CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Clara Montpelier had fared no better than Tyler Stone. The cause of death was the same—multiple stab wounds to the torso and abdomen—and the rats had chewed through most of the soft tissue of her chest, leaving a hollowed-out gaping wound that looked like something off of the cover of a death metal album.

She was found in the same exact spot where Tyler Stone was found, dropped through the same shaft and dragged near the entrance of the cave. Splintered glass lay strewn across the surface of the cave, the remains of the cameras the police had left behind in case the killer returned to the scene of the crime.

"Were you able to recover any footage?" Michael asked Jones.

The detective shook his head. "We don't have an internet feed like the big cities too. We were counting on the memory cards of the cameras."

"And none of them are recoverable?"

Jones shook his head again. "He destroyed all of them. I mean, I assume it's a he. The killer looks like he'd have to be pretty physically strong." He looked at Faith. "No offense."

Faith sighed and said, "I want officers stationed here twenty-four-seven."

"They're not going to like—"

"I don't give a shit," Faith said, cutting him off. "I want officers stationed here twenty-four-seven. If your officers are too cowardly, find some from Brightwater."

"Faith," Michael interjected, waving his palm to indicate she should tone it down.

Faith wasn't about to tone it down. Once more, their killer had been visible, out in the open, and once more, he had eluded them. Faith had had enough of killers hiding in plain sight and getting away with it.

She and Michael had gotten the call on their way back from Tom Martle's house. The officers assigned to retrieve the memory cards and look for footage had come upon the scene and called Jones, who called Faith and Michael.

"How long until CSI gets here?" she asked Jones.

"First thing tomorrow morning."

She glared at him, and he lifted his hands and said, "I'll call them and see if I can convince them to come by tonight."

"No, you'll tell them it's an order, and if they don't get their asses here within one hour, I'll personally report them and you to the state law enforcement commission. Screw the damned ghosts. Real people are being murdered by a real person."

"All right," he said softly, "all right."

Faith pressed her palm to her forehead. "Shit!"

"Faith," Michael said, "a word?"

Faith followed Michael outside of the cave. Turk remained behind, sniffing for clues. When they were outside of the entrance, Michael said, "Look, I'm every bit as pissed as you are at this, but we need to be cool about it."

"Cool about it?" Faith nearly shouted. "How are we supposed to be ‘cool' about people dying?"

"We're supposed to remember our jobs and focus on solving the case, not being upset that it exists in the first place."

Faith pursed her lips, unable to think of a response to that.

"We've dealt with frustrating cases before," he said, "We've dealt with incompetent local authorities before. None of this is new."

"Is that supposed to comfort me?" she asked.

"It's supposed to get you to think rationally," he replied.

"So now I'm being irrational?"

"If you can convince me you aren't, I'll take everything back," he replied.

She sighed and once more couldn't think of a response. She definitely wasn't helping anything by being angry. Still, someone needed to take charge here, and the two of them had been acting like the support cast for long enough. "I will work on controlling my emotions," she said, "but I don't regret taking over back there. Jones clearly isn't going to help, and Kinzel was all too happy to take his prisoner and leave the dirty work to us."

"To be fair, he was ordered back to Boise."

"To be fair," Faith said with a sneer, "that's not the goddamned point."

Michael's lips thinned, and Faith felt a stab of guilt. "Look, I'm sorry," she said, "Why don't you take over in there? Maybe you'll be more ‘cool' than I am. Just make it clear that we're in charge, and what we say is an instruction, not a request."

"You got it," he replied, "Don't worry, Faith. We'll get this guy."

He went back inside to talk to Jones. Faith waited outside and gathered her thoughts.

Martle had heard voices in the mine. Not moans, voices that spoke words. It was very possible he had simply hallucinated, but Faith doubted it. It made too much sense to think that someone had spoken and Martle had heard him.

Then again, that was three years ago. Was someone visiting the mines every day? If so, how had no one seen him before? Was he living in the deep part of the mine?

The thought didn't feel as ridiculous as it sounded. People had lived in caves before. Hell, the catacombs in Paris held the remains of several underground dwellings along with the chapels and the infamous mausoleums. It didn't seem out of the realm of possibility that someone had been living in the mines for years, probably using the cave network to venture to the surface when necessary. It made even more sense now that they had confirmed that at least one ventilation shaft led back to the mines. If a ventilation shaft connected the man-made network of tunnels with the natural one, it stood to reason that there were other intersections between the two. Considering how reluctant everyone was to visit the caves, it was also quite plausible that he had never been seen before now.

But who? And why wait until now to start killing?

And Faith believed it was only now that the killer had started murdering people. There were plenty of missing persons cases, but when she dived more deeply into the history, she found no cases where bodies were recovered showing stab wounds or any sign of murder.

It was the mine. It all came back to that. Tyler and Clara had visited the mines, not the caves. She believed the killer had some sort of connection to the mines and when the entrance was reopened, he would kill people who wandered inside. Why, she wasn't entirely sure, but if she could find the answer to that question, she would be able to find the killer.

Michael returned to the front of the cave and reported, "Okay, so CSI's gonna do their thing. They'll take fingerprints like last time and probably find some. Ditto DNA. Once more, it probably won't show up as anyone in the database. I've convinced him to send a drone up the ventilation shaft so we can hopefully follow the killer's trail. We might even get lucky enough to see him. Who knows? In the meantime, Jones is calling off the S&R team from Colorado."

"No," Faith said, "Don't let him do that."

"There's no one to rescue, Faith," he said softly.

"And no one else brave enough to go into the mines," she said, "We need them so that we don't end up going into the mines alone and get lost."

"I understand that, but how do we convince them to stay?"

"We're FBI agents," Faith said, "we're going to talk to them with authority, and if anyone wants to give us trouble, we'll make more trouble for them."

"You mean more trouble for us."

"I mean, we're going to do something, Michael, not just wait for something to happen."

"Fair enough," he said.

"I want to look into the mine collapse," she said. "I want the names of the victims and the survivors and their families. I think our killer is connected somehow."

"I think you're right," Michael said. "I'm pretty sure the voices Martle heard were real voices, or at least one person's real voice."

After being at odds in so many ways for so long, it was like a breath of fresh air to find that she and Michael were on the same page about this. "Go tell Jones that we're heading back to town. I'll call Turk."

***

The nearest library was over an hour away in Lewiston, but they were able to find the Brightwater Courier —the regional newspaper—online.

The original collapse of the Granger mine occurred just over twenty-two years ago when the south tunnel collapsed, trapping twelve miners inside. Ten other miners were spared the collapse. They were the ones who alerted the authorities. The stories detailed the gory events described by Martle, including the bloodcurdling sounds of the miners suffocating to death under the collapsed tunnel.

Faith consulted the maps Martle gave them and found that the south tunnel was surrounded on one side by a half-dozen tunnels that Martle labeled UNSTABLE: UNSAFE. The other side was blank, indicating that he hadn't explored it. The nearest they could get, according to Martle, was a small cavern a quarter mile before the south tunnel that he had marked as MISC. STORAGE.

Well, a start was a start. They would have to wait for the backup from Aspen before they could start, however.

While Micheal napped, Faith looked into the names of the surviving miners. Not surprisingly, they had all quit the mine and moved far away, some immediately, the rest trickling away over the next several years. None of them lived within a thousand miles of Granger.

She moved on to the families of the deceased and found that they, like the survivors, had eventually moved away from the memory of their lost loved ones.

Except for one man. Linus Diller's brother and sister-in-law had died in the collapse. Linus Diller still lived in Granger.

Faith called Jones, and the detective answered groggily. "What is it?"

"Linus Diller," she said, "what can you tell me about him?"

Jones made a noise halfway between a sigh and a groan and said, "Linus is the town drunk. Lovely to have to admit that we have one, but we're already coming across pretty shitty, so I guess it's not the end of the world. He has a bit of a record—mostly barfights, nothing too serious."

"Did you know that his brother and sister-in-law died in the mine collapse?"

"George and Carol? Yeah, I knew."

Faith was past the point where any level of incompetence from Jones could surprise her. She didn't even bother to ask if he had questioned Linus. "Do you have an address for him?"

"Um, yeah, hold on. Do you need the exact street address, or can I just tell you where to go?"

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Doesn't matter."

"Well, he lives in an old cabin on Breaker Ridge Road, just past where it turns from pavement to dirt. But at this hour, you'll probably find him packing in as much booze as he can before Jonah Faulkner kicks him out of the Tin Can. That's the local bar. Nice place, incidentally, if you two felt like a celebratory beer once this is all over."

"I'll get back to you on that," Faith said. "What time does the bar close?"

"Two o'clock."

That left them a little over an hour. "All right," Faith said, "thank you."

"Yep," Jones said before unceremoniously hanging up.

Faith looked at Michael sleeping on the bed and debated going herself to allow him a chance to rest. If she did that, though, she'd never hear the end of it.

She woke Turk first, hoping that the noise of the big dog springing to alertness would also wake Michael. It didn't, and Turk didn't seem inclined to wake Michael up himself, so Faith had to do the job.

She shook him softly, and he rolled over and smiled softly. "Love you, Faith," he murmured.

A memory flashed across Faith's mind then, of waking Michael the morning after he first spent the night. They had spent the rest of that day in each other's arms, and Faith thought at the time that she could get used to waking up like that.

Apparently, Michael had once felt the same.

She shook him again, a little harder, and this time he woke fully. "What is it?" he asked.

"I found a lead," she said, "Linus Diller. Town drunk. His brother and sister-in-law died in the original mine collapse."

He sat up, alert now. "Where is he?"

"Jones says he's probably at the local bar."

"Wonderful," Michael said, standing. "Do we like him for this?"

"He's the only person connected to the collapse still in town," Faith said as Michael quickly dressed. "I don't know if he's a suspect yet, but he's definitely a lead. He does have a history of violence." She filled him in on the information Jones had given her.

"Well, a barfight isn't the same as a murder," Michael said, "but I suppose it's possible that he might have gone off the deep end when he heard the mine was uncovered."

"Even if not," Faith said, "odds are he knows something we can use."

"Well," Michael said, pulling his jacket on, "let's go find out."