Killer View (29 page)

“Thanks, Sheriff.”

“Tread lightly, Danny. And don’t speak a word of this to Dr. Bezel. I don’t see how, but she may be part of this.”

Cutter looked as if Walt had hit him.

“Do we even know if she’s actually with the CDC?” Walt asked. “I never checked her credentials.”

“Sweet Jesus!”

“Trust no one, Danny,” Walt said. His voice continued inside his head:
Not even me
.

“MAY BE I’M NOT EXPLAINING IT RIGHT.” JOHN BORTON WAS a big, bearish man, with red hair, wide eyes, and an unexpectedly kind and soft minister’s voice. He’d started out as water master for the water district, inspecting headgates on irrigation canals, reporting violations, and locking flows at levels where they belonged. Then he’d served as an inspector for the state’s adjudication process—the redistribution of stream and river water to private landowners—that had taken five years and nearly cost a few lives. Now he was the water master for the central district, and, as such, ruled like a feudal lord over million-dollar ranches and their century-old legal rights to tap into and drain both the surface waters as well as the underground aquifer that flowed for thousands of miles, from British Columbia to Mexico.

His office was small, even by government standards. The water district was housed in a building that also leased space to the Nature Conservancy.

Walt and Borton were leaning on a worktable that held Fiona’s aerial photographs, a satellite image of central Idaho, and a topographical map of a fifty-square-mile region surrounding Craters of the Moon and reaching to the Pahsimeroi Valley.

“Think of it as an eddy,” Borton said. “Just like in open water, but, in this case, it happens to be underground. You’ve got this tremendous flow of water, sometimes thousands of feet below the surface, moving like a river north to south. Huge volume. It pushes up quite close to the surface for much of the route. But we know it always seeks the path of least resistance, as well as the lowest spot it can find. This range,” he said, indicating a spur of mountains that pushed toward the alluvial plain and the desert that housed the Idaho Nuclear Laboratory, “acts as a barrier, just like a levee or breakwater.”

“But you said the flow of the water is north to south,” Walt reminded. “And the elevation of the Pahsimeroi is higher than the desert. My interest is whether water could get from here,” he said, indicating the desert, “to here.” He pointed to the center of the Pahsimeroi Valley.

“And, logically, that’s impossible. How can water run uphill?” Borton dragged the satellite image closer. “But some rivers flow to the north in the Northern Hemisphere, don’t they? And so do some aquifers. In this case, it’s the result of a subterranean fault and a promontory.” He pointed out a mountain spine on the satellite image. “This looks like a weather map, but these gray swirls are actually the underground water—part of the Northern Rocky Mountain Intermontane Basins system—that exists thousands of feet below the surface and is one small part of a freshwater source that stretches from Canada all the way to Mexico. The Big Lost River disappears completely under the desert here and doesn’t resurface for hundreds of miles. But the force of that downward pressure has the same effect as a narrowing river: increased speed. That pushes a great quantity of water west and around this underground promontory. The flow is further restricted by faults on both sides, and, with nowhere to go, it flows north for nearly seventy miles, until most of it is absorbed into the more porous strata of the upper Pahsimeroi.”

For security reasons, the satellite image had grayed out the surface topography of an area that included the INL, but Walt pulled Fiona’s photograph alongside the image and visually compared the two. The long, feathered flow that was the rogue branch of the aquifer curled and turned directly beneath the area where he and Fiona had spotted the after-hours earthmoving equipment. For a moment, he just stared.

“This help any?” Borton asked, made uncomfortable by the long silence.

Walt looked up at the man, then back to the various pictures. “Does the water in the aquifer ever reach the surface of the Pahsimeroi Valley’s floor? Is it part of the groundwater?”

“That’s a much bigger question,” Borton said, running his stubby finger across the satellite image, “because there’s a constant surface flow north to south—all the winter melt slowly finding its way down through sediment and into the valleys. But that water can prove itself seasonal and intermittent, as we know, and the reason this gets more complicated is that some of the ranchers have drilled very deep wells. Those deeper wells, eight hundred to as much as ten thousand feet, are directly tapping into the aquifer, not the surface water. It presents a particularly difficult issue for us.”

“Do we know the locations of those deeper wells?” Walt asked.

“We would have a list of at least some of them in the state, because they’ve been the subject of adjudication.”

Not once had Borton asked what any of this was about, though Walt sensed his curiosity.

“How hard would it be for me to get hold of that list?” Walt asked.

“It’s a public record,” Borton returned quickly, having anticipated the request. “I don’t have those documents here, but the state water board should have copies.”

“That helps.”

“I do happen to have computer access,” Borton said with a twinkle in his eye. “And a printer. But any data that proved useful to you would have to eventually be sourced elsewhere. It didn’t come from me, Walt.”

“Understood.”

Borton glanced around the quiet office. “Wait right here,” he said.

WHEN WALT’S ATTEMPTS TO REACH GAIL FAILED, HE RESISTED using the power of his office to find her, knowing any such personal use would be held against him. Instead, he sought out his divorce attorney, Jan Wygle, in an attempt to get his daughters returned.

As he sat in the officer’s reception, an NPR report out of Boise caught his attention.

“Today, the state senate’s environmental impact committee will hear public comments on the Semper Group’s management of the Idaho Nuclear Laboratory. Conditions of Semper’s contract with the federal and state governments require semiannual review of health and safety issues in the workplace. Semper took over management of the nuclear facility from the troubled General Industries two years ago and was instrumental in the fifty-square-mile facility’s third name change in just six years. More now from our Capitol correspondent, Lisa Laird.”

The reporter continued the story, reminding listeners of the controversial shipments of overseas nuclear waste to the INL. Said to be for temporary storage, much of the Japanese and Korean low-level waste had been held in drums above ground in central Idaho for nearly a decade. Semper was said to be in negotiations to extend the program by accepting Russian low-level waste. Walt’s ears pricked up when Hillabrand’s name was mentioned. He was to be the committee’s chief witness, testifying at three P.M. A public forum.

He faced a two-hour drive or a thirty-minute flight. His first phone call was not to Nancy, nor to Barge Levy, who he hoped might fly him over to Boise now that his own pilot’s license had been suspended. It was instead to Danny Cutter. His request caused Cutter to invoke a moment’s silence on the other end.

“You want
what
?” Cutter had asked.

“You heard me right,” Walt answered.

“I don’t know if that’s possible.”

“Find a way,” Walt told the man. “Both our futures may depend upon it.”

WALT ARRIVED AT the statehouse in Boise wearing a crisp, heavily starched uniform, his shoes and belt polished to gleaming, his hardware sparkling. It was three-twenty by the time he slipped through the door of the hearing room, where a dais held five state senators, four men and a woman. The room’s interior was a magnificent throwback to the grand statehouses of the nineteenth century: aged mahogany and walnut panels, a marble floor, and brass chandeliers. Roger Hillabrand sat at a long table, front and center, with his back to the main doors, the fabric of his suit shining. He took no notice of Walt’s entrance.

The same could not be said for James Peavy. The dignified-looking rancher sat on the aisle in the fifth row of bench seating. He wore his trademark Stetson, a blue blazer, and a white oxford. He glowered at Walt. There was no mistaking that look. He shook his head faintly, like a reminder of his prior warning, and his eyes tracked Walt, as he found a seat.

Most of the hearing centered on the proposed expansion of the so-called temporary storage of offshore low-level nuclear waste, and, when the hearing was thrown open to public comment, the room became hostile toward Hillabrand. At last, the chairman relieved Hillabrand by stating that the floor was closed to questions regarding that particular issue, and the room emptied quickly. There were fewer than ten people in attendance when the chairman opened the floor to any other questions for Mr. Hillabrand and Semper’s management of the INL.

An environmentalist beat Walt to the microphone, asking what Hillabrand intended to do about a high fence that was interfering with the winter movements of an established elk herd.

Hillabrand turned around to address the questioner and, in doing so, spotted Walt. There was a pronounced hitch to his movement, like a film having been cut and spliced back together.

A minute later, Walt stood at the aisle microphone and introduced himself to the committee, all of whom he’d met on other occasions. He carried copies of maps, photographs, and a time line of his own investigation to the dais, then offered Hillabrand copies.

The committee chair fingered the documents and then leaned into his microphone. “Sheriff Fleming, Mr. Hillabrand comes here in good faith. He is not on trial.”

“I’m aware of that,” Walt said into the mic.

“This is a hearing. We’re just getting Mr. Hillabrand’s semiannual report and his appraisal of the condition of the facility and where it’s going over the next six months.”

“Yes.”

“If you have a public comment, then—”

“I do, Senator.” Walt turned slightly to address Hillabrand. “The witness is under oath?”

“He volunteered an oath at the start of his report,” the senator answered. “It is by no means binding or legal.”

“Be that as it may, I would hope it counts for something.” He looked directly at the witness. “Mr. Hillabrand, would you please view the photograph labeled ‘B’ and answer this question?” Photo B depicted the aerial view of the massive earthmovers, working alongside one of the newer INL buildings. “Are you aware of any current threats to health,
including
any spills, leaks, or mishandling of nuclear waste at the INL, recent or not?”

There were not enough people in attendance to throw a murmur around the room, but clearly the question caught everyone on the committee by surprise.

“I will answer the question,” Hillabrand replied confidently. “But, first, I would ask if the committee is aware of your having been detained by INL security just last night, Sheriff, and if this questioning of yours is being done at the hand of politics, in an attempt to salvage the damage last night’s incident will have upon your current reelection campaign?”

“Sheriff?” the chairman asked.

“This has nothing to do with politics, Mr. Chairman.” Walt never took his eyes off Hillabrand, whose bitten-back smile bordered on arrogance. “I have a follow-up question or two, if Mr. Hillabrand only will answer the first.”

The chairman seemed intent to not allow this to be a duel between Walt and Hillabrand. “The committee would like to set the record straight as to your detention. Did this, in fact, take place?”

“It did. Yes, sir. My glider was accidentally blown off course and intercepted by INL security. We were forced to land, questioned by INL security, and later released without charges.”

Hillabrand snorted into the microphone. Without permission from the chairman, he waved the photograph high in the air and said, “Carrying him conveniently over our facility, I see. I feel it important to inform this committee that the existence of this photograph is a violation of federal law and that the viewing of this photograph will likely require investigation.”

The statement surprised Walt. Hillabrand had just thrown Fiona under the bus. Walt had hoped that Fiona’s involvement with Hillabrand might mitigate how seriously he intended to prosecute the photography.

The committee turned in on itself for internal discussion. Indiscernible whispering floated through the room, as the steam radiators popped and clanked. Walt felt desperate to at least get his first question answered, though it now seemed obvious that Hillabrand was willing to lie.

“You said you would answer the question,” Walt reminded.

“I’m unaware of any spills or leaks or any health threats posed by our operations at the INL.”

“Have you or any of your employees,” Walt asked him, “had contact with, or offered payments to, Lon Bernie, James Peavy, or Daniel Cutter in exchange for their silence, their participation in a cover-up concerning contamination of groundwater in the Pahsimeroi Valley?”

This question sent the committee into gasps and further consultation; harsh glances at both Hillabrand and Walt. Someone left the room behind Walt, and, within seconds, a dozen spectators hurried inside, including a few reporters, judging by their busy notepads. The chairman took notice of the arrival of the press, cupped his mouth, and went back to whispering to his panel members.

“Sheriff Fleming,” the chairman finally said, “while this committee respects and applauds your service in law enforcement in the great state of Idaho, we do not feel that this is the proper forum for your line of questioning.”

“Isn’t this a hearing on environmental impact?” Walt asked.

“It is.”

“My position, Mr. Chairman, is that the INL, under Mr. Hillabrand’s governance, has contaminated an eddy in the Northern Rocky Mountain Intermontane Basins system, the deep groundwater beneath the Pahsimeroi. I have personally witnessed the burning of over fifty head of sheep. What rancher would dispose of his sheep by fire, Mr. Chairman? Buck—Senator Oozer—you run sheep. Have you ever burned any?”