Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

Once again, he heard faint sounds. The rush of water, overlaid by a human voice. At least, it appeared to be human, and yet it was so distorted that it was impossible to make out any words—if indeed there were any.

Shining his light on the ground before his feet, he noticed that he was not the first person to have taken this shortcut.

He edged into the crack, which soon widened enough for him to walk normally. Gradually the bottom of the crack dropped away and a crevasse opened below; yet the walls remained narrow enough that he could continue forward, one foot on either side of the crevasse, squeezing his torso through a narrow slot. It was a position that gave, strangely, the sensations of both claustrophobia and acrophobia at the same time.

Ahead, the crack opened into the blackness of space. He was standing on a narrow ledge almost a hundred feet up the wall of a domelike cavity. A stream of water plunged from above and feathered down toward the base far beneath his feet, filling the cavern with the echoing splash of water. A billion winking lights—reflections of feathery gypsum crystals—filled the cavern like fireflies.

Pendergast’s flashlight beam could only barely reach the bottom.

There had been footprints at the entrance to the crack: that meant there must be a way down.

Below the lip of rock on which he stood, his light caught a series of hand- and footholds. Intermittent sounds came from below, clearer now.

Had Hazen and the troopers reached the killer and Corrie? The thought was almost too unpleasant to contemplate.

Pendergast crouched on the narrow ledge, shining his light into the blackness below. He could see nothing but a massive jumble of fallen stalactites, torn from the ceiling by some long-ago earthquake.

He took off his shoes and socks, tied the laces together, and draped them around his neck. He turned off his flashlight and slipped it into a pocket: it would be of no help now. Then, reaching down into the darkness, he grabbed the first handhold again and swung out into space, his bare feet finding slippery purchase. Five minutes of cautious climbing brought him to the bottom. He put on his shoes in complete darkness, listening.

The noise was coming from the blackness at the far end of the cavern. Whoever was making that sound had no light. It rose and fell in a strange, babbling way, but there could be no mistake: it was a man, and he sounded injured.

Turning on the flashlight again and pulling out his handgun, Pendergast moved forward swiftly.

A flash of color, and something flickered across the dim cone of light; he swung the beam around and saw something yellow on the ground, behind a fractured boulder.

He leapt catlike onto the rock, gun and light pointing downward together. He peered into the cavity beneath the boulder. And then, after staring for a moment, he holstered the gun, dropped down the far side, and laid a hand on the man who was curled in a fetal position in the lee of the rock. He was a small man, soaking wet, gibbering to himself. Lying next to him was a regulation-issue set of night-vision goggles and a helmet with an infrared spotter.

At the touch of Pendergast’s hand the man crouched farther, covered his head, and squealed.

“FBI,” said Pendergast quietly. “Where are you hurt?”

The man shivered at the sound of his voice, then looked up. Two red eyes peered uncomprehendingly out of a face completely covered with blood. The man’s black jacket sported the yellow insignia of the Kansas State Police K-9 squad. His lips trembled above a wispy goatee, but the only sound that emerged was more incoherent sobbing. His pale eyelashes trembled.

Pendergast performed a quick examination. “It seems you’re unhurt,” he said.

The stammering reply did not succeed in reaching the level of intelligibility.

They were wasting time. Pendergast grabbed the man by the collar of his K-9 suit and hauled him to his feet. “Get a grip on yourself, Officer. What’s your name?”

The sharp tone seemed to stun the man into sensibility.

“Weeks. Lefty Weeks. Robert Weeks.” His teeth chattered.

Pendergast released his hold; Weeks staggered but managed to stay upright.

“Where did the blood come from, Officer Weeks?”

“I don’t know.”

“Officer,” Pendergast said, “I don’t have a lot of time. There’s a killer in here who’s kidnapped a girl. It is vital that I find her—before your friends get her killed.”

“Right,” said Weeks, swallowing.

Pendergast retrieved the night-vision goggles, found them broken and inoperative, dropped them again. “You’re coming with me.”

“No! No, please—”

Pendergast grabbed his shoulders and gave him a shake. “Mr. Weeks, you will conduct yourself like a police officer. Is that clear?”

Weeks swallowed again, struggled to master himself. “Yes, sir.”

“Stay behind, follow my lead, and keep quiet.”

“My God, no! No, don’t go that way . . . please, sir. It’s there.”

Pendergast turned and looked carefully into the man’s face. He looked traumatized, ruined. “It?”

“It. That, that man. ”

“Describe him.”

“I can’t, I can’t! ” Weeks buried his face in his hands as if to blot out the image. “White. Huge. All bunched up, like. Cloudy, cloudy eyes. Big feet and hands—And . . . and the face! ”

“What about the face?”

“Oh, lord Jesus, the face—”

Pendergast slapped the man. “What about the face?”

“The face of a . . . oh, God, of a baby, so . . . so—”

Pendergast cut him off. “Let’s go.”

“ No! Please, not that way—!”

“Suit yourself.” Pendergast turned and strode off. With a yelp, the man scrambled to follow.

Leaving the tumult of broken columns, Pendergast moved into a broad limestone tunnel littered with huge yellow mounds of dripstone. Weeks stayed behind, cringing and whimpering to himself, afraid to follow Pendergast, but still more afraid to remain alone. Pendergast’s light roamed from dripstone to dripstone, once again following a trail.

And then he stopped. His light remained fixed on one mound that looked strikingly different from the others. Its deep yellow was heavily streaked with red, and at its base lay a pool of bright red water. Something was floating in the water: about the size of a human, but the shape was all wrong.

Weeks had fallen silent.

Pendergast played his light around the cavern wall that rose behind the dripstone mound. The dark rock was decorated in arcs of crimson, and gobbets of white, red, and yellow hung dripping here and there. His light finally came to rest on the giant forelimb of what could only be a dog, lodged in a crack about halfway up the wall. A piece of a lower jaw was wedged nearby, and something that might have been part of a muzzle had struck the sloping wall with enough violence to stick.

“One of yours?” Pendergast asked.

The man nodded dumbly.

“Did you see this happen?”

The man nodded again.

Pendergast turned, raising his light to the man’s face. “What, precisely, did you see?”

Officer Weeks choked, stammered, and finally got the words out. “ He did it.” He paused, swallowed. And then his voice broke. “He did it with his bare hands!”

Sixty-Three

A t a nexus of branching tunnels, Hazen waited for the state troopers and Larssen to catch up. Five minutes passed, then ten, as his labored breathing returned to normal. It seemed that either they hadn’t followed the sound of his voice, or they’d taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Hazen swore, spat. Raskovich was gone, bolted like a rabbit. Although Hazen had briefly given chase, he’d been unable to find the guy. The way the man had been running, he was probably halfway back to KSU already.