The Secret of the Stones, Ernest Dempsey [popular books to read TXT] 📗

even less certain what he was looking for. “Yeah, me either,” he replied.

The two detectives had arrived shortly after leaving the site where the car had gone off the side of the mountain. Upon arriving, they had gone to the park ranger’s office up the road and asked him a few questions.

The ranger had been less than helpful. After being asked if he had seen anyone in the area that morning, the ranger had said, “No. I ain’t seen anybody up here today, but I didn’t get to the office ‘til an hour or so ago. Ain’t like I gotta clock in.” The old ranger’s saggy skin shook as he let out a hearty laugh at his last comment. He then pinched a wad of snuff and carefully placed it in the pouch of his bottom lip. Both cops had looked at each other with a disgusted glance.

Now they were standing in the shadow of the highest summit in the state and didn’t have a clue why. The ranger had begrudgingly told them the history and a few of the theories concerning the large boulders, but nothing had been much more informative than what the people in the diner had told them.

“Do you think that maybe this is just an ancient prank by a bunch of Indian teenagers from three hundred years ago? You know. They were sitting around getting high off some wacky tobacky one day and decided to do a little graffiti on some big rocks? Thought it would be a hoot and voila, here we have it.” Will’s theory was more humorous than insightful, which actually helped, considering they were finding more dead ends everywhere they turned.

Save for their cars, the parking lot across the field was empty. “Guess they don’t get a lot of traffic up here on the weekdays.” Trent’s comment was as pointless as it was true.

Will didn’t respond. He just continued looking at the rocks with an odd fascination.

Morris went on, “If they were here, they either didn’t find what they were looking for, or they found it quick.”

“What if they didn’t come here?”

It was certainly a possibility. “Okay. Let’s review,” he started as he turned to head back to the vehicles. Will took the signal and joined him walking across the grass. “What reason would Sean Wyatt have for getting rid of Schultz?”

“Money,” Will stated. “He would have complete control of the IAA and its finances. And they have a ton of money.”

“Right. But doesn’t the timing just seem really odd?”

“How so?”

Morris looked off into the trees, watching the wind push around the leaves. The dense forest was alive with critters of several types busily gathering their stores for the winter.

“I’ve been thinking about this since we left the McElroy place. Tommy was about to have a press conference. What was it for?”

“Nobody is really sure. But the rumor is that he’d been looking for something big. Speculation was he found it or something to do with it.”

Trent stopped walking for a second. They were standing at the edge of the parking lot near a light pole. “Yeah. So, what, exactly, was it that he was looking for?”

His younger partner looked thoughtful for a minute. “I don’t know,” he finally answered with a shrug. “Did you hear something?”

Trent nodded slowly. “I didn’t hear much. But I did hear something about Schultz looking for some huge treasure, had to do with some golden rooms or something. Now, I don’t know anything about that kind of stuff, but that is what I heard.”

“Golden Chambers?” Will appeared clueless.

“Yeah. Beats me. Sounds like another city of gold hunt to me. But from what I did hear, it sure seemed like it would be the discovery of a lifetime.

“The other thing I heard was that it is some kind of ancient Native American treasure.”

“So you think that’s what this is all about?”

“Schultz finds something and sets up a press conference. He goes missing. A professor who is a friend and contemporary gets killed. Now it seems like his best friend, our prime suspect, is visiting historic Native American sites with an expert in ancient Indian history. Then, Wyatt gets himself into a high-speed shootout with two unidentified gunmen. If I was a betting man, I would say Wyatt is looking for whatever it was that Schultz was onto, and someone doesn’t want him to find it.”

“All right, I’m listening,” Will replied. “But what does that mean? Are you saying that Wyatt isn’t behind all of this?

“No. He’s still at the top of my list.” Trent smirked, “Okay, he is the list. But something just doesn’t seem right about this whole scenario.” Bracing his shoulder against the light pole, he reached down to tie a shoelace that had become undone.

As he finished tying the knot, something on the ground caught his attention. Half-doubled over, Trent reached down and picked up the metal cylinder. He looked at the object and then started scanning the parking area, suddenly more alert.

“Is that a bullet casing?” Will asked as he stepped closer to see what Morris had found.

Trent nodded, flipping the small cylinder to his partner, who caught it with one hand. “Nine millimeter.”

It only took them a second before they started noticing the shells lying around on the pavement. “They’re everywhere.”

“Another shootout?” the younger cop posed.

“Sure looks like it.” Bending at his knees, Detective Morris stared closer at the light pole he’d just been leaning against only a few moments before. He removed a pen from his jacket and scraped a mark on the metal. Then he looked down and found another mark, this one on the concrete base of the metal post.

Will stepped