by Thomas Zigal
“How about Tyler Rutledge?”
“No.”
“Give me your Glock, Randy,” he said.
Randy stared at him. “No can do,” she said, chewing gum with a stoic detachment.
“If you’re worried about Kat, go tell those people over there to call Miles on their phone. He’ll meet you with a trunkload of guns at the gondola station,” he said. “Now give me your Glock.”
“What the hell do you think you’re going to do, hotshot?” Randy asked.
“Take the shortcut,” he said. He would lose nearly an hour if he rode the gondola back down, got in his Jeep, and drove the roads to Annie Basin.
“You’re going straight down the mountain on a bicycle?” Randy smirked.
“Un-hunh,” he said.
“Give him your gun, Randy,” Kat said, lowering the glasses. “We’ll be okay.”
Randy took her time considering the order. “I’m doing this against my better judgment,” she said, unzipping the parka and reaching in to her shoulder holster.
Kurt released the Glock’s magazine, zipped the clip into his jacket pocket, and shoved the unloaded pistol in his waistband. “Later, dudes,” he said, launching himself past the bike’s irate owner, speeding for the old Jeep trail over Richmond Hill and down into the basin.
“Kurt, be careful!” he heard Kat shout after him.
He rode the brakes down the rugged switchbacks through the trees, fishtailing around rockslide talus and patches of black ice, his legs growing rubbery and weak. He was thankful there were no hikers today, so early in the season. Sweat poured down his face, ribs, calves. The stiff wind whipped his long hair into greasy snarls. There was a scary moment, right before the final plummet past Ned’s property fence, when the back wheel began to wobble and he thought he’d blown a tire.
He could see the tall corrugated headframe of the Lone Ute poking up in the forest and skidded to a stop. Abandoning the bike, he rolled under the barbed wire fence and snapped the magazine into the 9mm as he stumbled down the hillside toward the mine. To slow his lumbering descent he latched on to the trunk of an Engelmann spruce and knelt quickly to catch his breath, spitting a dry cotton wad, his heart pounding so hard he thought it might burst through his shirt.
From this knoll he had a clear view of Ned’s cabin and the entrance to the mine. Tyler’s pickup with the spiderwebbed windshield was parked next to an old yellow school bus used as a storage shed, but there was no sign of him or the deputy. Kurt waited, breathing through his open mouth, trying to get a bead on the situation before rushing ahead. He smelled heavy cordite, a sure sign there had been gunplay. Was anyone still here? An eerie silence had settled over the work site.
He gave himself two minutes to steady his breathing, then raised the Glock shoulder high and dashed for the black hole in the mountainside. When he reached the adit he found spatters of blood on the ground by the entrance, a thin trail leading out to the clearing where the Toyota 4 x 4 must have been parked. Somebody had taken a bullet.
He shielded himself behind a splintery support beam and shouted into the dark shaft. “Sheriff’s Department! Is anybody in the mine?”
His voice echoed back at him. There was no visibility beyond the first twenty feet. He waited, counting silently, giving them a chance to respond.
“This is Kurt Muller with the police! If anybody is in the mine, I want you to come forward and identify yourself!”
The thought of exposing himself to the long dark tunnel churned his stomach. Ned’s explosion was fresh on his mind.
“Tyler Rutledge!” he called. “Are you in there? Come out and identify yourself!”
At first he thought it was wind howling through the shaft. The sound was faint, plaintive, a human voice moaning deep inside the mine.
No no no, he thought. I can’t do this. What happened to the deputy on duty? And where are the goddamned lights to this place?
Like a diver before a plunge, he sucked in a quick breath and held it, then scurried into the mine, sliding his hand along the cold rock wall at eye level, searching for the fuse box. It had to be there somewhere. Fuse box and throw switch. Miners were practical people. This was where they would locate the juice.
The box was close by, all right, with just enough light from outside to show Kurt what he didn’t want to see. Wires dangled like entrails from the box’s open door. Someone had jerked everything loose.
The moaning was louder now, a man in serious pain. No, he told himself, staring down the shaft into utter darkness. He sat down in the packed dirt and placed the Glock next to him on the ground. He couldn’t do this. He had seen the rescue men carry Billy Nichols’s small broken body out of a mine. He had watched them unzip the black bag that held together what was left of his brother after a fall from Maroon Bells. He just couldn’t do this. He had been a fool to dash down here without proper backup.
He thought he could hear the word please in the feeble keening moan. How much longer would it take the 911 call to arrive? Twenty minutes? Thirty? Maybe he should run to Ned’s cabin and call for EMS assistance as well. Somebody with more experience at tunnel rescue.
Please. A small desperate prayer echoing in the gloom.
Kurt rose to his feet. Was it Tyler? he wondered. The deputy? Somebody wounded in an exchange with three men in the Toyota 4 x 4?
He stuck the pistol in his belt and gazed far into the shaft, the darkness dropping like a black curtain beyond the slanting rays of sunlight.
What if it was your boy? What if Lennon was down there in the dark with a hole through his chest?
Kurt turned and sprinted out of the mine for Tyler’s pickup. He threw open the passenger door and popped the glove compartment. Among the yellowing traffic tickets and screwdrivers and coils of electrician’s tape he found what he was looking for. A long silver flashlight. The batteries were weak, but they would have to do.
For forty yards or so the shaft was as straight as a chalk line, and Kurt followed the narrow-gauge tracks into deeper opacity, the air thick with bitter cordite. The moaning was sporadic now, and every long silence urged him on. The flashlight beam fluttered and grew dim, and he stopped to tap the light against his thigh, the walls closing in around him like a cold black membrane.
When he reached the ore car, his beam danced over a shotgun lying where it had dropped on a pile of mine rubble. Blood spotted the dirt floor, trailed away. His light traced the red splatters to a junction of several shafts—at least three narrow crawl spaces tunneling upward at forty-five degrees from each other, and a gaping hole in the floor that appeared to be a deep vertical stope. As he drew closer he could hear the moans again, and he was fairly certain they were coming from the bottom of that hole.
“Tyler!” he called, kneeling down to peer over the edge. The hair on his arms stood on end as the stope sucked the chilled air around him, a swift downward draft, the dank odor of an ancient cavern. “Tyler, are you down there, man?”
The flashlight beam flickered weakly over the terrible blackness. He saw a body curled up on a steplike ledge about twenty feet below. The beam dimmed again and he tapped the thing against his hip, shaking the batteries. The light blinked, shrank to a match flare, and died. He tapped it again but nothing happened. The darkness was total, unlike anything he had ever experienced. He couldn’t see the dials on his watch.
Easy, he told himself. Don’t panic. Keep it together.
He heard footsteps behind him, someone so close he could smell his sweat. “Who’s there?” Kurt said, his heart in his throat.
He wheeled around and stood up, pointing his pistol, but the darkness confused his sense of direction. Another footstep crunched over loose rock and Kurt swung the pistol toward the sound, upsetting his balance. He tried to plant a foot behind him for support but the dirt gave way and his leg buckled and instantly he was sliding down the stope, losing the gun, the flashlight, clawing desperately at the soft clay walls, screaming, grabbing at anything that would slow his fall into the
bottomless void that had swallowed Billy Nichols. His head ricocheted off something sharp and there was a white flash behind his eyes and then everything stopped abruptly.
He was lying on his back, alive, his bones intact. He had come to rest on a bed of soft wet poppies. Now I lay me down to sleep, he thought, soil raining over him from the grave digger’s spade.
Chapter eighteen
The boy didn’t need that,” said a deep voice, someone standing over him.
Kurt raised his head but thought he was dreaming. There was a penlight shining in his eyes. “Ned?” he said.
“He was damn near dead without you falling on him.”
The bed of poppies was the moaning man. Kurt had landed on top of Tyler Rutledge.
“Get a grip, hoss,” said the voice behind the light. “We’ve gotta haul him up out of here before he bleeds to death.”
Kurt tried to sit up. His head swirled, the back of his shirt was wet with Tyler’s blood. “You’re not dead,” he managed to say.
“You musta hit your head.”
“Is it really you?”
“We’ve run into each other before,” the man said. “You have something that belongs to me.”
Strong hands searched through Kurt’s tangled jacket, turning out empty pockets.
“Who the hell are you?” Kurt asked. He couldn’t decipher the man’s face but he realized now it wasn’t Ned Carr.
“I’m the Lone Ute, Tonto,” the man said with a raspy laugh. “What the hell did you do with my neckpiece?”
“It’s in an evidence Baggie in the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Department.”
“Shit.” The man stood up. “Next time I see you, you better give it back. Now roll out of the way so I can get to that boy.”
Kurt began to crawl away and then froze, feeling the cold suction of air whistling up the stope. “Where’s the drop-off?” he asked, panic-stricken.
“Don’t move any more thataway,” the man said, aiming the tiny light toward the black chasm. “It’s about twenty levels straight down to the flooded shafts, and then another twenty full of water.”
He stuck the light in his mouth and squatted down, grappling Tyler by the limp arms and hoisting him over his shoulder like a sack of grain. “You coming or staying?”
“You’ve got the only light,” Kurt said, rising unsteadily to his feet.
“There’s a ladder over here,” the man said. “Give me a hand with this little turd.”
The penlight was useless beyond five or six feet. The man pointed the way, directing Kurt up the ladder as far as the light would penetrate; then Kurt was on his own, securing one hand over the other as he climbed cautiously into the overhead darkness. At the top he steadied himself on a wooden platform that croaked and swayed beneath his boots. He waited nervously, his arms aloft for balance, watching the meager light bob upward along the ladder, the man bearing Tyler’s unconscious body over one shoulder, an impressive feat of strength. Kurt could bench-press 250 pounds but he wasn’t sure he could do what this fellow was doing.
The penlight clamped between his teeth, the man grunted something incomprehensible when he reached the platform. Kurt bent down to grab Tyler and drag him up.
“Your turn,” the man huffed, panting like a dray horse as he dropped down to rest next to the body.
Kurt laid his ear on Tyler’s bloody chest and listened for a heartbeat. Pressing three fingers to his neck, he could detect a weak pulse.
“Were you in the firefight?” he asked the man.
“No,” he said, his lungs heaving.
“What are you doing here? Why were you in Ned’s cabin last night?”
The man remained silent, breathing hard.
“Did you see what happened?”
“Some of it.”
“I’m a cop,” Kurt said.
“I know who you are. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Their respiration was more labored now, and Kurt wondered if someone had cut off the oxygen in the ventilation hose. He knew they had to move quickly before their endurance played out.
“Which way?” he said, managing to load Tyler over his shoulder with the man’s help.
“Follow me.”
Kurt held on to the man’s shirttail and they inched ahead in the darkness, the penlight’s small ray butterflying over the shaft floor at their feet. After several minutes he stopped to rest.
“Hey!” he called out as the ponytailed man continued on, the light shrinking in the distance. “Hey, hold up! I’m taking a break.”
“Just keep heading where you’re heading,” the man’s voice echoed back at him. “Keep your feet between the rail tracks. You’ll be all right.”
“Get your ass back here with that light!”
The man’s laughter floated like a black ribbon in the enclosing gloom and then quickly vanished. Kurt took a deep breath, hefted the body in his arms, and pressed on, sweat streaming down his face, his mind wandering into fathomless waters. Soon he was adrift in a cold damp place, weightless, gasping for air, the fear so cruel he felt the blood chilling in his veins. He thought he might have been floating for three days and three nights in the belly of a giant sea beast, like Jonah, tossed into this murky abyss by an angry God. Were those human voices he was hearing, the mariners who had hurled him overboard?
“Pitkin County Sheriff’s Department! Please identify your-
Bright lights exploded down the tunnel, blinding him. The sudden flash threw off his equilibrium and he sank to his knees, surrendering Tyler to the ground in front of him.
“Kurt, is that you?” A woman’s voice. Muffin Brown. “Bring the stretchers!” she commanded. “Let’s get some help in here!”
He shielded his face with his hands, the intense spotlight like an ice sliver plunged between his eyes. “Take this man to the hospital,” he mumbled. “He’s almost dead.”
He could hear footsteps running toward him, Muffin calling his name again. And then he collapsed headlong into the ancient seabed, the bottom of the earth. self!”
Chapter nineteen
He woke up in a hospital bed with an iv tube in his arm. Muffin was sitting in a chair across the room. “Hey, hero,” she smiled, coming over to squeeze his hand. “Back from the land of Nod?”
“How’s Tyler?”
“Still in surgery,” she said, her face darkening, “Two gunshot wounds. One shattered his forearm, the other punctured a lung. He’s barely hanging on. If you hadn’t got to him when you did, he’d be dead by now.”
Kurt groped around to find the bed’s adjustment button. “Raise me up,” he said. “What am I doing in here?”
“Well, for one thing you were hallucinating like a madman and the doctor thought you might’ve suffered some oxygen loss to the brain,” she said. “Not that anyone would notice. How long were you in the mine?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were pretty disoriented, Kurt. You kept babbling about an Indian.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“Who?”
“The Lone Ute. Did he come out of the mine?”
She patted his hand and pressed a button, raising him to a sitting position. “Your electrolytes are real low and you’re dehydrated,” she said, nodding at the iv, “and they want to get your blood pressure down.”
“There was another guy in there with us. Without him we’d both still be halfway to hell.”
“And this guy was an Indian?”
“I think so. The same guy I wrestled with in Ned’s place.”
He could see the confusion in her face. “How do you know that?”
He shrugged. “He was looking for his choker.”
Her eyes narrowed with faint amusement. “He wears a choker?”
“It’s an Indian thing.”
She nodded, patted his hand again, rearranged the sheet.
“Stop doing that,” he said. “I’m not nuts. Where the devil is the nurse?” He found the call button and buzzed for assistance. “I�
��m getting out of here. I’ve got to meet Corky Marcus at four o’clock.”
“Don’t be a jerk, Kurt. They want to keep you under observation for twenty-four hours. You’ve been through a lot and your body’s run down. You could use the rest.”
“I feel ducky. I just need somebody to take this goddamn tube out of my arm.”
“You’re one stubborn son of a bitch,” Muffin said, her hands on her hips.
“Would you please get the nurse?”
“The department can handle this one, Kurt. We won’t fall apart if you take a day off. We’ve managed just fine for the past year without you.”
It caught him off guard, a sudden, unexpected moment of doubt. She had jabbed him in the one place he was vulnerable. The department could do without him. Ten years in the ring, his back against the ropes every day, body slams from the commissioners, the media, the FBI. A ruined marriage, a dead brother. None of that counted. The department would survive no matter who was in charge. Kurt Muller was replaceable.
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said, trying to contain his resentment. “Then maybe you can explain where your deputy was—the one who was supposed to be on duty watching the Carr property when all this shooting went down.”
Muffin was prepared for criticism. “Tyler chased him off,” she said. “He showed up around ten o’clock and told our man to take a hike, he didn’t need a watch-dog.”
“It wasn’t Tyler’s call.”
“Gillespie didn’t want a confrontation. He figured it was broad daylight, give Tyler some space. Who’s going to come messing around in the middle of the day?”
“Try three assholes in a Toyota four-by-four,” he said. “Tyler must’ve popped one of them. Have you checked all the valley clinics for gunshot victims?”
“We’re on it, Kurt,” she said, her annoyance growing. “We’ve sampled the blood on the ground outside the mine. We’ve got our men in the shaft, collecting evidence, trying to reconstruct what happened. Forensics is looking at a bullet fragment from Tyler’s arm. We’ve even taken a statement from your old chum.”
