Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3) by Allan Leverone Page A

on a dime and turned. Sharon was surprised such a big guy could move so
nimbly. Pellerin had been directly behind him and nearly ran into him. “There’s
dead people lying in a hole in the ground right behind your bar,” Melton said,
his voice rising in volume as he spoke. “What would you have wanted me to do,
just cover them back up and pretend I never found them?”
    Sharon
had known Bo Pellerin a long time and knew without a shadow of a doubt that was
exactly what he would have preferred Melton do. “Of course not,” Bo said after
a long pause. “I just think that since this…incident…occurred on my property, I
should have been notified first.”
    Melton
shook his head, exasperated, and said, “Just give it a rest, Bo, and let me
show Officer Dupont the hole so we can all get the hell out of the rain.”
    All except me, Sharon
thought.
    They
rounded the corner and Melton waved a hand in the general direction of the
portion of the hole closest the back wall of the Ridge Runner. “You can see it
for yourself,” he said uneasily, refusing to look into the pit.
    Before
turning her attention to the hole, Sharon let her gaze linger on Dan Melton’s
face, scrutinizing him. His skin was pale, his lips a grayish-white, and it occurred
to her with stunning clarity that he was afraid. This is more than just being shaken up by the discovery of a dead body.
Melton’s actually terrified. She knew the contractor would never open up
with Bo Pellerin standing right next to him, though, and made a mental note to
talk to him later, alone.
    She
turned her attention away from the heavy equipment operator and at last looked
into the pit he had dug. It was nearly finished, measuring roughly ten feet
long by eight feet wide, maybe four feet deep.
    Except
for the area in question. That portion of the hole was much deeper, extending
perhaps another six feet below the
four feet Melton had already excavated. It opened up into what at one time had clearly
been a small room. Melton had dug right through the ceiling and exposed the
hidden room by stripping away the layer of earth covering it.
    She squatted
down on her haunches in the wet grass and looked more closely and saw what
Melton had called the station to report: the bones of two skeletons, sprawled on
the hard-packed dirt floor of the room. The falling rain and drizzle had turned
the floor into a gooey, muddy mess, but the off-white bones were still easily
recognizable from above.
    The
flesh surrounding the bones had long-since disappeared, meaning either the
bodies had been down there a very long time, or the victims had died somewhere
else and been transported to their present location only after decomposition
was complete. Sharon guessed it was the former, as small bits of muddy, mostly-decomposed
fabric—presumably the clothing the victims had been wearing when they
died—still clung to the bones and lay scattered in the immediate
vicinity.
    She
furrowed her brow and looked up at Melton. He had turned his back on them and
was staring resolutely in the direction of the parking lot. “Dan,” she said
softly.
    He
turned and cast a questioning look in her direction. Sharon noticed he still
did not look into the pit. “Two bodies,” she said. “Why didn’t you just tell me
there were two?”
    “Two?”
he answered. “What about the other guy?”
    “Other
guy? What other guy?” Sharon dropped to her knees now and examined as much of
the room as she could. The steel-grey light provided by the glowering skies made
it nearly impossible to see much of anything besides the bones through the relatively
small gash in the room’s ceiling.
    She
produced a Maglite flashlight and shined it down through the hole, examining as
much as she could of the room’s interior. It looked exactly like some kind of
ancient underground bunker. As far as she could see, no other bodies were
present. “There are two sets of bones here,” she said. “Probably human,
although we’ll have to