Con Law Part 27

'You know Carla?'

'Everyone knows Carla. Heard you had a meeting with her at Padre's last night.'

'We met. We didn't have a meeting.'

'You sure beat up those roughnecks for her.'

'They were rude.'

'They're roughnecks. So what'd you think of their boss?'

'He's a mouth-breathing creep,' Nadine said through her pizza.

'Says he's got sinus problems. And gals tend to think he's a little creepy, but, h.e.l.l, he's an Aggie.' The mayor chuckled. 'Look, I've known Billy Bob since he moved to town. I've seen him sober and I've seen him drunk-don't invite him to your Christmas party, by the way. He's a skirt-chasing fool, but he ain't a killer.'

He held up the letter.

'This is pretty serious stuff.'

'Enough to get Nathan Jones killed?'

'Sheriff ruled it an accident, boy driving too fast. You met him, Brady. He seem like he knows what he's doing?'

'He did.'

'He does. If Brady Munn says it was an accident, it was an accident. Case closed. Folks don't murder each other in Marfa.'

The mayor downed his iced tea like a drunk downing his last shot of whiskey and stood as if to leave. But he hesitated; he had one more question for Book.

'Why do you care so much about Nathan Jones?'

'He was my student. I owe it to him to learn the truth.'

'The truth?' The mayor seemed amused. 'I've lived sixty years now, Professor, and I've learned there's no such thing as truth. There's just points of view.' He paused a moment, as if contemplating his own words, then said, 'Speaking of students, don't you still have cla.s.ses to teach in Austin?'

The mayor walked away. They watched him glad-hand a few folks on their lunch break, then exit the establishment. Book turned to his intern.

'You get the feeling people want us to leave town?'

'I know I do.'

Chapter 16.

'Henry, thanks for calling me back.'

'Just updating my resume. How's Marfa?'

'Different.'

Book sat on Rock Hudson's rooftop patio. The sky was blue, and the afternoon warm. He had called Henry Lawson at the law school for legal advice. He often consulted Henry because he had worked in the real world. He had dealt with the reality of the law and not just the theory. He provided an objective view of the world. And he was smart.

'What are you doing in Marfa? You left kind of fast.'

'A former intern named Nathan Jones wrote me a letter-'

'Uh-oh, another letter.'

'-said he was now a lawyer here in Marfa representing an oil and gas client involved in fracking. Said his client was contaminating the groundwater. Said he had proof.'

'So what'd he have to say?'

'Nothing. He's dead. Died in a car accident, same day he mailed the letter to me.'

'Odd timing.'

'I thought so.'

'You suspect foul play?'

'I do.'

'Another quest for justice?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'Why do you care so much about Nathan Jones?'

'He saved my life.'

'He was the one? Down in South Texas?'

'He was. His wife's pregnant, due in a few weeks.'

'd.a.m.n. So you're playing detective again?'

'I talked to the sheriff-'

'What did he have to say?'

'Accident.'

'He got a stake in the game?'

'No.'

'Go on.'

'Then we visited the accident scene, talked to Nathan's senior partner in Midland-'

'Who's that?'

'Tom Dunn.'

'He's an important lawyer in West Texas.'

'Nathan said he took his proof to Dunn, but Dunn denied it.'

'That's what lawyers do.'

'Then we met with his client.'

'Who?'

'A fracker named Billy Bob Barnett.'

Henry laughed. 'You met Billy Bob?'

'You know him?'

'Everyone in the business knows Billy Bob. He's like a character out of a movie, a modern-day Jett Rink. Last I heard, he was sitting on a gold mine out there, held oil and gas leases on all the land in the Big Bend. So this dead lawyer had proof that Billy Bob is contaminating the groundwater?'

'Said he did. But I can't find it.'

'That kind of proof wouldn't be good for Billy Bob. You think he killed the lawyer, to shut him up?'

'It's a theory.'

'Book, I trust Billy Bob as far as I can throw the fat b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but a murderer? People murder for money, and he's already got lots of money.'

'He doesn't have a good reputation in the industry?'

'When he dies, they're going to have to screw him in the ground. He's like a lawyer-you figure he's lying anytime his lips are moving.'

'Not a straight shooter?'

'Only when he's shooting you in the back.'

'So the lesson is ...?'

'Don't turn your back on Billy Bob Barnett.'

'I'll try to remember that.'

'So how can I help?'

'What do you know about fracking?'

'Everything. Fracking is the oil and gas business today. Virtually every gas well in the U.S. is fracked, and sixty percent of oil wells. Fracking accounts for fifty percent of all natural gas production, twenty-five percent of oil.'

'Billy Bob took me through the process. I thought I'd fact-check with you.'

'Shoot.'

'Water usage. Billy Bob said he uses five million gallons of water to frack a well, but says that's really not much water compared to ethanol.'

'He's right. Relative to other energy production, fracking uses very little water. But he didn't tell you the whole story.'

'Which is?'

'Which is, shale gas wells are short-life wells because the gas flows very fast out of the reservoir. The decline curves are steep, production levels drop off fast. So they have to constantly frack more wells to keep their production revenues up to cover expenses-fracking is expensive, about seven million dollars per well-and turn a profit. So even though on a per-well basis water usage is relatively low, the fracking industry uses a ma.s.sive amount of water in total, something like three to four trillion gallons annually, mostly from lakes and aquifers, the sources for our drinking water.'

'He didn't mention that.'

'They never do.'

'Groundwater contamination.'

'Environmentalists have been trying to connect the dots from a frack well to a contaminated aquifer for the last decade. If they ever do, the Feds might shut down fracking. Which is what they want.'

'Why? Billy Bob said switching from coal to gas cuts carbon emissions in half.'

'And switching to green energy cuts it to zero. That's what the environmentalists want, to shut down the oil and gas industry and go straight to renewables-without a bridge. Just a big leap from eighty-five percent carbon energy to one hundred percent renewable. We're three, maybe four decades from that.'

'Billy Bob said the Energy Inst.i.tute at UT found no direct connection between groundwater contamination and fracking.'

Henry laughed again.

'He didn't read the entire report. They also said that contamination is not unique to fracking, that casing failures and improper cement jobs occur in conventional drilling as well. But so far, no one's found direct evidence of contamination, not even the EPA. There's some anecdotal evidence-tap water turning brown and smelling foul, folks in Pennsylvania lighting their water on fire because of methane, the so-called "flammable faucets"-but hard to know if it's caused by fracking. So that's the first potential for contamination, failure of the well hole casing, which would allow frack fluids to flow directly into the aquifer. And we don't want those chemicals in our drinking water.'

'He said it's all under-the-kitchen-sink-type stuff.'

'But you don't want to drink any of that stuff. And some frackers have used known carcinogens like benzene and formaldehyde in their frack fluids. We don't know who or when or where because they're not required to disclose their chemicals.'

'Federal water and pollution laws don't regulate this stuff?'

'If you want to inject any chemical into the earth for any reason, you're subject to the EPA rules and regulations under the Safe Drinking Water Act ... unless you're fracking. Then you're free to pump any chemical you want down that hole.'

'Why?'

'Back in oh-five, Congress exempted fracking from the Water Act at the behest of Halliburton's ex-CEO, Vice President Cheney. Since Halliburton invented fracking, the exemption became known as the "Halliburton Loophole." So they can put anything except diesel fuel down the well hole without a permit or disclosure.'