Move to Strike (23 page)

Let it be anyone but Him.

She skidded into the parking lot, still breathing hard. She turned the engine off, unsnapped the gray plastic of the armchair compartment, and pulled out the pouch. So he hadn’t gotten it!

It was not until she grabbed her briefcase and reached into the back seat for her jacket that she realized the jacket was missing.

Her expensive, brand-new Donna Karan jacket! Her first reaction was relief. It wasn’t Him, it was the other one, the one who wanted the rocks. The case shrank to ordinary proportions again. The man in the woods had thought she put the pouch in the jacket. He had watched her on Nikki’s porch, then.

Nikki’s treasure, pebbles collected by a kid, worthless. He must not know. Maybe Sykes had switched pouches on him. She jumped down onto the pavement, leaned against the wet door, and poured the stones out into her hand again. Black and dirty little rocks, not gold, not silver, nothing to steal, terrorize, murder for . . .

The squall had blown through and bleached clouds made way for a sky the fresh rich blue of an oil painting. A ray of sun pierced through the blowing clouds to shine onto her palm. She picked one of the chunks up and twisted her hand in the light.

The glossy surface clarified into transparence. She looked inside the rock, through it really, and finally saw its secret: pale green, violet, pink flames shooting out sparks of rainbow light.

PART FOUR

In his dream, the giant lizard tries to say something.
It staggers. He has delivered the death blow and is
no longer afraid. Now the lizard is finally afraid. It
cries out because it wants to live after all.

He looks down. The lizard is shrinking! It’s
shrinking and shrinking, and suddenly it runs up his
pants leg. It can’t be killed! It runs up his pants and
under his belt and up his chest and he claps his hand
to his own mouth but too late. The lizard has run
into his mouth and is now lodged inside him.

CHAPTER 17

“BLACK FIRE OPAL,” said the bearded geologist, inspecting the rock with one eye to a jeweler’s loupe. “Really large, too. Maybe ten carats uncut. Flawless, to my eye.”

Nina had turned out of her office parking lot, driven straight to the local rock shop, then called Sandy on her cell phone to ask her to cancel her appointments for the early afternoon, and endured Sandy’s ire. She couldn’t wait to find someone who could tell her more about the rocks. Unfortunately, the shop was closed. Possessed by a passionate curiosity, she had driven over Spooner Pass, down to the high desert and around Washoe Lake to the brick buildings of the University of Nevada in Reno. There she had knocked on doors until somebody directed her to Tim Seisz’s office. A professor of geology for twenty-seven years, Seisz specialized in mineralogy, and had a real passion for his work. Nina knew him from a previous case but had never seen his office.

The unpretentious room was cubicle sized with a brown metal chair on wheels and an overstuffed bookcase. All spare surfaces sported dusty rock samples in every color and size. Bald and heavyset, the professor was in his forties. Wild strands of gray and brown beard stuck out of his face like metallic bristles on a scrub brush. His rugged, multi-pocketed shorts revealed long brown legs. His dusty brown boots were crossed on a mottled oak desk, and as he leaned back in his chair examining the specimen with interest, the hinges squeaked.

Nina stood in front of the stuffed bookcase.

“Black fire opal?” she said. “What is that? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“It’s rare,” Seisz said, looking at the rock, holding it and turning it in the sunlight coming through his window.

“But . . . opal is white, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “That’s the background you most commonly see in jewelry. But the ground mass can be many colors. Honey-colored. Milky-white, gray, brown, orange, or red. Translucent to opaque. Of course the more transparent stones are preferred, because the light penetrates and you can see the light show on the surface better.”

She was thinking about how she could turn the stones over to Henry McFarland without making Nikki appear guiltier than ever. They were hot in every sense of the word.

“What are you doing with these?” He showed slightly crooked teeth in a smile, a relief after Dylan Brett and his bionic crew. “You didn’t even know it was opal.”

She put aside the question. “Well, I first saw it in very dim light.” She had spent much of the drive to Reno meditating over the stones sitting in the sunlight on her dash, but her meditations had nothing to do with their geologic origins. She had been seduced by the glitter of colors that shifted like rainbows. Closing her eyes at a stop sign, she had still seen the same brilliant flashing colors on the inside of her eyelid. They were covered with dirt and a crust of grayish-green rock, and they smelled like dirt. But inside they were beautiful, magical, precious. Whatever Seisz might say, or any expert, the stones had infected her with a strange fever.

“You can see the colors even in dim light if you get the angle right,” Seisz was saying.

“We had no idea what we were looking at. Where do you find this kind of opal?”

“Where did you find these?”

“I asked first,” Nina said. “And that’s a long story. Don’t want to bore you.”

He picked through the collection of stones and found another one to study.

“Mostly in Australia,” he said, pulling a book off the shelf nearby. He flipped to a double-page spread of a dry desert setting. In the foreground, a man’s dirty hand held a collection of what appeared to be pebbles. They were very similar to Nikki’s rocks. He thumped a finger on the picture. “Those come from a famous mining area called Coober Pedy. You’ve heard of it?”

“No.”

“Mintbee Mine or Lightning Ridge . . . ring any bells?”

Nina shook her head. Experts in other fields often impressed her, but just imagine spending your life studying rocks, she thought. How deadly. On the other hand, she liked the little office and the big man with his tanned brown pate. This office held what her office never held, serenity and the implacable march to knowledge through pure science, as opposed to her office, which played host to some wild experiments in legal alchemy.

It’s early, she told herself again, trying to incorporate this new information into the case. The plane crash, the plastic surgeon, the samurai sword, and now Australian opals. Wildly divergent elements. She could see no rational pattern emerging, and so far the usual trusty intuition wasn’t kicking in to help her find one.

“Those places are well-known sources for black fire opal,” Tim said. “It’s rare. Found in only a few places in the world.”

Nina picked up a stone and turned it to reveal the magical flash of colors.

“These are dry samples,” he went on, “which is good. Shows they are relatively stable. Opal is mostly water. The black opal is a product of volcanism. At some point in time, a volcano erupted, and hot ash drifted over the surface, burning plants right down to the root, but not necessarily disturbing the soil where they grew, and leaving a hollow in the shape of the root or twig. Water and silicates mixed with volcanic byproducts dripped in over a few million years and formed opaline deposits. At least, that’s the common scientific explanation, that black opal is a kind of fossil.”

Getting into it, the consummate professor now, eyes traveling to faraway places, he said, “If you want, I’ll tell you all about the clay you find opal in, bentonite, and how it’s composed of a mineral called montmorillonite. But I’ve noticed people who don’t share my . . . um . . . what my wife used to call my obsessions, glaze over when I talk in three syllables or more.”

“What can you tell me about these particular samples?” Nina asked.

“I believe pieces this large are quite unusual. Of course, until you rub them, you won’t know if they are crazed or cracked.” Again, he looked through the loupe. “However, most of what I can see looks good.”

“I’m not following.”

“Rubbing is grinding down the outside of a rough opal to get a better picture of where the opal is, and how much there is in the rock. Crazed describes a superficial network of fine cracks that happen when opals dry. Crazing also happens spontaneously, or during the cutting process, which keeps things interesting, doesn’t it? Might have a fabulous-looking stone that can’t take the processing.”

“You mean . . . one of these stones, even if it looks perfect right now . . .”

“After it’s rubbed and you can check out its fire, the dominant color, its translucence . . .”

“Might get . . . crazed later?”

Tim laughed. “Right. You never know how long a stone may last. Obviously, the ones that have been dried and around for a while are going to do better. How long have these been dry?”

“I don’t know. They were stored in a moist environment until some weeks ago. Then they were . . . er . . . buried. So, not dried completely yet.”

He reacted to the burial concept with scientific neutrality, ignoring the irrelevant fact. “Store them in a dark place, in a zip bag with a paper towel or something to absorb moisture. Don’t subject them to too much bright indoor or outdoor light for a few months.”

“You said something about ‘cracking.’ Is that different from crazing?”

“A crack is a fracture. It’s a deeper flaw.”

“Okay,” she said. “Can you evaluate these stones for their . . . uh . . . stability? I guess what I mean is, are they precious gems or worthless junk?”

“I could look into that for you. It’s not something I know offhand. I’m not much involved in the market.”

Someone knocked. Fortunately, the door opened out into the hall.

“Dr. Seisz?” With shoulder-length blond hair and abs of steel defining a tanned midriff, the girl waiting there had that trendy Britney Spears look. Seisz gave her the same polite regard he gave Nina. His ruling passion really was rocks.

“I’m having trouble studying for the midterm,” said Britney’s clone. “I wondered if . . .”

“I have a class to teach in just a few minutes, but if you want to come back here after, I’ll be glad to go through your work with you.”

“I knew I could count on you.” The clone batted her eyes, but Seisz had returned to the rocks on his desk. She left, and only Nina observed the casual swaying down the hall which was probably habitual but was surely wasted on this particular professor.

“So you’re saying this is black fire opal from Australia,” Nina went on. “Assuming it’s not defective. Is it valuable?”

“No, no, no,” said Seisz, shutting the Australia book. He smiled. “You’ve misunderstood. I never said this came from Australia. I said that’s where you find almost all black fire opal.”

“If you find it there, and it doesn’t come from there . . . I’m confused.”

“It could be Australian. However, there is one other place in the world where black fire opals are found and it’s probably a much more likely source of your hoard.”

“Which is . . .”

“The Virgin Valley.”

“And the Virgin Valley is . . .?”

“About a hundred miles from Winnemucca right here in Nevada. Oh, and maybe you don’t know this. Black fire opal is the Nevada state gem.”

“Really.” She didn’t even know the state gem of California, if it had one.

“Yes. If I were to hazard a guess, these opals come from the Virgin Valley, up in the Sheldon National Wildlife Preserve area. Opals found up there have a perhaps undeserved reputation of being more brittle than the Australian blacks. I think that’s arguable. Depends on the water content. Some are, some aren’t.” He touched a stone in her hand. “This is big. Never saw one so large or so immaculate. There have been some incredible finds up there, so I’ve heard. One over ten thousand carats.”

“Wow,” said Nina.

“Yeah.”

“Tell me something, Tim,” Nina said. “How does someone become a geologist?”

“I take it you’re not asking about my course of study at USC.”

“No.”

“I was born to it, maybe the same way you were born to practice law. I see it as a micro-philosophy versus macro. You deal with people and their everyday woes. I deal with the grand scheme. Daily events, people, their little worries, don’t interest me much. I’m also a pilot. I love being up there, looking down at the Earth. Speculating about what formed those hills or why that river ran dry eons ago.”

“But . . . it must be hard on a marriage.” It just came out. She had no business . . .

He broke into a hearty chuckle. “Oh, yes. I should have said my ex-wife earlier. She grew tired of my everlasting field trips and took a hike of her own. So you see, I’m not excused from being human! Believe me, I come down to earth now and then, despite my godlike perspective.”

She knew he was making fun of himself, and she appreciated it.

“I don’t ignore the human links entirely,” he said.

“In fact, I’m quite interested in the folklore associated with stones. I’m working on a book. Don’t know if anyone will be interested besides me, but it amuses me to find connections between elemental Earth and ancient cultures.”

“Do you know any stories about opals?”

“Oh yes. The stones have a long human history. Centuries ago, people called opal ‘opthalmios.’ ”

“What’s that?”

“Means eye-stone. It’s a word they used in the Middle Ages. People then thought opals formed in the eyes of children.”

Nina thought of Nikki.

“The stones were believed to have a magical power: anyone who wore opal became invisible. That’s why they also called the opal the ‘patron of thieves.’ ”

“Really? What an unfortunate name.” Nikki again, the child-thief. If the samurai sword could hold souls, then opals could too, and Nikki’s soul seemed to have attached itself to the dirty gems. Nina couldn’t see how they could protect her, though.

“And as for the question you didn’t ask, whether that secret vein of it you probably found somewhere up there in the Virgin Valley is quite a find, my best guess is yes.” He lifted himself out of his chair, piled books into his arms and went toward the door. “Is it ever.”

Back at the office after the eighty-mile-return drive, Sandy welcomed Nina with a grunt. The outer office was, for a change, empty.

“I said I’d be back by two,” Nina said. “Nobody here?”

“I thought I’d save myself an afternoon round of cancellations,” said Sandy. “In case you didn’t make it.”

“You canceled everyone?”

“Every mother-loving one.”

“I got a speeding ticket coming back.”

“I’m sure you deserved it.”

Sandy squinted at her, and the way she looked straight through Nina to the molten core Nina took such care to hide made her feel uncomfortably exposed. Needing to deflect the focus from her emotional shortcomings to something else, Nina removed the bag from her briefcase, spilling the stones out on the desk. Under Sandy’s decent halogen lamp, with more of the dirt rubbed off the surface of the stones, the opals glinted and flickered.

“Pretty,” she said noncommittally, but Nina noticed she did not take her eyes off the stones as she spoke.

“They’re called black fire opals.”

“This is something to do with Nikki Zack, isn’t it?” Her eyes dug into Nina’s face.

Nina shrugged. She didn’t know how she would handle the issue of Nikki’s acquisition of the opals, and until she considered the ethical questions and made a decision about that, it was best to say nothing. She gathered up the stones.

“Joe took me mining for opals in the Virgin Valley years ago,” Sandy said unexpectedly.

“Really? How’d you do that?”

“There are a couple of places up there that are open to fee mining. You pay by the day to pick through the tailings or even poke around in the bank. Use a pick and shovel. Spritz the chunks and you can see the lights inside.”

“Did you come back with anything?”

“Rocks. No lights. It’s not that easy.”

“Where is the Virgin Valley anyway? I checked the map but couldn’t really find it.”

“Northwestern part of the state, almost in Oregon.

It’s something like twelve miles long and a couple miles wide.” The phone rang and she picked up. “For you,” she said, handing it to Nina. “It’s Paul.”