Free Widow Town by Joe Hart Page B

needing to expose the rich phosphate sixty or more feet down in the ground. The shadow of the towering silo spilled onto the heated dirt and Ryan walked into its embrace, the air changing only a little in temperature. He readjusted his grip on the peanut butter sandwich wrapped in plastic as well as the glass bottle of cool water, already beginning to sweat beneath his fingers.
    The dirt track led around the side of the silo and turned right before petering out in the cornfield’s emerald mass. Ryan left the path and threaded his way between several maple trees, their leaves’ dry clicking filling up the morning air. A high stand of reed grass, trampled in places , stood past the trees and Ryan pushed his way through it until he felt his feet land on smooth concrete.
    A row o f stairs cut into the earth.
    Their short steps numbering half a dozen, led down to a steel door set within a poured concrete enclosure, its top even with the rest of the ground. Grass grew in matted clumps from a layer of earth upon it, a hard fall for anyone who didn’t know it was there.
    Ryan climbed down the steps, not looking at the dirty, five-gallon pail filled with rusted instruments, their bladed smiles gleaming beneath clumps of matter gone dark with age. The memory of the pail’s handle in his palm nearly overwhelmed him and he rubbed his hand on his jeans to assure himself he wasn’t actually holding it.
    A sliding block of iron graced the front of the door, a shining padlock securing its end. Ryan set the food down and dug a single key from his pocket. The key shook and jittered against the lock’s cylin der face before sliding inside.
    He pulled the lock free and set it on the ground. He slid the shaft to the left, the rasping scrape of steel on steel grating against his eardrums. Picking up the food, he pulled on the door, letting the bright light of the day spill inside.
    The root cellar was only seven feet wide but over twenty feet long. Its smooth walls were dry and powder-white, helping the light from outside stretch farther in. The smell hit him as soon as he stepped inside and even though he braced himself, he couldn’t help the gag that spasmed in the back of his throat. The scent was a mixture of human waste along with body odor laced with fear. The latter was sharp in the close air.
    A tinkle of chains came from the far end of the cellar and Ryan waited for his eyes to adjust before he took several steps inside.
    A man lay on his side near the furthest wall, one arm tucked beneath his head, the other ran down to his hip where it ended in an ugly stump that oozed blood and pus through a soiled wrapping of gauze. He wore only a brown pair of underwear, once white, that barely hung on his emaciated frame. Scars, old and new, covered his legs and torso in archaic etchings of pain, their puckered mouths speaking silent agonies. Chains ran down from deep-set anchors sunk in the wall to a dozen oversized fishhooks that were embedded in the flesh of the man’s back and buttocks, their tips catching the light in evil glints.
    The man’s eyes were twin reflections of terror, their shine that of a beaten animal past the point of breaking. He shifted and tried to scramble back against the wall, but the hooks twisted in their fleshy moorings and he made a choked sound before lying once again on the floor, urine flooding the front of his underwear. The formerly vivid shock of red hair on his head was a matted maroon, looking like strands of old blood.
    Ryan cleared his throat and moved closer, trying not to vomit from the smell of fresh feces that lingered in the a ir.
    “I brough t you a sandwich, Mr. Baron.”

Chapter 12
     
     
    “We’re looking for a dried up swamp, Joseph.”
    Ruthers glanced at Gray as the cruiser lifted slightly over a hump in the road and then settled again, the car feeling like an airplane instead of a vehicle.
    “Sir, if you don’t think this man is the one we’re looking for, why ar e we going out to