Cheater Hollow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cheater Hollow

 

 

 

Synopsis: A detective trying to solve a missing person case finds answers deep in a mine.

 

1.       Black.

Black.

Not black, not … anything.

I close my eyes and see … nothing.

I open them … nothing.

I’m alone, lost in the dark, no idea of where to turn.

Walking in this tunnel for an hour? A day? Keeping my right hand against the rough stone wall, now and then I trip, but I keep going. The air is still, never a good thing in a mine, the pounding in my head might be from methane, or it might be because I’ll soon be dead.

Dead. Buried. Half a mile of dirt and rock above. Sunlight three miles in front of me, maybe, if I find my way. Behind me, a dead body.

Ok, figure it out. You got your ass down here; figure out how to get out.

Rewind. Remember. Digging. We were digging. Found the body. Got back in the car. Then pain, falling, face down into the dirt.

A truck’s taillights fading in the distance.

Wait.

Up ahead.

A light, bouncing off the rock walls. Something’s there.

 

2.       Cheater Hollow

Two days before, I drove from my office to do a sit-down with a mister William Guyer. No phone, if you can believe it. The letter said we should talk, he was going to get rich with my help. “Cheater Hollow Road, six miles east of the West Virginia Border on Roy Pickett Highway.”

What the hell. My folks lived near there. Before cancer took Mom and black lung dragged Dad down.

The letter said he’d be in a red house at the end of the road. “You’ll be best off if you’re driving something that can go through standing water.” The Forester made it through the first creek. Then a few miles on a winding one-lane until it ended into a fast-moving stream. I left the car, crossed an old wooden walkway, and walked the rest of the way.

Guyer was sitting on his porch.

“Bascom, right?” he said.

“Mitch Bascom. I see why you don’t have a phone.”

“No phone, no electric. Got a generator, though, me and the Missus watch movies some nights. Picked up a big box of tapes at the Goodwill, passes the time.”

“You think the mining company has something to do with your missing son?” I asked.

“Right to business, aren’t you? You had a long drive, Wheeling’s a good hour from here. Sit, let’s get to know each other. Jennifer! Jennifer, honey, bring us a bottle and a couple glasses.”

I didn’t think he’d have anyone up here with him, miles from the nearest store, let alone flush toilet.

But there she was. “Jennifer.” Maybe thirty, thirty-five tops. Half his age. You could see she was once pretty. Skinny, though. Boney legs. Tracks. Up here, it was oxy or meth.

“You’re the detective, Mister Bascom? You’re going to help us find Chris?” she said. Big shakey smile. Definitely meth.

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Jenny, honey, go back inside, me and Bascom have to talk business,” Guyer said. “I’ll take the truck into town later, pick up supplies.”

She gave a forced smile, closed the screen door behind her.

“Nice wife, how long …” I started to say.

“Year and a month. But got nothing to do with our business. Chris, my boy, he works the Bayler Mine, up near Finley. Black hat. Bolter on the night shift.”

“Nice work,” I said. You get a black hat and a good raise after two years with Bayler. I did the math. Maybe twenty bucks an hour, time and half for the midnight shift, plus overtime, Chris would pull in eighty, maybe a hundred thou a year.

“Yeah, nice work until he up and went missing,” Guyer said. “But he ain’t missing. I know right where he is.”

“Well then you wasted my time in coming up here.”

He poured two glasses of something brown. Drank his down in one gulp.

“I need somebody to do the talking for me. See, I think the Bayler Mine took Chris,” he said.

“One step at a time. Your boy, Chris, you say he works at the mine.”

“Worked,” he said.

“Worked.”

“He put in seven years. Good miner,” he said.

“Where does he live?”

“Upstairs bedroom, unless he stays in town.” He paused, “or if he got a girl, then at the Super 8 up on I-79.”

“You keep tabs on his romantic life?”

“We talk. Chris could spend his whole pay chasing women. But like I said, he went missing a couple weeks back.”

“You have a date for when he disappeared?” I asked.

“He didn’t come home for a week, so I went looking,” he said. “Not many bars in these parts, and they all know him. Every place, same story, no hide nor tail of Chris. His buddies said same thing, last time they could remember seeing Chris was end of month payday, May 31.”

“That’s a month ago. Did you contact the company?”

He spat, poured another drink.

“See, me and the mine don’t see eye to eye. They shitcanned me back in ’05, said I was drinking on the job, danger to the crew. Bullshit, the shift manager fucked up production and needed somebody to blame for short numbers.”

“Did you go to the union?” I asked.

“Union don’t do shit. Plus, when I got fired I lost my temper. Whupping that HR bastard was the only good thing the company ever done for me.” He smiled, emptied his glass.

“The union felt bad about me losing my pension,” he continued, “but all they done was find me a doc to sign off for disability. Nine hundred seventy-four dollars a month I get, ain’t gone up a cent in fifteen years. I was making good money; they stole it away.”

“Sorry to hear it,” I said. “Why do you think the company has anything to do with your son’s disappearance?”

“His truck. I found it, crashed in the ravine behind the mine parking lot. Wouldn’t have seen it except I wanted to sneak into the mine, see what was going on. See, there’s an exhaust vent, big shaft, pulls methane direct from the longwall faces. Opening should be locked tight but the grating been broke since I first come in the mine. We’d use it to sneak out without hitting the punch clock. If the bosses were out, say on a holiday, we’d walk up the shaft, up to the parking lot, maybe smoke some weed, maybe visit a girlfriend, all on the clock. Then sneak back right before whistle, take the elevator back up and punch out.”

“The truck. Anything in there” I asked.

“His keys. No way that boy would let anyone drive his truck. F-150, not even a year old, he loved that thing.”

“Who dumped the truck?”

“Shift manager.”

“The mine boss? Why?”

“See, the Company don’t want no accidents. You go down there, you’ll see a big sign, ‘Bayler Mine has gone 200-something days without a lost time accident.’” They don’t want accidents – bad press, pisses off the union, raises insurance. The midnight manager, Tom Huffman, he’s an asshole. Don’t know shit about mining, wants to be a big boss.”

“But what does it have to do with Chris?”

“What I figure, Chris ain’t the first miner to go missing. They got maybe half a dozen men disappeared in the last few years, all night shift.”

“You think Chris had an accident, and rather than announce it, they …”

“Huffman. He done it,” he said. “Chris fucked up and got killed and Huffman covered it up.”

“Huffman made Chris’ body disappear, then pushed the truck off the parking lot, all to cover up an accident?”

“Yep. I figure they buried him in the backfill.”

“Backfill?”

“After the longwall machine clears out a slice of coal, the machine moves forward, lets the ceiling collapse behind. That rubble is the backfill.”

“Backfill.” He continued. “You go down there, poke around. That’s where they buried Chris. You find him, I’m going to have a nice fat settlement. You and me are going to get some money. I’ll split it, fifty-fifty.”

A garbage case. But I had a soft spot for these folks. “Tell you what, I’ll talk to people. One day, then I’m back to Wheeling.”

“Give it two. You can stay up here. Jenny’s a good cook, we got fresh venison.”

“Thanks. I already booked the Super 8.”

 

3.       The Company

Manager’s shack, outside the mine entrance. Tom Huffman said he’d talk to me before he went in for the night shift.

“Old man Guyer told you what?”

“Guyer says the company is covering up for accidents by making dead miners disappear,” I said.

“Laughable. First, the other miners would never let it happen. They know what happens in the pit. Second, our miners are like family. We’d never let anything bad happen to them.”

 “I’m just asking questions, I said. “I’m not putting blame on anyone.”

“Blame?” Huffman’s voice rose. “Blame? The Guyers are bad news. Always have been. The old man is a drunk, he almost got five good men killed, switched on a longwall cutter without hitting the alarm. If those guys were any closer to the blades, they’d be hamburger. His kid, Christ, he did ok on the job but he didn’t do much to make the other guys like him.”

“What do you mean,” I asked.

“Good looking kid but a drinker, like his old man. Had the sense to stay sober on the job, but I’ve heard stories about him. If he wasn’t fucking around with other guys’ women, he was out in the parking lot looking for fights. Bad news.”

“What do you make of his truck showing up in the ravine?” I asked.

“Beats me. Lots of guys hated his guts. If I was you, find out who hated him the most. You’re going to have a lot to pick from.”

“Let me tell you,” Huffman continued, “the Guyers are bad fucking news. You ask around about Chris. And that Jennifer girl, see what they say about her.”

“Bill Guyer’s wife?” I asked.

He laughed. “That what they’re saying? I have to get back to the mine. If I was you, I’d get the hell out of here.”

 

4.       Dig

I got back to my motel, found Guyer, waiting in his truck.

“Get in, I got a lead,” he said.

“Look, I’m going to go to sleep, and when I wake up, I’m going to get the fuck out of here. Your son will show up. Or he won’t.”

“Somebody told me a secret,” he said. “Chris had a buddy, remembers seeing something funny in the mine last month, right around payday. Get your ass in here, I’ll tell you.”

“Something funny, huh?”

“He says at the shift end, he saw Huffman go into the longwall tunnel with a shovel. Managers don’t shovel. Not now not never. Says he saw him go to the end of the tunnel, then start digging. Wasn’t sure what he saw but he swears he saw him dragging something. Something big. Man-size.”

“Why didn’t he tell anyone else,” I asked.

“Afraid of losing his job. It’s the mine or it’s the Walmart. Get in. We’re going to find Chris. Then we’re going to sue the fuck out of the Company.”

Crazy, but I figured I’d go along. A lead’s a lead.

“That longwall, it’s the last shaft on the north face. No one’s going to be near there. We walk down the air shaft, borrow a shuttle car and find Chris,” said Guyer.

“Wait. We can get a warrant, get the cops to look.”

Guyer interrupted. “Warrant? Go beg a judge? No way. By the time we get in, they’ll clean things up.”

We parked.

It took an hour to get to the longwall. We drove the shuttle down the main tunnel, passing dozens of side shafts. I thought about driving down Fifth Avenue in New York, street after street, 14th, 15th all the way to 125th.

Guyer said once they clear out a section of the coal seam, they wall it off. Otherwise, gas escapes into the rest of the mine. Methane. If you breath too much of it, you asphyxiate. If it explodes, the tunnel roof collapses and then you’re crushed or trapped.

We stopped at a dead end. Coming off the tunnel to the right was the last shaft. Guyer shut off the shuttle and we were in total darkness. He handed me a shovel, and we started walking.

“Here it is. Right here. Dig,” Guyer instructed.

We dug. Loose rock, tons of it. We had an hour to work. It didn’t make sense, but Guyer looked like he knew what he was doing.

First, we smelled it.

“Here! Look, here, it’s his hand, look, dammit, help me clear this off,” he yelled.

Chris Guyer. Bloated, eyes huge and black, pushing up out of his purple head.

“It’s him. Dammit. Pull him out, leave him here. They’ll find him.”

We both stood, looking at the broken body.

“We’re going to get the money, Bascom, damn, we’re rich!”

Not what I expected to hear. We walked back to the shuttle, he turned it on, throwing blinding light up the tunnel.

“Bascom, look over there.”

That’s when he hit me.

 

5.       Out

I walked toward the light, until up ahead in the tunnel, the shuttle car was stopped. Standing in front of it was Jennifer.

I slowly made my way to the car.

Bill Guyer was pleading. “Jenny, honey, I’m sorry. I’ll make it better. We’re gonna have lots of money soon, me and you can move and start over.”

“Bastard. I can’t stand the thought of staying with you one more day.”

Guyer stepped out of the shuttle, walked up to Jennifer.

I didn’t see the crowbar. Neither did Guyer. By the time I stopped her, he was dead. Very dead.

“Mister Bascom, please, I had to, he killed Chris. He caught us, he killed Chris and dragged him down here. He made me help. I was too afraid to say anything.”

“I’ll talk to the police,” I said, looking up the tunnel toward the breaking day. “Don’t say anything, I know a lawyer who might take your case for free.”

“Mister Bascom, we have time. I thought about it. This part of the mine is shutting down. We can drag Bill into any of these old tunnels, they’ll never find him, won’t even know he’s gone. We can still get the settlement. Me and you, fifty-fifty.”

The shuttle car’s headlights lit up her smile.