by Kathi Daley
“Are you okay?” I heard Cass call from a distance.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I answered. “I’m just taking it slowly, as you suggested.”
“Remember, once you feel the rope pull indicating it is at the end, turn around and come back.”
“I will.”
I took a deep breath and continued, wondering why on earth I’d thought this was a good idea in the first place. When I was up top, it didn’t seem like a big deal to take a quick peek, but now that I was down here, all I could think about were cave-ins, spiders, bats, and cave monsters.
I continued to take each step slowly and deliberately, as Cass suggested. I couldn’t help but imagine spiders in my hair, so it was with a breath of relief that I turned around after coming to the end of the rope and heading back toward the opening where Cass was waiting for me.
“How are you doing?” he asked when I arrived.
“I’m fine,” I lied in an attempt to appear braver than I actually was. “It’s sort of spooky, and my imagination is going crazy even without a hallucinogen, but I’ll be fine.”
“Okay, head in the other direction. When you get back to the center, I’ll pull you up.”
“Okay. I’m going now.”
As I had before, I took one step and then another. Slowly. Methodically. I realized as I scooted along that a scared kid would most likely have not been as careful. When I came to a low hanging section of the ceiling, I wondered if Austin had hit his head on it while hurrying to escape the enemy who existed only in his imagination. When I stepped down only to find nothing but air, I screamed.
“Callie! Are you okay?” Cass called out.
“I’m fine.” Luckily, I’d been able to grab onto a ledge on the wall next to me and hadn’t fallen. “We’re out of floor, however. There’s a drop-off.”
“How deep?”
I shone my flashlight down into the dark cavern. “Deep. I can’t see the bottom.” I looked around. “Wait. There’s a ladder on the far wall.”
“A ladder?”
I nodded, even though there was no way he could see me. “A steel ladder that’s bolted to the rock. I guess whoever used to work this mine put it there. How much rope do I have left?”
“About half.”
“Okay. I’m going down. If I don’t reach the bottom before I reach the end of the rope, I’ll come back up.”
“Be careful. Who knows what’s down there.”
“I’ll go slowly. One rung at a time.”
I took a deep breath and scooted around the narrow ledge behind the hole until I could access the ladder. I took a deep breath, got into position, and started down. I could feel the weakness in my left hand. It was shaking and throbbing as I climbed down the ladder. Perhaps this hadn’t been a good idea after all. “Okay,” I called up. I wasn’t even sure Cass could still hear me since I was literally down in a hole. “I’m at the end of the rope. Hang on.” I clicked my flashlight on and shone it into the darkness. The floor was about twenty feet below my current location, which was about a hundred feet down the hole, which had widened considerably as I climbed down, and on the floor was a skeleton. I was pretty sure I’d just found Austin Brady.
Chapter 14
“Does Cass think the skeleton in the mine might actually belong to Austin Brady?” Tom asked me later that evening after Cass had dropped me back at the house.
“He isn’t sure. It seems to fit the story we’ve come up with, but there was no way to tell simply by looking at the bones. After Cass dropped me off, he was planning to go back to the mine. He has a team coming to remove the bones and any evidence they find.”
“How is a whole team going to get into the shaft if you could barely squeeze through?” Gracie asked.
I shrugged. “The passage I took to the left of where I entered was a good passage. Even an adult could walk erect. It makes sense that there’s a regular mine entrance somewhere. Maybe they’ll access the tunnel that way. The opening we found wasn’t put there as an entrance. I suspect it was originally an air vent, which is why it was small, but it makes sense to take the bones out that way, so I guess they’ll make the hole larger. Either that or they’ll just send one person with climbing experience in to gather the bones and whatever else they find.”
“Did you notice anything that could help identify the body?” Tom asked. “Clothes, perhaps.”
“No. It was dark, and all I could see were bones. They’ve been down there for a long time, and I heard all sorts of scampering around when I was down in the mine. I’m sure there are scavengers of some sort. Mice. Maybe rats or even larger animals who take refuge in the mine from the weather.”
“That poor boy. What a terrible way to die.” Gracie wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.
“It really is a tragedy whether the bones belong to Austin or some other child. I doubt the child survived the fall, so death would have come quickly, but if the body in the mine does belong to Austin and the story Larry told me is true, how awful that he spent his final moments in terror.”
“I’m surprised the search and rescue team didn’t think to look in the mine when the boy went missing,” Tom said.
“The entrance to the mine is on the other side of the mountain, miles and miles from where Austin disappeared. I’m sure it never occurred to them that he might have found another way in. Not only was the opening very small, but it was up on a ledge, and it was hidden behind shrubbery. If not for my idea that he might have accessed the mine to hide, there was no way I would have thought to look there.” I glanced at Alastair. “Actually, if not for Alastair and the magazine he knocked into my path, I would never have known about the mine, and without the map, I certainly would never have known the extent of the mine or the fact that shafts were running through that entire mountain.”
Gracie smiled at Alastair, who must have heard us talking about him since he jumped up onto her lap and began to purr.
Tom took a sip of his coffee. “So, I guess Cass is having the bones looked at by an expert.”
“I guess. He didn’t specify what the plan was once they retrieved them from the bottom of that pit, but I’m sure his first order of business will be to identify them. Of course, even if he can do that, I’m not sure where he goes from there. If Austin died from the fall, then I suppose Colin is liable to a point for giving him the hallucinogen, but if he won’t admit to doing that, it really is his word against Larry’s at this point.”
“Do you think any of the other boys knew what happened to Austin, assuming, of course, the bones in the mine belong to him?” Tom asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I doubt it. It seems that if Austin ran off and then ended up in the bottom of that shaft, there is no way the others would know what happened.”
“You said you suspected that Austin had been there before,” Tom reminded me.
“Yes. If he did head there, my assumption is that he’d been there at least once before. Probably more than once if he was able to find his way in the dark. Plus, there’s the little ledge that someone chiseled out to provide access back out of the small opening. Someone had been there before.”
“So you’re saying that Austin found this totally cool mine, and he never told any of his friends about it?” Tom asked. “That seems very unlikely.”
Tom was right. If Austin had found the tunnel in the mountain, he would have shown it to his friends. Even if none of the adults who responded to the missing child call knew about the opening to the mine located near Logan Pond, which would have provided them with a reason to look there, the other boys must have known, assuming, of course, Austin had found the mine as I suspected, at some point before he’d died. Had the boys known Austin’s fate and lied about it?
“It does seem as if Austin would have told the others if he’d found something as cool as access to a boarded-up mine.” I looked at Tom. “You’re absolutely right. The other boys must have known about the entrance, and one of them would have eventually thought to look th
ere. If they did look in the mine and found Austin’s body, why wouldn’t they have said anything? His poor parents must have been frantic to find him.”
“Maybe there’s more to the story,” Aunt Gracie suggested. “Something that would cause all the boys to make a pact to never tell anyone what they knew.”
I supposed that might be the case as well, but what possible reason could the boys have had to keep such a huge secret when one of their friends was missing and the entire town was looking for him?
Chapter 15
Friday
Friday mornings meant a meeting with Dex to turn in my column for the following week, as well as any other assignments I’d worked on during the week. This week, in addition to my column, I had a second article about the spaghetti dinner and raffle to benefit cancer research, a second article about the new wellness center now that I’d actually taken one of their classes, a short human interest piece about the athlete of the month from the local high school, and an announcement that the Barfield Family had kittens in need of a new home.
The article I’d planned to write had to do with my journey to find the truth, but if the skeleton in the mine did turn out to be Austin Brady’s remains, then I’d need to switch gears and lead in with the big reveal. Unfortunately, there was a lot that was still unknown, and my column normally ran on Mondays, so I planned to talk things over with Dex. I supposed if I could get confirmation on the identity of the remains, I could write the article tomorrow, and Dex could have it formatted on Sunday.
As far as I knew, the only people who knew about the remains Cass and I had found were the police team who recovered the remains, the medical examiner, Tom and Gracie, and, of course, Alastair and me. Cass had wanted to keep the whole thing under wraps, but I needed to discuss it with Dex.
“Hey, Dex,” I said after sitting down across the desk from him. “I have news.”
“What sort of news?”
“We may have found Austin Brady’s remains.”
Dex’s mouth fell open. “What? Really?”
“Cass and I took a look around in the area closest to where the boys camped that spring. I’d found a magazine with a map of mines in the area, and was curious, so I brought it with me. It occurred to me that if Austin had been running for his life, he might have hidden in a location he knew about, where he was certain the large monster chasing him couldn’t get to him.”
“I don’t remember there being any mine entrances close to Logan Pond.”
“There aren’t,” I confirmed, “but the mine system runs all through the red rock mountain to the northeast of the camping spot. It occurred to me that even though the entrance to the mine is on the other side of the mountain, which is miles and miles from where the boys camped, there might have been another entrance. A smaller hole created as an air vent.”
His brows shot up. “And you found it?”
I nodded. “I climbed in yesterday while Cass held onto the rope I was tied to so I wouldn’t fall or get lost. I found a shaft that goes straight down more than a hundred feet. There was a ladder secured to one wall of the shaft, which I climbed down. I couldn’t get all the way down, but I made it far enough to see the bottom. When I shone my flashlight into the hole, I saw bones. Human bones. Child size bones.”
“Oh, God.”
“I don’t know for certain that the bones belong to Austin. Cass took a team out to the mine yesterday to retrieve what was there. I know he was going to attempt to have the bones identified. I’m not sure where he is in the process, so I don’t know if he’s been successful or not. I texted him earlier and asked him to call me when he could, but I haven’t heard from him.”
“So you think that when Austin began to hallucinate, he headed toward the mine he’d previously found, knowing it would be a good place to hide?”
“That’s my theory.”
“If that were true and he’d found the mine at some point in the past, he must have known about the mineshaft. Why wouldn’t he avoid it?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “He was having hallucinations. Who knows what he might have seen that could have caused him to run, forgetting all about the huge hole in front of him. He may have gotten turned around and thought he was heading in the other direction, which provided clear access and a wide path with high ceilings.”
Dex sat back in his chair. He looked pale. I was afraid he was going to pass out or have a heart attack or something, but after a moment, his color began to return. He still didn’t say anything, so I asked the question which was on my mind.
“I was talking about this with Tom and Gracie last night, and Tom pointed out that if Austin had found an opening to a mine and access to such a cool adventure, he would have mentioned it to his friends. Our theory is that Austin had been to the mine in the past. I know the two of you were friends. Did he ever mention the mine to you?”
He slowly shook his head. “He didn’t mention that he’d found an access point, but I did know he was interested in the mines in the area. He came across a magazine that had an article about the mines in Colorado as well as a map of the mine systems the previous fall. He was really interested in the subject, so Austin, Josh, and I hitched a ride around the mountain to where the original entrance to the mine is located. The entrance was fenced off, but we managed to get inside. Once we were inside, we found that there’d been a cave-in about fifty feet in, and access was impossible. I remember Josh and I were disappointed, but we took the whole thing with a grain of salt, Austin, however, was determined to find a way in and announced to Josh and me that he was going to keep looking. This was late fall, and the first big snow came not long after. I guess Austin must have continued his search once spring arrived, and the snow melted. It sounds like he was successful in his search, but if he did find the opening before that trip, he never mentioned it to me.”
“When I spoke to Toby, he mentioned that after they arrived, he and Larry went fishing, but Josh and Austin took off for a while. I wonder if the reason they took off was because Austin was showing Josh the mine entrance.”
“Maybe. Josh and Austin were close. In fact, the two of them were best friends, while the rest of us were just part of the gang. But if Austin did show Josh the opening, don’t you think Josh would have thought to look there when Austin went missing?” Dex asked.
“Maybe he did. Maybe he even climbed inside and found Austin dead.”
“Why wouldn’t he tell the police?” he asked.
“I don’t suppose we can ever know for certain why he did or didn’t tell what he knew if, in fact, he did know what had happened to Austin, but maybe he confronted Colin, and Colin threatened him, or maybe Colin managed to convince him that they’d all be in trouble if the adults found out what had happened. Unfortunately, Josh and Austin are both dead, so we can’t ask them, and it’s beginning to look as if Colin is the bad guy in this story, so I doubt he’ll talk. Bobby is dead, Larry was the new kid, and it sounds like he was mostly kept in the dark, and Toby was just a baby in the eyes of the others, so they wouldn’t have looped him in.”
“So how can we prove any of this?” Dex asked.
I slowly shook my head. “I really don’t know. The reality is that at this point, all we have is a pretty good story. We don’t even know that any of it is true. Larry said that Colin drugged Austin, but unless Colin confesses to doing so, we can’t prove that. Even if the bones are proven to belong to Austin, all Colin has to say is that Austin got mad about something, wandered off, and ended up in the bottom of a mineshaft. If he does decide to employ that strategy, his assertion that the whole thing was just some huge accident can never be proven otherwise.”
“If Colin drugging Austin did lead to his death, he should be held accountable, but keep in mind that the guy was thirteen,” Dex reminded me. “I’m sure he really did intend the whole thing to just be some big prank. As a group, we were big on pranks. I have to believe that Colin had no idea what would happen, and if he did get the others to lie for hi
m, it was probably just because he was terrified.”
“Maybe. And maybe a thirteen-year-old’s liability in a case such as this would be limited. But what if he killed Bobby? Now. As an adult? What if Bobby decided he could no longer keep the secret, and Colin killed him to keep him quiet?”
Dex frowned. “Do you think that is what’s going on?”
I lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. I think it’s possible. But to be honest, I don’t know Colin, and the only thing I have to go on when it comes to judging his potential for violence is the opinion of others.” I laid a hand over Dex’s. “Don’t worry. Cass will figure this out. I guess all we can do is to cooperate when needed.”
“Let’s write the article identifying the bones as belonging to Austin, so we have it ready. I won’t print it until Cass can confirm this fact, and he gives me the okay to make the information public.”
I nodded. “Okay. Let’s do it together. The piece can be about searching for answers, and finally finding the truth of what happened to Austin Brady, but it can also be about his life. Who he was before he died. Why his life mattered.”
Dex smiled a sad little half-smile. “Okay. We’ll write it together. No matter how this turns out, I welcome the opportunity to remember a friend who left us much too soon.”
Chapter 16
After I finished chatting with Dex, I headed out to the bullpen where the desk I’d been assigned, but rarely used was located. I considered calling Toby. I knew he’d be interested in the fact that we may very well have found Austin’s bones, and of everyone involved, other than Dex, of course, he was the member of the old gang that I knew best. I did, however, hate to say anything to anyone without talking to Cass, so I called him instead.
“Any news?” I asked.
“The medical examiner is still working with the bones to confirm them as having belonged to Austin Brady, but he has confirmed that the bones belonged to a male child around twelve or thirteen who matches the approximate height of Austin. I’m hoping to have more by the end of the day.”