Kill chain rogue warrior.., p.14
Kill Chain (Rogue Warrior Thrillers Book 10), page 14
Dexter shook his head. “Looking for Hawlaak ChIish. He working today?” It sounded like “Huwlack Shleesh” to Bob’s ear.
“Dr. Spenser has patients until noon, and then he’s off.” Bob noted her tone had changed from friendly to “secretary protecting her boss’s calendar” officious in a blink.
“That’s okay,” Dexter said, pushing past the gate next to her and walking behind the front counter. “It’s almost noon. He’ll see me.”
Bob noticed Jolene roll her eyes as they walked by. “So does everyone here speak Wanapum?” he asked.
Dexter stopped walking briefly at the door to the next office. A plate on it read “Dr. Joseph Spenser, MD.”
“Nah. It’s all versions of Sahaptin, which is, like, the overarching language for a bunch of tribes. But young people are trying to learn it again. It’s tough because the Elders who spoke it as their first tongue have mostly all passed on now.”
He raised a hand to knock, but Bob interrupted. “You called him something other than Dr. Joseph Spenser at the counter.”
“Hawlaak Chlish. It means ‘Water Spirit.’ His grandfather named him, as his family lived off the Columbia for years, and they wanted to honor it. But he was raised with adopted parents, in Seattle. So, like a few folks, he’s got two names.” He knocked.
“Come in.”
Dexter opened the door just enough to poke his head in. “Uncle? Do you have a minute?”
Dr. Spenser had long white-and-gray hair and thick, dark eyebrows that were a little wild as well. He wore a white lab coat and had a stethoscope around his neck as he jotted notes. After a couple of seconds to catch up, he looked up. “Dexter, you’re behaving yourself, I take it?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“And whom do I have the pleasure of meeting today?”
“This is Bob. He’s working on the Jericho situation.”
“You mean the vegan commune? It’s not a situation for most of us, as you’re well aware.”
That’s interesting. I assumed Dexter had community support.
“That’s… Uncle, we can discuss that at a different time,” Dexter said. “I wanted to know if you’d mind speaking with Bob about the coal mine. About the stuff that happened years ago.”
Dr. Spenser rose and rounded the desk. He offered a hand, and Bob shook it. Then he waved a hand towards the door. “Come on. My twelve-fifteen is a longtime patient, and she never shows anyway, not for weekday appointments. The coffee Ms. Feather makes is… not good. But there’s a place down the street.”
Bob cringed and died a little inside as he watched Dr. Spenser put four sugars in his coffee. The older man looked up as he leaned over the molded plastic table and noticed his look of sheer horror.
“Yeah, I know. And a physician too. Physician, poison thyself. Worse, I’m an Indian guy eating sugar like it was water.”
That caught Bob off guard. The doctor read him accurately once again. “Our metabolisms do not respond as well as people of European heritage to refined sugars. By the time they were introduced to us a few hundred years ago, we had been eating naturally and more healthily for millennia. So native peoples now have a far greater prevalence rate for diabetes and alcoholism, as sugar seems to affect our neurochemical balance more severely and contributes to addictions to both poor-quality food and booze.”
“One more shitty gift from the bringers of enlightenment, eh?” Bob said. “Or shitty grift, maybe.”
“Unfortunately so. But I limit myself to extra sugar in coffee, and I eat well and teach my patients to do the same. Most listen and eventually quit the bad stuff, especially booze and tobacco. The young people give me great hope in this regard. Most of them, anyway.” He glared at Dexter briefly.
“Uncle…”
“Dexter, if you’d seen your second cousin Lester on that iron lung all those years ago, you would save the tobacco for ceremony only. And don’t get me started on the weed…”
“Please. Don’t,” Dexter said.
If it was technically possible for a twenty-something Native American guy to blush like an apple, Bob figured, that was as close as it got. “So tell me about the mine,” Bob said, trying to bail Dexter out. “Dexter said his information came from you, so it was yours to share. All I know is that he seems genuinely worried people are going to be hurt.”
“Or the land, the creeks, the animals,” Dr. Spenser said. “All of them. That mine was open a great many years ago, before I was born. But in our culture, we pass our history down orally, and men of my age knew to stay away from there.”
“It’s that bad?” Bob asked. “There are people working it now.”
The Wanapum Elder looked down gravely. “And soon, death will visit them.”
21
ROYAL CITY
Mikey Martel threw his bag into the back of the beaten-up old Mustang and onto the bench seat. He glared back at Karl Giesbrecht while his front-seat friends waited, then turned the same poisonous gaze to the gated Cross compound, the guest houses and mansion beyond.
“Go on then, time to go,” Karl said, waving him away like a head maître d’ dismissing a waiter. “You’ve embarrassed yourself and Mr. Cross quite enough for one lifetime.”
As he waited for them to pull away from the curb, Karl adjusted the sleeves of his perfectly cut black Bill Blass double-breasted suit jacket, then brushed the lint from his lapel. Cross had wanted the four men who’d ambushed Bob Smith at the mine murdered, their bodies dumped in the desert for coyotes.
He’d been sorely tempted, if for no other reason than it seemed quicker than rounding up all four and forcibly evicting them from the Cross compound. But they had families out of state and nearer, people who would go looking, who knew where they’d worked. Killing people was never quite as easy as television shows made out. And it never sat well with the big German, not really.
Instead, they’d been dismissed without pay, with an enraged Cross adding the proviso that if he saw them again, he’d set his dogs on them… and if they returned to the compound, they would be shot.
Down the street, the departing car took a sharp right and vanished from sight.
It was just as well. Bob Smith was clearly a trained fighter, based on what Deputy Chief Dan Fitzhugh had told them. But they knew about Dexter Waptasyi already, and he was just a local Indian. Even with the latter bringing a friend, they should’ve been no match for four armed, trained guards.
Which means they were lax, caught unawares. And that means their story was a lie.
“You done yet?”
Karl turned. Despite the considerable bulk filling his white linen suits and the occasional smelly cigar protruding from his gibbous lips, Jessup Cross had an annoying habit of sidling up without warning.
“They’ve been sent on their way, sir.”
“Good. Still think we might’ve considered a more permanent solution.” His phone buzzed, and Cross checked the screen. “Gol’-dang! It’s that geologist, Nesbitt, bothering me again. I’ve blown that fool off a solid three times already this week.”
“Maybe he really needs to talk to you,” Karl suggested.
“Yeah… but you know what they’re like, the science types. You get ’em talking and they just start blathering like you know what the heck they’re up to. He can wait.” He frowned again. “That Mikey, he could’ve used a bullet or two to set him straight.”
“And I will always argue against the most extreme option because my job is to protect you.” Cross would’ve had him shoot that clumsy valet at the wedding had it sprung immediately to mind, Karl supposed.
But that was who he was. And he had a long reach. Just walking away had long since ceased to be an option.
Cross took a cigar tube out of the inside pocket. He opened it, slid the fat Cuban stogie out, bit the end off roughly and then lit it. “Uh-huh. Long as it’s not ’cause you’re a pussy, Karl. I’d hate to think when push comes to shove, I have to worry about you getting bid’ness done.”
When push comes to shove, Karl thought, I suspect we might be at the proverbial cliff’s edge, with you doing the shoving. “Of course, sir,” he said instead.
“How’d they fuck this up, anyhow? I thought we were clear for them to follow Smith until he was away from the compound, give the other men time to work.”
“They did, sir. He had help from the troublesome Indian, Dexter Waptasyi, and another man. Beyond that, it’s clear from his fights here in Royal City that this man has serious training, almost certainly military. You stated when this all began that you didn’t want me to bring in outside help. That’s why we’ve worked with the local toughs and yokels I could find, those willing to accept the same substandard pay as your other workers. But if I bring in outside expertise, this matter can be resolved far more quickly.”
That shut Cross up for a few seconds. He stared blankly ahead, as if the mere notion of spending more money was debilitating. Eventually, he said, “How much?”
“A crack unit of six mercs will run you about five thousand per day, plus expenses.”
“That’s a lot of goddamned money,” Cross muttered. “What if it takes them the whole two weeks until the hearing? That’s near on seventy grand, just to kill a single man.”
Karl considered himself too refined to shrug, as if his employer’s dignity was paramount. “Two men, probably. But it eliminates the matter once and for all.” And it is not a lot of money to you, you greedy, fat swine. It is nothing to you, a pittance. But he supposed his clients didn’t get wealthy by ignoring what they saw as waste.
“Do it,” Cross said begrudgingly. “And bring our new cop buddy in on it. I didn’t spend all that time flattering his dim-witted uncle, the judge, just so’s he could fold when there was real pressure on. We’re paying him for protection, and he’d better make goddamned sure he’s providing it. Tell him if he don’t, maybe I’ll send mercs after his ass, too.”
MATTAWA
Dr. Spenser took a sip of coffee and looked around the room quickly, perhaps curious to see if anyone was paying attention.
He had a measured tone as he spoke, a man accustomed to capturing attention, to holding a room with his words. Bob worried about saying the wrong thing. “When I was young, my grandfather would talk about the olden days. He would speak of them with reverence, but also a sense of awe, respecting all those who passed and all the changes he experienced. He spoke in less modern terms than the youth do now, and often in our tongue. He would speak of Mother Earth and the people’s relationship to it. He would not hide his contempt for the interloper cultures that treated his people so badly.
“One day, we had a campfire and roasted fish near Nunnally Lake. And we had passed the old telegraph lines in the desert. And as a curious child, I had asked about them. They were a last sign of the white man’s great folly, he told me. They led to a place where men dropped dead for seemingly no reason, where soon after they were followed by birds, by insects, by the fish from the creek and river. All of the men were miners, people who worked underground.”
Bob was about to ask dates, but Dexter noticed him trying to get a word in. His eyes flashed, widened, signaling him to not interrupt.
“Over the next few months, he heard of more men becoming terribly sick. The mine owners refused to blame the mine, even though it was the only thing all the men shared. Instead, they blamed the water. They shut down two community wells, claiming they were responsible, even though it left some on one side of the town without enough to go around. Word began to spread that the mine was cursed. Some of the settlers blamed us, claiming we’d used black magic or some such nonsense.”
“But it was no such thing, was it?” Bob said. “You’re a doctor. You don’t subscribe to any of that stuff.”
He shrugged. “Most people, me included, know less than they think. But I will say, they discovered at the time, the gold mine was poisoned by considerable levels of naturally occurring arsenic.”
“Huh. Well, that would do… wait…” Bob caught himself. “Did you say ‘gold mine’?”
The Elder smiled and nodded matter-of-factly. “You didn’t really think this was all over some low-grade coal, did you? That mountain is sitting on thousands of pounds of unmined gold. At one point, many decades ago, it was well known. It was also known that anyone trying to reach it would either die or, potentially worse, pollute the adjoining aquifers. They run into Lower Crab Creek, and it, in turn, runs into the Columbia River.”
“So… if Cross goes in there and starts digging up that seam…”
“He could poison thousands, hurt the wetlands and wildlife for generations.”
So many people I can let down. It was daunting, and Bob hoped Dr. Spenser would provide something tangible; real proof to prompt real action.
Cross had judges, cops and politicians in his pocket. He’d gotten away with so much already, and it seemed unlikely he’d run out of guys willing to fight for him.
And what did they have? Dexter’s determination. Toby’s good intentions.
It’s not much against a small army, is it, Bobby?
Chances were good the state would shut the mine down eventually. Maybe Cross wouldn’t expose any arsenic before then. Maybe the risk was overstated.
But I can’t take that chance.
The entire exercise put lie to his efforts to stay out of trouble, to keep his head down, find honest work, live quietly and safely for a while.
But there was no choice, really. The idea of Justin’s life being limited by crippling medical bills when he had a way to make the money was unacceptable.
And both Toby and Dexter deserved better, anyway. They had opposing objectives, but they’d gone about pursuing them honestly, by the book. Neither deserved to be stepped on by the likes of Cross. How would I look myself in the mirror if I just walked away?
And isn’t that always the choice, in the end?
He leaned back in his chair, the entire hustle making more sense. Cross was drilling illegally, probably from some assay result he’d been given or discovered telling him gold was definitely there. His surveyor might well have found maps showing the original mines in the area, which had mostly been coal but had included gold as well. It was possible that in their subterfuge, they hadn’t tapped enough of the gold seam yet to hit arsenic.
“Do you think they might be unaware of it?” Bob said. “It seems a hell of a risk, to put anyone near that.”
The physician nodded. “It hasn’t been talked about in nearly fifty years, I think. I am old, even though I do not feel it. And I cannot remember it ever being reopened before this, or broadly discussed. But my grandfather told me way back then that they tested water from a deep well on the mine property, and there was enough arsenic in the sample to kill a grown man. They didn’t hit it for several weeks when the mine opened. But from what science now knows, when the drilling hit a certain depth, the heat from the drill bits probably activated arsenic trioxide, which is when it turns from solid to gas without ever being in a liquid state. The men were trapped in small spaces, shafts back then tiny and far more dangerous than today.”
“And… I have to think the drill bits and scale they can operate on now…”
“Yeah. A death trap for anyone in the camp or in the direction of the prevailing wind, polluted wetlands, possibly massive fish kills and pollution in the river.”
“And does anyone have proof of this?”
Spenser looked down suddenly. “And here we run into an age-old problem. My people passed our stories and history down orally. We did not keep many records that long ago. Is it possible the state, at some point, was informed? Sure. But we would have nothing to confirm that down here. We have been able to work well with the state in recent times, but in the past… it is entirely possible the deaths were covered up, the stories not taken seriously. We were never taken seriously then.”
“I heard they flooded your land.”
“They did. And they built a plutonium-enrichment facility for the atomic bombs they dropped on Japan on traditional burial lands. It pollutes the desert south of here and will for eternity. Eventually – as they seem incapable of cleaning it up – it will probably spread to the Columbia. We are accustomed to outsiders, often with the best intentions, poisoning and destroying our traditional home, Mr. Singleton. We are accustomed to being ignored.”
If there was any record of the arsenic in the Royal Slope’s gold seam, it lay nearly four hours’ drive east, Dr. Spenser had suggested, at the Fish and Wildlife records office in Olympia. He’d promised to call ahead, talk to a senior official he knew, and try to get Bob access.
Dexter had contributed by loaning Bob his truck and promising to watch Toby Moore. The route was twisted, the scenery stunning as he rolled across the state, skirting Mount Rainier National Park, its snowcapped peak towering fourteen thousand feet above.
The winding highway took him down the side of Tiger Mountain, the steep grade slowly curving down towards the west coast, through thousands of acres of lush pine forests, the road often empty for miles at a time. Traffic slowed him in Seattle, the skyscrapers partially obscured by a constant rainy drizzle, clouds crushing the sun with grim efficiency.
He’d spotted the tan truck just outside of Bristol, and it had followed him for more than an hour into the city. By the time he’d taken the exit heading south towards Tacoma, however, it had disappeared.
In the capital of Olympia, a small city just southwest of Tacoma, he headed for the semicircular capitol building, which looked like something out of a dystopian Tom Cruise science fiction epic, the windows numerous but undersized, the concrete tinged like gray flannel.
The woman at the office records desk was pleasant, a curvaceous and large librarian in a print floral dress. But she seemed deeply skeptical.
She had a badge on that read “I’m Janet, Ask Me for Help!”
“I get what you’re after, Mr. Smith, and anything we can do to help Dr. Spenser, after all he’s contributed to the county over the years… well, we will do. But I’m just an archivist, and even though I’ve been here coming up on twenty-two years, you’re talking about a document from the late nineteen twenties.”
