Virtue Falls Read online

  Elizabeth had always heard so much about the onset of a tsunami, seen videos shot by people on the scene, tried to imagine what it would be like to view it in person. Now she was viewing it, large and clear, the only one of the team lucky enough to be a witness to the cataclysm.

  She had so much at stake here, not merely the knowledge that hundreds of scientists would study every scrap of evidence in classes and conferences, and thousands of people would view her video on television. She also had a reputation to uphold, a reputation formed not by her actions but by the actions of her parents. She had to prove she wasn’t Misty, beautiful and wanton. She had to prove she wasn’t Charles, prey to murderous rages. If Elizabeth could remain cool under this pressure, never again would there be suspicious glances cast her way, or whispered rumors behind her back.

  Of course, Garik would tell her she was kidding herself, and maybe she was.

  But hey, Garik—maybe I want to prove something to myself.

  In her best lecture voice, she said, “We can clearly see this is the case, and can also see why the geological evidence in Virtue Falls Canyon points to massive tsunamis which in the past have swept far up the river, filling it like a bathtub, then … wait. Far out to sea—is that the swell?”

  Her heart began to pound so loudly she could hear it in her ears.

  It was only a swell. On a normal day, she wouldn’t have glanced twice.

  But it was long, stretching from north to south as far as she could see, and moving fast. She took the camera away from her face and watched, glancing from the view screen to the real panorama as the swell got closer, rose higher, and higher still, and finally higher in the middle where it raced toward her.

  Her excitement mounted, and she resumed her commentary. “You’re witness to the fact that our theory that the shallow ocean floor at the mouth of Virtue Falls Canyon contributes to unusually large tsunamis … is correct.”

  The wave crested and crashed, the noise unimaginable, and she filmed the forward edge as it swept up the river, ripping out giant trees by their roots and tossing them into the air. The water cut the soil out from under the rim of the canyon; giant boulders tumbled like marbles in the hands of a careless boy. As the wave churned through the channel, it grew brown, and then black.

  Elizabeth raised her voice. “The roar and tumult shakes the ground, and I don’t know if I’m experiencing the power of the tsunami or another earthquake. Although I’m standing on the high point, and never in geological time has the water ever reached this area around me, I know there’s a first time for everything, and the danger is real.”

  The danger was real; the water could claw its way up here, sweep her away, and her body would never be recovered.

  Yet she wouldn’t move for the world. She had been born to bear witness to this moment. She had dreamed about it, hoped for it, imagined it. She remembered her father describing the long-ago cataclysm …

  Charles sat next to her on a rock toasted by the sun, and pointed out to sea, and with gestures and exuberance he told the young Elizabeth about the restless earth, and how the ground that seemed stable could change in a minute, and glow red with fire or blue with ice, or tremble and break.

  Elizabeth listened, eyes wide, caught up in his wonder and excitement, until Mommy slid her arms around his neck, and kissed his cheek, and said, “Enough now, Charles, she’ll have nightmares.”

  “You won’t, will you, Elizabeth?” Daddy asked.

  “No!” Elizabeth said stoutly.

  Daddy turned to Mommy. “See? She’s my daughter through and through. Except that she’s almost as pretty as you.” He smiled at her, a thin, tall, tanned man with thinning hair and wrinkles around his eyes.

  Mommy kissed his mouth. But she crushed the collar of his golf shirt in her fist, and her knuckles strained white against the faded blue. Lifting her head, she smiled at her little girl. “When Elizabeth is grown, she will be much prettier than I am. In the meantime, it’s time to eat.”

  Daddy let Mommy go reluctantly, and he watched her so lovingly Elizabeth felt warm. Secure.

  But Elizabeth hadn’t believed Mommy. Mommy was so beautiful, with a halo of gold hair and big pretty dark blue eyes, and Elizabeth loved everything about her.

  Mommy …

  The earth-breaking, forward-grinding noise stopped.

  Elizabeth caught her breath.

  Remarkable and startling as it had been, the memory was over.

  The moment was now—and danger appeared from an unexpected source.

  The long, giant, frothy wave became a whirlpool. It swirled, roaring like the open mouth of a hungry beast. It ate the sides of the canyon, climbing higher and higher, and for the first time, fear caught at her.

  Run. Elizabeth, run!

  Then, inexorably, the water in the middle of the canyon slipped backward toward the ocean, dragging the edges after it, ripping more of the now water-softened ground away.

  Elizabeth backed away from the edge. She pretended that her terror had been minor—certainly it had been natural—and she took up her commentary again. With a depth of fascination that marked her encounters with the natural world, she said, “The first tsunami is pulling back, but considering the magnitude of the earthquake, I expect at least three big waves.”

  And next time, she would know about the whirlpool, and before it threatened her, she would back away.

  Garik always said she had no common sense when it came to danger.

  Maybe not. Not the first time. But she learned from her mistakes.

  Which was more than she could say about him.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Over an hour later, three waves had advanced and retreated in a horrible, magnificent, destructive rhythm. The second tsunami had been the largest, cresting halfway up the canyon, sucking away debris while the earth rocked beneath Elizabeth’s feet. She hated for it to be over, and yet it was, the earthquake reduced to the occasional aftershock, the waves subsiding as if weary … and anyway, her camera battery was almost dead. In a voice hoarse with excitement and fatigue, she said, “The sun is setting, and I believe the worst of nature’s onslaught is finished. When the team returns, and we’re sure it’s safe, we’ll return to the many sites we have studied in the Virtue Falls Canyon—it will take a GPS to locate them—and investigate the changes the earthquake and tsunami have wrought. For now, as the sun sets, I can feel the earth living and breathing beneath my feet, and I have to wonder—what will tomorrow bring? Elizabeth Banner, signing off from Virtue Falls Canyon.”

  Trembling with excitement and perhaps a small residue of fear, she put the camera away in her bag, and placed it on the ground. With the light failing and the worst of the disaster behind her, she should go into town.

  But her heart still raced, and the need to discover more, learn more, observe every detail of a splendid cataclysm was a drug in her veins.

  One last surveillance and she would go. One last examination of the powerful, pervasive evidence that everything she and her father had worked to prove was true.

  Walking to the edge of the canyon, right to the spot where the ground dropped away into its steep slope, she looked, just looked with her whole eyes and for her whole self. She hugged herself, thankful she had been in the right place at the right time, amazed at the savagery and glory of nature.

  Yet the pain in her hand now prodded at her. Her focus was narrowing, returning to the smaller details of life. She wanted to remain, to savor, yet she knew she should get back to town and find a doctor.

  About twenty feet down in the canyon, caught in a pile of debris, something bleached and white caught her eye.

  What was that … down there? A bone?

  She inched down the slope, peering at it. Holding on to tree trunks and grabbing at branches, she slid farther down the slope, the loose dirt falling away beneath her feet.

  A femur? A human femur? Her mind leaped in scientific anticipation. Had the tsunami uncovered an archeological treasure? How cool would t
hat be, if not only had her father’s prediction of earth-shattering disaster come true, but also the cataclysm had unearthed some ancient encampment built by prehistoric man?

  Something slithered in the underbrush.

  She half-screamed, then clutched her chest as a garter snake rippled away. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she heard her father’s voice say, They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.

  She doubted that. She was pretty calm about most of the creatures that populated the great outdoors, but snakes … She shuddered.

  She should climb back up. She knew she should. Snakes weren’t the only creatures that had been displaced by the water. All of those creatures would be confused and hostile. The tree trunks and the wild clutter of branches that was her goal had come to rest at the highest watermark. The ground in the vicinity was unstable, ready to slide into the chasm. The earth’s slightest shudder could send her tumbling into the mud below. She’d slip down into the canyon until a rock or debris stopped her—or until she rolled off a newly exposed cliff face and fell all the way to the bottom.

  At least the video would be safe in its bag at the top of the canyon.

  Stupid thought, but that bone beckoned. She scooted closer, and closer, the bone gleaming in the gathering twilight. She stretched until her fingertips touched it, leaned farther until she was able to grasp it, brought it back and looked at it.

  It didn’t look that old.

  Of course, it was old. All the flesh had been cleaned away. But it wasn’t petrified. It didn’t show the cracks of extreme old age. She turned it over and over in her hands. In fact, she didn’t even know if it was human. What had she been thinking, to allow her enthusiasm to lead her here?

  From the rim above, a man’s voice snapped, “What are you doing?”

  She gasped, jumped, and dropped the bone. Grabbed for it. Caught it. Her feet skidded out from underneath her. She landed on her butt, crashed into the pile of brush, and came to an ignominious, and lucky, halt. That hurt her hand, a piercing pain that made her close her eyes long enough to gain control.

  Then she looked up at the rim.

  The man loomed there, a silhouette against the failing blue of the sky. He wore a broad hat. His hands rested on his belt. He carried a gun.

  It was the sheriff. Dennis Foster. He glared at her as if he discovered her committing a crime.

  Swift guilt rose in her. “I’m, um … I saw this bone.” She showed him. “I thought an … archeological find…”

  He still glared.

  “You know. I thought that the tsunami had uncovered a site where ancient man had built his home and…” Her voice faltered.

  Sheriff Foster had never liked her.

  She was used to people not liking or trusting her. But from the first moment they’d met, he had seemed more hostile than most. He’d been the one who had brought in the evidence to convict her father. She would have thought he’d be gloating, or patronizing. But he made it clear, right from the first moment he’d spotted her at the Oceanview Café, that he hated the sight of her.

  Maybe she reminded him of Misty. Her aunt had been like that sometimes, angry that Elizabeth looked so much like her mother.

  “You’re alone out here,” he said. “If anything happened to you, no one would find you for a very long time.”

  She found his choice of words … menacing. “I know.”

  “Especially since the earthquake created real emergencies in town.”

  “I’m sure.” She tucked the bone under her arm and started to pull herself up the steep slope to the rim. She grabbed branches and trees, used her good hand to hoist herself from one spot to another.

  Sheriff Foster watched without any offer of assistance. Probably he figured that if she had managed to get herself down there, she could get herself out. But he still loomed, unmoving, impatience shimmering, and if she could have figured out a different way around, she would have taken it.

  At last, she crawled, literally crawled, onto level ground.

  He moved back. But not far.

  She stood. She looked around and located her bag … behind him.

  “Are you satisfied now?” He asked as if he had the right to know.

  Taking the bone out from underneath her arm, she looked at it again. “Archeology is not my specialty, of course, but I think this bone is probably no more than a hundred to two hundred years old.”

  He barely glanced at it. “Probably it came from the whore’s cemetery.”

  The contemptuous tone, the use of that word, the word she’d heard applied to her mother, shocked her. He wasn’t being rude to her—but it sure seemed like it. “What are you talking about?”

  “Local story goes that late in the nineteenth century, Virtue Falls sported a thriving brothel. When the whores died, the ladies of the town didn’t want them resting beside them in the town cemetery, so they consecrated some ground somewhere farther up the canyon on a flat spot, and buried them there.” His words were clipped, his tone was flat and cold.

  “Is that true?” Elizabeth clutched one end of the bone in both her hands.

  “I don’t know. But it seems likely.”

  “Wow.” She was, she realized, holding the bone like a weapon. “That’s so unfeeling.”

  His impatience grew to something more, something close to violence. “I’ve barely got things under control in town, I’m running a fast perimeter check to survey damage and see if there’s anyone who needs help, and you want me to concern myself with old bones?”

  It took her a minute to realize that he had thought she was calling him unfeeling. “No! I meant … I meant it was cold of the town women to shove the prostitutes into such a lonely place.”

  “Oh. That.” He waved a dismissive hand.

  She flinched, and ducked.

  Satisfaction gleamed in his eyes.

  A bully. He was a bully.

  But he wouldn’t hurt her. After all, he was the sheriff.

  Although, if he did want to hurt her, they were 1.6 miles from town, there was no one to hear her scream, and he could dispose of her body by the simple act of shoving her off the cliff and telling everybody the crazy man’s daughter had fallen while filming the tsunami.

  “Was anybody in town hurt?” She hoped not.

  “We haven’t found any bodies yet. But people are trapped in collapsed buildings. Medical personnel are hopping. You should go back to town. Get that hand stitched.”

  She stepped sideways and caught the strap of her bag. “How did you know my hand needs stitching?”

  His impatience swelled again, and his voice was sharp and aggressive. “Because Rainbow Breezewing found me and shrieked that you were probably bleeding to death and I had to find you. Why else would I do a perimeter check now?”

  “I don’t know. But thank you. This was nice of you.” She inched away, bag over her shoulder, still holding the bone like a club.

  “Give me that damned thing!” He moved fast, grabbing the bone and twisting it out of her grasp.

  She turned and ran.

  Sheriff Foster was a man teetering on the edge of violence, and she wanted to be nowhere near when he fell.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Garik Jacobsen walked into his Las Vegas apartment, his home now for eight months. He flipped on the TV, flung his suit jacket on the chair, and placed the Styrofoam containers that held his dinner on the kitchen counter. As he headed for the bedroom, his stomach rumbled.

  Ever since the FBI had taken his badge, he hadn’t been eating regularly.

  But tonight, for the first time, he knew exactly what to do, and his appetite had come back with a vengeance.

  Yay for him.

  The bedroom was stark: blinds at the window, a bed, a nightstand, a reading lamp. He pulled open the drawer and looked down at the pistol he wasn’t supposed to own. He picked it up, weighed it in his hand, checked to see that it was properly loaded. It was. And the safety was on. Putting the pistol back, he shut the drawer.
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br />   He kicked his dress shoes in the direction of the closet. They banged, one by one, into the cheap wooden sliding door.

  He worked as a security guard at Nordstrom; the tie had been loosened as soon as he left the store. The jacket had come off as soon as he got to the court-ordered therapist’s office. Now it was time for T-shirt and jeans, and he donned them with the reverence of a man who wore them all too seldom.

  Opening the drawer again, he picked up the pistol. He shoved it into his waistband, and headed back to the kitchen. There, he kicked a discarded pizza box aside. He flipped open the tops of his Styrofoam containers and admired the contents.

  Yeah. Steak: thick, charbroiled, rare. Potatoes au gratin with enough cheese to give a cardiologist a heart attack. Green beans cooked with bacon.

  He might skip the green beans. He liked them, but what was the point of eating something good for him now?

  In the other container, tiramisu. In the paper cup, espresso.

  Yeah.

  He heated the skillet on the stove, melted a stick of butter until it was smoking, and slapped the steak in to crisp it up. He put the beans and potatoes on a plate and into the microwave. He got out a fork and his good steak knife—it was actually a stiletto, but he wasn’t allowed to own one of those either, so he called it a steak knife—and put it on the coffee table.

  On the TV, a rerun of CSI. Like he needed to watch that noble shit about duty and honor and esprit de corps. He changed the channel, found The Punisher, one of the best, most violent, stupidest movies of all time, and left it.

  He flipped the steak, watched it sizzle another minute, then pulled the plate out of the microwave and lovingly laid the steak beside the steaming potatoes. Going to the couch, he sat down, put the plate on the table, and pulled the pistol from his waistband. He placed it beside the plate, within easy reach.

  The movie had ended. The local news blared, the silly anchor team making much of insignificant details in the Las Vegas area while ignoring the big shit that was important. He used the remote to mute them, picking up his knife and fork, and with exquisite care, he carved the steak.