Volcano Watch

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The yellow crime-scene tape was still in place. It seemed right that this place was sealed. It should remain sealed for eternity.

I unlocked the frosted glass door and ducked under the tape.

Her office had not been disturbed. Every surface that would hold prints was fuzzy with black powder, and there were wads of discarded tape on the floor. Actually, it made being here easier. I could not picture Lindsay at that grimed desk. She would not sit shivering in this cold. The room had finally cooled down. I kept my jacket on.

The irregular dark stain on the rug looked permanent.

I could not look at that. I looked, instead, at her desk. All the pretty cluttered things. And no pretty crinoid.

I took a seat in Lindsay’s desk chair. Creamy soft leather. A dream of a chair. The thought came that Lindsay would want me to have it. I stiffened. I could never sit and work in such a chair.

But surely this is where she sat that night. Working. Monitoring the progress of the quakes. And then the perp barges in. Does he show the gun right away? Soon enough. And what about her gun? I pictured, vividly, sitting on the other side of this desk and asking her how she could have set up that thing at Hot Creek, and I saw, vividly, how she had to swivel her chair to retrieve her gun from the credenza, to show me how she had the situation covered. She can’t do that now, with him. She swivels and he says freeze, or something. Whatever he says, whatever he wants, he gives her time enough to think up a plan. His gun tells her she may not come out of this alive. She can’t reach her gun. She sees the crinoid on her desk — the symbol. At some point while he glances away — maybe she distracts him, says who’s that in the hallway — she palms the rock. She drops her hand to her lap, hidden from him by the desk, and she sets to work.

She’s scared, of course, but she’s Lindsay and her wits never leave her. So here she sits, worrying grains from a telling stone into the matrix of her ring, knowing it won’t escape the attention of two cop geologists, should it come to that. Knowing they’ll get the message.

And what’s the gunman doing? Just watching? What does he want? Why is he going to kill her? Why doesn’t he shoot her right away? What does he want?

My head was spinning. I opened my eyes.

And once she works the grains into the ring, what does she do with the rock? He never sees it — if he saw it he would have known enough to see what she’d done. After all, he’s fallen in love with forensic geology. He would have taken the rock and the ring. But he didn’t. The encrusted ring stayed on her finger.

So where’s the crinoid rock?

I’m Lindsay and I have to hide this rock and I can’t make any obvious moves or he’ll notice. I’m standing on the jute rug when he shoots me, so I had to have hidden the rock before I got there.

It had to be in the desk.

I reached to open the top righthand drawer. No. He’ll see my arm move.

And then the obvious hit me, as it must have hit her. There is a shallow center drawer, and all I have to do is raise my knee to slide it open. The modesty shield on his side of the desk will block his view.

I raised my knee and nudged the drawer open and it slid silently because her desk is the kind of quality craftsmanship that makes drawers slide smoothly. I looked inside. Keys. Hand lens. Flashlight and batteries, pens and pencils, paper clips. Tape measure. Clinometer. Rock hammer and cold chisel. A geologist’s catch-all drawer. Not surprisingly, containing a rock. Bo or Lupe or Jim would not have found it odd upon checking the drawer to see a rock. Not worth mentioning — she had rocks on her desk, in the cabinet, on top of the apothecary cupboard. She used a rock as a doorstop.

I took out the chunk of gray limestone with the white disk standing in high relief. I used her lens. Under high-power, the limestone looked the same as the ring evidence I’d examined in the lab. Or darned similar to. I bagged the crinoid.

I felt nauseated.

There was a terrible odor in the room and it came from the apothecary cupboard. I hadn’t noticed when I first entered because it was so familiar. Someone had left the cupboard doors ajar and the coffee bean oils were scenting the office. I covered my mouth but the odor was on my hands. It was in my clothes, in my hair.

Quite suddenly, I was furious with her. Indulging her eccentricities to the point that a simple cup of coffee became a ritual and Walter and I had to drink from her cup as solemnly as though we were meeting with the gods.

I waited until the urge to retch had passed, then restored the scene and locked the door behind me and ran through the hallway. Outside, in the cold, I took in a long breath of fresh air but it was some time before I left behind the scent of coffee.

Aged Sumatra. The Toba caldera.