The Night Killer df-8

by Beverly Connor

  In the rising fog, Slick Massey’s house looked one hundred percent spooky. The windows were dark and the porch was sagging as if no one had lived there in years. Slick frowned at the place as his gaze drifted beyond the house to where his empty dog runs stood. Diane thought he looked wistful. She had heard that he was worried about his dogs and wanted to be sure his friend was still caring for them.

  The last to arrive at the house was Liam Dugal. He was invited because he was looking for two lost people, and Slick, in searching for places to put his own bodies, had found two stray ones. Liam nodded to Diane and her team as he walked over their way. Diane noticed he was also dressed appropriately for the business at hand. She hoped he didn’t think he was going inside the cave.

  Diane was surprised that Tammy and Slick had made the deal so quickly. Gil Mathews said Tammy was the one who had collapsed-deflated after Frank told her he had found the money. It might as well have been a death blow. It broke her. Gil said Slick was still convinced they hadn’t done anything wrong.

  Slick’s day was going to be a long one. After he showed them the two bodies he had discovered, he had to show the GBI where he had put the bodies of Tammy’s “patients,” as Slick still called them-that and “the old ladies.”

  “Is it far to the cave?” Agent Mathews asked Slick.

  “Not very far. About three miles,” Slick said.

  “Three miles?” said Mathews. “Are you saying we have to hike three miles through the woods?”

  “Well, yeah,” Slick said. “Like I said, it ain’t far.”

  “You try anything and the deal is off,” said Mathews. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “Like I ain’t been told a million times. Me and Tammy want our deal,” he said.

  “Tell me again why we should believe you didn’t do anything to these two people,” said Gil Mathews.

  Diane thought Gil was simply delaying the hike as long as he could.

  “Well,” said Slick, “I wouldn’t be telling you about ’em if I had killed ’em. I’d have to be pretty stupid. I mean, they might of been murdered or something-not like Tammy’s old ladies.”

  “Maybe you just thought we couldn’t prove you murdered them,” said Agent Mathews.

  “I already seen how you can find out things I didn’t know you’d ever know. Tammy’s seen it too. Like I said, I just found these people. I got tired of digging holes to put Tammy’s patients in and remembered this cave. I thought it’d be a good place to just take them and leave them. But somebody else had the same idea, so I just kept digging holes in my pasture,” he said.

  Mike, who was not familiar with the thought processes of criminals, stared at Slick, astounded. Neva tried not to smile and gave Mike’s hand a squeeze.

  “Well, I guess we’d better get started,” said Mathews. He took out a can of insect repellent and sprayed himself down again.

  Slick led the way, under the eyes of his guards. He quickly found a path that looked like it might be a deer trail, and they followed it.

  Diane and her team carried rope and caving gear, two body bags, and an evidence kit.

  About a mile down the deer trail, Slick veered off of it into the woods.

  “Wait, Slick, where you going?” said Mathews.

  “To the cave,” he said.

  “The trail goes this way,” said Mathews.

  Slick looked at him a moment. “Yeah, but the trail don’t go to the cave. The trail goes to a meadow about a half mile that way.”

  “There’s not a trail to the cave?” asked Mathews, looking at the underbrush.

  “No. The deer don’t go to the cave. They go to water or to meadows. They like to graze in a meadow near the woods.”

  “Are you saying the deer made the trail?” asked Gil.

  This brought a chuckle from several.

  “I can see you are a city boy,” said one of the GBI agents. “Who do you think makes trails through the woods?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it. I guess I thought people did,” said Gil. He laughed at himself. “You’re saying it’s animals?”

  “Deer, fox, coyotes, bears,” said Liam.

  “Bears?” said Gil. “Now I know you’re trying to get to me. We don’t have bears in these woods.”

  “Sometimes we do,” said Slick, “but they’s usually more up in the hills.”

  “You’ve heard about bear sightings in Atlanta, haven’t you?” said Frank. “Where did you think they came from?”

  “The zoo,” said Gil.

  They all laughed.

  “I don’t suppose after all this we can go by Rolly Hennessy’s and see my dogs?” said Slick. “Mary Sue just had her puppies and I’d like to see ’em.”

  “I don’t think so, Slick,” said Mathews. “Get him to send you a picture.”

  “What kind of dogs you got?” asked one of the guards.

  “Walker hounds,” said Slick. “The best in the world. They’s got the sweetest voices you ever heard.”

  “What do they hunt?” asked a GBI agent.

  “Raccoons,” said Slick. “They track ’em down at night and run ’em up a tree. You can tell when they’s running and when they’s treeing by the sound of their voices. You just set back and have a beer and listen to your dogs. The best kind of hunting.”

  “That sounds good to me,” said a guard.

  Liam smiled. “My uncle raises Walker hounds,” he said.

  “Does he?” said Slick, interested. “Do I know him?”

  “He doesn’t live around here,” Liam said. “He’s over in Louisiana.”

  “Hey,” said Slick, “you the one I heard about? That was in the woods that night that fooled me?”

  “What does that mean?” asked Gil.

  Diane thought Gil probably enjoyed the talk. It took his mind off the trek. He was clearly uncomfortable.

  It wasn’t so scary for her in the daytime as it had been that night in the rain. She had seen woods then only as dark, shadowy forms of trees, or in brief flashes from the lightning. It was far prettier in the daylight-with people around.

  “I took Diane’s jacket and laid a false trail,” said Liam to Gil. “Then put it up a tree.”

  “I heard my dogs on the trail and then their voices told me they had her treed-or that’s what I thought. But I also thought it was kind of funny; I mean, women don’t usually climb trees. Leastwise not up high like this one. When I caught up to ’em I could see the jacket way up yonder and I thought it was her. For a while, anyways. I tried to coax her down.” Slick laughed. “Bonnie Blue-Tammy named her for that little girl in Gone With the Wind-Bonnie Blue thought I’d gone crazy. She never seen me try to talk a raccoon out of a tree before.”

  Even Diane had to laugh.

  Slick led them through several turns during the trek and Diane was hoping, like Gil, that he was not trying to pull something. She tried to keep track of where they were going, watching for rock formations, characteristic trees, or creeks. Not that she would have to find her way out alone, but she wanted to develop a habit of knowing where she was. Mike, Neva, and Frank were far better than she at finding their way around-though Frank was better in a city environment. Still, he seemed to have a natural sense of direction.

  “We’re ’bout there,” said Slick, as he led them over a log across a creek and through a thicket.

  This was the densest underbrush they had been through so far. Diane heard Gil moan as he pulled his pant leg loose from briars that had entangled him. The thicket didn’t open up, but seemed to get even more dense.

  “I swear, Slick Massey,” said Gil, “if you’re pulling something-”

  “No, it’s right here,” said Slick.

  They were in the midst of a thick copse of trees at the foot of a hill.

  “You know, fella,” said one of the guards, “getting here with a body couldn’t possibly be any easier than digging a hole in your meadow.”

  “I don’t see anything,” said Gil.

  But Diane did. Th
en again, she knew what to look for. The cave was in the side of the hill-a small slit through crumbling rocks.

  Chapter 46

  “There it is,” said Slick, pointing to the irregular hole in the side of the hill.

  “That?” said Agent Gil Mathews. “That’s it? I told you, Massey, you screw with me and I’ll bury you.”

  “That’s the cave,” said Slick. “I’m not screwing with you.”

  The entrance to the cave was small, but big enough for even a large man to squeeze through, Diane observed. Perhaps Mathews was expecting walkways and a handrail and that everyone would be able to just stroll in. This entrance was what you might expect for an undeveloped cave in the wild. It occurred to Diane that Mathews would have really been undone by a vertical entrance that dropped straight into the ground.

  “Where are the bodies?” Diane asked Slick.

  “Okay,” said Slick, “once you get in the cave, you’re in this room, see. It’s about as big as a room in a house. It’s kind of nice. I used to play in it when I was a kid. There’s a tunnel on the right that kind of goes down. You got to stoop to walk through it, but it ain’t long, just a few feet. Okay, then to the left you come to another tunnel. You can stand up in it. It goes on about ten feet, then opens to kind of a little room on the left. You got to watch out there, ’cause just a little ways in there’s a drop-off of. . like, maybe fifteen feet. That’s where the bodies is.”

  “Is he on the level?” asked Mathews.

  “We won’t know until we get there,” said Diane, “but I have no reason to doubt him right now.”

  “This doesn’t look like any kind of cave I’m familiar with,” said Mathews.

  Ah, thought Diane. She was right. “What kind of caves are you familiar with?” she asked.

  “None, really, but I visited Mammoth Cave when I was a kid,” he said.

  “Caves have all kinds of openings,” she said. “This isn’t unusual.”

  Mathews nodded. “Frank says you do this for fun,” he said. “Doesn’t look like much fun to me.”

  “There’s hardly anyplace I’d rather be,” said Diane, smiling.

  Mathews shook his head to indicate his utter lack of understanding of the appeal.

  Diane, Neva, and Mike tested their flashlights and hard-hat lamps. They organized their rope and double-checked their gear. Frank walked over to Diane as she and the others were preparing themselves.

  “You think he’s telling the truth?” He nodded toward Slick, who had found a boulder to sit on and wait.

  “We’ll see,” said Diane. “You sure you don’t want to take up caving with me?”

  “I’m sure,” said Frank. “Somehow, slipping through that little hole has no appeal to me at all.”

  “That’s a fairly large hole,” said Diane. “We’ve been through much smaller entrances than that.” She looked at him for a moment, smiling. “This isn’t a big deal. Were it not for the fact that we’re here to retrieve bodies, I would be having a great time. It sounds like an interesting cave.”

  Frank smiled back. “Have you ever met a cave that you didn’t find interesting?”

  “Some more than others,” she said.

  Liam was speaking with Slick. From what Diane could hear, it was about the bodies. It sounded as if Liam was trying to find some clue as to whether they were the couple he was looking for. She imagined he hated the idea of telling his client his daughter was dead, her body dumped in a cave.

  “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.
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br />   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.