I said, “I really don’t think this is working. It’s not helping you and it’s a waste of my time.”
Krom raised his hands. “Then just tell me where you plan to go tomorrow.”
I searched the relief map, my eyes coming to rest at Crater Meadow, settling on the two small cinder cones symmetric as breasts. “Somewhere around Red Cones, most likely.”
“Why there?”
“Calcite. Sulfur. Trachybasalt. Pumice.”
He shook his head.
“I can give you a lesson in forensic geology if you like. We’ll be here all night.”
“Look.” Krom hiked his big shoulders. “I need to be able to go out for a beer with John Amsterdam and talk about the case as if I know what the hell is happening. I need your chief of police to see that I’m closely following developments, that I’m ready to respond to whatever you find. Whatever Georgia found. I need John to tell his chums on the Council that I’m on top of things and that I’ll spring for a round of beers. I need to repair the relationships. I need to know what the hell I’m talking about.” His polished brown eyes held steady on mine. “I need your help. Let me be the judge of its worth.”
I hesitated.
He gave a slight smile. “I’m an official with a valid interest in the case.”
“Okay, here’s something new you can tell John. We found cyanide in the soil, which might have come from old mining tailings. And hot springs are associated with the precious ores. So that’s a lead I’m following.”
Krom considered. “So I can tell John you’re looking for a mine.”
“Yup. And maybe he’ll spring for the beers.”
I followed Laurel Creek, a good three miles east of Red Cones, as the crow flies.
Two more mine diggings were crossed off my map and a third was ahead. I had widened my sampling field, checking sites farther from the glacier, although the farther afield I went the harder it was to envision hauling the body from the scene of death to the scene of disposal.
I was going now more on hope than belief.
I came to a steep bluff, shorn of snow. The face was roughly striped. The layering tilted, striking to the northwest until it bent down and back upon itself in a recumbent fold. It looked like a large striped cat had tucked itself under the face and stretched recumbent upon the snow.
It brought me a vision of Lindsay. Her cat’s smile when she told me not to worry about vendettas. Her face roughened when she told me not to tell Walter about her role in Hot Creek.
It brought me a vision of Georgia, writing furiously in her Weight Watchers notebook. No way out. No way out no way out no way out.
I shivered. What did you find, Georgia?
All was silence.
“What did you find at Red Cones?”
“East of Red Cones, actually.” I sat on the ledge of the relief map, facing Krom on his split-log bench. “I found nothing of interest.”
“Cassie.”
I flipped a hand. “You don’t find something, you move on.”
“Move on where? I’m running out of time, Cassie. I’m getting phone calls, courtesy of Len Carow. And if you’re thinking you don’t give a damn about my fate, then think about your town’s fate. Remind yourself that Georgia found something important over two months ago and then she was killed and tell me if you give a damn about time.”
I said, soft, “I give a damn. I want to find it as much as you do. I’m just frustrated. I don’t know where to look next. Walter and I have run out of likely mines.”
He said, equally soft, “You disappoint me.”
Surprisingly, that stung.
He stood, and hiked himself onto the ledge next to me. “Let me help you.”
“How?”
“Tell me about your evidence. Tell me what you were looking for out at Casa Diablo that day. Besides calcite. Calcite’s real common.” His eyes shone beneath the heavy lids. “Your own phrasing. You said it that day with a dismissive tone. You wanted me to see calcite as a general example. But now we’re working together.”
I thought, all right. I said, “Gunpowder.”
He frowned. “In the evidence?”
“Yes.”
“But Casa Diablo…”
“There’s a shooting range there. The targets are down for the winter.”
“And that’s why you stayed behind after the drill? To search the biathlon range for gunpowder.”
“Yes.”
He was frowning deeply now.
I thought, he didn’t know. He didn’t know there was shooting in the place Georgia died. I felt a sudden relief. He didn’t know where Georgia died.
“And Red Cones?” he said. “And the other places you went to? Who shoots there?”
“I don’t know.”
“So where are you going tomorrow, Cassie?”
I was at a loss. I’d checked all the mines on the map that were anywhere near a hot spring. I could move on to mines without springs, which is what Walter wants to do. Put the hot spring aside. We don’t know the calcite and sulfur came from a spring. We do know we’ve got cyanide. Follow the cyanide angle until we hit paydirt, or until it stalls. The way we did with gunpowder.
“Cassie. What are you going after tomorrow?”
“The truth.”
He laughed, soft. “I was right about you. You have belief. Not hope. Hope won’t get you out the door.” He slid a look at me. “Am I right? You still have belief? You’ll find what Georgia found?”
I gripped the ledge. I didn’t know.
He said, thoughtful, “Are all mines mapped?”
I went north, driving Highway 395 the sixty miles along the Sierra scarp to the county seat at Bridgeport. In the old clapboard Victorian, with the cupola sitting atop the second story like an old lady’s hat, I spent half the day reading microfiche. Notices of location filed by the scavengers who’d picked over sites after the big mines played out. They located claims by landmark. One mile south of Deer Creek bridge and ninety feet northwest of the tunnel adit, and…
Claims so ephemeral they never made it onto a map.
Five claims were described as being near hot springs.
Three for me, I thought, and two for Walter.
Thank you, Adrian Krom.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I was up Coldwater Canyon again.
I skied past the turnoff I’d taken two days ago and paused to check behind me. No fog today, just sunshine. Nobody in sight, just me and my visions.
Ahead was a stand of lodgepoles with their trunks snapped off above snowline, unlucky enough to grow in an avalanche trough.
I kicked up my pace and didn’t slow until I left the canyon trail behind. I was concealed now, in the hemlocks and silver pines. The climb steepened and my muscles burned. I topped a ridge and followed the map I’d made around an outcrop of granite, finding my way to the little fold in Red Mountain. Here was the nearly hidden draw that that I’d read about at county records, that its claimant had expectantly named Gold Dust.
I skied in.
The draw backed into the mountainside, to a tunnel whose entrance showed a reddish cinder face. The adjoining rockwall showed another face, gray granodiorite.
It was a place where two different kinds of rock meet.
Looked like someone, sometime, found something here worth scavenging.
There was the stone foundation of a building, still timbered. A stream bisected the old camp, and frozen into the waterway was a rusted contraption of gears and teeth. Slightly uphill were snow-covered mounds that looked for all the world like sand dunes. That was likely the dump, boneyard of discarded ore. Below that was a circular depression — the cyanide pond where someone had leached the remaining gold from the tailings. I’d seen its like before, couple of days ago, at two other sites on Red Mountain. I didn’t know precisely how much cyanide the leaching process left in the soil. Way too much for the good of the environment. Ironic, that it would bode well for my case.