Burials

by Mary Anna Evans

  Joe watched her study one side of it, then run a fingertip over it before turning it over to repeat the process.

  “Whatcha got?”

  She held out something that Joe recognized. He’d seen it sitting around the house for years—on his father’s chest-of-drawers, in a bowl of interesting junk that stayed on the coffee table, on a spot on the mantel right in front of where Faye stood—but he’d never given it much thought. He was pretty sure he’d seen it in the houses they’d rented before this one. It had always just been there.

  He picked it up from her palm and, for the first time, he realized what he was holding. “Wow. We’ve gotta ask Dad where he found this. But maybe Mom found it. We’ve had it for a long long time.”

  He thought, If my dead mother found it, we’ll never know where it came from, but he didn’t say it out loud. He just said, “It’s Mississippian, ain’t it?” running his finger over the surface just as she had.

  It was a potsherd with a gentle curve, as if it came from the side of a large ceramic pot. Before it was fired, someone had taken a sharp implement and carved a design into its soft clay surface. He felt and saw a series of concentric curves, like a rainbow. Below was another design made of short curving lines that made him think of a feather.

  “Mississippian?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’d say so. Maybe Carson’s not wrong to think that they lived around here.”

  She reached her hand toward his, touching the old thing on his palm lightly with her fingertip. She traced its outline, pointed on one side and with a deep notch on the other, and said, “It’s shaped like a heart, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah. I always did think so.”

  “Maybe that’s why he keeps it next to your mother’s ashes.”

  Joe gently set it back on the mantel, propped up against the urn.

  “We need to go out there,” Faye said.

  Joe said, “Where?” but he knew exactly where she wanted to go.

  “Think about it. Somebody killed Sophia Townsend. Tonight is the first time since 1987 that the killer has had any reason to worry about being caught.”

  Joe’s attention hadn’t left his mother’s urn. In 1987, she’d still been alive. Healthy. Strong. Cancer had been the furthest thing from her mind.

  “And that’s not all,” Faye continued. “Back in 1987, somebody buried a canvas bag holding priceless artifacts underneath the dead body of a murdered woman and let them be covered by five feet of dirt. That person obviously never intended to come back to get them. It was like burying a stack of thousand-dollar bills. It was like burying the Mona Lisa.”

  Joe put 1987 and his mother in the past and thought about what she was saying. “So we need to go out in the middle of the night to check on artifacts being guarded by an armed officer…because why?”

  “It’s not the middle of the night. By the time we get there, it’ll be almost sunup. Anyway, we need to go out there because one person just isn’t enough to protect the place. What if there are more priceless artifacts still buried in the ground and somebody out there knows about them? People talk. Gerard, the medical examiner, was so excited by those pearls and that figurine that he’s probably blabbed about them to the whole world. By now, every crook for miles around knows what we found today, so we’re not just up against the murderer who put them there.”

  “You think the murderer is still alive?”

  “Could be. And I can see what Sylacauga’s like. I don’t think anybody’s ever left here but you. Anybody that was here in 1987, even Sophia Townsend’s murderer, is probably still here. You’re the exception that proves the rule.”

  Joe was stupidly pleased to hear that she though he was a special case.

  Faye was still talking, running through every detail that had been running through her mind when she should have been sleeping. “It would be too easy for anybody with a rifle and a night scope to pick off Officer Denton, walking away with things that would bring a fortune on the black market. It could happen. Don’t forget that somebody was already out there with a gun this morning.”

  Joe couldn’t argue with her logic. He almost never could. In some ways, Faye was a slave to logic. He started looking for his moccasins.

  Faye wasn’t through sifting through all the logical possibilities, despite the fact that she was succeeding in getting him to leave the house when he should be asleep. “And there may be more amazing things buried there,” she said. “Only one person knows.”

  “You call the detective yet? Somebody could shoot us as well as they could shoot the officer he left guarding the place. There’s a lot of hunters around here. A lot of ’em probably have night scopes.”

  Faye nodded. “I was planning to let Cloud know. I’ll call him now.”

  “You say one person ain’t enough. How ’bout three? Is four enough? If we go out there, will we be making Officer Denton any safer?”

  “That’s why I’m calling Roy Cloud so he can meet us out there. I hope he can bring more officers with him. Maybe Agent Bigbee’s people will be here soon. The woods need to be alive with people. Anybody hoping to grab those artifacts needs to look around and say, ‘I can’t take on an army, so I’m going to get the hell out.’ So, no, we’re not enough, but we would improve the odds.”

  Joe always traveled with weapons, but when he flew, he packed them in his suitcase and checked it. Airport security people wouldn’t understand why he was carrying two stone knives and a weighted leather bolo that could take down a man at fifty paces. He went to their room and opened his suitcase, pulling out a knife and the bolo and slid them both into the bag hanging at his waist.

  Then he pulled the other knife out of his suitcase and handed it to Faye. He’d made it for her, but she refused to carry it on a regular basis. This time, she took it.

  ***

  Roy Cloud had known the truth for a while. He’d known it when he finished his fruitless interview with Vernon, the Creeks’ young-and-therefore-useless contract officer. Vernon had been two years old in 1987, so he knew nothing that wasn’t in the project files left behind from Sophia Townsend’s dig. He’d said that the project’s 1987 records included the contract, Sophia’s bills, and nothing else. No record of how many employees she’d hired. No list of their names. Nothing. Her bills weren’t even itemized, so they could hardly be more useless.

  Vernon had suggested he talk to Phil Smithee, who was the boss of his boss, and who was the man who had let Sophia Townsend mismanage her budget in 1987. Roy, not being stupid, had spoken to Phil hours before and learned nothing, because Phil was still an idiot. He’d risen to a position of responsibility and appeared to be discharging that responsibility well, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t an idiot. It meant that he hired good people to help him feign competence.

  Roy couldn’t imagine how Phil had kept his job after paying Dr. Townsend all that money and having nothing to show for it. As a member of the tribe who funded that paycheck, Roy was royally pissed off at Phil. Vernon McAlester seemed to be following in Phil’s barely competent footsteps, so Roy’s trip to his house had been wasted.

  As Cloud had left Vernon’s house, he’d tried to raise Kira Denton on the radio. She’d answered him every other time he’d called, but this time she didn’t. This couldn’t be a good thing.

  He’d been sure of the truth when she also failed to answer her cell phone. As he’d accelerated to the top speed that the country road beneath his tires would allow, he had called for backup. Imagining how dark it must be in the woods surrounding the open pit, he’d said, “Bring night scopes, heat sensors, lights, a dog. Bring it all.” And then he’d let Agent Bigbee know what was going down.

  As much as he hated to give up trying to reach Officer Denton, he did it, so that he could radio Brian Hannity, the officer he’d asked to check on Denton throughout the night. Hannity didn’t answer, and he didn’t answer his ce
ll phone, either. Something wasn’t right.

  After driving away from Vernon McAlester’s front porch light, after long minutes spent driving away from the city limits of Sylacauga, after a timeless time spent studying the Milky Way’s foggy stripe emerge as the moon left the jet-black sky, Roy had finally admitted to himself that he needed still more help. So he called for it.

  “Cloud here, calling for more backup. I’m going to need a helicopter.”

  For how else would he find a fugitive fleeing in utter darkness, unless he had someone in the sky?

  He tried time and again to raise Denton and Hannity on the radio and on the phone. When his cell phone rang, he grabbed it, hoping they were calling him back to tell him their radio was on the fritz. Later, they could all laugh about it, except Denton didn’t laugh when she was on duty.

  His phone rang and he grabbed for it, hoping.

  His hopes were for nothing. The ringing phone’s screen didn’t say, “Kira Denton.” It said “Faye Longchamp-Mantooth,” so he let it go to voice mail. He appreciated that the archaeologist wanted to help solve Sophia Townsend’s death badly enough to lose sleep, but he couldn’t talk to her now. The Townsend murder was a cold case that had waited twenty-nine years for his attention. It could wait another day. All he could think about now was the safety of Kira Denton and Brian Hannity.

  He tried a few more times to get ahold of Denton and Hannity. Eventually, he gave up and just drove.

  ***

  Faye was glad for Joe to be at her side in the front seat of their parked rental car, knowing that their arrival had tripled the number of people in the dark woods surrounding the Sylacauga site’s open excavation. And its open grave.

  Or perhaps they didn’t triple the site’s population. There was no way to know how many people were in those woods. Perhaps Kira Denton wasn’t out there any more. Perhaps someone dangerous had come back to fetch those valuable pearls and that priceless figurine. Perhaps that someone had come back to make sure no one uncovered evidence that would reveal a murderer.

  In the grassy clearing between their parked car and the edge of the excavation, they could make out nothing more than shapes and shadows. Nothing more than a warm glow lit the eastern horizon. The moon had set, so they would have no light to help them until dawn came.

  They had brought flashlights, but it would have been nuts to venture into the unfamiliar woods with nothing but their pale beams. For now, they had only the stars and the diffuse light of the sun’s rays striking airborne dust far above their heads. Faye and Joe could probably have managed the few short feet over open ground to the excavation in the darkness. They might even have been able to do it without falling into the pit, but venturing out of the car seemed like a good way to get shot by a police officer who didn’t know they were friendly.

  “What now?” Joe asked.

  “We should get down. Anybody could be out there with a gun,” Faye said, and they slid down in their seats until the tops of their heads hardly reached the bottom of their car windows.

  “Is Cloud on his way?”

  “I left him a message. If he got it, he should be here any minute.” Faye listened to the darkness and watched the sun’s glow reach a tiny bit further into the eastern sky. Keeping her head down, she rolled down her window and listened to the night’s silent air. Then she said, “Something’s wrong.”

  “And you know that how?”

  “Nobody could have missed us just now. Loud engine. Headlights on bright. We weren’t even trying to sneak in. Denton should have already been checking us out. We should see her flashlight coming. We should hear her yelling ‘Who’s there?’”

  “That was your plan? Come out here and see if we could flush her out just by showing up?”

  “Yes, and don’t laugh. I figured if we rode out here, Officer Denton would come out to greet us. I figured we’d be helping her just by being here. Safety in numbers. But somebody got to her before we did.”

  “So you’re saying that there may be a bad guy out there, but there aren’t any good guys.”

  “Not any more.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Faye could hear the approaching vehicle before she could see it. Headlights off, it approached them at a speed that was more than safe. It roared toward her so fast that she reflexively flung her arms in front of her face to stave off the impact.

  Swerving in from behind, the SUV stopped mere inches from the passenger side of the car where she sat. If she’d wanted to flee, she couldn’t have opened her door wide enough to get out.

  Joe’s hand closed gently around her upper arm, and she could feel the smooth curve of his own stone knife between her skin and his palm. She reached into her purse and retrieved hers. The sound of the handbag’s clasp opening, then snapping shut, was as loud as a snapping tree trunk in the silent car.

  Then the other car’s window rolled down. Chief Roy Cloud leaned out of it and through Faye’s open window. He glared down at where she sat slumped in her seat, and his face was so close that she could feel the heat of his breath on her cheek.

  He hissed, “Are you people out of your minds? This place isn’t safe. It isn’t safe at all.”

  Faye was still listening for the sound of the officer who should be approaching, weapons at the ready, demanding to know what they were doing there at this hour. She heard nothing.

  “We know it’s not safe,” she said. “Your officer is in trouble, and we don’t know what to do about it.”

  Joe had leaned out his own open window, listening. He was moving his head slowly from side to side, trying to assess the direction of a sound that only he could hear. Faye had long ago learned that his hearing was better than hers, so she wasn’t surprised that she heard nothing but ordinary night sounds. A moment later, she heard the sound of engines and turned around in her seat to see two more cars approaching.

  It had hardly been an hour since she had stated that, in this place and at this time, safety could only be had if the woods were alive with people. Maybe she was about to get her wish.

  Joe’s hand grew tighter around her upper arm. “Listen.”

  All Faye could hear were the sounds of approaching engines, until the two speeding cars pulled to a stop behind them. When they cut their engines, there was a single moment of silence and Faye could tell by the twitch of Joe’s hand that he still heard something she couldn’t.

  Then the silence was broken by Roy barking into his radio. “Cloud here—”

  Joe leaned far across Faye and reached a long arm into Roy’s car. Grabbing the police chief by the shoulder, he said, “I hear something over that way.” He pointed out his window toward the excavation or perhaps beyond. “Somebody’s calling for help. If you and your people will be just quiet for a minute, maybe we can find her.”

  As she tried to listen, another noise, much louder than the cars’ engines, assaulted Faye’s ears. A bright light swooped in from the west, accompanied by the whapping sounds of helicopter blades. Under any other circumstances, she would have seen the coming chopper as an emblem of hope, like the cavalry cresting the hill in a black-and-white western movie. At the moment, she just wanted it to be quiet so that Joe could do what he did best.

  Joe was doing all he could to be heard above the din. “Chief Cloud! Did you hear me?”

  “I did, and I’m on it.” Roy paused just long enough to look Joe in the face and say, “Thank you.” Then he returned to barking orders into his radio, laying out a plan to send the helicopter away, so that Joe could hear. After that, she knew he would ask the helicopter pilot to cover his officers from the air while they searched for their missing friend.

  Joe got out of the car and waited for Roy and his officers to gather themselves. Faye stopped slumping and sat up in the car, ready for action. Roy Cloud didn’t know it yet, but Faye knew that her husband would be going into the woods with his officers, wheth
er it violated police protocol or not. Joe was not an arrogant man, but he was completely aware that there weren’t many trackers with his skill.

  Roy Cloud also didn’t know yet that Faye was going with them, too. In her years with Joe, his skill with woodcraft had rubbed off on her. She would never have Joe’s eyes and ears, but she had her own intuitive ways. She also had a logical brain that never stopped sifting through clues, trying all the ways that they could fit together until she found the right one.

  While she waited for Joe to locate the source of the cry for help, Faye had sat in the front seat of this unfamiliar car and studied the lay of the land. She remembered that Denton had stationed herself on the far side of the pit from where they sat.

  Faye had tried to use her binoculars to get a look at the area where she thought Denton might be. It was still too dark. Fortunately, she had sat in that truck the evening before with Carson and Joe for two or three everloving hours, at least, facing in that direction. She could summon up the view at will.

  The underbrush in that area was thick, too thick in most areas for an intruder to approach without warning and too thick for a faraway shooter to get a good shot. There was only one spot where it would be easy to pass quietly through the trees. Faye remembered the scorched area cleared by wildfire that she’d seen the previous afternoon. By removing the undergrowth, the fire had opened a spot where Officer Denton could get a clearer view of her surroundings. It had also made a narrow opening in the underbrush where trouble could approach. Faye suspected that this was where the unseen shooter who had terrorized her, Carson, and Kenny had stood less than twenty-four hours before.

  When she told Cloud she intended to go with his officers to search for Denton, he said, “The hell you are.”