She heard Mike working with the rope, tying it off.
“Almost there,” he said.
She must have whispered louder than she thought.
The backpack felt as if it were filled with lead. She felt her grip slipping. If she fell and landed on her feet, she’d break her legs, but her skeleton could still absorb most of the shock of the fall. Still, spine and hip injury would be almost inevitable.
“I can’t reach you,” said Mike. “I’m going to toss you the rope. Grab it. You’ll swing back this way, so hold on tight.”
She leaned her head back slightly so that the rope fell between her face and her arms. Diane didn’t hesitate; she grabbed the rope with one hand, then the other. As soon as she released her grip, her body swung across the opening. The rope caught on the rim of the hole beneath the anchor, sending her under the ledge and slamming her into the thick face of rock dividing the upper chamber from the cavern.
Her backpack whipped back and forth below her like a frantic pendulum. She held tight as Mike tried to stop the swinging.
When the swinging stopped, Diane didn’t move for a long moment. She grasped the rope and breathed deeply, rejecting the pain caused from slamming into solid rock.
“You okay?” Mike peered over the edge at her.
“Nothing’s broken, as far as I can tell.” She looked up at him and then down at the cavern floor and the length of the rope below her. “I think I have more strength to climb down than up.”
“Okay. Let yourself down easy. I’m going to secure the rope a bit more.”
Diane lowered herself, hand over hand, until she reached the bottom of the chamber. Her feet were unsteady on the loose rocks. She sat down and untied from around her waist the line that tethered her backpack to her. Fortunately, nothing had dropped out of it. She stretched her muscles and fingered her rib cage. She’d be sore tomorrow, but right now she seemed fine.
From where she sat, she could see Mike setting another anchor bolt, securing her means of escape. He then placed a pad under the rope to keep it from fraying where it came in contact with the rock.
“Thank you,” she shouted up to Mike.
“No problem.”
Mike was a geologist at the museum where she was director and was working on his Ph.D. at Bartram University. He was a good friend and caving partner, and professed an attraction to her that left her a little unnerved, mainly because he was so much younger than she. But lately, to her relief, he had been seeing Neva, a fellow caver and a member of the crime scene lab that Diane also directed. And if Diane was any judge of body language, Mike and Neva had become close.
Diane thought to herself that while she was down here she might as well make good use of the time. She took her distometer, a notepad and bottle of water from secure pouches on the side of the backpack.
As Mike worked above, Diane picked her way out of the worst of the breakdown and examined the chamber she’d discovered, or perhaps, she thought wryly, that had discovered her. She glanced around and saw that she was standing almost in the middle if it. She measured to the wall ahead-twenty feet, three inches. She turned and measured the opposite direction: nineteen feet, seven inches-thirty-nine feet, ten inches long. Its width was eleven feet shorter. The height to the rim at the top of the chamber was thirty-two feet. Good thing she didn’t know that while she was hanging by her fingernails.
The twin headlamps on her helmet threw round pools of light on the several stalagmites that stood like sentinels around the room, tall and straight, casting their shadows on the wall behind them. The tallest was perhaps twenty feet. The thought that she might have fallen atop any one of them made her cringe.
Other than the entrance she had accidently created at the top, the chamber had only one other egress. About twenty feet from the floor on the wall of the cave was a rounded opening leading to what looked like a tunnel. She scribbled down some notes.
“Ready to climb back up?” yelled Mike.
“In a minute.” Diane walked around the room, examining everything.
“That’s what I like about you, Doc. You don’t let a little thing like a near-death experience keep you from having a good time.”
Diane had hardly heard him, however. The hair on the back of her neck prickled. In her dim peripheral vision she saw the figure of someone crouching behind one of the stalagmites.
Chapter 2
Diane drew a shallow breath, focused her light full on the figure and discovered that it was not crouching but slumping, its back against the wall, long dead. She walked carefully to it, examining the floor each step of the way, then dropped on her haunches next to the body. What lay before her were the mummified remains of a male, judging from the prominence of his brow ridge and jaw, clad in the rotted remnants of a plaid shirt and jeans turned almost the color of the surrounding rock. With the partial disintegration of his soft tissue, he had collapsed and reclined in a fearful repose, his head leaning back against the wall and turned slightly, his mouth gaping, his thin lips stretched open, showing yellowed teeth.
She saw glimpses of dry skin and bone through his shirt. One hand rested in his lap, and the other lay beside him on the floor. They were balled into fists. A helmet lay upside down beside him along with a canteen. She retrieved her digital camera from her backpack and snapped several pictures from different angles and distances.
“Damn, Doc. What was that I said about you knowing how to have a good time? You find the creepiest things.” Mike was standing beside her. Diane had been so engrossed in her find that she hadn’t heard him descend into the chamber. “Is that what it looks like-a mummy?”
“Yes,” she said. “Natural mummification. The tissues have been partially preserved by the dry air of the cave.”
Mike squatted beside her, looking at the crumpled remains. “Wonder what happened to him. Did he get lost? Lose his light? Fall? He probably didn’t come in the way we did. How did he get in here?”
“Don’t know.” Diane snapped a picture of his helmet. “What I need you to do is take our mapping notes to the surface and figure out what county we’re in and call the appropriate coroner.”
“Coroner?”
“The county coroner has to be notified when a body is found.”
“You going to work this as a crime scene?”
“That’s for the coroner to decide. Until then, I can’t touch him.”
“But you’re dying to look at him, aren’t you?”
Diane smiled. “I am looking at him.” She stood up. Mike rose with her, and Diane turned toward him, careful not to shine her headlamp in his eyes. “I appreciate your being quick with the rope.”
“Sure. I’ve had to hang from my hands before, and it’s dicey if you’re not used to it. You okay? You crashed pretty hard into the rock wall.” He looked up toward the hole in the roof.
From their vantage point she could see the thick walls of the hole surrounded by a thin lip that had at one time been a too-thin floor that had collapsed countless years ago.
She looked down at her hands. Faint abraded lines of blood etched her palms and fingers. “My hands are going to be sore for a while. I imagine my body’s going to ache too.”
Mike took one of her hands and examined the palm. “Now, how many caving trips has it been that I’ve told you, you need to put on your gloves?”
“I know, I know. I just like the tactile feel of the cave.”
“Yeah, well, you’re going to be feeling the tactile sensation for several days.”
