Stampler slipped back into his Crikside accent for a moment. 'Now, yuh know what I main, Marty. Feel it, don't yuh? A hurtin' in the chest. Yer stomach's on fire. Head feels like it's in a vice and somebody's squaizin' it tighter and tighter. Got a hard-on waitin' fer it't' happen. You feel it, don't yuh, Marty? The urge to kill.' Vail's finger tightened on the trigger. 'Or maybe I shouldn't call you Marty? Too familiar. How about Mr Vail? Or Mr Counsellor? Mr Prosecutor? Martin? Oh, help me, Martin,' he jibed, slipping easily from one accent to the other. 'Ah'm so scairt and confused. I lost time, Martin, and Ah jest know sompin' terrible has happened. Plaise help me, suh.'
Hate ate up Vail's insides, assaulted his head, gnawed at his heart. Stampler was right, he wanted to squeeze the trigger, watch the bullet rip into his chest. He wanted to watch Stampler die.
'Marty?' Flaherty said behind him.
'Stay out of it, Dermott.'
'Let me go bring him in. You're making me nervous.'
'How 'bout it, Martin? Can yuh help me, suh?' Stampler began to laugh. 'I'm goan turn 'round now, I'm jes' gonna walk away from you. Go ahead, shoot an unarmed man in the back. That's what you want to do, isn't it?'
'He's pushing you, Marty.'
Vail felt the cold trigger against his finger. His fist tightened a little more.
'I know what he's doing,' Vail said. 'I'm going out there and get him.'
'Stay right there, Dermott, can't you read the sign?' The sign, weather-scarred and leaning sideways in the drifting snow, said:
DANGER
UNSAFE
DANGER
This mine shaft has been sealed
No admittance to this area
DANGER
UNSAFE
DANGER
And behind it the mound in the snow was the cover that had been placed over the shaft years before. Vail called out to Stampler. 'Put your hands behind your head and walk towards me.'
Stampler walked away from them. 'Ah'm leavin now, Martin.' He laughed harder. 'Catch me if you can.'
'You're standing right over mine shaft five, Stampler,' Vail called to him. 'The hole. Remember the hole?' He pointed to an old sign lying near the shed:
KC&M MINE
NUMBER FIVE.
Stampler hesitated. He looked back at Vail and Flaherty, then at the rusting lift mount. The groaning, clinking, awful sound it used to make rang again in his ears. He looked down at his feet and his gaze pierced the snow and boards and plummeted into the darkness. He saw twelve men - eleven men and a boy - suspended under the steel mount, being lowered from the land of the living into that pit of pure darkness; men, old long before their years, bent over and stooped from chopping away at walls of coal; saw the light at the top of the shaft as it shrank, growing smaller and smaller until he couldn't see it any more; dropped into air that smelled of bad eggs, with his mouth so dry his tongue stuck to his teeth. Dropping down into hell. A pitch-black hell.
'What's with him?' said Flaherty. 'He's just staring at the ground.'
The boards under Stampler's feet whimpered and sagged ever so slightly. Stampler stared at his feet. Snow cascaded between the boards. His jaw began throbbing as his pulse increased. He took a step forward. The ancient boards, ruined by years of bad weather and neglect, groaned as Stampler's weight tortured them. The platform sagged even more. He stopped - afraid to move ahead and afraid to stay in place. He took a giant step, put his foot down gently, leaned forward, and swung the other leg beside it. There was a crack under his feet. It sounded like a rifle shot as the board underfoot broke.
'Oh, Jesus,' Stampler said to himself. He started to run and with each step the rotted platform collapsed underfoot, disintegrating behind him as he dashed madly towards the trees. Then his leg crashed through the platform and he fell forward, felt the platform behind him start to fall away. He started to crawl and it cracked again. This time the platform began disappearing from under him. He leaned forward, reaching out, trying to find something to grab. His fingers burst through the snow, dug into the rotten wood. He pulled himself forward and another section broke away. He looked over his shoulder. Behind him, like an enormous, obscene black mouth, the hole kept spreading.
'Aw, Jesus!' he screamed. He started to fall and he dug his fingernails deeper into the wood. His weight pulled at the nails, but they began to slide, and splinters, like needles, pierced his fingertips, jutted under his fingernails, and punctured the quick. He was too terrified to cry out in pain. He was scrambling for his life as the decayed platform disintegrated completely around him. The last boards gave way.
Stampler looked back for an instant. His eyes locked on to Vail's. His fingers scratched across the disintegrating platform and he vanished into the black maw.
He did not scream. He did not utter a sound. He plunged soundlessly down, down, down.
It was a very long time before they heard the dull, faraway thump; the faint clatter of wood slats as they plunged down behind him. Then it was deathly still except for the wind rattling the dead limbs of the trees.
'God almighty,' Flaherty whispered.
'Save your prayers for somebody who deserves them,' Vail said. He turned and walked away from the gaping hole in the snow.
They followed the road back to the chopper, which was waiting with its rotors idling. Vail and Flaherty helped St Claire into the helicopter and climbed aboard behind him.
'Where's Stampler?' he asked.
'Where he belongs,' Vail answered. 'In hell.'
The chopper lifted off and climbed towards the top of the ridge. Vail watched mine shaft five pass below them. He stared down at the black circle surrounded by fresh snow. It looked like the bull's-eye of a target. He watched it until the chopper swept over the top of the ridge and he could no longer see Aaron Stampler's grave.
EPILOGUE
The mixed aromas of ether, antiseptics, and disinfectant permeated the silent hallways of the hospital. Doctors and nurses consulted in hushed conversation at doorways. Visitors wandered from rooms, some smiling and encouraged, other teary-eyed and wan as they struggled to comprehend bad news. Elation and melancholy walked hand-in-hand, and the atmosphere was charged with emotion. Nothing seemed commonplace in these corridors where strangers were drawn together by the common bonds of disease, misfortune, and mishap.
Vail avoided everyone, speaking briefly when he could not avoid it, usually merely nodding to those he recognized as regulars or staff. He rushed to the hospital at the end of each day, first checking on Jane and Abel, then eating tasteless food in the cafeteria or standing outside the emergency door to grab a smoke.
Martin Vail had always detested hospitals because they reminded him of the blackest and most agonizing days of his past. They evoked images, in sharp and painful focus, of his mother as they put her in an ambulance and carried her out of his life forever, the intensive care unit where his father lay dead from a coronary, the pale blue room in which he said farewell to Ma Cat, the grandmother who had raised him, as she lay dying of cancer. Ironically, those images now had been replaced by relief and thanksgiving and by the sheer joy of knowing that Jane Venable and Able Stenner had been saved by the surgeons, nurses, and attendants in the emergency room at Chicago General.
A few days after the demise of Stampler, Jack Yancey died as the result of his stroke, and Vail officially became the district attorney. Dr Samuel Woodward, under fire for his role in the release of Stampler, held a press conference and, bolstered by half a dozen colleagues, weasled out of the situation with long-winded psychobabble.