Death Pans Out

by Ashna Graves

  No, impossible. Law or no law, Reese Cotter was not the sort to risk delaying work while officials decided what to do about artifacts. He was far more likely to bulldoze history out of sight. Thinking of the bulldozer, she focused on a bright yellow patch in the cascade of rock at the opposite side of the old chamber. Later, she would try to recall the next few minutes but never was satisfied that she remembered correctly. It seemed to her that she knew instantly the full dimensions of the disaster even though she could not have known that more than the bulldozer was buried over there. Still she ran, her feet slipping in the gravel with nightmare clumsiness. Drenched in sweat, her mouth dry, she reached the far side, got down on her knees and crawled to the sunken edge. Peering over she could see nothing of the bulldozer, but she was certain of the spot because it was the only caved-in section. To verify that it really was the bulldozer that lay buried in rock she would have to go down.

  She should not go down there. She knew this in her very bones, as Skipper would say. She knew it—but she also knew that she could not walk away without looking closer, to be certain that nothing more than machinery had plunged into the pit.

  The safest way down was backwards. She turned her back on space, eased one leg over, felt for solid footing, lowered the other leg. Reminding herself to breathe, pausing after each move to detect shifts in the tumbled rock, she made her way down step by step. The stones held as though gravity had jammed them into a new form that might last another century. At last, below her and to the right, she saw yellow metal and changed course. A large rock near the metal gave her a platform to stand on as she peered in among the stones. Glass glinted in the shadows. Her eyes clamped shut, refusing to look. Leaving them closed, she breathed slowly, willing her knees to hold.

  Steady again, she cleared away the smaller rocks until a section of windshield showed. Although it had shattered into myriad tiny veins that gave it a milky cast, the glass had held together. More stones came away and then she saw the face behind the glass, blurred as though under ice. Her gaze locked on a pair of open dark eyes that seemed to observe her distress with complete composure. Despite the blood that covered the lower half of the face it was clearly Roy, the pleasant young man who had called Reese captain.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jeneva parked in Elkhorn’s old downtown, drew a long breath, and sagged against the car seat. Less than twenty-four hours had passed since she found the body of Roy DeRoos. She had sped down the canyon to Gene’s cabin, certain he had no cell phone and that it wouldn’t work if he did have one, but hoping she was wrong. He was not there. Furious, as though he had deliberately failed her, she had driven too fast to Angus, watched in stunned silence as Al called 911, then returned to the base of Billie Creek Road to wait for the ambulance and the sheriff. It was after dark by the time the body had been excavated and taken away without sirens.

  She had returned alone to her cabin at last but there had been no sleep, no escape from Roy’s young face, at one moment bloody and staring, and the next moment radiant with life as it had been on the day they met. And where was Reese? Sheriff Tug McCarty had sent a deputy up the road in search of the red pickup when he heard about their wild night on the ridge, but they had found no sign of the truck, no sign of an accident. When the sun had risen at last she knew she had to be among people, lots of people, people doing simple things like shopping, eating sandwiches, drinking coffee at sidewalk tables. Unable to manage breakfast, she had headed down Billie Creek Road with her morning coffee beside her, stopping to feed and water the little black dog that remained tied to the porch post at the Barlow Mine. At the Angus post office, Bernice Pangle had been heavily mournful and sympathetic, her suspicion of Neva evidently forgotten or set aside.

  “Hardly more than a boy,” she said. “I can’t help thinking it could have been one of mine. What a shock for you, dear.”

  The twisting, forty-mile drive over the mountains to Elkhorn had passed like a slow dream, as though she were suspended in a moving landscape rather than steering a car through curve after curve. Now, watching strangers go about their business in the clean morning light, Neva felt her internal landscape begin to shift into more familiar shape. She would sit here until she could get out of the car without yesterday’s horror blazing from her face. The windows were down, letting in the sound of voices and traffic. The sun rose above the buildings on the east side of the street and shone full on the car. She moved to a shaded bench in the entryway of a pharmacy with etched glass windows.

  As her eyes began to work, to see more clearly what was before them, she recognized that Elkhorn’s solid old 19th-century downtown was the real thing, a genuine Western small city center from a hundred years ago. Elegant Old Western rather than cowboy, it had not been abandoned, not sacrificed to big box stores sprawled on the outskirts of town. The handsome two-story brick buildings offered real shops on the ground floor, shops full of things that people actually need. From the bench she could see women’s wear, stationery, books, hardware, computers and software, a bank, even a soda fountain.

  Hunger and the smell of roasting coffee drew her down the street at last, past the newly refurbished Grand Hotel and its Eldorado Bar Š Grill, to the Daily Grind Café. Soon settled at a corner table with both hands around a mug, she sat very still between sips, her eyes closed, feeling herself breathe. The living breathe. The living sit in cafés drinking coffee. The living are left to think about the accidental dead, to try to grasp what it means to be vibrant at one moment and nothing in the next. She had seen Roy alive only once, on the day the bulldozer blocked her way. Healthy, playful—“She’s ready to sail, Captain”—evidently a skilled mechanic, he had lived barely a quarter of a normal lifetime. He had died instantly from a blow to the head, the sheriff had told her as they watched the useless ambulance pull away. Driving too close to the edge of the old mine pit, he had plunged down along with an avalanche of rock that had buried him inside the bulldozer.

  Neva reached into the bag hanging on the back of her chair, felt for the letter from Ethan that Bernice had produced without being asked, and read hungrily. Then she took out a notebook and started a reply.

  With several pages covered in close script, she felt steady enough to order a toasted bagel and more coffee. Usually she wrote letters in installments, but now she wrote until she was finished, the six pages folded and ready to go. From her seat at the Daily Grind she could see Blue Mountain Books across the street, and headed straight there from the café. A pleasant bearded man behind the counter directed her to the mining section along the south wall, where a quick perusal turned up Golden Days in Oregon, by Morton T. Bellamy. As she waited for change, she asked for directions to the library and newspaper office, and was not surprised to learn that both were within easy walking distance.

  “You’re new here?” the proprietor said without real curiosity.

  “I’m spending the summer over on Billie Creek.”

  His expression sharpened to positive interest. “Then you must be that lady that found the DeRoos boy.” Barely waiting for her nod, he rushed on as though thoughts of Roy had been building in his mind all morning. “Now, that’s a sad situation, real sad. He was well liked in this town, won cross-country trophies in high school, never in trouble. He must have read every Western I ever got in here. I don’t know what he was doing working at a mine. He was set on being a cowboy, never mind that the real cowboy days are gone. Even most of the rodeo riders are professional rodeo now, not your actual working cowboys. I hear his mom is taking it hard, but who wouldn’t.”

  As he talked, Neva’s heart squeezed painfully again, and she realized with shame that she hadn’t wanted to know details about the young man’s life, hadn’t wanted him to become even more real in her mind. Now she could see him in his numbered cross-country running shirt, his mother watching near the finish line with a bottle of water and an anxious look. Roy, are you sure that knee’s all right? Please don’t let him be an only child.

  “The f
uneral’s day after tomorrow but I hear there won’t be any viewing because of the injuries,” the man said. “Kind of makes you sick to think about it. I’d rather have any part smashed than my brain. I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve been thinking all morning about his brain full of Westerns. He never got the chance to put anything better in there.”

  Handing her the receipt with a sad shake of the head, he added, “If only he hadn’t been working alone. It’s hard to figure.”

  Walking on to the Elkhorn Times-Standard office, Neva felt heavy and tired again. Reese must have been told by now, most likely last night by Sheriff McCarty or the deputies who had been alerted to watch for him in town. He had not returned to the mine. It was unknown whether he had been there at all that day, or had headed for town the night before after leaving Neva. McCarty had put a note on the cabin door but it had still been there this morning when she stopped to feed the dog. With Lance gone and Roy dead, Reese could not continue mining. She couldn’t imagine that he’d want to, but what would he do with himself, how direct his colossal energy?

  Pausing in the lobby of the newspaper building, Neva let the familiar smells and sounds fill her senses. Telephones, jumbled voices, a police radio, burned coffee, newsprint, possibly cigar smoke. There would have been a death notice in today’s paper, and now a longer story about the loss of a local youth would be in preparation. Interviews with family members, teachers, coaches, maybe a girl friend. It would run with a picture of him grinning at some moment of young triumph. She had written many such stories in her early years, before she became a columnist, and now she sent up silent thanks that she did not have to coax good quotes out of anguished family members.

  Suddenly feeling conspicuous in the otherwise empty foyer, afraid she would be recognized as the one who had found Roy in the pit and cornered for an interview, Neva crossed to the reception desk. A cheerful young woman informed her that back issues were kept at the library on microfilm. Relieved, Neva hurried out again into the bright day.

  At the Elkhorn library, which was still in the original Carnegie building, she scrolled through fifteen-year-old issues of the Times-Standard and soon found what she was looking for. There were just two items, including a news story, “Local mining veteran vanishes,” and an editorial, “Evidence suggests bad end.” There was nothing new or interesting, though she was struck by the old-fashioned language in the editorial given that Uncle Matthew had vanished in the 1990s, not the 1890s, particularly the conclusion.

  “As most readers know, Mr. Orson Gale and Mr. Matthew Burt are among the few old-timers left who still pay for all their business in gold. Neither man has a bank account, which raises the interesting question of travel money: If Mr. Burt did not meet an accidental death, as many surmise, then he must be paying his way with gold, which surely would get attention and give away his current whereabouts. It seems most likely that this familiar and well-regarded member of our far-flung mining community met his fate through an untimely accident while working alone on Billie Mountain. May his soul rest in peace wherever it may be.”

  She had not necessarily intended to do more than look up the local news coverage of the disappearance, but the editorial reminded her of what Bernice Pangle had said that morning as she handed over Ethan’s letter.

  “I was thinking after you were in here the other day that you ought to look up Enid Gale. I guess she knows as much as anybody about your uncle Burtie.” Enid, she explained, was Orson’s sister, and at one time had stayed with the partners for several years before moving to Montana. “It was Kalispell, I believe. People who didn’t know any better used to wonder about her and Burtie but there was nothing in it, of course. For obvious reasons, if you don’t mind my putting it that way. But you know how they are—people! Sometimes I think they’re the worst thing on earth, don’t you?”

  Neva sat down at a library computer and logged onto the Internet. A quick search of the Kalispell, Montana, telephone directory brought up no Enid Gale. A bit more hunting turned up the homepage of the local newspaper, the Kalispell Daily Inter Lake, but the electronic archives button brought up a page that said the site was under construction. She then found an email address for the Kalispell public library and typed the following message: “Dear Librarian, A friend of mine who’s in a nursing home has a sister, Enid Gale, whose last known address was Kalispell. Would it be possible for someone at the library to search the newspaper records for any mention? I tried online but the archives aren’t available yet. If she died, there should have been a published notice and possibly an obituary. I’m a columnist for the Current in Willamette, Oregon, but I’m on vacation right now near Elkhorn and only check email when I get into town. If you write back and don’t get an immediate reply, please know that I will respond as soon as I can. Thank you for your help.”

  ***

  It was late afternoon when Neva finished buying groceries and gas. Heading out of town, she passed the Garden of Eternal Peace and pulled over to the curb, wondering whether she could summon the nerve to ask Darrell for water again. Then it struck her that Roy must be inside this gingerbread palace. She couldn’t stop here. As she reached for the ignition, however, she noticed two figures standing on the funeral home porch, one familiar and one startling. The first was Sheriff McCarty. The second was an extraordinarily tall, thin man dressed in black that made his shock of white hair stand out like a signal lamp at night. This was clearly the mortician; Darrell must be an assistant.

  Sheriff McCarty had questioned her at length last night, but now she could remember little of what had been said, by her or the sheriff. She had found him comfortable and as reassuring as anyone could be in such a situation, and she felt an urge to speak with him again, though she had nothing in particular to say. She wasn’t eager to go back into details of her experience in the Barlow Mine pit, but it suddenly seemed important to connect again with someone else who had been there, who had shared the experience.

  She got out of the car and was spotted instantly by McCarty. He waved, shook the other man’s hand, and strode across the lawn toward the street, calling out, “You saved me a trip. You aren’t in a hurry I hope?”

  Stocky, affable, with dark red hair, McCarty leaned on her car hood, supporting his weight with a big meaty hand. “How’re you doing? You were a bit stove in yesterday and can’t say I blame you. To come on a scene like that all on your own.” He shook his head. “Good kid, Roy DeRoos. A damn shame. Not pretty to look at right now. I had to agree with Lloyd, it’s better to hold a chapel service and skip the viewing and graveside bit. But you don’t want to hear about that. I’m worried you’re going to see a rush of artifact hunters digging around in that pit and we might end up with another cave-in. I told Reese he better keep a good look-out.”

  “You found Reese?”

  “It was as I figured. He’d come into town looking for Lance and ended up hitting the bars. I found him in the only cheap room at the Grand. He took the news hard. Along with everything else, he can’t mine all by himself. Don’t know just what he’ll do.”

  “If you see him again could you remind him about the dog? I fed her, or maybe him, this morning.”

  “He said you’d take care of her for the time being, and he did say her.”

  “Well, yes, I certainly will.” Pleased by Reese’s confidence in her, Neva smiled for the first time since finding Roy. “That’s some funeral palace.”

  “Lloyd’s done all right for himself. Funny thing, when I was a kid that was where the mayor lived. He lost the place to Lloyd in a poker game, and Lloyd buried him a few years later.”

  “Oh, right, I heard about that from Reese, about the poker game. He seemed bitter about it.”

  “Is that so? Well, you can bet that side of the family would never have inherited the place, no matter what they may claim. Lloyd’s buried a lot of folks around here. Sometimes I think I should have gone into the funeral business myself. Everybody dies sooner or later. Of course, there’s no shortage of lawbreakers
either. The difference is I don’t get paid per client like he does.” His laugh was easy but Neva was aware that he was watching her closely, and she waited without speaking until he said, “I know I gave you the third degree last night, but could you please tell me what you’re doing out at the Billie Creek Mine? We didn’t get around to that.”

  “At the moment I’m being kicked out by the Forest Service.”

  “Is that right? Kicked out why?”

  “For reading and writing on federal property without a permit.”

  A split second of perplexity was followed by an explosion of laughter. “Hooo, that’s good. I’ll have to remember that one. But how’d you find your way to a mine at the backside of nowhere?”

  “I needed a quiet hideaway for the summer, and since it used to belong to my Uncle Matthew, I knew it was there and empty.”

  “Matthew? Would that be Matthew Burt? Burtie was your uncle? Well, I’m damned. I never heard he had a family apart from Orson. I can tell you one thing, if I’d been sheriff back then, we would have done a lot more looking when he turned up missing. I’d like to buy you a drink later, after I take this thing off.” He flicked the badge on his shirt. “Say, about six?”

  “Thank you. I’d enjoy that any other day, but not tonight, I think. I want to get back to the mine early, before dark.”

  “That’s understandable. But why don’t you stay the night in town? Give yourself a well-deserved break. You’d love the Grand.”