And now curious members of the town Council were crowding in.
Something new showed on Krom’s face, the thick look of a cornered animal, and then the CNN minicam nosed out of the crowd and Krom panicked. He lumbered to the video cart and killed the picture. The fissure expired. The minicam swung for a head shot of Krom. He put up a hand, blocking the lens. Carow whistled and hooked a finger and the plump reporter altered course. Attention shifted Carow’s way, leaving Krom for the moment free.
I moved in, close enough to smell his sweat. I said, “Are you scared?”
He had hold of the brushed-steel handle of the video cart. He made no answer, did not acknowledge he’d even heard, as though the blood was pounding so hard in his ears he’d gone deaf to all but his racing heart.
I waited with my own heart pounding, greedy for something more.
Walter was beside me. “Shall we?”
I waited until Krom finally swung his head my way, until his depthless brown eyes hooked on mine, and I tried to read in there his future — where he’s pilloried for Mammoth — and then I turned and broke free of him and walked with Walter out from beneath the blue canopy into the open.
“Are you satisfied?” Walter asked, and I didn’t know how to answer. The rush had passed, as adrenaline will, leaving me hollowed. I asked, “Are you?” He took so long to answer that we’d started walking, and when he finally said “It’s a rough sort of justice,” I didn’t press any further. I wasn’t sure how to quantify rough justice. On the one hand, Adrian Krom had committed murder and he was free. On the other hand, he wouldn’t be playing hero in anybody else’s town, playing challenge with anybody else’s volcano. Was that enough?
Walter and I headed up Minaret, boots crunching paved pumice.
Minaret Road had grown noisy: chatter, shouts, somebody crying, the crash of rubble thrown on top of rubble. People stood out in bold relief, dwarfing the remains of buildings. Even in the distance, mile after unobstructed mile, tall figures could be seen tramping over the corrugated landscape.
We came upon what we judged to be the lab. We went inside and settled onto low seats of pitted concrete. I rubbed the ridged scar on my right hand, then pressed my hands between my knees. Maybe it’s a female thing, trying to hide scars.
“Well.” Walter braced his hands on his thighs. “What are you going to do?”
“Maybe go see if I can find the house.” I suddenly wanted to go see it all — the house, Walter’s place, Lindsay’s. Eric’s. I didn’t want to leave a stone unturned. I wanted to see everything, burn it into my memory.
“What are you going to do for a living?” Walter said.
“Oh.”
“You must give it some thought.”
I had, actually. “Maybe go into geotech reconnaisance.” Soil stability studies, make sure houses are built on solid ground.
Walter snorted.
Nobody gets killed. “What about you?”
“I’m too old to begin anything else.”
I thought, he doesn’t look too old. I’ve been treating him like old porcelain, but he looks crisp in his tan field jacket with the epaulettes and flap pockets. He looks jaunty with his scar, as though he’s fought a duel and won. He looks as though he’s finished aging, having reached an accommodation with the elements, his face settled into its final high-relief topography.
He said, “I’ve been thinking about the name.”
“What name?”
“Of our business. Sierra Geoforensics. I think we might personalize it.”
Before he spoke again I understood what was coming.
“Shaws and Oldfield, Geoforensics.” He looked at me.
“You’re serious?”
“I do think my name should come first.”
“I’m serious, Walter.”
“So am I.” His eyes, on me, were sharp again, astringent blue.
“You wanted more than you got, just like I did.”
“Very well then, dear, what do you expect? Batting rate of fifty-fifty? I say we can do better. Or you can go crawl around building sites and expect zero percent and achieve what you expect.”
I flinched. “Do we need to do this now?”
“We need to do this here.”
I got up, and paced the lab. Not much had survived. Concrete survived, blasted and tossed here and there. Steel survived, I-beams in tangles like ropes. The storefront window survived, shattered and melted and blackened. The lab was gone but its footprint remained. I felt the sudden sharp pain of loss. I knew it would last a very long time. A lifetime. And I knew, at last, there was but one way to bear it. Try again.
I turned to Walter. “I think we should stick with Sierra Geoforensics. It’s an established brand.”
EPILOGUE
We’re busier than water on rock, and after work today I’ll fill a thermos with coffee and catch the shuttle to L.A. to catch a redeye to Taiwan to examine soil particles caught in a batch of black-market microchips. It promises to be an interesting case — one that will not raise my blood pressure.
Statistically, though, somewhere down the line a case is bound to come along that will grab me, again, in the heart. That’s the one my ghosts will be watching.
That’s the one I both dream of and dread.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank the following experts in their fields for information, education, reading the book, and giving me terrific suggestions and support: G. Nelson Eby, Raymond C. Murray, John Thornton.
If there are factual or technical errors in VOLCANO WATCH, they are mine alone.