Point Blank

Savich thought Dix wanted Gordon to stay gone, proof or not.

Their food arrived, and talk turned to the boys. Over a dessert of warm fresh apple pie Ruth said, “Okay, guys, tell us exactly how you managed to track down Moses Grace and Claudia.”

Sherlock looked over at her husband. “Well, it’s like this. What Dillon did wasn’t quite what you’d want to get out. In fact, the lid is on as tight as we can make it. So consider yourselves privileged.”

Dix’s eyebrow shot up. “Whatever did you do, Savich? If it needs to stay among the four of us, you’ve got my word on that.”

Savich nodded, set his fork on his plate. “You know that when someone calls nine-one-one, the dispatcher gets the callback number and the location of the person almost instantly, regardless of the carrier. Bottom line, we reprogrammed all the cell towers in the Washington, D.C., area to switch any call to my cell phone to the Hoover Building as a nine-one-one call. We fastened MAX to the dashboard, all ready for Moses to call. When he did, we had a nice dancing yellow dot showing us exactly where he was.

“The programming was manageable, but getting permission to work with the cell phone providers to reprogram their networks was the hard part. But Moses helped us out. When he bombed the Bonhomie Club he became a domestic terrorist threatening the nation’s capital. Some very important people in the executive branch wanted him stopped immediately, and that turned out to be quickly fatal for him.”

Dix said, “So anyone calling your number would have had their voice recorded and their location displayed in the FBI building. Is that legal?”

“Not usually,” Savich said, smiled, and took another bite of apple pie.

CHAPTER 40

WINKEL’S CAVE

MONDAY AFTERNOON

THEY STEPPED THROUGH the cave opening with no hesitation this time and climbed downward, pressing close to the right side of the cavern, well aware of the precipice two feet to the left.

Ruth stepped into the cave chamber where Erin Bushnell had lain and shone her head lamp all around. “What a relief, this place doesn’t seem all that scary anymore. It’s nice now.”

“It’s nice because it still smells like a crime scene. All right, Ruth,” Dix continued patiently, “you refused to tell me anything until we were here. This has to qualify. Do you think you can tell me what we’re doing here?”

“We’re here for some treasure hunting, Dix. We’re here for my Confederate gold. I keep thinking about my treasure map. It said the gold was beneath the niche. When I saw the deep crevice and realized parts of this cave are cut well below us, I started to wonder whether they meant that literally. The soldiers may have found a lower crevice or cavern and buried the gold there.”

“Why go to that much trouble?”

She walked to the deep niche, went down on her knees, pulled out her pick, and began tapping the earth. She said over her shoulder, “They didn’t want anyone to find the gold, even if they found the cave. That’s why they left the map incomplete.”

He stood behind her, watching, saying nothing.

They both heard it—not the sound of rock but the dull sound of wood. She looked up at him, her smile lighting up the dim chamber. “Is this great, or what?”

She began digging with her pick, and Dix dropped to his knees and began pulling away the loosened earth. Within moments, they felt rotten wood planks, and soon they uncovered a depressed floor some three feet square.

Once Dix had pulled up the last plank, Ruth lay on her stomach and angled her chest down into the hole, Dix’s Maglite shining down. “I wondered how they could do this, but now I understand. It’s a natural passage they boarded up, like a hole into a low-ceilinged basement in a house. The drop is only about five feet. I wondered how they could get the gold bars down there so easily, and this is how.” She jumped to her feet and wiped her hands on her jeans. “Let’s go down there, partner.”

Once Dix and Ruth stood in the middle of the chamber, they panned their flashlights around the small space. “Look,” Ruth said. “That narrow passageway probably leads back to the underground river and that cliff at the cave entrance.”

“The cave floor must slope up very fast,” Dix said. “It dead-ends here in this chamber. Look how the floor keeps going up. At the back wall, I’ll bet it’s only about three feet tall.”

“All that’s surely nice,” Ruth said, “but where’s my gold?”

Dix said, “I guess there’s no reason to think the Rebel soldiers would leave the gold out in plain view, not after they went to all the trouble of lugging it down here and covering that hole in the ceiling.”