The Night Killer

nodded.
    Usually, either Diane or Mike took point. Mainly because they were the most experienced, but also because each had the same mind-set about caves. They proceeded with the same protocol, the same perspective. When Diane entered a cave, she owned it. Not ownership in the normal sense of the word, not a possession, but a love, a feeling that she was home, was in her world, and it was her responsibility to protect her home and guests she invited in. Mike, she suspected, had the same worldview about the ancient, fantastic holes that had been scoured out of the ground by nature.
    Diane was about to cross the entrance zone, the barrier between the outside world and the world of the cave. She stopped and turned to Neva.
    “You want to go first?” said Diane.
    Neva grinned at her for a moment. “Yeah,” she said, “I would.”
    Mike smiled at Diane and hoisted the rope to his shoulder. Neva entered the cave, followed by Diane, then Mike.
    Visibility was reasonably good in the first chamber as a result of the light filtering in from the entrance. The room was roughly ten by ten, give or take a few feet in either direction. The ceiling was low and slightly dome shaped, and the walls had a gentle curve from ceiling to floor. There was a scattering of leaves and debris blown in through the entrance. Diane could see places where some animal had nested against the wall near the opening.
    The twilight zone of the cave was the shadowy area between the light of the upper world and the dark of the underground. It was a place where light still filtered in from the outside, but barely. In going from the first chamber room into the tunnel, they entered the twilight zone. It had its own biota, different from the entrance zone.
    Slick had described the tunnel accurately. It was short and low. None of them could walk standing straight and it angled downward. Just as Slick said, they came upon another tunnel on the left. It wasn’t wide, but they could stand, though the tunnel narrowed toward the top and in places the ceiling was such a tight squeeze that they had to bend over to get through. There was little breakdown—debris fallen from the ceiling—on the uneven floor, just a few rocks, mostly the size of large gravel. They stopped at another opening just to the left. They were now entering what was called the dark zone of the cave, a place where no light filtered in from outside. Only their flashlights and headlamps pierced the pitch black.
    Neva stepped into the room slowly and stopped just a few feet inside. Diane and Mike followed her. The floor vanished into blackness in front of them. They were at the edge of a drop-off. Diane knelt and shined her light down. In the darkness below—as Slick had said—were two bodies. They were in disarray, one across the other. It appeared that they had been tossed over the edge and crashed to the floor some fifteen feet below.
    Mike went about setting the anchor bolts into the rock. He threaded the rope through and secured it while Diane and Neva put on gloves.
    “I don’t think we’ll need harnesses,” said Neva. “We can just use the rope.”
    “It shouldn’t be a hard descent,” said Mike. “I’ll send your equipment and bags down after you.” Mike placed a pad under the rope to give it protection from being frayed by the rock on the edge of the drop-off.
    Neva climbed down first, landing beside the bodies. Diane climbed down after her. Mike lowered the body bags and crime scene kit next. Diane and Neva stood looking at the bodies for a moment.
    The visible tissue was only partially decomposed. It appeared the bodies were drying out, rather than putrefying the way they would if they were lying exposed in the woods. The air of the cave was drier than outside and the biota was different, which made the decaying process different. The body on top was lying facedown over the other one. The long honey blond hair made it appear to be female, but you never knew. She or he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. The body on bottom lay faceup and appeared to be male.
    Diane and Neva shined their lights around the floor, looking for anything that might have fallen with the bodies. Nothing showed itself on a preliminary search. They split up and started a grid-pattern search of the cave floor.
    It wasn’t a large cavern, not much bigger than the entrance room. There was breakdown littering the floor, and the walls and roof were much the same as they’d seen so far. Diane noted