Fatalis

Chapter Nine

Jim Grand bent carefully and carefully picked up the radio. He listened for a moment to the crackling voice coming from it. There was a great deal of interference because of the mountain walls, but he was able to make out most of what was being said.

Grand looked for a volume dial. He found it on the side of the radio, then turned it up and pressed the transmit button.

"Caltrans emergency, this is James Grand. Can you hear me? This is James Grand."

There was a momentary delay. Then the voice on the other end said, "We hear you, Mr. Grand." The sounds reverberated loudly through the upper reaches of the cave. "Where are you? Are our two engineers with you?"

"There's no one here," Grand said. "At least, not that I can see."

"Exactly where are you?" the caller asked.

The scientist described where he was in the mountain and how he'd gotten here. The man on the radio asked him to hold.

Grand used the time to take a slow look around the cavern. The illumination from the penlight spread across the center of the lake. The distant cave wall was a thick shadow and the water was dark and clean. There were no leaves, no flecks of wood, no detritus of any kind on the surface. Save for the gentle swells caused by the slow-running stream, the lake was unnaturally still. There were no fish moving underwater, no lizards crawling along the walls or ledge, no bats on the ceiling. Just the gnats, which was surprising; they usually weren't found in caves.

Grand began to feel uneasy again. Most caves had a personality he could feel when he entered. The geology-personality types tended to be craggy-and-hostile, tall-and-proud, sinuous-and-aloof, deep-and-dangerous. But this cave felt empty, like a corpse.

And the tunnel had reminded him of a tomb.

The cave had apparently unsettled the Chumash as well. Grand couldn't imagine that the shaman who worked in the outer cavern would not have come here. The cave couldn't have been submerged then. Stalactites can only form in a dry gallery, as water containing minute mineral particles drips to create stone "icicles." That process takes millennia. The Chumash would have had access to the cave. They obviously didn't want it.

"I assume this is Professor Grand?"

The voice coming from the radio was deeper, sharper than before. But familiar.

"This is Professor Grand," he said. "Who is this?"

"It's Sheriff Gearhart."

Grand felt as if he'd been drop-kicked a year into the past. He went from zero to angry before the echo of the radio had faded.

"How long have you been at that site?" Gearhart asked.

"About two hours." Just hearing the man's voice brought back the sheriff's stony face, his flat eyes, his intractable stand-

"And you saw and heard no one," Gearhart said.

"That's right."

"Do you see blood anywhere?"

"No," Grand told him. "Was there an accident somewhere?"

"Professor, is there another way into the cave?"

"Possibly," Grand said. So the sheriff was going to play alpha dog and not answer his questions. Fine, Grand thought. He could mark that territory if he wanted it so badly. "That's one of the things I'm doing up here," Grand said, "mapping the caverns and tunnels."

"Which means we've still got two missing persons."

Gearhart said. "We're going to have to send a search team in there. Can you meet me at Painted Cave in fifteen minutes?"

"I've got some climbing to do to get out," Grand said. "I can meet you in half an hour."

"All right," Gearhart said. "Park down the road, we've got a major sinkhole here. Are you wearing gloves?"

Grand said that he was.

"Please put the radio down carefully so you don't rub off fingerprints or other markings."

"Sure," Grand said.

Grand clicked off the radio, put it down, then turned and walked back to the tunnel entrance. He'd signed off quickly, not only to end the conversation but to keep from taking his long-festering anger at Gearhart out on the radio. He would put what he was feeling into his ascent. Channel it from the heart to the arms and out the fingers, the same way he had always climbed or thrown spears he'd reconstructed or made love to Rebecca.

Grand hauled himself into the tunnel opening and began crawling back up to the main cavern. There was something back at the sinkhole he wanted to check, something that might help answer some questions. And at least there was one positive result of the conversation. He didn't feel uneasy anymore.

The cave was silent again and dark, save for the fast-fading glow of the flashlight. Soon the only movement was the river and the only light was two small, faint, iridescent globes on the far side of the cave, hovering just above the surface of the lake.

And then they too winked out.