The tracks didn’t say how long he’d stayed.
I got out my pocket knife and opened the blade, listening to my own sharp breathing, and then because I couldn’t ski with an open blade I put the knife away. I ran on my skis until the slope angled enough to take the downhill in a tuck. Drops ran down my spine — not the sweat of exertion but the cold oily trickle of fear.
When I reached the Lake Mary parking lot I saw Mike Kittleman changing the tire of his Explorer.
I saw his skis racked on top, caked with snow.
Mike Kittleman was on the biathlon team as a kid, before Georgia kicked him off.
I watched him a moment. Thinking, he’s such a runt but he’s wiry and strong. I recalled that day in the gondola barn when the machinery broke and Eric came and I told Mike to let Eric fix it, and I recalled just how wiry and strong Mike had been when he grabbed me by the hair and put the screwdriver to my neck — and I wondered if I needed to be afraid now. But there were other cars in the lot, and there was a family unloading a sled and the dad was big and burly.
I took off my skis and approached Mike.
He saw me. He pretended not to, his head bent to the job.
I said, “Mike.”
He looked up. Feigned surprise. Spoke, at last. “Yeah?”
“What are you doing here?”
I waited for him to say what does it look like, I’m changing a tire. Mike is unrelentingly literal. He said, instead, “Just came back from a ski.”
I was blunt. “Did you follow me?”
He lifted the spare tire onto the wheel studs. He screwed each lug nut back on, slowly and meticulously, by hand. He said, finally, “No,” like he was so unaffected by my question that he nearly forgot to answer.
“Then what were you doing out skiing? Where did you go?”
He picked up the tire iron and tightened the first lug nut. He shot me a glance. Face set in naked hatred. “It’s a free country.”
“Yes it is,” I said. “And I’m free to tell the chief of police my unfounded suspicion that you’ve been following me. And you’re free to prove me wrong.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I went straight home after my trip to Gold Dust. No reporting in to Krom, no chats on the split-log bench.
I ate an apple and cheese for dinner and had little appetite even for that. I took a steaming hot shower. I went to bed early. I had a nightmare in which Krom followed me to the hidden draw and barged in and dug a hole in the snow and when the steam licked up, he forced me into the hot blue pool. I awoke sweating and went outside and stood for two minutes in the snow to cool off. Went back to bed, back to sleep, and had another nightmare, in which Mike followed me only this time he had the nerve to confront me while I was pondering the gunpowder under my hand lens, and Mike knocked me over and put a screwdriver to my throat.
That time when I awoke, I heard Georgia chiding me. You’re not the victim, I am.
Early the next morning I went to the lab and laid out my findings for Walter.
Walter took his time, poking through specimen dishes, plucking out items of special interest, comparing gunpower grains under the comparison scope, scrutinzing minerals under the polarized lightscope.
I waited, watching. On the screen of the lightscope, minerals floated like fish in the sea.
Walter finished and turned to me. “We have a soil match.”
“I agree.”
“More than that. We have a gunpowder match. This is especially significant because the powders are so unusual.”
“I agree.”
“We need to hurry along the gunpowder lab. We need an ID of those mystery powders.”
“I sent an email last night. I praised the chief examiner for a paper he presented at the last conference of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and asked if he could move things along.”
“Was it a good paper?”
“I wouldn’t know. I just googled it and grabbed the title.”
Walter’s eyebrows lifted, and then he smiled.
“So,” I said, “what we need now are exemplars that contain the hot springs minerals, and cyanide. Means we have to dig.”
Still, Walter smiled. “I’ll take the cyanide pond.”
“You and your mines. Okay, fair enough, you have fun with that and I’ll start the grid search for the spring.”
“Tomorrow morning?” Walter said.
“Early. Lot of digging to do.”
“In the meantime,” Walter said, “we have all of today to do a thorough analysis on the soils.”
“I need to get caffeinated first.” I poured us both a cup, and we took the time to nurse the brew in companionable silence. Enjoying the small moment of victory. A good-sized step in the direction of solving the case, finding out where Georgia died. And, I had to admit with a small stab of guilt, just the simple pleasure at doing the geology.
Walter finished his coffee and turned back to the lightscope. He rotated the polarizer, turning a hexagonal crystal to its point of extinction, where all light is absorbed.
I took a moment to do some scutwork, labeling the gunpowder samples. Unidentified powder number one. Number two. And so on. And, finally, the one powder from the tunnel that I could identify: dimples. Fiocchi, choice of many a biathlete — including Mike and Eric and Stobie and my brother Jimbo.
My gaze shifted to the Alice-in-Wonderland poster on the wall behind Walter’s bench. Alice is tumbling down the rabbit hole. The message being, you follow the evidence wherever it takes you, down the rabbit hole if you must.
Even if you don’t want to go there.
We worked until the dinner hour and my stomach growled and then Walter left to go get takeout.
Five minutes later, Krom knocked at the door, same time as he opened it.
I sucked in a long breath, and motioned him to take Walter’s stool.
He scooted it over beside mine. He assessed the specimen dishes laid out on my bench. He took off his parka and laid it across his knees. His gaze came to rest on me. “I haven’t heard from you for two days, Cassie.”
“I’ve been too busy.”
“Nothing of interest to report?”
I considered our bargain. I decided I’d better warn him. “I might have found the place Georgia died but I have to tell you, there’s nothing there that impacts your job. Nothing to do with the volcano.” I shrugged. “Nothing you can use to spin, over beers with John Amsterdam.”
His hand slammed down on my workbench.
I jumped.
He took hold of my arm, as if to steady me.
I pulled away.
“Listen to me.”
I stiffened.
“Give me your hand,” he said, soft. “Please.”
I looked through the storefront window, at the crowds passing by, tired from the slopes and ready to find a place for dinner.
Krom caught my look. “Please, Cassie. Please.”
I gave him my hand.
He shoved up his right sleeve and placed my hand on his forearm, on top of the tattooed scar, so that my palm cupped the raised flesh. “I want to share a vision with you. I want you to feel it.”
His arm was hot. My hand was unaccountably cold.
“On the other side of the world,” he said, “a volcano out of the blue starts erupting. There’s a tribe living on its slopes and they blame the outsiders who’ve been drilling holes into their mountain. You see, these outsiders are after geothermal energy. But the tribe thinks the mountain is their mother and the drilling has made her so mad she’s exploded. The tribe runs to escape her anger but two of them — a man and a woman — run toward the eruption, not away from it. The sacrifice satisfies their mother and she lets the rest of the tribe escape.”