The Secret of the Stones (28 page)

The
blonde’s eyes turned for a moment to Tommy before another shot resonated
through the building.
 
This bullet
went through the ranger’s shoulder, directly into the joint.
 
Blood trickled from the wound down the
tan sleeve of the man’s uniform.

Both
of the guards looked visibly uneasy as they watched from a few feet away.
 
They were busily looking around to make
sure no one else was going to enter the room, paranoia on their faces.
 

Ulrich
squatted down and put his nose close to the grimacing face of the Indian and
pressed the gun against the man’s temple.
 
“Tell me where the chamber is and I will end all of this for you right
now.
 
This is your last
chance.”
 

The
agony on the ranger’s face turned once again to a look of defiance.
 
“I am already dead,” he spat through
gritted teeth.
 
“My ancestors await
me.
 
And you shall never have the
treasure you seek.
 
My purpose is
fulfilled.”

“Have
it your way then,” the gun lowered to the ranger’s abdomen.
 
Another pop burst through the silence.

Bloody
hands first grasped at the arms of the European jacket of the man that had
certainly ended his life.
 
Then,
releasing the sleeves, he reached down with his hands and felt the warm, thick
liquid seeping from the bullet hole in his stomach.
 
His voice came in a gasp now, “The chamber will not be
found.”
 

A
moment passed and the Indian just lay there silently, looking at the ceiling
with his hands on his belly, covered in the oozing crimson.

“Nooo!”
 
Tommy yelled.
 
Adrenaline took over as he broke the grasp of the guards and
rushed towards the kneeling Ulrich.
 

The
move seemed to catch the killer off guard for a moment as the crazed prisoner’s
shoulder plowed squarely into the man’s right arm, jarring the gun from his
hand.
 
It clacked onto the hard
carpet floor and tumbled a few feet away.
 
Startled into action, the two guards pried the wildly swinging Tommy off
of the blonde before he could strike back.
 

One
of the flat tops bear hugged him into submission while the shorter one
proceeded to punch him viciously in the mid-section.
 
Tommy lost his breath and his body’s natural reaction was to
double over, but with the far stronger arms holding him up, his body couldn’t
reach the position it desired for relief.
 
Another fist slammed into his jaw, causing the world to spin recklessly
out of control.
 
The guard released
his grip, and unconsciousness teased him for a moment as he lay sprawled out on
the floor.
 

Ulrich
had recovered from the attack and was now standing over him.
 
Through his captor’s legs, he could see
the huddled mass of the park ranger leaning against the wall. The man’s chest
still moved up and down, but a considerable pool of blood was collecting around
his body.
 
He held something in his
right hand, unseen by the attackers.
 
It looked like a cell phone.
 

“That
was an unwise move, Thomas.”
 
Ulrich said, still standing over Tommy.
 
“Why should I not do to you the same as I did to him?” his
arm gestured carelessly toward the heaped Indian in the corner.

Tommy
coughed, his breath returning.
 
A
thin line of blood streamed from his lip as he rose to his knees.
 
He wiped the blood with the top of his
hand.
 
“You know why.
 
I’m the only one that can help you find
the chambers.”
 
Another cough
wracked his body and kept him on one knee.

During
the punching session, Ulrich had recovered the gun from the floor and was now
holding it level with Tommy’s chest.
 
“For now, Thomas, for now.”
 
He glanced over at the bloody mass by the doors.
 
“Let’s move.”

Ulrich
stopped by the body on the floor and turned around.
 
“We will go to the church.
 
Perhaps we will find a clue there.”

“Maybe
we should look some more here,” Tommy tried to stall, hoping the Indian had
gotten through to the police on the phone.
 

“And
wait around for the authorities to find us.
 
I don’t think so. Move.”
 
He flicked the gun toward the door in a commanding motion.
 

Standing
at the exit, Ulrich poked his head out to make sure the path was clear.
 
No one stood in the lobby.
 
The only movement in the open room was
the slow revolution of a ceiling fan that hung from the exposed wooden
ceiling.
 
They slipped out of the
doorway, careful to make sure there were no other visitors to the museum that
might suddenly pop out of a restroom or some other area.
 
The last thing they needed at this
point was to be careless.

Chapter
43

Blue
Ridge Mountains

“I
got nothin’ over here,” Will stood, looking at the caged rocks with a beleaguered
look on his face.
 

Fifteen
feet away, Morris, too, was deeply studying the soapstone paintings, unsure at
what he was looking and even less certain for what he was looking.
 
“Yeah, me either,” he replied.

The
two detectives had arrived shortly after leaving the site where the car had
gone off the side of the mountain.
 
Upon arriving, they had gone to the park ranger’s office up the road and
asked him a few questions.
 

The
ranger had been less than helpful.
 
After being asked if he had seen anyone in the area that morning the
ranger had said, “No.
 
I ain’t seen
anybody up here today, but I didn’t get to the office ‘til an hour or so ago.
 
Ain’t like I gotta clock in.”
 
The old ranger’s saggy skin shook as he
let out a hearty laugh at his last comment. He then pinched a wad of snuff and
carefully placed it in the pouch of his bottom lip.
 
Both cops had looked at each other with a disgusted glance.
  

Now,
they were standing in the shadow of the highest summit in the state and didn’t
have a clue why.
 
The ranger had
begrudgingly told them the history and a few of the theories concerning the
large boulders, but nothing had been much more informative than what the people
in the diner had told them.
 

“Do
you think that maybe this is just an ancient prank by a bunch of Indian
teenagers from three hundred years ago?
 
You know.
 
They were sitting
around getting high off some wacky tobacky one day and decided to do a little
graffiti on some big rocks.
 
Thought it would be a hoot and viola, here we have it.”
 
Will’s theory was more humorous than
insightful, which actually helped considering they were finding more dead ends
everywhere they turned.

Save
for their two cars, the parking lot across the field was empty.
 
“Guess they don’t get a lot of traffic
up here on the weekdays.”
 
Trent’s
comment was as pointless as it was true.
 

Will
didn’t respond.
 
He just continued
looking at the rocks with an odd fascination.
 

Morris
went on, “If they were here, they either didn’t find what they were looking for
or they found it quick.”
 

“What
if they didn’t come here?”

It
was certainly a possibility.
 
“Okay.
 
Let’s review,” he
started as he turned to head back to the vehicles.
 
Will took the signal and joined him walking across the grass.
 
“What reason would Sean Wyatt have for
getting rid of Schultz?”

“Money,”
Will stated.
 
“He would have
complete control of the IAA and its finances.
 
And they have a ton of money.”

“Right.
 
But doesn’t’ the timing just seem
really odd?”

“How
so?”

Morris
looked off into the trees, watching the wind push around the leaves.
 
The dense forest was alive with
critters of several types busily gathering their stores for the winter.
 

“I’ve
been thinking about this since we left the McElroy place.
 
Tommy was about to have a press
conference.
 
What was it for?”

“Nobody
is really sure.
 
But the rumor is
that he’d been looking for something big.
 
Speculation was he found it or something to do with it.”

Trent
stopped walking for a second.
 
They
were standing at the edge of the parking lot near a light pole.
 
“ Yeah.
 
So, what exactly was it that he was looking for?”

His
younger partner looked thoughtful for a minute.
 
“I don’t know,” he finally answered with a shrug.
 
“Did you hear something?”

Trent
nodded slowly.
 
“I didn’t hear
much.
 
But I did hear something
about Schultz looking for some huge treasure, had to do with some golden rooms
or something.
 
Now, I don’t know
anything about that kind of stuff, but that is what I heard.”

“Golden
chambers?”
 
Will appeared clueless.

“Yeah.
 
Beats me.
 
Sounds like another city of gold hunt to me.
 
But from what I did hear, it sure
seemed like it would be the discovery of a lifetime.
 

“The
other thing I heard was that it is some kind of ancient Native American
treasure.”

“So
you think that’s what this is all about?”

“Schultz
finds something and sets up a press conference.
 
He goes missing.
 
A professor who is a friend and contemporary gets killed.
 
Now it seems like his best friend, our
prime suspect, is visiting historic Native American sites with an expert in
ancient Indian history.
 
Then,
Wyatt gets himself into a high speed shootout with two unidentified
gunmen.
 
If I was a betting man, I
would say Wyatt is looking for whatever it was that Schultz was on to and
someone doesn’t want him to find it.”

“Alright,
I’m listening,” Will replied.
 
“But
what does that mean?
 
Are you
saying that Wyatt isn’t behind all of this?

“No.
 
He’s still at the top of my list.”
 
Trent smirked, “Okay, he is the
list.
 
But something just doesn’t
seem right about this whole scenario.”
 
Bracing his shoulder against the light pole he reached down to tie a
shoelace that had become undone.
 

As
he finished tying the knot, something on the ground caught his attention.
 
Half doubled-over, Trent reached down
and picked up the metal cylinder.
 
He looked at the object and then started scanning the parking area,
suddenly more alert.

“Is
that a bullet casing?” Will asked as he stepped closer to see what Morris had
found.
 

Trent
nodded, flipping the small cylinder to his partner who caught it with one
hand.
 
“Nine millimeter.”
 

It
only took them a second before they started noticing the shells lying around on
the pavement.
 
“They’re
everywhere.”

“Another
shootout?” the younger cop posed.

“Sure
looks like it.”
 
Bending at his
knees, Detective Morris stared closer at the light pole he’d just been leaning
against only a few moments before.
 
He removed a pen from his jacket and scraped a mark on the metal.
 
Then he looked down and found another
mark, this one on the concrete base of the metal post.

Will
stepped over to see what his partner had found.
 
“These shots came from over there,” he pointed back across
toward the other side of the parking lot.  

Nodding,
Trent stood and walked with him about thirty feet away, both sets of eyes
closely examining the ground for more clues.
 
“There are some more,” he stated, as if the bullet casings
were right where they belonged.
 

Both
cops bent down to see the remnants from the firefight.
 
“Forty cal,” Will confirmed.
 

“Yeah,”
Morris agreed.
 
“There was
definitely an exchange of fire here.”

“So,
my question is this: who was doing the shooting?
 
There must have been a second group involved that wasn’t
part of the shootout on the road.”

“No
way to know that right now, but we do know they were here.”
 
He looked down the road that went up
over the hill from the way they’d come just a few minutes earlier.
 
There were two spots with heavy concentrations
of empty bullet shells in separate locations.
 
If Sean Wyatt was involved with this whole thing, then
someone else didn’t want him there.
 
“We need to find out exactly what it was that Tommy Schultz was looking
for and what he found.”

“The
guy was secretive, didn’t really tell anybody what he was doing except for
Wyatt and Borringer.
 
And I don’t
think either one of them are going to be very helpful at the moment.”

Trent
nodded.
 
“There has to be someone
else who knows what he was up to.
 
I find it hard to believe that he was traveling around all over the
state on some treasure hunt and no one knew what he was looking for.”
 

Aggravation
had reached its boiling point.
 
He
took a few deep breaths and ran his hands over his head from front to back and
then to the top where he stopped and dropped them back down to his hips,
exasperated.
 
“Every time it seems
we’ve found something that will help us, more questions pop up.”
 

Will
just stood quietly, letting his partner vent.
 
They may have been a relatively new pair, but the young cop
already knew enough not to say anything when Trent was frustrated.

Detective
Morris was at his wit’s end.
 
With
resignation on his face, he turned and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

“Where
we goin’, boss?”
 
Will threw his
arms up, not yet ready to give up the search.

“Back
to Atlanta,” his voice was resolute.
 
“We’ll search every scene again.
 
Maybe something will turn up.”

“Trent,”
Will pleaded, “maybe we should double check here.
 
There’s got to be some kind of clue that could show us where
they went.”

Morris
shook his head.
 
“I appreciate your
enthusiasm, but this wild goose chase has gone on long enough.
 
Wyatt has disappeared.
 
We’re not experts in Archaeology or
ancient mysteries.
 
You heard the
Park Ranger.
 
People from all over
the world have been coming here for decades trying to interpret those stones and
not a single one of them has been able to do it.
 
You and I probably couldn’t get any more out of those
drawings than a three year old.”

That
last part was a good point, Will thought.
 
“So we’re just going to head back and recover our steps?”

“Unless
you got a better idea or someone that can tell us where the hell those guys
went…yeah.”

There
was nothing Will could say.
 
He
just shook his head.
 

“Then
we head back.”
 
Trent pulled his
keys from inside of his pants pocket as he strode angrily towards the Charger.
 
Will was on the other side of the car,
opening his own door when the cell phone in Morris’s pocket began ringing.
 

“Jeez,
what is it now?”
 
He reached into
the coat and pulled out the silver phone.
 
After a quick glance at the caller ID on the screen he slid the phone
open and said, “This is Morris,” his voice sounded irritated.

“Detective
Morris?” the man on the other end of the line clarified.
 

Maybe
they didn’t hear the way he answered the phone.

“Yes.
 
This is Trent Morris.
 
Who is this?”

From
the sounds coming through the receiver, the caller must have been in a vehicle
driving down the road.
 
Even with
all the background noise, he was still able to hear the answer, “This is Sean
Wyatt.”