Badwater (The Forensic Geology Series) Read Free Page B

the entire placard was visible. A drawing had been added. The first thing I noticed was that I could read the drawing without tipping my head. Which meant it had been done after the crash, with the trailer on its side.
    Walter made a sound, tinny in my earpiece. Astonishment.
    It was a crude sketch in black marker. Radiating lines fell from the fan blades, like rain. Like fallout. The lines fell onto a stick figure, who was running. Behind the figure was a skull and crossbones. Over my canned breathing I could hear Scotty mutter, “Goddamn weird-ass game.”
    Soliano said, “Our hijacker leaves us a message. The radiation...” He seemed to search for the words. He found them. “Escapes control.”
    “Yup,” Scotty said, grim. “That promises a bad nuclear day.”
~
    I focused, hard, on the scene at hand. “Has anything here been touched?”
    Soliano led us around to the front of the truck. “My evidence technicians have processed the scene. Photos, serology, fibers, prints. They recovered bullet casings, nine millimeter. We have established from the entry angle that the weapon was fired through the windshield from here.” He pointed to a patch of ground marked by orange cones. “The soil evidence is untouched. I lack the budget for a full-time geologist.”
    Yes, that keeps us in business.
    “However, I am most anxious that you see the driver.” Soliano gestured to a ladder leading up to the cab. “The driver is encased in mud.”
    Walter eyed the ladder. “Why don’t you take the driver, dear?”
    I shifted. Walter doesn’t think he can get up the ladder. I’ve seen him climb far worse than that, but not in bulky hazmat. And not, I calculated, since the strokes.
    He opened the field pack. “And why don’t I begin with the tires.”
    I selected my tools as if it was, after all, no big deal. But it was. As I crabbed up the ladder I worried it—what if Walter’s field days are numbered?—and then I reached the cab and my worry found a new focus.
    I leaned against the bent frame and gazed through the broken windows, sucking in several Darth Vader breaths.
    Jesus.
    I set out my tools on the side of the cab then shined the flashlight around the interior. There was a garbage dump on the caved-in downhill side. Crumpled brown bags. Grande Starbucks cup. Spilled tool kit. CDs. A paperback. I angled the light; Don Quixote. Son of a gun. Attached to the visor was a credential with the driver’s name, Ryan Beltzman, and next to that a red-lettered sign: Engage Brain Before Engaging Engine . I came back, finally, to the driver, around whom I had been peering, who I’d been avoiding.
    Ryan Beltzman was still strapped in, slumped rightward. His legs were jammed under the dashboard. Even hanging from the seat belt, he showed the stiffness of early rigor. He was blond, like Scotty, although his hair was longer. The side of his head was dented, like the cab itself. He’d been shot. I couldn’t tell how many bullets it had taken to deconstruct his face. Gunshot wounds are not my field but I’ve seen enough of them at other crime scenes to think that what happened to Beltzman, here, was overkill.
    Perp’s a marksman, I thought. With a temper.
    I took a big inhale and moved on to the rest of the body.
    Beltzman was coated with mud—Soliano got that right. Jeans, T-shirt, back of the head. I picked up my scalpel, clumsy in gloved fingers. I chose a thick skin of mud on the left shoulder and pried a chunk free. Not a pretty piece of work. Probably didn’t matter—this guy had clearly rolled in the mud and I was not going to be finding any neat sequences of deposition. I deposited the mud chunk in a specimen dish. I took two more samples and then something caught my eye, in his shirt pocket. I poked with the scalpel. Mud flaked. It was a joint.
    Oh God. The radwaste driver’s a pothead.
    I would have liked to get to his shoe soles but I’d have to climb in with him. I did not really care to do that. I climbed down