“The Last Hope was quite a mine,” Tully said. “I didn’t expect anything like this.”
“Anything in particular you’re looking for?” Susan said.
“Maybe it’s just that I’ve always wanted my own little gold mine.”
“With your own little dam and your own little gold mine you’d be all set,” Susan said, clearly trying not to laugh.
“That’s about the way I figure it,” Tully said.
“What exactly do you have in mind for your gold mine?”
“Oh, something small enough that I could work it myself. I saw this bit on television once about an old guy, he must have been ninety-something, and he had this vein of gold he worked with just a pick. He’d whack out a few rocks and put them in a sack and carry them back to his cabin. He’d built this rock crusher out of some pipe and other stuff and he’d pound the rock down into a powder and then take his gold pan and wash out the gold. I said to myself, ‘Perfect!’”
“It doesn’t sound like a great life to me, living up in the mountains all alone and pounding rocks all day.”
“I was afraid of that,” Tully said. He and Susan walked over to the mine entrance. The explosion that closed it had brought down tons of rock. A few timbers protruded from the pile of rubble.
“Nobody’s going to get in there,” Tully said. “Unfortunately, the owners of a lot of mines in these mountains simply walked off and left them. Some kids found one a few years ago that still had boxes of old dynamite stacked inside. It was so old the sticks were sweating nitroglycerin. The kids had twenty-two-caliber rifles with them, and if they had fired one shot into that stack of dynamite, we’d have been lucky to find so much as a hair from any one of them. Somehow, one of them must have had a lick of sense, and they ended up reporting the mine back to us. We blew it up. It was quite a bit of fun, actually, but the blast shook practically every window in the county.”
Susan shook her head, whether it was in disbelief or simple amusement Tully couldn’t tell.
“I imagine the miners who lived in these cabins had a pretty rough time of it,” Tully said. “Particularly in the winter.”
“They had a terrific view, though.”
“It’s nice,” Tully said.
“We’d better head back,” Susan said. “You probably want those autopsies done tonight.”
Tully still didn’t like the image that popped into his head of Susan doing autopsies. It ruined some of his other images. “If you could just do the fence guy tonight, that would be great. We know the victims in the car were killed with automatic weapons, probably Uzis or Mac 10s.”
“I’ll at least do Mr. Holt,” Susan said. “How about you? What are you going to do?”
“I think we’ll stay up here. I was planning on camping out, but it’s gotten so cold it might even snow. I asked Mrs. Littlefield if it would be all right if we stayed in the old hotel. She said there are some old army cots in there.”
“That old hotel looks haunted,” Susan said. “I saw it on the way up here. Your secretary told me to watch for it.”
“Haunted? Maybe I’ll check with Ed at the service station. There might be a B and B in Famine.”
Chapter 14
Pap was sitting on a log next to the road, blowing into his cupped hands to warm them. Lurch was poking dowels into the Jeep’s bullet holes. A wrecker and its driver waited for the vehicle.
“I thought you’d taken off for good with Susan,” Pap said. “I knew I should have warned her about you.”
“You’re a good one to be warning anybody,” Tully said.
“He was a perfect gentleman at all times,” Susan said.
“He was? Obviously, I didn’t raise him right.”
“Or at all,” Tully said.
“That, too,” Pap said.
Tully pointed at Lurch. “This is Lurch, my Crime Scene Investigation Unit,” he said. “He also goes by the name of Byron Proctor.”
Lurch nodded at Susan.
She smiled and said, “Hi, Byron.”
Tully knew his Crime Scene Investigation Unit had to come as a shock to anyone seeing it for the first time. But Susan seemed to take it in stride.
“We going to head back to Blight or spend the night here?” Pap asked.
“I’d thought we might camp out. But it has turned pretty cold. I asked Mrs. Littlefield if we can sack out in the old hotel. She said sure.”
“The hotel? It’s probably haunted,” Pap said.
“If you believe all the stories, half the places in Blight County are haunted. You’re certainly welcome to stay with us, Susan.”
“In a haunted hotel? You’re just trying to make me think a night of autopsies is a pretty great thing. No, I’ve got to head back.”
“I brought along some homemade elk sausages to roast over a campfire,” Pap said. “Some fried potatoes and onions, too, and fresh rolls. Baked them myself.”
“You’re starting to make that haunted hotel sound pretty good,” Susan said. “But no, sorry, I’ve got to get back. It’s been nice hanging out with both of you. See you back in Blight City.”
She got in her Suburban and left.
Tully squatted down next to his CSI unit. “Figure out anything yet, Lurch?”
“Yup,” Lurch said. “It’s kind of odd. You see these bullet holes in the front door. The dowels in them all converge out toward where one shooter was standing. He shot up only the front seat instead of spraying the whole car.”
“I see that.”
“The other shooter, he sprayed bullets only into the back seat.”
“That’s weird,” Tully said. “Why didn’t both of them just spray the whole car and be done with it?”
“Don’t know. But look at this. Most of the dowels in the rear door seem to slant to a shooter who’s standing back in the woods but to the rear of the car. Pap didn’t find any signs somebody was standing over there, though. No ferns trampled down or anything.”
“I’m not going to guess, Lurch,” Tully said. “Tell me.”
Lurch stood up and opened the door. The dowels now pointed to where the second gunman had stood.
“The door was open!” Tully said.
“Right. Somebody must have shut it after the shooting stopped.”
“But why would it be open?” Tully wondered aloud. “If somebody was sitting in the right rear seat and jumped out, he would have been an easy target. But there’s no blood on the ground or in the rear seat.”
“I think you’re on to something,” Pap said.
“Let’s suppose the first shooter starts to spray the front seat,” Tully said, tugging on the corner of his mustache. “The second gunman holds back to let the person in the right rear seat open the door and dive out of the way. That gives Holt just enough time to go out the left rear door, before the second shooter sprays the rear seat. Holt’s got a gun out and is firing in all directions. By chance he hits someone standing back in the woods, maybe another potential shooter.”
“So why does the second shooter let the guy in the right rear seat get away?” Lurch said.
“Because the guy in the right rear seat set up the ambush,” Tully said.
Chapter 15
The wrecker driver hooked up the car and left. Tully and Pap got in the Explorer and started to drive to the entrance of the mine road. Suddenly Tully stopped, got out and walked back to Byron. “It’s getting kind of dark, Lurch. You got a flash on that camera of yours?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve got one more thing I’d like you to do before you head in. There’s a tiny spring a couple hundred yards up the road and the ground is wet there. There are a couple of shoe prints in the mud. One is going uphill and the other down. I didn’t think much about them until now, but I think each set was made by different people, one going uphill and the other down. You’ll be able to figure out Susan’s and my prints, because they’ll be a lot fresher. What I want to know is if those other prints were made by different people. I’m pretty sure
they were. If you’ve got some of that dental-stone powder, make a couple casts. Might turn out to be something.”
“You got it, boss.”
“I want you to do some tests on the car tomorrow.”
“Gee, Sheriff, I was hoping to have tomorrow off.”
“I guess that’s okay. What’s happening, a big date?” Tully almost laughed at the absurdity.
“Yeah, I haven’t seen my girlfriend all week.”
Tully stared at him, astonished. “You have a girlfriend?”
“Sure. I got her picture right here.” Lurch dug out his billfold, took out the photo and handed it to him.
Tully stared at it. “Good gosh! She’s beautiful, Lurch!”
“Yeah. She’s really smart, too. She’s a cytogeneticist at a Boise hospital.”
“A cyto—what?”
“A cytogeneticist. She studies chromosomes.”
Tully felt dazed. Lurch? “A girlfriend,” he said.
Chapter 16
At the entrance to the Last Hope Road, Pap asked, “You want to leave the crime-scene tape up?”
“I don’t know,” Tully said. “What do you think?”
“Won’t do much good around here. People want to look, they will, tape or not. Probably just attract attention.”
“That’s what I figure,” Tully said. He got out and stripped down all the tape. When he got back in, Pap said, “You got a heater in this thing? I’m about half froze.”
“Good heater. In ten minutes, you’ll be warm as toast.”
“By then I’ll be dead.”
“Better not be. I’ve had about all of that I can stand for one day.”
Fifteen minutes later, they were driving through Famine. “You want to eat here?” Tully asked.
“No,” the old man said. “I told you, I brought along some good elk sausages.”
“I just thought you might be too tired to cook.”
“Never too tired to cook elk sausages.”
Tully pulled out his cell phone and dialed. “Hello, Buck? Yeah, Tully here. Meet us at the old hotel on the Littlefield ranch. You and Pap and I are spending the night there. . . . I don’t care if it is haunted. You’re staying there with us!” He hung up.
Pap chuckled. “Wish all I had to worry about was ghosts.”
It was nearly dark when they reached the hotel. Tully could still make out among the dried-up weeds the stone foundations of the houses and other buildings that had been burned down. The hotel had been set off from the other houses, at the foot of a hill occupied by the town’s cemetery.
Pap got a small propane lantern out of his pack, lit it and hung it from a nail on the hotel’s porch. Tully left the Explorer’s lights shining down what once had been the town’s only street. He walked around in the light gathering scraps of boards for the campfire. When he had an armful, he hauled them back in front of the porch and dumped them. Pap, who had been exploring the inside of the hotel, hauled out three chairs.
“It ain’t too bad,” he informed Tully. “Dusty but sure a lot warmer than out here.”
“It’ll be warmer out here, too, as soon as I get this fire going,” Tully said. “You got any paper on you?”
“Paper, ha. I got this.” Pap unwrapped aluminum foil from around what at first appeared to be a large candy bar. “Fire starter,” he said. “Never go out in the wilds without your fire starter. Been many a man froze to death for not having the foresight to take along his fire starter. Let this be a lesson to you, Bo.”
“Give it here.”
Pap tossed him the stick. Tully stuck it under some of the smaller boards he had broken up and held a lighted match to it. As Tully said later, a person could have welded with that fire starter. Underwater.
“You make this fire starter yourself?” he asked the old man.
“Yeah. You want the recipe?”
“Maybe, but I’ll wait until after my mustache and eyebrows grow back.”
The lights of Buck’s Explorer came down the highway and turned off toward the hotel. He pulled up next to the other Explorer.
“I don’t like the idea of staying in this old hotel,” he told Tully as he walked up and held his hands over the fire. He glanced at Pap, who was squatted down cutting potatoes and onions into a large black skillet.
“Drive to Blight City if you want to,” Tully replied, “but I’ve got to have you back up here at six in the morning. We have a lot of people to talk to, and I personally don’t want to stay up here any longer than I have to.”
Buck watched Pap open a folding grill next to the fire and rake coals under it with a broken branch. “Whatcha cooking there, Pap?”
“Grilling some elk sausages, along with some fried potatoes and onions. Got some good rolls, too. Baked them myself.”
“What’s for dessert?”
“Whiskey. Brought along a fifth of Cabin Still.”
“I guess maybe I can stay at the hotel,” Buck said. “It’s just that you hear about this place being haunted enough times, it makes you wonder.”
“Buck, you ever hear of a ghost actually hurting somebody?” Pap asked.
“No.”
“Well, there you go.”
“Just seeing a ghost would be more than enough hurt as far as I’m concerned,” Buck said. “But I’m staying. You might just as well throw a couple of those sausages on for me, Pap.”
“I already did.”
After supper, which Tully thought was about as good as any he had ever eaten, the three of them sat around the fire and talked. Buck and Pap smoked cigars Pap had brought, and Tully joined them in drinking whiskey out of paper cups. Pap had always had a talent for living well. Tully was tired and had seen more than enough death for one day, but this was one of the better evenings he’d had in a long while.
He held up his cup of whiskey. “Happy birthday, Pap!”
“Your birthday, hunh?” Buck said. “Happy birthday, Pap.”
“Thanks, I guess. Bo give me these here murders as a present. All I can say is, you shouldn’t have, Bo, you shouldn’t have.”
Tully laughed. “I didn’t expect it to be quite this big of a present.”
“You got any idea who done ’em, Bo?” Buck asked.
“No. How about you, Pap?”
“I figure it has to have something to do with drugs, all the cash in their pockets, the L.A. guys.”
“You’re probably right,” Tully said. “Seems like just about everything that happens nowadays has something to do with drugs. It’s pretty clear the dead guys were set up. For some reason, they got themselves lured onto an old mining road.”
“I kind of like your idea about there being a fourth guy in the car,” Pap said. “I think you’re right about a fourth guy setting them up. Otherwise, there’s no reason the shooters didn’t spray the whole car with automatic fire. Holt could never have got out of the car otherwise.”
“That’s about the way I see it,” Tully said. “If that’s right, we’ve got two ambushers in the trees on the right side of the car, two guys killed in the car, another guy in the car who set the other guys up and who went out the right rear door. Then there’s a fourth guy back in the woods, somebody that the Holt fellow probably killed by chance.”
“Sounds about right to me,” Pap said. “As far as I could tell, there were only three four-wheel ATVs used by the ambushers to come and go on. That would be enough. It was probably one of the shooters at the Jeep who tracked Holt down and killed him. So that probably means one ATV was left behind for him. The guy in the car who lured the others in probably drove out on one ATV. One of the shooters drove the other ATV out with the dead guy strapped on behind.”
Buck shook his head. “Sounds to me like you fellas got this whole mess figured out.”
“Not quite,” Tully said.
After Pap and Tully had told a few ghost stories to get Buck in the proper mood to spend a night in a haunted hotel, they decided to turn in. Tully gave each of them a sleeping bag and kept one for h
imself. He told Buck to park both vehicles in a shed next to the hotel and close the doors.
“No point in advertising that we’re staying here,” he said. “Pour some water on the fire and kick dirt over it too, Buck.”
The three of them each selected a room on the second floor.
“Wait a minute,” Buck said. “Maybe we all should sleep in the same room.”
“Why is that?” Pap said.
“It might be warmer,” Buck said.
“Not warm enough that I want to listen to you snore all night,” Tully said.
“It was just a suggestion.”
Tully went into his room. Moonlight poured through the window. The only furnishing was an old army cot, but at least it was dry and inside. He rolled out his sleeping bag on the cot. He hung his coat on the door-knob and removed his boots and belt. He took off his wristwatch and put it on top of his boots, so that he could read it when he woke up at night. If he woke up. He doubted if he would wake up before morning, though, because it had been a long while since he had felt this tired. Finally, he stood up his flashlight next to his boots and placed his Colt Woodsman next to the flashlight.
About one-thirty in the morning, something awoke him. He glanced at his watch. It said 1:30 but he read it upside down and thought it said 7:00. The moonlight was still pouring in the window. Outside it was bright as day, and he thought it was morning. Then he heard someone moving in the hallway. He thought it was probably Pap or Buck, but to be on the safe side he stuck the Colt Woodsman in the waistband at the back of his pants. He opened the door and stepped out. A tall, slender figure was standing right in front of him. Tully blurted out, “Up against the wall!” Thinking about it later, he remembered that he might also have blurted out a twelve-letter obscenity very much against department policy. Fortunately, the figure was startled even worse than Tully. It turned and, without being told, spread its hands up against the wall, apparently having had previous experience in assuming the position. Tully reached back for the Colt. It was gone! He had sucked in his gut at the moment of seeing the figure and the Colt had slipped down into the crotch of his boxer shorts. He had forgotten all about the diet and the lost twenty pounds. “Don’t look back!” he told the figure. He then unzipped the fly of his pants and reached in to get hold of the gun. He worried about touching the trigger and hoped he had left the safety on. At that moment the person looked back. He shouted out his own twelve-letter obscenity, turned and ran down the stairs.
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