Phil must have phoned Krom as well because Krom has issued his own decree, closing the town to nonresidents, clearing the backcountry of snow campers.
We’re left in town with only ourselves for company.
Meanwhile I’m on watch, in synch with the volcano.
I sit at my bench and stare at the specimen dish of pumice and bark, and I still can’t say how it got into Georgia’s mouth and I still can’t connect it with Adrian Krom. I can’t place him at the scene of her murder. I stare at the specimen dish of gray limestone, which does not place him at the scene of Lindsay’s murder. I know he killed them, but I can only watch the dust gather on my specimen dishes. My evidence exists in a vacuum.
Today, I could stand it no longer and so I fled to Hot Creek. The gate was unlocked. There were two Survey trucks parked in the lot. I parked and got out. I needed to walk. The gorge was swarming with Survey people. I headed out into the tableland above the creek, intending to pay a visit to Lindsay’s fumarole, her little fellow.
The snow was soft and my boots made no noise and in this vacuum I became invisible. This is how he came back from the airport, I thought. Invisibly. Snowstorm postponed his flight and maybe he took that as a sign. Tonight’s the night. Tonight he has to kill her. There must be a reason, of course — nobody kills without a reason. Nobody’s on the street in this storm, nobody sees him. It’s late, her building’s nearly deserted. He wears gloves so he will leave no prints. He wears a cap so he will shed no hairs. He sheds Sears wool but that’s not going to nail him. He brings clean shoes and changes in the hallway so he will leave no soil trace, or maybe he ties plastic bags over his boots. That alarms her, although not as much as the gun in his hand. Maybe he just intends to scare her, some final humiliation, and things get out of hand. She says something, indicates she will not be cowed. Scared of course but even in fear, we are who we are. Maybe it’s just a look from her that does it. The lift of her chin, and he shoots. Then he goes home, gets some shuteye, and rises early to catch the flight out.
I could not breathe well. This thick air. I once went snorkeling in Hawaii and all I could hear underwater was my own labored breathing. This was like snorkeling, just me and an ocean of snow and the faraway horizon where the caldera lip rises. And that crazy sky, blue as the ocean, sitting down on top of me. I walked faster, underwater breathing, and I wanted to scream to break the silence but the feeling of pressure was so great that I was afraid to open my mouth — it would be like opening my mouth underwater.
Her little fellow was steaming.
I turned and ran for my car through the crazy thick air, breathing ragged, heartbeats like gunshots.
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.