She saw Tadeki reach for an iron bar, pick it up in his knotted hands; the weird gleam in his eyes seemed to intensify. Gripping the bar as if it were a bat he took a step toward her, saying, “If you won’t save her, I don’t have any other choice but to . . .”

A voice called, “Supervisor?”

“Here!” She turned, hearing the pattering and grating of footsteps as several people approached. Lights were bobbing, beams gleaming off the rails and water puddles.

Kalico glanced back; tears streaked Tadeki’s smudged cheeks. Feet braced, he gripped the iron bar as if to crush it. Good thing he hadn’t taken it up with him to pry out that big trapezoidal stone. She might have arrived just in time to see him vanish under a cascade of rock that might have destabilized the whole mountain.

Tadeki stood as if frozen, breath laboring in and out of his lungs. Head hanging. Then his body began to tremble.

“Supervisor?” Sula Talovich called as he held up a hand against the shine of her light. He led the way, Ghosh and Ituri behind him.

“Mr. Talovich,” she told him. “Where have you been?”

“I know what happened,” he told her.

“Tadeki?” Ituri asked. “Aren’t you supposed to be up top working on a hauler?”

“Tadeki was just leaving,” Kalico told them. Turning to the man, she said, “Go on. Tell Stryski I said it was all right. Go back to work.”

The man’s muscles tensed, the iron bar wavering in his knotted grip. Glancing up, he shot a half-glazed look at Ghosh and then Ituri. The iron bar clanged musically on the rock floor as it slipped from his suddenly nerveless fingers. Lips working soundlessly, he awkwardly stumbled past them, caught his stride, and broke into a run. Fleeing as if the furies of hell were behind him.

“What’s that all about?” Ghosh asked.

“He and Stana were expecting a child.” Kalico rubbed the back of her neck where it had suddenly gone tight. “She was three months pregnant. The damn fool thought he could dig her out. That she was still alive back there. Said he could hear her calling to him.” She paused. “Is there any possible way he could be right?”

“There is not,” Talovich told her. “It’s not our fault. I mean, it is, but it isn’t.”

“You want to be a bit more concise in your wording?”

Talovich shot a look around him, pointing to the shoring. “That’s chabacho.”

“Very good, Mr. Talovich.” She crossed her arms, making sure not to blind them with her light.

“Back in the addit, we switched off. Chabacho and aquajade. It just depended on what we had cut as we built the haul road. We’ve used aquajade for years in the Number One and Number Two. It’s a good structural wood . . . right up until you put it in water.”