Point Blank

said, “So anyone calling your number would have had their voice recorded and their location displayed in the FBI building. Is that legal?”
    “Not usually,” Savich said, smiled, and took another bite of apple pie. 

CHAPTER 40
    WINKEL’S CAVE MONDAY AFTERNOON
    THEY STEPPED THROUGH the cave opening with no hesitation this time and climbed downward, pressing close to the right side of the cavern, well aware of the precipice two feet to the left. Ruth stepped into the cave chamber where Erin Bushnell had lain and shone her head lamp all around. “
    What a relief, this place doesn’t seem all that scary anymore. It’s nice now.”
    “It’s nice because it still smells like a crime scene. All right, Ruth,” Dix continued patiently, “you refused to tell me anything until we were here. This has to qualify. Do you think you can tell me what we’re doing here?”
    “We’re here for some treasure hunting, Dix. We’re here for my Confederate gold. I keep thinking about my treasure map. It said the gold was beneath the niche. When I saw the deep crevice and realized parts of this cave are cut well below us, I started to wonder whether they meant that literally. The soldiers may have found a lower crevice or cavern and buried the gold there.”
    “Why go to that much trouble?”
    She walked to the deep niche, went down on her knees, pulled out her pick, and began tapping the earth. She said over her shoulder, “They didn’t want anyone to find the gold, even if they found the cave. That’s why they left the map incomplete.”
    He stood behind her, watching, saying nothing.
    They both heard it—not the sound of rock but the dull sound of wood. She looked up at him, her smile lighting up the dim chamber. “Is this great, or what?”
    She began digging with her pick, and Dix dropped to his knees and began pulling away the loosened earth. Within moments, they felt rotten wood planks, and soon they uncovered a depressed floor some three feet square.
    Once Dix had pulled up the last plank, Ruth lay on her stomach and angled her chest down into the hole, Dix’s Maglite shining down. “I wondered how they could do this, but now I understand. It’s a natural passage they boarded up, like a hole into a low-ceilinged basement in a house. The drop is only about five feet. I wondered how they could get the gold bars down there so easily, and this is how.” She jumped to her feet and wiped her hands on her jeans. “Let’s go down there, partner.”
    Once Dix and Ruth stood in the middle of the chamber, they panned their flashlights around the small space. “Look,” Ruth said. “That narrow passageway probably leads back to the underground river and that cliff at the cave entrance.”
    “The cave floor must slope up very fast,” Dix said. “It dead-ends here in this chamber. Look how the floor keeps going up. At the back wall, I’ll bet it’s only about three feet tall.”
    “All that’s surely nice,” Ruth said, “but where’s my gold?”
    Dix said, “I guess there’s no reason to think the Rebel soldiers would leave the gold out in plain view, not after they went to all the trouble of lugging it down here and covering that hole in the ceiling.”
    A few minutes later, at a height of about four feet, Dix’s fingers pressed against something rough in a crevice in the west wall. He pounded his fist against it and heard the echo of wood. “There’s something here, Ruth,” he called as he felt excitement fill him.
    They quickly uncovered more wood planks. Dix looked at Ruth, raised an eyebrow. Ruth nodded to him and smashed her pick through the rotted wood. It splintered inward. Dix leaned over her shoulder, shining his Maglite into the blackness.
    “Oh my.” Ruth crawled into a space too small to stand in, laid the Maglite on the floor. She knelt in front of a low pile of what looked like bricks covered in dust. She ran her sleeve roughly over it. They stared at six rows of gold bars, four deep, lined up perfectly by those soldiers long ago. Sitting next to the bars was a very old leather satchel.
    Ruth touched the gold bars, but her eyes went to the satchel. Gently, she pulled it out, carefully unfastened it. Inside was a small leather-bound notebook. “It’s not a diary, there aren’t any pages. There are a dozen or so letters here.” She ran her fingertips over the folded sheets. She unfolded one near the top of the pile. “It’s a woman’s handwriting. Her name is Missy and she’s