by P A Vasey
“Didn’t you think that was warning enough, professor? You being a man of science and all?”
“There was no significant radiation contaminating that particular crater. I had a Geiger counter. I’m not stupid.”
“So what’s with the wetsuit? I mean, you’re in the middle of the desert.”
I was watching this exchange like a spectator at Wimbledon. Connor swallowed, and shook his head in an exasperated fashion. “I thought I’d seen water down there on my initial scouting trip. Underwater cave systems often have water you know, and this was a deep, man-made hole in the ground. By definition it’s an unexplored cave system. I was certain it’d dip below the water table. Underground caves like that often have streams and significant bodies of water. Catnip to explorers like me.”
“Isn’t that sort of thing dangerous on your own?” said Woods, arching an eyebrow.
Connor shook his head. “The guy who was going to come with me was an expert cave-diver.”
Woods looked up, interested. He turned the page on the file and hovered his pen, looking up expectantly. “Can you give me this gentleman’s name, please?”
Connor swallowed nervously, seemingly weighing up what to say. I could feel my heart rate picking up, and I stared at him as he shuffled in his chair, clearly mulling over his answer. “His name is Adam Benedict. He was - is - an old friend from my college days. He lives in San Francisco. I’m sorry but I don’t know the address. I hadn’t seen him for many years but we’d kept in touch via texting and email. I’d heard on the TV that there’d recently been a family tragedy. His wife had been murdered, you see. Breaking and entering while she was sleeping and he was overseas on business. I felt sorry for him, so I asked if he wanted to join me on this trip. Thought it might help, y’know?”
My mind was racing. The vision Adam had put into my head came flooding back. The cavern and the globe of light with Adam walking towards it. The name he kept calling as he looked back at me.
Gabe.
Connor was there, with Adam, in the cavern. He saw Adam disappear. I wondered why he wasn’t coming clean with the police, but then I knew if I called him on it, I’d have to explain how I knew, and to be honest I wasn’t ready to unload the telepathy and the dream like experiences yet. I had a professional reputation to try and preserve. Or at least that’s what I told myself.
Woods tapped his pen on the table. “So this Mr Benedict won’t mind if we give him a call to check out this part of the story?”
“He never returned my last message,” said Connor quickly, rubbing his sweating palms together. “But I’m sure he won’t mind. If you can track him down of course. I think he travels overseas a lot so presumably that’s why he didn’t get back to me.”
He smiled at Woods, apparently pleased with himself but it sounded unconvincing, even to me. He scribbled a cell phone number on a piece of paper and slid it to Woods who took it without looking.
“Can you describe this guy?” said Woods.
Connor nodded. “I might have some photos back in my office. I’d be happy to go and look them out for you.”
Woods shook his head. “Later. How about a description for now?”
Connor looked at the ceiling, squinted as if he was trying to recall details. “He’s very tall, about six-seven. Well-built, like a swimmer. Toned, I guess you’d call it. Muscles like ropes.”
“White guy?” said Woods.
“Yes, very white actually…” Gabriel tried a nervous laugh. “For an outdoorsy type he isn’t very tanned. Last time I saw him he’d grown a bit of a beard, and let his hair grow out. He generally had short black hair, crew cut, y’know like in the army.”
Woods continued to scribble in his notebook. “Does he have family?”
“He was an only child, I remember that. As I said, he’d lost his wife recently. Cora - that was her name. He also has a daughter from a previous relationship, but he doesn’t see her much. Name of Amy. We certainly didn’t talk about her.”
“What about a job?”
Connor continued to look thoughtfully at the ceiling strip. He tapped his bottom lip as he tried to give the impression of digging deep to get information. I wasn’t fooled, and I doubted whether Woods was, either.
“No, I don’t think he has one. He got quite an inheritance when his parents passed away, and he married well. His wife was the breadwinner. Quite the successful businesswoman, she was. She indulged his cave-diving hobbies, kept him sweet, y’know? He was a pretty successful Ironman competitor, I recall. Very fit guy. “
Woods put the pen down and looked directly at Connor without blinking. “So, just to be clear Professor - this Adam guy had a rich wife who was murdered, right? Presumably he benefited from this, financially? Was he a suspect?”
Connor sat back in the chair and sighed theatrically. “Look, as I said, he is really just an old college buddy. We were close back in the day, but that was a long time ago.”
Woods finally broke off his stare and stood up, hitched up his pants and walked over to the far wall to stand next to Chatfield. She pushed herself off the wall and coughed. “A person fitting this description was brought in to the ‘Springs ER earlier today. He was hit by a pickup truck walking along Mercury last night. Pretty grim by all accounts.”
Woods raised his eyebrows at me. “But then he kind of ‘self-discharged’ himself from hospital, ain’t that right, doc?”
I now understood why I was here. Connor was definitely lying about Adam not being with him. They were both wearing the same scuba diving kit. Woods wanted me to make the connection. I was about to say so, when to my surprise Woods gestured to the door. “All right Professor, I guess we’re done here for now. You can go.”
Connor pushed up out of his chair, relief etched over his face.
Woods gave a feral grin, “But please don’t leave the area. We’re not finished yet.”
Chatfield opened the door and waved Connor through. He glanced furtively in my direction as he shuffled out. After he’d left I turned to Woods and opened my hands.
“So that’s it? You bring me all this way, and for what?”
Woods simply smirked and walked over to the door. “Like I said doctor, we’re not finished yet. But you can go for now.”
Then I was being escorted out of the room, fuming.
CHAPTER SIX
I-95 Interstate, Nevada
I barrelled down the empty highway, the powerful twin halogen headlights of my Jeep Cherokee illuminating the road for a hundred yards before becoming impotent in the face of the deep velvet blackness of the desert night. There was an occasional coruscating moon peeping grudgingly from behind fishnet clouds, and spider-shaped shadows of Joshua trees flashed in the peripheral zone of the beams. The radio was silent and the only sounds in the cab were the hum of the tyres on the tarmac and the wind whistling past the boxy corners of the vehicle. My eyes kept getting drawn to the mesmeric flicker of the centre road markings as they disappeared beneath the hood, and I tried not to picture a tall figure appearing out of no-where, dead ahead with no time to get out of the way.
I shook my head to clear it, and glanced at the clock. I couldn’t believe it was only eight-thirty. The caffeine hadn’t worn off yet and my mind was buzzing. The police interview had slightly unnerved me, but not as much as my encounter with Adam Benedict. I could still hear his voice in my subconsciousness and bouncing around inside my head. The complete weirdness of that notwithstanding, it was clear that something extra-ordinary had happened to him - but what? I couldn’t figure it out. Woods was closemouthed as a clam at the end of the interview and had dismissed me just like he had Connor.
I pulled into my space at the front of the hospital, only a short walk to the side door that leads into the ER doctors’ office. Thankfully the room was empty, meaning Clem had gone home presumably having decided to take calls from the comfort of his armchair and TV. The coffee machine was still lit, and despite my already over-caffeinated blood I lifted the jug up to my
nose and savoured the aroma.
“Mmmm … fresh coffee. Mind if I have a cup of that?”
I jumped, nearly spilling the pot, and saw Gabriel Connor peeking around the door, an apologetic look on his grizzled face. He’d put on some tortoiseshell glasses that actually made him look semi-professorial until he shuffled into the room still wearing the wetsuit and a pair of scuffed white tennis shoes. He saw me looking and shrugged.
“Yes, I know, but I didn’t have time to change. Einstein wore odd socks you know. Sometimes, no socks…”
“You followed me here?” I said, putting a menacing tone in my voice.
“Sorry, yes,” he said. “I think we need to talk.”
He seemed hesitant, definitely nervous. I thought about it for a few moments but then shrugged and waved him in. He looked harmless enough. He closed the door behind him and I poured us both a cup of black coffee. We sat down on a couple of the recliners along the wall, and I flipped the footrest up and kicked off my shoes. I brought the cup to my lips and the strong aroma of over-stewed beans filled my nose. I thought I was going to start getting palpitations. Connor was looking at his cup but not drinking. I decided to say nothing, and let him lead. After all, he’d come to me.
“Dr Morgan,” he began slowly, “did you talk with Adam?”
“Yes,” I said. “Briefly.”
I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to share anything with him at this time, but he seemed a geeky kind of guy and I didn’t get any odd vibes from him. Not that my instincts were always accurate.
“Was he - okay? I mean, did he seem, I don’t know how to put this… normal to you?”
I leaned further back in the chair and stretched. I could feel a headache coming on. I carefully placed the mug on the armrest and closed my eyes, fighting a yawn. “Professor, you’ve come all this way to tell me something. Why don’t you just get to it?”
He seemed to consider this for a moment, as there was a long pause, followed by a resigned sigh. “Yes, you’re right. Okay, well it was a few days ago. Adam was burying his wife. I was late - as usual - I but got there just as the last of the mourners’ limos were pulling away. This was in Colma, just outside San Francisco.” He raised his eyebrows me. “You know Colma, right?”
I shook my head. Never been to ‘Frisco.
He grinned. “Most of Colma's land is dedicated to cemeteries. Apparently the population of the dead outnumbers the living by over a thousand to one.” He took a loud slurp of his coffee. “Hence the name: ‘The City of the Silent’”.
“Are you trying to be an asshole?” I said.
“Once a professor, always a professor …”
“Maybe you could move it along a bit?”
“Yes. Of course. Anyway, I’d just flown in from Vegas that morning. I’d heard about Cora on the news a day or so before. Couldn’t believe it.”
“What happened?”
“You need to understand,” he said, leaning towards me for emphasis, “we’d kinda lost touch, I’d moved from Chicago to take up a position as Professor of Palaeontology at the University. Tenure. Big deal for me.” He looked away, embarrassed. “Not that this matters of course. I could see that Adam was in a bad place. Cora’s family are - well - just awful, awful people. And then there’s his daughter, Amy. Didn’t even come to the funeral or the wake. I mean, she wasn’t actually Cora’s child, and she and Cora weren’t close, but I thought she would’ve been there to support Adam. After all, she was murdered…”
I was about to say something, but my voice caught, and emotions entombed and locked away broke the surface like zombie hands poking through a grave. The face of my own daughter flashed before me, lying on a gurney, pale and lifeless, a scrape of blood on her eyebrow and a smudge of dirt on her cheek. Nausea swirled around my empty stomach and a surge of profound sadness covered me like a wet blanket. The pain was still deep, and I closed my eyes and blinked back the tears I had vowed I would not shed again.
“Adam had returned from South America,” Connor was saying. “Flown in from Santiago. As his aircraft taxied to the gate he’d texted Cora. There wasn’t any response to his texts and she wasn’t there to meet him at the gate as they’d arranged. He’d caught a cab but when he arrived home he found the front door wide open and the lights in the house were out. They still think it was a home invasion gone wrong. The police blamed smack-heads looking for cash to score a hit. They think she’d been followed… maybe the junkies saw that she was alone… the security cameras weren’t working properly…”
He stopped talking and took another loud slurp of coffee. I thought about Adam finding his dead wife in that scenario. All those treasured memories suddenly trashed from the mind, replaced with evil, darkness and despair. Sorrow would be his new status quo, sadness his new best friend. I had often wondered when sadness would leave after such an event, and what emotion would replace it. I’d been working on that question for the last six months and hadn’t gotten an answer. My insides felt as raw now as they did that night in the Chicago ER.
“So how did this end up in a trip to a radioactive crater?” I managed to say, rubbing my eyes and hoping he wouldn’t notice.
Connor’s mouth twitched, and he shrugged in a ‘what can you do?’ kind of way. “I’d been planning an expedition to visit some new dig sites for my students. Uncharted caves and underground systems, that sort of thing. Adam had been and done many things in his life, and for the last couple of years he’d been a professional cave-diver. Recently he’d been to the Peruvian Andes where he and a couple of locals had spent three weeks mapping and exploring new underground aquifers.”
I knew that cave diving was a dangerous pastime, having watched documentaries on Nat Geo. Squeezing through tight and claustrophobic underground spaces to get into pitch-dark flooded caves. But when you get there, you could be floating through some of the last lost worlds on the planet.
Connor continued, almost reading my mind. “I’ve been in caves that ranged from huge liquid aquamarine chambers cut with shafts of sunlight, to sinkholes boasting gardens of silent fallen trees.” He paused and pursed his lips. “The fact is, Adam was lost. The empty house, the loss of his soul mate, a senseless murder – or so the police had concluded. I could sense his growing despondency. I could see the early signs of depression.”
“So you asked him to come on a holiday with you. To ‘get over’ the murder of his wife?”
Gabriel looked at me, and a twinkle appeared in his eyes. “Caves never before explored or catalogued. Guaranteed.”
I frowned. “In Nevada? The nuclear graveyard?”
He looked at me strangely. “It’s not what you think.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Indian Springs Hospital and Medical Centre
A month before, and on a whim, Connor had taken a tour of the Nevada Test Site, a one and a half thousand square mile patch of desert where the United States military had undertaken most of their post-WWII atomic bomb tests. The bus tour had taken two hours during which Connor and a dozen other tourists had been driven past roped-off areas and huge mounds of desert and craters moulded by the fierce atomic explosions of cold war paranoia. Cameras, mobile phones and videos were banned, and the guide had talked almost non-stop about nuclear detonations that vaporised solid bedrock forming massive underground chambers subsequently poisoned with radioactive rubble.
Connor had been fascinated and saw the potential for exploration and finding new fossil records in the man-made caves, as there were very few virgin sites for palaeontologists to explore in mainland US. It seemed that the only problem was the residual radioactivity, which should have been a deal-breaker. But the security seemed very light; the assumption being that the threat of ongoing radioactive contamination would deter visitors.
Like the good academic he was, Connor did his research.
Over the next three months he’d driven around the site at night armed with a map, a list of the nuclear tests from the Internet, a Geiger counter and night vision goggles.
The bomb-testing area was criss-crossed by three hundred miles of paved roads and twice that amount of unpaved dirt tracks so he was able to steer clear of the four seemingly abandoned heliports and airstrips that also inhabited the site. He’d evaluated the larger craters from the surface noting their size, apparent depth, and the amount of local radioactivity. He’d decided that while there was higher than normal background radiation, there were no really dangerous areas - provided that he didn’t spend a long time there. Some of the craters appeared to be more contaminated at the edges, suggesting that below the surface there would be higher and therefore more dangerous levels of radiation.
However, one particular crater appeared to be unique. On the surface it seemed morphologically similar to all the others, but the radiation signal at the edge was no higher than ambient background level. Connor consulted his records and read that the underground detonation there took place in 1953. There were eyewitness accounts describing the mushroom cloud and the detonation blowing out a circular chamber in the desert floor which then collapsed forming multiple canyons and tunnels. Satellite images showed that the crater resembled one of the meteor strikes on the moon he’d seen photographed by the Apollo missions. It was approximately 50 yards across, making it one of the medium-sized holes pockmarking the desert floor like acne on a teenager’s face. Connor had shone his torch down the precipice into the inky blackness and was unable to see the bottom. However, during an early morning scouting trip he thought he saw something shimmering, as if the light was being reflected from a water surface.
“So you went there the next day?” I asked. “After the wake?”
Connor nodded. “I laid out my plan that night over a bottle of scotch. Adam was keen to go, but a bit concerned about the radiation risk - despite the data I’d collected, and shared with him.”
“But you still went.” I said.
“Of course.”
He passed over his mobile phone, opened at a photograph of the Nevada desert hazing, shimmering and presenting a vista of bleached scrubland dotted with cactus plants, parched bushes and cadaverous trees. There was a highway in the background, arrowing into ancient mountains that had deeply coalescent shadows raggedly scarring their sides. The sky was panoramically cobalt, the sun in ascension, and a few wispy clouds stretched thinly across the upper reaches. I flicked to the next photo, which was of a road sign. It had serious-looking writing framed by a radiation tri-foil in black and yellow, and was acting like a sentry to the desolate wasteland behind.
