of.
As he waited, he heard something move behind him. He spun and searched the darkness, sensing a watcher he couldn’t see. He stabbed the flashlight beam into the black throat of the tunnel. Deep inside the Vermilion Drift, two yellow eyes glowed back at him.
“You coming?” Haddad shouted down.
“Just a minute!”
Cork crept toward the eyes, which didn’t move. He reached down and picked up a rock from the tunnel floor. As he approached, a hiss came from the darkness, then an angry snort. Cork kept moving, the rock firmly in his grip. When he was fifteen feet away, the creature turned to flee and, in turning, showed its fat, furry body and bushy tail. A raccoon. Cork figured the tunnel would be a pretty good place to make a den for the winter months, and probably the coon had young somewhere. He was just about to return to the rock mess at the bottom of the test pit when the Maglite beam swept across a broken area in the wall that he’d overlooked as he’d passed through earlier. It appeared as if rocks had been loosely piled to close off a crosscut tunnel. He stepped around the rubble on the floor and worked one of the stones away from the makeshift wall. Behind was a well of darkness, and from that well flowed the stench that fouled the air in the tunnel. He shined his Maglite inside.
Cork had always thought that as a cop he’d seen the worst of everything. When his flashlight revealed what the stone wall had hidden, he realized how wrong he’d been.
SEVEN
The sink, which Haddad had identified as most probably a wildcat operation, was in the middle of a small clearing a quarter mile north of the headframe for the Number Six shaft of the Vermilion One Mine. The sheriff’s people had been able to reach it by driving carefully among the pines that lay between the sink and the mine buildings.
It was nearing seven in the evening, and Cork stood with Sheriff Marsha Dross and Captain Ed Larson near the edge of the sink. Dross had put in a call to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension office in Bemidji, and they were waiting for the agents to arrive. The drive would have taken a good three hours, and enough time had already passed that Cork and the others were watching their watches. Alf Murray, the chief of the Aurora Volunteer Fire Department, stood with Cork and the others, using a walkie-talkie to communicate with his men below. The firemen had brought out mobile lights and a generator, and a power cable snaked out of sight down the passage that led eventually to the Vermilion Drift. They’d set up the lights in the tunnel, but only as far as the gruesome discovery Cork had made. Ed Larson, who was in charge of major crimes for the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department, had overseen the dismantling of the makeshift stone wall. Some of Dross’s people had done a flashlight search of the tunnel from that point to the timber construction where Haddad and Cork had crawled through. Dross had put others to work doing a quadrant search of the area surrounding the surface opening of the sink for anything that might prove to be evidence. She’d hoped for maybe a footprint or tire track, but the ground had yielded nothing.
Someone had gone to Lucy’s in Gresham and brought back a big container of coffee, and Cork stood sipping from a white foam cup as he waited. The sun had shifted to the far west, and the shadows of the pines had begun to creep across the clearing.
“Ever deal with anything like this when you were sheriff?” Dross asked.
“Nope,” Cork replied. “I can’t imagine many sheriffs do.”
“Jesus, I hope not.”
Cork heard the sound of a vehicle engine approaching gradually through the pines. The sun was in his eyes, and it was hard to see into the deep shade among the evergreens. A minute later, a white Suburban entered the clearing and rolled slowly toward them. It stopped beside the sheriff’s pickup truck, and the two occupants got out. One of them Cork knew well: Simon Rutledge, with whom he’d worked in the past, both when he was sheriff of Tamarack County and in the time since. Cork liked him immensely and had great respect for his ability. Rutledge’s companion was a stranger. She was of medium height, early fifties, hair the color of a cirrus cloud and with the same wispy appeal.
“Marsha, Ed, Cork,” Rutledge said in greeting, and they all shook hands.
“Thanks for coming, Simon,” Dross replied.
Rutledge gestured to his companion. “Agent Susan Upchurch. Her specialty is forensic anthropology.”
“The truth is we’re so short-staffed these days that I do everything.” Upchurch laughed. “Damn budget cuts.” Her accent was southern.
“Alabama?” Cork guessed.
“Birmingham,” she said.
“Long way from home.”
“I went to graduate school at the U of M. Found I didn’t mind the snow, and then the BCA made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Here I am.”
“And we’re lucky to have her,” Rutledge threw in. “Fill me in. What have you done so far?”
Dross replied, “We’ve dismantled the wall that blocked off the crosscut tunnel. We’ve gone over the main tunnel all the way to the timbers. Not easy. Most of the drift is still without lights, so it’s pitch dark.”
“Did you videotape the dismantling?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Anything else?”
“We shot video and stills of everything inside the crosscut, but haven’t gone in yet. Our M.E.’s the only one who’s been inside, and just to certify death.”
“Is he still here?”
“No, he left to prepare for the autopsy.”
“He didn’t disturb anything down there?”
“No.”
“Who else has been in the tunnel?”
“Besides Ed’s crime scene team, only Lou Haddad, one of the officials from the mine. He was with Cork.”
“Where is he now?”
“At the mine office. We can bring him back if you want him.”
“Not necessary at the moment.” Rutledge glanced around the perimeter of the sink. “Did you go over the area up here?”
“Yeah. Nothing.”
“Okay. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
They gathered at the edge of the sink. It was a five-foot drop to the opening in the rubble where the passage began. Although there were natural hand- and footholds in the side of the pit that could have been used to climb in and out, the firemen had placed an aluminum ladder against the wall. Dross went first, Rutledge next, Upchurch after him, and finally Larson. Cork brought up the rear. He wasn’t eager to return to the hardness and the darkness of the Vermilion Drift, but the tunnel was full of questions, horrifying questions, and he was a man trained his whole life in mining answers. He hesitated in the evening light, watched Larson disappear into the narrow throat of the opening in the rubble, took a good, deep breath of pine-scented air, and descended.
The passage was a snaking affair, lit by daylight that slipped through gaps in the blasted rock. It was big enough throughout its length to accommodate the body of even a large person, but the ragged rock edges and the constant twisting made the journey a slow one. Those who reached the bottom first waited for the others to arrive. In the passage itself, the air was fine, but in the tunnel where the cool mine air pooled, the nauseating smell of rotting flesh was overwhelming.
Lights supplied by the fire department illuminated the drift. Cork and the others walked a path cleared and
