Bones Are Forever tb-15

by Kathy Reichs

  Had Chalker discredited me to divert suspicion from himself and his cronies?

  McLeod. Tyne. Chalker.

  McLeod died in a plane crash.

  Tyne. Chalker.

  One of these men wanted McLeod’s claims. Maybe both.

  Ruben and Beck were dead. Snook, the sole survivor, was easily manipulated.

  Had that been the strategy? Kill Beck, disappear Ruben to Montreal, after seven years have her declared dead? Then get Snook to sign over the claims? Had Ruben’s sudden reappearance spurred a change in plans?

  Who had I seen in the woods the night Ruben was shot? Who had made off with her body?

  Suddenly, I felt I was plunging.

  I’d told Snook to do nothing. To sign no papers.

  “No. Christ, no.”

  I’d gotten Ruben killed. Had I put Snook in danger?

  I checked the time.

  Seven-ten. Ollie was already at the airport.

  I grabbed my mobile.

  Voice mail.

  Unka be damned. I had to talk to Ryan.

  I pocket-jammed my iPhone, slammed the cover of my Mac, and headed out.

  * * *

  I was unlocking the Camry when I sensed a presence behind me. Before I could turn, a gun muzzle kissed my temple.

  An arm snaked around my neck and pulled me upright.

  I couldn’t move or speak.

  “Not a sound.” Male. Had I heard the voice before? Tyne? Chalker?

  I thought of dropping fast and rolling under the car. What was the point? My assailant had a gun. He’d squat and nail me.

  The arm tightened and twisted my body to the right. “Move.”

  Probably wanting to avoid notice, the guy dropped the arm from my neck, stepped close, and lowered the gun to my back.

  On rubber legs, I took a few very small steps.

  “The truck.”

  I hesitated. Every cop I know says, If taken, never enter a vehicle. Once inside, your chance of escape plummets.

  The muzzle gouged deeper into my spine. “Don’t fuck with me.”

  I walked as slowly as I dared. Two feet out, I stopped.

  I felt the guy’s gun hand tense. I pictured the long dark tunnel, the bullet tearing through my bones, my heart, my lungs.

  Instead, my assailant pushed me forward into the side of the pickup. With the gun back in place, he yanked my purse from my shoulder. “Get in.”

  I didn’t move.

  “I said get the fuck in.”

  Maybe fear. Maybe boldness. I believed he would shoot me but remained frozen.

  I felt his body shift. Saw movement in the corner of my eye.

  A shadow crossed my face.

  I heard a sound like the snap of a piano wire.

  The world broke into millions of white particles.

  Went black.

  * * *

  I was at the bottom of a deep, dark pit, struggling to climb out and getting nowhere. A moth flailing in sap slowly turning to amber.

  The pit shifted.

  A pinpoint of light appeared overhead.

  I strained to reach it.

  Slowly swam upward.

  To consciousness.

  The place I was in sounded hollow.

  I smelled moisture. Ancient rock and soil. An acrid scent unfamiliar to me.

  The world lurched.

  My body shifted.

  I was curled fetal on a cold, gritty surface.

  I listened.

  Heard the crunch of rubber on gravel. A soft humming.

  I was in a vehicle. But not a car. The engine was wrong.

  A flash image. The parking lot. The SUV.

  The gun!

  I lifted my head.

  Almost screamed.

  I lay back until the pain and dizziness passed.

  The pressure on my body changed. The vehicle was moving downhill.

  I tried to roll to my back.

  My arms wouldn’t move. My legs wouldn’t move.

  Dear God! I’m paralyzed!

  My heartbeat kicked into high.

  The adrenaline helped.

  Sensation crept back.

  I felt tingling in my cheeks and fingertips. Drought in my mouth, my eyes.

  I tried to swallow. Could barely muster sufficient saliva.

  I attempted to open my lids. They were crusted shut. I blinked them apart.

  Inky black.

  The vehicle stopped. The motor cut off.

  I held my breath.

  Voices. Male. Close but all around. How many?

  Trickling water. A faucet? A stream?

  Boots on gravel. One pair to the left, one to the right. Moving away? Approaching?

  Every noise echoed back onto itself. Nothing was clear.

  The voices grew louder. Ricocheted wildly. Two? Three?

  Banging.

  More voices.

  Footsteps.

  I froze.

  The footsteps clomped toward me.

  Continued past.

  Receded.

  The pounding in my chest was supersonic.

  I had to do something.

  Ignoring the fiery arrows shooting through my brain, I twisted my neck and looked around.

  I was in the back of a golf cart.

  Moving gingerly, I finger-wrapped the safety bar on one side and slowly raised my head.

  Ten feet ahead and to the left, a beam cut the darkness. Behind it, I could make out a form wearing some sort of helmet. Vapor swirled in the tight cylinder of light shooting from above its brim.

  For a few feet to either side of the beam, the scene was visible through a milky-white haze. The contours of a tunnel. Snaking pipes. Yellow and orange numbers and letters hand-painted on rock. Beyond that, a black void.

  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.

  IT 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.

  TWO 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.

  Ollie commandeered a rental car and sped from the airport. Ryan snagged a ride from Chalker and raced from headquarters.

  The trio converged on Giant simultaneously. Just as Tyne was returning to the shaft with a crowbar and a Remington 700 bolt-action rifle.

  The locomotive that ran me over was Chalker. He knocked me clear so Ollie could get off a shot at Fast. Turned out the guy was solid all along. Just doing his job as a cop and as a member of Snook’s exceedingly extended family.