Grave Danger (16 page)

“He’s probably having nightmares this will turn into another Kennewick Man controversy. I’ll call him.”

The doorbell rang. Simone slipped into her bedroom, leaving Libby alone as she opened the door.

Mark’s clear blue eyes scanned her from head to toe. “You should have called me last night.”

“I figured you should sleep.”

“If there’s a next time, let
me
make that choice.”

She moved closer, and his arms slid around her. She leaned her head on his solid chest. How odd that this embrace should feel as natural as breathing. She barely knew him. After several seconds she stepped back, feeling calm for the first time since seeing the blood-drenched mask. “Thanks. I needed that.”

He smiled. “So did I.” He took out his notebook. “The blood on the mask and wall was bovine. It could’ve come from supermarket meat.”

“The pickaxe came from the site,” she said. She began to pace. “We noticed it was missing yesterday when we took inventory after you shut us down. I figured it was buried in a backdirt pile, which happens all the time.” She paused and then decided share her main concern. “My pickaxe, a mask in my home, and blood I could have gotten at the supermarket.”

“Yes.”

She stopped and faced him. “Mark, am I a suspect?”

“I can’t rule anyone out without corroborating evidence.”

Disappointment filled her. “So you think it was me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But what do you believe? And I don’t want an answer worthy of a politician.”

“I don’t date suspects.”

She stopped pacing. Was he going to cancel? Maybe it was for the best.

“And I’m still looking forward to tomorrow.”

She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d held. “So am I,” she admitted. “Does anyone else in the Coho Police Department believe me?”

“I haven’t asked.”

She resumed pacing.

He caught her hand and stopped her. “We’re checking Aaron’s alibi for last night.”

“What about the other incidents? Could he have been here on Thursday, Friday, or Sunday?”

“He could have been here on Thursday and Sunday, but he has an alibi on Friday.”

“Was his alibi one of the officers who vouched for him three years ago?”

He nodded, his face giving none of his thoughts away.

“You can’t trust the alibi. They all lied three years ago.”

“I need more to prove Brady is your stalker. If it comes down to your word against his, you’ll lose. You’ve admitted the photos were doctored last time. I’d have to tell the judge that under oath.”

“Great, I tell the truth and it’s just another nail in my coffin. I didn’t know the photos had been altered until after the fact.”

“It doesn’t matter. Your credibility is shot as far as building a case against Aaron.” His look was apologetic. “If he’s doing this, I need to catch him in the act.”

Again she remembered Aaron’s hand on her neck, cutting off her air as he worked his belt buckle with his other hand. She’d been alone, but she’d gotten away from him. She could face Aaron again if she knew someone would be there to protect her. “Then use me as bait.”

“Like hell I will. We’ll catch whoever is doing this with good old-fashioned police work.”

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

O
VER THE LAST TWENTY-FOUR
hours, Mark had gathered information on the disappearance of Angela Caruthers. On August 21, 1979, she told fellow graduate student and officemate, Dan Parker, she was going to Coho to gather research for her dissertation. She climbed into her Volkswagen Rabbit, drove away, and was never seen again.

Weeks later, hikers found her car on an old logging road in the North Cascades National Park. The car had been completely cleaned. No fingerprints were found anywhere—not even Angela’s. Jack had always been the prime suspect, but at the time of his wife’s disappearance he’d been in Spokane with Jason, visiting his parents. The only way Jack could have killed her was if she lied to her officemate about her destination and drove to Spokane.

The Seattle Police Department, the US Park Police, and the Coho Police Department had investigated her disappearance, and Mark had leveraged Seattle’s past involvement in the case to get them to provide a medical examiner in Coho. He had no proof the remains in the pit were Angela, but finding remains on Jack’s property was enough for ME Rita Leavenworth, who now knelt in the excavation pit and used a small vacuum device to collect dirt from the abdominal area of the skeleton, while Mark made phone call after phone call, contacting the officers who’d investigated the 1979 disappearance.

After Kreegen’s bumbling yesterday, it was a relief to work with a professional crime scene investigator, and Rita was the best Seattle had to offer. Mark turned away, satisfied she had her task in hand, and dialed the next officer on his list, when Rita suddenly swore loudly.

“This is a waste of time,” she said. “For all of us. Come and look at this. You aren’t going to like it.”

Mark looked into the burial pit. The carefully cleaned skeletal fingers clutched an arrowhead.

“This isn’t a murder victim,” Rita said. “It’s an Indian grave, just like it’s supposed to be.”

L
IBBY DROVE TO THE SITE
immediately after receiving Mark’s urgent call. The two officers she’d met the day before stood by the excavation area with Mark, and she was relieved to see Doc Kreegen wasn’t present. Instead, she was introduced to a Seattle medical examiner, a petite dark-haired woman who greeted Libby coldly.

More disturbing was Mark’s manner, which reminded her of Friday night, when she answered questions about Aaron. The exciting sizzle that usually emanated from him was absent. “I’m hoping you can explain something,” he said.

She glanced into the excavation units. A bowl-shaped chunk was missing from the once vertical wall and the pit was a half-meter wider. “What happened?” she asked.

Mark answered. “The wall collapsed. Kreegen stepped too close to the edge, which is why he’s not here. But that’s not why you’re here. Look at her hands.”

The skeleton was completely exposed now. The yellow-tan bones lay in sharp relief against the dark soil. Interwoven between phalanges and carpal bones was an artifact, a large pale-green lanceolate blade. Libby looked at the ME. “May I look closer?”

“Pick it up if you want. She’s not a murder vic, so I don’t care,” Dr. Leavenworth said.

Libby climbed into the pit and studied the tool. The size and shape seemed to be the most perfect example of Clovis she’d ever seen. But that just wasn’t possible. A Clovis point would make this the oldest skeleton ever found in the Americas, and no human remains had ever been found in association with a Clovis point. Clovis artifacts were the oldest universally accepted evidence of the existence of humans in the New World.

“If she’s not Indian, how do you explain the arrowhead?” asked Officer Roth, the young cop who’d been cold to her the day before.

“Give me a second,” she murmured. “This can’t be right.” Baffled, she leaned closer. The sunlight caught an edge of the stone, making the glossy surface shine. The pale-green stone wasn’t a cryptocrystalline silicate, as she’d first thought. The projectile point was made out of obsidian. It took her a moment to recognize the material, but when she did, the tension knot in her belly unraveled and she laughed. What a beautiful fake.

“What’s so funny?” Officer Roth asked.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that I nearly fell for it.”

“Fell for what?” Officer Eversall asked.

“It’s a perfect fake.”

“You know that from a ten-second look?” The younger officer sounded incredulous.

“Yes. To start with, this is supposed to be a Clovis point—a spearhead for hunting big game. Clovis is the oldest of the Paleolithic blades, and pre-dates this site by eight to ten thousand years.”

“That doesn’t make the arrowhead a fake,” Officer Roth said.

“Spearhead,” Libby corrected automatically. “The implied age alone isn’t what makes this spearhead a fake, but I can say that no Clovis tool could be associated with these bones. There is no way a ten- to fourteen-thousand-year-old skeleton would be as well-preserved as this one is. Bones would be broken, missing.

“You’ve probably heard of Kennewick Man. He’s young compared to Clovis. Only about nine thousand years old. Scientists are eager to study him because he’s the oldest, most complete skeleton ever found in the Americas. He was nearly complete but his bones were in pieces and fragments missing.” Libby looked at the ME. “That’s not the case here, is it?”

“No,” she said. “This skeleton appears to be complete.”

“But that doesn’t mean this isn’t a one-thousand-year-old skeleton buried with a twelve-thousand-year-old point,” Roth persisted.

“You are correct. Archaeologists always have to consider such a possibility. Later cultures could have easily found and reused spearheads from earlier time periods and even buried them with their dead. But not in this case, because that spearhead is younger than you are, Officer Roth.”

“What?” Mark said.

“How do you know that?” Officer Eversall asked.

Libby directed her answer to Mark, the person she most wanted to believe her. “The obsidian rock it’s made of was manufactured after 1980.”

“The rock was manufactured?” Mark asked.

“Yes. I’ve seen that type of obsidian many times. My master’s degree is in lithic analysis. I studied stone tools and the way they were made. I worked with a professor who flint knaps—”

“Flint knaps? What is that?” Eversall asked.

“Flint knapping is part of experimental archaeology—a branch of archaeological research where we try to duplicate the tools made by prehistoric cultures.”

“Why would you do that?” Roth asked.

“To help us better understand the culture and their technology. Anyway, I had a professor in graduate school who is known for his skill at flint knapping. He’s known among archaeologists as the Lithic Master. I can say with one hundred percent certainty he made that point.”

“I didn’t see a signature on the rock,” the ME said.

“His signature
is
the rock. Obsidian that shade of pale-green isn’t natural. Not in the Pacific Northwest. That color obsidian is manufactured. It’s been dubbed Helenite, because it’s made from rock dust from Mount St. Helens. The professor I worked with uses Helenite to replicate stone tools. He uses it because of the distinctive color. It’s his way of maintaining the integrity of the archaeological record. Every archaeologist in the Pacific Northwest knows that if you find a Helenite point, it’s not an artifact. The Lithic Master made it.”

“And how did your professor’s arrowhead end up here?” Luke asked.

“Over the years, he’s sold hundreds to tourist shops. Anyone could have bought it. Someone tried to make this grave look prehistoric, and it’s not. Fortunately, obsidian hydration-dating will prove the stone is only about twenty years old.”

Dr. Leavenworth held out her hand to Libby. “I’m sorry for doubting you.”

“I understand. I was worried at first myself.”

The woman climbed back into the pit and resumed cleaning the hand bones. Libby wished she had a vacuum like that for excavating.

“I’d like the number of a lab that does the obsidian-dating test,” Mark said.

“I have the number in my Rolodex.”

“And your flint-knapping professor?”

“I have his number, too.”

“Of course you do.” Mark smiled. “So my suspect knew this was an archaeological site. We’re back to square one. This body had to be buried here on April ninth or tenth, 1984. In 1984, who knew this was an archaeological site?”

“In 1984, officially, no one. But the tribe has references to this area in their oral history so any number of pothunters could have known it was here.”

“So the suspect knows enough about archaeology to recognize a site when he or she digs through one,” Eversall said.

“Yes,” Libby answered.

“Why didn’t he or she just use an artifact from the site?” Roth asked.

“They might not have found one.” Libby shrugged. “This part of the site isn’t artifact-rich. The only tool I found while excavating the burial was broken. But your suspect placed a fake with the body, so doesn’t that mean he—or she—knew this was a site and came prepared?”