by Simon Toyne
“We need to cover the three main roads into town,” Andrews said, walking toward the middle of the square and taking Morgan with him. The stone wall prevented Cassidy from following and he lost the conversation. Andrews started pointing out of town and up at the roofs of the higher buildings and Cassidy felt a pang of sadness at finding himself excluded from the business of defending his own town. It was like being a kid again and not being asked to play ball.
He looked around at the black-uniformed men with their automatic weapons and body armor. Maybe he would see another dawn after all. And when the smoke cleared and the questions were inevitably asked, he would tell the truth and take whatever was coming to him. Saving the town was all that mattered to him now.
65
SOLOMON FOLLOWED THE LINE OF THE RISING ROAD, KEEPING AN EYE on the distant escarpment and watching the subtle shift in the landmarks. After about half a mile he came across a wooden sign planted in the ground next to a dirt track running up and away from the main road. The words painted on the sign were cracked and flaking but still legible—SPIRIT MOUNTAIN CAMPSITE. A smaller sign hung beneath on metal loops: “Closed for the summer—mid April to mid October.”
He could hear the rumble of Holly’s car behind him and waited until she came into view before easing his horse forward and up the softer ground of the track.
The camp was hidden around the curve of the hill, far enough back from the road to give campers the impression of being way out in the middle of nowhere, but close enough to the road so they could drive back to town in twenty minutes if they needed to. It was little more than a collection of traditional ramada shelters with woven branch roofs supported by mesquite poles. A mountain creek burbled nearby, swelled by the recent rainwater, and Solomon rode over so his horse could drink, passing fire pits ringed with white stones. He imagined faces gathered around them, eating food hot from the fire, listening to ghost stories while they stared into the flickering flames. James Coronado’s face had been one of them once.
He slipped from the horse’s back and let it walk over to the stream. He could see the whole valley from up here—the burned desert, the airfield, the town with its streetlights starting to wink on as the evening gloom deepened. The sun was sinking fast and casting long, deep shadows across the ground, as if night was leaking up from the earth to drown the day. The mountain range opposite was silhouetted against the sky, making the V-shaped niche stand out. Behind him he heard the rumble of the old engine struggle up the track and stop. It cut out and there was the squeal of a door hinge, then Holly walked over to where he was standing.
“This is where your husband came the night he died,” Solomon said.
Holly looked out at the view and around at the deserted campsite. There was nothing to indicate anyone had been here in months. “What makes you think that?”
Solomon pointed at the V in the distant mountain range. “That niche is in the background of every group photo hanging in his study. He’d been camping here since he was a kid. This was a safe place with happy memories for him, a private place—especially at this time of year when it’s out of season—the perfect place to retreat if he felt under threat.” He nodded down at the town nestling in the valley. “He could literally gaze down on his problems and put them in perspective.”
The horse snorted and tossed its head, clearly bothered by something. It pawed the ground and moved along the stream and away from the camp.
“What is it?” Holly asked.
“Not sure.” Solomon sniffed the air and followed the horse’s gaze. He took a step forward, reaching out with his predator’s senses for any sight, smell, or sound from whatever had spooked the horse. The shadows were deepening as the light leaked away, making figures appear in the folds of the rock face that stretched up behind the camp. He took another step. Saw movement in the shade of the farthest ramada. Sniffed the air again and caught something that made the hairs prickle on the back of his neck and arms.
Blood. But not fresh.
He followed the scent deeper into the camp to one of the fire pits. There was a pile of blackened ash in its center, whereas all the others were filled with mesquite straw and dry grass blown there by the summer winds. Someone had been here. They were still here. He could feel their eyes upon him. He looked up. Scanned the campsite, his body tensing. Night was falling fast and smothering what little light remained, turning the campsite into a place of darkness and deep shadows. He saw something, close and to his right. Movement. He turned to it and his eyes widened when he saw what had caused it.
Holly appeared next to him, following his gaze. “What is it?”
“Your husband did come here,” Solomon whispered, staring deep into the shade of the ramada. “He died here too.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he’s still here. I’m looking at him right now.”
The ghost of James Coronado stood in the dark crease of the shadow, confusion clouding his face.
Holly followed Solomon’s gaze. “I can’t see him,” she said, frustration and emotion fraying her words. “I can feel him, but I can’t see him.”
“He’s by the post at the edge of the shadow,” Solomon said. “He’s staring right at you.”
A sob burst out of her. “Tell me what he looks like.”
“Like he did in the photograph, though the color has gone from him. He looks a little like . . . He looks like me.”
Holly wiped a tear from her cheek and took a step toward him.
“He’s fading,” Solomon said. “When you move closer, he starts to melt away.”
Another sob. She walked faster.
“He’s going,” Solomon said, but she didn’t listen. She stepped into the shadow just as the ghost vanished entirely and hugged the air where he had been. She stood like that for long moments, rocking from side to side, whispering that she loved him, that she missed him, that she would give everything to see his face again.
Solomon moved over and put his hand on her shoulder. She turned to him and let her arms drop, realizing that whatever had been there was gone. She smiled a sad smile, then stepped forward and kissed him full on the lips and held him tight, as if, in her mind, she was holding somebody else.
“Thank you,” she said. “He wasn’t supposed to die. We were supposed to have a life together. I never got to say good-bye. This was closer than I thought I would get, so thank you for that.”
Solomon touched his lips and in the empty depths of his memory a truth floated up. He had not been kissed for a long time, not in the tender way she had kissed him, and the thought made him feel very alone. But there was something else in the kiss, something his mind identified and that made him catch his breath at the significance of it.
“Do you think this is where he died?” she asked, looking down at the ground.
“No,” Solomon said, sniffing the air and following the scent of blood with his nose to the edge of the fire pit. There was a stone missing from the ring that surrounded it. He surveyed the campsite but couldn’t see it. It could be anywhere: in the stream, hurled away down the side of the escarpment, tossed out of the window of a moving car. He didn’t need to find it to know what it had been used for. He crouched down and raked his fingers through the mixture of soft earth and dry straw by the missing stone. The ferrous smell of blood became stronger.
“This is where he died,” he said. “Right here. He was hit on the side of the head with that missing rock. That’s why he had a fractured right temporal. He was most likely hit from behind by a right-handed man. Be hard to hear someone creeping up with the sound of the wind and the hiss of the mountain stream. It’s dark here too.” He looked around at the place, rapidly sinking into shadow. “Whoever did it must have followed him, killed him here, then staged the crash back on the road.”
“Morgan.” Holly said it like she was cursing.
“Probably.”
Holly knelt beside him, ran her hand over the darker ground as if she was caressing it.
Solomon looked back at the place where the ghost had been then rose from the ground and walked over to it. Night had made the shadows inside the ramada solid now and he couldn’t see well enough to search the area. “Do you have a light?” he called over to Holly.
She moved over to him, pulling her phone from her pocket. She handed it to him and the bright screen cast a cold glow on the ground and the upright of the post where it stuck into the ground. There were marks in the wood, cut with a knife a long time back and darkened with age. Solomon rang his finger along it, tracing the letters—JC.
“This is where your husband used to sleep on his camping trips,” he said, imagining him working his name into the wood after lights out, leaving his mark here for the future. Solomon studied the ground and realized why the ghost had drawn his attention to this spot.
“The mesquite straw has been disturbed here,” he said, sweeping it aside with his hand. The ground beneath was not hard and compacted like the rest was.
“There’s something buried here,” he said, and started scooping the loose earth away with his hands.
66
CAPTAIN ANDREWS STOOD AT THE RED-PAINTED LINE OF THE CITY LIMITS, looking out at the blackened desert growing darker in the evening light.
Behind him his men were busy securing the area and taking up positions in the buildings by the road and in the old miners’ shacks that still stood. They all knew who the target was and the job they were here to do and the mood was focused and sharp and combat ready. They were setting up for an ambush, but they could stage a defense just as easily if that was required.
There were thirty-eight men in all, each armed with an AR-15 tactical carbine assault rifle with Trijicon 3 Dot tritium green night sight. There were two SDMs—squad-designated marksmen teams: two shooters, two spotters—with long-barreled M6A2s already in position, one by the side of the billboard, one in the gas station, both covering the road. No one was going to come down this highway without being lit up, and this was the road they would be coming in on. He knew that for a fact.
“You got a number for the crash investigators?” Andrews asked Morgan. “No need for them to get caught up in this.”
Morgan found the number of the NTSB coordinator on his phone and dialed it. When it started ringing, he handed it to Andrews.
“This is Captain Andrews, 27th DEA tactical arms unit,” he said when someone answered. “We have intel of a high-value target inbound to the town of Redemption, undoubtedly armed, possibly hostile. We have taken up defensive positions along the city-limit line and can see your work lights. For your own safety, I need you to pack up your team and ship out as fast as you can before they get here.”
Way out in the desert, Morgan saw the work lights blink off. A couple of minutes later, a Jeep and a van started heading back to town over the heat-deformed road.
Andrews raised his field glasses and lensed the desert again.
“Anything?” Morgan said.
“Not yet. Should be good for another half hour, I’d say.”
Morgan glanced back at the town. “In that case, I got a small problem maybe you could help me with.”
Andrews finished his sweep of the desert. “What problem?”
“Nothing a small team of your men can’t help me fix. I got a fugitive I need to bring in.”
“You know where he’s at?”
“Yeah,” Morgan nodded. “I got a pretty good idea.”
67
THE TIN BOX WAS BURIED ABOUT A FOOT BELOWGROUND, RIGHT UP AGAINST the mesquite pole. Solomon’s fingers scraped across the smooth surface of it and he dug down the sides, trying to pull it up and out of the hole, but the earth had been baked hard again in the short time it must have been here.
“Could you find me a stone or a stick?” he asked, and the ramada went dark as Holly removed the glow from her phone and used it to search around outside. It was full dark now with no moon yet to light up the night.
Solomon continued to dig in the dark, feeling around the tin with his fingers, until Holly returned with the light and a stick she had found in one of the fire pits. He used it to scrape the dirt from around the edges, loosening the earth until he could hook his fingers underneath and tug it free.
He laid it on the ground and brushed loose dirt from its surface. It had once contained shortbread but the rust-pitted surface suggested that it had been underground for a while, longer than a week. Solomon prized the lid off and they both leaned over to look inside.
It was filled with folded sheets of paper. Solomon took them out and saw other items below that were mottled with age and had likely been there as long as the tin had been buried. There was a small stack of baseball cards held together with a rubber band that had almost perished, a pocketknife that had rusted shut, and a hand-drawn map showing a rough chart of the campsite, an X marking where the tin had been. “Lost Cassidy Riches” was written across the top in childish handwriting.
“Seems your husband’s interest in the Cassidy legend started young,” Solomon said.
He placed the tin on the ground and unfolded the pages that had been on top. There were two folded sets of documents and Solomon opened the larger one first then held them under the light of Holly’s phone to read them.
“They’re not financial,” Holly said.
Solomon shook his head. “It’s a chemical analysis of groundwater samples taken from around the town.” He flicked through all five pages of it. “It recommends immediate discontinuation of all mine works and a major program of remedial water treatment to remove certain harmful reagents from the groundwater.” He turned to the last page where the chemicals were listed. “This report is dated almost a year ago, but Morgan said the mine was still producing.”
Holly shook her head. “I don’t think it is. Whenever Jim talked about the town finances, he never mentioned it as a source of income.”
Solomon nodded. “I walked past earlier and the place seemed abandoned.”
“So if they shut down the mine like this report recommended, why pretend they didn’t?”
“And why would your husband hide this document?”
Holly turned to him. “You think this was what they were after when they trashed my house?”
“Maybe. Let’s see what else is here.” He picked up the second piece of paper and unfolded it. It was a photocopy of an architect’s drawing outlining the footprint of the church. He spread it flat, looked at what was on it, and felt like the sun had come out from behind a cloud.
The elevation revealed shapes in the building’s design that had not been apparent at ground level. It showed the traditional cross-shaped foundation, but that wasn’t what had drawn Solomon’s attention. The plinth the altar cross stood upon was outlined in the drawings too. It was an I, the exact same shape and size as the mark he had on his arm.
He held the plans to the light so he could read what was written on them. It seemed to be a combination of notes from the original document and some new ones that had been added in green ink. The older notes detailed how the altar plinth had to be positioned above something called a resting stone. The new notes, written in James’s hand, posed two specific questions:
Is the resting stone where JC is buried?
Is the I the key to the lost Cassidy riches?
Solomon frowned. “Is Jack Cassidy not buried up in the cemetery?”
“Apparently not. Some treasure hunters broke into his tomb a few years back after reading that line in his memoir about taking the secret of the lost riches to his grave. They posted pictures online. It was empty.”
Solomon remembered the repaired cracks he’d seen on Cassidy’s tomb up at the cemetery. “So where is he buried?”
“Who knows? The mayor maybe, but if he does, he’s not saying.”
Solomon studied the drawings again. The resting stone was placed directly beneath the altar, the most sacred spot in the church. “I think your husband had an idea,” he said, pointing at the I shape in the center of
the plan of the church.
Holly looked at it. “Oh my God,” she said. “Take this.” She handed him her phone, then set off in the darkness. Solomon listened to her receding footsteps through the sounds of rushing water and thought he heard something else. His horse snorted over by the stream and the light came on in Holly’s car and whatever sound he had heard was gone. He turned his attention back to the documents, picking up the list of chemicals and studying it again, letting his teeming mind furnish him with more information about each one. He noticed a small mark by one of the chemicals on the list, made in the same green ink he had seen on the plans: TCE—trichloroethylene. His mind seized it and started peeling away at it, telling him the story of what it was:
Halocarbon, clear nonflammable liquid, no smell, initially used as an analgesic but now discontinued due to health worries, commonly used as an industrial solvent.
He focused harder, digging deeper into what it was. And in the torrent of information he saw something that explained exactly why James Coronado had taken this particular document and hidden it, and why they’d had to kill him to keep him quiet.
“Look at this—” Holly reappeared from the dark with an envelope in her hand. “It was the last thing Jim requisitioned from the archive before he died.”
Solomon took it and pulled the drawing from inside. It was a design for the altar itself showing detailed drawings of both the copper cross and the plinth it sat upon. Solomon studied the diagrams, the side elevations, the shapes they made, and he understood. “This is it,” he said. “This is my connection to your husband. I’m here to finish what he started.” He undid a button on his shirt and reached inside. “When I arrived here, the only possessions I had were the copy of Jack Cassidy’s memoir and this.” He held up the cross he wore around his neck.
“The altar cross?”
“That’s what I thought, designed by Jack Cassidy, just like he designed all of this, the church, the decor, even the plinth the cross rests on. ‘Not bad for a man who started life as a locksmith,’” he said, quoting what the mayor had said to him in the church.