A Fugitive Truth

by Dana Cameron

  The door to the building opened and a heavyset man stepped out, wearing a down vest over a dress shirt and tie, along with a wool cap. As I approached, Chris sipped on a can of soda and leaned against the frame of the closed door, letting the weak March sun warm his teddy-bear face.

  I guess he hadn’t changed much in the years since we first crossed paths, archaeologists studying a similar time period and working within a couple of hours’ drive of each other, but the lines on his round face were a little deeper, and I got the impression that the cap was covering an ever-diminishing amount of wavy brown hair. The times we met were at conferences for the most part, though our e-mails were filled as much with personal updates as bibliographic exchanges. He and Nell were good people, into the work with a good balance of reality and idealism, juggling their growing family with complicated schedules, diminishing state and local budgets, and their mutual passion for colonial reenactment.

  I waved and he responded, tentatively, until I walked closer and he recognized me.

  “Hey, Emma! You still driving that piece of shit?” Chris and I had been friends since Bessy was a proud and recent acquisition.

  “Not for too much longer, if that nasty sound it was making up the last hill was any indication.” We shook hands warmly. “How you been, Chris?”

  “Overworked and underpaid. Damn glad it’s spring, though it always seems to come later and later out here. How about you?”

  “Much the same. Also underappreciated.”

  “I hear you.” He sighed and scratched behind his ear, under the cap. “Why, just last week, I managed to trim my budget without taking too big a bite out of the new programs Nell wants to do next year and without having to cut back on the old stuff. What thanks do I get? The finance committee got on my case for not having made the changes in the first place, and I caught a ration from Nell, who also called me a butcher.”

  “Sounds rough.”

  He shrugged. “Nah. It’s just the same crap every year. It doesn’t even bug me anymore. It comes with the seasons, right? I go home and complain to my wife about what kind of a magician I have to be to do the job I have and how whiny my staff is, and Nell comes home and complains to me that even after four years, her ungrateful boss asks her to do more and more with less and less. Then we have a drink and get the kids out of hock, and it’s cool.”

  I furrowed my brow. “Please tell me that by out of hock, you mean you pick them up from school or something.”

  “Daycare, but Todd’s off to big-boy school next year. He’s very impressed with himself.” Chris took another swig of soda. “God, listen to me. Between the bureaucracy and the kids, my vocabulary has gone into the poo-poo toilet. Save me, tell me what you’re up to. Something adult and archaeological, with artifacts and everything.”

  I briefly filled him in on the Chandler journal and what I’d been doing at Shrewsbury. Although he’d heard about the murders—how could he not?—Chris only stopped me to ask whether I was okay. I didn’t elaborate any further on that situation than to reassure him I was fine.

  “I just needed a break, you know?” I finished. “Get out of there, get out of myself.”

  “I hear you,” and that was the end of his questions. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Look, if you want, Nell’s in the activity room with a batch of fourth-graders. You can go watch her for a bit if you want, she’ll even put you to work, if you don’t move fast enough out of her reach. Or if you want, you can go check out a couple of the cellar holes we’re going to take a peek at next year. We have two definites—they’ve got flags—and one possible. We’re going to break for a late lunch in about twenty minutes, but they’re not far.”

  I knew right away how I was inclined. “I think I’ll take a walk and see if I can’t discover any more of your cellar holes. With the way my luck’s been running, I’ll probably find one by falling into it.”

  “Don’t knock it; it worked for me. That’s why I leave the fun to Nell these days, and hide at the desk. I can’t believe how much it takes out of me. It wasn’t that long ago that we were all indefatigable, was it, Emma?”

  He sighed, but looked content enough, I thought. “Not that long at all.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you in a bit. Just follow the trails around back. We trust you enough so you can move off the paths, no matter what the signs say.” He wagged a finger at me. “Just don’t go taking anything, now, young lady.”

  “Damn. There goes my funding for next year.”

  I went around back and paused at the window to watch Nell for a minute. She was a graying ash blonde, slender and looking lost in one of Chris’s old sweaters. The waiflike look was misleading, as I knew that she was all whiplike muscle from fieldwork and wrangling her toddlers at home. It took me a moment to figure out what she was doing; the window was shut tight, blocking out the sound in the classroom, and she had a group of kids helping her make a cake. That didn’t make a lot of sense until I realized she was teaching them about stratigraphy and how archaeologists look at the layers of soil on a site. The plate was put down first, the earliest “layer.” Then one layer of pound cake, a thick smear of frosting, a layer of sprinkles, another layer of cake, more frosting, some chocolate chips, and a final layer of cake, the frosting on top of that, and then gummy bears on the very top.

  My stomach rumbled as I watched her, as if by pantomime, show that to get to the earliest layers, a careful archaeologist or cake-eater had to work from the top down; I also noticed that she had them jot down how they ate the cake, recording the layers as they carefully exposed them with plastic spoons. I suppose that went a long way to take some of the sting out of hearing about how we learned about dating things, reasoning the layers on top were deposited later in time relative to the ones on the bottom. If she threw in a few of those gold-foil candy coins or some other goodies, she could have gone on about how we can work with artifacts whose dates we do know.

  God bless her, I thought, for having the guts to work with ten-year-olds, though perhaps their parents wouldn’t love them having a big chunk of cake at school, or learning to eat their food in layers, which didn’t bode well for future meals of lasagna, sandwiches, or s’mores. The kids were probably old enough to understand the concepts she was teaching them, but I personally never felt comfortable talking to anyone under twelve, in the instructional sense. Though if Marty’s kid was going to be my godchild, then I’d have to learn. But Nell had the knack of getting across to any age group, which was a talent I just didn’t have, nor did I have the patience to work on acquiring it.

  Nell caught my eye and held up a finger for me to wait for her until she’d finished, another minute. Then as the kids were cleaning up, she came over to the window, and raised it up.

  “Hey, you! What are you doing out here in the back of beyond?”

  “Clearing my head. You’re finishing up soon?”

  She glanced at the clock. “Another twenty minutes or so? Got time to stick around for a chat?”

  I nodded. “I’ll catch you on my way out.”

  “Good deal. See you then.”

  I followed the trail for about ten minutes. It was well maintained, different paths marked for different destinations, difficulty, and distances, and what’s better, it was nothing like the manicured woodlands at Shrewsbury. There was just enough honest mud, frozen, dried, and hardened into boot-shaped ridges, to remind me it was March. Even the air was different, more of a bite, and I could hear the sound of an eagle screaming as it soared overhead. The sky was pale blue and unbroken by clouds; it seemed to go on forever. Out by the highway, it seemed almost to race the stony hills to the horizon; here in the woods, the trees were the columns supporting the sky like the roof of a cathedral.

  As I walked along, I kept my eyes open for clues that would lead me to a cellar hole. Openings in the trees, perhaps a sparse stand of younger trees that had grown in the area after the house was abandoned and had collapsed over time. Collections of stones that were not n
atural, something more than glacial deposits. Stones that were squared off, worked, perhaps even with the telltale tool marks left by the feather and wedge used by some stonemason long ago to dress them. Fruit trees, perhaps the remains of an orchard, or roses, anything that had been introduced and cultivated by humans, or maybe even some clusters of native but opportunistic plants that throve on the edges of habitation sites, where there might be disturbed soil, waste dumps, or animal pens. Just one more example of how so often studying humans comes down to looking at their trash.

  The smell of dried leaves and earth was restorative, and settling into my old habits of field walking was a balm. I paused on the trail, squinting off to the left. Sure enough, in amid some fairly old oaks was a small cluster of flat stones, tumbled perhaps, but still in a roughly rectangular shape around an indentation. Taking advantage of Chris’s permission for me to go off the trail, I ventured into the woods to get a better look. It took me a moment, but then I found the flagging that my friends had used to mark the area. Satisfied that I hadn’t lost my skills, rusty as they presently might be, I continued on the path.

  I was just about to turn around, having walked for about twelve minutes, when I heard a gunshot. Hunters, I thought automatically, though the notion didn’t cheer me much, being dressed in dark colors and without any fluorescent safety gear. I didn’t think it was actually hunting season, but the shot sounded remarkably close by, though I didn’t have any idea how sound carried in the hills around here. More than time to get back, I decided.

  That’s when the second shot came, and this one was undeniably close.

  I whirled around crazily, but couldn’t see anyone sporting hunter’s orange. “Shit! Hey! There are people out—!”

  At that point, a third shot rang out, and I heard a heavy thud beside me; I felt a sharp pain in my cheek. I abandoned the ideas that it was hunters, licit or illicit, and I didn’t care to find out why anyone should be so careless. I was still hoping that it wasn’t deliberate, as I broke into a run. A fourth shot followed, and this time I could tell a tree had been hit, within feet of me.

  I tore down the trail toward the visitor center, but realized that the path was probably the least safe option: Whoever was shooting at me would know exactly where I was heading. I certainly didn’t want them to be able to find me, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to lead them back to the visitor center and all those kids, either. Operating under the assumption that whoever had the gun was behind me, I left the path and hit the woods, heading roughly back the way I’d come. As I entered a small clearing, I heard another sharp crack and dove behind a slight rise in the ground. That hurt as much as the shelter comforted me; leaves covering rocks in a shallow concavity didn’t much help to break my fall.

  “Emma? Emma!”

  I could hear that it was Chris: I didn’t want to answer, but I had to warn him. “Chris, don’t! Someone’s shooting at me!”

  “They sure as hell better not be!” he shouted even louder now. “I don’t know what the deal is, buddy, but I’m armed and you should get gone now!”

  I strained to hear, but couldn’t make out anything that sounded like anyone retreating. At the same time, there were no more shots. I waited still, unsure of what to do.

  “Emma?” Chris called. “Come on out, toward me. Keep talking so that I know it’s you, okay?”

  “Uh…”

  “It’ll be okay.”

  “All right.” I had a last look around, and couldn’t see anyone, not even Chris. “I’m coming out now. I don’t see anyone…”

  “That’s good, just keep coming toward me. Follow the path, if you can find it again.”

  “Uh, no problem.” I tried to think of something to say. “Um, I think I found another foundation hole for you.”

  “Yeah?” Chris called back, his voice cracking a little. “That’s good. Pretty big one?”

  “Not too bad.” I thought about what I’d used it for. “I would have liked it to be deeper, though.”

  “Well, come back next summer. It will be pretty deep after we get done excavating it. You think you can find it again?”

  By this time I could see Chris. True to his word, he had a shotgun in his hand, but he was sweating bullets, and breathing heavily, a Day-Glo orange vest hanging half off him.

  I hurried the rest of the way down the path. “Chris, I didn’t want to lead whoever it was toward the center. Toward the kids.”

  “Nell just put them on the bus; everyone’s fine. I doubt they even heard it.” Then he saw me up close. “Shit, you’re bleeding!” The alarm on his face made him look almost babyish. “Did you get hit?”

  “I didn’t think so—” But some of those shots had come pretty close, I recalled with a shiver. I reached out to Chris instinctively, and clutched his sleeve in my hand.

  “I think I see a piece of bark,” he said, going paler, holding my arm tight. “Maybe it’s just a splinter. Let’s get you back and get you cleaned up. And I’m going to call the cops.”

  “No! Don’t!” A panic almost as great as that in the woods threatened to engulf me.

  Confusion filled Chris’s face. “Emma? I gotta call the cops, I can’t just…”

  I shook myself. “No, you’re right…you have to call them.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I…nothing. I…just didn’t want any more police.”

  Chris didn’t say anything. We walked the long way around to his office, avoiding the windows of the classroom, just in case. He picked up the phone and looked at me. I nodded, and Chris called the police. He then pulled a first aid box out from a steel cabinet and put on a pair of surgical gloves. He probed gently at my face, and I felt a sharp pain as he hit something. “You got a big-assed splinter in here. I’m going to take it out, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  He worked carefully, but I could feel the blood flow when the splinter was removed. Chris took his time blotting it up and applying disinfectant. “By the way, I don’t advertise that I keep a shotgun out in the truck. I don’t like to take any chances, not with the kids around.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Did you see anyone? Do you think it was…something to do with the other stuff? At Shrewsbury?”

  “I didn’t see anyone, but the bullets just came faster when I called out to whoever was there.”

  “Hmm. Any idea who it might have been?”

  “Not really.” But the number of suspects had just been increased by two, if Detective Kobrinski had to release Paul Burnes and Gary Connor. I felt a sharp pain as the disinfectant found its way into the wound. “Ouch!”

  “Now, you’re all right. I’m done,” Chris said with the practiced calm of a father. He cleaned up the discarded wrappers and gloves and put the box away. “I don’t think you’ll need stitches or anything.” He paused as he shut the cabinet door.

  “Emma. Do me a favor? Talk to your cop about this, okay?”

  I nodded. “I’m going to call the investigating officer as soon as I get out of here.”

  Chris looked at me funny, and I realized that he seemed a little sick.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Nell was suddenly in the doorway, her face waxen. “Christopher Marlowe Hensley, you tell me what I just heard outside! And what is that thing doing around your neck?” She tugged at the hunting-orange vest that still hung crazily off Chris.

  “Uh. There were shots. I was worried about Emma.”

  He didn’t need to say anything more. Nell saw the shotgun propped up against the cabinet.

  “You asshole!” She crossed the office in two steps and shoved her husband in the chest. “Don’t you know—?”

  “Yes, of course I do. Why do you think I…?”

  By this time, Nell was sobbing, hanging onto Chris by his shirt. He was crying too, not making any noise at all. I wished I was a million miles away; this was all my fault, I couldn’t help but think.

  Sirens sounded nearby.

  Nell quieted down; Chris pull
ed out a hanky and handed it to her. She shook her head, pulled out her own, and wiped her eyes and nose. “Trust us to get pregnant, right before a vacation.”

  “I knew we would, we always do. St. Bart’s?”

  “Better hope it’s a boy. What would we name a girl?”

  “Bartina? Guadalupe?” Chris screwed up his eyes, concentrating. “Maybe Gustavia?”

  Nell shuddered. “Better hope it’s a boy.” She turned to me. “We were going to St. Barthelemy in a couple of weeks. We name the kids…well, usually we go on vacation, we even think about going on vacation, we get a kid.”

  I was about to suggest she change travel agents, but I bit my tongue. “Congratulations.”

  Nell turned suddenly on Chris. “And you, if you know I’m pregnant, don’t go running into the woods with a shotgun!”

  “This is my fault,” I interrupted. “If I hadn’t been here…”

  “Don’t be stupid, Emma.” Nell cut in. “You don’t know who was out there. Big guy should have a little more sense, no matter what.”

  “I was thinking of you…” he began, but he already sounded lame. “I wasn’t going to let anyone hurt you.”

  “Don’t be a dope.” She kissed him again, suddenly all business.

  I wasn’t about to bring up the fact that Chris had probably saved my life. I didn’t want to believe the shots had anything to do with me, and admitting that he had would bring it home to me.

  The three of us went outside and waited for the cops to come. When the squad car arrived, Chris and Nell looked relieved.

  “Burke’s a friend of mine,” Chris explained. “Good guy.”

  “You guys okay, Chris?” the officer called as he emerged from the vehicle.

  “Yeah, Burke, we’re okay. This is Emma, she’s the one who was out there.”

  The cop was on the shorter side of average height, but with a barrel chest that seemed to compensate for his lack of inches. “What happened, ma’am?”