Friday mornings meant a meeting with Dex to turn in my column for the following week, as well as any other assignments I’d worked on during the week. This week, in addition to my column, I had a second article about the spaghetti dinner and raffle to benefit cancer research, a second article about the new wellness center now that I’d actually taken one of their classes, a short human interest piece about the athlete of the month from the local high school, and an announcement that the Barfield Family had kittens in need of a new home.
The article I’d planned to write had to do with my journey to find the truth, but if the skeleton in the mine did turn out to be Austin Brady’s remains, then I’d need to switch gears and lead in with the big reveal. Unfortunately, there was a lot that was still unknown, and my column normally ran on Mondays, so I planned to talk things over with Dex. I supposed if I could get confirmation on the identity of the remains, I could write the article tomorrow, and Dex could have it formatted on Sunday.
As far as I knew, the only people who knew about the remains Cass and I had found were the police team who recovered the remains, the medical examiner, Tom and Gracie, and, of course, Alastair and me. Cass had wanted to keep the whole thing under wraps, but I needed to discuss it with Dex.
“Hey, Dex,” I said after sitting down across the desk from him. “I have news.”
“What sort of news?”
“We may have found Austin Brady’s remains.”
Dex’s mouth fell open. “What? Really?”
“Cass and I took a look around in the area closest to where the boys camped that spring. I’d found a magazine with a map of mines in the area, and was curious, so I brought it with me. It occurred to me that if Austin had been running for his life, he might have hidden in a location he knew about, where he was certain the large monster chasing him couldn’t get to him.”
“I don’t remember there being any mine entrances close to Logan Pond.”
“There aren’t,” I confirmed, “but the mine system runs all through the red rock mountain to the northeast of the camping spot. It occurred to me that even though the entrance to the mine is on the other side of the mountain, which is miles and miles from where the boys camped, there might have been another entrance. A smaller hole created as an air vent.”
His brows shot up. “And you found it?”
I nodded. “I climbed in yesterday while Cass held onto the rope I was tied to so I wouldn’t fall or get lost. I found a shaft that goes straight down more than a hundred feet. There was a ladder secured to one wall of the shaft, which I climbed down. I couldn’t get all the way down, but I made it far enough to see the bottom. When I shone my flashlight into the hole, I saw bones. Human bones. Child size bones.”
“Oh, God.”
“I don’t know for certain that the bones belong to Austin. Cass took a team out to the mine yesterday to retrieve what was there. I know he was going to attempt to have the bones identified. I’m not sure where he is in the process, so I don’t know if he’s been successful or not. I texted him earlier and asked him to call me when he could, but I haven’t heard from him.”
“So you think that when Austin began to hallucinate, he headed toward the mine he’d previously found, knowing it would be a good place to hide?”
“That’s my theory.”
“If that were true and he’d found the mine at some point in the past, he must have known about the mineshaft. Why wouldn’t he avoid it?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “He was having hallucinations. Who knows what he might have seen that could have caused him to run, forgetting all about the huge hole in front of him. He may have gotten turned around and thought he was heading in the other direction, which provided clear access and a wide path with high ceilings.”
Dex sat back in his chair. He looked pale. I was afraid he was going to pass out or have a heart attack or something, but after a moment, his color began to return. He still didn’t say anything, so I asked the question which was on my mind.
“I was talking about this with Tom and Gracie last night, and Tom pointed out that if Austin had found an opening to a mine and access to such a cool adventure, he would have mentioned it to his friends. Our theory is that Austin had been to the mine in the past. I know the two of you were friends. Did he ever mention the mine to you?”
He slowly shook his head. “He didn’t mention that he’d found an access point, but I did know he was interested in the mines in the area. He came across a magazine that had an article about the mines in Colorado as well as a map of the mine systems the previous fall. He was really interested in the subject, so Austin, Josh, and I hitched a ride around the mountain to where the original entrance to the mine is located. The entrance was fenced off, but we managed to get inside. Once we were inside, we found that there’d been a cave-in about fifty feet in, and access was impossible. I remember Josh and I were disappointed, but we took the whole thing with a grain of salt, Austin, however, was determined to find a way in and announced to Josh and me that he was going to keep looking. This was late fall, and the first big snow came not long after. I guess Austin must have continued his search once spring arrived, and the snow melted. It sounds like he was successful in his search, but if he did find the opening before that trip, he never mentioned it to me.”
“When I spoke to Toby, he mentioned that after they arrived, he and Larry went fishing, but Josh and Austin took off for a while. I wonder if the reason they took off was because Austin was showing Josh the mine entrance.”
“Maybe. Josh and Austin were close. In fact, the two of them were best friends, while the rest of us were just part of the gang. But if Austin did show Josh the opening, don’t you think Josh would have thought to look there when Austin went missing?” Dex asked.
“Maybe he did. Maybe he even climbed inside and found Austin dead.”
“Why wouldn’t he tell the police?” he asked.
“I don’t suppose we can ever know for certain why he did or didn’t tell what he knew if, in fact, he did know what had happened to Austin, but maybe he confronted Colin, and Colin threatened him, or maybe Colin managed to convince him that they’d all be in trouble if the adults found out what had happened. Unfortunately, Josh and Austin are both dead, so we can’t ask them, and it’s beginning to look as if Colin is the bad guy in this story, so I doubt he’ll talk. Bobby is dead, Larry was the new kid, and it sounds like he was mostly kept in the dark, and Toby was just a baby in the eyes of the others, so they wouldn’t have looped him in.”
“So how can we prove any of this?” Dex asked.
I slowly shook my head. “I really don’t know. The reality is that at this point, all we have is a pretty good story. We don’t even know that any of it is true. Larry said that Colin drugged Austin, but unless Colin confesses to doing so, we can’t prove that. Even if the bones are proven to belong to Austin, all Colin has to say is that Austin got mad about something, wandered off, and ended up in the bottom of a mineshaft. If he does decide to employ that strategy, his assertion that the whole thing was just some huge accident can never be proven otherwise.”
“If Colin drugging Austin did lead to his death, he should be held accountable, but keep in mind that the guy was thirteen,” Dex reminded me. “I’m sure he really did intend the whole thing to just be some big prank. As a group, we were big on pranks. I have to believe that Colin had no idea what would happen, and if he did get the others to lie for him, it was probably just because he was terrified.”
“Maybe. And maybe a thirteen-year-old’s liability in a case such as this would be limited. But what if he killed Bobby? Now. As an adult? What if Bobby decided he could no longer keep the secret, and Colin killed him to keep him quiet?”