Web of Lies (Page 43)

I glanced at the map again. "Take the next right."

Donovan nodded and did as I asked.

The smooth concrete fell away to cracked pavement as the car twisted and turned even higher onto the mountain ridge. Gravel replaced the pavement. It ran out into two hard-packed dirt ruts that passed for a road. Despite the terrain, Donovan drove on. We went almost a mile down the ruts before they ended in a small, wooded clearing.

The detective stopped the car, and we got out.

The air was even cooler up here than it had been at Country Daze, and it had started to drizzle again. I turned up the collar of my black fleece jacket, hefted the coil of rope over my shoulder, and made sure I had all my other supplies. Donovan reached into the backseat and grabbed a navy rain slicker embossed with the words Ashland Police Department on the back. He offered the jacket to me, but I shook my head.

"You keep it," I said. "You’re the one who brought it, not me."

The detective shrugged into the jacket. I stuffed the maps Finn had given me into my jeans pocket so they wouldn’t get too wet.

"This way," I told the detective.

I headed out of the clearing. The drizzling rain had already slicked the assorted weeds and fallen leaves underfoot, so I walked carefully and slowly. I didn’t need a sprained or broken ankle tonight. Behind me, Donovan did the same.

A sign at the end of the clearing read No Trespassing –

Dawson Mining Company, but I ignored it. Trespassing was going to be the least of my crimes this evening. We walked in silence through the wet woods for a few minutes before we reached the lip of the ridge. I crouched behind a tall pine on the edge, and Donovan squatted beside me. Despite the rain, the detective’s clean, soapy scent washed over me. Mmm. The smell made me want to turn to him, press my lips to his, and lower us both to the forest floor. Sure, the leaves and earth would be a little damp, but I had no doubt Donovan and I could warm each other up – in a hurry.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t here for a quickie with the detective, no matter how pleasurable it might be. So I raised the binoculars I’d brought along up to my eyes. Below me, the ridge sloped downward and then bottomed out, forming a fat U shape. The ridge we stood on was the base of the U, while the rest of the mountain had been removed to form the open area. Ramps of dirt twisted down either leg of the U, providing access to the topmost portions of the slope.

A variety of machines sat on the basin floor. Backhoes, bulldozers, and other machines designed to move earth – and a lot of it. Others were just big, hulking, complicated brutes of metal with more arms, cranes, and buckets than I’d ever seen. Some of them were bigger than small houses, but I had no idea what their names were or even what they did. There were dump trucks too, with beds and wheels even bigger than the ones on the vehicle Finn had used to run over Trace Dawson.

Across the basin floor was the other end of the operation – the underground mine. A square black hole in the wall of the mountain, held open by concrete support beams. Metal tracks ran into and out of the wide mouth.

I supposed at one time the tracks had been used to help move men and equipment down into the earth. Now they looked dull and rusty from lack of use. I could see places where the metal had been torn up and not replaced. I remembered what Violet Fox had said about the coal in the underground mine running out and how it had been idle for some time now. It was easy to tell that the focus had shifted to stripping off the mountain one layer at a time. That’s what all the equipment was here for – to cart coal and dirt away, not bring it up out of the ground. Not anymore.

More tracks curved around the far side of the basin and disappeared from sight. According to Finn’s map, they led to another area where the coal was stored and processed, among other things. I had a lot of knowledge about a lot of subjects, thanks to all the classes that I’d taken at Ashland Community College, but coal mining wasn’t one of them.

But even from my high vantage point, I could hear the stone of the mountain. Growling, snarling, cursing, muttering. The stone was supremely angry at the cruel damage that had been done to it. Once upon a time, this must have been a lovely spot, with steep slopes, trees, and rocky outcroppings as far as the eye could see. But now there was nothing left but stripped, bare earth, rock, and machinery. The stone’s vibrations made me want to draw on my magic, to make the whole mine, the whole rest of the mountain, crumble down and bury the men and machines that had been so cruel to her. But I didn’t have that kind of power, and it wouldn’t help Warren and Violet in any way. So I gritted my teeth and forced the feeling aside.

It was after six now and already growing dark. I passed the binoculars to Donovan Caine, so the detective could watch the workers climb down off their machines and head out of the basin. I kept scanning the area, fixing the overall layout in my mind. It would be easy to lose your sense of direction among the massive machines, especially with the rainy twilight rapidly giving way to full night.

"I don’t see anything much. Just machines," Donovan Caine said.

"Look down to the left at the edge of the basin. Down there." I pointed to a small, white building that gleamed like a dull moon. "That’s where some of the mine offices are, including Dawson’s, according to the information Finn gave me."

"What do you expect to find in there?" Caine asked, peering through the binoculars at the structure. "I doubt Tobias Dawson just leaves incriminating evidence lying around."

I shrugged and got to my feet. I took a moment to swipe the dead, damp leaves from the knees of my jeans.

"Maybe, maybe not. Dawson’s the big boss around here, remember? This is his mountain. He might be sloppy enough to leave things out in the open."

"And if not?"

I shrugged again and tied one end of the rope around the base of a nearby pine tree. After I made sure it was securely knotted, I tossed the rest of it down the ridge below us. "Then at least we’ll have gotten our exercise for the evening."

I reached into my back jeans pocket and held out a pair of gloves to him. They were gardening gloves, white with brown trowels on them, but they’d keep us from getting rope burn on our hands – or leaving fingerprints in Tobias Dawson’s office.

"Now, are you coming or not?"

Donovan Caine let out a low curse. But the detective took the gloves from me and started pulling them onto his hands.

For whatever reason, the miners hadn’t dug out this side of the mountain yet, which meant the ridge was still covered with rocks and gnarled vegetation. It was a steep, slippery slope, made more so by the drizzle, and we moved with care, using the rope to help us walk our way down the embankment. We moved as quickly as we could, but it still took us almost twenty minutes to reach the bottom.