The Double-Jack Murders: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (Sheriff Bo Tully Mysteries)

by Patrick F. McManus

  “I’m getting a little short on curiosity myself,” Dave said. He was peeling one of the oranges they had bought in Angst. Tully watched him. He thought the best part of oranges was the peeling of them. Dave said, “So, Bo, you come up with any idea about what we might be looking for?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Can’t be a campsite,” Pap said. “There are a lot easier ways to conceal a campsite than blowing up a cliff.”

  “We’ll give it today,” Tully said. “If we don’t find something by five today, we’ll go pick up the tent and head in.”

  “You’re apparently not too worried about Kincaid,” Dave said.

  “No, he’s had his shot and I’m getting so tired of roughing it I’d appreciate a little interruption by old Lucas. It’s pretty inconsiderate of him to leave us alone for so long. I’m much more concerned about Brian.”

  “Yeah,” Pap said. “I’m surprised you would put him up against Kincaid.”

  “He’s the best I have,” Tully said.

  “Ain’t good enough.”

  They went back to rolling rocks. Then Dave found a hollow under one of them. Smaller rocks slid down and vanished through a tiny hole. The hole grew bigger. A few minutes later, he uncovered a sharp edge of rock with an opening below it.

  “It’s the mine!”

  Tully scrambled across the scree and looked at the opening. “Tom and Sean’s mine!” he shouted. “Has to be! It looks more like a rabbit hole, though. Can’t be more than three feet from bottom to top.”

  Pap said, “If you want to hide it, maybe under a pile of sticks, a small entrance makes it a lot easier.”

  Dave took out his handkerchief and mopped sweat from his forehead. “I think you’re right about that. If we clear a few more rocks away, we should be able to drop down in front of it.”

  “I ain’t going down in there without a flashlight,” Pap said. “A hardhat wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.”

  “I don’t have any hardhats,” Tully said, “but I’ve got some flashlights in the truck and a lantern. There’s a good rope there, too. I’ll climb up and get them.”

  “Don’t bother with the lantern,” Pap said. “Going into an old mine with a flame of any kind ain’t a good idea.”

  Dave said, “I don’t think going into any old mine at all is a good idea.”

  “Probably not,” Pap said.

  Tully was already climbing up the scree toward the cliff. He was happy once again the blowdown hadn’t reached this far down the drainage. Before gathering up the rope and flashlights, he leaned his head against the truck canopy and gasped for breath. He hadn’t felt this excited in a long time. It felt good, but he didn’t want to kill himself. He was on the ultimate treasure hunt, this time for an actual gold mine. Going back down the scree he angled over a ways so as not to send an avalanche down on Pap and Dave. He could see Pap sitting on the rocks above the mine opening. He was smoking one of his hand-rolleds. Dave was climbing back up the scree from the creek, a small log over his shoulder. He threw it down on the rocks. Coming down to them, Tully said, “Glad to see you’re both hard at work. What’s the log for, Dave?”

  “We’re going to need something to tie the rope to, Bo, unless you know one of those Indian rope tricks where it just stands by itself in the air.”

  “Well, let’s see, an Indian rope trick would work as well as that log. We’d just pull it in after us.”

  “Dang! I wish I’d thought of that!” Dave said. “On the other hand, maybe we can tie on the rope and then pile rocks on the log. Do you suppose that might work, Bo?”

  Tully smiled. “Might work.” He handed each of them a flashlight and then tied the rope to the center of the log. He laid the log a few feet from the opening, which Pap and Dave had enlarged in the scree. They piled enough rocks on the log to hold an elephant, as Pap pointed out.

  “Okay,” Tully said, “which one of you wants to go first?”

  “Pap’s smallest,” Dave said. “I vote for him.”

  “And the most expendable,” Tully said. “He’s got my vote, too.”

  Pap responded with an obscenity. “If you guys are too chicken, I’m happy to go first. Never have been able to stand the company of pantywaists.”

  “What’s a pantywaist, anyway?” Dave said.

  “Beats me,” Tully said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Pap took the rope, wrapped it around his shoulder and back between his legs, and began walking his way down through the scree. Dave and Tully peered down at him from the edge. He reached bottom, knelt down, took a flashlight from his pocket, and directed the beam into the entrance hole.

  “See anything?” Dave shouted down.

  Pap looked up. “The only way I can see anything is to get down on my hands and knees and crawl through the hole.

  And stop shouting! I suspect if there’s any support timbers down here they are pretty well rotted. The hum of a mosquito could bring the whole thing down.”

  Dave looked at Tully. “You’re next.”

  “Thanks.” Tully grabbed the rope and slowly worked his way down through the scree to the hole. He noticed that he was standing on crushed rock, apparently tailings that had been excavated from the mine. He looked around. The mine was scarcely more than a hole in the side of the mountain. Pap had already crawled inside. Tully followed. Inside, the hole grew larger, but the ceiling was barely high enough for him to stand. At most, the mine was wide enough for two men to walk abreast, if they were both thin and excessively friendly. Tully shined his flashlight down the tunnel. A wooden wheelbarrow with a metal wheel leaned against one wall. A dozen or so feet beyond it, the mine curved to the left. “Find anything?” he whispered to Pap.

  “Just a bunch of rags over there,” Pap whispered back, pointing to a row of rags at the edge of the tunnel.

  “Let’s wait for Dave. I see what you mean about rotted timbers. There aren’t that many timbers to begin with. I guess Tom and Sean weren’t too concerned about such niceties.”

  Dave came down. “Glad you waited for me.”

  “Whisper!” Pap whispered. He pointed at an overhead timber.

  Dave looked at the timber and then back at the entrance hole. “It might be a good idea for one of us to wait topside, in case there’s a cave-in or something. I volunteer.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Tully whispered. “We’ll let Pap do it, though.”

  “But I wanted to see the rest of the mine,” Pap said.

  “You can see it later. We need somebody up top.”

  Grumbling, Pap got down on his hands and knees and crawled back out of the mine.

  “How come you picked me to stay instead of Pap?” Dave said. “He’s the one who knows something about mines, although this appears to be nothing but a narrow tunnel blasted through solid rock.”

  “Because Pap isn’t scared enough. He’s liable to strike a match and light one of his hand-rolleds. There could be a box of dynamite rotting away down here all these years. Maybe all the nitroglycerine would have evaporated or whatever nitroglycerine does when it oozes out of dynamite. I don’t want to take any chances.”

  “Well, I’m scared enough, Bo. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  They worked their way back into the mine, Tully sweeping the beam from his flashlight back and forth ahead of them. The mine seemed surprisingly dry, but odd smells drifted in the stale air, none of them pleasant. Dave held his finger to his nose, as if he were about to sneeze. Wide-eyed, Tully glared at him and pointed to the ceiling. The sneeze went away. Tully sighed in relief. Various rusted tools leaned against the walls. They came to an open wooden box, the dynamite inside having deteriorated into a spongy mass. Tully pointed to it and shook his head. Dave rolled his eyes.

  The mine ended at a wall of white quartz. Tully shined his flashlight on it. He spit on his hand, wiped a spot clean, and examined it closely. The wall was threaded with veins of gold. Tom and Sean had hit it big. He motioned toward the quartz. Dave mout
hed, “Wow!”

  “Hey, looked at this,” Tully whispered, pointing to a long-handled sledgehammer and a set of chisel-bit steel drilling rods lined up neatly against the wall. “Tom and Sean intended to return to work. No miner would ever leave behind a set of steel drills, let alone the gold. I think we’re looking at a double-jack setup.”

  “What’s a double jack?”

  “It’s two guys, the miner and a helper, in this case Tom and Sean. The miner got a person with a low IQ to hold the steel while the miner hit it with the long-handled sledge. I suspect O’Boyle was the fellow with the low IQ. A single jack was basically a one-man drill. He held the drill bit with one hand and hit it with a short-handled sledge in the other hand.”

  “Sounds labor-intensive.”

  “No kidding! After the smart guy in the double jack hit the drill bit with the big sledge, the dumb guy gave the steel a quarter turn and the bit chipped out about a quarter inch of rock. Once the hole got too deep for the first steel, they replaced it with the next longer one and so on. To get a blasting hole deep enough, I’ve heard it took a hundred swings of the sledge.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Dave said. “This place is too spooky for me.”

  “We haven’t found any bodies. I don’t know if that’s bad or good.”

  “It’s just that I don’t ever want to get so close to that much work.”

  “Me, neither.”

  They made their way back to the opening. Dave got down on his knees and crawled out. He grabbed the rope and started working his way up through the scree. While he waited, Tully picked up a stick and poked around in the rags at the edge of the mine. Then he climbed out.

  “No bodies, huh?” Pap said.

  “A box of dynamite,” Dave said. “And a double-jack setup and other tools.”

  “And two skeletons,” Tully said.

  “Skeletons?”

  “Yeah, Dave, those rags along the edge of the mine, they were clothes with two skeletons underneath.”

  Dave ran his hand back through his hair as if clearing something from his mind. “Somebody blasted rocks down over the mine and trapped them in there,” he said. “What a miserable way to die!”

  “No way is good as far as I’m concerned,” Pap said.

  Dave said, “So you think somebody blew the mine shut and left them in there to die?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. I can’t imagine Tom and Sean wouldn’t have noticed somebody drilling up above them on the cliff. Also, I don’t think they would just have lain down together and waited to die. I’m going to call my Crime Scene Investigations Unit and get it up here to see what it can figure out.”

  Dave looked puzzled for a moment. “Oh, yeah, I forgot. Your CSI unit consists of only one guy.”

  “Lurch is good, too,” Pap said. “Solves most of Bo’s crimes for him.”

  “I wouldn’t say most,” Tully said. “But he’s pretty good.”

  Tully took out his cell phone and dialed Daisy.

  “Hi, Daisy. It’s Bo, and I—!”

  “Bo! About time you called in! I—We have been worried sick about you!”

  “You could have called me if you were so concerned!”

  “You may remember telling me never to call unless there’s an emergency I can’t handle!”

  Tully winked at Dave. “Oh, good. So there hasn’t been an emergency. I’ve been gone less than a week and no emergency. That must be a record.”

  “There have been emergencies, but nothing I couldn’t handle!” Daisy said. “I’ve been spending night and day with your mom, and I think she’s getting pretty sick of me.”

  “It’s okay for you to get back to the office and do some work. You can sleep at home, too.”

  “The Kincaid business is over?”

  “I’ll tell you about it later. I should be back in a couple of days. Do you know where Lurch is?”

  “Yeah, he’s at the office. I just talked to him.”

  “Thanks.” He dialed Lurch’s number.

  “Hi,” Lurch said. “How’s it going, boss?” Apparently nobody but Tully ever called the unit.

  “It just got interesting, Lurch. I need you up here pronto. Bring your kit and throw in a metal detector. I’ve got a couple of skeletons in pretty bad shape, and I want you to figure out what caused them to become skeletons. Bring something to haul them back in.”

  Tully told him how to get to the Finch Mine. Lurch said he would meet them at the mine’s chain in two hours.

  17

  TULLY DROVE DOWN to the chain to wait for Lurch, but the unit was already there. They drove their vehicles back up to the Finch Mine and unloaded two plastic cases from Lurch’s Explorer. Lurch said they would be used to put the bones in. He would take them back to Blight for more careful analysis.

  Lurch pointed to the various structures of the Finch Mine. “It looks kind of creepy. Like all the workers disappeared yesterday, but it’s been shut down sixty years or so, right?”

  “Right,” Tully said. “It’s like it has been frozen in time.”

  They put one plastic box in the other and Lurch’s gear in that one and hauled it down the scree, Tully carrying the front end of the boxes, Lurch the back. Wearing only oxfords, the CSI unit wasn’t happy about having to tramp down the steep grade on loose rocks. Going down the hole on a rope made him even more unhappy. “I don’t like the looks of this!” he yelled up from the bottom.

  Tully came down on the rope. He pointed at the small opening into the mine and gestured for Lurch to crawl through. The unit shook its head.

  “Oh, all right,” Tully said. “If you’re going to turn chicken on me, Lurch, I’ll go first. Remember, once we’re inside talk only in a whisper.”

  “Oh, great,” Lurch said.

  Pap and Dave lowered the CSI kit and first plastic case down with the rope. Tully reached out and pulled the first one into the mine. He gave the rope a tug. Pap or Dave pulled it back up and the second case came down. Then the unit.

  Tully pointed at the rags. “That’s where the skeletons are.”

  Lurch took two pairs of latex gloves from his kit and handed one pair to Tully.

  “I don’t need gloves,” Tully whispered, “because I ain’t touching anything! I’m just here to hold the flashlight.”

  “Yes, you’re touching!” Lurch whispered, snapping on his own gloves. “I’m going to need your help to lift the skeletons into the cases, if we want to get them out of here in any shape resembling the original.”

  It soon became evident that the skeletons would make it into the cases in several pieces. Lurch picked up a gray skull and examined it. “This guy was pretty young. The teeth are perfect. He picked up the other skull. “Ditto here. Not much chance of getting a definite ID. Like none at all.” He turned the second skull over in his hands.

  “There are two belt buckles here,” Tully said. He held them up. “What about those?”

  “They’re pretty fancy,” Lurch said. “Big fancy buckles. They must have been cowboys.”

  “Kind of, I suppose. What I was thinking, Agatha has photographs of the two of them. Maybe we can use a magnifying glass to check their belt buckles in the photos.”

  “Good idea! Might work. I can tell you one thing right now about how they were killed.”

  “So tell me, Lurch.”

  “They were both shot in the back of the head. They were both lying facedown with their hands tied behind them and their feet tied together. They were executed with shots to the head. Pretty terrible, if you ask me. Why tie them up? Why not just shoot them?”

  “Whoever did it probably didn’t think that far ahead. After he had them tied up, he couldn’t figure out what to do with them. Maybe he thought the kind thing to do was shoot them. So he shot them. You know, Lurch, it’s possible these bones don’t belong to Agatha’s father or the O’Boyle boy. Maybe we’ll just give them to the family and say that’s who the bones belong to. How could they tell? It will give them something to bur
y, anyway.”

  “Gee, I don’t know about that.”

  “Don’t get picky on me now, Lurch. Besides, maybe we’ll get IDs from the buckles.”

  “Yeah, I’d prefer that to the Blight Way. So are we done here?”

  “Not quite,” Tully said. He walked over to the entrance hole, knelt down, and stuck his head out. In a loud whisper, he said, “Pap, send down the metal detector.” A few minutes later the metal detector came down on the rope.

  “Ah,” said Lurch. “You want to look for the bullets.”

  “Actually, I want you to look for the bullets. I myself try to avoid learning how to operate any machine I don’t have to. If you’re right that Tom and Sean were shot right here while lying facedown, the bullets have to be here someplace.”

  Lurch clicked on the metal detector and began sweeping it back and forth over the rubble. Almost immediately, the instrument began to beep. He took out a flat wooden stick and began to dig down through the rocks. Picking up a small object, he blew it off. Tully leaned over his shoulder to get a better look.

  “What is it, Lurch?”

  “Just what you wanted—one of the bullets that killed our vics here.”

  “Not likely there would be any other bullet right at this spot. Can you make out any striations on it?”

  Lurch spit on the object and wiped it off. “Yeah, enough to identify the gun it was fired out of. Here’s something weird. It’s green! Good luck finding that gun, after, what, about eighty years?”

  Tully squinted at the bullet. “Spit on it again, Lurch, and see if you can identify the caliber. I’m always amazed by your advanced technology.”

  “Weird,” Lurch said. “You ever heard of a green bullet, Bo?”

  “Yeah, half my bullets are green. They get old and wet, the brass turns green. This one has to be brass-covered. What kind of weapon fires it?”

  “Don’t know. I’ll have to check it out back at my lab.”

  “You don’t have a lab.”

  “I just say that to fool people. I do have some resources available to me, though, stuff I’ve scrounged, stolen, and bought with my own pitiful earnings.”