The Death in the Willows

by Forrest, Richard;

  “I’ll lead. Just tell me what a phreatic tube is, so when I come across one I’ll know it.”

  He lay on the floor with his head pillowed on the knapsack and closed his eyes. “Limestone caves are formed by water seepage that erodes the rock. Phreatic passages are formed by water under exteme pressure that’s subsequently changed course.”

  “For a claustrophobic you know a lot about caves.”

  “When I had the mumps overseas there wasn’t anything to read but a book about …”

  “I know. How are you feeling?”

  “Better.” He forced his body to relax by starting with the lower extremities and imagining their anatomical makeup. He willed the various nerves in the lower portion of his body to relax, and then his midsection and arms. He lay limp against the rock and thought of animals that lived in caves. Bats, salamanders, and worms. The book The Cricket in the Cave might work. Bird’s nest soup in China was made from certain types of nests found only in Java caves: that was an interesting fact he might incorporate in the book. The Wobblies didn’t fear caves, but then again, the Wobblies didn’t fear much of anything.

  He felt them near him.

  They moved down the length of the room to flank the entrance of the phreatic tube. Their tails swished back and forth while red eyes peered through the deepest possible darkness.

  Lyon Wentworth got to his feet and followed his wife and imaginary beings into a passageway he could not have otherwise entered.

  They stopped at the yawning blackness of the shaft indicated on Nick Pasic’s map. Bea shone her light into the depths. The opening was nearly a perfect circle with a diameter of fourteen feet. Lyon turned away from the shaft to take pitons and an ice ax from the pack. He felt along the wall for fissures, found a narrow slit, and pounded his piton. Looping a line through the ring, he tugged until completely satisfied that it was secure enough to support their weight.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve ever rappelled?”

  “All the time. Whenever our garden club runs out of speakers, someone always suggests that we rappel down a cliff or two. Wentworth, you know how I hate heights.”

  He adjusted the rope around his body. “We make a great pair.” He showed her how to place the rope, and then stood at the lip of the shaft, facing away from the opening, and leaned backward. Gripping the rope, he leaped off the edge and bounced off the side of the shaft halfway down. He bounced again and then reached the bottom. “Lower the pack next and then yourself.”

  For the first time the complete silence of the cave was broken. Water gurgled nearby. As Lyon swiveled the flashlight he could see the small stream as it came through the rock, widened, and then disappeared under rock at the siphon.

  He turned the light upward to see Bea, halfway down the shaft, with her feet braced against the rock. Her body swayed. “Let out more slack and jump off.”

  “ARE YOU CRAZY!”

  “You stay like that much longer and your arms will tire and you’ll be in real trouble.”

  “IF THIS ISN’T TROUBLE, I DON’T KNOW WHAT IS.” She began to lower herself on the rope until he was able to reach up and pull her down to the floor. “ONE THING, WENTWORTH. How do we get back up?”

  “Hand over hand.”

  As the map indicated, near the shaft was a pile of fallen rock, and then the stream widened to fill the passage as rock and water met to form a seemingly impenetrable passage. They walked as far as they could on the shelf and looked into the water. “The siphon.”

  “The professor said it was only a few feet until the roof became higher and there was another shelf.” Bea heard his breathing become more rapid and knew that any delay would not help matters. She tied the end of a line to her waist, sat on the edge of the shelf with her feet in the water, and pushed off.

  The cold water shocked her. She took a deep breath, and holding the waterproof flashlight before her, began an awkward swimming movement through the siphon. There was only blackness ahead, and she had a brief moment of panic. They were following a map found in a children’s book, and were taking the word of a fey disoriented professor that the siphon ended in an air pocket. She took a stroke upward and felt her fingernails brush against rock. She knew she must have come more than a dozen feet, the supposed length of the passage. It could go on … and on … an underground stream whose current would carry her on forever.

  Her hand broke from the surface, and then her head and shoulders. She gulped air as her free hand clawed for the ledge.

  She placed the light on the shelf and pulled herself from the water. Untying the rope from her waist, she wrapped it around the pillar and began to wait for Lyon.

  She knew he was a strong swimmer, and with the safety line attached, should have little difficulty; but still he did not come. She gave the line two hefty tugs and felt a tug in return.

  Lyon’s head surfaced. His eyes were wide and blinking as she reached for him with both hands and helped him to the ledge.

  “The reels should be behind the pillar.” He scrabbled around the pillar and knelt to scoop sand and loam with his hands. Within minutes he had uncovered a metal box encased in a plastic waterproof bag. He tore off the bag, opened the box, and turned the light on the two computer reels. “We’ve got them!” He turned to see Bea standing on the ledge beyond the pillar looking into the water.

  “Maybe not for long.” She pointed to a glow in the water coming from the siphon. “Someone’s coming.”

  15

  “Do you know who it is?”

  Lyon looked at the wavering light refracted through the dark waters of the siphon. “Yes, I think I do. When he surfaces, he’ll be disoriented for a few moments, which means we’ll only have seconds.”

  “To do what?”

  “To get into the water and go back the way we came.”

  They stood poised on the edge of the ledge with their lights switched off. The glow from the siphon grew stronger, an arm holding a flashlight broke the surface, and it was followed by the head and shoulders of a man. The beam traversed the narrow ledge illuminating Bea and Lyon. The swimmer’s orientation quickly returned and he scrabbled toward the ledge and heaved himself from the water.

  “Now!” Lyon yelled and dove for the siphon entrance. An instant backward glance before he submerged revealed Raven Marsh crouched on the ledge activating the slide of a large automatic. With strong strokes, Lyon swam for the bottom of the siphon in the hope that Bea had entered the water before him.

  A zip close to his ear.

  Raven had snapped off a shot.

  He swam easily through the tunnel and wondered why the return passage was so much easier. He realized, with horror, that the rapidity of his movement was due to not carrying the flashlight. He had dropped it on the ledge as he dove into the water. If the siphon branched, if there were other tunnels that he mistakenly took … He kept swimming until he saw a glow to his front. Bea was swimming awkwardly, her flashlight still in her hand. He saw her stroke upward and followed.

  They sat on a rock near the internal shaft, regaining their breath, until Lyon put his hand on his wife’s shoulder. They scrambled to their feet and stumbled toward the ropes hanging down the shaft. She hesitated, her hands limply grasping the lines.

  “We don’t have much time. Hold the rope tight. Brace your feet and pull yourself up. That’s right … keep your feet against the wall. Hurry!”

  She started slowly up the shaft. He waited until she was nearly to the top before he followed.

  They lay on the tunnel floor at the head of the shaft. “What now?”

  “He’ll be along in a moment.” Lyon went to the lip of the shaft and pulled up the ropes.

  “The reels!”

  “I think we can be sure he’ll bring them.”

  Over the soft sound of the stream at the bottom of the shaft, they heard the crunch of shoes on rock, and then a light flickered off the walls.

  “Wentworth! You up there?” Raven Marsh’s voice echoed from the bottom of the well
. “Goddamn it! I know you’re there. Answer me and we’ll make a deal.”

  Lyon placed a finger over Bea’s lips.

  “Come on. Throw me a line!”

  “A line for the reels,” Lyon called without exposing himself.

  “You’re holding the deck. You’ve got a deal.”

  Lyon lay prone near the lip and coiled a line.

  “Don’t,” Bea said. “You can’t believe him.”

  “I know,” he replied in a whisper and threw the line over the edge. He slithered toward a rock to brace himself. “The reels first, Raven. If I feel more than their weight, I let go.”

  “They’re coming.”

  Lyon tugged on the line. As the weight began to ascend he estimated it to be the reels, or at least not a man on the end of the rope. The package came over the rim and Bea, without exposing herself, undid the line and opened the box. She nodded toward Lyon.

  “Okay, Wentworth. I did my half. Send the line back.”

  “In a minute.” He felt around the cave floor until he found a heavy rock he could hold in one hand. “You’ll need both hands to catch this, Raven.”

  The man below wedged his light on a rock. “I’m ready.”

  “Here it comes.” Lyon dropped the rock on the flashlight. The light shattered under the impact and winked out.

  “Hey!”

  “Come on, Bea. Let’s get out of here.” The glaze returned to Lyon’s eyes as he stumbled along the tunnel. Bea walked behind him with the box of computer reels under one arm, while the other steadied the light beam on his path.

  They still heard the decreasingly distinct screams from the man at the bottom of the shaft.

  “Wentworth, you promised! Goddamn you! Where are you! Throw me a light!”

  The shots began. They stopped to look back. The discharge of the heavy pistol caused a lightning effect in the tunnel, while the whine of the ricochets bouncing off walls and ceiling seemed like the cry of a hurt animal.

  The tunnel swerved to the right, obliterating the sounds of gunfire.

  They began to hurry up the incline toward the cave entrance. As they rounded the last turn of the tunnel, and saw the dim light of the entrance in the distance, Lyon began to run. He stumbled in the soft sand of the floor as he staggered out into daylight.

  He sank to the ground with his back against a willow tree. His shirt was soaked in perspiration, his breathing erratic, and his pulse rate astronomical. Normalcy began to return as he looked across the green valley spread below the hill. In the distance, a large hawk circled in slow sweeping banks.

  “We had better get help,” Bea said.

  “I would think so.” He got to his feet and walked back to the cave entrance. “I think we better lock him in.”

  “You’re not going back in there?”

  “Lord, no! But he’s not coming out either.” He closed the gate across the entrance and extracted a piton from his belt and pounded it through the hasp. “I think that will hold him until we get help up here.”

  The living room furniture at Nutmeg Hill had been shifted into a corner and a large blackboard placed in front of the fireplace. The board was divided into squares for each precinct in the congressional district. Kim stood ready to insert the vote totals as they came over the bank of telephones installed along the far side of the room.

  An aura of expectancy filled campaign workers as they milled nervously through the house and spilled out onto the patio.

  The subdued babble of election night activity provided a muted background for Rocco and Lyon as they sat in the study with drinks in hand. Rocco swirled the ice in his glass and glanced at his watch. “It’s nearly eight and the polls are closing. They ought to have the results soon.”

  “Bea’s got a worker in every polling place in the district. As soon as the machines are opened the calls will begin to come in. We should know in a few minutes.”

  “Since the beginning of the campaign I’ve had the feeling that you didn’t really want to go to Washington.”

  Lyon felt the aura of the familiar room where he had spent so many of his waking hours. It was an integral part of him, almost an extension of his self—a comfortable retreat and a place of work. He knew, without looking, the view from the window by the desk that extended past the patio and parapet and overlooked the winding Connecticut River below the bluff now splotched with streaks of silver light. “I’m part recluse and part creature of habit. I like things I’m used to, but Bea wants to go to Washington, and I know she can do some good down there. I can work anywhere, Washington as well as Murphysville. Well, I can work almost anywhere, as long as it’s above ground.”

  Rocco pulled on the last of the vodka and poured a refill from the bar cart. “At least you made it back for the election. For a while, I was afraid you and Bea were going to become permanent residents of Kentucky.”

  “Actually, they were very sympathetic and did their best to speed up the hearings. Needless to say, it got a little complicated to explain.”

  “You know, I still think that Raven Marsh killed himself. Hell, if I’d been down in that black hole and thought I’d been left there permanently, I might have, too.”

  “In a sense he did, according to the coroner in Kentucky, but not purposely. He began firing as we left him, and one of the bullets ricocheted from the wall and caught him in the forehead. He probably died about the time Bea and I were making our way through that damnable squeeze. Thank God it’s over.”

  “If it helps any, just before I came up here tonight we had a conference call with the Florida Task Force and the FBI. They’ve completed running the computer tapes and the printouts are very interesting. The IRS wants first crack at the Hungerford Corporation, and then there will be a grand jury hearing for further indictments. It’s going to take a while, but the whole damn operation will be dismantled, and they foresee a couple dozen charges against members of the families throughout the country. Your telephone caller friend, Attkins, will be the first under the ax.”

  “Sergei Norkov?”

  “He had a massive heart attack the minute he was told you had recovered the reels. He’s in an intensive care unit at a Miami hospital. They doubt he’ll make it through the week. They tell me he had a past history of heart trouble.”

  “I heard that from his son.”

  “You know, old buddy, there are a few pieces missing. Like, how were you so sure the reels were in a cave, specifically the Willows?”

  “In looking back, I see now that I was Nick Pasic’s insurance. That night in the hotel room, he did everything but write me a detailed confession. It couldn’t have been more obvious now that I think of the inscription he wrote to his grandson in my book.”

  “Which was a cave map.”

  “It took me a while to realize that, but it fit when I remembered the line he wrote about the secret of the karst.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “Pasic was Yugoslavian by birth. The karst area of that country has given its name to all karst formations of limestone throughout the world.”

  “Which are usually filled with caves?”

  “Exactly. And then there was another hint, the alias he used, F. Collins. Floyd Collins, the name of the caver who died in Sand Cave in 1925.”

  “That rings the gong. Wasn’t he the cave explorer who became trapped underground for days and died just before they were able to rescue him?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Then when Bea found the rock-climbing equipment in Pasic’s camper, you discounted mountains and thought of caves.”

  “It’s as hard to go down as up.”

  “And then when I came across the credit card charge that showed Pasic had been in Willows, Kentucky.…”

  “The reels had to be there. The cave map told us exactly where.”

  “I’ve got that part. How did you suspect Raven Marsh?”

  “I couldn’t be positive until I saw who it was that came after us in the cave. I knew it had to be
someone that was close to the situation, someone we’d had contact with. I first began to suspect Raven when I asked him about his articles and the sale of North American serial rights. Although he purported to be a writer, he gave me an indirect answer.”

  “So you sent Kim to check out Orlando to get her out of the way and leave Raven open to follow you.”

  “Yes, and it worked, although I’m hazy on exactly how he traced us to the Willows.”

  “I can answer that one. When Kim reached Orlando, she began to worry about you and Bea going off alone. She called me, and during the conversation I told her about the package I sent air freight to Atlanta.”

  “That explains it. Raven picked me up at the Atlanta airport and followed us to the Willows.”

  “As far as the rest is concerned, I suppose that all Raven’s contacts with Attkins were by mail and Swiss bank deposits?”

  “Attkins never did believe that I wasn’t his hit man, although he should have begun to wonder when he made me that bonus offer over the telephone and then a few days later got a letter demanding a hundred thousand for the spools.”

  “And no one else knew about the bonus offer until we heard the phone call recording in my office.”

  “When Hilly and Raven were present. Until that time Raven thought that getting rid of me was part of his assignment to protect the secrecy of the reels, but with the bonus offer, he stopped trying to do me in and allowed me to lead him to the cave.”

  The sound of subdued voices and muted phones swept into the room as the door opened. Bea slowly shut the door and stood with her back against it as tears brimmed her eyes.

  Lyon went to her.

  “IT’S NOT A COMPLETE LOSS, WENTWORTH. YOU WEREN’T WILD ABOUT GOING TO WASHINGTON ANYWAY.”

  He held her nestled against his shoulder. “All the returns can’t be in.”

  “The ones that count are, and we lost. IT HURTS, LYON. I DIDN’T BELIEVE IT WOULD BE SO PAINFUL. BUT DAMN IT! IT HURTS!”

  The Wentworths were jostled from the door as it slammed forward to admit a furious Kimberly Ward. She waved crumpled tally sheets in both hands. “Only six hundred votes! I could have yanked that many in with two days on the phones. For God’s sake, we could have stolen that many.”