This took the fight out of her. She was genuinely pleased at my prospects for romance. I said I thought Charles wouldn’t mind a side trip to the reservation. She made me promise to call her if anything came up, and wished me luck with Charles.
I couldn’t reach Charles at home or work. I left messages on both machines. I felt like crashing but I wanted to talk to him first. I made myself a stiff gin and tonic. John keeps the gin in the freezer, making it as viscous as salad oil and perfect for mixing without ice. I decided to wile away the time until the phone rang by cooking dinner.
I brought out a skillet, sprayed it with Pam, and covered the bottom with olive oil. I threw in a couple of tablespoons of minced garlic, and while that was slowly heating, chopped an onion into small pieces, which I added to the pan, stirring slowly and basking in the aroma. That brings me to the point where I actually figure out what’s for dinner.
Brother John often orders in from a nearby Chinese restaurant. The portions are huge and inevitably there are cartons of leftovers. I located one half full of kung pao chicken judging by the peanuts. It didn’t have fuzz on it so I assumed it was safe to eat. Chinese food goes well in the Mediterranean base of onion, garlic, and oil. I tossed in the entire contents. For carbohydrates, I cut some leftover rice noodles into bite-sized lengths and added that to the already sizzling mélange.
I was feeling mellow, thanks to the gin, and ravenous, thanks to having forgotten to eat lunch. A B-52’s CD sat on top of the stereo. I started it playing; it was music from my early teens, comfort sounds, chocolate for the ears, or maybe rockolate for this particular band. A half-filled bottle of a Washington State Chardonnay accompanied my meal, edging out a Merlot that remained in its holder.
I spent some time after dinner on my laptop updating the Judy Raskin case file. There was plenty to add, what with the gold mine revelation, and two new players: Bill Sr. and Bill Jr. I couldn’t entirely eliminate the junior Raskin from having played some kind of role in his sister’s demise. He didn’t seem all that broken up about it, and eventually it would be to his benefit. I made a note about Judy’s pharmacy record, and added to the “gangsta” information I already had.
That done, I turned on the tube and found a baseball game between the San Diego Padres and the Atlanta Braves. Greg Maddux had a no-hitter going and that kept me awake and interested for the two and a half innings it took for the phone to ring. I muted the game and picked up.
“Chaahles heah,” said the voice at the other end.
“Daaagny heah,” I mimicked.
“Dagny, I’m sorry I couldn’t ring you back sooner. I just listened to your message. I worked late to clear up matters for my holiday. I hope we’re going.”
I recapped the day’s events as quickly as I could. I finished by asking if he minded a detour to the Churok Reservation to check out the gold mine.
“I’d like that enormously,” he said. “I don’t feel as though I am experiencing as much American culture as I should.”
“I hope this gold mine won’t bore you.”
“I can’t think of anything I might do with you that’d be boring, Dagny.”
“A fine piece of flattery, Dr. Clarke. Shall I pick you up around eight tomorrow morning?”
“Suppose I nip round to your place at eight? We ought to take my Subaru wagon. It has all-wheel drive and plenty of room for gear.”
“You haven’t been carting bodies in the back, have you?” I quipped.
“Just parts (paahts) of bodies, but not to worry—I’ll give it a good wash. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Dagny. Have a good night.”
I’d never taken a friend on an investigation. Summers, when I’m with John, we sometimes work together, but that’s different. He’s a P.I., too. Still, I reasoned, Charles is a medical examiner, akin in some ways to a P.I. I needed him to be at Troy’s autopsy, and he might provide a lot of help at the gold mine.
I decided to pack. Right away I had a nice clothes/work clothes problem. San Francisco was a city where people dressed to the nines to go out. With my wardrobe, I couldn’t dress to the ones. I’m the casual type. I did have one decent outfit that one of John’s girlfriends once lent me and never took back. That would have to do. The rest—jeans, khakis, and a pair of slacks—would mix, if not match, with a couple of tops, jerseys and sweaters.
I checked my semi and placed it carefully at the bottom of my handbag. I keep it “topped off,” that is, a bullet in the chamber and a full magazine, giving me one shot more than its specified capacity. That extra shot once saved my life, and took the life of Sparky’s parents’ killer, who had counted me out of bullets in a heart-stopping shootout. The Glock 26, or “baby Glock,” has built-in features that prevent it from firing accidentally, so there’s no actual safety to be set or unset. It is also light in weight—only 26 ounces when fully loaded and topped off. Part of the trip was business, and violence wasn’t out of the question.
The next morning I awoke before the alarm clock went off. I had a double tingle of anticipation, one for the gold mine and one for Charles. An early morning jog energized me even more. I hummed through the post-run ablutions, rechecked my packing, and ate a light breakfast while studying a map of south central California.
By the time Charles ‘nipped round,’ I had planned our route. The Churok reservation lies along the Makrui River, north of Los Padres National Forest. As the crow flies, its nearest point is only fifty miles from Santa Barbara. The airborne traveler would overfly the forest with the San Rafael Wilderness on the west and the Dick Smith wilderness on the right. No such course is possible for the earthbound.
Our route was simple, but would take us three times the distance. We’d drive up the 101 to Santa Juanita where we’d pick up state highway 166 leading straight into Churok territory. I’d taken that precise route two years ago to depose a witness who was too ill to travel to court.
Charles was dressed in well-worn jeans, a baggy sweater that had also seen several tours of duty, and a pair of shit-kicker boots that were positively sexy. I threw my gear into the back seat of the Subaru and off we went. He’d brought two large Styrofoam cups of steaming coffee. Mine lasted till Las Cruces, where Charles suggested a pit stop, and in good time. Thank goodness he wasn’t one of those men who assumed a woman’s bladder was the size of Lake Michigan. He’d seen a few up close and personal in his daily work, I guess.
I retrieved the directions to the mine. We stayed on 166 until the reservation. Six miles past the ‘Welcome to the Churok Nation’ sign, we turned right on Cowslip Road. At first, the road was populated on both sides by small houses on large tracts of land, four or five to the mile. The houses became even farther apart as we drove south toward the forest. The road began to climb, and within a mile the pavement ended. We stopped where the road forked into two unpaved branches.
A metal sign pockmarked by .22 caliber potshots indicated Winchester Canyon to the right. To the left, promised the sign, we would find Whitewater Spring Canyon. That was our direction. Charles engaged the all-wheel drive as the sturdy wagon moved smoothly onto the dirt road. I noted the odometer. Precisely 4.6 miles from the fork would be a turn leading to the mine, or so said the map.
The road ascended in earnest. With the increasing steepness came the inevitable switchbacks. It took a quarter of an hour to reach the turn, which was so severely overgrown we would have missed it had we not been creeping along and counting by tenths of a mile.
Up to this point the all-wheel drive had been useful but not strictly necessary. But I doubt a conventional car would have made the last half-mile. The road degraded into little more than a streambed, with deep ruts and ominous potholes. Bare traces of wheel tracks helped guide us, and the little wagon didn’t falter.
The road ended at a cleared, terraced area about 50 by 100 feet. Off to one side, the forest was slowly digesting some ancient, rusted machinery. On the other side were heaps of rocks and dirt overgrown with vegetation. Facing us was a large, square black h
ole in the hillside, the entrance to the mine (or adit for crossword puzzle fans). Above it, a sign read: Lucky U Mine, and below, in large capital letters, were the words: TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
Chapter 8
The directions were right on the mark, said Charles.
“Yes,” I agreed, repelled by the desolation around us and the yawning maw of the cavern. “I suppose that, as we’re here, we should look around.”
“No need to buy tickets,” quipped Charles. “They’ve quite gone out of business.”
He maneuvered off to the side and we got out and stretched. Forest sounds and smells abounded. Every few seconds a creature stirred unseen. The strong midday sun drew forth rich scents from the lush vegetation that covered the hillsides. On two sides of us the forest sloped off sharply. Charles examined the rusted heap of machinery without comment. Finally he said, “Let’s go in. I’ll get a torch.”
Visions of caveman Charles holding a bundle of burning sticks flickered in my head. He opened the back of the car and brought out a large flashlight. We walked into the mine, penetrating some dozen yards before looking around. Already the temperature was markedly cooler. In contrast to the outside, inside the mine the air had a brown odor—a mixture of earth, wood, machinery, and oil.
“Ah, here we are,” exclaimed Charles.
“What’s that?”
“The rails. They have to get the ore out somehow. The usual way is to use gondolas on tracks, filling them up inside the mine, then winching them out. Some of that rusty machinery we were looking at had parts of the winch.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked. “Not from Harvard Medical School.”
“Hardly,” said Charles. “I logged on to the Internet last night and put gold mine into a search engine. I wanted to be something more than extra baggage. I printed out a few pages.” He pulled several folded sheets of paper from a pocket. “Everything you ever wanted to know about mining, and then some.”
“How far in do you think it goes?”
“It’s hard to tell. This is probably a drift mine, for working placer deposits of gold.”
“Placer deposits?”
“That’s what mining engineers call them. They’re concentrations of minerals, gold in this case, accumulated through erosion. Water probably ran through here for millions of years, depositing the heavier gold-bearing ore in a vein. This mine taps into the vein, which is in there somewhere,” he explained, waving his pages of information at the black interior.
We walked in deeper, Charles sweeping the light left and right. Every so often he stopped to examine the huge beams of timber that were holding the mountain back from crushing us. When they met with his approval, we’d move on a few dozen yards and repeat the procedure.
The adit gleamed brightly in the distance, the size of a playing card. “Ah, here we are,” exclaimed Charles for the second time.
This time it was obvious what had caught his attention: a tunnel off to the right. A bit farther up, another tunnel branched off to the left.
“We’re in the vein now,” said Charles. He turned into the first tunnel, ducking his head. The main shaft had an eight-foot ceiling. This ceiling was much lower. “Mind the slope,” warned Charles, as we entered the narrow passageway. No longer being able to see the little square of daylight spooked me. I moved closer to Charles who continued to peer curiously about.
Along both sides of this tributary were cavities where the gold-bearing ore had been excavated. A bend in the tunnel prevented us from seeing where it ended. “I’m curious to see where this goes,” said Charles. “It appears to be following the vein.”
We rounded the leftward bend. Another dozen feet of tunnel widened out into a cul-de-sac. Against the far wall were some old miners’ tools, a couple of shovels, an immense wheelbarrow, and an assortment of pickaxes. An ancient leather jacket rested atop a wooden crate.
Charles shoved the jacket aside. Through the little dust storm raised, I could make out two words, stenciled in red letters on the crate. These were the “D” words of mining: Danger and Dynamite.
“Hmmph,” muttered Charles. “Not much here, really. Shall we go back?”
I agreed unhesitatingly. I’m not ordinarily claustrophobic, but this was different. It was an oppressive kind of closeness. Who knew how far the shaft extended, or what kinds of dangers awaited the intruder? It was this acting-up of my imagination that caused me to ignore the first scuffling sound. I didn’t want to spook either Charles or myself. But when I heard it a second time I grabbed Charles’s arm.
“Did you hear that?”
“I heard something,” he said. “Probably an animal.”
“Christ, you don’t think a bear lives here, do you?” My imagination was in overdrive.
“No, we’d have smelled a bear. It’s probably…ouch!”
We had emerged into the main shaft, Charles ahead of me on my left. He reached up to his neck and swatted at something, tried to speak, and crumpled into a heap, pulling me down with him. Something flew past my ear. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the figure of a man silhouetted against the square light of the entrance.
Instinct, honed by my military training, made me go flat. Shielded by Charles’s body, I reverse belly-crawled into the tunnel we had just left. I reached out and grabbed Charles by the right ankle and pulled as hard as I could. His body scraped across the gravelly floor of the mine. This wasn’t going to do his face any good.
I bit my lip to keep from screaming. My heart pounded in my ears, and I was beginning to hyperventilate. I began rapid shallow breathing to control my panic.
In a few seconds I regained control. I felt Charles’s neck for a jugular artery. His heartbeat was strong. I pulled him farther in, rolled him over, and put my ear on his chest. He was breathing normally. What in hell was going on?
“Charles,” I whispered, shaking him and slapping his cheeks the way they do in late night movies. “Charles, wake up. I think someone’s trying to kill us.” No response. I turned him around and grabbed his shoulders. He was easier to drag this way. We retreated to the cul-de-sac, bouncing from wall to wall in the pitch dark.
The flashlight had gone out when Charles hit the ground. There was little chance of retrieving it now. I keep a tiny penlight in my bag—but who takes their handbag into a mine? I wish I had. More than the penlight, I missed the Glock.
I felt all over Charles for blood, starting with his head. Only a bullet could drop a man that fast. I didn’t remember hearing the soft pop of a silenced gunshot, but I could have missed it.
I couldn’t feel blood anywhere. He was still breathing as if he were sleeping. I wondered if he had one of those disorders where you fall asleep suddenly at unexpected times. I doubted that. Since he’d been driving, he’d have warned me. Besides, I clearly saw the outline of a person. Though my imagination was aroused from being in the dark mine, I’m not prone to hallucinating.
I listened for someone approaching. A man with a gun and a bright light would find us easy prey. I thought I could hear voices whispering, but I couldn’t make out the words. Only the hissing penetrated the dark. That meant we had at least two antagonists. I crouched silently, listening so hard it made my head hurt.
After some interminable minutes, I decided to creep up the passageway toward the main shaft. Maybe I’d hear something, or see something. Maybe I’d get myself killed. I felt gingerly for a weapon. I didn’t want to knock something over and give away our location. My hand touched the wooden crate. I pulled it back quickly. What if there was still dynamite in there and it detonated? We’d have a cave-in. We’d be buried alive, even if we weren’t killed instantly.
Charles moaned. I felt my way over to him, found his mouth, and put my hand over it. “Are you okay?” I whispered, keeping my voice low and speaking directly into his ear.
He perceived the need for silence. He swallowed, breathing quietly, deeply, as he regained composure. He felt for me, put his hands alongside my head. I tried to
turn my ear toward his mouth but he used both hands to keep my head straight and pulled my mouth down on top of his. I returned his kiss, a wave of relief and passion replacing the fearful anxiety. I supposed that if I were going to die, there were worse ways to go. He stopped long enough for me to say, “Listen.” Though I couldn’t see him in the dark, I could feel his face become serious. I could picture Charles’s serious look in my mind’s eye.
“What happened to you?” I whispered.
“Tranquilizer dart. The kind they use on wild animals. I felt it in my neck, and then I was gone. How long have I been out?”
“Ten minutes, maybe twelve.”
“Gawr, what great stuff. Takes down a thirteen stone animal instantly. Total unconsciousness, complete recovery. I feel fine, no headache, no nausea. I’d love to know what it is.”
“Charles,” I pleaded, “get real. Someone’s trying to harm us, or kill us. Are you going to walk out there and discuss pharmaceuticals with them? They may be back with guns any minute.”
“You said I’ve been out ten minutes. If they intended to shoot us, what stopped them?”
“I don’t know. They may have been surprised when I pulled you back out of the main shaft. I think they thought we were cornered, sitting ducks in a shooting gallery. They may not know about these other tunnels. If they know I’m a P.I., they may think I’m armed. That’ll make them cautious.”
“Are you?” asked Charles.
“No, dammit. I left everything in my handbag in the front seat. If they find my gun, they’ll know we’re unarmed.”
We sat in silence for a few seconds. A flicker of light glanced off the wall accompanied by faint shuffling sounds. Again, a flicker, a little brighter. Someone was coming down the main shaft, sweeping a light from side to side, just as we had done.
The Evil That Men Do Page 8
