Quicksilver (The Forensic Geology Series, Prequel) Read Free

along. Following the veins, panning the rivers. Henry went for it big-time. He still does. He’s not comfortable living in the present. He’s a throwback to the nineteenth century, to the Gold Rush.”
    “And you?” Walter asked.
    “I took a different path. I’m a venture capitalist. I help companies get a start. I suppose you could say my gold country is Silicon Valley—although I’d never put it that way to my brother. Gold country is gold country for Henry, pure and simple. And this,” Shelburne tapped the rock, “is what sent Henry into the wild three days ago. And what brought me to you.”
    “Why us?” Walter asked.
    “Well, you specifically. I found you online.”
    “Our website.”
    “First, I found you on the forums. You appear to be the go-to guy for anyone following the legends.”
    Walter said, “I debunk the legends that deserve debunking.”
    “And those with merit?”
    “I add my expertise.”
    “All right, then.”
    “Mr. Shelburne, I must clarify that I am not, professionally, a mining geologist.”
    “But you have the itch.”
    After a long moment Walter said, “Let me give you a backgrounder. Did you ever watch a television program called Dogtown?”
    “Sure, when I was a kid. One of those old shows you can stream on the Net.”
    “It lives on,” Walter said, brittle.
    “Why do you ask?”
    “My mother was script supervisor. My father was production manager.”
    “No shit?”
    “No shit,” Walter confirmed. “When I was a boy I haunted the set, which was a false-front mining camp. For me, it was faux-gritty enough to pretend it was real. There was a consultant, a mining geologist, and one day he took me aside and scraped the gold paint off a ‘nugget’ and explained how that quartz pebble could be associated with real gold. And then I no longer had to pretend. I knew how to make the false real—become a geologist. In graduate school, however, my thesis advisor was called in to consult with the FBI about a murder, in which sand was found in the pant cuffs of the victim. I came along. And here I am, today. A forensic geologist.”
    Shelburne said, “Then for my purposes you’re the best of both worlds.”
    Walter pretended not to be flattered.
    Shelburne turned to me. “What about you? You’ve been quiet.”
    “Just waiting to get back on topic.”
    Shelburne lifted his palms. “Shoot.”
    I shot. “Was it your brother who found this chunk of ore?”
    “No. Our grandfather found it, so the story goes. It turned up at our father’s house. Dad died a month ago. My brother and I had a reunion—Henry still lives in the old hometown—and I drove up and we went through Dad’s things. There was a lot to go through. Family things, going back to my grandfather’s day. An attic full of junk, mostly. That’s where we turned up this ugly customer. I would have tossed it but Henry recognized it for what it was. That was three weeks ago. Day before yesterday I got a message from Henry’s landlady. He lives in a boarding house, real old-timey place. She said he’d disappeared. She wouldn’t have taken notice—he went off on his wanderings all the time—but this time he’d left the sink faucet running. When she checked his room she found a note. ‘Call Robert.’ I got there in three hours. He’d gone hunting the source of granddaddy’s ore.”
    I wasn’t getting it. “But he left the specimen behind?”
    “Not entirely. He left this half behind.” Shelburne indicated the rock in the lunchbox. “It was on his table, along with a microscope and tools and a lot of rock dust. He’d split the rock. Hammer and chisel, bam bam bam. He took half, left me half. Very melodramatic. That’s Henry.”
    “And you’re certain he went looking for the source?”
    “Yes.”
    “He’d know how to do that?”
    “My brother is something of an amateur geologist—if you’ll pardon the expression. All those years tramping around the gold country, he’s schooled himself in the