Chapter 13
“What did Allie’s killer say?”
“Nothing.”
“Did he seem upset?”
“I couldn’t see his face behind the ski mask,” Tess says. “But he seemed calm, almost methodical. Like he’d considered this
as a possibility, and he was prepared for it. I could hear him moving on the other side of the boulder, scrapes and thumps.
He was rummaging around, maybe looking for any gear I’d left behind. Then . . . he left.”
“Back to the surface?”
“He had to crawl backward like a big python. I watched his headlamp disappear up the tunnel. Eventually it was just that red
glow, slowly fading.”
“You beat him.”
“Barely.”
“How’d it feel?”
“I wanted to laugh and cry and scream and throw up, all at once.” The survivor takes a breath. “It didn’t feel real. I couldn’t
believe I was still alive.”
But Tess would have only bought herself time, and not much of it.
She’d outwitted this dangerous man and made herself unreachable—but now she was wedged deep underground, far from help.
Allie’s killer knew he couldn’t leave a witness alive, let alone a witness with incriminating video footage of the whole thing. He couldn’t allow her to leave.
His next step would be to guard the cave’s entrance and keep her imprisoned inside. He was already well equipped to outlast
her. By her own account, Tess had packed for only an afternoon outing—just a few granola bars, spare batteries, and a water
bottle. Soon she would be hungry and thirsty. Eventually her headlamp would die.
“I wished I could stand up and stretch my legs. I couldn’t even sit up without my helmet hitting the ceiling.”
Tess was still only a fraction into the cave’s true depths. She was still hundreds of feet from where the rescue operation
would concentrate its efforts.
“The red glow from his headlamp had disappeared.” She lets out a breath. “He was gone. Now it was just me, lying on my stomach
in the dark. The mud was freezing cold. And maybe it was just the adrenaline, but all my senses felt so weirdly acute. I hadn’t
noticed how humid the cave’s air was. Or all the little smells. I could hear the falling water droplets with perfect clarity,
my breaths, my heartbeat. And I wondered if this was the experience Allie had told me about, like coming apart on a molecular
level. Losing yourself.”
Like I’m a tiny creature being digested in a giant stomach.
She hesitates, as if embarrassed to say it. “And a part of me actually wished he’d come back,” she admits. “Somehow, being
alone down there was even worse.”
Our own brains can sabotage us.
Six months ago Washington was driving alone on the freeway late at night and suddenly couldn’t remember where she was going.
It felt like she’d woken up from sleepwalking.
The disorientation was terrifying, a jolt of animal fight-or-flight.
She had to pull over onto the shoulder, her heart pounding in her ears.
She never told a soul about the episode, and she never even determined where or why she’d been driving.
It was as if something had hijacked her body for its own purposes and then relinquished control without warning at seventy miles per hour.
Sleep deprivation and long hours were at least partially to blame, but it was part of a troubling pattern of missed appointments and lost thoughts.
She researched it, like any detective, and reassured herself that a certain amount of spaciness is just an inevitable part
of aging. All cells in the body break down over time. Inside the brain, the mechanisms that convert glucose to energy and
dispose of waste are often the first to fail. Cerebral debris accumulates and neural processes slow down, congested by cellular
crap. Individuals with higher IQs are more likely to notice the signs because they simply have further to fall. It’s only
something to worry about if other people notice your mental glitches. At the time, this made her feel better.
But that’s the thing. Maybe other people have noticed.
She’s felt the sympathetic eyes on her while she grasps for a word for just a second too long. She’s sensed the polite pauses,
the moments a conversation shifts gears to accommodate her. Once that seed is planted, even normal brain farts become further
evidence of neurological decline. You can’t win against confirmation bias. Last week, her lieutenant had quietly taken her
into his office and recommended she subject herself to a cognitive assessment.
No disrespect, he’d assured her.
Of course.
But Washington knows she’s here at the hospital because of her perceived frailty—and not just her body. She’s been sidelined, seated indoors to question Tess and take notes, while the real work happens miles away.
A cave is a uniquely challenging crime scene to process. Because the interior environment is protected from rain, wind, and
most predatory animals, physical evidence can stay intact for years. This is not a good thing. It means the sprawling tunnels
have already been contaminated by thousands of prior humans, each leaving behind their own perfectly preserved footprints
and handprints. Add in all the stray hairs, clothing fibers, and general waste, and the Devil’s Staircase is a daunting trash
heap of unrelated leads to sort and eliminate. Then throw in a daylong rescue effort on top of that, with rock chisels and oxygen bottles and scores of boots and gloves touching and moving everything. The incident commander
had already assured the sheriff’s department—twice—that his people were being mindful of the parallel criminal investigation,
but saving the trapped woman had to take priority. It’s impossible to safely navigate dangerous crawlways without also obliterating
evidence. It’ll be a miracle if much can be recovered at all.
This means determining what really happened that day will depend less on analyzing the scene of the attack and more on firsthand
accounts like Tess’s. Things seen and heard, gathered by careful interrogation. Old-fashioned police work. It’s amusing, then,
that the powers that be may have unwittingly reassigned Washington to the most crucial role in the entire investigation. This
is an opportunity. And a risk.
Don’t blow it.
If she does, she might find herself facing more than a cognitive test.
“It’s important that we establish a timeline,” Washington tells the survivor. “Do you know how long you waited behind the
cave-in?”
Tess shakes her head.
This is to be expected. Since the moment Tess and Allie took their first steps underground, their bodies’ circadian rhythms
began to unravel. Without a sun to track across the sky, without electronic devices, measuring time becomes subjective and
unreliable.
She prompts: “An hour?”
“Maybe.”
“Two hours?”
“Enough time passed that I started to worry about my batteries. The idea of being in complete darkness without light terrified
me, but I needed to plan ahead. I kept my headlamp off. I avoided using my flashlight. I checked Allie’s GoPro, still recording—the
battery was twenty percent, I think. It would die soon.”
“Did you . . . watch the footage?”
She shakes her head. Seeing it happen once was enough.
Then she rotates her shoulders and stretches her sore arms in her hospital bed, clearly grateful to be free from the confined
space. “Lying on my stomach was getting uncomfortable. My elbows and knees went numb at first, and it gradually turned into
pain. Eventually it was unbearable, like a full-body hernia. I wished I could stand up, so badly. My body needed space.”
“Could you hear the killer?”
“I kept holding my breath and listening for him. Every now and then I heard scrapes and scratches in the dark. Like something
heavy being dragged. Weird noises, echoing down the tunnel. Maybe my senses were playing tricks on me.”
What had Allie called them?
Bogeys.
The longer a person remains wedged in this sensory-deprived state, Washington knows, the less reliable their firsthand experience becomes.
It’s a situation the human psyche simply isn’t designed for.
When subjects are left alone in an unlit room for long enough, a psychological phenomenon called the prisoner’s cinema can develop.
Some see light shows, as Allie herself described, while others claim to see strange colors or even ghosts and
demons, until it becomes impossible to untangle memory from hallucination. In ancient times, followers of Pythagoras ventured
into caves to receive visions from the gods. No drugs required. Even before facing the prospect of her own cognitive decline,
Washington has always found it disturbing how little it actually takes to unravel our minds—merely darkness and quiet.
During this stretch of missing time, the male suspect, “Jacob,” was surely in damage control mode. His highest priority would
be keeping his second victim contained in the cave.
“I knew I had to wait,” Tess whispers. “No matter how uncomfortable it got. If I crawled back up to the surface, he would
be there, waiting for me.”
He couldn’t leave the cave. He was locked into this life-and-death standoff with Tess, a meek and petite woman he’d presumably
judged to be easy prey, and under no circumstances could he allow her to escape with the GoPro footage. He was probably hiding
somewhere just outside the Drainpipe in silent ambush, hoping to lure Tess out so he could cut her throat. She was wise to
stay prone down there inside the narrow tunnel, as painful as it must have been.
“I knew he was on a ticking clock, too,” Tess says. “He couldn’t wait forever.”
“How so?”
“Allie and I couldn’t just disappear in the mountains. I work Mondays and Thursdays at a law office, and if I was a no-show,
my boss would look for me.”
“Eventually.”