Dead Secret (4 page)

Chapter 5

Neva looked up from the evidence bags and moved to stop Jin.

“Tell me you didn’t spray anything on the rocks,” said Mike.

Jin raised his eyebrows and stared at him for a moment, then at Diane. “We almost always check for blood. I didn’t think—”

“We don’t contaminate caves. The ecosystem here is fragile. I should have told you not to bring any chemicals,” said Diane.

Jin looked around at the barren landscape of rock and speleotherms. “I didn’t know. Who would have thought?”

“The fauna can be very small—microscopic,” said Mike.

“And we can’t leave anything toxic that other cavers might get into,” said Diane.

Jin wrinkled his face. “Didn’t think of that.” He glanced at Mike, who was staring at him with a disapproving frown. “I haven’t sprayed anything. We’re safe.”

Mike nodded, then gave him a crooked half smile. “Good. Then I don’t have to dangle you over a bottomless pit.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” said Jin. “I’m not wearing my Spide-Man underwear.” He grinned at Mike, then looked at Diane. “I saw some suspicious dark stains that might be blood,” said Jin. “I’ll take samples and photographs. We can map any pattern that way.”

“I have something here.” Neva had donned a pair of latex gloves from the crime kit and was examining what looked like a slip of paper. “I think it might be a photograph, but it’s been soaked through—with blood maybe.”

“Really?” said Jin. “Let me see.”

Diane and Jin walked over and peered at what appeared to be a dirty brown square piece of paper in Neva’s hand. Neva shined her flashlight through it.

“I think I see a shape,” said Neva. “Maybe a person.”

“Maybe,” agreed Diane. “We’ll clean it up at the lab. If we’re lucky, it will have a name on the back. Good find.”

Neva dropped the paper fragment into an evidence bag she retrieved from the crime kit and set it in the row of bags containing evidence that had been collected so far—more than Diane expected.

Jin returned to his soil samples. Diane slipped on a pair of gloves and helped Neva put the mummified remains of Caver Doe into the body bag. With his body fluids gone and only skin and bone remaining, he was light, but he was fixed in a sitting position, so they had to lay him on his side in the bag.

“Do you know how long he’s been here?” Mike peered into the body bag. “He looks a little like that Egyptian mummy you have at the museum—if it weren’t for the clothes.”

Diane shrugged her shoulders. “Perhaps between thirty and a hundred years.” She zipped up the bag. “We’ll know when we analyze the evidence.”

Neva let out a breath. “He’s been sitting a long time waiting for someone to find him.” She gave the body bag a pat. “Poor fellow.”

Jin squatted beside a dented, discolored brass lamp setting with collected evidence. “He had a carbide lamp. Do they still make them?”

“Most definitely,” said Mike. “I have several.”

“Many cavers still use them,” Diane said.

“Really?” said Jin. “Interesting. Well, this one looks old.”

Neva stood, stretched, and began packing up the evidence in the crime scene kit. “I’ll bet we can get something from the Moon Pie wrappers. And heaven knows what’s in his backpack. Maybe he kept a journal while he was waiting.” She grinned. “He had to do something to pass the time.”

“Probably just sat and groaned,” said Mike, still staring at the closed body bag. “Depending on how he landed, he could have been in a lot of pain.”

While they discussed the last days of Caver Doe, Diane studied all the objects littering the cavern. They looked incongruous amid the columns of stalagmites and stalactites. “Now we have to haul this stuff out of here.”

Mike came over to her side. “I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “We can hoist the stuff up to the cavern above and divide it among us.” He lifted Jin’s huge backpack. “You were only going to be here a few hours; why did you bring such a big backpack? What do you have in it?”

“Flashlights, space blanket, bedroll, food, dishes, duct tape, first-aid kit, binoculars, emergency shelter . . .”

“Emergency shelter?”

“It’s the stuff I take on long hikes. I thought some of it might be useful in a cave.”

Mike laughed. “We’ll have to teach you how to put it in a smaller pack.”

“It was kind of hard dragging it through the tunnels,” admitted Jin.

Diane winced, trying not to think of the speleotherms he may have damaged with the huge metal frame on his pack.

Mike climbed up the rope to the chamber above while Diane and her crew packed up the lamps and evidence. Now the cavern was illuminated only by Diane’s and Neva’s headlamps and Jin’s flashlight.

Diane’s eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the loss of light. Everything in her peripheral vision was a dim shadow. It was like closing a door, leaving the cave as it should be—deep and dark.

At the sound of hammering from above, Jin looked up. “What’s he doing?”

“Probably putting in pulleys to make it easier to haul this stuff back up.”

Jin paused. “You mean he carries pulleys around in his backpack, but he scoffed at my emergency shelter?” He grinned, showing a row of even white teeth.

“We work on rope a lot, so we carry a lot of rope gear,” said Diane.

They had moved all their things near the rope. Diane glanced up just as Mike peered down from the hole.

“Stand back,” he yelled. “I’m dropping a rope.”

Diane tied the metal case of the crime scene kit to the end of the rope, and Mike quickly hauled it up. The duffel bag and the lamps were next, and then Jin’s backpack.

While Mike was hoisting the backpack, Diane made a rope harness for the body bag. She tied the harness to the hoist rope and Mike lifted it up through the hole. All that was left was Diane, Neva and Jin.

Jin looked up the long rope and over at Diane.

“There’s no disgrace in using the loops in the rope as hand- and footholds if you need them. That’s what they’re for,” said Diane.

Jin gave her a sideways look. “You say that as if you don’t have to use them when you climb.”

Diane smiled at him. “Here’s some chalk,” she said.

Jin dusted his hands, put his flashlight in his belt and started up. He did better than Diane expected. Mike grabbed his arm at the top of the climb and helped pull him over the ledge. Neva was next. She had a more difficult time. She was strong, but it took a special set of muscles to climb a rope, and she struggled to get to the top and over the ledge. When Neva was up, Diane chalked her own hands and climbed up the rope with only slight discomfort.

It was crowded in the small chamber with all four of them and their supplies. Now they had to get through the narrow passage dragging Caver Doe and all their paraphernalia.

“I called MacGregor and asked him to meet us on the other end of this passage to help carry some of this stuff,” said Mike. “He’ll get a kick out of helping carry the body.”

“Yes,” said Neva. “It’ll give him something to talk about—for months, maybe years.”

Diane decided that she would take the lead out of the tunnel and Mike would bring up the rear. She went through, pulling both her and Jin’s backpacks. The metal frame on Jin’s pack scraped the rock wall all the way through the tight tunnel. She emerged almost in MacGregor’s lap.

“Hi! Need help getting the stuff out?” Dick MacGregor was sitting outside the narrow tunnel eating an apple. He stuffed the unfinished snack in his backpack.

“Yes. We could use your help,” said Diane.

Neva’s headlamp was visible as she squirmed through the narrow passage, dragging the crime scene kit and her backpack behind her.

Diane tried to tune out the scraping sounds of the hard metal crime scene case.

“Is the deputy outside?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah. Me and him have been talking. He said the sheriff wasn’t going to like the coroner giving you the body. But, heck, what was he going to do with it anyway? I mean, I think the coroner was right—finders keepers. You going to put him on show with the other mummy at the museum?”

“We’re going to find out who he is. He may have relatives from around here. You ever heard stories about anyone getting lost in a cave?” asked Diane as she helped Neva out of the tunnel with her load.

MacGregor scratched his scruffy dark beard. “No . . . come to think of it, I never did. I’ll ask my cousin. It’s his family’s land. They might know.”

Jin came tumbling out, pulling Caver Doe in the body bag behind him. They were in a small room devoid of any formations. It had an irregular dome shape and walls a light color similar to the big tunnel where Diane had found the button. It was a cozy room, almost like a bubble between the narrow crack they just came through and the twisting passage they were about to enter.

They waited several minutes for Mike.

“What’s keeping him?” asked Jin.

“He’s getting the rope,” said Diane.

“Oh, yeah. Isn’t it heavy carrying around all that rope?”

“Can be, but it’s good to have it when you need it.”

Finally Mike came through, pulling Jin’s duffel bag and his backpack with his coils of rope tied to it.

“Why don’t MacGregor and Jin carry the body bag?” Mike said to Diane. “I can take the crime scene kit and Jin’s backpack. Neva can carry your pack, and you can carry the duffel bag.”

Diane nodded in agreement. She and Mike were the most experienced cavers, and he had given the heaviest loads to himself and her.

“Can’t believe there’s a dead body in this bag,” said MacGregor. “You don’t think it’s anybody we know, do you?” His voice had a sudden tone of concern in it.

Diane shook her head. “No, this guy’s been here a long time.”

It took them three times as long to get out of the cave as it had to get in, loaded down as they were. Several times they had to stop and negotiate through squeezes, taking off their load and pulling it behind them or pushing it in front of them.

A loaded caravan through a cave wasn’t as much fun as simple caving. Diane felt relieved when they first emerged into the outdoors, but she quickly wished she were back in the cave. It was hot, especially compared to the cool cave. With her long-sleeved caving attire, it wouldn’t take long to get uncomfortably hot. But there was the deputy to talk to first.

He sat on the bumper of his Lumpkin County patrol car with his arms folded in a manner that Diane had seen young children do when they were in full pout mode. Dressed in navy-blue pants and a short-sleeved shirt, the deputy looked to be in his early forties and had wavy blond hair and the beginnings of a potbelly.

“You know, I have other things to do than sit around here all day. Which one of you is Diane Fallon?” His gaze took in all of them, as if one of the males might have been named Diane.

“I’m Diane Fallon.”

“You could have come out and signed this paper and I could have been on my way.”

“I’m sorry, Deputy”—she looked at his nameplate above his shirt pocket—“Deputy Singer. I would have if I could. But I’m here now and I’ll be glad to sign the coroner’s papers.” Diane smiled at him, hoping she wasn’t showing the amusement she felt at listening to him complain.

The deputy shoved some wrinkled papers at her.

“Got a pen?” asked Diane.

The deputy breathed a heavy sigh and handed her the pen from his shirt pocket.

Diane took the papers and laid them out on the hood of his car.

“Now just a minute.” The deputy sprang toward his car and grabbed a notebook from the backseat. “Use this. I don’t want you scratching my car.”

As she wrote, Deputy Singer looked over her shoulder and told her what the sheriff was going to think of all this. His breath smelled of garlic and onions.

Mike opened the back of his SUV, took soft drinks from his cooler and passed them around, handing the deputy a Coke. Deputy Singer took it and muttered a thanks and went on with his harangue between sips. Diane had a feeling he’d been mentally rehearsing it while he was waiting. Mike gave her a 7-UP and popped the tab for her. It was cold and felt good going down her throat.

Diane took several long gulps before retuning her attention to the paperwork. She glanced up and saw Mike leaning against his vehicle with an arm around Neva’s neck, sharing a Coke with her, the two of them sporting amused expressions as they watched her deal with the deputy.

“Yes, sirree, Sheriff Burns is going to have a talk with Pilgrim. I don’t know what he was thinking, giving all this to Rosewood, like we can’t take care of our own. Who does Rosewood think they are anyway? Atlanta? Too big for your britches, I’d say.”

Diane let the deputy get the ire out of his system. She’d learned from her former boss, who was a career diplomat, that sometimes letting people have their say defused their hard feelings.

“I’m sure he thought the sheriff had more important things to do than fool with some incident that happened maybe fifty or sixty years ago,” said Diane.

“Fifty or sixty years ago? That long, huh? You’re right about that. Probably don’t even have a next of kin still living. Just be a waste of time. I guess ol’ Pilgrim thought you all had the time to waste, with your fancy equipment doing everything for you.”

“I imagine so.” Diane smiled and handed him the papers. “Tell Sheriff Burns I’ll give him a call, and thank you for waiting for us. I know it was an inconvenience, but I appreciate it.”

“Just doing my job. It’s what they pay me for.” He slumped toward his patrol car, got in, and drove off with a spin of his wheels, kicking a cloud of dirt and grass on them.

Chapter 6

“Pleasant fellow,” Neva said, turning to MacGregor. “Bet you had a good time with him out here, Mac.”

“Oh, that’s just him. My cousin said he was like that as a kid—like everything puts him out. I tried to get him in a good mood for you guys, but I guess I failed.”

Diane couldn’t suppress a chuckle; neither could Mike or Neva. Diane looked at her watch. It was almost three o’clock. If she hurried she’d have time for an extra-long soak in the tub before her date with Frank. She and the others got their clean clothes out of the car. The guys went behind Mike’s SUV to change.

Dick MacGregor had built a blind just into the woods for Neva and Diane to change behind. The blind was at the base of a hillside with thick woods all around, and it included a bench. For all his annoying habits—talking incessantly, humming
The Twilight Zone
theme song every time they passed through the twilight zone of a cave, telling bad jokes—MacGregor was actually a kind and considerate person. She and Neva both appreciated the place he had built for them.

Diane sat down on the bench, pulled off her boots and wiggled her freed toes. Neva sat down beside her and began unlacing hers.

“This was certainly an eventful caving trip.” Neva kneaded her foot before she took off her jeans and put on a fresh pair. She slipped her bare feet into running shoes that didn’t look much cleaner than her caving boots. “How are you doing—you know, after the almost fall?”

“A little sore.” Diane stretched her muscles, bending down so that her head touched her ankles and stretching her back. It felt good.

“That had to be scary,” said Neva.

Diane sat up. “It was. But when something like that happens, as you know, you put all your energies into hanging on. I was lucky that Mike was there to throw me a rope.”

“How do you get rid of the fear?”

“You don’t. It’s kind of like pain—you just work through it.” Neva was silent for a moment, as if contemplating what Diane said. “You appear to be working through your fear of caving pretty well,” said Diane.

Neva nodded and smiled. “Mike’s been a big help. He’s a really great guy, although . . . ” She smiled and lowered her voice, as if he might be lurking around listening. “Sometimes he’s a little stuffy.”

Diane was surprised. “Mike, stuffy? How?”

Neva took off her dirty shirt and slipped a clean tee over her head. “He’s a vegetarian and mostly likes classical music. And when he starts talking about geology . . . I mean, he thinks folded rocks are so interesting. I never knew you could fold rocks, but Georgia apparently has a lot of them.”

“I knew he liked classical music. He used to date a violinist in a string quartet.” Diane slipped on a pair of clean blue jeans.

“Did he? One thing I like about Mike is that he never talks about his ex-girlfriends, and he’s apparently had a lot.”

“Oh?”

“At least, a lot of girls seem to know him.”

Diane knew that when Neva was first assigned by the Rosewood Police Department to Diane’s crime scene unit, she had been afraid of Diane. She had come a long way to be able to share girl talk with her.

“I can imagine. He’s a great-looking guy.”

“And smart. He’s the most educated guy I’ve ever dated. In my family, when I went to the police academy, you’d have thought I was going to Yale. Mike knows a lot of stuff. Sometimes I have no idea what he’s talking about.”

“Neither do I when he starts talking geology. You and I aren’t geologists. But you know a lot of stuff he doesn’t. The whole area of evidence collection and forensics, for example. And your artwork.”

“That’s true.” Neva nodded. “You know those little animals I do from clay? He loves that. I gave him one I did of a mustang.”

“Mike admires talent.”

Diane pulled her shirt off over her head and reached for her blouse—crisp white with an embroidered neckline.

Neva stared at Diane’s rib cage. “My God, did you get that when you fell?”

Diane looked down at her ribs. A large patch of skin had started to turn blue. “Must have been when I grabbed onto the rope. I swung into the wall pretty hard.”

“It looks sore.”

Diane fingered the bruise and made a face when it smarted. “It is a little tender. I’ll put an ice pack on it when I get home.” She pulled the blouse over her head. “This has been quite an eventful trip.”

“I’ll say. Do you think the sheriff will let us process the evidence?”

“I imagine he’ll go along with the coroner.” Diane scooped up her dirty clothes, rolled them up and tucked them into her pack, and walked with Neva to the vehicles. Diane climbed in hers and started the engine. She waved at Neva and MacGregor as they climbed into Mike’s SUV.

The next order of business was to get the body of Caver Doe logged in and secured in the museum forensic lab until arrangements could be made for the autopsy. That job was made easier by a call on her cell phone from Sheriff Burns as she drove back to Rosewood. As she had suspected, the possibly fifty-year-old case of Caver Doe did not rank as a priority in Sheriff Burns’s pressing caseload. He was more than happy to let Diane arrange the processing of the body.

Diane scrolled down her cell phone address book to the number for Lynn Webber, the medical examiner for Hall County, and got Lynn on the phone.

“Well, hello, Diane Fallon. What can I do for you?”

As soon as she spoke in her deep South Georgia accent Diane visualized Lynn’s dark, well-coiffed hair and manicured nails. Lynn didn’t look like a medical examiner until you saw her elbow-deep in the bowels of a cadaver.

“I have a special situation here, and your expertise immediately came to mind.”

“Flattery usually works with me, but this sounds like a problem.”

“No, really, this could be a welcome break from what we usually see.” She explained the circumstances and the condition of Caver Doe to Lynn.

“You have the most experience with mummified remains of anyone in the area, so I’d like you to do the autopsy,” Diane said. “And the entrance to the cave is in Hall County, so technically, it could have been your body—sort of.”

“I looked at the MRI of the Egyptian mummy for your museum. That is the extent of my experience.”

“Yes, and that gives you much more experience than anyone else around.”

“A fifty-year-old mummy?”

Mike blew his horn as he passed her on the road. He was a much faster driver than Diane.

“Fifty, sixty, seventy. We don’t know the exact age. But his Moon Pie wrappers look pretty old.”

Lynn laughed. “This isn’t a joke, is it? Did that Brewster Pilgrim tell you to call me?”

“No, this is legit.”

“Okay, send him over. You want your mummy stripped when I’m finished, I guess?”

“Yes, please. And . . . thanks, Lynn.”

“You tell Brewster that if this is a joke, payback’s a bitch.”

It took about twenty minutes for Diane to deliver the body to the hospital morgue where Lynn worked, and another twenty minutes to check it in with the attendant on duty. By the time the mummy was safely inside his drawer Diane was more than ready to be in her small Rosewood apartment soaking in her large claw-footed tub.

Just as Diane had anticipated, the bubble bath was soothing and relaxing. She would have preferred warm water, but with the bruises on her midsection, she opted for a cooler soak. She was leaning back in the tub when she heard Frank’s knock on the front door. He had a rhythmic knock he did with his knuckles before he let himself in with the key Diane had given him. And he always called out when he entered.

“Diane, it’s me.”

“I’m in the tub.”

“That sounds nice. Let me put the food down and I’ll join you.”

She smiled to herself as she heard him rattling around in the kitchen and then his footfalls coming toward the bathroom.

“You look all relaxed. Hard day at the cave?” He sat on the edge of the tub and dipped his hand in the water. “A little cool. How long you been soaking?” He shook the bubbles off his sleeve.

“I’m about ready to get out.”

Frank Duncan was a detective in the Metro Atlanta Fraud and Computer Forensics Unit, where he investigated everything from white-collar and computer crimes to identity theft. They had dated before she went to South America to work for World Accord International looking for and excavating mass graves. When she returned to take over directorship of the museum, she had been surprised to discover that his blue-green eyes still made her quiver when his smile made them crinkle at the corners and sparkle—like they did now.

“We have the rest of the evening and two full weeks,” he said.

“I am
so
looking forward to being in a mountain cabin with you, and no dead bodies, blood spatter, or fussy board members.” Diane relaxed back in the tub, feeling content and peaceful in the cool water, glad Frank was here.

“I brought some Thai food for dinner. Thought we could eat in the living room, look out your picture window, listen to music and . . . ” He let his words drift off as he sloshed the water back and forth with his hand. Diane sat up in the tub and smoothed the water out of her hair with her hands. Frank took the towel she had folded and laid on the counter and opened it up. “I can help.”

Diane pulled the plug in the bathtub, stood up and reached for the towel. “Great, I’m in the mood to be waited on.”

“Diane, what happened?” Frank held on to the towel as he stared at the blue bruise that covered the length of her left rib cage.

“It’s nothing. I bumped into a wall in the cave.”

“It’s not nothing, and you don’t get a bruise like that bumping into a wall.”

“I was hanging on to a rope at the time—it was swinging. Look, it’s just a bruise. I get bruises all the time when I’m caving.”

“I see you naked on a fairly regular basis and I have never seen you bruised up like this.”

Diane grabbed at the towel. Frank wrapped it around her and helped her dry off.

“There’s not much to tell, really.”

“When you say there’s not much to tell, I know there’s a story lurking. What happened?”

“I fell through some loose rocks . . . an ordinary caving mishap.”

“Fell through some loose rocks, hanging on a rope? I’m not getting a picture of this. You are going to have to draw a little better.”

Damn.
Diane could see she was going to have to tell him. The last thing she wanted to hear from Frank tonight was a lecture on the dangers of caving. Noncavers just didn’t understand the allure of caves—and it wasn’t like she had accidents every weekend. “At least let me get dressed.”

“Is that necessary?” He drew her close.

Later, Diane, in faded jeans and a tee, sat on her sofa cross-legged, finishing her chicken-and-cashew-nut dinner. Frank sat on the other end enjoying a dish of spareribs in peanut curry sauce. Brahms’s “Waltz in A-flat” was just finishing on her CD player.

Frank took the plates to the kitchen and came back with a cup of coffee for each of them. “Okay, now that you’ve had time to think out your story, are you going to tell me how you got that bruise?”

Diane should have known he wouldn’t forget. She explained how the rocks were caught in the hole, creating a false floor, trying to make it sound like nothing. In fact, the near miss had rattled her, but she found ignoring it was more effective for her peace of mind than dwelling on it. What nagged at her the most was not as much the near fall, but the fact that she had overlooked something dangerous.

“Mike was there with some rope,” she said. “That’s why I cave with several people. We watch one another’s backs.”

“But for a while you were hanging by your fingers?”

Diane stared at the stereo. She had put some Beethoven sonatas on low. She was wondering now if she should turn up the volume and drown out the conversation. She glanced at the remote and sighed. “Yes. But when you climb rocks you develop strong hands.”

“Right. How far would you have fallen?”

“Not that far. I’m not sure,” Diane said as she took a long sip of her coffee and made a grab for the remote. Frank, apparently, anticipated her move and grabbed it first.

“Yes, you are. You map caves. You have that little laser gadget with you. Don’t tell me you didn’t measure the height of the chamber once you were in it.”

“Okay. Thirty feet.”

“Thirty feet! God, Diane, that could have killed you.”

“Probably only broken some bones. But I didn’t fall. Look, most of the time caving is uneventful, in terms of actual danger. This was an unusual trip.” She glared at him directly in his eyes. “Frank, I love caving. I’m a good caver, and a safe one.”

She decided not to mention the rock slide. That wasn’t even a near miss. They got out of the tunnel in plenty of time . . . sort of.

“This is actually a fairly tame cave so far. But what was interesting was what we found in the chamber,” she said.

Frank raised his eyebrows. “What did you find?”

“A mummified caver who wasn’t as lucky as I was. Looks like he probably broke some bones and couldn’t get out.”

Frank shook his head. “Do you have some kind of compass that points you to dead bodies?”

“I think he got into that chamber from another entrance no one knows about. We may have discovered a connection to an entirely different cave. That kind of discovery is important to us cavers.”