Burials

by Mary Anna Evans

  Cloud continued to doodle in the margins of his notepad. Faye could hear his pen scratching on the yellow pad. Sometimes he stopped writing and fiddled around with his phone.

  For reasons she couldn’t pinpoint, she was as nervous as a cat. The scratching of Cloud’s pen made her want to reach over and smack it out of his hand. Without looking up, Cloud said, “Dr. Longchamp-Mantooth, would you like to ask Mickey a question about some things that he might have seen dug up at the Sylacauga site?”

  She wasn’t sure whether word had gotten out about the figurine and pearls, because she didn’t know how close-mouthed the medical examiner was. She’d just asked Emily about them, but she hardly thought Emily had immediately called Mickey to tell him. They didn’t seem like best buddies. She knew Cloud wouldn’t have told anybody about the potsherd, and the federal forensics people had left shortly after it was found. She decided to ask questions that gave no information away.

  “Do you remember finding anything unusual while excavating the Sylacauga site?”

  “You mean other than tons and tons of dirt?”

  “You know that I do.”

  Her voice was calm and cool. Mickey looked surprised that she hadn’t laughed or been offended at his ham-handed attempt to evade the question. She hadn’t reacted at all. At that point, he apparently decided to take her question seriously.

  “I found a couple of arrowheads that were real pretty. I think all of us found those sometime during the summer. There were also a lot of chipped-up and ground-down pieces of stone that didn’t look like much until Sophia explained them to you. She’d show you that this one was sharp on one edge, like a knife, and that one had a dent in it where somebody rested their finger while they used it for grinding. I won’t lie. It was an interesting job. I’d gotten a second major in anthropology in college, but I didn’t really understand a lot of what I learned until Sophia explained it to me.”

  “You don’t recall finding any pottery? Jewelry? Bones? Anything like that?”

  “No, but Sophia sure did want us to.”

  “Nothing else memorable?”

  “Nope. Just chipped-up rocks. Some of them were pretty.”

  Finally, Cloud looked up from his yellow pad and held Mickey’s gaze for a moment. If he’d been waiting for the man to get nervous or fidget, he was disappointed. “Am I right to suppose that you are the one who spread the rumor that Dr. Townsend had left Sylacauga, retreating to her weekend cabin?”

  “I didn’t start that rumor. That wasn’t me. I’d already heard it before I headed out to Arkansas. If I didn’t have an inkling that she’d gone to her cabin for good, I would have been a lot more worried before I went out there. When I did go out there, it looked to me like the rumor had been true at first, but then she’d packed up and gone someplace even further away from Sylacauga. Can’t say I blame her. I should’ve left this town years ago.”

  “Do you remember who told you the rumor first?” Bigbee asked.

  “Nope. If I had to guess, I’d say it was Emily.”

  “Not Kenny?” Roy’s tone said that he was going to ask specifically by name about everybody who might have spread that key piece of gossip.

  “Nope. Kenny doesn’t talk much, so I remember it when he does talk. Now that I think about it, I’m sure it was Emily that told me.” He leaned forward with a conspiratorial air. “Is it just me, or does Emily seem a little unbalanced?”

  ***

  It wasn’t just Mickey and Faye who thought Emily was unbalanced. Cloud’s body language told Faye that he felt the same. The man was obviously uncomfortable sitting across the table from Emily and asking her questions. Bigbee looked about as off-balance as Cloud did.

  Every time Emily revealed an inappropriate behavior like “I was the first one to come to work every morning so that I could have a little alone time with Sophia” or “She pretended like she didn’t like me, but I knew different by the way she looked at me,” Cloud leaned a little further back in his chair. It was as if he were running away from her while still staying in the same room.

  He asked her to repeat the story she’d told Faye about her trip to the cabin, and she gave him details that were completely consistent with what she’d said before. Mickey had backed up some of her story, so Emily was turning out to be Cloud’s star witness. Too bad she creeped him out completely.

  Faye pressed Emily to remember anything historically interesting that the team had dug up. Emily reminded Faye about the potsherd and bone that they’d already discussed, and she remembered that they had all uncovered stone tools. And that was all.

  Emily’s response to the question of the day—“Are you sure it was Mickey who told you that Sophia Townsend had left her job to stay at her weekend home full-time?”—wasn’t at all helpful.

  “Now that I’ve thought about it, I believe it was Kenny. I’m pretty sure about it, because I asked him a lot of questions about why she left and how she was doing and whether she was coming back. He just kept saying, ‘I don’t know.’”

  Just before Kenny was ushered in, Faye whispered, “What do you bet he says that Mickey told him? That would send the rumor in a complete circle.”

  But Faye had forgotten to account for one suspect. After Kenny had stated for the record that he never visited Sophia’s cabin and that he didn’t remember any particularly interesting finds, Cloud asked him a confusing array of questions about what Sophia Townsend had been like as a boss. When the repetitive questions finally cracked the even-tempered Kenny’s cool, Cloud asked Kenny that all-important question.

  “How did you hear the rumor that Dr. Townsend had left the project to live in her weekend place?”

  “Alba Callahan was the one that told me she’d gone to her cabin. She said that everybody knew that was where Sophia took her lovers. Alba said she figured that having a job had cut into the time Sophia needed for sleeping with other women’s husbands, so she’d quit it so she could wreck homes full-time. And before you ask, yeah. That’s what my wife thought of Sophia, too.”

  The rumor circle was eventually completed during the next interview, when Alba answered their questions with, “Yes, that is exactly what I said to Kenny about Sophia and her philandering, and it’s exactly what I thought of her as a human being.”

  This time Cloud wasn’t retreating in his seat. He had regained the confidence born of many years on the force, and he was leaning forward with his eyes locked on Alba. “But who told you that Sophia had gone to the cabin?”

  “My husband, of course. Mickey was always very concerned with where Sophia Townsend was and what she was doing.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Faye wasn’t sure how much longer she could watch Roy Cloud scribble. It seemed to be taking him longer to organize his notes than it had taken to interview the subjects in the first place. Bigbee was using the time to catch up on his e-mail, but Faye didn’t like to handle business in front of a client.

  While waiting, she had nearly memorized the contents of Cloud’s office. There was a map of Creek lands on the wall, next to a historical map of Oklahoma when it had been the old Indian Territory. There was an array of neatly shelved books. Some of them were law books and forensics texts, but there were a few novels tucked among them. Faye could picture Roy spending the occasional lunch break flipping through the pages of a book that took him to faraway places, but not to stay. She couldn’t imagine Roy Cloud living anywhere but east Oklahoma.

  There was only one personal photo in the room, a small one in a frame covered with tiny, handset beads. It showed a younger Roy and a woman who must have been his late wife. Between them stood a teenaged girl dressed in a cobalt blue dress. It was high-necked with a square yoke and a ruffled floor-length skirt. The beaded crown on her head made her nearly as tall as Roy. Her oval face and full mouth were very like her mother’s, but her relaxed bearing and warm eyes were all Roy.

 
“You got any grandkids, Roy?”

  He didn’t even look up. “I wish. Evelyn isn’t even thirty yet, so there’s still lots of time.”

  Faye got the message that she should quit interrupting him or he’d never finish, so she spent a few minutes admiring the lovely Evelyn and her sweet-faced mother.

  Finally, Roy looked up from his notepad. He looked remarkably calm for a man who had to be kicking himself for forgetting that there was an Arkansas.

  “You heard them all, Roy. Nobody can agree on who started the rumor about Sophia running off to her cabin,” Bigbee said.

  “Emily can’t even agree with herself,” Faye pointed out. “Nobody remembers finding the figurine and pearls. And nobody but Emily remembers finding the potsherd and the bone. Did we just waste the whole day interviewing four people who told us nothing we need to know?”

  “You haven’t spent much time questioning people, have you? You have to learn to read between the lines.” Cloud pushed his notepad across the table to her. Bigbee, looking over the police chief’s shoulder to read his notes, started to laugh.

  Cloud had written pages about what the witnesses had said, then he had summarized the key points on a page all by themselves.

  •Mickey Callahan went to Sophia Townsend’s cabin after she died. Now that I know it was in Arkansas, I can go there myself. I imagine Bigbee’s going to want to go, too.

  •Mickey Callahan obviously went to the cabin before Sophia disappeared at least once, or he couldn’t have found it. Oh, I guess he could have followed her the way Emily did or maybe Sophia had told him where it was, but let’s go with the simple answer. Seems like a man who maybe took at least one weekend trip with his lover. Presumably he went to the cabin with her or she told him how to get there.

  •Emily Olsen went to the cabin both before and after Sophia disappeared. Sophia did not tell her how to get there, and she was not pleased when Emily followed her there the first time. Emily has been carrying a torch for Sophia for nearly thirty years, and she was very happy to finally be able to unload on us. Most witnesses are not happy to talk to me, but Emily stayed for two hours, even when I was actively trying to get her to leave. This is not the behavior of your average guilty person, but Emily is certainly not average.

  •Alba Callahan was pretty confrontational this afternoon, considering that I’ve got nothing on her. Her husband was the one that did wrong, not her. Lots of people get cheated on, but not many of them commit murder. Why was she so touchy?

  •Kenny Summers is hiding something.

  •Emily Olsen couldn’t hide anything if she tried.

  •I would not care to be alone in a room with Emily Olsen. I’m not sure I’d care to be alone in a room with any of them, but especially not her.

  •None of them will admit to seeing the figurine or the pearls. Only Emily will admit to seeing a bone that might have been human.

  •Emily remembers finding that potsherd. The others don’t seem to remember it, but I don’t want to read too much into that. It might not have seemed all that exciting to them and it’s been nearly thirty years. A bone, though. Finding a bone that might be human seems pretty memorable.

  •Dr. Longchamp-Mantooth is pretty sure that we found a piece of Emily’s potsherd in the hole with Sophia. It wasn’t there when we first dug her up, but it showed up after the killer dug around in her grave. Not sure what that means.

  •They all want us to believe that they thought Sophia just took off, but none of them seems the least bit surprised to find out that she’s dead. None of them even seem sorry about it, except for Emily.

  •Sometimes I just want to wipe that smug grin off Mickey Callahan’s face. It pleases me to no end that he knows what it’s like to have and lose a woman like Alba.

  Faye slid the notepad back across the table toward Roy. “Your notes remind me of Sophia’s.”

  “I didn’t curse as much as her.”

  “You didn’t curse at all.”

  “Sometimes I do.”

  Bigbee chuckled again.

  A tentative knock sounded.

  “Yes?” Roy said.

  It was Emily. “I was thinking—”

  She took a step into the room. “I thought maybe, um—”

  She edged a little closer and Faye felt herself solidly in Roy’s camp. Emily weirded her out and she felt herself physically drawing away from the woman, just as Roy had. Faye wouldn’t relish being alone with Emily any more than he would. The time she’d spent with her that morning had been more than sufficient.

  “We should have a funeral,” Emily said. “For Sophia.”

  “Maybe we should leave that to her family.”

  Emily took a big step forward, moving directly across the table from them.

  “She doesn’t have any family. Didn’t, I mean. No brothers or sisters. No aunts or uncles or cousins that she ever spoke to. Her work was her life. We worked with her, so we were her family. We were the last family she ever had.”

  Now that she’d begun speaking, the words poured out. “Kenny, Mickey, and me—we should hold a memorial service. It should be at the site, because that’s where we were all together with her and that’s where her grave has been. We’ll have to find another place to bury her when the investigation is over but—oh, I’ll think about that later. I’ll organize the memorial service.”

  “Okay…” Roy dragged out the word as if to say, “I’m not sure why you’re asking me this.”

  “I hope you’ll both come. You, too, Agent Bigbee. You’re trying to get justice for her, and I’m grateful. I want to do it tomorrow. I think it should be a sunrise service. She would have liked that. So many indigenous cultures timed their ceremonies with the motion of the sun, you know.”

  Sunrise. Of course, Emily would want to do this at sunrise. Rousting other people out of bed at dawn seemed to be what she did best.

  ***

  Faye, Roy, and Bigbee had firmed up some end-of-the-workday details, like looking up when the sun would rise the next morning. If they were going to go to Emily’s sunrise service, getting there on time was the least they could do.

  Faye was ready to leave Roy and Bigbee to their work. Bigbee seemed more than ready for her to leave.

  She’d gotten the feeling that he considered her superfluous, and that was fine with Faye. Sophia Townsend’s notebooks were calling her and she was starting to feel her lack of sleep, but she remembered one thing that she wanted to tell Roy before she went home.

  “Emily wants to know if she can have Sophia’s necklace when this is all over. You know, the silver necklace shaped like a sigma.”

  “Emily’s not shy about asking people to do things or give her stuff, is she?” Roy said.

  “Nope.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” The hooded black eyes caught hers. “Most people would have blown Emily off. Not you. You invited her into your home. You listened to her story about her relationship with Sophia, which is more than a little disturbing. You spoke to her respectfully during questioning, and you did it again just now. You’re even willing to be the go-between for Emily’s weird little request for the necklace she just yanked off a dead woman’s skeleton. You’re a good woman, Doctor Faye. You have heart.”

  It felt almost like Roy was taking this opportunity to explain to Bigbee why she was on the job, and Faye was surprised by how much this touched her.

  “You’ve been nothing but respectful to all these people, Roy. They’re lucky to have you here to keep the peace.”

  Before Faye could excuse herself and go home, a man in a uniform opened the door.

  “You texted that you wanted me to interrupt you when I got the information. Right, Chief?”

  “I did. What have you got?”

  “I talked to the sheriff’s department in Crawford County, Arkansas. They dug up
a report filed back in 1987 when they checked up on Dr. Sophia Townsend’s wellbeing.”

  “No kidding? They found it this fast? It had to have been on paper, maybe handwritten. I figured they’d sent all their old stuff to some warehouse somewhere and we’d have to wait for them to dig it out of deep storage.”

  “Nope. They found it, scanned it, and e-mailed it to me. It was the very devil to read that officer’s chicken-scratch handwriting on a computer screen, so I printed it for you. Here you go.”

  He handed a page to Roy who gestured to the man that he could leave.

  After a moment, Roy handed it to Bigbee and said, “This report tracks with everything Mickey told us. Even better, there’s enough information here to get us to that cabin. I think we should go tomorrow.”

  Bigbee nodded without looking up from the page.

  “If there’s any information left under those old sheets Mickey says she put on her furniture, we will find it,” Roy continued. “For once, I’m glad you’re here, Bigbee. No offense. It’ll be a helluva easier for you to get us onto private property in Arkansas than it would be for me.”

  Taking the page back, he handed it to Faye. “Here. Take a look.”

  “Mind if I take a picture for my files?”

  “It’s public information. Be my guest.”

  Faye centered the document on her phone’s screen and snapped a picture. Then she skimmed the document, which described a long series of backwoods roads that ended in a dead end in front of Sophia Townsend’s former front yard.

  He took the report back. “I suppose we might find something out on that mountainside that’s in your bailiwick, Doctor Faye. I don’t know—a potsherd or some more pearls or something. Can you come with us?”