I felt wood, slipped, and grabbed a rough crack in the timber. I yanked with all my strength, pulling the rope in after me. As the downward bite continued, I let my weight carry me into the drift until I was resting on my left hand and both knees. My right leg, until then sound asleep, tingled sharply with the new movement.
Above they would continue to pay out the rope, giving me three more bites of slack…about eighteen feet of line. I hoped they wouldn’t ask questions when the weight left the line. I straightened up slightly and pulled out the Colt automatic.
The murmurings of soft voices reached me. I tried to judge the distance, but the sound bounced and echoed. I recognized Daisy’s little voice, high-pitched and confused.
Finn hadn’t heard me. I kept my mouth closed, forcing my breathing quiet. My heart hammered in my ears. Slowly I shuffled forward five feet, a third of the distance to the pump foundations.
In minutes Finn would return with Daisy. I knew I’d have the time and the strength for only one try.
I edged my way toward the old pump foundation. When I thought I was close, I reared up on my knees like an old dinosaur, hand outstretched and groping.
The edge of my hand touched cold, damp concrete. With infinite care I palmed the small automatic, held it against my chest, and pushed off the safety. I took a deep breath and braced my forearm on the concrete. The darkness in front of me was a solid door.
Finn would have to use the light to walk Daisy out. I strained to hear. Nothing.
“Keep your eyes on your feet, Ruth,” he said. The voice took me completely by surprise. I crouched as low as my belly would allow. Their feet made soft shuffling sounds with an occasional tinkle as some small piece of mining detritus was kicked from their path.
The light cut the darkness over my head, darting out into the shaft. I kept my head down. My hand on the automatic was wet with sweat. The sounds stopped. Had the son of a bitch seen the rope?
“Gastner!” His voice was strong…and close. The beam of light twitched, swinging from one side to the other. “I’ve got the girl with me.”
I could hear her breathing, little chirpy breaths of raw fright. He took another step, and I watched the flashlight beam.
His voice was a soft whisper. “Stay close, Ruth.” She wasn’t linked. I gritted my teeth and slipped my index finger in the trigger guard of the Colt.
The flashlight beam was narrow and intense. He was close. Another step, you bastard, I thought. I saw the shadow of his hand behind the light, counted three, and moved.
Six feet away, the target for my automatic was just a murky figure behind the light. I saw Finn’s trick almost soon enough. The images registered just as I squeezed the trigger. The smaller of the two figures was holding the flashlight.
I pulled the shot, but too late. The little Colt coughed and spat. The bullet sang past the side of Daisy’s head, whined off the ceiling, and ricocheted down the drift.
Finn was already in motion, but he was a big target. I squeezed the trigger twice, and this time Finn yelped and spun sideways. In two staggering backward steps he crashed into the wall of the shaft.
Instinctively Daisy turned, and the beam turned with her. For a moment Finn was illuminated. He scrambled to his feet. In his right hand was my .45 automatic, and there was no silencer on the muzzle.
I pointed quickly and fired twice. Each time the little pellets struck him, he flinched and staggered back. But he didn’t go down. For a moment he stood motionless, his face looking up at the roof of the drift, as if he were lost and searching for direction from the rocks.
The little girl dropped the light. It clattered, rolled a couple of feet toward me, and lay against a length of rusted pipe. Its beam pointed back into the drift. She whimpered and sat down, a tiny, frightened ball.
I slapped the automatic down on the concrete foundation, lunged toward her, and grabbed the harness. I pulled the little girl to me. I saw motion and looked up to see Finn staggering like a drunk. He raised the .45 and held it in both hands.
“Don’t do it!” I shouted. Releasing my hold on Daisy, I made a wild grab at the little Colt. Finn swung toward me and pulled the trigger. The .45 bellowed, the explosion mind-numbing in the drift. The bullet passed harmlessly two feet over my head, crossed the main shaft, and thudded into a timber.
I locked my arm against the damp concrete, pointed the .380 toward the center of the shadow that was Finn’s torso, and pulled the trigger twice.
Finn staggered backward. The drift was filled with the crashes of the .45 as his finger jerked the trigger spasmodically. I cringed low, hugging Daisy to me. One of the fat, hollow-point bullets of the .45 glanced off an iron bracket and sang over our heads like a wasp. Finn had already lost his balance, the recoil of the gun adding to his backward dance.
Another sound became harmony to the big automatic. With a loud “whump,” a section of the wall just behind the timbers caved in, the mass striking Finn and carrying him to the other side of the drift. He screamed and went down. The dust billowed toward me.
I slapped the light switch on my helmet. In one desperate motion I stood up, pulled Daisy off her feet, and plunged the carabiner through the loop of my own harness. The spring snapped shut.
With the little girl hanging from my waist like a rag doll, I turned and waddled toward the vertical shaft.
Behind me, Finn screamed. “No! Listen to me!” he shrieked. The son of a bitch would have to talk to himself.
I fumbled with the mike switch on my collar. “Pull me up!” I bellowed into the mike.
Behind me, Finn continued to shriek and then he found the .45 again. Its last cartridge exploded. The flash illuminated the back of the drift, and the slug danced off the rock and dug into the dust. Even as the clip emptied, the rumble of the earth’s guts built, low and ominous.
A puff of air hit my face and with it came the acrid smell of fresh rock dust. A timber nearby cracked loudly and a shower of rocks clattered around my feet. I grabbed a fistful of Daisy’s jacket and reached the mouth of the drift just as the last of the rope’s slack snaked past. The rotten timbers above the pump station collapsed inward.
Something heavy struck my right foot and I spun sideways. “Son of a bitch!” I shouted and jumped into space.
The jolt of the rope damn near cut me in half. Daisy was a small child, but her weight pulled the harness off-sides.
Like a twisting, turning pendulum, we snapped out away from the drift and then crashed back against the side of the shaft, the iron of the ladder cracking my helmet. If Daisy screamed, I never heard it.
The rumble of the collapse died away in the drift even as we were lifted toward the surface. I hung limp, head back and eyes locked on the patch of light above me.
It was almost a relief to hang in the quiet shaft.
“Gastner, you copy?”
In order to key the mike, I would have had to release my hold on Daisy. That would have been a hell of a way to test whether or not the carabiner still locked her harness to mine. I didn’t have the strength to yell. Let ’em wait, I thought.
A thousand hands hoisted us out of the shaft. The ground under my feet was hard and firm—with nothing hanging over my head but the night sky.
“Be careful with the child,” someone said. Her eyes were tightly closed, with her arms drawn up tightly to her chest and her fists balled under her chin.
I struggled to my feet and saw Nolan Parris. The priest was trying to reach the child, trying to push his way past the medical team and the assisting cops. His face was as white as his Roman collar and his eyes wide with concern for the child…but he was heading for disaster.
“Parris!” I shouted at him. He jerked up and saw me. I wrenched my arm away from someone and staggered toward the priest. I caught him by the shirtfront and for a minute we both executed a slow, clumsy dance as I tried to keep my balance.
I shook Parris until he was looking me in the eye.
“Listen!” I shouted at him and then I lowered my voice. “Listen to me. Now’s not the time. You’re a stranger to her, just like the rest of us.”
“But I…”
I shook him, but it was a damn feeble shake. “Stay out of their way. She’s in good hands. And you’re not going to be able to just walk back into her life. She doesn’t know you. You’ll make matters worse.” He turned in my grip and watched the medics bundle the little girl toward the medivac helicopter.
Hell, I knew what he wanted. He’d made up his mind and now wanted to make up for four lost years. But he had no idea how tough that road was going to be. The little girl wasn’t going to run into his arms, shouting, “Daddy, Daddy!” I figured she’d had her fill of adults for a while. If I’d been her, I’d have wanted to stay catatonic for about a month until I sorted life out.
Camera lights bathed the helicopter as the reporters got what they had come for. A little, helpless, battered child made damn good copy.
I could see Nolan Parris wasn’t going to do anything stupid, and I released my hold on him. “Help me over to the chopper. We’ll ride into the hospital with her.”
***
Twenty hours later Pat Tate answered the telephone for me. I was standing in front of the small mirror that hung over the nightstand in my hospital room, trying to manipulate the electric shaver so I didn’t hack my chin wattles to pieces. Even over the buzz of the razor, I heard the caller’s ranting and knew right away who it was.
“You betcha,” Sheriff Tate said. He nodded and repeated himself, then added, “Here he is.” He held out the receiver, and I set the razor down.
“Holman?”
“Himself.”
Posadas County Sheriff Martin Holman was pissed. I got in the first word.
“Yup,” I said into the phone and the tirade began.
“What the
hell
is going on up there with you?” he shouted, and I held the receiver away from my ear. Tate grinned, tapped his watch, and mouthed that he’d be back in a few minutes. Holman was still barking, and I let him roll on until he lost some momentum.
“My God, all I see in the papers and on television is your mug, and for Christ’s sakes you don’t even work for them.”
“Those are the breaks,” I said.
Holman almost choked, and I listened to him cough for a minute before he got control. “Do you know how many times I’ve called?”
“No, sir,” I said. He was twenty years my junior, but what the hell. He signed my paychecks. “No one told me you’d called.”
“Three times yesterday,” Holman barked. He really was angry. “Three goddamned times. And shit…four times today, at least.”
“Sorry about that. Things were hectic though.” Pat Tate must have been having fun. And the son of a gun never had told me.
“They said you were asleep.”
“The docs wouldn’t let anyone in to see me. They were worried about me combining exhaustion with coronary stress.”
“Coronary stress, hell. You’ve got the next best thing to a new one. No one can kill you.” His tone modulated a little. “They could have at least told you I called.”
“I’m sure they were planning on it.” I saw an opening and took it. “And Estelle is doing well. I thought you might like to hear that.”
“I know that,” Holman said. “I talked with her husband. More than once,” he added pointedly. “He says she’s going to recover fully.”
“Yes.”
“So how the hell did you piece together that this character was wanted in Washington? Talk about grandstanding heroics. Jesus.”
“I didn’t piece it together. He saw an old newspaper I’d kept after we got the APB earlier this month. He thought I had nailed him.”
“You mean you hadn’t made the connection?”
“Nope. I was as stupid as everyone else.”
“Everyone is saying you did.”
“Nope. Dumb luck.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. And he was in New Mexico when the murders took place in Washington…that’s what Tate said earlier.”
“That’s right. He sent a friend back to Washington…a kid that lived with him. Slipped in, shot the governor and warden, slipped back out.”
“Hell, he could as easily have ended up down here in Posadas, Bill. Right in our backyard.”
“They have to end up somewhere. Pat Tate got lucky.”
“And he was a nut case? That’s what Tate said.”
“In and out. We haven’t had a chance to really sort everything out with the cops from Washington State, but from what they told us over the phone, Finn was treated at one of the state hospitals there about five years before. And he was treated as an outpatient on occasion before and after that. He and his younger sister used to run a fundamentalist church of sorts.”
“He was a preacher?”
“Sort of. Fire-and-brimstone stuff. Eye for an eye. He was arrested once for assault, but that was tossed out. Apparently he managed to keep the lid on until his little sister was killed in a women’s correctional facility a year ago.”
“His sister?”
“Yes. A young woman named Ruth Tolever. She was arrested for something Finn contended she never did. She was killed during an altercation before she could be sprung on bail. The fight had nothing to do with her, they’re telling us…she just got caught in it. That set Finn off. He blamed the whole system.”
“He took his time, if revenge was what he had in mind.”
“A planner,” I said. “And the son of a bitch wasn’t one of those nuts who wants to be caught. He moved down here, planning all the time what he was going to do. Hooked up with his young friend and found Arajanian was an apt pupil.”
“And the little girl? The TV men sure had a field day with that story.”
“As near as we can figure from what Washington tells us, Finn probably saw the little girl as a replacement for his sister…that’s my guess. Maybe he really did love Cecilia Burgess. She was going to have his kid. Maybe he just kept her around so he could keep Daisy. We may never know for sure.”
“One cold bastard.” Holman fell silent for a minute. “He had his pal kill all those kids in the truck.”
“That’s the way it looks. The one kid lived, and from what he’s told Pat Tate, that’s what happened. Since revenge worked in Washington State he probably figured it’d work here, too.”
Holman grunted. “So, how are you?”
“All right. Bruised and tired.”
“When are you heading back?”
I chuckled. “By the end of the week, I guess. Not before. I want to stick around to make sure Estelle’s on the mend and doesn’t need anything. And they haven’t brought my Blazer back yet either.”
“My house burned down, you know.”
“I know. Bob Torrez told me. Did you find the key to my place all right?”
“We’re staying at the Essex Motel.”
“For God’s sakes, Martin, what for? Get the goddamned key and use my house.”
Sheriff Pat Tate had stepped into the room. I grinned at him and looked heavenward. Holman said, “Well, I don’t know…and it was arson. To cover up a robbery.”
“No shit? Bob didn’t say anything about that.”
“Hell no. We didn’t know until yesterday. I was going to tell you, but they’d never put me through to you. How could I?”
“What was taken?”
“The usual stuff. My stereo, some guns, pottery, a couple rugs. Stuff like that.”
“Any leads?”
“None yet. I was kinda hoping you’d be back so I could go over some things with you.”
“End of the week for sure. Any other messages?”
“No. Well, wait a minute.” He shuffled papers. “Your daughter in Flint called. But she said it wasn’t important. You’re supposed to call her when you can. I think she saw something on television and got worried.”
“Fine. Anything else?”
Holman laughed, his usual good mood returning. “I feel like I’m being dismissed.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” I said, although I had. “I got company, is all, and we got a meeting with about eight different law agencies from Washington…and the feds.”
“Better you than me,” Holman said. “End of the week, then. Give my best to Estelle and Francis. And tell Tate that you don’t work for him.”
“I’ll do that.” We hung up and I repeated Holman’s message to Tate.
“By the time we’re through with all the paperwork and all the meetings, you’ll think that you do, kid,” Tate said.