Point Blank

seemed like I’d landed on a different planet.”
    Ruth bent over to retie her boot laces. “How much farther, Mr. Holcombe?”
    “Call me Chappy, Special Agent.”
    Ruth laughed. “I guess you’d best call me Ruth.”
    “I’ll try, Ruth. But you know, that sounds like you stepped out of the Old Testament or should be home, spinning cloth in front of a fire.” Chappy stopped a moment, scanned. “Over there, I think, another thirty or so yards,” he said, pointing. “You can see Lone Tree Hill—that single oak tree standing on top of that rise? It’s been standing sentinel up there longer than I’ve had feet on the ground. The snow’s really changed how everything looks—the snow and all the years.”
    They trudged on toward that single oak tree. Nearly goose-stepping through the snow with the bright sun overhead, they weren’t cold, but their feet were wet through. “Rob’s got lots of wool socks he can lend us, if you need any,” Ruth said to Sherlock. “Dix can see to Dillon.”
    Chappy held up his hand, stopped. They were standing some ten feet from the edge of a gully that fell at least twenty feet, forming a bowl of sorts some thirty feet across. The sides of the gully were covered with scraggly trees and blackberry bushes, all weighed down with snow. Lone Tree Hill stood to their left, upslope, the oak tree silhouetted against a cobalt sky, its branches laden with snow. Ruth said, “It looks sort of like a Christmas tree. I’ll bet it’s a favorite for photographers.”
    “Yeah, but mostly from a distance. Few people come up here,” Chappy said, wiping snow off his arms. “
    My wife loved to paint that tree, in every season. A lot of people can see it from all around here.”
    Chappy pointed to the far side of the gully. “Over there, by that bent old pine tree, that’s where the cave opening is. That old tree looked near death when I was a boy. It still looks like it’s about to fall over.”
    Once they’d made it across the gully and climbed up some six feet, Chappy stopped. “The opening must be right there, beneath all that brush.”
    The brush came away easily, too easily. Savich stepped back when Dix began to shovel away the snow that had fallen through the brush. When he hit solid rock, he looked over his shoulder at Chappy. “You’
    re sure, Chappy? There doesn’t seem to be an opening here. Should I try to the left or the right?”
    Chappy shook his head. “Nope, right there, Dix, by the twisted old bush. I’m not totally senile yet.”
    “Wait a minute,” Savich said. He squatted down and wiped away the remaining dirt and snow with his gloved hand. “Chappy’s right. This is the spot all right. That brush came away awfully easy, didn’t it, Dix? It looks like somebody’s packed a bunch of rocks in here. To hide the entrance.”
    “They did a nice job of it,” Sherlock said. “It’s invisible until you brush it clean and look real close. This could be where you got out, Ruth. It looks like somebody’s trying to cover up that cave from both ends.”
    “Dix, you think you can pry those rocks out of the way with your shovel?” Ruth asked.
    “Let’s give it a shot,” Dix said. He wedged the shovel beneath the lowest rocks and shoved it down into the earth. It took a lot of muscle, but after five minutes, Sherlock had pulled out the last stone. They caught their breath, staring at a cave opening in the side of the hill, maybe four feet high, three feet wide. They looked into blackness.
    “Just a moment, Dix,” Chappy said, elbowing his way forward. “Let me check this out first.” Chappy leaned down into the opening. “Yep, I remember now. There’s the easy slope downward, to the right. You have to press hard to the right because two feet to the left there’s a nearly sheer wall that plunges straight down. When I was a teenage boy with more luck than brains, I tried to rappel down. Maybe twenty feet later I freaked out because out of nowhere bats were swarming all around me, heading up to the cave entrance.
    “I remember that right-hand passage led to one big chamber. I don’t remember any connections to Winkel’s Cave, but I suppose there may be some small ones.
    “I’ll go first. You follow close behind me, single file. I remember it widens out pretty fast.”
    Dix laid his hand on his father-in-law’s shoulder. “Ruth might have been exposed to gas in there, Chappy. There could be residue. I don’t want you swooning away at my feet.