seen or heard from Frederick again. It was as if they'd never happened. Even her sister, Molly, wasn't keen to talk about it. That was where Anna might have found what the modern how-to books were calling closure. Without being able to talk a thing to death with her sister, it was hard to truly put it to bed.
The pure, unadulterated male warmth of Curt's expedient embrace had awakened dormant memories. Anna groaned and piled her aching self into a sitting position. As near as she could figure, it had been approximately ten thousand years since she'd last seen the sun. Her love life was the least of her worries.
Holden was already up. Flashlights were set butt-down on the cave floor, forming a makeshift campfire. The dark held few terrors for Tillman; he traded batteries for morale. Anna looked at her watch. They'd slept seven hours. Tillman looked as if he had never closed his eyes, and when he spoke it was a cross between rasp and a whisper. Stress and the injury to his ankle were costing him. Running on empty, Anna noted, or close to it. The idea alarmed her. She'd worked with guys like Holden before. They'd literally work till they dropped in the traces.
We'll be out of here before then, she promised herself. Then she remembered she had a gift for Holden: Sondra McCarty. She would tell him of the suspicions Frieda had had, of her own. If she could prove his choice of anchors hadn't killed Frieda, she knew a weight the immensity of which she could only guess at would be lifted from him. Even if Sondra was innocent, Anna would gladly throw her to the wolves for Tillman's peace of mind.
Opportunity didn't knock for several hours. Tapping what had to be toxic doses of instant coffee crystals into his lower lip, Holden kept the team together and working. Camp was cleaned and the logistics of what had now become a body recovery were hammered out. The traverse was rerigged using the bridge as an anchor. Because of Holden's own decency and the sensibilities he granted those around him, Frieda's remains were handled as if they still housed her soul. Delicacy was the respect the living paid the dead and the respect Tillman showed the cavers who had known Frieda.
Anna considered herself to be of the 'lights out' persuasion; life is there, then it's gone, as if a switch was flipped. No afterlife, no haunt-ings, nothing. Here today, gone tomorrow. Regardless of this cherished hardness of heart, she was touched by the care shown the corpse. It allowed her to hold Frieda close a few hours longer if only in tending a home her friend had long since abandoned.
Taking landmarks from earlier surveys and comparing those measurements with the measurements of the newly existing gout of debris, Holden was estimating the thickness of the slide. Ten hours had passed since the rock had fallen. From his calculations and the sounds from the far side, he predicted it would be less than an hour before the rescuers broke through. As soon as Frieda was retrieved from the bottom of the Pigtail, he would detail three people to dig toward them. More than three could become a danger to one another.
Suggesting he rest his broken ankle got Anna nowhere. To slow him down enough so she could tell her story, she had to appeal to his gallantry. She didn't need to feign fatigue, merely to capitalize on it. Sitting on the bridge, feet dangling over the abyss, she told him everything. Reproach pulled down his mouth and her heart, but she refused to justify herself for keeping silent about their suspicions. The decision had been Frieda's. Had the situation been reversed, she would have wanted her wishes respected.
'You think the doctor's wife might have started the slide?' he asked after she'd finished.
'It crossed my mind.'
'How do you figure she did it?'
'Pried out a key rock,' Anna suggested. 'A rock other rocks hinged on.'
Holden thought about that for a while, then shook his head. 'Pried with what? We didn't come equipped with shovels or crowbars. A spoon handle is about the biggest lever she could have gotten her hands on.'
Anna didn't say anything. She hadn't thought of that. 'Maybe she started it from above the entrance to the Distributor Cap, at the apex of the slide area. Pushed something.'
'I don't see how she could have started it, then gotten below it to safety in the Cap.'
'Maybe she's buried underneath.'
Holden nodded slowly. He was too generous to admit that murder, the disintegration of a marriage, were more appealing than the idea that he'd screwed up and lost a patient, but Anna could see the concept growing on him.
'Well, you know, I could have sworn that anchor was bombproof,' he said finally.
She waited.
'Okay. You check it out. With this bum ankle I'm likely to stir up too much trouble. Be careful. Test every step before you trust it. I'll keep folks clear till you get back. Then we dig.'
Anna left before he could change his mind.
The slide was comprised of loam as fine as ash, and rocks with unblunted edges. For each step up she slid half a step back. Dust boiled from under her boots and hands, and she could hear the steady rain of dirt and debris from below. The slide had wiped clean all trace of human passage. Orange tape, footprints, everything was buried. Anna crawled on, wondering just what it was she hoped to find. Instead of cluttering her mind with what-ifs, she opened her eyes to let any and all information register.
The slide narrowed near the top in an abbreviated cone of loose rubble about twenty feet across. If anything remained to indicate cause, it would be here. Anna stopped, turned, and planted her rump in the soft soil to slow her heart and still her mind before she began tainting the scene with her presence.
'Got something?' Holden called.
'Just catching my breath.' From her vantage point she could see the length of the Pigtail. Dust had been carried away on Lechuguilla's air currents, and the helmet lights of the cavers working on the body recovery moved and winked like fireflies. In a different context Anna might have found it beautiful. At present it served only to remind her how much she'd give for one more glimpse of a summer's night.
The last few feet of the climb were the hardest. The way grew increasingly steep and the cushion of soil thinner at each step. Bracing toes and knees in the dirt, she shined her light along the uneven curtain of new-fallen silt. The dirt was uniformly smooth, packed down slightly at one place where it ran the thinnest. No scars indicated rock had been scratched or pried.
'Anything?'
'Looking,' she hollered.
'Come on down. From the sound of things we're going to have company real soon.' Holden's voice had gone utterly flat. The small spark that hope of a reprieve had ignited within him had gone out.
'In a minute.' Anna was determined to find something.
'Make it short.'
Anna moved her light across the wall again, but nothing new was revealed. The pitter-patter of earthen rain grew louder.
'Anna. Now.'
Loath to give up, she pushed her luck for half a minute more but was none the wiser for it. Before Holden had to embarrass them both by yelling at her a third time, she turned to skitter down. Her light fell on the spot where she'd sat admiring Lucifer's fireflies. In the soft loam was a smooth-packed place, a perfect butt-print in the silt.
'Got it,' Anna shouted. 'Ten seconds more.' Forgetting she could start another slide, she crawled quickly back up the slope. It was there; the slightly smooth, lightly packed place near the center. Knowing she was onto something she risked the slide potential of the last few feet and pushed herself up near the top of the fall. A butt- print remained where someone had sat, braced their back against the wall, and shoved with their feet. In the fragile drift of fine sand she could make out wrinkles in the fabric and the line of a seam on a rear pocket.
'Anna!' Below her the dirt was beginning to shift, she was being pulled down. She knew if she fought it she would start another slide that would take her and Lord knew how many pounds of dirt down onto the heads of their saviors.
Before her eyes the print was vanishing, eaten away as a footprint on the beach is drawn into the sea by the waves.
'Coming,' she hollered, and turned to slide down on fanny and heels, oblivious to the sharp-edged fragments of limestone that tore at her trousers and arms.
Someone had been up there, probably had started the slide. Anna must cling to that. With the dark and the dust, the evidence drained into dirt, it could so easily seem a figment of her imagination.
She would keep it real for herself, for Holden, for Frieda. And she would find who'd made the mark if she had to examine every posterior in New Mexico.
