He cut off the motor and stared up at the isolated little cabin on the hill high above the creek. The path leading up to it was narrow and precipitous, and he marveled that he and Strenk and the others had been able to follow it in the dark.
He sat there a long time, studying the terrain and getting it fixed in his mind. The cabin was about two hundred feet above the creek bed. All along toward Black Hawk, the bottom of the gulch had been filled in by mine tailings and by construction crews leveling out building sites until only a narrow, deep channel was left.
With the whole scene before him in daylight, it was easy to see how someone could have shot Meade at the cabin and then evaded Cal Strenk and himself as they followed the path to the cabin. As Strenk suggested, he could have slid straight down to the bottom of the creek and forded it, climbed up to the road from Black Hawk and re-entered town unnoticed; or, he might have gone just a little way down the slope until Shayne and Strenk passed on the path above, then climbed up behind them and gone back to the village before the alarm was given.
Shayne opened the door of his car and stepped down on the rough boards of the flume, leaned over the shaky railing and peered down at the mere trickle of water dripping from the end of the flume this morning.
The flume was large enough to accommodate a terrific volume of rushing water. It was rectangular, approximately four by six feet. From the end of the bridge where he stood would be a perfect spot to dump a body into the torrent, and he searched carefully along the floor boards and railing for a bit of torn cloth or a spot of blood to indicate that Nora had been struck down here.
He found nothing. But that didn’t mean this wasn’t the death spot. She had been struck one heavy blow. A slight shove coincident with the blow would have sent her tumbling into the stream before the blood flowed. He recalled the doctor’s belief that there had been no struggle preceding her death.
He walked slowly around his car, followed the course of the flume with his eye until it disappeared under the middle of an old store building. He saw a youth watching him curiously from a filling station up on the road, and beckoned to him.
“Is this flume open to the surface anywhere between here and the opera house?” he asked the lad.
“You’re the detective, ain’t you?” The boy’s freckled face shone happily.
Shayne nodded. “I’m trying to find the closest spot to the opera house where a body could have been placed in the creek. If the flume is covered all the way, this looks like the nearest place.”