| |
By the time Officers Reyes and Jones arrived on the scene, the crowd at the entrance had swelled considerably.
Nancy Flynn, who owns the ranch adjoining Little Tombstone and has been the mayor of Amatista for decades, had exercised the power of her position and arrived with reinforcements.
In fact, there were so many vehicles lining the narrow road to the entrance of the mine that the officers had to park their cruiser and walk the last few yards to join the knot of people clustered around the entrance.
Oddly enough, no one had yet produced a rope nor volunteered to go inside and attempt to extract Hank should a rope be located.
“Who’s actually been inside the mine this evening?” Officer Reyes asked the milling crowd.
When Officer Reyes determined that it had only been Ledbetter, Jason, and me who’d ventured inside, and Ledbetter was the only one who’d been in direct communication with Hank, the officer produced a large dive light from the trunk of his car and prepared to go inside.
“I’ve got my big light,” said the officer, “but I won’t go in too far, nor will I allow anyone else to. This really is more appropriate work for a search and rescue team.”
He wasn’t wrong that a search and rescue team probably was what was called for. The problem was that it would be hours, if not a day, before a qualified crew got out to the old mine with their ropes and grappling equipment.
“I’m going with you,” I said.
It was the least I could do for poor Phyliss who was home fretting—especially since it had turned out her fears had been far from idle.
“I’ll go, too,” said Ledbetter, which prompted Jason to chime in that he was also volunteering. Jason knows that Ledbetter and I have a purely platonic relationship, but letting me go back down into the mine with Ledbetter while he stayed outside and waited was clearly a bridge too far.
Officer Reyes let Ledbetter lead the way, and within ten minutes of entering the mine, we were standing a few feet back from the edge of the hole Morticia had predicted I’d come upon if I followed the main shaft far.
“Mr. Edwards?” Officer Reyes called out.
I heard Hank reply. Ledbetter had not been deceived in surmising that Hank was angry. Hank was employing language he never would have used in front of Phyliss, or me, for that matter.
“Are you hurt, Hank?” I called out.
Hank yelled back that he was sure his ankle was broken, sans the strong language, but in a tone that suggested that while his body might be broken, his spirit was still very much intact.
Officer Reyes cautiously approached the edge of the hole and shone his light down.
I got down on my stomach and belly-crawled my way over until I could see the short slope Hank had slid down.
At first, the vertical shaft below the shelf which had arrested Hank’s fall appeared to be a bottomless abyss, but when Officer Reyes belly crawled over to the edge and directed the dive light down into the hole, he announced that he could see the bottom.
“There’s a body down there,” he said quietly after he’d inched back from the edge and stood to his feet.
“I think we already know there’s a body down here,” Hank yelled back up. “It’s mine. When are you going to get me out of here?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell Hank that when Officer Reyes had solemnly reported the presence of a body down the mine shaft, he hadn’t been referring to Hank.