“Not to mention, think things through,” Charles added. “You took pictures of Tully, Crosby, and me at the dance as well as some footprints in the snow outside of a school? So what? Nothing was taken from the school. The lock wasn’t even broken. It was picked. All that’s missing is an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch piece of paper, which is impossible for you to prove. It also doesn’t matter if you contacted one or a dozen reporters, or who you spoke to in town. Without Bucky’s car, the geology report, or Jason Shirk’s body—all of which I can handle—you have nothing.”
He stepped away from her, went over to the drop-off in the floor of tunnel “22,” then turned back to her.
“You’re going to have an unfortunate fall of several hundred feet. We’ll take down all the lights, the spikes holding them up, and remove the generator. I doubt investigators will want to consider what you’ve told others and spend hundreds of dollars on core samples without that geology report. But even if they do, all it proves is that there is still silver in a mine that I legally purchased. And the mineral rights to the properties? They were legally purchased, too. So, checkmate. If no one considers your conjectures, then I’ll let a respectable amount of time pass, build a bridge across the collapsed floor, and start mining. In the interim, you, my dear, will have become a distant memory. So, again, checkmate. There’s no way this ends well for you.”
“Time for a swan dive, lassie,” Crosby said, coming for her.
Suddenly, there was a flash of light and a loud bang from the darkness of tunnel “12.” A wide-eyed Crosby grabbed his chest, stumbled back a few steps, then, with a scream, tumbled backwards into the black cavern where the floor had given way. The sounds of the shot and scream seemed to echo everywhere as Charles and Peter looked at one another, astonished.
Goldie turned to Peter, confidently.
“Your team got here early. Mine got here earlier.”
He looked at her, open-mouthed.
“How, how did you know?—”
“That you were setting me up?” she finished. “I read one of your short stories Friday night while you were sleeping. Loved the one about the abandoned mine with all the core sample holes. Except, how would you even know what core sample holeswereunless you researched them, or had recently seen ‘em?”
With an impulse of fury, Peter raised his pistol at Goldie’s head and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The firing pin just clicked. Surprised, he looked at it, then at her.
“I took your bullets yesterday while you were in the church checking out Father’s pictures,” she clarified. “I knew you kept your gun in your glove compartment. Right next to the whisk broom.”
Peter looked at her for a few more seconds, then dropped the pistol, turned, and ran down tunnel “22,” heading back the way they had come.
“Well,thatwas unexpected,” she observed. “I didn’t think he’d turn into a wuss.”
With a sudden blood-chilling scream, Charles Banyan charged at Goldie with outstretched arms, intending to strangle her. But a second shot and flash of light came from tunnel “12,” striking Charles in his left knee. With a painful yell, he collapsed to the ground in front of her and grabbed his leg. As the sound from the second shot bounced around the rock walls, she looked down at him, chewing and cracking her gum.
“You can’t hurt people you were elected to serve, Charles. It’s the mountain code.”
“You bitch!”he screamed.“You Goddamn bitch!”
“Yada-yada-yada,” she said, stepping over and picking up Peter’s .45. She ejected the clip, dug into the pocket of her blue winter jacket, and produced a handful of bullets. As she reinserted them, one by one, into the clip, Paul McCaw slowly came walking out of tunnel “12” holding his Sedgley Springfield hunting rifle.
“Hey, Goldie,” he calmly said, ducking to avoid the string of lights going across the tunnel entrance.
“Ay, Paul. How ya doin’?”
“Hey, Mayor,” he said, looking down at Banyan. “Sorry about the knee.”
“You shot me, you asshole!”Banyan painfully yelled.
“I hope you didn’t have to wait too long,” Goldie said, still loading bullets.
“Not too long,” Paul said, straight-faced. “Saul sealed up the entranceway behind me, and we was real careful about tracks. I had a flashlight and followed your instructions. I just hunkered down yonder and waited by them long planks on the floor. The lights came on about twenty minutes after I got here.”
“Y-you waited in a dark mine to ambush us?” Charles asked between tears and gritted teeth.
“No different than waitin’ in a duck blind or a deer tower. Besides, I had jerky.”
Goldie put the last bullet in place, then slipped the clip into the handle. “What long planks?”
“There’s a couple long planks in tunnel “12,” and I figured people musta used them to get across the collapsed floor of tunnel “22.””
“Perfect,” Goldie smiled, mocking herself.“NowI find out there were planks. Where’s Saul?”
“Probably about to entertain Tully,” Paul figured.
