Shotgun Mine

by Jim Heskett

  For a second, she couldn’t remember if she’d taken her meds this morning. Then, she remembered the daily pill box sitting by her office sink, and she could visualize herself taking today’s allotment. Probably.

  After a few more seconds of stretching her legs and back, she ambled down the last bit and finished the trail. After minutes of dark shade from the trees, the brightness of Shotgun’s gray sky forced her eyes shut. When she opened them, she saw her assistant, Jordan, sitting on the hood of his car, looking down at his phone.

  “Hey?” she said, stretching one leg back and almost falling over as she did so.

  “Ma’am,” he said, standing up, urgent. “I was trying to reach you.”

  “I didn’t take my phone and my watch was… you know, too far away or whatever. Too far to connect. What’s up?”

  Her speech felt a little slurred to her, but maybe that was in her head.

  “They moved the budget meeting to 3:30. Sorry, I was trying to tell you. I went by your house, and then I remembered you said something about hiking, so I found your car.”

  “Quite a little detective you are.” Another glance at her watch. She barely had enough time to get down the mountain, let alone shower and review her presentation slide deck. Plus, the world was spinning a little too much to face reality at this exact second.

  She closed her eyes and knew she was wobbling, so she hunkered down on her knees to avoid falling over.

  Now Jordan looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “Ms. Caldwell, are you okay?”

  She wished she could crawl into bed right now with a bowl of ice cream and her phone. Deep under the covers, eating junk food and browsing the video sites to see if anyone else had copied her sand sculpture style yet. “Can you give me a ride back to town?”

  “Of course.” He guided her to his car and helped her into the passenger seat. She appreciated that he kept his concern in his furrowed brow and not in his words. She would not tolerate a lecture right now. Buckling the seatbelt was challenging enough.

  As he started up the car and backed out of the lot, she looked at him, and realized she knew almost nothing about him. And, even though part of her said that maybe this wasn’t the best idea right now to flirt with the boy, another part of Winnie told the first part to shut up and she proceeded with speaking. “Where are you from, originally?”

  “Texas, ma’am,” he said as he craned his neck around to join the road.

  “You have to stop with the ma’am stuff when there’s no one else around, Jordan.”

  He nodded. “I can do that.”

  “What brought you from Texas?”

  “To be honest, it was a girl. I followed her from Lubbock to Colorado Springs when she went to grad school.”

  Winnie grinned at him. “I didn’t peg you for a romantic.”

  “I’m not enough of one, apparently. It didn’t work out, but I stayed around Denver.”

  “And where do you see yourself in five years?”

  He paused to consider this, and Winnie took slow breaths to steady her drunken nerves. She needed to keep talking to work through the slurring. Her head and mouth were out of sync and she had to remedy that nonsense before the budget meeting, quick. Pronto. Lickety-split.

  “In a few years, I hope I’m doing something important. Like, working on a big campaign.”

  “I’d say that’s an admirable goal. You could do a lot of good out there, helping the right people get elected.”

  “What about you?”

  She wondered if he knew about her online presence. He had to; any basic search of her name revealed all of her videos. Still, he hadn’t yet asked her about it, and she liked that. She liked that he had never pried into the non-mayoral parts of her life. It made her feel like he could be trusted.

  Winnie rolled her head around on her neck and sighed. “Five years? I’m just trying to get through today.”

  He smiled at her, and then he put on the brake to navigate one of the mountain’s hairpin turns. As he did, he gripped the wheel, and she watched the flex of muscle along his bicep. His shirt strained against the bulge. The veins along his wrist popped.

  An idea fell into place. A wild idea. But maybe it was the right time for wild ideas.

  Jordan was a strapping young man, probably with plenty of strapping young friends. Maybe he could do something about the Big Cat Sanctuary. He was capable, smart, and loyal. That last one most of all.

  Maybe something outside of the court system. Maybe he could go talk to them and make them understand that all the legal drama needed to end.

  This idea seemed crazy, but it also seemed fitting. It seemed like something she had to try.

  Winnie studied him, wondering if he were the kind of person who could do something like that. If he would do whatever it took to make them see reason. If he could threaten someone.

  But, then again, was she the kind of person who could ask that as a favor?

  As Winnie watched her handsome, young, white assistant drive her back to town, she wondered.

  17

  Layne watched his old friend Keegan and his old flame Molly Waffles through the windshield as he held the phone to his ear. Molly had lent him her old Ford F150 and a brown baseball cap, since the Disciples had put out a kill order on Layne Parrish. Obviously, a cap wasn’t enough disguise to keep Layne hidden in a tiny town like Shotgun, but he knew how to use backroads and bicycle trails to avoid detection. Even after a quarter century away, Layne still knew how to get around. He only needed the car for travel up and down the mountain.

  They were at West Mine, with Layne in the truck and his two colleagues gearing up next to the mine entrance. A trapezoidal hole in the side of the mountain, with aging wood framing the entrance. Nothing but darkness past that entrance.

  Layne learned today that the wooden stairs down into the East Mine had collapsed and made it inaccessible, so they were going to explore what they could over here.

  Layne had to believe the Disciples were using a mine for something. Probably West Mine, since East wouldn’t allow for large objects—let alone people—to move back and forth.

  Something to do with the barrels those guys mentioned, so maybe they had precursors for explosives? Large amounts of ammunition? If they were moving large barrels, they would need a place to store them. The mountain’s dense rocks would possibly provide cover from any prying thermal eyes above. If that were true, they could be working on something big. Something game-changing.

  And it all had to do with a mine named Shotgun Mine, which didn’t exist.

  “I appreciate the call back,” Layne said to Harry, on the phone.

  “I tried to call you earlier.”

  Layne watched the sun vanishing behind the mountains and felt around his temple. He had a bump above his right eye, pulsing and sore. “I actually got attacked by a leopard. Maybe a jaguar. It all happened so fast, I didn’t get a great look at it. It must’ve gotten out of the sanctuary, somehow?”

  “Holy crap, Boy Scout. And you’re still alive to tell the tale, apparently.”

  “In the process of defending myself, my head smacked on a rock and I took a little nap. Actually, now that I think about it, basically the same thing happened to me in Hawaii almost a decade ago. No cat then, but same result.”

  “It’s a good thing it didn’t eat you while you were knocked out.”

  “Yeah, I’m okay, though. No broken bones, as far as I can tell. Can you do me a favor and look at recent news reports about an escape? Anything about the BCS or CWSBCS today?”

  Layne waited as he listened to the sound of Harry’s computer mouse clicking. “Ehh… nothing about a cat escape. There are news articles about an upcoming Halloween costume contest there, the BCS campus is going to be closed for cleaning day after tomorrow, new items at the gift shop… nothing in the last few hours.”

  Layne wondered if the sanctuary had measures in place to keep something like a security breach quiet. It probably wouldn’t be good business if touri
sts found out the creatures escaped from time to time.

  “Interesting,” Layne said. “Maybe it wasn’t from the sanctuary? I know that sounds unlikely, but maybe it wandered up here from the Denver Zoo?”

  “Could be.”

  Layne watched Molly and Keegan through the windshield, then his eyes flicked north, toward the sanctuary. “Yeah, could be. But, to be honest, I’m not here to investigate the BCS, and they’re not in league with the Disciples, as far as I can tell. I know they’re involved in a legal battle with the town over pollution or something similar.”

  “Still, it’s worth keeping an eye on them. I’m clicking around and there are a lot of people who do not like the BCS. They’ve made a good number of enemies.”

  “Roger that, K-Books.” Layne paused and examined the sky, an unending charcoal cloud ready to unleash snow on the town. Only an hour ago, sunny and crisp, now dark and glum.

  “Did you get something on our missing man?”

  A sigh came over the phone line. “Afraid not. I just don’t have enough to go on.”

  Layne flexed his jaw. He believed that the man who had disappeared had been a Disciple. Probably one of their own who had broken a rule and been killed for it. Then, for some reason, George Parrish had driven that car away. Earlier today Layne had found a severed head near the hill where he’d been informed the Disciples liked to meet. It made sense to tie that head to the missing person, but how did it all connect?

  “I understand,” Layne said. “And I appreciate the effort. I took a sample of hair strands from a dead guy, and I have a feeling it might be the same as our missing man. I don’t know that for sure, but it makes sense to explore.”

  “Sure, that would help a ton. If you wanted to overnight it to me, I could work on the DNA, but it would still probably be a few days until I had anything concrete. I’m guessing you probably need answers faster than that?”

  Layne considered this. “Yeah, I have a feeling something is coming here, and soon. Also, I don’t even know if there is a place in Shotgun where I can overnight something.”

  “Try to get me the sample, just in case.”

  “Will do. You know what I was thinking about earlier today?”

  “What?”

  “My wedding on Hawaii. I wish you could have come.”

  “Me, too, but Daphne nixed it. I tried to convince her I could come as cousin Ted from Cincinnati, but she shot me down. I heard she was there, though.”

  Layne didn’t know if Daphne had ever told the rest of the team what had happened on Oahu. Apparently, not. “Yes, Daphne was there, but not by my choice.”

  Harry let out a muted chuckle. “Believe me, I know how that works.”

  Layne looked at his two friends he hadn’t seen in years, standing by the mine entrance, with backpacks strapped tight and headlamps ringing their foreheads. “I’m about to go explore a mine.”

  “What for?”

  “I think the Disciples might have a—this is going to sound cheesy, but I don’t have a better word for it—lair down below, or maybe a big ammo dump. Maybe an IED workshop. It may not even be in this mine. I’m running on fumes here without any quality intel.”

  “You went to high school there, right? You an experienced spelunker?”

  Layne scoffed. “Hardly. We used to sneak down into these mines back in school, but we never ventured too far in. I knew a couple kids back then who got turned around in the dark and died. Crazy to think we used to take flashlights and beer and wander off into the tunnels, with no thought about how dangerous it was.”

  “Yeah. That’s teenagers for you. But you have better supplies now, right?”

  “My buddy Keegan is with me, and he’s explored the mines and the caves multiple times. He’s got glow sticks and backup batteries and a device that monitors the air quality.”

  “I wouldn’t love the idea of breathing poison.”

  “Sure, man. But he said the mines are fine, it’s the network of caves underneath. Sometimes the bad air leaks up, which is definitely info I did not know in high school. Add that to the amount of gear he has in the back of his truck, I have to believe he knows what he’s doing.”

  “Be careful down there. And send me that DNA sample.”

  “Will do. Thanks, Harry.”

  Layne brought up the rear, with Molly Waffles in the middle and Keegan leading the way. While it was definitely warmer inside the mine than outside, the air still smelled of winter.

  Layne didn’t like being here. Every step felt like it could be his last.

  Keegan had explained there were three levels of this mine, each connected by a series of shafts with ladders or pulleys, as well as worming mine cart tracks. He dropped glow sticks every fifty yards to light their path back out of the mine.

  Since the mines had officially closed, there had been a few various attempts to turn them into tourists destinations. Every so often as they trudged the tunnel, they came upon newer artifacts like braided rock climbing rope, discarded flashlight batteries, and plastics that weren’t around sixty or eighty years ago.

  Layne was happy to let his friend lead. Venturing into man-made caves wasn’t something ingrained in his skill set. The tunnels were framed with wood in various states of decay, and none of it made Layne feel great about exploring down here. In several places, the floor itself had wood planks covering weak spots in the tunnel. None of it looked in good shape. Early into their journey, Keegan accidentally bumped into a rusted wheelbarrow and it collapsed into pieces before their eyes.

  And, Layne knew exactly why he felt so uncomfortable down here. About a decade ago, Layne’s boss Daphne had loaned him out to a strike team hunting a group of unsavory coyotes near the Texas-Mexico border. Their search had taken them into a series of cramped caves, where a partial collapse then killed three of the strike team members. Layne had been lucky to escape that day with only a twisted ankle and minor dehydration.

  Mines and caves were close enough that Layne didn’t think it was an overreaction to stay on high alert down here. He was also surprised to realize that this West Mine was the one in good shape. East Mine was mostly collapsed, and only the suicidal would attempt to explore there. Molly Waffles and Keegan had talked him out of making an attempt at East. They decided to save exploring that black hole of danger until they’d run out of sane options.

  “It would help if you could pinpoint what we’re looking for,” Keegan said as they came to a branching pathway. Darkness and mine cart tracks one way, darkness and no cart tracks the other way. The air felt thick and musky, like a bear’s abandoned hideout. The vague smell of old meat came from somewhere.

  “Well,” Layne said, “Most likely, we’ll know it when we see it. A bunch of barrels, maybe crates, either in a big room or stacked along a hallway. Anything that looks newer than the stuff left behind when they closed the mine.”

  “No big rooms down here,” Molly Waffles said as she adjusted her pincher arm. “It’s all packed in tight. There’s one spot on the lowest level where a partial collapse led to discovering some caves deeper into the mountain, but that’s mostly unexplored. Some are flooded, most too unstable. Nobody’s stacking crates in there, trust me. Even getting those things in or out would be a major task. I don’t know what the Disciples are doing with those barrels you mentioned, but I have a hard time believing they’re in this mine.”

  Layne didn’t know how to respond. For a few seconds, they pushed forward, with Keegan’s air quality device clicking and scratching. His light bounced around, and Layne scooted closer to Molly to keep their conga line tighter. Feet shuffling through loose rock and hunks of wood.

  Keegan angled his head back as he walked. “You two okay back there?”

  Molly Waffles grunted her answer, and Layne gave an affirmative.

  “You didn’t get down here much in high school, did you, Layne?”

  “No, only a couple times. I didn’t grow up exploring them like you guys did.”

  “Didn’t you go
to Paul Clausing’s senior mine party?” Molly Waffles asked. “When we were seniors, I mean. Not his class.”

  Actually, Layne hadn’t attended, and Molly apparently had forgotten why. She had broken up with him two weeks before, because they were both preparing to move to different places after school. Instead of attending the party and risking injury to his still-wounded heart by seeing the ex, Layne had gone out with big brother Randall and drank a liter of whiskey between the two of them up near Diamond Lake. Layne had never drank straight liquor before. He could almost still feel the burn in his throat now. He could also clearly remember barfing up most of the whiskey along the trail on the way back.

  “No, I wasn’t there,” Layne said. “I had other plans that night.”

  Keegan halted and lifted a hand to get their attention. “Hold up, guys. Tunnel takes a dip here, so watch your heads and keep an eye on where your feet land.”

  Now they were bunched together, and Keegan bent over first to crouch into the lowered space. Molly followed him, right behind. Their shoes tapped on planks and boards underneath them, and Layne didn’t like how the ground felt weak and tenuous. Venturing deeper into the mine had so far revealed no easier path.

  As Layne bent to follow, Keegan angled his body again to speak. “See, the thing about these little crawlspaces is that sometimes they used them for—”

  Before he could get the next word out, he set his foot down on a shoddy wooden plank. It ruptured, split, and Keegan tumbled through a shaft in the floor.

  18

  Several things happened as Keegan fell through the hole in the mine floor.

  He had stepped onto what looked to Layne like a pile of boards that must have been covering an old shaft to bridge two levels. Or covering a hole that had previously been created in a small collapse. The hole itself was barely two feet in diameter.