Chapter 109
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. As well as they could anyway, in the dim light from the cell phone.
He was behind her, her own phone all that was lighting their way.
His hand was tight on her shoulder.
“You will need to walk very carefully here. There is a steep drop-off and it is very slippery. Bo broke his arm once. I am not ready to leave you behind just yet.”
“So why are you taking me in here? Can’t you just leave me with the van?
Everyone already knows you are involved.
Killing me really doesn’t get you anything in the long run.
Except Dominic Acardi coming after you with everything he has—all of his cave-buddies with him.
I’d even be the least of the witnesses against you.
Considering they have figured out what you have done and everything.
There are reports, and records, and notes, and Kimball kept a diary, and there are things going back decades.
All it takes is one tied to you and you are toast.”
Madison was trying to make note of the features she was passing.
But they were just a mix of limestone that had been carved out by man and eroded by time, weird looking caved in winzes—the areas people were supposed to work in—and ore chutes.
Ore chutes were where the copper had once been pulled out.
She’d learned all this great information when Bailey Addy and Bert Dillon’s daughter Kyra had been abducted and held down in a mine not even a mile from here.
Their assailants had been looking for rumored treasure at the time.
Somehow, she didn’t see Newcomb as a treasure hunter. That would be something too adventurous for the man in front of her now. Then again, it wasn’t as if she exactly knew him, right?
“I may consider it. I really have no issue with you. You put a lot of faith in Acardi, don’t you? Of course you do. You are in love with him and he with you. We all have known that for a long time. I take it he finally bit the bullet, so to speak?”
“I have, too. I also know he’s going to be one of the Major Crimes major pains coming for me. He’ll probably be with Miguel. They have been working together on a few things lately. Like catching you and your buddies. Do you honestly think they are just going to let you get away?”
“No. But if they are busy finding you, that will keep them out of my way for a while, won’t it?
Why, they could stay down here for days looking for your body, there are so many places I could just put you.
It’s very interesting down here. And not as muddy as most people think.
Well, except when it’s rained. Which—it has. ”
Well, she suspected he was finally being honest here. She wasn’t exactly bait to catch Major Crimes. She was just the distraction to buy Newcomb time to disappear into the sunset.
“Probably. Except there are a lot more Major Crimes detectives than there are of you. You have five guys working for you—and now good old Bo bit the dust? You are down to four. Just four. Tell me their names. I am assuming Pete was one of them? So…three. Tell me, did that old butthead actually kill anybody?”
Once she got out of this, she was going to find him, and kick his butt so far up into his head, his ears pooped for a week. Then she was going to go to the trial and watch him get convicted. If…Newcomb hadn’t killed him when he shot him, anyway. There was always that.
Pete’s family…they were going to be devastated.
He had four kids, and his oldest had just made him a grandfather recently.
His wife had made Madison cookies when she was in the hospital after the choir hall shooting.
How could Pete have been involved in this?
She had thought he was a better man than that.
“No. Pete is far too squeamish for that, actually. He just handled the evidentiary end of things. For a little financial help now and then. Two of his boys are a bit different, after all. Therapy can be expensive. Everyone, Madison, has a price. Everyone.”
“So when there were a bunch of people involved in the ambushes and attacks on Major Crimes, they weren’t all your people?
How did that work?” There had been attacks in the past on Major Crimes, ambushes, that kind of thing, where up to a dozen suspects had been involved.
Most of the time, the only hint of their identities, were the ones who Major Crimes had to take out line-of-duty.
And those were turning out to be surprisingly hard to identify. It was slow-going.
That had been one of the things good old Pete had been working on—Pete and Hope, who was beyond amazing at getting DNA samples from the smallest contributions. No wonder it hadn’t been getting anywhere. Pete had probably been sabotaging things for a long, long time.
“Mostly my people, actually. I just had a core group who helped me do things. In Finley Creek, there is always someone willing to do what you ask. For the proper fee.”
Fee. He had said he was paying for something a few times now.
Interesting. So…people were being paid. Imagine that.
And if he was paying it, who was he paying it, too?
That would be really nice to know. “Who do you go to for that? Asshole-R-Us? Are they on Google? How do you pay? Do they take Discover or Mastercard?”
“Hardly.”
“So that Spencer Miles guy who went after Heather, he was just a goon?”
“Yes. I made a phone call. And he took the job. It really isn’t much more complicated than that.
He had done a few others for me, from time to time.
He was usually reliable. Unlike Trey Grundenman and his friends.
They were always too disorganized and arrogant.
I only used them occasionally because of the risk.
It caught up to them, I’m afraid. Watch your step. ”
Madison just kept walking.
She saw what he meant in the dim light.
They were in a narrow tunnel, but the path had collapsed just ahead. Crumbling down the side of the shaft.
Limestone had fallen all around where they walked.
And it was wet.
Slick. Grimy. Limestone when wet turned more to clay than mud, but there was mud too. She could hear water trickling somewhere nearby. Below. Everything down here…echoed.
“How far up are we exactly?”
“Fifteen feet or so. But when there has been rain, runoff can be deadly. And people in here are so often never found.”
He sounded so gleeful about that. What a creeper.
She was reminded of a scene from a Slater Davis movie where the bad guy was dropped down a gold min and eaten alive by radioactive cockroaches.
Slater Davis was the bad guy. It had been fun to watch, considering Slater Davis was Zoey’s brother that she despised and everything.
But…radioactive cockroaches.
That would be too enjoyable for Ernie Newcomb. But very satisfying—for the cockroaches.
“Just how many people have you left down here?”
“I have lost count. Two or three dozen, most likely. Keep walking.” No remorse. Nothing.
“How deep is the water?” It was to the left of where she walked. And she felt…open air, and then the wall was there again. For about six feet. She somehow doubted the mine had been designed that way—but cave-ins. They were a real possibility here.
The idea she was going to be buried alive here, or drown, or be shot, or—
Madison fought the panic. She would not panic.
She was going to get out of here. No matter what.
“Probably a few feet. Depends on runoff, of course. But I am no scientist. I believe that is your thing.”
“I am not a geologist. Tiff is the one more into earth and space science.”
She needed her phone.
That light could mean the difference between life and death in here. One wrong slip...
Madison was a strong swimmer, but in the dark, in rushing water, in a cave?
No.
That would mean almost instant drowning. She needed to think. Madison just kept walking.