Quicksilver (The Forensic Geology Series, Prequel) by Toni Dwiggins Page A

to separate out the gold. And Henry thought he could keep dancing away from the vapor. More like dancing with the devil.”
    I shook my head.
    “And now,” Shelburne said, “he leaves me the dimes. You asked about the message? Blame. Short and sweet. And I get it.” He shouted once again, to the sky, “ I get it, Bro .”
    I said, suddenly chilled, “So what does he want?”
    “Fuck if I know. Apology? Admission of guilt?”
    First I’d heard Robert Shelburne use that particular expletive. First I’d seen him lose any manner of control. I took note.
    Walter said, “Is there a chance he wants revenge? To harm you?”
    “He’s had years to nurse that grudge. He could have sent me a bucket of dimes a hundred times over.”
    “Then why now?”
    “My best guess? Culmination. A lifetime of failures. Dad dies. Henry’s doing his last shot at finding the legacy. And maybe he’s tying up loose ends.” Shelburne suddenly grinned, tight. “Don’t worry. He’s not a violent man. If he wants to settle a grudge with me, it’ll be just that. The two of us. All I need from you is to get me to him. I’ll take it from there.”
    “Still,” I said, “you’re dealing with that chaotic mind.”
    Shelburne took a moment. “Let me ask you something. You told me your brother died. How did that happen?”
    “How is that relevant?”
    “If you’d rather not...”
    I said, “He had hemophilia—a blood-clotting disorder. He fell and hit his head. Bled into the brain.”
    “I’m very sorry.”
    “So was I. How is this relevant?”
    “What if you’d been able to ... catch him? What if you’d been there?”
    “I was there.”
    Walter put a hand on my arm.
    I added, “I wasn’t paying attention.”
    Shelburne said, “What if you could go back in time, and pay attention?”
    “What a damn fool question.”
    “Maybe so. But I don’t want to be asking myself that damn fool question some day.”

9
    W e set off.
    We rounded the pond, giving the cattails and the spongy soil a wide berth, circling to the far sit of the great pit, passing the crumbling mouth of a dark tunnel. The little stream we’d crossed earlier appeared here, braiding with another little stream, ferrying muck and sediment into the tunnel.
    I peered inside. No light. The sound of flowing water. A blast of cold air. I shivered.
    “No,” Shelburne said, “he won’t be in there.”
    He doesn’t like enclosed spaces. I got it. Claustrophobic, among his other impairments.
    Shelburne led us around the tunnel and out of the giant mining pit and over the lip down into the canyon below.
    Still the Trail of Trial and Error, he said. 
    And now, the fast way down to our next target.
    He took us by way of the bouldery outflow of the tunnel, the escape route of sludge and debris once washed out of the sluiceway and into the drainage tunnel, where the pit once and still disgorged its waste, where the father taught the boys to pan the tailings for pickings. Robert Shelburne shouted “ Henry ” and we listened for a moment to the hiss of water streaming out of the tunnel and boiling over the boulders as it picked up speed on the down slope.
    The debris stream fed into a larger creek that cut a channel into the canyon side.
    The canyon steepened.
    Waterfalls muscled down over boulders.
    The trail veered close to the tumbling creek and I thought, easy to lose your footing.
    Shelburne nimbly navigated the trail like he’d done it a thousand times before.
    We dropped until our trail bottomed out onto an oak-studded ledge overlooking a wide rocky river.
    The river ran like a boulevard through a high-rise canyon.
    I looked downriver, to the west, and then upriver, to the east. We were in the southern district of the Shelburne neighborhood.
    Walter said, “Which way would Henry have gone?”
    Shelburne said, “I’m sure he’s been all over this river canyon but which way now? I don’t know. From here, the trail goes east and west. From here, we follow the