Even In Darkness--An American Murder Mystery Thriller (24 page)

He smiles at me, as sweetly as a child. ‘Hemingway.
A Farewell to Arms
.'

It is the gentleness I hear in the tone of his voice, that makes the hair stand on the back of my neck.

T
he road is narrow and meanders from left to right. It is desolate here in the countryside, dark and unfamiliar. The headlights are on high beam, but the darkness hides everything but the next twenty feet of road. I keep my hands twined together in my lap, to hide that they are shaking.

Every half mile or so we pass a house, and I look at the lights in the windows. I see glimpses here and there – curtains, a dining room table. The glow of a television set.

Harvey flips the turn indicator, brakes, and we go left, down a steep gravel drive. At the bottom are three security lights that illuminate the mouth of a monster. The entrance is wide enough that we can drive straight in. The ceilings are tall, a good thirty feet. A metal gate, like the ones that barricade storefronts in the mall, has been raised high enough for us to pass beneath.

Harvey points to the gate. ‘I see that Cletus has the jump on us. He is oscar mike to the zone.'

The car slows to a crawl and I open my window. Grit and gravel grind beneath the tires, and I see the gleam of eyes near a cluster of rocks – a possum, most likely, hidden in the dark. The air pressure changes as we pass through the entrance. Water that seeps from the limestone floors hisses beneath the tires. The quiet and the envelope of darkness swallow us whole.

The primitive part of my brain kicks in. The dark. The unknown. The predator at my side. Pressure builds in my chest and I am humiliated by the tears that run down my cheeks. There is no sign of Hal. Of the FBI. Of anyone but me and Harvey. Are they back there somewhere, Caroline and Andee? Who am I to be afraid?

The car creeps forward.

Modular offices, like temporary classrooms, branch to the right and left. They have little porches on the front, with porch lights. The office windows are dark, employees gone for the day. What will they find, when they come to work tomorrow? Nothing will ever be the same.

I get a glimpse of a conveyor belt and machinery behind a metal partition to the right. The bottling operation, no doubt. Harvey bears right and the illumination from the security lights cuts away. My chest goes tight. I feel like I'm being smothered, and I take deep, panicked breaths.

Harvey turns yet again, and we creep along, and I am already unsure of finding my way back. I see a lake of water; it looks deep. We turn again and I am completely disoriented. I dig my fingernails into the palms of my hands and think about Andee. She is here in this cave, and I will not leave without her. It is that, finally, that keeps me from going over the edge.

Harvey eases the car alongside a wall and turns off the engine, leaving the headlights on. He leans across the front seat and opens the glove box.

‘Flashlights,' he says.

There are two of them, small and black, and he hands one to me. It is startlingly heavy.

‘In a minute I'll turn off the headlights.' His voice is low and I have to bend close to hear. ‘People get kind of freaky, back in the dark like this, when the lights go out. You need to hang tough, OK? Stay quiet and calm. We're close to the RV where Cletus and the girls are. If you scream or call out, he might hear us. I don't need to tell you that wouldn't be good.'

He flips the switch of his flashlight. ‘Here's how it's going to work. You wait here and let me go on ahead.
Don't
wander off. If you get lost, no one will find you. There are miles of unexplored passageways back here. And if Cletus spots you, Caroline and Andee are dead. You understand me? You're clear?'

‘I understand you.'

‘I'll tell Cletus that we're blown, but that I've got the money. That the FBI is on to us and we need to close up shop.'

‘What money?'

He shakes his head at me. ‘There
isn't
any money, but Cletus thinks there's a ransom. He's not doing this for fun.'

‘OK. I'm with you.'

‘I'll take the girls with me. We'll regroup, you, me, Caroline and Andee, and head back out in my car. Then we'll drop the girls at a house somewhere where there are lights and somebody's home, or if not that, then some gas station somewhere. That way you'll know they're safe, and you and I can sort things out.'

‘I get to pick the spot where we drop the girls. So I can be sure it's not some prearranged drop.'

He gives me a second look, then nods. ‘If that makes you feel better. Fine with me.' He scoots to the door of the car. ‘Time for me to get going. Hang right here, just for a minute, and get ready for the lights to go.'

He pushes the button beneath the dash, pops the trunk and disappears. I hear him rummaging through his luggage. I think about Caroline and Andee. I want to believe what Harvey has told me. That they're close and we'll bring them out safe. But why will Purcell let Harvey take the girls, if he doesn't have his half of the imaginary ransom? This man who never leaves a witness alive?

Harvey appears suddenly beside my window and motions for me to get out of the car. ‘Just stay behind the car. Sit down, so when Clete and I come up, he won't see you, and blow this whole thing.'

He reaches a hand in the open window. Says ‘Ready' and shuts off the lights.

It's like being buried alive.

I don't mind dying so much; it's the getting there that worries me. I flip the switch on my flashlight and focus on the circle of illumination. There is nothing to see but damp walls, a crumbling limestone floor and shadow.

Harvey's voice is barely a whisper. ‘If you hear gunfire, stay away from the walls. Bullets tend to travel along walls.' He salutes. ‘Wish me luck.'

His light bobs, marking his progress, and I can hear his footsteps and their small echo. The light disappears suddenly, as if he's turned a corner. I listen, but he's disappeared. It occurs to me that he could be standing a few feet away, watching to see what I'll do.

It is chilly in the cave. Maybe fifty-four degrees. I fold my arms, huddled in Harvey's sweater. He has worn it recently. It has his smell. I hear the faint sound of water dripping, and notice the smallest caress of an air current on my cheek. The question is, do I stay where I am?

The psychopath is not your friend.

Harvey will know if I follow too closely. But I could wait a few minutes, then start out in the direction he went. I wonder – what are my chances of finding the girls?

It is the easiest thing in the world to become lost in a cave. Harvey said this one has over a million square feet. Mammoth Cave, further west, is still being mapped, with four hundred miles of passageways down, and who knows how many more to go.

Three hundred and fifty million years ago the local countryside was covered with water, resting beneath a shallow sea. Gradually, as the water level dropped, the land formed sandstone layers at the surface, with limestone layers beneath. A labyrinth of passages was sculpted by rivers underground, and the water is still there, four hundred and fifty feet below the surface, popping up in underground springs.

I aim my flashlight upward, trying to keep my mind off cave-ins, a regular occurrence when ceilings in the passageways get too wide to support the bedrock beneath. Jesse James hid out in caves like this. Maybe this one. He made it back out again.

Not everyone does.

Floyd Collins was trapped in Sand Cave in 1925 when the ceiling came down, trapping him in the passageway. He had air but could barely move, one foot wedged beneath a rock. The cave-in caused a media frenzy, while rescuers toiled over the treacherously shifting dirt and rock for all of two weeks. A reporter for the Louisville
Courier-Journal
held interviews with Collins while rescuers tried to get him out.

The reporter won a Pulitzer; Robert Penn Warren wrote the incident up in a novel that became famous. Floyd Collins died.

I see no trace of cave life – no crickets, no bats. No water here, so no blind fish. I would feel better if I saw something. Animals have good instincts when they make a home. A cave can be a safe sanctuary, for man and beast. I am picturing the pillars we passed on our way inside, where the rock was blasted and sculpted to make supports. There aren't any pillars this far back.

There is a scrape of rock from somewhere behind me. I shine the flashlight over my shoulder but can see nothing in the beam of my light.

I poke around until I find a pointy sliver of rock. I scrape it on the wall and see that it leaves a mark.

I'm not going to stay. My gut tells me not to do what Harvey says. And there is zero chance of me finding the girls if I stay where I am. I might not be able to see them, but there's a good chance I can
hear
. I remember what I saw in the web cast, the little kitchen where they cooked, toilets that flushed according to Andee, and light. The RV will have a generator, and generators are noisy. If I go in the direction Harvey went, I'll be able to hear the hum.

I will walk with one hand on the cave wall and scratch an X in the rock every two or three feet, and be able to find my way back. This isn't a Greek legend, and I don't have a ball of twine.

I
am counting my steps, and my tally so far is two thousand two hundred twenty-three. I hear scratching noises sometimes, and what I'm sure must be footsteps, but when I shine my light there is nothing there.

The wall drops away and I am at a crossroads. I can go into a chamber to my left, continue straight ahead or turn right and keep following the wall. Heading right and staying with the wall is my best shot at keeping my bearings, but it'll be no good if I'm going the wrong way. I shine the light at my feet, close my eyes and listen. If someone is close I might be able to hear.

I don't want to let go of my wall. I know how dangerous it is, this wandering. Never go alone, take rope, bring three sources of light. Always let someone know where you are and when you'll be back. I choose the wall, making my marks and counting my steps.

It is the echo that saves me, the sound of a generator somewhere close. The noise seems to come from my right, but behind me as well. I stand still and there's a sudden sound, like someone has shut a door at the bottom of a well. I backtrack, one hand along the wall until the damp rock drops away. I don't hear the noises anymore.

Panic comes in a wave. There is no forward, no backward, nothing but dark. I have no idea which way to go, where to find the girls, the noise I heard or the entrance of the cave. I tremble with an overwhelming urge to run. I stand still instead, taking deep breaths.

And then I hear things, small noises that bounce off the rocks before they're absorbed by the walls. There are voices, like you hear in dreams. I feel the presence of people, am aware of tiny smells, a difference in the air pressure where before there was a sensory void. I move toward the voices and hear, again, the generator's tell-tale hum.

There is light ahead, diffused, hazy, strange. It leaks from the edges of small, boarded-up windows. There is a monstrous presence in the darkness. The dark outline of an RV.

I have found it. Caro and Andee's prison.

The hinged door opens abruptly and voices of men drift toward me. I can hear an undercurrent of continuous sobbing, my granddaughter's exhausted cry. So she is alive, my Andee. She is well enough to cry.

I drop and lie flat on my belly, crawling slowly, with such care, inching closer to the RV. The floor is dry and cold and gritty. I stay flat and silent, lurking to one side.

‘They don't go anywhere till I get my cut. After that, you can take them with you, if you want to do it. Smartest thing be to leave them with me.'

I am held by the power of that voice. It takes me back to the afternoon where Cletus Purcell sat across from me over coffee and I faced the flatness, the odd lack of reflection in his eyes. It is Purcell that I remember. I have dreamed of him for years.

‘That's fine.' Harvey's voice. ‘But we need to head out. We have to wind this up
now
, Cletus.'

‘I don't like it.'

The tension is strong between them, strong enough that I can feel it out here.

‘Look, just lock them back up.' Harvey's voice. ‘We'll go to the car together – it's not that far. Let's split the cash and decide what to do from there.'

I hear layers of meaning in Harvey's words.
Let's go get the money, then I'm out of here, and you can do what you want with the hostages.

But, of course, there is no money. Just twists, turns, more games ahead.

Purcell makes a sound that I take for agreement. Evidently he reads Harvey's subtext the same way. Harvey is an expert, after all, at being whoever he needs to be. Salesmen are vulnerable to pitches from other salesmen. Maybe serial killers affect each other the same way.

The RV shakes as the two men come out, the weight of them rocking the steps. Neither speaks to Caroline and Andee. I wonder what it's like for my girls inside, being discussed like a carcass of meat.

The door clicks shut, followed by the sound of a heavy plank of wood sliding into place. I can free the bolt of wood from outside the door, and hope rises inside me like helium, only to sink when I hear the chirp of a keyless lock.

I wait until I can no longer hear the murmur of Harvey and Purcell's conversation, and the sound of their footsteps fades. I look out from my hiding place, but they've been swallowed by the dark. I stand very still, I hold my breath. I count to one hundred, slowly, three times. It is disturbingly quiet inside the RV.

I shine my light in all directions. There are damp spots and puddles, but I can detect no one watching from the surrounding dark. I turn the light to the door. A two-by-four of lumber has been placed to bar it shut, cradled in a newly installed metal hasp. There is a back-lit keyless entry pad installed by the door, and a warning sticker that says
STOP – Protected By – Flagship Sentry
^™
Digital Security System
. The wood plank is awkward, but no trouble once I set my flashlight on the front step. I glance over my shoulder, not that it does much good. It's too dark for me to see.