Volcano Watch

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Harmonic tremors in the moat, new ground cracking on Red Mountain, and the fissure is belching acid gases.

The premonitory quiescence has broken, like a fever.

Walter and I were at the open door. The storefront window, cracked by quakes and secured with duct tape, rattled until its protest was drowned by the roar of oncoming trucks. I moved out for a better look and all along Minaret Road others were stepping out of doorways, the lot of us like prairie dogs popping from our burrows in alarm.

There was a line of trucks from here to the horizon, and although it’s seven in the morning they came into town with their headlights switched on as though dark had already fallen in Mammoth.

The noise grew insufferable and we retreated inside.

It’s as if burglars have been at work in here. The lab’s stripped bare, most everything moved to Bishop. What’s left is now boxed and waiting by the door — the bare-bones equipment we’ve been using the past few days, and current cases. Los Angeles, Costa Rica, a new one from Tucson, and of course Georgia and Lindsay. The small lab television plays with the sound off. It’s tuned to King Videocable, which keeps playing the same tape with a crawl updating the evacuation schedule. I’ve been watching for two hours. I switched the TV on at home at five ayem when the civil defense alarm went off and shocked me awake. Jimbo and I knew the drill and we’d moved in synch packing last-minute stuff, and then Walter phoned and we agreed to meet at the lab to pack our skeletal equipment. We were packed and ready to go by six-thirty but Minaret was closed in anticipation of the National Guard convoy. When it passes and officials open the road again, we can bring around our cars, load up, and head home.

Plan is, we evacuate by home address. My street’s in the second-to-last group and Walter’s is in the last. So far, everything is going stopwatch perfect. It’s a perfect day, clear and no storm forecast. There are no visitors in town to burden us, to clog the exit. Plan is, last I heard, to evacuate out highway 203—with Pika Canyon as backup in the case of flat tires or engine trouble or fender benders or anything else to slow 203—but either way we should all be out within four hours.

We sat waiting. The workbenches and catchall table and metal shelves were too heavy to be worth moving — moving twice should we return. The stools on which we sat were too cheap to bother with.

I thought of Lindsay’s leather chair. A real waste. We’d packed nothing from her office, although it was no longer sealed, no longer a worked crime scene. We’d packed nothing from her house. We leave her things alone, Walter said. I asked about her personal stuff — didn’t he care about that?

He said, never love anything that can’t love you back.

So all we have of Lindsay is what’s in the box. A gold filigree ring and some grains of limestone. She would be pissed, I thought. She was a shopper, she valued things. What a waste.

I stared at her carton. She’s in limbo, like Georgia. The two old crones boxed up, one on top of the other. Village elders sitting in judgement. Both royally pissed with me. I could have gone into volcanology but I’m a failed forensics chick who can’t nail one guy for two murders in my own backyard. Stop whining, Georgia snaps. Lindsay just raises one fine eyebrow. Honey, what a waste.

I spun on my stool and said to Walter, “It just royally stinks. We know he did it.”

Walter said, dully, “There is no evidence.”

“There’s the crinoid she put into her ring. Why’d she do that if not to tell us it was him?”

Walter didn’t reply. There was no reply, and we both knew it, and we were both royally sick of this dead-end talk, and so he just sat quietly waiting, his shirt untucked, two fingers bandaged from paper cuts, old fellow beaten and lost in the attic.

He got up and walked over to the TV and flipped up the sound.

We’d seen the tape three times already.

Jeanine, our local TV star, wearing a prim sweater dress, is standing at a lectern. Jeanine, of all people, has been tapped to read the USGS hazard alert, the WARNING declared this morning. A mouthful for anyone and for Jeanine the laid-back queen it’s the challenge of a lifetime. But it was somehow comforting to have Jeanine on the tube with the official word.

“…indicates that a volume of maaagma,” she read, “is being injected into the shallow crust with a strong possibility…”

I knew it by heart.

“…still possible that the maaagma may yet stop short…”

I knew at precisely which point Jeanine’s hand was going to wander to her hair. I knew how her hand was going to stop short and that — given the gravity of the situation — she would stifle the need to tug on her ponytail.

“…and an assessment of its implications for possible…volcanic…hazards.” She looked directly into the camera, her eyes slitting.

I knew Jeanine had acquired a new war story, a companion piece to her battle with Krom in Hot Creek.

I knew I should be fixing my attention on details at hand — I help Walter load the Explorer and keep room in my Soob because Jimbo called and said there’s more boxes waiting at home — but I could not help wondering what Krom was thinking. He’s won. He’s built his road, he’s vanquished his human foe, and his nonhuman foe — that nasty-tempered unpredictable chum — is about to be vanquished as well because by noon Krom will have whisked us all beyond its reach.

On TV the tape rolled and Jeanine began again.

And then there was a blast and then another and another, one blast rolling into the next and the window crack widened and the door sucked open and my ears buzzed and Walter and I hit the floor and rolled beneath our workbenches and I began to pray.