Burial Ground Page 8

  David grinned ruefully. “To tell the truth, I don’t know where I was. When I started asking old Absalom about the artifacts, he said he had something to show me. He got up and went into his house and I thought he was rooting around for something to bring out. Then I heard the back door slam, so I got up and went around the house and saw him headed into the woods. I yelled after him but it didn’t do any good. My mistake was in following him.”

  “You ended up in the creek,” I surmised.

  “Exactly. I wasn’t sure which way to go, so I headed north a little ways, because I thought I heard him splashing around ahead of me, but there weren’t any tracks, so I turned around and started back in the other direction, south. I was looking so hard at the ground, to try to find his trail, I guess I passed where I came in without knowing it.”

  I caught P. E.’s look: I told you we should have gone south.

  David went on: “I don’t know how far I went. Probably a couple hundred yards. Then I was sure I heard something, like somebody above me, in the woods. I yelled but there wasn’t any answer. Then somebody threw something, a big log, that landed in the water and scared hell out of me.”

  Elizabeth gave a little gasp but neither P. E. nor I showed any surprise.

  “I found a place to climb up the bank, on the west side, and headed toward the river. But when I started down the last slope I tripped on something, and as soon as I landed I knew my leg was broken. I dragged myself a hundred yards or so, because I hoped I could make it to a jeep trail, but I ended up just lying there, by the swamp, until the dogs found me.” He shook his head. “At first I thought the chase team was going to celebrate. But when they came and saw I wasn’t one of their convicts I thought for a minute they were going to string me up.”

  I looked at the mosquito bumps on his face.

  “I guess it was a pretty long night,” I said.

  He jerked his head in assent. “Damn right. When you’re alone in the woods you hear all kinds of noises. Birds, wildcats, maybe even a coyote. But I had the damndest sensation while I was lying there. It was about the only time in my life I’ve really felt creepy.”

  “Oh?”

  He wore an expression I’d never seen before, far from his usual self-confidence and cheerful cynicism.

  “All I can say is it felt like somebody was out there watching.”

  We stayed another few minutes and then left him with Elizabeth. I went home and washed a few pounds of dried, stinking gumbo mud off me, and rubbed Dr. Tichenor’s antiseptic on my insect bites. Then I changed clothes and drove to the office to relay the news in person before Marilyn took my call to mean David was undergoing amputation. She almost ran into my arms, this tiny, usually self-possessed girl whom I’d hired to do our books when she was a student. But, fortunately for her self-esteem, she caught herself short.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “He’ll be on crutches for a while,” I said. “Besides that everything’s okay.”

  “We’ll have to file a workers’ comp claim.” She sighed. “They’ll want all kinds of information. Our rates may go up.”

  “Then we’ll have to pay them,” I said and started into my office.

  “Oh, Alan.”

  I turned around. “Yes?”

  “Willie Dupont called. He wanted to talk to you. When I told him there’d been an accident he said he was driving over.”

  I nodded in resignation.

  “And there was also a call from Marvin Ghecko.”

  I closed my eyes and told myself to count to ten. “What does he want?” I asked.

  “He didn’t say. But he wanted you to call when you got back.”

  Marvin Ghecko, the Acting State Archaeologist, was a five-foot, two-inch wisp whose office evaluated all reports on projects done under federal and state auspices. We called him Marvelous Marvin and Ghecko the Echo, the latter for his habit of repeating himself when he was agitated. Now I dialed his private line and wondered what I’d done to merit his concern.

  He picked it up on the first ring.

  “Dr. Ghecko,” he said.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Marvin, this is Alan Graham.”

  “Oh, Alan, thank God you called. I need to talk to you like yesterday.” He had a high-pitched voice, and I envisioned him perched on his padded chair with his thin sandy hair slicked down with a ton of grease, and his feet hanging inches above the floor.

  “Today’s the best I can do, Marvin.”

  “Look, what’s this about you and some new Tunica Treasure, what is it, eh?”

  Oh, God, I thought.

  “Just rumors, so far,” I said, trying to sound blithe. “We were hired to survey some land just south of the nuclear plant. The owner had heard there was a site on it.”

  “A site, eh? And have you found it yet?”

  “No.”

  “Alan, listen: I don’t have to tell you if you find some Tunica burial place the tribe is going to jump in with both feet. Both feet, Alan. Why didn’t this landowner send us a request for clearance?”

  “Because he isn’t going to be disturbing any site, for one thing, Marvin. And for another, it’s private land and he can do what he wants. And for the third thing, he’s dead.”

  “Oh.” There was silence while he mentally regrouped. “But if there’s burials it’s a whole new ball game. You should have called me as soon as this came up. I don’t like being sucker-punched. Don’t like it at all.”

  “Who hit you, Marvin? Freddie St. Ambrose? Is he pissed because he didn’t get the job?”

  “Can’t divulge sources. Just say a little bird. But you really should have called.”

  “You’re right.” I sighed. “I’m sorry.”

  Marvin made a grunting sound of approval.

  “So have you found anything yet?” he asked.

  I thought of the little brass object in my pocket, that I’d picked up from the beach. It could have gotten to the island in a thousand different ways.

  “Lots of mosquito bites,” I said. “And David hurt his leg in a fall.”

  “Fall. Well, that’s rough country. Rough,” he repeated, as if he’d actually worked there. “Look, you keep me informed, aye? I need to know what’s happening. I am the State Archaeologist.”

  “Acting State Archaeologist, Marvin.”

  “What?” This time there was alarm in his voice. “Have you heard something about the final selection? You didn’t apply for the job, did you?”

  “They wouldn’t ever choose me, Marvin. I’m too much of a maverick.”

  “That’s true enough. You had me scared for a minute. Well, thanks for calling, Alan. I feel better now.”

  I wish I could have said the same for myself. Because while I hadn’t lied to him, I hadn’t been perfectly candid, any more than I had when P. E. had thought I’d picked up a cartridge case and I’d let her believe it. What I was holding wasn’t much bigger than my thumb and it was the kind of artifact I’d seen many times in books and in museum cases. It was a small brass bell of the kind that Europeans had traded to Indians in the eighteenth century, along with kettles, blankets, and glass beads. It was the kind of artifact T-Joe had produced the day we’d met, the kind that formed a tiny portion of the famous Tunica Treasure.

  TEN

  That afternoon I visited David again in the hospital. He had his color back and he was lying with his leg in a cast, propped up on pillows. Elizabeth, he explained, had gone home to get some things, but would come back to stay with him overnight.

  “About the business in the woods,” I said. “You told me you had the feeling somebody was out there watching you.”

  “That’s right. And you know I’m not the kind to let their imagination run haywire. But somebody—or something—was definitely chasing me before I fell.” He eyed me. “You can call me crazy if you want.”

  I shook my head and walked over to the window and looked out. Below, the tiny cars and antlike people were baking in the summer heat
, but inside it was cool. I turned around to face him.

  “I don’t think you’re crazy,” I said. “The same thing happened to us.”

  He listened, amazed, as I told him how we had fled along the creek, while something on the bluff above had tossed logs down at us.

  “There’s something, or somebody, out there,” I said. “And I don’t have any idea who.”

  “Me either,” he said, reaching for his water glass. “Except I can’t see it being Absalom. He was too spooked. It was almost like he knew there was something to be scared of and that was why he didn’t want any part of it.”

  “I know, but who else could it be?”

  He shrugged. “There are those convicts. But it doesn’t seem like they’d do something so obvious. If I was trying to run away, I’d lie low. Or else I’d kill somebody and take what they had. But I sure as hell wouldn’t play hide-and-seek.”

  “Well, I never heard of a Sasquatch in these parts,” I joked.

  “No. It’s almost like there’s something somebody’s trying to protect, so they’re trying to run everybody off. But I didn’t find anything, did you?”

  My fingers closed around the little bell in my pocket and was pulling it out to show him when the door opened and Willie Dupont stood swaying in the entrance.

  “I came as soon as I heard.” He advanced into the room, bringing with him a strong smell of whiskey. “Is he okay?”

  I motioned to David, in the bed.

  “Ask him yourself.”

  Willie’s face relaxed. “Man, you had me scared. I called up your office and that girl wouldn’t tell me crap. But I could tell something was the matter. I called Carter Wascom and asked him had he seen you people, and he said somebody’d been hurt. So as soon as I could I took off for Baton Rouge.”

  “I’m okay,” David said. “Maybe even better than you are.”

  Willie collapsed into the big easy chair.

  “Things goin’ to shit. Whole damn family’s mad at me now. My sister Dominique thinks I’m trying to get the treasure for myself. She thinks it’s worth a lot of money.”

  “Really.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “But it isn’t, is it? I mean, what you told Dad was right, it’s just a historical sort of thing.”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “They’re mad ’cause they couldn’t bury him today.” He took a pint bottle out of his pocket and started to pull on it, then realized it was empty and set it down hard on the floor. “They hate to admit I was right.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “That doctor over here that did the autopsy: He says it was murder, too.”

  I felt a little chill ripple through me.

  “Murder?”

  “Damn straight: Somebody shot him in the back of the head, through the back window. Coroner didn’t catch it right off ’cause the window was broke and the bullet hole was so small his hair covered it.”

  I thought of Carter Wascom and his carbine.

  “What caliber?” I asked.

  “Said it was a .22.”

  “Magnum?”

  “Wasn’t sure. The bullet broke in pieces.”

  He wiped a hand across his mouth and belched.

  “So now the shit’s in the fan. Mom’s in bed and Dominique is going crazy, she’s so sure I’m trying to pull a fast one. They don’t want to know the truth. They just want it to all be done. Well, that ain’t good enough. He was my father, damn it.”

  He staggered forward until his face was a few inches from my own.

  “You know what I did when I was a junior in high school? Me and some friends broke into a hospital to get some dope. Got caught big as shit. I dragged my family through the courts. And you know what? My dad never stopped supporting me. As much as I shamed him I was still his son. Oh, he let me sit in jail a few months. Said it was something him and the judge worked out to teach me a lesson. But once I came out it was over with. That’s the kind of man he was, and the bastard killed him is gonna pay.”

  “Did the pathologist send the tooth to Chloe Messner?” I asked.

  “I had to threaten the son-of-a-bitch. Said he didn’t know what she could say about it, that it wasn’t from Dad’s mouth, so what was there to do with it?”

  Professional jealousy. I’d seen enough of that before.

  “Yeah. So I was thinking about the project. Ain’t worth getting nobody else killed.”

  “No,” I said. “But I’d like to have a little more time to work on it. We’ll take precautions.”

  I didn’t add that I didn’t have the foggiest notion what kind.

  “And then there’s those damn convicts,” he said. “Have they caught ’em yet?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “But they always do.”

  “Sure, but meanwhile…” He shrugged. “Look, have you all found anything so far?”

  “No archaeological deposits,” I said truthfully. “We were hoping Absalom could help us more.”

  Willie shook his head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with that man,” he said. “Carter told me Absalom’s turned up missing, too.”

  He wove to the other side of the room. “My sister said I was throwing money down the drain, that Absalom probably found those things ten miles away, that nobody ever wanted that land for anything but hunting, that’s why Carter sold it to us, because he saw a dumb coonass who didn’t know what land around here was worth. Then she turned around and said I was trying to swindle her. She’s held it against me ever since I had my problem with the law. Like I don’t know what I did to the folks. Now she figures I’ve got some other reason for going through with it. Families!”

  He turned an anguished face to my own. “Dad had it all worked out: the nature trails, picnic spots, the lake. He was gonna make our own little piece of paradise right here. He ended up dead because of it.”

  “I still think it’s a good dream,” I said quietly.

  “Dream,” he repeated. “That’s what it was, all right. A daydream nobody in their right mind would’ve had.”

  “It isn’t over,” David argued from the bed.

  Willie advanced on the bed, squinting. “That old man, Absalom, didn’t disappear for nothing. And you ain’t in that bed for nothing.”

  “I fell down in the woods,” David said. “It can happen anywhere.”

  “But it happened there. And if somebody killed Dad, that means there may be somebody out there who doesn’t want you or anybody else to find anything. I can’t ask you to keep going if you might get killed.”

  I looked at David and he gave a little nod.

  “I understand your being worried,” I said quietly. “But we aren’t about to give up if you don’t.”

  Willie stared me in the eye and then looked over at David.

  “You don’t think I’m a dumb coonass, like my dad?”

  “Never thought that about either of you,” I said.

  Willie pounded his fist against his thigh. “Guys, you gotta find whatever it is. You gotta make sense of why my dad died.”

  “We’ll do our best,” I promised.

  I guided him to the door and closed it behind him.

  When I turned back to the bed I heard David exhale. “I hope he makes it home.” He took another sip from his water glass and grimaced.

  “If I’m gonna risk my ass for this, seems like you could bring me something to drink?”

  “Soon as you’re off painkillers,” I promised.

  He grunted. “Alan …”

  “Yeah?”

  “What if we don’t find squat?”

  “Oh, I think we’ll find something,” I said.

  “How the hell can you promise that?”

  And that was when I reached into my pocket and showed him the little brass trade bell.

  ELEVEN

  When I left David I drove back to the office and parked outside with my motor running, thinking. I hadn’t mentioned the brass bell to Willie because I didn’t want to c
reate false hope. It’s one thing to find a few artifacts and another to find a whole cemetery. Besides, I’d seen projects where the archaeologist had to perform with his client looking over his shoulder and it doesn’t work for anybody, believe me.

  So I checked in at the office, was relieved there were no calls, and made a call of my own. Then I walked across the street to the university, a map cylinder under my arm.

  The Italianate buildings, sand-colored with tile roofs, fronted a parade ground, where the cadet corps marched twice a week. In the seventy years since the campus had moved here from the old location downtown, it had come to fill an area of about six hundred acres, and many of the grassy vistas I remembered from childhood had become parking lots.

  By the time I reached the shade on the far side of the parade ground I was soaked as well as parched. I sucked in the cool air of the geology building and took the elevator to the third floor. I passed under an emblem that said LOUISIANA, GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, 1934, and down a hallway. Lars Kjelgard had his office door half-open when I stopped outside.

  “Alan, come in and tell me what brings you to calling me after you don’t come up here in so long,” Lars cried, rising to give me a two-handed shake. A solidly built man in his late thirties, Lars had longish, prematurely gray hair, and a way of killing the king’s English when he spoke.

  “A question,” I said. “The kind I only trust you to answer.”

  “Somebody trusts me?” Lars snorted. “You know I’m on the Corps of Engineers shit book after I told them they can’t put that canal north of the city without they run into sand before they got the bore holes drilled good.” He made a face of mock pain. “They say I made them all kinds of embarrassment.”

  “I bet you did.”

  “So what is it now?” he demanded. “They sent you to offer me money to recant?”

  “Not exactly.” I laughed. “It’s just a little problem of alluvial geomorphology.”

  He nodded gravely. “We do that here,” he said.

  I took the topographic map out of the map tube and he made a place for it on his study table. Over the table, on the wall, was a framed certificate from some South Louisiana mayor, declaring Dr. Lars Kjelgard an honorary Cajun.