Diana Palmer - Before Sunrise

“What can I do for you?” she asked professionally.

He looked at her for just a few seconds too long. His eyes darkened. There were shadows in them.

He pulled the notepad out of his pocket, crossed his long legs, flipped the pad open and checked his notes.

“You spoke to the man the day before his body was found,” he repeated. He took out a pen. “Can you tell me what he said?”

“He told me that a construction company was trying to cover up a potentially explosive archaeological site,” she replied. “Neanderthal remains.”

The pen stilled and he lifted his eyes to hers. He didn’t say a word.

“I know, it sounds preposterous,” she replied. “But he was quite serious. He said that the company was deeply in debt and afraid for the site to be discovered, for fear of being bankrupted during the excavation that would follow.”

“There are no recorded Neanderthal remains anywhere in North America,” he replied.

“I have a degree in anthropology,” she replied coldly, insulted by the insinuation that she wouldn’t know that. “Would you like to see it?”

His eyes narrowed. “You’ve changed.”

“So have you,” she bit off. “Back to the subject at hand, please. I know it sounds outlandish, but the man seemed to know what he was talking about. I tried to trace his number. He’d blocked it.”

“They found your number on a pad beside his telephone, in a motel room. he registered under a false name and address. His ID is missing, except for a card designating him as a member of a national anthropological society.”

“If someone stole his credentials, why didn’t they take that, too?” she asked.

“It was under the bed. His wallet was thrown on his bed, empty of everything except a twenty-dollar bill. They must have emptied it there. Maybe they tore up the anthropology society ID card and that piece of it fell and they didn’t notice. Pretty good work otherwise, though. No obvious clues, although I had our crime technician check the room with a blue light for latent prints. There were none. I sealed off the room and I’ve already got our crime unit on the scene,” he added, naming a group whose purpose was specifically to gather and process trace evidence.

“How about footprints? Tire tracks?”

He shifted restlessly. He was recalling, as she must be, their cooperation in tracking down a polluter outside Charleston by following tire tracks. It was a time when she was young and full of life and hope and ambition. It was a different world.

He forced himself not to look back. “It’s early days. We’re checking that out. Had you ever heard his voice before?” he added.

She shook her head.

“He didn’t mention the developer’s name, anything that would help find him?”

She shook her head again.

He grimaced. “There are a number of possibilities, I’m told. Meanwhile,” he added, putting up the pad and pen to pierce Phoebe’s eyes with his own, “you’re the only link we have to a murder.”

“I could be the next victim,” she assumed.

“Yes.” He bit off the word, as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.

“I’ve already been told that. I have a dog,” she said. “And one of the deputy sheriffs is giving me shooting lessons tomorrow.”

Something touched his face, something cold and angry. “Do you have a gun?”

“He’s loaning me a pistol.”

He thought for a moment. “I’ll see what I can do about some protection.”

She stood up. “You and I both know that no law enforcement budget is going to provide around-the-clock protection for me. Marie’s cousins have offered to keep an eye on me,” she added.

His eyes narrowed. “This is not a civilian matter.”

“That’s good, because they aren’t civilians. They belong here. They live on the reservation,” she replied sweetly. “And you may have jurisdiction there, but you’re not going to be met with open arms, either. They don’t like feds.”

He glared at her and she glared right back.

“Three years,” he bit off.

“Your choice,” she returned icily. “Haven’t you got a crime to investigate, Special Agent Cortez? Because I’m quite busy myself.”

She walked to the door and jerked it open, her face so hostile that Marie, walking toward her, actually turned in midstep and went the other way.

Cortez unhooked the sunglasses from his vest pocket and shot them over his eyes and nose. “I’ll be in touch,” he said curtly.

She almost made a sarcastic remark, but it wouldn’t help. Nothing would help. Dragging up the past would only make things worse. She had other concerns, not the least of which was her own well-being.

He walked out, apparently not expecting a reply. A minute later, she heard the engine start and the car pull out onto the highway. He didn’t even spray gravel when he left. He was more controlled now than he had been when Phoebe knew him, and that was saying something.

Marie came into the office a few minutes later, watching her boss warily.

“So that was him.”

Phoebe wanted to deny it, but there was no use. “Yes.”

“No wonder you came up here in the middle of nowhere to work,” she replied. “That’s more man than I’d want to try to handle.”

“My sentiments exactly.”

“Drake isn’t going to like him, I think,” Marie mused.

Phoebe wasn’t listening. “I’ve forgotten a lot of my training,” she murmured to herself. “But I do remember that nothing has ever been found in North Carolina older than the last Ice Age, around 10,000-12,000 Before Present Era. The man did mention something about finding the skull in a cave…” she added slowly.

“This whole area is honeycombed with caves,” Marie reminded her. “Don’t you remember those stupid stories about our huge stockpile of lost Cherokee gold? As if we had anything left after we were rounded up like cattle and walked all the way to Oklahoma in 1838!”

“Of all the tragic stories I know—and I know some—that hurts the most,” Phoebe said quietly. “I can’t even walk through the Museum of the Cherokee Indians without being reduced to tears. It was a terrible mistake on the part of Andrew Jackson and local governments.”

“Gold fever,” Marie said. “We were in the way.”

“Yes. But your family escaped,” Phoebe reminded her gently. “So did a few others.”

“Not enough of us did,” Marie said sadly. “But, about that gold—there are lots of caves.”

“Any at those construction sites?”

“There’s a mountain that adjoins all three of them, near a river, and it’s honeycombed with caves,” Marie said. “They were bulldozing near them last week. Chances are that no matter what that man found, if it wasn’t inside a cave, it’s a pile of rubble by now.”

“What if,” Phoebe wondered aloud, “we could get an injunction to halt construction everywhere until we had time to look?”

“What if we got sued by starving construction workers?” Marie asked, putting things into perspective. “Plenty of men from the reservation work for those companies. It’s going to hit a lot of families hard if we shut those companies down. And how would you get the authority to do it, anyway?”

Phoebe grimaced. “I wish I knew.”

They went back to work. Alone in her office, Phoebe tried to come to grips with Cortez’s unexpected presence in her life. It had wounded her to have to see him again with the past lying between them like a bloodied knife.

She wondered why he’d come here. He couldn’t have known she was working nearby. He’d obviously been back with the FBI for some period of time, to be assigned to this case. But where was he working out of?

She tried to recall every single word the murdered man had said. She pulled up a blank file on her computer and started typing. She was able to reconstruct most of their brief conversation, along with putting color into the man’s accent. He had a definite Southern accent, which would help place him. He had a way of talking that sounded like a bad stutter, or a lack of cohesive thought. He’d mentioned two people, a developer and another person who was apparently feeding him information. That might be useful. He’d opened the door and someone had called to him while he talking to her, definitely a woman’s voice. It had been at exactly 3:10 p.m. the day before. None of it was worth much alone, but it might give the authorities something more to go on.