Randy White - Haunted

I said, “Why didn’t you tell me about Theo last night? That’s why you got flustered when I mentioned his award, isn’t it? If my friend Birdy hadn’t found out-”

“Now, now,” Belton said. “Delicate situations require delicacy. I didn’t know your relationship with the young man. And I wasn’t a hundred percent certain he was a fraud until this morning. Ivanhoff didn’t expect Dr. Babbs to arrive until tomorrow. If you’d been twenty minutes earlier, you’d have witnessed quite a scene, Hannah.”

I said, “I wish I could have seen his face.”

“Maybe you will. Dr. Babbs called the police.” Matás moved to peer around my shoulder. Birdy, carrying a shoulder bag, a sweater knotted around her waist, was walking toward us.

“She is the police,” I informed him.

He chuckled at that, but then said, “For real?”

“A deputy sheriff. And she is seriously… Well, I’m not going to use the term, but she’s already mad at Theo. And for good reason.”

“Seriously pissed off, you think?” The man lifted his face to the sun and savored the possibilities. He looked rumpled, in his jacket with elbow patches and with his slacks tucked into his boots, but spry. I got the impression he hadn’t slept well but was used to tolerating the aches and pains and rough mornings that accompanied old age.

“Yes, Belton,” I replied, “she is.”

He grinned. “Good,” he said, then used his cell to call Carmelo and remind him, “Don’t forget to buy gas. We’ll have two extra passengers in the boat this afternoon.”

It wasn’t until he’d hung up that he asked, “Do you still want to see where we found the bottles?”

“I brought mosquito spray and a change of clothes,” I answered. I’d also brought Capt. Summerlin’s journal. It was sealed in a watertight bag that added weight to my pack, but I wasn’t going to leave it unattended again. Not while Theo and Lucia and her witch friends were still around.

LESLIE BABBS was a nice man but distracted and lacked energy-Belton was right about that-and he wasn’t comfortable bending the rules. When I asked, “Would you mind if I stood here alone for a few minutes?” he tugged at his collar and said, “Sorry, the waiver you signed requires visitors to be accompanied. And I really do want to get this Ivanhoff matter settled.”

He and Belton and Birdy had turned away from an excavation where human bones nested in dirt that had been carved with the delicacy of an artist’s brush. No discernible order to the scattered vertebrae, several femurs that were scorched black by fire, and at least four partial skulls and one that appeared complete. That skull, one eye socket still buried, had a bullet hole in the forehead the size of a nickel. It lay near shards of tobacco pipes and brass uniform buttons and what might have been an iron hoop protruding from the soil-but also could have been the rim of a huge boiling cauldron.

For rendering salt? I wondered. What I had read in Capt. Summerlin’s journal last night, plus new entries I’d deciphered this morning, had created an emotional tie with men who had lived and died during desperate times. These were the bones of many people, not just a few. At least one had been shot, the skulls of the others were crushed. Their remains appeared to have been burned, then covered in a rush under only a few feet of soil. It was unlikely that either prayers or respect had been offered. That’s one reason I wanted a private moment to stand there alone and contemplate. A chance to sneak photos was another. But I minded my manners and said, “Rules are rules,” and followed Dr. Babbs and my friends toward the road.

The archaeologist had rushed us through a tour of two of the three dig sites and we were done for the day. No mention of ultraviolet light. And only a few remarks about the significance of scorched bones or finding Union buttons issued in 1864. He was more interested in setting the record straight on his dealings with Theo Ivanhoff. It was Theo who had alerted state archaeologists that he’d found a Civil War burial site on property that would soon be developed if Tallahassee didn’t act fast. State officials had contacted the feds. The feds had sent a one-person team: Leslie Babbs, a man of slight build and nervous mannerisms who relied on volunteers wherever his job sent him. Theo had volunteered full-time.

“It’s because we’re so damn underfunded,” Babbs said to Birdy. He had opened up to her because she was a deputy sheriff and because she had also witnessed Theo unlocking Dr. Babbs’s camper, pretending it was his own. “I knew what Ivanhoff was right away-a digger, an artifact hound. We see them all the time in my field. But he is charming. And quite smart. He caught on fast when the GPR arrived, once I showed him the basics. That’s something else that concerns me.”

“Ground-penetrating radar,” Birdy translated. She was in cop mode. Not making notes on paper but storing information in her head until on-duty officers arrived.

“Precisely. To a layperson, the unit resembles a lawn mower. You know, a machine on tires that you push. But that’s where the resemblance ends. It uses microwaves to penetrate the subsurface-radar that sees through the ground, in other words. Three-dimensional tomographic images that can be saved on a laptop. Very expensive. He had no right to do what he did.”

“The GPR is missing?” Birdy sounded hopeful.

“No, but he used it while I was away. It’s a calibrated system that requires tuning, so the computer keeps track. I left last Monday-an illness in the family. Since then, he’s put almost twenty hours on the thing.”

Birdy, walking shoulder to shoulder, said, “That’s a misdemeanor at best. And only if someone saw him-unless you gave Theo permission. You didn’t give him permission to use the GPR, did you, Dr. Babbs? Or your RV?”

“No,” he said. But tugged at his collar. “Well… not written permission anyway. That’s not what worries me. Theo was along last week when I made a remarkable”-he paused, aware that Belton, yet another amateur, was listening-“well, a rather interesting discovery. This was two days before I left for Louisville. Of course Theo expected me to say ‘Grab a shovel and let’s start digging,’ but that’s not the way archaeology works.”

“You wanted more images, to do some core samples,” Birdy suggested. Said it in a helpful way, but was, in fact, softening the man up.

“Precisely. No one was to touch that site until I got back. But…” He looked from Birdy to Belton, ignoring me, the quiet tagalong. “I don’t think I should say anything more until the police get here.” Hands in pockets, he shook his head. “My supervisors in D.C. will want answers.”

Birdy said, “He dug up the spot, didn’t he?”

Dr. Babbs grunted and ducked under the rope with signs that warned Federal Antiquities Site. Access Prohibited . “We’re so damn underfunded,” he said again. “Whoever handles this case, I hope you make sure that’s mentioned in the report.”

What had the ground-penetrating radar discovered? That was the obvious question, which Birdy, the smart cop, postponed by asking, “You said Theo is a digger, sort of a treasure hunter. How did you know?”

Spreading his arms to indicate this weedy field and trees, the old house screened by distance, he said, “Ask yourself how he happened to dig here in the first place. He wasn’t looking for Civil War materials. For one thing, there’s no record of a battle. And certainly no mention of a graveyard from that period. He doesn’t own the property. No, he was trespassing. But that never stops people like him.”

Belton, who hadn’t said much, asked, “What do you think he was looking for?” In reply to Babbs’s chilly stare, he attempted to explain, “When you get to be my age, even obvious answers aren’t obvious. Sorry if I missed something.”