Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 104, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 633 & 634, October 1994

“The whole U.S. is gun country nowadays,” Ray said mildly. “But maybe it doesn’t matter. I’m nearly finished. I might’ve found something interesting today, though.”

“Interesting how?”

“It may be nothing. I came on it at dusk, and I’ll have to scout the area to see if there’s been any activity recently. But I’ve got a feeling... Do you work Sundays?”

“No, not usually. Why?”

“I might need a little help. If you’re free Sunday.”

“What kind of help? And why me and not Charlie?”

“Maybe I just prefer your company. In fact, I think I’d rather spend time with you than anyone else on the planet. Would that be so hard to understand?”

Our eyes met, and held. And suddenly we’d entered dangerous ground. And I wasn’t ready for it. Not yet. I didn’t know him well enough, and I knew Charlie didn’t trust him. And so I deftly changed the subject, and he was courteous enough to let me. I wish to God he hadn’t been.

I read it in Charlie Bauer’s face the moment he stepped into the Nest the next afternoon. Serious trouble. I was working in my office, but I rose involuntarily and walked out to meet him as he crossed the room. “What’s happened?” I said.

“Calderon,” he said simply. “He’s been shot.”

I felt as though someone had turned the volume down on the room. “Is he alive?” I asked. And suddenly my eyes were stinging.

“Yeah,” Charlie said, glancing away, “but he’s in rough shape. Real rough. He may not make it.”

“I’ll get my coat.”

“There’s no rush,” Charlie said, following me into the office and closing the door. “He’s still in surgery at County General and he’ll be in intensive care after that. No visitors. But maybe you can help. Do you know where he was today?”

“No, I... In the hills, I think. Why?”

“We’re trying to trace his movements. He cracked your Jeep up just outside the city limits on River Road. Sideswiped a parked car and spun broadside. A couple of Canadian tourists stopped to help. They said he was weaving before the crash but no other cars were near him, so apparently he was shot somewhere else and he was trying to make it to town.”

“How seriously is he hurt?”

“As bad as it gets. He was shot in the head, probably with a small-caliber handgun at close range. The wound showed powder burns. His skull’s fractured, his left eye is gone and the other one’s severely injured. So even if he survives the surgery...”

I sat down on the edge of my desk. Had to, or I would have fallen. “He’ll be blind?” I said, my voice barely a whisper. And for a moment I was in the river again, groping around in the rental car. Lost in black water. Forever.

“Maybe not,” Charlie said carefully. “But... Yeah, maybe. If he makes it at all.” He opened my liquor cabinet, poured a stiff brandy into a snifter, and held it out to me. “Here, you look like you need this.”

“No,” I said. “I’ll — I’ll be all right in a minute.”

Charlie hesitated, then knocked back half the brandy with a single swallow. And somehow seeing that snapped me out of the fog.

“You don’t drink,” I said. “I’ve never even seen you sip a beer.”

“That’s because you usually see me on duty.”

“You’re on duty now.”

“That’s right,” he said. He drank the rest of the brandy, baring his teeth against the sting. “God, Mitch, what the hell’s happening? We’ve got a quiet little town here, and all of a sudden I’ve got one man missing, probably dead, and now his brother’s been shot. Jesus, it was awful, blood all over...” His voice was trembling, and he stopped suddenly. “I’m sorry. I’ve seen bodies before. Maybe too many. You said he was up in the hills? What was he doing there?”

“Looking for his brother. He thought Walt might have hidden the body on land his family owns.”

“I see. Well, he couldn’t have been shot up there. There’s no way he could have driven those roads in the shape he was in. Maybe he can tell us when he comes around. If he does. I’d better get back to the hospital. Would you like to come along?”

“Yes,” I said.

County General was abustle, as usual. A harried intern in a blood-spattered smock told us Ray was still in surgery, still critical. They were trying to contact a specialist from the University of Michigan to do the surgery on his right eye. If Ray survived the night.

Charlie and I sat quietly on plastic chairs in the hall. I don’t know how long we waited. An hour or so. At some point I began to shiver uncontrollably and Charlie draped his jacket over my shoulders. And then his beeper went off. He used the phone at the nurse’s station.

“I’ve gotta go, Mitch,” he said, kneeling beside me. “Got a three-car pileup on south twenty-three. You gonna wait here?”

I nodded.

“Okay. If he regains consciousness, you ask him who shot him. Nothing else, at least not at first. Okay?”

I nodded again, and Charlie trotted off, grateful to be moving, I think. A half-hour later a nurse in surgical greens came out, holding a plastic packet at arm’s length in front of her.

“Dr. Kienzle said there’s no point in your waiting. They’re going to insert a cranial shunt to try to control the cerebral edema. The patient won’t regain consciousness for at least eight hours, maybe longer. These are his clothes. Do you have gloves?”

“Gloves?”

“The pants are wet,” she said briskly, placing the package on the seat beside me. “Apparently he soiled himself when he was shot. I have to get back. The doctor said he’ll call the station and brief you when we’ve finished. You can borrow a pair of gloves at the nurse’s station. You shouldn’t handle these without them.”

“Miss?” I said. But the door to the surgery was already closing behind her. She didn’t hear me.

I sat there a moment, eyeing the package of sodden clothing. And I realized she’d left it with me because I was wearing Charlie’s jacket. I unfolded the plastic wrapping.

Phew! I grimaced involuntarily at the stench. She was right, his jeans were sodden. But his pockets seemed to be dry, more or less. The hell with it. I went through them and retrieved his wallet, a pocketknife, and some loose change. I found what I was looking for in his shirt pocket. A plat map of the hill area, neatly divided into search grids with more than half of them X-ed out. At least we’d have some idea of where he’d been searching.

I started to close the sheet again, then hesitated. There was something wrong. His pants pockets were dry. But if he’d soiled himself... I picked up his jeans by the waistband and held them out. They were wet all right, but it couldn’t be urine. There was a neat waterline roughly halfway up the thighs. The waist area was bloodstained, but otherwise dry.

I raised the pants higher and sniffed the wet area. Definitely not urine. Similar though, and familiar. The rotten-egg stench the nurse had smelled was hydrogen sulfide, a mild chemical stew that sometimes seeps into groundwater near abandoned mines or quarries. It stinks, but it’s harmless. I’ve even dived in it a few times, exploring old mine shafts in the Upper Peninsula. Somewhere, Ray must have waded in water contaminated with sulfide.

But there aren’t any mines in the hills he’d been searching. I folded the jeans carefully and wrapped them up, then scanned the plat map again.

He’d been methodical, moving from the north, section by section. I’d been in those hills, of course, used to run in them when I was a girl. The section he’d apparently been working was in a valley, but he couldn’t have gotten in there. It was completely fenced off because of...

Sinkholes.