The red scope light the shot had come from blinked off. Whoever had shot just went back out towards the cave entrance.
My instinct was to run after him. He had a gun, yeah, but I knew the terrain of the cave. I could practically do it blindfolded. As soon as I could see his light I'd shut mine off, then sneak up and grab him from behind. And then ... well, something would come to me.
But Jed was shot. No good going after the guy if Jed would just bleed out in the passage. Plus, he could ambush me too.
I knelt down by Jed. His face was white, and he patted desperately for his pack. "First aid kit. Bandages." The patting increased. "Where the hell's my pack?"
I slid it out from behind him, gently. "You were sitting on it. First aid kit in here?"
Jed's hands went to a six inch diameter around the wound, afraid to touch it. "I think there's a little betadine or something. Kills infection."
I looked at his wound as I dug in his pack. It looked green in the light. Infection sure as hell didn't work that fast. I checked out the other colored objects in my carbide's light: Jed's blue suit, the sleeve of my red one, brown mud on both. All those colors looked regular. But the wound was still green.
I couldn't help it. I laughed in Jed's face, a big spittled burst of air.
He swung his glance to me, his face pale and sweating. "Christ, I'm shot here, Ted!"
I wiped my finger over his wound, and showed him the color. "Paint ball."
Jed's eyes rolled back. "Oh, for the lova God."
"Green paint ball."
"Man, that scared me half to death!" He grabbed his pack from me and stood up.
I was relieved as hell that the shot was nothing, but Jed wasn't going to know. "You think you can make it out with your injury?"
"You thought I was shot, too, buddy."
"I was going just from your reaction. You were going from a painless green splat."
"I thought I was in shock."
"If only one of us had the ability to notice the difference between a bullet wound and a complete absence of wound."
"It's a real thing. Your body gets a giant change in the status quo, so the nervous system just doesn't register anything initially. You could get a solid minute of no pain before a gut shot starts to hurt."
"Good, cause he's coming back with a water gun and I'd like to know how my last moments will be."
"Shut up. That guy might hear you and come back."
"I got a bullet proof vest on. Made of turpentine."
"Here's a thought, Ted. Turpentine's flammable." That shook me back into reality. There was a burnt corpse a few hundred feet from where we were standing. Whoever just hit Jed with the paintball, he probably torched the poor guy, possibly while alive. We just survived an encounter with a murderer.
We headed out of the cave cautiously. I noticed three other paintball splotches on the wall. Two green, one orange.
"Thanks for staying when, uh, I got incredibly stupid," Jed said, "but you really should have gone after that guy. You could have stopped him."
"Last time I stop to save your ungrateful ass. And it was two guys."
"I just saw the one."
"So did I. But I just saw two different color splats from paintball guns. And there's two cars in the lot. Plus, solo caving's kinda stupid."
"Yeah, you could really get yourself killed, accidentally ignite yourself that way."
The cave was unlocked when we came out, just as we left it. As soon as we got out we slapped the lock on, as if it was helpful. Whoever did this obviously already had a key, so the lock meant nothing, but it felt good to be able to do something.
I had a feeling Jed's tires would be slashed and flat in the gravel, but they weren't. The Ferrari and SUV in the lot were gone, though. They had been there when we entered the cave.
"Don't suppose you got the license on either of those cars, did you, Ted?"
"Wasn't thinking crimestopper at the time."
Jed was careful not to disturb his paint splotch as he got his suit off. It was just to the right of the zipper, so he was dainty with the unzipping and folding of it. I was pretty sure you couldn't do a ballistics test on paint, but Jed thought there might be an experimental FBI test just waiting for its first real use. "I've read about a ton of them. They can get fingerprints off a dead body. They can read newspaper headlines from space with satellites. I'll bet they can match a paintball pellet."
It took half an hour to find the police station. Never noticed it was right by the McDonalds, although I had been to that McDonalds at least three times.
It felt weird to be in the police station, in the desk area all the cops worked in. I don't hate cops or anything, but I only saw them as the guys who pulled me over for speeding, or the guys who broke up decent parties, or the guys who would hopefully not find the pot in my pocket.
Jed, of course, was in heaven. He came in asking to go directly to the homicide detectives, and when he heard that a small town like this one doesn't have a homicide department, he asked for the local FBI number, so they could send some field agents over. All this before he said who he was or why he was there.
The cops initially treated us politely, but like we were nuts. It took five minutes for them to actually believe us.
"You ever find a body like that around here?" Jed asked. "Maybe there's a serial killer in the area."
"A guy last year died of exposure, and a hiker found him." Loomis said. Loomis seemed to be the cop who enjoyed talking to civilians. Crew cut, very visible pleats in his clothes, looked like he just got out of the army. "Local crazy guy wandered into the woods too far. But nothing like what you're saying."
After half an hour of us talking to uniformed cops, Sgt. Addison came in. He was a kinda short guy with a salt and pepper mustache, and seemed to be in charge. He was called in from home after the cops started believing our story. He wore an old sweatshirt and jeans.
He first asked how we got into the cave with a locked grill on it, and we said we were cavers and had a key. Jed sorta glossed over our key being a copy and us not officially being allowed in there, but he mentioned that copies had been made in the past so a lot of people could have access.
"About how many people have a key, would you say?"
"Boy, at least a dozen. Most of them would be in the Garden State Grotto. That's the caving group. A few people have dropped out of activity over the years after getting a key, and the lock's never been changed. No one I can think of as a murderer, but there's a bunch of key owners floating out there."
The cops knew about the cave, but none of them had ever gone in. No one there had a key, and there was never any reason to go in the cave itself.
Addison asked a solid dozen times if we were sure it was a real body or just some campfire remnants. They didn't treat us like suspects, but they didn't sound particularly glad to know us.
We were worried about leaving the cave unguarded, so Addison radioed for a squad car to go to Simpson Cave and tape off the site until the body could be verified.
After two hours of questions, Addison stood up and said loudly "We're going in the cave."
He and Loomis got some makeshift cave gear together. Two sets of greasy cotton coveralls from the garage area, two hardhats from God knows where, and the big police flashlights, which they both said they were used to using. They wore their belts overtop, holsters included. "You never know," Addison said.
The police led the way back to the cave, Jed's big Ford following. There was a squad car in the gravel parking lot by the entrance, lights swirling.
There was concern about Addison and Loomis not having any way to signal help once they went under. I was pretty sure their radios weren't going to work. Jed and I estimated a trip time of an hour and a half, and said if the trip would run longer, one of us would run to the surface and keep the topside guys informed.
Addison and Loomis were very good first time cavers. No hesitance at all about going into the entrance, even though Jed and I were iffy about seeing the dead guy again.
"I don't know what this place looks like normally, but if anything seems the slightest bit weird," Loomis said, "just point it out."
Jed went first, then Addison, then me and Loomis. I noticed the cops could pull their guns and have easy targets of Jed's and my asses. Probably just a defensive thing, cop reflex. I was still a little wary.
When we broke into Bart, Lisa and Maggie, Jed pointed out the smoke. "The smoke gets thicker as you go into this alcove. We just followed it to the body."
I showed them the paintball splotches. Loomis found three more on a rock, close quartered. Looked like target practice. Jed and I wanted to show them the body immediately, but they said to calm down and just take in the scene room by room: the corpse wasn't going anywhere.
They spent a few minutes over a map I gave them, figuring out where they were. "This thing's impossible to read. All these levels on top of each other."
"Welcome to caving," I said.
After spending half an hour just standing and estimating where the paintballs were fired from, Addison and Loomis were OK to go see the body. Jed practically dove into the crack.
"Soot all over the place, looks like." Addison said as I went in.
"Jed, you remember soot in the crawl here?"
"Not really." Jed pulled himself into the small room. "Uh-oh."
Sgt. Addison grunted for a minute as he wormed forward. "What's the 'Uh-oh' about?" He pulled himself out and I quickly popped my head out, to see what change was in the room.
His legs blocked most of my view, but I could see the room was empty. No corpse. Char marks on the ground, but that's all. "Wrong room?" Addison asked.
"No, right room." Jed said. "Someone moved the body."
