“Has to be that way,” Dave said.
Pap returned from his snipping and put the bolt cutter in the back of the Explorer. He was smiling.
Ernie Thorpe came over.
“It’s almost midnight,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Dave. “The new entrance is just over on the other side of these ATVs. Let’s go.”
Tully didn’t like the idea of being the point man through the narrow tunnel, but he couldn’t very well send anyone else. There had been no volunteers. Pap would have been delighted to go first, of course, but Tully knew he would never hear the end of it if he let him.
“Herb, you stay outside and guard the entrance. We don’t want to get trapped in there.”
“My pleasure, boss.”
Dave and Tully lifted the piece of shale away from the opening of the new tunnel. It was surprisingly light. Tully suspected it wasn’t rock at all, but made of some kind of artificial substance that could be easily moved. He peeked over the edge. Below him was a shallow pit that had been blasted out of the rock. The tunnel extended at a downward slant from the pit to the old mine. He lowered himself into the pit and peered into the tunnel. It was dark from one end to the other. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he could make out a faint glow of light at the far end.
He took a deep breath and started crawling through the tunnel on his hands and knees, the 9 mm Glock tucked back in its holster. Someone had laid several thicknesses of old carpet along the floor of the tunnel, which made the crawling a good deal less painful. The tunnel opened onto the floor of the mine. He peeked around the edge of the opening. Far off down the mine he could see a light and hear the murmur of voices. He could make out rusted rails for ore cars still in place on the floor of the mine. As he and Dave had suspected, the old timbers were now accompanied by new timbers as far as he could see. Tully now knew the reason for the brief logging operation on Littlefield land.
He slid out into the mine. He directed his flashlight back into the tunnel and blinked it once. He soon heard the scuffling sounds of crawling.
Dave was first out. The others emerged one by one, Pap bringing up the rear.
“Just like old times,” Pap whispered.
Tully knew there was a big smile on his face, even though he couldn’t see it.
“No killing unless absolutely necessary,” he whispered back.
Ernie Thorpe whispered, “Man, this is spooky.”
Chet Mason whispered, “I can smell the marijuana from here. You could get high just breathing the air.”
“I don’t want any of you high,” Tully said. “Everybody walk quietly. The closer we get to the light, the better we’ll be able to see. With any luck, we’ll take them all by surprise, and there won’t be any shooting.”
They moved off down the mine, three in front and three behind. The murmur of the voices ahead grew louder. There was an occasional laugh. Soon they could make out words. Two men were talking about fishing.
Tully heard the words “. . . maggots mostly.” The warmth and humidity increased steadily. Water drizzled down from overhead.
As they neared the light, they could make out a long line of tables containing hundreds of green plastic garden pots. The pots were empty. Beyond the empty pots, a heavy clear plastic curtain had been drawn between the rock walls. Shadowy figures could be seen moving about behind the curtain.
Tully and his deputies moved slowly along the tables, bent over as low as they could stand it. From time to time, Tully heard a moan from them. He felt like moaning himself. When at last he reached the plastic curtain, he stuck his Glock into a gap at one side and flung it open. He stepped into the light.
Chapter 50
A couple dozen men and women, residents of Famine, turned and stared at him. Tully in fact had seen some of them before, gray, flabby men and women, on the streets and in the stores and certainly at Ed’s gas station, getting five gallons of gas in their tanks and their windows washed. Some of them wore bib overalls. Most were dressed in jeans. All of them wore T-shirts splotched with sweat. Tully recognized one man because of his earflap cap. He seemed to be supervising the work. Large pots of marijuana, some with plants reaching nearly to the rock ceiling, covered the tables stretching off into the distance. Some of the workers were cutting down plants, others were placing them in a contraption that compressed the stalks and leaves into tight bales and then wrapped them in heavy plastic sheets.
Lister Scragg leaned against a rock wall, a shotgun hanging by a sling from his shoulder. A cigarette dangled from the bottom lip of his gaping mouth. Old
Lucas, wearing his earflap cap even in the warmth of the mine, stood across from him, holding a rifle.
“Police!” Tully shouted. “Get your hands up!”
The workers continued to stare at Tully. No hands went up.
Pap, Dave and the deputies stormed in. Lister dropped behind a table, the weapon coming off his shoulder. An instant later, several plants flew apart and the rocks above Tully’s head exploded as Lister fired from below the table. Workers dropped to the floor screaming and swearing as they crawled under the tables. Pap fired his shotgun into the rocks behind Lister’s head. The rocks sprayed like shrapnel under the table. Lister staggered up and backwards, holding the bloody side of his head with one hand. He no longer held the weapon.
“Don’t shoot!” he screeched. “Don’t shoot! I been hit.”
Pap had his finger on the trigger.
“Stop!” cried Tully.
Pap moved his finger reluctantly off the trigger.
Tully was sweeping his Glock back and forth, watching for anyone who came up with a weapon.
“This is the Sheriff of Blight County,” Tully yelled. “Everybody in here is under arrest! Come out from under the tables with your hands up! Anyone holding a weapon will be shot!”
Bit by bit the workers, dazed and sullen, emerged from under the tables. Some of the women cried. They looked like housewives and farm workers, their hair wrapped in bandanas or covered with old felt hats or fits-all caps. Most of the men seemed older, their bellies swelling out their overalls, their jaws covered with gray stubble. Several had the brown juice of chewing tobacco dribbling down their chins. No one in the crowd appeared to be a prosperous drug dealer.
Brian Pugh moved behind one of the tables, his shotgun at the ready. Holding the gun in one hand, he grabbed Lister by the arm and jerked him back to where Tully was standing. Dave slid behind the table and picked up the shotgun.
Except for the forest of marijuana plants undergoing harvest, Tully felt as if he had interrupted a Famine bingo party.
The room fell into a dazed silence, with only the sound of water dripping and dribbling from the rock ceiling. Then, off in the distant darkness of the tunnel, Tully heard someone running deeper into the mine. A lot of good that will do him, he thought.
Then Lister blurted out, “Wasn’t me shot those guys down on the road. It was them. I’m not taking the fall for them.”
“Who’s them?”
“Them!” He pointed off down the mine with a bloody hand.
What had bothered Tully since they had entered the mine suddenly came to him. The bales of marijuana both here and at the hotel were too big to go through the narrow entrance tunnel!
“Quick, Lister, and you’d better not lie or I’ll turn you over to Pap.”
Pap grinned his evil grin at Lister.
“What?” cried Lister.
“Is there another exit from the mine?”
“Sure. Down there a couple hundred yards or so. Comes out down on the dam’s reservoir.”
“Brian, Chet, Ernie!” Tully yelled. “You three search these characters here. If you find a weapon on someone, cuff him. Those with IDs, get the names and addresses and put them on the bus and take them home. Those without IDs go to jail. And cuff the guy with the earflap cap. I want him taken in. Take those rubber boots off of him, too, and sack them up as evidence.”
“You got it, boss,” Chet
said. “How about this character?” He indicated Lister.
“Cuff him and take him to my vehicle. Have the medics wipe some of the blood off of him. Makes us look bad.”
The faint sounds of sirens drifted into the mine.
“I ain’t going down for this,” Lister said.
“We’ll talk, Lister,” Tully told him, “but not right now.”
Pap and Dave were already in the small entrance tunnel. Tully scrambled through after them.
As expected, the ATVs and the old school bus were still there. “You need help?” Herb yelled at them.
“No, we got it covered,” Tully shouted back at him. “Keep guarding the entrance.”
He grabbed a rifle and handed it to Pap, who threw his shotgun on the ground. Tully grabbed a portable spotlight and a portable bullhorn out of the Explorer.
The three of them ran down over the bank toward the reservoir. When they came to where the rock walls dropped sharply down into the canyon, they stopped and sat down. The water was low, far down on the dam.
Pap was wheezing. “Okay if I build myself a smoke?”
“Go ahead,” Tully said. “If you can build it and still hold a rifle.”
“Sure. I could roll a cigarette paper with my toes if I had to.”
It seemed colder close to the reservoir, particularly after the warmth of the mine. Tully turned up the collar on his jacket.
“Just exactly what are we supposed to be looking for?” Dave said.
“If I’m not mistaken,” Tully said, “any minute now three or four men are going to come paddling a rubber raft out from the side of this cliff. Or maybe they’ll have a motor on it.”
“A raft?” Dave said. “How do they get through a rock wall?”
“I guess what happened was, when the dam was put in, the pressure of the water backing up must have burst through the rock into a lower tunnel of the mine. It would have hollowed out kind of a cave. During the spring and summer, when the dam’s full, the cave would be underwater. But this time of year, after the summer drought, the lake drops down to the cave level and they can run a boat or raft back in there.”
Pap said, “I kind of remember that blowout now. I think there was even something in the paper about it.” He blew a stream of smoke out into the cold night air. Tully shuddered. For a moment, a cigarette seemed almost appealing. Pap was a bad influence.
“They probably got a dock and everything back in that cave,” Dave said. “Pretty slick.”
“It is,” Tully said. “I suspect they have the dock right below the shaft that goes to the lower level. Then all they have to do is winch the bales of marijuana down to the dock and load them onto a boat or raft.”
Pap said, “This probably explains the scuba gear at the hotel, too. When the water’s too high for a boat or raft, a couple of fellas in scuba outfits can drag the bales out underwater.”
“Sounds about right to me,” Tully said.
He motioned for silence. There had been an increase in watery sounds coming up from below. The three men leaned forward so that they could see better over the rock edge.
Then, as if by magic, a large rubber raft suddenly emerged from the side of the cliff. Tully hit it with a beam from the spotlight. Three men were in the raft, two in front paddling and one in back. The one in back held a weapon of some kind.
Tully handed the bullhorn to Pap.
“Pap Tully speaking.” His voice boomed up and down the canyon. “The first quick move you fellas make will be your last. You there in the back, very slow and careful, lay that weapon in the bottom of the raft.”
The man swung his weapon up toward the sound of Pap’s voice.
Lem Scragg yelled from the front of the raft, “Throw down that gun, you fool, or he’ll kill us all!”
The man with the weapon threw it to the floor of the raft.
“Shucks,” Pap said. “It’s a terrible thing when a man gets such a reputation.”
“I know how disappointed you are,” Tully said, taking back the bullhorn.
“Okay, now,” he boomed through it, “I want you fellows to paddle up to where the road cuts down to the reservoir. And don’t even accidentally touch a gun with so much as your toe, because you won’t hear the shot that kills you.”
The men started paddling.
“You okay, Pap?” Tully asked.
“I’m great, Bo. If this is still my birthday party, it’s the best I ever had!”
“I’m glad. Consider it a thoughtful gift. As opposed to an expensive one. Now, can you walk along the road and keep these guys covered?”
“You bet.”
“In that case, Dave and I will go get some vehicles and meet you down there.”
Two Idaho State Police cruisers followed them down the road to the water. The ISP guys took the men out of the raft and cuffed them. As Tully expected, two of the men were the same two he had met at Littlefield’s ranch, Robert Mitchell and Harry Kincaid. The man who had swung the weapon up at them had been Kincaid.
The State Police loaded the Littlefield crew into their vehicles. Tully carefully collected two Uzis from the bottom of the raft. He was pretty sure both guns would contain the fingerprints of Mitchell and Kincaid. The guns would match the casings used in the killings at the car.
Tully handcuffed Lem and put him in the back of his Explorer. He drove back to the parking lot at the new tunnel entrance. His deputies had all the workers out of the mine and standing in the parking lot. Some of the women were still crying. Tully felt sorry for them.
Ernie Thorpe walked over to the Explorer. “They all had ID of some kind, Bo. You count a library card as ID, don’t you?”
“It’s one of the best, Ernie. Load them all onto the bus and take them to their homes. We don’t have room in the jail for practically a whole town. I doubt they’ll be running off.”
Ernie told the group they were going back to their homes in Famine. Some of the women stopped crying, but otherwise the announcement didn’t provoke any outburst of joy. That’s the problem with arresting folks who live in Famine, Tully thought.
Ernie brought Lister over and put him in the back seat of Tully’s Explorer with Lem. One of the medics had bandaged up the rock cuts on his head. The top of his shirt was dark with blood and he still seemed a bit dazed.
Tully told Herb to escort the man in the earflap cap back to jail. “I’ll talk to him in the morning.”
He drove down the Last Hope Mine Road to the spot the berm had once occupied. Tully parked the car in nearly the same place where the Jeep Grand Cherokee had been shot up.
“Here’s the way I think the shooting went down,” Tully said. “I figure you and Lister were the shooters. One of you stood over there and the other one stood there. The Jeep comes up and stops at the berm. You spray automatic fire into the front seat, Lem.”
“Close, but not close enough,” Lem said.
“Lister has to wait,” Tully went on, “because the guy who is setting them up is sitting on the right in the back seat. This guy opens the door and rolls out of the car. Lister then blasts the back seat. But because Lister hesitated, the guy in the left back seat, Holt, manages to get out. He’s shooting wildly and manages to hit someone standing back in the woods. Holt then takes off running and is tracked down and shot by either you or Lister.”
Lister shook his head, very gently, as if he had a terrible headache. Lem laughed.
“That is a remarkable piece of crime deduction,” Lem said. “Basically, you got it right. But there are a couple of things wrong with it. First of all, Lister and me weren’t the shooters.”
“Easy for you to say,” Tully said.
“I ain’t going down for no murders,” Lister whined.
“We were home that night,” Lem went on. “But we knew all about the setup, okay? If we’d tried to stop it, they would have shot us. Not that we had any such foolish intention. Right, Lister?”
“Right.”
“All you got to do is check the fingerprin
ts on the Uzis in the boat,” Lem said. “The only prints you find on them will be those of the guys that used them, Mitchell and Kincaid. They wouldn’t let anybody else touch those guns, not even Lucas. The bullets in the bodies will match up with the Uzis.”
Lem was almost cordial, giving the impression his whole purpose in life was to ingratiate himself with the sheriff. Thank goodness for sociopaths, Tully thought.
“Lucas?” he said. “You mean the guy in the earflap cap who sometimes works at the gas station for Ed Grange?”
“I don’t know if ‘work’ is the right word. But Lucas Kincaid is one mean guy. Even Bob and Harry are scared of him.”
“Lucas Kincaid?”
“Yeah, he’s Harry’s old man. He’s a terrific tracker.”
“He’s the guy who tracked down Holt and killed him?” Tully said.
“He’s the one. He did a lot of trapping, shooting coyotes for their pelts, that sort of stuff, until Grange started paying him a lot better money.”
“So Mitchell and Harry Kincaid handle the marketing?”
“Mitchell does, anyway. I think Harry mostly kills people.”
“So who shot Buck?”
“Lucas Kincaid. Shot him with his coyote gun. I think it’s a two-twenty-three. The guy you found dead over Dad’s fence emptied his gun and then threw it away. Lucas found it. It’s a nice pearl-handled forty-five.”
“We’ve already got it and the coyote gun. So who was the guy standing back in the woods?”
“Guess,” said Lem.
“Vern Littlefield,” Tully said.
“You got it! I don’t think anybody knew he was standing back in there. He apparently snuck out to see for himself how this thing was going to go down. They found him after the shooting.”
“What did you do with the body?”
“We, me and Lister, didn’t do anything with the body. We weren’t there. I think Harry and his dad hauled it away. But there are a lot of prospect holes around. Be tough to find the one they dropped Vern into. And a whole lot tougher to get him out.”
“Littlefield’s vehicle would have still been at the mine,” Tully said.
The Blight Way Page 18