And, indeed, here was a file of the well permits. Pendergast looked through it. Each well required the testing of water quality — standard procedure. And every single well had passed: no mercury contamination noted.
Without question, falsified results.
Now came the sales contracts for the first houses built in The Heights. Pendergast selected those dozen properties in the contaminated zone in the valley for special scrutiny. He examined the names of the purchasers. Most appeared to be older, wealthy individuals in retirement. These houses had changed hands a number of times, especially as real estate values skyrocketed in the 1990s.
But Pendergast did recognize the name of one set of purchasers: a “Sarah and Arthur Roman, husband and wife.” No doubt the future parents of Ted Roman. The date of purchase: 1982.
The Roman house was built directly on the site of the smelter, in the zone of greatest contamination. Pendergast thought back to what Corrie had told him about Ted. Assuming he was her age, or even a few years older, there was little doubt that Ted Roman had been exposed to toxic mercury in his mother’s womb, and raised in a toxic house, drinking toxic water, taking toxic showers…
Pendergast put the records aside, a thoughtful expression on his face. After a moment, he picked up the phone and called Corrie’s cell phone. It went directly over to her voice mail.
He then called the Hotel Sebastian and, after speaking to several people, learned that she had left the hotel shortly after her work shift ended at eleven. In her car, destination unknown. However, she had asked the concierge for a snowmobile map of the mountains surrounding Roaring Fork.
With somewhat more alacrity, Pendergast dialed the town library. No answer. He looked up the head librarian’s home number. When she answered, she explained to him that December twenty-fourth was normally a half day at the library, but she had decided not to open at all because of the storm. In response to his next question, she replied that Ted had, in fact, told her he was going to take advantage of the free day by engaging in one of his favorite activities: snowmobiling in the mountains.
Again, Pendergast hung up the phone. He called Stacy Bowdree’s cell, and it, too, went over to voice mail.
A furrow appeared on his pale brow. As he was hanging up, he noticed something he normally would have seen immediately had he not been preoccupied: the papers on his desk were disarranged.
He stared at the papers, his near-photographic mind reconstructing how he had left them. One sheet — the sheet on which he’d copied the message of the Committee of Seven — had been pulled partway out and the papers surrounding it displaced:
mete at the Ideal 11 oclock Sharp to Night they are Holt Up in the closed Christmas Mine up on smugglers wall
Pendergast quickly left his office and went upstairs, where Iris was still dutifully manning the desk.
“Has anyone been in my office?” he asked pleasantly.
“Oh, yes,” the secretary said. “I brought Corrie down there for a few minutes, early this afternoon. She was looking for her cell phone.”
61
The vile, rotting odor in the air seemed to intensify as Ted waved the burning stick about. The flames licking at its end began to die back into coals, and he pushed it back into the stove.
“Love is the Fire of Life; it either consumes or purifies,” he quoted as he slowly twirled the stick among the flames, as if roasting a marshmallow. There was something awful — after his fierce and passionate ranting — about the calm deliberation with which he now moved. “Let us prepare for the purification.” He pulled the stick from the stove and passed it again before Corrie’s face, with a strangely delicate gesture, gingerly, tentative now — and yet it hovered so close that, although she twisted away, it singed her hair.
Corrie tried to gain control of her galloping panic. She had to reach him, talk him out of this. Her mouth was dry, and it was hard to articulate words through her haze of pain and fear. “Ted, I liked you. I mean I likeyou. I really do.” She swallowed. “Look, let me go and I’ll forget all about this. We’ll go out. Have a beer. Just like before.”
“Right. Sure. You’d say anything now.” Ted began to laugh, a crazy, quiet laugh.
She pulled against the cuff, but it was tight around her wrist, securely fastened to the pipe. “You won’t get in trouble. I won’t tell anyone. We’ll forget all about this.”
Ted did not reply. He pulled the burning brand away, inspected it closely, as one would a tool prior to putting it to use.
“We had good times, Ted, and we can have more. You don’t have to do this. I’m not like those others, I’m just a poor student, I have to wash dishes at the Hotel Sebastian just to pay for my room!” She sobbed, caught herself. “Please don’t hurt me.”
“You need to calm down, Corrie, and accept your fate. It will be by fire — purifying fire. It will cleanse you of your sins. You should thank me, Corrie. I’m giving you a chance to atone for what you did. You’ll suffer, and for that I’m sorry — but it’s for the best.”
The horror of it, the certainty that Ted was telling the truth, closed her throat.
He stepped back, looked around. “I used to play in all these tunnels as a kid.” His voice was different now — it was sorrowful, like one about to perform a necessary but distasteful service. “I knew every inch of these mine buildings up here. I know all this like the back of my hand. This is my childhood, right here. This is where it began, and this is where it will end. That door you came out of? That was the entrance to my playground. Those mines — they were a magicalplayground.”
His tone became freighted with nostalgia, and Corrie had a momentary hope. But then, with terrible rapidity, his demeanor changed utterly. “And look what they did!” This came out as a scream. “Look! This was a nice town once. Friendly. Everyone mingled. Now it’s a fucking tourist trap for billionaires…billionaires and all their toadies, bootlickers, lackeys. People like you! You…!” His voice echoed in the dim space, temporarily drowning out the sound of the storm, the wind, the groaning timbers.
Corrie began to realize, with a kind of awful finality, that nothing she could say would have any effect.
As quickly as it had come, the fit passed again. Ted fell abruptly silent. A tear welled up in one eye, trickled slowly down his cheek. He picked up the gun from the table and snugged it into his waistband. Without looking at her, he turned sharply on his heel and strode away, out of her vision, into a dark area behind the pump engine. Now all she could see was the burning end of his stick, dancing and floating in the darkness, slowly dwindling, until it, too, disappeared.
She waited. All was silent. Had he left? She could hardly believe it. Hope came rushing back. Where had he gone? She looked around, straining to see in the darkness. Nothing.
But no — it was too good to be true. He hadn’t really left. He had to be around somewhere.
And then she smelled a faint whiff of smoke. From the woodstove? No. She strained, peering this way and that into the darkness, the pain in her hand, ribs, and ankle suddenly forgotten. There was more smoke — and then, abruptly, a whole lot more. And now she could see a reddish glow from the far side of the pump engine.
“Ted!”
A gout of flame suddenly appeared out of the blackness, and then another, snaking up the far wall, spreading wildly.
Ted had set the old building on fire.
Corrie cried out, struggled afresh with the handcuffs. The flames mounted upward with terrible speed, great clouds of acrid smoke roiling up. A roar grew in intensity, until it was so ferocious it was a vibration in the air itself. She felt the sudden heat on her face.
It had all happened in mere seconds.
“No! No!” she screamed. And then, through her wild cries, she saw Ted’s tall figure framed in the doorway to the dingy room from which she’d first emerged. She could see the open door to the Sally Goodin Mine, the dewatering tunnel running away into darkness. He was standing absolutely still, staring at the fire, waiting; and as it grew brighter and stronger she could see the expression on his face: one of pure, unmitigated excitement.