A Treasure to Die For Read online

  Daylight! A busy street. Sewer drains. What did that mean? Her thoughts were still scrambled. Think, think. “Oh, dear, all-knowing God, help me think.”

  Central Avenue! She had gone through a trap door in the basement of the Fordyce, the Fordyce fronted on Central, and Central was built over...OH. She was sitting in Hot Springs Creek.

  Everett had shoved her through the trap door into a concrete room that opened on the creek.

  Her mind began to search through what she could remember of Ranger Hawk’s program on Hot Springs’ history. The creek, which carried away storm run-off and extra water from the hot springs, had been open until 1884, when the Department of the Interior ordered it covered with a masonry arch topped by a roadway. Instead of the creek bed that cut the downtown area in half and had become a stinking open sewer hosting rooting pigs, Hot Springs gained broad, fashionable Central Avenue. Many people—from then until now—didn’t realize they were walking or driving over a covered creek when they were in front of Bathhouse Row.

  Now that she sat in the flowing creek, Carrie was grateful for mud. She had no idea how far she had fallen before landing, but the mud provided a cushion. Here in the creek bed there were rocks everywhere.

  Had Everett known there was mud under the Fordyce?

  Her body began to shake again, but this time with fury, because logic told her he hadn’t known. He would have expected her to be hurt or killed by a fall on concrete or bare rocks, and he was the only one who knew where she was. That was a death sentence. No one would come to help; he had not meant for her to get out of this alive. He couldn’t allow that after letting her hear him talk about his treasure.

  What was she going to do? Do? She didn’t even know what to think.

  Calm...calm.

  She vaguely remembered hearing someone say that the best time to be grateful to God is during the worst challenge. Be grateful?

  Well, yes, she could do that. There was mud to be grateful for, the mud that had protected her from rocks. How funny it would sound when she got out and told Henry she was grateful for mud.

  When she got out—when she got out. When she saw Henry, told him about her experience down here. When...

  Oh, God, help me.

  She was alive, able to move around. That was something else to be grateful for. And if God could part the Red Sea, guide Noah in making an ark, bring the ark through the flood, He could help her now, help her here in nothing more than a little underground creek.

  She ignored the tears streaming down her face and looked up at the grate. Too thick and heavy. And anyway, it was far above her, she couldn’t reach it.

  Well, she could holler, there would be many people walking by on the sidewalk, probably heading for restaurants at this time of day. Someone would hear.

  Carrie stood slowly and balanced on the rocks, taking time to be grateful she was wearing her rubber-soled walking shoes. She lifted her head and began to shout, “Help! Help me!” She listened for breaks in traffic before shouting each time, then cried out as loudly as she could manage.

  Long minutes went by as Carrie shouted, cried, and pleaded. After a forever in time her neck was getting stiff, her voice was nothing but a croak, and not one person had come to look through the grate. No one had answered, no one had heard.

  There would be no help, no one would come.

  She slumped back into the water and looked around her prison. In spite of light coming through the grate, it was too dark to see more than a few feet into the tunnel. She lifted her arms in supplication, stretching them toward the grate as if it were some god offering salvation.

  She shut her eyes to stop more of the futile tears and saw herself in Mrs. Hicks’ Sunday School class, sitting on one of the little wooden chairs, all those years ago. She wore her yellow Easter dress with the rows of ruffles. It had panties that matched, and she remembered that the panty ruffles made sitting feel funny—slidey and lumpy—kind of like sitting on these wet, slimy rocks.

  She and the rest of the class were stretching their arms up, up, like she was now, then moving them around, saying with Mrs. Hicks: “God is up here, God is out here, God is down here, God is ev-e-ry-where.”

  Ev-e-ry-where. Everywhere.

  She needed more light, and evening was coming. She needed...

  Oh, OH! Her hand went to the pocket of her slacks. The cloth was wet, of course, and her cotton underpants were soaked, but, as she recalled, the card behind the little flashlight’s bubble pack had said water-resistant. She’d read the card in the store when she bought the flashlight as a gift for Henry.

  Maybe... She stopped breathing, clicked the switch, and now the tears signaled yet another reason for gratitude as Henry’s tiny flashlight, picked up off the floor of the Fordyce basement this afternoon, glowed. The beam was too newly bright in the darkness, and she blinked, imagining she saw things moving.

  They were moving. Roaches scuttled away in every direction, and Carrie sighed. Roaches were such a small problem right now.

  What next? She had light, but...

  “Shepherd, show me how to go...”*

  So, dear Shepherd of us all, where to go? She shone the flashlight back and forth in the creek bed. The light-sparkled water was flowing to her left. Go that way, she thought, almost as if hearing a directing voice. It was reasonable, there must be an outlet of some kind. For all she knew, the only inlets were storm drains and pipes running from springs and bath houses. So—go with the flow. She began moving with the water, picking her way carefully over rocks that were clearly revealed in the flashlight’s beam, though the sides of the tunnel were still hidden in shadows. Armies of roaches retreated, bodies piling on bodies in the haste to get away. She hoped they were the only creatures living in the tunnel.

  She passed around a curve, under more overhead grates. It looked like the daylight was less bright now. What time was it? She hadn’t the faintest idea and, unlike the flashlight, her watch had not survived the drenching. Its hands were stuck on 4:15.

  She began to hear a rush of falling water as she moved forward. Waterfall? Surely that couldn’t be, not in here. Ranger Hawk hadn’t said anything about a waterfall. She lifted the flashlight and peered into the tunnel ahead of her, seeing only haze.

  Carrie walked more slowly as she came closer to the sound. No, not a waterfall. Through the haze, which was becoming very warm, she saw a torrent of water spraying into the tunnel from a drain pipe. It was moving with such force that spray almost reached the curved wall across from the pipe. The water in the creek bed churned and boiled, and she could no longer see the bottom. Probably the force of the spray was digging away the rocks and silt.

  Now haze drifted all around her, and intense heat beat against her face. The haze was steam, and not only was the creek becoming uncomfortably hot, it was getting much deeper, rising to her waist. She had started to push backward, away from the heat, when she slipped on a mossy rock and was suddenly in water up to her chin, water hot enough to make her want to scream with pain.

  As she fought to get out of the pool, her foot struck a protruding rock, stopping her forward slide into the churning water. Skin tingling, she stumbled away from the heat, splashing back into the creek bed where she had been walking. There the incoming water was only moderately warm and not more than a foot deep.

  Carrie sank, panting, into the cooler water. She began to splash it over her arms and blouse as she stared at the steaming torrent.

  The water ahead of her was too deep to walk in, too hot for swimming.

  She was trapped.

  Chapter XII

  Henry

  They couldn’t do this to him, they couldn’t.

  But Henry knew they could. He was no longer Major Henry King of the Kansas City Police Department, he was a civilian. They were doing exactly the right thing, the legal thing, what he would have done back in Kansas City under the same circumstances.

  As soon as Agent Bell arrived in the storage room, he ordered Henry to leave the
area. After a discussion that had become more heated than Henry intended, Bell amended his order and allowed Henry to stay in the employee break room, warning him not to leave without an escort, and not to touch anything but his chair and the table.

  Being in the break room, however, was turning out to be almost worse than exile to the hotel. He knew too much—and too little—about what was going on. FBI agents, park rangers, uniformed police officers and detectives had been coming and going in the hallway for some time. Henry could hear few actual words from the storage room, but he understood most of the procedure from his years of police experience. Jurisdiction here was different though, because the crime had happened in a national park. The FBI, with Colin Bell as case agent, was in charge.

  As soon as he’d viewed the body and the crime scene, Bell began calling in his teams of experts. He’d escorted Henry to the break room, pointed him into a chair, and made several phone calls, not seeming to care if Henry heard his end of the conversations.

  An FBI evidence recovery team from Little Rock would be on the scene within two hours. In the meantime, the park’s law enforcement rangers were securing the area, and, with assistance from the Hot Springs Police Department, had begun a wide-ranging search for Carrie throughout the park and the city. Early on, Henry had heard one detective say that a thorough search of the building, including the elevator maintenance room, roof, and, Henry supposed, even the long-unused dressing rooms, private bathing areas, and steam cabinets, had proved Ms. McCrite wasn’t anywhere inside the Fordyce.

  At one point Henry saw lights flash in the hall and knew that crime scene photographs, and probably a video, were recording visual evidence. An emergency medical team and the coroner came soon after that. Bell also requested a K-9 tracking unit, and a police officer accompanied Henry back to his hotel room to get Carrie’s dirty shirt for scent-identification. The officer suggested, very firmly, that Henry remain at the hotel. He refused and returned to the Fordyce with his escort.

  Now the waiting was driving him nuts. Everyone working in the basement rooms had a purpose, something definite to do. Everyone but Henry. All he had was too much half-knowledge and too many thoughts, thoughts that were rapidly sinking into helpless rage and a boiling worry. He was able to control those only by searching his memory over and over for clues that Bell and the others might miss. His information—and Carrie’s—together with their fresh viewpoint were going to be of great importance in this case. To begin with, why had Bogardus abducted Carrie? No one seemed to be asking that question yet.

  After another hour they carried the body out through the exit at the opposite end of the hall while Henry watched from the break room doorway. Almost immediately they brought in a ladder, working it into the storage room through the narrow spaces and sharp turns.

  A ladder? What...? Oh! That blasted trap door!

  God, make her be okay, take care of her. He wished he knew more about praying, understood more of what Carrie believed in and trusted.

  He had paced the small room then, going around and around, bumping chairs aside. Finally, using a spoon he found in the sink, he began opening cabinet doors, pushing the spoon through the handle loops so his fingers wouldn’t touch them. He peered inside every cabinet, saw nothing out of the ordinary, and pulled the spoon out quickly, allowing the doors to bang shut. He hoped someone would come to see what the noise was so he could ask a question or two. But no one had paid any attention to him, no one came.

  He sat at the table chewing on stale restaurant crackers he’d found in one of the cabinets. Well, why not? The crackers were too old for anyone to enjoy. At least opening the little packets gave his fingers something to do while his well-trained mind searched through all he’d observed since coming to Hot Springs. For one thing, it was possible that Bogardus wasn’t the only one here under false pretenses. An Elderhostel could provide a convenient cover for anyone over fifty-five. Henry wished he’d picked up his attendance list when he was in the room getting Carrie’s shirt.

  After finishing the crackers, he took a paper cup from a stack on the counter and got a drink of water. The heck with Bell, he knew what to touch and what to leave alone!

  He played with cracker wrappers for a while, trying to fold them into smooth little squares. Then, in a frustrated burst of energy, he swept the wrappers off the table and watched them scatter as if they were trying to escape from his impotent fury.

  After a space of time he knelt on the floor to pick the wrappers up, wadded them tightly inside a clenched fist, and dumped them in the trash basket.

  Back at the table, he let his fingers drum the slick surface. Tap, tappity tap-tap. Tap, tappity tap. He knew what Brooks and Bell and the others were thinking—that, in panic or rage, Carrie stabbed out at Everett Bogardus and, after realizing what she’d done, had fled.

  In this special situation they should let him help with the investigation. Henry had offered to help as soon as Bell arrived on the scene, reminding the agent of his years of law-enforcement experience. “And after all,” he’d almost said, “Carrie’s my wife.” He caught himself in time, wondering where that thought came from, realizing he could only say, “She’s my lady-friend,” or “my special friend,” and those connections sounded so weak, almost like there was no important connection at all.

  His appeal had done no good. So be it. They didn’t understand.

  God, keep her safe.

  Whoa, that was it. Carrie believed in God, in His Commandments, “Thou shalt not kill,” and all the rest. She could not kill anyone, not even a man who threatened her with some unspeakable evil. She couldn’t...

  He sighed. Yes, she could, under some circumstances, he knew she could.

  Henry folded his hands, shut his eyes, and tried to think a prayer.

  All that came were images of Carrie hurt, frightened, lying someplace unable to get up. The pictures rushed around and around inside his head like a horrible silent movie.

  He heard the break room refrigerator motor click off. In the silence, Henry noticed it was also very quiet down the hallway. Now there was only an occasional voice murmur, a few muted thumps. What was going on?

  If only he’d stayed with her, hadn’t been willing to leave her alone with Bell. He should have been with her when she joined the tour group or, at least, kept her with him. He should have...should have...there was so much he should have done differently. He’d had that gut feeling about Bogardus, he should have paid more attention.

  There was a step in the hall and he opened his eyes to see Agent Brooks standing in the doorway. Henry said nothing, waiting in the awkward silence, and, for a moment, Brooks didn’t speak either. This agent had never appeared tough, but now, as he looked at Henry, his cocoa brown features softened even further and his eyes radiated sympathy and understanding.

  He came over to the table, lifted a large plastic bag, put it down in front of Henry. It made a squishing sound and sagged with the weight of something large and lumpy. Whatever it contained was wet. Brooks pulled the top apart. The translucent latex gloves he wore made his hands look purple.

  “Identify this?”

  Henry looked. Globs of mud covered it, but he knew the item too well. “It’s Carrie’s,” he said, “her purse. Where did...?” His eyes misted over then, and he had to stop talking. Blast, oh blast! What was he going to do?

  Brooks studied his face for a moment, then looked away, concentrating on a careful inspection of the refrigerator door. He said, still looking at the refrigerator, “Heavy. Getting warrant to look. Any idea about that weight? Concealed weapon?”

  “Certainly not,” Henry answered, knowing Brooks meant a gun. But Henry had already pictured something else. If a geologist’s pick was a weapon—and they all knew now it could be—it was likely there was a concealed weapon in that purse.

  He coughed, cleared his throat, and asked, “Why is it wet? Where did you find it?” He thought his words sounded hesitant and unsteady, almost as if he were about to cry.


  “Oh, come with me then, man, I’ll show you,” Brooks said, stringing a surprising number of words together and speaking as if Henry were a child who had begged to go with Daddy on a forbidden trip.

  Henry knew the body was gone, of course; he didn’t expect to see it there, but its presence lingered in the room. It always took a while...

  Agent Bell was kneeling beside the open trap door when Brooks and Henry came in. He looked up, noticed Henry, scowled, but said nothing, and made no objection when Henry looked over his shoulder into the hole. An electric cord snaked across the floor and dropped into the opening. It ended in a light socket holding a strong bulb.

  At the bottom of the hole two men wearing hip boots were moving around in what looked like a pit full of mud. Was Carrie somewhere down there?

  Henry’s voice sounded unnaturally high in his ears. “Is she...?”

  Bell said, “No, she’s not there, just the purse. Nothing else has been found. We think Bogardus had opened the trap door, was pushing her toward it when she managed to grab his knife, struck out, stabbing him fatally. Then she ran, leaving the building by that outside door at the end of the hall. Her purse must have fallen over the edge while she and Bogardus struggled.”

  “What is that place?”

  “It’s an old water storage tank for the Fordyce, not used for years. Has a hole broken in one side now, only about two or three feet across. If you went out the hole and down fifty feet or so of a rocky slope, you’d be in the creek.”

  “Creek?”

  “Hot Springs Creek runs beneath Central Avenue through the downtown area. The creek was covered with an arched tunnel in the nineteenth century and Central Avenue built over it. Comes to daylight at Transportation Plaza.” Bell waved his hand to indicate a direction. “Creek’s still active with storm run-off and excess water from the springs.”

  “Ah, yes. I remember the ranger telling us that.” Henry paused, staring at the floor. Finally he said, “So you’re still searching for Carrie.” It wasn’t a question.