Karl Wagner - Why Not You and I?

With sudden strength, Moore pushed the other man’s hands away from his shoulders. “John, this is all moving just a little too fast for my brain, and even for a nightmare this is making no sense. Who is dead, then?”

“John Wingfield and some girl I can’t identify — but I know it isn’t Kirsten. And probably a mining engineer named Cullin Shelton was killed too.”

“I think you’d better start at the beginning,” Moore said, getting to his feet uncertainly. “There’s coffee in the kitchen. Who’s John Wingfield?”

“A friend from New York — or rather, a friend of Kirsten’s,” Chance amended, following him into the cramped kitchen-dinette. “I didn’t know him all that well. He was one of her former satellites — part of a mixed bag of old acquaintances we’d had down for the week for a homecoming-engagement party sort of affair.”

Moore boiled water. He remembered tearing the invitation into tiny fragments and burning them into fine white ash.

“Wingfield hung around awhile after the general festivities — still not giving up the chase, I suppose. But Kirsten knows so few friends here, and she enjoyed the attention. Yesterday I drove over to Cherokee to try to follow up some bits of Indian legend concerning the lost mines of the Ancients that are said to lie hidden in the mountains here. As luck had it, an afternoon shower left me mired to the door latches on some Godforsaken trail I had no business attempting by car. Eventually I hiked out to a phone, called Kirsten the news — then spent the evening and half this morning slogging the machine out to the road with a team of mules. I limped back to Knoxville by afternoon to learn I was supposed to be dead.”

Chance frowned and went on. “On my desk there was a quick note from Kirsten to the effect that a man named Cullin Shelton, a mining engineer, had phoned yesterday evening from Dillon. Sounded like he had his wind up, and he begged for me to drive over to meet him right away. Said he had the information I’d been asking around about. Kirsten thought it was important, and talked Wingfield into driving her up to Dillon in the middle of the night. Doubt it took much persuading him.”

Moore poured out black coffee into a pair of cracked cups. “And Wingfield drove off the road in the fog and killed them both,” he finished for him. “The car identified Kirsten, and with the connection what was left of Wingfield looked enough like you to fool some backwoods medical examiner.”

Not seeming to notice the scalding heat, Chance swallowed the sour java. “I drove up to Dillon as soon as I found out,” he stated. “That took some people by surprise.”

“I imagine.”

“The Packard was a total wreck, but it didn’t burn — not at the crash site. There was a lot of mashed-up rhododendron, but not a single scorched blossom on the slope. Oh, somebody had set fire to the wreck afterward — after it had been towed up the ridge — but the tank had punctured, and there was barely enough gas to peel the finish and scorch the upholstery.”

Moore refilled his cup. The coffee set his teeth on edge, but cleared his head. “I thought the bodies were burned beyond recognition.”

“They were.” Chance’s seamed brow furrowed at the memory. “The corpses looked like they’d been through an electric-arc furnace. Remember the poor burned devils we saw in the War? Remember how clothing cakes into the melting flesh and forms a sort of scab? Well, they’ve got some nice and clean charred clothing in the morgue there, but it still smells of the gasoline someone sloshed on the heap to ignite it. Hell — heat intense enough to burn bone to near ash — and there’s still sections of unmelted elastic left!”

Choking down a third cup of coffee, Moore felt his thoughts begin to steady. He forced himself to concentrate on Chance’s incredible account. “Electricity can play tricks like that,” he suggested. “I saw a man hit by lightning once — barely raised a blister on his skin, but he was charred meat inside. Did they hit a power line?” Chance swore. “That’s what the local constabulary said when I pointed out the discrepancy in the degree of incineration. And when I pointed out that there were no power lines where the car went over, they told me it must have been lightning. Lots of freak lightning in the hills this season, it seems.”

“Well, maybe it was lightning.”

“There’s too many things that still don’t follow. Like the identification of the bodies.”

“Well, surely with your logic you convinced them you weren’t one of the victims,” Moore commented acidly. His head was throbbing suddenly and his stomach was knotting itself.

“On going back over the crash site we found Wingfield’s dinner jacket with his billfold inside — must have had it off, and it flew off under the rhododendron when they rolled. That might have been an honest mistake in identification.”

“Kirsten?” Moore asked finally.

“The girl they say is Kirsten — well, there’s not much left to identify. Skull and jaw were completely crushed — forget dental work.” Chance drew a breath and thrust his hands in the pockets of his rumpled tweeds. “But they’d made a token effort at autopsy there. They’d opened the chest and abdominal cavities. Heat may char limbs to ashes and bone to cinder — but the internal organs maintain relative integrity. At least their positions don’t shift.”

Chance paused for understanding to light. Moore had been one of Kirsten’s intimate circle of friends, and this had been an amusement to her.

“Good lord!” Moore exploded in sudden awareness. “Kirsten had complete situs inversus! Her heart was on the right side of her body — she always thought it was a fine jest!”

Chance nodded. “This girl’s body had the heart on the left side. It was a blunder they couldn’t possibly have allowed for.”

“But why! Why this ghastly charade!”

“Because Kirsten is still alive — and she knows something important enough to kill for!” said Chance grimly. “Cullin Shelton ‘left town’ last night, no forwarding address. No one knows a thing. But there’s a sooty smear of burned animal grease on the curb in front of the Dillon Hotel where Shelton had his room. And wedged between the passenger door and the running board of the wreck I found this.” Chance tossed a knotted handkerchief to the kitchen table.

Gingerly Moore unwrapped it. Inside was a charred human finger — a man’s gold wedding band fixed into the cindered flesh.

“Wingfield’s?”

“Not hardly.”

Moore pushed the thing away. His stomach had endured enough.

Chance struggled to pull together the pieces of the puzzle for him. “Ever since I’ve been back I’ve been hearing vague hints of trouble in the mountains — strange things you can’t quite pin down. I wouldn’t have paid attention if it weren’t my life’s work to note and study the inexplicable and the unusual. Lately I’ve learned someone has been making serious efforts to learn the secrets of the lost mines of the Ancients. Sure there have been a lot of people interested in this legend — except there appears to be a sinister purpose behind this exploration. Shelton was a mining engineer hired by someone to delve into this matter. Shelton, I’m convinced, is dead.

“Cullin Shelton had something to tell me,” Chance counted it off. “Something important enough that he died horribly trying to tell it. He met Kirsten and Wingfield — they must have discovered something from him. So the thing killed again — whoever and whatever it is. But somehow Kirsten escaped. To prevent a search for her, someone went to a great deal of effort to make it appear she had died in the crash along with, supposedly, me.”