Page 34 of So Insane

“Yes,” he agreed.

“Well, I think our killer is deeper in the network, and I think he’s trying to keep us from following him.”

“What, like he lives here?”

“I doubt that,” she said, “Stranger things have happened, I suppose, but most likely, he’s just hiding out here until the heat goes away. He’s probably a local, and he’s probably waiting until eyes are off of the caves before he gets out of town.”

“So he's what, giving us our bodies, hoping we'll just decide that's enough and not try to find out how they got here in the first place?"

“I’m not sure,” Faith said, “the hypothesis definitely needs to be developed, but I think it would be worthwhile for us to get some search teams deeper into the tunnels.”

“Good luck with that,” Jones said.

Before she could ask him what he meant, Michael returned. “Kinsey’s on a bus back to Boise. He regrets that he can’t help us, but his job was to apprehend Tooley, and now he needs to make sure Tooley gets where he’s going for real this time. For what it’s worth, I think it’s his superiors pressing him.”

“That’s fine,” Faith said, “I didn’t expect him to stick around.”

“What do we think about searching deeper in the tunnels?” Michael asked. “Trying to see where our killer might have come from?”

“Your partner just got finished saying that,” Jones told him. “Great minds, right? Anyway, what I think is that it’s a perfectly sensible idea. The problem with sensible ideas is that people need to be sensible to understand them.”

“What do you mean?” Faith asked.

“You’ll see,” he said.

***

Faith looked at Jones in annoyance, but Jones only sat where he had the entire meeting with his arms folded across his chest and a resigned expression on his face.

She sighed and tried again. “I’m not suggesting that we run blindly into a cave system without preparing for it,” she said. “I’m suggesting a professional and well-organized search party.”

“It’s too dangerous,” one officer, a woman around Faith’s age with a weathered appearance that made her appear significantly older, said, “Those tunnels—especially the old mineshafts—are unstable. Cave-ins happen all the time.”

“When was the last cave-in?” Faith challenged.

The woman crossed her arms and frowned, jutting her chin out in defiance. “All the time,” she repeated.

“Very well,” Faith said, “We’ll work slowly and have supplies to shore up the tunnels if we feel any of them are unsafe.

“Can’t know for sure if a tunnel’s gonna collapse until it does,” another officer, a reed-thin man with an Adam’s apple the size of a golf ball opined.

There were murmurs of agreement, and Faith said with more than a touch of irritation, “Well, I guess we’ll just have to be big boys and girls and take a risk.”

“They’ve only mapped a third of those tunnels anyway,” a third officer added, ignoring Faith. There were more murmurs of agreement, and he continued, “And we don’t have enough lights to supply an entire search party.”

“Really?” Faith said, “Flashlights? You really think we won’t be able to find enough flashlights to extend the search?”

The third officer frowned, crossed his arms and jutted his jaw defiantly forward in an almost exact repeat of the first officer’s behavior.

“I promise you,” Faith said, her voice dripping with sarcasm, “We can find you enough flashlights. We’re going in that cave.”

"We're not helping anyone getting lost down there ourselves," The first officer said again. "I say we just keep looking through the surface caves. We found the Stone Boy near the surface. We'll probably find Clara there too."

“And if we don’t?” Faith challenged.

“Then we wait.”

Faith’s eyes narrowed. “Wait for what, officer?”

---