Bone Rattle by Marc Cameron (best ereader for pdf .TXT) 📕

second floor. Each helmet had a headlamp strapped to it. Three more lamps, a little larger, and likely more powerful, rested in chargers on the desk next to a twenty-inch computer monitor. An orange helmet, probably Horning’s favorite, sat on top of a Panasonic Toughbook on the other side of the desk. Climbing rope, ascenders, rappelling brakes, and harnesses from a recent adventure – before the helicopter fall – were spread out on a tattered love seat. Dozens of poster-size charts and maps, rolled into tubes with rubber bands, leaned against the corner opposite the computer desk. Bright yellow weatherproof Pelican cases were propped open to reveal thousands of dollars in cameras and lighting equipment.

Lori Maycomb gave a low whistle. “I think we’ve come to the right place. Your wife do all this with you?”

“Most of it,” Horning smiled. “She’s a badass. A quiet badass, but still a badass. Works at the library. Her superpower is putting up with this mountain of gear.” He shoved the ropes on the love seat aside. “Take a load off.”

“I feel like we’ve stumbled into Indiana Jones’s house,” Maycomb said.

Horning smiled. “Not hardly,” he said. “But I did just order a bullwhip from Australia. Always wanted one.” He sat in the swivel chair at the computer desk, propping his leg on a hard plastic camera case. The dog jumped in his lap and curled up, one eye on their new guests. “Bobby said you’re interested in the area around the old hatchery. Hoping to save some young woman who’s hiding there or something.”

“That’s right,” Cutter said. “He said you might have run across some old off-the-grid cabins.”

“I know of a couple cabins,” Horning said. “But I’d lay odds that if she’s hiding, she’ll be in a mine. Bobby mentioned Levi is involved. He’s come on quite a few group hikes I’ve led, back before the oxy got ahold of him. Decent kid, really. Anyway, he seemed like he was familiar with several of the adits up there behind the hatchery. I have maps of that area if you’d like.”

“That would be helpful,” Cutter said.

“When you say mines,” Maycomb asked, “are you talking like caves? I know Juneau was built on mining, but I’ve never been in one.”

Horning gave his dog a scratch behind the ears. “Caves, pits, shafts, rooms big enough to hide a cruise ship, you name it. The city as we know it sits on tailings, basically the insides of Mount Roberts and Mount Juneau. The AJ mine runs for miles through the mountain, the entire length of town with multiple levels connected by drifts, raises, and winzes – basically chutes and ladders. The area you’re talking about by the hatchery wasn’t worked as extensively as some, but there are a couple of good mines up there – and a lot of places to hide. I guarantee you, you could walk within twenty feet of some of the mine openings and you wouldn’t realize you were there if you didn’t know what to look for.”

“What do you look for?” Cutter asked.

“Tailing piles, mostly,” Horning said. “They’ll be grown over with moss and plants now. All the rock has to go somewhere, so it ends up piled outside the opening. You look for shapes that don’t belong, something man-made. I’ve found hidden mine entrances by following the river of cool air flowing down the hillside. Ambient temp in the mines stays in the mid- to high forties once you get away from the entrance, a little warmer when you go deeper underground. If there’s airflow, it’s easy to feel the breeze pouring out in the summer.”

Cutter made a mental note, as he always did when he learned some new bit of information that would help with tracking. “I’m trying to imagine someone hiding inside a mine. Wouldn’t methane be a danger?”

“Oh,” Horning said. “There’s all kinds of stuff in a mine that could kill you. Rotting wood gives off CO2, displacing oxygen. Methane, as you mentioned, is a problem. Rotten ladders, old planks set over hundred-foot drops – covered with a thin layer of sediment so you don’t see them with even the brightest light, giant icicle-mites near some openings, cave-ins, and just plain old bumping the shit out of your head. And all that’s not counting the Tommy knockers.” He pronounced it knacker.

Maycomb frowned. “What’s that?”

“Welsh miners believed in little leprechaun dudes who knock on mine walls,” Horning said. “Some say they’re malevolent, but most believe they’re the ghosts of dead miners who knock to warn you of an impending cave-in. Just settling rock and timber supports, but it’s awfully easy to grow a vivid imagination when you’re four hundred feet from daylight.” He chuckled. “And then there are the spiders. Some walls are covered with thousands of harvestmen – daddy longlegs. Though I guess they’re not technically spiders.”

“I’m okay with spiders,” Maycomb said. “It’s crawling around in tight spaces that creeps me out.”

“Sorry,” Horning said. “There can be more than a little of that.”

Horning steadied Kat, the toffee-colored dog, in his lap as he spun the chair to access his computer. A couple of clicks of the mouse brought up a sectional map of a large mine. Viewed from the sides, the multiple layers, connected by up-and-down shafts, resembled a maze.

“By far, most places are big enough to stand up and walk in,” he said. “But some, especially if you want to hide, might mean getting down on your hands and knees.” He clicked through a couple of photos, stopping on one that showed a rock face at the end of a tunnel. A closer look revealed a two-foot gap at the bottom of the wall. “This used to be open to shoulder height,” he said. “But there was some shifting over the last couple of years and now it’s all but blocked. There’s a big stope on the other side, but you have to belly crawl to get there.”

Maycomb squinted, scrunching up her face, looking like she might be sick