All these clothes presented an obstacle course to me, and I kept getting further and further behind. We ran past the ahu with its moai and away from the beach. I was gasping with the effort of making my way through the sand. I followed him as best I could, and when I rounded a mound nearly ran into the van and truck. I kept going past that, trying to see where Andrew had gone. After a minute or two, I realized I was completely alone. I couldn't believe it. Not five minutes away was a beach filled with dozens of bathers and now nothing. There was no road here, just some trails leading off somewhere, I had no idea where.
I figured that Andrew had been about two hundred yards ahead of me at most when I'd lost him. But I could see over that distance and he simply wasn't there That had to mean the cave was somewhere close.
The terrain was rocky now, with grassy patches as well. I couldn't see a cave, at least not like the one I'd taken Gordon to, where the mouth was quite obvious in the rock. That said to me it was subterranean. I had to find the entrance. I was running, stumbling, trying not to break my ankle, when I saw something gleam in the sunlight. It was a pile of silver bracelets. Andrew was showing me the way. At first it looked as if he'd simply left them on a rock, but on closer examination I could see a small opening down about four feet in what looked to be simply a pile of stones interspersed with tufts of yellow grass.
I stood for a minute thinking about this. I had no idea what lay on the other side, but I was reasonably sure that pushing through that opening was not going to do much for anybody. I could go back to the beach and try and get help, but we were still going to go in there one at a time, and if Edith and Moira were being held hostage, as they most certainly were, that wouldn't help either.
I'd had experience with only one cave, although I had been told the island, being volcanic rock, was riddled with them. The one cave I did know, however, had two ways in, one of them on the cliff face over the water. This part of the coast did not have the high cliffs of Poike or Orongo, rather it was a series of rocky outcrops. I ran to the shore and picked my way along it, keeping the pile of rocks inland as my reference point. At last I found a cave, just a few feet up from the shoreline and in relatively the right spot. I decided it was worth a try.
The problem was that if the cave was exactly the same as Gordon's, then when I stepped into the cave, I would block the light and be immediately seen. Or, it could be a cave that went nowhere near where I wanted to go. I tried to listen carefully to see if I heard anything that would tell me someone was in there, but the wind was the only sound that was audible. I counted to ten and crawled up and into the opening. At first it looked to be a simple cave with no other chambers, but when I went to the back, I found another tunnel, a lava tube. It looked almost man-made, although it couldn't have been. I got down on my hands and knees and started in.
The cave was rock, but it might just as well have been broken glass. It cut through the knees of my pants within a minute or two. My hands were scraped and bleeding. I still had the light behind me, though, and knew I was keeping a reasonably straight course in the right direction and could, if necessary, find my way out. Then the shaft turned upward. I pulled myself along for a few yards in almost complete darkness.
I decided I couldn't go any farther, and stopped. The air was bad now that the shaft had changed direction. It was hot, and the shaft seemed to me to be getting narrower. I didn't know what to do.
It was then I heard the sound of voices. Not only that, but I thought I saw a pinprick of light above me. I hauled myself up the shaft and into a more open area, but not high enough to stand up in, lit from below. I peered as carefully as I could over the edge. I had been right about the other entranceway. I could see it and Gordon, Andrew, and Moira standing to one side of it, just far enough away, in fact, that they'd never make it if they made a run for it. The light that was focused on them, a powerful flashlight, cast huge shadows on the wall behind them. I couldn't see Edith, but I could see her shadow. She was behind them.
"Look," Gordon was saying. "It's me that you want. Not my daughter, not Moira. They have nothing to do with this. Please let them go. I will stay."
"I also will stay," Andrew said. "My name is Andrew Jones. I am another that you want."
"Andrew Jones! What a pleasant surprise," a voice that seemed to be right beneath me said. "I thought I wasn't going to be able to find you. This is very noble of you, I'm sure, but you are all going to die."
"You are very sick," Andrew said.
The voice beneath me laughed. "I've been told that many times, by people much more qualified than you. Runs in the family," the voice said. "My mother spent the last four years of her life staring at the wall and picking imaginary lint off her sweater. Can't imagine what drove her over the edge, can you? Could it have been the death of her daughter? I adored both of them, you know. I spent what should have been the best years of my life looking after my mother. She had to be spoon-fed, and she had to wear diapers. What do you think of that?"
"I'm sorry," Gordon said.
"I'll bet you are," the voice said. "You don't even remember me, do you? You were off in your own little world, oblivious to anyone but yourselves, and your petty wants."
"I remember you very well now," Andrew said. "You were an obnoxious kid who resented your little sister, and all the attention she got." Perhaps Andrew thought he would provoke the killer into doing something stupid, but this killer was made of ice.
"You have no idea how I felt," the voice said. "I think this scintillating conversation needs to come to an end. Which of you would like to go first?"
"I will," Andrew said. His voice cracked.
"Nervous, are we?" the voice said. "Think how frightened Flora must have been, all alone in the dark. Your lipstick is smudged, by the way."
I couldn't see exactly where the killer was, although, given the angle of the light and the direction the others were looking, I was reasonably sure it was straight down, perhaps under the lip of the ledge on which I was now lying. Deadly tattoos were no longer the weapon of choice, I would assume, given the crowd in the cave. That probably meant that the killer didn't have a knife, either. Three adults could probably overtake one person with a knife. Anakena had to have a gun, so really the element of surprise was the only hope left. There was a large rock on the ledge, and I did the only thing I could think to do. I tried to push it off. It wouldn't budge. As quietly as I could, I turned and, bracing my back against the side of the bubble, I put my feet against the rock and pushed again.
I'm not exactly sure what happened then, except that I was falling. The ledge had given way. A shot rang out, and I hit the floor of the cave face down. I tried to take a breath, but I couldn't. There seemed to be blood around me, and I was trying very hard not to pass out. I looked up to see Andrew holding his arm. Blood poured through his fingers, but he was still on his feet. Moira was hunched over what I took to be Edith. Gordon was just standing there, stunned.
I wondered why I wasn't dead. I had to have fallen ten feet onto sheer rock. To my surprise, it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I tried to sit up, but could only just raise my head.
"Is everybody more or less all right?" I gasped.
"I think so," Gordon said. Andrew nodded.
"Are you?" Moira said, unfolding herself from around Edith, who ran to her father and grabbed his hand.
"I guess so," I replied. "Where's… ?" It was then I noticed that I was spread-eagled on top of the decidedly unconscious Mike Sheppard.
"Good of you to drop by," Andrew said.