PART VI FLORIDA #2
‘Linc had a digital key fob attached to his key ring. Kept all his crypto records on it. It’s trackable.
He knew he was going to die, so when he was rambling, he was actually sending me a coded message: find his key ring.
I’m guessing when they caught him, he tossed it to the ground to mark the location. ’
Audrey looked at me askance.
‘Your friend did that while they were torturing him?’ she said.
‘He was a good person. I liked Linc. Let’s go find his keys.’
And so we pressed further inland, through the abandoned gator farm, following the second location icon.
We passed through a rusted broken fence on the farm’s western boundary and tramped for about five minutes through natural knee-deep swamp.
We were heading toward the phosphate mine.
The rain pelted down.
We came to a shiny new chain-link fence that marked the perimeter of the mine.
The huge white toxic mound loomed beyond it to our right.
However, the pin indicating the location of Linc’s key fob suggested it was to our left . . .
. . . beyond another chain-link fence, only this one was old, rusted and twisted.
‘There,’ I said.
Through the older fence, I spotted it.
An ancient mine entrance, burrowing into a low hill: a small square doorway made of wooden beams, veiled from above by hanging vines and from the ground by a century of rising mud.
It was a mine from the 1800s.
A fast-flowing rivulet of rainwater flowed into it.
I said, ‘The Union investigator from 1877, Captain McShane, mentioned a mine in his last investigation note. After he went in search of it, he disappeared. Looks like Linc found it, too.’
We slipped through a gap in the broken older fence and hurried over to the ancient mine’s entrance.
It yawned before us, black and menacing.
Linc’s location pin pinged, indicating that his key ring was nearby—not inside the mine, but somewhere close.
I looked at the rainwater flowing into the doorway.
The mud around it, rather than being smooth and untouched, was all churned up with footprints: from the struggle when the Hammer’s men had caught Linc.
I saw it about ten yards from the dark doorway.
A black plastic key fob.
It was lodged in the mud. Maybe Linc had thrown it clear when they’d grabbed him.
Good work, Linc, I thought.
I turned my gaze back to the decayed wooden doorway.
‘You ready?’ I asked Audrey.
‘I’m game,’ she replied.
We flicked on our cell phone flashlights and entered the antebellum mine.
The old mine breathed with its own eerie sounds.
Chains hung from hooks, swinging, clanking.
Rainwater flowed away from us down the straight main tunnel, disappearing into darkness, the echoes of its trickling suggesting faraway depths.
We edged cautiously down the tunnel and came to a wider space.
In the centre of this space was the mine’s key component: its elevator.
The elevator’s entire frame—including its vertical rails—was made of super-thick wood.
The only part of it that was made of metal was the rusted cage that hung from a chain in its middle.
The cage wasn’t that big but I knew that back in the 1800s, maybe ten miners would’ve been squeezed into it for their descent deep underground.
I scanned the space with my phone’s flashlight.
A filthy plastic supermarket bag lay near my feet.
I picked it up.
It bore the logo for the Kash n’ Karry chain.
‘A shopping bag?’ Audrey observed.
‘Kash n’ Karry,’ I said. ‘Interesting.’
‘How so?’
‘Kash n’ Karry was an old supermarket chain. I think they stopped doing business under that name around 2010. I’ll have to check it out when we get back.’
I stepped over to the elevator cage in the huge wooden frame.
‘We’re not going down in that, are we?’ Audrey asked.
‘No.’
I nodded at a wooden safety ladder attached to the wall of the shaft behind the rusted cage.
‘We’re going down that.’
Using the ladder, we climbed down the dark mine shaft.
We passed several horizontal digging levels: picks, shovels and buckets from bygone ages still littered their earthen floors. Each level was blocked off by wooden barriers covered in years of dust.
We came to the bottommost level: a rock-cut tunnel leading into darkness. It was not blocked.
The shaft continued down for another fifteen or twenty feet, with no more side levels branching off it. Its sheer stone walls just plunged into blackness.
I aimed my flashlight down it.
From what I could see, the base of the shaft was filling with the incoming rainwater.
I turned my attention to the rock-cut tunnel of the lowest level.
Something was lying on its floor.
A can of New Coke.
I picked up the soda can.
It bore the cheesy branding of the 80s and was covered in years of grime.
‘What’s that brain of yours thinking?’ Audrey asked.
I turned the can over in my hands.
‘New Coke came out in the mid-1980s,’ I said. ‘It was -supposed to be Coca-Cola’s great new formula but it was a total failure. They shut it down within a few months. For our purposes—in addition to the Kash n’ Karry bag—it acts as a time capsule. Someone was here in the 80s and the 2000s.’
‘Could be vagrants, homeless people,’ Audrey said.
‘True.’
I took a cautious step down the tunnel beyond the Coke can.
After ten more steps, I entered a wider space and stopped dead.
‘Oh, man . . .’ I breathed.
THE DEPTHS OF THE MINE
It looked like a prison, an underground Alcatraz.
The super-high cavern in which we stood was maybe three -storeys tall and rectangular in shape.
On both of its long sides were two levels of cells—barred cages cut into the rock walls—accessed by rusty iron ladders and half-broken catwalks.
There must have been sixty cells in total.
All were empty.
At the centre of the vast cavern—its focal point—was a giant pillar of stone.
It was nine feet high and thick as a tree trunk. Two large brass rings were bolted to its flanks.
I knew what it was.
So did Audrey.
‘A whipping post,’ she said softly.
‘Visible from every cell, so all the other prisoners could see the person getting whipped,’ I added.
Audrey stepped out into the vast space, gazing up at it all. ‘Back in the 1800s, the owners of these mines used slaves. Then after the Civil War, they leased convicts. It was said that a lot of those convicts never saw daylight again. This must’ve been where they housed them.’
I stepped over to the nearest cell.
Its barred door was open.
I peered inside it.
A ragged hessian sleeping mat lay on the rock floor. A pathetic effort at comfort.
Some soda cans lay in the rear corner of the cell. A few more New Cokes.
But there were some other cans, too.
Also old. Also filthy.
But not soda cans. They were thicker, sturdier.
I picked one up.
Its label read: campbell’s tomato soup.
As with the New Coke cans, this label’s lettering gave away its age.
It wasn’t a modern can of Campbell’s soup.
No, it actually looked like the tomato-soup cans from the famous Warhol painting: from the 1960s.
‘Audrey, this is weird. This mine has got shopping bags from the 2000s, Coca-Cola cans from the 80s and soup cans from the 60s. Someone lived here. Over decades.’
Audrey came over and stood beside me. ‘Sure, it’s possible that folks have lived in here over the years. Like I said: vagrants or homeless people seeking shelter from hurricanes.’
‘Yeah, maybe . . .’ I said. ‘But if that’s the case why kill Linc for finding it?’
My mind was trying to piece everything together.
LaToya Martyn’s dead baby.
The thirteen rag-wearing corpses under the Catholic property.
Art Hillerman’s mutilated face.
And now this: foul underground lodgings for leased convicts or, going further back in time, slaves.
With evidence of use in the 60s, 80s and 2000s.
I frowned, perplexed. ‘It doesn’t make any sense—’
A sharp clanking made me spin.
Audrey whirled, too. ‘What was that?’
More clanking, then voices.
Distant and echoing.
Men’s voices. From the top of the elevator shaft.
‘Must be down on the bottom levels . . .’
‘I want them found now . . .’
I knew that voice.
It was the Hammer’s voice. After murdering Linc, he was still in Florida.
‘Is there any other way out?’ Audrey hissed.
I spun, searching for an escape, but we were at the very bottom of the mine.
We had nowhere to go.
And the Hammer and his men were coming.
A few minutes later, the old iron elevator car arrived at the bottommost level, creaking loudly.
Four security guards in grey-and-black uniforms got out of it, guns raised. Their shoulder patches read: ‘sss – southern security systems’. Behind them walked the Hammer in his black t-shirt, cargo pants and gun belt.
‘Fan out,’ the Hammer said. ‘Roke, you got point.’
A huge guard with a shaved head and a bushy moustache led the way. He moved like a soldier and I guessed he’d probably served with the Hammer.
Audrey and I watched them in total, frozen silence.
They couldn’t see us, but we could see them . . .
. . . from our position in the muddy pool at the base of the shaft, fifteen feet underneath their stopped elevator.
We lay flat on our backs in two-foot-deep—and rising—rainwater, with our noses and eyes protruding just above the surface.
A steady sequence of plops and trickling noises gave us some audio cover.
While trying to breathe as quietly as I could, I watched them through the gap between the elevator car and the tunnel.
The big man named Roke said, ‘They’re here somewhere.’
How did they know we were here? I thought. Had we triggered some infrared tripwire, maybe?
We stayed dead still in the pool.
As I lay on my back, I felt the detritus at the base of the mine shaft digging into my spine.
Stones and sticks, jabbing into my back and legs.
One round rock in particular irritated me as it pressed against my lower spine. I tried to ignore it as I stayed as still and silent as possible.
And then, finding nothing on the lowest level, our pursuers reboarded the elevator and left, and Audrey and I both exhaled with relief.