Beverly Connor - One Grave Too Many

When they finished marking the search lanes, the search area was about sixty feet by sixty feet, with the pit in the center. The north section was down a slope through thick underbrush terminating in another erosion gully, which took most of the runoff that used to go into the dump pit.

Starting at one end, they walked slowly down the strips with Diane setting the pace, scrutinizing the ground, using long sticks to gently move away leaves and other detritus to uncover bare ground. Diane wanted to finish this search before they stopped for lunch. She didn’t expect to find any clues dropped by the perpetrator, but did expect to identify bones scavenged and dragged out by animals.

The temperature climbed quickly. It was forecast to reach a hundred today. It felt like it had already topped out. Diane’s tee shirt was wet and her skin hot. She took a drink of water from a boda bag she had slung across her shoulder. She came upon the end of a long bone. It wasn’t human. She sunk a green flag in the ground beside it.

A searcher let out a short laugh. “I found an arrowhead.” His colleagues laughed with him. Under the circumstances, the archaeologists thought such a find to be ironic.

When they reached the end of the marked lines, they had completed half the search area. Switching to the remaining search lines, they began the slow search process again, looking and setting flags into the ground.

“I found a patella,” said one of the guys.

“Human?” asked another.

“Do animals have them?” he asked.

“Damn straight,” said a third guy. “My dog’s kept jumping out of place and he’d be all stiff-legged. He had to have surgery to tack it down. Cost me a fortune, but he’s fine now.”

“Go ahead and put a red flag beside it,” said Diane. “I’ll check it out later.”

There was more conversation during the last half of the search. But as Diane glanced at them, they never took their eyes off the ground. When the last leg of the initial survey was finished, there were small patches of flags around the pit from five to twenty-six feet-marking places where, in all probability, animals had dragged carrion from the pit. There were very few yellow flags. Diane wondered in passing if the guy had marked the arrowhead or simply picked it up.

“Let’s break for lunch,” she said, rubbing her sore back. “I know it’s sort of a late lunch. And I thank you for the good job you’re doing.”

They had all brought packed lunches and now looked for comfortable shade to sit down in and eat. The only shade was in the surrounding woods several yards from their search area. Diane found a rock beside Jonas Briggs and sat down with her peanut butter sandwich, apple and bottled water. She was more tired than she thought she should be. Must be old age creeping up on me, she thought, but there was Jonas, looking as refreshed as when he started. She took a long drink of water.

When she was in the jungle digging, on those occasions when she was close enough to get back to the compound in a reasonable amount of time, she’d sometimes drive a couple of hours or more and arrive so hot and tired she’d collapse on the cot in one of the two rooms she rented from the mission school. Ariel would come with a bottle of water, pat her arm and snuggle up to her. As hot as Diane was, Ariel’s warm little body was always a comfort. She’d tell Diane everything that had happened at the mission that day or what she’d learned in school. Diane would tell her a story, and before long she wasn’t tired anymore. Sometimes the worst of her feelings was regret-that terrible wishing that more than anything she had taken Ariel out of the country. The wish sucked at her heart, hurting all the way to her throat, filling her eyes with tears.

“The Abercrombies are letting the crew bed down on the floor of their den,” said Jonas, jolting Diane from her thoughts. “Mrs. Abercrombie’s a very gracious woman. She’s fixing us all supper this evening.”

“That certainly is nice of her.”

“It seems as though she likes to entertain, but her husband doesn’t. This is her chance. Lucky for us.”

Diane tucked away her sad thoughts and asked the crew members what each of them did. Two were looking for positions at universities, three were professional archaeology field-crew members, and two were working on their doctorates. During lunch she got a summary of their interests, which ran from taphonomy to pottery types and debitage, which was explained to her as the waste flakes from projectile-point production. Another of the doctoral students was about to explain behavioral-chain analysis when Frank and Whit arrived with the sheriff. Diane got up to greet them, feeling guilty at her relief for not having to listen to the explanation.

“How are things going?” asked Frank, looking out over the terrain of flags and string.

“Got a good start. After we eat, we’ll begin excavating.”

“I appointed a couple of deputies to stay at the site,” said the sheriff. “Maybe some of the guys would like to help them with guard duty. A couple of them said they always stay with their archaeology digs to warn off pot hunters. I didn’t know there were people out in the woods actually looking for the stuff. Seems to me you wouldn’t want to come upon somebody’s patch.”

“I think they mean people who steal artifacts,” said Diane.

“Oh, well, that makes more sense. Got a call from your-all’s chief of detectives yesterday.” The sheriff laughed. “He’s not real pleased with this project here. Thinks we’re interfering. I asked him how locating the rest of a body to go along with that foot bone you found in my jurisdiction is an interference in anything he’s doing in his city.”

“And?” asked Frank.

“Came down to he didn’t want me mentioning it to the newspapers that some of us think it might be connected to the Boone murders. God forbid facts might get in the way of his theory on the case.”

“What’s the deal with them?” asked Diane. “Why aren’t they anxious for leads? Even if they don’t lead anywhere, you don’t know until you investigate.”

“As far as they’re concerned, they’ve got the killers in jail and the case is solved. This is the first big test of the mayor and his new chief of police’s ideas for better police work. It’s the mayor’s chance to show the city council and the rest of Georgia that he’s a man who gets things done in a big-city way. I’m sure he’s making his campaign signs for governor right now.”

“So,” said Whit. “You have a collarbone and a foot bone. That’s at least one, maybe two people.” He suddenly laughed uneasily. “Two people buried here would look bad for us, wouldn’t it?”

Frank and the sheriff looked askance at him. “Yeah,” said the sheriff. “It sure would. One could be passed off as an accident. Two would be downright carelessness.”

“Lady,” Whit addressed Diane. “I really hope you don’t find more than one person here.”

“Right now we have a minimum number of one,” said Diane, almost smiling at his sudden discomfort.

“Oh,” said Frank, taking a large envelope from under his arm and handing it to her. “Here. I called your office, and Andie asked me to come by and bring this to you.”

Andie had written on the envelope: Fax from Ranjan Patel.

“That was quick. It’s the results from the stable isotope analysis.”

The phrase stable isotope analysis must have leaped out of their conversation and over to the crew, for suddenly they stopped talking and came over to Diane, carrying their sandwiches and drinking water.

“You had an SIA done on some material?” asked one of the doctoral students.