Quicksilver (The Forensic Geology Series, Prequel) (14 page)

“I’m apologizing.”

“What did you say, R?”

“You want the exact words?”

“That’s what I want.”

Robert hunched forward. He was shivering now.

Henry said, “What did you...”

“I
said
, Henry would not be an asset in my world.”

My heart squeezed.

Henry unzipped his belt bag. “That’s what you said.”

Walter grunted and looked away, shifting from foot to foot, almost skittish.

Yeah, I thought, that’s it. Game over. I waited for ... I didn’t know what. Henry to shoot? He didn’t want to shoot. He’d said so. And he wasn’t aiming the damn Glock, he was unzipping his belt bag and whatever he took out of that bag had to be better than the Glock. Better for Robert. Better for us. Better for Henry. Henry wasn’t a killer. Henry was a damaged soul. A wounded soul, betrayed by his father and his brother, not an asset in their world, surely not an asset in anybody’s world. Hurt to the core. A man in the wrong century. And all he wanted now, here, was an apology from his brother.

I waited for Robert to apologize so we could all go home.

Robert just gave his brother that appraising look of his.

I wanted to scream. Will you please
apologize
? You’ve already said the words a dozen times. Doesn’t matter if you meant them. Doesn’t matter how glib you are if you can’t spit it out one more time. When it counts.

Walter spoke. “I would like to sit.”

I gaped at my partner. That’s all you got?

Henry jerked a shoulder. Go ahead and sit. Or maybe it was just one of Henry’s twitches. Didn’t matter. Walter cleared pebbles from a space with his boot and sank to the ground like an old man and Henry kept his wounded attention on Robert.

Robert smiled. “You want an apology, Bro? You wander around the mountains like some kind of original man and you think you know what a business deal is? You think it’s unfair I left you out in the cold?”

I tensed. Careful Robert, you’re insulting him, I hope you know that.

Henry flushed, a deeper pink than the pink of his peeling nose.

Robert rolled his shoulders and put his hands flat on the surface of the pool. This time he didn’t flinch at the touch. He relaxed into a more comfortable position. He looked like a man lazing on a raft waiting for someone to bring him a Margarita. He cocked his head to appraise his brother. “Not a world where you’d thrive, Henry.”

Henry blinked. “
You either
.”

“Oh but I do,” Robert said.

“I
heard
you.” Henry’s voice stronger now. “The test failed.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it does.”

“It doesn’t. That’s the beauty of it.”

Henry frowned.

“What matters,” Robert said, “is the name. We named the company AquaHeal.”

“Why does that matter?”

“Because it’s a shell.”

“A what?”

“A front, Henry. For the parent company, the money guys. They don’t care that the test failed. They don’t care if the cleanup works. Yes or no, it doesn’t matter.”

“It has to.”

“No it
doesn’t
. The money guys make their money in the oil market. That sample Dad and I were taking, when you saw us at the river? It was for their dog-and-pony show, a stunt for the press. AquaHeal is their green cred.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means the money guys want people to look at what they say and not what they do.”

“That’s illegal,” Henry said.

“No. That’s strategy.”

“That’s ... That’s....”

Shameful, I thought. Shameful is the word you want, Henry. I glanced down at Walter seeking I didn’t know what, some kind of help here, some way to take this in a better direction than it was now heading, but Walter was hunched over staring at the ground, perhaps trying to come up with a word, an idea, with
something
and if the answer was there in the dirt I wished him good luck finding it.

Robert finished it for us. “Bottom line, Henry, I kept you out of it. I kept you pure.”

Henry Shelburne laughed.

~ ~ ~

“D
id Cam know?” Henry asked.

Robert answered, “Does it matter?”

Henry reached into his belt bag.

Robert appeared unconcerned. Still waiting for that Margarita.

Walter said something, whispered something, so hushed that I could not make it out and I moved down into the trough and knelt beside him thinking okay
finally
he’s got an idea.

Something landed in front of me.

I jerked, and looked. It was entirely commonplace. And unsettling as hell.

Now that I was on eye level with Walter I turned to him—what now, because things are really going to hell here, because we really need an idea here. He met my look and gave a shake of the head.
Don’t
.

Don’t
what
? I could think of a dozen things not to do. I could think of nothing useful
to
do.

“You need to sit ankles together,” Henry said. “You need to do them first.”

I looked up.

Henry nosed the Glock in our direction.

Walter took hold of my arm and tugged me down to sit beside him in the space he had cleared.

The package Henry had tossed was closer to me. So I picked it up and ripped the plastic open. Took out two cable ties. Passed one to Walter. They were heavy-duty, rated to handle a couple hundred pounds. I’d used heavy-duty ties like these to bundle duct hoses when I installed my washer and dryer, two years ago. Now, slowly, Walter and I began to bind our ankles. Threading the cable ties, a micrometer at a time. Sounded like a clock ticking.

“
Zip them
.”

We zipped them tighter than I’d wished. Sounded like a machine gun.

“Now you need to do your wrists,” Henry said.

I took out two more cable ties. Passed one to Walter. We bound our wrists. At Henry’s instruction, zipped machine-gun tight.

Walter hunched over his knees and muttered, “Blast it.”

I whispered, “You okay?”

He hiked a shoulder.

Henry crabbed close and retrieved the open package. He moved to the mouth of the grotto. He took out a tie and tossed it to Robert. It landed short, in the brush edging the pothole. He took out another tie. Hands shaking. He crabbed closer. “I don’t want to shoot,” he told Robert.

“You don’t need to.” Robert leaned forward and held out his hands.

Henry tossed the tie. It landed true. It floated on the pool like a stick. Robert picked it up and began to loop it around his wrists.

“Only do one hand,” Henry said. “Thread it through the handle first.”

Robert’s face tightened. He had to twist his torso and stretch his arm to reach the spigot. He slid around the surface of the pool like it was ice. He gripped the spigot. He anchored there. And then with an effort he threaded the cable tie through a wheel cutout in the handle and closed it off around his wrist. He pulled the zip tight. Quite clearly it was not going to slip off over his big hand. He adjusted his position to face his brother. Awkward, now. No relaxing on the raft, no Margarita on the horizon.

Henry returned the package of cable ties to the belt bag. He asked, again, “Did Cam know?”

“You’re like a dog with a bone, Bro.”

“Did Cam know?”

“I kept him out of it.”

“Then why were you fighting?”

Robert took a long pause. “Fighting?”

“That day on the Yuba.”

Robert took a longer pause. “I’ve never fought with Dad. Which day on the Yuba we
talking
about, Henry?”

“That day Cam died.”

I thought, oh shit. I thought, as if it mattered, Robert lied about being in Sacramento the day his father died.

Robert slowly held up his uncuffed hand. Palm out. “Let’s be clear, Henry. You overheard us talking about the company, right? So if you heard that, you also heard me giving Dad the strategy, the way it got funded. And you heard Dad disagree. He waved his hands around, like he does. But no blows were exchanged, for Christ’s sake.
We argued
. That’s what you heard.”

“No,” Henry said. “I didn’t hear the strategy. I didn’t hear that part.”

“Then I don’t follow, Bro.”

“I saw that part.”

Robert gave a strained laugh. “You’ve lost me, Bro.”

“You said, Henry would not be an asset in my world. When I heard you say that, I left.”

“You left? Well then...”

“The trail is steep, Robert. I saw from up above.”

Robert gave a little jerk.

“I saw Cam wave his hands.”

Robert gave a stiff nod.

“I saw Cam fall over.”

“He had a heart attack,” Robert said.

“I saw Cam fall into the water.”

Robert sat stone still in the quicksilver.

“I saw you watching. That’s all you did.” Henry holstered his gun. “And then you left.” 

H
enry turned and walked away.

Robert remained silent.

Walter and I were silent. I could hear my own heartbeat, the pulse in my ears. I could hear the distant cry of a bird, the crunching sounds of Henry’s boots upon gravel, Walter’s quickened breathing beside me. I could hear the hiss of the mercury through the spigot. A constant sound. Otherwise, the silence went on and on, excruciating.

At last Walter spoke. Whispered. “This is news.”

Was it? Hadn’t I suspected as much, when I obsessed on the steel clip on the mesh pocket of Robert’s pack? Yes I had. And then I’d let it go. And then Henry had come on scene. Henry and his gun. And I had a new suspect in my sights.

Now I fixed my sights again on Robert Shelburne. One expression after another seemed to chase across his face. Worry, confusion, anger, calculation. No, what I saw was mounting fear. And then he started yanking his cuffed hand, trying to free it from the wheel handle of the spigot.

I glanced at my partner. He was doing the same. Bent over his feet, shifting position, trying to find an angle to work.

Good idea.

I followed suit, hunching over my own feet, positioning my ankles, hoping for a little give in the binding, a space between one foot and the other which could be capitalized upon. Maybe if I took off my boots I could slip one foot free. Hands bound at the wrists but that left my fingers free. I yanked the laces on my right boot, the boot with the torn tongue, didn’t even feel the bruise anymore, that damage entirely inconsequential, and now in my haste I’d knotted the laces and I thought fiercely
pay attention
but already another thought had entered my mind. A geologist thought. How many times have I used a rock pick to pry out minerals deep inside a pocket in an outcrop? I didn’t have my tools at hand but I sat in a field of rock debris. I started raking through the gravelly soil.

Walter hissed, “He’s coming back.”

I snapped my attention to Henry. He was indeed returning and what he carried chilled my bones.

Robert, too, had seen. Had frozen.

Henry Shelburne went straight to the grotto, went inside, skirting the pool where his brother sat stunned, squatting at the back of the grotto where the old timbers and riffle blocks were stacked in a jumble. Henry deposited the armful of kindling he’d brought from the campfire.

Brown and dried, thick woody stems, shriveled leaves still bearing their resin glands, I guessed, because when Henry had thrown that kindling onto the campfire it threw off that nose-tingling odor.

That, and set the campfire ablaze.

Flammable as hell.

Walter whispered, “Can you get free?”

Yeah, sure, if I can find a pointed shard. If it’s pointed enough to do the job. I whispered, “Rock pick.”

He nodded and began to pick through the pebbles around his feet.

“Hey Bro.” Robert’s voice rang out. Strong, but without the hearty gloss he’d put on
Bro
before. Strong and harsh now. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Henry stood and opened his belt bag. He took out a box of matches.

“Not fair,” Robert said. “Not a fair fucking game.”

I was transfixed. I knew this game. I’d seen Robert play it back at the great mining pit, the void, the place where a mountain had once stood. Robert standing in the mountain misery, striking a match, dropping it onto the resin-thick ferns, showing how quickly the stuff would ignite. Explaining how the brothers had played this game when they were kids, vaporizing the mercury to go after the gold. But Robert’s demonstration for us was just a dog-and-pony show. This, here, now, was the real deal. This mountain misery was tinder-dry. This stuff was ready to kindle a bonfire of old timbers and riffle blocks—no doubt impregnated with mercury—and if that bonfire got lit it was going to heat the pipe coming out of the wall, through which the mercury flowed from some never-ending supply somewhere in that hillside.

I wondered at what point it would give off its poisonous vapors.

I glanced at Walter. He too was watching. Pebbles forgotten.

“Get past it,” Robert said. “Dad’s dead. I panicked. End of story.”

Henry opened the box and took out a match. Hands shaking.

“This game is fixed,” Robert said. Anger flared off him like heat from a fire. “You’ve got matches. I’ve got nothing. What kind of game is that?”

Henry said, “No kind of game.”

“The hell it isn’t.”

Henry struck the match on the side of the box.

I waited for Robert to scream, because once Henry lit the mountain misery on fire and heated the mercury, Robert wouldn’t be wanting to scream, wouldn’t be wanting to open his mouth, in fact he’d be holding his breath.

The match was burning.

“You want to play poker, brother? Let’s play poker.” Robert sucked in a breath, let it escape. “I’ll see you.”

I shook my head.
How
? With what? Robert had no moves, no hand to play. He was bluffing.

Robert twisted his head, underneath the spigot, and brought his face to the silver stream.

I sealed my lips. Some kind of crazy-ass Shelburne bluff, ready for the fire to start, the mercury to heat, to vaporize, for the poison to pour out of the spigot. Ready to breathe in a lung-full. Hey Bro I’ll see you,
this
what you talking about?