Fault Line (Em Hansen Mysteries) Read online

  “So if you’re an engineer who has specified moment frames in this city, and you’re running for public office, and your welds crack in a stadium, say, that’s just about to be on nationwide—no, international—TV, you might think your deal was going down if someone like Screaming Sidney Smeeth found out about it.”

  Logan laughed unkindly. “That would depend.”

  “On what?”

  “Whether our engineer was connected. You know, a Mo.”

  “Mormon?”

  “Yeah. The bottom line is that bottom line with that gang.”

  I let that hang in the phone line an extra heartbeat before replying to it. “Come on, isn’t that a bit of a generalization? I mean, it’s a family-oriented religion.”

  Logan grew quiet. “You a Mormon, Em?”

  “No.”

  “Well, let me tell you about some religions. They’re big on what I call compartmentalized intellect. They believe in family and goodness, and charity and all the other virtues on Sunday, and for every other occasion when it behooves them to think the think. But on Monday, when they go to work, they walk a different walk, even if they don’t talk a different talk. And it all goes down as pragmatism. Guy down the hall here? A geologist like you and me? He believes in evolution and a four-point-five-billion-year-old Earth Monday through Friday, and on Sunday? It’s Adam and Eve, honey. And he doesn’t even blink.”

  “What about engineers? The kind who engineer buildings with moment frames in earthquake zones.”

  “Now you get into another form of rationalization. Engineers can engineer around just about any hazard you can name, build you a building that can survive anything but a direct hit by a nuclear weapon or Haley’s comet. A titanium sphere comes to mind. Do you want to live in one of those?”

  “No. But who built the stadium?”

  “Hayes Associates. Been putting up ski condos in avalanche chutes and housing developments on landslides for ages. The land’s cheaper. But this time, with the Olympics coming to town, they went for something much more expensive and technically challenging. And their outside investors were much bigger players. International money. And getting back to what I was saying, you understand, don’t you, that survivability and usability are two different things. Survivability means that the people inside live, although the building itself may be damaged beyond use. Red-tagged. Have to be demolished. In the case of a large public building, the builder and his investors could be out millions of dollars.”

  AT TOM’S OFFICE, I pulled out my notes and settled in at the other side of his desk for some serious work. “I don’t know who’s behind your fraud case, because you haven’t told me what or who is being defrauded, but I have an idea who’s killing women who try to expose certain essential details of your case.”

  Tom leaned forward onto his elbows. “I’m all ears.”

  “First, you tell me exactly how Sidney Smeeth was killed.”

  Tom drummed his fingers on the desk for a moment, thinking. “You first, then me.”

  I glowered at him, then decided that if all else failed, I could simply climb up onto his head and peck at him like a mad duck until he held his part of the bargain. “Well, it’s pretty simple. It’s the fault. A big fat line on a map. It runs right through all of this.”

  “I don’t disagree,” he said. “But everybody knows there’s a fault in Salt Lake City.”

  “Oh, sure, they know there’s a fault, but they don’t know what that means. And it’s so easy to ignore, most days.”

  Tom nodded.

  I said, “You had me read Building Department files for Hayes Associates. They built everything from condos and housing to the new stadium, and they’re just breaking ground on a shopping mall next door to it. Every one of the projects I know about, including this new one, is on or near a branch of the fault or some other geologic hazard. The other thing they have in common is that the geology report was done by a guy named Frank Malone, who does not command the respect of his peers.”

  “You’re saying that a positive report can be bought.”

  “A scientist can be straight arrow and brilliant and still come up with the wrong answer from time to time, but this guy ignores or downgrades the geological hazards on his sites routinely. And surprise, surprise, when things get hot, he leaves town.”

  “I’m following you. So you think this guy’s our killer?”

  “No. Opportunists don’t generally kill their hosts. Sidney may not have been happy about it, but she was part of a system that keeps the Malones of the world employed.”

  “Can you enlarge on that?”

  “Hazard. Risk. Public policy. There’s always a gap in there the Malones can exploit. In this case, it’s seismic hazards, an earthquake fault. Anyone who builds on that fault, or near it, is at risk of being hurt or killed when the fault breaks loose and the building fails. So we have scientists who study the hazard, but they are enjoined only to advise, not set policy. It’s the politicians who set policy, who say how a building may be built, or how close to the fault, and so on. The problem is that politicians are at best trying to hit a happy medium between accommodating the risk and accommodating certain pressures such as economic resources—how much can we afford to spend on housing, or public structures. Or the fact that people started building here—and got quite attached to this place—before they had a clue that there was a hazard.”

  “And how does that spell murder?” Tom inquired.

  I rubbed at my face with my hands. “It doesn’t, not directly, because people seldom have to kill one another over politics anymore. God knows, we’re all so used to corruption that we don’t even call it that anymore, so what’s to cover up? You just send the spin doctors to work and then go on about your merry career. But this time, someone killed a scientist. And a reporter. So it’s logical to think that one was going to expose some corruption and the other was going to report it, right?”

  “Keep going.”

  “Well,” I said, “then the thing is, you have to look at the mechanism by which the big guys spin things.”

  “Which is …”

  “Stick it on some underling and hang him out to dry. Say, ‘He did it. I knew nothing. Oh, how horrible.’ Hang him, work out your outrage on him. Ignore the fact that I’m building more buildings that will collapse on people. Don’t face the fact that I’ve paid off a lot of politicians for the privilege of building unsafe buildings. Deny the sickening fact that the politicians have rationalized the whole damned situation to the point where they think it’s fine if some nameless number of the population is stupid or ignorant enough to get killed in an earthquake. Because, hey, most politicians think in such short-term intervals that they aren’t even interested in what a magnitude seven quake can do to this city. That’s a low probability. That’s tomorrow, or the next century. That’s someone else’s risk. The politicians are too busy. They’re spending fifty percent of their time worrying about getting reelected, and the other fifty cutting deals for the fat cats who got them in there in the first place.”

  Tom beamed at me. “Why, Em, where’d your idealism get to on this lovely morning?”

  “Climb off.”

  “I meant that as a compliment. It’s high time you grew past such optimism. It can be quite limiting when we’re trying to see into the dirty, shortsighted little rationalizations so many people live by. Take it from one who’s never fully grown out of it himself. So, who’s our culprit?”

  I readjusted my toot, which was beginning to prickle with constricted blood flow. “I’m not sure yet. All I’ve got is an idea, not even a theory. I need more information first. More data. It’s time to give, Tom.”

  He didn’t answer for a moment, then said, “Okay.”

  “Good. First, Sidney Smeeth. Method of demise.”

  Tom watched me carefully as he said, “Strangulation.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. So that was why Wendy wouldn’t talk. Strangulation is such a personal form of killing.


  I pressed onward. “Second, you told me that whoever killed Pet did a tidy job of going through her papers. Did he take her notes from the conversation she’d just had with me? Did he take her cell phone? You can find these things out. I can’t. I’m lying low until you catch this guy. But—”

  “You say ‘he’ and ‘guy.’ You want to stay safe, Em? Give me a name.”

  “I will if I have to. No, trust me, I will tell you, but this time, I absolutely don’t want to be wrong.”

  “Why?”

  “Give me that much, Tom!”

  “Is this Em the idealist getting on her white horse?”

  “I truly hope not. Please, Tom, let me eliminate a few places where I might have gone wrong in my thinking. Just a few questions.”

  Tom sighed in frustration. “You know I can’t tell you everything I know. I’ve gone too far already.”

  “Yes and no will do nicely. First, does Hayes Associates always build in the same political districts?”

  “No. They go all over the state. Sometimes into adjoining states.”

  “But the fraud you’re looking into involves cutting corners.”

  “Yes.”

  “Questions about whether or not building codes were sufficiently followed. Payoffs. Corruption that leads deep into government.”

  “Yes.”

  “And it’s the government officials as much as anyone whom you want to get.”

  “You know me well.”

  “And that is why you used me. You wanted to make sure there weren’t many FBI cooks stirring his broth, because you don’t always know whom to trust. Word could get out that you’re looking into certain people, and they might destroy the evidence you haven’t even figured out to look for yet.”

  Now Tom leaned back in his chair and nodded. His gaze had gone distant.

  I said, “You were working with Sidney Smeeth on this, weren’t you?”

  He did not deny it.

  I said, “She knew that Hayes had politicians on the take, but she couldn’t prove it.”

  Tom shook his head. “It was worse than that. Hayes had her boss in his pocket, and her boss was telling her to can it.”

  “You mean he was going outside and using a consultant’s analyses instead of using her people.”

  “No, I mean she was being told to shut up.”

  I let out a long, low whistle. Now Sidney’s rage began to make sense. It was one thing to disagree with someone like her and another thing to discard her work, but telling her to not do her job at all would be like dousing her with gasoline and teasing her with a burning match. “And let me guess: Hayes, or somebody he knows well, owns the television station that cut her off the morning of the earthquake.”

  Again, Tom was silent. He had found something far outside his window on which to focus his gaze.

  “Ever get tired of this, Tom?”

  “Heavens yes.”

  “About ready to retire?”

  He thought a while before answering. “It has occurred to me more than once. Any particular reason you ask?”

  “Just wondering. So you must really trust Jack Sampler. Where’d he come from?”

  “I’d trust Jack with my life.” He laughed. “I borrowed him from Washington. Told him if he’d help me with this project, he could at least get some skiing in. Best laid plans and all that.”

  “Sorry I fell down and ruined his pay-off. Why haven’t you moved in with Faye, Tom?”

  Tom’s head snapped back a fraction of an inch. “What’s that got to do with—”

  “I want to know, Tom.”

  Tom’s face went dark. “You’re out of line, missy. We were talking murder here, and now you’re—” He broke off, sputtering mad.

  “Just answer, please. In fact, it kind of fits with the whole story, don’t you think? It’s about housing, eh? She’s got that huge house, and you live in an efficiency apartment no bigger than mine. You’re up at Faye’s most nights anyway. Why not just move in?”

  Tom inhaled a lungful and let it out slowly, struggling to control himself. Not looking at me, he said, “It is precisely that huge house that deters me from suggesting any such thing.”

  “Too close to the debris flow?”

  “No. Too big. Faye’s a wealthy woman; she can afford whatever strikes her fancy, but …”

  “But you can’t?” I said it as kindly as I could.

  Tom stared out the window again, his eyes shining with anxiety, his mind wandering through a region of pain.

  I watched him, surprised that I had managed to knock the great master so far off his pins. He had completely forgotten about fraud, and murder, forgotten about everything but the sad, lonely territory of his heart.

  At length, he shook his head. “It’s not how much more she has than I have. You must know by now that I’m far too arrogant to be cowed by a woman’s net worth. That’s not it at all. It’s the wastefulness involved. She doesn’t need all that space, and neither do I. Not even both of us, or—It’s grotesque. I … I just worry that we live on different scales is all. No, let me say it directly: It is not in my philosophy to live beyond the carrying capacity of this planet.”

  Oh. I had not realized Tom was such an environmentalist, but on contemplation, it fit. He was Zen through and through, to the point of parsimony, and everything had to integrate with that principle. I said, “Don’t you think you guys could get past that, Tom? I mean, have you discussed it?”

  Tom made a fist out of one hand and ground its knuckles into the space between his eyes.

  I said, “I’m sorry. I’m really intruding. I—”

  He sighed again. “No, it’s okay, Em. God knows, I do it to you. Yes, we could probably get past this, or I fervently hope so. The thing is, it’s kind of a delicate time to be discussing such things, don’t you think?”

  It was, and I didn’t have a ready answer that would make it anything other. So I said, “Okay then, back to the other stuff.”

  “Anytime you’re ready.” He sighed.

  “Did the police find Pet’s cell phone?”

  “Why? Did she call you on it? Hell, then your number would be on it! Christ, if our killer picked it up …”

  “Yes,” I said, relieved that he understood. “And if the police got it, they’ll already know.”

  “Know what?”

  “As I said: I think I know who killed Sidney and Pet.” I felt my resolve slipping away. My bubble of detachment burst as I contemplated all that I had hoped would bloom between Ray and me, in the garden of the life I had hoped to build with him.

  “You have proof?” Tom asked.

  Proof. That was always the problem: The game of detection was played on a field that was tilted in favor of the person willing to forgo any semblance of ethics. “I … I’m sorry. I’m just not sure yet.” In a smaller voice, I added, “I think I should talk to Ray.”

  Tom indicated the telephone on his desk. “One call. Then I am putting you under wraps so you can’t test your damned hypothesis the hard way.”

  I bit my lip. “This will be personal.”

  “I thought that was over,” he said. “I thought you’d finally gotten yourself clear.” He clipped his words, exasperated, unwilling to tell me how little he thought of my relationship with Ray, or the fact that I still seemed to think I had one.

  “I owe him this much, Tom.”

  “Why? Because he’s a cop? You think he’s got to save face? He’s not even working Homicide; what are you trying to save him from? You’re afraid that Hayes is going to embarrass his precious family? Or is it the humiliation that you’ve figured out something he missed again? You want my opinion? He’s not even that talented at walking the beat. He’s quick, yeah, and athletic, but he gets the blinders on every time it comes down to seeing what’s really going on. Em, you—”

  I held up a hand. “That’s enough.”

  Tom looked like he was about to burst.

  I thought of telling him that he had it wrong, that
it was Ray’s personal entanglements, not the professional or financial ones, that had me wanting to warn him, but telling Tom would have been … telling. “When I know, you’ll be the very next to know,” I said. “I promise.”

  Tom shook his head in disapproval. He said, “I’ll get Jack to take you home. And he will stay with you.”

  27

  I can handle earthquakes intellectually, but emotionally, when the ground wiggles around … that’s bad.

  —Dave Greene, engineer, recalling various earthquakes in Long Beach and San Fernando, California

  JACK TOOK ME TO MY APARTMENT AND LEANED AGAINST THE refrigerator while I dialed the phone, doing his best impression of a mild mannered unassuming refrigerator magnet.

  Ray answered on the first ring. He sounded breathless. “Em! You got my call.”

  “What call?”

  “On your machine. How soon can you meet me?”

  I pushed aside the book that I had set down on my answering machine early that morning as I prepared to stare at the ceiling. Sure enough, the message light was blinking. It had not occurred to me to check for a return message from him. That meant that I had not really expected him to call me back. Or that a significant part of me had hoped he wouldn’t.

  What was going on inside of me?

  I pushed the message button. Ray’s voice came out of the mechanical memory. “Em? Honey, I—I’m sorry about last night. Please, I need to talk to you right away. Call me, okay?”

  He was sorry? I had wanted to meet with him, for reasons of unraveling things in a civilized manner. I wanted to cleanse myself of him, and, even more, of his family, of Enos and Katie and all the rest. But now he wanted to meet with me? What did that mean? Wariness flooded through me.

  Best to get it over with.

  “Em? Honey?”

  I said, “I can meet you now. Where?” There it was, the usual issue: no privacy. He wouldn’t come to my place, and I wasn’t to go to his. No wonder we’d never sorted things out.

  Ray said, “Are you home? I’ll come by and get you.”

  A car date. I looked up at Jack, who was now standing at my tiny stove, pouring himself some coffee, looking at ease and at home. I said, “Okay … .”