"Have you been up there since then?" Will asked.
"Just once. Late May, I think it was. No one was around, but there'd been a lot of digging. Lately though, Burke hasn't said a word about the mine."
"Okay,"
Lansa
said. "Let's go up there and take a quick look around."
T
hey turned off the highway and followed a dirt road that switched back and forth up the mountain. Soon patches of wet snow speckled the landscape, and the higher they went, the larger the patches became until a continuous, gleaming mass of white covered the ground and road. Large heavy flakes fluttered from the gray sky, adding to the recent accumulation.
They rounded a bend and the edge of the road fell away. Will looked out over the spidery thicket of barren aspen trees outlined against a field of snow and wondered what they would find at the mine.
With their course of action firmly in mind, Will relaxed a bit and laughed as he told
Lansa
and Connors how he and Corey must have surprised Aaron Thomas when he saw them suddenly switch vehicles and drive away without saying another word to him.
But his father didn't join in Will's laughter. "That's too bad. By now the sheriff probably knows you're in this vehicle. It's going to be harder to get away."
"Do you think Aaron would tell anyone?" Corey asked.
"I don't know," Will said, reassessing the situation.
The scenery was obscured by a black mound of tailings, partially glazed with fresh snow. Connors nodded toward it. "You see that, Corey? A lot of people just think these tailing piles are an eyesore. But for miners like me they represent a lot of hard work by honest people. I'm proud of them."
Corey peered out the window at the tailings and said she'd like to know more about Aspen's mining history. "I'd be glad to tell you all about it sometime, young lady."
Will was sympathetic to his grandfather's views, but he also knew that the tailing piles were more than just an eyesore. They were also a source of water pollution that had affected Aspen and other former mining communities. As his father once said: You can't continually take from the earth without eventually paying a price.
"Okay, we're not far now," Connors said. "Just another quarter mile or so. Then we'll find out if Will's dream was telling us something important."
The dirt road widened, and Connors eased the car over to the side. As they got out,
Lansa
stared down at the tire tracks covered by the fresh snow. "There's been activity here recently. Several vehicles. A couple of them were here within the last few hours."
Will looked at the barely perceptible maze of tracks. He would've never noticed them, and he certainly couldn't put them in any sort of time frame, except that they were made before the latest snowfall.
"This way," Connors said and led the way along a snow-covered trail. Even though his grandfather was close to seventy, he was wiry and healthy and moved with surprising agility across the rugged landscape.
Will zipped his jacket against the late afternoon chill. The crisp air still held the pungent scent of decaying leaves.
He glanced back at Corey, who was walking a few feet behind him. She ran a hand through her curly hair, brushing the snowflakes away, and smiled back self-consciously.
"You see, Burke and his buddies were working up here," Connors said as he walked around a heap of rubble. A shovel was jammed into the top of the mound like a tilting flagpole. "This is all from last spring."
On the far side of the mound were narrow gauge rail tracks that led into the mountain. Above the entrance to the tunnel, imbedded in the earth, was a wooden plaque. Connors raised up on his toes and wiped the snow away. The plaque read THE JOHN WAYNE TUNNEL. The letters were carved in a hard wood that had weathered well over the years.
"I wanted to use silver for the plaque, but I know damn well somebody would've come along and stolen it before too long," Connors said.
Will ducked into the tunnel and was greeted by a dank odor of earth. The tunnel was narrow and just high enough for him to stand up. A few yards inside, a rust-colored iron cart rested on the tracks. The handle of another shovel was sticking out of the top. The tracks continued several more yards, then disappeared under a heavy wooden round-top door. A thick padlock secured it shut.
Connors shined a flashlight on it. "That door and lock are new. I wonder what he's got in there."
"So do I,"
Lansa
said.
Will looked inside the cart. There was something lying on the bottom. It was too dark to see what it was. "Gramps, can you shine your flashlight in here?"
The beam struck the floor of the cart, and Will saw that it was just a coil of rope. Then the beam momentarily played across another object. "What was that?" Will
Â
asked.
Connors aimed the flashlight into the corner.
"That's Myra's shoe. I'm sure of it. She was wearing brown loafers the night she disappeared," Will said.
Lansa
took the flashlight and leaned over the cart. "There're dark stains on the cart. It might be blood."
"I bet the body's inside," Corey said. "They put it in the cart first, then moved it."
"That's what I was just thinking," Connors said. "You've got your gun with you, don't you, Dad? Why don't you shoot the lock."
Lansa
walked over to the door. "That only works in the movies, Will. I've got a .38, not a cannon. That's a heavy lock."
"I've got a crowbar and a hammer in the Land Rover," Connors said.
"I'll go get them." Will jogged out of the tunnel and down the trail.
C
orey had wanted to go back with Will, just to be alone with him again. To find out what he was thinking. To listen to him talk. But he didn't invite her, and she didn't want to seem too eager to tag along. Besides, this was a serious matter, not an outing in the woods, and she had a bad feeling about this place. The sooner they left, the better.
Will's father and grandfather were looking around outside, but she had decided to stay in the tunnel. She took the lock in her hand, felt its weight and shape.
Locks were like people. They had both outer and inner strength. Some of the ones that appeared big and strong were weak inside, and vice versa. She realized immediately that she was looking at one of the former types.
She smiled as she reached into the untamed thicket on her head and pulled a bobby pin from just above her ear. It wasn't doing much good anyhow. In fact, most of her attempts at controlling her hair were more wishful thinking than anything else.
She quickly worked the pin into the lock and moved it around with the assurance of an expert locksmith. She'd always had a knack for breaking into things, whether it was computer systems or locks with no keys. Usually it was easier for her to finesse her way in rather than use brute strength. For example, she preferred guessing at secret passwords rather than running mathematical programs that would automatically try hundreds of thousands or even millions of word or number combinations. With locks, she preferred a pin or a paper clip over a sledgehammer.
She closed her eyes as she worked, feeling her way. Finally, she pushed and twisted and the lock popped open. "Nothing to it," she said aloud.
She removed the lock from the hasp, and the door creaked open several inches. She hesitated, thinking that she should wait for the others, but then impulsively she leaned against the door. Faint light filtered through the doorway, and she knew immediately that this was no ordinary mine. It was no mine at all.
"Corey!"
She spun around. "Oh, you scared me."
Connors stood behind her. "What the hell! You got the door open?"
She immediately felt wary. She'd learned long ago that adults usually didn't appreciate being upstaged, especially by a black girl. "I picked the lock," she said with a shrug.
"Hey, that's great. You should've said something before Will left. So what do we got inside?"
She let him go in first with his flashlight. She liked Will's grandfather, even though he seemed sort of gruff. Will's father was more like Will, quiet and thoughtful. Except that he was quieter than Will.
"What in the-world!" Connors exclaimed. "I don't believe what I'm seeing."
W
ill
Â
hurried back to the tunnel, a ten-pound sledgehammer in one hand and a crowbar in the other. But he stopped short when he saw someone standing at one side of the trail. A hole in the overcast sky had opened and a ray of light filtered through the trees, forming a halo effect around the figure. For a moment, Will thought he saw feathers streaming out from the top of the man's head.
"Dad? Is that you?"
Without responding, the man turned and walked into the woods. Will followed him, but when he reached the top of a rise, the man was no longer in sight. He looked for tracks in the snow, but didn't see any. The forest wasn't particularly dense here and with no leaves on the trees, he could easily see a couple of hundred yards. But nothing moved. There was no one out there.
Will headed back to the trail, wondering if he'd really seen the man. A low, shrill whistle suddenly raised the hair on the back of his neck. He looked over his shoulder and saw the man standing on the rise that Will had just vacated.
This time he saw him clearly and recognized him. It was the same beaming face he'd seen last summer at the Spring of Shadows, at the game, and in his dreams.
Masau
.
"Will?"
He turned at the sound of his father's voice. "What are you doing over there?"
He glanced back to the rise, but the man was gone. He hurried over to his father. "Dad, I saw him again.
Masau
was standing right up there."
His father nodded, looking toward the direction Will was pointing. He didn't question him as his grandfather would have done, nor did he seem surprised.
Will felt more awed than disturbed or frightened by what he'd just seen. In fact, this time he wasn't frightened at all. Maybe his father's presence and the reassurances he'd already given him about his mystical experiences were bolstering his confidence.
"
Masau
is guiding you, but he's not necessarily protecting you,"
Lansa
said.
"What do you mean?"
"It means we have to hurry."
They trotted back to the tunnel without saying any more about
Masau
, but Will felt that his father was holding something back. He entered the tunnel right behind his father and waited for him to move past the mining cart.
Lansa
held up a hand for him to be quiet, then pointed at the door. The lock lay on the ground and the door was ajar. He poked his head through the door, and Will looked over his shoulder. The door creaked open a few more inches. At first, all he could see was a flashlight beam that crossed the wall, then shone in his eyes. He held up a hand to block the light.
"Pete, Will, c'mon in here," Connors said. "You've got to see this."
"How did you get the lock open?" Will asked as he and his father stepped inside.
"Our young lady friend here happens to be handy with a hairpin."
Will looked over at Corey, but his attention was immediately distracted as Connors moved the light around the room.
The beam illuminated a room that was about twenty by twenty with a concrete floor and finished walls and ceiling. A long counter dominated the center of the room and it was covered with beakers, racks of test tubes, Bunsen burners, and other lab equipment. Nearby was a metal storage rack stocked with canisters marked with chemical names.
"It looks like a chemistry lab," Will said.
"That's exactly what it is," Corey said, picking up a beaker. "This must be where that drug is made."
"Burke isn't a chemist, though," Will said.
"You can bet one of his partners is," Connors said. "They probably figured they'd found the perfect spot for a drug lab."
"But there's no sign of Myra here," Will said. "Will, I found what looks like a grave not a hundred feet from the entrance,"
Lansa
said.