Old Bones, page 12
Corrie, tense in her seat, balled her fists below the table. Nothing made her angrier than being patronized. Well, except some jackass sexually harassing her—which had been a problem at the Academy.
Morwood’s voice was quiet, even gentle, but the words cut her like a knife. “This is a good object lesson, and one that everybody in this room either has learned or will learn soon enough. Focus on the case at hand, and don’t chase after every circumstantial lead.” He looked pointedly at her. “Ask yourself: what could this Albert Parkin, who died in 1847 in the mountains of California, possibly have to do with the homicide of Frank Serban in a Civil War cemetery almost two centuries later? Albert Parkin’s remains haven’t even been found yet. And you yourself said this excavation is being conducted by a highly accredited organization with all the required permits—nothing like nighttime grave robbing.”
He took a deep breath. Corrie could see he was about to draw the lesson for everyone in the room.
“There’s an insidious danger we all face in our job today: computers are too good at giving us information. We at the FBI are faced with an overwhelming deluge of data. It becomes difficult to determine which leads are valuable and which are just coincidence…or wishful thinking.”
He paused to let this sink in.
“And so what I’d suggest for your next action steps, Agent Swanson, is to continue the good work you’ve been doing. Continue the investigation into the Serban homicide. And while you’re doing that, keep an eye—a distant eye—on this Parkin family connection. Watch for any other incidents involving the family line. Wait and see if that expedition in California ever finds the remains of Albert Parkin.”
He gave Corrie a smile of encouragement along with an approving nod, but she could see the no in his eyes as well.
Morwood then took a hearty gulp of coffee and turned to Wantaugh. “All right, Agent,” he said. “We’re now ready for the next chapter in this thriller of yours.”
17
NORA HIKED BACK down Dollar Fork to Hackberry Creek, taking particular care—being on her own—not to slip on a rock or twist an ankle. She had to cross multiple times going downstream before she reached Poker Creek. By then her feet were freezing and making a squelching sound with every step. The clouds were lifting, revealing a fresh snow line laid down by the storm. The line looked a lot closer than it had on the first day they packed in.
She started up Poker Creek and in forty minutes had reached the defile, then the wall of dead trees. Instead of looking for the profile of an old woman, she walked along the base of the cliffs searching for freshly fallen rock that might indicate where the profile had once been. The job wasn’t difficult: rock had been falling for tens of thousands of years, leaving long scree slopes and boulders, but most of it was covered with lichen and buried in soil. The rock faces were riddled with cracks and holes. As she worked her way along, a pair of ravens flew overhead, cawing their displeasure. The air smelled of fir trees. A strange, icy feeling took hold as the mists once again descended, obscuring the peaks and turning the valley into a lake of ghostly mist.
She reached the end of the valley and started back down the other side, almost immediately coming upon a fresher rockfall—recent enough that the trees it had knocked down could still be seen rotting among the broken rocks. She backed away and looked up. Along the edge of the bluff, below the line of melting snow, she spied an area of lighter, newly exposed rock where the canyon made a turn.
This seemed an ideal vantage point for a stone face to be visible—if what was now rockfall had once resembled a face.
She backed up further, sizing up the hollow with a practiced eye. The ground fell away from the valley edges, leveling out into a smoother area—smooth enough for a campsite. It was three, maybe four acres: much larger than the archaeological site itself, which would probably occupy no more than a quarter of an acre.
So where, exactly, might they have pulled up the wagons? She tried to put herself in their heads. At the time, there was about a foot of snow on the ground and it was falling fast—the leading edge of a blizzard that was about to alter their lives forever. The remote landscape had changed little, if at all, since 1846, and Nora knew that—except for the lack of snow—she was seeing much of what they would have seen.
If she were leading the group, where would she have made camp?
She moved about, walking a transverse first to the right, then to the left. Closer to the creek the ground sloped down again. They would have stopped somewhere in the middle of the flat area. From which vantage point would the now fallen face have been seen best, the sharp granite corner most visible? It was hard to be sure, but after a bit of squinting up at the still snowy cliff she settled on a spot that somehow felt right. The hollow was larger than it looked from a distance. The grass was wet from the rain here, thick and healthy. Unusually thick and healthy. And there were flowers.
There were no flowers anywhere else in the damp meadow. As an archaeologist, she was trained to watch for areas of soil that were unexpectedly rich, or where there was a sudden change in vegetation.
She knelt and pressed her hand into the icy grass. Should she?
She was qualified, and they had all the proper permits. There was no reason not to.
Kneeling, she took off her pack and removed an archaeological trowel, gloves, and a face mask from it. After measuring and cutting a fifty-centimeter square in the thick grass cover, she edged the trowel underneath, working the roots loose, and lifted free the plate of grass to expose the muddy soil below. Slowly, with exquisite care, she began scraping back the layers of dirt, bit by bit. A 175-year-old site would not be far below the surface, especially at this high altitude, in a meadow where soil would have accumulated slowly.
At three inches, the trowel tapped something. Changing to a light brush, she exposed the object.
It was a tooth.
* * *
When she returned to camp, the weather had fully cleared, the fleeting clouds tinged a blood red from the setting sun. The freshly whitened peaks were afire with alpenglow. Jason and Clive were still out, and Nora said nothing while Maggie cooked dinner and the wranglers fed the horses their evening oats. Finally, just as she was beginning to grow concerned, Jason appeared in camp. Clive followed, his face a mask of discouragement.
“What a bust,” he said, dumping his pack. He picked the ever-ready coffeepot off the fire and poured himself a cup, sitting down on the log.
“No go, eh?”
Clive shook his head.
“Nothing at all? Really?”
“Not so much as a button.”
Jason poured himself a cup as well.
“Jason, what do you think?” Nora asked.
He shrugged. “If there’s a camp, it’s not up Dollar Fork.”
Night was falling quickly and Nora heard the hoot of an owl. She turned back to Clive. “Kind of selfish, don’t you think?”
He looked at her in incomprehension. “What? Who is?”
“You. All this whining about what you didn’t find. Why haven’t you asked me what I found?”
Both men turned. “You found something?” Clive asked.
She nodded.
“What?”
“A human molar.”
Clive leapt to his feet. “No shit! Really?”
Everyone started talking at once, asking questions.
“It was just over a mile up Poker Canyon, in that hollow we first explored.”
“Nora, my God, that’s fantastic,” said Clive, giving her a hug before recollecting himself, stepping back, and shaking her hand vigorously. She was gratified, and a little surprised, by Clive’s lack of envy that it was she, not he, who’d made the discovery. On top of that, she realized the hug had left her with a faint tingle.
“Amazing. Phenomenal.” He sat down again, still laughing with joy, his blue eyes flashing. “Tell us how you did it.”
She briefly told the story, while Burleson broke out a bottle of wine and poured glasses all around.
“A toast,” he said, holding up his tin cup.
That bottle was followed by another, as Maggie served dinner. Afterward they sat by the fire, and the conversation—consisting mostly of excited speculation—eventually fell off into silence. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire, the hooting of an owl, and the faint sigh of wind in the trees.
“We’ll move camp tomorrow,” said Nora. “There’s a flat area along Poker Creek only about half a mile down from the site.”
Burleson nodded. “I’ll get Jack and Drew on it at first light.”
Again they lapsed into silence. And then Jason sat up. “Did anyone hear that?”
A long silence. Nora heard a knocking sound, very distant and faint.
“There it is again,” said Jason.
“Woodpecker,” said Clive.
“They don’t peck at night,” said Maggie.
“Sure they do. Don’t they?”
Another distant knocking sound, this time a little nearer. The wind sighed in the trees.
“Anybody missing from the campfire?” Maggie asked. “Off answering nature’s call?”
“Nobody’d go that far,” said Peel.
They did a quick head count anyway. Everyone was accounted for.
“Okay,” said Maggie loudly into the darkness as she rose to her feet. “We know you’re trying to scare us. Well, it worked. So show yourself, now that you’ve had your fun.”
They waited and, as if on cue, there was another knock, followed by a low thump.
Nora stood up and flicked on her headlamp.
“Where you going?” Maggie asked.
“Out there to see what it is.”
Nora walked quickly across the verge of the meadow, ignoring the various voiced warnings from the campfire. She reached the tall trees and walked into the forest, the trunks like giant pillars in a cathedral, disappearing into the darkness above her. She paused and looked back. The glow of the fire was visible through the trunks. She walked farther, then paused to listen. Nothing but barely audible voices from the campfire, no doubt calling her back.
Then the thumping sounded again—closer. It could be the wind, Nora thought, knocking two trees together. Or perhaps an elk moving about in the dark, rubbing its rack on tree trunks.
The sound came again and this time she zeroed in on the direction, walking fast through the trees, keeping to a straight line. After a few minutes she stopped to listen once more. This, she judged, should be the approximate location of the sound. She waited, and waited some more. But no sound came.
Taking a few more steps, she passed through a particularly dense stand of trees and suddenly emerged into a roughly circular clearing. Odd: there was no reason for a break like this in such thick forest. She shone her light around, but there was nothing: just a soft bed of green moss, undisturbed by tracks, and a few scattered boulders.
She waited five minutes, but the sound did not return. She turned and began retracing her steps. Despite being an experienced woodsman, she hadn’t marked her back trail, and in the dark every trunk began to look the same as every other. Just as she was starting to panic, thinking she’d lost her way, she saw a faint gleam through the trees and headed for the welcoming fire.
18
May 8
TWO MORNINGS LATER, Nora stood near the base of the cliff and looked around. What had been an empty meadow the night before last was now a full-fledged archaeological excavation. And, she had to admit, a damn fine one.
The prep had gone like clockwork. Salazar and Adelsky had gridded out the central site, driving pegs into the ground at one-meter intervals and tying Day-Glo orange string to create a six-by-ten-meter grid—each of the sixty grid spaces representing a square meter, from which every speck of soil would be removed and screened. The proton magnetometer—a device that looked like a high-tech lawnmower—had already been run over the entire area, giving them a rough idea where buried artifacts might be located, especially ferrous objects such as nails, bolts, and tools. Since this was a pristine area, free of human settlement, Nora assumed any ferrous object located in the ground must have been left by the Donner Party. And there were a lot—all concentrated in the middle of the hollow. That was probably where the hearth and the remains of the shelter would be found.
Clive had pitched in with gusto, asking questions about how this worked, or that, showing a keen interest in how archaeology was done and an eager desire to help. He was like an enthusiastic boy, really, thrilled to be on his first dig.
Meanwhile, Maggie and the wranglers were busy shifting their base camp from Hackberry Creek up Poker Canyon, just over half a mile from the site. Peel was leading the pack train to and from the ranch into the mountains on a daily basis. He would pack in equipment, overnight the animals in the campsite, and then lead them out again for another journey. Their living quarters had already been set up along the banks of the creek, and the move should be complete and everything in place by the following night.
At the Lost Camp itself, a large wall tent—cheekily labeled HQ by Adelsky—had been set up adjacent to the archaeological site. It contained worktables and storage containers for sorting, photographing, and conserving the artifacts, along with a computer and Wi-Fi transmitter, attached to solar panels and a small backup generator. The Wi-Fi couldn’t connect them to the outside world, but it would be effective in communicating and transferring files among themselves. The strongbox went into a corner, and on the opposite side was an area for storing the proton magnetometer and other archaeological equipment. Adelsky and Salazar were at the far end of the meadow, finishing up the magnetometer survey. In the aftermath of the storm, the weather had been sublime: warm during the day and above freezing at night.
As she watched, Clive emerged from the work tent and came over to where she was standing. “Beautiful morning,” he said. “I’m really curious to see how this is going to progress. I’ve never worked on a dig before. We historians spend most of our time shut up inside libraries and archives, accumulating dust and withering away.”
Nora smiled. “Nice shirt,” she said, nodding at yet another paisley horror show. “How many of those did you bring? It’s going to get awfully dirty, you realize. That is, if you’re really serious about helping.”
Clive grinned, tugging on the collar. “I know, I know. I can’t help it: I just like paisley. But I am serious. Really. We’re partners and I want to be useful, not just some bump on a log.”
“Okay. I think that can be arranged.” Nora thought back on how solitary her life had been since her husband’s death, how used she had become to working alone. Well, perhaps it was time to engage with life a bit more.
“That’s great,” said Clive. He gestured at the snowcapped mountains. “Sierra Nevada. Snowy Mountains. They sure live up to their name—it’s mid-May and they’re still covered with snow. I can’t believe how thrilling it is to be out here, working on this.” He looked around. “You think we should give this meadow a name?”
The same thought had occurred to Nora. She’d considered “Tamzene’s Meadow,” but decided that wasn’t suitable: even in the early morning sunlight, the damp hollow held little charm. And it was not only because of what had happened here. The rocky walls seemed to loom over them almost menacingly. Where they narrowed at the far end, the cliffs were still topped by heavy scallops of snow. In particular, one vast lip of snow the size of an apartment building hung over the edge of a steep col high above them. It seemed to defy gravity, and she wondered what kept it in place.
“I guess that’s one of the cornices Burleson warned us about,” she said, nodding toward it.
“Good thing the dig site’s nowhere near it. I wouldn’t want to be under that baby when it gives.”
Nora continued her visual survey. The trees that formed the edge of the vale were dark and forbidding, cloaked in almost constant shadow, and many were partially or completely dead. At a low point near the end of the valley, the creek temporarily widened into a black, ice-skimmed tarn before continuing on its sinuous way. All in all, it was—not to put too fine a word on it—spooky.
“Let’s call it Lost Meadow,” Clive suggested.
Nora considered this a moment. It seemed both simple and appropriate. “Good idea.”
At that moment, they heard the distant voice of Maggie, calling them down to breakfast.
* * *
Nora finished her bacon and eggs and gulped the last of Maggie’s strong black coffee. Seated nearby, Salazar and Adelsky were both wolfing down their food. Now that the site was prepared, they knew what the day had in store: serious work.
She rose and put her plate in the dish tub. “What do you say, Jason?” she asked the field assistant. “Ready to get dirty?”
“Damn straight!” He was on his feet in an instant.
“Count me in,” said Clive.
Moments later the four of them—Nora, Salazar, Adelsky, and Clive—were headed back to the gridded-out dig site, Maggie wishing them good hunting at the top of her lungs.
At the work tent, Nora picked up one of the iPads that ran the Institute’s cutting-edge excavation app. As she fired it up, Clive came and looked over her shoulder. “How does it work?”
She swiped open the app. “It’s pretty amazing. You input all the levels, soil types, and every artifact and its position. All you have to do is photograph the artifact and the app maps it in situ using the picture. It stitches all the pictures together to create a complete dig site image, layer by layer.”
“Amazing. Can you teach me…?”
“To use it? Sure. I’ll show you the details. But you’ll also need to know the rudiments of basic dirt archaeology. I’ll show you as we go along. You can observe and follow what we do today, and maybe tomorrow I’ll give you some actual work to do.”
“Thank you, this is very exciting for me. History is always one step removed from the real thing—but right here, to be able to see and feel…It’s so much more immediate, so real. It’s like touching the past.”
