An Eye for Gold Page 34

  Virgil dialed the number and handed the receiver to me. The line rang twice, then Gretchen answered. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Gretchen? This is Em Hansen. You’ll recall I stopped by and talked with you a few days ago.”

  “Yes.” Her voice didn’t sound quite as easy as the day before, but she was hardly a blubbering mess.

  “I’m sorry, is this call an imposition?” I asked carefully.

  “Well, people keep calling me,” she said irritably.

  “Who’s been calling?”

  “Virgil Davis, he’s the mine superintendent, and Kyle Christie.”

  “What have they wanted?” I asked. “Are they looking for Don?”

  “Hah.”

  “What are they looking for, then?”

  “I don’t have to answer you.”

  “That’s right.”

  She hesitated. “Oh, they just want his maps. They’re always just pushing him. If they only understood . . .”

  She was still not worried about him, only annoyed that people were pestering him. “So you haven’t heard from your husband since I visited you,” I asked.

  Gretchen pulled the conversation up short. “I . . . hey, I’m sorry, but I got to go.”

  “Gretchen—”

  “Gotta go.” She clicked off the line.

  I set down the phone and stared straight at Virgil Davis. Gretchen had still not been worried about her husband, and when I asked her directly if she’d heard from him, she would not answer. I suddenly connected that dot with the conversation I’d had with the two miners in the Basque restaurant. “I know where he is,” I said, so amazed that I hardly realized I had spoken the words aloud.

  “Where?” Virgil demanded to know.

  I looked left and right, sorry I had opened my mouth. “My associates will be here soon,” I said hastily. “Then we’ll find him.”

  He was on his feet. “Where?”

  “I—I spoke too soon. I don’t really know. I just have a suspicion.”

  Virgil held out his hands in supplication. “Please.”

  “Well, I—” I stared out the windows toward the metal storage units that were lined up out there. “Are those locked?”

  “Some of them. They’re just for core samples.”

  My mind raced. I knew I should wait for Tom and for the search warrant, but just peeking in the door couldn’t hurt, could it? And if I was right, I could—

  Virgil had figured out what I was thinking. He headed out the door, moving fast. I chased after him, following at a gallop. He charged through the maze of hallways and burst into the outside heat through a door I had not previously seen. It led straight out to the storage units, which stood safely inside the electronically-controlled gate and chain-link fencing. Virgil strode right up to the only one that was not padlocked, grabbed the iron handle, and wrenched it open. The door groaned, shuddered, and shifted on its hinges, slowly opening.

  Inside, I could see the back end of a beige Ford Explorer.

  35

  VIRGIL STRUGGLED PAST THE SIDE OF THE VEHICLE and stared in through the glass. At once, I saw his shoulders drop as tension ran off him like water. “Jesus God,” he said, “For a moment there, I thought he was in it.”

  I squeezed past the door and scraped my way around the back bumper to the other side of the vehicle. He was right, there was no telltale odor that would foretell the presence of a corpse, but I had not expected one. I simply wanted to see the vehicle and know far certain that it was MacCallum’s. I pressed my face to the glass by the driver’s side window. I saw the happy jumble of field gear I would expect in any field geologist’s vehicle: a beaten-up file box, a rock hammer, his Brunton compass, empty Gatorade bottles on the floor, and in the cup holders, rocks. A big cardboard box full of white cotton sample bags had come open in the back of the vehicle and spilled all over it. But there was no Donald Paul MacCallum in there.

  “Well, hell,” roared Virgil, “then where is he?” He had his hands up to his temples, and gripped his head like it was about to burst.

  I could see where his mind was going. Two bodies had been discovered already, but neither one here. He himself had had the misfortune of finding one of them. Now the vehicle rented by a third person who had been missing for a week had been found right here on the ground for which he was responsible, a facility in which huge weights of rock were routinely dumped through immense grinding machinery, and where gigantic vats of acid boiled over rotating blades. “Virgil, stop!” I said, moving around the vehicle to stand next to him. “He’s not dead!”

  “But his vehicle’s here, and—”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, putting a hand on his arm to calm him. “He’s in the mine. He’s just hiding.”

  Virgil burst out of the storage shed and strode furiously toward the door back into the building.

  I hurried after him, begging him to stop. I tried every kind of logic I could, even hung on his arm and dug my heels into the gravel to keep him from going underground before Tom arrived, but I had no authority to stop him. Virgil moved steadily and forcefully back into the building, heading straight for the equipment room. There, he buckled on his gear belt and reached for his hard hat. He was a man possessed, and he was going under.

  Virgil yanked a battery out of the recharger, muttering angrily all the while. “You FBI are deceitful, you know that? I thought you were what you said, a geologist. Why, I—”

  “I am a geologist. But I’m also a detective. Is that so hard to understand?” I could hardly believe I’d heard myself say that

  “Well, detective,” Virgil said angrily, “If you’re right I’ve got a man hiding in my facility that shouldn’t be there. I’m not harboring a killer. I found a woman dead out there with fire burning all around her, and if you think that was a barrel of laughs, think again!”

  “It’s possible he didn’t do it. Let’s wait for the others.”

  “Wait? As far as I know, he killed her, and if he thinks hiding in my mine is going to save him, he’s insane!”

  With that, he threw his body back into high gear and headed toward the door.

  As he came past me, I grabbed his arm. “Virgil, wait. Let me come with you.” It was a crazy thing to suggest, but I had blown it, totally screwed the surprise of Tom’s imminent arrival, and I could at least atone by offering witness to what happened before he got there.

  Virgil stared at me, wild-eyed, his mouth open. Only then did I remember that he still thought I was a federal agent. He turned and headed back to the equipment rack, and began to harvest a second rig. “Here’s a hard hat,” he said, “Adjust it there. And here’s a belt and a self-rescuer. Remember your instructions? This is your headlamp battery. The switch is here. Take these boots, those running shoes aren’t to code.” When he had me trussed up, he took a stern look at me and said, “Here’s a pair of safety glasses. You should have a Tyvek suit to keep the dirt off you, but—”

  “Jeans wash fine.”

  “Here’s a tag. Put it in your pocket.”

  I held out my hand to receive the small brass circle. It had a number stamped into it. I shoved it deep into my front jeans pocket. “Will I need a jacket?” I was wearing a thin T-shirt, having planned to fend off the heat of the open desert.

  “No,” he said, staring deep into my eyes. “Where we’re going the sun won’t shine, but you’ll be warmed by Satan’s breath.”

  36

  KYLE CHRISTIE LISTENED TO VIRGIL’S AND EM’S receding footsteps from the floor of the storage closet just off the equipment room, where he had been hiding while he caught a nap. Just my fucking luck to hit on a federal agent, he thought, as panic seized his brain for the third time in a week.

  He stood up, already sweating, and listened to make certain that they had not returned for any missed equipment Too late, he was beginning to put two and two together, and anger spurred his panic into action. Hell, she was out there looking for me, not Rabbithole Springs! And I bought her whole fucking story!


  He stepped carefully out of the closet. His breath came shallowly.

  He made a hurried mental list of those persons who had seen him arrive this morning. The security guard, yes, but he had told him that he had come to use the computer. And the guard would confirm that he had arrived before the Hansen bitch, so no one would suppose he had been following her. Could he plead the truth, that he had only wanted to scare Pat Gilmore, so she’d back off on her threats? The lesbian stuff hadn’t even phased her, and then, when Chittenden had told him to just plain steal her data, she’d caught him! He’d gotten the stuff off the hard drive on her computer, but he knew that it was her original field notes that would convince a jury, anyway. Hand-scribbled notes, made over weeks and months, in different colors of pen and pencil, all wind-blown and gritted with dirt. He had been picking through her desk looking for her notebooks when she came in. What followed was horrifying, even worse than that Dietz bitch twisting his balls. Pat had charged at him, demanding that he explain himself, and he had backed down and told her to call Chittenden if she wanted to know. The humiliation of that moment still burned like acid. His bosses might intimidate him, and little weasels like Deputy Weebe might keep him at bay, but to be cowed by a woman was more than a man should stand. And she had said that this tore it, and if Chittenden didn’t have a good explanation, she was taking her story to Reno. So what could he do? He had driven out there and waited for her. Just to talk to her, set things straight. He had held the rock hammer tight in his fist just so she wouldn’t try anything again

  And then that bastard Sam had seen him drive by with the lawyer. He’d thought for sure the old man had recognized him.

  All these thoughts raced through Kyle’s mind as he grabbed a third set of gear, making certain to take equipment other than his own in case anything went wrong and he once again had to cover his tracks. He was going to have to be smarter this time.

  He waited, giving them another minute’s lead. He did not want them to see him following them. Especially not the bitch from the FBI.

  37

  VIRGIL LOADED ME INTO A HIGH-SPRUNG PICKUP truck that was parked outside the back door, where Laurel Dietz had parked her red Chevy Blazer. I glanced quickly around the lot. I saw a dark green Ford Explorer. Was it Kyle Christie’s? No matter, I could leave Kyle to Tom and Ian, who would be here any minute. I had worse things to worry about just then. I was going underground.

  Virgil drove up the haulage road past the mill and continued on up the side of the mountain. A huge, fat-tired yellow vehicle the size of a swimming pool lumbered past us going downhill loaded with rocks. “Ore truck?” I asked, trying to lure him into conversation.

  “Thirty ton,” he replied, but said no more.

  We came around a last curve and there was the mine portal, the gaping maw of the tunnel that led into the earth. It was surrounded by trim masonry, the bold symbol of Virgil’s pride. Carved into the cement facing above the masonry was GRANVILLE RESOURCES, and between the masonry and the mouth itself were the words, GLORIANA MINE.

  “Was the mine named for a real person?” I asked, still desperately trying to make small talk.

  Virgil’s jaws clenched tightly, bunching his muscles, and he spat, “Some lady of the evening Chittenden knew.”

  We climbed out of the pickup truck. I had to run to keep up with Virgil as he closed on what looked like a industrial-sized forklift tractor without the forks. It was equipped with a heavy roll cage. He climbed swiftly into the saddle and flipped a side seat down. “You sit here,” he said. “You get to feeling faint or nauseated, you let me know. It will only get worse.”

  I climbed into the seat and grabbed the protective bar in front of my knees, and we were off, the engine of the tractor echoing brutally off the hard face of the mine. Just before diving down the portal, Virgil pulled the machine to the left and stopped at a board full of hooks. He pulled a brass tag out of his pocket and hung it up. I noticed that it matched the number of the tag I held in my pocket “What’s that for?” I asked.

  Virgil did not even look at me as he backed the tractor around and took aim at the portal. “That’s in case you are killed in a rock fall,” he said. “So we can identify what’s left of your body.”

  THE TRACTOR HURTLED past the portal, confining the din of its engine to the space of the tunnel that led into the mine, a decline that dove into die mountain at steeper than ten degrees off the horizontal. Instantly, my whole world was transformed. Gone were all physical clues to what was normal, or usual, or recognizable. We dropped quickly through the short fetch of daylight that lapped jealously into the tunnel and entered a world of darkness. All color fell away as the absence of light sucked up the thin beams of our headlamps like a famished sponge. Instantly, there was no tint of pink or yellow or blue except as a ghostly remnant on my hands. All was simply darkness, a sucking gray without warmth, and it was growing darker with every foot. I squeezed my eyes shut and held them closed for several seconds, forcing them to adjust to the darkness more quickly, but when I opened them, the best our headlamps could raise was just a turgid charcoal gray.

  I turned and looked longingly over my shoulder at the dazzling pinpoint of light that was the portal. Something moved across it: a man stepping into the tunnel? The glare was so great that I could not tell for certain. Then we went around a slight bend in the tunnel, and even the tiny shard of light was gone.

  I turned back to face downward into the earth. I looked all around, lacing the darkness with the beam of my headlamp, trying to orient myself in this new world. The floor and walls of the decline were gray, featureless rock. Along the ceiling were strung corrugated tubes three feet in diameter. Tucked up beside them were heavy electrical cords and long hoses which I presumed to be water lines. The tunnel roared with sound. “What are those?” I asked, pointing at the larger tubes.

  “Ventilation. Air blows through them at thirty miles per hour. There are places where you’ll need to cover your ears.”

  I could barely hear him over the sound, which by itself would have been disorienting. As we jolted along down the uneven rock floor of the decline, my mind struggled to understand what I was seeing and hearing and feeling, trying madly to match this new landscape with any I had met before. I could remember nothing even remotely like this domain with no light to give form to solid objects. As I once again scanned my headlamp over the long tubes above, my brain suggested to me that I was descending the gullet of a giant caterpillar. No, I told it, this is a mine. Just map it, please. But all reference to the outside world had been obliterated, and there was only darkness.

  My eyes fell into a hypnotic stare, searching for anything to look at within the limited fields illuminated by our headlamps. I saw only rock dust, which floated in the air like a thousand tiny space ships navigating the void, making the atmosphere within the tunnel seem almost liquid.

  Suddenly, lurching out of the gloom far below us, I saw an array of lights. There were four of them. They bounced and swayed slightly, dull mesmerizing fireflies in the total darkness. Three seemed to move as a fixed arrangement and one bounced just above them. You’re in the benthic deep, my brain informed me. This is a National Geographic special, and we are watching deep sea creatures from a diving bell Those lights are the phosphorescent protuberances on a deep sea creature. And it’s a giant! It’s—

  The array now loomed close enough that I could discern what carried them. Three were headlights on another enormous ore truck, and the fourth was the lamp on the hard hat worn by its driver. Slowly, I realized that the headlights were as dim as our headlamps, so that miners, whose eyes were attuned to this eternal darkness, wouldn’t blind each other as they met in the tunnel.

  I told my overheated brain to take a break from interpreting what it saw.

  After what seemed like hours but was probably only minutes, we came to a side tunnel and turned off into it. Virgil shut off the tractor and spoke to me.

  “MacCallum didn’t kill Pat,” he said.
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br />   “How do you know?”

  “I just pieced it all together. I recall now seeing Don sitting in his office as I left that evening, just kind of staring out the window. He couldn’t have done it. When John and I got to the crash site, the dust was still settling, and Pat’s blood hadn’t even begun to dry.”

  “Are you sure? We can’t be too careful.”

  “Yes, I’m sure. And there’d be a record in the guard station if Don had gone out and come back in. And it was at least a fifteen-minute drive down to the crash site, and dust won’t hang in the air like that and blood dries in a snap in the desert air. And Don’s crazy, but not that kind of crazy.”

  He was beginning to relax. He pointed down a side tunnel. “These drifts lead off toward the working faces. The geologists take assays along the face to check the grade, then mark it for the miners. The miners drill the face, then set their charges. We take the ore up to the mill, then shoot the waste back in here impregnated with gunite. Then we move up a level and go again. Now; there are four levels, and five of these entries. I have men working ten faces on this vein alone, and further down the main decline there are more veins that run off at an angle. Where do you drink our man is?”

  My eyes went wide. I was still reeling with disorientation, every inch of my skin registering to the increased heat and humidity and the sounds of the drills and other engines that formed a steady buffeting below the roar of the air tubes. Where was MacCallum? I had divined that he was underground, but I had no idea where. “Give me a minute,” I said. I picked slowly through my mind, treating it like a filing cabinet. “Do you know where a miner named Larry is working?”

  “Big Paiute guy?”

  “Yeah. I talked to him at a restaurant last night. The waitress said he was making extra money. I figured that meant he had an assistant.”