Bones Are Forever (35 page)

My eyes traced the beam to a row of yellow barrels. Painted on each was a single red word:
Arsenic
.

My mind registered. Analyzed.

Subterranean shaft. Miner’s helmet. Arsenic. Horace Tyne.

My blood chilled to ice.

I knew where I was.

The Giant gold mine.

Sweet Jesus. How far underground?

Tyne had brought me here to kill me. To hide my body.

As he’d done with Annaliese Ruben.

I had to get out. Or get help.

Please!

Moving with stealth, I fumbled for my pocket.

Yes!

I pulled out my iPhone and cupped the screen.

No signal. Too far underground.

Think!

An e-mail would go out automatically as soon as the device reconnected with a tower. It was the best I could do.

I opened mail. Dispatched my location to Ryan.

Noticed a text from Pete. Why not? Whichever medium worked first.

Pete’s message was short:
Fast Moving general partner Philippe Fast
.

I sent a reply:
Giant Gold Mine. Call Ryan
.

Was I insane? Reading e-mail and texts? I had to get out.

Pulse gunning, I repocketed the phone, drew in one knee, and braced my foot on the floor of the cart.

Waited.

Breath frozen, I drew in the other foot.

Braced.

Waited.

A deep breath, then I flexed to spring.

One sneaker skidded.

Gravel ground between rubber and metal.

The sound was like a screech in the stillness.

The helmet beam whipped my way.

I caught a glimpse of the face below.

Disparate facts toggled.

A text message.

A photo.

Pieces. Players. Moves. Strategies.

Suddenly, I saw the whole board.

I
T CLICKED. THE DETAIL THAT DIDN’T FIT WITH THE REST OF THE
photo. The parkas, the vests, three truckers squinting into the sun.

A fourth trucker, face turned, white streaking the hair below a fur-lined hat.

Phil looks like a skunk
.

A flyer showing Ralph Trees’s brother-in-law behind the wheel of a truck.

Got it here? Want it there? We move fast!

Fast Moving.

Farley McLeod had allowed some of his mineral claims to lapse. An entity called Fast Moving had acquired those claims.

Philippe Fast was the general partner in that entity.

It wasn’t Tyne bearing down on me with a gun in his hand.

It was Philippe Fast.

Who was his partner? Tyne? Chalker? Where had he gone? For how long?

No matter. These were the best odds I’d have.

I threw my legs over the safety bar and slithered to the ground. My knees buckled, but I kept my feet.

“Hold it right there!” The bellowed command bounced off rock and reverberated down the shaft.

All around me was blackness. I suspected we’d descended a ramp, but had no idea its location.

Fast drew closer, the light on his helmet pointed straight at the cart.

I was a sitting duck.

When Fast’s beam was focused on the barrels, I’d noticed a spade propped to their rear.

I pitched into the darkness, rounded the row, dropped to a squat, and peered through a gap.

Fast’s light swiveled left, as though he were searching for something. Then it swung my way. “Get out here. You’re just delaying the inevitable.”

Stall!

“Five syllables. Impressive.” Blood leaping. Sounding much calmer than I felt. “Rocky said you were good with words.”

Fast shifted his feet but held position.

“Fast Moving. Love the double entendre, Phil.” My words leapfrogged one another, as though coming from everywhere at once.

“You’re dead, bitch.”

“Oh, dear. Now there you disappointed me.”

I felt for the spade, talking to cover any sound I might make. “Did you kill Beck?” Wrapping my fingers around the spade handle. “Or did you have your buddy do it?” Taunting to draw Fast closer. “Or have I got that backward? Is he the brain and you’re just the muscle?”

Fast took a few tentative steps, gun aimed in my direction. “Shut the fuck up.”

“I get why you had to eliminate Beck.” I eased the spade from the wall. “But why kill Eric Skipper?”

Fast again glanced left, then inched closer to the barrels. I sensed he was also stalling. Why? What had the other man gone to do? To get?

“Come on, Phil. Obviously, there’s been a glitch. Since we’re chatting here, waiting for your pal to get back so you two can murder me, why not lay out how it went down?”

Arms trembling, I lowered the spade. “OK. How about I give you my version. You just nod yes or no.”

“How about you shut the fuck up.”

Fast was now close enough for me to see his face. His skin
looked autopsy-pale in the glow of the light from his helmet. A tangle of curls sparked white on his forehead.

“You learn that Farley McLeod has scored a rich kimberlite pipe. Maybe through Fipke, maybe on his own. You and McLeod and Tyne are all buddies. All ice road drivers together at one time. You know all about McLeod’s mineral claims.”

Fast’s gun hand rose. I visualized his finger tensing on the trigger.

“You snatch up the claims that McLeod lets lapse. But he keeps active the three he says will deliver big. And he’s registered these in the names of his kids. How am I doing so far?”

Moving ever so slowly, I laid the spade across my knees.

“McLeod buys it in his Cessna, so now it’s just the three bambinos.”

Fast was arcing the gun back and forth along the row of barrels, uncertain of my exact position.

“You and Tyne set up the Friends of the Tundra scam to get McLeod’s children to sign over what they think is worthless land to help save the caribou. Tyne is the front man. He never mentions mineral rights. Eric Skipper discovers the caribou preserve is phony and confronts Tyne. I’m guessing he also tips Beck. Whatever. Beck won’t play ball, so you cap him. Skipper also has to go. If he exposes the con, Nellie won’t donate the land.”

I kept goading.

“Very clever, your plan for Ruben. You know she’s not competent to sign over anything, so you bury her in the Montreal sheet world under an alias, planning later to have her declared dead. The claims will belong to sweet, malleable Nellie Snook, who loves the caribou. This tracking right so far?”

Fast was now two feet from the barrels. I could hear breath rasping in and out of his nostrils. See the Beretta trembling in his grip.

“When Tyne tells you Ruben is back in Yellowknife, you hightail it out here from Quebec. Time to up the ante on little Annaliese. We know how that story ends, don’t we, Phil?”

With icy fingers, I groped the ground around me. Found what felt like an old rubber glove.

“You also snuff the babies? That how the big, bad ice road trucker rolls?”

A shot rang out and roared down the tunnel.

The rock beside me sparked.

I felt a jagged prickling on the side of my face.

Now!

Keeping low, I tossed the glove to the far end of the barrels.

Fast moved left. Another round exploded from the Beretta.

I sprang from my end of the row and, death-gripping the spade handle, sliced sideways with all my strength, aiming for the pale swath of flesh between Fast’s collar and his helmet.

The blade connected with a sickening thunk.

Subsequent events exist in my mind as disjointed images and sounds. At the time, they seemed to go on for hours. In reality, the sequence lasted but minutes.

Fast windmilled forward, legs pumping. Finding no traction, he stumbled to his knees. The Beretta flew from his hand. His forward momentum sent him into the last of the barrels. His helmet popped off and landed upside down.

The barrel spun, careened off a wall, tipped over, rolled, and boomed against rock.

The lid popped free. Spotlighted in Fast’s upside-down beam, a noxious mix of mud, stagnant water, and arsenic-laced sludge spilled from the barrel and spread across the ground. A form took shape in the muck.

Annaliese Ruben lay on her side, long dark hair pasted to her face, features blue and rubbery in the cast-off light. Her legs and arms were tightly flexed. Below her chin, a lifeless hand lay curled on her chest, translucent skin peeling from the fingertips.

My pain gave way to a wave of pity.

Annaliese resembled the poor dead baby she’d hidden under her bathroom sink.

The sound of frantic scrambling snapped me back.

With a guttural howl, Fast lurched to his feet, head canted at an unnatural angle.

I tightened my grip on the spade. My pulse thudded in my ears. Blood pumped in my throat.

Swing again? Go for the gun?

That second of hesitation gave my opponent the advantage he needed.

Moving surprisingly quickly, Fast kicked the shovel from my hands and several feet from me. He then dropped on all fours and began groping for the Baretta.

I heard the spade clatter in the darkness and lunged to retrieve it.

Too slow!

With an animal snarl, Fast grabbed my hair and brought the gun up to my head. “Now you fucking die!”

He spun me and drove the Baretta into the back of my skull.

Against my will, I cried out. For a moment all was silent except for the soft trickle of water.

Then. A swish.

Where? To the left? The right?

Or had I imagined it?

Fast dug the muzzle deeper. I smelled his sweat and hair cream. Would they be the last sensations my brain would register?

In my mind I saw Katy, Pete, Ryan, Birdie. Tears streamed from the corners of my eyes. I braced for the bullet.

Then. A scrape. Like a shoe being placed with stealth.

Fast tensed and pointed the gun in the direction of the sound.

The Baretta discharged with another thunderous crack.

A locomotive blasted my right side. My body went airborne, hit the ground hard. Almost instantly, I heard another shot.

Lungs in spasm and gasping for air, I strained to comprehend what was happening.

Blood and bone burst from Fast’s shoulder and splattered the wall at his back. He gave a keening yelp, then toppled with a sound like meat hitting wood.

In the smoky haze lit by Fast’s bottom-up helmet, I saw three figures. One squatted beside me. The other two crouched by the cart.

All three had weapons trained on my would-be executioner.

T
WO P.M. TUESDAY. OUT MY WINDOW, THE SUN WAS A HARD
white ball in a perfect blue sky. The bay looked glassy and still.

Between the koi-pond plunge, my gritty cart ride, and ricocheting fragments from Fast’s bullet, my face resembled postwar Dresden. And I ached in places I didn’t know I had.

Nevertheless, my mood was upbeat. I was packing to go home.

Sunday night’s abduction had left me with abrasions and a possible concussion. The latter had mandated twenty-four hours of hospitalization.

While under observation, hooked to IVs and very cranky, I’d gotten the story piecemeal. Mostly from Ryan.

One heroine in the tale was Nora, the conspiratorial desk clerk. Through the hotel’s front entrance, Nora saw a man flatten me against a truck and yank my purse from my shoulder. Thinking she was witnessing a mugging, and still in Dick Tracy mode, she’d noted the license and phoned the cops.

When the plate came back registered to Horace Tyne, someone told Rainwater. Rainwater told Ryan.

During one of their long stretches together, Itchy and Scratchy had discussed my double-motivation theory, decided it had merit. Figured I could be in danger.

About the same time Nora was dropping her dime, Ollie
contacted G Division. He’d also considered the possibility that I might be right. And therefore in danger.

I have to admit, these guys moved fast. Rainwater contacted Corporal Schultz out in Behchoko. He checked Tyne’s house, reported no truck in the drive.

Ryan remembered Tyne’s part-time job as a security guard at the Giant gold mine. Rainwater remembered the barrels of arsenic being stored underground. Both agreed that sounded bad. Told Ollie.