by Lisa Gardner
“We need special equipment to access the cave,” Mac translated. “Okay, so when will the search-and-rescue team arrive?”
“Making calls … different locations … Bats … on cars.”
“Their cars will have bats?”
“Stickers!”
“Gotcha.”
Mac popped open his car door and got out to survey the fallen tree. Kimberly was already out and walking its length. She glanced up at his approach and grimly shook her head. He saw her point. The tree trunk was a good three feet in diameter. It would take a four-wheel-drive vehicle, a chain saw, and a winch to move this sucker now. No way was it happening with a guy, two girls, and a Camry.
“We made the left turn,” Mac said into the phone. “What do we do next?” This time he couldn’t make out Ray’s reply at all. Something about “smell the fungus.” Mac looked around sourly. They were in the middle of soaring woods, deep into the heart of nowhere. Since turning off Interstate 81 forty minutes ago, they’d drifted into the westernmost part of the state, a thin peninsula wedged between Kentucky and North Carolina. Nothing around here but trees, fields, and double-wides. Last building they’d seen was a decrepit gas station fifteen miles back. It looked like it hadn’t pumped a drop since 1968. Before that had been half a dozen mobile homes and one tiny Baptist church. Lloyd Armitage hadn’t been kidding. Whatever better days had come to this part of the state had departed a long time ago.
Now it was strictly backwoods country, and Mac’s cell phone reception would not be getting better anytime soon.
“I’ll try you again at the scene,” Mac said. Ray made some kind of reply, but Mac still couldn’t hear him and finally snapped his phone shut.
“What do we do?” Nora Ray asked him.
“Now, we walk.”
Actually, first they assembled gear. True to her word, Nora Ray had come prepared. From her travel bag, she pulled out a modest daypack, complete with dried food, first-aid kit, compass, Swiss army knife, and water filtration system. She also had waterproof matches and a small flashlight. She loaded up her gear; Kimberly and Mac attended to their own.
They had three gallons of water left. Mac thought of the condition the girl would probably be in, unglued his shirt from his torso for the fourth time in the last five minutes, and stuck all three gallons in his backpack. The weight was considerable, the nylon pack feeling like a son of a bitch as it dragged against his shoulders and pressed his shirt against his overheated skin.
Kimberly came over, removed one of the gallon jugs and stuck it in her own backpack. “Don’t be an idiot,” she told him, then hefted on her pack and clipped it around her hips.
“At least the trees are providing shade,” Mac said.
“Now if only they’d soak up the wet. How far?”
“Couple of miles. I think.”
Kimberly glanced at her watch again. “We’d better get moving.” She sneaked a peek at Nora Ray, and Mac could read her thoughts. How hard could the civilian push it? They’d soon find out.
It was a surreal hike, Mac thought later. Moving down a thickly shaded logging road in the middle of a blistering afternoon. The sun seemed to chase them, peeking in and out of the trees as it dodged their footsteps and seared them with unrelenting beams of light.
Bugs came out in force. Mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds. Some kind of obnoxious fly with a vicious little bite. They were batting at their faces before they’d gone fifteen feet. At thirty feet, they stopped and got out the cans of bug repellent. A quarter of a mile later, they stopped again and sprayed each other down as if the stuff were gallons of cheap perfume.
It didn’t make a difference. The flies swarmed, the sun burned and the humidity covered their bodies in never-ending rivulets of sweat. No one spoke. They just put one foot in front of the other and focused on walking.
Forty minutes later, Mac smelled it first. “What the hell is that?”
“Deet,” Kimberly said grimly. “Or sweat. Take your pick.”
“No, no, it’s worse than that.”
Nora Ray stopped. “It’s like something rotten,” she said. “Almost like … sewage.”
Mac suddenly got it. What Ray Lee Chee had been trying to tell him on the phone. Smell the fungus. He picked up the pace. “Come on,” he said. “We’re almost there.”
He started jogging now, Kimberly and Nora Ray hastily following suit. They crested the small rise of the hill, came down the other side, and then abruptly drew up short.
“Holy shit,” Mac said.
“B-grade horror movie,” Nora Ray murmured.
And Kimberly just shook her head.
Quincy was getting frustrated. He’d tried Kimberly’s cell phone three or four times without success. Now he turned back to Ennunzio and Rainie.
“Do you know where this cave is?” he asked Ennunzio.
“Absolutely. It’s in Lee County, a good three or four hours from here. But you can’t just crash into this cavern as if it’s one of the tourist hot spots from the Shenandoah Valley. To access Orndorff’s Cavern, you need serious gear.”
“Fine. Get the gear, then take us.”
Ennunzio was silent for a moment. “Perhaps it’s time to let the official case team know what’s going on.”
“Really? What do you think they’ll do first, Doctor? Rescue the victim? Or call you in for a three-hour interview to corroborate every last detail of your story?”
The linguist saw his point. “I’ll get my gear.”
“What are we looking for?”
“Hell if I know. Some kind of cavern entrance. Maybe amid a pile of rocks, or a sinkhole at the base of a tree. I’ve never done any spelunking. Then again, how hard can it be to find the entrance to a cave?”
Pretty hard, it turned out. Mac had already been running around the sawmill for a good fifteen minutes. So had Kimberly and Nora Ray. They were probably all being stupid. The smell was the first kicker. The foul odor rose so thick in the heavy, humid air it stung their eyes and burned their throats. Mac was now holding an old T-shirt over his mouth, but even that didn’t make much difference.
Next to the smell was the intense wall of heat rising from the same sky-high pile of sawdust. None of them had even recognized the wood residue at first. It had looked like a pile of white sand, or maybe dirt covered in snow. Ten minutes ago, Kimberly had gotten close enough to discern the truth. Fungus. The entire stinking, rotten pile was covered in some kind of fungus.
When Brian Knowles had guessed their water sample came from a site in crisis, he hadn’t been kidding.
Now Mac leapt belatedly over one abandoned blade saw. He wove in and out of long, shed-style buildings with busted-out windows and sagging roof beams. The old conveyors still gleamed darkly in the shadows, complete with nasty-looking pikes used for skewering the wood as it was brought before the blade.
Litter covered the ground. Crumpled-up soda cans, discarded Styrofoam cups. Mac found a pile of old gasoline containers, probably used to fill up the handheld chain saws. He found another pile of old fluorescent lights. A faint popping sound was emitted from the debris field as some of the glass exploded from the heat of the sun.
He’d never seen anything like it. Strings of rusted barbed wire clawed at his legs. Abandoned saw blades lay hidden in the overgrown weeds, waiting to do far, far worse. This place was straight out of an environmentalist’s nightmare. He was 100 percent sure their third girl had to be around here somewhere.
Kimberly came staggering around one of the broken-down sheds. She had tears streaming down her face from the stench. “Any luck?”
Mac shook his head.
She nodded and went careening on by, still looking for some hint of an underground cavern.
He came upon Nora Ray soon afterward. She’d stopped running around and was now standing in one place, her eyes closed, her hands spread by her sides.
“See anything?” he asked brusquely.
“No.” She opened her eyes and seemed embarrassed to find him there. “I
don’t know … It’s not like I’m a psychic or anything. I just have these dreams so I thought maybe if I closed my eyes …”
“Anything that works.”
“But it’s not working. Nothing’s working. And that’s so unbelievably frustrating. I mean, if she’s in a cavern, well then, aren’t we literally walking on top of her right now?”
“It’s possible. Search-and-rescue isn’t easy, Nora Ray. The Coast Guard passed back and forth over your spot five times before seeing your red shirt.”
“I was lucky.”
“You were smart. You hung in there. You kept trying.”
“Do you think this girl is smart?”
“I don’t know. But I’m willing to settle for lucky if that gets her home.”
Nora Ray nodded. She resumed walking and Mac zigzagged through another abandoned building. Already past four o’clock. His heart was beating too fast, his face felt dangerously hot to the touch. They were pushing too hard for the conditions. Raising their core body temperatures to dangerous levels and going too long between drinks. This was no way to manage a rescue operation and yet he couldn’t bring himself to stop.
Nora Ray was right; if the girl was in the cavern, they could literally be standing on top of her right now. So close, yet so far away.
Then, through the buzzing drone of the insects, he finally heard a welcome cry. It was Kimberly, somewhere off to the left.
“Hey, hey,” she yelled. “I found something. Over here, quick!”
CHAPTER 39
Lee County, Virginia
4:53 P.M.
Temperature: 101 degrees
“Hello, hello? Can you hear me?” Kimberly had found an eight-inch-wide duct sticking up through the ground like a section of stovepipe. She peered down the tube, trying to see where it led, but encountered only darkness. Next, she waved her hand over the top. Definitely a draft of cooler air coming up from somewhere. She tried dropping a small pebble. She never heard it land.
Mac was running over. Nora Ray as well. Kimberly leaned closer to the pipe, cupping her mouth to amplify her voice. “Is anyone down there?”
She lowered her ear to the mouth of the pipe. Did she hear movement? Sounds of something shifting way down in the dark, dank depths? It was hard to be sure.
“Hellooooooo!”
Mac finally drew up at her side. His hair was spiky with sweat, his shirt and shorts plastered to his skin. He dropped to his knees beside her and added his voice to the pipe.
“Is anyone down there? Karen Clarence? Tina Krahn? Are you in there?”
“She might be asleep,” Kimberly murmured.
“Or unconscious.”
“Are you sure that goes to the cavern?” Nora Ray asked.
Kimberly shrugged wearily. “As sure as I am about anything.”
“But that can’t be the entrance,” Nora Ray said. “No one could fit down that hole.”
“No, it can’t be an entrance. Maybe it’s an airhole, or a skylight. Someone at least took the time to engineer the pipe. That’s gotta mean something.”
“The cavern’s big,” Mac muttered. He tried the pebble trick and got the exact same results. “From the website it sounded as if it were several rooms connected by long tunnels, and some of the rooms are the size of small cathedrals. Maybe this pipe leads to one of those chambers, letting in some natural light.”
“We need an entrance,” Kimberly said.
“No kidding.”
“I’ll stay here and keep yelling. You and Nora Ray see if you can’t find another opening. Maybe you’ll hear my voice echoing through and that will help. Besides …” Kimberly faltered. “If one of the girls is down there, I don’t want her to think we went away. I want her to know that we’re coming. That it’ll be over soon.”
Mac nodded, giving her a look that was hard to read. He and Nora Ray resumed their frantic scouring of the woods. Kimberly got down on the dusty ground, placing her mouth next to the rusty pipe.
“This is Kimberly Quincy,” she called. She wasn’t sure what to say, so she started with the basics. “I’m with Special Agent Mac McCormack and Nora Ray Watts. We’ve come to help you. Can you hear me at all? I can’t hear you. Maybe, if you’re too weak to yell, you could try banging on something.”
She waited. Nothing.
“Are you thirsty? We have water and food. We also have a blanket. I understand the caverns are cold, even this time of year. And boy, I bet you’re sick to death of the dark.”
She thought she heard something this time. She paused, holding her breath. A thud against the rocks? Or maybe a cold, frightened girl, trying to drag her body closer to the hole in the sky?
“A whole team is coming. Search-and-rescue specialists, karst specialists. They’ll have all the proper gear to be able to get you out of there. And trust me, if you think it’s cold down there, wait ’til you find out how hot it is up here. Must be a good hundred degrees in the shade. You’ll be missing that cool hunk of rock in no time. But I bet you’ll love seeing the sun again. And the trees and the sky and all the smiling faces of us rescue workers, who can’t wait to meet you.”
She was still talking. Rambling, really. Funny, her voice had grown thick.
“You don’t need to be afraid. I know it’s hard to be alone in the dark. But people are here now. We’ve been looking for you a long time. And we’re going to go into the cavern, we’re going to bring you back up to the light and then we’re going to find the man who did this, so it never happens again.”
Sounds now. Loud, startling noises like the crunch of gravel. Kimberly jerked her head up in excitement, then realized the noise wasn’t coming from the stovepipe. Instead, she saw two dusty trucks pull in straight ahead. One had a sticker of a bat glued to the driver-side window.
A door banged open. A man sprang out, already running to the back, jerking down his tailgate, and tossing out gear.
“You the one that reported the lost caver?” the guy yelled over his shoulder. The second truck had already come to a halt and was now shedding two more men rushing for gear.
“Yes.”
“Sorry for the delay. Would’ve been here sooner if not for that damn tree. What can you tell us of the missing caver?”
“We believe she’s been abandoned in the cavern for at least forty-eight hours. She doesn’t have proper gear, and was probably left with only a gallon of water.”
The man drew up short. “Huh? You want to try that again?”
“She’s not a caver,” Kimberly said quietly. “She’s just a girl, a victim of a violent crime.”
“You’re kiddin’?”
“No.”
“Ah hell, I’m not sure I want to know anything more after that.” The man turned to his two companions. “Bob, Ross, you catch that?”
“Girl, no gear, lost somewhere in the cavern. You don’t want to know anything more.” The two other men didn’t even look at Kimberly. They were busy pulling on long johns in hundred-degree heat. Then they grabbed pairs of thick blue coveralls and jerked them on over the long underwear. Both men were sweating profusely. They didn’t seem to notice.
“I’m Josh Shudt,” the first guy said, coming over and belatedly shaking Kimberly’s hand. “I wouldn’t say I’m the leader of this group, but I’m probably as close as it gets. We have two others on the way, but given what you say, the three of us should probably head on in.”
“Does this stovepipe go to the cave?”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s a skylight in the main chamber right beneath your feet.”
“I’ve been talking down it. I don’t know if she can hear anything …”
“She probably appreciates that,” Shudt said.
“Can I go with you?”
“You have any gear?”
“Just what I’m wearing.”
“That’s not gear. In a cave, it’s fifty-five degrees every day of the year. Feels like a fucking refrigerator, and that’s before you get into the water. To enter Orndorff’s Cavern, we g
otta descend forty feet by rope into knee-high water. Then we get to wiggle through thirty feet of watery tunnel that’s ’bout twelve inches high. Good news is then we enter the main chamber, which has a forty-foot vault. Assuming, of course, we don’t run into a rabid raccoon or a ring-necked snake.”
“Snakes?” Kimberly asked weakly.
“Yes, ma’am. At least there are no bats. Orndorff’s Cavern is dying, sad to say. And even if the bats had still found it an acceptable hibernaculum, this time of year they’re out eating bugs. October through April, it’s another story. Never a dull moment being a caver.”
“I thought you guys were called spelunkers.”
“No, ma’am. We’re cavers. Cavers rescue spelunkers. So don’t you worry. Just let us do our thing, and we’ll find your missing person. She got a name?”
“Karen or Tina.”
“She has two names?”
“We don’t know which victim she is.”
“Ah man, I really don’t want to know more about your case. You do your thing. We’ll do ours.”
Shudt walked back to his pile of gear, snapping on his coveralls, while Mac and Nora Ray finally came running over. Everyone made curt introductions, then Mac, Kimberly, and Nora Ray were left standing awkwardly to the side while the three men finished suiting up, strapped on packs, then donned thick hiking boots and tough leather gloves.
They had piles of brightly colored rope among them. In deft movements they coiled up the various heavy-duty lengths, then looped them over their shoulders. They seemed to be down to final adjustments then, testing out multiple light sources, adjusting their hard hats. Finally Shudt grunted approval at each man’s gear, returned to the back of his truck, and pulled out a long backboard.
For transporting the victim out of the cave. In case she couldn’t walk on her own. Or in case she was dead.
Shudt looked over at Mac. “We could use a spotter to help man the ropes up top. Ever worked with a belay?”
“I’ve done some rock climbing.”
“Then you’re our man. Let’s go.”
Shudt turned one last time toward Kimberly.
