Michael Connelly: Lost Light

“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s go.”

I handed him a light and a shovel and we approached the mouth of the tunnel.

“He’s going to pay for this,” Lindell said.

I nodded. I didn’t bother to tell him that Lawton Cross had already been paying for it every day of his life.

The tunnel was big. Shaquille O’Neal could walk through with Wilt Chamberlain on his shoulders. It was nothing like the stale, claustrophobic systems I had crawled through thirty-five years before. The air inside was fresh. It smelled clean. Ten feet in we put on the lights, and in another fifty feet the channel curved and we were out of sight of the entrance. I remembered Cross’s directions and kept to the right, moving slowly.

We came to a central cavern and stopped. There were three tributary tunnels. I focused my light on the third opening and knew it was the way. I then turned my light off and told Lindell to do the same.

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Just turn it off for a second.”

He did and I waited a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. My vision and focus came back and I could pick up the outline of the rock walls and jutting surfaces. I could see the light that had followed us in.

“What is it?” Lindell asked.

“Lost light. I wanted to see the lost light.”

“What?”

“You can always find it. Even in the dark, even underground.”

I snapped my light back on, careful not to hit Lindell in the face with the beam, and headed toward the third tributary tunnel.

This time we needed to duck and proceed in single file as the tunnel grew smaller and more cramped. The channel curved to the right and soon we could see light ahead. An opening. We moved through and came out into an open bowl, a granite stadium chiseled out decades before. The Devil’s Punchbowl.

Over time the bottom of the bowl had filled with a layer of run-off granite debris and dust, a layer just thick enough for brush to put down roots and for a body to be buried. It was here that Dorsey and Cross had been led to the body of Antonio Markwell and where they would come back again with Marty Gessler. I found myself wondering how long she had been alive on that night three years ago. Had she been pushed at gunpoint through the tunnel or dragged, already dead, to her final resting spot?

Neither answer was any comfort. I looked back at Lindell as he came out of the tunnel into the opening. His face was ghostly white and I guessed that he might have been considering the same thing.

“Where?” he asked.

I turned from him and scanned the bottom of the bowl and then I saw it. A tiny white cross rising in the brown-and-yellow brush line by the granite facing.

“There.”

Lindell took the lead and walked quickly to the cross. He lifted it out of the ground without a second thought and tossed it to the side. He was already putting his shovel into the ground when I got there. I looked down at the cross. It was made from an old picket fence. At its center point was a photo of a young boy. A school photo framed with popsicle sticks. Antonio Markwell was long gone from this life and this spot but his family had marked it as a holy ground. Dorsey and Cross had then used it because they knew the ground here would never be disturbed by trespassers.

I leaned down and picked the tiny cross up. I leaned it against the granite wall, and then I went to work with my borrowed shovel.

We didn’t really dig with the shovels. We scraped at the surface, both of us instinctively reluctant to drive the point of the blade down too deeply.

In less than five minutes we found her. One final scrape of Lindell’s shovel revealed a thick plastic tarp. We put the shovels aside and we both squatted to look. The plastic was opaque, like a shower curtain. But through it was the distinct outline of a hand. A small withered hand. A woman’s hand.

“Okay, Roy, we found her. Maybe we should back out of here now. Make the calls.”

“No, I want to do this. I…”

He didn’t finish. He put his hand on my chest and gently pushed me back away. He then crouched over the spot and started digging with his hands, his arms moving quickly, as though he thought he was in a race against time, that he was trying to save her before she suffocated.

“I’m sorry, Roy,” I said to his back but I don’t think he heard me.

In a few minutes he had uncovered most of the plastic. From her face down to her hips. The plastic had apparently slowed but not stopped decay. The air in the bowl took on a musty smell. Moving back closer and peering over Lindell’s shoulder I could see that Agent Martha Gessler had been wrapped and buried fully clothed, with her arms crossed in front of her. Only half of her face was dimly visible through the plastic. The rest was hidden in blackness; blood in the folds of the plastic. I guessed that they had killed her with a head shot.

“Her computer is here,” Lindell said.

I stepped further forward to see. I could make out the outline of a laptop computer. It was wrapped in its own plastic and left on her chest.

“It holds the connection to Simonson,” I said, though that was obvious by now. “It was their edge. They wanted the body and the laptop someplace where they could get to it. They thought it would keep Simonson and the others in line. But they were wrong.”

I saw Lindell’s shoulders start to shake but I knew he was no longer digging.

“Give me a minute, Harry,” he said, his voice straining.

“Sure, Roy. I’m going to make my way back to the cars and call some people. I left my cell phone.”

Whether he knew I had lied or not, he didn’t object. I picked up one of the flashlights and headed back. On my way back through the smaller tunnel I could hear the big man crying behind me. The sound was somehow picked up and intensified as it came into the tunnel. It was like he was right next to me. It was like he was inside my head. I moved faster. I got to the main channel and was almost running by the time I got to the entrance. When I finally came out into the light it was raining.

The following afternoon I took another Southwest jet from Burbank to Las Vegas. I still wasn’t allowed back into my house and wasn’t sure I ever wanted to go back anyway. I was still a key part of the investigation but nobody had specifically told me not to leave town. They only say that sort of stuff in movies, anyway.

As usual the flight was full. People going to the cathedrals of greed. Bringing their stores of cash and hope. It made me think of Simonson and Dorsey and Cross and Angella Benton and what part greed and luck had played in their lives. Most of all I thought of Marty Gessler and the bad luck she had. Left to molder for more than three years in that place. She had simply made a phone call to a cop, and that had brought about her own destruction. Good intentions. Trust. What a way to go. What a wonderful world.

This time I rented a car at McCarran and I fought my own way through the traffic. The address Lindell had gotten for me off the license plate number I had given him was located on the northwest side of the city. It was out near the end of the sprawl. For now, at least. It belonged to a house that was newly built and large. It had a French Provincial style to it. I think it did, at least. I’m not that good at that sort of thing.

The two-car garage was closed but off to the side of the circular driveway was a car that wasn’t the one I had been in with Eleanor. It was a Toyota, maybe five years old with a lot of miles on it. I could tell. I am good at that sort of thing.

I parked the rental at the edge of the circle and slowly got out. I don’t know, maybe I thought if I took my time somebody would open the door and invite me in and all my qualms would be eased.