Burials

by Mary Anna Evans

  After a time, he spoke. “That’s pretty personal, Doctor Faye, finding a woman’s bones on your own land. Maybe you felt about her the way I feel about anybody who dies on tribal land. It’s my land. Partly mine, anyway. I feel responsible.”

  Faye nodded but said no more. Cloud had said exactly what she was feeling.

  “As for Sophia Townsend,” he went on, “maybe her medical records will tell us something that proves whether these are her bones, but it’s been a long time since she died. Doctors and dentists retire and their files were on paper back then. Things get lost. In the meantime, the necklace is enough to prove it to me. That and the fact that even a cursory web search of her name should turn up something if she were still alive, but it just doesn’t.”

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I mean, I should be able to find out plenty of things about Dr. Townsend with nothing but this. I did a web search that pulled up a few articles she published in the seventies and eighties, but other than that? Nothing.”

  Faye’s eyes traveled over the curve of Sophia Townsend’s bare cranium, as if that would tell her something about who the woman really had been. “From what people say about her, she doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would have hung out on Facebook.”

  “She’s not just absent from social media. She’s absent from the whole Internet. She hasn’t even got a White Pages entry. I can’t find a phone number or an address anywhere. Even a mountain cabin has an address, unless it was built illegally and totally off the grid.”

  “It’s as if she died before there was a World Wide Web,” Faye said.

  Cloud poked around on his phone. “It says here that the World Wide Web was invented in 1989. She did die before that.”

  “There you go.”

  Cloud’s eyes stayed on the bones in front of them. He said, “And it’s as if she died before we required standardized addresses so that calling 911 would bring help when people called for it. Maybe mountain cabins really didn’t have physical addresses back then.”

  “Was 911 even available everywhere back in 1987?” Faye asked.

  Cloud shook his head and waved the phone at her. “Not according to this amazing machine I keep in my back pocket. I was a grown man in 1987 and I still have trouble wrapping my brain around how much the world has changed.”

  “Same here.”

  “As I recall, private detectives made a real good living back then, running down information that I can find on my phone now. Working this case is like climbing into a time machine. I might have to do the legwork the old-fashioned way, but I can do it. There aren’t many advantages to not being twenty-five years old any more, but that’s one. I know how to roll up my sleeves and look through a file drawer for paper evidence.”

  Faye was using her thumb to estimate how long the exposed femur was. “How do you plan to go about doing that old-fashioned legwork?”

  Cloud laughed. “Well, I’ll do my best to keep my own paws out of the file drawers, because I’ve got other fish to fry. This is where federal jurisdiction comes in handy. I can find out about tax delinquencies and mortgage defaults and such around here in the 1980s, but this isn’t where Sophia Townsend owned her cabin. The FBI has much longer arms. It would sure help if I knew where that mountain cabin was, but there aren’t that terrible many places around here that have what most people would call mountains. Lots of Oklahoma is flat as a pancake, but not all of it. My money is on one of the counties east of here. The land has got some elevation and it’s close enough to drive back and forth every weekend.”

  “What do you expect to find?”

  “I expect to find that Sophia Townsend stopped paying her bills in 1987, just like I expect her dental records, if they still exist, to match the teeth we’re looking at right now.”

  “We’re going to have to be smart about how we dig here. Here’s an example,” Faye clicked the button that turned her pen into a laser pointer. She used it to make a red dot on an area of bare dirt that still bore the scrape marks left behind by Emily’s trowel. “It’s going to be really tricky to get the left jawbone out of the ground without disturbing stuff like that.”

  “Like what? I don’t see anything, and my eyes aren’t as old as all that.”

  Faye pulled a flashlight out of her pocket and shone light over the spot, parallel to the ground. “See that?” The rays of light, raking across the surface at a different angle, revealed a domelike bump about the size and shape of a contact lens.

  He turned his head to the side and leaned down so far that his cheek nearly touched the ground. “I do. Is that another pearl?”

  “I can’t answer that question, but it’s about the right size. And so’s that.” She moved the laser pointer’s red dot a few inches to the right. Then she moved it again. “And that.”

  “You’re saying we may have three more pearls buried here?”

  “Maybe more. We won’t know until we look.”

  “You’re worth every cent I’m paying you and every cent I should be but I’m not. Do you see anything else I should know about?”

  “I do. Those pearls, if they’re pearls, are in the area between the skull and collarbone, very near the vertebrae. And they are at a slightly lower level than the vertebrae. Now imagine that those neck bones still had flesh on them.”

  “If those bones were still inside a neck, the pearls would be beside it, but lower. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes. And see where the figurine is, right up next to the clavicle but slightly below it?”

  “You’re saying that the figurine was underneath her body, too?”

  Faye nodded.

  “Were they there already? Did the killer coincidentally pick a spot for the grave that was on top of some really important artifacts that have been waiting here for a thousand years?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I can’t even say that the artifacts are the same age as each other, not without lab tests or undisturbed stratigraphy. If they aren’t the same age, then it’s even less likely that they waited patiently together for Sophia’s body to join them. I’ve seen pictures of pearl necklaces and similar figurines from Spiro, but they’ve got wildly different dates. I mean, like…hundreds of years of difference…so that argues against these things being buried at the same time.”

  “But here they are together.”

  “Yes. And if I’m right that they’re of different ages, there are only a few situations where you’d expect to find them together. Usually, it would be because somebody brought them together on purpose. Now look at this.”

  She used the laser pointer to point out a rectangular patch of darker red soil on the bottom of the rectangular grave. It was so obvious that even Cloud’s inexperienced eyes were able to see the difference in the soil colors, once she pointed it out. The smaller rectangle lay under the skull and the neck, extending about halfway down the length of the sternum.

  “It looks to me like a second hole was dug below the grave and below the pearls and figurine. I think it was shaped like a box.” she said. “I have no idea why it’s there.”

  “Who dug it? And who buried the artifacts on top of it? Sophia Townsend? Her killer? Somebody who’s been dead a thousand years?”

  “I don’t know,” Faye said. “I just know that they’re here.”

  ***

  Faye had done all she could do with the daylight available. She had scrutinized the condition of the bones, pearl, and figurine. They had been photographed and documented in her notes. She and Cloud had made sure they were covered in case of rain, to the extent possible. She’d visually inspected the floor of the entire excavation, in case something had been waiting there for the twenty-nine years since the protective layer of plastic was laid in 1987, and she had found nothing.

  Standing beside the old bones, Faye watched Carson’s security guards making their rounds. Kira Denton was debrie
fing Roy Cloud, and the other two officers were still fussing with the canopy they’d hung over the grave.

  Sophia Townsend had been alone so long that all the activity around her seemed noisy and intrusive. Faye had never before understood so fully the meaning of the age-old wish for the dead to rest in peace.

  It was time to leave Sophia Townsend be, even if just for the night.

  She climbed out of the excavation for the last time that day and found Carson, unmoved and frustrated, in the exact place she’d left him.

  “What now?” The man was so upset that he was almost twitching.

  “What you need is some patience,” she said.

  “I’ve been patient. Very patient. What I need is a beer. I waited here all afternoon while they questioned all three of my workers. Then they all three hung around even after the police released them. Should I pay them for the whole day? The two who are still working for me, I mean. Not Emily. Oh, you know what I’m saying.”

  Faye grabbed the man by both elbows and steered him toward his truck. If he was going to melt down, he didn’t need to do it in front of his employees. He certainly didn’t need to melt down in front of the police.

  “You can’t pay them indefinitely if the investigators don’t release the crime site soon. But today? Yes, I think you should pay them for today.”

  All Carson could say was “My budget.” He got in the truck and laid his head down on the steering wheel.

  “Your budget is what it is. Unexpected things happen. Smart managers pad their budgets a little, and you’re smart.”

  Carson grunted, and Faye thought that the tone of the grunt said, Yes, I did pad my budget, but I didn’t expect to lose the padding on Day One.

  “I called Joe a while ago,” Faye said. “He should be here any minute.”

  Carson’s wordless grunt said, I can’t afford your husband and I can’t afford you, either.

  “Joe’s not on the clock. He just wants to say hello to an old friend. And I’m not on the clock, either. If you’re able to dig again before I leave, I’ll be back on the job as if nothing ever happened.”

  Carson raised himself to vertical and stuck out a hand. “It’s a pleasure doing business with you.”

  “Any time.”

  He took a silent moment to look at his father and Kenny Summers standing idle under an oak tree like two smokers taking a break. Emily was sitting alone with her back against a pine trunk gazing with dull eyes at the pit where Sophia Townsend lay dead. Carson didn’t bother giving Emily a glance, so Faye knew he was still angry with her.

  Of course, he was angry with Emily. She had broken a generous handful of taboos and thoroughly earned being fired from the job.

  Carson watched the three of them for a while, then he said, “I guess I need to rethink everything.”

  Stepping out of the truck, he gave Faye a follow-me jerk of the head, so she got out, too.

  Kenny took a step in Carson’s direction, interrupting him before he even started to talk.

  “We can’t do this, Carson. We can’t disturb that woman with our digging. She needs to be left alone to rest. Anybody can see that this site was never meant to be dug up. We shouldn’t have done it in 1987 and we shouldn’t do it now.”

  Faye noticed that Kenny had been willing enough to bend those convictions to take this paying job. Twice.

  “I differ with you on that, Kenny,” Carson said. “I think that finishing Dr. Townsend’s work is the best way to honor her memory. She’s in a better place and she doesn’t need the body lying at the bottom of that excavation now. She wouldn’t want her bones to stand in the way of getting this important work done.”

  Kenny didn’t answer him. He just stepped back, standing shoulder to shoulder with Mickey. Faye didn’t doubt that Kenny would be coming back to work. He might not like the job as well, now that Sophia Townsend’s body had been uncovered, but he still needed the money.

  Carson started talking, and it was clear that he’d been thinking through these words ever since a lonely corpse had surfaced in the middle of his excavation.

  “I’ve been blaming Sophia Townsend for thirty years of neglect of this site. Well, maybe I was wrong. Maybe she planned to get up the day after she was last seen and come to work, just like she did every day. We can’t know what was in her head, but there has to be a reason everybody was so quick to believe she’d run off. The police are trying to find the answer to why she died. I just know I’m going to finish the work she started. That’s as good a memorial as an archaeologist can have.”

  With one hand on the truck door, he turned to face his employees one last time.

  “You might as well go on home. You can stay home, Emily, and you’ll get your paycheck for the time you worked before I fired you. Dad and Kenny will be paid for all of today and after that—well, I don’t know. I’ll let you know when we’re able to get back to work. I promise. As soon as I know, you’ll know. Have a good evening.”

  Chapter Nine

  Joe opened the door of the truck where Faye and Carson sat. She scooted to the middle of the bench seat as he dropped down beside her and said, “You two making plans for a big dig? One with lots of paying work for Faye and me?”

  “Yeah, eight whole hours of your wife’s time and none of yours,” Carson said. “You were expecting more than that?”

  Joe laughed and stuck out a hand. “So how’re you doing? Last time I saw you, you were taller than me. And heading off to college, I think.”

  “I was! That was a long, long time ago, wasn’t it?” Carson reached around Faye to grab Joe’s hand with both of his and shake it hard. “I remember thinking I was so grown up and you were just a kid. How much older am I? Two years? Three?”

  “Something like that. Who would’ve thought we’d ever wind up in the same line of work?”

  “Not just in the same line of work. You’ve passed me up, little buddy. You’ve got an established business. You got married. And you married up! I mean, really up. Look at this woman. And she’s smart, too.”

  Faye laughed until Joe let go of Carson’s hand and put a possessive hand on hers. That’s when she realized that these guys were serious. She decided to keep her silence until they finished the manly tallying of status points that would, she presumed, establish that Joe was no longer Carson’s “little buddy.”

  “Got a couple of kids, too,” Joe said, holding out his phone so Carson could assess the quality of his offspring.

  Faye wondered how many college credits of anthropology had been earned by the three people sitting on this pickup truck’s bench seat. She also wondered if either of the others had noticed that the way they were maneuvering to assert primacy was just classic. Right out of a textbook.

  Carson looked at Joe’s phone and made admiring noises. “I never would’ve thought I’d get this old and still be single. It’s time to settle down and start a family. It really is. My parents have been praying for grandchildren for so long that they think maybe God’s going deaf. Man, I put everything aside to get that doctorate.”

  Yep. Carson knew he was losing the battle over who had the better personal life, so he had no choice but to play the PhD card.

  Joe and his bachelor’s degree couldn’t counter it, so he squeezed Faye’s hand a little tighter and scrolled through his phone for more kid pictures that were even cuter, if such a thing could be possible. It was time for Faye to stop this.

  “Joe hasn’t been home to Oklahoma in years, and I’ve never been here at all. Let’s get out of this truck and look at it before it’s too dark to see.”

  ***

  The three archaeologists walked away from the pickup and the excavation and the dead body of Sophia Townsend.

  They followed a faint path, almost a rabbit’s trail, that led through the thick woods surrounding Carson’s worksite. A recent wildfire had burned through the underbru
sh, leaving a black swath that was rapidly going green with new growth. The burned area crossed the narrow path and extended through the woods away from the excavation.

  A clear creek skirted the base of the hill where they stood. Faye saw no dramatic scenery, no craggy mountains or rushing river, only pastures and hay fields stretching out toward a line of low hills. The whole scene was overwhelmingly green, with the earthy soil of new-plowed fields and the near-black of the far hills offering a sharp contrast. A charcoal gray cloud billowed on the west horizon. Faye couldn’t have said why the silver-blue sky looked enormous, but it did.

  Joe was looking around, spinning in a slow circle to drink it all in. Until this moment, she’d had no idea that he was homesick.

  They stood silent for five minutes or more until Carson raised a hand and pointed east.

  “The mounds at Spiro are that way, as the crow flies. Spiro is said to be the westernmost Mississippian outpost of any significance—but the spot where we’re working is indisputably west of Spiro. You know what that means?”

  “If you find something significant, you win,” Joe said. “That’s what it means. You’ll rewrite that part of the history books.”

  “Maybe we did it today. Maybe that figurine and that little pearl were what I came here to find.”

  Yep. They were back to establishing primacy, but this time they were competing with the entire field of archaeology, instead of with each other. Faye figured that was progress.

  Carson was finished with talking about his personal life, since Joe was winning in that arena, but he could talk all day about archaeology.

  “We know that the people at Sylacauga traded with Mississippian cultures as far away as Ohio. We’ve found the lithics to prove it.” he said. “Well, Dr. Townsend did, back in eighty-seven. It beggars the imagination to think that they weren’t in touch with the people at Spiro, just a day or two away by canoe. Frankly, I think they were the Spiro people.”