Deadly Thyme (39 page)

50

J
on swiveled at the muffled scream from where Ruth had been behind the desk. Quentin Malone, county magistrate, had Ruth in his grip. They were leaning against the back wall. He stood not five feet away from them. He stepped closer.

“You
’d best stay where you are!” A strange woman’s voice rang out. Then a man’s voice, “Mother, stop! Don’t make me do it this way.”

“Fool!”
the woman’s voice screeched. “Can’t do anything without losing it.”

Jon saw the gun and froze. “Mr. Malone, you can
’t get away.”

“No?” Malone, of the distinct penguinesque nose, held the gun under Ruth
’s ear with one hand and gripped her tightly in a strangle hold with the other. “Looks like we have you all where we want you.”

For all his training, Jon could do nothing against bullets. “You don
’t have to do this. We can help you.”

Malone jerked Ruth around like a rag doll. The metal gun barrel clicked against an earring. “Bullets enough for all. Who first?”

A woman’s cracked falsetto voice rang out from Malone’s mouth, “Kill the woman.”

“Don
’t tell me what to do!” Malone screamed. Saliva flew. He switched from voice to voice with eerie precision.

“Chubby Charlie!”

“Stop calling me that!” Malone whipped the gun up and waved it across the room. His hand shook.

Jon reached for Ruth.

A gunshot. A vase exploded. Jon ducked.

Dust billowed around the vase. It must have been a burial urn. Jon pivoted around to see Malone standing with his back against the decorat
ed wall, holding Ruth in front of him. Malone fired two more shots into the ceiling. The gun clicked. Malone threw the gun at Trewe. It glanced across his head. Trewe slumped down. Malone leaned against the wall. Jon thought,
He’s boxed in.
Air whooshed. A dark place gaped in the wall. Malone pulled Ruth backward. The opening in the wall narrowed. The gap was closing.

“Jon! No!” Trewe yelled.

But Jon had already dived through.

Ruth struggled against the crazy man. A scream rose from deep within and poured long and loud from her mouth. Her pulse raced and her thoughts with it. She had to get away. He had squeezed her into a skinny hallway with gobs of dry plaster sticking out of rough stone walls with half-hidden timbers. Cobwebs scraped off the walls and were sticking to her. Pain from her injured hand shot up her arm. As soon as he pulled her completely within the enclosed place Malone let her fall to her feet.

“Walk!” he commanded.

“I
’m going,” she muttered, furious at herself for getting caught and equally terrified of what this man was. She jumped to her feet and turned to give him a swift kick. The torch light in her eyes was like a blow. She stumbled backward, off-balance, catching herself before she fell down a flight of stairs.

“Go!” Malone ordered and grabbed a big hank of her hair.
He held so tight she couldn’t move her head. She mostly slid down the steps with Malone on her heel.

She heard shouts behind them.

At the base of the stairs an old timber door blocked them, but Malone was through it and had it locked behind them as if he’d practiced the move many times. In that moment she was able to twist and step away from him and would have gotten farther if he hadn’t grabbed her bad hand and spun her around. He loomed, his face a mask of hatred.

She clutched her throbbing hand to her chest and shouted, “Why did you take Annie?”

“She was to help me get you,” he hissed. His fist smashed into her mouth and a tooth sliced through her lip. She fell backwards on the rough stone floor. Sparks of light exploded behind her eyes. The pain took a second to register. She choked back a sob and swallowed blood. Her stomach rebelled. He pressed a knee squarely onto her midsection and pressed so she couldn’t breathe. Her lungs burned. She choked on her own blood. He made a cruel hacking sound through smiling lips as he snarled, “You’ve been a challenge.”

With a violent convulsive movement, he dragged her.

The knobby stone floor scraped every inch of her backside. Sweat ran down her chest. Spitting blood, she yelled, “What do you want?”

Malone responded with a sharp bark of laughter. About ten feet later, he stopped. She ordered her mind to register what kind of hell Malone had created. It stank of dead and rotting things despite the cold. But all she could see was the wet rock walls and a black hole in the floor.

When Jon Graham stepped after them, his foot found nothing to land on for a heart-stopping second. He flung an arm out and caught himself short against stone. With the click of the closing wall behind him, there was a cutting off of sound, a deadness—a lack of echo. The space he found himself in was no more than two feet across. He was trapped.

He choked and bent double fighting nausea. He pulled himself up. He had to save Ruth Butler. He had to. His arms knocked against the walls. His breath came in short gasps. He clutched at his throat and heard a little boy screaming
, “Let me out!” It wasn’t him. He wasn’t a kid stuck in a cupboard beneath the stairs any longer.

Then he remembered that
Perstow had given him a penlight. Pulling it out of his pocket and switching it on, he started down a short hall. When he heard a muffled banging from the other side of the wall, he called out, “I’m here!” but realized his words went nowhere. Pulling his mobile out, he dialed.

Trewe answered. “What
’s back there? Do you see another entry?”

“You
’ve got to get through. It’s dark. There’s steps leading to God-knows-where with a door at the base. I’m going down. The signal will be cut as soon as I’m below ground.”

“Do you see any lever on that side of the wall?” Trewe sounded desperate himself.

“Nothing.”

“We
’ll keep trying. There must be another way in.”

“What
’s below me?”

Trewe conferred with Perstow, “Abandoned mines, tunnels reaching miles in every direction.”

“Great,” Jon said. “That’s just great.”

Trewe shouted at Perstow, “Surround the building. We need reinforcements. Jon, I
’ll get someone to break a hole through from this side.”

“I
’m going after her, Peter. I can’t let him hurt her.” Feeling his way down the narrow passageway, Jon held the phone against his ear with one hand and the penlight in the other hand.

“Tell me what you see,” Trewe yelled.

“I’m trying … I don’t like small spaces. For Christ’s sake, don’t go away.”

He placed his phone on the step, then lay the penlight on the step above so it shown down across the door. He braced his elbows against the brick walls to leverage his weight and concentrate the force of his kick against the door. Nothing. He tried again. The wood gave. He kicked again. His foot smashed through. He tried the lock from the inside. The door opened on well-oiled hinges. He picked up the mobile.

Trewe was yelling. “What happened?”

“I
’m through. It’s cold. Smells bad, like rancid meat.”

Silence on Trewe
’s end, then static.

Jon muttered, “Oh God.”

Trewe’s voice suddenly burst into his ear. “Jon! We may know a way to get to you. There’s a mine shaft west of you on the coast. We’ll have someone try from that end. Infrared cameras are on the way.”

The connection died as
Jon said, “Gotta go. I heard Ruth.”

As long as his mobile
’s battery lasted, he could use the compass—and the flashlight app didn’t hurt—and he could message. In the event that signals reconnected, they would discover his last thoughts, if nothing else.

51

R
uth felt her loose tooth with the tip of her tongue. She held her arms across her belly, bent into them, gulping air and fighting the desire to throw up.

Malone waved the flame of his torch over a small box. He lifted out a necklace that looked like it was made of colored glass, but something told her that he wouldn
’t be this crazy if it were only glass. A snake-like quality oozed from his voice. “Fascinated? Take it.”

“No.”

“I’ve never offered you such riches before.”

She turned her face from him.

He spat at her, “Am I so disgusting you cannot look at me, Mother?”

Ruth didn
’t answer.

“Then go.” He stood and pushed her ahead of him.

She hit her head on the rock ceiling. She stooped, but another shove from behind sent her scrambling to stay on her feet. Malone’s torch made the shadows dance around her. Her head swirled with the smell and the horror and the shadows. Sweating, she clutched her hand to her chest and tried to slip her shoes back on because they had come loose. He pushed her. Her shoes came off. He made a sudden movement and she leapt forward to avoid his touch. She had to abandon the shoes. Many steps later they came to another wide place. He hardly allowed her time to stand straight before he shoved her again. Twenty paces into the tunnel, she tripped and fell to the floor, landing on her good hand before whacking her bad hand again.

She ground her teeth against the pain, knowing that she wasn
’t going to survive unless she took control. She jumped up. Her socks made her feet slip on the wet floor, but she dashed back the way they had come. He was quicker. Maneuvering his body in front of hers, he smacked her across the face.

His hair, which had been wound around his head in a massive
, flattened mess to hide the baldness, now stuck out in greasy strings. With a finger held to her nose, he cackled, “You can go with pain or you can go without pain. But go, you must.” And he stooped and threw her over his shoulder like a sack of rice.

From her position as human gunnysack, Ruth struggled for breath each time Malone
’s bony shoulder jabbed into her abdomen. Once she’d gotten breath, she twisted around until he dropped her. She had a fistful of his tweed jacket. The material stunted the brunt of her fall, but a sharp rock dug into her back as she landed. She bit her lip to keep from screaming. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of hearing her scream. She wanted maneuver room to hurt him and get away.

But what if he was taking her to Annie? She heard a tapping noise. Footsteps? She yelled, “Help!”

Malone back-handed her. She fell.

“We are being followed,” Malone muttered.
The torchlight jerked crazily across the shining walls. “Get up!”

From somewhere nearby came the sound of running water. Her heart thundered in her chest. She
’d read somewhere that the mines sometimes went under the sea, where the miners could hear the waves pushing and pulling boulders across the ocean floor above them.

“Where
’s Annie?”

Malone leered. “Weren
’t you scheduled to bury her after the inquest?”

“That isn
’t my daughter.”

“So they know, do they?”

“I don’t know.” She huddled over her bandaged hand. The pain so great that the light blurred into rainbow flashes. She yelled, “Where is she?”

“Wouldn
’t you like to know?” Malone towered over her. “Murdering slut!”

She leaned away and used the momentum for a sidekick
—and missed. She had miscalculated and he leapt aside. By the yellow glow of the torch, his face shone oily and pockmarked. His nose ran rivulets into the drool from both corners of his mouth.

“Get away from me.” She brought her knee up as he leaned over her. It glanced off his leg. He held her down with a foot. She wrenched sideways but was unable to budge the reeking hulk.

He reached and pulled her up by her hair, then wedged her neck into a headlock. Her wet socks slipped on the rock. He ranted in her ear, “Don’t you think I am sick to hell with always explaining myself? You would never leave me alone.”

“I never did anything to you.”

He yanked her around so they were face to face again. “Of course not, you never knew me at all, did you?”

“I
’m not your mother.”

“I always wondered.” He stared hard at her and growled, “If you were truly dead we would all have peace.”

She moved her shoulder down for leverage and gave an upper cut to his belly, but he stepped away, so her fist caught him lower. He bent double with a retch. She raced back the way they had come, but there was no light. It was so dark she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. Crouching down, she tried to think. Where could she go? The cave held a strong smell of death.
Mustn’t stop
. She stumbled forward and fell on something soft with a horrible stench. She felt around and recognized the feel of another hand, cold and lifeless. She gagged and realized she was able to distinguish shapes—light meant Malone was coming. She glanced down and saw a row of human limbs, rotting and shriveled.

She retched and pulled herself up. She had to get away. Too late. Hands grabbed her and shoved her head against the wall.
There was a loud explosion in her mind and the dark folded in on her.

Spurred on by Ruth
’s cries, Jon rushed forward. He stopped at a wide place in the tunnel. Timbers held up the roof and walls, and the floor had been roughly hewn. His light revealed a juncture of three tunnels. Another cry came from the tunnel on the right. The low ceiling forced him to stoop double. He stepped over a small box with an open lid and played the light over gold coins and jewels. So this was Malone’s secret.

A residual dankness of long-gone sweaty bodies permeated his sense of smell until it seemed he could actually taste body odor.

Malone. The man had been a wealth of information, filling Jon in on the history of Cornwall and of pirates, about the wreckers and the Spanish ships carrying gold to finance political schemes. Jon had half-listened like a foolish schoolboy. School’s out now, Jon Graham.

He flashed the penlight across ancient, rotting timbers. One slip against a bulwark, one knock against a piling, and the whole works could come down
on top of him. He wondered how many tons of rocks suspended by these few strips of dead tree waited above his head. Every creaking sound, every shower of dust raining from the ceiling reminded him that a few miniscule, soft, squashable humans crept under it all. He knew how being trapped felt. He tasted fear, a metallic, hollow taste that coated his tongue, drying his mouth.

He held himself against a wall, trying to decide. Two dark, rough-hewn holes gaped before him.
Ip dip, sky blue! Who’s it? Not you!
What a stupid thing to have flash across his mind. In this horrifying chase to save Ruth, he found his mind wandering. There must be bad air. He heard a cry. He pitched forward as he tripped over a wide board. It had been covering a hole. The fresh breeze blowing from the hole cleared his head. He got up and kept going. From somewhere before him came the sickly smell of rotting flesh. There was a pair of women’s shoes, laying as if tossed aside. The floor rose steadily. The walls gleamed with streaming water.

Passing a ridge of dark granite, he saw from the corner of his eye a reflected flash from his light. He played the beam into the deep shadows and saw three small legs, severed and neatly lined in a row. He came to a full stop.

A pretty bracelet on an out-flung arm led his eye to Liz Malone, who lay toes up, as if peacefully asleep. Her dress, blue like her eyes, was one Jon had noticed before. Her head was turned slightly. As he stared at her, her eyes opened.

He gasped, heart thudded to his throat. “My God!”

Liz moved a hand and then tried to sit up. Jon rushed to her. Her head was bleeding. She said, “He wants to kill me. My husband wants to kill me.”

“Can you stand?”

“I need air. What smells so bad? Where am I? What has he done?”

Jon didn
’t want her so shocked she couldn’t move. He needed her help. “Tell me what you know.”

“It was after breakfast. He told me he wanted me to see something at his office. I followe
d him into the wall. I thought … it was amazing, but then I don’t remember anything else. Except once we were here, he said …” She cried out, “He said he wants to kill me. Why?”

“You
’ve got to get back down this tunnel. Here’s my penlight. There’s a hole in the floor you’ve got to miss. Do you think you can do it? Can you walk?”

“Where will you be?”

“I’ve got to keep going. He’s got Ruth Butler.”

“Oh my
, no!”

“Can you get back? They are trying to break open the wall. There is no way to contact them this far underground. You can tell them where we are.”

“I know how to open it. He showed me because I wouldn’t follow him unless he showed me.”

“Please, go help them.”

Liz stumbled back the way they had come, leaving Jon in the dark.