AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But the moan.
Eve was propped against a wall, canted awkwardly to her left, arms and legs slack, like a doll that had been tossed aside. Josie put her phone on the ground, light pointed upward, and lowered Eve until she was flat. Josie started chest compressions, counting off in her head. The familiarity of the act, of the trained police officer inside her taking over, loosened fear’s steel grip around her ribs. Still, when she bent to administer rescue breaths, it was difficult to take in a full breath.
Eve’s lips tasted like ice and death.
Josie kept going until the cave was lit with the torches of a half dozen other officers. She kept going until one of them picked her up and carried her away.
EIGHTEEN
DIARY ENTRY, UNDATED
I can’t take this much longer. I want to make a clean break. As clean as it can be with him. I can’t take the lying and the sneaking around anymore. It’s ruining the purest and most profound joy I’ve ever experienced. I don’t want our future to be tainted by betrayal. I want to be free to shout it from the rooftops that I’m in love—that we’re in love. I know we’ll both be hated for a long time, maybe always. But we’ll have each other and that’s all that matters. We won’t have to lie and cheat any longer. That’s what matters. But every time I imagine the two of us sitting down to tell him, I can’t breathe. He will never understand or accept this.
I am afraid neither of us will survive him.
NINETEEN
Two hours later, Josie sat on top of a picnic table outside of Lovers’ Cave, staring at its opening which now glowed with light. The clearing was filled with people and equipment. Uniformed officers stood sentry around the perimeter, waving off any park visitors who stopped to gawk or speculate on what was happening. It hadn’t been possible to get an ambulance this close to the cave, but paramedics had wheeled two gurneys with body bags on top of them into the clearing. One of them had offered Josie a blanket, but she’d turned it down. The cold she felt had little to do with the January weather. The ERT had wheeled their equipment up the trails in collapsible wagons. They’d set up enough halogen lights inside the cave to disturb the bats. That had caused quite a commotion but hadn’t stopped Hummel and his team from continuing to process the scene.
Dr. Feist arrived while they were inside the cave. She took one look at Josie and snatched the blanket from a nearby gurney. She strode over, snapping the blanket like a bullfighter, and then wrapping it tightly around Josie’s shoulders.
“Doc,” Josie said.
“Shut up.” Dr. Feist placed the back of her hand against Josie’s forehead, then her cheek. Somehow, between the folds of the blanket and Josie’s coat, she found her wrist and pressed two fingers against the inside of it.
“I’m fine,” Josie said.
Dr. Feist ignored her. When she was satisfied with the rate of Josie’s pulse, she disappeared and reappeared seconds later with a bottle of water. “Drink this.”
Josie knew the doctor well enough by now not to argue. She took a long swig and put the bottle on the table next to her.
Dr. Feist said, “Where’s Noah?”
“Trying to find Eve Bowers’s car,” Josie said. “We think the killer drove off in it.”
Dr. Feist bent her knees, leaning in to get a better look at Josie’s face. “Are you all right?”
Josie managed a weak smile. It certainly wasn’t the first time she’d had to go into a dark, enclosed space in the line of duty, or the first time she’d tried to save someone but failed. But it always cost her something. She said, “Would I tell you if I wasn’t?”
Dr. Feist held her gaze for a moment. Her face softened. “You could, you know. Tell me. We can talk about things besides bodies.”
Josie sighed and pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’d rather stick with bodies. At least for today.”
Dr. Feist nodded. “Then tell me what we’ve got.”
Josie recapped the events inside the cave. Dr. Feist asked a few questions. Then they waited until Hummel emerged from the cave to give the doctor the go-ahead to take a look at the body. Dr. Feist found a Tyvek suit, complete with skull cap, gloves, and booties nearby and pulled it on. “Care to join me?” she asked Josie.
Josie looked at the light shining from the maw of the cave. It seemed even brighter as the sun sank lower on the horizon. “No,” she said. “I’ll wait.”
Dr. Feist went in. The afternoon wore on. What seemed like an eternity later, the doctor came back out. She snapped off her gloves and beckoned to two paramedics. After a brief conversation, they rummaged through their equipment for a backboard and disappeared into the cave.
Tugging off her skull cap, she walked over to Josie. “If you’re flogging yourself for not being able to save that young woman, you can stop.”
Josie hopped down from the table. “What are you talking about?”
“She’s been dead for hours, Josie. She went into rigor while the scene was being processed. Based on her body temperature and the temperature in the cave, my initial estimate is that she was killed sometime between seven and ninea.m.”
“But I found her sometime around ten,” Josie said. “I heard her moan. There was rustling and then a moan. I heard it.”
