Harry Turtledove - Supervolcano :Eruption

Unless, of course, he did.

He still had plenty to worry about here at the cop shop. Not just the South Bay Strangler. His thoughts about a crackhead with a shotgun weren’t free association. Somebody with a shotgun had blown the head off a Korean who ran a liquor store near the corner of San Atanasio Boulevard and New Hampshire. That was only a couple of miles east of the station, but it was anything but a prime part of town.

Most of the time, people robbed liquor stores to get money for drugs. Most of the time, they started shooting because they were already amped to the eyebrows. That made crack and crystal meth the two leading candidates. A surveillance camera showed that the perp was African American, so crack seemed more likely. No guarantees, but more likely.

Three different news shows had run the surveillance video-including what happened when a charge of double-aught buck caught the luckless so-and-so behind the counter square in the face. “This footage may be disturbing,” they’d all said, or words to that effect. It was a hell of a lot worse than disturbing, as if they cared. If it bleeds, it leads.

With luck, somebody out there would recognize the asshole with the scattergun. With more luck, whoever did recognize him would have the nerve or the moral indignation or whatever else it took to call the police. It did happen. Not always, not even often enough, but it did.

No matter what the TV shows claimed, though, that wasn’t why they ran their “disturbing footage.” They ran it for the same reason they preempted things to show car chases: it made people watch. Once you’d said that, you’d said everything that needed saying, as far as they were concerned.

The phone rang. Colin picked it up. “Ferguson-San Atanasio Police.”

“Hey, Colin. Nels Jensen here.” Jensen was a Torrance police captain also chasing the South Bay Strangler. “Any luck on the DNA profiles?”

If there was, Nels would find some way to take credit for it. He was a pretty fair cop, but he liked seeing his own smiling face in the paper and on TV. He’d be a chief one day, and probably of a department bigger than the Torrance PD. Because he was a glory hound, Colin might have been tempted to tell him no even if the answer were yes. If he wanted yes so much, he could dwork that produced it instead of scrounging off other people.

As things were, though, Colin could say “Diddly-squat” with a perfectly clear conscience.

“Ahh, shit,” Jensen said. “I’ve got one of my sergeants plowing through them, too, but he hasn’t found anything close to a match. I was hoping you’d do better.”

Because I’m a lieutenant, not just a chickenshit sergeant? Colin wondered. At least Nels had somebody in his department checking through them. But if that hardworking sergeant did find a DNA close to the Strangler’s, two guesses who’d announce it. Not the guy who did the work. The captain who’d assigned it to him.

“I always hope,” Colin said. “I don’t expect too much, that’s all.”

“Yeah, I know that tune,” Jensen agreed. He was a cop. “Okay, I’ll check with you later-and I’ll let you know if we come up with anything juicy.”

Uh-huh. I’ll believe that when I see it. Colin kept his mouth shut there. It was usually the best thing you could do. “Right,” he answered. “Thanks.” He hung up. From the desk next to his, Gabe Sanchez raised a questioning eyebrow. “Jensen,” Colin said.

“Oh, boy.” Gabe silently clapped his hands together. “He’s got everything wrapped up in a pretty pink bow, I bet.”

“Yeah, right,” Colin said. “Torrance is looking at the DNA, too-I will give them that much.”

“Yippy skip.” The sergeant was good at curbing his enthusiasm. “I notice you aren’t saying Jensen’s doing it himself.”

“Nah. He gave it to a sergeant. Not like it’s important or anything.”

Sanchez flipped him off. “So what was his High and Mightiness doing instead? Getting his teeth whitened for the next time he goes under the lights?”

“He didn’t tell me, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit.”

“One of these days, the guy will fuck up,” Gabe said. Colin wasn’t sure whether he was talking about the Strangler or Nels Jensen till he went on, “Assholes almost always do. They never think they will, but they do. It’s part of what makes them assholes.”

“Yeah,” said Colin, for whom that was also an article of faith. “I just hope to God he does it soon.”

When he got home that night, he grilled a couple of lamb chops with paprika and garlic powder and nuked a package of frozen mixed veggies. It wasn’t exciting cooking. It was an imitation of Louise’s, and she wouldn’t show up on the Food Network any time soon even if she did watch it. After they broke up, at first he’d eaten out almost every night. That got expensive fast, though. This saved him money, and it was more what he was used to.

Half the veggies went into a plastic icebox dish, then into the refrigerator. He wrapped half a chop in aluminum foil and stuck it in there, too. It would do for lunch when he had a day off. When he was done eating, he washed the dishes and left them in the drainer to dry-he hated drying dishes. The kitchen had a dishwasher, but using it for one person was another money-wasting joke.

He pulled out a mystery after dinner. Most of the time, he read them to laugh at them. What the authors didn’t know about police procedures would fill fatter books than the ones they’d written. Every once in a while, he had the pleasure of finding a good one.

This one seemed betwixt and between. Not silly enough to laugh at, not good enough to keep him turning pages. He tossed it aside and grabbed the remote. ESPN was showing the World Series of Poker. Poker was a fine game-he’d won several grand in his Navy days-but it was not a goddamn sport. Colin changed channels.

A talking head on Fox News bellowed his opinions to the world. Colin changed again, just as fast. He had opinions of his own, and didn’t figure he needed anybody else’s secondhand ones.

CNN was showing… What the hell was CNN showing? A long-distance shot from a helicopter. Snowy ground, with dead pine trees sticking up through the snow like whiskers on a corpse’s cheek. A big plume of black smoke climbing high in the air. Mountains in the distance.

“Fuck,” Colin said. “That looks like Yellowstone.” He shook his head. What could be going on in Yellowstone in the middle of November? It looked like a forest fire-a big old forest fire, like the one they’d had back in the last century. But that was crazy. How could you have a big old forest fire this time of year? Wouldn’t the snow on the ground and the snow on the trees control a fire’s size?

Then a graphic appeared in the lower left-hand corner of the screen. YELLOWSTONE ERUPTION, it said.

“Holy shit!” Colin yanked the phone out of his pocket. Kelly was in Yellowstone, doing more seismic research. When he dialed her number, he got voice mail. That didn’t surprise him; cell-phone reception in the park was spotty at best. “Hey, hon, it’s me. Just saw the news. Call when you get the chance. Hope you’re okay. ’Bye.”

The anchor had started yakking while he was delivering his message. “-eruption in the Lower Forty-eight since Mount St. Helens in 1980,” he was saying. “It began this afternoon in Yellowstone National Park, near Ranger Lake.”

“Where the hell is Ranger Lake?” Colin asked-he didn’t remember hearing of it.

As if on cue, a map of Yellowstone replaced the eruption shot. Ranger Lake lay in the far southwestern part of the park, about as far away from a paved road as you could get this side of the Canadian border. A big red X near the lake presumably marked the spot where the volcano was going off.