Mining for Justice

by Kathleen Ernst

  “I’m sorry!” Ezekiel whimpered.

  “Let’s sort that out later,” Mary said urgently. “We need to tend to him.”

  “I’ll take him to my house,” Andrew decided. “The rest of you, scatter. We shouldn’t all be seen.” He turned away.

  “Andrew,” Mary began.

  He looked back impatiently. “What?”

  “Chy Looan is closer,” she said. “Take him there.”

  Twenty-Six

  Chloe got back to the Pendarvis office at quarter after one. “So sorry I’m late,” she began, pulling off her rain jacket.

  Evelyn nodded hello from the typewriter. Claudia swiveled in her chair. “No problem.”

  “I have a gift for you.” Chloe scootched the spare chair close to Claudia’s desk. “Tamsin has this gorgeous old Boston rocker, and this morning I found a maker’s signature penciled on the bottom, and guess what?” She held out the photocopy she’d made of the ad. “Midge found him! He was a cabinetmaker, and owned a furniture store in Mineral Point in the 1860s and 1870s.”

  “Really?” Claudia snatched the copy. “This is exactly the kind of thing I’ve been searching for! Do you think Tamsin will let me see the chair? Document it?”

  “I’m certain she won’t mind,” Chloe assured her. It was wonderful to see Claudia excited. I’ve done at least one good thing here, she thought.

  “I’ve been so distracted by crises I haven’t even asked how your Chy Looan research is going.” Claudia looked remorseful. “Any luck identifying the victim who ended up in the root cellar?”

  “No,” Chloe admitted. “It was an unrealistic goal, I think.” She brightened. “But I did learn something interesting along the way. The first owners of the cottage were named Pascoe. Mary Pascoe owned it for over fifty years. Isn’t that cool?”

  “Mary Pascoe?” Claudia mused. “I’ve heard that name. Oral tradition suggests she was a real trailblazer. The local Cornish Club members all speak her name with pride.”

  “I found her obit, and it’s glowing.”

  “A grad student looking at the economic impact of the 1839 financial crash found a story about Mary Pascoe baking bread and giving it to hungry families.”

  Awesome, Chloe thought.

  “She didn’t leave any written records behind, of course, but—” Claudia’s phone shrilled, and she reached for it. “Hello? … How many? Where’s Gerald? … Oh. Has Rita gone home? … Oh. Okay, I’ll take it.” She hung up and looked at Chloe. “A surprise group of homeschoolers just arrived. Rita was scheduled to leave early this afternoon, and her ride is on the way. No one knows where Gerald is. He took a late lunch, but he should be back by now. I need him to be available for general visitors.”

  “You deal with the homeschoolers,” Chloe said. “I’ll go find Gerald.” She grabbed her jacket and totebag and headed out.

  The rain had tapered off, but more dark clouds were building overhead as Chloe quickly searched the site. Gerald wasn’t anywhere in the rowhouse. He wasn’t in Polperro House, or Pendarvis House, or Trelawny House.

  She glanced toward Dark Hill. Had Gerald spent his lunch break working on the badger hole? Might as well check, she thought, and hurried across the street.

  Wind whipped tree branches as she started up the path. The brittle brown fists of dead Queen Anne’s lace flowers bobbed angrily. A squirrel stopped in the trail as if shocked to see a human before scurrying back into the undergrowth. The air smelled dank.

  Chloe was nearing Gerald and Loren’s badger hole when she heard the snuffling sobs of a crying child.

  She froze, pulse racing. You’ve tapped into a local legend, Claudia had said. Every once in a while someone comes down from the hill saying they’ve heard a child crying.

  No way was that a bird, or a rabbit, or anything else that lived in the forest. But, Chloe told herself, that did not mean she was hearing some ghost child echoing through time. School was not in session today. What if a couple of bored kids had gotten into some kind of trouble?

  Chloe nibbled her lip, then took a cautious step forward. Two more steps and something unexpectedly bright, blue and white, blinked from the muted forest floor. A lonely domino peeked from beneath a fallen leaf.

  Her mouth went dry. Dear God, when she’d searched for Gerald, she hadn’t seen Holly on the site proper. “Holly?” Chloe shouted, looking wildly about.

  No answer.

  “Is someone hurt?”

  More weeping.

  Chloe followed the sound to a mounded shrub growing against a limestone upthrust. Echoing off the rock, the whimpering cries sounded odd. Hollow, sort of. Chloe’s nerves tingled. “Holly!” she yelled. She felt gooseflesh rise on her skin and rubbed her arms. The woods were dim. The air felt oppressive. But nobody was here.

  Then she spotted a broken branch dangling from the right side of the shrub. Somebody had recently forced their way past. Chloe did the same, squeezing between the shrub and the rock face. Branches raked her jacket. She sheltered her face with one bent arm.

  She was so focused on minimizing blood loss that she didn’t think about her footing … until solid ground became open air. Caught off-balance, she stumbled backwards with an inelegant screech.

  A black hole, almost hidden beneath the shrub, had opened at her feet. Chloe took a deep breath to steady herself. Geez. She’d come very close to falling into a freaking mineshaft.

  How far back did it date? Her head filled with visions of sweating Cornish miners, digging deep where the Americans had contented themselves with easy pickings.

  But that was irrelevant now. She knelt and peered into the hole. Propped against one edge of the very old shaft was a very modern aluminum ladder.

  Who had found this shaft, brought the ladder, and gone exploring? Whoever it was hadn’t mentioned the discovery to Loren. Unless maybe … maybe Loren was the explorer. And/or Gerald.

  A whimper rose from the shaft.

  “Holly?”

  More whimpers.

  Chloe silently cursed whomever had left the ladder to beckon Holly or whatever curious child had found it. The sound was fading again. Was the child seriously hurt? Or moving deeper into the mine?

  Chloe hesitated, torn between investigating herself and going for professional help. She was definitely not eager to venture down that ladder into the dark unknown. But how long would it take for her to get back to Pendarvis and make the call? To wait for help, and then guide the responders here? What tragedy might conclude in those extra moments?

  “Dammit!” Chloe muttered. She twisted to her knees and began the awkward maneuver of getting situated on the ladder. “Hang on,” she called to the depths. “I’m coming!”

  “Chief’s waiting for you,” Marie told Roel­ke as he came through the door. He nodded, grabbed a folder he’d left on the officers’ desk, and went into the chief’s private sanctum. Officer Skeet Deardorff was already there. Roel­ke took the empty seat, gritting his teeth to keep from wincing. At least sitting straight down wasn’t as painful as climbing into his truck had been.

  “Did Zietz complete the second buy?” Chief Naborski asked.

  “She did.”

  Skeet thumped one fist against his palm. “Excellent.”

  Chief Naborski tipped his chair back with a small, satisfied smile. “Alright. Talk us through what happens tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow is the final buy. Assuming all goes as planned, we hit the house right away. I’ve already requested the warrant.”

  “Backup?” Skeet asked.

  “In addition to the three of us plus Conroy”—one of the EPD part-timers—“Troy Blakely from Palmyra is going to assist, and one officer from North Prairie. We should be good.” Roel­ke opened the file, produced the map he’d drawn of the property on Hackberry Lane, and outlined his plan for hitting the house.

  When the talk-th
rough was complete Chief Naborski banged his chair back down on four legs. “Well done, Officer McKenna. It’s your show tomorrow.” He paused. “Officer Deardorff, will you give us a minute?”

  Once the door had closed behind Skeet, the chief gave Roel­ke a level gaze. “Roel­ke. Are you alright?”

  Dammit. “Yessir.”

  “You don’t look good.”

  Roel­ke fought the urge to look for a spreading bloodstain. “I’m just a little tired.”

  “This is way too important to screw around with. Will you be good to go?”

  “Yessir. I will be good to go.”

  “Very well.”

  Roel­ke knew a dismissal when he heard one. He rose with as much ease as possible and made his escape.

  In the main room, Skeet was busy at his locker. “Say, Roel­ke,” he said over his shoulder. “You had your interview with the Police Committee about the advanced training gig, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Have you heard anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “I suppose we’ll know soon enough.”

  “I suppose so.” Roel­ke pulled out the desk chair and went through the sitting-down-without-groaning routine again.

  But once settled, the question nagged. Well, hunh, he thought wearily. On Monday, winning the opportunity had seemed incredibly important. But honestly, since his interview on Wednesday, he’d forgotten all about it.

  Chloe hadn’t climbed down very far before the meager light from above vanished. It was disorienting to descend into darkness. A bit spooky too. She’d considered turning on her penlight, but she needed both hands for the ladder. So down and down she went, moving one hand or foot at a time. Her fingers began to ache, and she realized she was clutching the metal convulsively, but couldn’t seem to stop.

  After ten minutes or an hour, she wasn’t sure, one foot hit solid earth. Chloe pulled her totebag from her shoulder and scrabbled inside. Her fingers first found the iron sticking tommy she’d been carrying around, and she almost laughed. “My kingdom for a candle or ten,” she muttered. She also found the foil-wrapped herby pasty Tamsin had given her for lunch, and her notebook, and several pens. Finally she found the slim flashlight and gratefully flicked it on. The tiny beam wasn’t nearly as bright as she wanted, but it was better than nothing.

  She stood beside the ladder—the only space where she could stand. A passage led off to the left, but it was no more than four feet high. It was colder down here, and damper. Moisture gleamed among the gravel beneath her shoes. She could hear water dripping on stone.

  What she didn’t hear was the childish weeping that had brought her down here in the first place.

  “Hello?” she called, her voice echoing strangely against the stone. “Holly? Is anyone there?”

  No answer. Chloe rubbed her chin. Was the child hiding? Should she climb back out? But what if the child was unconscious, or bleeding to death? I’ve come this far, Chloe thought. She couldn’t weenie out now.

  For fortification, she did delay long enough to gobble part of the pasty. She threw the crust off to one side. If some of the knackers Tamsin had told her about lived in this mine, she might as well stay on their good side.

  Then she bent over and got moving.

  Chloe quickly realized that every mining scene she’d ever imagined was a fantasy. She hadn’t expected Mammoth Cave, but she had imagined easy-to-navigate passages. Now she remembered the short shovel she’d seen on display in Polperro House, and Claudia’s comment about the men digging on their knees. The men who’d worked this mine had surely spent a lot of time on their knees, because there wasn’t room to stand erect. Chloe crept along with knees bent and back hunched, occasionally banging her head against rock anyway. She wished whomever had left the ladder had left a helmet behind too.

  The passage was narrow and twisty. At times she splashed through shallow streams because there was nowhere else to put her feet. Water dripped from the ceiling and trickled down the irregular walls. Chloe also had to inch past—and, once, over—piles of rock debris. But that made sense too—why would miners waste energy and time hauling every bit of rubble to the surface? If what they hacked from the earth didn’t contain lead, they simply shoved it aside, or behind them, and kept going.

  Every few steps she paused. “Hello? Holly? Anybody?” Her calls bounced from wall to wall, and were never returned.

  Progress was slow, so Chloe knew she hadn’t gone far when a voice in her head said enough. She didn’t want to give up, but it would be foolish to keep going. The silence was ominous. No one knew where she was. She had to go back and get help. She knew what she’d heard, and she wouldn’t back down until someone believed her.

  Frustrated, she studied her surroundings. Had she been so focused on forward motion that she’d missed some side passage branching off? A frightened child might have found a hidey-hole among the rock that she hadn’t seen. As she began retracing her steps, Chloe paused every few feet and let the narrow beam of light play over the rough rock.

  Suddenly the light flashed on something pale and shiny—just a glimpse between two jags of stone. Stepping closer, Chloe discovered a cleft in the rock maybe eight inches wide, about as long as her forearm. Something was wedged into the crevice. A bunch of somethings. The shininess was a row of plastic storage bags.

  “What on earth?” She drew one out—the type of gallon-sized reclosable bag she used to freeze leftovers. This one was packed with smaller plastic bags. She removed one of those. Her penlight revealed the contents: some sort of small white lumps.

  Oh, God. She was holding a bag of crack cocaine.

  She’d never actually seen crack cocaine, but she lived with a cop and had heard his descriptions. She’d also heard him talk about the need to educate those who believed that small towns like Eagle—and Mineral Point—were immune to the danger. Now she remembered the light she’d seen, and then not seen, on Dark Hill the night before. She remembered the safety rope repeatedly removed from around the badger hole, as if someone was discouraging Loren and Gerald from returning.

  She also flashed on something Investigator Higgins had said the day they’d met: We’ve got our share of domestic abuse calls, speeders, kids on drugs … Evidently some of those kids kept their drugs right here.

  Except there was way more here than some teen user would need to stash. Chloe stared unhappily at the crack. This was more likely to belong to a dealer.

  A gnawing fear replaced her apprehension. She didn’t want to think about why she’d heard a child crying in a mine frequented by a drug dealer. All she wanted to do was get out of there and call the cops before said dealer showed up.

  Her hand trembled as she re-zipped the bag and stuffed it back into the crevice. There were bags of pot stashed in there as well. Then the flashlight beam touched on something else. A cheap spiral notebook was stashed here too, also enclosed in plastic to protect it from moisture and mud.

  Chloe looked over her shoulders and listened. Nothing suggested that she was not still alone. She extracted the notebook.

  Only a few pages had been used. Scrawled in columns were dates, names, and figures—probably quantities purchased and money paid. She hastily skimmed the list of names. Near the end, one line jumped from the page as if highlighted in neon marker: Yvonne Miller.

  Chloe’s jaw dropped. Dr. Yvonne Miller, Ph.D., had used pot or crack cocaine? That was almost unbelievable. But Miller had been an unhappy person. Maybe she’d been looking for something, anything, to ease whatever caused her unhappiness.

  Chloe jammed the notebook into her totebag. Cops could come down here and fetch the goods, and the notebook would prove her story. Quivering with the need to get the hell out of there, she scurried as fast as she could back in the direction she’d come.

  “Hey!” a man bellowed up ahead.

  Chloe went still. Had help arri
ved? Or a drug dealer?

  “I’m talking to you, bitch!”

  Ice formed in her veins. Questions answered.

  She tried frantically to think through her options. Problem was, she didn’t have options. The man was between her and the mine entrance. As desperately as she wanted to reach the ladder, she wanted even more to avoid the man.

  “I know you’re down here!”

  Chloe turned again and scrambled deeper into the winding passage. Maybe there was another exit up ahead.

  She tripped and fell more than once. She banged her elbows and konked her head. Her feet were soaked from splashing through wet patches and her chinos clung clammily to her ankles. She shivered uncontrollably.

  Just keeping going, she ordered herself. She crawled over a rubble heap. The passage opened up a bit, and she rounded a corner … and hit a dead end.

  “No, no, no,” she whispered, madly shining her measly light over the jagged rock walls. Up, down, left, right. There was nowhere to go, and the man hunting her was closing in.

  Twenty-Seven

  Chloe’s flashlight flickered. She convulsively punched the Off button, plunging herself into depthless blackness.

  “That’s not gonna help,” the man scoffed. “I don’t like snoops. And nobody in this town is gonna miss you.”

  He wants to kill me, Chloe thought. She realized she was panting, and forced herself to slow her breathing and think. She’d reached a dead end. Her only chance to escape whoever this was, and whatever he had planned for her, was to somehow get past him and beat him back to the ladder.

  She was in a space not much larger than a phone booth. She pressed herself against the rough rock just beyond the final turn, to the right of the straightaway. Then she slipped her hand into her totebag and drew out the only remotely weapon-like item she carried. Don’t think about it, she ordered herself. Just be ready to do it.

  The light from the man’s flashlight was growing brighter. She saw the beam’s lead edge. “There’s nowhere to go,” he sneered. “You’re at the end of the line, lady.” His voice was close.