He considered reasoning with the professor about the imminent danger presented by the fire, but it was obvious Sartore didn’t care.
Chuck remembered the excessive anger the professor had directed at him over the phone when things had begun to unravel earlier in the week. Now he knew the real cause of Sartore’s rage.
“You used her,” Chuck accused the professor. “You used Kirina, your own child.”
“I gave her an opportunity. She chose not to accept it. But, fortunately, my backup plan—you—enabled me to learn what I needed.”
That’s why Sartore had called, after all these years, to offer him the field school position. “I found what you were after, didn’t I?”
Sartore’s eyes glinted. “Another of your many discoveries. That’s what I appreciated about you as a student—so inquisitive, such a thinker—and why I selected you for this job. You and Kirina both. Between the two of you, I knew I’d strike gold—which is precisely what you did for me.” Sartore looked Chuck in the eye. “And now you have before you the same opportunity I presented to Kirina. You can be as wealthy as you’ve ever dreamed, Chuck. Wealth you may share with your lovely young wife, your two little girls, and Clarence, too, should you so desire.”
“The mine,” Chuck said.
“My mother’s discovery. Thanks to her hard work so many years ago, you have a decision to make—and you don’t have long to make it.”
Chuck stared at the gun in Sartore’s hand, less than three feet away. The professor was sure to pull the trigger if Chuck tried to wrestle it away from him. Chuck risked a glance over his shoulder at the front doorway. Should he try to escape the dormitory? No. Sartore would gun him down before he reached the bottom of the stairs.
Chuck feigned a cough and pointed at the smoke gathering in the rafters. He slid along the railing and backed down the first step. Sartore followed, the gun thrust before him.
“What decision are you talking about?” Chuck asked as he took a second backward step.
“Whether to be a rich man, or a dead man.”
Chuck continued backing down the stairs. “We both know the answer to that.”
The professor followed. “You’ll have to convince me you’ll be good to your word.”
“The gold.”
Sartore nodded once, short and sharp. “From the beginning.”
“And your mother?”
“My brilliant mother. She figured it out. She was one of the park’s first female rangers, raised in Estes Park. Her family—my family—homesteaded here. Her grandfather worked claims all through the Mummies before the park was created. When my mother went to work for the park service in the 1950s, she explored the old claims in the park, her grandfather’s and others, out of curiosity. One day, deep in Cordero Mine, she made an incredible discovery.”
“Thomas Walsh,” Chuck said.
In the dim room, the professor smiled, his eyes glowing. “My mother found exactly what Walsh found in Ouray.”
“Calaverite.”
“A massive pocket of it. But I needn’t tell you that; you’ve seen it.” Sartore’s face darkened in sudden anger. “And then you had to go and tell everyone else.” He regained his composure. “But there’s still time. A few loads, before the authorities find out, will be more than enough for us.”
“For us?” Chuck asked, nearing the bottom of the stairs. He glanced around the room, taking in the smoke pouring from the first-floor hallway and gathering overhead, the boxes on the tables, the gear bins and tools in the corner—and his pack, resting against the wall at the foot of the stairs.
He gulped. The skull stowed inside his pack and the 1950s lipstick container found beneath the floor of the mine tunnel. The two objects were related.
Chuck stepped backward to the last stair. His pulse, already racing, quickened even more.
The skull wasn’t that of a small-statured, Civil War-era miner from a century and a half in the past. Rather, the skull was that of a woman who had been murdered just a few decades ago.
FIFTY-THREE
Chuck looked up at Sartore from the bottom step. “What was your mother’s name?”
The professor’s eyes took on a faraway look. “Sandy. That’s what everyone called her. Her full name, though she never used it, was Cassandra.”
Chuck blinked. The Cassandra Treasure.
“And your father?”
The professor’s voice filled with contempt. “My so-called father. He was the only one who ever called her by her given name, when he wanted to humiliate her—which was all the time.”
Chuck backed from the final step to the wooden floor of the common room. Sartore stood three steps above, his eyes clouded by the past. Beyond him, at the top of the stairs, the door to the second-floor corridor exploded outward. Flames burst from the upper hallway, enveloping the balcony and lighting the room.
Still backing away from the professor, Chuck angled between the tables toward the front door. Sartore descended the last of the stairs. Perspiration seeped through tendrils of hair plastered to his forehead. The flames consumed the balcony and licked across the ceiling above.
“My mother wanted to tell the park officials about her discovery,” the professor said, the gun still trained on Chuck’s chest. “She was convinced they would give her a share of the takings—and back then, they very well might have. But my father believed the park bosses would keep it all for themselves. My mother and father fought over the decision, ferociously. I was just a boy, hiding in the corner. My father made threats, waved a gun around, even threw my mother across the room. But she wouldn’t leave him. She loved him no matter what he did to her. Then, one day, just like that, my mother was gone.”
“He killed her?”
Sartore continued as if Chuck hadn’t spoken. “I would give anything to know she didn’t do what my father said. He told people she’d abandoned me and run off. He stayed in town for a while, started buying things for himself. Clothes, a new car. But people began to talk—until, one day, he didn’t come home either.
“He’d mined enough of the calaverite to set himself up for the rest of his life. It was easy to disappear in those days. My aunt and uncle took me in, and I was left to listen to all the whispers behind my back.”
“But you waited all these years,” Chuck said.
“I left town as soon as I was old enough. I wanted to get away, live my own life—which is exactly what I’ve done, and exactly what I would have continued to do if I hadn’t met Kirina’s mother.”
The horrible vision of Kirina being swallowed by the flames struck Chuck between the eyes. He forced the image to the back of his mind. “She really is—was—your daughter?” he asked again, playing for time.
He’d backed far enough between the tables by now to catch a glimpse of the fire advancing steadily down the first-floor corridor toward the common room. Overhead, flames from the second-floor hallway rolled far across the ceiling. Smoke gathered beneath the flames, twisting in wraith-like coils. Heat built in the room like an oven.
“Her mother left me when she became pregnant, though she never told me,” Sartore said. “I didn’t know I had a daughter until one day last year when Kirina called. She said she’d always known about me, that I was the reason she’d chosen to study anthropology. I agreed to meet her. When I saw her, I knew. She was my mother all over again. It brought back everything I’d lost. I understood then that I never should have turned my back on my mother’s discovery, her dream.”
“This whole summer was staged,” Chuck said in amazement.
“I knew more of the gold had to exist, but when I visited the mine last fall, I found the tunnel was solid granite. I needed to deepen the search, figure it out. I was too old, but not Kirina—especially with your help. I proposed the field school idea to the park, talked up the public-relations potential, got them to bite.”
“It was all a façade,” Chuck said, recalling the professor’s insistence that the students excavate the tunnel. “Exc
ept Kirina didn’t turn out to be who you thought she was.”
“In fact,” Sartore replied, his disdain obvious, “she turned out to be more like my mother than I ever could have imagined.”
“Lovesick, you mean.”
“She was captivated by Clarence. Consumed. Enthralled. I told her there would be plenty of time for him later, but she couldn’t help herself. I forced myself to believe everything would work out—until two days ago, when the police called with all their questions.”
The flames reached the end of the first-floor hallway, climbed up the back wall, and joined the blazing balcony above. The temperature soared. Smoke hung thick in the room. Chuck took another backward step, edging toward the front door.
The professor trailed Chuck, his back to the flames. “And now you have the same opportunity as Kirina. You can make things right, for both of us.”
Embers tumbled from the burning ceiling, blistering the varnished floor behind the professor. Chuck took small breaths to avoid searing his lungs. How far behind him was the front door? He dared not turn his head to find out. Instead, he looked Sartore in the eye. “Your mother,” he said. “I found her.”
The gun trembled in the professor’s hand. “My mother?”
Chuck pointed at his pack, resting against the wall at the side of the room. “In there.”
Sartore turned to the pack, his eyes growing round.
“It’s everything you’ve spent your life wanting to know,” Chuck said. “Everything.”
“What?” the professor sputtered. “How?”
Chuck tilted his head at the fire coating the back wall of the room. “There’s no time.” He pointed at his pack. “In there is—to you—my greatest discovery ever.”
Sartore looked past Chuck at the open front doorway. Chuck held his ground, the heat in the room so intense his shirt burned his skin where it touched his chest.
A tear ran down Sartore’s leathery cheek. He lowered the gun to his side, turned away from Chuck, and walked to the pack, his shoulders bowed.
Chuck backed to the front doorway. The cool night air poured past him into Raven House, feeding the flames.
Sartore set Hemphill’s gun on the floor, lifted the pack, and rummaged inside it until he pulled out the skull. He held it before him, staring at the bullet hole.
Chuck gripped the doorframe, his eyes locked on Sartore. The breeze flowing into the building stopped. A millisecond later, a violent jet of superheated air blasted Chuck out the door.
FIFTY-FOUR
Chuck flew backward off the front steps as the Raven House roof collapsed into the common room and white-hot flames swallowed the professor.
Driven by the explosive blast of wind, Chuck tumbled across the front yard, his arms and legs flailing. He came to rest on his hands and knees, climbed to his feet, and ran away from the flaming building.
Janelle met him in the middle of the road in front of the collapsed dormitory. She held him in her arms, her cheek to his chest.
Chuck put his hand to Janelle’s hair. Blood, dripping from the knife wound on his forearm, stained her shirt.
He leaned on her shoulder, his ears ringing from the concussive collapse of Raven House, as she helped him across the road, her arm tucked tight around him. Carmelita and Rosie met him at the edge of the grass. They wrapped their arms around his waist and buried their heads in his torso. Janelle’s mouth moved, but he heard only high-pitched ringing. He looked around him, glad his eyesight, at least, was functioning.
Under Gregory’s supervision, Clarence, Parker, and the students stood on either side of Sheila and Hemphill, preparing to carry the two patients deeper into the fields away from the fire. Falcon House, still standing, was engulfed in flames, as were the collapsed dining hall and Raven House.
Tornado-like winds, spawned by the flaming buildings, spun across the road and into the fields, pelting anything and anyone in their path with burning debris. A pair of fire trucks, dispatched from the lodge and conference center, raced around the fields toward the blazing buildings.
Clarence, Parker, Gregory, and the students lifted Sheila and Hemphill and hustled them away from the raging fire.
Janelle released Chuck. He caught his balance, his hands resting on the girls’ heads for support.
Janelle put a hand to his chest. “All right?” she asked, her words battering his eardrums as the ringing in his ears subsided. “Are you all right?”
He nodded but didn’t speak, afraid to trust his voice.
She gathered his shirt in her hand and pulled him close. She stared into his eyes. “I love you,” she said. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Damn it all.”
She pried the girls from his side. Taking them by the hand, she led them away from the fire. “Come on,” she said over her shoulder to Chuck.
In front of Falcon House, the international workers retreated deeper into the fields as well—all except Anca. Nicoleta’s roommate stood watch over Jake, who sat before her in the grass, his hands and feet drawn together with the nylon cord from Parker’s truck, his wrists trussed beneath his ankles.
Chuck approached Jake and Anca on unsteady feet, his addled brain struggling to comprehend how Jake had known about the calaverite in the mine before anyone else.
Chuck spoke to Jake’s hunched frame, his words echoing in his head, trying to come up with something, anything, that would get him talking. “You see what you did?” He aimed an accusatory finger at the burning structure that had been Raven House, ablaze behind him. “You just murdered two people.”
Light flickered on Jake’s face. Blood from his flattened nose covered his upper lip. “The girl got what she had coming to her. She shot a cop.”
“That wasn’t who she was,” Chuck said, repeating his kneejerk defense of Kirina despite what she had done to Nicoleta, and had attempted to do to Sheila.
The fire trucks rolled to a stop in front of the blazing buildings. Firefighters jumped from the trucks and set about unfurling hoses. A water tanker sped around the fields, joining the two trucks.
“You’re telling me I was seeing things?” Jake insisted.
“Greed,” Chuck said. “I see a lot of it in what I do.”
But the word didn’t describe Kirina, who’d been coerced into doing what she’d done by Professor Sartore, her father. Chuck shook his head to clear it as the ringing in his ears continued to diminish. The description of Kirina as greedy didn’t fit her—but it fit Jake to perfection.
Chuck looked down at the wrecker owner. “Sometimes I find things people want real bad.”
Jake stared at the fire trucks parked end-to-end in the road. He dug his heels into the grass, turning himself away from Chuck to face the firefighters as they worked.
A swirl of wind, launched by the fire, swept across the grass, flattening the stems to the ground before lifting them straight up. The heat from the spinning wind dried the sweat on Chuck’s brow, but the perspiration returned as soon as the mini-tornado passed.
“It seems you found something this summer before I found it,” he said to Jake.
Jake continued to eye the firefighters.
“Those sandbags,” Chuck said. “For sighting in rifles at the gun range.”
Jake flinched.
Chuck continued, “The dead girl, Nicoleta. You knew her.”
Jake spoke without looking at Chuck. “I already told you that.”
“But you didn’t tell Hemphill.”
The wrecker owner’s shoulders drew together beneath his coveralls.
“Why not?”
“She was disgusting,” Jake said, trembling.
Chuck bit his lower lip. Only Kirina had known, all summer long, that gold might be hidden in Cordero Mine. Only Kirina. He remembered, with a start, Jeremy disparaging her earlier in the summer: “One of those square-faced dykes who swing both ways.”
He turned to Anca. “The people Nicoleta slept with—they weren’t all men, were they?”
Anca shook her head, the
movement slow and deliberate.
Chuck stepped in front of Jake. He caught Jake’s gaze only for an instant before Jake lowered his head and averted his eyes, but that was enough for Chuck to see in them everything he needed to know.
Jake could have heard about the gold from only one person: Kirina. She had told Nicoleta about the possible riches in the mine; Nicoleta, in turn, had told Jake.
Chuck had overheard Kirina describe to Sartore, just moments ago, Nicoleta’s all-consuming desire for a green card. The young woman from Bulgaria had been so determined to remain in America that she’d been willing to sleep with anyone and everyone who might provide a way for her to stay in the country. She’d even cut herself, soaked Clarence’s knife with her blood, and called the cops anonymously, planning to blackmail him into marrying her. It was easy to see why Nicoleta would have slept with Kirina when the opportunity presented itself, and it was equally easy to see that someone as conniving as Nicoleta would have had no trouble prying lovelorn Kirina’s big secret out of her. In fact, Kirina might well have told Nicoleta about the gold for her own purposes, promising Nicoleta a payoff in return for keeping her hands off Clarence.
But why would Kirina, bisexual or not, have slept with Nicoleta in the first place? Kirina was infatuated with Clarence, not Nicoleta. Rather than sleep with Nicoleta, Kirina should have resented Nicoleta for sleeping with her beloved.
Perhaps, Chuck reasoned, Nicoleta had been the next best thing for Kirina—a chance to get one physical step closer to Clarence, and to show him she, too, could play his game.
Chuck spoke to the back of Jake’s downturned head. “How did Nicoleta pay you for the work you did on her car?”
Jake stumbled over his words, speaking to the ground. “She…she…I…”
Chuck’s stomach climbed into his throat. “You killed her, didn’t you?” he demanded.
He’d been right all along: Kirina was not a killer. So strong and competent on the outside, she was a lost soul on the inside, hopelessly infatuated with Clarence. At some point in the course of the summer, she’d sought physical solace in Nicoleta—solace that had cost Kirina her life.
Mountain Rampage Page 23
