Tainted Mountain (4 page)

Gary glanced at Cole then settled his focus on Nora.

“Hi, Nora,” Gary looked down at his shoes then up at her again. “I'm afraid I have some bad news.”

It suddenly dawned on her this wasn't about the attack. The ambulance. Charlie.

“We just brought Scott down.”

“Scott? What?”

“I'm sorry,” he said.

Scott? Brought him down? Down from where? The ambulance. Not in town but on the mountain. Scott.

Her eyes lifted to a hint of red glow through the trees. Scott was there.

Her husband had been hurt on the mountain. He needed her. She sprinted past Cole and hit the stairs two at a time.

Gary called to her, but she dashed on across the parking lot and around the bend in the road. Scott needed her.

The ambulance sat at the trailhead across the road from the parking lot. Its red lights flared off the pines.

“Scott!” Her gravelly screams echoed off the mountain.

No, oh no. He's got to be okay. He's fine.

Then she saw it. The gurney. Two people wheeled it toward the back of the ambulance. There was no face. It couldn't be Scott.

No face.

Because it was covered with a sheet.

Seven

Barrett stood at his
office window assessing the view. His home commanded the countryside from atop a hill that looked over an expanse of juniper, scrub, and desert. Across the valley the San Francisco Peaks rose in splendor.

The mystery and power of the peaks still had the ability to awe him, despite his years in the sometimes-sordid energy business. God, how Ester had hated the ski resort. He barely remembered his own disgust in those earlier times. Ester wouldn't understand why he'd had to do what he did to Scott. What happened on the sacred mountain this morning would break her heart, if he hadn't destroyed it forty years ago.

But Ester wasn't here to rail against him. Her sacred kachinas hadn't saved her. He lifted the faded photo and stared at the happy young family. Ester, with her black hair falling over one shoulder to her waist, bent toward their two-year-old daughter at her feet, his darling Soowi. Next to them stood the man who used to be Barrett. He was thin and sunburned with a baby resting on his arm: his son, Manangya. In the photo, Barrett's head tilted back, his mouth open in laughter. Try as he might, he couldn't remember what his daughter had said that morning to make them laugh. Just one more thing that haunted him.

The sun slipped below the tallest peak.

Heather skipped down the stairs, the short skirt flipping, a bare strip of brown belly showing. Instead of the usual burst of love and joy at the sight of his daughter, he girded himself for battle. Being a father required more courage, strength, and sacrifice than running a multinational energy corporation.

She ran to him and stretched to kiss his cheek. This affection used to be her normal state. Now it was usually sighs and outbursts, tears and slamming doors.
There should be an Alcatraz for teenaged girls
, Barrett thought
. You send them there at thirteen and pick them up when the hormones settled, whenever that might be. In the meantime, a vast moat would protect them from sniffing and groping men.

“I'm meeting some friends in town. I won't be late.”

A rock sat in his gullet. “You're not going anywhere.”

Quicker than a teenaged boy's orgasm, she whipped toward him, her eyes heating with temper. “Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“That's not fair.”

Bad start, but he was committed. He patiently motioned for her to enter his office and she flounced in front of him. “I saw you at the courthouse yesterday.”

She thrust her chin in challenge. “So?”

Screw patience
. “You will stay away from Big Elk.”

Heather leaned back against his desk and faced him as he dominated the room. She folded her arms, that impenetrable look on her face. She'd never met her, yet Heather's expression matched Ester's. It still took Barrett's breath away. “Do I have your word you won't have anything to do with Big Elk?” He wouldn't bring up Alex Seweingyawma, the boy he'd identified as Heather's
friend
at the courthouse hoopla. Barrett had had no trouble finding the hoodlum's name, or making sure the cops locked him up.

She stared at him, emotionless except the flash of defiance in her eyes. “You have no right to keep me from my people.”

Barrett was surprised his clenched jaw didn't pulverize his molars. “Your people are the McCrearys.”

“My
adopted
people.” Her nearly black eyes glistened with contempt.

He glared back, ignoring the blow. “Nevertheless. McCreary's don't carry signs and stop economic progress. We don't spout fairy tales about sacred mountains.”

Though Heather assumed an icy attitude, she hadn't yet established Ester's stamina to hold the calm. She broke and shouted. “You bigot! You think your Christian doctrine, the one that says the world was created for you, is the only viable religion on the planet. It's never occurred to you that you were created to protect the planet. That's what Hopi believe. To you, the whole world is here for you to rape and pillage.”

Now Barrett had the upper hand. “I know what the Hopi believe. I spent a fair amount of time on the rez. I've even been inside the kivas during certain ceremonies.”

She laughed in disbelief. “When were you ever open-minded enough to learn the true Hopi way?”

“I was young once.” It sounded cliché even to him.

She narrowed her eyes as if detecting a lie. “Maybe. But you don't get it.”

Déjà vu sent a chilly wind over his skin, raising goose bumps. He remembered when he stood outside a home on Second Mesa, the ancient bricks crumbling beside the newer stone repairs and cinder
blocks. Heat radiated from the empty plaza and created a haze across the landscape below the mesa. Sweat drenched his body under his dashiki. His heart was broken, but he made sure Ester didn't see the fracture.

Ester stood in front of him in a colorful peasant dress he'd bought for her in a Flagstaff boutique. It was one of the few gifts she'd let him buy, always insisting she didn't want anything that cost him mere money. If her heart broke too, she did an equally good job of hiding it. She said those same words to him: “You don't get it, do you?”

Barrett's heart had pounded in desperation to make Ester understand. As much as she talked about responsibility to her people, the world, and respecting the Hopi way, she should know he had a responsibility to his family.

But Ester left him sweating on the blazing plaza. Barrett never saw her again. They didn't even tell him when she died.

He couldn't let Heather slip from him like that. Not after all this time.

Barrett cleared his throat. These damn flashbacks had to stop. “The Hopi are wrong,” he said. “Their claims of being able to save the human race are nothing but false hope and giant egos. All they amount to is trying to control their youth, ban world progress, and keep the people living in poverty.”

“The simple life brings us into balance, lets us focus on what's important.”

This from the iPod princess with the plasma TV, driving a new Toyota SUV and charging gas and lattes on his card. “Ask some of your new Hopi clan how they like living in squalor, not having money for food or clothes, and the sorry state of their medical care.”

“A spiritual person doesn't need much to be happy.”

“A poor person has to be spiritual because that's all he has.”

Heather jumped from the desk and started for the door. “If you can't touch it or put a price tag on it you don't believe in it, do you?”

Barrett grabbed her arm and forced her into a chair. “There you are wrong, little girl. Show me where I can touch our heritage and the essence of McCreary. Yet I believe in family above all else. And show me where I can touch the love I feel for you. Because, Heather,
that
is the most important thing in my life.”

She ignored his exposed heart. “Hopi have a special bond with the forces of nature. If we don't pay attention, the world will be out of balance.” Heather glared at him. “And then it will end.”

Barrett's temper threatened to break loose. “Hopi are like children. They don't know how to function in the real world and are afraid of it. We, the McCrearys you think are so evil, have been taking care of them for three generations.”

Heather's voice rose to a shriek. “Taking care of them? Is that what you call strip mining their coal and pumping water for a coal slurry? And you paid them a pittance.”

Acid ate Barrett's stomach and he wondered if he could mainline Rolaids for the next few years. “You call twenty-five million dollars a pittance? That's what it cost to seal those nine hundred mines. And McCreary Energy reseeded thousands of acres.”

Heather swiped at her tears. “Yeah. You hauled off the radioactive tailings and boarded up the bad wells and water holes. But Poppy, before you did that, people died.”

His heart went as dry and cold as the mesa in winter. It continued to beat even so. Just as he still breathed and walked around. He couldn't stop the image of the twinkling brown eyes, the soft skin and baby fat thighs, the gurgle of delight from Daddy's embrace. The son that would never swim in the creek, eat a popsicle, or even go to school. He remembered Ester's eyes burning with love and passion the last time they made love.

Barrett drank in the sight of the beautiful girl in front of him, his last chance at redemption. He'd lost everything but her.

“You are forbidden to see Big Elk. You will not go up to the Mesas.”

Heather pulled her hand back and swung, smacking Barrett on his cheek with such force it snapped his head back.

They stood toe to toe, breathing hard and staring at each other.

Heather's lips peeled back in a snarl. “I hate you.”

Even taking into account her teenaged hormones, the words hurt far worse than his stinging cheek. “But I love you. More than you can know.”

She walked slowly out of the room, leaving the door ajar.

Barrett sank to his desk chair. He felt her tugging at the blood that bound them together; had felt it for some time now.

Keeping Heather safe in the moment carried urgency, but her long-term security depended on the new uranium mining. Individually, the problems didn't amount to much, but each cog had to work or the whole thing would fall apart.

The congressional committee needed to release the lands they'd temporarily withdrawn. Huntsman had the credentials to give convincing testimony, but he had a troublesome individual streak. Even if he performed for the committee, he might give Barrett problems later on. He was much smarter than Scott, after all, and look how that had turned out.

And there were protesters, specifically that loose cannon Charlie Podanski and the troublemaker Big Elk, constantly in Barrett's way. Barrett would love to smash them, but he had to tread lightly to keep from creating a public relations debacle. Big Elk was a smarmy fake and Barrett could dispatch him easily enough with cash. But Barrett knew Charlie to be relentless and once he got started, he wouldn't quit. Luckily no one really listened to him.

Then there was Nora Abbott. Tough in business but young and easy to manipulate. Now that her husband was gone, she'd need strong guidance. Who better than a wealthy mentor? She shouldn't pose much trouble.

And the Hopi had agreed to recommend mining on their lands, but he couldn't count on them absolutely until their X was on the line.

“Barrett.” Cole Huntsman's voice startled him out of his plans.

“Jesus.” He had a meeting and he'd completely forgotten about it.
I must be losing my fucking mind.
He never used to forget anything.

Barrett rose from the desk and waved Cole in. “Just finishing an overseas call.”

“Thought it might be something like that when no one answered the door. Hope you don't mind that I let myself in.” Cole had a country bumpkin face that made him look harmless. It didn't fool Barrett.

“Glad you did,” Barrett said. “I've been working on our testimonies for the hearing.”

One eyebrow arched on Cole's forehead. “Our testimonies? I figured on speaking for myself.”

“Of course. These are just some thoughts to coordinate our message.”

“Right.” That sincere drawl and perpetually friendly face would play nicely at the hearings.

Barrett picked up a stack of papers from his desk and handed them to Cole. He lowered himself back into his chair. “Sit down and we'll get to work.”

Cole took the papers and wandered over to the window, his eyes on Kachina Mountain. He acted as if he had all the time in the world, like he operated on Navajo time. Cowboys and Indians—with their disregard for time, it was a wonder the West was ever settled.

Cole glanced at the pages Barrett prepared for the hearing. “Releasing those claims might be a tough sell to the committee.”

Another shovelful of coal was added to his heartburn. Goddamned Interior Department withdrawing lands he needed for expansion of uranium mining. “That's why we've got to coordinate our efforts.”

Cole nodded. “Be easier if we had a champion.”

Barrett could ease Cole's mind by telling him about a guaranteed vote or two, assured by Barrett's behind-the-scenes tactics. But the less Cole—or anyone else—knew about that, the safer for Barrett.

Cole read silently for a moment. “What do you know about a Charlie Podanski?”

Barrett's neck hairs bristled. “He's a kook. Why?”

Cole shrugged. “I hear he's a radical and can disrupt things like hearings. And that he doesn't like you. Is there anything he can use against you in this?”

Despite himself, Barrett laughed. “He's past his prime. Keep tabs on him, but I doubt he'll amount to much.”

Cole didn't seem to mind chunks of silence in a meeting. Finally, he said, “I've got a concern about the groundwater.”

Barrett's balls sucked into his belly. “Groundwater? How so?”

Cole continued to look at the mountain.

Does he know something? Impossible. Does he suspect?

“I'm not convinced about the stability of the breccia pipe formation. Even with the in situ method, there is risk of crumbling and some of the debris leaking into the groundwater. I'm wondering if anyone on the other side will challenge it.”

Barrett leaned back in his chair, the well-oiled springs silent. “This has all been researched. Hell, you did most of it yourself.”

The shaggy head nodded. “Might be something I missed someone else caught.” Cole moved in slow motion to a leather Morris recliner and sat. He slouched, his long legs stretched in front of him. “When's the last time you logged the water? Wouldn't mind updating our records.”