Her breath began to come faster as she returned to the middle of the room. At least, she thought it was the middle of the room: she was quickly becoming disoriented in the utter blackness.
Okay,she thought. Stop moving, breathe a little slower, get a grip.Okay, so it was really stupid to come in here with one flashlight and no matches. But the cavern she was in was small and there was only one opening—wasn’t there? She hadn’t remembered any passageways going off, but then again, she hadn’t really checked.
Her heart was beating so fast that she could barely breathe. Just slow down,she thought. Time to forget about the flashlight. It was probably busted, anyway. The important thing now was to get out, to keep moving; otherwise, she’d freeze up. She’d left the door unlocked, thank God, and the lights were still on back in the Kaverns. All she had to do was get out of this back room and down the passageway.
Stupid, stupid, stupid . . .
Carefully, she oriented herself toward where she thought the exit would be. Then, just as carefully, she began crawling forward. The floor of the cave was cold, rough, uneven, covered with greasy pebbles and puddles of water. It was absolutely terrifying, the pitch blackness. Corrie wasn’t sure she’d ever been in a place completely without light. Even on the darkest night, there was some trace of starshine or moonlight . . . She felt her heart begin to beat even faster than before.
Then her head bumped painfully into something. She reached up, felt: the iron cauldron. She had crawled right into the dead coals.
Okay, so she’d gone in precisely the opposite direction. But at least now she had her bearings. She’d crawl along the wall until she reached the passage out. Once in the passage, she’d keep crawling, one hand on the wall, until she reached the iron door. From there, she could reach the pool, she felt sure—even in utter darkness. And in any case, on the far side of the pool lay light and the boardwalk. It’s not so far,she repeated, not so far at all . . .
Forcing herself to relax, she began crawling forward, sliding her left hand along the walclass="underline" slide, stop, slide, stop again, three, four, five.Her heart began to slow. She bumped into a stalagmite, tried to visualize its orientation in the room. With relief she realized the exit should be straight ahead.
She kept on crawling, one hand on the floor, the other on the wall.
Six, seven, eight . . .
In the dark, her hand touched something warm.
She instinctively snatched back her hand. The rush of fear and surprise came a moment later. Was it some cave-dwelling creature—a rat or a bat, perhaps? Her imagination, working overtime in the blackness?
She waited. There was no sound or movement. Then she carefully reached out, felt again.
It was warm, naked, hairless, and wet.
She shrank back, a sob rising involuntarily to her throat. The smell of something dirty, something indescribably foul, seemed to rise and envelop her. Was that noise she heard really the sound of her own breathing? It was: she was gasping with fear.
She gritted her teeth, blinked her eyes against the darkness, tried to regain control of her wildly beating heart.
The thing she had touched hadn’t moved. It was probably just another bump or ridge in the floor. If she stopped in horror at every little thing she touched, she’d never make it out of the cave.
She reached out to move forward, and brushed against it again. It waswarm, there was no imagining that: but it must be some freakish thing, volcanic or something. She felt it again, lightly, letting her hand brush here, there . . .
She realized she was touching a naked foot, with long broken toenails.
Ever so slowly, she withdrew her hand. It was shaking uncontrollably and her breath came as a rasp, completely beyond her control to silence it. She tried to swallow but her mouth had gone dry.
And then a coarse, singsong voice, a caricature lisping of human speech, came from the darkness.
“Wanna pway wif me?”
Forty-Seven
Hazen sat back in the well-upholstered chair, fingertips pressed lightly against the polished wood of the conference table. He wondered yet again why Medicine Creek couldn’t afford a sheriff’s office with nice comfortable chairs, or a table like this one; but then it occurred to him that the Deeper sheriff’s office, like everything else in Deeper, was running on borrowed money. At least his department ran in the black, every year. Medicine Creek’s time would come, thanks in no small part to him.
The voice of Hank Larssen droned on in the background, but Hazen was barely listening. Better to let the Deeper sheriff talk himself out. He glanced surreptitiously at his watch. Seven o’clock. They’d come a long way today, made some great progress. He’d done a great deal of thinking, and in his mind the case was now almost complete. There was only one detail that still bothered him.
Larssen, it seemed, was winding down. “It’s just way too premature, Dent. I haven’t heard any hard evidence, just a lot of conjecture and supposition.”
Conjecture and supposition.Christ, Hank had been reading too many Grisham novels.
Larssen drew himself up with an air of finality. “I’m not going to cast a cloud of suspicion on one of Deeper’s leading citizens without firm evidence. I’m not going to do it, and I’m not going to allow anyone else to do it. Not in my jurisdiction.”
Hazen let the silence ripen, then turned to Raskovich.
“Chester? What do you think?”
Raskovich glanced at Seymour Fisk, the KSU dean, who had been listening intently in silence, a crease furrowed across his bald pate. “Well,” Raskovich said, “I think that what Sheriff Hazen and I found is enough to justify continuing the investigation.”
“All you’ve found out,” Larssen replied, “is that Lavender’s in financial trouble. A lot of people are in financial trouble these days.”
Again Hazen withheld comment. Let Chester do the talking.
“Well,” said Raskovich, “we found more than just financial trouble. He hasn’t paid real estate taxes on some properties in years. Why there haven’t been any tax seizures is something I’d be interested in knowing. And Lavender went around assuring everyone that the experimental field was coming to Deeper. He told everyone he had a plan. As if he knew something that nobody else knew. This ‘plan’ sounds pretty suspicious to me.”
“For heaven’s sake, it was just talkto appease his creditors,” said Larssen, practically rising out of the comfortable Naugahyde to make his point.
This is great,thought Hazen. Now Hank’s arguing with the KSU guys.Larssen always had been a few beers short of a six-pack.
“It’s pretty clear,” Raskovich went on, “that if Dr. Chauncy had announced on Monday that the field was going to Medicine Creek, Lavender’s creditors would have moved in and he’d have been forced into bankruptcy. That’s a powerful motive.”
There was a silence. Larssen was shaking his head.
And now Fisk spoke at last, his reedy ivory-tower voice filling the office. “Sheriff, the intention is not to make accusations. The intention is merely to continue the investigation, looking into Mr. Lavender’s affairs along with whatever other leads develop.”
Hazen waited. It was politically important to “consult” with Larssen. Old Hank just didn’t seem to get the fact that it was all pro forma, that nothing he said would stop the investigation into Lavender.
“Mr. Fisk,” Larssen said, “all I’m saying is, don’t focus on a suspect too early. There are plenty of other avenues that should be explored. Look, Dent, we all know Lavender’s no saint, but he’s no killer either, especially not thatkind of killer. Even if he hired someone, how in hell did that person get from Deeper to Medicine Creek without being observed? Where’d he hide out? Where’s his car? Where’d he spend the night? That whole area’s been searched by air and on the ground, and you know it!”