Burial Ground (20 page)

The waves lapped at the beach, ten feet below, and a log with a red rope around it nudged the shore.

A red rope. I blinked.

“Look.” She was pointing, because she saw it, too.

We scrambled down the sandy slope together and stood looking down at the object before us.

It wasn’t a log at all, but the body of a man. The rope wasn’t a rope, but red suspenders. And I knew where I’d seen those red suspenders last: They’d been worn by the man we were searching for, Absalom Moon.

E
IGHTEEN

“He must have fallen in or been dumped someplace upstream,” I said.

She stared up at me. “What do you think we should do?”

“Drag him up on the bank and then call the sheriff.”

She nodded. “Right.”

I reached down, found his belt loops, and tugged while she pulled at his shoulders. Between us, we got him half onto the beach and then managed with our next effort to pull him the rest of the way. The body was waterlogged, paler than it had been in life, and when I turned him over I saw the river creatures had done a job on his face. Or maybe he’d been hit by a ship’s propeller. It didn’t much matter at this point.

She stooped and washed her hands in the river and I knelt beside her.

“It’s murder, isn’t it?” she said.

I shrugged. “Probably. But he could’ve fallen in. It’ll take an autopsy. Let’s see your phone.”

She pulled it out of her pocket and punched the
on
button.

Nothing happened.

She gave me a guilty look.

“I forgot to charge it last night.”

“Then I reckon we’d better get back to the boat.”

We made our way to the top of the bank and then started toward the point of the island. I knew the temperature hadn’t changed but it suddenly felt colder and a chill passed over me.

When we reached the point the chill became a deep freeze.

The boat was gone.

“Could it have slid back down into the river and floated away?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Not likely. I think somebody pushed it.”

We stared at each other.

“Then whoever killed Absalom is nearby.”

“Maybe,” I said and bent to look at the ground. The sand was a confusion of boot tracks and drag marks from the boat and it was hard for me to tell if there were any tracks besides our own.

I thought of the frequent river traffic: tugboats with barges, launches, dredge boats. They could all generate waves that could lift a small boat. But nothing had passed since we’d been out here, unless it had been on the far side of the river, during the rain. A wave traveling from that distance would have weakened too much to do anything, though.

I stood up and looked at the misty hills. It would be a long trek, in near darkness. My pack had been left in the boat, with my compass, GPS, and flip phone.

“What now?” she asked and for only the second time since I’d known her I thought I noticed hesitancy.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. She started down the slope toward me and all of a sudden the sand slid out from under her and she gave a little cry of pain. When I got to her she was sitting on the beach, holding her ankle.

“Damn, damn, damn,” she swore softly. “I think I sprained it.”

I bent down beside her. “Did you feel something pop?”

“No, but it hurts like hell. Let me sit here for a minute.”

I nodded. “I’ve twisted my ankle before,” I said. “I know how it feels.”

“That doesn’t help.” She reached out to me: “Here, give me a hand up.”

I bent and put my hand under her arm, and she struggled to her feet. For a few seconds she hesitated and then she slowly transferred her weight back to the injured ankle.

She gave a little yelp and raised her hurt leg.

“It’s no good,” she said. “Lower me back down.”

I let her settle slowly onto the sand. She sat there for a moment, rubbing her ankle and then she uttered a little cry of despair.

“Well, I’ve made a real mess of it,” she lamented. “Now we’re stuck.”

“It can’t be helped,” I said.

“Aren’t you mad at me?”

“Did you do it on purpose?”

“Of course not. But I acted like such a b—”

“Yes?”

“Anyway, I’m sorry.”

I nodded, then reached down and grabbed her arm again. “Come on, I’ll help you to the top of the bank.”

She gave me her arm and grabbed me around the waist. Together we struggled up the west bank, my knees sinking into the sand, until we were both crawling our way upward. When we got there we sat side by side, panting.

“You’ll have to leave me here,” she said.

“No way we’ll stay until morning. Together.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” I spotted her pack a few feet away, on the ground. “Do you by any chance have any matches in there?”

“Sure. And a penlight.”

“Good. I’ll get some wood. Do you have a knife or anything we can scrape off the wet bark with?”

“A hunting knife,” she said. “Are you going to try to make a fire?”

“No, I’m going to
make
a fire.” I checked my watch. Four o’clock and the rain was still falling.

I went to the trees and began to hunt for dry wood. I wished I felt as confident about being able to make a fire as I’d sounded. Here and there, though, where sticks and branches lay facedown on the ground, I was able to feel a dry side and I dragged the bits and pieces out to where she sat and took off my poncho and covered them.

“You’re going to get soaked,” she warned.

“I’m already soaked,” I said. “Besides, we need a fire. It’ll keep away the insects, and any boat that’s passing will see it. Then we can use the flashlight to signal.”

“And the person that took the boat?”

“I’m hoping they escaped in it,” I said.

She looked up at me and nodded doubtfully, then pointed to her pack.

“There’s something else in there,” she said. “An army survival manual.”

“Where did you get that?”

“It was my brother’s. He was in Desert Storm. I kind of held on to it.”

I went to her pack and felt around until I found it, a small, brown paperback book in a plastic pouch. I glanced over the contents. How to tell directions without a compass, how to live off the land, how to make a fire … I slipped it back into the pouch and put the pouch back into the pack.

“I’ll use it if I have trouble,” I said. “Right now, about all we can do is hope the rain stops.”

I sat down next to her on the sand. A few seconds later she struggled out of her poncho and handed me an edge. “Put it over your head,” she said. “We can both fit.”

I felt her warmth against me and listened to the steady patter of raindrops on the plastic. “I guess we should have left earlier, when you wanted,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“No use crying about it now,” I told her.

“I just get so wrapped up in my work … I love archaeology. I really do.”

“So do I. It’s a character flaw.”

“But you’re a man. It’s harder for a woman. I had to fight every step of the way. How can you get men to take you seriously when you’ve got a name like Pepper? They all think it’s so cute.
Pepper Ellen
. What a nice little girl.”

“You’re talking about people like Oldham. Well, we aren’t all that way. And sometimes, when we get the feeling somebody’s pressing too hard, well …”

“Yeah.” She rubbed her ankle. “I feel like it’s swelling.” She started to unlace her boot.

I helped her loosen the boot and touched her ankle. She flinched.

“Can you move it?”

“I don’t know,” she said, but I saw her foot move slightly up and down and then from side to side.

“I don’t think it’s broken,” I said. “The best thing to do is wait for the swelling to go down and then try to put some weight on it.”

“Yes, Doctor,” she said with a grimace. “So what do we do if a boat doesn’t pick us up?”

“I don’t know.” But I thought of our flight through the hills, with our unseen pursuer throwing things at us from above. I didn’t look forward to a repeat of the episode, trying to support
her
with one arm. “I’ll think of something,” I said. “Maybe Marx has a quotation for the occasion.”

“Marx?” She turned her head to look at me. “Oh, I see: You think from what I said last night about the slaves building the levees that I’m a Marxist.”

“It was in fashion when I was a graduate student,” I said.

“It still is in some places. And I think he was right about some things. But I don’t go much for
isms
of any kind. Besides, I was trying to get to you.”

Her admission caught me by surprise. “Why?”

“You seemed so together, so sure of everything. Like you thought you were my uncle, giving advice to this little girl.”

“Your uncle?” I snorted. “I’ve been called a lot of things …”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

A small river of water coursed down a crevasse in the plastic covering and started to drip on my leg.

“No insult.” I sighed. “I’m just feeling my age.”

“You’re not old,” she protested. “Not more than ten years older than I am. Well, fifteen at most.”

I sucked in my stomach without thinking. “More or less.”

The pattern of raindrops on the river had become barely discernible. I held out my hand. The rain had subsided into a fine mist.

I crawled out from under the cover and began to work on the pile of wood, trimming off the wet bark with the knife and trying to shave the dry places into tinder.

“Want a suggestion?” she asked.

“No.”

“Try my field book,” she said, reaching into her pack. “It has a lot of blank pages.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?”

It was a new surveyor’s transit book, the kind that costs fifteen bucks, with waterproof pages, but except for the first few leaves, the rest was blank and I ripped them out and crumpled them. I arranged my dry wood over them, small pieces first, and then got out one of her matches and lit the paper. The paper flared and I watched the bright flame eat away at the paper, then die into ashes. I cursed under my breath and lit another match. By the fifth match I was beginning to think it was useless, but then some of the smaller twigs caught and then the tinder, and in a few more minutes I had a small fire.

“I’ll go get some more pieces of wood,” I said, taking her penlight. “It ought to be able to dry out if I put it closer to the fire.”

She scuttled over to the side of the blaze and I sat down beside her.

It wouldn’t be so bad, I told myself, if only we had some food. And if we could forget about the dead man a few hundred yards down the beach.

“I feel like Robinson Crusoe,” she said. “Do you really think a boat will pass?”

“I don’t know. All we can do is listen.”

She shuddered. “This isn’t like the Charles River. This is so big it scares you. It’s almost like there might be things in the depths, things that are waiting to come up …”

I didn’t say anything because I’d often had the same thought.

Finally I turned to look at her outline, faintly limned by the firelight.

“Pepper, why did you really come down here?” I asked.

“I…” She started to answer then stopped and picked up a small twig and broke it.

“It won’t do any good to tell me it was because of some economic analysis you did. You knew what a hard time you’d have before you ever got down here, am I right?”

She nodded silently, like a child caught out in a lie.

“So what was it? You running from a bad love affair? It’s understandable, you know. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

“It wasn’t that,” she said in a voice almost too low to hear. “I’m not running away, I’m looking.”

“Looking?”

She nodded. Something plopped into the water and I saw her flinch.

“I was born in 1964,” she said. “Just before the Vietnam War got going good.”

She drew a haphazard line in the sand with the twig.

“He went to the war,” I said softly.

“Yes. In 1969, when I was five years old. He never came back.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thanks. It left me and my mom and my brother, Chad. Chad was two years older than I was. We were close. He always looked after me. He was affected by dad’s death worse than I was. He always said he wanted to join the army, be like him.”

I waited, listening.

“His chance came in 1985, when he finished college. He went off to the service and took airborne training. He came home on leave and he seemed to like what he was doing, almost like he was proving something. Then Iraq invaded Kuwait and we sent troops over to Desert Storm. He came back with a chestful of medals but he was never the same.”