Earth Colors Read online

  Wardlaw spread his hands out in mock self-protection. “Loud and clear. Jesus, I didn’t know what I was taking on here, or I would have brought a backup. A’right, a’right, so I’ve told you my stuff. So, I was wondering if you had anything you’d like to tell me. You get me?”

  “I’d have to think about this,” I muttered. “No, on second thought, I don’t. The fact is I have nothing to tell you.”

  Noreen took that as a cue. “Great! So why don’t we go on up to my office and get some science done, okay?”

  Wardlaw opened his mouth to say something smart, but closed it again. After a moment, he said, “Okay.”

  “First we have to get you both cleared to enter the lab space,” she said nastily. Then she opened the door and swept a hand toward it, showing us the way.

  21

  I DID NOT EVEN TRY TO FIND MY WAY BACK TO THE RENWICK Gallery to visit the Catlin portraits. I was too distracted by the weight of my heart, and I was sure that if I looked half as bad as I felt, some White House guard would shoot me first and ask questions later.

  I was never so glad to see a couple of sweet old geezers as I was to see Mr. Carter and Mr. Hauser that evening at the Cosmos Club. I wanted to grab Mr. Carter by the lapels and say, Your niece needs help. Drive up to Philadelphia and drag her away from that gray-eyed snake! It took me until halfway through dinner to concentrate on what was being said.

  “The dosage makes the poison,” Mr. Hauser was saying, as he slathered butter on a second roll and I finally got my anxiety-ridden brain into the room. “Anything, even this butter, can become a poison if taken in sufficient amounts.”

  “What are the symptoms of butter poisoning?” asked Mr. Carter jovially, raising his astonishing eyebrows at his friend’s paunch.

  “A large bill from one’s cardiologist,” answered Mr. Hauser. “But seriously, toxic thresholds are calculated as the amount in excess of what one can take in over an eight-hour period and hope to excrete within the following sixteen.”

  “I have never been able to take in as much butter as you, Martin,” said Mr. Carter.

  Mr. Hauser smiled. “Some of us are made of stouter stuff than others, my friend.”

  “Ah. Just so.”

  I asked, “What are the symptoms of heavy-metal poisoning?”

  “Oh, that varies. And it depends on the vector, of course. One has to think in terms of ingestion, inhalation, or transdermal absorption.”

  “Lead, for instance,” I said, trying not to make the question sound pointed. “Or lead chromate; you know, ol’ Baltimore yellow.”

  “Oh, lead is a horrible toxin if eaten or inhaled, but it doesn’t move through the skin. Inhalation would cause obvious distress—painter’s cough, and with greater exposure, pneumonia; but that would show up on X-ray, the lead being photo-opaque.” He speared a mouthful of salad and munched it down like a great rabbit let loose in Mr. McGregor’s garden.

  Wouldn’t Mrs. Krehbeil’s doctor have taken an X-ray? I wondered.

  “How does it act on the human body?”

  Mr. Hauser said, “Lead is a cumulative poison; the body does not expel it well, which is common to many heavy metals. It is absorbed by the bloodstream, where it deactivates the enzymes that create hemoglobin. This results in the buildup of precursor molecules of aminolaevulinic acid, which causes the various symptoms of lead poisoning. It is taken up in the bones, replacing the calcium and forming lead phosphate. It paralyzes the gut, causing cramps and constipation; it results in excess fluid in the brain, causing headaches and insomnia; and it affects the reproductive system, causing infertility and miscarriage. Beyond that it moves to weariness, anemia, and insanity. All of these symptoms are also characteristic of other disorders. Mild lead poisoning might be easily overlooked. Long-term exposure is insidious. The ultimate symptom is death.”

  I said, “Would it mimic pneumonia, or senility?”

  Hauser smiled and added more dressing to his salad. “Oh, certainly. It mimics many other diseases, but when a great many people develop the same symptoms, then one gets to looking closely for the cause. The Romans were the first to discern that lead caused problems, and historians point to it as a major cause of the fall of Rome. You see, their water-supply pipes were made of the stuff. But we’re still using it. In very recent times we’ve put lead in our gasoline, belching it out into the air as exhaust. Our city streets became contaminated with it. It rose as a dust that accumulated in the lungs, particularly afflicting young children, whose brains were still developing. It was, within my lifetime, still used in the glazes on tableware, and was often ingested with one’s dinner.”

  Mr. Carter looked doubtfully at his plate. I thought of Sloane Renee and wanted to jump up and start screaming.

  The waiter brought our entrées. Mr. Hauser took a bite and chewed merrily. “Ignorance is only one problem. There is also vanity. Young ladies, from the ancient Egyptians clear up through Victorian times and in Japan, the geisha, used lead-based cosmetics to whiten their complexions. Over time, they lost their appetites and slowly swooned, all the time applying more and more of the stuff in order to keep up appearances. No, sorry to tell you, we’re selectively blind where it comes to some of the things we release in our environments, despite our best intentions.”

  Mr. Carter dropped a dollop of salad dressing on his skin. “But you said lead wasn’t transdermal, didn’t you?”

  “They smeared it around their mouths. It’s sweet, you know. The English used to place pellets of lead in their wines for flavor,” said Mr. Hauser cheerfully. “Many toxins will move readily through the skin, especially if the barrier formed by the skin’s protective oils is breached. An artist clears away his protective oils by handling solvents, such as turpentine, and then off we go.”

  “I suppose one gets scars from that,” I said, remembering Mrs. Krehbeil’s fingers.

  “Oh yes, a marvelous little symptom called paronychia: They’re sores that develop around the cuticle. The subject hardly feels them, as the toxin also poses as a nerve deadener, but they don’t heal well, and form odd little scars.”

  Bingo: fingers, pulmonary distress, and dottiness. Did Mrs. K paint all those not-so-great pictures at her house, or is someone … such as Precious William, feeding it to her? “So, artists are known to have been exposed to it,” I said. “The man at the National Gallery today was telling me about Van Gogh licking his brush.”

  “Yes, certainly,” said Mr. Hauser. “He developed insanity, after all, and those halos around the stars … that could be what he actually saw. Lead would have caused swelling on his optic nerve. Oh, yes, toxicologists have had a lovely time fixing twenty-twenty hindsight to some of our more famous characters. Oh, yes, great stuff. Beethoven’s hair has been shown to have one hundred times the normal amount of lead. Perhaps that explains his erratic behavior, and maybe even his deafness.”

  Mr. Carter said, “What about that hexavalent chromium you were espousing last evening, Hauser? What lovely thing does that do to us?”

  “Cancer,” said Mr. Hauser. “But chromium is also necessary for the body to utilize glucose. And lead chromate itself is a carcinogen.”

  “Last evening you said that chromite ore was processed and manufactured into pigments in Baltimore. And you mentioned the Krehbeils,” I said.

  “Ah yes, William Krehbeil Primus. He was the youngest son of an old Mennonite family. His parents left their farm to his oldest sibling, so he left them and said he’d buy his own farm, and quit the church in the bargain. They shook their heads and said he’d never amount to anything because the land he bought was down in the barrens, but then it proved to have one of the hottest ore bodies. He sold out to the entrepreneur who bought up all the claims and set himself up in paint manufacturing down in Baltimore. Then, to finish the job of thumbing his nose at his forebears, he bought a very large farm back in Lancaster County and built a grand house on it.”

  “Did Krehbeil the second and Krehbeil the third carry on the business?�
� Mr. Carter asked.

  Martin Hauser wrinkled his brow as if to massage his brain for further information. “Krehbeil Primus was well advanced in years when he married. Wed a lovely lass from Philadelphia, the story goes. She was a lively young thing, wanted to go west, but of course young girls didn’t just travel at will in those years. He built a grand house for her, so she could have that sense of the rural and he could have his sense of grandeur. She gave him two children, a son and a daughter, and outlived the old man by many decades.”

  Mr. Hauser took another bite of his buttered roll and continued his tale. “The son wasn’t much for engineering and such. He tried to run the shop for a while after the old man died, but the board of directors made short work of him, jacked him up and ran a man with a mind for business underneath. I’ve heard it said they bought him out with a bit of stock maneuvering, and everybody was happy, or so the story goes. I’ve heard that he went into dealing art, or some such.”

  “I think Faye knows the current generation,” I said tentatively.

  Mr. Carter lowered his eyebrows in thought. “Couldn’t say.”

  Hauser forked a bit of chop into his mouth and chewed. “Krehbeil Secundus died recently. Your niece could know his son.” He smiled abstractly.

  “Yes, in fact she’s staying with him in Philadelphia just now. It’s a business visit, you see. She wants to start that flying delivery business of hers again.”

  Mr. Carter stiffened. “Surely not! Not with a baby!”

  The baby. Indeed, it was the baby I feared for the most. Tert appeared to have affection for Sloane, but if he would poison his own mother—and that was what I was beginning to suspect—would he be sick enough to hurt an infant? Or might he have the stuff about? Lead is sweet, after all …

  I lifted my napkin to my lips and gave Mr. Carter a sideways glance. “Um, I think you and I ought to have a talk about this situation.”

  He addressed his roast beef with mathematical vigor. “Yes, I agree. Are you available tomorrow morning?”

  “I have to run back up to Pennsylvania, but may I give you a call soon?”

  “Please do, my dear.”

  Mr. Hauser said, “On to lighter topics. You haven’t told us anything about your visit to Quantico. Please don’t hold out on us. That sounds like a most stimulating experience.”

  I paused with a forkful of fish halfway to my lips, my stomach tightening at the memory of my meeting with Agent Wardlaw. “Ah … yes, it was quite something. Noreen Babcock, their forensic geologist showed me all about the labs.”

  Mr. Carter’s eyebrows shot up. “The whole place?”

  “The whole kit and caboodle. Geology—that’s trace evidence—gets the evidence first, because they’re dealing with fine stuff that can easily be lost in other analyses. They work with geologic materials—dirt, dust, sand, all that—but also glass, hairs, and fibers. They have a scraping room where they hang up the evidence and knock free the trace materials for analysis. They have all the standard equipment—X-ray diffraction, SEM, mass spec, Fourier-transform IR, and such, but also the good old hand-lens and their quick minds.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Mr. Carter. “No amount of machinery is going to replace the power of a good analytical mind.”

  “My favorite thing was the duct-tape archive,” I said.

  Both men chuckled. “Duct tape?” asked Mr. Hauser.

  “Oh yes,” I assured him, doing my best to offer entertainment when what I wanted to do was weep. “The FBI’s motto is: ‘No crime is committed without duct tape.’ Imagine the criminal tearing off his bit of duct tape to accomplish his crime. Then, being frugal, or tidy, or both, he tosses the rest of the roll into the trunk of his car. Voilà. Ergo and forthwith, the FBI keeps on file one of every kind of duct tape ever manufactured.”

  “But surely duct tape is duct tape,” said Mr. Hauser, his eyes dancing with amusement.

  “Oh, no, no, no! Think of all the different companies that make it. There are seven or eight different adhesives, for starts. The fiber used to reinforce it varies, as does its weave, and the density of the weave. And even within your basic gray duct tape—it comes in red, and blue, and … well, what have you—the tape material itself varies, and the filler material in it, which, by the way, is also geologic trace evidence, because that filler is made of clay—kaolinite, bentonite—and the coloring pigments include rutile, calcite, aragonite … .”

  Both men laughed, covering their mouths with their napkins in mirth.

  I managed a smile, but it had been damned hard enjoying any part of the tour with Agent Wardlaw breathing down my neck. What I had hoped would be a discreet, exchange of methodologies was not possible with him there, and now that Noreen knew who my client was. I said, “It gets better: Duct tape does not always tear cleanly. So, Joe Criminal tears off his chunk to, say, tape the victim’s mouth shut so she can’t scream for help. Nasty stuff. But the tape comes off ragged, and Joe’s kept the rest of the roll. Aha, our forensic expert now matches the two sides of the tear.”

  “Marvelous,” said Mr. Carter. “And what else did she show you?”

  “Oh, let’s see. There was the questioned-documents section, shoeprint analysis, tire tracks, chemistry, latent fingerprints, genetics … .”

  “And bomb analysis?” said Mr. Hauser. “I understand they have quite a lab for that.”

  Bombs. Yes, Noreen had shown me photographs of what was left of the yellow trucks that had bombed Oklahoma City and the garage at the World Trade Center. Bombs and yellow trucks brought to mind Fritz Calder, but they also brought to mind Jack, who was still over there, wherever “there” was, looking for the colleagues of the people who had taken the Trade Center the rest of the way down. Jack who had taken the trouble to warn me about Tert. Jack needed and deserved my support in return. How could I reject him for not coming home?

  I stared at my dinner plate. The conversation ebbed. Even Mr. Hauser laid down his fork.

  “You must be exhausted,” said Mr. Carter.

  “I am.”

  He reached out an ancient hand and patted mine. “Don’t worry about us, my dear. You go on upstairs and get some sleep.”

  “Yes … Yes, I think I will.” There was nothing I could do right now for Jack, but on the morrow, I would think up some way to better protect Sloane and Faye. It hurt like fury that they were all moving away from me, but I loved each intensely anyway, and I would care for them in my own way.

  I nodded to the gentlemen who had given me closeness for the evening and produced the bravest smile I could muster, thanked them kindly for the meal, their companionship, and the enlightenment of their conversation, and found my way upstairs to my room.

  22

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, I TURNED MY LITTLE RENTAL CAR north, back toward Pennsylvania and a day in the field with Fred Petridge and Nigel Iago. Even though I left Washington well ahead of the commuter traffic, it was hard on nine o’clock when I reached the Geologic Survey. I found Fred Petridge in front of the building, packing gear into a Jeep. A woman about my age stood beside him holding a big wicker picnic basket. It even had a checkered tablecloth folded over the top.

  “Ah, Em, here you are,” said Petridge. “Slow down, catch your breath, Nigel isn’t here yet. If it was important to leave right at nine I would have told him eight-thirty. Meanwhile, I’d like you to meet Jenny Neumann, an expert on the local farms and a colleague from various volunteer efforts I’ve become involved in. You asked about the farm situation here in Lancaster, and Jenny had asked to come along on one of my field jaunts, so I’ve taken the liberty of putting the two together. She’s also interested in the limonite pseudomorphs I mentioned.”

  Jenny and I exchanged pleasantries. She was an interesting sort: slim, athletic, and short-haired, with striking Germanic coloring and cheekbones. She was dressed in mixture of retro-hippie, drape-and-dangle stuff and practical farm gear. Her fingernails were a vivid purple, dotted with scarlet.

  Fred put Jenny’s picnic
hamper into the back of the Jeep and closed the tailgate. “I guess we’re all ready except for our resident warlock. Ah, there he is now.”

  I turned to find Nigel Iago just skidding into the lot in a beat-up Austin Mini with Indiana license plates. He approximated fitting his vehicle into a slot—rather missing the center of one pew and overlapping at a notable angle into the next—and sat for a moment, possibly meditating on having survived his transit. The door opened. He unfolded himself from the driver’s seat, put both hands against his spine, and leaned back, unkinking with an audible crunch. He leaned back into the car for a moment and rummaged around, producing a large black computer bag. Then, whistling the tune of a sea chantey, he headed toward us. “Morning, all!” he caroled, raking the sky with one wild, long-fingered hand. “Or at least, that’s what they call this overabundance of illumination, isn’t it?”

  Nigel strode right past me and brought his frame to attention directly in front of Jenny. He took her right hand in both of his. “My heavens,” he said, his voice dropping into a purr, “Fred, who is this vision of feminine pulchritude?”

  Fred rolled his eyes heavenward. “Get in the vehicle, Nigel, you’re late.”

  I rushed for the shotgun seat. I wanted a good view of the day, and it was clear by Jenny’s blushing, smiling response to Nigel’s bromide that she and he were going to be looking more inward. Besides, I wouldn’t have wanted to give him the front seat and have him hurt his neck turning around to leer at her all day.

  Nigel helped Jenny into the backseat, Fred gunned the motor, and we were off in a cloud of flying dung, as my mother used to say. We turned onto Highway 283 and headed southeast toward Lancaster.

  Nigel crooned to Jenny in the backseat. “I have within my command—right here in this computer—all the soils maps, geologic maps, land ownership for this county, plus forty other layers of information.”

  Jenny bestowed a smile on him. “Oh, you’re a GIS expert, right? Fred has told me all about you. He said how useful your expertise can be. I have so many projects that need exactly that kind of help!”