“You've done your homework,” Reid said. “Good job. You must have learned glauconite lenses can be found in a number of places in the Shinumo.”
I had learned that.
Reid smiled. His right shoulder, ever so slightly, lifted.
I had also learned, in that visit to his home, about grad-school poker nights and the players' tells. Reid doing that one-shoulder shrug, losing a few hands to Walter.
I studied the smiling man. Bad job, Reid. Showing your hand.
From upcanyon there came a shout.
“Come see!” Walter shouted.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
WE MOVED THE FEW YARDS upcanyon to join Walter.
My partner was standing on the bank of Shinumo Creek, looking up the Bright Angel slope to the Muav cliff above. The brush was so thick that we didn't see what he'd found until we were almost on top of him. And then we saw.
Oh yes, I thought. Aha.
The Muav rock face emitted a waterfall, which pooled below the cliff, which then ran in a creeklet down to the vigorous Shinumo.
“Pretty,” Quillen said.
“Life-giving,” Walter replied. “There are a number of springs feeding Shinumo Creek. A big one up at the rim, in the Kaibab. You could say this sums up the hydrogeology of the area. Groundwater up top drains via joints down through the permeable rock layers. You could say that the fracturing created high-flow pipes, and wherever the pipes reach an impermeable layer—like Bright Angel Shale—the water flows laterally to exit as seeps and springs, and sometimes waterfalls. You can see a fracture there.” Walter pointed at the prominent line on the cliff face, above the waterfall.
We looked up, and then we looked at Reid.
“Hydrogeo isn't my field,” he said.
“True,” Walter said. “You trained as a structural geologist. As did I. As was our thesis advisor, Harvey Phipps.”
“Harvey? What the devil has he got to do with this?”
“Marine transgression.”
“I repeat.”
“Indulge me, Reid.”
“This isn't grad school, Walter.”
Walter smiled. “Let's see what else there is to see around here.”
Walter led us the few yards downcanyon, back the way we'd come. He stopped us, and pointed. “You can see another fracture line up there.”
I saw it—looking like a frown line down the face of the Muav cliff. Here, though, no water leaked out.
I took in the lay of the land.
The shale slope here was more open than the brush-haired slope below the waterfall. The reason was apparent—here there were slumps of soil and rubble, clearly due to slippage. Small landslides. Further defining this slope were high-water marks where Shinumo Creek had overflowed its bed and cut into the lower hill. At least one flood had left a conspicuous scar of tree limbs entombed in dried-mud debris.
This slope of Bright Angel Shale had been destabilized, in years past. In decades past, perhaps.
Here's where it got tricky. Here's where Harvey Phipps had been cagey. Indeed, Harvey had everything to do with this, as Walter had learned when he found Harvey's field notes.
The notes were the key.
But the notes had said, simply, 'instability.' Had Harvey meant here? The slope below the waterfall showed no signs of sliding, of flood-cutting. So must be here. Right?
Walter thought so. Walter started up the Bright Angel slope, taking care with his footing, kneeling here and there to put his lens to a rubble heap, to a slump.
While he went about his business, I moved downcanyon to the site of my glauconite lens. Back into the thicker vegetation again.
I climbed up the brushy shale slope to the alcove tucked beneath the Muav cliff, where I'd found the lens, where I'd taken my sample. This time, I began to follow its track, tracing it across the Bright Angel slope, below the long Muav ledge, fighting the brush until I reached the slide zone, where the going was easier. I quickly intersected the field of study that Walter was staking out. He was now above me on the slope. We didn't speak. Noses to our work. My lens was interrupted here and there by the slides, but I kept an eye out for the color. That vivid green color.
Harvey hadn't mentioned the color. The glauconite.
Reid, though, had sure made a show of it, on his geologic fireplace. Perhaps it meant nothing more than, Reid likes his drama.
Or perhaps it meant more.
And here's where it got even trickier. Whatever Walter's and Reid's old thesis advisor had found up here in the Shinumo was not noted in his field book. Hinted at, though. Harvey had found something 'of interest' as he put it, in dry academic-speak.
And then, at some point, Reid had found it. Or so we posited.
It had to be interesting enough for Reid to conceal. For Reid to unloose an avalanche upon our heads, to stop us in our tracks.
I glanced down at the others, resting on boulders on the bank of Shinumo Creek. Pete and Wes and Quillen watched Walter and me. Reid's back was turned.
A gust of wind ruffled my shirt. I pushed back my hat, ready for the next gust, to dry my sweaty forehead. The next gust came but it was weaker and it made a strange whining sound, as if it had got caught by the brush. Like us, all too often.
I gave up on the wind and reset my hat and resumed my hunt. I had tracked my lens across the slide area back into the brush—to a particularly inconvenient dense stretch—when Walter interrupted.
“Hey!” he cried out.
I turned.
He was kneeling on the upper shale slope, beneath the long Muav ledge, pretty much where I'd passed him. I abandoned my lens and joined him. The others abandoned their boulders and joined us. Reid trailed them uphill.
“We've got bore holes,” Walter said.
There were five holes, about a foot in diameter, spaced about ten feet apart beneath the ledge. They were neatly dug, or more likely drilled into the shale. Three were nearly covered with loose brush, their outlines just discernible. Two had been uncovered, a little pile of brush in between. Walter's doing, no doubt.
Walter got to his feet. “For blasting.”
I glanced down the slope, at the fans of the old slides, at the cut marks from the old floods. Instability.
But not unstable enough? A helping hand was needed?
Harvey hadn't mentioned bore holes. Blasting. This was all Reid. Wasn't it?
Wes peered into a hole. “Sonofabitch.” He turned to Reid. “Fireworks here?”
I tensed. This is it, right? Where Reid caves? The others tensed. Even Reid.
Wes moved in on Reid. “You wanna tell them? Or should I?”
Reid held his ground. “I will.” He gestured at the bore holes. “This? I know fuck-all about this.” Reid addressed the rest of us. “Fireworks at the brine plant—that was my nephew's doing. He mentioned it weeks ago, some kind of protest. He called it fireworks. He wanted to impress his mom. My sister blames the plant for the quakes, for ruining property values. I tried to discourage Jeff. I sure didn't think he'd escalate to a bombing. Sadly, it went so terribly wrong for him.”
“For us both,” Wes said.
“I'm truly sorry Wes, but that's partly on you.” Reid again addressed the rest of us. “Wes came to me—while he was on the run, hunting for Becca—because he'd learned she and I had a bond. He hoped I'd know where she was. I didn't. But I told him, much to my regret, about Jeff's plan. I said it's better if Becca stays away, because Jeff might try to enlist her—given that she and Wes did that protest at Glen Canyon.” Reid turned to Wes. “And I assume you went to stop Jeff.”
“Assume? You gave me the date and the place.”
“I gave you my best guess, based on what Jeff said.”
The wind whined again. At least I thought it was the wind. Strange.
“It went just like you planned,” Wes said, his voice tightly strung. “You counted on us hating each other. You warned Jeff I was coming. He got there first. Set off the pipe bomb. And when I showed up, he jumped me. Wh
ich one of us did you want dead, Reid?”
“I had no reason to want either of you dead.”
Sure you did, I thought. You do nothing without reason. Whatever it might be.
Quillen spoke up. “We'll discuss this in more depth when we return.”
We'd already discussed it, with Wes, when he'd shown up at park headquarters driving the four-wheel-drive he'd borrowed in order to do his off-road search for Becca, when he'd confessed to Quillen and agreed to join us—to pressure Reid into talking. We hadn't expected the bore holes, but they gave Wes his opening.
I toed the edge of the nearest hole. Fireworks here? A protest here? Who would see it? No, not a protest. I looked downhill, at the slides. At the flooding high-water marks. Explosives here would further destabilize this slope. But to what end?
The others resumed their seats on the boulders by the creek.
Walter and I returned to work. Walter, looking for the explosives that were presumably meant for these holes. Me, back to the glauconite lens where I'd left it, in the brush.
My green trail still followed the upper shale slope, just below the Muav cliff. The trail led in and out of bouldery bushy clumps and I had to sidetrack around them and then pick up the trail again and it was slow and scratchy work. I wondered if this was the path Harvey had followed, when he took his break and noticed something 'new'. And if it was, I wondered if that's why Reid had chosen the vivid green for the Bright Angel Shale layer on his fireplace. Because it led somewhere. Somewhere in this 'brushy bouldery' neighborhood, as Harvey had grumpily described it.
I moved on and the trail jogged slightly upward and soon I had to detour around another damned boulder, and that left me in a pocket of more boulders and brush. These boulders were silvery. This was the contact zone between the Bright Angel Shale and the Muav Limestone.
I wiped sweat off my brow.
I thought I heard the wind coming again. The wind was whining.
No, the wind was laughing.
What?
Somebody was laughing?
From far away.
I looked around. Through the brush, I got the barest screened glimpse of the others down below by the creek. Not noticeably doubled over in laughter. Walter was hidden from me by the brush, somewhere on the shale slope. But it was not Walter laughing. I'd heard his laugh for over half my life. I knew what it sounded like. This wasn't it.
This was like the wind that catches in something, in a stand of reeds, making the reeds bend and whip and whistle, and if you're not looking, just hearing, the sound is somewhat like laughter.
No. This wasn't whistling reeds that sounded like laughter.
This was laughter.
The wind gust came then and it ruffled my shirt and cooled my sweaty face. It made a rustling sound. It didn't whine. I questioned my previous hearing.
And then the wind went away and the rustling ceased and I turned my attention back to the brushy bouldery pocket, and I squeezed behind a huge Muav boulder—the thing big as a truck—and that's when I found the entrance.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
WE HUDDLED AT THE ENTRANCE.
Huddling because there was so little room between the truck-sized boulder and the mouth of the tunnel into the Muav Limestone cliff.
I could smell us. Sweat, mostly. Sunscreen. Someone was wearing after-shave—Quillen, I realized, although he too smelled primarily of sweat.
I could feel us. The tension. Was this the place?
If I'd correctly identified the glauconite lens as the something 'new' Harvey Phipps had noticed, and followed—and if I myself had correctly followed that vivid-green trail across the shale slope up to the contact zone with the Muav, then this had to be the place.
I watched Reid, who stood beside Walter, slightly in front of me. Been here before, Reid? Harvey tell you about this place on that Bolivia field trip, before he died?
“Reid,” Walter said, “I owe you an explanation.”
Reid shot a wary look at Walter.
“How we got here,” Walter continued. “The last piece of the puzzle—Harvey's field notes.”
Reid stiffened.
“You wondering how I saw the notes? They were sent to the university library, after his death. They were then digitized.”
Reid said nothing.
“You wondering how I went looking for the notes? It was something your sister said. She accused me of making a documentary of the Lassen family life. It struck me then—a field book is a documentary of a geologist's life. And I thought of Harvey.”
Reid didn't ask about the timing.
The last act in the documentary of Harvey Phipps's life was unrecorded, because any field notes he might have taken did not survive his Bolivia trip. The field notes digitized by the library predated that trip. As best Walter could date it, Harvey had interrupted his field work here in the Shinumo Quadrangle to join Reid on the trip to Bolivia.
Reid hadn't said a word since we'd gathered at the mouth of the tunnel.
Walter adjusted his headlamp. “Shall we?”
We all fell in behind Walter—Pete, then Reid, then Quillen cutting off any retreat by Reid, then me, then Wes.
As we entered the mouth I readied myself, uncomfortable with enclosed tunnels, but this one was reasonably wide and comfortably tall.
We switched on our headlamps and our six light beams painted a jigsaw along the limestone walls, until we coordinated and staggered our positions to better illuminate the way ahead. We went slowly because the floor was rough uneven limestone mottled with pebbles and cobbles and the few patches of dry soil were too small to show footprints. Had there been footprints.
It quickly grew chilly.
It smelled like old rock.
And then Walter stopped us. “You hear that?”
We cocked our heads. Cartoon listening.
I wasn't sure what Walter heard but I thought I heard a whistling sound—the wind in the reeds still in my mind—and then I thought no, it's water flowing. Not a gush. A trickle, maybe.
I stared at the dry floor and then aimed my beam up the right-hand wall to the ceiling and there was nothing. No seep. No trickle.
But there was a definite fault trace running along the ceiling.
I considered our tunnel in relation to the cliff face just upcanyon where we'd seen the waterfall emerge. I thought of the fracture lines on the cliffs. Judging from that, I figured the joints down through the Muav no doubt ran in parallel. The upcanyon joint drained groundwater down to the level of the impermeable Bright Angel Shale, which was an aquiclude, at which point the water ran laterally to exit as the waterfall. Here, if the frown line down the Muav face indeed correlated to a joint, it had perhaps been plugged by debris. And that would explain the dryness of our tunnel.
I stared at Reid, ahead. Hydrogeo wasn't his field. Didn't need to be. One semester would do it. Hydrogeology 101.
Reid said nothing about hearing anything.
I said, “Walter, could it be running water?”
Quillen said, “What?”
“Maybe,” Walter said, over his shoulder. “A trickle flow.”
“I don't see any,” Pete said.
Quillen relaxed.
Walter moved again, and we followed suit.
Within a short distance Walter's light disappeared.
Wes, behind me, hissed, “Huh?”
“A bend up ahead,” I told him.
Indeed, one by one the light beams winked out, and then I reached the bend and waited for Wes to draw up right behind me, and whispered to him, “Gnarly, right?”
He whispered, “Right on.”
And then I moved ahead, Wes on my heels.
I strained to hear the trickle but our boots on rock were making too much noise.
Walter would have stopped us, if need be.
Actually, he was slowing us. The light beams grew closer. The men in front of me closed ranks. I figured Walter had come to a side tunnel and was wondering which way to go.
> And then everything grew confused. Walter gave a shout, “Look out!” Somebody hissed, “Shit.” Pete. That did it. Ranger Pete Molina alarmed? My heartbeat ramped up and I was again angling to get a look, to see what in this place would draw a shit from Ranger Molina, some desecration in his national park, in this tunnel.
We crowded forward, coming up behind Walter.
Somebody's light beam pointed down.
Into a void.
And then we all coordinated, as when we'd first entered the tunnel, aiming our beams in concert at the gap in the floor. I thought, it's a narrow crevasse, where a fracture has broken the rock.
It swallowed our lights.
We raised our beams to illuminate the edges of the gap, and I saw that it was anything but narrow. It was a hole. No, bigger. It was a crater.
It was a collapse in the floor that left only a narrow ledge on the right-hand side, flanking the crater, a walkway of sorts that led around the crater, to the far end where the tunnel should have continued.
But the tunnel ended back there, victim of another collapse, this one from the ceiling.
A joint, perhaps—the joint that correlated to the frown line on the Muav face outside. A joint plugged by debris, collapsing the ceiling, blocking the tunnel.
End of the line.
Quillen swung on Reid. “This your doing, Mr. Lassen?”
Reid choked out, “No.”
Silence. And I heard the trickle again. We all froze, listening.
I aimed my headlamp at the debris plug at the far end, playing the light along the blocks of collapsed Muav, and spotted a glistening, water trickling down the blockage and then finding its way, as water will do, through the rubbly edge of the crater, and then down.
I turned to Walter, to direct his attention to the debris plug, but his attention was focused on the near edge of the crater.
“There's a barrier,” he said.
He raked his beam along the edge, focusing on the curb of rubble that flanked the opening. The barrier would do double duty, I thought, not just keeping one from stumbling into the crater but also determining the stability of the ground. In the event of more slippage, this rubble curb would likely have tumbled into the crater.
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