Blind Descent Page 14

  A heavy hand closed on her shoulder, the weight of an arm was laid across her chest. “Anna, it’s Curt,” came a whisper in her ear. “Are you okay? Do you know where you are?”

  Whether it was the human contact or the fact her fingers closed around the shaft of the Maglite, she wasn’t sure, but the panic ebbed slightly.

  “The twilight zone?” she whispered back.

  He must have smiled; she felt his beard tickle her cheek. “Do you have to go to the bathroom? Do you want a drink of water?”

  Reassured by the childhood litany, Anna breathed out slowly. “I’m old enough to be your mother,” she said to cover the fact his simple stratagem was working.

  “You’re old enough to be my sister,” he corrected her. “I always thought she was pretty hot stuff. If you let me watch you put on your makeup, I’ll be your slave.”

  “Believe it or not, I’ve been known to wear it.” Lipstick and perfume seemed far away, artifacts from a past life. Reflexively she raised her hand to touch her face, count the creases time had carved there. A furry brush stroked her cheek, and she realized she clutched a feathery rope-end in her fist, caught up, no doubt, in her scrabble from sleep. It took a second to figure out where she’d come by such an oddment. It was the end of one of Lisa’s braids. Stealthily, though the darkness had masked her thievery, Anna put the pigtail back on its owner’s chest.

  Rolling onto her shoulder, she groaned as the bruised flesh reminded her of her transgressions.

  “If I let you use me as a pillow will you stop squirming and go back to sleep?” Curt whispered.

  “I’ll try,” Anna promised.

  Schatz raised his arm so she could move onto her uninjured side and rest her head on his shoulder. Anna didn’t know if he was a Boy Scout, an opportunist, or a friend when she needed one. She didn’t much care. His warmth brought her courage, the sound of his heart beating soothed her like the ticking of a clock is said to soothe orphaned puppies.

  Curt’s breathing evened out, but sleep refused to return for Anna. Shielding the glow so it wouldn’t disturb her bed-mates, Anna flicked on the Mag. Brent was missing, and down the stoop-walk corridor to the rift she could see the water bottle in the “occupied” position. Even the time-honored remedy for insomnia of going to the bathroom and getting a snack was denied her.

  Encased in perfect darkness the meager brilliance of her covered light showed everything clearly. Pressed between Lisa and Holden, Peter lay next to Zeddie. Like she and Curt, they’d found a degree of solace in each other’s arms. Zeddie’s head nestled in the crook of Peter’s neck. His arm and one knee were thrown across her body. The embrace looked practiced; there was an ease of familiarity in the intimacy. Embarrassed, Anna turned off the light. She remembered Sondra’s accusations. “Everybody’s laughing themselves sick at my expense,” Sondra had said, and, “Is there anything you wouldn’t do to make yourself necessary to women?” That smacked of a fight over infidelity. Peter had said something about Frieda, then Sondra said, “Maybe I wasn’t talking about Frieda.” Zeddie. She’d been talking about Zeddie.

  Homicide by avalanche struck Anna as a little over the top to get time alone with one’s inamorata, but if avoiding an ugly divorce was thrown in as an added inducement it might tip the scales.

  The absurdity hit Anna with its obvious counterpart. Peter wasn’t the one with something to gain in the rockfall. Sondra said she was going ahead. As far as they knew, she was the last to head up for the Distributor Cap. An avalanche had started. She was out free. Her husband and his lover were trapped, possibly dead.

  Holy smoke, Anna thought, consciously using one of the newly proffered cowboy curses. Following this epiphany was a wave of white-hot fury that shook her so hard she clenched her fists in Schatz’s shirt and he swatted at her like a man conditioned to sleeping with pesky felines. An act of God or Mother Nature, Anna would accept. The deadly conniving of her fellow man, never. She could live with the fact that Frieda had lost her life, but not that she’d been robbed of it. Holden was not the only one anxious to know just what had caused the avalanche.

  In a perverse way, Anna hoped it was Sondra. Unless she wanted to spend the rest of her days in jail, she would have to forgo the pleasure of wringing Sondra’s neck but, given the mood she was in, it would feel good to knock her around a bit. Surely a jury would allow her that. After Lechuguilla, a plea of temporary insanity would sound not only believable but probably downright conservative.

  Fantasies of revenge did what counting sheep could not. When next Anna stirred, the others were up and moving. Curt had slipped his bulk from under her and left a cold place at her side. Lying on the dirt floor of the cave, letting the pain of her shoulder bring her slowly into the new “day,” she thought about how long it had been since she’d slept curled in a man’s arms. More than a year. Two summers before, a long-distance affair with an FBI agent had dribbled unspectacularly to a close. On some level, Anna had known it was for the best—too many old wounds on both sides—but she’d never properly laid the affair to rest. Except for the final good-bye over the phone she’d not seen or heard from Frederick again. It was as if they’d never happened. Even her sister, Molly, wasn’t keen to talk about it. That was where Anna might have found what the modern how-to books were calling closure. Without being able to talk a thing to death with her sister, it was hard to truly put it to bed.

  The pure, unadulterated male warmth of Curt’s expedient embrace had awakened dormant memories. Anna groaned and piled her aching self into a sitting position. As near as she could figure, it had been approximately ten thousand years since she’d last seen the sun. Her love life was the least of her worries.

  Holden was already up. Flashlights were set butt-down on the cave floor, forming a makeshift campfire. The dark held few terrors for Tillman; he traded batteries for morale. Anna looked at her watch. They’d slept seven hours. Tillman looked as if he had never closed his eyes, and when he spoke it was a cross between a rasp and a whisper. Stress and the injury to his ankle were costing him. Running on empty, Anna noted, or close to it. The idea alarmed her. She’d worked with guys like Holden before. They’d literally work till they dropped in the traces.

  We’ll be out of here before then, she promised herself. Then she remembered she had a gift for Holden: Sondra McCarty. She would tell him of the suspicions Frieda had had, of her own. If she could prove his choice of anchors hadn’t killed Frieda, she knew a weight the immensity of which she could only guess at would be lifted from him. Even if Sondra was innocent, Anna would gladly throw her to the wolves for Tillman’s peace of mind.

  Opportunity didn’t knock for several hours. Tapping what had to be toxic doses of instant coffee crystals into his lower lip, Holden kept the team together and working. Camp was cleaned and the logistics of what had now become a body recovery were hammered out. The traverse was rerigged using the bridge as an anchor. Because of Holden’s own decency and the sensibilities he granted those around him, Frieda’s remains were handled as if they still housed her soul. Delicacy was the respect the living paid the dead and the respect Tillman showed the cavers who had known Frieda.

  Anna considered herself to be of the “lights out” persuasion; life is there, then it’s gone, as if a switch was flipped. No afterlife, no hauntings, nothing. Here today, gone tomorrow. Regardless of this cherished hardness of heart, she was touched by the care shown the corpse. It allowed her to hold Frieda close a few hours longer if only in tending a home her friend had long since abandoned.

  Taking landmarks from earlier surveys and comparing those measurements with the measurements of the newly existing gout of debris, Holden was estimating the thickness of the slide. Ten hours had passed since the rock had fallen. From his calculations and the sounds from the far side, he predicted it would be less than an hour before the rescuers broke through. As soon as Frieda was retrieved from the bottom of the Pigtail, he would detail three people to dig toward them. More than three could become a dang
er to one another.

  Suggesting he rest his broken ankle got Anna nowhere. To slow him down enough so she could tell her story, she had to appeal to his gallantry. She didn’t need to feign fatigue, merely to capitalize on it. Sitting on the bridge, feet dangling over the abyss, she told him everything. Reproach pulled down his mouth and her heart, but she refused to justify herself for keeping silent about their suspicions. The decision had been Frieda’s. Had the situation been reversed, she would have wanted her wishes respected.

  “You think the doctor’s wife might have started the slide?” he asked after she’d finished.

  “It crossed my mind.”

  “How do you figure she did it?”

  “Pried out a key rock,” Anna suggested. “A rock other rocks hinged on.”

  Holden thought about that for a while, then shook his head. “Pried with what? We didn’t come equipped with shovels or crowbars. A spoon handle is about the biggest lever she could have gotten her hands on.”

  Anna didn’t say anything. She hadn’t thought of that. “Maybe she started it from above the entrance to the Distributor Cap, at the apex of the slide area. Pushed something.”

  “I don’t see how she could have started it, then gotten below it to safety in the Cap.”

  “Maybe she’s buried underneath.”

  Holden nodded slowly. He was too generous to admit that murder, the disintegration of a marriage, were more appealing than the idea that he’d screwed up and lost a patient, but Anna could see the concept growing on him.

  “Well, you know, I could have sworn that anchor was bombproof,” he said finally.

  She waited.

  “Okay. You check it out. With this bum ankle I’m likely to stir up too much trouble. Be careful. Test every step before you trust it. I’ll keep folks clear till you get back. Then we dig.”

  Anna left before he could change his mind.

  The slide was comprised of loam as fine as ash, and rocks with unblunted edges. For each step up she slid half a step back. Dust boiled from under her boots and hands, and she could hear the steady rain of dirt and debris from below. The slide had wiped clean all trace of human passage. Orange tape, footprints, everything was buried. Anna crawled on, wondering just what it was she hoped to find. Instead of cluttering her mind with what-ifs, she opened her eyes to let any and all information register.

  The slide narrowed near the top in an abbreviated cone of loose rubble about twenty feet across. If anything remained to indicate cause, it would be here. Anna stopped, turned, and planted her rump in the soft soil to slow her heart and still her mind before she began tainting the scene with her presence.

  “Got something?” Holden called.

  “Just catching my breath.” From her vantage point she could see the length of the Pigtail. Dust had been carried away on Lechuguilla’s air currents, and the helmet lights of the cavers working on the body recovery moved and winked like fireflies. In a different context Anna might have found it beautiful. At present it served only to remind her how much she’d give for one more glimpse of a summer’s night.

  The last few feet of the climb were the hardest. The way grew increasingly steep and the cushion of soil thinner at each step. Bracing toes and knees in the dirt, she shined her light along the uneven curtain of new-fallen silt. The dirt was uniformly smooth, packed down slightly at one place where it ran the thinnest. No scars indicated rock had been scratched or pried.

  “Anything?”

  “Looking,” she hollered.

  “Come on down. From the sound of things we’re going to have company real soon.” Holden’s voice had gone utterly flat. The small spark that hope of a reprieve had ignited within him had gone out.

  “In a minute.” Anna was determined to find something.

  “Make it short.”

  Anna moved her light across the wall again, but nothing new was revealed. The pitter-patter of earthen rain grew louder.

  “Anna. Now.”

  Loath to give up, she pushed her luck for half a minute more but was none the wiser for it. Before Holden had to embarrass them both by yelling at her a third time, she turned to skitter down. Her light fell on the spot where she’d sat admiring Lucifer’s fireflies. In the soft loam was a smooth-packed place, a perfect butt-print in the silt.

  “Got it,” Anna shouted. “Ten seconds more.” Forgetting she could start another slide, she crawled quickly back up the slope. It was there; the slightly smooth, lightly packed place near the center. Knowing she was onto something she risked the slide potential of the last few feet and pushed herself up near the top of the fall. A butt-print remained where someone had sat, braced their back against the wall, and shoved with their feet. In the fragile drift of fine sand she could make out wrinkles in the fabric and the line of a seam on a rear pocket.

  “Anna!” Below her the dirt was beginning to shift, she was being pulled down. She knew if she fought it she would start another slide that would take her and Lord knew how many pounds of dirt down onto the heads of their saviors.

  Before her eyes the print was vanishing, eaten away as a footprint on the beach is drawn into the sea by the waves.

  “Coming,” she hollered, and turned to slide down on fanny and heels, oblivious to the sharp-edged fragments of limestone that tore at her trousers and arms.

  Someone had been up there, probably had started the slide. Anna must cling to that. With the dark and the dust, the evidence drained into dirt, it could so easily seem a figment of her imagination.

  She would keep it real for herself, for Holden, for Frieda. And she would find who’d made the mark if she had to examine every posterior in New Mexico.

  10

  THE NEXT SEVEN hours passed like a fever dream. With Frieda dead, Anna felt no compunction about rotating out. She climbed, crawled, and crept, a zombie clawing her way from the grave. Under protest but accepting the inevitable, Holden went out with her. Brent, too, took the opportunity to escape. Oscar, Peter, Curt, and Zeddie chose to remain with the new team and continue the body recovery.

  The closer they got to the entrance of Lechuguilla the more desperate Anna became to get out. Emotions, long held in tight rein, began to break their bonds. Claustrophobia returned in force, and she chafed and sweated at each delay. Only the ominous threat of appearing a fool or a blackguard kept her from abandoning Holden and the others to bolt for the surface. By the time they reached the culvert that would release them into the confines of Old Misery Pit, waiting her turn to ascend she had to count in Spanish and recite poems to hold on to the ragged edge of patience. At last the iron trapdoor was closed behind her, and she could smell the world, cold and dry with a faint perfume of desert plants. Ascending the last sixty feet to the surface, she forgot the steady ache from her shoulder in unadulterated joy. Even the dirt smelled alive. Gone was the dank sepulchral odor of soil unblessed by life or light. When she saw her first stars, she croaked out her delight from tired lungs. Night, real honest-to-God night, with planets and dead suns, clouds and breezes. After so long a sojourn underground, even the moonless sky appeared bright and welcoming.

  The glare and hubbub that awaited as she climbed into the narrow oak-filled gap protecting the cave’s entrance was overwhelming. In anticipation of a heartwarming celebration of heroism and perseverance, a great crowd had gathered. News media from all over the country were there with harsh lights and makeup to herald the triumphant return. The news that Frieda died had surfaced only moments before Anna, and the party was in a confusion of changing gears, rewriting copy.

  Nobody wanted to be left out of the limelight; all the NPS brass was in attendance: CACA’s superintendent, the head of resource management, the chief ranger, a sprinkling of bigwigs from Guadalupe Mountains, an hour to the west. A tent had been set up for the rescuers, both those going and those returning. Beer and pizza had been hauled out onto the desert hillside.

  Anna survived a grueling gauntlet of questions, condolences, and congratulations as she stumbled
over the uneven ground toward the tent, where she hoped to hide. As a little fish, she gauged she should be able to slip through the net of cameras and well-wishers without too much difficulty. Not so Holden. Notoriety and a crippled ankle made him an easy target. The last Anna saw of him, he was pinned down by hot lights and microphones. Though sympathetic, she had to laugh. The man was worn out, his mind turned to putty, as was hers. Floodlights had brought down a host of moths, and as the news anchor asked deep and meaningful questions, Holden’s eyes flitted here and there following the flying insects. He looked less like a hero than a complete lunatic. Anna hoped somebody with a VCR was taping the interview. When he’d recovered, she suspected he would enjoy the joke. Any laughter they could glean from this debacle was to be treasured.

  The cavers’ tent, probably borrowed from CACA’s fire cache, was a twenty-by-twenty-foot canvas shelter with flaps that opened at either end. Free of media types and, no doubt because of that, free of brass, the welcome was low key. No amount of hype could seduce them from the single fact that they had gone in to save a fellow caver and they had failed. Anna was hugged by strangers, some smelling nearly as bad as she did; kind words were murmured and a cold beer was pressed into her hands. They seemed to understand that she could not talk and could not stay. No overbearing do-gooder tried to stop her when she slipped out of the rear of the tent.

  The December air was cold on her arms and back. Clad only in tee-shirt and trousers—and those soaked with sweat—she emerged into a winter night, forty-five degrees at best, with a slight wind. Sweat turned to icy patches on her shirt, and the hair on her arms was raised by goose-bumps. Anna revelled in it. Intellectually, she knew the honeymoon would be short-lived, but at the moment she felt she would never again resent the cold of the wind or the heat of the sun. So long as she could feel it, it would remind her that she was alive and aboveground.

  When she’d gone far enough she could still see yet was hidden by the night from prying eyes, she sat down with her back to a small boulder weathered into a thousand tiny crevices, potential homes for all manner of beasties that might be attracted by her warmth: snakes, scorpions, tarantulas, centipedes, lizards. In her exalted state, Anna welcomed them all. Like some deviant Disney heroine, she would spread her metaphorical skirts for all the stinging, biting, scaly creatures of the world. She smiled at the thought of waltzing with a horned lizard to the plaintive strains of “Someday My Prince Will Come,” a bevy of mud wasps holding up the gossamer train of her soiled tee-shirt.