The Thunder Keeper(59)

She took a deep breath and relaxed her grip on the steering wheel. Traffic was light. A few cars and trucks and semis in the oncoming lane. A line of semis ahead. On either side of the highway, the vast, limitless plains spread as far as she could see, merging into the sky. She could make out the dips of the arroyos, the gentle rise of the plateaus, covered with wild grasses raked by the wind. The land was part of her, in her blood—a blood memory passed down from the ancestors. No matter where she went, she could never leave the plains behind.

She’d filed the brief with the appellate court this morning, then arranged to take the rest of the day off to drive to Laramie, wondering now if the appointment with Charles Ferguson was an excuse to escape onto the plains. The meeting would probably be a waste of time. The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality had confirmed that no letters of authorization had been issued to take samples of soil on state land in central Wyoming. Nor had any licenses to explore been issued. She’d also contacted the state land office. No mineral leases had been granted to explore for diamonds in central Wyoming, and no permits issued to mine diamonds there.

Vicky gripped the wheel against the force of air from a passing semi. Tiny specks of dirt and rock pinged on the windshield. Nathan Baider’s men could have found a deposit and could be working it without the necessary legal steps. The penalty was high—ten thousand dollars a day—but Wyoming was a big state. She doubted the state had enough mining inspectors to cover the vast expanse of undeveloped areas in central Wyoming alone. Lewis had died trying to tell her something. She owed it to the man to find out what it was. She owed it to her people.

The Laramie roofs shimmered on the plains ahead, and Vicky let up on the accelerator and again glanced in the rearview mirror. The black sedan was there. She felt her heart take a little jump.

Still there as she took the exit onto the flat wide pavement leading into town and drove past the car dealerships and motels and box stores that bunched closer and closer together as she neared the center.

“You’re not the only one going to Laramie,” she said out loud, startled at the fear in her voice. She shot through a yellow light and passed a pickup, pulling away from the sedan. Another glance in the mirror. The sedan had disappeared.

The campus came into view on the right, two- and three-story redbrick buildings surrounded by lawns and concrete walkways and cottonwoods that had probably been there in the Old Time. Through the trees, she could see the yellow-brick geology building.

“Can’t miss us,” Ferguson had said on the phone. “We’re the only yellow building around here.”

She found a vacant parking place on a residential block and walked back to campus. There was an instant when she thought she saw the black sedan in the next block, but then it was gone.

Inside the building, she studied the directory a moment before making her way down a narrow corridor to a door with CHARLES FERGUSON printed in black letters below the glass pane. She knocked.

“Come on in.” The friendly voice on the phone yesterday, as open as the Wyoming plains, gave her a sense of normality and security.

She stepped inside and stopped. The room looked like a storeroom, with cartons, books, and papers crammed onto shelves against the walls and various-sized glass containers filled with specimens of rock and soil stacked on the metal cases that jutted into the room.

A slim, fit-looking man rose from the desk wedged beneath the window. Outside was the redbricked view of another building. “Professor Ferguson?” she said.

“Most folks call me Charlie,” he said, motioning her forward. He looked about thirty-five, with short-trimmed brown hair and the ruddy complexion of a cowboy who spent his days herding cattle. He wore blue jeans and a plaid shirt, the sleeves rolled up around muscular forearms. Instead of cowboy boots, he had on brown, lace-up hiking boots.

“I’m Vicky Holden.” She picked a path around the metal cases and held out her hand.

“Pleased to meet you.” He gave her a wide friendly smile that accentuated the tiny squint lines at the corners of his light eyes. When he shook her hand, she could feel the strength in his grip.

He nodded toward the chair next to the desk and told her to have a seat. On the wall above was a map of Wyoming similar to the map in Nathan Baider’s office. Pins with various-colored heads—red, blue, yellow—dotted the periphery. There were no pins in the center.

“I appreciate your taking the time to see me,” she said, settling on the hardwood chair.

The professor sat down in an oak swivel chair and regarded her a moment. “You’re not the first woman I’ve met who’s interested in diamonds.”