Airtight Case (42 page)

The aroma of sausage made her mouth water. Eating in the mess tent with a hundred others didn’t hold any appeal this morning. She took a biscuit and sausage from the waiting trays and a bottle of orange juice from the refrigerator and sat on the front porch, looking out over the pond to the site, lit up like a county fair. It only lacked a Ferris wheel in the background. People were already moving around like ants, but then they probably never slept. Someone always had to stand guard.

“You’re up early.” Luke Youngdeer squatted beside Lindsay’s wicker chair.

“It’s a good day.”

“You’re counting on this identification, aren’t you?” He took her hand and squeezed it.

“If I can turn him over to the sheriff with a positive ID, he’ll roll over on the others.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. He’s not the type to go down alone.”

“You know this, do you?”

“Yes.”

“Lindsay, I believe you’ll solve this thing, but don’t be disappointed if this isn’t the path.”

“It will be. Eat breakfast before you go. It’s not that long a drive, about eighty miles, and it’s very early yet.”

* * *

Lindsay absorbed herself in finishing her analysis of the bones from the coffin and tried not to let her mind wander to Luke’s mission. Other than the calcium deposits, there weren’t any remarkable pathologies on TPB 1, as the trash pit coffin burial was designated. TPB1 was right-handed. Her handedness showed clearly in her glenoid fossa, even at so young an age. She must have worked hard at something that required repeated reaching. If her work had been hard, it didn’t show up in her spine, which appeared normal for a person her age—no signs at all of wear.

She had just written the last entry of her analysis when Lewis came to tell her and McBride that Jarman and Peter were ready to extract the antique air. The two of them hurried to the other tent, already filled with people.

There was no room near the pit for any of the archaeology crew. Alex Jarman and Peter Willis were in the pit, and a host of technicians were around it, monitoring equipment and operating the various instruments and valves involved in the process. The archaeology crew had to stand toward the back of the tent. Lindsay strained to hear over the noise of the machines and the focused chatter of technicians.

“I guess one person can’t do this job,” whispered Byron to no one in particular.

Occasionally, Lindsay got a glimpse of Jarman’s red hair when his head cleared the pit as he went about the duties of supervising the complex procedure.

“Okay,” Jarman said. There was a hum and a sound like a loud dentist’s drill.

Lindsay held her breath with the others but didn’t know exactly what she was holding it for or for how long.

“Okay,” she heard Jarman say again. The sound of the drill stopped and the sound of the vacuum pump increased.

“It’s holding a vacuum,” said Peter.

Lindsay took that to be good. She craned to see inside the pit, but all she could see was tubing leading to the pit, the bald spot on Peter’s crown, and Jarman’s thick shock of red hair.

“What do you think, guys? Did we get it?” Alex Jarman stood up, and from the smile on his face, he knew they did.

The activity of the technicians didn’t decrease after the acquisition of the air sample. They were still just as busy. Jarman explained that while the rest of the coffin was being excavated, they would pump chilled argon gas into the coffin to replace the air that was taken and to preserve the remains. Then Juliana Skyler would test the soundness of the coffin to be lifted out of the pit.

With the main show over, Lindsay left the tent and stood at the chain-link fence, her fingers curled over the wires as she watched the road for any sign of Luke. He had left at seven. It was conservatively about two hours each way. Giving him a generous one hour to get the task done, he should be back by twelve. She looked at her watch. It was 10:14. She turned and went to her bones.

While Lindsay had been watching the air extraction procedure, Mr. Laurens had delivered the sandbox. It was sitting on a table against the wall of the tent. A small bag of sand sat on the floor under the table. She started to fill the box, but the photographer showed up to complete the photographs of the bones.

McBride came back from the cemetery tent as she and the photographer finished setting up a shot on a special table for that purpose.

“Will you make your sketch from these photos?” McBride gestured toward the skull sitting on the donut ring.

Lindsay checked her watch again—10:20. “What? Yes. I usually start the sketch on a light table, then fill in the shading after I have a basic face.”

“I read a book about that once.” The photographer lined up the shot for a profile. “I forget the name. But it was about sketching and sculpting faces from skulls. You do that?” As he moved the tripod to the 45 degree mark Lindsay had made on the table, the aroma of cigarettes and body odor wafted past.

“Sometimes,” she answered. “I’m going to make sketches of these.”

“Funny about the skeleton under that first coffin. You think he was alive when they dropped it on him?”

“We’ll probably never know.” Lindsay shuddered at the thought. “I think that’s all the shots I need of the skull. We’ll get some of the postcranial skeleton, and that’ll be it for this set of remains.”

“I heard someone say you’re going to glue that fellow together. How long will that take?”

Lindsay was starting to get a headache.

Why is the photographer being so annoying?

She was growing tired listening to his running questions as he snapped his pictures.

He’s just curious and asking perfectly natural questions.

She realized as she looked at her watch again that she was counting on the nurse to identify Mike Gentry, counting on Luke returning with news that would make her nightmare come to an end. She was starting to resent any other thoughts that interfered with that one goal.

Dammit. Relax.

“I want to get close-ups of these calcium deposits.” She indicated the area to the photographer.

“You really think this poor kid was suffocated in that coffin? I’ve read about kidnap victims buried alive. That’s about the cruelest thing I can think of.”

Lindsay had to agree.

“You ready for another one?” Erin, grinning proudly, entered the tent carrying a tray of boxes. “Bill and Kelsey are coming with more—where do you want them?”

“On the table next to the sandbox.”

Erin set the tray on the table. Kelsey, smelling like hot perfume, came in behind her. Her hair, like Erin’s, was stuck to her head in damp locks, and her T-shirt was hiked up in front and tucked under the bottom of her bra. She had rolled up the sleeves to her shoulders.

“Whew, it’s hot inside the tent down in the ditch. You won’t believe the stuff we’ve found.” She set her tray down next to Erin’s. “If you like, we can arrange the boxes like the grid.”

“That would be great. We’re almost finished here. What did you find?”

Bill arrived with boxes of long bones. Shattered, but distinguishable. Kelsey picked up several boxes and brought them to the examination table.

“I asked Dr. Lewis to join us.” Kelsey almost giggled with delight, and it was catching. McBride was about to laugh, and Lindsay felt like she could crack a smile. She tried to look in the boxes, but Kelsey put her hands over them.

“Okay, what’d you guys find?” Lewis strode into the tent mopping his damp forehead with a red bandanna, which he then stuffed in his back pocket. Sharon hurried in behind him, slipped her arm around her husband’s waist and kissed his cheek. “What’d you all find, honey?”

“First.” Kelsey held up a brass belt buckle. “We found it near what might have been his midsection, only displaced a couple of feet. If you look real close, you can see the initials W. K.”

“Which happen to be my initials.” Bill took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirttail.

“Yeah, he’s got a covetous eye on it. We’re going to have to search his luggage when he leaves here.” Kelsey set the oval buckle on the table.

“Erin found this,” she continued, gently taking out what appeared to be a knife with an antler handle. She set it beside the buckle on a cotton cushion.

The photographer whistled. “Now, I like that.”

“The blade’s about gone,” said Bill, “but look at that handle.”

Lindsay stroked the carved antler. “It’s in very good condition. We’re lucky it isn’t smashed.”

“Okay, I found this next thing,” said Bill.

Kelsey pulled out a wad of cotton with a six-inch V-shaped metal object on it and placed it beside the others.

“It’s a compass,” said Lindsay. “A hinged compass.”

Kelsey nodded enthusiastically. “I think the guy may have been an engineer or some kind of surveyor. We figure it’s a guy, because these were guy things back then.”

Lewis bent down and scrutinized the compass. “I like this. Now, if we can just figure out what he was doing under the lead coffin.”

“We’ve come up with several creative scenarios while we’ve been digging,” said Kelsey, “but none that are sensible. So tell me, what do you think of our little excavation?”

“I think it’s as interesting as the coffin burials,” said Lewis, and Lindsay agreed.

“So do I,” said McBride. “I particularly like the compass. It would be kind of like finding my bones with the metal parts of my stethoscope. You’d know something about me.”

“Or me with a camera,” added the photographer. “A man is known by his tools. We can photograph these here where we did the skull.”

“Okay,” agreed Lindsay. “Someone got a quarter for a reference size?”

The photographer patted his pockets. “Alex took all my bills and my change last night for beer.”

“What did you say? Alex took your bills?” Lindsay frowned.

The photographer looked at her, puzzled. “It’s just a figure of speech. He didn’t steal them. I gave them to him for beer.”

“I didn’t hear what you said,” Lindsay said with a faint laugh.

What can I say—something about what you said made my brain itch? They’d know for sure I’ve gone nuts. What was it, though?

It was one of those thoughts that flashed lightning fast through her brain, too fast to see, too fast to catch. She mentally shrugged. Maybe it would come back around and slow down.

“I like what you guys found,” she told Kelsey. “We’ve got a job description and initials for TPB2. That gives us a good chance at identifying him.” She turned her head toward McBride. “Think Elaine’s up for going back through the historical documents at the library?”

McBride nodded vigorously. “She’d love it.”

“Here.” Lewis handed Lindsay a coin.

It was a shiny new State of Georgia quarter, the one with the peach. Personally, she preferred Delaware’s with the horse, but Georgia was known for its peaches. She flipped it to the photographer.

“Let’s get some good shots of these artifacts.”

As they were setting up the first shot, Luke Youngdeer walked into the tent.

Chapter 35

Argon Is Good

LINDSAY STARED AT Luke a moment, trying to read his face. She excused herself and pulled him out of the tent and away from ears that might overhear them.

“Did she identify him?”

Luke’s keen dark eyes bore into hers compassionately. “No. I’m sorry.”

“No?” Lindsay was utterly surprised. “She said it wasn’t him?”

“She said she didn’t recognize him.”

Luke was fading away in a blur as tears formed in her eyes. “Did you ask around?”

“Yes. I talked to several of the nurses, the receptionist, the people in the business office who did remember that the guy who came to fetch you wrote them a bogus check.”

Lindsay stood still for a moment. She was so sure they were the same person. She squeezed her eyes tight, trying to remember her time in the hospital. There was nothing there, just empty space. She felt the tears running down her cheeks. “I’m sorry I wasted your time on such a wild-goose chase.”

“I don’t feel I wasted my time. For what it’s worth, Mary Carp didn’t want to talk to me. I don’t know if she was afraid you were going to sue the hospital, if she’d already received a lot of flak about the incident, if she didn’t like talking to an Indian, or if she was lying.”

Lindsay opened her eyes and looked at him. “You think maybe she lied?”

Luke shrugged. “She may have. I know you were counting on this. I’m sorry.”

“Me, too. There were two men who came to take me. One didn’t go into the hospital. He waited on the sidewalk. Maybe Gentry is the second one—except he fits the description I gave John for the other one. I shouldn’t have counted on this so much.”

“You have police detectives working on it. Tell them your suspicions, and let them talk to this guy.”

“That’s what I’ll have to do. I was just hoping to wrap it up myself. Go get yourself something to eat. I know you must be hungry.”

“I will when I know you’re all right.”

“I’m fine.” One side of her lips turned up in a lopsided smile. “We’re finding lots of interesting things associated with the guy under the coffin.”

“You don’t say.”

“They’re being photographed right now. Come in and take a look.”

On her way in, Lindsay met Lewis coming out, and she couldn’t avoid telling him the disappointing news. Of course, it wasn’t as great a disappointment to him. He hadn’t hung his future on the outcome.

“This should be a relief then,” he said.

“It’s not.”

“It was a long shot.”

“I didn’t think it was.” Lindsay pushed past him and went into the tent, wondering what could be her next move. She had to solve this. The idea of going through life not knowing who had tried to kill her, and never knowing if they might try again, was unbearable. If she could solve murders that happened almost five hundred years ago, for heaven’s sake, she could solve this.

The photographer was setting up the shot of the knife. That was his favorite, she could tell by the way he handled it and the delighted expression on his face. Lindsay was content to let the others take care of the photos. She walked over to look at the shattered bones in the boxes. Erin, in a halter top and dirty ragged cutoffs that her mother would hate, was organizing the boxes according to the grid numbers.