Adrienne swung the pot that was in her hand. Not to throw it at him, but drenching him with the water that it contained. At least, Erin hoped it was water. Samuel yelped and ran away. Adrienne lowered the pot and looked at Erin, the corner of her mouth twitching. Vic burst into peals of laughter. Erin tried to keep a straight face but was unable to stop a huge grin from splitting her face.
After the tension that had dominated the conversation, it was a huge relief to laugh at little Samuel getting soaked by his mother. The three of them just shook their heads and laughed, relaxing for the first time. Adrienne set her pot down on the ground.
“I declare… when I was a young ’un, I thought my parents knew everything, including how to raise a family. It is terrifying to think that they didn’t have any better idea than I do now. You’re just winging it every day. Right, wrong, you have no clue.” She gave a single laugh. “Don’t ever have children.”
“It looks very… challenging,” Vic said, still trying to smother her giggles.
“And it’s twice as challenging as it looks. Or a hundred times. Hundreds of little decisions every day, and I don’t think more than half of them are right. It’s a wonder any of them survive childhood.” She sobered suddenly and looked away.
Death wasn’t funny. Not when their community had been touched by it so recently. Soaking a pouting child with water was funny. Thinking about their deaths was not.
“Sorry,” Erin said, though she wasn’t sure what she was actually apologizing for. For reminding Adrienne about what had happened? For coming out and bothering her again, when they just wanted to be left alone?
Sorry for all of the challenges that had brought Adrienne to that place.
Adrienne sighed. “There has been so much going on. Too much, I think. We’re all feeling it. I know you’ve been trying to be kind and helpful. It’s just come at a really bad time, and we’re not very trusting of outsiders. You want to be nice, but you don’t know how disconcerting it is for us to deal with this behavior.”
“With what? With being nice?”
Adrienne nodded, then wrinkled her nose and scratched her ear. “When you’re not used to it… when all you’re used to is people ignoring you, or chasing your kids off, or shouting at you to get a job… then having someone go against all of those conventions and treat you like a real person… I don’t know what to do with that. I’m sure it’s the same for Jenny. We’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop. To find out what’s really behind all of this nice behavior.”
Erin nodded slowly, understanding. She knew how anxious she would get at a foster home that she’d only been at for a few days, trying to discern where the dangers were. She would be very off balance until she figured out the rules and the personalities of a new place.
“Well, I’m sorry,” Erin said, tongue in cheek, “for being so nice.”
Adrienne smiled and nodded. She looked in the direction the children had run. “I think I’d better check in and make sure that they’re staying together and no one has fallen into the water. You ladies… can get on your way.”
Erin and Vic nodded and headed back toward the truck.
Chapter 38
As they walked toward the truck, Erin looked back over her shoulder toward Adrienne and the tents. Adrienne was soon out of sight, walking into the trees behind the tents to check on the children—or to escape Erin’s and Vic’s prying eyes.
Vic called Nilla to her and struggled for a minute to get the leash back on him. “You’ve had your fun now, it’s time to settle down to go home.”
Erin looked in Adrienne’s direction once more.
“Can we look at the cave again?”
Vic raised her brows in disbelief. “You want to go see a cave?”
“Well… yes. Not to explore it. Just to see it again, and think.”
“Why?”
“Why are they camped so close to it? Why do they care about being close to the cave? I mean, Rip wanted to mine it, if Willie is right. But he’s gone now. Is Adrienne going to mine it? Her husband, if he shows up again? Why does she care about being close to it?”
“I don’t know.” Vic shrugged. “I think it’s more that she wants to be close to the rest of the settlement, not that she wants to be close to the cave.”
Adrienne had said that she would not stay there for long; she didn’t want to be close to the place where Rip had been killed.
“But if she and Jenny are such good friends, why isn’t she on the other side? Closer to Jenny? It would be farther away from the cave, but that doesn’t really matter. Does it?”
Vic shrugged and led the way toward the cave again. The sky was getting dark, and she grabbed a flashlight out of the truck before heading into the bush. Erin tried to ignore the thumping of her heart. She wasn’t afraid of the dark. She didn’t even have to go into the cave. She just wanted to go over there again, to think about it, and to try to understand what appeal it had other than the possibility of mining minerals.
It seemed like it was farther away than it had been the first time Vic had taken her to it. Maybe the dimness made things appear farther away. Maybe it was her anxiety that made it feel like it was taking longer to get there. She started to worry that Vic had taken her in the wrong direction or walked by it, missing it. But then she saw the rock face, glowing dimly in the falling dark. Vic ran her flashlight along the wall. Nothing appeared to be any different from the last time they had been there. Nothing seemed to be wrong or out of place. Erin followed Vic to the mouth of the cave.
“Come in with me,” Vic suggested.
“No, I can’t.”
“I don’t want to go in there myself. If you want to figure out what Adrienne is here for, you need to come in with me. You’re the one who wants to see.”
“You can just take pictures, like last time.”
“Showing you a picture on a little tiny screen isn’t going to give you a sense of what it’s like in there. And anything smaller than my head isn’t even going to be visible on the screen.”
“I can’t go inside a cave.”
“It’s been a long time since you were hurt,” Vic said reasonably. “Nothing is going to happen to you in here. We go in, we take a look around, and we come out. There isn’t anyone else here that’s going to bother us. No one knows that we’re here, so it isn’t like they might have set a trap for us. There isn’t going to be a cave-in here.”
Any of those things could happen. Erin didn’t believe that it was safe to walk into the cave and then back out again. Her experiences had taught her otherwise.
“Vic. Can’t you just go have a peek?”
Vic held the flashlight toward her. “Why don’t you take the light and go in first, so that you can see everything. You won’t be afraid if you can see.”
Nilla was scratching around, sniffing at all of the plants and rocks at the cave entrance. He scraped at the dirt with his back feet and then strained toward the cave to go inside and investigate. The furry little beast didn’t even have enough sense to be scared.
“Nilla. Let’s go back to the truck,” Erin called.
Vic shook her head. “Not yet. Come in and see what it is you were looking for. I’ll let Nilla in first and then you’ll know there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“Just because he doesn’t have any sense?”
“No. Because if there was anything to be afraid of, he would get eaten first.”
Erin laughed.
“Come on.” Vic motioned Erin toward the cave, and pressed the flashlight into her hand. “Turn on the light.”
Erin did.
“Shine it into the mouth of the cave.”
Erin got a little closer and shone the light inside. It was a strong light and lit up the interior well. Just a lot of rock. No one lurking inside. The floor of the cave was sort of sandy. There wasn’t a lot of loose rock. The walls were jagged, glistening in the light and throwing odd shadows.
The entrance ‘room’ was large and, with the l
ight on, it didn’t seem that dangerous.
“Send Nilla in,” she told Vic.
Vic gave a laugh and did so, letting Nilla off of the leash once more. She didn’t have to tell him to go in; he was already straining to explore it. Erin crept in after him.
“I don’t know if this is a very good idea.”
“You’re not going to know until you try it. I don’t think it’s that bad. Nothing is going to happen.”
Vic followed close behind her. Erin felt comforted rather than crowded to have Vic on her heels.
“To the right?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Erin followed the curve of the walls, finding her way through open spaces and then smaller crevices. But none of them were too small. She didn’t have to crawl on her belly. They were, of course, large enough for a man to get through. Because Rip had gone in there, and the police had gone in there. They would only have to duck or to turn sideways.
There were a couple of places where Vic needed to show her where the passage was but, in a few minutes, Erin could hear the musical tinkling of the underground stream as it flowed over the rocks and then dribbled into a pool. Erin stepped into the larger room, like a dwarfen hall. She shone her flashlight around, looking for anything out of place.
“You see?” Vic said. “Just like my pictures. Only better.”
Erin kept shining the light all around them, right up to the farthest corners of the room. She took a couple of steps toward the pool. She was determined not to go too close to the water. She didn’t want to see the horror that Vic had seen that day when Willie had taken her there spelunking even in her mind’s eye.
“Get closer,” Vic urged.
Erin shook her head. “This is close enough.”
“There’s something in there.”
Erin closed her eyes. It was dark. She opened them again. She didn’t want to be in the dark. But she didn’t want to see what was in the pool, either. Another body? A blind white fish? She didn’t want to know what it was. Not at all.
Vic got closer to the pool. “Give me the light, then.”
Erin shook her head. The light was hers. No one else was going to get control of it.
“Then shine it over here,” Vic insisted.
Erin shone it at the pool without getting any closer, keeping her eyes averted from it. Vic bent over. She laughed. “Well, I don’t think it’s anything you need to worry about,” she said.
Erin looked reluctantly over to Vic. A fish, then? A cave salamander? Something harmless, but undoubtedly slimy and gross.
“What is it?”
“A fridge.”
“What?” Erin frowned and squinted toward the pool. There was no big, square, white fridge. She would have noticed something like that.
“They’re using it as a fridge.” Vic dipped her hand into the flowing water. “It’s freezing cold. Must come from snow runoff higher in the mountains.”
Erin shuffled closer. There were bottles of juice, some condiment jars, a few items that were weighted down with rocks. Jenny had said that they used the stream to keep things cold. Erin had assumed she meant an outside stream. But the cave would be better. Fewer animals around. Maybe they couldn’t smell any food smells once the items were in the water.
“These are some of the things that I gave Jenny.”
“Then it looked like your plan worked. She did share it with the others in the community who needed it.”
Erin nodded. She was still worried about looking into the pool and imagining Rip’s remains there, but she was curious about seeing the crime scene, sterile as it appeared to be. She looked around the cave slowly.
“So… they think that Rip was hit somewhere over there,” Erin waved at the opposite side of the cave, “and then dragged into the pool.”
“Yeah. The blood they found and the rock were over there.”
“The rock?”
“Uh… the murder weapon,” Vic said, looking embarrassed. She had been careful before not to say what the weapon had been, not wanting Erin to have to picture it.
“A rock. So… it wasn’t a premeditated murder. He wasn’t shot or stabbed. Someone picked up what was already here, in the cave.” There were a few loose rocks of various sizes around the cave. “It was spur of the moment. Anger or maybe self-defense.”
“Yeah, that would fit.”
“Two people… who knew and trusted each other.”
“Maybe,” Vic was less confident in that answer.
“Would you go into a cave with someone you didn’t trust?”
Vic considered this. “No,” she agreed finally. “I guess I wouldn’t.”
Erin sat down on a large rock, considering. “The Ryders had already been using the cave. Willie had tried to kick them out a couple of times. Jenny said they used the stream as a fridge.”
“Right. They knew about the cave, the stream, and the pool. Rip was going to mine it. Jenny was using it to keep food from spoiling.”
“But there wasn’t any food in it when you found… him.”
Vic shook her head. “No. But they might have run out of perishables. They wouldn’t get too many things at a time that needed to be refrigerated. They might have eaten everything they had purchased. All of the foods that might spoil.”
“Is it possible that Jenny didn’t know that Rip’s body was in here?”
They were both quiet for a long time.
“Maybe… she had the baby and was still too sore to come this far,” Vic suggested.
“The baby was born on the third. What day did Rip die?”
“You’d have to ask Terry what they have it narrowed down to now. I know it was around that time, but I don’t think they have an exact date.”
“So… she had the baby, Rip disappeared and she didn’t look for him? And didn’t come in here for anything?”
“No. Why would she? If she knew they were out of food, she wouldn’t come here for that. If she thought that Rip had taken off on her, then why would she come here? She would assume that he was in town or the city, not that he was lying in a cave somewhere.”
Erin got up, walked to the opposite side of the cave and back again. She tried to connect everything up in her head.
“He was too big for one of the women to move him.”
Vic agreed immediately. “He wasn’t a featherweight. She would be pulling someone almost twice her weight, with lots of friction with the floor to slow her down. And why even do that? Why move him at all?”
Erin went over to the stream and the pool and prodded at the rocks.
“How big was the rock that was used to kill him?”
Vic considered them, measuring them in her mind against what she remembered before the police had taken over the scene. “Maybe… like that one,” she said, tapping one with her toe.
Erin handed Vic the flashlight. She bent over and picked the rock up, testing how much it weighed, how easy or hard it would have been for a woman a little bigger than she was, used to outdoor chores and wrangling children, to lift and use as a tool. It was heavy and awkward, but would not be impossible for her to use, especially not if she were angry. If Rip had confessed to infidelity or gambling away their last cent, Jenny could have been very angry.
“But she was pregnant,” Vic pointed out. “I don’t know if you could do that if you were pregnant.”
Erin lowered the rock, then tossed it back in the direction of the tumble of rocks she had taken it from. It landed on a different side, and Erin could see something scratched into it. She got closer, squinting, to make it out.
Chapter 39
IKE
It was in large, untidy letters.
Maybe the child himself had scratched it in. Five-year-old Ike. Erin stared down at it, her mind whirling, trying to put everything together in a way that made sense.
“What is it?” Vic asked, bending down and shining the light on it to read it herself. She looked back at Erin, baffled. “What?”
“I don’t think
he could have scratched that in himself,” Erin said, arguing against the first thought that had occurred to her. “These are really hard. It’s not like writing with pencil and paper. And he was only five.”
Vic picked up a smaller rock from the ground of the cave and tried to imitate the scratchings on the rock that Erin had dropped. Her attempt was not very effective. Her scratchings were fainter than the ones on Erin’s rock.
“No… I don’t think a five-year-old did that,” she agreed.
“What are you doing here?”
Erin shot to her feet, startled by the sharp voice. They both whirled around to face the doorway to the cave, the only direction they could go if they wanted to get out. A man stood blocking the passageway, shoulders broad, a shotgun in his hands. The man from the settlement. Wiseman.
Vic swore under her breath. Erin saw her hand twitch in the direction of her bra holster, but it was going to be too awkward to get at. She wouldn’t be able to draw her weapon with the man already holding his shotgun on them.
“We’re just looking around,” Erin said lightly. “We wanted to see where it was that Rip died. Just… curiosity.”
He didn’t believe a word she said. “You’ve already seen it.”
“Well… Vic did,” Erin admitted. “But I didn’t.”
He looked back and forth between them. “Why couldn’t you just go away and stay away? How many times did we tell you? You weren’t invited. You were told to leave. Why couldn’t you leave us alone?”
“I wanted to help,” Erin said lamely.
“This is helping? Prying into our business? Sticking your nose into something that was none of your business?”
“No… I mean… this wasn’t part of it. This was just… trying to understand in my head what had happened. It didn’t make sense.”
“And now you’ve gone and screwed things up.”
Vic looked down at the rock Erin had dropped, and at her attempt to replicate it. “Is this… a headstone? Is that what it is supposed to be? A grave marker?”
He shrugged one shoulder, not admitting it and not moving the gun an inch away from them.
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