Earth Colors Read online

  “So from this you concluded that the painting was a forgery?”

  I could tell by his tone that he was not going to be persuaded by one point of evidence. “No, I am a geologist, not an art conservator. I would not presume to suggest that I know Remington’s work in such detail. But a geologist is trained to examine the relative ages of materials. So I analyzed the lead in the lead white to see if there was much silver in it. While the cyanide process used today to separate those two elements was in widespread use by 1900, I thought that, if there were a significant impurity of silver in the lead, it might indicate that the pigment used was old. However, I found it to be quite pure.”

  “And did you find anything else at variance with the paints Remington would have used?”

  “Yes, and this last item was the most compelling. I recently took a short course in stable isotopes at the University of Utah, and I applied what I learned there in the analysis of the paints. You see, the pigments didn’t clinch the case, so I turned to the oil in which they’d been emulsified.”

  “And what oil was used, Ms. Hansen?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I imagine it was linseed oil. I have no reason to suspect otherwise, and that is what Remington would have used. But I wasn’t interested in the exact provenance—or origin—of the oil, just its age. You see, if the painting had been copied and switched between 1972, when the elder Mrs. Krehbeil died, the family fortunes began to slip, and the ranch where the original painting was stored was passed on to her daughter Winifred, and this winter, when my client went to fetch it, then it would be a matter of looking at the carbon isotopes present in whatever oil was used.”

  “So, am I to understand that you analyzed the oil for a carbon-fourteen date? You stated that the sample was only a chip; was there enough present to establish this?”

  “No, that wasn’t what I was doing.” I got out of the witness box and crossed to a chalkboard that had been set up for just such contingencies. I drew on it two lines: a vertical line, which I notched to indicate the ration of carbon-14 to carbon-12, and then I crossed it with a horizontal line, which I notched to indicate the years between 1700 and the present. I put my finger on the line with the dates. “Consider this line a baseline. Carbon-fourteen, the radioisotope, exists in our atmosphere at a steady ratio to carbon-twelve, which is stable. The way carbon-fourteen dating is done is by comparing that steady-state number with the amount found in the item tested, any organic item such as wood or a bone which was once alive. The isotope decay clock is set at the time of death of the individual, because, at death, it is no longer taking in carbon, and the unstable radioisotope continues to decay into carbon-twelve at a standard rate, called a half-life.”

  I stopped to take a breath. I looked out across the courtroom at William Krehbeil III, who was staring back at me like I was a statue he did not quite like.

  I said, “But there’s a glitch in our steady-state situation, and that’s why I’ve set my timeline back to the 1700s. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, here”—I put my finger on about 1750—“the amount of free carbon in the atmosphere shifted. It became bound up in combustion products from the burning of fossil fuels, such as carbon monoxide. So the ratio shifted slightly over the next two hundred years.” I ran the chalk horizontally almost to the 1950 mark, slowly letting it sink below the baseline. “It’s not much, but it’s easily measurable. At that time, something else happened technologically: We split the atom.” I zigged the chalk high above the baseline, forming a sharp peak. “Above-ground testing of nuclear devices released masses of carbon fourteen, dramatically shifting the ratio. Then here—I put my finger at the top of the peak—”we banned above-ground testing. The year was 1969. The ratio once again began to decline, until now—I drew a slope leading to the present year—“it’s almost back to baseline, but not quite. The point is that, in any organic material, we can measure this ratio and plot it on this graph.”

  I pulled a folded page out of my pocket and opened it in front of the judge. “In the Krehbeil samples, the oil in which the pigments had been emulsified displayed a dramatically elevated ratio. As you can see, there are two places where that level can be found on this chart.” I pointed at that level on both the rising and falling sides of the peak. “But either date is long after 1909, when Remington himself died and therefore ceased to work. So whoever mixed that paint did so after Remington’s death.”

  There was a restless shifting in the chairs beyond the rail. I saw perplexed reporters trying to figure out how to make notes on what I’d said. The judge asked, “And how do you believe this bears on the case?”

  “Because I believe that it proves your prime suspect’s innocence.”

  Tert’s eyes widened with surprise. The courtroom broke out in a rumble of conversation and the judge called for silence.

  I said, “Look, I know what the evidence is against him, because I proposed it myself. But it’s all circumstantial. His mother got sicker each time he visited. That doesn’t prove he was dosing her. He would benefit financially if she died before the land was sold into an agricultural easement, but benefit does not prove guilt, either. All the other points can similarly be tossed, because not a single bit of evidence has his fingerprints on it. And I think his interests show he in fact expected to get the painting as his inheritance, not the land. He in fact didn’t have to wait for his mother to die to get the painting. Aunt Winnie was dead, and he trooped on out there to Wyoming and collected his prize.” I realized that I had dropped several notches in the formality of my speech. “Well, you get my point,” I said. “Tert told me how much he loved that painting when he showed me the fake. At the time I didn’t want to believe him, because I wanted to hate him. He was paying attention to my best friend Faye, and I did not approve.”

  The judge’s shoulders moved slightly, suggesting that he was suppressing laughter. “Go on,” he said. “So, who do you suspect of poisoning Mrs. Krehbeil and murdering her younger daughter?”

  I took a deep breath and said, “I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts it’s Deirdre.”

  Excited whispering arose throughout the room. The judge said, “But she’s been poisoned, herself.”

  I locked eyes with Deirdre. Her hard gray eyes bored into me, glinting with hatred, but not the slightest attempt at feigned innocence.

  “Maybe that’s how she figured out how to do the job. Lead chromate is the basis of the family fortune, so I’d be surprised if they didn’t have a sack of it still sitting around in that barn. There’s a bad yellow paint job on the front door of the house. Mrs. Krehbeil as much as told me it was traditional to paint it that color. Deirdre might have tried to mix that paint herself and gotten herself a nasty dose. Even the best hunters sometimes shoot themselves in the foot.”

  Nervous chatter broke out in the courtroom, and the judge dropped his gavel three times to quiet it. “Continue, Miss Hansen.”

  I counted things out on my fingers. “Point one: opportunity. She could have done it to any of these people just as easily as her brother, and timed her mother’s progression by his visits just to frame him. And she’d have the same access as anyone else to the poisonous pigment, in fact, better access: Her father’s studio is a locked room in the upstairs of the house, and I’ll bet that’s where she found the sack of lead chromate in dry form. It’s what her father would have used when he tried to make Hooker’s green to fake the painting.”

  Loud discussions broke out, and the gavel fell again. “Order! Order!”

  I said, “I talked to Hector. I realize this is hearsay, but you can ask him yourself. Mr. Krehbeil the Second ‘could paint like anyone.’ He was a mimic, but he had no ideas of his own. Heck, it was even fashionable a hundred years ago to have paintings copied. You gave them away to your friends, or you had one for the city house and one for the country. I’ve been reading up on this for my thesis. And most of Remington’s works that were reproduced in the magazines were copied one way or another. It was what they had fo
r Xerox machines back then. So it would have seemed almost traditional for Krehbeil the Second to copy the painting, and he needed the bucks, so he sold the original. Besides, he inherited the good-old-boy network with his mother’s gallery, and he could swear to the provenance. The only question in my mind is when he pulled the switch on Winnie.”

  The judge said, “That is speculation, Miss. Hansen. Please confine your testimony to your direct experience of matters brought before this inquest.”

  In my mind’s eye, I could see through to the place where the shattered members of the Krehbeil family cut into each other like jagged pieces of glass. Deirdre’s rage and jealousy and guilt were almost palpable. I had to bring the judge to the point of my vision. In mounting frustration, I said, “There was something that Deirdre said to me after I helped her put her mother back in the chair. Or more accurately, something she didn’t say. When I asked her about her siblings, she cussed about Tert and Hector, but never mentioned Cricket. It was as if Cricket already didn’t exist to her.”

  “The law is interested in evidence, Miss Hansen, not the interpretations of someone barely acquainted with this family,” the judge informed me, the lines around his mouth hardening.

  I could feel Deirdre’s eyes burning into the side of my skull. I had begun my accusation in a mood of righteous anger, but now fear sat like ice in my intestines. I was attacking a woman I suspected of systematically murdering her parents and siblings in cold blood, but suspicion was not proof. What if she walked away free and came looking for me, or someone I loved?

  I focused on the judge’s mouth, mesmerized by his contempt. Taking a quick breath, I said, “Right, but there’s one last thing: Cricket’s car. Didn’t the Sheriff say that duct tape was used to jam the accelerator pedal to the floor?”

  The judge nodded.

  “Well, even if there are no fingerprints on that duct tape, the tape itself can be matched, and I’ll bet you’ll find the rest of the roll in the trunk of Deirdre’s car. She’s so frugal she’d never throw out even an inch.”

  The judge’s eyebrows ratcheted up a tiny increment.

  I chanced a look at Deirdre. She had bolted halfway from her seat, but now descended back into it, her exit suddenly blocked by a large, muscular bailiff. Her gaze slid back my way, and the look she gave me was pure poison.

  MY MASTER’S THESIS was a snap to write once I got home. I was able to put my analytical data together with Nigel’s GIS analysis and—voila—one master’s thesis, or more precisely one more lap around the track with the judges watching.

  The chubby underbelly of human enterprise loves to watch a proud family fall, and the print and television media had a grand time boosting their ratings and sales with every last grisly detail as first Aunt Winnie and then William Secundus were exhumed and joined Cricket’s and her unborn child’s remains in chemical analysis. Once that was out, it came out, too, that the family’s wealth in art was long gone, sold by Secundus to maintain the appearance of continued grandeur after his mother died. The publicity didn’t hurt a bit when I went to apply for a job. The Utah State Geological Survey said they needed someone to work with stable isotopes, and to address the occasional forensic case that crossed their desks.

  One day my Internet server popped out the following e-mail, which was a portion of one I had sent, copied back to me with embellishments:

  May 3rd

  Rem{ington} to H{ussein}*

  {shipped from} Wyo/UPS (spec. {labeled “velvet painting”—

  the nerve!})—SAC {=switch at counter} / will call

  O/*—ridge/hoc

  Pd. / ck + cash {stupid ass, check was easy to track, hope he

  had fun with the cash}

  June 8th

  orange—no. 26 {=stolen Renoir}

  223,000 profit

  split/50.50 {with other suspect, here to go nameless until I

  tighten the noose}

  Aug 12th

  Big One—10% to [{another damned drug smuggler with delu-

  sions of grandeur}]

  new frame—Rocetti/Boston

  Denver—van/cash {yeah, meet me in the middle of the bridge

  at midnight, Bucko}

  Split w/GRR/London a/* {this links us nicely with Interpol,

  thanks}

  Send you the rest as I crack ’em, and that thing in KC I swear it’s all lies.

  Brucie

  The thesis write-up, rewrites, and defense occupied me from June through November—no small effort, considering that in late June I took that part-time job with the Utah Geological Survey and moved into a place of my own, with the understanding that the job would become full-time once I’d finished my degree.

  Graduation that December was bittersweet: At my invitation, my mother came to watch me turn my tassel and don the master’s hood, and it seemed she was really quite proud of me. Why she hadn’t said so earlier, I’ll never know, but perhaps it was a new sensation for her. The feeling was, in fact, mutual: My respect for her bloomed in contrast to Mrs. Krehbeil. It was nice to have a mother who at least took responsibility for what she wanted, and looked after herself so that I wouldn’t be shackled with the job unnecessarily. And, it seemed, she really did have a realistic notion of what was best for me: With the master’s and a real job, and the pleasure of good friends around me whom I knew cared for me, I had never been happier.

  And getting my master’s and the job and the new place to live wasn’t everything that had gone right during that half-year.

  Faye’s great uncle invested funds so that she and Fritz could open what’s called an FBO—or “fixed base operation”—out at the Salt Lake airport for general aviation customers who needed aircraft sales and rentals, instruction, and service. Faye was finally able to run down to Florida to pick up her plane (leaving the baby with me for the weekend, to my immense joy), and Fritz moved ahead with his prototype. The investors he found in Baltimore came through for him. Between these investments and the business they were able to bring in at the FBO, Fritz was able to drop his remaining contracts with the military.

  As the air grew crisper, I got to thinking of the days six months before the whole fracas with the Krehbeil fortune had started, and I got in a mood to sweep out the last few grains of turmoil that had blown in on that storm.

  I telephoned Ray. I asked him to meet me.

  “Where?” he asked, surprised to hear from me after so many months. “When?”

  “How about right now?” I said. “We can meet on the roof of the city library. I like the view.”

  “That sounds good. I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”

  The air was bright and clear when I got there, and I could see my breath. I took the long way up, walking up each and every step along the long curve that led to the roof garden. It took a long time, because Sloane Renee was with me for the afternoon, and she kept wanting to get down from the backpack and take some steps herself. She’d make it up four or maybe five and then reach up to me, her little hands fluttering with an unspoken request to lift her up once again.

  She was getting big: a whacking twenty-four pounds at sixteen months, but then, her mama and daddy were no shrimps. And it felt good to carry her, her little legs swinging, her little voice softly singing, “Ma-ma-ma.” It felt good to work my legs, and my lungs, and to sing along with her. And I listened to the sounds of the city I had adopted to be my home, and admired its colors, from the dark gray twigs of every tree to the warm sandstone-reds of the City and County Building across the way, to the rich cobalt dance of the Utah sky.

  Ray was waiting for me at the top, his cheeks rosy in the brisk air. The hood of a gray sweatshirt lay open around his neck, its cool gray setting off his wonderful coloring, from the healthy warmth of his skin to the rich dark lashes around his indigo blue eyes. He had a foot up on a bench so he could stretch a hamstring. He had taken the steps at a run.

  “Hi, Ray,” I said.

  He rewarded me with a contented smile. “Em, it’s nice
to see you. Is this Faye’s baby?”

  I nodded as he played “Uncle Ray” to the little hussy I was carrying. I said, “It’s nice to see you. So. I bet you’re wondering why I called you here today.”

  He stood with his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt and waited, smiling.

  I said, “I thought it was time that we officially broke up.”

  His smile stiffened. He waited.

  “Well,” I said, beginning to stutter as my self-confidence wobbled, “it occurs to me that we never did break up, really.”

  “Em, it was over a long time ago.”

  I waved a hand as if to dispel a cloud of confusion. “I know that. The thing is, things ended rather abruptly between us, and—”

  “Rather!” He tried to make a joke of it, but he began to blush with the humiliation of memory.

  “And we never got to talk about it. And I know, you’re really not a talker, even now that you’ve been working so hard on yourself. But I am. So here’s what I want to do: I want to tell you what was good about us, and what I miss, to honor what we had. I want to say also what wasn’t good, so that can be part of the past, not the present. I just don’t want to be thinking about all this every time I see you.”

  Ray thought about this for a moment. “That’s fair,” he said. “I’ll go first. I miss—” He stopped abruptly, and looked away.

  “Let me go first. Then you’ll know what I mean. Ray, I thank you for all your kindnesses, and all your caring. That was huge for me. I thank you for the honor of being asked to be a part of your family. I miss our walks together, and all the time we spent just being together, saying nothing. I grieve the loss of possibilities.” I had to stop, and take a deep breath. Ray’s eyes grew wet with tears, and he opened his mouth to speak, but I loosened a hand from the grip I had on the baby and put my fingertips almost to his lips. “Please wait,” I said. “I know I’m a terrible chicken, but if I don’t finish now, I’m going to make things a whole lot worse. Ray, there were things that weren’t right. I lost myself in that relationship, so I don’t want to go back there. I resented your insistence that your way was the right way, because while some parts of it were fine and good, other parts were not what I could do.”