Burials

by Mary Anna Evans

  “But I think I know where she is. It’s where I’d be if I were her.”

  “Tell me.”

  So Faye had pointed at the spot. The darkness was so deep that she could barely see the pointing index finger at the end of her arm. “Over there. Does that help you any?”

  Cloud had cursed, then he had assigned her to an armed officer with a night scope and a heat sensor who would be glued to her side. Then he had cursed some more, because Joe was approaching with a light in his eye that said he too expected to risk his life tonight.

  Roy Cloud didn’t know what Faye and Joe could do yet, but he would soon. In the few minutes left before daybreak, their skills might save a life or two.

  ***

  The source of the cries for help was found quickly, but it was not Kira Denton. Brian Hannity, the officer assigned to swing by and check on her periodically, was lying crumpled in a corner of the excavation.

  “I heard gunfire, two shots, so I left my vehicle and ran toward it. Being stupid, I forgot you said there was a big hole in the ground, Chief.”

  Cloud’s voice was gentle. “It’s not stupid to be so dead-set on helping your fellow officer that you run in the direction of an active shooter. It’s not the way to live to a ripe old age, but it isn’t stupid.”

  “Where’s Kira, Chief?”

  “I don’t know.”

  ***

  Faye wouldn’t have wanted to be a lurking fugitive, listening to the officers taking possession of the woods, tree trunk by tree trunk. They took cover behind each tree of any size, used their heat sensors and night scopes to assess their surroundings, then moved forward with their firearms drawn. With them came powerful lights and the voices of well-trained people focused on a single goal. They were here to find their fellow officer.

  Bleck and his partner were on the way, but the chief hadn’t wanted to wait. If all went well, Kira Denton would be safe and sound before Bleck’s famous nose came on the scene. If not, Bleck would find her. Or he would find her body, but Faye didn’t want to think about that.

  Overhead, the helicopter hovered, shining its light wherever Roy Cloud told the pilot to shine it. The noise of its blades was constant. It rattled Faye’s heart in her chest.

  Their first goal was to find Officer Denton, but their second goal was to track down the person who had fired two shots in these woods for Brian Hannity to hear. Cloud had mustered everybody he could and he had deployed all the resources he had, but there is always a limit to what is humanly possible. The truth is that the world is big and there are only so many officers of the peace. It was entirely possible that a fugitive could get past the officers patrolling the perimeter, and it was entirely possible that the helicopter pilot would be looking in the other direction when it happened. All they could do was their best.

  Faye moved into the woods with the second wave, behind the officers in the forefront who had cleared their way. She pointed out a path to the spot where she believed Kira Denton would have stood guard and the man at her side radioed it to everyone else. After the first wave of officers had cleared each area, Faye and her companion moved in behind them.

  When they reached the clearing where Denton should have waited, Faye was heartsick to find it empty. She had been so sure.

  She stood in the middle of the open patch and spun in a circle, imagining where she would go if she were a police officer under attack. After spinning once with her gaze focused outward, she spun again with her eyes and flashlight on the ground. The officer at her side handed her his night scope, so she spun again.

  On this pass, she saw a dark streak that shook her faith in everything. She had so wanted to be wrong about Kira’s safety. She had hoped they would find her hiding, even injured, but the streak of blood at her feet was too dark, too wide, too terrifying.

  “Here!” she said. “She has to be nearby. She was bleeding too much to get very far.”

  The smear led across the clearing in the direction of the excavation, growing broader and darker with distance. Between the clearing where they stood and the open pit, the body of Kira Denton lay huddled behind a cedar tree. She’d been shot through the chest.

  ***

  Faye and Roy watched the paramedics maneuver the stretcher carrying Brian Hannity through trees and brambles.

  “Well, our killer is a good shot. Came damn close to putting a bullet through Kira’s heart,” Roy had said, wiping his eyes. “But that don’t mean a damn thing. The countryside is full of good shots around here. I know kids who could do that.”

  The approaching stretcher carried Brian Hannity, who had been lucky enough to only break a rib and a leg. He had also banged his head against the ground hard enough to knock him unconscious.

  A meter is only slightly more than three feet, and that isn’t very far to fall, but Brian Hannity had been running at top speed in the dark. He’d had no warning that he was about to hit the ground hard until his feet left solid ground and he launched into the air. He hadn’t even had time to throw out his arms to cushion his fall.

  If he had fallen with his head cocked at a slightly different angle, he might have broken his neck. At another angle, he might have suffered a head injury very like the one that killed Sophia Townsend. As it was, he had lost a dangerous amount blood from the places on his leg where broken bones protruded through the skin.

  Brian Hannity had been lucky enough to be lying unconscious and quiet in a corner of the excavation in the critical moments after Kira Denton’s death. The shooter, who hadn’t had any reason to suspect that he was there, failed to notice him in the dark, even while descending into the very same hole. Despite his concussion, Brian Hannity had woken with enough clarity to know that he did not want this person to see him, so he had hidden there without a sound until he was sure that the intruder was gone.

  Hannity had passed in and out of consciousness after the shooter left and before the police arrived, but the sounds of voices and sirens and gathering cars and an approaching helicopter signaled that these were people who were not trying to kill him. This had seemed like a good enough time to stop playing dead. He’d called for help until Joe had led a team of paramedics to the spot where he waited.

  As the stretcher passed, Roy ran to Hannity’s side. He trotted alongside the fast-moving stretcher, holding the wounded man’s hand and listening to him talk. The paramedics carrying Hannity wanted him in a hospital, immediately.

  Hannity had begun calling out information as soon as Roy drew near, like someone who kept remembering things and wanted to make sure he got them said. And maybe he was right to worry. Faye could see that mud was ground deeply into the terrible injuries on his leg. He could already be succumbing to infections or exposure or shock or the stress of long-term unrelieved pain.

  Hannity never stopped giving evidence while he was being carted to a waiting ambulance, trying to spit out the information while he still could.

  “Didn’t see who done it.” Fear made his voice loud and his words fast. Faye could hear every word.

  “Kira was on the far side of the pit. Heard a shot. Couldn’t get her to answer me.” He paused to drag some air into one damaged lung and one good one. “So I headed her way. Wanted to help.”

  “That’s what good partners do. And you’re a good partner.” Faye had seen Roy’s eyes sweep Hannity’s body from head to toe, assessing his condition in much the same way a physician would have. His glance lingered on the man’s torn pants leg, stiff with blood and filth.

  “Thought I could get to Kira if I used trees for cover. I went over the edge with my ears still ringing from the shot that took her. Guess I’m too clumsy for the bad guys to find me.”

  “Don’t say that. You didn’t do anything wrong,” Roy said to Hannity as the stretcher passed where Faye stood. “Nothing.”

  “Laid there on the ground for a long time. Don’t know how long I was out. W
hen I woke up, somebody with a flashlight was right down in the pit with me. Digging.”

  Faye wanted very much to be at the bottom of that pit. She needed to see what the shooter had done to Sophia Townsend’s grave and to the artifacts buried in it, but she had to wait until Agent Bigbee was ready to let her go down there. Until he and Roy Cloud were sure the killer was gone, she would be sitting here watching the police get control of the scene.

  Later, when Cloud and Bigbee gave the all-clear and when the sun lit the place where Sophia Townsend had lain for all those years, Faye would be able to see what was left there. But not before.

  Excerpt from the field notes of Dr. Sophia Townsend

  June 30, 1987

  My fellow archaeologists are full of shit.

  I haven’t gone to a professional conference in years, because I endured enough of their shit when I was in graduate school and during my abortive academic career.

  I’m good at what I do. I am. But I don’t suffer fools gladly, so I burned through five graduate advisors before I escaped with this PhD that qualifies me for a job that barely puts a roof over my head. I got this worthless degree by finding the least competent professor in the department and making myself indispensable.

  No, that’s not true. I acquired a graduate advisor by making myself so indispensable to Henry the Ass that he had to listen to me call him an ass whenever the situation demanded it. I made myself so indispensable that he was even afraid to hit on me. This made me something of a folk hero among my fellow female graduate students, whom he pawed regularly.

  I got my degree by writing a seminal paper that would assure his bid for promotion to full professor when he slapped his name on it as first author…then refusing to hand it over to him until he signed my application for graduation.

  I was justified. He would have kept me as his galley slave forever if I hadn’t forced his hand.

  The last time I went to a professional conference, Henry the Ass was presenting a paper and I attended the presentation. He started sweating the minute I walked in.

  During the Q&A session, I asked him a question about “our” paper that could only have been answered by someone who had read and understood it. Then I walked out and left him to flounder in front of hundreds of colleagues. And I did it quickly, before I was tempted to put him out of his misery by answering the question for him.

  Back in graduate school is when I got into the habit of using my field notes to…um…express myself. Henry the Ass certainly never looked at them. My clients don’t.

  If I should ever make an earth-shattering discovery, yeah, future scholars might comb through my notes to glean new insights on my work long after I’m dead. They might find my notes entertaining. Or, to put it more honestly, future archaeological scholars might comb through my notes in hopes that they might be able to cobble together a paper of their own out of tiny scraps of my original work, overburdened by great gobs of their own inanity.

  Psychological scholars might use the quirks of my field notes to write a few papers of their own.

  This is how academia works. If you can’t come up with a new idea, steal somebody else’s.

  Cut it up. Repackage it. Pretend it’s new.

  Fortunately for me, my career has been a long chain of boring jobs. Boring potsherds that are no different from anybody else’s. Boring flint tools that are no different from anybody else’s. And this job, with the lovely Muscogee name of Sylacauga that somehow looks Greek, too…it will be no different.

  It will be no different.

  No one will read the final report. No one will read any paper I might choose to write about it, and let me be honest and say that I’ll never get around to that.

  I don’t know if I’ll do this kind of work forever, but I’m doing it now, so here I am. I might as well amuse myself by insulting Henry the Ass in this notebook he will never see, and by using my dwindling sex appeal to wreak some havoc.

  Today, I tortured poor Ladybitch, who keeps dating men because she has no idea that she likes women better.

  Tomorrow, I believe I will unbutton an extra button at the top of this faded work shirt. I’ll pull on my tightest work pants, the ones that make my thighs look like they did when I was twenty-three. And I’ll spend the day pitting Idiot and Stupidface against each other and against poor Ladybitch.

  If the Hulk were still here, I might feel a few sexual fireworks myself, but he has decamped. I must make do with what I have.

  Watching two thirty-something-year-old men and one twenty-something-year-old woman suffer with the hots for the same thirty-seven-year-old body is somewhat entertaining. It makes working in this flat, hot, Godforsaken corner of nowhere almost tolerable.

  At the end of the day, as always, one of them will be invited to stay late to “help me finish putting away the tools,” and the other two will go home alone with their own useless tools, knowing that they lost today’s contest for my affections.

  Yep. That should be fun.

  Chapter Thirteen

  After Kira Denton’s body was found, Faye watched Cloud and his officers shift from searching for their friend to a full-out manhunt. The traditional word “manhunt” made Faye wonder whether the shooter was a man or a woman. At the moment, the shooter was a genderless shadow who might or might not be waiting in the darkness of the thickly wooded area that surrounded the Sylacauga site’s open excavation. Could that same shadow have been responsible for the gunshots that had terrified her just a day before?

  Possibly, probably, the shooter was gone. Possibly, probably, the shooter had fled after killing Denton, after failing to kill Hannity, after stepping down to the floor of the excavation to muck about with history and its relics.

  Had there been time for a clean getaway?

  Perhaps the shooter navigated in the dark through trees and the surrounding pastures, presumably to a waiting car. Or perhaps not.

  The risk that someone was waiting behind a tree to take out more of his officers had been too great for Roy Cloud. As soon as the edge of the sun had cleared the horizon, the chief had deployed the helicopter to pin down any fugitive still on-site, then he had deployed the search team and Bleck to search, tree by tree, the woods beyond the spot where Kira’s body had lain.

  Faye’s stomach growled and her groggy brain wished for its morning coffee. The thought of coffee reminded her of Sly, who seemed to be staving off his cravings for alcohol with a steady flow of caffeine.

  “We should have told your dad we were leaving. Or at least left a note. He’ll be worried.”

  “Didn’t think we’d be here this long. He’s still asleep, or we would’ve heard from him by now. I’ll text him. He’ll check his phone as soon as he gets up, so he’ll know where we are before he has time to get worried.”

  “Good idea,” Faye said, and then Sly was immediately gone from her thoughts. She leaned back in the passenger seat of their rental car, thinking of Kira Denton.

  Faye had never heard Denton speak a pleasant word, but the woman had gotten the job done. She had died getting the job done, just like Sophia Townsend. Faye didn’t have to like either of them to admire their dedication, their drive, their competence.

  Faye had been raised to be nice, trained by her genteel Southern mother and grandmother to behave just like they did. Most of the time, those genteel ways didn’t stand in the way when Faye needed to get something done. Usually, they provided a nice social lubricant that made her life run smoother.

  But sometimes they slowed her down. Sometimes people took advantage of her gentle nature. There had been times when Faye had wished she could be more like Kira Denton and Sophia Townsend, willing to let people dislike her, if need be.

  It was possible that some people thought that the deaths of nasty people mattered less than the deaths of lovable ones. Faye wasn’t one of them. She grieved the deaths of two people so prickly that there
might not be many others to grieve them. She figured she owed Kira and Sophia that much.

  ***

  The text from his son came before Sly had finished spooning dark-roasted coffee into a filter. He hadn’t even known that Faye and Joe were gone. It wouldn’t have felt right to disturb his married son’s time alone with his wife. Sly had been counting on the warm, brown smell of brewing coffee to lure them out of their bedroom to visit with him.

  He looked forward to his time with the two of them, just sitting around and talking about nothing. They were young, and just sitting around was something that never occurred to them. At home, they had children to tend and jobs to do. Here, away from the children, they never thought to use the time to relax. Instead, they’d found a way to bring their work with them, though as a man with a come-and-go job and bills to pay, Sly could hardly blame them for that.

  But even when the work was done, they didn’t know how to be still. Faye wanted to drive up past Tulsa to a national park where she could see a prairie full of bison. Joe wanted to take Sly’s battered john boat to the river, so he could show Faye some of his favorite fishing spots. They’d even invited him to join them.

  These weren’t bad ways to spend their time, and they were exactly the way that people their age did spend their time. Trouble was, the phrase “spending your time” came to have a different meaning when a man got to be Sly’s age and noticed that there was only so much time left.

  While the coffee dripped, he put on his reading glasses and studied the screen of his phone. Joe’s text said that there was trouble out at the Sylacauga site, where they’d found what was left of Sophia Townsend. It made him sad to think of what time had done to a strong, vital woman. And sexy. He might as well admit it. The woman had possessed a sex appeal that he was hard-pressed to explain.

  Usually, a man could point to the things that made a woman appealing. Big eyes. Big boobs. Curvaceous hips. Long legs. Long flowing hair. Had Sophia had any of those things? Nope.

  She had been a small woman with boyish hips and close-cropped black hair. Not big boobs and not small ones, either. If her eyes had been big, he’d never noticed. All he had noticed was the way she looked out of them at the world and found it wanting. Maybe that was the secret to her appeal. A man wanted her to look at him and let him know that he was enough. And not just men. That’s what Emily Olsen had wanted, too.