CHAPTER 71
Dan met Finlay Armstrong, a second deputy, and two Cedar Grove locals with chainsaws at Roy Calloway’s Suburban. Leaving the locals to cut through the downed trees and clear a path to Parker House’s property, Dan and the two deputies took off up the mountain toward the house and littered yard.
The snow had let up and the wind had lessened, making the trek not as difficult and bringing an eerie peace—as if they were in the eye of a tornado. When they reached the building, they found Parker alive, but he looked to be in even worse shape than when Dan had left him.
“You stay here,” Armstrong said to Dan, “and wait for the ambulance to arrive.”
“Not a fucking chance,” Dan said. “I’m going with you to get her.”
Armstrong looked about to debate, but Dan used the same line Calloway had used on him.
“We don’t have time to debate this, Finlay. Every second we remain down here is another second for House to kill both of them.” He started for the back door. “Let’s go.”
Armstrong and Dan climbed the mountain. Having grown up in Cedar Grove and hiked the hills their entire lives, they knew the way to what had been the Cedar Grove mine. The snow made everything look different, but their path was carved by footprints that must have been left by Calloway.
Twenty minutes into their hike, they found snowshoes staked in the ground about fifteen feet below what looked like the entrance to a cave. Someone had recently carved it larger. Deep boot prints had created a path to and from the opening, and there was a long imprint that looked as if someone had been dragged across the snow. That was disconcerting in itself. More disconcerting was the trail of blood that streaked the snow and led to the mouth of the mine.
They knelt outside the entrance, and Finlay shone his flashlight into the tunnel before he entered the mine first, his shotgun at the ready. Dan clutched the rifle. Their flashlights sent two cones of light down the shaft.
“Turn it off,” Dan whispered, shutting off his own flashlight.
They were plunged into complete darkness. After a few seconds, however, Dan saw a faint orange glow emanating about twenty feet down the tunnel. They walked toward it and came to a doorway leading into a room. Finlay paused outside, then flipped on his flashlight and spun in, shotgun extended. Dan followed with his light and rifle. The cones of light swept over what had apparently been an office, with metal desks and chairs and army-green file cabinets.
The orange glow was coming through an opening in the paneled wall at the back of the room.
“Here,” Tracy said. “I’m in here.”
Dan started for the door but Finlay grabbed his arm. “Tracy?” Finlay called out. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “House is dead.”
Finlay stepped into the room, Dan behind him.
A bare bulb dangled from a wire. Beneath it, resting against a wooden beam, Tracy sat cradling Roy Calloway’s head in her lap. In the far corner lay Edmund House, blood saturating the back of his head and his shirt.
Dan knelt and hugged her. “You all right?”
She nodded, then looked to Calloway. “He’s not going to last long.”
Morning dawned and with it, the storm passed. Tracy stood near the mine’s entrance, which had been dug out by Finlay and the others who had responded to his call for help. She wrapped the thermal blanket around her shoulders as she considered the patches of blue sky and shafts of sunlight knifing through the cloud layer in hints of magenta, rose, and orange, a post-storm sky. In the distant valley, the rooftops of the houses in Cedar Grove looked like tiny pyramids. Smoke spiraled from chimneys and curled into wisps in the dead air. Tracy had had a similar view from the window of her bedroom, and the knowledge that she knew so many in those homes had always brought her a sense of peace and comfort.
A noise from farther down the mine shaft drew her attention, and she looked back and watched paramedics carry Roy Calloway, bundled in blankets, out of the mine on a sled. Calloway turned his head and made eye contact as they carried him past. Tracy followed them outside, watching as they lowered the sled to the snow and tethered it between two snowmobiles.
“He’s still a tough son of a bitch, isn’t he?” Dan said, walking up behind her.
“Like a two-dollar steak,” she said.
Dan wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. “So are you, Tracy Crosswhite. And you can still shoot. No denying that.”
“What about Parker?” she asked.
“He’s critical. DeAngelo Finn is too.”
“DeAngelo?”
“Yeah. Looks like House was settling up with everyone. Hopefully we reached them in time. Hopefully they’ll all be okay.”
“I’m not sure any of us is going to be okay,” she said.
He adjusted the blanket around her shoulders. “How’d you do it? How’d you get free?”
Tracy watched a tendril of smoke that had spiraled up from one of the chimneys, which hung motionless, like the vapor trail left by a jet. “Sarah,” she said.
Dan gave her a quizzical look.
“House wanted me all along,” she continued.
“I know, Calloway told me. I’m sorry, Tracy.”
“He must have told Sarah he intended to bring me here next. She carved me the message in the wall. Even if he’d seen it, House wouldn’t have known what it meant. Only I knew. It was the prayer we used to say together at night. It was a message to me. Sarah wanted to let me know she’d found something to dig at the wall, to loosen the bolts. She must have just run out of time, and the concrete would have been stronger twenty years ago than it is now.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s chemistry.” She sighed. “That wall was poured some eighty years ago, maybe longer. Over time, the chemicals from the decaying plants wicked down through the soil and interacted with the concrete. When concrete deteriorates, it cracks, and we know that water will always find its way through cracks. When water reached the bolts, it caused them to rust. When the bolts rusted, they expanded, cracking the concrete even more. Sarah scratched the message in the wall, but what she was really doing was using the spike to chip away at the concrete behind the plate and around the bolts.”
“Mrs. Allen would be proud,” he said.
Tracy rested her head on his shoulder. “We used to say that prayer together when Sarah was young. She was afraid of the dark. She’d sneak into my room and crawl in bed next to me, and I’d tell her to shut her eyes and we’d say it together. Then I’d turn out the lights and she’d fall asleep.” She started to cry, not bothering to wipe away the tears. “It was our prayer. She didn’t want anyone to know she was afraid. I miss her, Dan. I miss her so much.”
He squeezed her tight. “Sounds like she isn’t gone. Sounds like she’s still with you.”
She quickly raised her head and pulled back to consider him.
“What?” he asked.
“That’s the strange thing about it. I felt her, Dan. I felt her presence here with me. I felt her leading me to that spike. There’s no other way to explain why I dug in that exact spot.”
“I think you just did explain it.”