Quicksilver (reissue)

by Toni Dwiggins

  “Deep depression,” Shelburne said. “One of the many symptoms of mercury poisoning. And that’s on top of Dad poisoning. Dad spoon-feeds him the family legacy, berates him, Dad dies, Henry opens the letter and finds the legacy rock. All of sudden Henry’s the man. The mission, which he chooses to accept, is to find the source of the rock.”

  “Might he not succeed?”

  “What if he doesn’t? The final flop. Can’t even impress a dead man.”

  My heart squeezed.

  “Either way, he sees himself as executor of the legacy.”

  “Meaning, find the gold?”

  “Not just that.”

  “Then what?”

  “Finding what our father was after, for most of his adult life.”

  “Not gold?”

  “Gold, sure. But in the context of something more fundamental.”

  Walter, at my side, stirred.

  “I’m going to have to go in-depth here. Another backgrounder. Our grandfather—known as the great bullshitter—claimed to have found a hidden ore deposit, from whence this rock presumably came. And he hid it under the floorboard, as I said, and left the letter for Henry. But there was another letter—the old man was big on writing letters and setting the family to play his games. This was a 'clue' letter, flowery, vague as hell, teasing. Full of boasts. My father ended up in possession of the letter. And he signed on big-time. Keep in mind, this became the family legend.”

  “There’s no need to warn me about legends,” Walter said.

  Shelburne tipped his head. “So my dad started looking for this deposit, dragging Henry and me along, preaching the letter. When we weren’t out hunting, Dad was feeding us the bullshit along with our breakfast cereal. Fast-forward twenty years. Dad dies—heart attack. Henry opens his letter, we find the rock, and we get bullshit clue letter out of Dad's files...” Shelburne eyed us. “Maybe not bullshit, after all. You geologists will know, right? Is this rock from the... Well, you have a look and tell me.”

  Shelburne took the ore specimen out of the lunch box. He walked over to Walter’s workbench and placed it there.

  Walter followed.

  “Like I said, Henry split the original chunk of ore and left me this half. And let me tell you, when I saw the fresh-cut face it was damned dramatic.”

  The fresh-cut face didn’t show on Walter’s workbench because Shelburne had placed the rock cut-face down.

  “Go ahead,” Shelburne said. “See for yourself.”

  Walter turned the rock over.

  He sucked in his breath.

  I might have made a noise, myself. The cut face was blue, the blue of glacial ice.

  Walter spoke. “I never expected to see this. It’s simply not to be seen, today.”

  “That’s right,” Shelburne said. “At least that’s what Dad always said. The blue is buried.”

  I turned to Shelburne. “It’s chemistry. Your rock, where the old surface shows, has been exposed to oxygen and so the iron minerals in the matrix have changed to an oxide. That’s why the color is reddish. But there, on the fresh face, which by definition hasn’t been exposed for long, the iron is not oxidized. That’s why it’s blue.”

  Walter said, to me, “It’s not the chemistry I was remarking upon, dear. It’s the legend.”

  I replied, “You’re becoming as elliptical as Mr. Shelburne.”

  “I’m just gobsmacked. This is, quite possibly, an ore sample from the deep blue lead.”

  Shelburne said, “Looks like I found the right guy.”

  “The blue lead.” I searched my memory. “Isn’t that...”

  “Extraordinary,” Walter said. “Mr. Shelburne has walked into our lab with a rock that every geologist who harbors an interest in the story of gold dreams of seeing. The blue. The deep blue gold-bearing gravels. The blue lead.”

  Shelburne said, “The golden brick road.”

  “Legend has it,” Walter said to me, “that long ago there was one special river channel, different from all others, where the gold-bearing gravels were deposited. The miners followed that path and they called it the ‘lead’ because they thought it would lead them to their heart’s desire.”

  I said, “Isn’t that where legends normally lead?”

  Walter smiled. “Of course the reality is that there were many channels, many tributaries. But down deep in those channels, down in the gut, the legend is true because the gravel of the lower stratum is a striking blue color and it’s there where the gold ran rich.”

  “You’re talking about the ancient river channels.”

  Shelburne said, “The lost rivers of California.”

  “They’re not lost,” I said. “They’re simply hidden by subsequent geologic events. Eruptions. Uplift. Erosion.”

  Shelburne turned to Walter. “She doesn’t have much romance in her soul, does she?”

  I flinched. Don’t I?

  CHAPTER 5

  “Speaking of romance,” I said, to Shelburne, “what about you? The blue lead and the gold in the rock? Your eyes lit up.”

  He lifted his palms. “You got me.”

  “I do?”

  “We’re all products of our childhood. Those lessons run deep. You do what you can with them when you grow up. Take them to heart, rebel, whatever. But you don’t erase them. I found my niche in the business world but sure, I still have an eye for gold.”

  “Then why didn’t you join Henry in the hunt?”

  “He didn’t invite me.”

  “But he’s inviting you now.”

  “Yes, the clues. That’s the way Henry communicates. His memory is damaged so he plays these little games. They started as a mnemonic, a way to remind himself of things. Remind others. And it became ingrained. The way I read the clues he left behind this time, he wants me to follow him, help him.”

  “Help him find the gold?”

  “Help him if he doesn’t.”

  “Or do both?”

  Shelburne abruptly unzipped his jacket. Underneath, he wore a slim green T-shirt with a Club One Fitness logo. He lifted the shirt. For a bizarre moment I thought he was showing off his gym-toned abs, and then I noticed the belt holding up his hiking pants. It was a tooled leather belt with a big silver buckle.

  I couldn’t read the curlicue lettering without coming closer but I knew what it said. Quicksilver.

  “Henry left the belt behind, as well. I’ll be wearing it until I find him.”

  I thought, very effective. If Shelburne had practiced this pitch in front of a mirror he could not have performed it more convincingly. Isn’t that what venture capitalists prized?

  Shelburne let his shirt drop. “Henry’s a wounded soul. Please help me find him.”

  And then I felt unduly suspicious and very small. I looked to Walter.

  He lifted his eyebrows.

  Technically, because I was the junior partner, Walter had the final say on whether or not we accepted a case. But in practice we usually decided jointly. Still, there was always the dance of who goes first. Walter was playing the gentleman, here. Charmingly old-fashioned, sometimes irritating, Walter always being a stickler for rules. Ladies first.

  The ball was in my court. Were we going to sign on to find Henry Shelburne? If so, I needed to proceed with full understanding that this case would in all likelihood dredge up the ache of the past. Two Henrys, the one already resonating with the other. Funny thing, much as my brother's death took up residence in my heart, it had primed eleven-year-old me for the promise of Walter's lab, where something could be done about calamities and bad shit. If I'd taken a safer path—a carrot farmer, like my uncle—would that have been easier? No expectations of dealing with past calamity. Just a never-ending supply of health food in the cellar.

  Walter cleared his throat.

  I wondered what I would have said had Robert Shelburne’s brother’s name been, say, George. But it wasn’t. I met Walter’s look. “It’s what we do.”

  He said, “That it is.”

  Dance
concluded.

  “Mr. Shelburne,” Walter said, “before we proceed we’ll require your signature on a contract. And a retainer.”

  Shelburne flashed a grateful smile and took out his checkbook. Walter went to the file where we keep our brochures and reports and contracts. They sat together at the map table.

  I watched.

  I don’t believe in premonitions—I’m not into the woo-woo stuff—but it seemed creepily pertinent that the contract-signing took place beneath the poster on the wall. It’s a film poster from the Disney flick Alice in Wonderland, the part where Alice is tumbling down the rabbit hole. Walter bought and hung that poster. Walter likes the message: you follow the evidence wherever it takes you, down the rabbit hole if you must.

  And that’s where Henry the wounded soul had evidently gone.

  I’d never been a fan of Alice, or her topsy-turvy world. And right now I was, in particular, not a fan of that whacked-out character she meets, the Mad Hatter. Back in Chem 101 I’d learned about the effects of mercury—and in a textbook sidebar, the reason the hatter went mad. Back in the day, hat-makers used mercury in the process of curing animal pelts to make hats. Day in, day out, breathing in the vapors. It affected speech. Coordination. It led to mental instability. Hallucinations. Dementia.

  Mad as a hatter.

  And now we were gearing up to go hunting for Henry Shelburne who, according to his brother, suffered the effects of mercury poisoning. Who left behind his vial of mercury as a fare-thee-well.

  Who was reminding me of my own little brother, who suffered the effects of a genetic disorder. Who died while I was looking out the window.

  Henry Shelburne and Henry Oldfield, each of them damaged goods.

  So yeah, I’m on board with taking this case. Let’s find Henry Shelburne before he does something stupid.

  But let’s do it on alert. Let’s be cautious.

  CHAPTER 6

  Gail Hawkins could see everything.

  The window was huge.

  Her vision was perfect. Her golden eyes saw twenty-twenty.

  Even from across the street she could read the sign on the door beside the window. The sign said Sierra Geoforensics. It was in black letters on a shiny brass plate. She could see through the window right into the big room with the microscopes and machines she didn't know the names for. That was the laboratory where Walter and Cassie did their science work. Until today, their work had nothing to do with anything Gail cared about. She'd studied their website and she knew what they boasted they could do. She hoped they were as good as they claimed to be.

  Because today their work mattered.

  She saw Walter and Cassie and Robert in there.

  She was too far away to study their expressions but she knew anyway. They were all excited about the rock Robert brought.

  Robert had taken it out of the metal box and put it on the workbench.

  And then Walter was all over it, like a duck on a June bug.

  That was exactly the way she expected Walter to act. Walter knew his ore. Walter loved gold as much as she loved gold. Well, almost as much. Nobody loved it the way she loved it, with the hunger of an unfed lioness.

  If Walter had been checking his personal message folder on the forum he would have seen the message about the rock. The message said, urgent. The message said that Robert had an ore specimen from the western Sierra, and that it would astonish Walter, and that Robert needed to contact Walter about the specimen. And then Robert sent a second message, which said that Robert's brother Henry had gone off looking for the source of the rock—had gone missing. And then Robert had deleted the second message. Walter hadn't been online. Walter had missed both messages. Gail hadn't missed them. Messages could not be hidden from Gail. She was a forum administrator and so she was able to see everything, read everything, and she'd seen the deleted message before Robert erased it.

  The forum was her arena. The forum was where she could keep watch over all the seekers posting and boasting about where to find it. About what they found. About what they wanted to find. About gold.

  The forum was where she kept track of her hunts.

  Her avatar was a big golden G.

  She rarely posted—but always watched.

  She had been watching Walter for years.

  And then, yesterday, it paid off.

  When Walter didn't respond to Robert's first two messages, Robert had sent a third message saying he would contact Walter through his website, or phone him.

  If Gail could have read Walter's email or tapped his phone she could have had confirmation that Robert had finally contacted Walter. But she didn't have those kinds of skills.

  And so she had to guess that Robert finally contacted Walter. There was no way to be one hundred percent certain that Robert would actually go to Walter's lab. But she had reason enough to take the gamble.

  And she would get there first.

  Last night she'd driven across the mountains to the town of Mammoth Lakes. She rented a cheap motel room, just off the main street. Did her surveillance. Found the lab. Found the cafe almost directly across the street—this was destiny, wasn't it? She got a table near the window and looked across the street, watching the lights in the lab. They burned until ten at night. Walter and Cassie worked long hours. Good. She liked hard workers. She needed them to be good.

  After they had gone home, she had gone to her motel for a good night's sleep. She needed to be rested—ready for the hunt.

  This morning she went back to the cafe early. After breakfast, she left and strolled around the main street, always keeping an eye on the entrance to the lab. This town was busy, full of tourists, full of Level-4 people who were background, who didn't matter unless they got in her way and then they became Level-3, claiming her attention, needing to be dealt with, and then when she was finished they went back to their proper Level-4.

  A little after eleven Robert had parked his Land Rover down the street from the lab and had walked to the door carrying a big briefcase.

  Her heart had swelled.

  She'd been right.

  He came.

  He carried the rock in his big briefcase. That was smart. Nobody on the street would guess that he carried something so valuable. They would just look at him and see a businessman who looked like a businessman no matter how he dressed. Probably they wouldn't even look at his briefcase. They'd see a man who looked like a movie actor, one of those sidekicks who was good-looking and a little snaky at the same time. In fact, if she wasn't on the hunt, she wouldn't mind fucking him. A Level-3 for the moment. She actually had his photo copied to her computer. She'd stalked him online and found his photo and full profile on the page of The Bayfront Group, in Mountain View California. Silicon Valley. She'd never been there, never wanted to go. There was nothing of interest to her in that place.

  Except, now, Robert. A Silicon Valley money man who came looking for gold.

  She ignored his good looks now and focused on what he carried.

  She waited until Robert went into the lab, then hurried back to the cafe and took her table again. She had to tell the waiter—a Level-3 for the moment—that she really liked the place and had worked up an appetite sightseeing and was ready for an early lunch.

  She wasn't really hungry but she ate anyway.

  She was a lioness, feeding when she needed to.

  Keeping watch on Robert and Walter and Cassie inside the lab.

  All of them Level-2 now.

  CHAPTER 7

  The men concluded the paperwork. Walter moved to our mini-kitchen to put the coffee on—coffee being a ritual he likes to indulge, if the client is willing—his version of breaking bread together, a symbolic sharing of the basics in life, establishing trust.

  Shelburne packed away the photograph and the mercury kit. Exhibits no longer required.

  I turned to the blue-faced rock.

  ~ ~ ~

  Striking as it was, the blue face was not going get us where we needed to go.

&n
bsp; There was a better clue cemented in the rock. A crackerjack clue. I assumed Henry the amateur geologist had noticed it, as well. Why else grab his microscope?

  I grabbed mine.

  Mine—well, Walter’s and mine—was a bulk-specimen stereoscopic scope. It had an articulated arm that could lift and reach and twist and accommodate a thick object like this chunk of ore. It looked vaguely prehistoric. I’d wager it cost more than Henry’s.

  I placed the rock on the stage and focused in on the angular dark pebble.

  The digital camera built into the scope sent the view to the attached monitor.

  Under magnification, the pebble showed its structure, a mosaic of tiny interlocking grains that made the rock tough, that shouted its name.

  Hornfels—very very cool.

  Even cooler was the exquisite crystal with a black Maltese cross piercing its heart.

  Walter brought me a mug of coffee and paused to admire the magnified pebble. He lifted his free hand. We high-fived. He said, “I believe I’ll start with the maps and see if that hornfels can lead us to fat city.” He headed to our map cabinet.

  Shelburne took his place, brew in hand. “Fat city?”

  I said, “The jackpot.”

  “Now you’re speaking my language.”

  I switched to my own. “That pebble is chiastolite hornfels, which...”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Chiastolite from the Greek khiastos, meaning a cross. Hornfels from the German, meaning horn rock, because it’s flinty and sharp-edged.”

  “The names aside—what does it mean for our search?”

  I took a careful sip of steaming coffee. A celebration in honor of the coolness of geological names.

  Shelburne drummed his fingers on his coffee mug.

  I said, “It narrows the neighborhood. Let’s start with the hornfels pebble. Notice the edges are still angular. That means it was not transported far from its source. If a stream had carried and battered it, the edges would be rounded. But they’re angular and that tells us the source was a nearby hornfels zone.”