Ashes and Bones Read online

  Even as I felt myself frown, Meg asked: “Emma, how many meter squares did we do yesterday?”

  “I thought you and I each did one—it’s pretty shallow around here—and we did two more today. Four”

  “That’s what I thought. I remember because I emailed you to bring more string for today.”

  We both counted again, and finally Meg asked, “So why is there an extra test pit?”

  I shook my head, unable to figure it out. I flipped through the notes, and checked. Sure enough, our memories matched the notes. There was a unit that wasn’t here yesterday.

  “Do you think it’s looters?” Meg asked.

  “I don’t know. Was someone camping here? It looks awfully regular, though.”

  “It is.”

  We walked over to the hole that we didn’t remember digging. It was in fact, just as square and regular as the rest of our units, but smaller, and to my all-too-practiced eye this one looked to be exactly fifty centimeters square, each side roughly the width of two shovel blades. Every profession has their own informal metrics.

  The walls were straight and clean; I would have praised the student who showed me such work. The location of the unit also puzzled me; it was exactly where I would have placed another unit, had we the time to spend on moving out from the core of the area I was most interested in.

  “We didn’t dig this,” Meg said.

  “No.”

  “But it looks…real.”

  “Like we did it,” I agreed. “But we didn’t.”

  “No.”

  A cloud passed from over the sun. Something was at the bottom of the unit.

  “Hang on a second,” Meg said, and she knelt down to get a better look.

  “Meg, wait,” I said. “This is bothering me.”

  She smirked. “What, are you afraid that there’s a land mine or something down at the bottom?”

  “You can laugh if you want, but…yes. Something like that.”

  She shook her head, serious now. “I won’t touch anything, I’m just going to get a better look.”

  She leaned over, and as she set one hand down on the opposite side, she suddenly jerked up. “Shit!”

  I stepped toward her. “What is it?”

  “Ah, nothing. You got my nerves going, that’s all. I put my hand down on a rock and it bit me.” She looked at her hand, saw nothing, and leaned over again.

  And jerked back much more quickly. “Ouch—goddamn it!”

  She held up her hand and this time blood was running down the palm of her hand. “There must be a piece of glass or something over there. Hold on.”

  “Meg, don’t,” I said. “Get out of there, please. Now.”

  She looked at me suddenly; it must have been the urgency in my voice. “Okay.”

  I did not move for a moment, just studied the ground before us. The grass around two edges of the pit was untrampled and most of the ejecta—the soil dug from the hole—was piled tidily not too far away in the familiar inverted cone. No doubt about it, someone had taken a good deal of care in excavating this unit. Call it, rather, the very square hole someone else had dug on our site. A spark of indignation began to burn: it wasn’t a unit unless I said it was.

  The ejecta. The edge of the pit. Finally, I figured out what was wrong.

  The hole had been dug to look like an archaeological test pit, but that’s as far as it went. The cone of excavated soil should have been sifted, if we’d been doing the work, with all of the rocks dumped on the top of the sifted dirt. So what I should have seen as the result of proper archaeological work would have been a cone with nicely sorted, fine soil on top, with the rocks and roots having rolled to the bottom of the pile. Different color soils would have been visible, separated out.

  This was just a pile of dirt, uniform color, no sorting whatsoever. That told me to reexamine the edge of the unit again. If it had been genuine archaeology, there would have been more trampling of the yellowed grass, where the excavator had squatted or kneeled or rested her hands or, heaven forbid, sat at the edge of the unit. I saw no knee prints, hand prints, or butt prints on the grass on two sides of the pit. So, it only looked like professional work.

  It was in staring at the untrodden grass, remembering how Meg had leaned on the edge, when I found what I was looking for. A glint in the grass, as the sun came out from behind clouds again, and I saw the pattern. Making sure that I had seen all of it, I gingerly got to my knees and carefully moved the taller grass stalks aside so Meg could see, too.

  Someone had stuck nails into the ground, points up, in an irregular pattern, around most of the square. Anyone kneeling or leaning within six inches of those edges would put her full weight on them; Meg’s quick reflexes—and a dash of luck in kneeling on the side where it was too trampled to hide the nails—had saved her from worse injury. And if Meg’s “joke” turned out to be no joke—if there was a land mine at the bottom—the nails would make excellent shrapnel.

  I stood up, brushing the dirt and grass off my hands. “My guess is that whoever it was cut the heads off, then stuck them in: points on both ends.”

  “Whoever it was also knew that we’d be on the ground, checking this out in no time,” Meg agreed. “Knew that we’d crawl all over the place near a unit. Knew we’re not afraid of getting dirty.”

  “Still want to see what that is down the bottom of the pit?”

  “I’m not that curious,” she replied. “But how—”

  “Let’s call the cops.”

  “Why, Em? I’m not hurt that bad.” She held up her hand, to show me that the flow of blood had slowed. “It could still just be someone else’s idea of a sick joke, it might not have anything to do with Tony.” She knew my fears, even if she didn’t think they were anything more than a parting blow from an angry ex-boyfriend.

  “I’m not much for coincidences right now,” I said. “I think someone is watching us closely, someone who knows how we work and move. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt, if possible.” I was thinking of Bucky’s clinic.

  “And you think, whoever it is, might be thinking about other people associated with the site, in this area,” Meg said.

  “Yes. Let’s see if Sheriff Stannard is in today.”

  About forty minutes later, Dave Stannard was standing beside us, looking down at the nails with an unreadable expression. He shifted his gaze to the water for a moment, then looked back at the ground.

  “Deliberate. Nasty.” Dave paused, then glanced at me. “For you.”

  I nodded, my stomach roiling. “I’m wondering how they knew we’d be out here. It’s not a state secret or anything, but…it’s not like there’s any cover for someone to hide out and watch.”

  “Hmmm. Might want to check with the Anthropology Department.” He turned to Meg. “How’s that hand of yours?”

  She held it up for him to see. “It’s fine. I cleaned it out real good, bandaged it up. It’s no big deal. I’ve got my shots, and it’s already stopped—”

  “Do me a favor?” I was surprised: Dave Stannard rarely interrupted people. “Keep an eye on it. Just in case.”

  “Just in case…there was something on the nails?” I said.

  He shrugged. “You never know. You might just stop by the hospital on the way out, make sure.” The sheriff kneeled down, pulled some latex gloves out of his pocket, and put them on. He took a few of the nails and put them into a plastic bag. “You never know.”

  I couldn’t respond. As bad as I’d thought the situation, he was able to imagine it so much worse. I wasn’t used to thinking like this.

  “We took some photos of the site,” Meg said. “If you like, we could send you some.”

  “Thanks—do that. Em, any ideas about what that is down at the bottom of the pit? Did either of you touch it?”

  “No,” Meg and I answered simultaneously. I added, “It was deeper than ours, maybe arm’s reach. I didn’t dare touch it.”

  He nodded. “I’m willing to. I think that after the nails
, it would be silly to put the real danger down the bottom of the hole. I mean, who’d be stupid enough to warn you away from it with the nails?”

  “I don’t know what this is about,” I said. “I only know that I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

  He shrugged. “It isn’t your call.” But he had us stand back and he probed the bottom of the pit with a long stick before he knelt on the safe side of the hole. He reached in. I tensed.

  Dave pulled out a crumpled and dirty brown paper lunch bag. Maybe it was the bag that once held the nails, I thought; it looks like the sort you could get from the hardware store. He slowly uncurled the top of it, crumpled and dirty and damp from having spent the night in the bottom of the pit, and looked inside.

  “I think we’ve got trouble here,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “Bones.” He shrugged. “I’m not an expert, but they look human to me.”

  “Human bones?” Meg looked more curious than scared or ill, which is more than I could say for myself. “What sort?”

  “Little ones.” Stannard smiled, a little sick, pale under his summer work tan, and shrugged. “I said I wasn’t an expert.”

  “Can we—?” I asked.

  “Just don’t touch them.” He shook a few of them onto a large plastic artifact bag that Meg whipped out of her backpack and spread out on the ground.

  “Shit,” she said. Something like awe was in her voice. “They do look human to me. Emma?”

  She knew that osteology wasn’t technically part of my specialty—colonial archaeology—but that I had been reading a lot on human remains lately, with an eye to expanding my professional horizons.

  I leaned over the bones. “Sometimes, if they’re in rough shape, the bones can be misidentified as some other carnivore—bear, maybe even a wildcat.” Sure enough, they were about the right size, certainly the right shape for human, but there was something distinctly odd about them, considering what I was expecting to see and where I was seeing them. “Yes, human—but holy cow! They’ve been prepared!”

  “Prepared?” Stannard looked queasy.

  “You know, someone cleaned them up, boiled or bleached them clean. Like they were being used for a study collection. It was strange; at first, I was just assuming the bones were something found here by whoever dug this hole. But there are no stains and they’re not weathered—they’ve not been in the ground at all, as far as I can see—and there’s no sign that they…” I stopped myself, trying to find the best way to phrase my grisly thought.

  “No sign, what?” Meg asked.

  “No sign that they…recently came off someone alive. There’s no tissue, no, uh, bloodstains. The thing that tripped me up was that they look exactly like the ones we have back in the faunal lab, the skeletons and bones that are known examples, to be used to compare with what you find in the field. I’m so used to seeing them there, that it didn’t register with me for a moment.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Damn.” Meg sounded like she was disappointed that she hadn’t caught that. At least, I hoped she wasn’t disappointed that the bones were not…recently acquired.

  “Jeez, you know—hey, check this out!”

  I was using a pen to roll the little bones around—they were short, roughly cylindrical with knobby protuberances on either end—when I saw the markings. Clear, but cryptic, black markings along the short shafts of some of the larger ones. Letters and numbers…

  “I’ll be damned,” Meg whispered. “Are those…?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I was actually more creeped out now than I had been when I still worried that the bones were fresh. “I think they are. Look here.” I pointed out a particularly good example.

  “Will you tell me what’s going on?” Dave said. “What are those marks? Some kind of occult thing? Or is it just ‘cult’?”

  “Kinda,” Meg said; I frowned, she wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t the time for humor. Everyone needs an outlet for anxiety, I guess.

  “Only if you consider accession marks on a study collection an occult practice. Imagine a room full of people dedicatedly washing each bone fragment as if it was precious, then marking each one just so, with the attention that is usually reserved for relics. These were part of a faunal collection, once, or an archaeological assemblage. The thing is,” I said, squinting at the numbers, “I’d be willing to bet that they came from Caldwell College.”

  “Not one of your sites?” Meg asked quickly.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I replied. “Caldwell’s collections, but not one of mine—we don’t have any human stuff from my sites. There’s a lot of stuff that was recently recatalogued, collections curated by my predecessors.” I finally looked up at Dave’s worried face. “They’re human. Finger phalanges, I think—you can see they’re a little flattened on one side. Toe bones are rounder, if I recall correctly. But these marks, the writing, indicate where these were found, and on what site. We do exactly the same thing.”

  “So that means…what?” asked Meg.

  “It could be a couple of things,” Stannard said. He was looking at the water again, rubbing his hand back and forth over his head, rumpling up his brown hair. Completely unconscious about it, as usual. “It could be someone from Caldwell. Obviously, whoever it was knew you’d both be here, knew enough to make it look like one of your units, had access to the collections.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Most of the department is scattered to the four corners of the world. Most of them will be coming back in a couple of weeks. I’m thinking of faculty, not students, though I’ve got an idea where most of them are. The archaeologists, at least.”

  Meg and Dave looked at me skeptically. “Okay, well the graduate students. Keeping track of undergraduates is like keeping track of fruit flies. There seem to be millions of them, and they’re always in constant motion.”

  “Doesn’t mean they couldn’t have come back early,” Meg said.

  “I know, but there’s none of them that would do a thing like this,” I said, a little impatient. We had to narrow it down somehow. “We can ask Chuck, our administrator, if he’s seen anyone—crap!” I slapped my forehead. “The keys!”

  “Right!” Meg said.

  Stannard furrowed his brow, confused.

  “There are only a few keys to the storage areas,” I explained, “and it gets recorded when they’re given out. I have one, Neal—that’s Meg’s fiancé—had one, but he turned it in—”

  “I remember him. Nice kid. Congratulations, you,” he said to Meg. She nodded impatiently, wanting to stay on track.

  “I don’t know who else would have a key right now,” I finished, frustrated. “Since I’m the only archaeologist, I can’t think that the linguists or social anthropologists need to get at the curation facilities. So it’s got to be Professor LeBrot’s stuff—he’s our physical anthropologist. We can double-check, and ask Chuck too.”

  “There’s another possibility,” Dave said, looking troubled now.

  I nodded.

  “It could be that someone broke into the storage. Someone pulling a stunt to play with your head, as well as cause you some kind of injury.”

  “Maybe they didn’t need to break in,” I said.

  Meg looked up.

  “Maybe Tony’s still got a key,” I said to Dave, then explained my current theories. His frown deepened as my story worked its way up to the present.

  “Even if the locks have been changed since that time, I’m sure he remembers enough of how to get in some other way. Nick another key, break in during the night, follow someone in, something like that.”

  “You should make sure you speak with the administrator, and the people in your department,” Stannard said after a pause. “This is serious. Even if it isn’t Tony Markham, someone deliberately tried to hurt you two—”

  “And if it is Tony,” I said, a little impatient, “you need to be careful too, Dave. I think…he’s reaching out to people I know. Some of them were related to his case, some a
re people who are close to me, family, friends. I think that with your involvement with the case, you should be extra alert. And your family, too.”

  “You know, Emma, we’ve discussed this before,” he started slowly. “Last time we had this conversation, after the conference in January, I was pretty sure Tony Markham was dead. I still am, truth be told.”

  I shook my head. “I still say, there’s no proof that he’s dead. No body, nothing. And even if it isn’t Tony, it’s someone who knows enough of the details of my history, and therefore our association with this site and Pauline’s murder. Information that isn’t readily available—”

  “Most everything is readily available, these days,” Dave said. “Do enough digging into public records, the Internet, you can find a lot of stuff. I don’t need to tell you that.”

  I waved one hand. “Okay, say it is someone else, just for the sake of argument. It could well be someone from around here who might have been on the scene four years ago. And if that’s the case, there’s still a good chance that you and your family may…be at risk.”

  Maybe my argument was convincing enough, maybe it was the strain in my voice, or the look in my eyes that said, yes, I am going to keep arguing until you at least pretend to agree with me, but the sheriff finally nodded.

  “Okay. I’ll talk to my people, have them do some nosing around. I’ll talk to my wife, tell her keep an eye out. You write me up an account of what happened today—you too, Meg—and then, Emma, you write me another summary of what’s been going on. At least that way, if I find something on this end, I’ll be able to see where it fits in.”

  I nodded so eagerly I’m sure I looked like one of those little dogs that people have in the rear windows of their cars. I didn’t care. Even if Dave didn’t entirely believe me, he’d do what he said, and that’s all I cared about. It was one of the many things I liked about him. More than that, he was taking my fears at least a little seriously.

  Though it would have been nice to think he did believe me. I liked and respected Dave and didn’t want him to think I was a basket case.