Badwater

12

Walter and I followed the geology and our noses around the hill to the backside of Chickie’s mine. Here was another entrance, a back door. Just outside this tunnel, white mine tailings spilled to mix with the native soil.

Walter knelt to sample.

It didn’t take a forensic genius to read the story. Marks in the dried mud — knees, elbows, one unmistakable butt print, bootprints hither and thither — showed one hell of a fight and chase.

Walter agreed. “Preliminary,” he said, peering through the hand lens, “but I suspect the driver acquired his mud here.”

I glanced at the rough road that ran down to join the road our convoy had taken. Not fit for the radwaste truck but a more nimble vehicle could navigate it. In fact, there were faint tire tracks. I looked back to the tunnel. Gated, with a padlocked chain. I wondered if Roy Jardine had a key.

Chickie was astonished that some fucker changed the lock on her gate and she grudgingly gave permission for Scotty to use bolt cutters.

It didn’t take Scotty long to meter the tunnel. “Not hot,” he said, “but you won’t believe what’s in there.”

I swallowed. What’s in there?

Soliano went in. Then he summoned Walter and me, Hap and Ballinger.

The tunnel was wide and straight and dead-ended in a large room, like a driveway into a garage. A two-car garage. The vehicle on the left looked like it belonged here. It was dented and scratched and mud-spattered — a high-clearance offroader with a winch and cable drum mounted on the front bumper. All four tires were flat.

Soliano shined his flashlight at the right front tire, illuminating a ragged hole.

I registered the tire damage, and the mud, which I was going to want to sample, only right now the tires were not the main event.

The main event was the trailer behind the offroader.

It was a brutish beast. Big enough to haul a hefty payload. Tough, clearly, with big-knuckle bolts and beefy tires, now flat. Built for crazy guys on testosterone weekends hauling their gear where the pavement doesn’t go. Built for a crazy guy hauling stolen resin casks. The back of the trailer was gated with a fold-up steel ramp. A vaulted steel cover hung open and wide, like a clamshell.

The vehicle parked beside it was another beast entirely.

Half forklift, half crane, all business. It had a telescoping crane boom with its grappling arms wide open, as if for a hug. Slotted into one side were attachments: hooks, fork tines, a scoop. It had pneumatic tires with deep treads. It looked like it could go anywhere.

Arrayed against the mine wall were open crates of protective gear. Gloves, booties, suits, silvery tarps.

Hap whistled — surprise, marvel. “Lookee here. Boy’s got his own setup.”

Soliano eyed Ballinger. “This equipment is from your facility?”

Ballinger gaped. “Knothead helped himself to the store.”

One thing I knew for certain — Roy Jardine was in no way a knothead. Or, despite the events of last night, a screwup. This setup showed a level of competence that put me on high alert.

Soliano made a slow survey of the room. “I believe we have found the place of the swap. Mr. Ballinger, tell me how it is done.”

Ballinger jerked. “Me?”

“Easy Milt,” Hap said, “Hector just wants you to role-play. Pretend you’re Roy.”

“No friggin way.”

“If you please,” Soliano said. “You know this equipment, Mr. Ballinger. I wish your perspective.”

Ballinger gave Soliano a cautious look, then a nod.

“And so. You steal a cask, bring it here — perhaps in your blue Ford pickup. And here you fill it with talc, using this…forklift?”

“Telehandler,” Ballinger said sourly. “Roy could’ve.”

“Very good. So now you have a cask of talc. Meanwhile, your partner Ryan Beltzman approaches on the highway — that is the radwaste truck route?”

“That little twerp,” Ballinger said, “he was in on it?”

“Difficult to make the swap on your own, yes?”

“Wouldn’t know.”

Soliano’s face incised into a smile. “Let us put it all together. It is late night, little traffic, so Mr. Beltzman pulls just off the highway so the transponder will not show anything odd. And there he waits. Can you deliver the talc cask to him?”

“Sure I can.” Ballinger’s chest roostered out. “I mean, Roy can. Telehandler holds the cask like a baby. Drives like a dream. Go right out that tunnel down to the highway. Set the talc cask on the flatbed, pick up the resin cask.” Ballinger warmed to it. “I’d do it remote for the hot load — telly’s remote-operable. Then drive it back up here and set the resin cask in that trailer. Trailer’ll handle it.”

Soliano was nodding. “And then what?”

“Then the twerp takes the dummy cask with the shipment to the dump, and the knothead takes the resin cask wherever he friggin takes it.”

“The depot, we will call it. Where would you site the depot?”

“With that rig,” Ballinger indicated the offroader-trailer, “I’d be going somewhere off in the wild.”

“What would you do when you got there?”

“Unload the friggin cask. With a telly. Remember, knothead stole two of my telehandlers.”

Soliano kept nodding. “And then?”

“Come back here.”

“Ah yes. Ready for the second swap, when the time comes. Last night. Which, to your dismay, went wrong.”

Ballinger snorted. “Maybe I’m not such a hotshot.”

“More than a mistake, I think. You, or your partner, shot out the tires. To stop the procedings, yes?”

“Why I’d do that?”

“Cold feet? Change of plans?” Soliano flipped a hand. “In any case, there follows the chase — Mr. Beltzman in his truck, Mr. Jardine in his pickup.”

Soliano, I noticed, had just switched to calling the perp Jardine, instead of putting Ballinger in that role. Ballinger seemed to notice too.

“And then,” Soliano said coolly, “we come to the end of the scenario. The crash, the shooting.”

“Almost,” Ballinger said, easy now. “Then Roy comes into work this morning. That’s just nutso.”

Maybe, I thought. But Jardine had learned something at work, hadn’t he? He learned he was leaving tracks. In talc. I’d made that plain enough, letting him know who was the geologist and who wasn’t.

“If this scenario is correct,” Walter said, “where is the resin cask now?”

We looked, as one, at the telehandler with its open arms empty. We’d seen the talc cask at the crash site. More than seen. So that meant the resin cask was here, last night, snuggled in the telly’s arms like a toxic baby. So at some point Jardine came back to retrieve it? I figured I knew when: while we were shopping and eating and going about our business in Beatty. I said, chilled, “Jardine got the jump on us.”

Hap whistled again. “Boy’s got cojones.”

“That he has.” Soliano regarded Hap. “And what does a boy with cojones do with this cask?”

“My turn to be Roy?” Hap shuddered. “Depends on his motive. Who knows? That boy’s brainpan is beyond my ken.”

I said, “What about the drawing on the radwaste truck?”

“You asking,” Hap said, “what if the boy unleashes the beads?”

I nodded.

Hap ducked.

We had no idea where Jardine had gone from here. We had no soils from his blue Ford pickup to trace. So Walter and I went to the offroader rig: here was something we might be able to follow. Find the depot where he stored his toxic babies.

Walter opened the field kit.

Soliano herded the others out, promising to return with his trace analysis techs. I doubted they’d have much more luck here than they’d had at the crash site. Jardine was surely equally fastidious in here. Protocol, certainly, to wear protective clothing when you’re playing swap with radioactive waste. And even when you panic. I could see Jardine — couple hours ago? Spooked, rushing, but protocol says you suit up first. I hoped, fervently, that he’d worked up a nasty sweat. I no longer pitied him, with his sad face. I wanted to put him away, down deep somewhere where the sun don’t shine. I wanted to find his toxic cargo and see it buried where it belonged and it damn well didn’t belong running around on little cat feet out in the environment.

I yanked open my field kit and spilled half the contents.

Walter looked. “Focus, dear.”

I inhaled, exhaled. That Zen thing.

We set to work. Walter began with the trailer and I took the offroader.

The treads of all the tires were ripe with dried mud but that didn’t set my heart racing. Oh, we’d likely be able to ID it but there’d be no way to tell in what order the mineral components had been acquired. With every rotation of the wheels, the tires would have mashed the stuff, mixing the new with the old.

I decided to start on the fenders, where there should be something worth having. Tires mash soil but they also kick up glop onto the underside of fenders, which preserve and protect, one layer after another. I squatted at the right rear fender and shined my flashlight deep underneath. It was lovely. I made three cuts then slid my scalpel down to the metal and pried out a fine wedge of soil. I placed it gently in the specimen dish so as not to spoil the sequence of deposition.

The trailer, unfortunately, had no fenders. Walter made do with the tires.

We came out of the tunnel with our little ice chest packed with samples and told Soliano we’d need a few hours in our makeshift lab to build a soil map.

Hap was stretched out in the shade. “Map?” He lifted his sombrero. “Where y’all going?”

“To hell.” Chickie spat. She sat on the tailings heap. She’d claimed to have no knowledge of what was stored in her unused tunnel, and there was no evidence linking her to Jardine. No probable cause for Soliano to detain her. Still, she remained, keeping watch on her mine.

Walter said, mild, “Hell is not on the itinerary.”

I presumed not.

“Jardine left a trail,” Walter said. “We’ll be following it.”

Soliano looked at his watch. “Good. Alert me before you leave. My agents and Mr. Hemmings’ team will be expanding the search around here. We must select a place to rendezvous, at the end of the day.” He thought. “We will establish headquarters at park headquarters — Furnace Creek. Check in at the ranger station.”

We were huddling like high-school freshmen to exchange cell phone numbers when I reminded myself to ask Scotty if he could spare a couple gallons of Wal-Mart water for our field trip.