LC 02 - Questionable Remains (14 page)

"If you remember anything else about Ken Darnell after
I'm gone, give me a call?" Lindsay reached into her pocket
and gave him a card with her car phone number on it.

"Like what?" he asked, trying to make out the writing on
the card in the darkness.

"Anything odd or out of the ordinary," answered
Lindsay.

"Sure, but that's all I know." He pocketed the card in his
shirt.

After saying goodnight to the others, Lindsay went to her
sleeping bag and turned in. She had a restless night filled
with strange dreams. She awoke with stiff sore muscles and
to a bloodcurdling scream.

A JOKE, LINDSAY thought at first. Some guy put a snake
somewhere for one of the girls to find. But the scream continued, and she heard some of the crew run past the tent. She
hurriedly got out of her sleeping bag, slipped into some
jeans, and ran to see what the commotion was. The sun was
just up, and the light was dim. The morning air was moist
with dew and cold.

"What is it?" Lindsay asked Jane when she ran past.

"I don't know, but it sounds like it came from this direction." She pointed toward a trail that wound down around
the hillside. They both followed other crew members who
were hurrying in that direction. The screaming had
stopped. Then more shouting-distressed, frightened
shouting.

When Lindsay and Jane arrived at a rocky area beneath
the bluff, they saw what had caused the distress. It was Gil.
He lay among the rocks. His right leg, bent at the knee, was
under him. His other limbs were at odd angles, draped over
the rocks on which he lay. His head leaned to one side. Alan
had climbed among the jumble of talus and was feeling for
a pulse in Gil's contorted neck, but there was no doubt. He was dead. Already the miniature army whose job it is to
reduce all dead things to dust had begun their work. Flies
buzzed, settling on the body, ants assaulted from the
ground. Lindsay smelled the faint odor of death that would
only get worse.

"He's cold and stiff," said Alan. Lindsay heard sobs. As
Alan moved away from the body, he brushed against Gil's
left hand, which caught on Alan's clothes. Because it was
stiff, the arm seemed to grab at him, and Alan almost stumbled. He cursed. As he climbed down, he inadvertently
moved the rock over which Gil's left leg was propped. The
lower part of the leg swung slightly and made Gil look animated. Someone gasped.

"We need to call the park ranger," said Lindsay. "Alan,
you and Jim stay with the body. The rest of you go back to
camp." Alan nodded slowly. They all had the confused look
that people have when confronted with sudden death-that
look that says, "But I just saw him last night."

Lindsay led the crew back to the camp. Jane fished in her
knapsack and pulled out a phone, strangely out-of-place in
this primitive setting. She dialed the ranger station, which
Lindsay noted she had programmed into the phone, and
told them to come, that there had been an accident, that one
of the archaeology crew was dead. Several people looked
shocked when they heard the word dead, as if saying it out
loud made it official. Gil Harris was dead and would not
rise off those rocks of his own volition.

After the call, they waited. At first in silence. Then one by
one, they asked questions. What happened? When did he
fall? What was he doing at the top of the cliff at night? It had
to be at night, because they all saw him the evening before
and they found him early this morning. It began to look sinister, and they all looked at one another and around them
into the forest, still dark because the rising sun had not penetrated through the canopy. Lindsay tried not to show the
anxiety she felt.

The agent in charge of criminal investigations in the
national park arrived on an off-road motorbike. He was
dressed in khaki pants and shirt and wore a gun in a holster
and a badge on his belt. He had short brown hair and a
clean-shaven face. Lindsay guessed him to be about thirtyfive years old. He parked his motorcycle and approached
the crew.

"Jane Burroughs?" he said.

Jane stood up. "That's me," she said timidly, as if she
were about to be accused of something.

"You're the site director who called?"

"Oh, uh, yes, I am," she said, and came toward the man.

He held out his hand. "I'm Agent Dan McKinley of the
FBI." He showed her his badge. "Where's the body?"

"This way," said Jane.

Agent McKinley told the crew to stay were they were and
that he was expecting others and to send them along.
Lindsay rose and followed the two of them. Dan McKinley
stopped and turned.

"Are you morbidly curious?" he asked Lindsay. Neither
his voice nor his expression was openly hostile, but his dark
eyes suggested that he meant business.

"No...," began Lindsay.

"Then why are you following?" he interrupted.

"Lindsay is a forensic archaeologist," said Jane hurriedly.
If that impressed the agent, he didn't let it show.

"There is something I would like to point out," Lindsay
told him.

"Then please, join us," he said. They walked to the scene.
Alan and Jim were there, standing as far as they could get
from the body, talking to each other, neither looking at the
corpse. Agent McKinley sent them and Jane back to the others
after he had asked the usual questions: Who found the body?
Had they touched it? Alan told him he only checked to see if
Gil was dead, but that he did stumble over some of the rocks.

When they were gone, Agent McKinley and Lindsay walked over to the body, gave it a quick look, then looked
up at the cliff. "You had something to say?" he asked.

"I saw Gil-Gil Harris, that's his name, last night around
ten. He was found around five this morning. That's, at most,
seven hours. However, rigor seems on its way to being well
established throughout the body. That suggests a struggle
that depleted the andescine triphosphate in his muscles,
accelerating the rigor."

"You think someone gave him a shove off the cliff?"

"I have only made observations at a distance that are suggestive. Many things affect rigor."

"Anything else?"

"Yes. When Alan stumbled over the rocks, the left leg
swung at the knee. If it's true that rigor is vastly accelerated
and has reached the legs, then the knee would be stiff,
unless it was broken after death in some way, as in a fall."

"Let's take a look."

McKinley took a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and
put them on. He tried to move Gil Harris's ankle. It was
stiff. He did the same to the leg at the knee. It swung easily.

"Sure enough," he said. "It looks like the boy was dead
for a while, then someone tossed him over the cliff. You
observed all this from a distance?"

"Yes."

Dan McKinley eyed her. "Rather observant, aren't you?"

"Observation is how I make my living."

He smiled for the first time. "Tell me, what is a forensic
archaeologist doing at one of these kinds of digs?"

"I mainly do prehistoric archaeology. I prefer it. But from
time to time I am called on to look at bones that are not in
an archaeological context. Right now, I'm supposed to be on
vacation. I'm just visiting. I came yesterday."

They turned at the sound of approaching footsteps. The
vanguard of the other army that deals with death, the
human one, had arrived. It was their various jobs to ascertain the cause of death and to begin the process that would delay the microbes and insects and lengthen by centuries
the time it took the body to revert to dust.

Agent McKinley questioned the crew members individually and separately about Gil Harris. Did he have any enemies? Was he suicidal? Had they seen anyone suspicious?
Did anyone have any arguments with him? Who saw him
last? All the answers were either "no," or "I don't know."
Gil Harris was a normal archaeology student from the
University of North Carolina who was interested in caves.
He was well liked, enthusiastic about the site, and led what
everyone believed to be a normal life. Lindsay, as it turned
out, was the last person to have talked to him.

McKinley interviewed her last. They stood by his motorcycle while the crew gradually drifted to their archaeology
tasks, mostly to keep their minds off the death of a fellow
worker.

"What did the two of you talk about?" McKinley asked
her, and Lindsay laid out the entire conversation before him.

"So, do you think there is any connection between Gil
Harris and this Ken Darnell fellow?"

"I don't know. It would be a strange coincidence."

"Do you believe in coincidence?" he asked.

"Yes. Life's full of them," Lindsay answered.

Agent McKinley smiled again. "You're right, but it is
interesting."

"I've gone over in my mind every nuance of his expressions as I talked to him, and there was just nothing about
him that was suspicious."

"I see. Well, if you remember anything, give me a call."
He gave her his card. "You're going to look into this Ken
Darnell business for the Lamberts?"

"Yes. I don't expect to find anything. It seems to be a
straightforward accident."

"Sounds like it, but if you find anything that connects
with this, let me know."

"I will."

It was well into the afternoon before the crime scene people came out of the woods carrying Gil Harris in a body bag
on a stretcher. The crew stopped what they were doing and
stood silently as they carried the body past them and headed down the trail. Lindsay, Jane, Alan, and Jim exchanged
glances. They had been through this before.

"Bad business, this," Agent McKinley said, looking
around at the archaeologists. "Mainly my work with the
Park Service has been to help the rangers look for poachers,
looters, and grave robbers. I left Los Angeles for a quieter
life." He shook his head. "Well, thank you, Dr. Chamberlain,
for your help."

"You're welcome. I don't suppose you'll tell me if you
found anything on the cliff or at the scene?" she asked.

"I'm afraid the information flows only one way: from you
to me. However, if you find out anything about the other
thing, maybe then we can share."

"Look, the crew here need to be safe. If there's some
maniac in the woods . . ." Lindsay hesitated, keeping her
voice low so that none of the crew would hear. "Is there
someone you could send?"

"At the very least, I'll have them checked on once a day. I'll
try to spare someone more often. In the meantime, tell them
not to go anywhere alone and to travel in twos and threes."

Lindsay nodded. Dan McKinley disappeared down the
trail on his motorbike. The crew resumed their work. Jane
and Alan came over to Lindsay.

"Was he murdered?" whispered Alan.

"I don't know," answered Lindsay. "Maybe. Agent
McKinley said not to let anyone go anywhere alone. He'll
have someone check in with you here every day."

"Who would do such a thing?" asked Jane.

Lindsay shook her head. She did not tell them about Ken
Darnell. She really didn't believe that there was a connection.

Esteban Calderon would have a permanent lisp. Because of the
lost molars, his cheeks were sunken. When the wounds to his face
healed, he would have conspicuous scars on both his cheeks. His
face, not a handsome one to begin with, had taken on a cadaverous
look as the swelling went down. Already, behind his back, his men
called him Calavera-death skull. These realities, added to the
fact that he was not any richer than when he arrived, made
Calderon a perpetually irritable man.

His cousins had told him another story from their travels with
de Soto's expeditions. Another story of treasure, which he had dismissed as too fantastic but which now seemed more believable. His
problem now was how to convince his men to continue along on
his quest. Maybe he wouldn't need them. This quest was different.
The treasure was smaller-it would not make him fabulously
wealthy like de Soto-but it would do. He would travel northeast
and catch up with Pardo. That would satisfy his men, then he
could make plans of his own. He would need only a few men.
Diego would be one. He could count on faithful Diego. Yes, that
would be better.

Roberto Lacayo had never before been on a war party. He had
not been allowed when he lived with his adopted tribe. This excursion with Piaquay was his first. He had, however, been on one
hunting party and found this similar. On both, he observed that
the Indians kept their bows strung most of the time, ready to use.
They were fast with their bows. Roberto had seen an Indian get off
as many as five arrows in the time it took a crossbowman to load
and shoot one bolt.

Roberto had no weapon. Even if they had given him a bow, he
couldn't have used it. That was one of the things he marveled at
the most. The Indians were so strong. They could pull a bowstring
back to their ear; Roberto could pull it only slightly, not enough to
send an arrow anywhere.