“There it is,” said Slick, pointing to the irregular hole in the side of the hill.
“That?” said Agent Gil Mathews. “That’s it? I told you, Massey, you screw with me and I’ll bury you.”
“That’s the cave,” said Slick. “I’m not screwing with you.”
The entrance to the cave was small, but big enough for even a large man to squeeze through, Diane observed. Perhaps Mathews was expecting walkways and a handrail and that everyone would be able to just stroll in. This entrance was what you might expect for an undeveloped cave in the wild. It occurred to Diane that Mathews would have really been undone by a vertical entrance that dropped straight into the ground.
“Where are the bodies?” Diane asked Slick.
“Okay,” said Slick, “once you get in the cave, you’re in this room, see. It’s about as big as a room in a house. It’s kind of nice. I used to play in it when I was a kid. There’s a tunnel on the right that kind of goes down. You got to stoop to walk through it, but it ain’t long, just a few feet. Okay, then to the left you come to another tunnel. You can stand up in it. It goes on about ten feet, then opens to kind of a little room on the left. You got to watch out there, ’cause just a little ways in there’s a drop-off of. . like, maybe fifteen feet. That’s where the bodies is.”
“Is he on the level?” asked Mathews.
“We won’t know until we get there,” said Diane, “but I have no reason to doubt him right now.”
“This doesn’t look like any kind of cave I’m familiar with,” said Mathews.
“None, really, but I visited Mammoth Cave when I was a kid,” he said.
“Caves have all kinds of openings,” she said. “This isn’t unusual.”
Mathews nodded. “Frank says you do this for fun,” he said. “Doesn’t look like much fun to me.”
“There’s hardly anyplace I’d rather be,” said Diane, smiling.
Mathews shook his head to indicate his utter lack of understanding of the appeal.
Diane, Neva, and Mike tested their flashlights and hard-hat lamps. They organized their rope and double- checked their gear. Frank walked over to Diane as she and the others were preparing themselves.
“You think he’s telling the truth?” He nodded toward Slick, who had found a boulder to sit on and wait.
“We’ll see,” said Diane. “You sure you don’t want to take up caving with me?”
“I’m sure,” said Frank. “Somehow, slipping through that little hole has no appeal to me at all.”
“That’s a fairly large hole,” said Diane. “We’ve been through much smaller entrances than that.” She looked at him for a moment, smiling. “This isn’t a big deal. Were it not for the fact that we’re here to retrieve bodies, I would be having a great time. It sounds like an interesting cave.”
Frank smiled back. “Have you ever met a cave that you didn’t find interesting?”
“Some more than others,” she said.
Liam was speaking with Slick. From what Diane could hear, it was about the bodies. It sounded as if Liam was trying to find some clue as to whether they were the couple he was looking for. She imagined he hated the idea of telling his client his daughter was dead, her body dumped in a cave.
“How long do you think it’s going to take?” asked Mathews. He was scratching his arms.
She couldn’t believe that any insects had gotten through the multiple layers of insecticide he had sprayed on himself.
“Not long to find them. Longer to process the scene and take them up,” she said.
“Shouldn’t we be using walkie-talkies or something?” said Mathews.
“They don’t work well in caves,” said Diane. “Cave radio is a science in itself. From what Massey described, the bodies are not that far in. I don’t think it will be a problem. If it looks like we are going to take too long, for any reason, Mike will come out and tell you.”
Mathews nodded.
“This is pretty easy caving, from the look of it,” said Diane.
“You have so much stuff to carry-and all that rope,” said Mathews.
“We try to be prepared for contingencies,” said Diane. “But this is not a big operation. It’s not like a deep- cave rescue.”
“Okay,” he said, “let’s get this over with so I can get back to civilization.”
“We ready?” asked Mike, grinning at Diane.
Diane nodded.
Usually, either Diane or Mike took point. Mainly because they were the most experienced, but also because each had the same mind-set about caves. They proceeded with the same protocol, the same perspective. When Diane entered a cave, she owned it. Not ownership in the normal sense of the word, not a possession, but a love, a feeling that she was home, was in her world, and it was her responsibility to protect her home and guests she invited in. Mike, she suspected, had the same worldview about the ancient, fantastic holes that had been scoured out of the ground by nature.
Diane was about to cross the entrance zone, the barrier between the outside world and the world of the cave. She stopped and turned to Neva.
“You want to go first?” said Diane.
Neva grinned at her for a moment. “Yeah,” she said, “I would.”
Mike smiled at Diane and hoisted the rope to his shoulder. Neva entered the cave, followed by Diane, then Mike.
Visibility was reasonably good in the first chamber as a result of the light filtering in from the entrance. The room was roughly ten by ten, give or take a few feet in either direction. The ceiling was low and slightly dome shaped, and the walls had a gentle curve from ceiling to floor. There was a scattering of leaves and debris blown in through the entrance. Diane could see places where some animal had nested against the wall near the opening.
The twilight zone of the cave was the shadowy area between the light of the upper world and the dark of the underground. It was a place where light still filtered in from the outside, but barely. In going from the first chamber room into the tunnel, they entered the twilight zone. It had its own biota, different from the entrance zone.
Slick had described the tunnel accurately. It was short and low. None of them could walk standing straight and it angled downward. Just as Slick said, they came upon another tunnel on the left. It wasn’t wide, but they could stand, though the tunnel narrowed toward the top and in places the ceiling was such a tight squeeze that they had to bend over to get through. There was little breakdown-debris fallen from the ceiling-on the uneven floor, just a few rocks, mostly the size of large gravel. They stopped at another opening just to the left. They were now entering what was called the dark zone of the cave, a place where no light filtered in from outside. Only their flashlights and headlamps pierced the pitch black.
Neva stepped into the room slowly and stopped just a few feet inside. Diane and Mike followed her. The floor vanished into blackness in front of them. They were at the edge of a drop-off. Diane knelt and shined her light down. In the darkness below-as Slick had said-were two bodies. They were in disarray, one across the other. It appeared that they had been tossed over the edge and crashed to the floor some fifteen feet below.
Mike went about setting the anchor bolts into the rock. He threaded the rope through and secured it while Diane and Neva put on gloves.
“I don’t think we’ll need harnesses,” said Neva. “We can just use the rope.”
“It shouldn’t be a hard descent,” said Mike. “I’ll send your equipment and bags down after you.” Mike placed a pad under the rope to give it protection from being frayed by the rock on the edge of the drop-off.
Neva climbed down first, landing beside the bodies. Diane climbed down after her. Mike lowered the body bags and crime scene kit next. Diane and Neva stood looking at the bodies for a moment.
The visible tissue was only partially decomposed. It appeared the bodies were drying out, rather than putrefying the way they would if they were lying exposed in the woods. The air of the cave was drier than outside and the biota was different, which made the decaying process different. The body on top was lying facedown over the other one. The long honey blond hair made it appear to be female, but you never knew. She or he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. The body on bottom lay faceup and appeared to be male.
Diane and Neva shined their lights around the floor, looking for anything that might have fallen with the bodies. Nothing showed itself on a preliminary search. They split up and started a grid-pattern search of the cave floor.
It wasn’t a large cavern, not much bigger than the entrance room. There was breakdown littering the floor,
