up another side road and away.
Rain splattered onto the window. She slowed down, cruising slowly through an area of National Forest that would eventually open out to the highway.
She was almost to Al Tahoe when she looked into the driver’s mirror and saw the corner of a denim sleeve in the back seat.
The sleeve was moving, and before she could breathe, an arm clamped around her neck. “Keep driving,” a man said. “You and I have some business.”
Was it Him?
She drove because she had no choice and because her hands were on the wheel and her foot was on the accelerator. She let the adrenaline pump through her body, urging her to get away.
She didn’t dare look in her rearview mirror, although the temptation was unbearable, but if she saw Him there what then? She might die of fear . . .
Not a good day to die.
She slammed on the brakes and the Bronco jerked into a skid. The arm loosed, pulling back from around her neck, and she felt a heavy body slam into the back of her seat as she herself was thrown forward into the seat belt. Holding tightly to the wheel, she ducked her head and steered straight for a gully full of water. The Bronco stopped cold.
She yanked the steel buckle of the seat belt and tumbled out of the driver’s side. Scrambling to her feet, she ran across the empty slick road toward a driveway.
She heard a car door slam and despite herself turned her head back for one frantic look.
He had fallen out of the back door into the gully and her view was blocked by the Bronco, but she heard him grunt as he hit. She went down into a crouch behind a boulder guarding the driveway and saw feet in brown boots and heard splashing, then saw a figure rush into the woods across from her.
Silence. A duck quacked somewhere. A few last drops of rain fell on her forehead.
He was gone. Trembling, she walked back across the street to the Bronco, searching the back seat and the cargo area. Nothing that wasn’t hers, but he had been hiding in the back seat as she drove, preparing to do— what? Her hammer lay ready on the front passenger seat, along with her purse. She jumped back into the driver’s seat and locked the doors and rolled up the windows and sat huddled and shivering. After a moment, when her ability to move had returned, she gunned the Bronco out of there and drove like hell to the office.
Had it been him? Not the man who had chased Bob, but Him—the one who seemed always to be roaming around just at the edge of consciousness, not satisfied with having killed her husband, wanting to hurt her or Bob. Her personal devil, who everyone from the police on down said had cut and run many months ago, who never did the expected. He had assumed an almost supernatural aspect in her mind. She felt that he had linked himself to her and that he would be irresistibly drawn back. A devil!
Let it be anyone but Him.
She skidded into the parking lot, still breathing hard. She turned the engine off, unsnapped the gray plastic of the armchair compartment, and pulled out the pouch. So he hadn’t gotten it!
It was not until she grabbed her briefcase and reached into the back seat for her jacket that she realized the jacket was missing.
Her expensive, brand-new Donna Karan jacket! Her first reaction was relief. It wasn’t Him, it was the other one, the one who wanted the rocks. The case shrank to ordinary proportions again. The man in the woods had thought she put the pouch in the jacket. He had watched her on Nikki’s porch, then.
Nikki’s treasure, pebbles collected by a kid, worthless. He must not know. Maybe Sykes had switched pouches on him. She jumped down onto the pavement, leaned against the wet door, and poured the stones out into her hand again. Black and dirty little rocks, not gold, not silver, nothing to steal, terrorize, murder for . . .
The squall had blown through and bleached clouds made way for a sky the fresh rich blue of an oil painting. A ray of sun pierced through the blowing clouds to shine onto her palm. She picked one of the chunks up and twisted her hand in the light.
The glossy surface clarified into transparence. She looked inside the rock, through it really, and finally saw its secret: pale green, violet, pink flames shooting out sparks of rainbow light.
PART FOUR
In his dream, the giant lizard tries to say something. It staggers. He has delivered the death blow and is no longer afraid. Now the lizard is finally afraid. It cries out because it wants to live after all.
He looks down. The lizard is shrinking! It’s shrinking and shrinking, and suddenly it runs up his pants leg. It can’t be killed! It runs up his pants and under his belt and up his chest and he claps his hand to his own mouth but too late. The lizard has run into his mouth and is now lodged inside him.
CHAPTER 17
“BLACK FIRE OPAL,” said the bearded geologist, inspecting the rock with one eye to a jeweler’s loupe. “Really large, too. Maybe ten carats uncut. Flawless, to my eye.”
Nina had turned out of her office parking lot, driven straight to the local rock shop, then called Sandy on her cell phone to ask her to cancel her appointments for the early afternoon, and endured Sandy’s ire. She couldn’t wait to find someone who could tell her more about the rocks. Unfortunately, the shop was closed. Possessed by a passionate curiosity, she had driven over Spooner Pass, down to the high desert and around Washoe Lake to the brick buildings of the University of Nevada in Reno. There she had knocked on doors until somebody directed her to Tim Seisz’s office. A professor of geology for twenty-seven years, Seisz specialized in mineralogy, and had a real passion for his work. Nina knew him from a previous case but had never seen his office.
The unpretentious room was cubicle sized with a brown metal chair on wheels and an overstuffed bookcase. All spare surfaces sported dusty rock samples in every color and size. Bald and heavyset, the professor was in his forties. Wild strands of gray and brown beard stuck out of his face like metallic bristles on a scrub brush. His rugged, multi-pocketed shorts revealed long brown legs. His dusty brown boots were crossed on a mottled oak desk, and as he leaned back in his chair examining the specimen with interest, the hinges squeaked.
Nina stood in front of the stuffed bookcase.
“Black fire opal?” she said. “What is that? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“It’s rare,” Seisz said, looking at the rock, holding it and turning it in the sunlight coming through his window.
“But . . . opal is white, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “That’s the background you most commonly see in jewelry. But the ground mass can be many colors. Honey-colored. Milky-white, gray, brown, orange, or red. Translucent to opaque. Of course the more transparent stones are preferred, because the light penetrates and you can see the light show on the surface better.”
She was thinking about how she could turn the stones over to Henry McFarland without making Nikki appear guiltier than ever. They were hot in every sense of the word.
“What are you doing with these?” He showed slightly crooked teeth in a smile, a relief after Dylan Brett and his bionic crew. “You didn’t even know it was opal.”
She put aside the question. “Well, I first saw it in very dim light.” She had spent much of the drive to Reno meditating over the stones sitting in the sunlight on her dash, but her meditations had nothing to do with their geologic origins. She had been seduced by the glitter of colors that shifted like rainbows. Closing her eyes at a stop sign, she had still seen the same brilliant flashing colors on the inside of her eyelid. They were covered with dirt and a crust of grayish-green rock, and they smelled like dirt. But inside they were beautiful, magical, precious. Whatever Seisz might say, or any expert, the stones had infected her with a strange fever.
“You can see the colors even in dim light if you get the angle right,” Seisz was saying.
“We had no idea what we were looking at. Where do you find this kind of opal?”
“Where did you find these?”
“I asked first,” Nina said
. “And that’s a long story. Don’t want to bore you.”
He picked through the collection of stones and found another one to study.
“Mostly in Australia,” he said, pulling a book off the shelf nearby. He flipped to a double-page spread of a dry desert setting. In the foreground, a man’s dirty hand held a collection of what appeared to be pebbles. They were very similar to Nikki’s rocks. He thumped a finger on the picture. “Those come from a famous mining area called Coober Pedy. You’ve heard of it?”
“No.”
“Mintbee Mine or Lightning Ridge . . . ring any bells?”
Nina shook her head. Experts in other fields often impressed her, but just imagine spending your life studying rocks, she thought. How deadly. On the other hand, she liked the little office and the big man with his tanned brown pate. This office held what her office never held, serenity and the implacable march to knowledge through pure science, as opposed to her office, which played host to some wild experiments in legal alchemy.
It’s early, she told herself again, trying to incorporate this new information into the case. The plane crash, the plastic surgeon, the samurai sword, and now Australian opals. Wildly divergent elements. She could see no rational pattern emerging, and so far the usual trusty intuition wasn’t kicking in to help her find one.
“Those places are well-known sources for black fire opal,” Tim said. “It’s rare. Found in only a few places in the world.”
Nina picked up a stone and turned it to reveal the magical flash of colors.
“These are dry samples,” he went on, “which is good. Shows they are relatively stable. Opal is mostly water. The black opal is a product of volcanism. At some point in time, a volcano erupted, and hot ash drifted over the surface, burning plants right down to the root, but not necessarily disturbing the soil where they grew, and leaving a hollow in the shape of the root or twig. Water and silicates mixed with volcanic byproducts dripped in over a few million years and formed opaline deposits. At least, that’s the common scientific explanation, that black opal is a kind of fossil.”
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