Next, he sat up on the desk, disgustedly staring at the ticket. Prudential would love this, an ideal excuse to milk more money out of him. He tried to banish the scene from his mind—his first traffic fine since high school. Bard would laugh the stationhouse down if he ever found out.

  Ten more minutes passed. Where the hell was Higgins?

  Now Kurt was pacing the office, though not really aware of it yet. He went to pour himself some coffee, but found the bottom of the pot encrusted by a coat of dried black sediment. The smell made his eyes water.

  By 7:00 p.m., Higgins had still not surfaced. Kurt glowered out the front window a few times, speculating. Not another departmental wreck, he pleaded to himself. Bard would go into convulsions. Maybe he broke down somewhere. After ten minutes more, Kurt dialed P.G. Police Headquarters. He counted seven rings before a clone-voiced desk sergeant answered, “County police nonemergency.”

  “Extension 345, please.”

  “Are you a police officer?”

  “Morris, Tylersville. ID 8.”

  “Hold.”

  A full minute must’ve ticked by during the technical oblivion of “hold.” Kurt leaned over and turned on Bard’s base station police monitor, wincing at the sudden upsurge of corroded voices and intermodulative static. When the phone line was reconnected, a young, personable voice answered, “Zone B dispatch.”

  “I need you to have 207 landline his station.”

  “Hang on.”

  Then the same man’s voice crackled out of the radio: “Two-zero-seven.”

  Seconds lapsed, with no reply.

  Again: “Two-zero-seven.”

  No answer.

  The dispatcher came back on the phone. “He’s not copying. Must be cooping someplace.”

  “No way, not this guy.”

  “How late is he?”

  “A little over an hour,” Kurt said, but now he was worried. It was one thing to miss shift change, but failing to answer the radio was a serious matter ninety percent of the time. “Is he 10-8?”

  Kurt heard a faint plastic plunking, computer keys. Then the dispatcher said, “No.”

  “What’s his last call?”

  More plunking. “10-6 to Belleau Wood, access number 4. Time, 15:58.”

  Over three hours? Now Kurt’s worry transposed to alarm. It was not uncommon for an officer to forget to radio in 10-8 after a call—Kurt had done it several times himself—nor was it terribly unheard of for routine police business to consume several hours. What Kurt didn’t like was Belleau Wood sitting in the middle of it all.

  “Want me to start a missing unit call?”

  “Let me check it out first,” Kurt said. “I’ll get back to you if there’s trouble,” but just at that moment, Higgins’s voice broke over the air—“Two-zero-seven.”

  Kurt relaxed, sighing into the phone. The dispatcher answered, “Two-zero-seven, we’ve been unable to raise. Are you in need of assistance?”

  “No, no, I went into low ground without realizing it.”

  “Your station’s on line.”

  “Good. Have him go to 3.”

  “10-4,” the dispatcher acknowledged. Then, back to Kurt on the phone, he said, “Did you get that?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Kurt hurried. He hung up and turned the radio knob to Channel 3, which police referred to as the “jabber freek.” This was the commo zone’s free, unmonitored frequency, operating to keep the main county band clear when two or more separated units needed to transmit back and forth for extended periods. Kurt quickly cut down the offending blare of squelch, waiting for Higgins to break.

  “You there, Kurt?”

  “Yeah. I called dispatch when you didn’t show at six. He gave me your twenty. What’s going on out there?”

  Higgins’s voice was fading in and out. The static sounded like a violent, pounding surf. “About four I noticed the last chain down, the fourth one. So I decided to cruise in for the hell of it—I’d never seen that side of Belleau Wood before…” There was a long, crackling pause. Then: “This could be something big.”

  “What, Mark?”

  “Just come out and see for yourself. I need some help anyway.”

  “Shouldn’t we call the county?”

  Higgins’s voice rose to near-panic. “No, Christ no. I don’t want those dough-heads scarfing my find. Don’t even call Bard, not till after we check it out.”

  “Okay,” Kurt went along, though Higgins’s refusal to specify left him mildly peeved. “How do I find you?”

  “Just go to the fourth entrance and follow it all the way back till you see the cruiser. I’ll be waiting for you. But before you come out… I’ll need you to bring some things.”

  “What things?”

  “See if you can find those dick walkie-talkies Bard bought a couple summers ago. You know what I’m talking about?”

  “Yeah,” Kurt droned. Bard had purchased the radios for T/A and open-building checks. To Kurt’s knowledge, though, they’d never been used more than once or twice. “They’re around here someplace,” Kurt answered. “I’ll find them.”

  “Good. And pick up some batteries on the way. We’ll also need some heavy gloves, a couple of good flashlights, and about a hundred feet of good, thick rope.”

  Kurt frowned into the radio set. “What do you have in mind, a safari?”

  “Just bring the stuff. We’ll need it.”

  “Where am I gonna find a hundred feet of rope?”

  “I don’t know,” Higgins said. He seemed confident that Kurt could conjure it up by magic. “Try tying a bunch of cordons together. Hell, buy it if you have to; I’ll pay you back. And it wouldn’t hurt to bring along a third person, extra muscle in case we have to haul something up.”

  Haul something…up? Kurt decided not to even ask. “That all?”

  “Yeah. See you in a few.”

  Kurt turned off the set, more annoyed than confused. What nonsense was this? But he admitted to himself that his curiosity was growing acute. He found the walkie-talkies in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet. There were three of them, still packed neatly in their box. The nylon cordons—stowed in the same drawer with a fingerprint template, some Peerless leg irons, and other junk they never used—were frayed and even if knotted together would not amount to anything close to a hundred feet.

  He kicked the drawer closed, leaving a black mark on the paint. What does he want so much rope for? he asked himself.

  I went into low ground without realizing it, Higgins had said. And:

  …in case we have to haul something up.

  The answer came like a good, hard jolt.

  — | — | —

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Vicky sat on the passenger side. She was remarkably staunch considering that his request for her to come along had caused her to miss the end of Dynasty (which Kurt, in his loathing for television, preferred to think of as Vaginasty). Vicky was all the “extra muscle” he could drum up on such short notice. She would have to do.

  He’d picked up three 9-volt batteries at the Jiffy, for the walkie-talkies; and at the house, he’d scrounged some old gardening gloves and several working flashlights. Lastly, a quick stop at Worden’s Hardware for one hundred feet of half-inch sisal rope, at eighteen cents per foot.

  Vicky opened the new batteries for the G.E. walkie-talkies. She glanced up at him now and again, her lips turned to the suggestion of a smile. “How come you’re not saying anything?” she asked.

  “Thinking. I’m not sure I like this.”

  She popped in another battery, deftly snapped on the plastic cover. “What exactly are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know for sure. I think he found something in one of the mines at Belleau Wood.”

  “That would explain the rope. What do you suppose he found?”

  Probably a body, Kurt thought, minding the wheel. “Who knows? But whatever it is, he sounded pretty keyed up about it.”

  “Gee, an adventure,” she said. “This could be fun.”

  Kurt didn’t comment. His mind assembled a vivid picture of Harley Fitzwater’s broken, scalpless body lying disjointedly at the bottom of some dank shaft.

  Without signaling, he guided the car left, past the sentinel-like posts at the entrance lane. Instinct urged him to keep the speed down. Tightly risen trees on either side goaded the image of being siphoned through a long, dark tunnel. The road narrowed, progressing, roughening. Several stones kicked up into the fender wells; dust followed the Ford like a vaporous banner.

  The cruiser appeared round the next bend. It was parked cockeyed, as if abandoned, and Higgins rushed forward as they pulled to a halt. He greeted Vicky without even looking at her, and was right on top of Kurt the instant he stepped from the Ford.

  “Did you get the rope?”

  “Yeah, I got it,” Kurt said, and dropped the heavy coil into his partner’s arms. “You owe me eighteen bucks.”

  “Kurt says you found something in the mine,” Vicky volunteered.

  Higgins looked puzzled. “How’d you know?”

  “It wasn’t hard to guess,” Kurt said. “I didn’t think you wanted all this to swing from trees.” He threw the third walkie-talkie into the cruiser; then he and Vicky collected the rest of their things and followed Higgins toward the row of mines. Here the cricket calls grew to a fever of throbbing, pulsing madness. The sound crowded Kurt’s thoughts as they stumbled up the moonlit path.

  “After I found the chain down, I decided to poke around,” Higgins said, molding fast shapes with his hands as he spoke. “There was nothing happening on the radio, and I’d never seen the mines up close before. Anyway, they’re all caved in, except for one.”

  “Big deal,” Kurt sputtered, but it was more like gasping. Vicky’s hair swayed in front of her face as she trotted along, arms full of flashlights.

  “And I’m sure there’re footprints leading in and out of it. Lots of them.”

  “Kids go in there to drink all the time” was Kurt’s exerted reply. He was losing his breath, years of cigarettes finally taking their toll. “If you dragged us down here just because of some footprints… Slow down, will you. I’m not the goddamned Marathon Man.”

  Higgins strode on, his eyes bright with whatever fascination it was that lay waiting for them.

  The path flattened to a wide lifeless expanse nearly the length of a football field, which cut into a great, thrusting ridge. Judging by the remnants, this particular mining operation had never developed into anything productive, a far cry from the immense projects Kurt, as a child, had seen in Garret and Allegany counties when his father had dredged coal. The first five manway portals were collapsed, some only trace etchings of what they’d been.

  “Here it is,” Higgins said, stopping at the last portal. Winded, Kurt looked up. In the fading sunlight, the mouth of the manway was a solid black aperture bored into the ridge. It looked much larger than the last time he’d seen it.

  “We’re crazy to go in there,” Kurt said. He withdrew his Kel-lite from the ring on his belt. “That sucker’s ready to fall.”

  Higgins shook his head obliviously. “You think after all these years that mine’s gonna collapse at the same time we decide to go in it? The chances aren’t even worth thinking about.”

  “Are we going, or aren’t we?” Vicky insisted. “Let’s not stand around like a bunch of dopes.”

  Their flashlights clicked on. Lances of glare preceded them as they entered the mine, squarely lighting up the walls and pushing back the clammy darkness. Something dripped far ahead. The manway grew cooler as it descended; the darkness thickened like mist. Every few yards, they passed heavy timber stulls erected to keep the manway from falling in on itself. Toothpicks, Kurt thought. Many of the stulls were vermiculated, swollen with rot.

  In the bobbing auras cast by their lights, Kurt picked out glimpses of the ghosts of this place, and again he thought of his father. Cable pitons studded walls of dense rock, some still ringing slack tails of power lines threaded through their eyelets. Lengths of trolley rails lay uprooted all around, stained black and eaten by rust. An old, rusted-out carbide lamp collapsed under Kurt’s shoe; it crunched crisply, like crab shells.

  Nailed to an overhead stull, a warped sign read: KEEP LEFT, HAULAGE LINE. And another, CAUTION: MAIN SHAFT AHEAD.

  The manway opened into a low-ceilinged cavern pillared by a maze of stulls, a ghost town within the earth. This type of mine was known as an “open stope”; the main shaft was just a narrow, wedge-shaped pit cut triangularly down into the rock, its walls paired with several horizontal corridors similar to the manway. A much narrower shaft continued at the bottom of the pit to collect seepage.

  “My father worked in a mine like this for twenty years,” Kurt said, just now realizing what back-breaking work it must have been. He glanced around sullenly with his light, as if expecting to see skeletons. “No wonder he tipped the bottle so much.”

  “Wait’ll you see the shaft,” Higgins said.

  Warily, they stepped up onto the wooden causewalk which surrounded the pit. Then they peered boldly over the side and down. The pit was huge. Kurt stared in awed silence, a tremor in his gut. It was like staring over the edge of the world.

  Groovelike winzes fitted with metal ladders and lift cables cut down past each row of stope entries. The erratic dripping sound echoed up, much louder than before. Pointing his light, Kurt combed further and saw more ladders and bilge lines leading straight down. He could not see their end.

  “I figure the pit’s seventy, eighty feet deep at least,” Higgins said.

  Vicky seemed dizzied by the shaft’s utter vastness. “What are all those holes?”

  “They’re called stopes,” Kurt said. His voice was hollow, drained of tone. “That’s where they dig out the ore. They’re actually shaped like horseshoes inside.” He looked to Higgins. “So what’s the big find, Mark?”

  “Look at the bottom. The very bottom.”

  They kneeled on the causewalk, targeting their flashlights. At first Kurt saw nothing of detail, just the overall wedge shape of the pit tapering down and down. Sheer depth drew his flashlight beam out to a thread of light; his eyes began to hurt.

  “See it?” Higgins said.

  Slow shock fused on Vicky’s face. “I don’t believe it.”

  As Kurt steadied his eyes, forms appeared just ahead of the seepage shaft. Piles of rubble, rock chunks, demolished trollies. Heavy layers of dust and earth evenly dulled everything at the bottom. But soon a small, square shape became visible. It seemed tilted forward and gave off a faint blue tint. He moved the flashlight. Something red glinted up. He was looking at the top of an automobile.

  “See what I mean?” Higgins said. “Don’t ask me how I was able to spot it.”

  “Hasn’t been there long, by the looks of it,” Kurt said. “It’s still shiny, no rust.”

  Higgins pointed left, to a section of causewalk that was crushed in. “Somebody pushed it over the side. You can still see the tire tracks.”

  “You’re not going down there?” Vicky said, a suspicious bend to the question.

  Kurt stood up, hunting for the walkie-talkie. “We’ve got to. We might be able to run the plates. For all we know, there could be a body in it.”

  “I don’t trust those ladders,” Higgins said. “That’s why I wanted the rope. Climbing down’ll be a cinch.”

  Kurt extended the antennas of the two radios and handed them to Vicky. He lifted up the rope. “I’ll go, I’m lighter than you.”

  “No way, Jose,” Higgins said back, already pulling on the gloves. “I’m the one who found it. I’ll be the one who goes down.”

  “All right,” Kurt said. “Just take it slow.”

  A few feet behind them sat an abandoned electric dredge. The motor panel bore stenciled letters: RANDOLPH CARTER EXCAVATORS, INC. Kurt securely tied one end of the rope through a rear idler arm. Higgins dropped the other end over the side, watching it unravel.

  “You’re nuts,” Vicky said to Higgins. “What if the rope breaks?”

  “It won’t break.” He slipped his flashlight through his belt, took one of the radios from Vicky. “That rope’s strong enough to hold ten men. Hell, it’d probably even hold Bard.”

  Kurt took the other radio. They made a quick commo check, then Higgins grabbed hold of the rope and swung his legs over the side.

  “And for God’s sake, be careful,” Kurt said.

  Higgins grinned up at them. “If Batman can do it, I sure as hell can.”

  He started to lower himself down.

  “Batman, my ass,” Kurt remarked. He and Vicky lay side by side on the causewalk. A vague, foul odor wafted up. They watched without speaking as Higgins made his way past the first pair of stopes, their flashlights following him like little halos. When he’d gotten past the third pair, Vicky said, “I hope he knows what he’s doing.”

  “He doesn’t,” Kurt answered. “But it’s not a very steep incline. It’s not like he’s going straight down. I just hope he doesn’t break his fool neck on all that junk once he gets to the bottom.”

  Higgins grew tinier as they watched; he moved almost gracefully and with speed that seemed careless. The sound of his feet scuffling against rock reverberated up through the black air. Soon he was just a blue dot against the gorge.

  Kurt’s walkie-talkie keyed, a crisp electric spark. “You hear me, Kurt?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “I’m at the bottom now. It’s not as deep as we thought, lots of rope left over. Looks a lot bigger from up there.”

  Below, Higgins’s flashlight winked on, but they could still barely see him. It was like following the course of a firefly.

  Higgins inched onward, over a mass of rubble. Kurt could tell by his progress that the bottom of the shaft was really rather small. Higgins was at the car in less than a minute.

  “Stay away from that water shaft,” Kurt warned into his walkie-talkie.

  “Don’t worry, hoss. My mummy didn’t raise no dumbbell.” Then a pause followed Higgins’s transmission. The fleck of his light didn’t move. “You’ll never believe this, Kurt.”