The Death Box(78)

She smiled, not looking the least bit tired after an afternoon working the scene at Tiki Tiki. “Six, highly sensitive for ferrous and non-ferrous. They’ll detect a nickel at eighteen inches. We looking for nickels?”

“You’re looking for stuff like this,” I said, holding up the wire, steel bar and clamp. “Supposedly this land has always been vacant. But something was here.”

“You find those subsurface?”

“Partially. We’re wondering what else is down there.”

“Where’d you start scratching? We should probably begin there.”

Ziggy took the Rover and made a run for coffee and snacks, always appreciated, and I showed Clayton the general area where we’d found the scraps. The sun dropping fast, Clayton’s team set up a generator and three banks of high-intensity lamps and went out waving detectors over the hard ground.

I saw headlights closing, a red sports-racked Outback pulling beside me. Vivian Morningstar jumped out wearing lightweight running shorts and one of those advertising-intensive shirts given to participants in sporting events. Her feet were in neon-green running shoes. “I don’t recall requesting a pathologist,” I said. “Even such a highly decorated one.”

“A two-shift day,” she said, stretching her back. “I break them with a run to clear my head. When Deb asked could she borrow the ME’s two metal detectors, I got curious about my site.”

“Your site?”

She nodded at the pit. “I release the site to the developer on Monday. ’Til then, I own it.” She flashed me a grin. “So whatcha looking for in such a hurry?”

I explained that it was a fishing expedition and showed her the relics Gershwin and I had unearthed.

“We found a couple things like that when the excavation started. I set them aside in case they meant something.” She led me to the rear of the mound. Atop a plastic sheet were two long bolts and another heavy-duty clamp. “What’s the stuff mean?”

I knelt and studied the clamp, the kind I’d seen on hydraulic hoses. “Probably nothing. The rancher drove a piece of machinery here years back and it fell apart. Still …”

“I’m starting to understand you, Ryder, a bit obsessive.”

We leaned against Morningstar’s vehicle and watched the techs work. If I’d hoped for a case-breaker to leap from the soil, it wasn’t happening. After thirty minutes and hundreds of square meters covered, all we had was a rusty flange and a five-foot length of cable.

I heard my Rover in the distance and saw it zooming through the trees like Gershwin thought he was in the Daytona 500. He wasn’t coming down the usual path to the pit, but a couple dozen meters to the east.

“Damn,” Morningstar said. “He’s moving.”

“He bangs up my ride he’ll spend eternity in Vehicle Theft,” I muttered. The Rover finished the final hundred feet of its trip at a cautious pace, pulling beside Morningstar’s cruiser. Gershwin jumped out with a bag cradled in each arm. “The burrito king has arrived,” he proclaimed. “And I’ve got about a gallon of coffee in the back.”

“Where’d you find the chow?”

“A little bar-restaurant a couple miles west. It’s an old-timey joint, but good stuff, homemade while I waited.” He passed out paper-wrapped burritos to nearby company. Morningstar grabbed a chicken and black bean and watched the techs sweep the ground. Gershwin grinned at her and elbowed me.

“You call her?” he whispered. “Or she just in the area?”

“She’s still in charge of the site. And she’s interested.”

“I know what interests the Doc,” he grinned.

“What was with that piece of driving coming in?” I said to change the subject. “I thought you’d wrap around a tree. Why not use the path?”

“I was driving a path,” he protested. “Like a lane.”

“There’s no road there.”

“I saw a natural opening to the east of the one everyone’s been using. It’s rugged – you bump over some stumps, but that’s what the jungle buggy’s built for, no?”

I’m not sure if I was dubious or curious.

“Show me.”

He retraced his path to the paved road and circled around, the headlamps transforming the vegetation into a pattern of dark and light. In the daytime the landscape blended into a panorama of sameness. At night the headlamps suggested an entry into the low trees and scruffy bushes. He was right about the stumps as well. There were only a few but they seemed to step a path through the heavier growth.

“See?” he said. “What do you think caused it?”