Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [100]
“Okay. Done.”
“Now erase the second e in bee, and the e in caves. And change the v to a u . . .” The sheriff paused again. “What’s that look like to you?”
“BE CAUS . . . Jesus, bee caves. You think that’s what Christopher was trying to say? Not because, but bee caves?”
“I’m betting on it. As a matter of fact, I’m trying to find one of those suits that beekeepers wear, you know, the ones with the hood and the gloves. I’ll be checking out the caves myself. The investigators could have missed something, you know? I’m thinking that maybe, after they aroused the ire of the first hive or two, they figured that no one could have gotten into one of those caves to dump a body and gotten out alive. I think they just bagged searching the rest of the caves.”
“Can you wait for me?”
“You want to be in on this?”
“I can be there in a few hours. And I’ll bring the suits.”
It was one hundred five degrees in Tucson when Adam stepped off the plane that had been authorized to transport him to Arizona. By the time he’d driven to Bisbee where he met up with the sheriff, the temperature had climbed to one hundred eleven. It was even hotter when they finally arrived in the hills outside of Chaco.
“It’ll start to drop soon, as the sun starts to set,” Gamble said of the temperature as he pulled on the specially insulated beekeepers garb. “Of course, by then, we’ll be running out of daylight.”
“Then we’ll set up lights,” Adam replied and pointed to the first of the caves that lay ahead of them off the path. “Might as well start with this one.”
“The original search team went into that one,” Gamble told him. “That one and the next two. They were numbered in the file. I think we should start with the next two, up the ridge. How ’bout if we split up, each take one?”
“Fine, lead on.” Adam shoved his gloves under his arms and turned to check on the long breathing tube that trailed behind him like a long, thin, transparent tail.
“You know for a fact, don’t you, that this thing is going to be a sure pain in the ass?” Gamble grumbled.
“Yeah, but our experts said that if the bees don’t hear us breathing and if they don’t smell our breath, they won’t bother us, and we’ll be able to get through the caves more quickly and with little or no agitation to the bees.”
“Well, God knows we don’t want the bees agitated.”
Adam laughed and headed up the path to the entry to the cave, then lowered his visor and stepped inside. The walls of the inner cave were lined with bees clinging to each other in long, slowly undulating shafts. Careful to keep the light focused on the ground, Adam walked slowly, conscious of the steady hum that filled the air around him. After shining the light low into every corner, and convinced there was nothing to be found, he backed slowly toward the entrance to the cave, ducking slightly as he exited.
“Well, that was different,” Gamble greeted him when he stepped outside.
“Nothing in this one,” Adam said.
“Here either. On to the next two.”
And to the next two after that, but there was no trace of anyone having gone into the caves before them.
“Maybe we should check the lower caves after all,” Adam remarked as he removed the hood and took several deep breaths of cooling air. “Maybe something was missed.”
“Well, that’s not a bad idea.” Gamble, too, had removed his hood for the sheer relief of having fresh air—even hot air—on his face. “Since those early search teams didn’t have the benefit of these nifty space-age suits, maybe they didn’t venture all that far into the caves. Then again, there could be another reason why we’re not finding anything.”
“What’s that?” Adam asked as they headed back down to the lower caves.
“Maybe there’s nothing here.”
There was nothing in the first cave, but in the second, a ten-year search came to an end.
Here, too, bees were everywhere, and the hum from so many pairs of softly beating wings was incessant. Off to the right of the entrance to the cave, in a slight alcove in the rocks, lay what Adam would later describe as an indeterminate shape. At first glance it