Strangers by Bill Pronzini Page A

carried two-way radios. There’d be more armed guards inside the grounds; security was bound to be tight for any large gold-mining operation, particularly one that produced a million ounces per year.
    When I stopped and lowered the side window, one of the guards came over and asked if I had a pass. I could barely hear him for the loud machinery noises coming from inside and outside the mill. I said no, I was there to see Gene Eastwell on a private matter. And no, he wasn’t expecting me. The negatives didn’t set well with the guard. He demanded ID, studied my California driver’s license for a good minute before he returned it, and then demanded to know why I wanted to see Mr. Eastwell. I said it was in regard to a Marlin rifle he’d sold a couple of weeks ago and the person he’d sold it to. The guard obviously thought Mr. Eastwell would not want to be bothered with something like that while working, but he couldn’t be sure and he was not about to risk his job. He told me to pull off onto the side of the road, and when I did that, he went into the guardhouse to contact the mine office. The other guard stayed where he was to keep an eye on me.
    As I sat there waiting, there was the distant hollow boom of an underground dynamite charge; the ground literally shuddered when it went off, the way it does in the first few seconds of an earthquake. A minute or so after that a massive ore truck appeared on the other side of the gate; the watching guard opened up just long enough for the truck to come rumbling through.
    The first guard came back pretty soon and confirmed that I’d wasted my time driving out here. As if reciting from memory he said, “Mr. Eastwell says to tell you he sold the rifle through a newspaper ad and has nothing to say about the person he sold it to, now or at any time. He doesn’t want to be bothered again. Clear?”
    â€œClear enough.”
    The guard offered up a parting shot as I started the engine, maybe original with him but more likely quoting Gene Eastwell again. “Have a nice trip back to where you came from,” he said.
    *   *   *
    The offices of the Mineral Springs Miner, appropriately enough, were on Quartz Street downtown. The building was at least seventy-five years old, built of sun-bleached adobe brick. Venetian blinds covered the two plate-glass windows flanking the front entrance. The cluttered interior looked more like a downscale real estate or insurance operation than a newspaper office: two employees, a woman and a man, working at computers behind beat-up desks, framed historical photographs on the walls, no sign anywhere of newsprint or new or antiquated printing equipment.
    If either of the two occupants was the paper’s editor or one of its inquisitive reporters, I would probably have been recognized by sight or inference and subjected to a bunch of questions. As it was, they directed incurious glances my way. I asked the woman if I could look at a month’s worth of back issues; she said no, sorry, but she would be happy to sell me copies. That figured. I said okay, and she went into a back room to get them. The man continued tapping away on his computer keyboard without looking at me again. A hard-bitten, old-fashioned small-town journalist like William Patterson White would have thrown a fit if he’d found out two of his employees had as little noses for news as this pair.
    Outside in the car, it took me all of three minutes to find what I was looking for in a three-week-old section of classified ads. The ad read: For Sale. Marlin Winchester 30.30, nearly new, w/case. $495.00. Gene E. followed by a local phone number.
    So much for the Eastwell connection. But at least now I knew what Cody Hatcher had paid for the Marlin—a hell of a lot more than a kid five months out of work ought to be able to afford.
    *   *   *
    Haiwee Allen was home now. An old VW Beetle squatted in the packed