Killer View

Cutter leaned back in his chair. “You know who it is,” he said, unable to conceal his surprise.

“I don’t.”

“You have an idea.”

“I imagine you do, too,” Walt said.

“But I don’t! Government, as I’ve said. A private firm, no matter how big, can’t guarantee legal charges dropped. Who in the government cares about my company staying in business? This guy promised my probation violation would be expunged. The NDA gave no hint of who was behind it. I don’t have any idea. Honestly.”

“I think we’re done here, Da

“Done? I’m not done.”

“I appreciate the information. As to the offer, there’s nothing I can do without warrants, and, if I seek a warrant and it gets back to whoever is making you this offer, that’s not good for anyone.” He thought a moment, working the corners. “I’d like to hear from you if they make contact. If you go the informer route, it’s done through the U.S. Attorney’s Office. I could help with that. But if we go to the wrong guy, my guess is the offer will be pulled and you’ll be back in a federal facility. The coke charge was about discrediting you, Da

“Yeah,” Cutter said sarcastically, “let’s admire their work.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Since when is the government that smart?”

Walt cracked a smile. He stood up from the chair and said, “Good luck, Da

“I came to you in good faith, Sheriff. You can’t just walk.”

“I’ve got problems of my own, Da

Cutter looked devastated.

Walt scribbled out a name. “Andy Hamilton’s in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle. Andy can’t be bought.” He passed the name to Cutter. “Use my name.”

“Thanks, Sheriff.”

“Tread lightly, Da

Cutter looked as if Walt had hit him.

“Do we even know if she’s actually with the CDC?” Walt asked. “I never checked her credentials.”

“Sweet Jesus!”

“Trust no one, Da

48

“MAY BE I’M NOT EXPLAINING IT RIGHT.” JOHN BORTON WAS a big, bearish man, with red hair, wide eyes, and an unexpectedly kind and soft minister’s voice. He’d started out as water master for the water district, inspecting headgates on irrigation canals, reporting violations, and locking flows at levels where they belonged. Then he’d served as an inspector for the state’s adjudication process-the redistribution of stream and river water to private landowners-that had taken five years and nearly cost a few lives. Now he was the water master for the central district, and, as such, ruled like a feudal lord over million-dollar ranches and their century-old legal rights to tap into and drain both the surface waters as well as the underground aquifer that flowed for thousands of miles, from British Columbia to Mexico.

His office was small, even by government standards. The water district was housed in a building that also leased space to the Nature Conservancy.

Walt and Borton were leaning on a worktable that held Fiona’s aerial photographs, a satellite image of central Idaho, and a topographical map of a fifty-square-mile region surrounding Craters of the Moon and reaching to the Pahsimeroi Valley.

“Think of it as an eddy,” Borton said. “Just like in open water, but, in this case, it happens to be underground. You’ve got this tremendous flow of water, sometimes thousands of feet below the surface, moving like a river north to south. Huge volume. It pushes up quite close to the surface for much of the route. But we know it always seeks the path of least resistance, as well as the lowest spot it can find. This range,” he said, indicating a spur of mountains that pushed toward the alluvial plain and the desert that housed the Idaho Nuclear Laboratory, “acts as a barrier, just like a levee or breakwater.”

“But you said the flow of the water is north to south,” Walt reminded. “And the elevation of the Pahsimeroi is higher than the desert. My interest is whether water could get from here,” he said, indicating the desert, “to here.” He pointed to the center of the Pahsimeroi Valley.

“And, logically, that’s impossible. How can water run uphill?” Borton dragged the satellite image closer. “But some rivers flow to the north in the Northern Hemisphere, don’t they? And so do some aquifers. In this case, it’s the result of a subterranean fault and a promontory.” He pointed out a mountain spine on the satellite image. “This looks like a weather map, but these gray swirls are actually the underground water-part of the Northern Rocky Mountain Intermontane Basins system-that exists thousands of feet below the surface and is one small part of a freshwater source that stretches from Canada all the way to Mexico. The Big Lost River disappears completely under the desert here and doesn’t resurface for hundreds of miles. But the force of that downward pressure has the same effect as a narrowing river: increased speed. That pushes a great quantity of water west and around this underground promontory. The flow is further restricted by faults on both sides, and, with nowhere to go, it flows north for nearly seventy miles, until most of it is absorbed into the more porous strata of the upper Pahsimeroi.”

For security reasons, the satellite image had grayed out the surface topography of an area that included the INL, but Walt pulled Fiona’s photograph alongside the image and visually compared the two. The long, feathered flow that was the rogue branch of the aquifer curled and turned directly beneath the area where he and Fiona had spotted the after-hours earthmoving equipment. For a moment, he just stared.

“This help any?” Borton asked, made uncomfortable by the long silence.

Walt looked up at the man, then back to the various pictures. “Does the water in the aquifer ever reach the surface of the Pahsimeroi Valley ’s floor? Is it part of the groundwater?”

“That’s a much bigger question,” Borton said, ru

“Do we know the locations of those deeper wells?” Walt asked.

“We would have a list of at least some of them in the state, because they’ve been the subject of adjudication.”

Not once had Borton asked what any of this was about, though Walt sensed his curiosity.

“How hard would it be for me to get hold of that list?” Walt asked.

“It’s a public record,” Borton returned quickly, having anticipated the request. “I don’t have those documents here, but the state water board should have copies.”

“That helps.”

“I do happen to have computer access,” Borton said with a twinkle in his eye. “And a printer. But any data that proved useful to you would have to eventually be sourced elsewhere. It didn’t come from me, Walt.”

“Understood.”

Borton glanced around the quiet office. “Wait right here,” he said.