“Is there a flaw in my logic?” she said icily.
“You bet there is.” He stood up. “The flaw is, you’re not on the goddamn case.”
“I know,” she said. “But I thought—”
He interrupted her, stretching his arm across the big desk and pointing an accusing finger at her face. “You’ve intercepted the psycholinguistic report and you’re trying to sneak your way back on the case — and I know why! You think it’s a high-profile case, and you’re trying to get yourself noticed.”
“Who by?” she said indignantly.
“FBI headquarters, the press, Governor Robson.”
“I am not!”
“You just listen up. You are off this case. Do you understand me? O — f–f, off. You don’t talk to your friend Simon about it. You don’t check power plant schemes. And you don’t propose raids on vigilante hangouts.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“This is what you do. You go home. And you leave this case to Marvin and me.”
“Brian—”
“Good-bye, Judy. Have a nice weekend.”
She stared at him. He was red faced and breathing hard. She felt furious but helpless. She fought back the angry retorts that sprang to her lips. She had been forced to apologize for swearing at him once already, and she did not need that humiliation again. She bit her lip. After a long moment she turned on her heel and walked out of the room.
11
Priest parked the old Plymouth ’Cuda at the side of the road in the faint light of early dawn. He took Melanie’s hand and led her into the forest. The mountain air was cool, and they shivered in their T-shirts until the effort of walking warmed their bodies. After a few minutes they emerged on a bluff that looked over the width of the Silver River Valley.
“This is where they want to build the dam,” Priest said.
At this point the valley narrowed to a bottleneck, so that the far side was no more than four or five hundred yards away. It was still too dark to see the river, but in the morning silence they heard it rushing along below them. As the light strengthened, they could distinguish the dark shapes of cranes and giant earthmoving machines below them, silent and still, like sleeping dinosaurs.
Priest had almost given up hope that Governor Robson would now negotiate. This was the second day since the Owens Valley earthquake, and still there was no word. Priest could not figure out the governor’s strategy, but it was not capitulation.
There would have to be another earthquake.
But he was anxious. Melanie and Star might be reluctant, especially as the second tremor would have to do more damage than the first. He had to firm up their commitment. He was starting with Melanie.
“It’ll create a lake ten miles long, all the way up the valley,” he told her. He could see her pale oval face become taut with anger. “Upstream from here, everything you see will be under water.”
Beyond the bottleneck, there was a broad valley floor. As the landscape became visible, they could see a scatter of houses and some neat cultivated fields, all connected by dirt tracks. Melanie said: “Surely someone tried to stop the dam?”
Priest nodded. “There was a big legal battle. We took no part. We don’t believe in courts and lawyers. And we didn’t want reporters and TV crews swarming all over our place — too many of us have secrets to keep. That’s why we don’t even tell people we’re a commune. Most of our neighbors don’t know we exist, and the others think the vineyard is run from Napa and staffed by transient workers. So we didn’t take part in the protest. But some of the wealthier residents hired lawyers, and the environmental groups sided with the local people. It did no good.”
“How come?”
“Governor Robson backed the dam and put this guy Al Honeymoon on the case.” Priest hated Honeymoon. He had lied and cheated and manipulated the press with total ruthlessness. “He got the whole thing turned around so that the media made folks here look like a handful of selfish types who wanted to deny electric power to every hospital and school in California.”
“Like it’s your fault that people in Los Angeles put underwater lights in their pools and have electric motors to close their drapes.”
“Right. So Coastal Electric got permission to build the dam.”
“And all those people will lose their homes.”
“Plus a pony-trekking center, a wildlife camp, several summer cabins, and a crazy bunch of armed vigilantes known as Los Alamos. Everyone gets compensation — except us, because we don’t own our land, we rent it on a one-year lease. We get nothing — for the best vineyard between Napa and Bordeaux.”
“And the only place I ever felt at peace.”
Priest gave a murmur of sympathy. This was the way he wanted the conversation to go. “Has Dusty always had these allergies?”
“From birth. He was actually allergic to milk — cow’s milk, formula, even breast milk. He survived on goat’s milk. That was when I realized. The human race
“But you took him to doctors.”
“Michael insisted. I knew they’d do no good. They gave us drugs that suppressed his immune system in order to inhibit the reaction to allergens. What kind of a way is that to treat his condition? He needed pure water and clean air and a healthy way of life. I guess I’ve been searching, ever since he was born, for a place like this.”
“It was hard for you.”
“You have no idea. A single woman with a sick kid can’t hold down a job, can’t get a decent apartment, can’t live. You think America’s a big place, but it’s all the damn same.”
“You were in a bad way when I met you.”
“I was about to kill myself, and Dusty, too.” Tears came to her eyes.
“Then you found this place.”
Her face darkened with anger. “And now they want to take it away from me.”
“The FBI is saying we didn’t cause the earthquake, and the governor hasn’t said anything.”
“The hell with them, we’ll have to do it again! Only this time make sure they
That was what he wanted her to say. “It would have to cause real damage, bring down some buildings. People might get hurt.”
“But we have no choice!”
“We could leave the valley, break up the commune, go back to the old way of life: regular jobs, money, poisoned air, greed, jealousy, and hate.”
He had her frightened. “No!” she cried. “Don’t say that!”
“I guess you’re right. We can’t go back now.”
“I sure can’t.”
He took another look up and down the valley. “We’ll make certain it stays the way God made it.”
She closed her eyes in relief and said: “Amen.”
He took her hand and led her through the trees back to the car.
Driving along the narrow road up the valley, Priest said: “Are you going to pick up Dusty from San Francisco today?”
“Yeah, I’ll leave after breakfast.”
Priest heard a strange noise over the asthmatic throb of the ancient V8 engine. He glanced up out of the side
