Dust Up With The Detective. Danica Winters

parents that something was amiss if this was some kind of wild-goose chase. She could just imagine her mother getting a similar call. In a matter of minutes, Gemma West would have been on the scene and attempting to tell the crew exactly how they should be doing their jobs. No, family could wait.

      She stepped up onto the porch and pressed her face against the window in the door. Inside Robert’s one-room cabin was an open sofa bed and a wood-burning fireplace. The walls were covered in pictures of elk and bear, and a mounted trout hung over the kitchen window. A gun rack hung over the bed, and a small-caliber rifle sat nestled in its grips. It was as if the place had been intentionally stripped of all things feminine.

      “Do you think it’s possible Tiffany left him?” she asked.

      Jeremy shrugged, staring ahead as if he was lost deep in thought.

      “Is this what the house looked like the last time you were here?”

      “What do you mean?” Jeremy moved beside her and peered inside.

      “I...uh... I just mean I don’t see anything of Tiffany’s. Wouldn’t you think if she was still living here you’d at least see a stray hair tie or something? It’s almost like there hasn’t been a woman here in a long time.”

      “Robert and Tiffany...” Jeremy gave a tired sigh. “They have more issues than National Geographic. They’re constantly at each other’s throats. If she left, good for her. It’s the best for both of them.”

      Robert’s personal life was in shambles. Could that have meant he would have wanted to end things? As a miner, he had everything he needed to cave in the mine’s entrance. Maybe it had been his way of never being found.

      On the table underneath the window was a ledger. She squinted through the glass as she tried to make out the penciled notes. She read the most recent one scrawled onto the time sheets.

      September 23 Time in: 06:30 Time out:

      The time out sat empty, echoing all the things it could possibly mean—or the one thing she feared most.

      “Was your brother having any other issues? Anything going on as far as his mental health is concerned?”

      Jeremy stepped around to the bay window and peered in through the glass. “My mother said he’s been agitated lately. Thought it had something to do with Tiffany.”

      “Any signs of depression?” She instinctively looked toward the sofa bed, where the sheets sat in a rumpled mess at the end of the mattress.

      “I don’t know. It’s hard to say. Robert has always been one who kept his cards close to his chest.”

      There was something in Jeremy’s voice, almost as if there were pangs of guilt that rested just under the surface of his words.

      “Do you think he would have ever tried to commit suicide?”

      Jeremy jerked.

      She shouldn’t have just thrown it out there. He was feeling something...some sort of guilt or perhaps vulnerability; she couldn’t be sure. She should have been softer in her delivery, but the officer in her corrected her. She had to ask the questions that needed to be asked. She couldn’t censor herself to spare his feelings.

      “I would hope not,” he finally answered. “I would hope he wouldn’t do anything so stupid.”

      “Stupid?” She thought a lot of things about suicide, and what a mistake it was for anyone to take his or her own life, but rarely did she think it was stupid.

      “That’s not what I meant,” Jeremy corrected himself. “I would just hope that he would ask for help before he made the choice to end things.”

      “You said he was tight-lipped.”

      “He is...but...” Jeremy’s mouth puckered and his eye turned storm. “Look, he’s probably fine. Let’s not go there, okay?”

      He’d shut her down. Not that she could blame him. Maybe he was right. Maybe an accident had caused the cave-in, and Robert was sitting in the mine, hoping someone would find him.

      “I’m sorry, Jeremy.”

      He seemed to force a smile, the lines of his lips curled in harsh juxtaposition to the rest of his face. “No...you’re fine. If I was in your position, I’d be asking the same thing.”

      She nodded, not sure of what exactly to say that would make things less tense between them, but there was no fixing what riddled the air.

      A fireman walked up the hill after them, stopping before he reached the porch. His cheeks were spattered with dirt and sweat. “We’ve broken through. Looks like the mine shaft is intact.”

      “Great. That’s great,” Jeremy said. “Was there anything that could give us a clue as to why the mine entrance collapsed? Any evidence of explosives?”

      The fireman shrugged, his sweaty shirt hugging his chest as he moved. “The excavator did the trick in getting us in, but it tore the hell out of everything. It’s hard to say what you and your investigators will find.”

      Firefighters were like Wreck-It Ralph, always tearing and bulldozing away anything that stood in their way, but this was one of those times that Blake was happy to have their help.

      They followed them down the hill, night trailing them. Ahead the fire crews had set up industrial-strength lights that burned away the darkness. All except for the oblong entrance of the mine, where the light disappeared like it was being sucked into a black hole.

      “We haven’t sent anyone in. We were waiting for you,” the fireman said, stopping at the mouth of the cave.

      “Robert!” Jeremy called, his voice echoing in the mine and cascading deep into the darkness.

      There was no answer. Instead they were met with the excavator’s treads rattling and clanging as a man drove it up the embankment and toward the waiting tractor trailer.

      Jeremy moved forward, but Blake grabbed hold of his biceps, stopping him. “Wait.”

      “My brother’s in there.”

      “I hear you, but we need to be careful.”

      Jeremy gazed into the mine.

      Blake took out her notepad and turned to the firefighter who’d headed the excavation. “How deep was the cave-in?”

      “It varied, but mostly everything was about ten to fifteen feet.”

      She made a note and, after sliding the camera from her pocket, took a picture of the scene. “But you didn’t find evidence of an explosion?”

      The fireman shook his head. “No, but look,” he said, running his hand down a structural support beam they must have put into place to keep from having the mine fall back in on itself. “We found support beams like these every three feet. You’d have to check on the code, but with these four-by-fours like that, it seems like more than enough structural support to sustain the weight above. There’s been no earthquakes, at least that I know of, and no major rainstorms or weather that would have caused the ground to give way. I’d bet my bottom dollar that someone did this on purpose. If it was imploded, it was with a low-grade explosive. Nothing big enough to cause major damage, just enough firepower to get the job done.”

      Blake nodded, taking note of his opinion. It wouldn’t be admissible in court, but at least she had an idea of what could have happened and she could write it up when she filed her report.

      “Is it stable deeper in?” she asked.

      The firefighter shrugged. “It’s hard to say what you’ll find. Oftentimes, explosions can have a bit of a cascading effect. If you go in, you need to make sure you take your time and be safe. You want me or one of my team to go in with you?”

      “I’ve got it,” Jeremy said. “I’ll go in. There’s no sense in you all going in and putting yourself in danger.” He turned to look at