“Now I see why they call it ‘Cave Springs,’” Art said. “Handy for baptisms, huh?”
“Very. Okay, your spelunking friend was right—hard to miss.” The opening in the rock wall was an oval about eight feet high by four feet wide. A grate of rusting bars blocked the entrance, supported by iron hinges pounded into the rock; a stout padlock hung from the hasp. “Dang,” I said. “Now what?”
“Pray,” said Art as he moved to study the lock. I heard a jangling of keys, then the click of a lock popping open.
“Hey, how’d you do that?”
“God provides,” he intoned, looking heavenward as he slipped a master key back among its fellows and dropped the key ring into his pocket. We made a quick trip back to the truck for flashlights, jackets, Art’s headlamp and evidence kit, and my camera, then returned to the opening. Despite the rust on the grate, the hinges turned easily and silently. I noticed a liberal coating of grease on the pins. “Be nice to know who greases the hinges and carries the keys,” I said.
As we entered the mouth of the tunnel, a cool wind fanned our faces. I sniffed the air, wondering if I might pick up a faint whiff of decomp or adipocere, but I knew that if I did, it would be emanating from my imagination, not the cave itself. Just inside, once the harsh daylight began to fade behind us, Art knelt down, his flashlight angling low along the dirt floor. “Look familiar?”
I crouched, and felt a chill that had little to do with the cave’s temperature. “See all those? Those are the same work boot prints as in the slides.” He played the beam slowly back and forth, and I clutched his arm. “There—that’s the sheriff’s track, or one just like it.” Just as in the photos I’d taken in the grotto, the crisped lugged prints were superimposed over the worn tracks. At least, in the closest set of prints. But as Art played his beam farther along the cave floor, he let out a low whistle.
“This place gets more traffic than a bathroom in a sports bar,” he said. “Looks like whoever owns that beat-up old pair of boots has been back one more time since your friendly neighborhood sheriff was in here.” Sure enough, here the worn prints were clearly uppermost, smashing the lug marks nearly flat.
“So whoever it is, he knows that somebody else knows.”
“Maybe. Probably. But that’s not all.” Art wiggled his flashlight beam slightly to the right of the layered prints. “Somebody else has been here, too.”
I studied the area he was illuminating, but I couldn’t see any more prints. I leaned closer, but all I saw were what appeared to be vague smears in the mud. I looked at Art in puzzlement.
“That one was smart enough to cover his tracks,” Art said. “Maybe dragged a board or something along behind him to wipe ’em out. Lot of work.”
Art snapped open his evidence kit and took out a small headlamp, which he snugged into place, then removed a big ziplock bag. The bag was half-filled with a white powder that I recognized as dental stone, a stronger, harder cousin of plaster of paris. “What say we grab some casts?” said Art. “Just for kicks. So to speak.”
“You are the sole of wit,” I said. “I’ll take some pictures, too.”
From a plastic squeeze bottle, Art squirted a stream of water into the bag, zipped it shut, and began to knead the mixture through the plastic. “This is some kind of mess we’re stirring up here, Bill,” he said. This time he wasn’t joking.
“I know. You wanna just pack up and forget about it?”
“Naw, too late for that—hate for this dental stone to go to waste.” The mixture looked a lot like pancake batter, though I wouldn’t want to bite into a cake of it once it was hard. “Besides, you’ve got me curious now. You wanna bail?”
“Guess not. Still can’t stop thinking about that girl and her baby.”
“Okay then.” He dribbled the goopy mixture into four individual prints—two from each boot—as well as a short section of the obliterated track. “First time I ever tried to match a sawmill print,” he said. “These’ll take thirty minutes to set up. Meanwhile, you wanna see where these tracks go?”
“I’ve got a pretty good guess. Let’s see if I’m right.”