“What a liar!”
“She claims your people set off explosives at the dig site.”
“Oh, that …” he sniffed. “It was nothing. Just a little plastique.”
“Plastique?”
MacElroy shrugged. “It was the Fourth of July.”
THIRTY-NINE
“THAT’S WHAT WAS in Dr. Farrell’s plane!” Keera blurted.
MacElroy squinted at her, then turned to Ray. “Huh?” Ray closed his eyes, sighed, tried to think of a way to avoid explaining. Unable to, he confessed, “Something may have happened to Farrell.”
“What? Is he okay?”
“We don’t know. He’s …”
“Dead,” Keera announced.
“Dead?” MacElroy was shocked. “Mark? No …”
“We don’t know if he’s dead.”
“But his plane was rigged to explode,” Keera threw in. “With plast … plast …”
“Plastique!” MacElroy’s jaw fell open and his brow fell.
Ray waved him off. “Someone did rig the plane with plastique. But it didn’t go off. Farrell never showed up in Kanayut like he was supposed to. That’s why we’re here.”
MacElroy stared at him, dazed.
“When did you see Farrell last?” Ray asked.
Sinking to a wooden bench, MacElroy answered,” ‘Bout a week ago. Mark comes by at least once every ten days or so to poke around in that little site down the hill. And to give us a hard time about screwing with history, destroying the landscape.” When he noticed the concerned look on Ray’s face, he added, “It’s good-natured. He razzes me about ruining the environment. I accuse him of loving dead people more than living people.”
Ray considered this. “Janice said …”
“Janice is a witch. I warned him before they got married. The woman is deranged.” MacElroy shot a glance at Keera before whispering, “She’s a nympho.”
It was Ray’s turn to make a face.
“You met her, right?” His voice dropped again. “Did she … come on to youT’
“Well …” Ray could feel his cheeks blushing.
“See? She is … what I said. And she hates me because I turned her down.” He nodded knowingly. “She wanted to … while I was on the dig that summer. But I wasn’t about to do that to Mark.”
Ray considered this for a moment. “So you and Farrell are friends,” he submitted. “And there’s no hard f elings between your crew and the archaeological crew?”
“Nothing serious. Just good-natured pranks. All in fun.”
“The fact that he’s seeking a permit that will shut you down doesn’t bother you?”
MacElroy shrugged. “The injunction would only be for a season or so, as long as it took them to work the site down there. We wouldn’t like it, but … Actually we could probably use the downtime to get our financing in better shape.”
Glancing at his watch, Ray continued reviewing the information. “He comes by here every so often. You saw him about a week ago. But you don’t know where he is?”
“Or who killed him?” Keera prodded.
MacElroy shook his head wearily, lips pursed.
“Any chance someone else saw him since then, say Thursday or Friday?”
“Doubt it,” MacElroy grunted. “Mark usually makes a point of coming up to see me. But maybe Gene’s seen him.”
He led them to the opening in the embankment. “Watch your step.” Once inside, he handed them each a hard hat equipped with a light and a small black box the size of a pocket calculator. “Regulations,” he explained. “The hat’s supposed to keep you safe, as if it would do any good if a ton of rock fell in on you. The other’s a locator. If there is a cave-in, and you aren’t killed instantly, that tells us where you are so we can try to get you out.”
“Have you had any cave-ins?” Ray asked warily.
“Oh, sure. Almost every day. This ridge is pretty unstable. And what with all the earthquakes up here … But don’t worry. Nobody’s been killed in Red Wolf.”
As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, Ray realized that they were standing on a platform overlooking a vast, seemingly bottomless crater. The sides of the hole were flat, man-made. Hanging halogen lights provided illumination.
Adjusting his hat, Ray flicked on his own head lamp, then Keera’s. A crate emerged from the shadows. Ray could see neat squares of orange stacked inside.
“It’s not armed,” MacElroy said. “We use TNT mostly. But there are some tricky spots where plastique does the trick.”
“Do you keep track of it?” Ray asked.
“Sure.” Lifting a wireless walkie-talkie, MacElroy thumbed the button and said, “Gene? We’re up top. Got a minute?”
After a burst of static, a tinny voice replied, “Be up in two.”
A moment later a man emerged from the darkness, the antithesis of MacElroy: tall, slight, with flowing blond hair.
“What’s up?” he sighed, removing his hat. His hair was matted with sweat.
“You seen Mark Farrell lately?”
Gene shook his head. “Not since … probably a week ago Tuesday. Maybe Wednesday.” He paused. “Is that it? Don’t tell me you dragged me up here for that.”
“Mark’s missing,” MacElroy explained.
“And his floatplane was sabotaged,” Keera added.
Gene examined her curiously before asking MacElroy, “Who are these people?”
“Ray Attla, Barrow PD.” He offered his hand. “And this is Keera.”
He glanced at Keera before asking MacElroy again, “What’s this all about?”
“We’re looking for Mark Farrell,” Ray told him.” We think he might be missing.”
“He’s dead,” Keera informed. “His plane was going to blow up.”
Gene looked to MacElroy for confirmation. MacElroy shrugged at him. “Who’s got the p-brick count?”
“Dave does,” Gene answered. “But I can tell you what it is. It’s twenty-three. That’s what it was when Dave did the last tally and we haven’t p-brick-blasted since.”
MacElroy used the walkie-talkie to confirm this information. Calling down to the base station, he spoke with Dave. When he was confident that the count was indeed twenty-three, he walked over to the crate and used a flashlight to conduct his own assessment. A half minute later, he swore, making the resemblance to his father that much more valid.
“You count,” he told Gene, handing him the flashlight.
Gene bent to sort through the bricks. He concluded the task with a curse of his own. “Don’t tell me. Farrell’s plane was rigged with plastique.”
Ray nodded. “Are you short?”
Gene’s response was profane but specific. Red Wolf’s supply of plastic explosives was off by one brick.
Out of curiosity, Ray asked, “What would a block of that stuff do to a plane?”
MacElroy adopted a thoughtful expression as he pondered this. “It turns solid rock into dust. Probably turn a 747 into scrap metal.”
“What about a Twin Otter?”
“Blast it to smithereens,” Gene said. “You’d need a magnifying glass to find it.”
“Why would someone want to do that, to Mark?” MacElroy wondered.
Ray shook his head. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
“Get Dave up here,” MacElroy growled, tossing the radio to Gene. “Have him do an inventory. Maybe that missing brick got misplaced or something.”
“Doubt it,” Gene muttered.
“Just have him check. Then have him do an inventory of the detonators.” Turning to Ray, MacElroy asked, “How was it hooked up?”
“Three wires—yellow, black, red—and a black square.”
Nodding, MacElroy grumbled, “That sounds like ours all right.”
Ray checked his watch: 4:52. “We’ve got to get going,” he said to no one in particular. “Let us know if that brick turns up, okay?”
“How can I get a hold of you?” MacElroy asked.
“Call Bar
row PD,” Ray said, already imagining himself winging toward home.
“No phone. Just shortwave.”
“Radio Barrow PD.”
Gene departed to the dark abyss he had come from while MacElroy walked them to the incline. When they were aboard, and the door was shut, he stared at them through the window with a forlorn expression. “I hope you find him.”
“Me too,” Ray replied, punching the green button. Popping his ears, Ray reflected on what he had learned. The explosive hooked to Farrell’s plane had most likely come from Red Wolf. MacElroy and Farrell, in opposition to Janice’s testimony, seemed to be buddies. The rift between the miners and the archaeologists was more of a friendly rivalry than a bloody war.
Most of that hinged on MacElroy. Ray assumed he was telling the truth. And if he was, Janice was either lying or seriously deluded. If MacElroy was lying … What if the clash was just as violent as Janice had suggested? What if MacElroy saw Mark Farrell as a threat to the operation and had decided to use a chunk of plastique to … No. It didn’t make sense. Sure, MacElroy would have been upset about the closure of Red Wolf. So would Gene. So would Mack. But as MacElroy had said himself, a historical permit would only result in a temporary shutdown. Besides all of that, the bomb had failed to kill Farrell. Whoever had been after him, had missed.
It was a tangled mess and the more Ray attempted to unsnarl it, the more frustrated he became. Despite his meager efforts to investigate, two glaring questions remained, the same questions that had been presenting themselves since the case had fallen together: where was Mark Farrell and why was someone trying to kill him?
He watched the mountain slope pass by, wishing he knew the answers, but unsure he had the mental and physical strength to seek them out any further.
“You’re not giving up,” Keera said. “We’re not really going back, are we?”
“Where should we go?” Ray asked in a tired voice.
“I’ll ask. If you’ll promise to go.”
Ray stared at her, then laughed. He was getting punchy. Not enough sleep, far too many life-threatening m’shaps. “I’m not promising anything.”
Keera shot out her lower lip in a pout that Ray found charming. When a ten-year-old girl didn’t get her way, she sulked. When a ten-year-old seer didn’t get her way, she sulked. Some things held true no matter the level of spiritual gifting.
“I’m asking anyway,” she said.
“You do that. Let me know what the Voice has to say. In fact, tell it hello for me.”
Ignoring him, she bowed her head, closed her eyes and breathed in deeply.
Ray sighed loudly. He was going home. End of story. There was nothing that Keera or her gang of unseen spiritual advisers could say to make him change his mind.
“I know where Dr. Farrell’s body is,” she announced abruptly.
Except maybe that.
FORTY
“YOU KNOW WHERE his body is …” Ray repeated skeptically.
She nodded, eyes clamped shut. “And I can take you to it.”
Ray popped his ears again. Maybe the altitude was getting to him. He suddenly felt lighTheaded. Thin air up top … Coming down rapidly … The change in pressure … That had to be why he was entertaining the nutty idea of taking Keera up on her offer and traipsing off to find Farrell’s body. Yes, he was definitely suffering from altitude sickness.
“It’s upriver,” she continued. “Near Shainin Lake.”
A vision of the mystery skull raced through his mind. “There’s a lot of wilderness surrounding Shainin Lake.”
“In a gray river.”
Gray river? Glacial? In the stream where Fred had come from? “How do you do that? How do you find out things that … that there’s no way of finding out?”
After a long pause, Keera shrugged. “I listen.”
“Well, you’ve got better ears than I do,” Ray told the floor of the incline.
“No. I just practice more.”
Ray thought this over during the final minutes of the transport ride. When the incline had bounced to a stop and they had exited it, he begrudgingly asked, “Could you really take me to it? I mean … reallyT ’
“Yes.”
“You’re sure? Because I don’t want to waste time going down there for nothing.”
“I’m positive. The Voice was very strong.”
He was about to ask how a voice could be strong, when Mack met them.
“What did you find out?”
“Not much,” Ray said.
“Except that the bomb on Dr. Farrell’s plane came from here,” Keera gushed.
“It what??”
“According to your son, the mine’s supply of plastique is down by one brick.”
“Impossible!”
Ray shrugged at him. “He had Gene and Dave check.”
Mack cursed angrily. “That’s just what we need. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.” He swore again. “You think somebody around here … You think they tried to kill Mark?”
“I don’t know,” Ray admitted. He didn’t know much of anything at the moment.
“What are you gonna do now?”
“Report my findings to the proper authorities.”
“That’s it?”
“They’ll probably investigate further,” Ray added, the sense of fatigue growing.
“Mark gets swallowed by the Bush … One of our people tries to blow him up …” An obscenity led Mack to an ugly conclusion: “We’re certain to be shut down now.”
Ray was struck by the parallel and the potential outcome. Farrell had been working to have a moratorium put on Red Wolf anyway. By turning up missing, he might just accomplish that, especially if the Feds wound up taking the case and a Red Wolf employee had, in fact, rigged Farrell’s plane. Could Farrell have purposefully dropped out of sight? Could he have sabotaged his own plane just to make it look like Red Wolf …
“I’ll lose my shirt if we don’t operate next season,” Mack was grumbling.
“Your son thinks it would give you time to arrange new financing,” Ray said.
“New financing,” Mack scoffed. “It’s not like investors are lining up to give us their money.” He sighed, “That kid of mine … How he got his MBA, I’ll never know.”
Ray eyed the ATV, hoping Mack would offer them a ride back down. Out of curiosity, he asked, “Who has access to the explosives?”
“Everybody in camp,” Mack snorted. “They’re sitting up there in the main shaft.”
“Have you had any problems with theft?”
He shook his head. “There’s not much worth stealing around here.”
“Except for blocks of plastique.”
Another shake and a frown. “You could take some of it, but without the detonators, it wouldn’t do you any good.”
“Who had access to the detonators?”
Mack considered this. “They’re locked up down here at base camp. Only four people have the combination. Hal … Gene … Dave …”
“Who else?”
With a lopsided grin, he grunted, “Me.” Pointing a thumb at the shed, he led them inside. “I’ll check the detonators for you. Maybe this is all a big mistake.”
The interior of the small building was set up like an office: steel folding tables, their work surfaces cluttered with printouts, maps, and diagrams. A half dozen metal chairs were scattered about and in the opposite corner, a crate held a radio unit, pads of paper, pencils.
Nudging the crate aside, Mack knelt in front of a cast-iron safe the size of a portable television. He twisted the dial, twisted it again, squinted at the tiny numbers. After a final whirl he swung the door back and withdrew a shallow, topless cardboard box.
Rifling the contents, he mumbled, “Seven … Twelve … Fifteen …” When he finished he looked up, staring through them. “Including the one Gene’s got up there now … that would make … Twenty-two.” There was a brief pause before he swore. Stuffing the box back into the safe, he retrieved a sheaf of paper and
examined it, counting again. “Missing one detonator, right?’’ Ray asked.
Mack’s answer was crude. He glanced at Keera, and for the first time seemed to appreciate her age. “Pardon my French, little lady.”
When Mack had closed the safe and was peppering it with another paragraph of “French,” Ray thought aloud, “Hal and Mark were friends.” He hesitated for a moment, realizing that he had just used the past tense. Were … As much as he hated to admit it, his thoughts were veering toward the unpleasant possibility of murder. At the very least, a murder had been attempted. Ray had the evidence in his backpack.
“Hey, I’ve got the bomb down at the boat,” he told Mack. “Could you take a look at it and confirm whether or not it came from here?”
Mack nodded, still peeved that the mine might be headed for a premature end. As they left the shed and started for the ATV, Ray returned to his brainstorming. “Hal and Mark were friends. What about Gene? Did he get along with Farrell?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. How about Dave?”
“Yeah. We all did fine by Mark.” He straddled the ATV and started the engine.
“And nobody else had access to the detonators?” Ray asked.
Killing the engine, Mack spun to face them. “Rick Sanders! He had access.”
“Had?”
“Hal sent him packing.” Mack shook his head. “Rick was trouble from the start. He had an attitude and a half. The only thing he was good at was avoiding work. He’d been screwing around all summer. A couple weeks ago he placed dynamite in the wrong tunnel.” Mack swore. “Caused a cave-in. We lost a month’s work. Hal canned him.”
“So he’s not here anymore?”
“Nope. But he knew the combination to the safe. He could have snatched a detonator. He was that kind of guy: lazy, always looking for shortcuts.”
“Any idea where he went?”
Mack shrugged. “Back home, I guess.” He studied Ray. “You think maybe Rick did this, stole some plastique and rigged Mark’s plane?”
“Where was he from?”
“Portland, I think.” He nodded at one of the other buildings. “There’s a box of his stuff in the bunkhouse there. You can go through it if you want to.”
Ray agreed. It wouldn’t hurt. This Rick guy was probably a dead end. Why would a disgruntled miner set out to kill an archaeologist? Why not try to get back at his boss for firing him?
Season of Death Page 26