Blood Money (Joe Dillard Series No. 6) (27 page)

She was certain they’d leave her dead once she showed them where the gold was hidden. Why wouldn’t they? She knew what they looked like. She knew Johnny’s name and knew Carlo’s first name. Johnny hadn’t actually admitted to anything, but she knew these two were responsible for at least two deaths and an arson. There was something inhuman, animalistic, about Johnny and Carlo. Carlo hadn’t said hardly a word, but she could feel the predator in both of them. She was their prey. Once they got what they wanted, they would kill her, discard her, and never give it a second thought.

She’d guided them slowly up the mountain and had directed Johnny away from the cave for as long as she could. Along the way, she’d questioned herself again about the way she’d handled things, about whether her greed had cost Luke his life. She could have done what Joe suggested, turned the gold over to the court and let the court case run its course. She could have worked out some kind of settlement with Barnes. She could have gotten the police involved early on. But she hadn’t done any of those things, and now, well, now she was facing the consequences of her decisions. A part of her was almost relieved. Even if she ended up dead, at least she wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore. And if they killed her, took the gold and left, Jasper would no longer be in danger, nor would Joe or Jack or Sadie or anyone else.

The hour glass was in front of them. Charlie pointed.

“There. Behind that rock.”

They got off the four-wheeler. Charlie removed her shoes and set them on the seat. She looked at the others and the thought struck her that all three of them looked entirely out of place, they in their athletic wear and she in her business attire. Under different circumstances, she would have laughed.

“Give me the light,” she said to Johnny.
 

“I’ll carry the light.”

“I have to go first. I need the light. You’re both carrying guns. If I try to get away, shoot me.”

Charlie snatched the flashlight from Johnny’s left hand. His pistol was in his other hand. Carlo was carrying one, too. They weren’t nearly so cocky up here on the mountain. Their eyes were darting around from the mouth of the cave to the boulder to the mountain to the four-wheeler.
 

“Watch out for bats,” Charlie said. She turned and walked into the cave.

The smooth rock was cold beneath her feet as Charlie worked her way carefully through the first tunnel. The men behind her remained mute. When they came to the spot where the cave opened up into the first huge chamber, Charlie flashed the light around.

“We have to go to the bottom of this, then through another tunnel,” she said.

“No way,” Johnny said.
 

“Do you want it or not?”

There was no reply, so Charlie started winding her way downward through the formations. Now that she was in the cave with strangers, with people who she believed would do her harm, she felt almost comfortable, as though the cave was an old, familiar friend.

“I feel like I’m in hell,” she heard Carlo say.
 

“Maybe you are,” Charlie whispered.

A few minutes later, they were in the second tunnel, then in the bottom chamber.
 

“Wait, what’s that?” It was Johnny.
 

“A still. It belonged to the man who kept the gold.”

Charlie was trying to feel Jasper’s presence. Was he there? Did he find it? Did he make it in time? If he was hiding somewhere in the darkness, what would he do?

The flashlight reflected off the stream. They were at the end of their journey.
 

“It’s in there,” Charlie said, shining the light on the spot where the stream flowed beneath the rock. “You have to walk down into the stream and wade in. It’s about fifteen, twenty feet back. It opens up into a smaller chamber. The gold is on a ledge, in wooden crates.”

“Lead the way,” Johnny said.
 

“No. This is as far as I’m going. I’ve showed you where it is. Let me go.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Carlo said. He moved around Johnny, closer to her.

The chamber suddenly filled with a blinding light, coming from Charlie’s right. Carlo and Johnny both turned and raised their guns. Carlo grunted and staggered back a step. Both of them started firing. Gunshots ripped the silence in rapid succession. Charlie backed away a step, looked at Johnny, saw him turning his gun toward her.
 

She ran two steps, sucked her lungs full of air, and dived headlong into the frigid water. The flashlight was still in her hand. It flickered and went out. She kicked furiously, knew she was already underneath the rock face, knew she was going toward the outside of the cave.
 
How far was it? Blackness and cold covered her. It was as though she’d entered a freezing womb.
 

She saw it, a dim yet unmistakable glow, but it seemed so far away; she kept kicking. The light was growing brighter, but at the same time, her chest was tightening, her throat constricting. How much farther? She felt light-headed. The thought that she wasn’t going to make it entered her mind. She didn’t care. Dying wasn’t so bad.

Suddenly the light was above her. She broke the surface gasping and choking, gulping in air between fits of coughing and gagging. She got her feet beneath her, found her balance, and stood. The water was thigh deep. She looked up and saw the rock face, knew where she was. She took two steps toward the stream’s edge, stopped cold.

Uncle.

Charlie crawled out of the water and started running toward the cave entrance. She’d run close to a hundred yards when she realized the flashlight had gone out. It was still in her right hand, lifeless. How could she ever get back in there without light? She couldn’t. She stopped and turned back toward the stream, back toward the cave, back toward the stream.
 

“Oh, god. What do I do? What do I do?”

She looked at the flashlight closely. It was cheap, a plastic case, but the bulb didn’t seem to be burned out. She unscrewed the cap, poured the batteries out into her palm. She started rubbing them on her skirt, but it was soaked. So was her blouse, her vest. Everything was soaked.

She looked around. There was a stand of laurel bushes near the stream. She ran back and dropped to her knees. The top layer of leaves that had been shed by the bush was relatively dry. She scraped a handful and frantically stuffed them into the case. She pulled them back out with an index finger and started blowing into the case. She took the batteries and rubbed them with more leaves, rubbed the contact point on the bulb. She reassembled the flashlight and pushed the switch with her thumb, held her palm over the lens to shade it from the sunlight. It worked. The light was glowing.
 

Charlie got off her knees and ran to the cave. The beam from the flashlight was dull, but it was better than nothing. She hurried down the first tunnel with the light bouncing and her heart pounding. When she got to the end of the tunnel, to the top of the cathedral, she saw an intense light at the bottom close to where she knew the second tunnel opened up. She turned her flashlight off and instinctively went to her knees.
 

A long minute, maybe the longest of her life, passed. There was no sound. She was frozen in time, like an insect in amber. Then the light moved, almost imperceptibly. Moved again, just a bit.
 

Charlie stood slowly. She turned the flashlight on, pointed it at the ground, and started moving again.
 

“Uncle?” She said it softly.
 

“Uncle?” A little louder.
 

She heard a groan. Jasper’s voice.
 

“Uncle!”

Down the slope she went as fast as damp feet against slick rock would allow. When she got to him, her light revealed a long, dark streak leading back into the tunnel.

Jasper was on his stomach, pushing the spotlight in front of him. As Charlie knelt, he rolled onto his back.
 

“You made it,” he said. “I knew you would.”

“What is it? What happened?”

“I gave ‘em a little too much time.” Jasper’s face was white. “A ricochet got me in the leg. Must’ve cut the femoral. Losing a lot of blood.”

“Are they…?”

“They’re dead.”

“Come on. Let me help you up. We have to get you out of here.”

“Too late.”
 

“Don’t say that. You’ll be fine. You’ll be okay.”

Jasper reached up with his right hand and ran his fingers through her hair, down her cheek.
 

“You’re safe now. You’re free.”

“I said don’t! Don’t quit! Don’t quit on me!”

Charlie felt tears welling in her eyes. She willed herself to keep her composure.
 

“Just bad luck is all,” Jasper said. His voice was just above a whisper. “You take care of that hound of mine. There’s money in the mattress in my bedroom, Peanut. Plenty of it. I want you to use some to hire a man named Wilbur Stoots to blow this cave shut. Put all the gold back and blow it shut. Seal it off forever.”

Charlie bit her lower lip as tears ran down her cheeks.
 

“Please don’t go,” she whispered. “Please.”

He sighed deeply, lifted his head. Charlie slipped her hand behind his neck. “Don’t put me in the ground,” he said. “Promise you won’t put me in the ground. Take me to Riley and tell him to burn me. Put my ashes with Rachel.”

Charlie nodded, unable to speak. Jasper’s eyes fluttered. He took a long breath and looked directly into her eyes.

“I always loved you, Peanut. I should’ve told you.”

And then he was gone.

Chapter 52

CHARLIE
sat next to him with his head in her lap for a long time, crying. She watched for signs of life early in the vigil, but before long the realization set in. There would be no signs. It was over.
 

She picked up the spotlight and walked back down into the cave near the stream. Carlo’s body was sitting against the cave wall. Charlie looked at him for a long time. There was a large, dark spot of blood on his chest, another in his throat. He’d apparently managed to pull himself into a sitting position with his back resting against the cave wall. His eyes were open, staring down at his hands, which were curled in his lap.
 

Johnny Russo was floating face down in the stream. Charlie knew she had a legal obligation to call the police now. The bodies would need to be disposed of, questions would need to be answered. The police would open an investigation, and when they discovered that these two bodies led to Zane Barnes and Luke Story and Roscoe Barnes and ultimately, a hundred bars of gold, it would become a circus. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, every state and local police officer who wanted to try to stick his nose in the spotlight would want a piece of this one. The media attention would be insane.
 

The cops would question, analyze and second-guess every thought she’d had, every decision she’d made. They would search her house, accuse Jasper of murder, ask why she hadn’t involved them earlier. She decided at that moment she wasn’t going to deal with their scrutiny or their judgments. She shined the spotlight around and found Jasper’s bow and five arrows, two of them bloody. She thought there was probably another arrow or two in the stream. If they were in there, they would stay there. She waded into the water and grabbed Johnny’s ankles, dragged him out of the stream. She didn’t want him floating beneath the rocks and popping up outside somewhere. Then she rifled his pockets for the key to the four-wheeler.

Jasper’s blood was black and thick on the rock floor where he’d dragged himself toward the entrance. She went back to him, ran her arms beneath his shoulders and started dragging him out. She wished there was a more dignified way, but there just wasn’t. She dragged him ten feet. Rested. Dragged him another ten feet. Rested. Finally, she got him back to the four wheeler. She laid him face down across the seat behind her, started the four-wheeler, and drove slowly home.

She finally managed to get Jasper’s body into the house and laid it on his bed. Biscuit almost tore the back door off the hinges when Charlie climbed the steps, but the dog quickly became silent when the door opened and he inspected Jasper. Charlie found a soft, white, silk sheet that had belonged to her grandmother and wrapped it around him. She went into her bedroom and changed clothes, went outside and backed Jasper’s truck up to the porch. She spread a blanket on the floor, rolled Jasper onto it carefully, pulled him outside, and put him in the bed of the truck.

Riley Potts was an old friend of Jasper’s who lived on Spivey Mountain in Unicoi County. He, too, was a taxidermist and a hunter. Charlie had been to his house a few times when she was younger, and Riley had come by to drink coffee and talk with Jasper several times.
 

Riley’s place wasn’t much more than a plywood shack. It sat back in a cove about halfway up the mountain. Charlie blew the horn when she got close to the house. Five matted mutts came tearing around the corner, all of them barking. Riley walked out the front door. He was wearing denim bib overalls over a white t-shirt. He waved when he saw Jasper’s truck and quieted the dogs.

Charlie pulled up close to the house.
 

“Well, I’ll be dogged. Charlie, I hain’t seen you in a coon’s age.”

“I need your help, Riley.”

“What’s wrong? Whar’s that uncle o’ yourn?”

“He’s in the back.”

Charlie got out and pulled back the blankets she’d wrapped around Jasper. She lifted the silk sheet from his face.

“I need you to take care of him for me,” she said, choking back tears. “He said he didn’t want to go into the ground.”

Chapter 53

I
watched through the window as Charlie climbed out of her truck and walked toward the entrance of Buddy’s Diner in Elizabethton. Neither Jack nor I had heard from her in days. We’d called her, texted her. We’d gone to her house and found it empty. No Charlie, no Jasper, no horse or dog. I called the Carter County Sheriff’s Department and reported her missing, but as soon as the word got out that they were looking for her, an investigator at the department called me and said Charlie had contacted him by phone. She told him that after everything that had happened, she just needed to get out of town. She was fine, she said. She had called me late the night before and asked if I would meet her, without Jack, at the diner early the next morning.