“What do you think that is?” Evan said.
“Somebody wants it to look like the septic tank, but you don’t drop a trailer on top of your septic.”
“That was a last-minute call. My father spent the days just before his trial out here with Cecil Buckner. They rented an excavator and did the job alone. He still didn’t trust it, though, so they moved the trailer too. I suppose it worked. Not the worst idea in the world, really. Most people don’t pause to study on trailers and septic tanks.”
He crawled over and pushed the lid back. He had to set the gun down to do it; the lid was plenty heavy. When it had scraped clear, Evan rolled onto his right shoulder and waved for Mark.
“Not bad, right? Only my old man could think to hide his golden ticket in shit. More I think about it, more it suits him.”
Mark crawled close enough to see, and then Evan lifted the flashlight and shone it down. The false septic tank spread out into a narrow and deep chamber of stone. Deeper than the light could reach. In the center, a long ladder made of steel cables and aluminum steps dangled. The walls sloped inward, forming a V, and it looked tight at the far end.
Mark glanced away from it and out at the fields that swept toward Trapdoor, and the distance seemed extraordinary. He’d made it all that way in the dark?
“This is where you put me?”
“Hell, no! You’d still be down there, your bones sitting alongside my old man’s. You went in the main entrance, the one people know about. And not far in, either. But in your attempt to get out, you just went farther in.”
“I thought I was getting close,” Mark said. “I thought I was heading the right way.”
“You were heading deeper into the cave.”
It seemed impossible to believe, but if anyone would know, it was the man who’d left him there.
“The entrances connect,” Evan said. “Only two people ever figured out how. My dad from this end and, apparently, Ridley Barnes from the other. Because Ridley got there, didn’t he? Hard to kill a man if you don’t get to him.”
“Your father is the dark man,” Mark said.
“The what?”
“He’s down there,” Mark said. “Your father’s body is down in that cave.”
Evan nodded.
“The teeth came from Detroit,” Mark said. “The police seem convinced of that.”
“That’s because they were mailed from Detroit, yes. Cecil needed people to stop looking for my father. The longer they looked for him, the more trouble it would be. Good news was, there was already somebody in the game who’d promised to kill my dad. And his people were in Detroit. Cecil drove up there and mailed them down and damned if he wasn’t right — it quieted the search awfully fast. Everybody had been waiting for my dad to get popped when he came out of prison, so when they finally had evidence that he had been, they were content with that. The old boy who put the hit on him, he wasn’t one to miss. That’s why, during the short time my dad was back in this town, he was stealthy about it.”
“Cecil pulled your father’s teeth out of his mouth?”
“No,” Evan said. “I did that.”
He didn’t look away from Mark. His face was hard and his voice steady and dark. “Cecil offered. I didn’t think that was right. I thought if anyone was going to treat his body like that, it should be family.”
Mark tried to imagine what that had been like. How long had it taken? How easily did they come out? How often did Evan see those images when he closed his eyes at night?
“I was told he never came back to town after he was paroled,” Mark said. “Everyone seems to believe that. How long was he really here?”
“If they believe it, then Cecil did his job. All summer, from the day my father got paroled to the day I came in here with Sarah, Cecil was hustling to keep my father quiet and invisible. It wasn’t easy. My old man was fixated on the cave and he would drink and do dumb shit, call Pershing and make threats, go down there and tag the cave with paint like a little kid. Cecil would rip his ass and then put the blame on Ridley, and that was easy enough because Ridley Barnes is the craziest fucking man who ever walked through this county. He’s talking to caves, right? Got himself friends down there, rocks he thinks are people. You know how convenient Ridley Barnes was for Cecil Buckner? Damn, brother, you have no clue just how valuable that old boy was. He was like one of those loons who stand on street corners preaching about the end times and government conspiracies or whatever. People expect him to say crazy shit, do crazy shit. They don’t expect him to say the truth.”
“You took Sarah in there for your father?”
“I did not take her in there for him!” For the first time, his mask of good nature shattered and Mark could see the dangerous rage that existed beneath it. When Mark spoke again, he took care to keep his voice gentle.
“Then what happened?”
“Just what I said happened from the start. We went in there because Sarah wanted to, then somebody scared us, and she hid. Then she was lost. Every bit of that was true.” He swallowed. “I just didn’t mention that I met my father in the cave. When I left her to check out the noises, the drunk son of a bitch came in and screamed at me for telling her about the cave. Except I wasn’t going to. I wasn’t going to tell her anything that she didn’t know, that everyone who paid ten bucks for a tour didn’t know. I tried to explain that. I’ll never know if she heard any of it or not. He laid me upside the head with a Maglite, and by the time I came to, they were both gone. So I went for help. I went to Cecil. I’ve spent ten years wishing I’d turned in any other direction. Hell, just gone right to the cops and let the old man go back to prison. But he was my father. I didn’t like the man, but he was my father. And the only friend he had in this world was Cecil Buckner.”
“What did Cecil tell you to do?”
“We went back and searched together. Didn’t find them. He told me to call the police but to keep my dad out of it and said that he would do the same and he’d find my father and get it settled. Basically, he told me he’d fix it. Then as soon as I got away from the police, he came to me and said that they were figuring it out. That Sarah was fine, my father was just waiting for the chance to take her back to a place where they could find her, toward Pershing’s entrance. Because it couldn’t be this place, you know. The whole fucking dream would have died then. Even while Cecil was telling me that, though, he was seeing the angles. He knew that Sarah meant something to Pershing. My father didn’t.”
“You think your father would have brought her back out?”
“I honestly do. Maybe that’s ignorant. But he listened to Cecil. Always. He trusted Cecil, because Cecil had earned it as far as my father was concerned. Cecil didn’t give up the cave while my father was in prison. He kept quiet. My father considered Cecil a partner. More than that, he considered him a boss. You got in trouble, you asked Cecil how to get out of it. Well, we both did that summer. And you can see how well that worked for us.”
Mark turned from him and stared into the unimpressive crack in the earth.
“This was the point of it all?” Mark said. “People died because of this?”
“People died because Cecil and my father wanted their dreams back. But don’t write this off until you’ve seen it, brother. What’s down there is special, and somebody will pay one hell of a lot of money for it. Wait and see on that. You can add a few more zeros to whatever number is in your mind. You can roll your eyes and shrug right now like everybody else, but trust me, by the time it’s done, a lot of money will have traded hands over this place.”