“How long do you think it’s going to take?” asked Mathews. He was scratching his arms.
She couldn’t believe that any insects had gotten through the multiple layers of insecticide he had sprayed on himself.
“Not long to find them. Longer to process the scene and take them up,” she said.
“Shouldn’t we be using walkie-talkies or something?” said Mathews.
“They don’t work well in caves,” said Diane. “Cave radio is a science in itself. From what Massey described, the bodies are not that far in. I don’t think it will be a problem. If it looks like we are going to take too long, for any reason, Mike will come out and tell you.”
Mathews nodded.
“This is pretty easy caving, from the look of it,” said Diane.
“You have so much stuff to carry—and all that rope,” said Mathews.
“We try to be prepared for contingencies,” said Diane. “But this is not a big operation. It’s not like a deep-cave rescue.”
“Okay,” he said, “let’s get this over with so I can get back to civilization.”
“We ready?” asked Mike, grinning at Diane.
Diane nodded.
Usually, either Diane or Mike took point. Mainly because they were the most experienced, but also because each had the same mind-set about caves. They proceeded with the same protocol, the same perspective. When Diane entered a cave, she owned it. Not ownership in the normal sense of the word, not a possession, but a love, a feeling that she was home, was in her world, and it was her responsibility to protect her home and guests she invited in. Mike, she suspected, had the same worldview about the ancient, fantastic holes that had been scoured out of the ground by nature.
Diane was about to cross the entrance zone, the barrier between the outside world and the world of the cave. She stopped and turned to Neva.
“You want to go first?” said Diane.
Neva grinned at her for a moment. “Yeah,” she said, “I would.”
Mike smiled at Diane and hoisted the rope to his shoulder. Neva entered the cave, followed by Diane, then Mike.
Visibility was reasonably good in the first chamber as a result of the light filtering in from the entrance. The room was roughly ten by ten, give or take a few feet in either direction. The ceiling was low and slightly dome shaped, and the walls had a gentle curve from ceiling to floor. There was a scattering of leaves and debris blown in through the entrance. Diane could see places where some animal had nested against the wall near the opening.
The twilight zone of the cave was the shadowy area between the light of the upper world and the dark of the underground. It was a place where light still filtered in from the outside, but barely. In going from the first chamber room into the tunnel, they entered the twilight zone. It had its own biota, different from the entrance zone.
Slick had described the tunnel accurately. It was short and low. None of them could walk standing straight and it angled downward. Just as Slick said, they came upon another tunnel on the left. It wasn’t wide, but they could stand, though the tunnel narrowed toward the top and in places the ceiling was such a tight squeeze that they had to bend over to get through. There was little breakdown—debris fallen from the ceiling—on the uneven floor, just a few rocks, mostly the size of large gravel. They stopped at another opening just to the left. They were now entering what was called the dark zone of the cave, a place where no light filtered in from outside. Only their flashlights and headlamps pierced the pitch black.
Neva stepped into the room slowly and stopped just a few feet inside. Diane and Mike followed her. The floor vanished into blackness in front of them. They were at the edge of a drop-off. Diane knelt and shined her light down. In the darkness below—as Slick had said—were two bodies. They were in disarray, one across the other. It appeared that they had been tossed over the edge and crashed to the floor some fifteen feet below.
Mike went about setting the anchor bolts into the rock. He threaded the rope through and secured it while Diane and Neva put on gloves.
“I don’t think we’ll need harnesses,” said Neva. “We can just use the rope.”
“It shouldn’t be a hard descent,” said Mike. “I’ll send your equipment and bags down after you.” Mike placed a pad under the rope to give it protection from being frayed by the rock on the edge of the drop-off.
Neva climbed down first, landing beside the bodies. Diane climbed down after her. Mike lowered the body bags and crime scene kit next. Diane and Neva stood looking at the bodies for a moment.
The visible tissue was only partially decomposed. It appeared the bodies were drying out, rather than putrefying the way they would if they were lying exposed in the woods. The air of the cave was drier than outside and the biota was different, which made the decaying process different. The body on top was lying facedown over the other one. The long honey blond hair made it appear to be female, but you never knew. She or he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. The body on bottom lay faceup and appeared to be male.
Diane and Neva shined their lights around the floor, looking for anything that might have fallen with the bodies. Nothing showed itself on a preliminary search. They split up and started a grid-pattern search of the cave floor.
It wasn’t a large cavern, not much bigger than the entrance room. There was breakdown littering the floor, and the walls and roof were much the same as they’d seen so far. Diane noted with dismay that the room at one time had a few stalactites and stalagmites. Most had been broken off and carried away, probably as souvenirs. A few were still lying broken on the floor of the cave, along with several vintage beer and soda cans. Diane and Neva collected and bagged every item they came across that was not native to the cave.
“Someone tried to build a fire,” said Neva. “I wonder how that worked out for them? Where did they expect the smoke to go?” She poked around in the burned charcoal and wood. “Nothing obvious here. I’ll bag it.”
Neva continued around the room and found an old piece of rope about three feet long that looked as if it had been down there for years. Diane found several candy wrappers that also looked old.
She shined the light around the walls and saw what she expected—graffiti. This wasn’t a difficult cave to traverse to this point, and over the years people had visited it who didn’t have the respect for caves that Diane and her fellow cavers had.
Mostly, the graffiti consisted of names and dates. Some of it dated from the 1930s. Someone announced that they lost their virginity here in 1978. From her current vantage point Diane could see three graduation announcements: 1946, 1958, and 1978. She and Neva photographed the walls and the graffiti.
“Look at this,” said Neva. “I wonder if it’s the same person we know.”
Diane walked over and looked at Neva’s find.
L. Conrad was here, 1974, it read.
“Well, how about that? Interesting,” said Diane. “The date would be about right for his high school graduation.”
After finishing with the walls, they turned their attention to the bodies. Before anything was touched, Neva photographed them from several angles.
Diane and Neva slipped off their caving gloves, put on latex gloves, and turned the first body over. It wasn’t the dried flesh of their faces that was so startling about the two bodies. What Diane and Neva noticed first was that their throats had been cut from ear to ear.
Chapter 47
“Wow. What do you make of that?” asked Neva, squatting to have a closer look at the wounds.
“Wow is right,” said Diane, crouching opposite her. “I didn’t expect this.”
The wounds in both victims were similar in length and depth and they looked exactly like the long, deep wounds to the Barres and Watsons.
Neva looked over at the handwriting on the wall. “He knew about this cave,” she said.
“He did, didn’t he? If it’s the same L. Conrad that we know,” she added.
“We could match the handwriting,” Neva said
. “It would have changed over time, but we could find early samples, like in an old yearbook, maybe, or from some old legal documents from his early days as sheriff.”
Diane nodded as she studied the wounds. “We could,” said Diane.
She was looking at the neck wounds. Evidence of flies was still in the wounds. “These two were outside before they were put here,” said Diane. “David can tell us how long.”
Diane retrieved the body bags. She and Neva lifted the first body—the female—and put her in the black bag. It was then that Diane noticed the charm bracelet on the victim’s right wrist. Diane took the bracelet off the body and put it in a clear evidence bag. Neva zipped up the body bag.
The two of them did the same grim task for the other body, a male. They tied a rope harness on each bag for Mike to pull them up with the pulley system he had constructed while they were searching the cavern room.
They examined the cave floor under the bodies. Nothing.
“I was hoping for a note or a driver’s license,” said Neva.
“It was certainly very helpful when the remains we found in that cave a year ago had the diary with them,” agreed Diane.
The two of them collected their evidence bags—the contents of which they were sure would turn out to be years of trash from all the graffiti artists—and hoisted them up along with the crime scene kit. The last thing Diane did was to record the temperature of the cave. Hector and Scott’s work might very well help pinpoint a time of death in these bodies—possibly within a couple of days or even a few hours. Diane and Neva climbed up the rope to join Mike. He collected his bolts and pulleys and re-coiled the rope.
“The bodies have lost a lot of their weight,” said Neva. “Could we stack one on top of the other and save ourselves a trip? You and I can carry the bodies and Mike can carry the equipment.”
Mike nodded. “We can switch out if it turns out the bodies are too heavy,” he said.
Diane agreed and she and Neva stacked the bodies, tied a rope around them, and gave them a test lift.
“Not too bad,” said Neva. “We don’t have a long way to go. We can do it.”
They retraced their steps to the first chamber of the cave. Mike slithered out first, put down the gear, turned, and helped pull the bodies through. Diane came out after the bodies, followed by Neva.
The others who had been waiting outside the cave gathered around when they saw Mike and they stood in a huddle around the bodies.
“See, I told you the bodies was there,” said Slick, craning his neck to look at the body bags.
“You took a long time,” said Mathews. “I thought you said you would send Mike out if you were going to be long. I was starting to worry.”
“I’m sorry. I should have specified what I consider a long time,” said Diane. “We searched the cavern they were in, collected all potential evidence, and photographed the graffiti on the walls.”
“The graffiti? Why?” asked Mathews.
“To see who knew about the cave,” said Diane.
“They signed their names?” asked Mathews.
“That’s about all they wrote,” said Diane.
“Can you tell if they are my couple?” Liam asked.
“It’s a male and a female. The female has long honey blond hair; the male has shorter black hair . . .” began Diane.
“Does that fit?” asked Mathews.
Liam nodded. “I’m afraid it does.”
He took two photographs from an envelope and showed them to Diane and Mathews. They showed a lovely elfish-looking girl with a sly smile and long honey blond hair and a boy with medium-length dark hair, a wide grin, and nice teeth.
Liam looked at Diane as if asking if these were the bodies. She shook her head.
“They have been dead for several weeks. I think my team will be able to pinpoint the time more accurately. And there is this,” she said, pulling out the evidence bag with the bracelet. “This was on the girl.”
Liam took the bag and looked at the bracelet. From the grim set of his mouth, Diane thought he recognized it. He nodded.
“It’s hers. Her sister gave it to her and she always wore it.”
“I’m sorry there isn’t better news for your client,” said Diane. “But we do need to do an autopsy before you tell him this is his daughter. We need a positive ID first.”
“Sure,” he said. “I’m not in a hurry to give him such devastating news.”
Diane turned to Mathews. “I’d like to speak with you,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows. “All right.”
“Is this something I need to know?” asked Liam.
“Eventually,” said Diane, “but not now.”
He hesitated a moment, as if he were going to press the issue, but backed off. Diane and Agent Mathews stepped away from everyone, almost into the bushes.
“What is it?” he asked. “You found something else?” Diane nodded. “Their throats were cut in a manner very similar—perhaps identical—to the Barres’ and the Watsons’.”
Mathews wrinkled up his face and looked toward the hole that was the cave entrance. “You think it was the same killer then?”
“It looks suspicious,” said Diane. “I wanted to ask you. I know the GBI has this case, but Lynn Webber did the second autopsies on the bodies of the Barres and Watsons. She made casts of the nicks the murder weapon made in the vertebrae of all the victims. I would like to suggest that you ask her to do these autopsies too—for a direct comparison.”
“We’ve been cooperating quite a bit lately,” he said.
“Isn’t that good?” said Diane.
“In theory, but . . . you know how it is,” he said. “The bureau’s got its procedures.”
Diane didn’t say anything, merely waited.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
“There’s one other thing,” she said, and told him about the graffiti of L. Conrad, 1974.
“You think it’s Sheriff Conrad?” he said.
“I don’t know how many L. Conrads have been in this cave,” said Diane. “If it was him, it shows he knew about this cave. What about Massey?”
Mathews shook his head. “We can track his whereabouts. You know where he was during the Barre murders. He could have done them, but at the time of the Watson murders he was in Atlanta staying in a cheap motel with Tammy. That’s when they decided to take their vacation from crime until things cooled down. We’ve verified that.”
“What’s the status now on Sheriff Conrad?” asked Diane.
“We’re getting a judge to remove him,” said Agent Mathews. “His behavior has gone far beyond his ability to talk himself out of punitive measures. This new information is even more disturbing. He’ll be off the streets by the end of the day—or tomorrow at most. Since this looks like it may connect to the Barres and the Watsons, I’ll be taking over those cases as well.”
Mathews looked like he was looking forward to slapping Conrad down hard.
Diane just remembered that she hadn’t told Liam about the lab results on the list he found at the campsite—how Korey had brought out the writing. She told Mathews about it first.
“So they were going to break into the Barres’ house,” he said. “Interesting. If they hadn’t been murdered first, they would go to number one on my suspect list.”
“I know,” said Diane. “You might get Liam Dugal to show you where their campsite was. From his description of it, I don’t think that’s the place they were killed, or he would have noticed blood—even after the rainstorm. But I’ll bet it’s near there.”
Diane realized that Frank was nowhere in sight and she hadn’t seen him since she came out of the cave. She was just about to ask Mathews, when Frank came out of the woods.
“I’ve found the kill site,” Frank said.
Chapter 48
“You found what?” said Agent Mathews. “Where have you been, anyway, Frank?”
“I thought I’d take a look around the area. I found a trail of da
maged underbrush and followed it to a stream just a few yards down there.” Frank gestured to the north and turned to Diane and grinned at her. “Glad to see you aboveground.”
“We didn’t get to do much sightseeing,” she said, “but we found the bodies.”
“You need to bring your bag of magic tricks and follow me,” Frank said.
“This day is just going to go on forever,” said Mathews. “I’ve still got to take Massey over to his pasture to find the bodies he buried. Well, hell . . . not that I don’t appreciate finding more evidence, but I really hate being out in the woods,” he said. “Let’s go look. Then I’ll leave you and Diane here to take care of this site and I’ll go on to Massey’s pasture.” He turned to Diane. “I think the Rosewood morgue will be quicker to get to and leave these bodies. I’ll send a couple of agents over with them. I’ll take your suggestion and damn the consequences. I’ll tell the bureaucrats they can get their butts out in this tick-infested jungle if they’re not happy with the way I handle it.” He swatted his arm.
Diane left the cave evidence with the GBI agents and called Neva over with the crime scene kit. Frank led them through the tangle of underbrush, showing them the damaged and flattened plants along the way. The rains had helped many of them stand back up, but Diane could still see a definite path.
“When I saw the damaged brush, I figured they might have dragged the bodies from the creek to the cave,” Frank said.
The trip through the woods reminded Diane of her earlier one that dark, rainy night when the brush and small trees whipped her legs and arms and stung her face. Only this time she had supportive company and it was light and she was dressed for the trip.
They arrived shortly at a creek filled with rounded rocks and bordered with ferns. As they began their examination of the area, Diane saw that Mike and Liam had tagged along. She caught a glimpse of them coming through the thick green brush. She also noted that they had lagged behind at a distance. Not an easy feat with Mathews going so slowly, but it was probably his string of nonstop complaints along the way that had drowned out the noise of their movement behind them through the underbrush.
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