Dead Secret

mouth gaping, his thin lips stretched open, showing yellowed teeth.
    She saw glimpses of dry skin and bone through his shirt. One hand rested in his lap, and the other lay beside him on the floor. They were balled into fists. A helmet lay upside down beside him along with a canteen. She retrieved her digital camera from her backpack and snapped several pictures from different angles and distances.
    “Damn, Doc. What was that I said about you knowing how to have a good time? You find the creepiest things.” Mike was standing beside her. Diane had been so engrossed in her find that she hadn’t heard him descend into the chamber. “Is that what it looks like—a mummy?”
    “Yes,” she said. “Natural mummification. The tissues have been partially preserved by the dry air of the cave.”
    Mike squatted beside her, looking at the crumpled remains. “Wonder what happened to him. Did he get lost? Lose his light? Fall? He probably didn’t come in the way we did. How did he get in here?”
    “Don’t know.” Diane snapped a picture of his helmet. “What I need you to do is take our mapping notes to the surface and figure out what county we’re in and call the appropriate coroner.”
    “Coroner?”
    “The county coroner has to be notified when a body is found.”
    “You going to work this as a crime scene?”
    “That’s for the coroner to decide. Until then, I can’t touch him.”
    “But you’re dying to look at him, aren’t you?”
    Diane smiled. “I am looking at him.” She stood up. Mike rose with her, and Diane turned toward him, careful not to shine her headlamp in his eyes. “I appreciate your being quick with the rope.”
    “Sure. I’ve had to hang from my hands before, and it’s dicey if you’re not used to it. You okay? You crashed pretty hard into the rock wall.” He looked up toward the hole in the roof.
    From their vantage point she could see the thick walls of the hole surrounded by a thin lip that had at one time been a too-thin floor that had collapsed countless years ago.
    She looked down at her hands. Faint abraded lines of blood etched her palms and fingers. “My hands are going to be sore for a while. I imagine my body’s going to ache too.”
    Mike took one of her hands and examined the palm. “Now, how many caving trips has it been that I’ve told you, you need to put on your gloves?”
    “I know, I know. I just like the tactile feel of the cave.”
    “Yeah, well, you’re going to be feeling the tactile sensation for several days.”
    Diane stretched her sore muscles and groaned. Damn, she was going to be in just great shape when she and Frank, her detective boyfriend, went on vacation tomorrow. Better remember to pack the Ben-Gay and heating pad, she thought.
    “Is everybody okay?” Neva leaned over the edge of the hole in the ceiling. “We heard you on the walkie-talkie and came as quickly as we could.”
    “We’re fine,” Diane yelled up at her. “Thanks to Mike’s quick rope-tying skills. Be careful of that hole; there might still be some weak spots up there. Where’s MacGregor?”
    “He didn’t think he’d fit down that narrow tunnel. Frankly, I think he was right. It’s a tight squeeze.”
    Dick MacGregor was a member of the caving club and, most important to Diane, he was a relative of the owner of the land where the entrance to the cave was located. That fact was enough for her to put up with his annoying personality traits and have him as one of her caving partners. He wasn’t fat, but he was stouter than Mike, Neva and Diane—and there were some close places he wouldn’t fit into without becoming stuck.
    “Neva, would you climb down here with me? Mike’s going back to the surface with MacGregor.”
    “So,” said Mike with a grin, “you are itching to have a go at the skeleton.”
    “Mysteries, particularly cave mysteries, always interest me.”
    “I thought so,” he said as he stepped through the rubble and made his way to the rope dangling from the hole in the ceiling.
    Diane noted that he’d tied a series of loops on the rope to aid in climbing back up.
    “How stable is the lip of that hole?”
    He looked up. “It’ll do for now.”
    “Can you bring more lights?” said Diane.
    “Sure. Want me to contact someone at the crime lab for you?”
    “Ask David or Jin to bring a kit, but tell them to wait outside. I think you had better bring it in.”
    Diane was director of the RiverTrail Museum of Natural History in Rosewood,