Jake was going nuts. He sniffed up the side of the sump wall, came back down, sniffed up again. He pulled furiously on his thick leash. It was all Arch could do to restrain him.
Tony, or Tony’s scent, had spent some time by the sump.
General Bo reached back to get his cap lamp. Arch stepped firmly on Jake’s leash but couldn’t keep his balance to get up on the sump step without pulling too hard on his dog. I mimicked Bo’s actions and groped along my belt for the cap lamp. Clumsily, I pulled the cord out, snapped the lamp into its bracket, and turned the knob. Given my current frame of mind, I was almost surprised when the light flashed on. My small thin beam swept over the ribs of the mine. While Arch struggled to secure Jake’s leash, talking to and soothing the excited animal, the general and I climbed up the uneven steps leading to the sump. The hound whined as Bo and I shone our pale cones of light into the liquid depths.
The water was so still it was almost impossible to tell it was there. The pool seemed to go back about fifteen feet, and down about eight. We swept our lights along the murky surface of the water, and then down to the sump floor. I cried out in shock.
At the bottom of the pool, fully clothed, bald head shining, eyes wide with surprise even in death, was Albert Lipscomb.
Chapter 20
“Stay still, Arch,” I commanded sternly as I turned away from the corpse to protect my son. “Just … wait until we get down.”
“Why? What’s there?” He was bent awkwardly over Jake. The leash had become tangled between his legs, and Jake was paying no heed as he pawed up and down and moaned deep in his throat. “Tony Royce must have sat down here or something,” Arch said, frustrated. “The scent’s really strong. That’s why Jake’s going ballistic. Is there something in the water. Mom?”
I turned back to the sump. If that fool dog was correct, we’d find Tony’s body next. General Bo moved his light over the length of the dead man. I swallowed hard.
“It’s Tony’s partner,” I murmured.
“I figured,” Bo said. “This is the corpse we’ve been looking for, I’d wager.”
I struggled to clear my mind. But yes, he was right. Victoria Lear had died because she had discovered the Eurydice was worthless. Albert had disappeared, ostensibly with all the money from the Prospect account. A bank teller who could have identified someone had been strangled. Marla had been accused of the murder of Tony Royce. But in discovering Albert Lipscomb, we’d found the main corpse, the key to unraveling the bizarre happenings of the last week.
His body did not float. This was Colorado, not Florida. As Tom had told me several times, it takes a month in forty-degree water for a corpse in a lake to come to the surface. Underwater, Lipscomb’s narrow, surprised face had a waxy, bluish appearance. His skin was shriveled. His long fingers, splayed, outward, looked like those of a person too long in the bath. I didn’t remember him having age spots on the backs of his hands. I blinked and focused on the dark, round marks. They looked suspiciously like burns. As if someone had tortured him—
“No, no!” cried Arch. He’d unfastened the leather lead. “Jake, come back!” But even as Arch called frantically, Jake trotted away. Apparently his powerful nose was telling him to go back down the track in the direction we’d come. Or perhaps he was again confused by the pool scent. Or maybe, like me, he desperately wanted to get as far away as possible from the presence of death. Arch took off after his pet, but the general was faster, bounding off the sump steps and racing nimbly down the rails with the same stamina I’d come to expect from him. Arch tripped and made a spectacular spill in the mud. As I stumbled after my son, a gunshot cracked loudly down the close space of the tunnel.
“Arch!” I yelled. Sprawled on the earth, he didn’t move. “Arch! Arch, tell me you’re all right!” He did not appear to hear me. “Arch, please!”
Finally, he sat up and shook himself dazedly. “It’s okay, Mom. I just fell. I have to go get Jake!” He scrambled to his feet, heedless of the danger behind us.
In the distance, Jake howled. The general was nowhere in sight. I heard Marla scream. “No! No! Damn it! Damn you!” And then another gunshot exploded. I grabbed Arch and shoved him against the rock wall, out of harm’s way. After a breathless moment, we heard the general’s voice bellow down the dark passageway:
“Arch! Goldy! Get down! Go back! Back where you—”
Light burst from the main tunnel like a blinding photo flash. A deafening boom flung us backward. In that instant, I somehow registered that all the light bulbs along the mine’s ribs were shattering. Then it was like a flame suddenly snuffed in a blackout. Darkness abruptly engulfed us. My nostrils picked up the faintly acrid smell of smoke.
I don’t know how long I lay, stunned, on the cold, moist stone before I tried to use my voice. “Arch,” I said into the blackness. “Arch, please, please, where are you?”
The darkness was ominously silent. Then, to my immense relief, I heard a cough.
“Here,” Arch called hoarsely. I struggled to my feet, but could see nothing: There was no light whatsoever. “Sorry, Mom.” Arch’s voice was close. “I don’t know where here is. What was that? Do you know where Jake is?” As usual, his first concern was for his dog.
“I don’t have a clue.” Get your bearings, get your bearings! I ordered myself. We’ve got to get out of here. It’s not safe. I held my arms out in both directions. But there was nothing to get bearings from. The dark was absolute, unyielding.
“Mom?”
I strained my eyes into the blackness. I squatted and felt along the damp floor. No Arch. Then my fingers fumbled against a metal chain, and thick leather: Jake’s leash. I crammed it into my jacket pocket.
“Arch? Where are you?”
“Here.” Two feet away? My son drew in his breath sharply. “Jake, Mom! What happened to Jake? Is Jake okay? Oh, Mom!” he cried. In the dark, I heard him fumbling, then the scrape of his footsteps on the damp stone floor. “Hey! Jake! Jake!”
There was no response to his calls.
Suddenly, Arch pulled off a miracle. He switched on his cap lamp. Tucked in his belt, the bulb had somehow survived the explosion. I blinked in astonishment to see that he was only a few feet away from me. In the distance, I heard the general’s voice calling to us. Are you in there? I fought off panic. Bo’s voice was impossibly faint, as if he were miles away. Goldy? Can you hear me? Are you all right? There was an explosion … Goldy?
“Yes!” I called, but my voice, too, was swallowed by the impenetrable rock that surrounded us.
“Mom?” Arch wailed. “Oh, Mom, I have to get Jake.”
“Arch,” I said, forcing my voice to sound calm, “hold my hand.” I reached for his gritty fingers, then clasped them tightly. Perhaps too tightly. He’s okay, I told myself. He’s not hurt. We’ll get out of this.
Arch turned his head toward the sump, then swept his light across the rib of the mine. “That’s the way out. Without the light bulbs along the sides, we’re going to have to go carefully, Mom.”
The smoke stung my eyes and made me cough. Was it getting thicker? Hard to tell. I called again to the general: “Yes! Yes! We’re coming!”
“Do you have Jake?” Arch shouted.
But neither Bo nor Marla answered. Cautiously, holding hands, my son and I started back up the tracks. Arch kept his lamp beam down, focused on the rails. Had we heard one gunshot or two? Two. And then the general had shouted his warning, and the blast had rocked the mine. But why? Why a blast? I shook my head. My thoughts were whirling too fast.
I trod carefully, holding Arch’s hand tightly in mine, determined to get us out of this claustrophobic hell. The smoke was indeed becoming thicker as we approached the bend. We made the turn. Arch lifted his beam toward the portal … or to where the portal should have been.
When he swept the light of his cap lamp down the tracks, all we could see was darkness and coils of smoke. My hopes plummeted. There were two explanations for our predicament: The blast had brought down
massive quantities of rock, and a wall of heavy boulders now barred our way to safety. Or we were lost, and we weren’t anywhere near the mine’s entrance. I refused to contemplate that possibility. It also seemed to me that the smoke was not coming from the source of the explosion. Something was on fire—probably the timbers. Arch started to hack.
“Mom! Mom! Put on your respirator!”
“Okay, okay,” I said, floundering along my belt. The more I tried to catch my breath, the more smoke I inhaled. In front of me, the tiny light on Arch’s head began to wobble and fade. Don’t let me pass out, I prayed. I must get Arch out of here.
I wrenched the self-rescuer out of the loop on my belt and tore off its cloth cover. To Arch, I said, “Do … you … have yours on?”
For a long moment he was silent, then, “Yes,” came his nasal reply. “Need light?”
“No.” I pulled up on the tether holding the nose clip, clamped my nostrils shut with it, and tentatively bit on the lug of the mouthpiece. I breathed. To my surprise, the carbon dioxide burned ravenously down my lungs. Disgusted, I let go of the lug. “I can’t,” I croaked into the increasingly smoky darkness. “The gas is too—”
“You have to. Mom!” Arch’s voice was sharply adult. “Now breathe with that thing and let’s find a raise back in the other direction! I have to find Jake!”
His gentle squeeze on the fingers of my free hand belied the harshness in his voice. I bit on the lug and breathed. It was like inhaling paint. Tears stung my cheeks as we turned and retraced our steps. Arch pulled on my hand just as Jake had tugged on the leash, up the tracks, back into the darkness.
After an eternity, we rounded the bend. Our footsteps grated over wet gravel as we passed the sump. Yes, there were shafts—technically called raises—for ventilation. This much I knew. But where were they? And what was at the top of them? A fan? Another locked grate? Wasn’t there some law in Colorado about not having openings to mines, so people couldn’t fall down them? And if we did somehow succeed in climbing the ladder of a raise, how on earth would we ever move a fan, if we encountered one?
Down, down the tracks we went, deeper into the dark bowels of the earth. I breathed smoke and cursed Tony Royce. And I cursed my own inability to see that he was the one who had caused the terrible problems which plagued us. Tony had somehow deceived his ever-hopeful partner, of that much I was now certain. And he had deceived us. Of course, the impact of Tony’s wrongdoing had been compounded by the idiotic arrogance of Shockley’s storm troopers, De Groot and Hersey. Their arrest of Marla had provoked our current disastrous situation. But most of all, I cursed my own stupidity for allowing Arch to track Tony on this ill-fated trip into the mine. With the pool scent that chronically baffled Jake, the hound had been utterly confused, scenting Tony Royce everywhere. In truth, it was my guess that Tony had been hiding out here since he’d left the Hardcastles’ cabin after attacking Marla and Macguire and once again pointing the finger of guilt at Lipscomb. Perhaps he’d seen or heard us coming, quickly closed the gates, and hidden in the powder magazine. Then he’d only had to wait for us to get deep enough into the mine to seal it forever with God only knew how much dynamite. He had done all of this, so he could make it away with a fortune in stolen cash and gold. Poor Albert Lipscomb, like Marla, had only been a pawn in Royce’s ruthless game.
We came to a fork in the mine passageway. The drift: with the track went off to the left, into what seemed to me to be utter blackness. To the right, when Arch swept his cap lamp over it, the passageway narrowed sharply, and the rock surrounding the drift became much more rough-hewn. An unfinished corridor? Perhaps. Almost certainly another dead end. Arch’s hand tugged me left.
One step at a time, one railroad tie after another. The rock was so rough, the darkness so total, and Arch’s light so feeble, that I was afraid he would miss an escape route, if indeed there was one. When your eyes become accustomed to dark, I’d always believed, it is because your visual sensors learn to utilize the tiny amounts of light available to see. But when no outside light is available, then what? Then you watch your son flash his cap lamp, left to right, right to left. And breathe. Feel your lungs fight the smoking air. And breathe.
We’re dying, I thought suddenly. I felt oddly lightheaded. Poor Arch. He should have had a better mother. Not someone who went tearing off at every opportunity to solve crimes. A mother who stayed in her kitchen where she belonged and left police work to the police … I bit hard onto the flaming-hot lug of the respirator. And kept walking into the fetid darkness with my son.
Suddenly, Arch clenched my hand and tugged me forward. His light had picked out a metal rod set in the wall. No—not a rod. His lamplight swung crazily over the stone. Not a rod—a metal chair. No.
Arch placed my palm around one of the rods. His nose-clipped voice rasped with triumph: “Ladder, Mom! It’s a raise. Climb up!”
I pulled the respirator from my mouth. “No,” I told him. “You first. Then if you fall, you’ll fall on me instead of straight down. Use both hands. Clamp the self-rescuer in your mouth.”
He groaned, but quickly acquiesced. I moved out of the way, listened to the weight of my son moving onto the metal ladder, and watched as his cap lamp lurched higher. He was ascending. I clamped my mouth back on the self-rescuer, and awkwardly started up behind him.
In the darkness, I had to grope for each new metal rung, tapping it like a blind person, moving my hand across its corrugated surface to assure myself it was really there. The one time I looked up, dust from Arch’s sneakers fell into my eyes, and I resolved not to do that again. I breathed in and thought instead about Tony Royce. Up, up, I went, keeping myself sane by replaying all the incidents with Tony Royce that I could remember, vowing all sorts of nasty revenge. I even had a gratifying vision of testifying against him in court—This man, Your Honor, is responsible for three murders, not to mention embezzling on a massive scale. And he duped my best friend. And framed her for his crimes. I resolutely shoved that fantasy away. Stick with what you know. What do you know?
Arch was stamping on something. My fingers fumbled upward: a grate. No, it was a landing. I slid my body through the opening and felt around the edges of the landing with my hands and feet. Arch was already moving upward on another ladder, and I groped for the sides of these new metal steps, working hard to avoid the hole I’d just come through. Then I started upward again.
I breathed in the fiery carbon dioxide. Think about Tony, I ordered myself. When you get out, what are you going to do to Tony? But my lungs screamed with pain. The mouthpiece was so hot I could feel blisters forming. I would never get used to inhaling carbon dioxide, I thought. And how long did I think I would have to become accustomed to this gas, anyway? What had the general said? An hour? If the carbon monoxide in the smoke was not too concentrated—two hours? How far up did we still have to go? Yes—the mountain sloped back, and with any luck we would come out eventually on the grass and rocks of the steep hill, well above the mine. But how many feet would that be? Forty? A hundred? Two hundred? And how long would that take? Would our air supply last long enough for us to reach safety?
We arrived at what must have been our fourth landing. I wondered if Marla had shot Tony. Or vice versa. There had only been two shots. Albert’s body, Jake scrambling away, the explosion, being trapped. It was all too much. I started up a fresh set of ladder rungs, hearing Arch’s steps above my head. We’re not going to make it, I thought as I breathed in the boiling-hot, acidic gas from the respirator. Oh, Tom, I’m so sorry. I’m such an idiot. I didn’t mean to get us buried alive. Tears stung and I cursed them, too. Damn it, Goldy. Think of Arch and go up a rung, then another, reflect back on what you really know about Royce. Why would he stay here for three days? Why wouldn’t he have left the country right away? Because … because he was waiting. He was waiting for something or someone. Someone who could give him something. What? What did he need? Escape. Escape, the same as what you want now….
Arch paused. He was sta
mping around on one of the landings, but this one seemed to be bigger than the previous ones. And was some distant gray light seeping down, entering the landing, or was it a hallucination? Arch swept his light upward to a metal grate. On one side of the grate was a fan, but it was not revolving. The electricity which moved it had probably been knocked out by the blast.
“Let me try to open it,” I said, since I was taller than Arch. I pulled off the nose clip. Oh, blessed, blessed air. It was smoky, but it contained sweet, sweet oxygen. I panted voraciously. I was a starved person, wolfing down air like the first food in a week.
“Move, move,” I ordered the grate, and shoved hard at it. It didn’t budge, “Could you point your lamp to the edge?” I asked Arch.
He did so, and I saw a lock like the type used on a fence gate. It appeared rusted shut. I heard—clear and close as a bell—Jake’s mournful howl. Clenching my despised self-rescuer with all the force I had left, I swung at the lock. It made a hideous grinding sound before clanging away from the locked position. I stepped up two rungs of the ladder leading to the grate and desperately, with every ounce of strength I’d gained from hefting food trays, heaved my body against it. The grate screeched open. I wriggled through, onto a passageway that led horizontally to the side of the mountain. I held my hand out to Arch. His smiling face made my heart sing.
We ran down the sloping passageway. And then we were in the open, on grass, between rocks, looking out at the sky. The misty air smelled like heaven.
“Look, Mom!” Arch called excitedly. He was pointing down. There were the sheds, there was the Jeep, there were Marla and General Bo, puzzling over a map. And there, tethered to the general, with the spare leash, twirling awkwardly because he had caught the smell of his master on the breeze, lifting his nose to the air, and howling joyfully, was Jake.
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