Текст книги "Still Life With Crows"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

“I told you I’ll leave some money on the kitchen table.”

“You’ll leave seven hundred and fifty dollars on the kitchen table.”

“That’s way too much.”

“For supporting you all these years, it’s hardly enough.”

“If you didn’t want to support me you shouldn’t have gotten pregnant.”

“Accidents happen, unfortunately.”

Corrie could smell the acrid scent of burning filter as the cigarette was inhaled right down to the butt. Her mother looked around, stubbed it out in Corrie’s incense burner. “If you don’t want to contribute, you can go find yourself another place to live.”

Corrie turned roughly away and replaced her earphones, cranking up the music so loud her ears hurt. She faced the smudged wall, stone-faced. She could just barely hear her mother shouting at her. If she so much as touches me,Corrie thought, I’ll scream.But she knew her mother wouldn’t. She’d hit her once and Corrie had screamed so loud the sheriff came. Of course, the little bulldog did nothing—he actually threatened herwith disturbing the peace—but it had the effect of keeping her mother’s hands off her for good.

There was nothing her mother could do. She just had to wait her out.

Long after her mother had gone back to her room in a fury, Corrie continued lying there, thinking. She forced her mind away from her mother, from the trailer, from the depressing empty meaningless hell that was her life. She found her thoughts drifting toward Pendergast. She thought about his cool black suit, his pale eyes, his tall narrow frame. She wondered if Pendergast was married or had children. It wasn’t fair, the way he’d just dumped her like that and driven off in his fancy car. But maybe, like everybody else, he was disappointed in her. Maybe in the end she just hadn’t done a good enough job for him. She burned with resentment at the way the sheriff had come in and just laid those papers on Pendergast. But he wasn’t the kind to roll over and play dead. And hadn’t he hinted he was going to continue working on the case? He hadto take her off the case, she told herself. It wasn’t anything she’d done. He’d said it himself: I cannot have you defying the sheriff on my account.

Her mind drifted toward the case itself. It was still so weird to think of someone in Medicine Creek doing those killings. If it really was someone local, it meant it was someone she knew. But she knew everyone in Shit Creek, and she couldn’t imagine any of them being a serial killer. She shuddered, thinking back over the crime scenes she’d witnessed firsthand: the dog, its tail hacked off . . . Chauncy, sewn up like some overdone turkey . . .

The weirdest of all was Stott, boiled like that. Why had the killer done that? And how did you boil someone whole, anyway? He’d have to have lit a fire, put on a big pot . . . It seemed impossible. Where could you get a pot like that? Maisie’s? No, of course not: the biggest pot she had was the one she used for Wednesday night chili, and you couldn’t even fit an arm in that. The Castle Club also had a kitchen—could it have happened there?

Corrie snorted to herself. The idea was nuts. Even the Castle Club couldn’t have a pot big enough to boil an entire person; for that you’d need an industrial kitchen. Or maybe he’d used a bathtub? Could someone have winched a bathtub onto a stove, cooked the body that way? Or set up a bathtub in some cornfield? But the spotter planes would have seen it. And the smoke from the fire would have been visible from all over. Someone would’ve smelled it cooking; smelled the smoke,at least.

No, there was nowhere in Medicine Creek the body could’ve been cooked . . .

Abruptly, she sat up.

Kraus’s Kaverns.

It was crazy. But then again, maybe it wasn’t. Everyone knew that, during Prohibition, old man Kraus had run a moonshine operation in the back of that cave of his.

She felt a crawling sensation along her back: a mixture of excitement, curiosity, fear. Maybe the old still was still in there. Stills had big pots, didn’t they? And would that pot be big enough to boil a person? Maybe, just maybe.

She lay back in bed, her heart beating fast. As she did so, the ridiculousness of it came over her again. Prohibition had ended seventy years ago and the old still would be long gone. You just didn’t leave something that valuable rotting in a cave. And how would the killer sneak in and out of the cave? That prying old woman, Winifred Kraus, kept it locked up tight and watched over it like a hawk.

She tossed restlessly. Locks could be picked. She herself had downloaded The MIT Guide to Lock Pickingwhile surfing the Web on the school computers, and she’d even made a small pick of her own and experimented on the padlocks of school lockers.

If the killer was local he’d know about old man Kraus’s moonshine operation and the still. The killer might have brought the body in some night, boiled it, and been gone by morning. Old Winifred would never have been the wiser. Fact is, she hardly ever gave tours anymore.

Corrie wondered if she should call Pendergast. Did he know about the still? She doubted it—the bootlegging was just some ancient bit of Medicine Creek lore nobody would have thought to tell him about. That was why he’d hired her, to tell him just this kind of stuff. She should call him now and let him know. She felt in her pocket for the cell phone he’d given her, pulled it out, started dialing.

Then she stopped. The whole idea was absurd. Stupid. It was just a wild guess. Pendergast would laugh at her. He might even be angry. She wasn’t supposed to be on the case at all.

She dropped the phone and turned toward the wall again. Maybe she should check it out first—just in case. Just to see if the still was there. If it was, then she’d tell Pendergast. If it wasn’t, she wouldn’t make a fool of herself.

She sat up, put her feet on the floor. Everybody knew the cave only had one or two small caverns beyond the tourist area. The still would be in one of those. It wouldn’t be hard to find. She would duck in there, check it out, leave. And it would get her out of the house. Anythingto get out of this hellhole.

She turned down the music and listened. Her mother had fallen silent.

She slipped off the earphones, paused to listen again. Then, ever so carefully, she got out of bed, pulled on some clothes, and slowly opened the door. All remained quiet. Shoes in hand, she began sneaking down the corridor. Just as she reached its end, she heard her mother’s door bang open and her voice ring out.

“Corrie! Where in hell do you think you’re going?”

She hopped through the kitchen and ran out the door, letting it bang behind her. She jumped into her car, threw her shoes onto the seat next to her, and turned the key, praying the thing would start. It thumped, choked, died.

“Corrie!” Her mother was coming out the door now, moving awfully fast for someone with a nasty cold.

Corrie cranked the key again, pumping the pedal desperately.

“Corrie—!!”

This time the engine caught and she screeched down the gravel lane of Wyndham Parke Estates, laying a spume of smoke, dust, and dancing pebbles in her wake.

Forty-Four

 

Marjorie Lane, executive receptionist for the ABX Corporation, was becoming increasingly agitated by the man in the black suit sitting in her waiting room.

He had been there ninety minutes. That in itself wasn’t unusual, but during that time he had not picked up any of the magazines conveniently laid about; he had not used his cell phone; he had not opened a laptop or done any of the things people usually did while waiting to see Kenneth Boot, the company CEO. In fact, it seemed as if he hadn’t moved at all. His eyes, so strange and silvery, always seemed to be looking out the glass wall of the waiting room across downtown Topeka, toward the green geometry of farms beyond the city’s edge.

Marjorie had been with the company through a host of recent changes. First, it had jettisoned its old name, the Anadarko Basin Exploratory Company, in favor of the sleek new acronym and logo. Then it had begun buying new businesses that went far beyond oil exploration: energy trading, fiber optics, broadband (whatever that was), and a million other things she didn’t understand and, when she asked around, nobody else seemed to, either. Mr. Boot was a very busy man, but even when he was not busy he liked to keep people waiting. Sometimes he kept people waiting all day, as he had done recently with some mutual fund managers who had come to ask questions about something or other.

She longed for the old days: when she understood what the company did, when people weren’t kept waiting. It was unpleasant for her when people had to wait. They complained, they talked loudly on their cell phones, they banged away on their laptops, and they paced about furiously. Sometimes they used profane language and she had to call security.

But this—this was worse. This man gave her the creeps. She had no idea if Mr. Boot would see him soon, or in fact see him at all. She knew he was an FBI agent—he had shown her his shield—but Mr. Boot had kept important people waiting before.

Marjorie Lane busied herself with work, answering phones, typing, responding to e-mails, but always out of the corner of her eye she could see the black figure, as immobile as a Civil War statue. He didn’t even seem to blink.

Finally, when she couldn’t stand it any longer, Marjorie did something she knew she wasn’t supposed to do: she buzzed Mr. Boot’s personal secretary.

“Kathy,” she said in an undertone, “this FBI agent’s been here almost two hours and I really think Mr. Boot should see him.”

“Mr. Boot is very busy.”

“I know,Kathy, but I really think he should seethis man. I’m getting a bad feeling here. Do me a favor, please.”

“Just a moment.”

Marjorie was put on hold. A moment later the secretary came back. “Mr. Boot has five minutes.”

Marjorie hung up. “Agent Pendergast?”

His pale eyes slowly connected with her own.

“Mr. Boot will see you now.”

Pendergast rose, bowed slightly, and without a word passed through the inner door.

Marjorie heaved a sigh of relief.

Kenneth Boot stood over the drafting table that served as his desk—he worked standing up—and only gradually became aware that the FBI agent had entered his office and seated himself. He finished typing a memo on his laptop, transmitted it to his secretary, and turned to face the man.

He was startled. This FBI agent didn’t look at all like Efrem Zimbalist Jr., one of his boyhood heroes. In fact, he couldn’t have been more different. Beautifully cut black suit, handmade English shoes, custom shirt—not to mention the white skin and slender hands. Five, six thousand dollars’ worth of clothes on the man, not counting his underwear. Kenneth Boot knew good clothes when he saw them, just as he made it a point to know fine wine, cigars, and women—as every male CEO in America had to do if he wanted to get ahead in business. Boot didn’t like the way the agent had made himself so very comfortable. The man’s eyes were roaming around in a way that offended Boot—it was almost as if he were undressing the office.

“Mr. Pendergast?”

The man did not look at him or answer. His eyes continued to roam, examine, scrutinize. Who was he to act so casual around the chief executive officer of ABX, seventeenth largest corporation listed on the New York Stock Exchange?

“You’ve got five minutes and one has passed,” said Boot quietly, going back to his drawing table and rapping out another memo on his computer. He waited for the man to speak, but no words were forthcoming. Boot finished the document, checked his watch. Three minutes left.

Really, this was quite annoying: this man sitting in his office, more comfortable than ever, looking at the paneling on the far wall. Staring, in fact, at the far wall. What was he looking at?

“Mr. Pendergast, you’ve got two minutes left,” he murmured.

The man waved his hand and spoke at last. “Don’t mind me. When you’ve finished your work and can offer me your undividedattention, we’ll chat.”

Boot glanced over his shoulder. “You’d better say what you have to say, Agent Pendergast,” he said as unconcernedly as possible. “Because you’ve got exactly one minute left.”

Suddenly the man looked at him, and the look was so intense Boot almost jumped.

“The vault lies behind that wall, correct?” Pendergast said.

With a huge effort of will, Boot remained motionless. The man knew where the corporate vault was—something only three officers and the chairman of the board knew. Was there some sign of it on the paneling? But in ten years no one had ever suspected. Was he under FBI surveillance? This was outrageous. All these thoughts occurred deep within Boot’s mind and did not surface on his face.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Pendergast smiled, but it was a faintly supercilious smile, that of an adult humoring a child. “You’re in a business, Mr. Boot, in which certain documents must be kept highly confidential. These documents would be the crown jewels of your company. I am referring, of course, to your seismic survey maps of the Anadarko formation. These maps show the location of oil and gas deposits, compiled by you at great cost. Therefore, your having a vault is a given. Since you are a person who trusts nobody, it makes sense the vault would be in your office, where you could keep an eye on it. Now, on three walls of your office you have expensive Old Master paintings. On that portion of the fourth wall, there, you have inexpensive prints. Prints that can be moved, taken down, without fear of a ding or scratch. It is therefore behind the paneling of that wall that your vault lies.”

Boot began to laugh. “You fancy yourself a real Sherlock Holmes, don’t you?”

Pendergast joined in the laughter. “I would respectfully ask you, Mr. Boot—and, of course, this is strictly a voluntary request—to open that vault and give me your seismic exploration survey of Cry County, Kansas. The last one, completed in 1999.”

Boot found he had to make an effort to control himself. As usual, he was successful. Boot had learned a long time ago that a quiet voice was menacing, and the tone he now spoke in was barely audible. “Mr. Pendergast, as you yourself said, those surveys—wherever their location may be—are the crown jewels of ABX. That geological information alone represents thirty years of seismic exploration and wildcatting, at a cost of perhaps half a billion dollars. And you want me to just giveit to you?” He smiled coldly.

“As I said, the request was strictly voluntary. I could never obtain a warrant for information like that.”

The man had nothing to go on, no cards to play, as he himself openly admitted. It was a joke—or a trick. There was something about the entire business that made Kenneth Boot distinctly uncomfortable. He managed a pleasant smile. “I’m sorry I can’t satisfy you, Mr. Pendergast. If there is nothing else, I wish you good day.”

He went back to working on his memo. But the black figure in the corner of his eye did not move.

Boot spoke without looking up from his work. “Mr. Pendergast, in ten seconds you will become a trespasser in this office, at which point I will call security.”

He paused, waited the ten seconds, then pressed the intercom to his secretary. “Kathy, get a security detail up here to show Mr. Pendergast out ASAP.” Boot resumed his work, typing a memo to his VP for finance. But he couldn’t help but notice that the son of a bitch was still sitting, one finger tapping the arm of the chair, looking around in that same breezy way as if he were in a doctor’s waiting room. Insolent bastard.

The intercom buzzed. “Security is here, Mr. Boot.”

Before Boot could respond, the man rose with an elegant swiftness and glided toward the drafting table. Boot stared at him, retort dying in his throat as he noticed the expression on the agent’s pale face.

Pendergast leaned over and murmured a number into his ear:

“2300576700.”

For a moment Boot was confused, but the number rang familiar, and as it dawned on him just what it was he felt his scalp begin to tingle. A knock came at the door and then three security guards entered. They paused, hands on their weapons. “Mr. Boot, is this the man?”

Boot looked at them, his mind blank with panic.

Pendergast smiled and waved dismissively at them. “Mr. Boot won’t be needing your help, gentlemen. He wishes to apologize for the inconvenience.”

They looked at Boot. After a pause the CEO nodded stiffly. “Right. Won’t be needing you.”

“If you would be so kind as to lock the door on your way out,” said Pendergast, “and please tell the secretary to hold all calls and visitors for the next ten minutes. We need a little privacy here.”

Again the guards looked toward Boot for confirmation.

“Yes,” said Boot. “We need a little privacy here.”

The men retreated, the lock turned, and the office fell silent. Pendergast turned to the chief executive officer of ABX and said cheerily, “And now, my dear Mr. Boot, shall we return to our discussion of the crown jewels?”

Pendergast strolled out to his Rolls-Royce, the long mailing tube under one arm. He unlocked the door, placed the tube on the passenger seat, and slid into the hot interior. Starting the engine, he let the compartment cool off while he slipped the survey out of the tube and gave it a quick overview, just to make sure it was what he needed.

It was all that and more. This tied everything together: the Mounds, the legend of the Ghost Warriors, the massacre of the Forty-Fives—and the inexplicable movements of the serial killer. It even explained Medicine Creek’s excellent water, which had proven to be the connection he had needed. As he’d hoped, it was all here on the oil exploration survey, printed in crisp blue and white.

First things first. He picked up the phone, pressed the scrambler option, punched in a number with the area code of Cleveland, Ohio. The ring was answered immediately, but it was several seconds before a voice of exceeding thinness spoke.

“And?”

“I thank you, Mime. The Cayman Islands number did the trick. I expect the target to experience more than a few sleepless nights.”

“Happy to be of assistance.” There was a click.

Pendergast replaced the receiver and examined the map again, looking more closely at the complex subterranean labyrinths it exposed.

“Excellent,” he murmured.

The memory crossing had notfailed. Instead, as the map confirmed, it had succeeded beyond his highest expectations. He had merely failed to interpret it properly. He rolled up the survey and inserted it back into the tube, capping it with a deft tap.

Now he knew exactly where the Ghost Warriors had come from—and where they had gone.

Forty-Five

 

In New York City, it was a warm, brilliant late afternoon. But in the strangely perfumed vaults that lay deep underneath the mansion at Riverside Drive, it was always midnight.

The man named Wren walked through the basement chambers, thin and spectral as a wraith. The yellow light of his miner’s helmet pierced the velvety gloom, illuminating a wooden display case here, a tall metal filing cabinet there. From all corners came the faint sheen of copper and bronze, the dull winking of leaded glass.

For the first time in many days, he did not carry the clipboard beneath his arm. It sat beside his laptop, half a dozen vaults back, ready to be taken upstairs. Because Wren, after eight weeks of exhausting, fascinating work, had at last completed the cataloguing of the cabinet of curiosities that Pendergast had charged him with.

It had proved a remarkable collection indeed, even more remarkable than Pendergast had intimated it would be. It was full of wildly diverse objects, the finest of everything: gemstones, fossils, precious metals, butterflies, botanicals, poisons, extinct animals, coins, weapons, meteorites. Every room, every new drawer and shelf, had revealed fresh discoveries, some wondrous, others deeply unsettling. It was, without question, the greatest cabinet of curiosities ever assembled.

What a shame, then, that the chances of the public ever setting eyes upon it were vanishingly small. At least, not in this century. He felt a pang of jealousy that it should belong to Pendergast, all of it, and nothing for him.

Wren walked slowly through the dim chambers, one following upon the next, looking this way and that, making sure that all was in order, that he had overlooked nothing, left nothing behind.

Now, at last, he reached his final destination. He stopped, the beam of his light falling over a forest of glass: beakers, retorts, titration setups, and test tubes, all returning his light from long dark rectangles of a dozen laboratory tables. His beam stopped at last on a door set into the far wall of the lab. Beyond lay the final chambers, into which Pendergast had expressly forbidden him entrance.

Wren turned back, gazing down the dim, tapestried chambers through which he had just passed. The long journey reminded him, somehow, of Poe’s story “The Masque of the Red Death,” in which Prince Prospero had arranged for his masked ball a series of chambers, each one more fantastic, bizarre, and macabre than the one before it. The final chamber—the chamber of Death—had been black, with blood-colored windows.

Wren looked back into the laboratory, shining his light toward that little closed door in the far wall. He had often wondered, during his cataloguing, what lay beyond it. But perhaps, in retrospect, it was best that he not know. And he did so want to get back to the remarkable ledger book that awaited him at the library. Working on it was a way to put these strange and disturbing collections behind him, at least for a while.

. . . There it was again: the rustle of fabric, the echo of stealthy tread.

Wren had lived most of his working life in dim, silent vaults, and his sense of hearing was preternaturally acute. Time and again, as he had labored in these chambers, he’d heard that same rustle, heard that furtive step. Time and again he’d had the sense of being watched as he pored over open drawers or jotted notes. It had happened far too often to be mere imagination.

As he turned and began moving back through the shadowy rooms, Wren’s hand reached into his lab coat and closed over a narrow-bladed book knife. The blade was fresh and very sharp.

The faint tread paced his own.

Wren let his gaze move casually in the direction of the sound. It seemed to be coming from behind a large set of oaken display cases along the right wall.

The basement chambers were vast and complex, but Wren had come to know them well in his two months of work. And he knew that particular set of display cases ended against a transverse wall. It was a cul-de-sac.

He continued walking until he was almost at the end of the chamber. A rich brocaded tapestry lay ahead, covering the passage into the next vault. Then, with sudden, ferretlike speed, he darted to the right, placing himself between the set of display cases and the wall. Pulling the scalpel from his pocket and thrusting it forward, he shone his light into the blackness behind the cases.

Nothing. It was empty.

But as he slipped the book knife back into his pocket and moved away from the display case, Wren heard, with utter distinctness and clarity, a retreating patter of steps that were too light, and too swift, to belong to anybody but a child.

Forty-Six

 

Corrie drove past the Kraus place slowly, giving the ugly old house a good once-over. A real Addams Family pile if ever there was one. That meddlesome old woman was nowhere to be seen, probably taken to bed sick again. Pendergast’s Rolls was still gone and the place looked abandoned, sitting all by its shabby self in the stifling heat, surrounded by yellowing corn. Overhead, the great anvil-shaped wedge of the storm was creeping farther across the sun. There were now tornado warnings on the radio from Dodge City to the Colorado border. When she looked to the west, the sky was so black and solid it seemed to be made of slate.

No matter. She’d be in and out of the cave in fifteen minutes. A quick check, that was all.

About a quarter mile beyond the Kraus place, she pulled onto a dirt track heading into the nearby fields. She parked her car in a turnaround where it couldn’t be seen from the road. Over the tops of the corn to the east, she could just make out the widow’s walk of the Kraus place; if she took a shortcut through the corn, nobody would see her.

She wondered briefly if it was such a good idea to be out in the corn like this. But then she remembered Pendergast being quite positive the killer worked only at night.

Pocketing her flashlight, she got out of the car and closed the door. Then she pushed into the corn and walked down the rows in the direction of the cave.

The heat of the corn pressed down on her almost to the point of suffocation. The ears were drying out—gasohol corn was harvested dry—and Corrie wondered mildly what would happen if the corn caught fire. She enjoyed that thought until she reached the broken-down picket fence that separated the Kraus place from the surrounding fields.

She followed the line of the fence until she was behind the house. She glanced back quickly, just in case the old lady had appeared in one of the windows, but they all remained dark and empty, like missing teeth. The house gave her the creeps, frankly: standing against the cruel-looking sky, rundown and alone, a couple of gnarled, dead trees at its back. The weak rays of the sun still illuminated its mansard roofs and ocular windows. But even as she watched, the shadow of the approaching front crept across the corn like a blanket and the house darkened against the background sky. She could smell ozone on the air, and the mugginess grew even more suffocating. The storm was worse than it had seemed from inside the trailer—far worse. She’d better hurry before all hell broke loose.

She turned and skirted the path to the cave, keeping low in case old lady Kraus glanced out an upper window. In a moment she was descending the cut in the earth and had arrived at the iron door.

She looked carefully at the ground before the door, but the dust was undisturbed. Nobody had been through here in at least a couple of days. She felt both relief and disappointment: the killer, if he’d been here at all, was obviously long gone, but the lack of prints made it all the more likely that her theory was just so much bullshit. Still, she’d come this far; might as well check the place out.

She glanced over her shoulder again, then leaned forward to inspect the padlock on the iron door. Perfect: an old pin tumbler lock, the kind they’d been making for over a hundred years, still basically unchanged. This was the same kind of lock as on the front door of her trailer, the lock she’d first practiced on; it was the same kind as in the padlocks on the school lockers. She smiled, remembering the gift-wrapped box of horseshit she had once deposited into Brad Hazen’s locker with a card and a single rose. He never had a clue.

First, she tugged on the padlock hard, to make sure it was actually locked. That was the first rule of lock-picking: don’t try any keyway tools until you’re sure you need them.

It was locked, all right. Here we go,she thought.

She pulled an envelope of green felt out of her pocket and unfolded it carefully. Inside was her small set of tension wrenches and the lifter picks she’d surreptitiously made in shop class. She selected the wrench that seemed the right size and inserted it in the keyway, applying tension in the unlocking direction. Lock picking, she knew, was basically a job of finding the mechanical defects of a particular lock: the individual pins were never machined to precisely the same size, there were always slight variations between them that could be exploited. Next, she inserted a pick and gingerly tested the wards, looking for the tightest fit, which would signify the thickest pin. Since the thickest pin of a lock binds first when a turning force is applied, it was important to pick the pins in order of fattest to thinnest. There it was: the pin that bound the most. Carefully, using the pick, she raised it until she felt it set at the shear line. Then she moved to the next thinnest pin and repeated the process, and then once again, careful always to maintain tension. At last, the driver pin set with an audible click; she gave a yank and the lock popped open.

Corrie stood back, unable to suppress a small smile of pride. She wasn’t particularly fast at picking locks—and there were lots of other techniques, like “scrubbing” and “raking,” that she hadn’t mastered—but she was competent. Too bad it was a skill Pendergast would disapprove of. Or would he?

Putting the lock-picking tools back in her pocket, she removed the padlock and placed it to one side. The door squeaked open on rusty hinges; she moved through the entrance, then hesitated. She stood in the darkness a moment, wondering if she should turn on the lights or use her flashlight. If Winifred Kraus showed up, the lights would be a dead giveaway. But then she recollected herself. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, past time for the last tour of the day according to the sign; and besides, Corrie was positive there hadn’t been any tours at all since Pendergast had been forced to take one. The old busybody wasn’t going to stir out of her house in a rising storm. Also, the watchful darkness was getting on her nerves. Better to save her batteries.

She felt along the damp stone wall, found the light switch, flicked it on.

It had been years since she’d been in the cave. Her father had taken her there once, when she was six or seven, not long before he’d run off. For another moment she remained still, looking down into the yawning tunnel. Then she began to descend the limestone steps, her waffle-stompers echoing against the stone.

After a long descent, the staircase gave onto a wooden boardwalk that disappeared between stalagmites and stalactites. Corrie had forgotten just how strange the place was. As a kid going there, she’d been surrounded by adults. Now she was alone in the silence. She walked forward hesitantly, wishing her shoes didn’t make such a hollow sound against the walkway. Bare bulbs, hanging from the uneven ceiling far overhead, threw spectral shadows against the walls. A forest of stalagmites, like jagged, giant spears, rose on both sides. There was no sound in the vast empty space but her footsteps and the distant drip of water.