Volcano Watch

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

In the shower that night, after my afternoon in the field with Lindsay, I took her theory apart.

Some people sing in the shower. I deconstruct.

Of course the samples I’d taken would tell the story — and I’d get to that first thing in the morning — but the story Lindsay’d concocted had a major flaw in logic. Adrian Krom, who was single-mindedly rebuilding his reputation, would not risk killing the mayor at Hot Creek. He was bizarre, certainly, in his relationship with the volcano. Ruthless, absolutely, in his continuation of the drill, in his campaign to destroy Lindsay’s reputation. But he wasn’t stupid. The creek’s a very public place. The creek’s a very long way from the glacier, so how does he get the body there? If it’s by horse, where does he get the horse and how does he go from creek to glacier unnoticed with a body across the saddle?

I’d have had the same questions about Casa Diablo as the site of death, had the soil there not ruled it out. The biathlon course at Lake Mary had been a better candidate, geographically, until the soil ruled it out.

As for Adrian Krom as a killer… I didn’t like to consider it. We needed to be able to rely on him. It was one thing to blame him for what happened to Stobie. But Georgia? That’s an order of magnitude beyond.

My eyes suddenly stung. Shampoo leaked down from my hair and I had to stick my face into the hot water flow to flush the contaminants.

Tension drained along with the Pantene.

By the time I was toweling dry I had pretty much desconstructed the lovers quarrel.

I still liked the idea of a hot spring, though, as a source for the sulfur. Some other hydrothermically active area, someplace else. Some place where people had been discharging firearms.

I opened the bathroom door to release the steam and heard the doorbell ringing. Once, twice, three times, four.

I wrapped in my robe and went to answer.

Eric stood on the porch. He seemed surprised to see me. Or, maybe it was my robe, decorated with grinning trout. Old boyfriend; Fish and Game; didn’t work out but this was one fine fleecy robe. Eric stared until I flinched.

I said, “Hey Eric.”

He said, “Jimbo here?”

I thought, that’s a little abrupt. How about, hey Cassie, good to see you — is your brother around? I regarded Eric Catlin — the guy who simply by standing there made me feel very naked in my trout robe, the guy I’d trust with my life if it ever came to that, the biathlete and cop who posts bullseye targets on his office wall — and I said, “You know that gunpowder in the evidence boot soil? Nearly half of it’s Fiocchi.”

Eric stiffened. It was the way he had recoiled, ever so briefly, when he missed the third shot in the 20K. He had recovered to ace the fourth shot and now he brought himself around as quickly. “No shit?”

“Jimbo says you guys shoot at Casa Diablo and Lake Mary. Anyplace else?”

“That’s where we shoot,” Eric said.

“Does Stobie shoot too? I mean, he’s the armorer and…”

“He shoots too. In practice. At least, he did.”

“Got any theories that explain where Georgia picked up all that gunpowder?”

“No theories.” Eric’s voice was rough. “When do you expect Jimbo back?”

I shook my head. “Should I give him a message?”

“Yeah. Tell him he’s a real…” Eric considered. “Jerk.”

Before I could ask, he thrust a folded newspaper at me then pushed down the steps and when he’d been fully consumed by the night he called back, “Didn’t mean to take it out on you, Cass.”

Mystified, I went inside and turned on the hall light. I read, standing against the doorjamb.

It was the local rag, the Mammoth Times. The headline grabbed me first, as headlines are meant to do. And then the photo — Hal had run a very large photo above the fold. I studied it with the same scrutiny I’d given the cliff face today, and when I’d fully absorbed it, a very cold hand took hold of my heart and squeezed.

I ran for the phone.