It had been Dorothy, Lis recalled, who’d heard that the weather the next Sunday was supposed to be particularly beautiful and had suggested the picnic.
“And who was Claire?”
Eighteen years old, the girl had been in Lis’s English class her sophomore year. She was intensely shy, with a pale, heart-shaped face. “She was somebody,” Lis explained, “you hoped wouldn’t become too beautiful because it seemed there was no way she could handle the attention.”
But beautiful she was. Seeing her on the first day of class, several years ago, Lis was struck immediately by the girl’s ethereal face, still eyes and long, delicate fingers. Teachers peg students instantly, and Lis had felt an immediate fondness for Claire. She’d made an effort to stay in touch as the girl made her way through her junior then senior years. Lis rarely singled out any youngsters from school; only on one or two other occasions had she maintained relationships with students, or former students, outside of class. She generally kept her distance, aware of the power she had over these young people. When she wore light-colored blouses she noticed boys’ eyes lose control and dart across her chest while their cheeks grew red and their penises, she supposed, irrepressibly hard. The shy or unattractive girls worshipped her; those in the inner clique were disdaining and jealous-for no reason other than that Lis was a woman, and they were not quite. She handled all of these feelings with consummate dignity and care, and usually kept home and classroom absolutely separate.
But she made an exception for Claire. The girl’s mother was a drunk and the woman’s boyfriend had served time for sexual abuse of a stepchild in a prior marriage. When Lis learned Claire’s history, she began letting the girl into her life in small ways-occasionally asking her to help in her greenhouse or to attend Sunday-afternoon brunches. Lis knew this attraction to the girl had an enigmatic, almost a dangerous, side-the time, for instance, that Claire had stayed after class to discuss a book report. Lis noticed a tangle in the girl’s shimmery blond strands and with her own brush began working it out. Suddenly, she realized: teacher-student contact, with the door closed! Lis virtually leapt from her chair, away from the startled girl, and vowed to be more circumspect.
Still, over the past two years, they’d seen each other often, and when Claire mentioned wistfully on the Friday before the picnic that her mother would be away all Sunday, Lis didn’t hesitate to invite her along.
That May 1 the picnickers set up camp on Rocky Point Beach. Portia left immediately for a run-an improvised 10K through the winding canyons. She runs marathons, Lis told Kohler.
“So do I,” the doctor said.
Lis laughed, astonished, as ever, that people actually engaged in this sport for fun.
“We sat on the beach for a while, Dorothy, Robert, Claire and I. Watching the boats. You know, just chatting and drinking soda and beer.”
They had been there for about a half hour when Dorothy and Robert began to argue.
Dorothy had left Lis’s book in the truck. “Hamlet,” she explained. She’d been preparing for final exams and had carted along a well-read and annotated volume. “I had my hands full with picnic things and Dorothy said she’d get the book. But it had slipped her mind.” Lis had told her not to worry; she wasn’t in the mood to work anyway. But Robert leapt up and said he’d get it. Then Dorothy made some sour comment about his doing anything for anybody in a skirt. It was supposed to be a joke, Lis supposed, but it fell flat-since she’d managed to insult both Lis and Robert at the same time.
“Robert asked her what she meant by that. Dorothy waved her hand and said, ‘Just go get the fucking book, why don’t you?’ Something like that. Then she told him he ought to jog all the way to the parking lot. ‘Work off some of that fat. Look, he’s getting tits.’ ”
Lis was embarrassed for Claire’s sake. Robert jogged off angrily and Dorothy sullenly returned to her magazine.
Lis had pulled off her shorts and unbuttoned her workshirt, beneath which she wore a bikini. She lay back on a warm rock and closed her eyes, trying not to go to sleep (daytime naps are taboo for insomniacs). Claire, with whom Robert had struck up an immediate friendship en route to the beach, had seemed the most anxious of anyone for him to return. After he’d been gone a half hour, she stood and said she was going to look for him. Lis had watched the girl as she strolled toward the towering, weathered rocks. Repulsive and fascinating, the cliffs seemed hard as polished bone. They reminded her of the yellow skull sitting on the lab table in the school’s biology classroom.
Lis noticed Claire standing in the mouth of the canyon about a quarter mile from the beach. Then she vanished.
“And I thought suddenly,” Lis told Kohler, “where is everyone? What’s going on? I felt very concerned. I picked up my purse and started toward the place where I’d seen Claire disappear.” Then she saw a flash of color ahead of her. She believed it was yellow, the color of Claire’s shorts, and leaving Dorothy behind she hurried into the canyon. Lis was perhaps a hundred yards into the ravine when she found the blood.
“Blood?”
It was right outside a cave. The entrance had been chained off at one time but the post holding the chain had been pulled out of the ground and flung aside. No way, she thought, was she going inside. But she knelt down and looked into the passageway. The air was chill and it smelled of wet stone and clay and mold.
Then she felt a shadow over her. A huge man appeared just feet away, standing behind her.
“Michael?” Kohler asked.
Lis nodded.
Hrubek started howling like an animal. Holding a bloody rock, he looked right at her and screamed, “Sic semper tyrannis!”
Richard Kohler held up a thin hand, indicating for her to wait. He made his first notation of the evening.
“You didn’t think of going to find a park ranger?” Kohler asked.
Lis suddenly grew angry. Why had he asked her this? It was the sort of question the lawyers had asked, and the police. Did I think of looking for a ranger? Well, for God’s sake, wouldn’t we always do it differently if we could? Wouldn’t we recast our whole lives? That’s why time doesn’t reverse, of course-to keep us sane.
“I thought about it, yes. But I don’t know, I just panicked. I ran into the cave.”
Inside, it wasn’t completely dark. Thirty, forty feet above her, shafts of pale light streamed inside.
The walls rose straight up to an arched roof full of stalactites. Lis, breathless and frightened, leaned against a wall to steady herself. A high-pitched moaning of some sort filled the air. It was like wind over a reed, like someone imitating an oboe. Terrible! She looked at the trail at her feet and saw more blood.
Then Hrubek slipped through the cave opening. Lis turned and raced down the path. No idea where she was going, not really thinking, she simply ran. Once out of the main chamber she fled down a long corridor, about eight feet high. Hrubek was somewhere behind her. As she ran she noticed the tunnel was growing smaller. By now it had shrunk to six feet, and the sides were closing in. Once she slammed into a rock, cutting her forehead and leaving a scar that still remained. By then the chamber had narrowed down to five feet and she was running crouched over. Then, four feet. Soon she was crawling.
Ahead of her the tunnel grew even smaller though on the other side of a very narrow opening it seemed to widen and grow brighter. But escaping that way would mean crawling through a tunnel that was no more than twelve or so inches high. With Hrubek right behind her.