Page 64 of South of Nowhere

As Debi Starr looked at her phone she recited, “This part of Olechu County, including Hinowah, is a designated brownfield. I’m reading from the EPA.”

She was one fast woman when it came to online research.

“Brownfield?” Olsen asked.

Starr said, “Here’s a quote. ‘A brownfield is a property where expansion, redevelopment or reuse may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant.’ ” She looked up. “There goes your vulture.”

Colter said, “Gabris gave me an idea for another possibility, though. Somebody blew the levee to steal the water.”

Tolifson asked, “Steal it? Who?”

“There’s a fracking operation southwest of town, he told me.” Her brother turned the computer so that they could all see the map. He typed a command and it changed from the basic schematic to the satellite image. You could see the town and, to the west, the copper mine and a farm. About three miles south of the farm was a large rectangle of land that was filled with industrial equipment.

He said, “I looked it up online. American Oil and Gas Extraction Company.”

Tolifson blew a breath from puffed-out cheeks. “Oh, I’ll tell you. Plenty of protests when they leased the land.”

Starr nodded. “The hearings? Anti-frackers painted this gloom and doom. Blowouts from gas explosions, earthquakes. The big issue is the water pumped down to do the fracking. It’s mixed with chemicals to make it a better quote ‘drill’ and after it’s shot into the ground the flowback comes to the surface and the companies have to do something with it—millions of gallons. Lot of it ends up in local soil.”

Dorion had run a cleanup job at a fracking site destroyed by an earthquake—which might or might not have been caused by the well itself. She told those assembled about the job and added, “The company said the chemicals are the same as you’d find in household products. That may be true but they don’t tell you that italsocontains diesel fuel, methanol, formaldehyde, ethylene, glycol, glycol ethers, hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide.”

Starr grimaced. “The leases went through anyway, no matter all the protests, and I always wondered if administrative folk got paidoff.” She gave a chuckle as she looked at Tolifson. “Not you, Mayor. I’m talking higher up. At the county level.”

Tolifson scoffed and said, “Hinowah is too lowly to even rate a bribe.”

McGuire asked, “Why do you suspect them?”

Colter explained that fracking operations used huge amounts of water.

Dorion said, “An average frack uses millions of gallons. Sometimes up to ten or fifteen—for a single well.”

Eyes on the map, Colter said, “Just a scenario. Thinking out loud. They blow the levee, the water flows down the spillway, into the gulley in front of Copper Peak.” He traced a line. “It hits the copper mine and farm and flows south, ending up here.” He tapped what looked like a dry lake bed right next to the fracking company.

Starr clicked her tongue. “Like a huge spigot, straight from the river to the frackers.”

Dorion added, “And one thing to know: fracking operations can use explosives in addition to the water for drilling. In fact, the process was invented by a Civil War general who saw that the impact of artillery shells released oil and gas from the battlefield.”

Olsen said, “So the fracker could have access to C-four or something else that goes bang.” Dorion noted another smiling glance Colter’s way. Interesting, she thought, before tucking the thought away.

He said, “I’m going to check the place out.”

Starr chuckled. “How’s that undercover thing of yours going to work this time? Tell them you want a barrel of fracked oil as a souvenir of your trip to the Sierra Nevadas?”

“I was thinking—”

“Flaw in the plan,” Gutiérrez said.

All eyes turned to him.

He looked up from his phone. “I’m quoting. ‘AOGE—American Oil and Gas Extraction Company—has suspended its operation in Olechu County, California, citing a miscalculation of the reserves.The equipment will be dismantled and sent to the company’s other facilities in Southern California and Oregon.’ ”

She looked up. “So.”

“Square one,” Tolifson said.

Or whatever cliché you wanted to use, Dorion reflected.

But the search for a new theory was interrupted by the curious sight of a shiny black limousine that pulled to a stop above them, on Route 13, parking in front of Colter’s Winnebago, just shy of the shattered edge of the highway.

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