Indy paused for a second. The total darkness was wearing on him, and the air was getting close. He wondered if talking was using up their small supply of oxygen too quickly. It was hot, and he knew he was perspiring heavily. Catherine reached over until she found him, and put a hand on his knee.
“Go on Indy. I think it’ll help you if you tell me.”
“I’m not so sure about that. But anyway, we were on a farm up the Fraser Valley — a fruit farm of some sort. A trench had been dug for some culvert work that was in progress. So the gang leader says, ’Drop him in the ditch.’ There I was, on the ground, in excruciating pain from the bullet wound and everything else. I was still handcuffed. I was kicked and rolled over to the edge of the trench. Then they gave me a few more hard boots to my head and chest, and I fell over and hit the bottom of the ditch with a nasty crunch. To this day it feels like I must have fallen more than 20 feet. I think I lost consciousness. When I came to, my head was soaked with blood — I could feel it dripping down my face. Then they started to shovel dirt on top of me. Do you have any idea how much that hurts Catherine?”
Catherine slowly shook her head back and forth in the stygian blackness, then remembered that he couldn’t see her and answered. “I don’t think so. I don’t know if I want to know.”
“It’s pretty extreme. But the worst of it is clawing for air. And when you can’t get it, the certain knowledge of death.”
Catherine realized that he was having quite a bit of difficulty recounting the experience. She reached for his hand and found it, wondering now about the wisdom of ’talking about it.’ She gave his hand a little squeeze and waited.
“Just imagine it, Cath,” he continued. “Clogs of dirt and gravel in your throat, as more and more dirt and rocks are shoveled down on top of you. And all the while those hideous bastards were laughing. They wanted to do it slow. I heard them say, ’Give us a better show.’ Oh God, Catherine, I get sick just thinking of it.”
“Well somehow you must’ve been rescued. I mean, here you are,” she answered.
“Yeah. The neighbors had heard the gunshots. They thought they heard someone screaming. I guess that someone was me, but I don’t remember doing it.” He squeezed her hand and was silent for a moment.
“Go on,” Catherine urged.
“Someone called 911, and even our primitive computers back then were able to cross-reference the location to a place where we had an undercover operation going. Dispatch sent a couple of PC’s. There was some gunfire, another officer was slightly wounded, and most of the gang was rounded up. Some of them are still on the rock pile, 20 years later, murderous bastards that they are.”
“How’d they find you?” Indy’s narrative was beginning to make Catherine nervous. His fear was contagious. She also had a very clear mental picture of what he had gone through. Suddenly the walls seemed to be pressing in on her, too, cutting off her air.
“The police dogs did. I think I was 90 percent gone by the time they found me. I heard the voices, saying, ’Holy shit, there’s a guy down here. He looks hurt bad. Holy shit. It’s Indy. Call a bus. Get a bus fast.’ That’s all I remember. I woke up a couple days later at Vancouver General. I had a bad case of pneumonia — a couple of fractured ribs had punctured a lung when I hit the bottom of the trench. I had a badly infected thigh wound and a severe concussion. Physically I was OK in a few weeks. I was out of the hospital in ten days, and back on the job in 12. But psychologically… well, that wasn’t so straightforward.”
“What happened?”
“I was plagued by nightmares. Had them almost every night. Every single damn night. And in the middle of the day I would drop into this weird state where I was experiencing the whole thing all over again. I thought about it obsessively, and I started getting panic attacks. In the middle of a meeting I would suddenly feel like I was suffocating. It was really awful; I slept without any sheets or blankets for awhile. The weight of them felt painfully heavy, like they were crushing me.”
“Did it get any better?” Catherine still held Indy’s hand in her own, and gave it another small squeeze.
“A bit. The local shrinks were saying I had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Not a particularly hard diagnosis to make. They put me on meds for awhile, but they didn’t do anything, so I stopped taking them. Then I went to counseling for the better part of a year — that may have helped, marginally. The only thing that really helped was the passage of time. Gradually, over the years, things started to settle down.”
He paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. “Now with this bullshit, I’m right back there. Catherine, you have no idea how absolutely paralyzing this is. I feel as though I’m in my own tomb, like I’m going to die here, slowly and painfully. It’s terrible. The fact that it’s drug dealers again…” His voice broke a little.
Catherine didn’t say anything. If deliveries only came through the mine once a month, they may very well be locked up in their own tomb. It wasn’t a nice thought.
32
By the next day, Khasha’s anxiety over Turbee’s disappearance had turned to fear, and by the day after that, to panic. The police weren’t interested, and her coworkers weren’t nearly as upset as she was. Relax, they told her. He’s worth $80 mil, more or less. He’s off in Hawaii on vacation. But Khasha knew that Turbee wasn’t prone to sudden trips. To get to Hawaii you had to fly. To do that you had to negotiate airports and security, and she couldn’t fathom Turbee doing that alone. Something was very, very wrong.
Every few hours she called the police, but there were no developments. The switchboard operators were starting to sound pissed off. Their answers were becoming shorter and more impatient. No. No Hamilton Turbee had shown up. Perhaps that was good, she thought. At least it meant that he wasn’t rotting in a cell somewhere. She turned to the hospitals next. There were dozens within the District of Columbia, from Walter Reed to the Children’s National Medical Center. Some refused to give her any information over the phone, and these she visited in person throughout an increasingly frustrating and anxiety-laden day. Turbee was a gentle soul with a quirky sense of humor, and tremendous gifts. But he had a history of depression, and after seven days of who-knew-what, with the idiotic standoff over the Haramosh Star, and a frothing Dan firing him in front of the entire TTIC staff, thoughts of suicide might not be far off. She was terrified that when she found him, he would be either dead or beyond help.
It was 4PM when she arrived, bone weary and desperate, at the receptionist’s desk at Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital. It was the twelfth DC hospital she’d visited that day.
“Hamilton Turbee? No, never heard of him.” The efficient clerk look up and down a computer screen, then ran a search. “No such person here, miss.”
“He’s in his mid-20s, blond, and very thin,” pressed Khasha. She placed a photograph on the counter.
“Well, a lot of people are. He isn’t here, miss. And in any event, this is a psychiatric hospital. We deal primarily with mentally ill individuals who are in trouble with the law. Does your friend fit that description?” Without waiting for an answer, she picked up the picture and inspected it. “Doesn’t look familiar to me, but I don’t go back in the wards too often. There are safety issues. Can get dangerous, you know. We have some very difficult patients in here.” She sternly straightened her glasses and shifted her gaze back to the computer screen.