Earthquake Games
Contents
Acknowledgments
1
Colorado Springs, Colorado
2
The Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Westside, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Scenic Viewing Site, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado
3
Great Falls, Virginia
Special Investigations Bureau, Colorado Springs, Colorado
The Great Sand Dunes, Colorado
Special Investigations Bureau, Colorado Springs, Colorado
4
Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado
5
The Williams’s Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Joni’s Restaurant, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Best Western Motel, Alamosa, Colorado
6
The Williams’s Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Special Investigations Bureau, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Huerfano County Sheriff ’s Office, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado
7
Alamosa County Sheriff ’s Office, San Luis Valley, Colorado
8
Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado
San Luis Valley, Colorado
Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado
San Luis Valley, Colorado
9
Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Great Falls, Virginia
Kim’s Place, San Luis Valley, Colorado
10
Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado
San Luis Valley, Colorado
Gaming Center, Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado
Special Investigations Bureau, Colorado Springs, Colorado
11
Crestone, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Perkins Restaurant, Colorado Springs, Colorado
12
Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado
La Veta, Colorado
Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Special Investigations Bureau, Colorado Springs, Colorado
13
Great Falls, Virginia
The Williams’s Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado
14
Crestone, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado
15
Westside, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Alamosa, Colorado
Special Investigations Bureau, Colorado Springs, Colorado
16
Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado
17
Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Crestone, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Great Falls, Virginia
Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado
18
Special Investigations Bureau, Colorado Springs, Colorado
The Williams’s Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado
The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
19
Special Investigations Bureau, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Kim’s Place, Alamosa, Colorado
Interstate 25, Southern Colorado
Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado
20
The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
The Williams’s Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado
21
Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado
The Williams’s Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado
The Williams’s Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado
22
Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado
The Williams’s Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado
The Williams’s Ranch, San Luis Valley, Colorado
23
Great Sand Dunes, Latitude 37.47.50, Longitude 105.33.20, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Great Sand Dunes, Latitude 37.47.50, Longitude 105.33.20, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Great Sand Dunes, Latitude 37.47.50, Longitude 105.33.20, San Luis Valley, Colorado
24
Great Sand Dunes, Latitude 37.47.50, Longitude 105.33.20, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Great Sand Dunes, Latitude 37.47.50, Longitude 105.33.20, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Great Sand Dunes, Latitude 37.47.50, Longitude 105.33.20, San Luis Valley, Colorado
25
Great Sand Dunes, Latitude 37.47.50, Longitude 105.33.20, San Luis Valley, Colorado
North of the Great Sand Dunes, Colorado
Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado
26
The Rio Grande River, San Luis Valley, Colorado
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Epilogue
Great Falls, Virginia
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
EARTHQUAKE GAMES
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2000 by Bonnie Ramthun
This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.
For information address:
The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://www.penguinputnam.com
ISBN: 978-1-1012-1445-9
A JOVE BOOK®
Jove Books first published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
JOVE and the “J” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.
Electronic edition: February 2002
Titles by Bonnie Ramthun
EARTHQUAKE GAMES
GROUND ZERO
For my father, Lee John Droege
Acknowledgments
Writing a book while raising three children and with one on the way was a bit of an effort. Sometimes I felt like I was trying to launch the space shuttle with a ’67 Chevy and a set of jumper cables. This book happened because of my friends and family, and I’d like to acknowledge them here.
Marcy Zipke picked my first book, Ground Zero, out of the slush pile at Putnam. She edited Ground Zero and now Earthquake Games with superb skill. In the past year, I have come to know her as an editor and as a friend. Stacy Creamer, senior editor at Putnam, generous and brilliant, patiently explained every step of the publishing process to me and guided Ground Zero and now Earthquake Games to a successful launch. She and Marcy are wise, witty, and honorable. I’m lucky to know them.
When
my deadline for Earthquake Games loomed and I was falling behind, my sister Roxanne offered to look after my boys and me at her house while I wrote. This was heaven for everyone, since her house is a ranch in Wyoming. My boys swam, trampolined, fished, hiked, walked 4-H sheep (did you know they have to be walked like dogs?), and generally had an incredible time. I wrote every minute I could, and this helped put me over the top. Heartfelt thanks to my handsome and athletic nephews Aaron, Eric, Brandon, and Jim Tomich for babysitting my little ones with good cheer. Also thanks to Andy Tomich, who did the daddy bottle duty for my husband, who couldn’t be there, and of course, thanks to the incomparable Roxanne.
I’d also like to acknowledge the friends I made simply by having siblings. My brothers married smart, strong, gorgeous women. Okay, I guess my brothers are kind of cute and bright and all, but still, how did they manage this? My sisters-in-law Lara Long, Sharon Droege, Jan Droege, Dawn Butler, and Jodi Butler have been an inspiration and a help. My brothers-in-law Michael Larson and Andy Tomich, on the flip side, are kind, funny, superintelligent guys. Thanks also to Kim Goggin, my terrific sister-in-law, and my in-laws Gary and Cindy Ramthun. They are generous, kind, and wise.
Thanks to Megan Silva, friend and physician, who researched the medical information in this book. Any mistakes are mine, not hers.
I am frequently asked how I manage to find time to write. I have a high school girl come over twice a week after school. She babysits for two hours and I write like a maniac. My first babysitter was Duabhav Vue—smart, kind, and lovely as a song. When college classes started to interfere with her babysitting, she found a friend, Kia Lee, to help. Kia is as terrific and lovely as Duabhav and now my boys eagerly ask me if it is a “Kia” day. The babysitters’ help allows me to leave the real world for a few hours every week, knowing that my children are safe and happy.
If you’ve slogged through the acknowledgments this far, you must be either a member of my family or a very dedicated reader. This book is not autobiographical, but in a sense it is a tribute to my father, Lee John Droege. It is a tribute to my foster parents, Dick and Judith Butler. It is a tribute to every human being that has ended up with more than one set of parents, no matter how it happened. I love my parents with all my heart, and I am lucky to be their daughter.
Finally, thanks again to Bill, my husband. He’s the reason why.
1
Colorado Springs, Colorado
“I think about it a lot,” Eileen said. “That’s only natural, I guess.”
“What’s it?” Gerri Matthews asked, leaning back in her armchair. “Shooting Teddy Shaw, or seeing what he did to Jeannie Bernowski?” Gerri’s clipboard rested comfortably on one knee but her pen dangled, point up, in her relaxed hand. Her relaxation was a ploy, Eileen thought, just like the exquisitely shabby little room, like her kindly face, like the delicious smell of the hot tea she served in thick pottery mugs. Gerri was the court-appointed psychologist for shooters. Cops who killed. Six years on the force, and Eileen Reed had finally joined the ranks.
“What?” she asked Gerri.
“Shooting Teddy, or seeing Jeannie?” Gerri repeated patiently.
“Shooting him, of course,” Eileen said.
“Okay,” Gerri replied. She was forty and looked a weathered twenty-five. Perhaps it was all the bike riding, she’d said during their introductions. Or perhaps because she and her husband didn’t have children, and thus she always got a good night’s sleep. This was said with a twinkle and a chuckle as irresistible as a little girl’s. Gerri had sandy blonde hair and dark blue eyes, and she dressed in clothes that looked so comfortable they could be pajamas. On a plump woman they would have looked awful, but on Gerri’s spare little frame, her baggy pants and shapeless pullovers looked terrific. Eileen wanted to like her immediately, and felt her ears pull back like a horse about to bite. Everything felt different since four days ago, when she’d shot Teddy Shaw.
“Do you have dreams about Jeannie Bernowski?” Gerri asked calmly.
Eileen closed her eyes momentarily, and the death scene unrolled in front of her. The backs of her eyelids had developed a sort of VCR-like capability, it seemed, and whenever she closed her eyes she was treated to what was now the number-one movie in her head.
“No, I remember Teddy,” she said.
It was a fine summer night in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The mild night air blew through Eileen’s open car window, carrying with it the scents of summer roses, recently mowed lawns, and sun-heated pines. The breeze felt good in her hair and against her face. One thirty in the morning on a Tuesday. There was no one else on the roads.
Eileen was on her way home after filing a report on a homicide, an easy one. She’d stayed late so she could take off Friday and Monday, thus giving her a four-day vacation. She’d planned to spend it in the mountains with Joe Tanner, her boyfriend. There was a persistent rumor that the Pike National Forest held the remains of an F-16 crash. The plane crashed twenty years ago and was seen only by the occasional hiker, or so the story went. No hiker had come forward admitting they’d seen the wreck, but the story persisted. The ghost of the pilot was said to haunt the plane, since he had never been buried and was, it was said, still strapped into his seat. Since the plane was never found, it was supposedly still full of equipment, including missiles and ammo for the dead pilot’s pistol. It was the Flying Dutchmen of mountain wrecks and a juicy target. The fact that the plane probably didn’t exist only fueled Eileen’s desire to find the thing. She was excited about the adventure and happy to get away from the city.
Eileen was so wound up, in fact, she gave in to an impulse. The city seemed to be completely asleep and the night air was intoxicatingly warm. She turned off the main road and into the Briargate Subdivision, a housing community with long, curving streets. She clicked off her headlights. After a second or two of terrifying darkness, the night world sprang up around her. The houses were dark, and her car made little sound at thirty miles per hour. When she was seventeen this was one of the favorite sports of the high-school ranch-kid crowd. Driving at fifty miles per hour down moonlit Wyoming highways, they would turn off the headlights and laugh and yell their favorite lines from Star Wars. Driving without lights was unearthly and scary and fun, and Eileen hadn’t done it for years.
“So that’s why Teddy didn’t hide from you,” Gerri said.
“Yeah,” Eileen said. “I didn’t exactly put that in my report, you know.”
“Of course, and as you can see, I’m taking no notes,” Gerri said. “I’m a psychologist. You can tell me anything, and it will go no further than this room.”
“You said that already.”
“I’ll say it until you believe me, chum,” Gerri said comfortably. “Now tell me what happened next. You’ve set the scene. I can see it in my mind.”
“I saw Teddy—a man—walking from a house carrying a large gym bag. He was walking very quickly and his van was running. But the van was at the curb and the driveway was empty, and there were no lights on in the house. That all added up to a robbery. I had just turned the corner in a long swooping curve. I knew the street was a long, straight one, so that was going to be my run at the Death Star ventilation tube.”
Eileen looked sharply to see if Gerri was laughing, and she was. But there was nothing mocking in Gerri’s face. She was just laughing.
“Use the force, Luke!” she said.
“That’s right,” Eileen replied and couldn’t help but smile. “Keep on target! All the great lines. I swooped around the corner in full Rebel Alliance mode and there’s Teddy Shaw with little Alice Gherkin in his bag—although I didn’t know that then, of course.”
“But you knew there was something going on.”
“Oh, yes,” Eileen said grimly.
The man didn’t see Eileen at first, because he was very nearly at his van. He had almost made his snatch, and his whole focus was getting to his vehicle. Besides, she didn’t have her lights on. Teddy Shaw would die with a petulant look
on his face, the look of a little boy who was beaten at a game where the other side hadn’t played fair.
Eileen flipped her lights on and aimed her car at the burglar, her mood changing in an eyeblink from vacationing lover to police officer. She expected him to run for his van, and perhaps even to have to chase him down, but her perceptions were all wrong. This was not a burglary. The man dropped the bag—which fell to the ground and bulged in a funny shape, a shape that was familiar and unidentifiable at the same time, a shape that was somehow horrible—and drew an enormous contraption from his long coat. The contraption looked like a homemade bazooka, a monster black muzzle with a tiny handle on the end.
Eileen stamped on the brakes and threw her car into a skid and ducked, and the windshield blew out of her beloved Jeep Cherokee with a coughing sound. There was no boom of a gunshot. At thirty miles per hour, Eileen was stopped in four seconds of skid, four very long seconds. She had time to consider her choice of weapons. She had a Sig Sauer 239 in a shoulder holster, 40 caliber with seven rounds in the magazine, cocked and locked for quick firing. She also carried a .38 Ladysmith in an ankle holster, a revolver with five shots. She decided on the Ladysmith since she was bent double underneath the dashboard anyway. The Sig Sauer was too hard to reach.
As her car stopped, she rolled out the door, keeping her Jeep between the shooter and herself, dropped to the asphalt, and aimed at the feet on the lawn from underneath her car. A low slung car wouldn’t have given her line-of-sight, but her Jeep was fairly tall.
“Police!” she shouted, and the Jeep’s side window blew out. There was no time to do anything else. Instinctively, she made sure the black bag was not going to be hit by gunfire and pulled the trigger three times.
The feet disappeared in a black burst of blood, black like an old movie because there wasn’t enough light for her eyes to register color. The man fell down as Eileen rolled to the back of her Jeep. She leaped to her feet and stepped out from behind her car, gun held steady, hoping the man was clutching his ruined feet and not his gun. The man still had his weapon. The bazooka Eileen had seen was an ordinary .357 revolver with a homemade silencer on the end, made of a perforated cardboard tube stuffed with cotton. The cotton was now on fire but the man didn’t seem to care. He was trying to bring the gun up and aim it at her, and in a microsecond more, he was going to get there.