立夏 [3] / [7]
"Hm,"
Cynthia looked serious.
"It's like a dangerous tug-of-war on a cliff. If we go much further, we might fall off.”
"You're absolutely right. We need to tread cautiously. And that's precisely why I need you with me."
"Exactly," she said with an amused expression and a wink,
"You need me to keep your dumb ass from walking off a cliff."
She added in a more serious tone to herself,
"What should I do next?"
"We take it like you suggested, cautiously, and think of our next move carefully,"
he answered.
Alexander and Cynthia discussed exactly what they should do next. The junkyard that the caller led them to was abandoned, but they both agreed that, before driving such a long distance, they should see what lay beneath the statue. Luckily, Cynthia had the right tools for the job.
"We can use this metal detector,"
she said, as they returned to the apartment and approached a storage closet just before the back patio door.
"It's a little old, but it still works. It belonged to my father. If there's anything metal under there, it'll show us a rough idea of how large an object it is, and what it looks like."
Alexander smiled, leaned in, and grabbed a shovel. Sure beats a rock, he thought.
"So what do you think we'll find?"
Cynthia asked Alexander.
"It's difficult to say."
Alexander replied thoughtfully,
"Maybe the promised evidence? Or maybe nothing at all. Perhaps it'll be a little of both; just enough of something to let us wet our beaks, but not nearly enough to be anything of substance. I think whatever is buried there is meant to get us on the road."
"You think we're being strung along then too?"
It wasn't a question she was asking, but rather a kind of statement. They were both silent for a moment, contemplating the gravity of that hitherto unexpressed concern. It knawed at both of them, no matter how much they tried to push it away. What if this was all a game, yielding nothing but phantoms and wasted hours?
"We don't have much of a choice," Alexander uttered at last,
"as far as the case against Sarah goes, we're at an impasse. The caller is the only route left to us."
She nodded in assent. They decided to wait until 2 am, when there was sure to be no one lurking around, before they returned to the junkyard. It may be abandoned, but they didn't want to take any chances. Whatever was buried there was buried well beneath the surface, and they would need time and as few potential prying eyes as possible.
Complete darkness, a filthy smell. Randomly heaped trash was scattered about, looking like a dead body in the beams of their flashlights.