If I Should Die

TWELVE

Lucy didn’t know what she’d been expecting to find in the mine when she and Sean ventured into the cavern on Friday morning, but nothing jumped out at her as odd. In the storage room, she stared at the spot where the dead woman had been lying two days ago and saw nothing but rock and dirt.

“What do you want me to do?” Sean asked.

She hadn’t wanted Sean to come down with her. He still wasn’t one hundred percent after his fall, and though he tried to hide the pain she knew his leg hurt. However, now she was relieved she wasn’t alone in the dark, frigid space. It seemed ridiculous to be scared of something that wasn’t even here. It was like being in a haunted house. Purely fiction, the imagination creating all sorts of implausible outcomes because of fear.

She gestured to the alcove. “She was right there.”

Their breath was visible. Though nearing fifty degrees topside, it was still below thirty here underground.

Why would someone keep the body in the mine?

To store it.

Down here it was as cold or colder than the crypt at the morgue. A body would decompose slowly or, if frozen, not at all.

Sean took her hand. “Do what you need to do,” he said.

She closed her eyes. She wanted to see the woman as she had been, the unique and musty scents of the cave triggering Lucy’s memory.

Her hair had been limp and darker than true blond, but that could have been because of the moisture. The skin had been only slightly molted, very pale, showing no obvious physical decomposition. But in these cold environs, the body could have been there a week or for months.

“She was laid out straight, flat on her back,” Lucy said, glancing at Sean. “Her arms were crossed over her chest. She wore dark slacks-not jeans-and a very dirty white blouse. No jacket or sweater.”

“Odd for this climate.”

Lucy nodded. “Her skin tone was almost identical to the corpses in the cold storage room at the morgue, but given her clothes, it stands to reason she was killed in a warm place, or at least not outdoors. I can’t see why the killer would have removed her coat, but not her other clothes, unless there was something on it that would identify him.”

“What about her shoes?”

Lucy sighed. “I didn’t look.”

“You saw them-you just don’t remember. Close your eyes again.”

She did, but didn’t know how this would help. She hadn’t made a conscious observation about the dead woman’s shoes, and she didn’t want her imagination conjuring something.

But as she mentally assessed the body as she’d seen it, she realized she had seen something. “Dark. Flat. No shoelaces. Loafers maybe, some sort of slip-on.”

“Good,” Sean said.

She smiled, pleased that she’d remembered the detail.

“Last night you said something bothered you about her hands. What?” Sean asked.

Her arms had been crossed … but something else was there, something had caught Lucy’s attention.

It hit her.

A flower.

Lucy opened her eyes. “I didn’t really register it before, but there was a flower on her chest, between her hands. Not in her hands, but laid on her chest, the stem tucked under her wrist. It wasn’t big, and it was shriveled and brown, but I was too distracted to notice more.”

“Distracted how?”

A chill went down her spine. “The maggots. In her mouth.”

Sean ran his hand up and down her back. “You didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t want to think about it.”

“What kind of flower?”

“It looked more like a weed, all dried out like that. But it’s clear-someone intentionally placed it on her chest.”

“As if visiting her grave.”

She shivered. That meant nothing-the killer might never have come back after leaving her here. He could have killed her and left the flower as a sign of remorse or part of some sick ritual. She wouldn’t know until she knew more about the victim herself.

She inspected the area closely with her flashlight. There didn’t seem to be any trace of bodily fluids or signs of blood or struggle. That didn’t mean they weren’t there, only that they weren’t visible to the naked eye.

However, where the woman’s head had been, Lucy spotted several strands of dark blond hair.

“Sean!”

He saw them, too. “Do you have plastic bags?”

“I can’t tamper with evidence.”

“I didn’t see any crime scene tape up. Or warning sign. And where are the cops?”

True. After talking to Deputy Weddle yesterday, it was clear that the Sheriff’s Department wasn’t taking Lucy’s statement seriously. Maybe they believed her, maybe they didn’t, but Sean was right: they weren’t here searching for evidence, nor did they blockade the area off.

She handed Sean her flashlight. “Shine the light there-I’m taking a few pictures.”

Though she had no cell phone reception, the built-in camera took photographs just fine. She snapped several of the area, then zoomed in on the hair. She wished she had a high-end digital camera for better quality, but her phone would have to do.

“Her head rested here,” she said.

Emboldened, Lucy gave the alcove a thorough examination, taking more pictures, before moving on to the area surrounding the slab. There were faint footprints in the hard-packed dirt, but there was no telling which ones might have belonged to the men yesterday or to whoever removed the body. A serious police investigation would get impressions and compare the footprints to those of the two rescue workers, as well as hers and Sean’s. If one set didn’t match anyone, it might lead to the person who had moved the body.

“A dead body isn’t easy to carry,” Sean commented.

“But not impossible. He was strong, or had a partner. There are no drag marks-dragging her body would be noticeable, even on this hard floor. If we assume she was here for a while and frozen-”

“It’s still twenty-eight degrees here, and it’s already nine,” Sean said, looking at his phone.

“Can you get historical data when we get back up?”

“Absolutely. What do you want? I’ll run it as soon as we get in the truck.”

“Temperature, high and low, for the last year,” she said, brow knitting. “I don’t know how to extrapolate it into underground temps, though.”

“I can write an algorithm for it, but it won’t be perfect. Underground, both heat and cold are retained, depending on the surface temps. You’d want a geologist to interpret the data, based on the location of this room, the type of rock, pulling in any data from when the mine was operational.”

“I’ll write down what I need if you can figure out how to get the information.”

“That I can do.”

“The maggots are important-if it was warmer, flies would breed and lay eggs at a faster rate. The maggots would turn into flies in days. But the cold inhibits them. They could have been dormant for weeks-months. It’s too cold down here for insect activity.”

“What are you thinking?”

She didn’t want to speculate, because she honestly had nothing to go on but conjecture. But Sean liked to brainstorm.

“This might sound stupid …” she began.

“Try me.”

“Under normal temperatures, the life cycle from egg to adult fly is twenty-four days. It’s very predictable. What affects their life cycle most are cold temperatures.”

“And it’s too cold here for a twenty-four-day life cycle?”

She nodded. “If she was killed here, then any flies would have remained dormant until the temperature rose.”

“I haven’t seen a fly down here.”

“Neither have I. It’s still too cold, but they could have been here at some point if there was a change in temperature. I’m not an entomologist, and this is all coming from a long-ago forensic biology class, but the larvae I saw in her mouth were about three days old. They wouldn’t have gotten to the pupa stage for another five to six days.”

“So you think she could have died three days ago?”

“Five days-three days before I found the body. If she was killed then, it wasn’t here.”

“Because there are no flies.”

“Exactly. The key point is that flies lay eggs within minutes of death,” Lucy continued, “so if she was killed in town, for example, the eggs would have been laid there.”

“So you think she died five days ago?”

“Possible, not likely-not based on her skin tone.”

“Can eggs be laid and then not hatch?”

“Yes.”

“So she could have been killed months ago, and only because it’s spring and the weather is warming the eggs hatched.”

“Exactly.”

“But not last summer, because they would have hatched long ago.”

She smiled. “You should be a scientist.”

He shrugged. “Well, I did go to M.I.T. I might not have been paying too much attention, but some basic knowledge seeped into my thick head.”

There was something about his tone that sounded odd to Lucy, almost regretful. She wondered what had happened back then that had him unusually melancholic. Before she could ask, Sean continued.

“A frozen body wouldn’t have been easy to move.”

“Quite right,” she agreed.

He shined his light slowly around the eerie space while Lucy looked more closely at the ground.

Yesterday, when she’d been down here with Hammond and Getty, the men had walked down each of the two tunnels for several yards. She considered it now, only because Sean was here with her. But Tim had warned them that there were cave-ins, holes, any number of dangers. And she had no idea where the tunnels led, or how to get to the main entrance from here. They could follow the tracks, but the dangers in the mine stopped her from suggesting it. Still the tracks were a clue. There was no evidence that the killer had moved the body up the mine shaft that Sean had fallen down. And the cart was missing. She wasn’t foolhardy-she wasn’t going to risk her life wandering down a deadly labyrinth without solid evidence.

“We should have asked Tim to take us to the entrance of the mine. The killer took the cart to move the body, he couldn’t have gone up the shaft.”

“When we’re done here”-he glanced around-“maybe we should go down the tunnels-”

“No,” she interrupted. “There are too many unknowns. We’ll go down a few feet, but that’s it.”

“What specifically are you looking for?”

“Anything that looks out of place. We should start where I saw the mining cart.”

They walked over to the narrow tunnel, just wide enough for a cart and little more. Its ceiling was low, just an inch taller than Lucy’s five feet seven inches.

Sean squatted, resting his weight on his good leg. “The tracks are freshly scraped, see?”

She saw the rust missing in gouges, possibly from the metal wheels of the cart. “How long ago, do you think?”

“Two days.”

“How about if you didn’t know I saw the cart here just two days ago.”

“I’d say these marks were made not more than a few weeks ago, at most. Seriously, the rust would have started to grow back. Not fully, but enough to lose that sheen.”

She took pictures of the markings and the track itself.

“Hammond followed the track down twenty feet,” she said, “and didn’t find anything. This probably leads to-” Something moved in the corner of her vision.

Lucy turned her head, dipping her flashlight to the packed dirt floor between the metal tracks. She sucked in her breath, stifling a startled cry, her stomach clenching painfully beneath her ribs.

On the ground, several maggots flopped slowly, stymied by the cold and lack of nutrients now that they had fallen outside of the corpse. Finally, solid evidence the killer had moved the body down this tunnel after Lucy’s discovery had been made public.

Her heart raced and she scanned the area with her light. About two dozen of the translucent white insects littered the path, some of them dead, some of them having moved much farther down the tunnel.

Sean whistled under his breath. “That’s pretty damn conclusive. I can’t believe they missed this yesterday.”

“They were looking for a body,” she said. “They weren’t thinking crime scene evidence.”

“They should have been.”

Lucy hesitated-she didn’t want to tamper with evidence. Quickly, before she could change her mind, she picked up three of the maggots with tweezers, then sealed them in a small plastic jar. She wrote the day and time and where she’d found them on the label.

The simple, methodical act of evidence collection calmed her more than her admonitions that she was a professional and shouldn’t get freaked out by bugs.

She turned around and swept the room again with her flashlight, from the angle the killer would have seen. The only reason the body had been moved was because it had been discovered. The dead body could have stayed down here forever, decomposing over the summer, until all that remained was a skeleton.

“Dozens of people knew I found the body,” Lucy said.

“Thanks to the quack doctor who you let sew me up.”

“That, and the Fire and Rescue and the Sheriff’s Department and anyone they told.”

They gave the ground one last going-over, and that was when she found it. Shriveled and brown, almost lost in the dirt, was the flower that had been on the woman’s chest, right next to where the cart had been. Lucy almost picked it up, but instead took a picture.

Sean watched her. “The flower?”

“Yes.” She packed everything up. “I’ll call Weddle and lay out our theories when we get back to the lodge and suggest he send someone down here ASAP. They can learn a lot from those little maggots. They may be able to get her DNA. Until we know the identity of the victim, where, why, and how she died will remain a mystery.”

They returned to the ventilation shaft. Lucy stared at where Sean had been lying, unconscious, at the bottom of the pit. It had been a long drop-he could have broken his back. It could have turned out so much worse.

Sean watched where Lucy rested her eyes, then looked back at her. Her expression was filled with loss. He’d thought that after Lucy’s nightmare last night, then her urgent lovemaking, she’d purged the fear that had grown after his fall and the tragedy that might have been. He realized by the stricken, desolate look in her dark eyes that she was still struggling. She’d merely avoided addressing her feelings, and he’d let her. Was he so scared of losing her that he let her skate by on something so fundamental? Was he strengthening her emotional barriers because he was too afraid to see her in pain?

She’d told him about her nightmare, her fear for his life, but he realized that he’d dismissed it as leftover from the shock of seeing him after the fall. There was far more to it than that. For the first time, he didn’t know what she needed. All he could do was reassure her.

“Lucy, I’m fine.” He put his hands on her shoulders and tilted his head so she couldn’t avoid looking at him.

When she shook her head and plastered a fake smile on her face, he wondered what she was now trying to hide. The mine shaft was no place to discuss this, but Sean knew if he didn’t push her now, it would be twice as difficult to get her to talk later, when she had time to suppress her feelings.

“Let’s get out-” she began.

“Talk to me, Princess,” he interrupted.

“Not now.” Her voice wavered. She leaned up and kissed him. “Later.” But she didn’t look him in the eye.

She pushed on the extension ladder to make sure it was secure, then motioned for him to go first. He began to argue, but she said, “You can’t put all your weight on your leg, I’ll hold the ladder so it doesn’t move as much.”

“You are a bossy nurse,” he said to lighten the tension. He kissed her firmly. “I’m holding you to your promise.”

Sean climbed up the ladder. Lucy was right, his thigh was throbbing, and it helped that she kept the ladder from bouncing with his weight.

He didn’t know why he hesitated; maybe it was the repetitive training his brother had put him through, but for some reason he stopped an inch away from the top.

Slowly, he peered over the edge.

His truck was where he left it, right on the edge of the overgrown logging road about twenty yards away. Birds chirped in the trees; a light breeze rustled the leaves. The sky was blue; the air was crisp.

But something felt wrong. Electric.

Sean slipped off his backpack and tossed it over the edge, five feet away.

A rifle echoed, hitting the ground next to him, a plume of dirt jumping into the air.

Fuck.

“Sean?”

Lucy’s voice was concerned, but not panicked.

“Stay there,” he commanded. He already had his gun in hand, but a handgun against a sniper rifle was like a match against a flame-thrower.

Which direction had the shot come from?

He pictured the area surrounding the mine shaft. Trees and foliage surrounded them on three sides; the only exposed side was the logging road. On the other side of the road were more trees, but the ground sloped down.

Based on the trajectory of the exploding dirt, the sniper was higher than the ground. Up a tree?

He didn’t have binoculars on him, and the tree line was thick on the opposite side of the road, roughly a hundred yards away. A good sniper could take him down as soon as he climbed out.

He assessed his surroundings as best he could without a clear line of sight. To his left, the trees were thinner, but to the right there was a low rise. If he could get out on that side, he could use the natural rock formation and foliage to hide.

Then what?

He wasn’t going to leave Lucy here, but he needed to get to the truck. He could drive it closer to shield Lucy when she got out. But a good sniper would go for the gas tank. What he needed to do was get out, determine where the sniper was located, then provide cover for Lucy. They wouldn’t go directly to the truck; they’d head into the woods. There was no guarantee the sniper didn’t have a partner. In the pit, they were sitting ducks, but no way was he going deeper into the dangerous mine.

He pocketed his gun and took out his cell phone. He had a weak signal.

He sent Tim a message.

Sniper at the mine. We’re going to run for the highway. Need pick-up ASAP.

Ideally, he’d like to sit tight and wait for the cavalry, but he didn’t know how long that would take, or if the sniper had friends. They could come after them here and he and Lucy would be trapped in the tunnels, with no idea of where the danger spots were.

He climbed back down the ladder.

“I have a plan,” Sean said moving the ladder to the right side of the ventilation shaft. “Leave everything except your gun.”

Lucy frowned.

“Luce-” He couldn’t believe she was poised to argue with him. She was smarter than that.

Lucy shrugged off her backpack, retrieved her Glock, and then the small bag with the jar of maggots. “If that’s the killer out there, I’m not leaving the evidence here for him to destroy.” She shoved the paper bag down her shirt, which was tucked into her jeans. She zipped up her dark jacket.

“I’m going to climb out, roll into the bushes to the right, and whistle. You get up this ladder as fast as you can when you hear it, but don’t show yourself. I’m hoping he’ll shoot at me so I’ll know exactly where he is. On the second whistle, count to three and get out, as low as possible, and roll over to my position; I’ll provide cover.”

She nodded, her jaw tight, and Sean kissed her quickly before he scaled up the ladder.

Lucy watched as Sean paused at the top, gun ready, every muscle poised, listening-feeling-for movement. Sean didn’t have to tell her how screwed they were-the sniper had plenty of time after spotting Sean to come closer. He could be standing at the edge of the mine, ready to shoot both of them as soon as they emerged.

She had her gun pointed at the edge, even though she had a very limited view of the surface. She looked for movement, shadows, anything that put Sean in jeopardy.

Sean gave her a hand signal that he was moving. He moved fast for his size, and five seconds later she heard the report of a rifle. It hit the spot where Sean had emerged.

Heart pounding, she almost didn’t hear his whistle. She quickly climbed the ladder and waited at the top. She tilted her head to spy where Sean was, but couldn’t see more than the bushes immediately in front of her.

Sean whistled again, and he was much closer than she’d thought. She counted to three, then saw Sean pop up on his knees, shielded by a boulder, firing his.45 at an angle over her head, toward the opposite side of the logging road.

She climbed out and scrambled over to him, lying low, her gun out.

Sean emptied his cartridge, popped it out into his hand, and slammed back in a reload.

“I can’t see him, but he’s shooting down at an angle-I think he’s in a tree. We can run for it because it’ll take him time to get down.” He gestured behind them. “I’m going to cover you while you run to that clump of trees. Then you cover me. Once we’re there, he won’t have a line of sight.”

Lucy nodded.

Sean used his fingers to count to three, and Lucy bolted, staying low, making herself as small a target as possible. Sean shot steadily toward the treeline until he was out of ammo; he reloaded and Lucy got into position. She could barely see the truck from where she was, but Sean had been aiming a bit south of it.

She caught his eye and nodded. She fired her Glock, calm and focused, knowing if she screwed up, Sean’s life was at risk. It angered her that someone was shooting at them; in fact she was more angry than scared.

There was one lone rifle shot, then nothing.

Lucy reloaded when Sean was on his knees at her side.

“Okay?” she said.

“Let’s go. That last one came from ground level.”

How he knew that, Lucy didn’t know, but she wasn’t going to question.

They ran through the trees in a zigzag pattern. Sean was falling behind, limping. Lucy slowed and he shouted, “Move it!”

If Sean thought she was leaving him behind, he didn’t know her. She kept the lead, setting a steady pace that pushed Sean but gave him a little slack. He had to have noticed, but he didn’t comment again. She cut through the path that the ATVs had forged the other day. There was no further gunfire, no sound of a vehicle or anyone in pursuit, but Lucy wasn’t about to stop and wait for a possible ambush.

The gully along the side of the highway was deep and muddy but Lucy jumped into it, rolling onto her stomach and looking back the way they’d come, gun ready, her eyes scanning the distance to see if anyone was in pursuit. Sean did the same less than thirty seconds later.

They both breathed heavily, but Lucy did her best to control her breathing to minimize noise. She hadn’t heard anyone coming after them, nor had she heard gunfire, but that didn’t mean someone wasn’t following, waiting to hit them after they thought they were safe.

Sean pulled out his phone. “Tim’s almost here.”

Lucy looked behind her. “Tell him we’re about fifty feet from where we found the ATV yesterday.”

Sean typed in the message while Lucy kept watch. “I don’t think our shooter followed us,” Sean said. “Once we got into the woods, there were no more shots.”

“But why shoot at us in the first place?” Lucy didn’t expect an answer. It made no sense that he’d let them go.

She heard a truck on the highway and cautiously peered behind her. It was Tim’s old red truck, followed by a newer Jeep that belonged to Adam. They drove slowly and as they neared where she and Sean lay in the gully, Sean stood up and waved. Tim pulled over.

“What the hell happened?” he asked through the open window.

Lucy jumped into the backseat and Sean into the front. “Someone shot at us as we climbed out of the mine.”

“I brought Adam for backup. Are we going back to your truck?”

Lucy deferred to Sean. He considered. “I think the guy is gone. He didn’t come after us, but he could be waiting until we return. We go back, get as close as we can to the driver’s side, and I’ll use your truck as a shield.” He glanced back at Lucy. “You stay with Tim-provide cover.”

Tim made a U-turn on the two-lane highway. Adam followed. Tim used his radio to tell Adam the plan, then added, “You go first down the logging road. Get behind Sean’s truck and take out the rifle. If someone is there, he’ll know we’re serious.”

“Got it,” Adam said, and sped past them.

The turnoff wasn’t far, and Adam made the turn in his black Jeep, driving as fast as he could on the rutted, unpaved road. Tim followed.

By the time Adam was in view again, he had the door of his Jeep open, an AR-15 over the top of the window frame, scanning the area across the logging road.

Sean jumped out and got into his own truck. He looked around quickly, assessing potential dangers, but nothing seemed out of place …

… except a blank envelope on the dashboard.

He still had on the gloves from the mine. He opened the unsealed envelope and removed a single piece of white paper on which was typed:

IF I WANTED YOU DEAD, YOU’D BE DEAD.

GO HOME.