LC 02 - Questionable Remains (22 page)

"So Calderon goes to find the cave where the Crest of the Uktena is kept?" said Piaquay when Cocunae had finished.
Cocunae nodded.

"Then I will follow," said Piaquay.

Sancho was a good mapmaker. Still, it was harder to find a
small location such as an entrance to a cave than it might seem at
first. Calderon was tired. So were the few men he took with him.
Pardo had denied him horses. Calderon cursed him. It was not his
fault so many of his men deserted him and took the horses. They
were cowards.

The mountains were cooler now-too cold at night. The trees
grew so close together it was hard to travel through the forest.
Calderon and his men thought they saw Indians at every step they
took, but it was always a bird taking off from a limb or a deer running in the woods or a rabbit.

"Tell me again," asked Diego, "how Sancho was able to draw
the map when lie had never actually gone to the cave?"

"You doubt my cousin's map, mi amigo?" said Calderon.

"I don't doubt his skills. I am just curious," replied Diego.

"He explained it to me. He visited a village just beyond the
ridge we are on now. It was there that they heard the story. He got
the teller to take him near the place where the cave is, but he would
go no farther. They are superstitious, you see."

"Yes, I see, but how-" Diego was impatient.

"The teller of the tale told him exactly where it is. Most everyone in the village knows. But they will not go there. We find the
village, and we find the cave."

Diego was still skeptical. "Caves can be very large. How will
we find the way?"

Esteban smiled. With his damaged face, his smile had a decidedly evil twist. "It will be marked." He said no more.

But Diego continued to question. He did not relish entering a village on foot with only Esteban and a few men and no way to send for
reinforcements. "How friendly are the Indians there? Did he say?"

"Friendly. He said they are friendly. They think us Spanish to
be gods," replied Esteban.

They came out of the woods into a clearing that was once a
cornfield, from the looks of it, but it was overgrown with weeds
and pine seedlings. Beyond the field was what was left of the village. The houses looked as though they had long since fallen in.
Calderon and his men walked through the deserted Indian town.
Only the sounds of birds could be heard. Here and there lay a broken pot. A torn, vermin-eaten basket blew across their path. The
inhabitants were gone and had been for a very long time.

Calderon was disappointed, though he said nothing. He was
counting on getting someone from the village to take him to the
cave. Now he would simply have to locate it himself with his map,
he thought as he sucked in his breath and mentally strengthened
his resolve. He always had to depend on himself. Everyone around
him was unreliable. This was nothing new.

"We'll stop here and eat. It's a good place to make a camp before
we proceed. There are no savages here to bother us."

They found a fallen structure with its walls still standing and
firmly set into the ground and cleared out a place to sit and built
a fire. They took off their heavy armor and ate a meal of roasted
corn and dried deer meat. It tasted good in the cool air.

"This isn't so bad," said Diego. "Nobody here to bother us,
good food, a place to sleep." The others agreed. It wasn't so bad.

Piaquay, Roberto, Tesca, Nayahti, two braves, Quanche and
Minque, and Kinua, the young warrior apprentice, stood looking
at the place where Calderon had camped. The Spaniard and his
men had given them a clear trail to follow. Even though they had
several days' head start, Piaquay had gained on them every day.

"They will come back to this camp," said Roberto. "We could
wait for them."

"No," said Piaquay, "we will follow."

After much shifting and meandering the trail ended at the
mouth of a cave that was concealed under a profusion of vines and
ferns. The clumsy passage of Calderon and his men was evident.

"This cave is taboo," said Tesca. "We will be bewitched if we go
in here. "

"This may not be the cave of the Uktena," said Piaquay. "I will
go. The rest of you, stay and wait for me."

"No, brother, bewitched or no, I will go with you. The others
can stand guard."

Nayahti gathered reeds and tied them together. In his travels he
had experience in caves and knew how to make torches. "You will
need many of these," he said. "When you use half of them, you
must come back, whether or not you have found the enemy." He
put the torches in the deerskin sack in which he carried food.
"Piaquay," he continued, "mark your trail. It is easy to become
lost in caves. If you do not come out by the time you should be out
of torches, I will come and follow your marks."

Piaquay smiled at his friend. Traders are always practical, he
thought. When Piaquay listened to Nayahti speak, it reminded
him of his father's brother, also a trader, who told him many times,
"Keep your medicine bag, but sharpen your arrows."

"Be watchful," Piaquay told the others.

"I will go with you," said Roberto. Piaquay looked into his eyes.
He had known Roberto would ask this. Revenge against Calderon
burned in him, too. "You can trust me," Roberto continued. "I
won't betray you. Only Calderon."

"Very well. Come. But it will be hard. Caves are the trails to the
underworld. They are always hard."

Lindsay awoke abruptly at 6:00 A.m. Her eyes went immediately to the lamp, as though it might have moved in the
night. She got out of bed and turned on all the lights and
began looking through her things to see if anything was
missing. Nothing. Nor did she find anything else moved.
Perhaps she just imagined-no, she had not, she knew that.
She opened the cabinet and looked at the television. It sat
there like a blind cyclops, oblivious to anyone who might be
staring at it. Nothing seemed amiss. She closed the doors.

What then? She was not missing money. She never trav eled with jewelry. Her gaze fell on the envelopes with the
photographs. It had to be them. They had been in the
motel safe. If they had not, would they be gone? Her mind
went to Craig Gillett and Jennifer Darnell. Could it have
been him? Was that why Jennifer had been so cooperative,
keeping Lindsay busy while her boyfriend searched her
room?

Lindsay stood, contemplating the possibilities, when the
phone rang. It was Derrick, checking on her. She decided to
wait to tell him about someone being in her room. After all,
she reasoned, she wasn't completely sure there had been
anyone. It might have been the maid. That was the problem
with everything about this case-the uncertainty. Were the
cavers murdered or not? Did someone shoot at her or not?
Was someone in her room or not? One thing was certain,
however: Gil Harris was dead. And he knew at least one of
the people who died in the cave. She hung up after assuring
Derrick that, following her talk with Dr. Olin Ballinger, she
would be off this case.

She looked at the photographs again. She saw nothing
that she hadn't seen before. She got out the ones the
Lamberts had given her, separating out the ones of the bodies where they were found in the cave. She scrutinized
them with her hand lens. She could see nothing unusual,
but the bodies were under rocks and were clothed. She
looked at Ken Darnell, the only skeleton whose skull had
rolled away from his body. He had been lying on his back,
and when his head came loose from the neck, it rolled
away, a common occurrence in skeletons. Then she saw itit was staring her in the face. She looked at the neck, then
the hands. Unlike the other two skeletons, Ken's hands
were mostly disarticulated and there was hardly any skin
left on the skull. The three bodies either had not decomposed in the same place or had decomposed at different
rates. Why hadn't Dr. Ballinger mentioned that? Surely
he'd noticed it. He must have.

Lindsay put the photographs back in the envelopes and
got dressed in jeans and a shirt. She was sure she wouldn't
be able to see Dr. Ballinger until after 9:00 at the earliest. She
took the envelopes to the motel clerk and put them in the
safe, then went to have breakfast. She planned on a leisurely breakfast to make up for all the nervous energy she had
used up being frightened last night, then to return to her
motel room, dress up in her suit, and go camp out on
Ballinger's doorstep. Perhaps she should see the sheriff
first. She would decide that over coffee.

Lindsay walked into the coffee shop and sat in a booth
near the window. When the waitress came, she ordered
scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and orange juice. She took a
newspaper from the counter to read while she waited. She
didn't wait long. In about ten minutes the waitress brought
her order and a fresh cup of coffee. Lindsay lingered over
each bite and sipped the coffee as she read the comics. She
finished and looked at her watch. It was only 8:30. She paid
her bill and left the coffee shop.

As she walked across the lobby past the schefflera plant
and past the door to the parking garage, the door burst open
and two men jerked a hood over her head, held her mouth,
dragged her out the door, and shoved her into a vehicle.
Lindsay kicked, tried to scream, but couldn't. She tried to
bite the hand that held her mouth, but couldn't. The air
under the hood was suffocating, and the fabric tasted awful.
It wasn't until she heard the car door close that one of the
men cursed. She thought she recognized his voice, but he
was yelling. Lindsay continued fighting, then felt something hard, like a rod or a gun, push against her head.

"Now stop fighting, or I'll blow your brains out here and
now," a voice whispered.

Lindsay stopped kicking. "Who are you?"

"It'll be easier on everyone if you don't know," he said.

"What are you going to do?"

"Just take you to someone who wants to talk to you, so calm down. We'll take you there, you'll have your talk, we'll
bring you back. You won't have seen our faces, so we can let
you go. It's as simple as that, so just relax."

Lindsay did, but in order to think. She didn't believe
him. Everything she had ever heard about attackers said
they lie; they want you to cooperate so they will tell you
anything. But she didn't know what to do. Think. They
didn't have her tied. Why? It would be easier for them to
tie her, so they must have a reason not to have done it. No
rope? If they had gotten a sack to put over her head, they
could have gotten a rope. No ligature marks? There would
be bruises. But maybe bruises that could not be accounted
for in an accident?

She was in a van. She deduced that from the sound of a
sliding door closing and the fact that there seemed to be a
lot of room. A van. Who owns a van? Archaeology students?
Damn, anyone can own a van. She didn't remember anyone
involved in the investigation who owned one. Any of them
could; certainly Jennifer Darnell could. She owned a store. It
would have a van.

But she was thinking about the wrong things. Knowing
who it was wouldn't help her get away, and getting away
was her first priority. She couldn't count on anyone having
seen her abduction. She thought about snatching her hood
off and making a run for the door, the driver, or a window.
Window-there probably were no windows in the back of
the van. Truthfully, she was afraid of getting shot. She had
been shot before by a kidnapper, and she didn't want it to
happen again. Damn, shouldn't there be a limit to the number of
times a person can get kidnapped in a lifetime?

"What do they want to talk to me about?" she asked.

The question seemed to surprise her captor. She thought
she felt him jump. He was not accustomed to this. Was that
good or bad? Maybe that meant it would be harder for them
to be cold blooded.

"You'll find out. Just keep quiet."

They turned off the road, and the highway noises were
gone. There were a lot of turns, but this was a mountainous
area, and almost any road off the main highway was winding. But that was good. She knew wooded areas. If she
could get away from them, she knew how to find her way
out of almost any woods. Lindsay tried to think of things in
her favor, things that would make her more optimistic.
Then she wondered if maybe she should have made a run
for it when they were in traffic. Now they were in a less
populated area, and she heard fewer and fewer cars.

"Don't think about making a break for it," the man whispered, as through he had been reading her mind. "You must
be thinking about it. I would be. But don't. We don't want
to shoot you, but we will."

They don't want to shoot me because they don't want a bullet
hole in me, she thought. She would wait until she was outside to pull the hood off her head and make a run for it. Yes,
that is what she could do. Lindsay was a good runner and
she knew woodcraft. She felt better with a plan. A line from
Tremors, one of her favorite movies, ran through her head:
"Running's not a plan. Running's what you do when a plan
fails." She almost laughed. She was getting giddy. Was it the
lack of oxygen or the natural progression of the psychology
of her circumstances? Sorry, Earl, she thought, running's the
only plan I got.