She slammed the phone down.
"I don't know if that was such a good idea, Mom. I'm getting kind of scared."
"Don't worry. I'm calling the police, too," she said, reaching for the phone.
Before he could say anything, the phone rang again. She snapped it up.
"What is it, Tom?" Her expression shifted, her features relaxing. "Oh, Dad. Yes, he's right here. Do you want to talk to him?"
She handed Will the phone and whispered, "Make it quick."
"Grandpa?"
"Will, listen. Do you remember that dream you had about John Wayne and that cave?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, that's been bothering me ever since you mentioned it the other night. I finally figured out why. The John Wayne Tunnel."
"What?"
"Up on the backside of the mountain is an old mine that I worked years ago. When John Wayne died, I dedicated it to his memory. I put up a plaque above the entrance with his name on it. It's a memorial to the Duke."
"I don't think I've ever seen it."
"Oh, yes you have, but you probably don't remember. I took you up there once when you were seven or eight."
A vague memory. Mining tunnels. John Wayne. His grandfather. It was all blurred together. "Do you think that's what I dreamed about?"
"Maybe. Dreams are funny things, Will. As your dad said, sometimes they show us things we don't realize we know. Anyhow, I think it's worth checking out. So does your dad. We were out for a drive and almost went up there, but decided to see if you wanted to come along. How about going up there right now? We've got a good three hours before dark."
There was so much to say and he didn't know where to begin, and he definitely wanted to talk to his father. "That's fine. I'll be waiting."
"What's going on?" Marion asked after Will hung up.
"Grandpa's got an idea about where Myra's body might be. We're going to take a look. Dad's going, too. They'll pick me up out front."
She nodded. "Maybe it's better that you're not around for a while. Things could get a little messy after I call Detective Olsen."
"Don't call Olsen, Mom. Not yet," Will said, heading toward the back door.
"Why not?"
"I think she might be involved. I'll explain later. I've got a friend waiting for me."
"Wait a minute. 'What friend?"
"She's a sysop from the computer lab."
"A sysop, what's that?"
"Later, Mom."
"Be careful, Will."
"You too."
He hurried out the door, before his mother could ask what she was doing in the alley.
"Sorry it took so long," he said as he slid into the seat next to Corey.
She smiled and looked relieved. "I was getting worried that something happened."
"My father and grandfather are going to take me up the mountain to an old mine shaft. They think it might be where Myra was taken."
"I want to go with you."
"I don't know. It could be dangerous."
"Will, if I didn't help you get out of the lab, you'd be in jail right now."
He was surprised at how adamant she sounded. "Okay. Go around the front and find a parking spot."
As they waited for his grandfather's Land Rover to arrive, Will took out the address book from his back pocket and paged through it. There were a few full names, like Bill Wharton, Jerry's father, but most were first names and initials for the last name or just initials. Among them were G. T. and Henry D. He wondered if G. T. was George Thomas, Aaron's father, and Henry D. was Paige Davis's father. Both were among Burke's movie industry pals. G. T.'s phone number wasn't the same as Aaron's, but that wasn't surprising. Most of his friends had their own phone lines.
"That's interesting," he said as his finger stopped on an unusual name.
"What is it?" Corey asked.
"P-R-0 period T-E-C. PRO.TEC, that's the name, and I know this phone number. It's the Kirkpatricks'."
"PRO.TEC. Could that be short for 'protection'?" Corey wondered.
"Or protector," Will said. "I guess that must be Claude."
"Unless it's the sheriff himself. Maybe he's protecting Burke in his drug dealings."
"If the sheriff is involved, this thing is really big." Will closed the address book and looked around. "Hurry up, Grandpa."
Sheriff's deputies were bound to arrive at his mother's shop anytime looking for him. They would spot two kids sitting in a car and they'd nab him.
But it wasn't the police or his grandfather who showed up first. Aaron Thomas was walking down the sidewalk, headed in their direction. Will was about to slide down in the seat when Thomas made eye contact. He grinned, played an air guitar, then made a passing motion with his hand.
"Oh, no," Will moaned.
Thomas's square jaw, blue eyes, and blond hair filled the window. He tapped on the glass, motioning Will to roll it down.
"Hi, Aaron."
"Hey, you're hot, man. You are hot. The sheriff's department has a friggin' posse out lookin' for you."
He peered past Will at Corey, snapped his fingers and pointed at her. "I know you." He shook his head. "You're full of surprises, Will. Who're you guys, Bonnie and Clyde? What's going on?"
"It's kind of hard to explain right now."
"Will!" Corey tapped him on the shoulder. The Land Rover had pulled up next to the Mustang.
Without another word, Will and Corey jumped out and dashed around the Mustang. Will opened the back door of his grandfather's car for Corey, then slid in after her.
"Let's go, Grandpa. Hi, Dad."
He glanced back at Aaron, who looked baffled but managed to recover in time to make a quick passing motion with his hand. His way of saying "Go for it."
"Who do we have with us, Will?" Ed Connors asked, peering into the rearview mirror as he drove away.
"This is Corey Ridder. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be here right now," Will said and began explaining everything that had happened this afternoon.
As soon as Pete Lansa heard that Will was wanted, he told Connors to stop. He turned in his seat as the Land Rover eased off the road. His face was expressionless, his dark eyes staring at Will from above his high cheekbones.
"Will, I believe you if you say that someone planted that drug in your locker. Even if you were involved with drugs, you're too smart to leave any in your locker."
"So why are we stopping, Dad?"
"Because I don't believe in running from the police. We've got to take you to the station."
"Wait," Corey said. "You don't know everything yet."
She quickly told Lansa about their visit to Tom Burke's apartment, about the drugs, the notebook, and the possible identification of PRO.TEC.
Connors cursed under his breath when she mentioned Burke. "I should've known he wasn't any good. He's too slick, but Marion kept saying I didn't like him because he is an actor."
"You're certain that's Kirkpatrick's home phone number?" Lansa asked, looking at the page in the address book.
Will nodded. "It's the old number I used to call before Claude got his own line last year."
"I want to try calling it, anyhow," Lansa said. "Can you find a phone booth, Ed?"
"Who needs a phone booth?" Connors pulled out his cellular phone from a compartment in his car door and turned it on. "What's the number?" He punched it and held the phone far enough from his ear so that Will could hear the ringing. A recorded voice answered and identified the Kirkpatrick residence.
Connors pushed the "end" button on the back of the cell phone.
"That's it, all right," Connors said. "But we don't know if the protector is the sheriff or his son.,'
"It could be both of them," Corey said. "The sheriff could be protecting his son."
Lansa nodded. "I don't want you in Kirkpatrick's jail, Will. We'll drive to Denver. I've got an old friend there, who's now the assistant chief of police. We'll give him the notebook."
"What about the mine?" Will asked.
Lansa hesitated.
"We've got to make a run up there first," Connors said. "It just dawned on me."
"What did?" Lansa asked.
"Burke owns the claim on the John Wayne Tunnel."
"He's a miner?" Lansa asked, doubtfully.
"Last winter Burke started talking about how he wanted to try his hand at mining for silver. He said he had a couple of friends who were interested in working with him. I thought it was just talk, but he kept on about it. So this past spring I made a deal with him on one of my claims that hasn't been worked for twenty years."
Will remembered Burke and his grandfather talking about mining. At the time, Will thought it was just an effort by Burke to get on his grandfather's good side. But he also knew his grandfather had sold a couple other mining claims and that was probably how Burke had gotten the idea.
"Have you been up there since then?" Will asked.
"Just once. Late May, I think it was. No one was around, but there'd been a lot of digging. Lately though, Burke hasn't said a word about the mine."
"Okay," Lansa said. "Let's go up there and take a quick look around."
Chapter Twenty-One
They turned off the highway and followed a dirt road that switched back and forth up the mountain. Soon patches of wet snow speckled the landscape, and the higher they went, the larger the patches became until a continuous, gleaming mass of white covered the ground and road. Large heavy flakes fluttered from the gray sky, adding to the recent accumulation.
They rounded a bend and the edge of the road fell away. Will looked out over the spidery thicket of barren aspen trees outlined against a field of snow and wondered what they would find at the mine.
With their course of action firmly in mind, Will relaxed a bit and laughed as he told Lansa and Connors how he and Corey must have surprised Aaron Thomas when he saw them suddenly switch vehicles and drive away without saying another word to him.
But his father didn't join in Will's laughter. "That's too bad. By now the sheriff probably knows you're in this vehicle. It's going to be harder to get away."
"Do you think Aaron would tell anyone?" Corey asked.
"I don't know," Will said, reassessing the situation.
The scenery was obscured by a black mound of tailings, partially glazed with fresh snow. Connors nodded toward it. "You see that, Corey? A lot of people just think these tailing piles are an eyesore. But for miners like me they represent a lot of hard work by honest people. I'm proud of them."
Corey peered out the window at the tailings and said she'd like to know more about Aspen's mining history. "I'd be glad to tell you all about it sometime, young lady."
Will was sympathetic to his grandfather's views, but he also knew that the tailing piles were more than just an eyesore. They were also a source of water pollution that had affected Aspen and other former mining communities. As his father once said: You can't continually take from the earth without eventually paying a price.
"Okay, we're not far now," Connors said. "Just another quarter mile or so. Then we'll find out if Will's dream was telling us something important."
The dirt road widened, and Connors eased the car over to the side. As they got out, Lansa stared down at the tire tracks covered by the fresh snow. "There's been activity here recently. Several vehicles. A couple of them were here within the last few hours."
Will looked at the barely perceptible maze of tracks. He would've never noticed them, and he certainly couldn't put them in any sort of time frame, except that they were made before the latest snowfall.
"This way," Connors said and led the way along a snow-covered trail. Even though his grandfather was close to seventy, he was wiry and healthy and moved with surprising agility across the rugged landscape.
Will zipped his jacket against the late afternoon chill. The crisp air still held the pungent scent of decaying leaves.
He glanced back at Corey, who was walking a few feet behind him. She ran a hand through her curly hair, brushing the snowflakes away, and smiled back self-consciously.
"You see, Burke and his buddies were working up here," Connors said as he walked around a heap of rubble. A shovel was jammed into the top of the mound like a tilting flagpole. "This is all from last spring."
On the far side of the mound were narrow gauge rail tracks that led into the mountain. Above the entrance to the tunnel, imbedded in the earth, was a wooden plaque. Connors raised up on his toes and wiped the snow away. The plaque read THE JOHN WAYNE TUNNEL. The letters were carved in a hard wood that had weathered well over the years.
"I wanted to use silver for the plaque, but I know damn well somebody would've come along and stolen it before too long," Connors said.
Will ducked into the tunnel and was greeted by a dank odor of earth. The tunnel was narrow and just high enough for him to stand up. A few yards inside, a rust-colored iron cart rested on the tracks. The handle of another shovel was sticking out of the top. The tracks continued several more yards, then disappeared under a heavy wooden round-top door. A thick padlock secured it shut.
Connors shined a flashlight on it. "That door and lock are new. I wonder what he's got in there."
"So do I," Lansa said.
Will looked inside the cart. There was something lying on the bottom. It was too dark to see what it was. "Gramps, can you shine your flashlight in here?"
The beam struck the floor of the cart, and Will saw that it was just a coil of rope. Then the beam momentarily played across another object. "What was that?" Will asked.
Connors aimed the flashlight into the corner.
"That's Myra's shoe. I'm sure of it. She was wearing brown loafers the night she disappeared," Will said.
Lansa took the flashlight and leaned over the cart. "There're dark stains on the cart. It might be blood."
"I bet the body's inside," Corey said. "They put it in the cart first, then moved it."
"That's what I was just thinking," Connors said. "You've got your gun with you, don't you, Dad? Why don't you shoot the lock."
Lansa walked over to the door. "That only works in the movies, Will. I've got a .38, not a cannon. That's a heavy lock."
"I've got a crowbar and a hammer in the Land Rover," Connors said.
"I'll go get them." Will jogged out of the tunnel and down the trail.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Corey had wanted to go back with Will, just to be alone with him again. To find out what he was thinking. To listen to him talk. But he didn't invite her, and she didn't want to seem too eager to tag along. Besides, this was a serious matter, not an outing in the woods, and she had a bad feeling about this place. The sooner they left, the better.
Will's father and grandfather were looking around outside, but she had decided to stay in the tunnel. She took the lock in her hand, felt its weight and shape.
Locks were like people. They had both outer and inner strength. Some of the ones that appeared big and strong were weak inside, and vice versa. She realized immediately that she was looking at one of the former types.
She smiled as she reached into the untamed thicket on her head and pulled a bobby pin from just above her ear. It wasn't doing much good anyhow. In fact, most of her attempts at controlling her hair were more wishful thinking than anything else.
She quickly worked the pin into the lock and moved it around with the assurance of an expert locksmith. She'd always had a knack for breaking into things, whether it was computer systems or locks with no keys. Usually it was easier for her to finesse her way in rather than use brute strength. For example, she preferred guessing at secret passwords rather than running mathematical programs that would automatically try hundreds of thousands or even millions of word or number combinations. With locks, she preferred a pin or a paper clip over a sledgehammer.
She closed her eyes as she worked, feeling her way. Finally, she pushed and twisted and the lock popped open. "Nothing to it," she said aloud.
She removed the lock from the hasp, and th
e door creaked open several inches. She hesitated, thinking that she should wait for the others, but then impulsively she leaned against the door. Faint light filtered through the doorway, and she knew immediately that this was no ordinary mine. It was no mine at all.
"Corey!"
She spun around. "Oh, you scared me."
Connors stood behind her. "What the hell! You got the door open?"
She immediately felt wary. She'd learned long ago that adults usually didn't appreciate being upstaged, especially by a black girl. "I picked the lock," she said with a shrug.
"Hey, that's great. You should've said something before Will left. So what do we got inside?"
She let him go in first with his flashlight. She liked Will's grandfather, even though he seemed sort of gruff. Will's father was more like Will, quiet and thoughtful. Except that he was quieter than Will.
"What in the-world!" Connors exclaimed. "I don't believe what I'm seeing."
Chapter Twenty-Three
Will hurried back to the tunnel, a ten-pound sledgehammer in one hand and a crowbar in the other. But he stopped short when he saw someone standing at one side of the trail. A hole in the overcast sky had opened and a ray of light filtered through the trees, forming a halo effect around the figure. For a moment, Will thought he saw feathers streaming out from the top of the man's head.
"Dad? Is that you?"
Without responding, the man turned and walked into the woods. Will followed him, but when he reached the top of a rise, the man was no longer in sight. He looked for tracks in the snow, but didn't see any. The forest wasn't particularly dense here and with no leaves on the trees, he could easily see a couple of hundred yards. But nothing moved. There was no one out there.
Will headed back to the trail, wondering if he'd really seen the man. A low, shrill whistle suddenly raised the hair on the back of his neck. He looked over his shoulder and saw the man standing on the rise that Will had just vacated.
This time he saw him clearly and recognized him. It was the same beaming face he'd seen last summer at the Spring of Shadows, at the game, and in his dreams. Masau.
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