Fatalis (9 page)

"I'd rather not say," he told her. "People might go out there-"

"-and climb all over the paintings," Hannah said. "I understand."

"They could also get hurt," Grand said. "Several of the caves have been opened because of rockslides. The ground is still pretty unsteady around the entrances."

"Say no more," Hannah said. "Professor, you were at that site roughly the same time as the men disappeared. Could anyone have snuck in or out without you knowing it?"

"Someone might have been able to get in through another entrance or fissure," he said, "but it would have been very difficult to
sneak
in. Even small sounds can carry for miles in those caves."

"There are miles of caves?" she said.

"Typically," he said. "The Chumash often used them to move under grazing herds in order to get upwind. And with all the flooding we've had, tunnels are probably being opened that have been blocked for tens of thousands of years."

"Bet you can't wait to have a look at them," Hannah smiled.

"I'd be camping there if it weren't for my classes," Grand said. "But there is something we can have a look at right now, if you'd care to join me."

"Something-
?"

"A place that may tell us how the radio got underground."

"I'm there," she said, beaming.

Grand and Hannah walked down the road, away from the sinkhole. He stopped at a spot past the parked cars. It was only about fifteen feet to the bottom of the ravine here. Large boulders were piled most of the way up, with newly broken tree limbs and soft, rotted logs scattered about Grand started down the jumble of rocks and debris and Hannah right behind him. It was an easy climb.

The rain-swollen creek coursed swiftly to the west Grand picked his way across the jagged rocks along the bank. It was even cooler down here than up on the road, the thickly leafed branches preventing sunlight from getting through. They created a sense of quiet isolation that was actually enhanced by the rushing waters. As the Chumash described riverbeds, this was the home of the waters. Everything else dwelt here at its pleasure.

The two sheriff's deputies were walking along the ravine several hundred yards ahead. It was extremely dry there. Grand stopped as they neared the little cove where the waters slid under the creek bed and went underground. He remembered it being a small, natural depression in the center of the creek, covered by two flat rocks that were steepled one against the other.

He reached the spot and stopped. The depression was there but it wasn't small anymore.

"Score one for Professor Grand," Hannah said as she stared at the spot.

Rushing water wasn't the only thing in the opening.

Grand called to deputies Scott and Bright, who called up to Sheriff Gearhart. The sheriff and Victor Singer came down one of the steep walls near the sinkhole. Hannah shouted for Walter Jones to hurry over. The Wall was in his Jeep sending photos to the paper. He was closer than the sheriff, and though he had some trouble getting down the side of the ravine, he made it before Gearhart did. He looked where Hannah was pointing and began snapping digital photographs as he approached. He and Hannah had both been in situations where Gearhart declared a place a crime scene and threw them out before they had a chance to get pictures. Occasionally the sheriff did it to protect the integrity of a site; more often than not, Hannah suspected, it was to minimize the space in which she could give bad news. "
Photos rock
," as the Wall was fond of saying.

Grand crouched on a flat rock beside the small, silty opening. Hannah stood behind him.

The hole was approximately two-and-one-half feet across. Snagged on a rock on the south side of the opening was a black backpack. It was held mere by one of the shoulder straps. Hanging from the backpack were long tattered ribbons that looked like they came from an orange poncho. The frayed pieces fluttered like seaweed as the silty water washed by.

"I'm guessing this opening wasn't here the last time you looked," Hannah said.

Grand leaned looked over the edge. "It sure wasn't."

"Obviously, our sheriff hasn't noticed that the creek bed is a little dry up ahead," Hannah said.

"It's not something he might have noticed," Grand pointed out. "The flow changes seasonally. I might not have noticed myself if I hadn't seen water pouring in when I was down there."

The deputies arrived then. The brawny Deputy Bright ordered Hannah and Grand to step back.

"Hey, we're the ones who found this," Hannah said. She remained where she was as Grand stepped back.

"We'd have gotten here in a few minutes," Scott said. "Please just do as the deputy asked."

Hannah reluctantly took a small step away as Deputy Bright got on his hands and knees in the water. The officer slipped his flashlight from its belt loop and carefully examined the backpack and the sinkhole without touching them. Deputy Scott crouched beside him.

A moment later Gearhatt reached the sinkhole. He was followed by Victor Singer.

"Now how the hell did this get way over here?" Singer asked.

"Maybe one of the men slipped in the dark and went off the road," Scott suggested.

"If either of the engineers went off the road, they didn't slip down this rabbit hole," said Deputy Bright.

"How can you tell?" Singer asked.

"There are large rocks in there," Bright replied. "A guy falling through would have plugged the thing up."

"Can you see the bottom?" Gearhart asked, pointing east.

"No, sir," said Bright. "It slopes off to the west."

"Scott, check the creek bed in the other direction," Gearhart said. "See if one of the men might have wandered off."

"Yes, sir." Scott said.

The deputy set off. Hannah told the Wall to go with him but to keep an eye on his watch. They had less than forty-five minutes to file the story and any additional photographs.

Gearhart regarded Grand. Hannah didn't like the look in his eyes. Something was coming.

"What made you think to look all the way over here?" Gearhart asked.

"When I saw the lake below I assumed the creek was feeding it with overflow," Grand said. "It made geographic sense."

"So you didn't know that the backpack would be here."

"No."

"You just expected to find another sinkhole," Gearhart said.

"That's right," Grand replied. "Sheriff, what are you implying?"

"I was wondering that myself," Hannah complained. "What do you think we were-"

"Professor, I'm not implying anything," Gearhart said, cutting Hannah off, "I'm trying to find two missing men. You were up here when they disappeared. Now if you have any other special knowledge of this incident, I need to know what that is so I can locate them."

"Sheriff, come have a look at this," Deputy Bright said.

Gearhart looked at Grand a moment longer before stepping over. When the sheriff's back was turned Hannah gave Grand's hand a reassuring squeeze. His large fingers closed around hers for a moment, then he stuck his hand in his jacket pocket. Gearhart was doing his usual trying-to-provoke-people thing, get them upset so they open up. The problem was, Gearhart either didn't know or didn't care when someone was truly trying to cooperate. She couldn't imagine what was going through Grand's mind, but the sadness in his eyes was awful.

They watched as the sheriff knelt in the water beside Bright. The deputy used his flashlight to point on the underside of the backpack.

"See those?" Bright asked.

Gearhart nodded. "Lift it up," he said.

Bright carefully pinched one of the straps between two fingers and raised the bag.

Singer stepped closer. "What is it?"

"Gashes," Bright said.

"From what?"

"I don't know," Bright said. "They could be from hitting the rocks."

Gearhart studied them for a moment, then rose. "Except for my deputies, I want everyone out of the ravine."

"What?" Hannah said.

"This area is now a suspected crime scene."

"The entire ravine?"

"Yes," Gearhart informed her.

"Why?" Hannah asked. "What is it? What kind of gashes are they?"

"I'm not going to speculate," he replied.

"You're just going to dictate," she complained.

Gearhart turned from her to talk to Bright.

Since discussion was futile and the party was over, Hannah bolted toward the sinkhole. She was able to get a quick look at the gashes before the sheriff moved between her and the backpack. They were about five or six inches long, several inches apart, and clean.

"Ms. Hughes," Gearhart snapped, "I want you
back
on the road and in your car and I want you to recall your photographer at once."

"Sheriff, are they knife marks?" Hannah demanded. "Was there a fight?"

Suddenly, one of the road crew workers called from the edge of the sinkhole. "
Victor
!"

Singer looked up. "What is it?"

"Come here!" the man cried. "We found something!"

Singer, Gearhart, Grand, and Hannah went back up to the road. At Gearhart's orders Bright remained behind with the backpack. Hannah used her cell phone to call the Wall and get him back up to the sinkhole.

The crew had found Stan Greene's backpack. Unlike the other backpack, it was intact. Since this section of the road had fallen in after the rest, Dr. Thorpe suggested that the engineer might have removed it and set it aside before going into the sinkhole. There was still no trace of Stan Greene.

But granite was finally showing through the wet dirt; according to Dr. Thorpe, they had reached the bottom of the sinkhole. Tired but determined, the crew began clawing away at the sides.

Shortly after, the two volunteers of the Special Ops team arrived in the sheriff office's new Hummer, which barely fit on the roadway. The Junior SOV, young baby-faced Albert Moy, was a former Navy SEAL who worked as a tennis pro at the Santa Barbara Country Club. The Senior SOV, craggy, middle-aged Frank Lyon, was a retired movie stunt actor. Grand and Gearhart went off to confer with them and Hannah went back to her Blazer. She had to concentrate on rewriting the article, changing the emphasis from collapsing roads and missing engineers to a story that carefully insinuated an attack on at least one of the men. Despite the sheriff's silence, he had given her that much by declaring it a crime scene.

Hannah also wanted to start working on the follow-up. By tomorrow morning everyone was going to have the basics: what happened, biographies of the two men, interviews with family members, and any late news.
The Coastal Freeway
had to have those too but also something different.

She'd find it.

For the moment, however, Hannah listened to her tape, plugged in a few quotes from Deputy Bright and Professor Grand, and let herself savor something she rarely had: a breaking story. She also enjoyed something else, one of the things that had attracted her to this profession in the first place.

The sense of being in the middle of a human drama. Of knowing that with the world and the flesh in disorder, the devil could not be far away.

Grand and two Special Ops volunteers drove to the foot of Snyder Trail and walked to the slope. One of them carried a gym bag stuffed with gear; the other carted an aluminum case that contained a MarineScan UCM-the "You See Em," the Underwater Camera and Monitor. The Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office usually used this off-shore to examine everything from broken pipelines to shifting sand levels. Today it would be used to study the lake.

The other two men were in good physical condition and made it up to the cave without difficulty. It took less than an hour for Grand to rig their harnesses and get them down to the floor of the upper cave. By now the rains were lessening and there was enough light coming in through the swallow hole so they didn't have to use the night-vision goggles.

The three men walked toward the runnel with Grand in the lead. The scientist's mood was slowly brightening. It had been dark when he left the ravine. He was angry about the way he'd let the sheriff manhandle him during the interrogation. It shouldn't have
been
an interrogation, it should have been an asking. A questioning. And Grand should have set the sheriff straight immediately. It was the same way Grand had responded to things all his life. He'd let someone push and push before finally giving a nudge back. And the nudge was never enough to gain back the self-respect he'd lost.

But he was back in his world where he felt safe. Where Gearhart and those like him faded to insignificance. Where the mission was to eliminate one's own ignorance, not learn to live with the ignorance of others.

The scientist looked up as they passed the steep cave walls. Hie two large paintings seemed subtly different from before. It appeared as though the lava and water were actually flowing. That impression could be due to shifting clouds changing the natural light or the fact that the men themselves were moving. Grand also wondered if the Chumash artist had created that illusion intentionally through the use of color, lighting, and slight variations in the rock surface. Maybe he was trying to suggest that the animal spirits were never at rest. It was an eerie and impressive creation.

The trip through the north-side tunnel was relatively quick and easy. Once they were inside the cave, the Special Ops team recovered the radio and placed it in a plastic bag. While they took detailed photographs of the ledge and the water flowing into the cave, Grand walked along the narrow stone outcropping. The ledge did not go all the way around the cave, so it was difficult to see where the water spilled after leaving here. Possibly it flowed into a series of caverns that emptied into the sea. That was how many of these so-called "mountain fountains" worked. They were carved by high-elevation runoff that began during the Ice Age, the water pouring through cracks and enlarging them over the centuries. But Grand had been right about the creek feeding the lake. Though very little light came from above, they occasionally heard the muffled, distant shouts of the men working above them on Painted Cave Road.