Badwater (The Forensic Geology Series)

by Toni Dwiggins

  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. Sodium 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.

  We dozed.

  Something was caressing me. I slapped my neck and came away with a crackling mess that gave off a bitter smell that cleared my head. I knew what to do. I wiped my hand clean, rolled to the dig, and scooped a palm of water. The silt had nearly settled out and it tasted less salty now. It left my hand silky smooth. When I had guzzled enough, I tied Hap’s bandana over the mouth of the water bottle and sank it in the muddy seep. What a fine gift Hap had given me. Then I slept again, dreaming of salt rings and abysses and vibrating shapes and a woman powdering my face with talc until I could not breathe.

  Walter woke me and said, “Look.”

  We stared across the saltpan, that great white starlit belly, to the Badwater Road where a pair of whi
te eyes traveled north. It’s them. They’re looking for us.

  We capped the water bottle and drank one last time from our oasis and then once again we broached the saltpan.

  The night air was velvet now, not brutal, and we walked lightly across the crackling ground, and I thought we’d make the Badwater Road in no time at all. Except it was taking forever to reach the floodplain. Walter’s old-man shuffle was slowing us down. My rubber legs were slowing us down. There came another pair of eyes on the Badwater Road, and that spurred us on, and at last we waded onto the floodplain. And then the saltpan changed again, bunching up, and we walked on tufts of salt that grew and grew as we picked our way deeper through this miniature forest.

  There came a shriek.

  We turned and Walter’s flashlight caught it and I knew that’s what I’d seen from the car and then I ducked because this was no mirage.

  Walter stumbled.

  I grabbed his arm. We went down together and I sliced my palm on a fin of salt.

  It came at us low, skimming the tufts and then wheeling to avoid a pinnacle, and then it tumbled, wing over wing, and hit the pan.

  We froze.

  It picked itself up, pale wings unfolding. It screeched and came our way.

  I kicked a chunk of rock salt free and heaved it and the bat shrank back, and then, insanely, came at us again. Not creeping. Attacking. Rabid. Walter tried to blind it with his flashlight and in the beam the bat eyes shone red. It stopped. Mouth opened to let loose another shriek and the teeth shone, bloodied. We shoved ourselves up and took off, scrambling through the salt forest until we reached another floodplain and our legs gave out.

  We sat back-to-back, Walter sweeping the flashlight beam to and fro, me listening for bat wings.

  ~

  Someone bent over Walter.

  I reached for the flashlight, which had rolled away, its beam now dimmed.

  She turned to me.

  The moon was up behind her, silhouetting her. Her face was in shadow. All I could make out was her long black hair, feathered like a shawl. She crouched, one hand cradling Walter’s head, her lean body twisted toward me, other hand braced on her knee. She was still. She was a pillar of salt.

  I croaked, “Who are you?”

  From her shadow face came a high young voice. “An alien.”

  And she turned back to Walter. She lifted his head and took a water bottle from the sling around her hips and put it to his mouth. “Drink, grandfather.”

  18

  I heard water running. Splashing.

  I dove into the cold pool below the waterfall. It was heaven.

  “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.”

  I lay on a cloud. I fought through fog.

  “If you’re happy and you know it, croak like a frog. Rrrribit, rrribit.”

  I opened my eyes.

  Hap Miller leaned over me. His heart face was inches above mine. “Welcome back. Long time no see.”

  “Where am I?”

  “You’re in fantasyland, Buttercup.”

  I made a slow survey. I was in a Spanish villa: sand-colored walls, arched stone fireplace, carved-wood furniture. I lay in a cloud of soft pillows under a heavy flowered spread. I began to remember being carried on a litter, transferred to this bed. A needle. My left arm lay on top of the spread, needle in my vein. Tubing ran up to an IV bag hung on the brass bedstead. Ceiling fan sent down a warm breeze. It wasn’t enough. I pushed back the spread and breeze tickled my bare skin. I smelled of sweat and salt. I was in my underwear. I yanked up the spread.

  Hap grinned. “See a whole lot less on the ladies at the pool.”

  I burned, beneath the covers. I now heard shouts. Kids. I turned my head. Two big windows, bristling palm trees outside.

  Hap said, “We’s in the playground of the rich and richer. This time of year, the furriners. Jess love the wild west—cain’t get enough of our deserts. And heat! Gotta come see for theyselves how hot hot is.”

  “Hap.” My throat felt scraped raw. “Where is this?”

  “Welcome to the Furnace Creek Inn.”

  “Walter?”

  “Doing fine. Right next door in a corner suite. With a private veranda for if he wants to catch himself some fresh air with his morning latte.” Hap sighed. “As for poor me, I share a room with Milt. I do fear he’ll snore.”

  “Why are we here?”

  “Headquarters. The FBI, in the dapper person of Hector Soliano, negotiated a sweet deal. A German here and there had to be relocated but otherwise all are happy—except the taxpayers footing the bill. Then again, they’ll never find out so all’s well.”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  “All in good time. Doctor Hap needs to make sure you’re up to it.”

  “You’re a doctor?”

  His eyes went flat. “You sound like my daddy.” He gave the IV bag a squeeze. “My daddy tried to send me to Harvard med school but damn, they didn’t want me. So I went to Podunk U and got me an EMT certificate. That’s Emergency Medical Technician, ma’am. That didn’t satisfy daddy so I went into the nuke biz and got me a health physics degree. I thunk daddy’d be impressed by all them alphas and betas and gammas under the supervision of his manly son. Daddy wudn’t.” Hap shrugged. “But hey, Milt was happy to hire a guy who can do radiation protection and, on the side, patch people up. You okay being tended to by a part-time EMT?”

  I thought, Daddy sounds like poison. I said, “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” He took my hand and checked my pulse. He put a blood pressure cuff on my IV arm and pumped it up. He brushed the sticky hair off my forehead. Cool hands.

  I let my heavy eyes close. The pressure cuff pinched. The sheet abraded my tender feet. My left hand stung. My skin felt sticky. I tasted grit. I didn’t care because I could summon enough saliva to swallow. I located an ache in my stomach that I identified as hunger. It was good to be alive.

  There was a crash and I opened my eyes.

  Hap held my arm steady. “Just thunder.”

  Rain came in a rush, clattering so loud my ears rang.

  “More on the way, Hector says. That is, Hector says the clerk at the front desk says. Hurricane off Baja California and we get the whiplash.” Hap fanned himself. “Cool us off.”

  I wetted my lips. “There was a girl.”

  He jerked a thumb. “Outside. Least she was, checking out the little bitty thongs on the ladies at the pool. Disapproving, I’d say. Methinks she is a Puritan.”

  “Who is she?”

  “She told Hector she’s an alien.” Hap held his nose. “In need of a bath.”

  I smelled my own rank smell. “How’d she find us?”

  “Took awhile to figure out you needed finding. We were at the talc mines way late, and when Hector couldn’t raise y’all on the cell he figured you were up some canyon but next time he tried he got a mite worried. So he called Furnace Creek and they sent a ranger out rangering but he didn’t find you on the West Side Road so he went on over to the Greenwater Road because that’s where you said y’all were going next. Ranger found somebody’d seen a car like yours, so we all thought you were up some canyon over there. We didn’t drag our sorry butts to Furnace Creek until after dark.”

  “What about Chickie?”

  “Miss Chick left her mine in a huff not long after you left.” Hap cocked his head. “Course, Milt left around about the same time. Went home to pack some necessities for him and me, shop for the others. Since it seemed we were gonna have a sleepover.”

  “When did Milt get here?”

  “Late. Gotta say, though, don’t see Milt as much of a suspect. Hasn’t got the imagination to bushwhack you.”

  What it took was gall.

  “Anyhoo, we all end up here at the Inn having a tailgate party, and a tip comes in—backpackers came across your car. So Hector dispatches some of his manly agents to find you.”

  “What about the girl?”

  “Right there, listening in.
We did attract a little crowd. Best I can make out, she’s local and sees herself as Miss Alien Desert Rat and damned if she isn’t because she went out and beat the FBI to the rescue.”

  I thought, bless her.

  Hap checked his watch, then disconnected the IV and gently pulled the needle from my arm. “Feel okay, Cassie?”

  Like I’d been resurrected. “You do good work.”

  “Uh-oh.” Hap took my left hand. “Doctor Hap missed something.” He rummaged in his kit. He squeezed a worm of ointment on my cut palm. He studied it. “Make a cool sketch.” He gestured at a sketchpad sticking out of his kit. “I draw hands. Fact, I’ve drawn most of the hands at the dump. Get me some down-time and I gotta fill it. Did a real cool one for this deconner who blew out his gloves—little necrosis of the tissue.” Hap made a face. “But it made for a Jackson-Pollocky sort of avante-garde effect.”

  “Like Roy Jardine’s face?”

  “Not that avante-garde.” He bandaged my cut and released me. “Tell me, find anything out there afore you got bushwhacked?”

  “No.”

  “Heard about your loss. That’s a bitch.”

  “Loss?”

  “The ice chest. Your soil map. Walter’s been having a cow about that.”

  Me too.

  “Cheer up. Start again, right? Go get more dirt off that rig?”

  He’s asking if I can? Why’s he so interested? I thought, suddenly, just because Chickie and Ballinger left the mine early doesn’t make them the only ones with the opportunity to bushwhack us. Jardine could have done it himself, if he knew where we were going. Who knew our plans, at the mine? Just about everybody. Hap certainly; he’d been the one who first asked. Or it could have been one of Soliano’s agents who overheard, and phoned Jardine. Not Soliano himself, though, I couldn’t buy that. But what about Scotty, or someone from Scotty’s team? Good God, I was getting paranoid. Yeah, but paranoid’s good.