Back on Friday, when she’d been trying to find her dad, Kiri’d watched the video of the big man grabbing her dad and twisting his arm. However, at that time she’d immediately gone into rescue mode without contemplating the event emotionally. This time, watching her dad being forced down the tunnel—where she knew he’d eventually die—was far more distressing.
Arvind said she’d watch the rest of the video herself to be sure nothing had been missed, but for now she skipped ahead to where the annotations indicated that Kiri’d entered the tunnel. They watched as Kiri traversed the same camera-covered segment of the tunnel that her dad and the men had passed through. Arvind asked questions about what was going through Kiri’s mind at the time and Kiri confessed that she’d fully expected to be able to do something to help her dad. “I was… way too cocky,” she said, feeling both embarrassment and remorse.
Next Arvind skipped forward to where the police entered, which didn’t seem to contribute much to the story. They skipped the video ahead to when the paramedics arrived with their stretcher. That also didn’t provide much additional clarity.
Kiri had to watch herself being led out of the mine. She also caught a brief glimpse of the stretcher being carried out of the mine with the shrouded shape of her father on it. To Kiri’s relief, as soon as Arvind recognized what she was seeing, she skipped quickly past it.
Next Arvind skipped ahead to the segment showing the big man leaving the mine. The man slowed as he arrived at the big doors over in the mine entrance. He stopped at the door and seemed to be listening for a minute or so. Then he pushed one of the doors open a little. He looked startled and quickly pulled a gun out of a small-of-the-back holster.
Morgan said, “Gun!”
Arvind looked up at him, “Yes.” She frowned, “You seem to be attributing particular significance to the gun?”
Morgan looked a little embarrassed. “We were playing amateur detective. Talking about the old ‘means, motive, and opportunity.’ The video shows this guy was present in the mine, so he had opportunity. Now we know he also had a gun, so he had means.”
Arvind nodded slowly, “What about motive?”
Morgan shrugged, “I don’t know.” He glanced briefly at Kiri, “Maybe they think Morgan found some precious metals?”
Arvind fixed Morgan with a steady gaze, “Are we sure he didn’t?”
Morgan looked at Kiri questioningly, so Arvind did as well. Kiri said, “He found tiny bits of gold. You can pan as much gold out of the French Broad River. We hoped we’d find more,” she shook her head, “but we never did.”
Morgan looked like he might be about to say something about the big chunk of metal her dad had in his pocket when he died, but he subsided. Instead, while looking into Kiri’s eyes, he said, “When I knew him, which admittedly was a long time ago, he could be pretty abrasive. Maybe the motive was that he somehow pissed off the big guy?”
Kiri realized that Arvind was looking at her questioningly as if for confirmation of this possibility. She shrugged, “Yeah.” She grimaced, “He had a way of making it evident just how stupid he thought some people were. Um, compared to him, most people were. Most of the time he didn’t make a big deal of it. But sometimes…”
Nobody said anything, so Arvind started the video again and they watched the man leave the mine. Arvind tapped on the video time display, “This occurred after midnight on Friday, or what would actually have been the wee hours of the morning on Saturday.” Arvind turned to Morgan, “You told Detective Chatfield you had video of the man leaving?”
Morgan shook his head, “No, when Chatfield came to arrest Kiri, we hadn’t reviewed this part of the video. But we did tell him we had video of the two men entering the mine.”
Arvind pursed her lips, “That’s pretty disappointing…” She sat silently for a minute or two, evidently thinking about options. “Okay,” she said, “I’m going to call the DA and the Chief of Police.” She looked at Kiri, “I’ll tell them that Detective Chatfield’s locked you up while you’re in the depths of the mourning of your father’s death. I’ll also tell them that he did this despite the availability of video evidence proving your story that a couple of men had attacked your father immediately prior to his death. Finally, I’ll tell them that we have video that shows the man leaving the mine in the middle of the night, with a gun.” She lifted an eyebrow, “I’ll be suggesting that if this video makes it into the public eye it’ll be a major embarrassment for the department.” She paused, “Do you have another copy to give the chief?”
Morgan reached in his pocket and pulled out another jump drive. “We made a spare in case there was some other need.”
Arvind said, “We’ve got to recognize that this tactic will put them on the defensive. I’d very much prefer not to have them angry at us, so I’ll be phrasing everything as politely as possible. I want you to understand this, so you’re not tempted to be rude to them yourselves. We’ll get a lot better service from them if they perceive us as friendly.”
A little irritated, Kiri said bitterly, “The only service we need is for them to let me out of this place.” Arvind eyed her expectantly. “Oh!” Kiri said, a little self-consciously, “And we need them to catch that guy.”
Arvind tilted her head and gave Kiri a questioning look, “What about the second guy?”
Kiri winced a little, “I’m pretty sure he fell down a vertical shaft deeper in the mine shaft.” She explained about the shaft and the surrounding stakes and ropes that’d been knocked down. “If he hadn’t fallen down the shaft or had something else bad happened to him, he would’ve come out with the big guy.”
“Ah,” Arvind said, “I also need to remind the police that the second guy must still be in the mine. And, that he might need rescue.” She stood up, “And, with that, I think I’ll be on my way. Unless I’ve badly misunderstood the situation, I think we’ll have you out of here before the end of the weekend,” she glanced at Morgan, “Thus putting an end to your need for a defense attorney, though I’ll still be happy to help in any way I can. I’ll get started on it right away.” Part way out the door, she turned and said, “I’ll send in one of the boys if they’ve been approved for a visit.”
Kiri’s heart leapt at this evidence that Lindl and Adam had come too. She turned to Morgan and said, “I want to tell you how much I appreciate your help. Despite my good intentions, it seems like I keep barking at you.”
He shrugged, “I understand. You’ve got ninety-nine problems.”
She stared at him for a moment, wondering whether he was really referencing… Then she grinned, nodded, and said, “You’ve got ninety-nine problems too. And,” she pointed at herself, “this bitch shouldn’t be one of them.”
He grinned back and nodded. Then the door opened and the guard lady brought Lindl in. Kiri jumped to her feet and Lindl immediately threw his arms around her. Leaning his mouth close to her ear, he whispered, “I know you say you don’t like them, but I need a hug.”
Kiri suddenly found a little frog in her throat. She swallowed, reached around him and squeezed, then leaned back, “Yeah, I guess I could use a hug too.”
When Lindl let go, she and her uncle explained what Ms. Arvind had said and he looked relieved. They talked a little longer, then he stood, “Our time’s nearly up and Adam really wanted to talk to you too. Is it okay if I send him in?”
Kiri nodded. She really liked Adam.
Too bad he was her cousin…
When Adam came in, she felt surprised to realize she was disappointed he didn’t give her a hug. Presumably because he remembered her saying, “I don’t hug,” when they first met. She decided that even though she didn’t like to hug, especially casual acquaintances, when she felt the way she did today she would’ve made an exception for her cousin…
***
Morgan and the boys stopped at Burger King for lunch since it was nearly 2 o’clock when they left the juvenile center. Lindl said he was starving and promptly ate two double-deckers and a large
order of fries.
They arrived back at the house to find a couple of Amazon packages sitting on the porch. Morgan eyed them curiously as he walked up. “I ordered a digital scale yesterday, but didn’t think it’d arrive yet. Besides, I only ordered one thing.” He looked at Lindl, “Did you order anything?”
“No,” he said. Then he got a sad look, “But my dad might’ve, before…”
“Oh, yeah.” Still a little nervous about having packages show up that he wasn’t sure of—when there were men out there who’d attacked and killed his brother—Morgan leaned down and looked at the packages without touching them. It’s sad to be so paranoid, he thought. One of the packages was addressed to Morgan Djai and he supposed it could be the digital scale—delivered in one day instead of two. The other one was in fact addressed to Daryn Djai. They both looked like normal Amazon packages. They had typical Amazon sealing tape that looked undisturbed. He decided he didn’t think they could be bombs.
Nonetheless, Morgan picked a wooden chair up off the porch, and holding it by the back, poked the packages with one of the chair’s legs hoping the wooden seat might provide a little protection from an explosion. Nothing happened. Next, reasoning that any triggers would probably be set off by opening the package normally, he got out his knife and cut a hole in the middle of a sidewall of the first package. He peered into the package and to his relief saw a commercial looking blue box inside. The box was labeled as containing a digital scale.
He followed the same procedure in opening the other package. He blinked. It contained a blister package with two small canisters of Mace. I guess Daryn must’ve thought someone might be coming after him, he thought. Unfortunately, it didn’t get here in time.
Lindl went upstairs and they soon heard him playing guitar. Morgan took the canisters of Mace up to his room and put them in the drawer. He got out the block of metal and took it back downstairs to the new digital scale.
Seeing him with it, Adam said, “Oh yeah. Are you going to check the density more accurately now?”
Morgan nodded. With the more accurate scale, the block of metal weighed 338.50 grams. That part was simple, but replicating the displacement measurement at the same degree of accuracy was significantly more difficult. He got two results of 15.77 and one result of 15.78 ccs.
Adam said, “Those give us densities of 21.46 or 21.45 grams per cubic centimeter.” He pulled over Morgan’s laptop where they’d pulled up a table displaying the densities of the various elements. “Hey,” he said a little excitedly, “21.45 is exactly right for platinum.” He chewed his lip, “21.46 would be a tiny bit too dense.” He looked up at his dad, “I guess it must be 21.45, right? Our measurement of 21.46 must a little bit off?”
Morgan shrugged, “Maybe it’s not pure.”
Adam looked at a table with the metals’ values, “If it’s a mixture of rhenium and iridium, it’d be worth almost as much as platinum.”
Morgan gave him a dubious look. He glanced at the density and value tables himself and said, “It’d be about one third iridium and two thirds rhenium. Iridium’s worth more than platinum, but rhenium’s a lot cheaper, only about ninety dollars per Troy ounce.” He shrugged, “So, one third iridium and two thirds rhenium would be quite a bit less than platinum.” He shrugged, “But still, we’re talking thousands of dollars so nothing to sneer at.” He looked at the list of densities again, “I suppose it could be partly osmium and partly tungsten. That combination would be a lot less valuable than iridium-rhenium.” He sighed, “What I really want to know is what it’s actually made of. To me that’s much more important than how much it might be worth. What’s it made of, and where did it come from? If we knew those things, we might be able to figure out what happened to Daryn.”
Adam said, “Okay, okay. I’ll spend some more time trying to figure out if we can test it ourselves without sending it off for an assay.”
Morgan said, “I’ll be in the basement. Maybe I can figure out what Daryn’s been doing by looking over the tools he’d been using.”
***
When Morgan came back upstairs, Adam looked up and said, “You figure it out?”
Morgan shook his head dispiritedly. “In the first place, I can’t tell which tools he was using. I mean, none of them look new, just out of the box, so I assume he’s used them all. But I can’t tell which ones he’s been using a lot, or most recently. I recognize some of the equipment,” he snorted, “hammers, screwdrivers, drill press, vice…” He shook his head, “Actually, it isn’t that bad. He’s got a lot of scientific equipment and I’ve at least heard of most of it, but I’ve never used it or even seen examples before. I certainly don’t have any way of knowing whether Daryn was using a piece of equipment. Did you have any luck figuring out how we can test the block of metal?”
Adam said, “At room temperature, rhenium resists all acids except for concentrated nitric acid. Osmium’s resistant to all acids, and iridium’s even more resistant than osmium. Platinum’s resistant to hydrochloric and nitric acid but dissolves in hot aqua regia.”
“What’s aqua regia?”
“It’s a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid. It’ll also dissolve gold. It’s a yellow orange fuming liquid that’s really toxic and has to be mixed up right before you use it because it goes bad pretty quickly. But, if we had some, it’d help us tell whether the metal’s platinum rather than iridium or osmium.”
“Can we get these acids?”
“You can get little vials of some acids from Amazon in precious metal testing kits. Unfortunately, they’re mostly oriented towards testing for gold, silver, and platinum, not differentiating the ‘platinum group of metals’ which is what they call the group of metals we’re suspecting. From what I can tell, iridium and osmium would pass the commercially available jewelry tests for platinum. I haven’t looked into whether we can buy nitric or hydrochloric acid.”
Morgan said, “I guess we probably should keep working on sending some of it off for assay at a professional lab.”
“Even that could be a problem unless we want to send the whole thing. Iridium, osmium, and rhenium are all as hard or harder than a steel file. That could make it hard to get flakes off it to send for assay. Platinum’s soft enough…” His eyes widened.
Morgan said, “There are files in the basement.” He pulled the block of metal out of his pocket, “Let’s go see what happens when we take a file to this thing.”
The block of metal was soft enough that the file easily cut into it. Adam said, “I guess it’s probably platinum. Unless, do you think there might be some way to make rhenium or one of the others soft? Some alloy or treatment we don’t know about?”
Morgan’d been frowning at the small block of metal. “No. I think it’s platinum. And I guess we know why those guys were after Daryn.”
Adam gave him a puzzled look, “But how did they even know about it?”
Morgan shook his head, “Damned if I know.”
***
Morgan was doing some Internet searches to learn more about platinum mining when he suddenly remembered the three extra rooms visible on the video of the mine. He climbed the stairs and tapped on the frame of the door to Lindl’s room. Lindl and Adam looked up. He said, “Hey guys, I’m gonna go up and have a look through the mine. It seems kind of crazy to be sitting here wondering where that platinum came from when I haven’t even seen the inside of the mine myself.”
Lindl set down his guitar, “I’ll go with you. I’ve been in it a few times.” This relieved Morgan since he’d intended to ask Lindl to go so he could quiz him about the extra three rooms after they got up there.
Adam hopped up, saying he wanted to go as well. They put on their sturdiest shoes and light jackets. Lindl found them some heavy-duty flashlights before they started up the hill. When they got to the big doors at the mine entrance, Lindl stopped. Looking concerned, he said, “The gate’s unlocked. We’re supposed to keep it locked when no one’s inside.” He glanced at the others, “You
know, so people don’t get in and get hurt.”
Morgan looked at the large combination padlock. It had four little scroll wheels on its side to set the combination. “What’s the combo?”
“1-0-3-1,” Lindl said.
The date for Halloween, Morgan thought. “Okay, I guess we should lock it when we leave.” Morgan pulled the gate open.
As they stepped into the mine entrance, Adam said, “What if the second guy’s actually still lost in here? We’d be locking him in.”
Morgan thought about this as they started down the tunnel, “If we do lock it, I suppose we should come up and check it each day.” He looked up at the lights that dimly lit the tunnel, “Are these lights on all the time?”
Lindl said, “They could be, they’re low-power LEDs, so it wouldn’t waste much power. But there’s an app in the video surveillance system that turns them on when it detects motion. It’s so quick, you’d never know they were off.”
As they walked Morgan turned his light down onto the rails. He could see a small black stripe running down the center of the rail’s surface. “You guys have a car for the rails?”
“Um, yeah,” Lindl said, “I don’t know where it is though.”
“Must be deeper in the mine,” Adam said.
As they walked deeper into the tunnel system, Morgan started pondering how to ask Lindl about the three rooms visible in the camera system. Suddenly, he realized that the three rooms weren’t visible in the videos Lindl had downloaded onto the drives for Tilly Arvind. Is that because he wanted the video images to be larger for better viewing? he wondered. Or, is he trying to hide those extra rooms just like his sister seemed to be? Maybe that’s why he wanted to be the one to copy and annotate the videos?
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