An Eye for Gold Page 9

  “And I’m done logging things in, too. Would you like me to drive the stuff on over to Reno?”

  “No, Laurel, that’s a hell of a drive. I’ll get one of the—”

  Laurel put her tiny hands together in supplication. “Please, Virgil? I’m really bored. I’ve got all my assay locations input to the computer, and I’ve updated all the grade maps.”

  Virgil smiled in spite of his desperate mood. Laurel always cheered him up. “You got some boyfriend over there in the Olinghouse mine or something?” he chided. He wondered how their economics were running. Maybe they could use a new superintendent.

  Laurel gave him more of her light-hearted, pop-eyed innocence in the form of polite silence.

  Virgil wavered. “Okay, saddle up and take ‘em on over there, even though that work’s way beneath you.” Then without thinking first what it might sound like, he added, “Really, I need you for more important things around here.”

  Laurel smiled vacantly and started to withdraw through the doorway.

  Had that smile been a nervous one? “But first,” Virgil added quickly, trying to keep his own nervousness out of his voice, “do you have any idea where MacCallum’s got to?” As he said it, he felt a sudden surge of satisfaction, the first that day. It was good to leave a trail of misinformation in the form of such questions, so that no one would link MacCallum’s disappearance to the argument they’d had.

  Laurel replaced her grin with thoughtful blankness. “No,” she said simply. She began to recede again, one bright blue eye disappearing behind the door and then the other.

  “Or Christie, for that matter?”

  “Nope. See ya, Virgil,” Laurel caroled, her soft footfalls echoing slightly as she hurried down the vinyl-tiled hallway.

  Half a minute later, Virgil heard the engine on a one-ton pickup roar to life, and seconds later saw it race past his office window with Laurel sitting primly at the wheel. As she paused briefly to check for cross-traffic before hurtling through the gate in the chain link fence and down the road that led toward Interstate 80, he noticed that the bed was already filled with the multitude of white sample sacks that she was ferrying to the lab.

  He wondered dully why she hadn’t told him that they were already loaded.

  11

  AT LOVELOCK, A RANCHING COMMUNITY NINETY miles northeast of Reno, we turned off Interstate 80 in search of the Pershing County courthouse to meet with the other biologist from Intermontane Biological Consultants, the consulting firm for which Pat Gilmore had worked. We turned down Lovelock’s one short block of half-empty shops (as in too many little Western towns, commerce had dribbled away to the big chain stores and fast food restaurants by the highway) and zeroed in on the midget courthouse.

  Like the anachronistic storefronts, the courthouse was a vintage affair. It was round, save for a short Greek revival pillar and pediment facade stuck on its front, and clad with pale creamy-beige stucco, so that it looked like a five-gallon tub of vanilla ice cream decorated with an American flag. I followed the two FBI agents up the wide front steps, between two of the six oddly-spaced Ionic columns, and through the oak entrance doors. I found myself in a central hallway which ran all the way around the county court’s chamber, which formed the central core of the building.

  Tom Latimer nodded genteelly and pantomimed tipping his hat to me. “This place kind of puts you in a mood for top hats and floor-length skirts, doesn’t it?” he murmured.

  Ian stared at me, unsmiling. I was beginning to get the impression he didn’t like me.

  I tugged at one blue jeans pant leg, pretending I was lifting the hem of an imaginary skirt to reveal high-buttoned shoes, and turned my ankle this way and that in a burlesque of a turn-of-the-century coquette.

  Tom grinned.

  Ian jammed his hands into his pockets and indulged himself in looking impatient. Tom as elaborately did not notice his impatience.

  I looked back and forth between the two men, wondering what was getting lan’s undies in such a bundle. “So where’s this dude we’re supposed to interview?” I asked.

  Ian grumbled, “He’s waiting for us in the courtroom.”

  The courtroom itself was splendid, a miniature delight of fine moldings and Greek-revival pediments and pilasters with faux Corinthian capitals painted gleaming white and highlighted with gold leaf. It was circular in plan, with concentric mahogany railings that separated the small fan of spectator’s seats from the dock. The judge’s bench, like the courtroom itself, was pleasantly diminutive and framed by United States and Nevada flags surmounted by gilded eagles. Silvery light filtered down from a band of nine-paned windows set in an ornamental frieze high under a domed silver ceiling. Globe-shaped sconces with gilded brackets illuminated the walls, and slender seats like those found in antique theaters curved out to either side of the central aisle. Only one seat was filled. The man in it turned toward us and studied us silently.

  Tom stepped toward him and offered him a hand to shake. “You must be Doctor Rodriguez,” he said soothingly, showing the man his identification.

  The man stood up briskly. At full stretch, he did not reach Tom’s collarbones, but he shook hands with the presumptive gravity of a five-star general. He turned toward Ian and soberly shook his hand, too, then turned to me, paused for just an instant, then smiled and bowed from the waist. “Señorita” he said, his eyelids lowering seductively.

  I was startled. I’d been slimed by a great many men in my day, but never this badly by a man of Hispanic descent. Based on my long friendship with Carlos Ortega of the Denver police, I had expected chivalry from this man, but not entwined with rudeness. Unwilling to go along with rank sexism regardless of the circumstances, I stuck out my right hand as insistence that he shake it. Straightening, he took it in his and gave it a lingering squeeze. I moved it up and down like the grip of an antique water pump. He closed his left hand over the top of mine, lowered his eyelids half a notch, and let his smile part his lips.

  I had to tug to remove my hand from his grip. Staring angrily into his leer, I entertained an urgent need to wash my hand, and couldn’t stop myself from rubbing the palm down across my hip, wiping it off on the rough denim. I glanced at Tom. His expression was almost unreadable, but as he flicked his eyes briefly my way, the glint in them said, This is work. This is not the time for personal issues.

  I let a strong glare at Rodriguez suffice to express my feelings.

  Blithely ignoring my reaction, Dr. Rodriguez said, “So, gentlemen, you are here to ask me about Patricia Gilmore. A very sad turn of events today.” He pronounced “Patricia” with a slight hiss, as if the name created an unpleasant steam in his mouth.

  Neither agent said a word. After a moment, Rodriguez’s eyes scanned languidly from one man to the other and back again, and then to me, the lines of his face beginning to sag with the slightest hint of disgust. He made a clicking sound in his cheek. “Please sit down,” he said.

  The agents remained standing.

  The silence began to stretch and sag, filling the room with the stickiness of taffy. This gave me time to settle back mentally into my fly-on-the-wall posture and observe Rodriguez closely. I fought to assess him independently of my irritation with him, to free myself of the stink of his egregious salutation. He was at least forty-five years old, and paunchy. I noticed that he wore cheap pants, and his belt was made of faux leather. About when I caught myself looking contemptuously at his haircut, I gave up trying to be impartial and concentrated on trying not to sulk.

  I glanced at Ian. He appeared as emotionally flat as a bodyguard, paying strict attention but waiting for someone else to make a move.

  I shifted my gaze to Tom. He stood phlegmatically relaxed, hands in pockets, a slight smile on his lips. Did he suspect Rodriguez of something?

  Rodriguez narrowed his eyes and spoke. “Gentlemen,” he said acidly, “I am here at your request. You have questions for me. Please ask them.”

  Tom nodded his head slowly, as if savoring
a joke. My stomach tightened.

  Ian broke the silence. “Dr. Rodriguez, Mr. Giles at the Bureau of Land Management has told us a little bit about the wildlife survey Ms. Gilmore was engaged in. He has told us, for instance, that Ms. Gilmore’s activities were first brought to his attention by yourself.”

  Rodriguez pulled his head back and knit his brow. “That is not exactly true.” He now raised his eyebrows. “But let me tell you the story from the beginning.” He sat down on the arm of his chair and raised his hands, a professor lecturing to his class. “Patricia first came to work with us only a few months ago. She was young and inexperienced” He spread his hands palms up. “She made mistakes.”

  As Rodriguez paused for dramatic impact, I studied Tom’s reactions. He had folded his arms across his chest, one hand to his lips. He watched Rodriguez closely, mapping him.

  The little man’s eyes grew limpid with sadness. “In pre-paring our Environmental Impact Report for Granville Resources’s new project area, Patricia was detailed to take a live-trap survey of the rodent population. Of course, most mining activity in Nevada occurs in die mountain ranges. This is a special habitat, very fragile. It is host to many species which have become isolated by the separation between ranges, an artifact of a change in climate.”

  My ears pricked up. Now he was talking earth history, and that was my department. I listened carefully, evaluating the extent of the good doctor’s knowledge.

  Rodriguez began to warm to his topic. “Fourteen thousand years ago, the climate of Nevada was vastly different This was the time of the great Ice Age. It was so cold that an ice sheet as much as two miles thick formed over the northern half of this continent” He paused, letting us absorb this information.

  So far he was on target with the facts, but he might have throttled back just a bit on the P. T. Barnum aspects of his lecture. I glanced sideways at Ian and Tom, to see how they were taking this. They were staring at him blankly.

  Rodriguez continued. “In the time of the ice, it was not only cooler, but also wetter, with rains such as are not seen here anymore.” His hands began to move with the eloquence of a storyteller, evoking the extremity of the storms, the vastness of the terrain. “This area was foil of lakes, and the vegetation was much richer. As the ice sheet retreated and the climate warmed, the places of cooler climate did not vanish, but simply moved to higher elevations. What once flourished at four thousand feet found conditions it desired at eight thousand, or ten.” He raised a hand slowly, tracing the mountain slopes. “Nevada is a land of mountains and deserts. The mountains are dryer than they once were, but still cooler, and more rich in vegetation, and the desert is most severe between the ranges. Those species which could not adapt to the heat and sparsity of food in the valleys followed their habitat up the slopes. They now live marooned on their little mountain islands, forced to adapt to conditions they find there, or die.” His hand dropped summarily. He looked knowingly at Tom and Ian, checking to make certain that they were apt pupils. “Subspeciation.” He slowly turned his hand palm up, as if proffering them a gift. “Very rare animals.”

  “Rodents,” Ian murmured, his expression still blank.

  “Yes, they are rodents,” Rodriguez admonished, “each species and subspecies a unique and integral part of the web of life. Not to be trifled with. Certain species are key indicators of the changes in the health of our planet. Take for instance the humble pack rat. It has the habit of nesting, and therefore urinating always in the same place, countless generations of rats, even through many millennia. We call the residue ‘amberat’ It entombs the seeds of sometimes extinct species of plants, and imprisons certain isotopes from the atmosphere”

  “Mice,” prompted Ian.

  Rodriguez let his breath out in irritation. “My attention was drawn in particular by Patricia’s population numbers for a subspecies of the dark kangaroo mouse, Microdipodops megacephalus kammai. It is in fact a new subspecies. I named it myself.” He raised an index finger imperiously. “She identified it as a known subspecies found elsewhere, and in fact showed it expanding its numbers.” He smiled wryly. “At first, I thought she had only made an error. You see, it is difficult to identify subspecies from the live specimen.”

  I said, “It takes an expert like yourself to properly identify it.”

  Rodriguez narrowed his eyes, but continued. “Exactly. In live specimen, it is a matter of subtleties in coloration, and small comparisons in length and the thickness of the tail, combined with a close examination of the mammae and of the incisors. It is a marvelous creature. Its skull—”

  “An expert like yourself,” Latimer emphasized.

  Rodriguez sighed with exasperation, as if the FBI agents were, after all, slow students, then plowed on with his tale. “Its skull has auditory bullae which can hear an ant’s footsteps at half a mile. Very helpful if your life depends on hearing the approach of a diving owl, whose feathers part the desert air almost soundlessly. Marvelous creature.”

  I said, “But Pat Gilmore could not identify these subtleties.”

  Rodriguez lowered his eyelids to bedroom level as he turned his attention from Ian to me. He said, “Exactly, Senorita. I began to wonder about Patricia. She is . . . was . . . impulsive. Difficult. She would argue wildly at meetings.” His face clouded with grief and regret, and he looked at the floor, as if with shame. “I . . . I began to wonder.”

  Rodriguez paused for a while, as if overcome, then elaborately recovered himself. “Gentlemen, Intermontane Biological tries to hire only the very best employees, but sometimes . . . a mistake is made. I am afraid that Patricia was just that form of mistake, which . . .” Here he paused, put a hand tenderly over his heart, and closed his eyes. “. . . I assure you I did not personally make. The president of the firm . . . sometimes . . . misjudges.” Here he opened his eyes, and looked me over from top to toe, and then halfway back up again. “She did not follow orders. She kept sloppy notes. And . . . and I fear that her veracity was . . .” He closed his eyes again. “. . . for sale.”

  I might have applauded the drama of his performance if I hadn’t been preoccupied with relief at having his gaze removed from the bottom of my fly. But the man did seem to know his natural history. Which was confusing, because his bombast screamed Phoney.

  It was clear that Rodriguez believed, or wanted us to believe, that Patricia Gilmore had sold out to the mining interests, that she had kited the figures for a price, helping Granville Resources to push their project through the permitting stage. “So you think someone killed her?” I asked, butting in.

  Rodriguez reeled back in horror. “Who would do that?”

  “Who indeed?” I murmured.

  12

  RODRIGUEZ SEEMED PREPARED TO TAKE US OUT TO the project site and catch us a kangaroo mouse just to prove to us how tricky the little guys were to tell from their nearest cousins, and how essential it was to have a fully qualified expert like himself clinch the identification, but the FBI agents appeared to be done with him. On the way down the courthouse steps, Tom glanced at me and asked, “Did he have his Ice Age right?”

  “Yeah,” I answered. “Glacial Lake Lahontan would have put us forty, fifty feet under water where we’re standing now. If I look around these nearest hills, I can probably spot you a relict shoreline, a kind of wave-cut bench in the slope. And he had his dates about right. And I suppose he knows his beans about the critters, too, but I’m no expert on that” When we got to the car, I said, “How about we go on out to the crash site?”

  Tom raised an eyebrow at me.

  I went quiet, uncertain how to justify my growing itch to be out on the land, away from pavement and government bureaucrats and petty, self-aggrandizing PhD.’s.

  “Okay,” Tom said. “It’s probably on our way to the mine, anyway. But out of professional courtesy, we should pay a call on the local fuzz first Always mind your Ps and Qs, Em.”

  “We’re going to the mine?”

  “Of course. Why do you think I brought yo
u along? We won’t go in it, of course, but I figured you’d know what to look for around the office of an outfit like that. Maybe they’ll have maps and assays. Think you can handle that?”

  I rubbed my hands together greedily. “You just leave that to me.”

  Tom opened the door to the car and stepped aside. “Climb in, m’lady. Or will you wipe your hands on your jeans again if I talk to you like that?”

  As I clambered past him into the car, I gave him a look more sour than lemons.

  BECAUSE SHERIFF OBERNICK had gone home for lunch, we were treated to a deputy named Rhett Weebe who kept his aviator sunglasses on indoors, apparently the better to practice his intimidating stare. Weebe needed a good intimidating stare in his repertoire. He was short and shaped like a pear, a fact exaggerated by the thickness of his lovingly oiled Sam Browne belt and gun holsters. A pearl-handled Smith and Wesson .45 perched on each of his chubby hips. Like his body, his face was also narrower at the top than at the bottom, suggesting a pinching of the brain, and worse yet he wore a toupee which adorned his narrow skull about as convincingly as indoor-outdoor carpeting imitates grass. He had combed the wiry synthetic hairs down over his hairline to cover the edge of the matting that held them in place against his greasy scalp, but had neglected to obscure the tell-tale warp and weft along his too-straight part. As I took all this in, I wondered idly how an Indian looking for scalps would feel after taking his best swipe and winding up with a handful like that, and decided that such tasteless deceit might just piss off a brave even worse than having his hunting grounds sacked by Euro-American squatters. It occurred to me about then that Rodriguez had put me in a pretty bad mood.

  Weebe’s caterpillar of a mustache wiggled as he spoke. “I’m glad you boys came by, though a’course the woman’s death is out of your jurisdiction.” He cleared his throat and struck a noble pose, ready to report. “She was found about two this morning out on the road that runs along the west side of Rye Patch Reservoir.” He turned and stuck a stubby finger onto the shaded relief wall map behind him. “Rah chere. Lonely spot, partic’ly at night.”