Bones Are Forever (33 page)

“You a friend of Joseph’s?”

“Mm.”

Rainwater hesitated, then waggled me in with upturned fingers.

As I wormed my way forward, he cleared space on his blotter, unfolded a white cloth, and spread it flat with his palms. Then he exchanged the bifocals for glasses with a little microscope stuck to each lens.

I gave him the purloined sample. He poured the gravel onto the cloth, turned on and adjusted a lamp clamped to one side of his desk, and leaned in.

I waited.

Every now and then Rainwater poked at the sample, rearranging the mix with one gnarled finger.

Long minutes passed. The entire floor was absolutely still.

“Have you anything else?” No robot now. Rainwater sounded genuinely interested.

I lay the five-by-seven on his desk.

The old man’s shoulders twitched, and I heard a sharp intake of air.

Rainwater switched back to the bifocals. Stared some more at the photo. Finally, his eyes met mine.

“My nephew put you up to some kind of stunt?”

“No, sir.”

“Sweet Lord in the rushes.”

“D
ID YOU COLLECT THIS?”

“No, sir.”

“Who did you say you are?”

I repeated my name but offered nothing else.

“Got any idea what diamond indicator minerals are?”

“Crystals that form in the earth’s upper mantle as companions to diamonds.”

“Hm.”

“The difference is, DIMs are millions of times more numerous, so they’re worth next to nothing.” Trying to impress.

Rainwater hit a keyboard combo to save his work. “Do you know how to look through a scope, young lady?”

“I do.” Wishing Binny could have heard the appellation.

The old man swiveled and pulled the cover from a microscope I hadn’t noticed in the jumble behind his desk. The thing was primitive, probably from a student lab. “Prefer a scanning electron microscope, but this old gal will do.”

Rainwater transferred my sample to the viewing plate. Then he flicked a switch, shoved his glasses onto his forehead, peered through the eyepieces, and adjusted focus.

“Look at this.” Rolling his chair sideways.

I squeezed behind the desk and bent down.

And was amazed at the beauty of what I saw.

“That’s magnified two hundred times.”

“Wow,” I said.

“Pretty, eh? When a prospector is out panning or bagging or however he does his sampling, he’s mostly looking for hue.”

I was mesmerized by the colors and shapes of the crystals.

“See the red and orange ones? Those are from the garnet group. The green to sort of lemony-yellow ones are from the pyroxene group. Olivine is one. The black guys are ilmenites.”

“What causes the color differences?”

“Iron, manganese, and chromium content.”

“So you’re saying this sample contains diamond indicators.”

“It’s loaded. One of the richest I’ve ever seen. See those big green ones?”

“Yes.”

“And this.”

I straightened. Rainwater was holding the five-by-seven of the gravel in Ruben’s velvet sack.

“Good call including a scale.” He pointed at the green pebbles. “These are chunks of chrome diopside. Usually, they’re microscopic. The biggest I can recall seeing was maybe one centimeter. These are almost two centimeters each. Hell, you could mount these babies and sell them in a jewelry store.”

“Chrome diopside?” Calm.

“Crystals that form deep within the earth, then get carried to the surface in a rock called kimberlite, which is softer. Over the eons the kimberlite erodes away, leaving the crystals intact.”

“So this came from a site near a kimberlite pipe?” Calm.

“I’d say there’s a mighty good chance. I’d look for an infill lake or some similar formation.” Rainwater steepled his fingers and eyed me over them. “You seem quite knowledgeable yourself.”

“No, sir. Not really. But there’s one other thing. I wonder if you can tell me how to research a claim.”

“A mineral claim?”

I must have looked confused.

“A mineral claim must be recorded with this office within sixty days of the date it was staked. To do that, a staker files paperwork and a sketch of the claim and pays his fees.”

“A mineral claim does what?”

“Gives the owner rights to the subsurface minerals for up to ten years if a specific amount of work is done on the claim each year.”

I could hear Rainwater retreating into robot mode.

“If the required amount of work is done on the claim, a person or company can apply to
lease
the claim anytime before the thirtieth day after the tenth anniversary date of the claim. A mineral lease is good for twenty-one years and may be extended for another twenty-one years if the rental payments are up-to-date and the renewal fees are paid. If a person or company is going to begin production—meaning construction, mining, milling, etc.—then the claim must be taken to lease.”

“Could we start with mineral claims?” I asked.

“You’d better pull up a chair.”

As I did that, Rainwater tapped the keyboard. A new page appeared. The header said
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada
in French and English. A red sidebar offered a choice of links.

“I’m going into the SID viewer.” Rainwater was entering a username and password. “SID contains a number of spatially integrated datasets.”

A map filled the screen. I recognized the NWT and Nunavut. Hudson Bay. The places I’d viewed on the inside cover of the mining book. Rivers appeared in deep blue, lakes in turquoise, boundary lines and community names in black.

“Got to zoom to a scale of under a thousand. Otherwise, the mineral claims data won’t appear on the table of contents. For now let’s stick to NWT.”

A red rectangle formed on the screen. Rainwater clicked an icon, and the area inside expanded.

A sidebar with choices ran vertically down the map’s right edge. Rainwater chose to display two layers by placing dots in the selection boxes beside the categories. Active mineral claims. Prospecting permits.

He refreshed the map, and gray, green, and chartreuse boxes appeared superimposed on the topography. Each box had a number. Rainwater chose an icon from a panel on the left, and a query box appeared at the bottom of the screen. On a scroll bar under “field,” he chose “C_Owners.owner_Nam1.” Under “operator,” he chose “=.”

His fingers paused at the “value” field. “Name?”

“McLeod,” I said.

He typed the letters, hit “add to query string,” then “enter.”

A pulsating silver bar said the system was searching.

Seconds later, a spreadsheet appeared below the map. It contained about twenty columns of data.

I skimmed the headers. Claim number. Claim status. Date claim was recorded. Acreage. Shape. Some abbreviations I lacked the expertise to interpret.

“McLeod was a busy boy.” Rainwater was scrolling down through the rows. “Ninety-seven claims. Most recorded in the nineties. All withdrawn or lapsed, save three.”

“Can you pull up information on the active claims?”

Rainwater hit some keys. “Looks like there are coowners on all three. Nellie M. Snook. Daryl G. Beck. Alice A. Ruben.”

Pulse galloping, I forced myself calm. “McLeod died in 2008. How would that affect his claims?”

“Unless the deceased party left instructions otherwise, I assume the claims would belong wholly to the coregistrants as long as all fees were paid and use requirements met.”

“Can you pull up one of the active claims?”

Rainwater tapped, and a block of green squares appeared on the map. They were dead north of Yellowknife, northwest of the Ekati mine, just below the border with Nunavut.

I stared at the cluster. Worlds were colliding. More accurately, separating.

Snook said it. I just didn’t hear.

The only thing Farley McLeod gave his kids was a quick shot of sperm and a worthless piece of dirt in the middle of nowhere.

Farley McLeod had left his children mineral rights on land he’d staked. Ruben and Snook each possessed samples rich in diamond indicator minerals, probably given with the warning that they be safeguarded.

The samples probably came from the land McLeod had staked.

Sweet baby Jesus.

Beck and Ruben hadn’t been killed in a battle over drugs. They owned mineral claims potentially worth millions. Someone wanted those claims.

But who?

A cluster of adjacent squares glowed the same bright green as those owned by Snook and her siblings. I pointed to them. “Are those active?”

“They are. Looks like someone snatched up the claims that McLeod let lapse.” Rainwater clicked on a square. Then another. And another. “All owned by an entity called Fast Moving.” He clucked his tongue. “The outfit’s not moving all
that
fast. It’s met the requirements for maintaining the claim but done nothing else.”

“Is it some sort of corporation?”

Rainwater chuckled. “Sorry. Not my skill set.”

The id cells had the band back together.

Fast Moving.

The name meant nothing to me.

While I was poking at my subconscious, my cortex conjured a terrible thought. Was Snook in danger?

“Thank you so much, Professor Rainwater.” I rose. “This has been very educational.”

Rainwater poured the sample back into the ketchup container. Handed it to me. “You are most welcome.”

I maneuvered around the desk. I was at the door when Rainwater spoke again.

“Dr. Brennan.”

I turned, surprised at the old man’s use of the title.

“Your secret is safe with me.”

“What?”

“Catch the bastards.”

I
WAS BECOMING A REGULAR ON RAGGED ASS. STILL, THE
atmosphere felt hostile.

As I pulled to my usual spot on the shoulder, I noticed a gray pickup in Snook’s drive. It had a rusting tailpipe and a bumper sticker saying
Give Wildlife a Brake
. I’d seen it before, couldn’t recall where. Rusty pickups were all the rage in Yellowknife.

I decided to hold tight.

Good call.

Ten minutes later, the side door opened, and a man stepped from the house to the carport. His face was in shadow, but his form looked familiar.

The man got into the truck and backed toward the street. While shifting gears, he glanced my way.

We registered mutual expressions of shock.

Horace Tyne.

Without a word, Tyne gunned it up Ragged Ass. Pebbles spit by his wheels ticked the side of the Camry.

What was Horace Tyne doing with Nellie Snook?

I got out, crossed to the house, and banged on the door.

Snook answered right away, holding a ball cap in one hand. “Don’t worry. I’ve got it.”

Realizing I wasn’t Tyne, she frowned. “You’re like a bad rash. You just keep coming back.”

“Was that Horace Tyne?”

“What do you want?”

“You told me your father left land to you and your brother.”

“Don’t remember saying that, but so what?”

“Did the land also belong to Annaliese?”

“He did it to salve his conscience for ignoring us all our lives. That’s my opinion, and I’ll never change it.”

“Think a minute. Do you own the land outright or the mineral claims?”

Snook’s brows winged farther down. “What’s the difference?”

“Where is the land?”

“All I know is it’s not here in Yellowknife. A town lot might have value. This is a worthless hunk of nothing so far out on the tundra no one would buy it.”

“Have you tried to sell?”

“Right.” She snorted. “That’d happen. Now that the deeds belong to me outright, I’m going to offload the land to charity. I’m tired of shelling out for all three of us. Annaliese and Daryl never had a nickel to spare.”

“You plan to donate the property to Horace Tyne?”

“Yes.” Defensive. “I sign a few papers, I’m out from under the taxes, or the fees, or whatever it is I’ve been paying.”

“For his preserve.”

“When they open the new mine, the caribou won’t have no place to go. Their migration routes will be shattered.”

Something cold clammed into my gut. “Which new mine?”

“Gahcho Kué.”

I grasped each of Snook’s upper arms and locked my eyes onto hers. She stiffened but did not pull back.