Volcano Watch

CHAPTER NINE

I took Highway 203 out of town, counting cars.

This has been the road out of town since the town was built. The Bypass, or any other emergency evacuation route that gets built, will be a secondary way out. Right now, this is the only way out. Highway 203 runs five miles from town down into the high desert, intersecting Highway 395.

I’d never given much thought to traffic on 203, unless I was stuck in it, but I sure did now.

Within a mile, thirty-one cars — twenty with skis and eleven with snowboards — passed in the westbound lane heading into town. I saw three cars in my eastbound lane and a bus in the rearview. Of course it was morning; most people were coming into town now to get to the slopes, not trying to get out. On a big ski weekend we probably get twenty thousand people. I increased the traffic on 203 to bumper-to-bumper, peak vehicle load. If the day was clear like this morning — and no flat tires, no disrupted communications — we should all keep crawling along. I adjusted for weather. Fog, snowstorm, black ice — well that would make it stop-and-go.

And to top it all off we’d be evacuating, for awhile anyway, straight into trouble. For it’s out here in the caldera where our attention, rightly so, has been fixed.

Out here the rising magma is stretching — and breaking — the earth’s crust.

earth’s crust is stretching and as it pulls, it sucks up magma.

Lindsay likes to tell the Paiute story about Coyote, who is walking along a path and suddenly finds himself in darkness. He meets an old woman who warns that he has entered the mouth of a giant and is now inside the giant’s belly. The giant is so huge that his belly fills a valley, so huge that Coyote cannot see all of him, so huge that Coyote had not even realized where he was walking and what lay ahead.

This, then, is the caldera: a volcano so huge you cannot see it for what it is, even as you go about your business within its perimeter. The giant’s head, I’d say, is Mammoth Mountain and his mouth is my hometown, and Highway 203 slides down into his belly. The Bypass sidles along the giant’s left shoulder and when completed will hit Highway 395 at his northern flank. Krom’s road would take the giant’s right shoulder to 395 on the southern flank. Deal is, Krom’s road doesn’t skirt the Inyo craters, and it escapes the giant a whole lot sooner.

I wondered what Georgia would think. I wished she were here to say.

I took 203 across 395 into the desert, parking near the steam vents at the Casa Diablo geothermal plant. Steam vents that, interestingly, deposited sulfur into the soil.

Fire and brimstone.

Indeed, this area is the heart of the growing quake swarms. Had that drawn Georgia out here? The mayor on a learning tour? And who drives her here, and leaves her behind? Somebody who doesn’t like her crusade, some realtor pissed about falling prices?

I got my gear and started up the path.

It was a fine field day, crisp and clear. Here and there, a shoot of bitterbrush poked through the snowpack. The grayish squat pinyon pines had yet to produce nuts.

But I was on the lookout for different flora. The telling leaf in Georgia’s boot soil was indeed mountain willow. None in sight here but they grow along the banks of nearby Mammoth Creek. A leaf could surely blow here on the wind. And the other flora in the evidence — the tree bark from her mouth — I’d identified as Jeffrey pine. Just north of here, Highway 395 enters a huge forest of Jeffrey. Flora-wise, Casa Diablo held my interest.

I turned my attention to the shooting range.

Someone could kill someone here, I took note, and not be seen from the road.

The range, in the shadow of a long cliff, was entombed in snow and the targets were still down. I chose a spot near the target site. Generally, unburned particles of gunpowder are blown downrange. I kicked through the soft stuff until my heel struck hardpacked snow, then got a trowel from my pack and knelt to dig.

I sank the blade into the snowpack and it was the work, finally, that settled my nerves. Excavating a dig is the most mindless portion of the job but I find it satisfying because every ounce of effort produces a measurable result.

“Hello the camp!” a voice called.

My trowel skipped.

Adrian Krom was striding up the path from the parking lot, scattering loose snow like sand. He drew up to my dig and gave it the once-over. With my gear lying about, it did look as though I was setting up camp.

I got to my feet. “Good morning.”

“You worried about last night?”

I found a smile. “Cut to the chase, hey?”

“It’s what you said you like. You’re like me, in that.”

I felt, acutely, aware of myself. He was frankly looking me over. Was he coming on to me? I kept my eyes steady on him. He wore the big tan parka he’d worn at Red’s Meadow. His Ray-bans hung by a brown strap around his neck. His thick brown hair was neatly combed. I had the sudden urge to reach up and tousle it. Crazy. I wasn’t attracted to him, and if I had been I certainly wouldn’t have jumped him. I could see, though, how women would be attracted. He wasn’t handsome but his eyes were arresting — heavy-lidded, polished brown eyes like stones. Strong nose, full mouth. Animal magnetism, you’d call it.

I said, “Yeah, I’m a little worried.”

“Don’t be. The Council’s meeting in a couple of days to consider the options. Be assured, Lindsay and I will cooperate.”

“That’s what you said last night.” It came out harsher than I meant. “Which is good. So listen to her, she knows what she’s doing.”

“Do you listen to her, about the Bypass?”

I felt, actually, irked with her. I couldn’t even consider another road without feeling disloyal. I said, “She always orders the grande mocha, but that doesn’t mean I won’t go for the latte.” I shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I will, either.”

He seemed to be trying to fathom this.

I glanced at my dig. “I should get back to work.”

He followed my look. “Find anything?”

“A lot of snow.” I shrugged. “What else can I do for you?”

“Get serious.”

I went cold. “I’m dead serious.”

“Then we’re as one.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Georgia was a colleague, Cassie. I want to know what you find. If you require persuading, talk to your chief of police.”

“John Amsterdam sent you?”

“John sent me to Walter. Walter told me you would explain what it is you do.”

Thank you, Walter. I knelt and took up my trowel. “First, you dig.”

Krom came to his knees beside me, as he had at Red’s Meadow.

I said, “Ever take a cake out of a pan?”

“No.”

“Finesse it.” I pried out a neat wedge of snow.

“I don’t have time for coy, Cassie. What are you digging for?”

I said, even, “Okay, here’s what it is I do. I take a look at the land. We’re in the rain shadow of the mountains, which means low rainfall. Land’s mostly flat so there’s not much cloud building. All that sunshine evaporates moisture, so there’s not a lot of water percolating through the soil leaching out salts. So I expect to find a good distribution of calcites.”

“You’re digging for calcites.”

“Calcite is real common, Adrian.”

His eyes shone. “But that’s what brought you out here. So calcite must be in your evidence.”

I said, even, “You’re not asking how it’s done. You’re asking what we’ve found.”

“Yes.”

“Walter say I’d tell you that?”

“Is Walter your boss?”

“Partner.”

“Well then, partner, answer what you will. Is there calcite in the evidence?”

I shrugged. What brought me out here was gunpowder, but that wouldn’t be apparent with the targets down.

“Let me speculate,” Krom said. “You’re a geologist so the evidence must be some kind of earth material. Something you found on the body? Dirt? On her clothes.” He snapped his fingers, sound like a gunshot. “And what about the shoes? People walk in dirt. My lord, can you can follow somebody’s tracks after they’re dead?”

I said, cautious, “To an extent.”

“Then you do amazing work.”

I was very nearly flattered. I buried my face in the dig. I struck rock-hard ice and abandoned the trowel. I got matches and a chunk of Presto log from my pack and built a small fire in the hole. Krom watched, rapt. Interested, after all, in how it’s done. “Trade secret,” I said, “thaw it out.”

“Very smart.”

God I’m easily bought. Give me an appreciative audience and I show off. I silently chose a second site and wormed my boot into the snow.

He followed along. “What if the dirt doesn’t match? What do you do next?”

“Go somewhere else.”

“I hope to hell you find it soon.”

“It?”

“The place your evidence came from. That is what you’re looking for?”

I nodded. Obvious enough. I wasn’t out here digging for gold. I knelt and sunk my trowel into the snow. “Did you work closely with Georgia?”

“Very.” He began to pace, in front of the dig. “She was invaluable. I want to know what happened to her.”

“We all do.”

“And I need to find out what she found. What she was referring to in her note.”

I froze. Hand on my trowel, trowel in the frozen ground. I looked up at him. “You know about that?”

He halted. He came into a crouch, that balancing act of his. He held my look. “You think I came out here for a stroll, Cassie? Of course I know. John told me. We’re colleagues. The chief of police and the emerg-ops chief have a common goal. Keep this town safe. We shared that goal with our mayor, but now our mayor is dead. Our mayor found something. Something that caused her to write an alarming note. No way out. Does that not interest you, Cassie? It interests John. It interests me.”

I said, “She wrote ‘just found out’. Could mean she learned something upsetting, something personal.”

“Could be.” His eyes warmed to copper. “Could be she found something we need to know about. Considering that Georgia was a conscientious mayor, I would like to know what the hell it was. How about you?”

Yes. Oh god yes. I said, light, “Any guesses?”

“I don’t guess. I want to know.”

I didn’t mind guessing. The wildest-ass of guesses. Something that got her killed. Something someone didn’t want her to find. I glanced around. Was it something out here — the geothermal plant? She found evidence of some planned sabotage or something? If the plant got bombed, say, that would sure impact the intersection of highways 395 and 203. That would qualify as no way out. That is, until an escape route is finished.

Krom stood. He checked his watch, a rugged sportsman’s model with a brown leather band. “I have to be at Hot Creek in half an hour. I’d like you to come.”

“Hot Creek?” It’s not far from here, but what the hell? “What’s happening at Hot Creek?”

“I think you should come and see for yourself.”