Rocke, on the other hand, wasn’t quick or masterful. In fact, from what I understood, past his little knack for dealing with things that were dead, he didn’t even have enough magic to pull off the most basic spells. For him, runes were more a practical way of getting at something he’d never be able to do otherwise or for kicking his arsenal up a few notches when he really needed it. But he was still a runecrafting amateur. He knew more about it than I did, but he wasn’t exactly quick or gifted.
I watched the goats eat, idly spiking my staff against the older, nearly defunct rune and creating little clouds of magic scent that drifted around the backyard. It was odd that these two were so calm around the scent in comparison to the ones at Mrs. Salas’s. I’d all but had to restrain them when Rocke had done his stuff there. Mrs. Salas had eventually ended up taking them out of the pen entirely and tying them up out front. I still hadn’t been able to get anything out of the group other than the vague “bad smell” reaction I’d gotten the first time.
One more thing to think about. I leaned back against the pen, staring vacantly at the back of the house. The Jefferson’s home was our next stop. Despite how tempted both Rocke and I were to avoid it in the wake of her husband’s disappearance, we still needed to go renew the runes on the back of her home to make certain that their other dog didn’t share the fate of the first.
And if we get lucky, I can ask that dog about any sort of “bad smell,” I thought as I pushed myself away from the pen. There’s an answer to it somewhere. Of course, it could just end up being that both Mrs. Salas’s goats and Mercury had experienced a run-in with some other less-than-friendly magic user in the past.
Still, it couldn’t hurt to ask.
* * *
I didn’t get the chance to do either, unfortunately. The Jefferson’s home was locked up tight, without a sight or sound from inside. Felix’s home wasn’t exactly been sealed, but Mercury hadn’t made her presence known, either. Given that Felix was out, presumably at work, he’d probably taken her with him. That or she was out around the neighborhood somewhere and didn’t come back to check when we’d driven up.
Either way, Rocke was both alarmed and annoyed by the wholesale destruction of his carefully carved rune and spent the first fifteen minutes looking for anything out of the ordinary with nothing to show for it. Whatever signs might have found had been thoroughly destroyed by whatever mechanism Felix or the veterinarian had used to remove the dead cow, leaving us with nothing but a lot of tire tracks and drag marks.
All in all, by the time Rocke had finished replacing the rune and we’d made our way back to the Rover, it was pretty clear that he was feeling beat. Between spending his entire morning and afternoon making runes and the injuries he was still recovering from, the day had wiped him out early, and I took him back to the motel to get some rest. I left the map with him for good measure, just in case he decided he didn’t feel like sleeping, but I wasn’t about to place any bets on that matter. He’d fallen asleep on the ride back, and the only reasons I hadn’t just left him in my Rover were that he’d have cooked to death sitting in the parking lot, and I didn’t have the keys to borrow his car while he was using mine.
Of course, with Rocke pretty much passed out in his room, I was once again left to my own devices to figure out what to do next. Which was why I was once again in the waiting room of Henderson Mining Corp, one foot up on my knee and watching as ever-lengthening shadows slid further and further across the parking lot.
Cynthia Valons was hard at work across the room, papers moving back and forth on her desk like a snowstorm as she filed reports, emptied folders, and generally made it look as if she had more than two hands. She’d been silent since my initial greeting, and I knew better than to disturb someone who was so focused, tempted though I was for conversation.
From the look of the parking lot, the day shift was coming to an end. I could see cars starting up and heading out the front gates, carrying weary workers who were probably as ragged as Rocke had been. The change to the night shift didn’t appear to be a sudden turnover like I’d expected. It was more of a gradual trickle as the various parts and pieces of the plant came together. Occasionally, I saw new cars come in, but not nearly as frequently as I saw them leaving. Probably on account of a smaller night shift.
I watched for a while longer, checking the clock occasionally to see how much time had passed. I’d been hoping to see Felix’s truck roll past the gates, but in the twenty minutes I’d been watching I hadn’t seen any sign of it. Car watching wasn’t exactly exciting, but I didn’t have much else to do.
The door to the break room opened and Henderson strode through, eyes locking with mine as I rose from my seat. His gaze was intense, piercing, as if he was trying to stare right past my face and look into my mind directly, to see what made me tick. Compared to the more businesslike he’d worn the last time I was there, it was like I’d returned to a birdcage and found an eagle instead of a parrot.
“Mr. … Decroux, was it?” Henderson said, coming to a stop with his hands held behind his back, a stance that would have been more at home with a suit than the stained work clothes he was wearing. “Back with more questions?”
“Mr. Henderson,” I said, extending one hand. It hung in the air, alone. I pulled it back. “If it’s not too much of a bother?”
“Oh, I highly doubt bothering me is high on your list of concerns,” Henderson said, his face utterly flat. “But since you’re here, you may as well disturb away. But if you’re going to once again ask permission for you or your friend to come dig around in potentially dangerous places you have no business being or once again question me about my possible involvement with your friend’s disappearance, I can tell you in advance, the answer is no.”
“I won’t be asking about either of those,” I said, shaking my head. “I had questions about something else, actually.” Technically, it wasn’t a lie.
“Very well, then,” he said, waving me towards his office. “If you’ll step inside.” I followed him, feeling a bit like I was fulfilling the fly’s role in “The Spider and the Fly.”
“So,” Henderson asked as he walked around his desk and took a seat. “What’s so important that my secretary had to call me out here from my work?” His expression stayed flat as his hands swept across his desk, pulling away several file folders and snapping them shut before I could even wonder what was in them.
“Before I get to that,” I said, watching as his eyes narrowed, “I just wanted to say that I hope they find David Jefferson soon.”
The tension melted from Henderson’s face like wax, his hard exterior fading into worry. “Me too,” he said, his voice low and heavy as his eyes lowered towards the pile of paperwork in his hands. “Me, too.” Then the worry was gone, the momentary weakness once again replaced be a cold mask. His way of hiding his concern, I guess.
“But I doubt you came all the way here just to tell me that. So, what do you want?”
“I wanted to ask you about something I heard in town,” I said, carefully taking a seat. “A couple of things, actually, and you seemed to be the most logical to ask.”
“Fair enough.”
“First, I was wondering about the land your company has sold back to the city over the years.” Henderson’s eyebrows rose, but he said nothing. “What sort of precautions did the mine take before it turned over those areas?”
“With regards to what, exactly?”
“Sealing off entrances and closing tunnels,” I said. Henderson let out a sigh.
“Mr. Decroux, your best bet is to ask the city engineers, not myself—”
“I’m going to get to them tomorrow,” I said. “What I’m interested in exactly is what your company did before it sold the land back. Did you detonate and collapse all the shafts?”
“No,” Henderson said with a shake of his head. “We dynamite some of the deeper shafts and bury over or collapse the surface entrances so that no one can find them, but we leave the rest undisturbed.�
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“Why?”
“Because that’s what the city wanted us to do,” Henderson responded. He looked slightly intrigued now, the hardness of his face fading. “The city wanted to be able to make use of the ones near the surface for sewer lines, telephone cables, other stuff like that. At least that’s what they wanted last I asked. Before that, who knows? We didn’t ask since it was less work for us, and we’ve been doing it that way since day one.”
“So most of the old mine shafts are still there.”
“Yes,” Henderson said with a nod. “Although you have to realize, we’re talking about holes a ways beneath the ground. You’re not going to simply be walking around and find one. And we did collapse any unstable shafts.”
“I see,” I said, nodding. “And you wait to do this until you’re ready to sell the land back to the city?”
“No, not always,” Henderson said, unaware of my trap. “Usually, once we’ve determined that we’re done with a shaft, if it’s deemed unstable or dangerous, then we collapse it.”
“So all the land around here that you guys aren’t using …”
Henderson’s face darkened as he realized what I’d just maneuvered him into admitting. “The land around here that we aren’t using is dangerous, Mr. Decroux, and you’re not allowed on it for your safety. In fact, I’m surprised that you’re still considering it, after what I told you last time.”
“I wasn’t,” I said, making my face as impassive as I could. “At least, not until I was at the museum and found that Rocke and I appear to be the exception to the standard practice, rather than the rule.”
“What are you talking about?”
“A professor was here about a decade ago. Name of Ford. He was investigating his claim that the Aztecs had some sort of outpost here.”
“Professor Ford? That crackpot—”
“Regardless of his theories,” I said, not stopping as Henderson protested, “he was given full access to investigate the company’s land—”
“Digging through the scrap piles!” Henderson said, his voice rising. “I don’t know who told you he’d been anywhere near the old mines, but they didn’t know what they were talking about.”
“You’re sure?”
Henderson’s face began to color, and he leaned back, one hand tapping at the phone on his desk. “I don’t know what you’re accusing me of, Mr. Decroux, but if I were you, I’d choose your next words very carefully. In fact, I wouldn’t bother choosing them at all, because I’m asking you to leave. You arrived here under false pretenses, and now you’re making accusations I’m fairly certain you’d really rather rethink.”
“So was Professor Ford given authorization to go inside the company’s old mines or not?”
“He. Wasn’t.” Henderson rose from his chair as the door opened behind me. “Mr. Peters, would you make sure that Mr. Decroux makes it back to his car and leaves the premises?” I turned as a massive wall of a man stepped up alongside me, staring up at me with a pair of intense grey eyes. He wasn’t as tall as me, but he was easily twice as large, with arms that could have passed as decent-sized trees. He gave me a quick up-and-down and grinned, tossing his head towards the door. Something about him looked familiar, and for a moment I didn’t move, trying to place where I’d seen him before. There was something about his face …
“Well, Mr. Decroux?” Peters asked me in a tone that implied he was not-so-secretly hoping for a specific answer. “Are you ready to go?” Despite his size and looks, his voice was surprisingly cultured.
“Of course,” I said, nodding as I turned away from the desk. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Henderson.”
“Mr. Decroux?” he said, stopping me as I stepped towards the door. “After tonight, if you are found on my company’s property, the police will be called and we will press charges. Do you understand me?”
“Perfectly.” I turned and walked out of the room, Peters at my back like a prison guard. He stuck with me all the way to my Rover, and as I pulled away, I could still see his hulking form standing in the lot like some kind of grotesque Greek statue, the setting sun throwing half of his face into deep shadow as he glared at me.
But as I pulled away, I felt a vague sense of smug satisfaction. I was certain now that Henderson was hiding something. I didn’t know what, and I didn’t know if it had anything to do with Rocke and I’s case, but he was hiding something. It hadn’t been in what he’d said. It had been in what he’d done.
He’d had me escorted out of his office by a blond linebacker named Peters, someone who’d looked incredibly familiar. But seeing him standing alone in the parking lot as I’d pulled away, it had finally clicked.
He looked a lot like a certain blond college aid in one of the photos at the museum.
Chapter 14
“Ah, Mr. Decroux!” Charlie said, his round face beaming as he saw me walk through the museum’s front door next morning. “Welcome back! Finally found that there really isn’t much else to do around town, have we?” He let out a chuckle at his joke.
“Oh, trust me, I’ve got more than enough to keep me busy at the moment,” I said, not joking at all. Now that Rocke was feeling better he was all business, apparently having forgotten that I was supposed to be on vacation. “I’m actually here to see if I could take a second look at your Aztec display.”
Charlie frowned and put a hand to his chest, as if I’d physically wounded him rather than just his sensibilities. “The Aztec display?” he asked, his tone hurt. “Just the Aztec display?”
“Relax, Charlie,” I said as I pulled out my wallet. “I’ll pay full fare. I just need to take a closer look at one of the pictures, that’s all.”
“Oh?” He leaned forward, buttoned shirt stretching tightly as it fought a losing battle between his girth and the museum counter. “What for?”
“Just something I noticed earlier. In fact,” I said, snapping my fingers, “I wonder if you might know.”
“Know what?” Charlie asked, snatching my fare from my hand.
“The professor who sponsored that whole expedition. Did any of his students stay here, or come back after the expedition was over?”
Charlie frowned, leaning back in his seat as the register let out a cheery little ring. “One of his students?”
I nodded.
“Not that I know of,” he said, shaking his head. “Then again, I’m not exactly the best person to ask,” he said with a shrug. “If you want to know about someone who lived here fifteen years ago, well …” He gave me a wide smile as he passed me my ticket. “Care to take the tour again?”
“Sorry, Charlie,” I said, shaking my head. “Not today. Maybe again before I leave, but I’m looking for something specific today.”
“Something … Unusual?” He cocked one of his large eyebrows, the action making him look almost like some sort of shaved owl.
“No,” I said, shaking my head and trying to hold back my laughter. I settled for an amused grin. “At least, not in the way you’re thinking of that term. Just something weird, but probably not Unusual-related.”
At least, I hope not, I thought as I passed into the museum’s early exhibits, the ones that featured the city back when it had first been founded. That would only work if Henderson was an Unusual anyway, and I doubt he’d be friends with Sheriff Hanks if that were the case.
I passed by the original mineshaft, my steps making faint crunching noises against the gravel. The shaft had been covered over once more, its opening blocked by heavy boards, each several inches thick. The lock on the door had been replaced, as well, and metal reinforcing had been installed along the outer frame of the door. Charlie was serious about preventing another break-in.
I passed by the mineshaft and continued on through the museum, my quick pace eating up the distance and turning a half-hour tour into a three-minute walk.
Over breakfast that morning, Rocke and I had discussed our options as well as the ramifications of what Henderson had told me the night before. He a
nd I agreed that there was something strange going on, but neither of us knew exactly what it was. On one hand, Henderson’s reasoning was sound. If the mines were dangerous, poking around in them would be a risky proposition, and the threat of the company being found liable for any accidents was more than enough reason for him to turn us away.
But if that was his reasoning, why did it seem that we were the only ones being affected by it? Which was why I’d come to take a second look at the museum’s display on Professor Ford. If he’d been allowed to investigate the old tunnels like I’d been told, there would probably be evidence of it on display.
Meanwhile, Rocke had taken my map and gone to city hall in search of detailed schematics of the city’s underground. If Silver Dreams had made use of any of the old mineshafts like Henderson had claimed, then cross-checking past attacks with those maps could help make some sense of the scattered pattern I’d found. I wasn’t surprised at all that it didn’t seem like it would be the first time Rocke would spend a few hours poring over old charts and zoning maps. He’d probably done quite a bit of it during his career as a spook.
The fake, plastic jaguar sculpture caught my attention again as I closed on the display at last, and the first thing I went for was the picture of the professor and his team standing together. I bent in close, narrowing my eyes as I squinted at the blond giant standing in the back of the group. It was a little difficult to tell, but … I leaned in a little closer, squinting as I looked at the solid line of the jaw, the way he seemed to be grimacing even though he was smiling. Or maybe that wasn’t a smile—it was hard to tell.
But it sure looked a lot like a younger version of the man who’d escorted me from Henderson’s office. Close enough that for all intents and purposes, I’d be willing to claim they were the same man.
I scanned the text beneath the photo, looking for mention of names, but didn’t see any. The small, italicized text simply described the picture as a group shot of “Professor Ford and his student assistants.” There was nothing mentioning any of their names.
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