Shoofly Pie & Chop Shop (50 page)

Riley said nothing.

“And why do I bet that you’ll be paying me by personal check, and not by a bank draft from Allegheny County?”

“Those are good questions,” Riley said. “Do you need answers before you’ll do my evaluation?”

Nick paused. “Not as long as you have two pieces of identification with your check. So what are you looking for—a postmortem interval?”

“I’m looking for … anomalies.”

“Anomalies—as in, ‘something out of the ordinary.’ I assume you collected these from a dead person?
Something
was out of the ordinary.”

“I want to know everything an entomological evaluation can tell me. Time of death, place of death, manner of death.”

“All of which can ordinarily be determined by the coroner’s office.”

“Ordinarily.”

Nick studied her intently. “I have so many questions,” he said.

“So do I. Will you help me?”

“Three hundred and fifty dollars,” Nick said. “I’ll need a week. Maybe two.”

“That long?”

“I’m just being
reasonable.
It’s the new me.”

“Can’t your assistant help out?”

“You mean Sanjay? He can’t make larvae grow any faster. Besides, Sanjay is not my assistant. We went to grad school together
at Penn State. Now he’s a research biologist at Pitt. He’s helping me with a little research project: We’re doing DNA fingerprints on flies of forensic significance. In their larval form, most flies are impossible to tell apart. The DNA sequences will let us distinguish different species even in their earliest stages of development. Cutting-edge stuff.”

Just then there was a sound from the doorway. Riley turned to see the figure of a short, stout woman in a screaming floral dress, beaming from ear to ear. She was—
loud,
that’s the only word Riley could think of. Her lipstick was too red, her pearls were too large, and her hair was too high—but she had an altogether warm and inviting manner. The woman cleared her throat a second time.

“Nicky, aren’t you going to …” She gestured to Riley.

Nick said nothing.

“Nicky! Who is this lovely woman? Tell your mother.”

“Mama, I’d like you to meet Dr. Riley McKay. Dr. McKay, the flashing siren standing in the doorway is Mrs. Camilla Polchak, ruler of all Poland—or at least all the Polish people living in Tarentum and Natrona Heights.”

“Mama?”
Riley whispered to Nick.

“Four hundred dollars,” Nick whispered back. “Keep it up.”

“A doctor,”
Mrs. Polchak beamed. “And not just one doctor, two doctors, in fact! Just look at the both of you!”

“Mama,” Nick said. “Why don’t you just throw rice on us and get it over with? We’ll try to produce a grandchild by Christmas.”

“What are you talking about, grandchild? Did I say grandchild? I just like to have a pretty face to look at sometimes, not just those two big portholes of yours.” She dismissed Nick with a wave of her hand and took Riley by the arm. “Such a pretty face,” she said. “And what do I have to look at around here? Bugs. Flies and spiders and things I don’t want to tell you.”

“Mama …”

“Nicky is blind,” she said, ignoring him. “The glasses—did you notice? A small thing. But let me tell you, under those glasses is a very handsome man. You stay for tea.”

“What? Oh. I would love to, Mrs. Polchak, but I have a very busy day.”

“Always a busy day,” Mrs. Polchak scolded. “Too busy, maybe. Too busy to have a cup of tea with a lonely old woman?”

Nick rolled his eyes. “You should go into real estate, Mama. You could make a fortune.”

Mrs. Polchak glared at him. “Why should I work? I have a rich doctor for a son! But no, you have to be a doctor for dead people—a doctor who makes no money. I ask you, what kind of person wants to be a doctor for dead people?”

“Ask her,” Nick said. “I’m a bug man myself.”

Mrs. Polchak looked at Riley in silence.

“I’m a forensic pathologist,” Riley explained. “Just a fellow, actually.”

Mrs. Polchak did a double take. “No man worth a zloty would call you a ‘fellow.’ Nicky, I ask you—is this a fellow?”

Nick looked her up and down. “Looks like a fellow to me.”

“This
is why I have no grandchild,” Mrs. Polchak said. She turned and headed back across the yard toward the house.

Riley looked at Nick. “You live with your mother?”

“I’m just visiting,” Nick replied. “Honest. I have my own car and everything.”

“We’ll have tea another time,” Mrs. Polchak called back from the house.

“Another time, Mrs. Polchak. Thank you.”

“Promise me. Promise me another time.”

“I promise,” Riley said, smiling at Nick. “I have so many questions.”

Cruz Santangelo crawled on his belly across the damp limestone surface. He reached forward with both arms and then pulled, pushing forward at the same time with his toes, propelling himself slowly forward like a swimmer. A hundred and fifty feet above him, rainwater trickled down through cracks and fissures,
leeching carbonic acid from the soil, dissolving layers of calcium from the limestone, leaving behind foot-high fissures and cracks that run three miles long and four hundred feet deep through the Pennsylvania hills.

Santangelo watched the green reflective strips on the soles of three other cavers ahead of him. Suddenly the light on his helmet blinked off; he raised his head slightly and tapped his helmet against the rock only inches above. The light flashed on again, and the long shadows reappeared on the rolling ceiling and floor that undulated together like two stone blankets.

“What’s the problem back there?” one of the forward cavers called back, his voice thin and strained.

“No problem,” Santangelo said quietly.

“Well, keep that thing on! We’re in a hurry here—you know the weather forecast!”

Santangelo shook his head. They should be back with the women in the Tour Cave, standing erect on the nice wooden boardwalk, oohing and aahing over theatrically lit stalactites and flowstone and soda-straws. They had no business tackling a virgin crawlway; they had no business caving with
him.
But he had been forced to suffer their presence all day long, a safety requirement of the Laurel Cavern authorities:
caving in groups only.

One of the men wore nothing but a simple pair of blue jeans and a thin flannel shirt. Another actually wore shorts—
shorts!
The fool had no idea that despite the summer temperatures above, fifty feet below ground the cave would stay an even fifty-two degrees year-round. Less than fifteen minutes after their original descent the man had begun to grumble about the penetrating cold and dampness, and he had been whining and complaining ever since.

All three men wore ordinary tennis shoes—not a decent pair of climbing soles among them—and none of them thought to bring a watch. Santangelo never did; but then, he was a veteran caver, and he knew how to compensate for the time-distorting effects of utter darkness—that is, except when he was distracted by the constant chatter of three anxious neophytes. Now none of them knew how much time had elapsed, and they were hurrying back toward the cave entrance just as fast as the unyielding stone would allow.

“Can you believe this?” one of the men laughed nervously. “We sure know how to spend a Saturday!”

“I tell you one thing, you’re buying tonight!” said the man to his right.

“You’re on!” his friend shot back.

“You guys can do what you want,” the third man shivered. “I just want to get
warm.
I swear, I’m numb from the waist down!”

Their voices crackled like electrical wires; they spoke with ever-increasing energy and volume. They were venting fear, Santangelo knew, bouncing their voices off the stone the way bats do. But the stone gave nothing in return, and the absolute stillness—the absence of even the tiniest echo—was shredding the nerves of all three of them. Santangelo despised them; their incessant blabbering violated the perfect blackness like arrogant tourists shouting across the aisles of a great cathedral.
They’re whistling past the graveyard, he thought, and if you’re not at home in a graveyard you have no business being down here.

“Quiet,” Santangelo whispered.

“What? Who said that?”

“I did. Listen.”

From the darkness beyond the narrow cone of their lights came a soft, shuffling sound. It was a kissing sound, a rubbery sound, like the sound of wet soles on a hardwood floor. It grew no louder, but it came steadily closer.

“Hey!” One man arched up suddenly, forgetting his narrow confinement; there was the dull crack of plastic on stone, and his light disappeared. “Something ran across my hand!”

“What was it?”

“I see it! There’s another one!”

Santangelo tipped his headlight down at the limestone floor. A small, greenish gray form wriggled past his left hand. He watched it pass; it had four fingers on each foreleg, each ending in a tiny suction cup. Its body was slender and tapered, and mucouscovered skin stretched smoothly over the head where eyes would ordinarily be.

“Lizards!” one of the men shouted. “There must be a hundred of ’em!”

“They’re cave salamanders,” Santangelo said quietly. He
reached forward with both arms, compressing his shoulders as tightly as possible, and began to roll onto his left side; his shoulders wedged between the ceiling and floor. He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, relaxing, elongating his body. He felt his right deltoid scrape past the coarse stone ceiling, and he rolled over onto his back.

“They’re everywhere! Where are they coming from?”

“Rocks. Cracks. They don’t like to be seen.” Santangelo slowly rotated his helmet from side to side, studying the rippling ceiling. Ten feet to his left the stone rose abruptly and then descended again, forming a sort of bubble six inches higher than the ceiling directly in front of his face. He began to work his body toward it.

“Why are they running toward us?” a panicky voice shouted back.

Centered under the bubble now, Santangelo pulled both heels under him, wedging his knees tightly between the ceiling and floor—then he reached up and switched off his lamp. “They’re not running toward you,” he said. “They’re running away.”

An instant later the wall of water hit them. The water itself reached them almost before the sound, and the flood caught the three men before their minds even had time to comprehend the nature of their impending deaths. Santangelo heard a half-scream, a muffled shout, and then the cavern was silent again.

The water hit Santangelo’s helmet hard and cold. His knees scraped across the stone ceiling, but the force only wedged his legs tighter, and his position held. He arched his back and let the force of the water lift him up toward the bubble. He lay perfectly still, the water caressing his back in pulsing gushes, his arms waving at his sides like drifting seaweed.

He felt his right arm brush against denim, and then a series of kicks and jabs from a pair of flailing legs; seconds later they passed. He saw quick beams of light sweep across the ceiling like searchlights, and then disappear into the darkness. Suddenly he felt the full weight of a body jam against his back, forcing him even tighter up into the air pocket above. The body was rigid and desperate—kicking, groping, clawing—and then just as suddenly the current pushed the body off to the left and away. But as it washed past, one frantic hand caught his left forearm and held on,
clutching at the last remnant of life in the subterranean graveyard. The hand jerked hard twice, and Santangelo imagined a voice saying, “Can’t you help? Are you just going to let us all die?”

He felt the grip slowly release, and then all was still and quiet again.

He pursed his lips and breathed slowly into the air pocket, in through his nose and out through his mouth. He floated in the dark water, feeling gusts of current and bits of debris wash over his back, grateful that the blackness had at last swept through the cathedral and washed its sacred floors clean.

It was more than an hour before the water subsided, draining silently away into even deeper and darker recesses of the earth. Santangelo lay motionless, slowing his pulse and controlling his breathing just as he had done a thousand times on the firing range, waiting for the telltale pause between heartbeats before squeezing off a round at a silhouette of a man’s head three hundred yards away. When the receding waters at last lowered him gently back to the stone floor, he switched on his light and swept the crawlspace from side to side. It was completely empty. He rolled onto his stomach and began to work his way back toward the cave entrance.

An hour later, Cruz Santangelo stood by the cavern opening, unzipping his sodden coveralls and peeling them down to his waist. He removed the ascenders from his nylon line and dropped them into a duffel bag. He took out a towel and began to blot at his wrinkled skin. He looked into the sky; to the south, lumbering gray thunderheads rolled off toward the West Virginia border.

Behind him, a mud-splattered SUV crunched to a stop. Windows rolled down, and three anxious faces peered out.

“We’re looking for three men,” the women said. “Have you seen them? Can you help us?”