His flesh was beginning to warm my icy hand.
“The volcanologists come and have a look and decide the mountain is letting off steam. It’s just getting started.” His arm tensed, beneath my hand. “I was one of those outsiders drilling into the mountain. When things got bad, the scientists warned us. Our camp was was evacuated. It was chaos.”
I thought of the photos in his office.
“It was dark and raining stones. My truck got separated from the group. Driver went the wrong way, toward the eruption, not away from it. Truck stalled in the ash. Driver and I got out to check the engine. He got hit by a lava bomb. Killed him. I was shit-scared I was going to die. Then I got hit, in the arm. Pain like I’ve never known. I got back into the truck. My arm was a blessing, a sacrifice. I screamed in pain. Pain moved me beyond the fear.”
He fell silent, waiting for me to speak.
I did not know what to say.
He resumed. “Later, I heard about the man and woman who offered themselves up to save their tribe. I decided that’s what I’m going to do with my life.”
He cupped his hand over mine and pressed. My fingers splayed, the tips coming to rest on the boundary of the scar, where its rubbery surface rose from the soft hairs of intact flesh.
“And I’ve already proved I can take the pain.”
I asked, “So we’re the tribe?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Late that night, I stood at the window of the cottage out back of my parents’ house, waiting for Eric.
I’m bunking here now but this cottage used to be the hangout of my brother and his friends. The paneling is darkened cedar, hung with their old snapshots. It’s one big room with a toilet and sink in the closet, and it’s showing its age. The floor tilts. The wall heater wheezes. The window is crisscrossed by sash bars that have been painted so many times a knife will go in a quarter inch before hitting wood.
Outside, the yard slopes down to a stream gully. The stream borders the six houses on our side of the street neatly as a fence. Beyond the stream is a meadow. I’ve always liked that because it gives the illusion of wilderness in my backyard.
I’d picked off two layers of peeling paint when Eric at last appeared. I swung open the door.
“Evening, Cassie.” He wore his Mammoth PD jacket and he refused my offer of a beer. I ducked into the closet, which stays cold as a refrigerator in winter, and got two cranapples. When I emerged he was reading the names carved into the old table. All Jimbo’s buds had immortalized themselves there. “This place.” He shook his head and hung his jacket over a chair. “It’s a time warp.”
A fitting place to dive into the mystery of old gunpowder.
He moved to examine the photos on the wall. He halted in front of the one where the boys, in their early teens, stand on top of some peak. They must have put the camera on a rock and set the timer because all of them are in the picture: Jimbo, Eric, Stobie, Mike, the de Martinis, Bobby Panetta, and Corey Steiner who’s since moved away. I’ve seen enough shots of them with their tongues out, and worse, but in this one they’re solemn kids on top of the world.
“Thanks for coming,” I said. I gave him the juice.
He tipped the bottle to me. “Can’t stay long. I’m going to see Stobie.”
“Jimbo saw him this morning.”
“Any change?”
“No. Jimbo would have said. He was rushing for work.” Although the Council was still debating escape route options, work on the Bypass continued. “There’s a change, Jimbo rushing for work.” I took a drink. “Have you seen him lately?”
“Not after I caught up with him and told him what an idiotic stunt that was at the creek.”
I tightened, waiting for Eric to mention Lindsay’s name. And mine.
He didn’t even look at me. He was staring out the window. “What a fuckup. All of it. You know, when we pulled Georgia off the mountain I thought, this is it. This is where the bad stuff happens here, not someplace like L.A. Lot goes down in L.A. — I saw that when I was at the academy. And I know we’ve led some goddamned sheltered lives up here, but our turn had to come sometime. I thought, with Georgia, we’d taken our hit. Some other place was up next. But no. It’s not enough this volcano’s all over us, we’ve got to fuck it up ourselves too.”
“We had some help.”
He turned. “Krom? Yeah, guy’s a real cowboy. But he’s got a job I wouldn’t want.”
“You still think he can do it?”
“You mean after the creek?” Eric studied his juice. “That took him down a notch or two in my book. Word is, they’re talking about a replacement.”
“Dicey time to replace him. Changing horses in midstream, and all that.”
Eric slowly nodded. “So what can I do for you, Cass?”
I moved to the table. In a green box were the files I brought from my condo. Unpaid bills, journal articles to read, sales on silk long underwear — my hot file. I pulled the front folder and handed it to him.
He read. He closed the folder and said, neutral, “Nice range of exotics.”
“They were part of that powder John couriered to the gunpowder lab for us.”
“Oh?”
Tonight, when I’d come home from the lab, I’d checked my email and found the report. I sent my thanks and promised to buy the chief examiner dinner sometime. And then I’d phoned Eric.
Eric returned the folder to me and lifted the cranapple to drink.
I said, “The gunpowder was in the soil I traced to a mine claim called Gold Dust.”
The bottle stalled at his lips.
“There’s a tunnel, about forty meters before it narrows down, almost as long as a biathlon range. I’ve been thinking — wind wouldn’t be a factor indoors. And it stays cold in there.” I remembered the guys as boys talking endlessly about which ammo worked best in the cold. “The one powder in the evidence that I could ID was Fiocchi. Mike told me it was the best. So Fiocchi was the control, and you test-fired the others against it? Exotics, you call them? But none of them ever outperformed Fiocchi.” The chief examiner at the gunpowder lab had identified the mystery makes as limited-production cold weather powders, off the market for over a decade.
“Heavy artillery,” Eric said. “I’m impressed.”
“I’m not interested in impressing you.”
“Then what can I say?”
“Help me with the chain of events.” I was able to come at it this way, evidence to be dissected. “The evidence — including those unique powders — places Georgia at Gold Dust. It says that’s where she took her last steps.”
He said, even, “Why ask me about it?”
“Because we just established you guys used to shoot there. Because Georgia used to sponsor you.”
He drained his juice.
I said, “How did Georgia find out about the place?”
“Because we shot off our mouths and she overheard us.” He shrugged. “Made us a deal — take her there so she could be sure it was safe and she’d keep our secret hangout secret.”
“Did Lindsay know about it?”
“Never saw her there.”
“Was there a hot spring at Gold Dust?”
Eric cocked his head. “Yeah. Great place to soak. Why?”
I mentally filed that; confirmation of the spring. “Remember the notes Georgia wrote? She found something.”
“Damn straight I remember.”
“Evidence says what she found could be a hot spring.”
He frowned. “If she meant our spring, it’s sure as hell nothing new.”