by Webb, Debra
Agony swells inside me. For so long I poured every part of myself into the search for my precious Natalie. Even when the police and the reporters stopped, I kept going. I could not stop. Could not give up. I didn’t notice how dangerously close I was to a very dark place until I fell, felt the change in velocity as I tumbled into that abyss. Every ounce of willpower and strength I possessed was required to climb out of that hole—for my sweet Emma. She still needed me. Andrew needed me.
“Call if you hear anything else,” I urge, trying with all my might to sound strong.
“Helen…”
I know what she’s going to say. “We made a pact, Ginny. I will never tell anyone what happened. We’ve left letters for our girls when we’re gone. There is no need to ever speak of what happened again until that time comes. Not to anyone. Not even to each other.”
The silence that fills the line is heavy with the misery that has been ours alone for two decades.
“All right. I am truly sorry you’ve had to carry this burden with me all these years. You are a dear friend, Helen.” Her voice breaks on the last.
“This burden belongs to both of us. We did what we had to do. I have no regrets.”
We end the call without saying more. There’s no need. It is what it is.
I scrub at my cheeks, cursing the tears there as I climb the stairs. Memories swirl in my head—memories I never wanted to think of again but today I have no choice.
In my room there is a box hidden on the top shelf of my closet. I scoot a chair there and retrieve it. I haven’t touched this box for twenty years. It’s too hard or perhaps I am just a coward. Either way, as soon as I sit down on the bed and open the lid I inhale the scents of the past…the scent of my sweet, sweet Natalie.
The many fissures in my damaged heart widen. A smile touches my lips as I rifle through our—mine and Andrew’s—favorite pictures of Natalie. So beautiful. Smart and talented. Just like Emma. We were so blessed to have two such beautiful, intelligent daughters.
I finger the ballet slippers she wore in her final recital. She so loved dance. Inside one of the slippers is the necklace we bought her for her fifteenth birthday. Lovely silver chain with a single charm—pink ballet slippers. Anger stabs into my heart. I close my eyes and will it away. Anger won’t change anything now. Inside the box is a letter Natalie wrote the day Emma was born. I laugh whenever I read it. She warns her new sister that she will never be the favorite. So funny. Her kindergarten report card and the retainer she hated wearing. I move through the memories, packing them all back into the box one by one. On top, I’m careful to leave the letter I wrote to Emma twenty years ago. When I die, she’ll find it.
That was the agreement Ginny and I made.
Whichever of us survives the other will answer any questions our daughters have and hope for forgiveness.
I remember the day I wrote this letter and first placed it in the box. It was the day before old Sam died. I had gone alone to him that day—before Emma got out of school. There were things I needed to say that I couldn’t yet share with Emma or her father. I sat on the porch next to the loyal animal. He was so old, but Andrew and I refused to put him down as long as he wasn’t in pain and he ate well. We made that decision years before. We allowed him to live out his life doing what he wanted to do—watching for our sweet Natalie to come home. Every single day for five long years he lay on that porch and watched for that damned bus to stop but it never did.
On this day, nearly five years after Natalie disappeared, I went to him, to tell him the news I had hoped I would never learn. Natalie wasn’t coming back. I have no idea if dogs understand our words but I believe my tears were explanation enough. Sam stared at me with those big brown eyes, so weary, so sad. I am convinced he understood that our girl was gone forever. If I’d had any doubts, when he laid his head in my lap I knew. I scratched behind his ears, stroked his head and his face, felt the dampness of his own tears. We sat together for a long time before I left that day.
It would be the last time.
The next day when Emma and I arrived after school Sam was not on the porch. We found him in the house in his bed. We both cried and went to where Andrew was working to tell him. As quickly as we could gather what we needed, we returned to give our sweet Sam a proper burial.
I had selected Natalie’s favorite teddy bear from when she was just a little girl. Emma placed it in the blanket with Sam before her daddy wrapped him and then covered him with the warm earth.
As Andrew and Emma loaded up in the truck to go home, I told Sam how very much we would all miss him. Before walking away, I asked a favor of him.
“Please take that teddy bear to Natalie in heaven.”
In my heart I knew without doubt that he was with my precious Natalie delivering that teddy bear even as I walked toward the truck where Emma and Andrew waited.
13
EMMA
If traveling by road, the cave is about ten miles from the farm where I lived from birth until I was almost nine. Even farther from where I was found half frozen the morning after the bus crash. Yet somehow my muscles remember the terrain…the place. These mountains have stood here for thousands of years. Most of the trees were here before I was born and will be here long after I’m gone.
My nerves are taut, like the high wire in a trapeze act. Once we left the road, ATVs took us the better part of the distance up the mountainside, but eventually the woods became too dense so we walk. Thick moss cushions our path like a velvet ribbon curling through the forest. The air is heavy with humidity and I am winded by the time we reach our destination. I haven’t been on a jaunt like this one since the injury. I feel the climb in my thighs.
Letty stops and takes a moment to catch her breath. “They entered the cave on the other side of that ridge and came out here.”
She gestures to a slit in the ground at the base of a rise that’s no more than five feet wide and maybe two feet at its tallest point. It looks like an all-seeing eye in the mountainside. Saplings and underbrush camouflage it, encircling the odd rupture in the earth like thick rows of lashes. I move closer and peer into the darkness.
“It’s pretty much straight down for about fifty, fifty-five feet,” Letty warns.
“If my calculations are correct,” Colton Tanner, a cave expert from the National Speleological Society, says, “this portion of the cave once had a fairly large opening that we could have walked through, located about ten yards that way.” He points downhill in the direction from which we came. “I’m guessing the collapse took place less than twenty years ago.” He waves a hand between the possible location of the original opening and the hole we’re looking at now.
I see what he means. The vegetation along that area is dense, but the trees are not nearly as large as the ones nearby. The underbrush is jungle thick, the ground noticeably springier. My instincts are buzzing. I remind myself that I don’t know what’s down in that hole and allowing myself to become overly agitated will not help me get the job done. Letty is counting on me.
“What we’re left with is a gap where the ground split after the collapse. This opening wasn’t listed in any of the society’s records. Until these guys were found, I’m guessing it’s been decades since anyone even came near it.”
It’s easy to see why no one noticed the opening the cavers crawled out of before today. Unless you stepped on just the right spot and fell in or poked your head through just the right clump of bushes, you would miss it altogether. Some of the undergrowth was trampled down by Letty’s deputies and a couple of the rescue squad members. Made getting through easier for us.
“Going in from the entrance where our guys started,” Letty says, “we might end up as lost as they did and never find the bones they claim are down there. They walked and crawled for miles. So we’re going in from here. Once we have our feet on the ground down there, the graves are supposed to be about half mile or so in.”
“Nothing I haven’t done before,” I assure my old friend
though my hands shake the tiniest bit.
Letty jerks her head toward the expert. “Mr. Tanner was kind enough to bring us all the equipment we’ll need for getting down there. He’ll go in with us but he’ll stay clear of the gravesites.”
The Cave and Rescue Unit is not particularly happy that Letty backed them off this part of the adventure. But if there are bones from a homicide down there, the recovery has to be done by the book with every effort made to preserve the crime scene and to protect the chain of evidence. I am qualified for crime scene evidence removal. Letty deputized me to make it official.
“Let’s do this then,” Tanner says.
I’m impressed with his gear. Top of the line fiberglass helmets, state of the art LED lighting mounted right on the helmets. At home, I pulled on socks and jeans and my hiking books and the only long sleeved shirt I brought with me. Since I didn’t have a jacket I grabbed the lying priest’s hoodie. I pull it on now, his scent lingering on the fabric. Sometime between leaving him at the bar and Letty picking me up I decided not to hate him for now. Maybe his message on forgiveness got through. I tug on the knee and elbow pads as well as gloves, completing the ensemble.
“He brought the equipment you requested,” Letty says. “If there’s anything else you decide you need, we’ll have one of my deputies bring it up the mountain.”
“Thanks.” I haven’t been around Letty on the job. I’m already impressed with how capable and competent she is. Nothing I hadn’t expected.
Tanner wears a pack carrying water, a few snacks in case we’re down there a while, and first aid supplies. A five-gallon bucket containing a portable spade, a trowel, dental picks, two medium size collapsible soil screens and a couple of paintbrushes will be lowered first. Both Letty and I have packs as well. In hers she carries a camera with flash and other items she will need for documenting the scene and the remains in situ. My pack contains a number of plastic evidence bags in varying sizes as well as a few paper sacks.
The Sheriff’s Department’s two forensic techs will remain above ground to bring up and properly store for transport all evidence we collect.
A slightly pared down version of the team and tools I generally have at my disposal on a dig but I can make it work.
With the ropes and rigging for descent in place, we gear up with the harnesses and prepare to rappel down into the cave. The drop is fairly quick but too tricky for a rope ladder since parts of the cave wall jut sharply outward. Our first priority is to get this done alive and unharmed. Another reason to be thankful I didn’t throw back that shot at Johnny’s. I guess the handsome, lying, I-have-weaknesses-too priest did me a favor.
I may have forgiven him but that doesn’t mean I’m not still pissed. A little.
One at a time, we go down into the dark abyss. Tanner first, then Letty and finally me. This part of the cave is larger than I expected. The uninviting crack in the ground led me to believe it was a long narrow space. Not true. By the time my feet touch the ground again any light that filters in from the opening above has vanished into the darkness. Our helmet lights reveal a large room surrounded by perpetually weeping limestone walls. Water seeps through, trickling down like tears. Time and water have left designs in the rock, almost like faces watching as we arrive to investigate the claim of bones in its depths.
The layers of rock stack up like shelves on one side of the space, which is the only reason the two lost cavers were able to climb out. I look from the top shelf to the opening and shudder inwardly. They still took a tremendous risk making that final leap. I guess it was better than dying down here without ever trying.
Moving forward is slow. The rocks are slippery and some jut upward like spikes. Overhead the stalactites remind me that we are traipsing into territory that could very well date back to the beginning of time. The temperature is cool, maybe fifty degrees. The air smells dank, like damp dirt and decomposing plant life. One of the delirious guys who’d gotten lost down here insisted he left a small orange stake flag, the kind surveyors use, to mark the spot. The site is a ways in so we keep moving.
Four maybe five minutes later Tanner announces, “The flag is dead ahead.”
I spot the small orange flag and the alien terrain seems to shift around me. The lightheadedness comes out of nowhere. Steadying myself, I shift the bucket I carry to my other hand. The unexpected and abrupt urge to tell Letty I can’t do this hurls into my throat. I want to turn around and run. But I can’t.
Letty needs me…I need to do this.
“We’ll make this the outer perimeter of the scene for now,” Letty says to Tanner.
This is as far as he goes. He doesn’t argue though I can see the curiosity as well as the disappointment on his face. “Standing by.”
My pulse flutters as I move toward the marked location. I think of Helen and how she asked me repeatedly what I would be doing to help Letty. I trust my mother, of course, but some part of me resisted telling her about the find. After twenty-five years you would think we had stopped anticipating the discovery of the truth about Natalie and Stacy’s disappearance, but that is not at all the way it is. I cannot help but wonder about the bones. Helen probably thinks the two girls who went missing just this week have been found. Since the find is only bones that isn’t possible.
I crouch near the mounds that do indeed give the appearance of graves. The soil has been disturbed on one of them, a human skull and a tibia lie atop the loosened dirt.
“Holy shit.” Letty breathes the words as she squats next to me. “I guess they weren’t as crazy as I thought.”
I draw in a long, steady breath, let it out. “The graves appear fairly shallow.” Which is why the two men spotted the bones. Time and the elements have shifted a layer of the soil. My spotlight reveals other glimpses of white against the dark earth. I steady my nerves. “I’ll proceed using the trowel. I don’t want to use the spade unless I have to.”
Letty nods. “I’ll take photographs and make some measurements before you begin,” she reminds me.
“Right.” I move back. “I can help with the measurements.” This is something we do at all digs. The routine is second nature to me.
Letty snaps pics of the general area. Then, as I hold the tape measure at different vantage points, she takes more and then makes notes. As much as I want to dig in, particularly to see if I can find any sort of ready identification, documenting the scene is extremely important to the investigation moving forward. If the bones are those of victims of a crime, those victims deserve our utmost care.
Once Letty has completed her work, it’s finally time for me to begin.
“Tell me what I need to do.” Letty steps back, giving me plenty of elbow room.
“Be ready to bag.”
“Gotcha.”
My hands slip into a rhythm that is as familiar to me as breathing. The emotional baggage lifts and my mind focuses solely on the work. I note fractures in the frontal, parietal and temporal lobes of the skull. Three distinct blows to the head, at least one is noticeably depressed.
I hesitate. It’s possible some sort of fall caused the injuries but most likely it was murder. Although it is not my job to make any conclusions about cause of death, I mention this to Letty as we bag the skull and the single tibia the cavers discovered.
She nods and that solitary action causes a buzzing to start in my ears.
I close my eyes a moment and silence the sound, remind myself to breathe deep and slow, then I say, “It appears the skull and the tibia came from this mound.” I gesture to the first of the two graves. “Let’s operate under that assumption and keep what we find in this section together.”
Letty nods her understanding. She packages the skull and the tibia, and labels each with a Sharpie, then waits for my next move.
Slowly, I float the trowel through the reasonably soft soil. I hit a rock now and then. Flinch and then continue. One by one, the skeletal remains emerge. As I reveal more of each bone, I choose the larger of the paintbrushes to sweep
away the soil without risk of causing further damage. Both arms are intact. A leg. The second leg has separated at the knee. Not unusual. Once all the tissue that holds together the pieces has completely decomposed, joints can and will fall apart.
My fingers gently ply the next piece from the earth. Pelvis. Female. My heart thumps hard against my sternum. There isn’t sufficient light for me to hazard a guess at the age. I would need my measuring instruments and plenty of light for that part. Again, not my job. Renewed purpose has my hands moving a bit more swiftly.
Could this be Natalie or Stacy? The question ricochets in my brain. I could be touching my sister’s bone…or Stacy’s. My hands tremble and my throat goes so dry I can hardly swallow. I should take a break and have some water but I cannot stop. I need to know. Whatever I find, I cannot be certain of anything until the remains are properly identified using dental and medical records.
I remind myself of this over and over as I continue.
I find a metal snap and what appears to be a zipper, both consistent with those found in jeans or some other type of pants made of cotton or linen that have long since decayed. Cotton and organic fabrics decompose quickly, most of the time within a few months. A small square of synthetic material appears to be the tag from a t-shirt or blouse of some sort.
Ribcage. I hold it in my hands for a moment, an ache throbbing deep inside my own.
Keep going.
Feet. Right one, left one. Partially decomposed sneakers. Blue. Natalie wore sneakers that day but they were pink.
Deep breath. The first set of remains is complete as best I can determine.
I move to the second mound and repeat the process, my movements steady and methodical. Thankfully the bags are large enough so far. There are a considerable number of bags piling up so we may have to rethink how we transport them back up through the entrance and down the mountainside.
