Buried Roots

by Cynthia Raleigh

  “I checked to see if there were any newspaper articles about a knife and scabbard like that being stolen, either from an individual, a museum, or a collection somewhere like a historical society. Sometimes small towns will have amazing relics sitting in a display in an old dusty building downtown, and no one thinks twice about it. Easy enough for thieves to come across it and quietly lift it. There are people who go through small towns just looking for stuff. I didn’t find any reports that would match the knife you bought.”

  “That’s too bad. If it is truly stolen, I would like to see it returned where it belongs.”

  “Me too. There’s also the possibility, though, that it just showed up in an estate sale somewhere and someone bought it, sold it to a dealer, and it ended up being purchased by Felix Tyndall. That’s very possible, and if that is what happened, there’ll probably be no way to find out the details.”

  “Hmm.” Nina contemplated that for a moment, then said, “Do you think that might mean Tom could keep the knife if they can’t find who it belongs to?”

  “That I don’t know. Maybe Archer will know. I’m not sure what the laws say about relics like that. Maybe we can ask him since we’re going there now.”

  Chapter 19

  Perri parked the car in the now-familiar State Police lot. They checked in at the desk and sat down to wait for Tom. He appeared almost immediately. “Hey guys. How did your day go? Have any luck at the library?”

  Nina kissed Tom on the cheek. Perri answered, “I did have some luck with a lot of the records, not all, but I got most of what I was hoping for.”

  “How did your venture go today?” Nina asked Tom.

  “Really good. I enjoyed it.”

  “Did you get through all of it?”

  “No, I would like to though, or at least spend another day on it. It doesn’t have to be tomorrow. It depends on what you want to do. I don’t want to abandon you to do it, but…”

  “I get it. I know this is like the candy store for you, even if the stuff isn’t real. Or, did you find some real stuff?”

  Tom was smiling. Nina had an inkling that he had. “I sure did. I’m ninety-nine percent sure anyway. I don’t like to claim one hundred percent, since I’m not an expert, but I think so.”

  Perri asked him, “What did you find that was not a reproduction?

  “Some small items mainly. I found a few musket balls, a half dozen metal buttons as well as some made from horn, some badges, and a few metal finial pieces from scabbards. It doesn’t take a whole lot to make me happy. But my big find was a small knife blade. It was a smaller pocket knife type. The handle may have been wood, because the blade and tang were all that was left, unless it had never been completed. Hard to tell now, it was more than a little rusted, like it had been in damp or wet ground. The blade was dull and pitted.”

  “Well, I’m glad you found some genuine items. I know you were hoping to.” Nina linked her arm through Tom’s.

  “Is Archer here right now?” Perri asked.

  “Yeah, he was in his office on the phone just a minute ago.

  “Do you think I could talk to him for a few minutes?”

  “Sure, I’m sure he will, and besides, he wanted you two to have a look at the still images from the hotel footage. Hang on.” Tom asked the desk sergeant to let Archer know they wanted to speak with him. When he hung up his phone, he said, “He’ll be out in a minute.”

  When he motioned to them from the hallway to come back to his office; all three of them followed single file. After exchanging greetings in his office, Archer slid a couple of photographs across his desk, “I’ve got a couple photos for you to look at. They aren’t much, pretty grainy, and not a full-on face shot.”

  Nina and Perri bent over the desk, carefully examining the photos. Perri was the first to speak up, “I don’t recognize him, but I was engrossed in looking at my own purchases while Nina was at the weapons table.”

  “I can’t say that I recognize him either. The man at the event had a cap on and was turned sideways while he talked to Russell Calder. I didn’t look at him closely, I had no reason to.”

  “That’s what I figured. Thanks anyway.” Archer dropped the photos back in his lap drawer. “What’s up with you guys? Anything new?”

  Perri responded, “I’m not sure. I wanted to ask you about an idea I had while I was at the LOV today.” Archer nodded his encouragement to continue. Perri summarized what she had found about looting and grave robbing, and asked Archer if he thought perhaps the knife and scabbard could have come from a small collection or have been looted.

  “It could be, I suppose. I checked the major reports of burglaries and theft but didn’t find anything. It’s a big item to have found, as far as looting would go, but theft from a small collection is possible. I can broaden the search and see if anything comes up. It seems like someone would have reported it missing if it was stolen.” He raised both hands and dropped them on the desk top. “But… that doesn’t mean anything. You never know. I’ll check.”

  “One thing I’m putting a lot of hope into is Felix Tyndall’s laptop. We’re getting it this evening. I have an officer on the way to pick it up.”

  “His laptop? Wow, hopefully that will shed some light on things. Where has it been?” Tom asked.

  “Eleanor has it at her home. She’s been released from the hospital. I have someone escorting her to her house to gather up some clothes to stay with a friend for a while. It isn’t a good idea for her to stay there until this is over. At any rate, when I talked to her at the hospital last night she recalled it being in Felix’s personal effects. Either the person who tried to steal the knife didn’t know a laptop had been recovered along with the inventory or didn’t think it was important. I can’t imagine that though. I’m betting it never occurred to them. Lucky for us, I hope.”

  “I hope so, too. That might give you the information you need to solve the entire thing.” Perri snapped her fingers as she thought of something, “Speaking of Eleanor, any word on fingerprints from Eleanor’s house?”

  Archer replied, “Nothing. Eleanor said the guy had gloves on when he came in the house. There were no unexpected prints on the duct tape or anything else in the house.”

  Tom remembered something he had forgotten to tell Perri and Nina. “Archer has an expert coming in tomorrow to examine the knife and scabbard. I’m looking forward to hearing what he says about it.”

  “That was fast. What do you hope he, or she, will be able to tell you?” Perri asked with interest.

  “Firstly, to verify that it is authentic and not a repro that has been distressed to look old. Secondly, I would like to know if there is anything about this knife that we can use to possibly figure out who owned it, although I know that’s a longshot.” Archer chuckled at himself. “Every now and then they’ll have some little scratching here or there that helps, like a regiment or initial, but not very often. It’s worth a try.”

  Nina asked, “Who did you find to come in? Was it someone at the University here?”

  “Yes and no. I contacted the History Department at the University of Richmond and asked if there was anyone they could recommend in the area. They have a resident history professor there who specializes in the Civil War period, Dr. Wilbur Giles, but he isn’t available. The reason he isn’t available is there is a week-long history conference and he is part of the faculty who is chairing it. Apparently, he is here, there, and everywhere this week, dealing with the seminars, greeting the visiting professors, and tending to all the details. He can’t get away while it is in session.”

  “That’s a ‘no’ then?”

  “I asked if there was anyone else was available who could come. The good news is the answer was yes. His name is Dr. Orcenith Graham, and he’s here for the convention. He is a Professor of History at the University of Georgia in Athens. His specialty is in the Revolutionary War but he has a subspecialty in Civil War history. The University contacted him with my phone number and a message, and he d
id call me back. He said he could come in to have a look at it. Tomorrow is best for him because he has a break between a morning seminar and one in the afternoon.”

  “We won’t take up any more of your time, Archer. I’ll come by tomorrow and see if I can finish up some of the boxes you have here. Nina seems to be ok with it.” Tom glanced at Nina and she nodded her approval.

  As the Explorer pulled out on the highway, Perri could feel her eyes closing slowly. She was suddenly very fatigued, but not unpleasantly so. She looked forward to the soft sheets and fluffy pillows. She was thinking that if research was starting to wear her out, she really needed to get more exercise, just before she drifted off with her head against the door frame.

  Chapter 20

  “That plan sounds fine to me.” Perri finished her late breakfast of waffles with fresh fruit and too much syrup. She tried to wipe the stickiness from her fingers with the soft linen napkin but it wasn’t very effective. She nearly stuck her fingers in the water remaining in her glass, but after glancing around the dining room, decided maybe that wasn’t the best display of etiquette. She delved into the depths of her purse, “I used to have some individual wet wipes in little packages but I think I used the last one.”

  Nina suggested, “Put some of that antibacterial gel on your hands and wipe that off.”

  “Good idea.” While Perri went through this procedure, Nina said, “Since we’ve safely delivered Tom to his new home at the police station, what we’re going to do is split up for part of the day, you to the library and me to the salon for a new haircut and then try out the yoga class I found near the hotel.”

  “That’s the schedule. I have to say, you are way more dedicated than I am to want to do yoga during a vacation. I can’t make myself exercise at home.” Perri put the napkin down.

  “It isn’t that I’m dedicated, but I can’t get the chance to do it at home even when I do want to. Every time I think I will have thirty minutes or so, something happens or comes up and I can’t do it. Here, I know I can do it. I just feel like I need to unwind a little, do something different. Warm up, stretch, spend some time not thinking. It’ll feel like a major indulgence.”

  “It does sound pretty good, but I feel like since I’m here, I need to get in as much time at that library as I can. If I went to the yoga class, I’d spend the time thinking about how I should be in the library.” Nina gazed pointedly at her over the centerpiece of white hydrangeas. “I know. The real reason is I’d rather be in a library doing research than stretching or unwinding on the floor. I do my unwinding with my face stuck in a book or old documents. But it’s also true that I feel like I should spend as much time as I can at the library while it’s available.”

  “I get that. Let’s head back to the room and get ready to push off for the day, shall we?”

  ***

  The intercom on Archer’s desk phone buzzed. “Yes?” He could hear muffled sounds of papers rustling, people talking, and many footsteps on a tile floor.

  “Yeah, Sergeant Vaughn, I have a call for you from Dr. Colbert. Line 2.”

  Archer swung around in his chair, “Thanks, Rob,” and punched the button for the second line. He’d been hoping the Medical Examiner would call today with results from Russell Calder’s autopsy. “Good morning, Dr. Colbert, this is Detective Vaughn.”

  He could hear the phone being picked up and the background noise dampening as the physician took the phone off speaker. “Good morning Detective. Got some results for you.”

  “Great. What’cha got?”

  “Cause of Death: Respiratory failure.”

  “Respiratory failure?”

  “Right. He suffered a penetrating wound to the cervical neck area by a single-sided blade of four inches in length and one-half inch wide. The weapon entered one inch from the midline and transected the trapezius and semispinalis capitis muscles and, unfortunately for Mr. Calder, passed between the C1 and C2 vertebrae, severing the thickness of the spinal cord.”

  “He was stabbed in the back of the neck?”

  “Just to the lateral left. It’s not a common injury to see. It’s quite unusual. As well as entry being slightly lateral, the direction of the wound is not perpendicular to the spinal cord, but at a twenty-degree angle from entry to end. It nicked the right pedicle of C2 as it entered, slipped between the atlas and axis, also nicking the interior face of the anterior arch on C1, before passing beyond the vertebrae and leaving a minute cut to the posterior esophagus.”

  Archer had been attempting to write down the findings, but stopped, “All that means what?”

  Dr. Colbert continued, “It means that the assailant either knew what he or she was going to do and had plenty of time to position and make the knife thrust, or the assailant was very lucky and the victim’s neck was in flexion at the time of the attack.”

  Archer thought for a moment, then asked, “What does that mean? The part about being lucky and the neck in…”

  “Flexion. I would choose that as the most likely scenario. The victim may have been not only bent forward but with his head bent down too, such as a chin to chest position, not facing the attacker. This would have provided not only a clear view of the entire neck area, but the victim probably didn’t see it coming.”

  “You said the knife was single-sided and four inches. How do you know that?”

  “The fact that it was single-sided was determined by the angles of the wound. The length of the wound spanned horizontally across the nuchal area, so the attacker would have been standing at the victim’s side. Provided the assailant held the knife in a conventional manner, with the sharpened edge of the blade toward them, he or she would most likely have been left-handed. It isn’t impossible that someone could have inflicted the wound with the right hand, but it would be awkward, have had less impact, and most likely would have followed a downward path after entering the body, rather than upward.”

  “I see.” Archer was making notes again.

  “During the autopsy, with the body face down and my stance on the victim’s right side, the proximal angle of the wound, that closest to me, was sharp, indicating the edge of the blade. The distal angle, that furthest from me and on the victim’s left side, was blunt, indicating the spine of the knife. The length of the wound was determined by the presence of associated abrasions around the blunt angle. Those are caused when a knife’s bolster, which is a hilt or guard, comes into contact with the skin, meaning the blade was all the way in.”

  “This wound caused, what did you say, respiratory failure?”

  “Right. The spinal cord being severed at that level inhibited the body’s reflexive breathing action, in other words, respiratory paralysis, just as the lower body can be paralyzed by an injury at a lower spinal area. The injury also prevented speech, movement, pretty much anything a body could normally do.” The doctor continued with the remaining information, “There was no significant bleeding. There was some blood on the collar and upper portion of the shoulder area of his shirt, but no major vessels were affected and the bleeding stopped relatively quickly, not only because of the lack of bleeding vessels, but because he would have expired within a very few minutes. As far as the rest of the autopsy, there was a slight amount of hemorrhage from superficial vessels in the abdominal area. It is consistent with a ‘punch in the gut’ as they say. There wasn’t much time for contusions to form, but initial hemorrhage was present. The balance of the autopsy was fairly unremarkable, other than mild arthritis in a few joints and beginning atherosclerosis.”

  Archer was nodding as he jotted down the information on a small white pad of paper. “So you are saying that he appears to have been punched, and once he was stabbed, he couldn’t have tried to fight back, get away, or even have called for help?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Would he have been unconscious?”

  The doctor hesitated. “He may have been, but unfortunately, just as likely was not. It wouldn’t have been an easy death for him. He may have been aw
are of what was going on around him, for a short period of time anyway.”

  “Oh, God.” He slapped the pen down on the paper. “That’s terrible. I can’t even imagine how frightening that would be, and don’t want to.”

  “I agree. I’ll be faxing a copy. You should have it in the next fifteen minutes or so. Call me if you need anything else or have any questions.”

  “Ok, thanks Dr. Colbert.” Archer replaced the phone in its cradle and pondered the new information. Nearly everyone at an event had a knife of some sort. Weeding out people who had knives wouldn’t help a great deal. His head swam a little at the possibility of having to collect knives for testing from everyone who attended the event. His contemplation of such a dreaded task was interrupted by the intercom again.

  “Yes?”

  “A Dr. Graham here to see you, Sergeant.”

  Chapter 21

  As Tom held one of the items up toward the light, he saw Archer and another man walk past the door of the meeting room where he was working. ‘Must be the professor,’ he thought to himself. He wished he could listen in, or better yet sit in to hear what Dr. Graham had to say. He tried to be quiet to see if he could hear any conversation. All he could detect was a series of low murmuring sounds; voices muffled by the walls and the hum of the air conditioning which was making the ceiling register rattle just a bit every time it came on.

  Unable to hear anything clear at all, Tom resumed going through the remaining boxes. Most of them contained chintzy baubles and bad knockoffs of various wartime articles. His speed of inspection had increased, pulling a small plastic bag out of one box, glancing at the items inside, then tossing them into another box. He got through the last few items in the box he was working on and was ready to fold in the flaps. He stopped. Something nagged at him. He opened the box again and removed the bags on the top layer. He laid them out on the conference table and looked closer at each one, eliminating it, and replacing it in the box.