LC 04 - Skeleton Crew (23 page)

"Harper, your feet. Where are your shoes? You didn't ..."

"Long story," she said.

"What happened?" asked Lewis. "Are you all right, Bobbie,
Lindsay? An hour ago we found your boat drifting along the
shore. We were worried sick when you didn't return last night."

"Someone sabotaged the boat and yanked out the radio while
we were in the restaurant," said Harper. "The motor quit on us in
the middle of nowhere. We had to row ashore and spend the night
on the other end of the island."

"My God," Trey exclaimed.

"It wasn't too bad," said Harper. "We walked straight across
the island. Only made one side trip, hardly worth mentioning.
Lindsay's a great trailblazer."

Lindsay, Bobbie, and Harper sat around a table in the lab and
related the story to Trey, Lewis, John, Agent Ramirez, and
Lieutenant Damon of the Coast Guard, who listened to the narrative with the proper gaping-mouth expressions.

"Are you sure it was a body?" asked Damon. "From your
description, you all were pretty hysterical."

Harper leaned forward with her elbows on the table and stared
at him, unblinking.

"It's true I was sinking in quicksand at the time, and Bobbie had
a rotting arm in her hand, and the two of us may have been excited
to the point we couldn't recognize the shape of a man. However,
let me tell you, Lindsay takes both quicksand and dead bodies
with a great deal of aplomb, and if she says it was a dead body,
then that's good enough for me."

Ramirez cleared his throat. "We do have a missing personKeith Teal."

"It's easy enough to check, Lieutenant Damon," added Lindsay.
"Go look. He isn't going anywhere, and he's in no condition for
anyone to try to hide the body."

"Well, that is more Agent Ramirez's jurisdiction. I've had two
cutters out looking for the three of you. When you are lost, the best course of action is to stay where you are until someone finds you."

"We weren't lost," Lindsay corrected him. "You didn't know
where we were, and we couldn't communicate with anyone. But
we knew where we were and knew how to get back to Magdalena
House."

"Still .. .

"Have you checked the north end of the island?"

. „
"No.

"Then we'd still be sitting there swatting mosquitoes."

"I think time would be better spent trying to find out who sabotaged the boat," said Lewis, intervening in the argument. "We are
grateful that the Coast Guard responded so quickly. We are also
grateful to have our colleagues back safe. We've had one diver
shot, and now this. We need to discover who's behind it."

"We looked at the boat," Damon said. "It looks like vandals.
The oil line was cut, but not through. That's why they got as far
as St. Magdalena. The radio cables were jerked out haphazardly.
Did you see anyone you recognized in the restaurant or on the
docks?"

The three of them shook their heads. "Not a soul," said Bobbie.

"A familiar boat at the dock?"

"No, but we didn't look at the boats that were docked," Harper
replied. "We had no reason to at the time. Look, I'm going to take
a long, hot bath. If you have any more questions, I'll be glad to
answer them when I'm finished."

Lindsay stood. "I like that idea. Thanks, all of you, for looking
for us. We truly are grateful. It's good to know someone knew we
were missing and was trying to find us, but we are all tired and in
need of a bath." She turned to Ramirez. "I'm sure one of the biologists can show you where the quicksand pit is located. Tell them
it's about four miles from here on the edge of the marsh."

John took Lindsay and Bobbie to the archaeology barge docked
at the cofferdam. Bobbie disembarked, but John held Lindsay
back.

"I was worried about you," he said.

"I'm sorry you were worried. We had a few anxious moments
ourselves."

Lindsay's words sounded sharp to her own ears, but she didn't
know how to soften them. They were being treated like teenagers
who had stayed out all night. No, that wasn't fair. It was really only Lieutenant Damon, and he was also skeptical of Nate and
Sarah. Obviously, he didn't trust anyone.

"It must have been bad for you. I just wanted you to know that,
well, I worried."

"I'm sorry if I seemed sharp. I'm worried, too. Damon seems to
think someone sabotaged our boat as a prank. I don't believe it.
Not with the other things that have been going on." She took his
hand between her two.

"How about a nice quiet dinner on my barge after you've rested
up?" he asked. "Maybe we could watch some television. I understand you like old movies."

"Who told you that?"

"Bobbie."

"You know, Bobbie's very nice," Lindsay told him.

"I know."

"You know she's an Indian."

"Yes, I know that, too. Where's this going?" asked John.

"I think she feels a little like some of you don't think she is,
because of the mystery surrounding her tribal affiliation."

"She had an argument with Luke. He's the only one who holds
an opinion. Apparently, she gives his opinion a lot of weight," said
John.

"She must," agreed Lindsay.

"Luke went out looking with the rest of us. He was very worried, too."

"That's good to know."

"So how about dinner and some television?"

"I'd like that."

RAMIREZ STOOD LOOKING at the bones Lindsay was examining.
They were alone in the big lab.

"And who is this?" he asked, touching the skull sitting on the
donut ring.

"He's the sailor with the leg irons. He was between thirty and
fifty, probably around thirty-five. Spanish. He had rickets at some
time in his life. He was left-handed. His bones show a lot of stress,
like he worked hard at manual labor. He had back problems and
syphilis. His teeth were decayed. And sometime before he died, he
had a wound in his left hand, like something driven through it."

"You mean like a crucifixion?"

"Perhaps he was in a fight, held up his hand in front of him and
someone stabbed him, but not with a knife, more like a nail."
Lindsay put her left hand in front of her face to illustrate. "I don't
see any evidence of other defensive wounds, but there may not be
any. Or," she continued, "it was a common practice to nail a
sailor's hand to the mast for various infractions. That may be what
happened."

"What a hard time these men had," said Ramirez, patting the
skull as he would a sick child.

"Some of them. The first skeleton, the one who was murdered,
looked as if he had quite an easy life, relatively speaking. But it
wasn't a particularly easy life for any of them." Lindsay placed a
wet cloth over the bones.

"You can tell a lot from bones?" he asked.

"Quite a bit."

"We think the body in the quicksand is Keith Teal."

Lindsay grimaced. "That's what I had guessed. His father's
going to be devastated."

"He is. He thinks someone here killed his son."

Lindsay frowned. "Does he suspect someone in particular?"

"He's confused about who to blame. Sometimes he blames you
archaeologists, sometimes he blames the biologists who ran him
and his son off the island. I think he may have been the one who
sabotaged your boat."

"Boote? No. Why?"

"I'm not sure. But I suspect he saw it docked and saw the
University of Georgia name on the side and got angry. By all
reports, he's quite often drunk and doesn't think clearly. He probably thought you would not be able to start the boat. I don't think
he intended to strand you in the ocean."

"Why do you think it was him?"

"Something he said ... and his reaction to the news that the
three of you were stranded. He likes Harper and Bobbie, they've
been very nice to him."

"Well, that actually makes me feel better. I was afraid it was
someone with more purpose. What about Hardy Denton?"

"What about him?"

"Have you determined the cause and manner of his death?"

"We're not sure. There are some peculiarities."

"Can you tell me what they are?"

"You know better than that."

Lindsay began putting the bones back in their tanks. Ramirez
had come to her for a reason. She would wait. "We have to keep
the bones in water until we rinse all the salt from them. It's sometimes a slow process."

"I read about that. Artifacts that have spent a long time in the
ocean can't live outside. The salt water becomes their amniotic
fluid." He studied the bones through the clear glass tank.
"Perhaps there is something you can help us with. It's very
puzzling."

Lindsay placed the skull in another tank. "We've been disappointed not to find any remnants of brain tissue," she said. "It
would have been a long shot, but not unheard of."

"Really, after over four hundred years?"

"Yes. You can get some amazing preservation in an anaerobic
environment."

"I'm learning a lot on this case. Even if I don't solve it, I will
have become better educated."

Lindsay stripped off her gloves and washed her hands. "What
is it that's puzzling you?"

"Hardy Denton was moved. We know that from the bruising."
He paused, but Lindsay was silent, waiting. "You know about
forensics. In drowning cases you get wet or dry drownings."

"He was drowned, then?"

"Oh, yes. He was drowned, but someplace other than where he
was found. The medical examiner tells me that in drowning situations, it's a matter of ruling out everything else. Not very precise,
to my thinking, but"-he shrugged-"what can you do? Anyway,
in a dry drowning the laryngeal airway closes, water doesn't enter
the lungs, and the victim suffocates."

Lindsay nodded.

"In a wet drowning the victim gets liquid in the lungs and he
suffocates. Hardy Denton's was a wet drowning. And I thought,
now that will be helpful. Salt water, he drowned in the oceanbrackish water, he drowned in the marsh-fresh water, he
drowned in a stream. It's a small island, that will narrow it down.
I feel good. So you can imagine my surprise and puzzlement when
the medical examiner told me he had sugar water in his lungs."

Agent Ramirez threw up his hands. "I don't know where to look
fora river of sucrose. So I thought we could brainstorm together."

Lindsay had dried her hands and was rubbing lotion into them,
still silent.

"You have an idea," Ramirez said. "I can see it in your face."

"And he had carbonized plant remains in his mouth," Lindsay
said. It was a statement and not a question.

"That was one of the things we were holding back."

Lindsay sighed. "Come with me." She led him down to the
dock warehouse. Isaac wasn't there. It was probably his day off.
The sink was empty and clean.

"This is where we do chemical flotation," she said. "It's how we
separate carbon material from other heavier fractions in dirt samples taken from the site. In the past we have used Calgon; it breaks
up the mud and allows the lightweight particles to float to the surface. Here on the island we are using sugar to change the specific
gravity of the water." She pointed to the trash barrel containing
empty sugar bags.

Ramirez put a hand close to the thin edge of the sink, almost
touching it. "Yes," he said. "This is where he died. I thank you. You have taken what for me was a confounding puzzle and solved it.
Dare I ask who has access to this place?"

"Everybody." She explained how the barge came every day to
store the heavier artifacts here. "Isaac Jones does the chemical
flotation. He may be close by, or he may be taking a day off. We
also have a night watchman. I don't know who he is."

"Is it locked at night?"

"Yes."

"Who has a key?"

"Most of us. A lot of us, anyway." Ramirez frowned. "That's
how a university works," said Lindsay. "We lock everything up
and give everybody a key."

"Why," asked Lewis, "did you tell him about the chemical
flotation?"

He sat behind his desk with his elbows on the polished wood.
They had the door closed this time, in case Ramirez was lurking
outside. Trey and Lindsay sat at the table in the corner.