White Wedding

by Jean Barrett

  Lane got to her feet, her gaze resting on Jack’s still face. Emotions she didn’t dare to think about choked her. She had never wanted so desperately not to turn her back and walk away. How could she abandon him, leave him on his own here in the dark? But to save him, she had to do just that.

  Swinging the flashlight in a wide arc, she checked the chamber for another exit. There was none. It was a dead end. No alternative but to mount the difficult stairway, cover the same route. Now, without delay.

  Knowing the hazards this time, and with the comforting aid of the flashlight, she was able to regain the higher level without incident. But then, in her haste to reach the cellar, she made a dangerous mistake. Either she somehow missed one of the critical flour deposits, or an unnoticed dampness had erased it.

  She was partway along the tortuous passage when she realized that she was doubling back on her route, headed in the same direction as the chamber where she had left Jack, only in a parallel tunnel. At least, it felt that way. She must have taken a wrong turn into a wrong branch.

  She was lost!

  Coming to a standstill, she resisted another attack of panic. Go back, she instructed herself. That’s all you have to do. Go back to the last fork, search for the flour mark. Some trace of it must still be there.

  She was in the act of turning around when she heard it. The unmistakable tread of hard-soled boots approaching from somewhere ahead of her. She froze in alarm. She had more to worry about now than wandering in useless circles. Much more.

  Lane had no doubt whatever that those echoing footsteps belonged to the killer. She was trapped unless she acted quickly!

  Her first impulse was to turn and run. But she couldn’t escape along a strange passage without the aid of the flashlight. That meant he would eventually spot her light as he advanced, hear the clatter of her boots as she was hearing his. And if he was familiar with the caves, he could easily overtake her or cut her off.

  She had to prevent him from being aware of her existence at all. Already, in an instinctive measure of self-defense, her hand had covered the glare of her flashlight. She hadn’t so far glimpsed the gleam of his own lamp, so she assumed her guarded light had yet to betray her. But if she didn’t immediately hide herself and douse the flashlight, it would be too late.

  She had two choices, and both of them were just a few feet ahead of her. Openings almost directly opposite each other in the passage walls. Lane crept swiftly, silently forward.

  She didn’t know what made her dive into the gap on the right. Maybe just because it was several inches closer to her, and she couldn’t afford the tiniest delay. The deliberate footsteps were louder, closer.

  Switching off her flashlight, keeping her gaze directed on the main corridor, she backed slowly into the narrow side passage. Within several feet of her retreat, she encountered solid rock. She pressed sideways in one direction, then the other. The rock was everywhere. She was caught in a dead end! Too late to correct her mistake. She could already make out the glimmer of his light. He must have rounded a bend. He was almost here!

  Lane squeezed back as far as she could, flattening herself against the stone. Scarcely daring to breathe, she prayed that he would have no reason to aim his light in her direction as he passed. Her heart hammered so loudly that she was sure he would hear it.

  She had counted on his striding by without a pause, but, dear God, his steps were slowing! And suddenly there he was! Her impression was a fleeting one because of the angle of her concealment and the light that was directed away from him. Fleeting but formidable.

  He was her specter of last evening. She knew now that she had viewed him that way with good reason. He wore some kind of insulated, all-white jumpsuit. Even his boots and the ski mask pulled down over his head were white. Not to present himself as some kind of ghastly apparition, she guessed. It was probably a form of camouflage, permitting him to blend in with the snowy landscape outside.

  There was no way to detect his identity. She couldn’t even be sure that the figure was male. Her view was all too brief because he swung away from her into that other gap across from her own. She had been lucky, after all, to choose the dead end.

  She didn’t dare to be relieved or to move away from the wall where she was pasted. She was conscious that his light still burned steadily somewhere not far off. Carefully, slowly, she leaned out a few inches, peering across the main passage.

  She thought she could make out a cavern in there, but she couldn’t see him, didn’t know why he was in there. All she could do was wait. And while she waited, she remembered the shadowy outline of a rifle slung by a strap over his shoulder. It made him more than just sinister. It made him hideously lethal, and all she had for defense was a chef’s knife in her pocket.

  He was coming back! She could hear the scrape of his boots. Rigid with fear, she held herself tightly against the wall, wishing she could melt into the rock behind her.

  He was in a hurry now. His light flashed past her opening. Within seconds it dwindled to a feeble glow as his footsteps retreated. He was returning by the same route.

  Lane waited until the silence and the blackness were complete. Only then, and with her pulse rate mercifully slowing, did she permit herself to turn on her flashlight and regain the passageway. She thought about investigating the cavern the killer had just visited, but there could be no more delays. Jack still needed rescuing.

  Fearing a return of the stalker, not trusting herself to turn around yet, she kept her flashlight shielded and began to back away down the corridor. If there was a sound behind her, she never heard it. She sensed nothing until a pair of hands reached out from the darkness.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lane was bringing the flashlight around to smash at her attacker when she was halted in midswing by a familiar voice.

  “Hey, give me a break!” Jack whispered hoarsely. “Haven’t I been punished enough? I’ve got a lump on the back of my head from that fall, which is competing with the gash on my forehead from last night’s accident in the cellar, and now you want to go and crack another part of my skull.”

  Weak with relief, Lane lowered the flashlight. “Where did you come from?”

  “As black as it was, I think it was hell. Sure felt like it, anyway.”

  “No, I mean how did you get here without the light?”

  “Easy. Two books of pocket matches, a couple of scorched fingers and a heck of a lot of stumbling and staggering in the dark.”

  “Jack, I’m sorry. I didn’t know how hurt you were, and I left you to go for help. Are you hurt?”

  “Does a headache count?”

  “Not unless it’s accompanied by some broken bones.”

  “Then I’m not hurt. Do you realize you’re in the wrong passage?”

  “There’s a reason. Why did you sneak up on me like that?”

  “Because I didn’t want to announce myself until I was sure it was you. What do you mean, there’s a reason?”

  She swiftly described how she had lost her way and her near encounter with the killer.

  He was immediately excited. “Then there is another opening to the caverns that he’s using. Come on, I want to find it.”

  “Haven’t you had enough? We need to go back to the guesthouse so you can lie down and—”

  “And nothing. I told you I’m okay. I was just out for a while, that’s all.”

  “But he’s got the rifle, and we could run into him again.”

  “I don’t think so. You said he was in a hurry. He’s probably back outside by now, and who knows what he’s up to this time. But while he’s gone, this is our chance to look for that entrance.”

  “All right,” she agreed, “but if we don’t find it in the next five minutes, we turn back. These batteries aren’t going to last forever.”

  As it turned out, their search required no more than three of those five minutes. There were no further side chambers this time to confuse or delay them. The route was a direct one through the stone tube
. It was after a sharp right turn that they spotted it less than two hundred feet in front of them. A crack in the blackness. Daylight.

  The cave rose and narrowed as they moved cautiously toward the light. Walls and ceiling closed in on them as they reached the low opening at the end of the tunnel. There was a crude wooden barrier blocking it. It was through a gap between two of the boards that light entered the cave.

  Jack, hunched over in the cramped mouth of the passage, pressed his eye to the slit. Lane waited in taut silence behind him. It seemed to take forever before he spoke in a whisper.

  “No sign of him. I think we can risk taking a look in there.” He placed his shoulder against the barrier, which moved with a minimum of effort. In fact, the thing was neither hinged nor latched, only propped against the opening. Jack had to catch it by a crosspiece to prevent it from clattering to the floor on the other side. He swung it carefully inward until it rested at a safe angle against the wall.

  “Wait here,” he instructed her softly. “I want to see if it’s clear.”

  He was gone before she could stop him, slipping through the opening and vanishing on the other side. Lane, bent over uncomfortably in the confined space, waited nervously, clutching the flashlight tightly in her hand. She had switched it off at the first sign of outside light in order to conserve the batteries.

  Jack was back within seconds, leaning into the opening to report, “He’s gone, all right. No point in trying to follow him. The footprints in the snow are confusing. He could have taken off in any direction.”

  “It’s safe to come out, then?” She was eager to see just where the passage emerged.

  “As long as we don’t hang around. You’re going to be interested in this,” he promised.

  Lane scrambled through the gap. Once on the other side, she was able to stand erect. She found herself in a narrow vault whose rock walls were crumbling with age and neglect. At one end were roughly hewn stone stairs mounting steeply to the outdoors. The light was dim in the close space, but after the caves it seemed blinding.

  “Where are we? What is this place?”

  “The log ruins of the pioneer cabin are just outside,” he explained. “We’re tucked off in one corner of the little clearing. The steps that come down here are buried behind so much undergrowth you’d never spot them unless you knew they existed and were searching for them.”

  She stared at him, beginning to understand. “A root cellar. We’re in an abandoned root cellar.”

  “That’s just where we are, and I think this is what Allison remembered and where she was headed. Chris probably knew about the cellar, too, and she may have figured that if he was hurt, he could have dragged himself in here and found shelter.”

  “Do you think she knows this opens into the caves?”

  He shook his head. “My guess is no, or she would have mentioned it Friday night when she took us to see the graves. I suppose the settlers who dug the cellar must have stumbled on the caverns at this end, but it looks like they walled it up.”

  “And over the years the wall began to collapse,” she said, gazing at the fallen stones.

  “The killer knows about it, anyway, and he could have widened the entrance. He’s using the caves, all right. Or at least that chamber he went into when you were hiding on the other side. Let’s go back. I want to see what he was up to in that cavern. Could be we can still lay our hands on one of his guns.”

  * * *

  IT WASN’T GUNS THEY FOUND in the cavern. Something far more startling had been hidden there.

  Lane and Jack stood in the shadowy stillness of the chamber and gazed down in shocked silence at their discovery. Shoved against the wall was a pallet. A figure was stretched faceup along its length. A flat, motionless figure, like a body in a casket.

  It was Lane, with a catch in her voice, who finally broke the silence. “Now we know what happened to Chris.”

  “We also know he isn’t the killer.”

  The next part was far more difficult, but she made herself say it. “Dead like the others?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  They knelt beside the pallet. Lane directed the beam of the flashlight at Chris’s head and waited in suspense while Jack’s fingers sought the carotid artery at the side of his neck.

  “Is he?” she demanded.

  “He’s alive.”

  “Thank God,” she breathed in relief, then added, “In a bad way, do you think?”

  Jack frowned. “His pulse is slow but regular. It’s a funny sort of unconsciousness.”

  “I know. He doesn’t look like someone suffering from a wound. His face is so peaceful, as if he’s in a deep sleep.”

  They stared at each other, the same thought occurring to both of them.

  “Induced?” she asked.

  “Let’s see if we can tell.” He drew back the thick blanket that was covering Chris from boot to chin. His action revealed that Chris’s coat had been removed and his shirtsleeve rolled up, leaving his forearm exposed. “Shine the light down here. There, can you see them?”

  Lane bent forward with Jack, peering at the smooth, bronze skin on the underside of the forearm. “I think so. Tiny needle punctures.”

  “Give me the light for a second. There’s something else I want to check.”

  She handed him the flashlight and watched as he swept its beam slowly along the side of the pallet, around the floor and up the side of the cave wall.

  “There,” she said, realizing what he was searching for as she pointed out a ledge halfway up the curving rock wall.

  Jack stretched out a hand, reaching onto the ledge to remove a small leather case. When he opened it under the light, a set of hypodermic needles and several glass vials were disclosed. She held the flashlight for him again while he uncapped and sniffed the contents of one of the vials, testing a drop of the liquid by rolling it between thumb and forefinger.

  “Phenobarbital in an oil base form, if I remember my chemistry rightly. It fits the picture here, anyway.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The stuff provides a sustained release so that it’s slowly fed into the bloodstream over a period of time. A person can be kept knocked out for hours like this, even days if the drug is periodically renewed, which is probably what the killer was doing in here while you were hiding from him. I’m not sure, but I think when the drug does wear off, it leaves no trace.”

  “But if he didn’t shoot Chris, how did he get close enough to inject him in the first place?”

  “Oh, he shot him, all right. Not with a rifle but with something quick-acting loaded in a tranquilizer gun. A paralytic of some kind. That would be my guess, though we can’t prove it without the gun. He’s probably got that stashed elsewhere, along with the rest of his arsenal. It could be anywhere in these caves. The thing I can’t figure is why he’s keeping Chris alive and unharmed down here when he’s killed the others.”

  “There could be an explanation,” Lane said slowly. “I mean, if you think back on all of it, the way Teddy Brewster died, the ancient graves, things that have been said about Chris, it seems to be...I don’t know, calculated to look Indian related.”

  “When it’s anything but?” He nodded briskly. “Damn, it’s not a bad theory.”

  Lane continued, expanding on her speculation. “The killer dumps Chris down here, keeps him drugged and then afterward, when everyone else is dead, Chris is alive to take the blame, and all the evidence points to him.”

  “If that is the answer,” Jack said decisively, “we’re going to cheat the bastard by taking his scapegoat away from him.”

  “Yes, we have to get Chris out of here.”

  “We’ll take him back to the guesthouse, hide him along with Allison.”

  “And just how do we do that? It’s a long way back to the cellar, and he’s a deadweight.”

  “Won’t be easy, but I’ll manage somehow to carry him.”

  Jack fulfilled his promise, but it was a slow, exhausting proce
ss. He bore Chris in his arms for some of the distance. When he was no longer able to stand the strain of that position, he shifted the burden to his shoulders. The load was traded back and forth in this fashion, with brief rests in between as they proceeded.

  Lane regretted her inability to share in the labor, but someone had to steady the flashlight and watch for the flour deposits marking the correct turnings. The batteries were weakening as they progressed, and this worried her considerably. But the light, though much dimmer, had yet to fail when they finally reached the cellar.

  “Better let me go up first and see if the kitchen is clear,” Lane suggested.

  Jack groaned as he eased Chris to the floor at the foot of the stairs. “My back will never be the same.”

  “I’ll reward you with a rub when we get him tucked away in the guesthouse.”

  He brightened at the prospect, grinning at her lasciviously. “The stripped-down version?”

  “Or maybe I won’t,” she said, recognizing trouble in her offer.

  Not waiting for any risky objection to that, she sped up the stairs and cautiously cracked the door. A fast peek around its edge revealed that the kitchen was empty.

  “Okay to bring him up,” she whispered over her shoulder.

  This time she insisted on joining him in the task of hauling Chris up the steep flight. She took his feet while Jack supported him by the shoulders from below. Even with the two of them, it was a considerable struggle. Lane was huffing before they were at last able to rest their load on the kitchen floor.

  It was then that their luck deserted them. The swing door from the dining room opened with a whoosh, and the solid figure of Dorothy appeared. Discovering her brother stretched on the floor, she rushed forward with a whimpering cry and dropped to her knees at his side.

  Lane didn’t hesitate to reassure her. “He’s going to be all right, Dorothy. He’s unconscious, not dead.”

  The woman looked up, her gaze traveling from Lane to Jack. Her eyes, as hard as polished black pebbles, demanded answers. Jack and Lane traded glances over her head, exchanging a silent understanding. They were left without a choice. They would have to risk trusting Dorothy.