by Jeff Vrolyks
“There’s a hill; I guess you can drive up it. Lots of rocks, though. And it gets steep for a little bit.”
“How about I just drive around it.”
“Oh. I guess that would work.”
“Great. Since it’s raining, he’ll likely be inside his tent, so we’re lucky on that front.”
“It was raining the other day, too, and he wasn’t there.”
“That’s right. Maybe he left when he saw you guys coming. It was dark and you had flashlights, correct?”
“Yes.”
“He might have been paranoid that detectives were out looking for Michael’s body, perhaps on a lead. He saw your flashlights and made a run for it. Maybe he hid behind a tree not too far away and was able to hear your conversation, and realized you weren’t cops at all. But you were heading toward the mine, and that either scared him or piqued his curiosity, so he followed you. When you discovered the body, learned his secret even if you didn’t know who did it, he decided that you couldn’t be ignored. You’re lucky he didn’t kill you both. But then again, maybe he didn’t have a gun, and knew he couldn’t have handled you both in a fight. So he followed you home, waited for Theo to leave, I guess waited for you to go to work, Georgette, and went inside your house. Why, I don’t know. But he found a gun, so that was a great find for him. What he plans on doing with the gun God only knows. But it seems possible he’d want to get you two together, alone, and… well, you know. It ain’t going to happen. If anyone’s dying, it’s that evil bastard.”
Theo looked back to Carmen, brow arched. He’s right, isn’t he? He said with his eyes. He’s absolutely right. That’s what happened.
Carmen nodded.
“I’ll pull the Jeep right up next to the tent. We have to expect the worst. We have to anticipate him shooting at us. How many bullets are in the magazine of the gun he stole, sweetheart?”
“I think nine.”
Gary sighed. “That’s disquieting, isn’t it? If he does begin firing, take shelter inside or behind the Jeep, and count the reports of his gun. If he does fire, hopefully he empties the magazine quickly; then we’ll move in. But not before hearing nine reports.
“So that’s one possibility,” Gary said thoughtfully. “Another is he runs away. Should that happen, we chase him. I can’t outrun a turtle, so Theo here will play a little defense and move to tackle that S.O.B.”
Theo nodded. He was squeezing his left fist in his right hand, as he always did when he was nervous. Like when Stanford was down in the fourth quarter and he needed a touchdown, or when Jessica called him and said Dad had cancer, though the doctors think they got it all removed. He couldn’t visualize a scenario where he was being fired at. It was more than possible, but still he couldn’t picture it. He had never heard a gun report in his life, save for what he heard on TV. Now he might not only hear them, but be in the line of fire. It felt like he was dreaming.
“Another possibility is he does nothing, and lets us ask him questions without drawing a gun. I doubt that would be the case unless we intimidate him with our weapons from the get-go. I’ll do the talking. First order of business will be for him to hand over Georgette’s gun. Once that’s done, things will go smoothly. We’ll have all the leverage we need to get what we want.”
“And what exactly do we want?” Carmen asked.
He unbuttoned his left breast pocket of his trench coat and produced a mini tape recorder. “I borrowed it from my neighbor,” he said to Theo. “We’re going to record his confession. He’ll admit to killing the man in the mine—the two men in the mine—and then we’ll make a deal with him. He has to move out of town, out of the county. Heck, out of Montana. If he ever comes back or mentions the name Theo Graham to anybody, we’ll hand over the tape to the Helena Police Department and he goes to prison. He deserves to be in prison now, but we can’t do anything about that, can we.” It wasn’t a question. “I wish there was something more we could do, but there isn’t without making this a national news story and hurting both our town’s reputation and Theo’s.”
Theo took the Glock out of the glove box and the flashlight. He put the flashlight in his pocket and gripped the handle of the gun, kept it on his knee, pointed at the glove box.
They drove around the hill, hit a rock so hard that they were sure the left front tire must have popped, but the Jeep continued along dutifully.
“Then there’s another possibility,” he said grimly and finally. “That he shoots one or more of us. Don’t hesitate to pull the trigger should that come to be the case. At the first shot of his gun, we need to be prepared to end that man’s life at once.” He looked at Theo, then Carmen. “Are you two willing to do that?”
They both nodded.
“I mean it. If you get gun-shy all of a sudden, it might mean all three of our deaths.”
“I won’t,” Theo said. “I’ll do what’s right, if that means shooting him, I’ll do it.”
Gary took a deep breath, muttered, “Maybe I should have told Andrew about this. Should anything go wrong, it would be good that someone knows what happened, who’s responsible. He should have been let in on this.”
Carmen leaned forward, peering at the distance from between the seats and said they were almost there. The Jeep was descending into the narrow valley between hills. She was squinting at the glass, wipers arcing in and out of view. Then she pointed.
Chapter Eighteen
The site was on a low elevation, a bald spot on the grass with a small gray dome tent askew from center, a fire pit fronting it. From their angle they could see the entrance to the tent was zipped closed. Carmen removed the gun from her purse before the Jeep came to a stop just short of the tent. Gary slid back his seat and brought the shotgun up from the foot-well. He left the engine running, the wipers now set on high to afford them the clearest view.
The man inside the tent (if he was indeed inside the tent) would have heard the Jeep’s engine groaning toward him, and now idling, but he wasn’t coming out to investigate. This unsettled Gary. The man would have an advantage being invisible inside the tent. He could fire the gun stolen from Georgette at the shadows over the canvas of his tent.
“Georgette, I want you to stay behind me the best you can, alright? Theo, why don’t you approach the tent from behind. If he does decide to shoot, let’s not make it easy for him to get us all. And if he does shoot, empty your gun on the tent, careful to not shoot through it at us. Ready?”
The two nodded. Gary pressed his Stetson hat down low on his brow, pushed his glasses tight to the bridge of his nose, opened his door, leaned the seat forward for Carmen to exit. Theo instinctively crouched and furtively made his way the backside of the tent, gun held at arm’s length and pointed at his broad target. Gary strode to the front of the tent with the shotgun stock against his shoulder, barrel aimed at the tent. Carmen had gained his side, her gun down to the ground. Gary waved her behind him. She defiantly held her position.
The rain came down at a slant, large pelting drops. The wind ruffled the canvas of the tent. The fire pit was a circle of rocks, ashes built up inside. Gary stepped around it, stopping at the zipped flap of the tent, looked over it to Theo, whose nod signified his preparedness. Carmen had arrived at his side, gun now in both hands and pointed at the dirt before her feet. Gary scowled and gestured her to get the hell back. She took a single step back, checked back with him for approval. His eyes were now raptly on the tent.
“John Whitmeier,” Gary began, his voice both calm and assertive. “Step outside, we’d like a word with you.” He gave it a few seconds before saying, “We just want to talk with you, then we’ll be on our way. Come on out.”
A moment passed. “There are three of us, John, and we’re armed. We won’t shoot at you if you don’t shoot at us. I’m opening the tent.”
Gary knelt on a knee, the barrel of the shotgun resting on his thigh, and ran the zipper halfway, draped the flap open with his gun and saw that there was nobody inside. He stood and exhaled dee
ply. “He’s not here.”
It was supposed to be bad news, but both Theo and Carmen were relieved. The tense moment had found an end, and they were safe. Theo joined the two, formed a circle to confer.
“You never saw that the man was here, correct?” Gary said. “We don’t know if he was ever here and this tent belongs to him.”
“No,” Carmen said.
“Maybe nobody lives here,” he theorized. “Maybe this is has been here for some time, abandoned.”
“But there was a light inside the other night,” Theo reminded him.
“That’s right,” Gary said, and bowed his head in meditation.
“Let’s see what’s inside,” Carmen said and crouched down to her haunches before the tent, ran the zipper to the top. Gary and Theo watched from behind her. There was a sauce pan, a bowl and spoon, some folded clothing, a knapsack, an empty whisky bottle and another not empty. What struck all three as odd was that there was no bedding, no sleeping bag, no pillow. An empty area centering the tent where those items would otherwise be. There was a plastic bag draped over something in the corner of the tent. She stepped inside, bent forward to avoid the low ceiling. There was water under her feet, not puddled but wet canvas. She ran a finger across the domed ceiling and it was wet.
“It leaks,” she said. “Maybe that’s why he left.”
She stepped to the plastic bag and pulled it away. A short stack of magazines lain under it, pornographic magazines. The edges of them were scalloped from condensation. Cherry was the title of the one on top, a busty little vixen smiling at Carmen. With her foot she slid the top few magazines off the others. Twink magazine. A muscle-bound stud was peering at Carmen from the cover. She stepped outside the tent.
“Pervert,” she said. “Pornos, straight and gay.”
“He didn’t get those from Cedar Hills,” Gary said proudly. “I didn’t see the lantern; did you, Georgette?”
“No. Or my gun.”
“He must have sought shelter,” theorized Theo. “Some place dry.”
“The mine,” both Carmen and Gary said.
Chapter Nineteen
They parked at the mouth of the mine, the headlights cutting thirty feet into the ripe darkness and illuminating twin rails, rails which had conveyed a cart to the deepest reaches inside ten years ago. Gary left the Jeep running and headlights on. They went inside, weapons at the ready.
“John Whitmeier,” Gary bellowed, his words reverberating off the dirt and rock walls. “Come forth!” He glanced at Theo, then back down the throat of the mine. “We want to talk with you. There are three of us, armed. We won’t fire if you don’t. We wish you no harm. We only want a word with you.”
Carmen took the pair of flashlights out of her pant’s pocket and offered one to Gary.
“No, dear, I need both hands for my gun. You shine the light for us.”
Theo took the flashlight, a metal Maglite, from his pocket and twisted the head. They ventured forward into the invisible mine.
The beam of Carmen’s light found it first, Theo’s then combined with it, illuminating a flat sleeping bag and a wad of clothes or rags for a pillow. There was a bottle half full of whisky, the same label as were the two in the tent.
“Well at least we know he’s here,” Gary said and stepped over the bedding, purposing onward.
The gentle downward slope steepened. Carmen and Theo were expectant of finding Michael Reese Gibson’s body, which couldn’t have been too far ahead of them. The portal of the mine was now invisible behind them, their environment oppressively dark. How John Whitmeier could travel the mine without a light was a mystery, unless he did have a light, a lantern. Gary thought that wouldn’t be the case. He would have extinguished it the moment he heard the interlopers arrive. He may have the disadvantage of being outnumbered, but at least he’d maintain the element of surprise. John would see them before they saw John.
“There he is,” Carmen said, shining her light on the corpse sprawled out over the dirt floor and rails.
The three huddled around the body on their haunches, covering their mouth and nose. Gary set aside his shotgun and took the flashlight from Carmen, probed over the body with it.
“I don’t see the cause of death,” he said, shining the light on the man’s throat, then filmy half-opened eyes. “Help me turn him over, Theo.”
The two heaved him onto his side, then face down. And there was the cause of death. The beam of light centered it, a slit into his upper back, just below his left shoulder-blade. There was dried blood, but not much. The sweater had soaked up much of it, Gary thought. Carmen centered the light to another slit with dried blood, inches from the other.
“Stab wounds,” Gary said. “This one would have punctured his lung.” It was a narrow slit, perhaps from a pocket knife. “This one here wasn’t a fatal wound, judging by how small the knife used presumably was.” He pointed at the other slit. “This one probably did him in. Collapsed his lung. He would have asphyxiated from his own blood. Drowned.”
“We should bury him,” Carmen said. “Not now, but soon.”
Gary erected, knee joints popping. He nodded and strode on.
After several minutes of walking at a brisk pace, Gary asked if the other body was much farther.
“Shouldn’t be,” Theo said.
And it wasn’t. Five minutes of walking did it. A heap of rags, blankets and clothing lay in a jumble just off the tracks. Gary had been right, decomposition was complete after ten years. The flesh of his head had been eaten away, either by bacteria, worms, or God-knows what. The rest of him was in thrift-store clothing, layers of it.
Carmen and Theo met eyes, journeyed back in time together to when they last saw this man. And that’s what he had been, a man. Not this… this skeleton. Back then he might have been asleep to the observer, easily recognizable to anyone who might have known him. Now it would take a forensics technician to identify him, DNA or dental records.
“John!” Gary bellowed. “You killed two men! How did you ever call yourself a Mormon? Show yourself!”
They continued past the second body. Gary asked if they knew how deep the mine was and they didn’t know. He hoped it wasn’t too deep because that coward was probably holed up in the deepest recess of these catacombs. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t far at all.
Chapter Twenty
The sight of it made Theo’s flesh crawl, even more so than did the skeletal remains of the man they had killed. Here is where it all began and ended. It hadn’t moved in all these years. A big iron thing appearing incapable of mobility, like it was constructed on the rails at that spot and left to rust and be forgotten. It wasn’t as tall as Theo remembered it to be, but that was because he was an adolescent back then. When he and Carmen had stood inside it, it reached their chests; now it would be at his lower stomach. It was wide and deep enough to conceal a man.
Carmen reflected back to her first kiss, received inside the cart just moments before her life would forever change. Then there was another kiss, a longer one. One not engendered from curiosity but stemming from their attraction. A mutual attraction. It was the beginning of a thing, a special thing between them. And the moment lasted so briefly that the moisture on Theodore’s lips was still on hers when it ended. It ended upon the realization of their misfortune, the tragedy which wasn’t limited to them killing a man but ripping apart at the seams the bond Theo and Carmen had formed. Or perhaps the bond was still there, only the fabric of it was wholly different.
Though it went unspoken, the three saw the cart for what it was: a great source of protection for someone seeking it. A thick iron bulwark. Gary brought the shotgun up from his hip and took aim. Theo and Carmen raised their handguns.
“I know you have a gun, John,” Gary said evenly. “If I see it in your hand I’m going to take your head off.” He pulled back the hammer of his gun. It clicked ominously. “There are three of us and only one of you. This doesn’t need to end badly. Once you throw your gun outside the cart, we�
��ll put ours down and have a little talk. What do you say?”
No response. The silence was deafening. The three exchanged stares, conferring without words. Theo leaned to Gary’s ear and whispered so softly that it was almost breathed. “What if I throw my flashlight inside the cart? Lob it in there. It will be unexpected and he’ll jump. If he’s holding the gun…”
Gary nodded. He whispered to Carmen, “We’ll move a little closer, keep your light aimed just over the cart.”
With one hand aiming the flashlight, the other gripping James’ gun, she inched forward, Gary at her left, Theo at her right. They were twenty feet from the cart when Theo stopped Carmen, nodded at the two. He took a deep breath, switched hands, gun now in left, flashlight in right. He turned the Maglite off, gripped it like a conical metal football, pumped once, twice, then lobbed it at the cart in a high arc, narrowly avoiding the ceiling. The flashlight was still in motion when Theo returned the gun to his good hand and took aim.
The quietude was shattered with a thunderous clang which echoed for seconds. It had landed dead-center inside the cart. They were expecting a soft thud, metal against flesh. That it hit metal was indicative of its emptiness.
“I would have sworn he was inside,” Gary muttered. “Let’s keep a move on. Maybe he’s not currently in the mine.”
There was only one light between the three of them now, and Carmen held it. They drifted to the left to bypass the cart. Theo, being closest to it, reached into the deep shadows of the cart, balanced on the rim at his waist, and felt around for the Maglite.
“What if he steals your neighbor’s Jeep,” Carmen said, sweeping the light back and forth before them. “It’s still running.” They had passed the cart and now stopped, waited for Theo.
