Once Shadows Fall by Robert Daniels Read Free Book Online

Cloudland Canyon, a picturesque gorge in the northern part of the state. Locked in a death struggle with each other, Jack Kale and Howard Pell went over the cliff together. Somehow, both men had survived.
    The report only made vague references to their injuries. Kale’s had been serious but not life threatening, making his medical discharge all the more puzzling. Those sustained by Pell were apparently extensive. At least that’s what the report’s author implied. Police reports had a funny way of ending up in court, so cops were cautious about what they wrote down. All the narrative said was, “Subject’s injuries prevented this investigator from speaking with him for sixteen weeks while he was in the hospital. After that, access to him was restricted by his legal counsel.”
    Internal Affairs from both the APD and the FBI followed up and concluded there was no wrongdoing on Kale’s part. They found Howard Pell’s injuries “were suffered during an assault on the arresting officer.”
    Predictably, a lawsuit followed in which the APD, Kale, and the FBI were all sued. The file included a newspaper clipping where Pell’s lawyer claimed Kale had “eviscerated his client.” Beth blinked and read that part again. A search party had found Pell with his intestines sittingon top of his chest. The image caused her shoulders to tighten. Somehow, she couldn’t connect the man she’d met earlier with that type of violence. Neither could the jury, who had little sympathy for Pell. They found for the defendants and dismissed the case.
    Other photographs followed, horrific, dark images that projected the unspeakable anguish Pell’s victims had suffered. Edward Chastain, the third victim, age forty-one, and a father of four, had been abducted and brutally murdered. The ME was uncertain whether the skin had been stripped off his hand before or after he was dead. Little by little, the crime scene photos showed earth being removed from the grave where Chastain’s body was recovered. Like Jerome Haffner, one of his fingers was missing, and burst capillaries indicated the man had been buried alive. Beth fought down her revulsion and kept reading. Kale was right. There were monsters in the world, and some of them walked on two legs.
    It was nearly one o’clock in the morning when she finished, and for the first time since she’d moved into the house, Beth got up, shut and locked the windows, and turned on her burglar alarm before returning to bed.

Chapter 10
    B eth was at her desk at seven forty-five the next morning going over the last section of the murder book. She’d already downed a full cup of coffee hoping it would wake her up. Her eyes felt scratchy and dry and she was having trouble getting started. The phone rang.
    “Sturgis.”
    “He was right,” Max Blaylock said. “We found a tunnel about twenty minutes ago.”
    “A tunnel?”
    “I started asking around and spoke to old Judge Etheridge, who grew up around here. He told me a number of farms in the area were once part of a larger plantation dating back to the Civil War. Turns out some of the slaves weren’t crazy about the way things were being run and decided to make a break for freedom using tunnels to escape.”
    “Where was it found?”
    “The barn.”
    “We looked there. It was empty,” Beth said.
    “Not completely. Remember those moldy hay bales stacked in the corner in front of the work bench?”
    “Sure.”
    “After we spoke, I told Avilles to start poking around. Anyway, he got to figuring, who stacks hay in front of a place they work? He moved the bales and saw the bench was sitting on a trap door.”
    “Did he—?”
    “No. He lifted the door to see what was under it but didn’t go down. All he did was shine his Maglite into the hole. Looks like there’s a small room underneath and a tunnel that runs toward the railroad tracks.”
    “I’ll leave here in thirty minutes,” Beth said, now fully awake.
    As soon as they disconnected, she