Deep Trouble

by Gail Z. Martin

  “I know that,” I snapped. “But be honest, Louie. I mean, I’m damaged goods.”

  Louie sighed and rolled his eyes. “You aren’t the only guy to ever get a divorce. Or to be a little fucked in the head.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered, giving him the side eye.

  “You know what I mean,” Louie replied. “I know plenty of cops and guys who came back from the military who saw shit that screwed them up a bit. It happens. Some of them have partners or find partners who can handle it; some don’t. You are more than your scars.”

  “That’s profound. Did you come up with that yourself?” The snark lightened the mood, just a little.

  “Hell, no. That was in a book Madison made me read about cops and PTSD and marriage. She told me she’s in it for the long haul, so I needed to keep my head on straight.” He grinned. “She’s one scary woman when she sets her mind on something.” And I knew from the smile on his face that Madison had her mind set firmly on keeping Louie alive and well and with her. I found myself hoping Sara would feel the same for me.

  “I’ll think about it,” I muttered. Then I turned the music up, the universal guy signal to indicate that the conversation was over.

  We pulled into the trailhead parking lot around ten. To my relief, no other cars were nearby. Piggy had quieted down, no longer making the camper rock from side to side, and I hoped he had worn himself out. Since I didn’t intend to take any chances, I waited until Louie loaded the dart gun, then I busted a window in the camper and let Louie take the shot. Piggy went down.

  “Shit. Look at the mess,” I muttered under my breath as we lifted the bar from the door and looked in. Piggy had managed to dent the walls, splinter cabinet doors, and destroy the overhead light. If the camper hadn’t been on its way to the junkyard before, it was certainly headed there now.

  “What about Patrick?” Louie asked as I hefted Piggy over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

  “Lock the doors. He’ll be fine. We’ll be back before he wakes up,” I replied. Louie locked Patrick inside the cab and jogged over to me.

  “Where are we taking pig man?”

  “I’ve got just the spot,” I promised.

  “What’s the beer for?” Louie had spotted the six pack in my left hand. I had the sap in my right hand, in case Piggy came around, and my gun in my holster, just in case.

  The last time I’d been in the woods here, there’d been snow on the ground. Louie followed me as we moved through my familiar path through the forest. Up ahead was the tree I was looking for. I set the beer down at the base, grunting at doing a squat with Piggy’s weight on me, and stood.

  “You’re leaving it out here?”

  “It’s for a friend,” I said and smiled as the air shimmered nearby. “Hi, Gus,” I greeted the ghost that materialized.

  Gus grinned. He was an older man, still clad in the camo jacket and pants he’d been wearing when he’d fallen out of a tree stand and died sixty some years ago. His ghost haunted the forest, helping lost hunters and hanging out in the woods he loved so much. Gus had given me a hand on a couple of dicey cases. I always brought him beer; my way of saying “thank you.”

  “I’m not imagining this,” Louie said, sounding a little breathless as he stared at Gus.

  “Nope. This is Gus. Gus, meet my friend Louie.”

  Gus nodded, pointed to the beer, and nodded his thanks. Then he pointed to Piggy and frowned.

  “He’s causing a nuisance where he was,” I explained to the ghost. “Didn’t hurt anyone, but he couldn’t stay. I didn’t want to have to shoot him. I figured he’d have plenty of room out here, maybe on the forbidden land?”

  Gus thought for a moment, then nodded. Part of the state forest was off-limits because it was sacred to the local Native American tribes. That land was closed to hunters, but I had a feeling that for a creature like Piggy, it would be just fine.

  We headed off together, two men, Piggy, and a ghost, and before long, we reached the fence that marked the tribal preserve. Piggy had already slipped his zip ties. I leaned over the fence and lowered him down onto the ground on the far side. He snuffled, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

  “Keep an eye on him, will ya?” I asked Gus. “Help him stay out of sight. There’s got to be enough backcountry out here for him to be able to avoid trouble.”

  Gus nodded solemnly and made a motion to cross his heart, letting me know he’d do his best. Louie watched Gus in a mixture of fear and fascination, but Gus just seemed happy to see us. I chatted with the ghost on the way back to the beer tree, filling him in on this and that, just talking.

  We stopped at the tree. “Hope you like the brewski. I’ll bring some whiskey next time.”

  Gus laughed and nodded. “I’m sure I’ll see you before long. Take care of yourself,” I said, and realized that was an odd thing to say to a ghost. Gus just grinned and gestured at me, basically saying “you, too.” I waved as Louie, and we headed back to the parking lot. Behind us, I heard a beer can collapsing. Don’t know how Gus drinks it, but I’m happy to know there’s alcohol in the afterlife.

  Louie had all kinds of questions about Gus, which I answered on our way to the truck. My phone buzzed, and I glanced at it. I had a text from Sara.

  Loved seeing you for dinner. Ghosts were a bonus. Call me. Missing you already. Sara.

  Maybe she wasn’t going to ditch me, after all.

  Just as we reached the lot, I held up a hand, and Louie went quiet.

  “Shit,” I muttered. A local cop was shining a light in through the passenger window.

  “You know him?”

  “Yeah. Officer Sumbitch. He kinda hates me.” The feeling was mutual. The cop had given me a hard time on my last couple of creature hunts out here. I couldn’t remember his real name.

  “Leave it to me.”

  Just that fast, Louie switched into cop mode. His posture, the swagger, the tilt of his chin, he was the same guy, but not. He already had his badge in hand as Officer Sumbitch looked up and pointed the flashlight at us.

  “You’re trespassing,” Officer Sumbitch announced.

  “Louie Marino, Linesville PD,” Louie said like he hadn’t heard the man. “That’s Patrick Carmody, Meadville PD,” he added with a nod toward the man sleeping in the truck. “Pat and Mark and I came up for dinner with my grandpa, Fred Houser.”

  The local cop’s brows drew together. “Chief Houser?”

  I forgot Louie’s mom came from out here, and apparently, her dad was a big deal. “Yep. You know him?” He kept on talking as if it was assumed that everyone in these parts knew Chief Houser. “So Pat had a few beers too many, and we were just driving back, but Mark and I had to take a whiz, you know? So we just stopped long enough to take care of business, and we’ll be on our way.”

  “What’s wrong with your camper?” Officer Sumbitch growled. I could see he didn’t like losing, and he was going to find something to fight about.

  “Doing a favor for my grandpa,” Louie lied. “He picked us up and drove us out here, and we promised to drive that beater back to the scrapyard in Geneva, ‘cause they’ll give him the best price. Pretty awful, isn’t it?”

  Officer Sumbitch wasn’t stupid. He knew we were up to something, but he had nothing to pin on us. It rankled, and he’d probably take it out on me when next we crossed paths, but invoking Chief Houser’s name had convinced him to bide his time.

  “Better get moving then,” he grumbled. “And watch your speed.”

  “We’re just leaving,” I promised, getting a glare in return. The cop stood with his hands on his hips, glaring at us as we backed up and headed away.

  “Another member of your fan club?” Louie needled as we got back on the road.

  I sighed. “You know me. Mr. Popularity.”

  Chapter 6

  “Thanks for coming, Father Leo. You too, Mark.” Thomas Horvath leaned forward over the table in the back of Nemeth’s Pub. A murmured comment to the man behind the counter had earned the
padre and me a once-over, then a nod to Thomas confirmed we’d have our drinks refreshed, and food brought, but be otherwise left alone.

  The crowd at the bar cheered the score as they watched the playoff on the huge screen. On the other side of the room, a pool game had the full attention of half a dozen guys and several women, while a dart board in the far corner drew other competitors. It looked like we’d found the hotspot in tiny little Cheswick.

  Downtown Cheswick looked like a lot of former coal mining towns in these parts. With its heyday long past, the business district had a depressing number of defunct shops, and what remained looked like they were hanging on by a thread. The homes were well-kept but appeared as tired as their owners, and most of the younger people fled for greener pastures. Yet, on our way in, I’d spotted a surprising number of new apartment buildings.

  “Who’s doing all the construction?” I asked. “You getting a big new fulfillment center around here?”

  Thomas shook his head. “I wish. It’s the frackers. You know, natural gas extraction. The energy companies bring in their crews and put up their equipment, then once they’re done, they they take the natural gas, and we’re left with polluted groundwater and earthquakes. The crews come in, overrun the place, and leave when the drilling goes elsewhere.” I couldn’t miss the bitterness in his voice.

  Fracking had turned a lot of Pennsylvanians militant. The process pumped liquid under high pressure into the layers of rock underground to push reserves of natural gas out, making deposits available that couldn’t be extracted any other way. But doing that disturbed the bedrock, causing tremors, and many communities blamed fouled water supplies on the fracking. Tempers flared, the big corporations and communities lawyered up, and things got nasty, sometimes violent.

  “What’s this all about, Thomas?” Father Leo asked. He wore a black shirt with a clerical collar over jeans and a worn pair of Timberlands, but the canvas jacket hid the collar from prying eyes. On the rare occasions Father Leo was out of “uniform,” he looked like a regular guy.

  Thomas slid a manila folder toward us. “I’ve had four murders in the past month, and that’s four more than Cheswick’s had in a couple of years,” he said. Even if Father Leo hadn’t told me Thomas was a cop, I would have known from the no-nonsense voice and the eyes that looked like they’d seen far too much. I saw eyes like that whenever I looked in a mirror, and more than once, people had guessed wrong that I was either ex-military or police. The horrors I’d witnessed came in a different line of duty, but they all left a mark, regardless of the source.

  “Mob? Serial killer?” I ventured. Father Leo winced at the sight of the pictures. I felt my stomach roll. The bodies had been mutilated, then burned. Whoever the killer was, he had a hell of a lot of rage.

  “Those are some of the theories,” Thomas said, in a tone that let me know he didn’t believe them. “But there’s no physical evidence at the scene. No footprints, DNA, hair, weapon, fingerprints, tire marks—nothing. Two of the dead men had security systems active at the time of the murders. The system doesn’t even indicate that the door was opened, let alone forced. One of the men was on the phone when he was attacked, and in the five minutes it took the cops to arrive, he was cut to hell and burned. Doors locked from the inside, no blood anywhere but under the body.”

  “You think it’s our kind of thing,” Father Leo said, leveling a gaze at Thomas, who nodded.

  “I can’t bring you in officially. I’d lose my badge,” Thomas admitted. “But standard operating procedure isn’t going to catch this killer.”

  “You need us to poke around and figure out what might be doing the killing, or do you have a theory?” I asked.

  Thomas reclaimed the folder and put it into his backpack. “You ever hear of the Harwick Mine Disaster?” At our shrugs, he continued. “Happened back in 1904. Killed 181 men and a mule. Actually, the mule killed two of those men.”

  “The mule?”

  “The mule was going down in the shaft elevator when the explosion ripped through the mine. It shot the lift cage and the mule out of the shaft so hard the poor creature flew up in the air, right through the tipple building, killing two workers.”

  “Holy shit,” I muttered, and Father Leo sighed. “Sorry.”

  “What does the Harwick disaster have to do with the murders, and us being here?” Father Leo asked.

  “I’m getting to that,” Thomas promised. “The four men who died didn’t know each other, didn’t have any business dealings with one another and had no enemies. No drugs, no funny financial stuff, no messy divorces. They all came from families that have been in Harwick for years, and they’re all the oldest male in their family. Ages ranged from forty to seventy. They had very little in common except for the kinds of injuries that killed them. And the fact that all of them had traces of coal dust on their clothing, although none of them had any reason to be near coal.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  He lifted a hand for silence. “Pete Mihilov was the one who made the comment that got me thinking. He’s almost retirement age, one of the oldest cops on the force. Grew up in a mining family and went down in the mines himself when he was a young man. Said that the only time he’d ever seen injuries like that was when a mine fire broke out.”

  “What did the dead men do for a living?” Father Leo asked.

  “Accountant, car salesman, graphic designer, plumber,” Thomas replied.

  “Any of the mines around here still working?” I asked.

  Thomas shook his head. “Haven’t been for decades. But I did find one other thing the dead men had in common. Their ancestors were all mine management back when the disaster happened.”

  “It’s a small town,” I said, playing devil’s advocate. “Isn’t everyone in Cheswick related to someone who had a connection to the mine?”

  “Not to the bosses,” Thomas replied. “The Harwick disaster was a cluster…” He cut himself off with a guilty look at Father Leo, who just smiled. “The fire boss was supposed to make sure no machinery had been used for a specific amount of time before a new dynamite charge was set off and that the area was watered down to get the coal dust out of the air. That didn’t happen. The ventilation system had ice in it that didn’t get cleared away, and that meant the fresh air wasn’t circulating and methane built up deep in the tunnels. The people who were supposed to check those things didn’t. And when the charge went off, it ignited the very flammable dust and methane gas. The men close by were blown up and burned. The ones farther out died from asphyxiation from the methane. And flying mules not withstanding, it was a hell of a blast. Caused a cave-in and ripped apart the elevator, which made it all the harder to go looking for survivors.”

  “Were there any?” I asked.

  “One,” Thomas said. “A sixteen-year-old boy who was pretty badly injured. Of course, there was an inquiry, and lots of noises made about safety, and some low-level guys got scapegoated, but no charges were brought against the mine owners, or the foreman, general manager, superintendent, or fire boss.”

  “Figures,” I muttered. I’d never been a miner myself, but I’d heard my grandfather tell stories about his father growing up around South Fork out in the middle of the state, in the coal mines back in the 1930s. Mining was hard, dangerous work, and if the hazards underground didn’t kill you, odds were good you’d wheeze out your last breath from “black lung” when you were older.

  “I think something happened when the frackers came in,” Thomas said, dropping his voice to a near-whisper. “I don’t understand how ghosts work, or any of that supernatural stuff, but how can it be that the frackers start up, and a few months later, something’s killing people with ties to the old mine?”

  I had to work at it to make the connection, but Thomas seemed to see the link clearly. “So you think the fracking disturbed something in the old Harwick mine, and it’s come back for revenge?” I asked.

  “Either the fracking process itself or the earthquakes it c
aused,” Thomas replied. “No one had any reason to kill those men, except for them being descended from the overseers whose negligence caused those deaths.”

  “Is there an anniversary of some kind?” Father Leo probed. “Maybe it’s some kind of vengeance from the miners’ descendants?”

  Thomas shook his head. “Locked rooms. Security systems and video cameras that didn’t trip. No physical evidence. I’m telling you, ghosts did this. And I can’t arrest a ghost.”

  Father Leo and I exchanged a glance. Thomas might be onto something, or he might just be desperate to find an answer, any answer. But his theory provided means, motive, and access, and Thomas deserved having us at least check it out.

  “We’ll see what we can find,” Father Leo promised. “And if it’s ghosts, we’ll deal with it.”

  Thomas let out a long breath, relief clear on his face. “Thank you. I didn’t know where else to turn. Everything else has been a dead end.”

  Father Leo and I got a room for the night, since Cheswick, the town where the Harwick mine was located, was over an hour’s drive from home. We wanted to get an early start to see what remained of the old mine and get prepared if Thomas’s hunch proved correct.

  The motel was the park-in-front kind, unchanged since the 1970s, with gold shag carpet and cheap paintings of Italian landscapes. All the other hotels were full, and we were trying to save money.

  Father Leo looked around the room. “I think my virtue is in peril just walking into the room. Are you sure this place doesn’t rent by the hour?”

  “It’s not old…it’s ‘retro,’” I replied with a smirk. “And it’s got a coffee maker. If the sheets are clean and the shower works, I’m good.”

  “Not exactly what I had in mind when I swore my vow of poverty, but we’ll work with what we’ve got,” he retorted with a grin. I’d had more than enough hunts where I’d slept in my truck. I wasn’t going to be particular.

  I’d stopped for pop and snacks on the way back from meeting with Thomas, so we were set for the night. I set up my laptop while Father Leo pulled out the copied files Thomas had shared with us. I knew the cop risked a lot to bring us in on the murders, and I felt certain that handing over the files to us was highly unorthodox. I hoped that after all that, we could come through for him.