thirty

My second underground voyage in one day. At least this one comes with semi-proper stairs—a rope ladder that takes me down about twenty feet. At the bottom, it does indeed resemble a bunker. Like that mine shaft, it’s blasted from the bedrock of the Appalachians. In this case, it’s not a shaft but one big, empty room, with wooden braces holding up dirt walls and a roof.

I move around the walls, my penlight shining on every wooden beam and section of dirt between them. I don’t know what I’m searching for. It’s not as if I’d miss seeing a hatch or a hole big enough to crawl through. The room is no more than ten by ten. It’s only on my second round that my beam catches a horizontal line between two support beams. I walk over and crouch and see that it’s a wooden frame embedded in the dirt. The wood has even been painted reddish brown to match the surrounding soil.

I feel along the edge of the frame. My fingers find some kind of mechanism and a latch springs free.

The frame is a crawl-space door. Which makes sense. McCall would have stored tools in this open room, but the bunker isn’t well enough disguised to risk hiding anything more valuable. Hence the secret door.

As I pull it open, I hear the whispery noise again.

“Hello?” I call.

The noise stops.

“I’m here to help,” I say…because an axe murderer would clearly announce her intentions. Not surprisingly, the bunker stays quiet.

I crawl through the hidden doorway and find myself in a short hall with a low roof. It extends to a dead end. There are doorways to each side. I wipe my sweaty hands on my jeans. Then I take out my phone. My one bar wavers. I hold it as high as I can and the bar comes strong.

I pocket the phone again and call, “It’s Winter Crane,” and then “Edie? Lennon? It’s Winter.” Silence. I check the room on the left and then the one on the right. Both have old debris—pieces of crates and burlap bags and bits of dried pot. And that’s all there is. The hall and these two rooms. Which is weird—why have the hall extend past the rooms? I shine my light over the end of the corridor. The top is dark. I keep going, and I see the hall doesn’t end—it’s been filled in. There’s a gap at the top, as if the person ran out of dirt.

Or as if he intentionally left that opening so he could crawl through to what was on the other side.

I climb the dirt pile and push the penlight through the gap. When I hear a soft tap-tap-tap, I exhale, thinking it’s whoever I heard earlier. Then I realize it’s me pushing dirt down the heap.

I wriggle higher so I can see through to my penlight beam, and the whispery sound comes again, from the left, where another doorway leads into yet another room. I keep wriggling until I’m through and sliding headfirst down the pile of dirt. I come to rest at the bottom, arms outstretched. An awkward twist, and I get my feet under me and then rise.

I glance through the doorway on the right. Just more crap in there. I check my phone again. No service now. I hold it up. Still nothing.

I look at the pile of dirt and quickly calculate how fast I can get through to place a call if things go wrong. Then I start toward the left-hand doorway. I have the cell phone in my jacket pocket, switchblade in one hand, and penlight in the other. Two steps forward and then I can shine the light through the doorway and…

And nothing.

Broken crates and burlap bags. That’s it. Just as my heart begins to sink, I realize there’s more crap in this room—a lot more. There are a few whole crates and some stuffed burlap bags. Enough “garbage” to completely block my view of the other side of the room. Garbage deliberately arranged to block that view.

And the moment I think that, I hear the scratchy whispering sound…from the other side of that strategically piled debris.

I inch forward. And then I see a shoe sticking from behind a crate. A shoe topped by a sock and a slice of denim, the rest extending out of sight, hidden by the crate.

It’s a white shoe. Dingy and dirt-streaked. But white.

“Lennon?” I whisper. “It’s me. Winter.”

The foot does not move. The sound does not come again. I creep forward, my gaze traveling up that leg as I circle wide to see past the crate.

A sheet. The legs are covered in a sheet, only that one foot showing. I keep moving.

The smell. God, the smell. It wasn’t evident at first, as if the sheet stifled it, but it smells like…

No, I’m wrong. I must be wrong.

I pick up my speed and bend by that leg peeking out, and I grab the corner to pull and…

A snake slides from under the sheet. I jump back, my hand smothering a scream. It slithers out, making that whispery, scratchy sound as it moves over the dirt. It stops, head raised, fangs extended.

Brown snake. Light-brown body. Darker brown rings.

Copperhead.

Poisonous.

I back up until I hit the wall, and as my heart hammers, there’s a little part of me saying to calm down, just calm down. I’ve encountered copperheads before, when they’ve come into the shack. I have a stick there for removing them.

But I’ve also helped Doc Southcott treat those bitten by copperheads. It isn’t fatal. It isn’t pretty, either.

And it’s not just that. It’s not just that at all.

I’m staring at this snake and I’m freaking, and part of that might be the poisonous snake hissing at me but most of it is…

Most of it is…

I look at the sheet. At that leg, not moving. I inhale the smell and I know what it is. I’ve known what it is from the start. I smell it when I need to go into the basement at Doc Southcott’s office and something has crawled in and…

My breath picks up, and I turn back to the snake, almost hoping it’ll do something, distract me, make me leave without lifting that sheet. But it’s already slithering off to a hole in the wall.

The snake disappears and my gaze shifts reluctantly to the sheet. I know what’s under it. I just know.

Since the moment Lennon told me about Edie going missing, I have refused to acknowledge this possibility. I’ve thought about a madman, a psycho, a kidnapper. Never a killer. I’ve been so careful about even the terminology I use in my head.

Now I’m standing here, and I’m staring at what is clearly a man’s shoe. At a white sock and blue denim. Like Lennon wore. All exactly like Lennon wore.

And the smell…

Tears fill my eyes.

I should leave. I can’t do anything to help him. I should leave the scene intact. Instead I move forward, bending to grip the edge of that sheet.

It’s a canvas tarp. Filthy, as if it’d been used for covering piles of pot from low-flying planes and it was repurposed for this, and when I realize that, rage fills me. Unreasonable rage, as if somehow this is a desecration, to throw a used and filthy tarp over a body.

I inhale and tug at the tarp. It doesn’t come easily. I have to pull harder and then it slides down, over dark hair and a face and…

The face.

It’s a corpse.

Yes, obviously, it’s a corpse. But it’s not someone who has just died in the last few days. It’s decayed and desiccated, and that rage flares again, as I think that McCall has done something to Lennon’s body to speed up the process, to hide what he’s done.

Except…

It isn’t Lennon. The dark hair lies straight and short. And there’s enough left of his face that I can clearly see it’s not Lennon. Enough left to identify the body.

Marty Lawson.

That’s what McCall had seen when he spotted my list.

He knew Marty hadn’t left Reeve’s End.

I should run now. Hell, I should be gone already, tearing off the moment I saw a dead body. Racing away, heart pounding, a scream in my throat.

But I don’t feel that scream. My heart isn’t pounding. I’m staring down at Marty Lawson and every image I have of him—every moment when our lives intersected—rushes back. I remember how he always said hi to me, always stopped to talk to me even after Cadence broke up with him. I remember one time, when I showed up at school with a bruise on my cheek and told everyone I fell, he told me he needed some advice on trapping, and took me to dinner, and instead of talking about trapping, he talked about his mother, and how she used to hit him, and how he’d learned to avoid it as best he could. Passing on tips and sympathy without once mentioning my own situation, leaving my dignity intact.

That’s the Marty Lawson I remember, but a few tears wash away those memories and my cold Winter self returns, the analytical one who does not run crying and screaming. I carefully tug back the sheet to see what I can of the corpse. To examine it. To analyze it. To accumulate answers before I leave.

Marty’s neck is broken. I see that as soon as I get the sheet past his shoulders. The angle of his head is unmistakably wrong. I keep pulling the sheet. I see caved-in ribs and a compound fracture of the femur, the bone sticking out. Those injuries suggest a story. That Marty Lawson was struck by a motor vehicle.

I see something else under the sheet, tucked up against him. A wad of money. I don’t touch it, but it’s a thick wad, tucked under his body. Then I notice a pile of clothing, off to the side, partially hidden.

My imagination takes the clues and fills in the rest. Hit and killed on a quiet road. Body stuffed into the trunk. Hastily written note left in his empty house. Clothing grabbed. Money grabbed. Making sure it looked as if Marty just took off.

Marty went missing nearly three years ago. Right before Owen McCall declared he’d gotten out of the pot business. Right before he locked up this bunker to make sure his daughter wouldn’t use it.

I haven’t found whoever kidnapped Edie and Lennon. I’ve found another tragedy, unconnected.

I resist the urge to cover Marty’s body. I will admit to the police that I pulled back the sheet.

I’m about to start making my way through the room, when a loud thump reverberates through the bunker. I go still for one second. Then I scramble around the crates, duck, and turn off my penlight.

No other sounds come. I stay still, knife in hand, eyes straining for any hint of light shining along the corridor.

After a moment, I creep, feeling my way in the pitch black until my foot tangles in a burlap bag and I stumble, hand striking a crate, the sound ripping through the silence.

Shit!

I crouch and try to control my breathing. Everything goes quiet again. I decide it’s safer to turn on the light, then continue through the room and peer around the doorway.

Nothing.

I crawl to the dirt pile and carefully make my way to the top. When I’m close enough to peek through, I turn off the light again. Darkness falls. Complete darkness, which shouldn’t be, with the hatch propped open and moonlight outside.

I realize then what I heard—the sound of the hatch shutting. I turn on the penlight and see my notebook on the floor.

Guess I didn’t prop that open as well as I thought. I crawl through, recover my notebook, and shove it back in my jacket. Then I climb the rope ladder and give the hatch a push. When it doesn’t budge, I don’t think much of it—I’d broken the latch, so it can’t have relocked. I push with both hands, a tremendous shove guaranteed to…

Guaranteed to do absolutely nothing. And that’s when I realize someone has closed it, trapping me inside.