Meg Gardiner - The Nightmare Thief

The entrance to the abandoned mine gaped in the mountain-side. Jo held back. The mine’s wooden support beams were weathered and rotting. Inside was a void: gloom and mystery.

“It’s all wrong,” she said. “Everything about this.”

The idea that Phelps Wylie had randomly hiked here, or that he had committed suicide by pitching himself down the mine shaft, struck her as absurd.

Gabe took a Maglite from his backpack and crouched in the entrance. The flashlight’s hard white beam shone on rubble, animal droppings, an empty plastic water bottle. The mine tunnel looked like a throat.

“Do you want to go in?” he said.

She put a hand against one of the support beams. “Not without roping up.”

She turned and examined the pine-stabbed mountainside. A fresh gash had been torn in the slope; a raw wound where the ravine had eroded violently under the force of fast-flowing, debris-strewn water.

“The flood channel certainly runs into the mine. I can understand why the sheriffs thought Wylie was swept to his death. Without having access to the satellite photos, it’s a logical conclusion.” She wiped her palms on her jeans. “I need to see the drop-off where his body was found.”

She put on her climbing harness, tied the end of a rope to it, and handed the rope to Gabe. He slung it behind his hips and held on, ready to anchor her if the floor inside the mine gave way.

“Shout if you run into mummies,” he said. “Or a mutant with a chain saw.”

“Jackass.”

“At your service, chica .” He handed her the flashlight and secured his grip on the rope. He was smiling, which almost allayed her fears.

Cautiously, sweeping the beam of the flashlight ahead of her, Jo walked into the mine. Though the roof was several inches above her head, she ducked. A rivulet of cold warning ran down her back. Her throat constricted and the old, desperate dread threaded through her, hissing, Small spaces collapse. The wind moaned like a ghostly pipe organ.

Stop it. Calm down. She forced herself to breathe. The walls were cool rock. Thousands of chisel marks were hammered into them. She wondered if anybody, ever, had gotten rich out of this hole.

Or if Wylie had thought he might.

Fifty yards in, she found the drop-off. It was a vertical side shaft, about three feet in diameter, which plunged thirty feet to rocks and crags and mining debris.

Yes, Wylie could have been swept this far into the mine by a torrent and then over the lip of the drop-off. But what if he hadn’t been?

She forced away the sensation that the walls were bulging, creaking, bearing down on her. Taking a breath, she continued along the tunnel. Soft dirt mounded beneath her boots, muffling her footsteps. Support beams were hammered into the tunnel’s walls and across its ceiling. She rounded a bend, swept the flashlight ahead, and stopped. A pit was dug across the floor. It dropped at least fif-teen feet. It was an emergency drain, in case of flood.

Directly above the pit, the old miners had inserted a crossbeam— a railroad tie. And above the crossbeam, dirt and rock had crumbled away. The wood was completely exposed. The sight didn’t reassure her. She jumped across the pit and kept going. The tunnel continued to bend. The daylight behind her grew dim and dusty. The walls narrowed and the ceiling lowered. Then, when she thought it couldn’t feel any more constricting, the tunnel branched. Tentatively she explored each offshot until she reached a final, dingy dead end. In the beam of the flashlight she saw only the occasional piece of trash. She turned and walked out.

“You all right?” Gabe said.

She nodded. She took off her harness, tilted her head back, and gulped fresh air. At the sight of the sky through the trees, her tension bled away.

“Somebody killed Wylie,” she said. “I have nothing to back that up, except gut feeling. But I’d put real money on it. I’ll drive up to Reno and lay odds.”

She got out her camera. “The question is who, and why.”

Gabe scanned the sky. Cumulus clouds were boiling in the west. “We’re going to lose the light. And we’re going to get rain.”

“I’ll hurry.”

She spent ten minutes shooting photos of the mine and hillside. Then she stopped, gazing up the slope. The Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office had searched the mine and flood channel for evidence. But she now believed the flood channel to be irrelevant.

She looked at the trail.

Consciously slowing herself down, she walked up it. Creeping along, she scanned the ground, examining it foot by foot.

It took her twenty minutes, but high above the mine, she stopped. The sunlight kicked again—like a flash from a signaling mirror. Cautiously, keeping her eyes focused, she walked toward the source of the light.

Ten feet from the path, stuck between two rocks, she saw it.

“Gabe.”

He climbed the trail to her side. “Is that what I think it is?”

Dusty and dinged, half covered with pine needles, it was a cell phone.

“Yeah. I need gloves.”

She dashed down to her backpack, grabbed latex gloves and a Ziploc baggie, and ran back uphill.

“It didn’t move,” Gabe said. His tone was wry.

She took a clutch of photos showing the phone in situ. “The sheriffs were out here in summertime. The sun was higher in the sky. The phone’s display wouldn’t have reflected the light the way it does now.”

“You coming up with a reason why they would have missed it?”

“Same when Evan came up last month—and besides, she wasn’t looking for a cell phone, because a cell phone had already been found on Wylie’s body and the cops didn’t know he had a second one. Nobody did, until she and I compared notes.”

She pried the phone from its cranny and held it, gingerly, by her fingertips.

Gabe said, “If it’s Wylie’s, it’s been here five months, exposed to the elements. I wouldn’t worry about fingerprints or DNA.”

“You never know.”

“And you don’t want to march it triumphantly into the sheriff’s station unless it actually belongs to the victim.”

“Let’s check.”

She pressed the Power key. Nothing happened.

Gabe took his own phone from his pocket. It was the same, extremely popular brand.

“Got any more gloves?” he said.

She handed him a pair. He got his key chain—a carabiner on which hung a Swiss Army knife. From the knife he slid a straight pin. He used it to eject the SIM card from the dead phone. He swapped the SIM into his phone and turned it on. The phone lit up.

“Yes,” Jo said.

The SIM was damaged. Only portions of the display showed up— if it had been a piece of paper, sections would have looked washed out from water damage. The entire display was weak and faded.

“It won’t be stable,” Gabe said.

Quickly she scrolled through the controls. She found the damaged SIM’s phone number.

“Write this down.” She rattled it off and Gabe scrawled it on his wrist. “The cops can get started with that.”

With increasing excitement, she checked the call register. The damaged SIM displayed only partial phone numbers. And there was no identifying information on any of the callers. But the numbers were all in the Bay Area. That strongly suggested to her that it was Wylie’s phone.

The screen flickered. “I’m going to lose it.”

She got her own phone. As quickly as she could, she sent it data from the damaged unit. Then she looked again at outgoing calls. A series of three-digit phone numbers had been called in rapid sequence. 6-2-2. 9-4-4. 8-2-1.

She felt chilly. “I think somebody was trying to dial nine-one-one.”

“Trying repeatedly to dial nine-one-one, and missing?”

The wind gusted around them. Gabe’s expression sobered.