LC 02 - Questionable Remains (23 page)

The van stopped. She felt the gun at the back of her head.
She heard the driver's door open, then the side door slid
open and someone climbed in. She was grabbed by both
arms and hauled out of the van. The ground she walked on
was soft, like a wooded area. She felt brush against her legs
and heard the soft crunch of forest litter. She was trying to
decide when to make her move, but both men held her
tight. Maybe someone did just want to talk to her. No! she
thought sternly to herself. Don't believe the lie. She kicked the
leg of the captor whom she thought had the gun. He yelled
and let go of her arm. She struggled with the other one. He wrapped his arms around her, pinning both her arms
against her.

"Stop it," he whispered. "Don't make this any harder
than it is. He told you he didn't want to shoot you. Now
stop."

Lindsay stopped. When he relaxed his grip she ran free
while trying to get the sack off her head. She pulled it off
just in time to avoid a tree. She ran as fast as she could, but
the man caught up with her and tackled her to the ground.
She could see the entrance to a cave like a yawning mouth
before her. Boards had been torn from the entrance and
thrown aside. There was no doubt in her mind which cave
this was. She saw one of her captors carrying a backpack.
He was dressed in coveralls from a window-cleaning company, and he had a ski mask over his face. She thought of
Denny Ferguson. The man also had latex gloves on his
hands. The other man, the one holding her pinned to the
ground was probably disguised the same way. They were
not even going to let her know who was killing her. She
struggled, but the man was too heavy on top of her.

"Come help me," he yelled. "She's damn strong."

The man dropped the backpack to the ground and came
over. He wore hiking boots. She flinched, ready for him to
kick her in the face, but he didn't. He put the gun against
her temple.

"Get up. No more trouble or we'll end it here."

She rose. The other man helped her up while telling her to
put her hands behind her head and lace her fingers. She complied. The first man held a gun on her while the other one got
the backpack. He was dressed exactly like the first one. They
could have been identical twins for all she could tell.

They marched her into the cave. It was damp, earthy
smelling, and very cool. "Put on this backpack." They handed it to her and again she complied.

"Now keep going." They prodded her and turned on
flashlights.

Lindsay understood their plan now. While investigating
the cave where the accident happened, she would have a
tragic accident herself. She would be found with caving
equipment, and there would be no unexplained bruises if
she was found before she decomposed. It would be as tidy
as the last one was supposed to be. John West was right. She
was stuck on a tar-man, and no wolf would be along that
she could entice to take her place.

They walked through a short corridor into a chamber
with rubble piled here and there and against the walls,
away from the center. It smelled musty and damp. This was
the place it happened last time. One of the men, the one
without the gun, walked over to retrieve some equipment
stashed behind rocks. The other set his flashlight down and
dug in his pocket with his free hand. Lindsay was standing
between the two men. With one rapid motion she reached
and grabbed the flashlight and swung it hard, hitting the
man on the temple. The other one turned and started for
her. She ran through an opening deeper into the cave.
Suddenly, after a few slippery feet she was sliding down a
slick surface. It was like a water slide with a thin sheet of
water. Instinctively, she clutched the flashlight. She slid for
an eternity, the walls of the cave a mere kaleidoscopic flicker as the light of the flashlight illuminated her passage like
a strobe. Then she was in the air, but only for a second. She
hit something, slid farther for several moments, then rolled
off onto the ground, rolled again, and stopped. She lay
there, numb, afraid to move. There was no sound but her
heart beating furiously in her ears. The flashlight was still
on, and she moved the light around the chamber. She saw a
beautiful cascade of stalactites with stalagmites growing up
to meet them. The long water slide was like a lava flow. She
couldn't see the top, even with the light. She heard a mild
explosion and a vibration. After several moments, debris
came sliding down the flow. Lindsay realized they had
sealed the entrance to the cave.

IT WAS DARK, pitch black except for the small circle of
light produced by the flashlight reflecting off the ground
and a distant wall. Lindsay stood up on shaky legs. She
could stand. Her legs weren't broken. She took a couple of
steps. They weren't sprained, but she limped slightly from
sore joints. Lucky. She set the flashlight down and felt her
arms and sides. Her clothes were torn. She felt numb in
places, but she believed she was unhurt. She took the flashlight and looked around the chamber, more methodically
this time. The walls curved upward to form the domed ceiling. Roughly twenty by twenty, the chamber was like a
cathedral-alien and beautiful.

She walked to the base of the flowstone. This must be the
Hell Slide, she thought. Aptly named. She shone her light
toward the top of the slide again, but couldn't see it because
of the way the flow curved. She traced the light down the
slide and caught her breath. The slide was interrupted partway down by a gap, an abyss. The chasm was a few feet
across and the slide started again. That must have been
when she was airborne. As if on skis, she had leaped across
the crevasse and slid to the center of the earth.

Lindsay felt a heaviness on her back and realized she was
still wearing the backpack. She took it off, opened the flaps,
and began taking inventory of what was in it. There was a trowel-her own trowel-and three nutri-bars, also her
own. When did they get her trowel and her nutri-bars?
There were batteries-batteries, she hadn't thought about
batteries. She looked at the flashlight as if it might treacherously go out at any minute. She would have to conserve the
batteries. No light. No life. She clutched it and turned off the
switch and was plunged into absolute darkness. She looked
around her for anything, any pinpoint of light anywhere,
any reflection, any shining thing. Nothing. She wondered if
blind people were in this kind of darkness. The darkness
was like a thing itself, substantial, smothering. Her situation
hit her like a solid object slamming her body, knocking the
wind from her, catching her throat. She was lost in a way
few people are ever lost, buried alive in the bowels of the
earth, and no one knew where she was-no one, that is,
who wanted her found.

"Oh, God," she choked, "please, don't let this be true."
She started to cry-a desperate, frightened crying that
echoed throughout the cave. If her crying were heard by
anything, it would have sounded like the dreadful mourning of a lost spirit. Lindsay cried as she had never cried
before, a gut-wrenching sobbing that made her stomach
heave. Never had she been this frightened or felt this hopeless or been this lost.

She lay in the dark for a long time, hiccuping from her
crying, pain creeping into her body, replacing the numbness. She thought of Derrick, wishing he would come to her
rescue. She thought of her family, never to know what had
happened to her, their lives ruined by her disappearance.
Then she thought of Harley Davidson.

Harley, her seventh-grade boyfriend-her first boyfriend-had been named by parents who loved motorcycles and had spent a big part of their youth on one. He had
not been her parents' choice of a boyfriend for her, but
Lindsay had liked him.

Unlike his parents, Harley didn't like motorcycles. His passion was caves. He loved caving. Mammoth Cave was
his favorite place in the world. He talked to Lindsay all the
time about caves and caving. She learned from his friends
that he was a pretty good caver.

There was a place he'd had to show her: a cavern covered
in gypsum blossoms-white crystal florets made when
water seeps into the dry passages and evaporates, leaving
behind the deposit of gypsum. It was beautiful. They'd had
to drop into the cavern using a rope, but it had been worth
it. Harley had been good with the rope, she remembered.
He'd also brought a couple of friends to stay outside and
wait for them. Harley had always said that caves are safe if
people are safe.

When they'd returned to the surface, their parents had
been waiting for them. Lindsay had never seen her mother
and father so angry. Neither had spoken to her on the way
home. That event prompted her father to tell her that a life
with Harley was not what they were raising her for and that
she had to stop seeing him. Her mother, often sympathetic
to Lindsay in disagreements with her father, was not sympathetic on the matter of Harley Davidson. They argued,
but in the end Lindsay had done what she always didobeyed her parents. But for a month, every evening when
her father came home, he had been greeted with the song
"Leader of the Pack, " a song about a girl whose father
made her stop seeing her motorcyclist boyfriend.
Despondent, he had a wreck and was killed rather dramatically. After a month Lindsay's father had asked her to
please stop, that someday she would thank him. She'd told
him she would never thank him, but that she would stop
playing the song. Harley had grown up to be a lawyer and
was currently running for the state senate in Kentucky.
Lindsay had framed the announcement when she had seen
it and sent it to her father.

Now, Lindsay wished she had paid closer attention to
Harley when he'd talked about caves, which he had done so incessantly that often she hadn't paid attention to what he
said, but simply listened to his voice. She tried recalling his
voice now.

She sat up and turned on her flashlight. She continued
the inventory of things she had with her. There was a pencil and paper, a tape measure-all belonging to her. Her kidnappers had packed some aluminum foil, a waterproof case
with matches, candles, an extra bulb for the flashlight, and
a magnifying glass-she wondered what that was for. The
cache cheered her. There were a lot of useful items. She
thought of Clay talking about how Jennifer Darnell planned
things as if they were actually going to be carried out. That
was Jennifer's genius. Lindsay wondered if this was her
work. Were they going to kill her, crush her skull, and place
her in the cave? Make it look as if she had gone there to
investigate and some of the debris fell on her and killed her?
Tragic. But then what was an amateur doing in a dangerous
cave where experts had been killed? Foolish girl. But at least
she had taken the right caving things with her.

Anger washed over her, momentarily covering the fear.
She turned her attention back to the inventory. There was
fishing line and her own pocketknife. They had taken several things from her motel room after all, and from her
Rover as well. Lindsay knew what most of the things were
to be used for; she remembered Harley talking about them.
She remembered him getting things ready for their foray
into Feather Cave. Whoever had prepared her death backpack was a caver.

Many caves had several entrances; this one would, too,
she told herself. Lindsay took off her belt and threaded it
through the handle of the flashlight. She buckled and further
secured the belt by tying fishing line through the buckle and
one of the belt holes. She couldn't afford to lose the light. She
put the belt over her head and around her shoulder so that
she carried the flashlight more or less under her arm.

"Okay," she said to herself. "That will work." Her own voice sounded strange to her ears. Too breathy, too shaky. Be
calm, she told herself. Her hands shook as she worked.

She repacked the backpack and put it on, securing the
straps around her waist. She looked at her watch. It was
broken. She almost started to cry again.

"No," she said aloud. "I'll get out of this. I will. The watch
is not important."

She started by shining the light on the ground around
her. She examined the slide again, looking for a way up the
flowstone. It was steep and slick. The chasm she had flown
across was too wide to jump. She walked carefully to the
wall of the chamber, watching where her feet would go on
each step. Caves have a lot of drop-offs, Harley had told her.
She made her way carefully along the circumference of the
chamber, looking for a way out. She was almost in despair
again when she found the entrance to a large opening. It
was across a chasm, but the gap was only a few feet, perhaps five, a distance she could jump. And it had a ledge in
front of it, but it was damp and probably slippery. If she fell
here, she would become wedged between the narrow walls
of the crevice, where she would die-suffocate from slipping deeper between the narrow walls or from dehydration
and despair. The prospect terrified her. I can't, she thought.
Oh, God, I can't.

She thought of the famous death of Floyd Collins in a
Kentucky cave. It was a horrific story that everyone in
Kentucky knew. It happened in 1927, but even small children could tell you the story today. A newspaper reporter
had crawled near the spot where Floyd was wedged, and
the whole nation had watched through his newspaper
reports the sad and lonely death that took days. But she
wouldn't be another Floyd Collins. There was no one here
to see her die.

She raked her fingers through her hair. "What am I going
to do? Damn, what am I going to do?" She heard the words
echoing in the cave and realized she had said them aloud. What if I get across to the opening and it's a dead end? Then
what? She said this silently to herself.

Lindsay shone her light into the opening. It looked like a
passageway. The walls were limestone, scalloped with
small, scale-shaped indentations. Lindsay tried to remember her geology. Small scallops, fast water. The passage was
narrow. That fit also. Narrow passages, fast water. This passage had been shaped by fast water flowing through it.
Then did that mean it was probably not a dead end? Yes.
She remembered now. The steep side of the scallops were
upstream. The steep side was away from her. That meant
the water flowed in her direction. That also meant that the
passage went up. Didn't it? She couldn't tell from her vantage point, but she was filled with hope. If she could find
passages that led up, she would find a way out.