Walter seemed not to notice Hap’s tense silence. Walter was busy explaining the passing landscape to Pria. “Look Pria,” he pointed at a black ridge, “what do you think carved out those rocks?”
She looked; star pupil. “Timbisha?”
“It would have happened before people came along — but it is an ongoing process.” He kinked in his seat and inflated his cheeks and blew.
“Wind!”
I waited for Walter to call the rocks by their name, ventifacts. Teach her the Latin, ventus, for wind. That’s the way I remembered the lessons back when he was teaching me — in between instructions on extracting soil from the shoes of a murder suspect — straightforward and no-nonsense. Certainly, no cheek inflating.
I waited for Hap to step in with a snarky comment. Blowing some hot air, Walter? Hap was mum.
Maybe Hap wished he was overseeing the borax cleanup with Ballinger and Scotty, instead of babysitting us.
Maybe he’d picked up a chill at the pool last night.
Or maybe his weird silence had something to do with whatever he was reading on his cell phone.
At Chickie’s talc mine, our trip officially began.
If we have it right, here’s what happened, time after time: Jardine and Beltzman made the swap, and the radwaste driver took the cargo with the dummy cask to the dump. And then, when the time was right, Jardine drove the offroader rig with its hot cargo from the mine down the dirt road to the highway.
Our itinerary, today, was this: follow Roy Jardine.
We took the dirt road, sampling along the way. Layer one of the fender soil map.
Then, there was a break in the map as Jardine traveled on highway pavement.
We, too, turned north onto highway 127. Two days ago, we’d traveled this highway southward on our way from Beatty to talc country.
I checked Hap in the rearview. Pale, silent. Phone now in his T-shirt pocket, a slight lump over Homer Simpson’s right eye.
Who the hells knows. It’s Hap. I refocused on the highway ahead, on the pools of water shimmering in the distance. The kind of mirage I like. No running figure. No creeping bat.
We passed the cinder block town of Shoshone and everybody’s heads turned, because it was Chickie’s town. Which one of the squat tin houses was hers? I spotted a white pickup pulling out of a Dairy Queen parking lot and twisted for a longer look.
“That’s not her,” Pria said.
“Her?” I said.
“The one people say messed you up.”
“You know Chickie?” Walter asked, a tick before I could get it out.
“She’s my mother.”
We passed from California into Nevada. We came to the town of Lathrop Wells, and turned northwest onto highway 95.
We came mostly in silence, digesting Chickie and Pria.
Pria hadn’t had much more to say, other than that Chickie and Pria and Ruth had all lived in the trailer with Peter Weeks — Ruth’s brother, Pria’s father, Chickie’s husband. Peter had died of lung cancer when Pria was six. Chickie then left the village because she was not Timbisha. Pria, who was half-Timbisha, remained with Aunt Ruth. Pria had no more to say, other than that Chickie was the devil and that’s why people said it was Chickie who had left us to die.
Hap’s eyes had widened in surprise and then narrowed. “Devil’s play,” he’d said, when Pria finished. His first comment of the day.
I agreed. Whichever devil it was who’d bushwhacked us.
Highway 95 shot straight through the high wide plain of the Amargosa Desert. Keep going on this road and we’d come to the crash site, and then the dump. A lifetime ago we’d been there, wondering what we’d got ourselves into.
Pria said, “The school bus goes this way, to Beatty.”
I checked her in the rearview. She was watching Walter, twisting a strand of hair into a cord. It shone like obsidian. If she didn’t have the devil for a mother and a sourpuss for an aunt, someone might have put that hair up in a cool French braid. She was waiting for Walter’s response. High school’s not his strong suit, so I stepped in. “So, Pria, what’s your favorite subject?”
“Softball,” she said, grudging.
“What position?”
“Pitcher.”
“Cool. I played soccer in high school. Midfield.” I waited for her to acknowledge the coolness of soccer and when she remained silent I looked again. She yanked the cord of hair so that it bisected her face, then crossed her eyes. I yanked my gaze away from the wild child back to the highway.
Walter said, “Up ahead.”
Up ahead, to our left, an ungraded road snaked up the gentle fanglomerate of the eastern flank of the Funeral range to its rough-hewn summit.
I slowed. This was it: the road we figured Jardine took. This route had been on our list from the get-go, along with many others, but Hap’s spilled glass of water last night jumped it to first place. I said, “You know that road, Hap?”
“No.” Second comment of the day. In my rearview, he was studying it.
Well, we were betting Roy Jardine knew that road. If we were right, here’s where he left the pavement. Why he took this route was a matter of speculation but we speculated that he preferred to re-enter Death Valley by the back door, the route no ranger patrolled. Because he didn’t want company.
Neither did we. I was glad to have the FBI on our tail, instead of the devil.
Soliano had given us a new toy — a satellite phone — so that we could stay in contact while in the canyons. Walter used it to phone our escort and tell them we were about to go offroad.
I turned onto the fan road and the FBI followed. I stopped to sample the coarse-grained alluvium, layer two of the fender soil.
From here, Jardine’s itinerary led up the flank of the Funerals. So did ours. We crossed an old railroad grade, climbed gently, then dropped into the wide pebbly wash of the Amargosa River. Layer three — playa mud and sand. This time, we all piled out.
The FBI kept watch, submachine guns nodding.
Hap leaned against the Cherokee. Nothing for him to do until, unless we encounter something requiring a Geiger check.
While I sampled the soil, Walter resumed his lessons.
Pria stared at the dry riverbed. “You said we were chasing the water.”
“We are.” Walter smiled. “When this river floods, water ends up in Death Valley.”
I wondered if she’d get the significance of the river’s course. It runs through this desert along the eastern border of Death Valley, then cuts down to its southern tip — talc country — and thence takes a hook northeast to exhaust itself three hundred feet below sea level on the Badwater saltpan.
I pictured the dinner table last night, Hap’s spilled water taking its path along the wood grain and then over the edge. That had sent my thoughts along their own path: if Jardine was trying to nail Ballinger for the leak at the dump, maybe he was following the path of the leak. That path led down into the water table, and thence into the flow system that brings water into Death Valley. On the hydrology website I’d learned there are two major flow paths. One is the Amargosa River, whose riverbed runs somewhat in line with the radwaste truck route. It also runs close to Chickie’s mine. Maybe it had led Jardine there. Maybe he’d been scouting for a site to stage his attack. He’d certainly found a place to stash his equipment and a use for the talc. I wondered if Pria knew we had visited her mother’s mine.
Walter stood behind Pria, pointing upfan to the crest of the Funerals. “That’s the water we’re chasing today.”
That’s the other flow path into Death Valley. That’s the one we’re betting on.
Hap looked where Walter pointed. I wished I could read Hap’s face but it was shadowed by the huge sombrero.