Shadow of the Raven

by David Sundstrand

  For a moment, the hunter’s easy assurance peeled away like paint bubbling in the sun, but then the habitual arrogance of a lifetime reasserted itself. “I hope you know you’re fooling around with a loaded weapon.”

  Eddie smiled. “Hope you know it, too.” He slipped the .44 back in its holster. “Just wanted to make sure we understand each other.”

  Smith eyed Eddie with some care, a new appraisal. Not quite the clown he had taken him for. “I didn’t drive to this shit hole to stand around and watch a trick show. Let’s get on with it. Where’s your truck?”

  “Where I left it.” Eddie looked smug. “Here’s what we’re going to do.” He cocked his hip out, letting his hand dangle over the butt of the pistol. “You’re going to wait here. After a little while, you’ll see me pull up on the road. You walk down to my truck. I give you the head, and you give me fifteen thousand dollars. Right?” Smith nodded in sullen agreement. Eddie could see he didn’t like being told what to do, not calling the shots. Just too damn bad. No more crap from the big man. Hey, they’d been equalized.

  Eddie pulled the battered Ford up at the mouth of the ravine, where he could see Smith standing beside the Range Rover. As Smith approached the truck, Eddie slipped out of the passenger’s side and stood by the truck, resting his forearms against the side of the bed. He was very glad he had listened to his voice. He didn’t trust this Smith at all. The mounted head lay in the back of the truck, covered with a plastic tarp. Smith was going to be really surprised.

  Eddie watched the tall figure clad in clean khakis and straw hat cross the road with purposefully confident strides and lean against the opposite side of the truck bed as casually as if he were stepping up to a bar.

  “Well?” Smith cocked a trimmed eyebrow.

  Eddie reached over with a pocketknife and cut the cord holding the plastic tarp in place, then lifted it back, exposing the mounted head. Smith’s face lost its blandness. His eyes widened with excitement. “That’s good. That’s really good.” He looked back up at Eddie. “You didn’t say that you had mounted the head. Damn good, too.” He nodded to himself, his gaze on the ram’s head, unable to take his eyes off the prize.

  Eddie grinned with pleasure. Score one for the Indians—no, two. The big man had lost his cool, practically drooled, and he had complimented Eddie’s work. The compliment should be worth a few bucks. “So how about the dough?” He looked up and down the road, furrowing his face in a furtive grimace. This would be a bad time for a car to come by.

  Smith encompassed Eddie with his open and frank expression, the one he used to engender complete confidence. “I don’t have the cash with me. I’d be foolish to carry that sort of money around.” Eddie’s good mood evaporated. He was gonna get fucked—again. He started to protest, but Smith raised his hand. “But I do have my checkbook.”

  “Come on, asshole. I take the check. You stop payment. No way.”

  “Wait a minute, Eddie, think it through,” Smith said, his reasonable voice smoothing the ruffles. “If I did that, you’d still have the check—the check that connects me with the hunting incident. I think we are at what’s called a standoff. I can’t afford not to pay you. You have me at a disadvantage, Eddie. I have to trust you. Besides, as you said yourself, what’s a few bucks to a rich dude like me?”

  Eddie looked thoughtful. “How much cash you got in that money clip?” He gestured toward Smith’s pocket.

  “Not much, Eddie, maybe another twelve hundred.”

  Twelve hundred, better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. That was for sure. “So give me a check and the cash. Look at the work, man.” He pointed at the mounted head staring awkwardly skyward over his shoulder. “Mounting the head wasn’t part of the deal. That’s extra.”

  Smith sighed in resignation. “As I said, it’s beautiful work, Eddie. Okay, it’s a deal.” He reached across the bed of the truck and took Eddie’s hard little brown hand in his soft white one. Eddie was grinning like the cat that had swallowed the canary. He didn’t hear the voice.

  The light was fading fast. The sun had dropped behind the western escarpment and the still, clear air was beginning to chill. Eddie poured another can of oil in the truck. Man this had been easy. Maybe too easy, the voice said. He glanced up and watched Smith hurry back to the climate-controlled interior of the Range Rover. They were both anxious to get out of there.

  As Smith opened the rear door of the Range Rover, he heard Eddie’s truck sputter into life. He’d have to hurry. He pulled the leather shooting case to him and let the hinged top and front down, revealing boxes of ammunition: 9-mm, .30-caliber carbine, .357 Magnum, and .300 Magnum. He pulled five .300 Magnums from the box, the brass casings gleaming in the half-light, and pushed them into the Weatherby’s magazine. He slammed the rear hatch shut and hurried to the driver’s side, shoved the rifle into the front passenger’s seat, and started the Rover. He’d have just enough time for the right shot. He pulled out after Eddie’s truck. He was at least a quarter mile behind him, but Eddie had to slow for the wash, and the wash was directly below a bend in the road that he would reach before Eddie reached the wash. It would be a downhill shot, maybe 250 yards. Really not that difficult.

  He pulled over on the shoulder, stepped out into the dusk, and listened. He heard the truck coughing down the canyon at a snail’s pace, coming closer, but still a bit too far away. He began to wonder if he was wasting his time. The truck would probably break down and the little shit would die of exposure, or asphyxiate from his own breath.

  Then again, it was time to put Eddie out of his misery. As the truck came within range, he steadied the rifle against the hood and located the battered cab in the sight, shifting around in the crosshairs. Despite the waning light, it was going slowly enough to follow in the scope. He waited as the truck slowed to approach the drop into the wash. It was creeping along, almost stopped. He fixed the crosshairs on Eddie’s head, just in front of his left ear, took up the slack, and squeezed. There was a metallic click, metal on metal. He yanked open the bolt and ejected a live round, then slammed the bolt forward, chambering another round. He found Eddie’s head again and squeezed. Click, metal on metal. He removed the bolt and felt the bolt face. No firing pin was protruding. Someone had blunted the firing pin, damaged his rifle.

  He could hear the truck grunting and chugging its way across the wash. The little shit was getting away. The goddamn Indian had his check. He’d have to catch him. Make sure Eddie didn’t have a chance to expose him, make absolutely sure he didn’t leave Jawbone Canyon alive. If he hurried, and he would hurry, he could catch him before he reached the highway.

  25

  “I don’t go in caves.” Roy peered into the darker reaches of the mine tunnel. They had drunk their fill of water at the spring, so much so that climbing up the talus slope and then around the mine tailings had been difficult. They felt heavy, full of water, but still thirsty, the onset of dehydration. The seemingly indestructible troll had slipped and fallen on a sharp rock, cutting his shin, crying out with pain. Blood seeped through the front of his pant leg, staining the faded denim a purplish blue. Now they stood in the waning heat, staring into the darkness of a mine tunnel, as if the looking itself would make something appear.

  Frank wondered why Roy didn’t go into caves. Was it because he was claustrophobic like himself, or was it because he was afraid of cave-ins, spiders, snakes, bugs? So far, Roy hadn’t shown much concern about dangers, remaining calm, deliberate, almost laconic. Frank filed it away: Doesn’t go into caves.

  “So where is it, Eddie?”

  “Hey, it’s in there. He said he put it back in the tunnel to keep it away from animals and stuff. It’s in there.”

  “How’re you going to find it in the dark?” Hickey sat cross-legged in the tiny patch of shade cast by the western shoulder of the mine entrance. He produced a joint from his shirt pocket and lit it with a wooden match. “Goin’ to light matches, light a candle in the dark?” He laughed softly.

 
; Frank gave a triumphant grin, as Eddy might. “I’ll use this.” He held up a small flashlight about two and a half inches long and three-quarters of an inch thick. It was attached to his key chain. “It’s got a special battery.” He twisted the head of the flashlight and a tiny bulb came on. “It’ll work great in the mine. Besides, I’ve been in there before. No problema.”

  “Let’s hope not, Eddie. Let’s hope it’s a ‘piece of cake.’” The sandy voice was barely audible in the breeze. “You can show Hickey where it is. That way, you both come out.”

  Jason stood near the mouth of the tunnel, mute and still, eyes squeezed shut. Roy touched Jason’s arm. Jason squeezed his eyes more tightly. Roy guided him, turning him around to face away from the tunnel and walking him over to the edge of the clearing, where the tailings sloped steeply away. “Sit down here, Jace, and just turn around and don’t look. Watch for the animals and things. You’re not going in the cave, Jace.”

  The bright little eyes came open. “Hickey goes in.”

  “And Hickey comes out. Caves don’t hurt Hickey.” Frank had been following the exchange, shifting his gaze from the pale face to the red one. There was real terror on Jason’s face and a sort of crooked tenderness on the whitened flesh of Roy Miller. They’d experienced something together, something that unnerved them.

  “What the fuck you staring at?” Roy glared at Frank.

  “Nothing, man. Only wondering what shook Jason there.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Eddie.” The calm had returned. “You’ve got your own problems. You haven’t completed your mission yet, finding the head. See Eddie, it’s simple logic, right? If the head’s there, then Dr. Sorensen’s going to be here, too, just like you said. If there’s no head, then you lied to us, Eddie. And liars burn in hell”—he paused, fixing his pale face on Frank’s—“and other places, too. So you go on back in the tunnel and show Hickey you’ve been telling the truth. Then we’ll wait for the doctor to show up, making his rounds. You follow?”

  Frank nodded, glancing over at Hickey, who was taking a deep toke on the joint. He grinned up at Frank. “A little grass and you can see in the dark, man.”

  Roy bent over Jason’s leg, looking at the blood oozing from the purple welt on his shin. The thick, curly red hair made the bruise appear less an injury than a tufted growth, except for the blood.

  Clearly, it was painful. Jason had struggled the last hundred yards, complaining in a childlike voice, “My leg hurts, Roy.” Then after a few minutes, he’d announced it again, as if it were a new discovery. “My leg hurts. It really hurts, Roy.” Roy Miller seemed surprisingly patient, helping Jason over the difficult places. It never ceased to puzzle Frank, what made people tick. If Miller was capable of such tenderness, was he, Frank Flynn, capable of deliberate violence? Perhaps. Perhaps they all were. And, these people were monstrous, like a disease laying waste to all they touched.

  “You first, man.” Hickey stood at the mouth of the tunnel, the breeze blowing the graying ponytail across the side of his face. Frank stepped into the twilight of the tunnel, letting his eyes adjust. Soon it would be dark, then so black, the darkness would be complete. He hadn’t been in the mine since he and Jimmy Tecopa explored its tunnels and shafts when they were kids, oblivious of the danger. That was before he got stuck in the chute, all those years ago. Now the tunnel seemed low and cramped and not nearly so big. They had come to the first turn much too soon. He remembered it as being a long way, but it couldn’t have been more than fifty feet from the entrance. Without the light behind them, the darkness closed in. Frank turned on the flashlight. Its beam illuminated a circle of light about eighteen inches in diameter if he kept it pointed close to the ground, and that’s where he kept it, following the narrow rails laid along the tunnel. There was a shaft after the turn, but first there was an ore car.

  “Slow down, man. I can’t see where I’m putting my feet.”

  “Just stay behind me. You’ll be all right.”

  “I said slow down.”

  Frank waited for Hickey to catch up, shining the light backward so he could see the floor of the tunnel. “What’s the deal with being afraid to go into tunnels?”

  Hickey stumbled in the darkness. “Who’s afraid? You see me here tripping around in the dark, right?”

  “Not you, man, those other guys. I thought the short guy, Jason, was going to cry.” Frank shined the light forward along the narrow tracks as Hickey shuffled forward, his footsteps muffled by the dust.

  “Shine the light back here, asshole.”

  He came up near Frank, breathing in shallow gasps. Frank could smell the sweet, acrid odor of pot from Hickey’s breath, mixed with the tangy smell of unwashed flesh.

  “Not that it’s any of your fucking business, but they were locked in a cellar when they were kids, so they don’t like dark places. And in case you think Roy ain’t up to coming in here if he has to, forget it, ’cause Roy ain’t afraid of a fucking thing.”

  Frank started down the tunnel, moving the flashlight beam from side to side. He stepped up the pace, pulling away from Hickey’s tentative stumbling. He had to stay far enough ahead of Hickey to see the rifle first. He’d grab it and cut the light. Then there would be two men in the darkness with guns, and things would even out. He’d have a chance.

  So far, he’d seen no sign of the head or the rifle, but clearly someone had been in the tunnel. There were occasional tracks in the soft dust, going both ways, in and out. The flashlight beam illuminated the back of a small ore car resting on the tracks. It was as he remembered it, an inverted pyramid with a flat bottom, only smaller. He and Jimmy had tried to push it along the track years ago, but it had been too heavy for a couple of kids. If someone used the mine as a hiding place, it was clearly the best place to stash something. His heart began to pound. Hickey would see him stop and be on him in a few steps. He’d have to be quick.

  He kept the flashlight low until he was almost on the ore car; then he swung the beam into the interior—rock and gravel, nothing more. He searched the ore car again. There was nothing—no head, no rifle. That damned Eddie had lied to him, and now he was one of the walking dead.

  “What’s that, man?”

  He and Jimmy had gone beyond the ore car, sidling along the narrow bit of floor to the left of the shaft. They had tossed rocks into the dark to see if it was bottomless. It wasn’t. They could hear the rocks hit, a long way down. Even the planks that had been laid down alongside the shaft to provide the footing from giving way at each step were crumbling into dust.

  “Hey, man, what’s that?”

  Frank cut the light. The darkness was total, suffocating. He began edging himself along the side of the tunnel, keeping close to wall. Bits of dirt trickled down the side and hit the floor.

  “I can hear you moving around, man. This isn’t going to do you no fucking good.”

  Frank held himself motionless. He hoped Hickey’s sense of direction was disoriented by the absence of light. Hickey had the Glock.

  “Turn the light back on, asshole. You ain’t going nowhere.”

  “It just went out. Hang on a minute. I’m trying to fix it.” Frank eased farther along the ledge. He placed his hands against the side of the tunnel for balance and bent his right leg, feeling out into the darkness with his left—nothing. A moment of giddiness rushed through him. The shaft was directly behind him.

  “Turn on the goddamned light, Eddie. If I come out of here by myself, you can forget about seeing daylight again.” The easy confidence had eroded. “Eddie?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m trying. It’s stuck. Just hang in there.” He’d moved along the ledge another couple of feet. Again he steadied himself and reached behind him with the searching foot. The toe of his boot hit something. There it was again, the floor of the tunnel. He was beyond the shaft. He stepped carefully back, breathing with relief. “I think I’ve got it. Just a minute. He turned the flashlight on again, pointing it down the tunnel, away from the ore car and Hickey. “Hey,
here it is, the head, right here.”

  “Give me some fucking light.”

  Frank stood across from Hickey, the shaft between them, invisible in the darkness. He turned back, holding the light up at face level. “This way, man.”

  “I can’t see shit. Lower the light.”

  Frank lowered the light to thigh level, the small beam swallowed in the darkness. “Just go along the side of the ore car. Walk toward the light.”

  “Shit.” Hickey’s voice rasped in the dark.

  Frank heard the crumbling sound, the sound of earth slipping as Hickey fell. He went silently. Frank imagined his arms flailing uselessly as he fell into darkness. He heard earth being dislodged and a grunt of pain as Hickey’s body encountered an uneven protrusion of rock before striking the bottom with a soft thud.

  He waited, his ears straining for sound. “Hickey?” he whispered into the enveloping blackness. “Hickey, you all right?” You all right? That was ludicrous. He was either dead or badly broken up. He shined the light down the shaft, the tiny beam throwing an ineffectual ray into the darkness. Hickey was in that darkness now, and for the moment, Frank was safe, but he felt removed and distant, as if he had fallen into the shaft with Hickey and lay smothered in a place where there was no light.