Possession

SEVEN

Someone started shouting from behind the downed barrier. “Hey! What are you two idiots doing? Get the hell out of here!”

I turned around, letting James Purlis slither away—I would have other chances to make my point to him and find out what he was up to with the vampires. I was pretty sure I’d have no trouble finding him when I was ready.

A slim woman with curling auburn hair pulled back into a serviceable ponytail was jogging across the city block–sized wasteland of dirt and machines toward me with two big guys in hard hats and safety vests coming along behind her. “What’s the idea? This is a restricted area—it’s dangerous. We have an open excavation down here!” she shouted at me.

“I’m sorry. I was looking for the tunnel site and I stumbled into the barrier. Those trucks are really close.”

“Next time walk on the sidewalk side. What are you, suicidal?”

“No, just lost.”

The woman sighed and turned around to wave the construction workers away. “It’s just a tourist, guys. I’ll take care of it.” She turned back to face me. “What were you trying to find?”

“The initial bore site for the tunnel project.”

“The launch pit. Well, this is it. Thoroughly unexciting. Why are you looking?” she asked, wiping her hands on her coveralls and then resting them on her hips. She was petite and had the sort of elfin features that had probably been called “cute” often enough to gall their owner to fury. Her coveralls, work boots, and mud smears only added to the impression that she was a visiting sprite trying to pass for normal.

“I’m trying to find the location where Kevin Sterling was injured,” I said.

“Who?”

“He’s a tunnel engineer. He was on the project until a few months ago when the tunnel collapsed on him.”

“Oh. That. Well, yeah, this would be the place, then. The official digging ceremony was really just for show and that’s the section of pit wall that collapsed. We’ve been doing everything right, I can assure you.”

“I’m not sure I follow you,” I said.

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “You don’t just dig a tunnel. I mean you do, but not just like any old hole. You have to do all sorts of soil tests and structural analysis, ground stabilization, water removal, staging-area creation . . . and, of course, archaeology. Which is where I come in—or rather the Washington State Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation.”

“I’m still not sure I’m following you. Look, I’m a private investigator and I’m afraid I don’t know anything about tunnels or how you build something like this, so I can’t understand what happened to Mr. Sterling and I thought I could get a better idea if I came down here and saw the site.” I offered her my hand. “My name’s Harper Blaine.”

She wiped her hand on her coveralls again and shook mine, leaving a bit of grit behind in spite of her best efforts. Being a woman who often works in messy situations, I didn’t mind. “Nice to meet you,” she said. “I’m Rhiannon Held. I’m the archaeological site monitor. I wasn’t here when the launch pit collapsed, so I’m not sure how much I can help you.”

“I’ll settle for whatever you can tell me—how the collapse might have happened, what an archaeologist is doing here . . . that sort of thing.”

She looked intrigued and glanced around. “I don’t think anyone’s going to care if I’m not watching them insert bracing sections for a few minutes. Why don’t you come with me? I’ll find you a hard hat and I can give you a general idea of what’s going on—if that will help. It’s got to be more interesting than watching dirt get shoved out of the hole.”

She waved me through and manhandled the plywood back into place between us and the traffic. She may have looked adorable, but she was no weakling. On the other side of the plywood barrier stretched the site of the tunnel’s southern mouth. Right now it looked like the human equivalent of an anthill—a long open pit supported by poured-concrete walls and walkways across the top that was the focus of furious activity by men and excavating equipment in the middle of a huge expanse of mud about a block wide and three city blocks long. The ground shivered around the hole and a distant growling sound issued from the opening. I noticed that we were several feet below the level of the pavement outside the barriers.

“So,” I said, “this is the famous tunnel.”

“It will be once it’s done. This is the launch pit—it’s where the excavator entered the ground to start the dig. It had to be shored up and angled so the boring machine could get into position to make the tunnel without risk of the mouth collapsing and burying the machine—it’ll also be the basis of the ramp into the southern end of the tunnel once the project is ready for traffic. The small collapse you were talking about happened before the excavator was brought in. The area is a little wetter than everyone hoped it would be. We also found some bottles and other debris at the historic level, but no significant artifacts. All that’s been cleared away long ago, though. The project is into the serious tunneling now and that’s actually kind of dull to observe. But that’s my job—watch the site and keep an eye out for anything that the department will want to take a closer look at.” Held led me to a trailer and went inside to grab a hard hat and a sort of coverall coat, which she handed to me.

“Put these on,” she said.

As I did, I asked her, “Why do they need an archaeologist on site to look at bottles? Couldn’t they send them to you?”

“Legal complications. This area is mostly landfill over tidal mud flats that the local Indians used to fish and go clamming on. The original landfill is kind of interesting on its own, too, so there’s potential historical interest and artifacts. Ever since the Kennewick Man find and all the legal wrangling that went with it, Washington has had pretty stringent requirements about working in areas that may present anything of significant archaeological interest. So much of the area around Puget Sound was populated or used by the local tribes that all construction projects have to be investigated and cleared before any work can go ahead—we already did that stage here—and then there has to be a monitor standing by during the construction in case they dig into something unexpected that could be significant. Usually they don’t, but that’s the bread and butter that keeps most archaeologists employed and in Washington there are enough projects to keep a whole lot of people busy year-round. There’s really not a lot of work for us, otherwise. It’s not all whips and fedoras out here, as you can see,” she added with a derisive snort. “Mostly it’s either preparation work screening buckets full of mud for significant items—that’s the fun part—or it’s sitting on a site like I am, waiting to see if anything pops up. Lots of tedious sorting and grubbing around or sitting and waiting and looking at more buckets full of muck. And I mean a lot of muck.

“The excavator—which is named Bertha, incidentally—is about five stories tall and it’ll remove about eighty-six thousand cubic yards of mud before it’s done. And I get to look at every yard, just in case there’s something interesting in it. The hard part is figuring out what’s significant and what’s just grunge. Mud’s not as bland as it seems, though this stuff is pretty cold and nasty. It’s mostly seawater here, you know.”

“It is?”

“Yeah. The seawall leaks. It’s over a hundred years old and it wasn’t the best construction to begin with, so that’s being replaced—that’s another part of the project. The whole area’s unstable due to seawater infiltration and the type of fill they used. First they dumped in sawdust from the mill, then they dumped in mud from when they did the regrades. People threw in all sorts of junk and garbage. There’s a small artificial island of old ships’ ballast stones that was completely buried between Washington Street and Main—we just found some of the cores and minerals that aren’t native to Washington, so now we know right where the island was—parts of the buildings that burned down in the Great Fire were thrown in, and there’s even a shipwreck in here somewhere at the north end.”

“You’re kidding.”

She glanced up at me and grinned. “No. Some old wooden sailing ship—not a big one—that was beached before they built the seawall. No one wanted to pay to move it, so they just buried it. This part of the harbor was below the mill and the original sewer outflow, so it’s got a lot of weird stuff in it that came down from the bluff in the sewage as well as the landfill and junk that was dropped or lost over time—the prep team found some old patent medicine bottles and things like that at the historic level.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Oh, before you get to anything interesting, you have to get past all the modern debris, roads, dirt, and so on that builds up or gets dumped on top of older layers. About ten feet down is where you get to the historic level in Seattle—you’ll notice the whole site is about six to ten feet lower than the streets around it. That’s because the prep and investigation teams had to basically scrape off the modern layer and look for deposits or sediment that would indicate an area of archaeological significance. That was done back in 2010. For instance, there used to be a coal wharf here before the first seawall was built, so the early team found bits of old anthracite coal and ships’ hardware. That kind of stuff is interesting, but the work going on now should be well below even that level. I don’t think they’ve found any of the bodies, though.”

I was startled. “Bodies?”

“Yeah. This is where the bad part of town started. It’s pretty awful, but during the diphtheria epidemic of 1875, a lot of people died—especially children—and they couldn’t bury them fast enough, so they dumped a lot of the bodies that went unclaimed or whose families couldn’t afford a burial into the landfill down here. People used to get killed in brawls and accidents around the brothels and saloons, and the poor died of disease and starvation, and the bodies got put in the graveyard here or thrown in the bay. Sometimes they washed out and then floated back on the tide, so the city offered money to any mortuary that would pick them up and bury them. So there was an upswing in ‘accidental deaths’ for a while down here. Sometimes people who wanted the cash would ambush or drug a sailor or a lumberjack or someone like that and then tie the body under the piers so they could ‘find’ it the next morning. Then they’d take it to one of the mortuaries in town, like Butterworth’s, and split the fifty bucks the city paid the business for dealing with the bodies. Not very nice. This is a great place for gruesome stories—like the car that went down around here.”

“Hang on—a car went into the bay?”

“Yes, but it was a long time after the seawall was completed and way out there,” Held replied, pointing nearly due west toward the waters of Elliott Bay. “Before the container docks, the bit straight out from here used to be the King Street pier. I think it was 1929 or ’30 . . . the family who owned the dock came to look it over and left the car in gear, so the car drove off the end of the pier by itself. The husband and both of the boys who were in the car got out, but the wife drowned, along with their dog. Horrible.” She closed her eyes and looked a little ill. Then she shook herself and added, “Anyhow, they pulled it out later, but I always wondered what might have drifted out of the car and into the mud there. I guess it’s the morbid streak in me. Probably an archaeologist thing. We’re all a little creepy that way—we want to dig up dead people and their homes and find out how they lived and died. There’s a lot of freaky things to be found in the mud—it’s waterlogged history with teredo worms. This end of the old shoreline is fairly wet and it’ll take a while after the new seawall is in place for the landfill to dry out and solidify.”

“How long?”

“Years. Personally, I plan never to drive through this tunnel once it’s finished. Ugh. I even shudder at the idea of taking the train while they’re building this. Everything built on the fill or supported by it would be undermined by a tunnel collapse. They had to insert miles of micropiles to keep the historic buildings down here from shifting or collapsing and they’re always fighting water seepage that could interfere with the dig here.”

“But the train tunnel isn’t in the fill, is it?” I asked. I’d been in the southern end of the tunnel and it had seemed pretty solid to me.

“No, it’s bored through the bluff, but it’s so old that they grandfathered it out of the current inspection and maintenance standards. It’s always damp, and it doesn’t even have any lights, modern ventilation, or escape routes. You wouldn’t want to be stuck in it if the ground at either end subsided a lot.”

“No,” I said as much to myself as to her. “I can see how that would be bad. But you guys haven’t had any problems now that the excavator is working, have you?”

“Oh, a few hiccups, but nothing worth mentioning. They’ve hit water in a lot of places, and the investigation teams working on the early seawall part of the project found some areas we’ll have to work around in the north end where the local tribes used to camp and that kind of thing. There are always areas that will need more stabilization than originally thought, but the monitoring stations will help pinpoint those problems before they get out of hand.”

“What monitoring stations?”

“Technically they’re called ‘monitoring wells.’ The project group installed about seven hundred of them along the tunnel route to measure, record, and report things like subsidence and tectonic movement. The well shafts were drilled about three hundred feet deep, but you can spot the covers in the streets and sidewalks from here to Northlake—they look a bit like small manholes that are painted white and there’s a black metal seal in the middle that identifies them as monitoring wells. Take a look around and you’ll find them once you know what to look for.”

“What would they do if you guys found something significant or the monitors showed movement?”

“Oh, I doubt we’ll find anything much at this point, but on the subsidence issue, I’m not sure—I’m not a geologist—but I’d guess they’d try to shore things up like they did with the micropiles installed along the Alaskan Way footing. Probably they’d just throw money at it and keep on going. This is Seattle, after all—the town that graft built.”

“Would you say, then, that whoever’s in charge of this would have no reason to delay and every reason to clear things up and pay off any claims?”

“You mean, like the businesses that are complaining about loss of customers? Or like your client who was hurt?”

“Either. Both.”

“Oh, yeah. There’s going to be a lot of money to be made out of fancy condos and new hotels with waterfront views built where the viaduct is now. Personally I think the idea of a tunnel through landfill is crazy, but some people obviously want it and they have the influence to get it. If they have to pay a few claims and kiss some extra babies at election time, they’re not going to quibble. If you’re working for the family of the guy who got hurt, I don’t think they have anything to worry about on that score.”

She pushed a lock of hair out of her face with the back of one hand. “I think I’d better get back to watching mud before someone gets pissed off. So . . . y’know . . . if there’s nothing else you want to know. . . .”

I caught the hint. “No. I’m satisfied. Thanks for the information. I really appreciate it.”

“No problem. Here, let me show you the easy way out.” She led me south past the pit and back to the trailer, where she reclaimed my hard hat and coat, then went around the trailer and pushed back a narrow door of plywood, revealing the exit route. “Don’t fall in front of any trucks this time, OK?”

I smiled and chuckled. “OK. Thanks again.”

“You’re welcome. ’Bye,” she added, closing the door.

I looked around with care, letting the Grey side of my vision range wide, but I saw no sign of James Purlis.

I checked my watch and figured I had enough time to snoop around the area a bit more. I started back up the street under the viaduct, keeping to the sidewalk this time, looking through the Grey for any sign of why Sterling was being badgered by ghosts. From what Held had said, there should have been plenty of spirits in the area, but I didn’t know why they would have attached themselves to Sterling—and certainly not to Julianne Goss, who had been quite a few blocks farther north when she met with a mosquito that had probably come from one of the pools of standing water Held had mentioned. Unless the sheer disturbance of the ground had caused some kind of paranormal upheaval I hadn’t detected or understood yet, the connection between the two injuries was so thin as to be useless. . . . There had to be something more. I wished again that I knew what had happened to Jordan Delamar—or even where he was right now. My sense that time was precious was strong, though I didn’t have any reason for this feeling.

Then I saw her from the corner of my injured eye—a willowy figure in 1920s clothes standing in front of the Hanjin Shipping compound across the street—and dropped all other thoughts from my head as I turned to see what was happening in the Grey. But even when I faced her and used both eyes, the phantom woman remained clear in my vision. Her beautiful face wore a tragic expression that drew me to her. I crossed the road, dodging trucks and cars, and stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the long concrete walls of the warehouse. Giant red cranes loomed in the background, like strange metal horses waiting to feed on a few of the cargo containers stacked around their legs and on the ships moored in front of them.

The ghost did a slow pivot to face me, her body turning without any movement of her limbs. A few strands of dark hair waved around her face and her clothes rippled as if caught in a gentle current. “I fear for them.” Her voice had the softest hint of cultured Southern accent.

“For whom?” I asked.

“The fat ones. I would not like more company in my watery den. My dog is somewhere near and he will suffice to chase away my loneliness.”

I frowned in thought, tickling out something Held had said. “Are you the lady who drowned here? In the car?”

A tiny smile flickered over her face and vanished again as she nodded. “I am Cannie Trimble. It is good of you to remember me. Few still do.”

“The city tries to remember, but it’s not easy with so much change. Things get broken and lost.”

“Indeed they do. I do not like these newcomers—they frighten me. They are so hungry, so greedy. . . . And they will break the new things to feed their mistresses.” Cannie shook her head, making her hair float and fan out in the unseen water. “It will be much worse than their deaths, much worse than the first time, by trickles, one by one. In the market. In the market where the ashes lay, where the player played, that’s where the truth lies. Do not let the wheel roll, do not bring me company—I want none here. I am enough.”

Ghosts have a bad habit of speaking in riddles—their minds are focused on different things than ours are and without their context, nothing they say makes sense. The “market” reference I thought I understood—Pike Place Market—but the rest meant nothing. Wheels and ashes, players and truth that lied or lay . . . ? Maybe the wheel was something to do with her car that had rolled off the pier . . . ? “Cannie, what wheels, what ashes? Please tell me where to find them.”

“Start in the market, end on the pier. Find the boy who played.” She turned her head aside, glancing at something I couldn’t see. “Jiggs! I’m coming.” She turned her face back to mine. “I must go. Please don’t let them roll the wheel.”

And she vanished as if a cloud had covered the sun and blotted her out. I reached for the temporacline—the shattered planes of time that float in the Grey, recording history in place—but she wasn’t there. She was a true apparition, because she had never existed in exactly that state, in exactly this place. I could not reach Cannie Trimble here, I could only take what she’d offered and hope it led to something more.

I would have to start with Pike Place Market—it was the only piece of her puzzle I understood.