LC 02 - Questionable Remains

by Beverly Connor

  "Back up, I said." He was nervous. It must have been easier with Denny, who hadn't known what was coming. Lindsay imagined it was harder for Scott when his intended victim knew what was going to happen. He was not a natural-born killer, but he was still a killer.

  "So Ken killed him," she said.

  "Yeah. We marched him up to the cliff with a gun on him. Ken said he had a proposition he wanted Gil just to listen to, that he didn't want to hurt him. He hit him with a tire iron when his back was turned. Just stunned the damn fool. He got up and tried to fight. I tried to calm him down, tell him it was just an accident, but he knocked me to the ground. Ken hit him again and killed him." Scott sounded as if he regretted it. Probably that was the one that made him feel like a killer. He could rationalize the other, but not Gil.

  "That must've been nerve-racking," Lindsay said.

  "It was. We waited on the cliff trying to decide what to do. We hadn't planned on anything like that. It rattled us both. We went back to the van and left. Then Ken got the idea we could use it to our advantage. It would be more dramatic to throw him off the cliff. I didn't want to go back, but Ken said that what we wanted was for you to go home. He said if a dead body didn't do it, nothing would. You've got to be the most relentless person I've ever met."

  "You actually went back?" Lindsay was surprised.

  "Yeah," answered Scott. "Ken loves to live on the edge. I think he enjoyed the risk of it "

  Lindsay moved suddenly, picking up the telephone receiver, hitting his gun hand and stabbing him in the neck with the knife in one motion. She had decided on the plan when she first saw the gun and had mentally practiced it while he talked. She knew she could do it. If she could climb the wall of that shaft in the cave and hang over a bottomless pit, she could do this.

  She bolted, unlocked the door, and nearly flew up to the main office. Dr. Kerwin, the acting head was there, so was his secretary, Edwina. They stood and blinked at her when she tried to tell them to call the campus police. Finally, she reached for the phone and called them herself.

  Chapter 19

  AGENT MCKINLEY CALLED. Lindsay was in her office working on an article. "Just wanted to catch you up on the latest. We have a tight case against the lot of them. Even if confessions weren't pouring out of Kelley Banks and Timothy Scott, we would have enough evidence. That was his thumbprint on the x-ray. He was very surprised. By the way, Scott's wound in the neck was superficial, and he's recovered nicely. So if you're the kind who worries about that kind of thing, don't. When we find Ken and Jennifer Darnell, we've got them, too. Seems little Miss Meticulous Jennifer missed a couple of things. First, we got a partial fingerprint of hers off the burned-out bulb from the flashlight."

  "You're kidding. You mean mine didn't smudge it?"

  "You didn't have any fingerprints to speak of. By that time you had worn yours off in the cave, and your skin was very dry from being dehydrated. Luckily, you didn't happen to rub hers off when you removed the bulb. Luckily, too, you kept the bulb."

  "Harley told me to never leave anything in a cave except footprints." Her mind flashed to her panties and she smiled.

  "Harley?"

  "An old boyfriend."

  "Good advice. Apparently Jennifer didn't know that the West Builders cap in the back of their van belonged to you. She just thought it was left over from construction workers. It had a couple of your hairs in it, along with some root tissue. So, if you'll give us a sample of your DNA, we'll match it up and place you in the van."

  "That's really good news. I can't tell you how relieved I am," she said. "I meant to ask Scott, while I had him here holding a gun on me, why they put a magnifying glass in the backpack. Everything else was regular caving supplies."

  Agent McKinley laughed. "I know the answer to that one. Jennifer thought you would have one, because you were supposed to be going to the cave to do detective work."

  "Oh." Lindsay shook her head and smiled.

  She hung up, feeling better. She was having fewer nightmares now, fewer incidents of waking up in a panic. Oddly enough, she found she slept better without a night-light. It was the light that seemed to trigger her attacks-fear that she had left her flashlight on, that its batteries would run down and she would be in the darkness forever. She looked up from her thoughts to see Grace and her family standing in the doorway.

  "Hi," said Marilee, smiling and waving her tiny hand at her.

  "Hi, yourself," said Lindsay. "Come in."

  "I came to apologize," said Grace. "I know I wasn't very gracious when you came out to the place to bring Joshua his knife. I know-I knew then-that none of this is your fault. Ken did terrible, terrible things. It's just that it hurt, and right or wrong just doesn't seem to make any difference in the hurt."

  "I know," said Lindsay. "He's still your brother."

  "Yes. He always will be. And I am glad he's alive. But it just doesn't seem like the same person I knew and grew up with did all those things. I'd like to blame it all on Jennifer, but I know that's not fair."

  "I'm very sorry about Kelley," said Lindsay. "I know she wasn't involved in any of the really bad things." Lindsay selected her words carefully in front of Marilee and Joshua, though she had imagined they had heard the worst.

  "No. She may be disbarred, but they don't think she'll have to go to jail."

  "We really want to say we're sorry for what Ken tried to do to you," said Miles. "That must have been just a terrible ordeal."

  "It was. I can't deny that, but I'm better. How did you like the knife, Joshua?" she asked.

  "Neat. Did it belong to the guy you found in our field?"

  "Maybe. Can't say for sure. I can say he is definitely European."

  "How did he die?" asked Joshua.

  "Don't know," said Lindsay. That wasn't true exactly. From a nick on the front of his cervical vertebrae, she suspected his throat was cut, but she didn't want to say that. "He's still being analyzed. My students are having a good time with him. They are putting his skull measurements in a computer model. We can probably come up with what section of Europe he came from."

  Grace and Miles merely nodded.

  "What's his name?" asked Marilee.

  "The students call him Pierre. We don't know his real name. We do know he was between sixteen and twenty years old. He had no diseases that we could see on his bones, but he didn't get enough to eat to keep him healthy. Let's see." She wrinkled her brow trying to remember. "He was left-handed, and probably a soldier. He limped with his right leg, because he had a healed wound to his right calf that had been made with a sword. That makes us believe he was fighting with other Europeans, since the Indians didn't have swords."

  "Maybe they thought he was an Indian," said Joshua, "because of the ear whatchamacallits."

  "Could be," said Lindsay. "At that time the French and Spanish were fighting over the New World; your knife was French. It's an interesting puzzle. But we're learning things about him. As I said, my students are having a great time."

  Marilee tugged on her mother and whispered in her ear. "Go ahead," her mother said.

  Marilee took something from her mother's purse and gave it to Lindsay. "She made that for you," said Miles.

  It was a plaster cast of Marilee's hand in a paper plate, spray-painted silver and decorated around the edge with a red crayon in a zigzag that looked liked an Indian. Lindsay fought back tears as she hugged Marilee.

  "I really like this," she told her. "Thank you."

  They left, and Lindsay sighed and thought about Derrick. She was reaching for the phone to give him a call when Dr. Kerwin walked into her office. "We have a prospective student," he said. "At least that's what she says she is."

  "You have doubts?" asked Lindsay, raising her eyebrows at him.

  "She may be, well, a spy," he said in a low voice.

  "A spy?" asked Lindsay. "To spy on what, for whom?"

  "You'd better talk to her." He walked out, leaving Lindsay bewildered.

  She was enlighten
ed when a young Native American woman walked through the door and sat down in a chair. "That guy's weird," she said.

  Lindsay grinned at her. "He thinks you may be a spy. We don't get many Native Americans wanting to be archaeologists."

  The woman, who looked about nineteen, grinned back, showing a beautiful even-edged occlusion. "I don't suppose you do. Some of my relatives think I'm nuts."

  "What can I do for you?"

  "I want to be an archaeologist."

  "Tell me about it," said Lindsay.

  "I'm a Lumbee Indian. You know what that means, don't you? We are the original lost tribe."

  Lindsay did know. The Lumbees are the largest Native American population in the southeast and have utterly and completely lost their original Indian culture. When they were first reported and written about in the 1800s, they spoke only English, lived like whites, and bore no trace of the culture from which they came.

  "Many people," said the young woman, "including other Indian tribes, don't think we are really Indians, but we are. Look at us. Where else did my black hair and shovel tooth incisors come from?" The woman's dark eyes shone with earnestness.

  "I agree," said Lindsay.

  "I want to find my history and the history of my people, and I figure this is the career to do it with. With the new stuff they're doing with DNA and everything, I think there is a good chance I can."

  "You're right," agreed Lindsay.

  "I have this idea that maybe some of our culture did survive, it's just hidden."

  "Where?" asked Lindsay.

  "In family stories handed down generation after generation. I want to collect them and compare them with known Indian myths and legends, and with historical accounts. I know there is something there. Things just don't completely disappear."

  "That's a very good idea," said Lindsay.

  The young woman smiled again. "And I think there is something I can find out in the family names as well. You know, don't you, that even though a lot of people don't think our ancestors were the Indians who absorbed the Roanoke colonists into our tribe when they mysteriously disappeared, we have more than two dozen surnames from people in the Roanoke Colony among our people. I think that says a lot. I think that maybe that's what happened to our culture. We absorbed so many Europeans into it, their culture began to dominate." She raised her chin as if expecting Lindsay to disagree.

  She did not. "I have often speculated about that," Lindsay said, "and believe that the whole question of where the Lumbees came from can be solved by looking at those things you mentioned, including the designs on their art and belongings passed down through the generations."

  "Art. I didn't think of that one," she said. "That's a good idea, too." She pulled a small pad and paper from her purse and began to write. "I write down all the ideas where I can get clues," she said. "This is something I really want to do. I know our history is out there somewhere just waiting to be dug up in some fashion. Do you think I can come to school here and work on it?"

  "I think that is a very valid direction for research. And assuming your grades are fine, I'm sure you can come here. By the way, my name is Lindsay Chamberlain. I guess Dr. Kerwin told you. What's your name?"

  "Bobbie. It's really Roberta-one of those family things you get stuck with." She wrinkled her nose. "Roberta Lacayo."

  Author's Note

  JUAN PARDO'S SECOND expedition took place from September 1567 to March 1568. For purposes of this story, I had his expedition take place in the summer. Unlike de Soto's expedition, Pardo had no horses.

  Residents of Tennessee may notice that I took some liberties with their geography. The caves of Grand Serpentine and Hell Slide do not exist, nor does Ellis County.

  The stories of Piaquay and his people, though based on what is known both historically and archaeologically about the Indians of the southeast, are fictional, as are the archaeological sites Lindsay visits.

  Estaban Calderon is fictional, but there is historical and archaeological evidence that his portrayal is consistent with events surrounding expeditions of Spanish conquistadores of the period through what is now the southeastern United States. The character Roberto Lacayo is also fictional, but explorers did become lost and lived among the Indians, where they learned native languages. When found by subsequent expeditions, many became interpreters between the Spanish and native people.

  THE LINDSAY CHAMBERLAIN MYSTERY SERIES

  1 RUi%IOR OP

  BONES

  BEVERLY (ONNOB

  Bones don't lie.

  But forensic anthropologist Lindsay Chamberlain had not bargained for this kind of trouble when she signed on with the archaeological dig at the Jasper Creek Site. Who is the mysterious woman unearthed in burial twenty-three? Since she's only been in the ground fifty years or so, she certainly isn't party of the ancient Indian village they have been excavating. The trouble is, she's not the only unexpected find. Body after body has surfaced in the town of Merry Claymore, and some of the graves are very fresh.

  When the local sheriff asks for her help in identifying the victims, Lindsay can't say no. As she and her crew are drawn into the maelstrom of suspicion, accusation, and terror raging between those who want the truth unearthed and those who want it to remain buried, Lindsay's special expertise with bones could be the death of her.

  A Rumor of Bones is the first volume in the Lindsay Chamberlain mysteries, which feature solutions to crimes that did not happen just yesterday.

  FROM CUMBERLAND HOUSE PUBLISHING