Fault Line (Em Hansen Mysteries) Read online

  Mrs. Pierce gave me a look that suggested that she thought that I, too, had just sprouted fangs. I briefly considered trying to explain the workings of my mind, but, having struck out with as close a friend as Faye, I decided to save my breath.

  The old woman’s eyes narrowed from anxiety to distrust. She said, “You’re a geologist, hmm? So you know a little more about this than some folks. I see you’re taking off here. Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  I thought, What’s this? You think I’d just run for it without passing you a warning? but my training kicked in again and immediately started spewing scientist hem and haw talk, full of qualifications. I said, “Well, first, earthquakes aren’t my specialty, so I really don’t know that much more than you do. But I think the first shock is usually the largest. Although there is no way to predict what will happen next.”

  Mrs. Pierce’s eyes narrowed down to slits. She was not enjoying this taste of the kind of sidestepping geologists get mired in when they’re trying to answer such questions.

  It was not the moment to try to explain the limits on predictability and the slipperiness of nonquantitative confidence intervals to my landlady. I threw scientific caution to the winds and said, “If I had to guess, I’d say that was as big as it’s going to get, but there will probably be several littler ones over the next few hours. And in that time, you’re infinitely more likely to die of exposure if you don’t go back inside than from falling masonry if you do.” I was unable to say this without looking somewhat apprehensive. My apartment was in Mrs. Pierce’s big old two-story unreinforced brick house on Douglas Street, up near the University of Utah, within a block of the line where the ground suddenly steepens as it ascends the buried scarp of the Wasatch fault. You’d think a geologist would live somewhere other than smack-dab on top of a fault, but hey, it’s cheap housing, and while house hunting, I’d used the same brand of denial that seems to work for everyone else: I’d told myself it wouldn’t happen while I was living there.

  I stood a respectful distance back from the facade, inspecting it as best I knew how. I couldn’t see any new cracks in the ancient mortar. The chimney was still standing. All was quiet. But was there something obvious I had missed?

  A moment later, I heard a siren, far in the distance. Somewhere in the back of my brain, it rang like a call to action. I scanned the wall again, my mind reaching into it, Em Hansen waking up once again in the skin and skull of the geologist. Giving Mrs. Pierce a pat on the shoulder, I said, “Go back inside and keep warm. But don’t sit next to a bookshelf, or under that chandelier you have in your dining room. Turn on the TV, get some early news; they’ll have interviewed some seismologists by now, and they’ll have an advisory for you. I’ll go scout the area and let you know what I find out.”

  I got into my truck and drove through the predawn city, marveling at how many lights were on, but as far as I could see, each house appeared to be still firmly mounted on its foundation. After a five-minute tour of the avenues, I had spotted only one fallen chimney, and for all I knew, it had been sent to its doom by the freezing and thawing cycles of Salt Lake City’s temperate winter weather, not by the renegade shifting of the Earth’s crust. Or by a combination of factors, I reasoned. I had read that earthquakes could be as quixotic as tornadoes when it came to the damage they did; one house might be leveled, while the one across the street could suffer only a few broken dishes. It was all a matter of the quality of construction and the angles at which shock waves struck solid and not-so-solid objects. Like the 1989 Loma Prieta quake out in California: Structures close to that Richter 7.1 event were snapped off their foundations unless bolted down. The farther away a building was from the epicenter, the less damage was done, until the shock waves reached the forty-miles-distant- cities of Oakland and San Francisco. There, a bridge fell, and elevated highways built below current codes collapsed.

  But that was a really big quake, I reminded myself. This one here is really only moderate, and the amount of energy released as the Richter scale numbers get larger is logarithmic. Loma Prieta was probably a thousand times larger.

  I decided to go back to my apartment and get some breakfast, then head up to the University of Utah to dig into some textbooks on seismicity and structural geology. Go on home, I told myself. Emergency over.

  But then I saw another pile of brick that had once been a chimney, and another, and then an ambulance hurrying north toward Holy Cross Hospital, and I wanted to be with friends. I remembered that Faye had asked me to come to her house. I decided to go there and, like Mrs. Pierce, watch the news.

  Faye’s house lay to the south and uphill. It was a big thing on a choice bit of real estate, set up above the city on a topographic bench carved by waves that had rolled ashore eleven thousand years ago, when Great Salt Lake filled the whole desert like a chamber pot. Being a pilot, Faye liked altitude and long views, and, being a trust-fund baby, she could afford to pay for them. Sadly, my ancient truck did not and could not. It conked out about four blocks short of her house, declaring its intentions by belching up a cloud of stinking smoke with a horrible grinding noise.

  I climbed out, slammed the door, and jumped up and down on the empty street in frustration, which is not something I recommend if you’re still getting back in shape after wobbling around in a walking cast for four months. A nasty jolt went up the still-healing muscles of that leg. But I wasn’t worrying about bones and flesh just then. That truck and I had gone a lot of lonely miles together, and this time, I could not afford to fix it. I was, as was not unusual, a touch underemployed. I had enough money squirreled away to pay my rent and feed myself for about four more months, but another round of automotive repairs would sink me. I closed my eyes, threw back my head, and whispered, “Why me?”

  The cold air kissed my face. Not getting an answer and not expecting one, I heaved a deep sigh, turned my back on the truck, and trudged the rest of the way up the hill to Faye’s house. As my leg now felt like I’d been hitting it with sledgehammers, I took the shortest route, which cut straight through a few acres of other people’s landscaping. The most recent snow had melted sufficiently so I left no obvious footprints, I awoke only one dog, and I had to climb only one fence, so by the time I got to Faye’s, I felt once again almost in control of my destiny.

  I found my way to Faye’s back door and knocked loudly. Abruptly, the light that had been burning in the bedroom wing winked out. I knocked again. Nothing.

  Perhaps half a minute later, I became aware that a volume of space beyond the window to my right had grown slightly paler.

  “It’s just me, Tom,” I announced to the ghostly accumulation of molecules. “I came in the back way because I had to walk the last four blocks. My truck bit the big one again. Let me in, okay?”

  The door swung open to a dark kitchen. “How’d you know I was here?” Tom asked, still not showing himself, his voice low.

  I stepped inside. There was just enough illumination cast by the galaxy of light-emitting diodes on the electronically controlled coffeemaker, the microwave oven, and all the other labor-saving wutzitses and widgets that decked the room that I could discern his face if I looked out of the corners of my eyes. He was not smiling.

  “You always dodge to your left,” I said. “So I looked to my right. A white boy like you shouldn’t try to skulk in modern kitchens, or you should at least put on more than just a pair of blue jeans. You glow like a beluga whale basking under a full moon.”

  “Spent a lot of time watching whales on that ranch of yours?” he asked dryly.

  “How I do wish it was mine. Right now, I’d sell it and buy myself a new truck.”

  Tom was still not smiling. “Somehow, I don’t see you doing either.”

  I said, “It suits my personality to keep duking it out with that same old heap of rust. But hey, we’ve had an earthquake. Now maybe there’ll be a little extra work for this girl geologist.”

  “Girl detective,” he replied.

  Like
I said, Tom was trying to marry my skills as a geologist to my raw talent for forensic work. Part of our agreement was that I didn’t have to take any crap from him. I popped him in the gut with a loosely balled fist and was surprised to discover how firm it was. He smelled of sex. “Go take a shower,” I muttered.

  He chuckled under his breath and padded off toward the bedroom. While he bathed, I sat on the edge of Faye’s bed, trying to discover what had moved her to demand my presence. She lay in bed facedown, with a pillow over her head, refusing to explain herself.

  “Come on, Faye,” I said. “I sacrificed a perfectly good twenty-year-old pickup truck getting here. Now tell me what’s got you playing ostrich or I’m leaving.”

  “Take my car,” she groaned. “My keys are on the table by the door into the garage.”

  “Your four-by-four? Didn’t you say that the clutch on that ‘miserable bucket of bolts’ is slipping like it’s on banana peels? I don’t mean to be picky; it’s at least fifteen years younger than my truck, and the leather seats are oh so cushy, but I just got my leg out of a cast, and—”

  “I meant the Porsche. The clutch is stiff, but you won’t have to ride it.”

  “I can’t take your Porsche. What will you drive?”

  “The four-by is going into the shop on Wednesday,” she muttered. “I won’t need it before then. If I live.”

  “You sick, huh?”

  She didn’t say anything for a while, then, “Yeah.”

  “Stomach flu?”

  Pause. “Yeah.”

  “Oh. So I guess you don’t want me to get you anything. Cup of ginger tea?”

  “Nooooo …”

  “But really, I can’t take your car.”

  “Take it, please. I. Am. Going. Nowhere!”

  “No, really, Faye. There’s open season on cowgirls driving sports cars. Someone would take a shotgun and—”

  “Then we’ll both be out of our miseries.”

  Now, that sounded a little bit nasty. Not like Faye at all. I yanked the pillow off her head. “Hey, what’s going on?”

  She cringed.

  I was just about to say something else when Tom came out of the bathroom, buttoning his shirt. He gave me a stern look and flagged me toward the door that led out into the hall. “Come,” he said. “She wants to be alone.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but Tom drew me out the door by my arm. I followed along, figuring I’d wait until Tom went to work, then try again. Maybe they had a spat, and she’s just waiting for privacy. Faye and Tom were the odd couple, he being over twenty years her senior and obliged to work for a living, but otherwise, they were both intellectuals, and as such, they got along like a couple of … well, intellectuals. They did their fighting abstractly, and in private.

  Tom dragged me back down the hall into the kitchen, turned on the lights, and began to rustle up some breakfast. He set to making the coffee, which he ruined by adding milk, and sicced me on the eggs. Sneering as he pulled the carton out of the pristinely clean refrigerator (oh, to be able to afford Faye’s housekeeper), I said, “Where’s the bacon?”

  “Let’s not fill the house with the smell of frying meat, okay?” He tipped his head toward the bedroom and did his impression of a vomiting gecko.

  “Mm. Forgot.”

  When we had our breakfast ready, we settled at the kitchen table. Tom switched on the television on the counter to get the early-morning news coverage of the earthquake. The top of the news was the scene outside the emergency room at the hospital half a mile from my house, where anguished relatives were gathering to await news on an infant boy named Tommy Ottmeier, who had been badly injured when a heavily laden bookcase fell on him during the quake. Tom whipped his hand out and had the channel changed in a blink. “I just can’t stand this kind of thing,” he muttered, looking anywhere but at me.

  The fragile moon-shaped face of the Utah state geologist now filled the television screen, floodlights glinting off her glasses, her elegantly cut graying hair glowing in the lights like frost. She stood hunched up against the cold in front of the massive concrete rampart of what looked like the outside of the new sports arena. “The good news is that the quake was as small as it was,” she was saying.

  The TV camera shifted briefly to a studly young reporter who was soberly nodding his head as if agreeing with her on every point. “What we’re all wondering is, Dr. Smeeth, is it safe to go back into our homes?” he asked importantly. “Aren’t aftershocks likely?”

  The camera shifted back to Dr. Smeeth. Her hands danced, proving that, like every other geologist, she was incapable of speaking with her mouth only. “It’s always important to remember that it’s not earthquakes that kill people, it’s collapsing structures that kill people. As I was saying, the good news is that the quake was no larger than it was, but we don’t know yet if this morning’s shaking was a foreshock or the main event. We simply don’t have enough records from previous seismic events in this area. In the meantime, Caleb, we need to mobilize our crews to inspect buildings that may have been damaged. Much of Salt Lake City is built on soft sediments, which tend to liquefy when shaken, intensifying the destructive force of any quake.”

  The reporter’s voice cut back in. “You asked us to meet you here at the new sports arena. It’s built to the latest standards. Do you really anticipate any problems here?”

  Dr. Smeeth said, “Caleb, I am concerned. The fault zone responsible for this morning’s earthquake runs right underneath the city, and because most of it is buried, we don’t even know the exact locations of many of its branches. You see, it’s not just one line on the map. Part of it may run right underneath our feet, and when it comes to buildings, the best and the latest can also mean the least tested. So it is crucial to make certain that the ground accelerations involved have not caused critical damage to any of our public or private structures. And we should start with this building here.”

  The state geologist drew herself up as if girding for a street brawl. “I chose this stadium because in just a few short weeks, Salt Lake City will host the Olympic games. Every hotel and every city service will be filled to capacity, and, as I’ve been telling the governor—”

  The view suddenly cut to a reporter at another location. He looked surprised. Caught unprepared, he fumbled with his microphone. He fingered the wire that led into his ear, his eyes wide with astonishment, as if he were receiving advice from a miniature oracle. “Ah … thank you for that report, ah … Caleb. Now … I’m here with Fred Bower at Temple Square. Fred, what’s the condition of these famous structures?”

  Fred Bower popped his eyes at the camera, giving the impression that he had a thyroid problem. He smiled unctuously. “Good. Heavenly Father is merciful. Everything is fine. Nothing amiss. Salt Lake City is ready for the Olympic Games!”

  Tom switched off the TV. “Nothing worse than trying to invent something to say,” he observed.

  “Sounded like the state geologist had plenty to say. Wonder why they cut her off?”

  Tom shot me a look. “Getting paranoid, little Emily?”

  I narrowed my eyes witheringly. “I know, I know. ‘Some days, a cigar is just a—’”

  I was interrupted by the distant sounds of Faye once again emptying her already-empty stomach.

  “When’d this vomiting start?” I asked.

  Tom peered into his coffee like he’d seen something swimming in it. “Oh, she threw up yesterday morning, but she seemed okay last evening. Except that she about chewed my head off.” He winced at the memory.

  “Why?”

  He arched one grizzled eyebrow, making its first few long, twisty hairs dance. “For nothing at all.”

  “Nothing, Tom? You?”

  He took a long draw on his coffee, savoring it, then slowly let it slide down his throat. A mischievous smile flickered at the corners of his lips. “All I did was pat her on her stomach and observe that it looked pleasantly Rubenesque. It was a compliment.”

  “Are you tired
of living?”

  Tom knit his brows in a burlesque of defensiveness. “Faye is a lovely, slender woman, and very sure of herself. I was just noticing that she had gained a pound or two, and affectionately suggesting that it suited her. Since when does the Faye Carter we know and love involve herself in such cultural norms as worrying about her figure?”

  He was right. At five-ten and a scant, lithe 142 pounds, Faye was sleek as a racehorse. A thoroughbred. A purebred. Muscular and elegant. If she’d had fur, it would have shone like satin. “Nice going, Tom. She may look anorexic to you, but remember that this culture teaches us fool women that Barbie dolls are the ne plus ultra. It’s subliminal. We’ve been brainwashed. We can’t help ourselves.”

  He shrugged. “The Barbie doll is a distortion of everything I love about the feminine sex. Worse yet, the form was adapted from a doll given out by post-World War II German streetwalkers to their marks. What self-respecting student of history would want to look like that? Give me the Venus of Willendorf any day. There’s a woman built to last a hard winter. Or June Cleaver; now, she had hips. To hell with you gen-Xers and your imitations of prepubescent waifs. I want a woman with a little adipose tissue. Nice mama-san with T and A.”

  Mama-san? Suddenly, things began to come together. I had just raised my coffee cup to my lips, but set it down again with a thud. I opened my mouth to speak, but shut it without uttering a sound.

  “What?” Tom demanded.

  I had to think fast and cover my reaction. “I—I just remembered what I forgot.”

  “What?”

  “I think I left my door unlocked,” I said evasively. “On the truck.”

  Tom’s shoulders relaxed, and only then did I realize the extreme tension with which he had been holding them. “You afraid someone’s going to steal that broken-down wreck? In this neighborhood? More likely, they’ll ticket you for besmirching their feng shui. Eat your eggs.”

  “Right.” I shoveled into them, quickly emptying my plate. “I’ll clean up,” I said. “You run along down to your office.”