Jed picked me up at my place again. My job hunt the past couple days hadn't been anything to report. Let's just say I know the difference between all those TV judges now.
"Economy sucks out there. Stupid thing is, I can't go anywhere without some guy saying how great the economy is. Maybe for stock traders." I dug through my McDonalds bag for my hash browns.
"If it makes you feel better, the market dropped and those economy-talkers lost a couple billion." Jed ate fast, so all his food was gone by the time I was still working on my first McMuffin. He paid for mine, told me not to worry about it.
"Helps a little."
Jed turned down the radio and grinned. "Hey, want to see my list?"
"What list?"
"Suspect list. I've got them in order of guiltiness." He dug in his shirt pocket and unfolded a yellow sheet of legal paper.
I glanced at the list. "This pretty much matches the people we invited to help with the recovery."
"Better to be safe than sorry. Suspect everyone, and when they pull a knife on you, they won't have the element of surprise."
"You forgot Mother Theresa, but you seem to have everyone else in the known universe here."
"The list isn't for public consumption. Don't mention it to the others."
"Why would I? According to you, they've all burned a guy last week."
"Just check the list. See if you agree with my order."
"Top of the list is ... Gunther. Because he doesn't like you?"
"Not just me. He's got that aggravated attitude toward everyone. It could easily morph into focused violence."
"I don't like him either, but he's not the sort to torch someone."
"Can you think of a Grotto member more likely to?"
"Not offhand, but that doesn't make it him. It can't be a Grotto member."
"You're not going to be happy with the rest of the list."
"Darren's number two? Because he's the treasurer, right? He'll bump us all off so he'll be able to spend everyone's twenty bucks with less procedure."
"Treasurer has nothing to do with it. He's Army Reserve."
"So?"
"The job involves death, training in how to kill someone. If I was a homicidal maniac, I'd join the Army just so I'd have an output for killing streaks."
"That should be a new slogan for them. Army: Justify Your Insanity."
"I put Alex third. Gunther and Darren are my big two, everyone else is a long shot. But someone's gotta be top of the long shot pile."
"Who's Alex?"
"Alex. The kid. You thought he was 16."
"Oh, the kid. Bit of a wiseass. Reminds me of you."
"Oh, let me move him up to the top of the list. You know how often I've burnt guys in caves."
One name jumped out at me. "Henry! He can't even fit in Simpson!" I wasn't feeling bad that he paid for my breakfast any more.
"Well he's obviously not the triggerman, but he could have had a hand in planning it."
"It's not a bank robbery! What could he possibly have to gain by helping some psycho torch a guy?"
"Mafia hush money, I don't know. But whoever really did this had a motive, and until we have more information, we can't go excluding people just because we know them."
"Am I on this list?"
"Of course not. You were with me when I got hit with the paintball."
"But if I stayed at home that day, I'd be on the list."
"I'm not accusing you, Ted. I know you didn't do it."
"You were just accusing Henry even though he couldn't have been behind the gun. Why couldn't I hire some guy to shoot a paintball at you while you're with me?"
"Come on, Ted, I don't think you did it."
"Well, why not? Your list is everyone else who's on the rescue. Or recovery. Or whatever this is."
"Plus Harry."
"Do I want to know why?"
"He's a college professor. So's the Unabomber. People who think for a living find strange justifications for what they do."
"What do you do for a living, Jed?"
"I thought you knew. I'm with the McDermott Group."
"Moving boxes around? Sweeping up?"
"No."
"So you think for a living."
Jed paused. "That's a way of putting it."
"Qed."
"Ked? What's that?"
"Qed. You said people who think for a living have strange justifications, and you think for a living, and that explains this crackhead list of yours. Qed."
"Sorry if the list bugs you. I'm just, well, excited by this. I don't solve murders every day. I'm not looking to lose friends; that's why I'm only showing it to you."
"Make sure it doesn't fall out of your pocket or anything."
"I will." he said, as we passed over the New York border. "Oh, for future reference, it's pronounced Q-E-D, just letters."
"What's it stand for?"
"Beats the hell out of me. Something Latin."
For the rest of the trip, Jed ranted at me on his lightning theory. If the dead guy got struck by lightning, that would alleviate the need for someone to be a killer. It wouldn't explain the lighter fluid and the guy taking a potshot at Jed, but Jed didn't seem to mind this.
The gravel lot outside Simpson was packed with cars. Cop cars, beat up trucks, gleaming SUVs (none of them looking familiar) and a few out of place sedans painted with giant antennae coming out of them.
Jed took his keys and stuck them under the rear bumper of his Ford. "I could probably leave them in the door and they'd be safe, all the cops we got here."
At the end of the lot closer to the cave a table was set up with a tarp over it. A huge map of Simpson, one I had never seen before, had a crowd of cop uniforms and coveralls around it. It was thirty pieces of yellowing paper taped together, with rocks over certain spots so the slight wind wouldn't blow it away. Every map I'd seen of Simpson could fit on one sheet of legal paper.
Henry bounced over to us, 280 pounds of smiling and sweating. "Hey guys. Lot of energy in this parking lot."
Jed had the Garden State Grotto problem, not me, so I was the friendlier one to Henry. "Hey there. What's the game plan?"
"It's still being hammered out. They're looking to cover most every part of the cave, but they're working from the bottom up, since the body was probably moved down. Smile." He whipped out a camera and clicked off a quick one of me and Jed.
"There's some deep parts of Simpson," I said. "A couple real close to where we found the body the first time."
"That's the parts being gone over first. You'll all be breaking up into small teams, to cover more ground. You'll take a good look around, see if anything's different, suspicious."
"What would be different?" I asked. "I don't think we'll be finding a secret passage."
"No, but someone's got a theory that the body is buried. I think one of the FBI guys, knows about a case five years ago in Texas. Real interesting conversations to listen in to. So you'd be looking out for mounds that weren't there before, new breakdown, stuff that might be concealing a body."
A black Lab walked by us, a long metal chain dragging behind it. Cops had better things to do than enforce leash laws. "Has anyone tried bringing dogs in there?" Jed asked.
"Simpson's not exactly walking passage," Henry said. "I think they're seeing how well we fare before risking some dogs breaking their necks."
"Cavers' lives are worth less than dogs. Sounds about right," Jed rolled his eyes. "Hey, is everyone from the Grotto here?"
"And then some. Everyone you two picked out, plus Marv."
"Marv?" Jed asked, his mind suddenly busy. Marv was the grotto beer fan, someone who was usually happy to stay with the car and the cooler while others went in the cave.
"I figured a few extra people would find out. Hard to keep the lid on news like this. So far it's just Marv, so no problem. A flood of people come, there's cops and Feds out the wazoo to turn them away."
"It's not just the local police?" Jed said, his eyebrow arching.
"Oh, no. They've got local cops, state police, even a few guys who I think are FBI."
Jed shook his head. "Man, it's going to be a mess in the cave. Everyone's going to want absolute authority in the search."
"Actually, they're getting along fine." There were no raised voices coming from the table. Hastily pointed fingers yes, but no one screaming about overstepped bounds. "No one's turned this into a pissing contest yet."
Jed paused for a second. "That's even worse! They know what's down there, and now they've put on a unified false front so none of us will catch on!"
"Then why did they ask us to help with the search in the first place?" Henry said. A drop of sweat rolled off his nose, cleared his huge stomach, and hit the ground.
Jed's eyes stared blankly for a second. "Damn, you got me there. Maybe they really are getting along."
"Thanks, Henry." I said. "Glad someone can talk sense into this moron."
"Just doing my job," Henry said, walking away.
Jed's 'sense' lasted just until Henry left earshot. "Marv's at the top of my list now. He's not even invited and he wants to come? Tell me that's not suspicious."
"We didn't tell the whole Grotto exactly because anyone who heard this would want to come! Marv heard, and now he's here. If I heard about something like this, I'd be here for damn sure."
"He's still an unaccounted factor."
"He's harmless. Watch." I scanned the crowd, looking for Marv. I saw Gunther and Darren talking together, but it took me a minute to spot Marv, walking out of the woods from probably his second beer-induced leak of the morning. I made eye contact with him, and he weaved through the crowd to get to us.
"Hello gentlemen. Are you going in?"
"Yeah," Jed said. "You?"
"No, I'm sticking above ground today. The police wouldn't let me on the trip. I got a case in my cooler, so I ain't lonely. Help yourself to one after you find that body."
"We definitely will," I said. I wasn't a huge fan of Bud, which was all Marv ever drank since he worked for Budweiser, but I couldn't complain about a free beer. "Hey, do you know where the police got that big map from?"
"Yeah, the last guys to survey Simpson, back in '83, that was the map they put together after each day of surveying. The map we all use is the shrunken down version of that guy, the original article. That's history on the table."
Sergeant Addison walked by, and I caught his attention. He was in the cave with us when we saw the body had been moved. "Hey, Sgt. Addison? Remember me?"
He chuckled. "You started the busiest week of my life."
"Any word on who the burnt guy is?"
"Until we find a body to autopsy, all we've got is missing persons reports from the estimated time of disappearance. Nothing definite."
A clanging got everyone's attention. Someone in a dark blue track suit banged a metal cup against his giant flashlight, while the group made a broad huddle around him.
"OK, we have a lot of law enforcement here, and a lot of spelunkers here, so I'll say everything once, and loudly."
"Cavers, not spelunkers!" Alex yelled. The cavers laughed. One cop groaned unappreciatively.
"We will go inside the cave in two groups, north and south section. Each section will have two person teams, one enforcement personnel and one caver. If you don't know which section you're in, ask me."
Jed and I were both in the north section, the one closer to where the body was originally found. The south section was just busywork. 99% chance the body was in the north.
I got my pack ready before Jed picked me up, so I didn't bother to check it again before going in. If I did, I would have noticed all my batteries missing from my flashlights. Even my cigarette lighter was gone.
After what happened in Simpson that day, I always check now.