But he did have her son Carson’s number, because Carson was the reason they were in Oklahoma to begin with. Carson was a Ph.D. archaeologist like Faye and he was Joe’s childhood friend. When he’d called Joe to say, “I’m putting on a big conference and I need speakers,” Joe had said, “I’ll put Faye on the phone.”
Carson had spoken just quickly enough to keep him from handing the phone over to his wife. “No, no, no, I want you to come do a presentation.”
There was only one question for Joe to ask, and that was “What the heck for?” He and Faye owned a cultural resources firm together, and he had a bachelor’s degree and all, but Faye was the doctor.
“I’m calling it The Oklahoma Conference for the Study and Celebration of the Indigenous Arts. I want you to come show people how to chip stone.”
Joe had tried to say some things like, “Aw, you don’t want me,” and “Nobody wants to hear me talk about how much I like rocks,” but Carson was having none of it.
“I’ve seen your work, Joe. In my opinion, it’s museum quality. There are a lot of people who want to learn how to do what you do. There are also a lot of anthropologists and archaeologists who want you to show them how ancient people did what they did. You’ll be a big draw and it will help me make this conference a success. Please say you’ll come.”
Joe thought Carson was just being nice when he said he’d be a big draw, but it was a chance to do something nice for his friend and a chance to take Faye and the kids to visit his dad, so he had said yes. He and Carson had talked to each other more over the past three months than they’d talked since they were kids, only now they were doing it on cell phones. Joe pulled his phone out of his pocket and hit Carson’s number, which now resided on his Favorites screen. Before the fourth ring, he heard Carson’s affable voice saying, “How ya doin’, Joe?”
“You don’t talk like a PhD.”
“Does your wife?”
“Sometimes. Speaking of Faye, I can’t get her on the phone. The radio says that the FBI ain’t letting anybody into the hotel where we’re supposed to stay tonight, since it got blown up and all. So I can’t call her there. Do you know where she is? Or maybe does your mom know?”
“I’ve been trying to reach Faye, too. Actually, I’ve been trying track down Faye and the entire faculty for my conference. Let me tell you, it hasn’t been easy. My contact at the hotel is in touch with the FBI and she’s in touch with me, but the information isn’t flowing all that well. All I know for sure is that Faye and Cully were in the lobby of the hotel when the bomb went off and they’re both fine.”
Joe was too well-mannered not to ask “Is everybody else okay?” even though he wouldn’t be feeling truly mannerly until he found his wife.
“They are. Dr. Nick Althorp, the basket expert, was at the coffee shop down the street when it happened. He was having breakfast with Sadie Raincrow, who actually knows how to weave baskets. Dr. Althorp is a Sadie Raincrow groupie, so I’m sure that they were deep into a discussion about natural dyes and river cane when the bomb blew. I’m not surprised to hear that he’d already cornered her before breakfast this morning and dragged her out for coffee. Who knew that Dr. Althorp’s fan-boy tendencies and Sadie’s desire to eat at a Native-owned place would save both of them from the bombing?”
Joe also had a basket fetish, so he was a little jealous of Dr. Althorp’s face time with the renowned Sadie Raincrow. And he wished Faye shared his fetish, because maybe she too would have been at a coffee shop far from the epicenter when the bomb went off.
Carson kept telling Joe about the health of people who weren’t Faye. “Dr. Gilda Dell, who studies traditional music, is local, so she’s still sitting in her university office thirty minutes south of here. Dr. Stacy Wong, the Oklahoma historian, is also a professor at the university in Norman. She is taking a historical walking tour and having a fine old time. I talked to Dr. Nathan Jackson, who studies African and Native American influences on modern American cuisine and he’s still at the university, too. And yeah. He’s gonna cook for us,” Carson said, victorious in his belief that keeping his attendees full and happy would ensure his conference was a success. “He’s promised to bring pots and pots of egusi soup with bitter leaf to his presentation. And fry bread, because we’re in Oklahoma.”
Joe’s patience was too thin to keep listening to Carson burble about a conference that had probably been bombed out of existence, so all he said was, “Faye.”
Carson must have heard Joe’s strangled tone, so he got focused. “Like I said, the feds say she’s okay, and that tracks with what I’m reading on the web. All the news people are saying that the most serious injuries were broken bones, and I’m hearing that Faye’s and Cully’s bones are just fine. Faye’s bones must really be fine, because I’m also being told that the FBI has hired her as a consultant. They like their people able-bodied, don’t you think?”
“She’s working for the FBI? Why?”
“I have no idea. Listen. I’m supposed to meet the hotel’s assistant manager downtown this evening to hear about her plan to save this conference of mine that is currently homeless. I’m at Mom’s now. Why don’t you come spend some time with us and ride back to town with me when I go to that meeting? Surely the FBI can’t keep Faye a prisoner—or an employee or whatever—all night. I bet you hear from her by then.”
Carson’s mother Alba lived in a suburb of Oklahoma City, close to downtown but apparently far enough out that the bombing’s aftermath hadn’t disrupted her cell phone service. Or maybe, as Joe thought of it, the FBI had co-opted the city’s cell towers for itself during the crisis.
Alba’s house was a perfectly reasonable place to wait for Faye to call, but it was too far away to suit Joe. “Thanks, Carson. I really appreciate it. But I can’t go that far from where Faye is. If I can track a bear, and I can, surely I can find my wife. Even if the FBI wishes I’d stop trying.”
* * *
Ahua had stepped out of the command center to do something that was probably pretty important, since Faye figured that Assistant Special Agents in Charge delegated trivia and kept the important stuff for themselves. While she waited, Agent Liu pulled her aside for a private talk. Liu was a thirty-ish woman with a starchy demeanor, but Faye could see that excitement had rubbed some of the starch off of her.
“My grandparents told me stories about those old tunnels,” Liu said. “They knew some of the people who lived down there. My grandmother even said that she worked underground in a laundry for a few months before she was married. I always believed that the stories were real, because my grandmother wouldn’t lie, but I never thought I’d have a chance to see the place with my own eyes.”
Agent Liu’s excitement, though charming, was insufficient to distract her from the task at hand, which was investigating the bombing. She seemed determined to repeat the interview Faye had already done when Bigbee pulled her off the street and into the FBI’s lair. Faye figured that this was one way they tripped up liars who couldn’t keep their stories straight.
“Bigbee says you were in the hotel lobby at the time of the blast?” she asked. “Did you see the bomber?”
Faye wanted to be snarky and say, “Like I said already, yes,” but being snarky to the FBI sounded like a really dumb thing to do. She went with a simple “Yes. I think I caught a glimpse of him.”
“You say that you didn’t recognize the bomber?”
Faye realized two things. First, she was liking these yes-or-no questions, and second, she liked them because she was very, very tired. All she had to do to answer a yes-or-no question was nod now and then, or shake her head. That is, until Liu started focusing on people she cared about.
“So tell me about this conference. How do you know the organizer, Dr. Callahan?”
“He’s my friend.”
“You’ve known him how long?”
“Just a few months, but—”
<
br /> “And Cully Mantooth. He’s a relative of yours? You know him well?”
“We’re only related distantly and by marriage. We met a couple of minutes before the explosion, tops. So no, I don’t know him well, but I have no reason to mistrust him.”
“Dr. Wong?”
“Until an hour ago, I only knew her online, but we’ve exchanged professional correspondence for at least a year.”
Liu checked her tablet for the names of the other conference speakers. “Dr. Althorp? Ms. Raincrow? Dr. Dell? Dr. Jackson?”
“Nope. Don’t know any of them.”
“But you do know Joe Wolf Mantooth.” Liu’s eyes flicked down to the narrow band on Faye’s left hand.
“He’s my husband and I really need to talk to him. He was at his father’s house outside Sylacauga when the bomb blew. I’m sure he got on the road right away, so surely he’s here now. I think it’s a four-hour drive. Maybe?”
“Then I should hope here’s here by now.”
“I would know that if someone would help me find a phone that worked so I could call him.” Faye couldn’t believe she was raising her voice to the FBI.
Perhaps Liu saw Faye’s overreaction to her noncommittal response. A trained interrogator should have seen that the subject was having trouble keeping still, but Liu wasn’t picking up those cues. Fortunately Bigbee was, because he approached them and said “Faye? Are you okay?” as he held out a bottle of water.
All of Faye was trembling, even her voice. She knew this made her look like she was guilty of something, though it could hardly have been planting the bomb that might have killed her. Also, she was as certain as certain could be that if she were a suspect she would never have been in the command center. Strangely enough, this didn’t make her feel any better.
She felt a shivering deep at her core, as if she were standing in a prairie blizzard instead of sitting in a government vehicle with marginal air conditioning.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Are you saying it has been more than four hours since the blast? Is that true?”
Was she losing time? Did she hit her head that bad? It didn’t seem so.
Bigbee moved closer. “What time do you think it is? Has anybody even showed you the bathroom?”
She gestured toward the back of the command center where the bathroom was and said, “Yeah. But I don’t know what time it is.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Not since breakfast.”
He handed her a bag of peanuts. “Somebody should have made sure you were taken care of. We’re all busy, but this is important.”
“I think somebody might have offered me food at some point, but I wasn’t hungry.”
Maybe that’s why she was so confused. She hadn’t had lunch and she wasn’t hungry. Therefore it couldn’t be afternoon yet. “If I’ve really been cooling my heels for that long, then I need to talk to my husband before he loses his mind.”
Bigbee said, “We can help you get a call through to him. Do you need anything else?”
“I need—” She stopped herself from saying, “I need to sit down,” because she was already sitting down and the question would get her an immediate neurological workup. Instead, she crossed her arms on her legs and laid her head down on them. Curled up like a startled armadillo, she sat there and concentrated on not fainting.
Faye was a scientist. She knew what she was feeling, but knowing it didn’t help at all. Her trembling collapse was fueled by the adrenaline that had been pumping since someone detonated a bomb in her immediate vicinity…and it had apparently been pumping for more than four hours.
No, longer than that. Faye’s adrenaline had first shot up that day for the most innocuous of reasons. She had laid eyes on a movie star. It seemed like a million years had passed since her first moments with Cully, when nothing was more pressing than scheduling some lessons so that he could teach her to play her beautiful new flute.
She looked down at her hands. They still cradled the flute, just as they had all morning. She had nothing else to do with them. Maybe the feel of its polished cedar was keeping her sane. It certainly seemed that way.
The memory of Bigbee’s “Do you need anything else?” was still echoing in her ears, but it must have been doing that for a while, because now the words, “Are you all right, Dr. Longchamp-Mantooth?” were coming from several mouths and they were joining “Not exactly,” in some kind of weird harmony.
Faye yanked herself back from the edge, refusing to faint in front of the FBI. Slowly, she raised her head.
“I’m fine. Just fine.”
Hands reached out and opened the bottle of water, which she tried to sip. Another set of hands—maybe the same ones—opened the bag of peanuts. She wasn’t hungry, but she nibbled at the peanuts anyway, hoping to get her blood sugar to settle down.
Ahua’s voice rang in her ears as she faded back into reality. He must have walked back into the command center while she’d been trying to get her brain to wake up. “If you’re truly fine, please know that I need you. I’ve had a text from the Evidence Response Team. They have discovered something odd in one of the rooms at the bottom of the stairs. That’s why I asked you to come talk to us. I need expert advice and I want your eyes on it.”
Something about Ahua was different. There was a set to his lips and a darkness in his eyes that chilled Faye. This was no ordinary text from the Evidence Response Team.
“Are you sure about this? You can’t just let her traipse through the crime scene.” Liu asked Ahua. “The bureau has regulations for a reason.”
Liu seemed to be something of a loose cannon, but she also seemed to be someone who could get away with questioning the boss, so maybe she was a crackerjack agent. Faye thought she had a point. She said, “I’ve done consulting work for local law enforcement, and I did that FBI case with Bigbee this summer, but I honestly don’t think I belong in a high-profile crime scene, Agent Ahua.”
“You don’t. And that’s not where we’re going. Not exactly. Even I don’t belong there. With these big feet, I’d crush something irreplaceable every time I took a step. But the Evidence Response Team also found a potential back door into the crime scene, so I sent some people to check it out and now they’re back. They did find a back way into that chamber. There’s something down there that I want your opinion on, and I know how to get you there. Are you willing to come help me out?”
Faye tried to process these cryptic comments. Where, exactly, would the back door to an underground room be, and how would one get to it? She had no idea.
Not that she didn’t know people who could come up with some awesome theories about that. Faye kept up with a bunch of amateur historians’ blogs and she’d also spent an embarrassing amount of time in online discussion groups for “urban explorers.” If she asked those people, they’d say that there could be a way to get to Ahua’s “back door” through a secret door in someone else’s basement. The trouble came when you tried to find out whose basement had the secret door.
Faye had a soft spot for urban explorers, a community of brash thrill seekers, mostly quite young, who liked do the city dweller’s equivalent of cave exploration. They could be found in abandoned buildings, behind “Posted—Keep Out” signs, in storm sewers, and atop buildings without authorized roof access, always in pursuit of going places where regular people never got to go. Stacy had gone exploring with some of them, but Faye was not that foolhardy. She took risks, yes, but not when the people leading the charge were fifteen years old.
Both she and Stacy had clung for years to the hope that Oklahoma City’s urban explorers would find an entrance to the underground Chinatown, but they never expected it to be uncovered by a bomb. If the urban explorers hadn’t found a back door after years of trying, was it possible that the FBI had found one in a single morning?
Who knows? Maybe the FBI could work that kind of m
agic. Maybe the “F” stood for “flippin’ amazing.”
The very serious voice of an actual FBI agent intruded on her thoughts. “Are you up to coming with us?” Ahua asked. “We’re trying to get access to a place that’s very old. We don’t want to destroy history, no more than we want to destroy evidence. And some of that evidence could have been buried since the 1920s. Your expertise as an archaeologist could be critical.”
“Why me? There have to be others who have worked with the FBI before.”
“I don’t know them. I don’t know you, either, but Bigbee does, and he can’t say enough good things. And also, you’re here and they’re not, and time is critical. I had some of my people do some calling around. Can you guess the first thing they heard from everybody they asked about you?”
“That I’m stubborn?”
“That trait was definitely mentioned, but no. Every single person said that you were level-headed and utterly calm in a crisis. You’re the one that I want.”
Faye thought about the subterranean staircase. She wanted to see where it led so bad that she could taste it. Her fluttery heart settled in her chest and the dizziness receded.
“Level-headed? You flatter me, Agent Ahua, but I guess flattery works. I’ll do it.”
She handed her flute to Agent Bigbee. “Do you remember where Cully Mantooth was sitting? Can you get this to him?” He nodded.
Then she turned to Ahua and said, “The answer is yes. I’m in.”
When he handed her hip-waders and latex gloves, then asked if she was up-to-date on her tetanus shots, she wondered if she should rethink that answer.
Chapter Seven
Cully sat on his bench, pleased that the FBI had released him, although he still as yet had no place to go. The cell phone companies had gotten their act together enough for him to speak to his cousin Joe. Joe was on his way to join him, so he was committed to homesteading this bench until he arrived. And probably afterward, because the bench was really pretty comfortable.
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