Q Is for Quarry

area, but it was nothing we could confirm."
    Dolan said, "He was higher than a kite the day they picked him up. Grass or coke. Arrest sheet doesn't say. He's a meth freak is what I heard."
    "Everyone under thirty was higher than a kite back then," I said. Mr. Johanson cleared his throat, having been excluded from the conversation too long to suit him. "Being's as you're here, you might want to see the rest of the property. This is the last ranch of its size. Won't be long before they tear down the old house. Probably build subdivisions as far as the eye can see."
    My impulse was to decline, but Dolan seemed to spark to the idea. "I'm in no hurry. Fine with me," he said. He gave Stacey a look. Stacey shrugged his assent and then checked for my response.
    I said, "Sure. I don't mind. Are we finished here?"
    "For now. We can always come back."
    Johanson turned toward his Jeep. "Best take the Jeep. Road's all tore up from heavy rains we had a while back. No point throwing up dust and gravel on that fancy car of yours."
    I thought he was being snide. I checked for Dolan's reaction, but he was apparently in agreement with the old man's assessment.
    We piled in the Jeep, Stacey in the front seat, Dolan and me climbing into the rear. The seats were cracked leather, and all the glassine windows had been removed. Johanson started the engine and released the emergency brake. The vehicle's shocks were gone. I reached up and grabbed the roll bar, clinging to it as we began to lurch and bang our way up the deeply rutted gravel road. Like me, Stacey was clinging to the Jeep frame for stability, wincing with pain from the jolts to his injured back.
    The grass on either side of us was rough. A hillside rose on our left and then leveled out at the top, forming a mesa where numerous pieces of heavy equipment sat. Much of the remaining ground was stripped and terraced, broad fields of rubble unbroken by greenery. "That's the quarry," Johanson said, hollering over the rattle and whine of the moving vehicle.
    I leaned forward, directing my comments toward the back of his head. "Really? That looks like a gravel pit. I pictured limestone cliffs."
    "Different kind of quarry. These is open pit mines. Grayson Quarry goes after the DE. That's diatomaceous earth. Here, I've got a sample. Take a look at this." One eye on the road, he leaned down and removed a chunk of rock from the floor of the Jeep, then passed it across the seat to me. The rock was a rough chalky white, about the size of a crude round of bread with irregular gouges in the crust. I passed it on to Lieutenant Dolan, and he hefted it as I had, finding it surprisingly light.
    I said, "What'd you say this was?"
    "Diatomaceous earth. We call it DE."
    I felt a tingle of uneasiness run down my spine as his 'explanation went on. "DE's a deposit made up mainly of siliceous shells of diatoms. This whole area was underwater once upon a time. The way they told me, marine life fed on diatoms, which is these colonies of algae. Now it's pulverized and used as an abrasive, sometimes as an absorbent."
    Stacey raised his voice against the crunch of the tires over gravel. "I used to use it to filter beer when I was making it at home."
    The road began to climb and the Jeep labored upward, finally rounding a bend. The old house came into view –massive, dilapidated, Victoriana under siege. Clearly, the structure had once been regal, but weeds and brush were creeping up on all sides, consuming the yard, obscuring the broken lines of wood fence. Years of neglect had undermined the outbuildings so that all that remained now were the rough stone foundations and occasional piles of collapsed and rotting lumber.
    The house itself was a two-story white frame, flanked by a one-story wing on either side of the facade. There were four porches visible, providing shade and sheltered ventilation so that doors and windows could be left open to the elements. A porch wrapped around the house at the front, with a second porch stacked on top. A widow's walk encircled the roof. The numerous paired windows were narrow and dark, many of the panes sporting the sort of tattered holes that rock-throwers make when they score a hit.
    Johanson waved at the house, scarcely slowing his speed. "Been empty for years. I'm in the gardener's cottage on 'tother side of the barn," he yelled. I found myself averting my gaze as we passed the house and headed for a compound of structures I spotted in a shady area ahead. Barn, toolshed,