Bitter Recoil (17 page)

“We’ve got Arajanian’s Beretta in Albuquerque,” Tate said. “It’s in the evidence locker. You kept a hold on that through thick and thin.”

“Too big. I want something small…something that I can hide. I won’t use it unless I can get close enough to shove it up his ass.”

“Well, I’ll work on that,” Sterns said. He walked off, scratching his head.

Tate glanced at me. He didn’t have much faith in Edwin Sterns. “I know someone in Albuquerque who can get us anything we need. We’ll send one of the choppers in for it.”

I nodded and he gestured to his detective. For a moment I was alone at the rim of the shaft. I looked down into the hole and felt a chill.

Chapter 30

Stubby Begay arrived about six-thirty—a short, scrawny man with badly bowed legs, a narrow, hawk-nosed face, and stone-black eyes. He had two teeth left, one snaggled right in front of his tongue so that he lisped. He talked so softly that in order to hear him I had to hunker down with him, his face no more than a foot from mine as he drew pictures in the dust.

According to Begay the vertical shaft of Floyd’s Number Two sank 785 feet below the headframe. We tested the depth with dinner.

Earlier Finn had agreed that we could send food down for the little girl. We considered spiking the food to put them both out, but I knew damn well that Finn wouldn’t fall for something that simple. And we had no way of knowing who might eat what…a dose necessary to knock out Finn would kill Daisy. So we played it straight. The small plastic cooler of sandwiches, fruit, and milk sank out of sight. The hundred yards of chalk line that we knotted to the cooler’s handle ran out and was tied to another ball of brown twine, and that reeled off for what seemed forever. Every inch of that 785 feet paid out before the cooler touched bottom.

We waited several minutes and then we heard Finn shout, “Pull…it…out!” We did so. There was no way we could touch the son of a bitch.

Begay enlarged his drawing in the dirt. “You got a drift on that side at 300 feet,” Begay said. “It’s an old pump station. And here, at 430, and another here, at 785. Right on the bottom.”

“Side tunnels, you mean?”

“They call ’em drifts.” His eyes twinkled.

“That’s where he must be then,” I said, tapping the bottom.

“I’d be right here,” Begay said and gouged his stick into the sand where he’d sketched the first side tunnel, or drift, 300 feet down.

“Why’s that?”

“’Cause the ladder goes right by it. No need to go to the bottom.”

“The food went all the way down.”

Stubby Begay grinned. His gums looked like plastic. “So you think he’s on the bottom.” He grinned even wider. “He takes the string and…” He made hand-over-hand motions as if he were pulling a bundle up. “He fake you out good that way.”

I frowned. “What about the other drifts? The deeper ones?”

He shrugged.

“There’s no way to reach them other than the ladder?”

Begay shook his head. “If it ain’t come loose.”

I looked up at Tate and Sterns. “Maybe that explains why we can hear him so well when he shouts,” I said. “If he’s only a hundred yards down in that first drift.”

“Only,” Tate said. He turned and watched two of the deputies unloading gear from the trunk of one of the patrol cars.

“So, Stubby, how about this. If I was lowered down in a sling seat, right along the ladder, I’d fetch up at this drift.” I tapped the dirt. “Where you say he’s got to be.”

“That’s what I say.”

“There’s nowhere else he might be?” Begay shrugged. “I mean except maybe the other side tunnels.” He shook his head.

I looked over at the climbing harness that one of the deputies was shaking loose. “There’s enough rope there?”

“Plenty,” Sterns said. He sounded confident. It wasn’t his ass in the sling.

As we made final preparations, the sun set. Spotlights from three cars converged on the shaft entrance, bathing it in harsh white light. Two big four-wheel-drive pickups had been recruited and parked thirty feet away, facing the shaft. Their floodlights added to the artificial daylight. The deputies attached the ropes to both front axles. They knew their job and took their time. When everything was finally ready, it was dark outside the circle of spotlights.

I looked down into the shaft, skeptical. The rope had to let me down right along the ladder so I could keep my feet planted and be able to use my one good arm. Otherwise, I’d just dangle and spin in the shaft, nothing more than a target on a string. The two deputies repositioned one of the trucks and were confident. I wasn’t.

“Sir?” The deputy, Gareth Burns, gestured for me. “Can you step into this?” He held up a bright blue nylon harness that looked like a big athletic supporter.

With several sets of hands assisting, I was trussed up tight enough to choke. Then two big steel rings were clipped into the nylon loops in front.

“Can you work these with one hand?” the deputy asked. He gave me a demonstration of how the carabiner worked and then watched me diddle with the lock ring. I pressed in the release and the ring came off. “Good. Although you might just want to leave it hooked up. We can pay out all the rope you’ll need.”

“Terrific.”

He nodded, mistaking my grimace for enthusiasm. “And I’ll just clip these two other harnesses to the belt here, so when it comes time to bring everybody up, we can do it right.” He had different plans than I did.

They pushed a plastic hard hat with a miner’s light on my head and pulled the chinstrap tight.

At one point during the preparations, Pat Tate handed me a tiny Colt .380 automatic. The silencer looked like a six-ounce juice can. I handed it back to him. “Put a round in the chamber.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.” After he did so, I pointed the muzzle of the gun off into the desert. The tiny safety catch was awkward to use with my left hand. I practiced snapping it on and off, then slid the little pistol inside my shirt, sticking its snout under the bandages that bound my right shoulder, arm, and ribs.

“Is that going to work?” Pat Tate asked.

“It’s going to have to,” I said. Pat didn’t ask what my plans were. The deputy snapped another large flashlight to my belt. It hung from a nylon loop.

“Slide this in your hip pocket,” Tate said and held out a slender black penlight.

The deputy saw my expression at the third light. “Rule of threes,” he said. “It’s dark down there.” I didn’t argue. Tate adjusted the hand-held radio in its holster and made sure the microphone cord was free. The mike was clipped to my collar. I felt like a goddamned hardware store, but we were as ready as we could be.

Sterns jerked a thumb in the direction of the crowd. “The television station sure would like to be able to bring their cameras on over,” he said.

“Sure,” I said. He looked hopeful. “On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“That you be the one to go down there.”

He didn’t like that much, but he didn’t mention the news hounds again.

I picked up the hailer. “Finn! I coming down now.”

“Take…your…time.”

I handed the hailer to Tate. “Polite bastard, isn’t he?”

The deputies handled me like glass. The iron mesh and its frame had been pulled completely off the shaft opening, and the hole gaped ominously. I stood with my back to the hole, the ladder’s top rung behind me.

“Now just lean a little against the rope so your weight is diggin’ in your heels,” the deputy said. “And remember with this Z-haul, you’re goin’ down in five- or six-foot bites. We’ll keep ’er just as smooth as we can. Now just edge on back until you got your feet on the ladder.”

The deputy had his hand on my left elbow while another adjusted a set of heavy edge rollers to guide the rope. I waited patiently, my pulse pounding in my ears.

“Just trust the rope,” Burns said.

“Do I have a choice?” I replied.

“Really, it works easy as can be. Now, just step down. Real easy. Leave it up to the rope.” I did so while he orchestrated. The ladder flexed and I stopped. “Go on down until you can hang onto the top rung,” he said.

One awkward step at a time, I backed down the ladder. After four rungs, I grabbed the ancient rust of the top rung in my hand.

“Now just relax for a minute and sit in the sling.”

He switched his light back and forth, checking ropes. The weight was off my feet, and with a twitch of the hand I could have spun around like a kid on one of those swings made out of an old tire. I kept my feet on the ladder rungs and my hand in place.

I twisted my head and looked down. The pencil beam from my helmet light shot down into the darkness. I looked up and squinted against the glare of the spotlights. Pat Tate was standing close by, as was Sterns. Both of them had that look on their faces that said, “Better you than me, kid.”

I took a deep breath. “All right,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.”

Chapter 31

Six feet at a time, I sank into the earth. I kept my feet free of the ladder, learning to trust the sit-harness. The ladder’s iron side rail slid through my left hand. That small contact was my anchor.

The vertical sides of the shaft were timbered, and in more than one spot water dripped down the face of the wood. The timbers smelled musty. I wondered what pockets of gases waited down below, trapped by the years of stagnation. I’d heard stories about miners walking into shafts where they took a breath and keeled over before they had time to turn around. That couldn’t be the case here…Finn had no shortage of breath.

As the bright light of the entrance drifted up and away, the shaft seemed to narrow with me at its focus. My mind played games with the perspective. When I was fifty feet down, the deputy touched me with the beam of his flashlight.

“Any problems?” he asked. He didn’t bother with the radio.

“No,” I said. The rope played out again. The next time I looked up, I flinched. I could have covered the opening of the mine with the palm of my hand. Looking down, I saw the beam from my helmet light stab into nothing. No bottom. Just wooden timbers and old iron.

I avoided looking at the rope. What on the surface had looked stout and unbreakable in its coil now stretched out above me thin and gossamer. Every time the deputies reached the end of a pulley bite and the drop stopped, the rope twanged from side to side slightly.

On impulse I reached up and turned off my helmet light. The blackness of the mine was complete, the entrance above nothing but an insignificant postage stamp of artificial light. I caught my breath as the rope descended again. The light had been my lifeline to equilibrium and I turned it back on.

The side tunnel, what Stubby Begay had called a drift, took me by surprise. The side of the shaft had been passing by my left shoulder as I descended, a steady, unchanging parade of old wood timbers, dripping water, and abandoned iron fittings. I hadn’t used the side of the shaft for support. Nevertheless, when it suddenly shelved inward, away from me, my stomach tightened. The rope dropped me far enough that my light shot into the tunnel.

The drift was nearly as large as the main shaft. I breathed in relief at seeing something substantial and horizontal.

I turned my head slightly, keyed with my left hand, and spoke into the hand-held radio’s mike that was clipped to my shirt collar.

“Stop,” I said. “I’m at the drift.”

“Affirmative.”

I pushed away from the ladder, rotating to face the drift. The floor of the tunnel was littered with junk—old sections of pipe, fittings, various lengths of wire and cable. The light illuminated heavy timbers and a series of three small concrete pads, each two feet high. Rusted bolts thrust up from the concrete where at one time machines had been secured.

Stubby Begay had called it a pump station. The miners hadn’t left much behind…just enough scars and litter to puzzle archaeologists in another thousand years.

For the first thirty feet the drift was as securely timbered as the main shaft. But forty feet back the drift elbowed to the left and the timber supports ended. I couldn’t see around the bend. The place made my skin crawl.

Rotten and water-soaked as the timbers were, they gave the illusion of strength and support. In the drift they gave way to something that looked like monstrous cobwebs, with patches of the material hanging down from a ceiling of jagged rock. It was some sort of fabric, bolted right to the face of the shaft.

In dozens of places rock fragments littered the floor of the drift where the old fabric had pulled loose, and off to the left, just visible before the drift turned out of sight, an entire section of wall and ceiling had slumped, filling nearly a third of the tunnel.

I swept the light carefully, looking for movement.

“Finn?” I said. My voice echoed down the shaft. The dust of the years had padded the floor, and the fresh tracks were as clear as if they had been painted on a sidewalk with Day-Glo paint. And the prints came in two sizes.

“Finn, are you in there?” Again my words rattled around and died with no response. I ducked my head and looked down the main shaft. Ten feet below the drift, the iron supports that held the ladder had pulled loose…or rusted through. The section of ladder was twisted away from the wall and hung off at an angle. Finn had to be in the drift.

I reached for the second flashlight, adding its beam to that of my helmet. I saw that with just a slight stretch I could plant my feet on the lip of the drift’s shaft and grab one of the wall timbers with my left hand. With some slack in the rope I could pull myself into the tunnel.

If I slipped and fell, it would hurt like hell, but the rope could be trusted. That’s what the deputy had said.

“Turn off your light,” Finn said. His voice was quiet and conversational.

Out of reflex I swung the lights toward the sound of his voice. Nothing. I snapped off the flashlight and let it hang, then reached up and turned off my helmet. The blackness was oppressive…the spotlights above at the shaft mouth served only as a beacon in the distance. I reached up and touched the small, reassuring pistol grip of the Colt under my arm sling. I waited.

“Sheriff, you copy?” The crackle of the damn radio sounded like a string of firecrackers.

I keyed the mike and snapped, “Stay off the air.”

“Ten-four.”

I took a deep breath, my fingers still covering the lump that was the automatic. “All right, Finn. What do you want?”

Unless Finn had developed sonar, he could see no more than I. His light exploded out of the darkness, and I jerked my head back in surprise.

“Get that goddamned thing out of my eyes,” I snapped, but he took his time. Finally the light slipped away and I cracked an eyelid. The beam was centered on the thick bandage that bound my right arm and shoulder. My right hand stuck out of the linen and lay flat against my belly, useless. Finn played the light this way and that, examining me and my equipment.

“Turn around,” he said and watched as I touched the shaft wall with my fingers and gently pushed myself so that I rotated on the rope. The wash of his light cast a fat shadow of me on the opposite wall of the vertical shaft. As I rotated back around, he turned off the light. I blinked my eyes, trying to put out the yellow sunbursts that remained.

“So,” he said.

“Are you through playing games? Where’s the child?”

“She’s asleep. And you’ve managed to make quite a name for yourself, haven’t you? I underestimated your tenacity.”

I was in no mood to exchange compliments. “You have to let us bring her up. Nobody’s going to hurt her…or you.”

Finn chuckled. “I can imagine.” The harness dug into my crotch and belly, and my right leg was falling asleep. Finn knew he had all the time in the world. I didn’t if I was going to be worth anything.

“I was surprised that you had put it all together, Sheriff,” he said. I tried to picture where he might be standing.

“Sometimes I get lucky.”

“Yes,” he said. “Had your truck not let me down, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.”

“What do you want, Finn? What do you think I can do for you?” I was tired of hanging like a goddamned potted plant.

“I saw the newspapers under the seat. You’re a clever man, to make the association. I’m curious why you didn’t call in any of the other authorities earlier.”

I frowned and said, “What do…” when what he’d said hit me like a sledge, smashing open the doors of my rusty memory. The newspapers. My notes. Until this day, I’d last seen the papers Friday night when I parked at the campground. The two-week-old papers, one of them with the front page headline…my notes in the margin.

I breathed a silent curse. We’d received the bulletin from Washington State along with a thousand other law enforcement agencies. We were close to the border. It made sense.

H. T. Finn had seen the newspaper when he’d stolen the radio—the headline and my notes. He had assumed that I’d made the connection, knew who he was, what he’d done.

“Arajanian did those hits for you, too,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and hoping that he didn’t recognize the guess.

“He learned well,” Finn said. “He would have been of great use to me.”

My mind raced. “No, he did just what you wanted,” I said. “It worked out better the way it was…you left the rifle with him for the police to find. It’s probably the same rifle you had him use on the governor of Washington and the prison warden, isn’t it? If there was a matchup, it’d tie those shootings to the kid, and you’d be long gone. No witnesses to say otherwise after you shot us…and set the mountain on fire.”

“Cleansing fire,” Finn said softly, and his voice drifted off as he recited, “‘And the fire shall cleanse the evil from the earth and…’” His voice became indistinct.

“And they don’t know you as Finn in Washington, do they?” I said, but he refused the bait.

Finally he said, “You will make arrangements, Sheriff. Listen carefully.” I wasn’t in a position to do otherwise, but I wanted answers to a flood of questions. Finn continued, “I want a fully fueled helicopter. The television station has one. The helicopter, one reporter, and a pilot. That’s all. It will land immediately beside the mouth of the shaft, close enough that I can see the flash of its blades over the opening.”

I sighed. Why was an aircraft always such magic to these fruitcakes? Where would he go, other than Mexico? And what made him think Mexico would want him? He wanted a reporter, and that meant he thought the world would be interested in hearing his sorry tale.

My eyes ached with the strain of trying to see him in the darkness, and my finger itched to reach for the Colt automatic. But he had the girl, and we would play his game until the time was right.

“That’s all?”

“As a beginning, yes.”

“You’ll let them send down two more ropes, one for the girl and one for you?”

“No!” he said sharply. “Ruth and I will use the ladder. We will go out the way we came in.” He laughed softly. “You’d like me in harness, helpless. You’d like that, wouldn’t you. Oh no. That’s how they killed my Ruth. It won’t happen again. Never again.”

Another Ruth. But now it was the little girl I worried about. “It’s a long climb. I was just trying to make it safe for Daisy.”

“You don’t need to be concerned. Just do as I say.”

“All right.”

“Talk to the ones on the surface now,” he commanded. I keyed the mike. “Gastner here.”

“Go ahead, Gastner.”

“Listen carefully, and get this right the first time. Finn wants Channel 8’s Jet Ranger, fully fueled, with a pilot and a reporter on board. He wants it to set down immediately beside the mine shaft. We have to be able to see the blades flash, or he won’t go for it. No one else in the way. The three of us will come up. The three of us will board the chopper. Is that understood?”

After a pause, I heard Pat Tate’s voice. “Understand: Channel 8’s chopper, one pilot, one reporter. They might not agree to that.”

“Don’t waste time, Pat.” The television crew would leap at the chance to be evening news. “And nothing else. Tell everyone to keep their fingers off the damn triggers. I don’t want the girl hurt.”

“Ten four. Search and rescue wants the girl in a harness, on a rope.”

“No,” Finn said loudly.

“Look,” I said. “It’s for her own safety, Finn. Use your head. You could slip. Without a harness, there’s nothing between you and 400 feet of shaft.”

His voice regained its original composure. “If you and your men do as I say, there won’t be any slips, will there?”

“Gastner, did you copy?”

I keyed the mike. “Negative on the rope,” I said. My brain raced. There was no way a four-year-old child was going to be carried up 300 feet of rusted, slippery ladder.

“We’ll see what we can do,” Tate said, and the shaft fell silent. I shifted in the harness, trying to let some blood down my right leg.

“Finn, listen to me. Turn your light on.” To my surprise he did so, keeping the beam centered on my torso. “Are you wearing a heavy belt?”

He didn’t answer.

“Look, if you are, use this.” I turned and groped with my left hand for the small harness that the deputy had clipped to my own. “They gave me this. Put it on Daisy, and clip her to your belt. At least do that.”

“No.” He turned off the light.

“Damn it, she’ll be clipped to you. She’ll be safe that way. What can we do if she’s clipped to you? No one can make a move to grab her. And it keeps your arms free. It will be even better.”

Finn was silent, and I hoped he was weighing his options. “All right,” he said. “Throw the harness into the tunnel.” He turned on the light. I breathed a sigh or relief. For several minutes I fumbled with the carabiner before the big steel ring snapped open. I tossed the smaller of the two extra harnesses into the drift.

The beam always fastened on me, Finn made his way through the scattered junk. He stopped when the line of pump foundations separated us. I couldn’t tell if he held a weapon in his other hand. “Tell them to pull you up ten feet.”

The bastard was shrewd. I keyed the mike and repeated his order. I had no sense of moving. Rather, the entrance of the drift sank, as if the wall itself slid downward. My feet were just above the top of the tunnel mouth when the pull stopped.

“Finn, do you know how to hook up that harness? Do it properly now.” I shouted, suddenly frantic at not being able to see inside the drift.

He didn’t respond, but I heard his footfalls as he advanced and picked up the harness. I tried to picture him bending down, then straightening up, and then retreating back down the shaft. I counted eight footfalls, then lost him. There was no other time to take the gamble. I reached up and gently keyed the mike. I kept my voice a husky whisper.

“Don’t answer,” I whispered. “Give me five bites down.”

Their response was immediate. In the darkness I felt the wall slide by, felt the breath of air as the drift yawned in front of me. I’d have one chance. I stretched out my feet, my toes reaching for rock. The floor of the drift touched my left foot and I grabbed with my left hand, my teeth clenched.