Bolt

by Siena West

  “Actually, I did,” Elena said. Maggie nodded in agreement—“Otis Greenlaw,” she said. “You thought he was way too interested in our artifacts and put him off.”

  “Okay, that’s one suspect,” Cole said. “But why wasn’t it that guy Cimelli? We know he didn’t wreck Mel’s room, but he could have started the fire. He has the hots for Tía, and she blew him off. That’s a motive for revenge.”

  Sue, who as usual had sat in silence, spoke. “Don’t forget the sorcerer’s bundle he gave you, Elena. The guy has evil intentions.”

  “I suppose it’s possible it was Cimelli,” Elena said. “But remember, nobody heard a vehicle. He might have parked so far away we didn’t hear, I guess, and walked into camp.”

  “He would have had to run back to his car,” Tim said, “because I got to the lab pretty quickly, and no one was there.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Elena said. “We can’t do anything tonight, so let’s try to get a little sleep. Things will look better in the morning because they always do. We owe you, Tim. If you hadn’t given the alarm and got us out of bed, we would have been toast.”

  Maggie roared with laughter again, and this time, everyone joined her.

  The motley crew toddled off to bed.

  In the morning, they would discover something more, but it wouldn’t answer their questions. It would create more.

  * * *

  Morning sun poured down on the wreckage as if nothing happened. There would be no archaeology this day. The camp was quiet; most students were still in bed. Norm cancelled breakfast. He would offer cereal, toast, and fruit when the camp’s residents arose. The showers flowed nonstop as people washed away the night’s horror along with the dirt and soot. One by one, the staff straggled into the kitchen. They were red-eyed from smoke and not enough sleep, but at least they were clean. Norm had made coffee as hot and black as sin. Cole poured a cup and joined Elena, who stood staring at the lab. She was up early, unable to sleep, and had showered and washed her tangled, singed hair.

  In the daylight, the damage looked worse than in the predawn hours. The lab was a jumbled mess of wood, soggy cardboard, tar paper, and roof shingles—all of it burned—and artifacts were mixed with mud, charcoal, dirt, and ashes. Daylight shone through the lab walls, and the rafters had collapsed, showering the mess with sunlight. The fire had damaged one side of the frame for the door into the annex, causing it to list at a crazy angle. Hoses still snaked around, and water pooled on the lab floor and in the yard. The stink of burned wood and wet charcoal hung in the air, along with the faint odor of gasoline.

  “We’re suspicious of each other now,” Elena said, “and I hate it. I saw how we looked at one another last night—this morning. We were looking for signs of guilt. I refuse to believe a student or staff member did this unless it was a horrible accident.”

  “An accident with gasoline?” Cole said. “I don’t think so. And anyway, if we rule out students and staff, who does that leave?”

  Elena shrugged, her shoulders sagging with fatigue. “We have to finish out the season without more trouble. We have to trust each other again.”

  Maggie joined them in time to hear the last of what Elena said. She had shampooed her glorious hair, and it was still damp. She looked puzzled.

  “We trust each other, Tía,” she said. “But we’re all sure somebody in camp did this awful thing. I can’t bear to think about it. A student? A laborer? Is there an undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic among us?”

  Elena had lost her words. She, too, was uneasy at the thought of a traitor. Then, with a sudden, sick startle, she remembered the boxes of bones in the annex. How could I have forgotten them? Last night, she was focused so intently on keeping the annex with the propane freezer safe from the fire she hadn’t given the human remains a single thought. Didn’t anyone go into the annex this morning? Then she answered her own question. Everyone stayed in the house or outside the lab to avoid the mess. There was no reason to go into the annex. Without a word, she ran through the house and into the annex.

  “Elena?” Cole asked, “What’s up?” When she didn’t answer, he followed her, Maggie trailing in their wake.

  The arsonist had broken into the annex. He’d used a hammer or axe on the lock in the door, breaking both, and splintered the surrounding wood. They didn’t notice it before because of the charring and soot. Otherwise, the room seemed unharmed, although it had filled with smoke, and ash coated everything with a sooty, greasy film. But there was damage—terrible damage.

  The shelves with the boxes containing the human remains from the bone bed were empty. On the wall, someone had scrawled an ugly message in red marker:

  Serves you right bitch

  Chapter 28

  Arson

  Elena slumped like a marionette with cut strings. Her bones felt liquid, as if they would no longer support her, and her face had paled to a buttermilk shade. It was the bones—everything came down to the human remains in the pasture. All summer, they unleashed terror and generated the sickness she felt. The bones may have caused all the senseless acts of violence perpetrated that summer, from broken bones to gunfire. Now, although someone stole the bones—a person with vile intentions—the fear and sickness they engendered still lingered. Elena wondered if she would ever be free of the bones and the dread they caused.

  “Sit down, Elena. You’re exhausted.” Maggie led her into the dining room and fetched a glass of water from the kitchen. They sat around the table, and Maggie forced the water on Elena. “Come on, drink up. I bet you’re dehydrated on top of everything else.”

  “Now we understand why the arsonist set the fire,” Cole said—“to cover up theft of the boxes. Whoever did it probably hoped the fire would spread into the annex, and we’d assume the bone boxes burned along with everything else.”

  “That’s one stupid arsonist,” Maggie declared.

  “But why steal the human remains?” Elena asked no one in particular. “They are culturally and emotionally valuable to the Hopi, and we archaeologists value their research importance. To the rest of the world, they are worth precisely nothing.” The theft was nonsensical, inane, considered in the light of day. But nothing about this summer was normal.

  Elena sighed. “I remember thinking the annex was a safe place to store the boxes because we could lock it. Nobody would be dumb enough to steal them. I was so sure.”

  Unnoticed, Maggie had refilled Elena’s glass.

  “Don’t blame yourself,” Maggie said. “It was a logical conclusion, and you couldn’t predict what would happen.”

  But why didn’t I know? What’s happened to me? Elena’s thoughts were as jumbled as the mess in what had been the lab.

  The director’s skin faded to a curious shade of gray under the summer tan. “I can’t imagine what the State museum and the Hopi will say about this,” she muttered to herself. “I’ll probably lose my job. And never get another. I’ll be greeting customers at Walmart.” She drained her glass. “Something’s not right. No outsider would realize human remains were in the boxes.”

  “That was Mel’s point,” Maggie reminded her. “It was an inside job, as they say in bad crime novels.”

  “You need to rest, Tía,” Cole said. “We can take care of things for a few hours.”

  She sighed and rose from her chair, trembling and listing from the numbing tiredness. “You’re right. Wake me if another disaster strikes.”

  * * *

  In her cabin, Elena was taking off her boots when a horrifying thought arose. The witchcraft bundle Cimelli gave her—now, after everything they had endured—could Cimelli’s curse be working? For spells and sorcery to work, the victim had to have faith. Despite her own sixth sense and New Mexico upbringing, Elena was not sure she believed in witchcraft. But everything was so bizarre about this summer, the charm may have worked.

  She couldn’t remember where she had put the bundle. She had ignored the horrid thing, even after Sue
told her what it was. The director scrambled through her things, turning jeans pockets inside out, checking jackets, looking through boxes of books and papers. Finally, she remembered she had shown it to the kids on the porch on the day Cimelli gave it to her. Then she’d stuffed it in her jeans. That night, she’d hidden it in a duffel bag under the bed because she didn’t want to look at the ugly thing.

  Now, she found the bundle and inspected it. The little animals had seemed cheap and foreign-made when she first saw them. She wasn’t so sure anymore. Perhaps someone crafted the creatures to appear crude on purpose—to augment the fear in whoever saw them.

  She had a purpose now—to get rid of the nasty charm. It revived her. Perhaps the curse was working, and maybe it wasn’t. Either way, it would do no harm to destroy the bundle. She wondered why on earth she had waited so long to do it.

  She flopped down on her bed. Relief was a great soporific, and she fell asleep right away. It would be a while before she got the opportunity to destroy Cimelli’s little gift, however.

  * * *

  When Elena joined the group at lunchtime, the camp swarmed with activity. The boxes of tree-ring samples sat forlorn in the sun where the kids left them the previous night. Sue was busy organizing a crew to collect and move them to the back porch where they’d be safe from the weather. Amid the mess were the buckets from last night’s brigade. There were so many things to set right.

  Norm called the County sheriff’s department to report the fire, and they sent an arson investigator to the ranch. As he stepped through the mud and pools of water in the lab with caution, the investigator took copious notes and many photographs. The staff watched as the man slipped samples into evidence bags and poked into the stinking piles of charred, wet cardboard and rubble with gloved hands. When he finished, he approached Elena with a notepad and pencil.

  “What did you store in this area, Ma’am?” he asked.

  “Worthless stuff to anyone but archaeologists,” the director told him. “Bags of sherds and stone artifacts from the excavations, boxed up for travel to Tucson.” The sad piles of burned artifacts sunk into the mud and ashes confirmed what she said. “And tree-ring samples. To date the site,” she explained to the man, who looked puzzled.

  “What about this other room—you call it the annex?”

  “That’s where we stored the boxes of human remains from the excavations. The arsonist stole them before he set the fire.”

  “Are these bones valuable?”

  “Not in terms of dollars. They are important to Native Americans, who consider them the bones of their ancestors. It makes no sense for anyone to steal them.” Elena stopped herself from blurting that the human remains seemed to carry a curse. The man would think she was crazy.

  The investigator—a burly man with a belly bulging over his belt—eyed the ugly, red scrawl on the annex wall.

  “That message—it’s pretty threatening. Anybody have a grudge against you, Ma’am? A student you failed? A tough divorce?”

  Since last night, Elena had worried that troubling question like a dog with a bone, coming up with no answers. She shook her head in disbelief. “Mr. Conway, that’s absurd. I don’t fail my students, and I’m not married.”

  “How about you, Mr. Taylor?” Conway said. “You got an ex-wife who’s suing you for more alimony, perhaps? Or you haven’t kept up with the child support?”

  Norm stammered. “Ridiculous. Never been married, no kids.”

  “Well, you two may be squeaky clean, but somebody seems to have it in for you people. Sure looks personal.”

  “Listen, Mr. Conway,” Elena said, glaring at the man. “The threat wasn’t just to me and Mr. Taylor. More than twenty people live in this camp, and everybody sleeping in the ranch house was in real danger. This place might have burned to the ground along with the data we’ve collected, the artifacts, and Mr. Taylor’s expensive roping horses.

  “This fire wasn’t a random act of stupidity. The fire was attempted murder.”

  * * *

  “Sure looks like arson,” Conway told them, folding his notes and samples into a briefcase. “The arsonist used an accelerant, as you know.” The faint odor of gasoline still hung in the air. “There’s no other way the fire could have started—no bad wiring in the wall, nobody smoking and tossing out a match or cigarette. No fireplace with hot ashes.” He paused and looked hard at Norm.

  “You were lucky the fire didn’t spread,” the investigator said. His eyes traveled to the propane tank in the yard. Is he blaming us for the fire? Elena wondered. “We’ll know more when the lab has analyzed the samples. I’ll mail my report to your insurance company, Mr. Taylor, and send you a copy. You can clean up.”

  Easier said than done. Because it would be impossible to restore the destroyed lab, they would have to tear it down. Moreover, they might not be able to salvage the artifacts. Norm would wrangle with his insurance company. He could look forward to endless phone calls, explanations to make, more questions to answer. Elena feared that poor, long-suffering Norm would decide that the field school was more trouble than it was worth.

  The fire was a deep and horrifying betrayal of trust. If what they had pieced together about the incident was true, the arsonist may have been someone who lived at the ranch. Mel put her finger on it in the early hours of the morning, when relief, exhaustion, and whiskey had obliterated everyone’s inhibitions. It was just like the vandalism in her room, she’d said. Someone they knew and trusted did this and put everyone in camp in danger. Who? And why?

  She remembered the day Linda found the skull and bones on survey, her nightmare, and her dire predictions. The little camp in the woods had faced and survived horrifying events. Linda had left, taking away a broken ankle and shattered dreams. And now there was this assault on the camp’s security and, truth be told, their lives. That old trope about a curse—could it be true? They hadn’t excavated the bone bed in its entirety—the rest of the human bones still lay in the ground. Were they waiting to release more wickedness into the world? Or was it the ignorant archaeologists who had unleashed an abomination with their excavations as the Hopi believed?

  Even now, the evil curled up from underground, icy tentacles touching everyone at the Taylor Ranch.

  Chapter 29

  Cleanup

  “The theft of the human remains was a federal crime, Sandy,” Elena said.

  Jorgensen arrived in midafternoon after Elena’s phone call in the early morning. The director wasn’t a person to succumb to hysterics, but her words and the tone in her voice made it clear the incident had upset her. Now they had closeted themselves in Elena’s office with the door closed. They needed privacy to discuss arson, federal crimes, and attempted murder. This was not the time for a boozy, light-hearted conversation on the porch. It was serious business—deadly serious.

  The yard and parking lot teemed with activity. Sue and several students shoveled up the burned artifacts into buckets, washed and sorted them, and put the labeled ones into new bags. They tossed out any that were unlabeled, destining them for type collections. There was no way to match unlabeled artifacts to the remnants of charred paper bags. To the archaeologist, provenience—where an artifact was found—was everything.

  Elena watched the activity from her window as they talked. Even Caleb helped. Despite a summer in the sun, she noticed, his complexion remained pasty white, pockmarked with old acne scars and fresh outbreaks. When he took off his shirt, his back and shoulders gleamed in the sunlight like ancient bones. Caleb claimed he slept through the fire, but doubts about him nibbled at Elena’s mind. The fire and resulting commotion and confusion had shaken everyone in camp from sleep, from Apache laborers to cowboys. How could Caleb have slept through it all?

  Jorgensen sent a crime-scene unit to the ranch. Because of the damage from the fire, he didn’t hold much hope they would find anything. The team concentrated on the annex, trying to lift fingerprints and seeking any trace evidence the
arsonist left.

  “What happened is far more serious than stealing the boxes of bones,” Jorgensen said. Elena turned from the window and started to speak, but he interrupted. “I understand—they are important to you, and I don’t intend to demean their significance.” It was the first time Elena had seen him angry; the planes of his face had hardened, and his eyes had lost their usual warmth. Part of his anger stemmed from the danger to Elena, but part of it also was the utter failure of the Lightning Bolt project. If the pot hunter they had been seeking was the thief and arsonist, the agent hadn’t prevented vandalism in Elena’s own backyard.

  “The fire was an act of violence against you and the entire camp,” Jorgensen said. “It scans like the work of an unstable person. A mentally challenged person or someone heavy into drugs and not thinking clearly. As you’ve pointed out, it was insane to steal boxes of bones that aren’t worth anything. And setting the fire—” Jorgensen sputtered, unable to finish.

  “Maggie’s been thinking along the same lines. She also suggested it might be someone who is mentally ill.

  “The staff and I have talked it over and concluded it must be someone living in camp, which makes me utterly depressed. The most important thing is that an outsider wouldn’t know about the gas shed or where we had stored the boxes of bones—or even that bones were in the boxes. It’s possible but unlikely that the arsonist was someone who visited us or worked here in previous seasons. I believe it could be a person with a personal grudge against me.”

  Jorgensen managed a laugh. “Revenge for what? Does the arsonist resent you for being beautiful and smart?”

  “Don’t be silly, Sandy. Another possibility is Carl Cimelli. Maggie pointed out I’ve turned him down several times when he’s asked for site tours. And she said he’s sweet on me.”

  The sudden intensity of the jealousy the agent felt was surprising, although he could understand why she would attract Cimelli’s attention.