We were finishing off the seaweed when Soliano joined us. “We have a development. We have an owner. She lives in Shoshone, that previous town we passed through. She will be joining us,” he glanced at his watch, “within the hour. In the meanwhile, I have obtained a telephone search warrant for the Serendipity.”
It took me a moment. “This is an active mine?” I’d been thinking the perp chose an abandoned mine, where he could take what he wanted and go about his business in private. But we had an owner.
“That is not all,” Soliano said. “We also have a primary suspect.”
We waited for it.
“Roy Jardine.”
11
“Criminy,” Milt Ballinger said, “Roy’s the knothead?”
“Suspected knothead.” Soliano did not smile. “My agents report that he left work approximately four hours ago, shortly after our own departure. Taken sick. He is not at his home, or at Beatty’s medical facilities.”
I felt suddenly sick myself. The heat. The McMuffin I’d wolfed. The memory of Roy Jardine. It was a tactile memory, his hazmat sleeve swish-swishing against my nylon shoulder as he tracked my hunt for talc.
“Left sick?” Ballinger said. “That’s all?”
“No, that is not all. My agents have learned that Mr. Jardine’s maintenance job includes the calibration of instruments. He spot-checks meters, on an on-going basis. He is the only maintenance worker with this expertise. His co-worker reports that he volunteered for this duty, which often required overtime. Presumably, on a day of his choosing, he could choose to spot-check the meter of the person monitoring an incoming dummy cask. He could, for that moment, become the key player.” Soliano regarded Ballinger. “You did not know the scope of his job?”
Ballinger wiped the sweat from his skull. “I got over a hundred employees. Don’t have time to get into everybody’s nitty-gritty.”
“I have the time,” Soliano said. “I have issued a be-on-the-lookout for a blue Ford pickup registered to Roy Jardine. From you, I will require his work records.”
“You got fingerprints or anything?”
“Unfortunately, the perp, at the crash site, appears to have been a fastidiously careful man. He wore booties. He perhaps also wore a full suit, since my techs have recovered no prints, hair, fiber, or DNA — other than the driver’s. Nevertheless, we will do a collection at Mr. Jardine’s residence.”
Ballinger shrugged.
“You appear reluctant to accept him as suspect.”
“Nah nah, it’s just…that’d mean Roy’s a killer.”
“Anybody’s a killer,” Hap said, “if they’re pushed.”
Walter said, “That’s a fallacy.”
I recalled Jardine’s offended reaction when Hap teased him about helping the ‘purty lady.’ I wondered if Hap was worrying about having pushed Roy Jardine.
The dented white pickup peeled around the parked vans and gunned up the hill and jammed to a stop in an eruption of dust.
A woman swung out and stumped toward us. She was barrel-shaped and dressed in white — white shirt, white bandana, white jeans, white cowboy boots — a white barrel cactus of a woman. She wore a white straw cowboy hat akin to Soliano’s and she carried, clamped by one arm, a shotgun. She barreled up to Soliano. “This is private fuckin property, what the hell you people doin here?”
Soliano showed his ID. “Christine Jellinek? My name is Hector Soliano, I am FBI, and you will if you please place the weapon on the ground.”
She didn’t budge. “I got a fuckin permit.”
“If you please.” Soliano’s hands flexed. “Now.”
She spat. She turned and stumped to her pickup and stowed the shotgun. She came back, whipping off her hat to wipe her brow.
“Whooeee,” Balllinger whispered, “she won’t win no beauty contest.”
Her face was like unfired clay that’s been left in the sun. Her eyes were nearly hidden under slumping lids. Her cheeks sagged to saddle at her jawline. Her nose was a defiant pug that seemed to pin her slumping features in place. It was hard to tell her age but her hair was yellow-streaked gray. Her skin, desert-varnish brown, looked like it might crack at the slightest touch. She caught us staring and clamped her hat back on, yanking its brim low.
My own skin scorched. I wouldn’t welcome scrutiny, either, not after all my days in the field.
She halted in front of Soliano and said, “Now you can all fuck off.”
“I am afraid not, Ms. Jellinek.”
“You wanna address me, you address me by the name I go by which is not la-dee-da miss anything. I go by Chickie.”
What is it with all the nicknames? I wondered. Is it the heat? Is it the solar radiation? Do people around here forget who they are?
Soliano watched her intently. “You are not curious about us?”
“You’re all fuckin rangers far as I care. This here’s my property and you got no right to go in there.”
“I am curious about you. How is it that you are allowed to mine in a national park wilderness area?”
Walter cleared his throat. “Actually, Hector, she couldn’t stake a new claim here but if her claim is pre-existing, it’s valid.”
Chickie nodded. “Damn right.”
“Providing,” Walter added, “that she meets Park Service conditions.”
“Fuckers’re killin me with their conditions.”
“Then perhaps,” Walter said, “you’d best abandon your claim.”
Perhaps she’d thought she had an ally in Walter, but she was damn wrong. Walter loves to poke around old mines and he finds the geology of precious ores an absorbing hobby — and, once, key to a case — but he prefers to see the geology left in place in national parks and wilderness areas.
“Old man,” Chickie said, “you’re uglier’n me.”
I wanted to rip out her throat, for that. I said, instead, “You have a colony of nesting bats in your mine.”
“So the fuck what?”
“You start blasting, you’ll disturb them. Aren’t they protected?”
“Lotsa mines in the park got bats.”
“Yes but does the Park Service know about yours?”
Her eyes narrowed. And then suddenly widened — she was looking past me to the mine entrance, where Scotty and his team had appeared. They looked like some kind of futuristic miners from the depths.
Scotty came our way, shaking his head.
Soliano turned to me — they all turned to me — and I said, “All I can tell you is, this is as perfect a match for the talc as I could want.” I watched Chickie. She didn’t ask what I meant, didn’t ask about the hazmat suits and the Geiger counters, and she didn’t, oddly, ask what Scotty and his team were hunting in her mine.
I would have asked, in her place.
Soliano said, “Ms. Jellinek, talc has been found at the scene of a crime. Our geologist has identified it as originating here.”
Chickie glared. “She’s wrong.”
“Do you know a man by the name of Roy Jardine?”
“Never heard of him.”
Soliano took out his cell phone and showed her a digital photo. “Do you know this man?”
“Never saw him.”
“Did you sell your talc to this man?”
“Can’t sell it to nobody.”
“You are having difficulty with the approval process?”
She spat. “I got a fuckin mine’s not bringin in a fuckin cent cuz the fuckin backpackin whale-watchin bat-lovin assholes got the government by the short hairs and they’re stealin my rights. So somebody wants to pay me for my fuckin talc I’ll fuckin well sell it.”
Soliano pounced. “Then someone did buy talc from you?”
“No, someone didn’t. Maybe your fucker stole it. I can’t afford a guard, I can’t even afford to fix up this old shit.” She jerked a thumb at the crumbling ore chutes and bins. “But I will. I been workin other people’s mines for twenty years.” She jutted her chin. “You see this face? Think I was born this ugly? I got this face workin sunup to sundown and I earned it. This face is a mine owner’s face, now. This is a proud face, fuckers.”