Page 39 of So Insane

“Yes,” he said, “Like something was trying to get out.”

“What exactly did you hear, Mr. Martle?” she pushed.

“I told you,” he said, “I heard voices.”

“And scratching?”

“And scratching.”

“And you’re sure it wasn’t rats you heard?”

He chuckled nervously and sipped more of his coffee. “Well, the scratching could have been rats and the moaning could have been air circulating through the tunnels, but I’m pretty sure that there’s no natural explanation for the words.”

“Words?”

“Yep. ‘We’re going to die now,’ ‘It’s so cold,’ ‘I can’t breathe! Help!’ and my personal favorite, ‘I’m going to get them for this.’”

Faith and Michael looked grimly at each other. “Why didn’t you report this to the police department?” Faith asked.

He chuckled again. "Report what? I went too deep into an abandoned mine and went loopy for a few minutes. I just told them not to go into the mines and suggested they fill them in and seal the entrance. Then I left."

“Why did you move away?” Faith asked. “Did you still hear the voices?”

He met her eyes. “I hear them now, Special Agent.”

He downed the rest of his coffee in one huge gulp, and it made sense to Faith now why he would drink coffee so late in the day. Sleep likely brought no rest to him, only dreams of voices in the dark.

In a practical sense, however, this was the best lead they had so far. It was plausible that he had simply gone temporarily—or maybe permanently—insane, but it was also plausible that someone had been making those voices. Someone else could have been in the mines, and if that person was unhinged enough, it was plausible that they were killing the unwary who traveled too deep.

It sounded like a stretch, but it fit with what they knew, especially after learning that Tyler was moved after death.

Something else occurred to Faith. She had been operating under the assumption that the killer used the caves for his murders and then left the scene, but what if the killer lived in the caves or the mine himself? No one had been into the deeper portion of either place in decades. In the case of the caves, it was possible that no one had ever been that deep.

The idea of a crazed killer living underground reminded Faith of a horror movie she had seen once. In the movie, the killers had been subhuman mutants. Then again, how else would normal people deal with the reality of someone so insane and twisted?

Faith had met enough serial killers to know that good old-fashioned people were far more frightening than anything Hollywood could come up with.

“We need the maps you made,” Faith said.

Martle chuckled. “Would it be worth my time to warn you to stay out of those mines?”

Faith shook her head. “Not while there’s a killer on the loose.”

He sighed and lifted his coffee mug to his lips. When he found it was empty, he set it on the coffee table and said, “All right. I’ll get them for you. They’re incomplete, for obvious reasons, but I’ve marked what tunnels and shafts are safe and what are unsafe. I don’t know how accurate it still is now that they’ve been excavating, but if you insist on getting yourself killed, I won’t stand in your way.”

“Agent Bold has a knack for surviving things that would kill other people,” Michael said, “Don’t count her out just yet.”

Faith looked at Michael in surprise. It had been a while since he had shown any kind of admiration for her.

“Well,” Martle replied, “she’ll need all of the luck she can get.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“I still think this is a bad idea,” Frankie said.

Shawna flipped her hair over her shoulder in that frustratingly devil-may-care attitude of hers and said, “You think everything is a bad idea.”

“Not everything,” Frankie replied. “I was pretty partial to the idea of staying home and eating pizza while watching a scary movie and cuddling on the couch.”

---