Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

W inifred Kraus bustled about the old-fashioned kitchen, making toast, setting out a pitcher of orange juice, boiling her guest’s egg, and making his pot of green tea. Her busyness was an effort to keep her mind off the horrible news she had read that morning in the Cry County Courier. Who could have done such a terrible thing? And the arrows they’d found with the body, surely that couldn’t mean that . . . She shook the thoughts from her head with a little shiver. Despite the strange hours Special Agent Pendergast kept, she was very glad to have him under her roof.

The man was quite particular about his food and his tea, and Winifred had taken pains to make sure everything was perfect. She had even gotten out her mother’s old lace tablecloth and had laid it, freshly ironed, on the breakfast table, along with a small vase of freshly cut marigolds to make everything as cheery as possible. Partly it was to cheer her own distressed state.

As she moved about the kitchen, Winifred felt her dread over the murder slowly supplanted by a sense of anticipation. Pendergast had asked to take the morning tour of the Kaverns. Well, he hadn’t asked exactly, but he’d seemed quite interested when she suggested it the night before. The last visitors to the Kaverns had been over a month ago, two nice young Jehovah’s Witnesses who took the tour and then had the kindness to spend most of the day chatting with her.

Precisely at eight she heard a light tread on the stair and Mr. Pendergast came gliding into view, dressed in the usual black suit.

“Good morning, Miss Kraus,” he said.

As Winifred ushered him into the dining room and began serving breakfast, she felt quite breathless. Even as a girl, she’d loved the family business: the different people from all over the country, the parking lot full of big cars, the murmurs of awe and amazement during the tours. Helping out in the cave, doing tours, had been one way she’d tried to earn the approval of her father. And although things had changed completely with the building of the interstate up north, she’d never lost that feeling of excitement before a tour—even if it was a tour of one.

Breakfast finished, she left Pendergast with that morning’s Cry County Courier and went on ahead to the Kaverns. She visited the Kaverns at least once a day even when there were no visitors, just to sweep up leaves and replace bulbs. She now did a swift check and found that all was in tip-top order. Then she went behind the counter of the gift shop and waited. At a few minutes to ten, Pendergast appeared. He purchased a ticket—two dollars—and she led him along the cement walkway, down into the cut in the earth, to the padlocked iron door. It was another scorcher of a day, and the cool air that flowed from the cave entrance was pleasantly enticing. She unlocked and removed the padlock, then turned and launched into her opening speech, which hadn’t varied since her pa had taught it to her with a switch and ruler half a century before.

“Kraus’s Kaverns,” she began, “was discovered by my grandfather, Hiram Kraus, who came to Kansas from upstate New York in 1888 looking to start a new life. He was one of the original pioneers of Cry County, and homesteaded a hundred and sixty acres right here along Medicine Creek.”

She paused and flushed pleasurably at the careful attentiveness of her audience.

“On June 5, 1901, while searching for a lost heifer, he came across the opening to a cave, almost completely hidden by scrub and brush. He came back with a lantern and axe, cut his way down the slope into the cave, and began exploring.”

“Did he find the heifer?” Pendergast asked.

The question threw Winifred off. Nobody asked about the heifer.

“Why, yes, he did. The heifer had gotten into the cave and fallen into the Bottomless Pit. Unfortunately, she was dead.”

“Thank you.”

“Let’s see.” Winifred stood at the cave entrance, trying to pick up the thread once again. “Oh, yes. Right about this time the motorcar was making its debut on the American scene. The Cry Road started to see some motorcar traffic, mostly families on their way to California. It took Hiram Kraus a year to build the wooden walkways—the same ones we will walk on—and then he opened the cave to the public. Back then, admission was a nickel.” She paused for the obligatory chuckle, grew a little flustered when none was forthcoming. “It was an immediate success. The gift shop soon followed, where visitors can buy rocks, minerals, and fossils, as well as handcrafts and needlepoint to benefit the church, all at a ten percent discount for those who have taken the Kaverns Tour. And now, if you will kindly step this way, we will enter the cave.”

She pulled the iron door wide and motioned Pendergast to follow her. They descended a set of broad, worn stairs that had been built over a declivity leading into the bowels of the earth. Walls of limestone rose on both sides, arching over into a tunnel. Bare bulbs hung from the rocky ceiling. After a descent of about two hundred feet, the steps gave onto a wooden walkway, which angled around a sharp turn and entered the cavern proper.

Here, deep beneath the earth, the air smelled of water and wet stone. It was a smell that Winifred loved. There was no unpleasant undercurrent of mold or guano: no bats lived in Kraus’s Kaverns. Ahead, the boardwalk snaked its way through a forest of stalagmites. More bulbs, placed between the stalagmites, threw grotesque shadows against the cavern walls. The roof of the cave rose into darkness. She proceeded to the center of the cavern, paused, and turned with her hands unfolded, just as her pa had taught her.

“We are now in the Krystal Kathedral, the first of the three great caverns in the cave system. These stalagmites are twenty feet high on average. The ceiling is almost ninety feet above our heads, and the cavern measures one hundred and twenty feet from side to side.”

“Magnificent,” said Pendergast.

Winifred beamed and went on to talk about the geology of the chalk beds of southwestern Kansas, and how the cave had formed from the slow percolation of water over millions of years. She ended with a recitation of the names Grandfather Hiram had given to the various stalagmites: “The Seven Dwarves,” “White Unicorn,” “Santa’s Beard,” “Needle and Thread.” Then she paused for questions.

“Has everyone in town been here?” Pendergast asked.

Again, the question brought Winifred up short. “Why, yes, I believe so. We don’t charge the locals, of course. It would hardly do to profit from one’s neighbors.”

When no more questions were forthcoming, she turned and led the way through the forest of stalagmites and into a low, narrow passageway leading to the next cavern.

“Don’t bump your head!” she warned Pendergast over her shoulder. She entered the second cavern, strode to the center, and turned with a sweep of her dress.

“We are now in the Giant’s Library. My grandfather named it that because, if you look to your right, you will see how layers of travertine have built up over millions of years to form what looks like stacked books. And over on that side, the vertical pillars of limestone on the walls appear to be shelved books. And now—”

She stepped forward again. They were about to come to her favorite part, the Krystal Chimes. And then suddenly she realized: she had forgotten her little rubber hammer. She felt in the pocket where she kept it hidden, ready to bring it out to the surprise of the guests. It wasn’t there. She must have left it back in the gift shop. And she’d forgotten the flashlight, as well, always brought along in case the electricity failed. Winifred felt mortified. Fifty years of giving tours and she had never once forgotten her little rubber hammer.