Old Bones, page 15
“The commonality I referred to. All four individuals were descended from a single person: a man named Parkin.”
Nora saw Clive start in surprise. “Albert Parkin?” he asked. “Of the Donner Party?”
“Exactly. And I’ve been led to understand he’s one of the individuals in the camp you’re excavating.”
“And how did you come by this information, exactly?”
“As a by-product of my investigation into the violated Parkin graves, the family ancestry came to light—including their link to the Donner Party. I learned of your expedition and contacted the president of the Institute, who provided the rest of the details—including a list of the missing persons you hoped to locate.”
“But hold on,” Nora said. “If Parkin died here, how did he leave any descendants?”
“He abandoned a wife and six children back in Illinois.”
“The plot thickens,” said Maggie with relish. “But wait—didn’t you mention a homicide?”
“A body was found shot to death in one of the disturbed graves. We believe he was hired to uncover the body.”
This brought a silence, which the FBI agent eventually broke. “So. Have you identified any remains belonging to Albert Parkin?”
“No,” said Nora. “We’ve only identified three individuals so far: a child, Samantha Carville, and two male adults named Spitzer and Reinhardt. Even those are only provisional IDs, since we’ve not yet done DNA testing.”
“How many individuals have you uncovered?”
“It’s hard to say, given the fact that a lot of the bones are broken and commingled. Including the three people I’ve already mentioned, we’ve located six partial or complete skulls so far.”
“So you may have already uncovered Parkin, but don’t yet know it?”
“It’s possible.”
Clive broke in. “This is very interesting, but I fail to see how what we’re doing could be connected to these grave robbings. You’ve already said that none of us are under suspicion.”
At this Swanson shifted, and Nora could see that the veneer of confidence she was trying to project was not very robust. “We’re in the information-gathering phase.”
“In other words,” said Burleson, “it’s a fishing expedition.”
“It seems quite a coincidence that the very person whose descendants were being dug up illegally was also being dug up at the same time.”
“Yes, but dug up legally,” said Nora. “You’ve talked to Dr. Fugit. So you obviously know our excavation is fully authorized, with federal and state permits, not to mention being sponsored by one of the leading archaeological institutes in the country.”
Swanson responded to this in a level voice. “Tomorrow, I’d like to go to the dig site and examine the human remains. I would also like the opportunity to ask you and your staff a few questions—if you don’t mind, of course.”
“You’re free to ask all the questions you like,” said Nora. “But like Clive said, it’s hard to imagine what a man’s death in 1847 has to do with his descendants getting their graves robbed almost two hundred years later.”
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to determine.”
“This is an active and extremely sensitive archaeological site,” Nora said, “and as director of this dig I can’t have uncredentialed individuals tramping around, touching things. Shouldn’t you have some sort of warrant?”
Swanson said, her voice as flat as a Kansas prairie: “This is federal land. I am a federal agent. I don’t need a warrant to search federal property or conduct whatever investigation I see fit. But just to reassure you, I have a master’s of science in forensic anthropology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice.” She paused. “And from what I know of your CV, posted on the Santa Fe Archaeological Institute website, I am at least as ‘credentialed’ as you to handle human remains, Dr. Kelly.”
Nora stared at the young woman’s face in the flickering firelight—determined and yet, at the same time, lacking confidence. For someone so seemingly qualified, she was awfully defensive.
Nora had the sudden insight that this was probably her first case.
22
May 10
SPECIAL AGENT CORRIE Swanson rose before dawn—as was her habit—and did a hundred sit-ups in her makeshift tent to get the blood flowing before dressing and exiting into the chilly air. Her arrival at breakfast shut everyone up, and she was relieved when they finally set off for the archaeological dig. It lay about half a mile up the trail from the camp. When Corrie arrived, she found the place to be an oppressive-looking valley, shut in by cliffs of dark rock, skirted by broken scree and boulders that had fallen from above. A circle of gloomy peaks, covered in patches and drifts of snow, surrounded them. On the floor of the valley, a number of dead spruce trees were interspersed with patches of sickly grass. There was a small, sad-looking pond at the far side, fringed by rocks. Even though it was midmorning, the sun hadn’t yet topped the eastern bluffs and the bowl was still in shadow. The only birds to be seen were a quartet of ravens in a dead tree, cawing back and forth.
She approached the edge of the excavated area, looking out over an expanse of blue tarps pegged to the ground. She thought back to an investigation of human remains she’d stumbled into as a student in Colorado a few years before, and realized she could easily develop a similarly morbid fascination with the Donner ordeal: the twenty-five feet of snow, the starvation so extreme they were forced to eat their own family. Almost unthinkable—but at the same time, a testament to the human will to survive.
The dig and its associated work tent and screening areas were neat and crisp-looking—at least to her inexpert eye. As she took in the site, she couldn’t help but wonder if this was a wild goose chase. Morwood certainly felt so. He’d nixed her first two requests, and it was only after continued pestering that he’d finally relented. He’d given her a Friday, plus her own weekend, which with travel time allowed her one full day at the site: today.
But as she continued looking over the meadow, the mystery returned with greater insistence. Why all those Parkins dug up all of a sudden? She had been racking her brains for a hypothesis. Could it be an inheritance issue? No: the descendants of Albert Parkin didn’t have significant money, nor was there evidence of family conflict, legal or otherwise. The dead whose graves had been despoiled were all second or third cousins who evidently hadn’t even known each other. Could it be related to an obscure medical issue, a rare disease or syndrome that ran in the family line? But there was no evidence for that, either, at least from her search of medical records. Maybe a bizarre form of revenge against the family? Or maybe some obscure religious practice, perhaps with a connection to voodoo?
Every idea she came up with was more outlandish than the one before. The truth was, she had no idea what she should be looking for. But she sure wasn’t going to show her uncertainty.
As she surveyed the site, Nora Kelly came over, with the historian, Clive Benton, following.
“So, what do you want to see?” Kelly asked, arms crossed. Her voice carried a note of suspicion.
Corrie tried to muster a firm, confident demeanor. “If you could remove the tarps, I’d like to take a closer look at the remains.”
“As you can see, the dig involves several discrete areas. It would be helpful if you could give me some idea of what you’re looking for.”
Corrie found herself growing defensive at the question. “Dr. Kelly, we are generally not authorized to discuss the details of our cases until we refer them for prosecution.”
“If we could narrow down the parameters, it would speed things up. I’d prefer not to uncover the entire site, which would be a waste of your time—and ours.”
Corrie nodded to the set of pegged blue tarps at the far end of the site near the tree line. “What’s out there?”
“The men I mentioned last night. Spitzer and Reinhardt. They were camped away from the rest.”
“And that other, smaller tarp, down by the stream?”
“The remains of Samantha Carville, a young girl who was one of the first to die.”
“Only Samantha Carville? Nobody else?”
“Not that we know of. We’re still excavating those quads.”
Corrie returned her attention to the main part of the dig. “And what about this large area—what does it represent?”
“It’s a midden heap, essentially a trash pile. It’s where the majority of remains have been discovered so far. We haven’t yet uncovered the camp’s hearth and shelter, but we think they’re over at that gridded area, there.”
“Last night you mentioned six skulls. Are the other three in the midden heap?”
“Yes, two males and a female. Along with a great deal of other bones, bits of clothing, boots, and so forth. And remnants of the camp’s dogs and oxen, which were of course consumed long before any human beings.”
“Could one of those three skulls be Albert Parkin’s?”
“It’s certainly possible,” Dr. Kelly said. “We haven’t made any identifications from the midden. Nine people are known to have died up here, so we still have three skulls to find—those of a male and two females. All of the males were adult, so it’ll be difficult to identify Parkin without DNA analysis.”
Corrie felt a faint sense of satisfaction at the realization that here she had a chance to put this know-it-all in her place. “Really? I don’t think Parkin’s identification would be difficult—depending on the location of his body.”
Nora Kelly uncrossed her arms. “And why is that?”
“He was injured by an arrow during a desert crossing. It broke his collarbone.”
“That’s correct,” the historian, Benton, spoke up. “Indians took potshots at the wagon train at several spots along the route.”
“The fracture should still be visible,” said Corrie, “healed or not.”
Nora said nothing.
“Good. I won’t need to look at the outlying sites, just this midden heap. Could you please remove the tarps?”
There was a pause. “As you wish,” Kelly said. “We’ll take it a few quads at a time—I don’t like to leave the bones uncovered and exposed to light for any length of time.” She turned to one of her assistants. “Jason, will you and Bruce uncover B3 and B4, please?”
As the two got to work, Nora Kelly pointed to a worktable, on which sat several boxes. “You’ll need to put on nitrile gloves, booties, a mask, and a hair net. And I would ask you please not to touch anything. We’re trying to prevent any stray human DNA from contaminating other remains.”
“Of course.”
The quads were soon exposed and Corrie, now kitted up, brought out a hand magnifier. When she did so, she detected some sniggering from behind and caught a whispered “Watson, the game is afoot!”
“These square meters,” Nora explained, “expose the center of the midden heap. We think most of the remains are concentrated here.”
Swanson gazed over the area. It was a dense aggregate of bones lying willy-nilly, a mixture of partials, with a couple of complete bones, very few articulated, and no complete skeletons. Most lay in what looked to the untrained eye like a broken tangle.
She carefully stepped to the edge of the closest quad and knelt on a board placed there, the smell of fresh earth rising to her nostrils. With the magnifying glass held close to the bones, she could see butchering marks made by iron knives, areas of burning, and rough breaks where the marrow had been scraped out—all classic signs of cannibalism. She took a suite of photographs with her agency-issued camera. The three skulls all showed signs of having been cooked in a fire and broken to extract the brains. Despite their damaged condition, it was obvious they were adults, two men and a woman, as Dr. Kelly had said.
Leaving aside the woman, she focused on the first male skull. It lay in two adjacent pieces with the associated mandible. The cranium showed burn spalling and flaking on the back, where it had been placed in the fire. The other skull lay not far from it and showed a similar pattern of cooking and spalling. The skulls were surrounded by a jumble of other bones and postcranial scrap. Almost all were broken, and some were processed beyond recognition. A few small flags bearing numbers and letters were inserted here and there in the matrix of the midden.
It was a dumping spot for food scraps, where the remains of one stew after another had been discarded over weeks or even months, and many of the bones were covered by others. There was no obvious way to tell which ribs, vertebrae, or collarbones were associated with any particular skull. She did her best to conceal her chagrin; so much for putting Nora Kelly in her place by identifying Parkin’s broken collarbone right under her nose.
“As I mentioned last night,” Kelly said, “this is an active dig site—with an emphasis on ‘active.’ As you can see, we still have much to do.”
“What about these flags?” Corrie asked, rising and pointing to the small colored markers.
“Those are checksum tags, placed by my team at the start of each new work session. They help in associating the digital information our computer model uses with the physical excavation—matching the data to the dirt, so to speak.”
Corrie nodded. This was obviously a professional, well-organized operation. There was nothing she could do for the moment except await further results. And she had to be back in Albuquerque tomorrow.
“I’d really appreciate knowing a little more about your investigation,” the archaeologist said. “Whatever you can tell me.”
“I really can’t go into any more detail than I already have. If you are able to identify Parkin, could you please let me know right away? And of course if you could ensure these remains are properly curated, that would be much appreciated.”
When Nora frowned, Corrie realized she had probably come off as condescending, and she added hastily: “Naturally, I don’t want to tell you your job. It’s just that, since we’re not yet sure how Parkin’s remains might fit into the investigation, it’s vital that they are kept secure.”
Kelly nodded. “Anything else?”
“Just keep me in the loop. If Parkin is identified, we might ask for the bones to be turned over to us for analysis. But for now, that’s unnecessary.”
Nora Kelly asked her two assistants, Salazar and Adelsky, to re-cover the quads.
“I have a few questions for you and Dr. Benton,” Corrie said. “If I may?”
“Let’s have a seat.”
They walked toward the headquarters tent and settled in director’s chairs set out under a tarp.
Corrie took out a notebook and pen. “Just to confirm, you’ve identified the three bodies at the two more distant sites, two adult males and one female child, and in the midden heap you’ve found three adult skulls, again two male and one female, as yet unidentified.”
Dr. Kelly nodded.
“You mentioned nine individuals died in this camp, out of eleven. What happened to the other two?”
“A man named Boardman escaped and managed to get to the Donner’s camp, and died there. Another man, Chears, was saved, but he died soon after returning to civilization. Of the nine individuals left, we’ve found six and identified three.”
“Do you expect to find the other three in this midden?”
“We’re still excavating the rear section, so it’s a little early to say. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the remains are there. We might find one or two additional outliers there, or perhaps at the site of the shelter.”
“The shelter?”
“Yes. They built a rude shelter out of wood from the wagons, and inside was a hearth. Our magnetometer survey suggests it’s in that area gridded out beyond the midden heap, but we can’t be sure until we open it up.”
“So Parkin’s remains might be there?”
“It’s a possibility. There’s still an adult male we have not located yet.”
Corrie made some notes. “So please tell me: how did this excavation originate?”
“Clive can give you the background.”
Benton then proceeded to tell, in exhausting length, the story of how he’d spent years searching for Tamzene Donner’s journal; how he’d found it; and how he’d gone to Nora Kelly and the Institute and convinced them to look for the site. Kelly then took over and explained how the excavation had reached this point and what their plans were, going forward. It was all Corrie could do to keep up with the flow of information. Everything seemed aboveboard, with the exception of Benton’s theft of the journal—but that was out of her bailiwick and frankly, in his place, she would probably have done the same, at least back in her scofflaw days.
She asked a few more general questions and received equally general answers. She could find nothing the slightest bit suspicious; nothing, at least on the surface, to tie the expedition to her own investigation. She wondered how Morwood would react when she briefed him.
She shut her notebook and looked at her watch. “I’ve gotten what I need for now. I’d better ride back to town while it’s still early. I want to thank you for your cooperation.”
She rose and Kelly did likewise. “If you do identify Parkin,” Corrie told her, “please remember to let me know. And be careful—there may be no connection, but you never know, and my case does involve a homicide and a probable kidnapping. So be on your guard.”
The look of relief on Nora Kelly’s face as she shook her hand goodbye was unmistakable.
23
May 11
THE FOLLOWING DAY dawned clear, and the night had been cloudless, allowing Nora and the rest an excellent view of the comet Skip had reminded her of before she set off. Around noon, however, thunderheads began piling up over the surrounding peaks. Nora’s first task was to open the quad containing the lower half of Samantha Carville’s body. After removing the layer of grassy turf on top and putting it aside, she and Clive began, using paintbrushes and bamboo picks in addition to the ever-present whisks, working with agonizing slowness down through the soil to the level of the bones. As before, the dirt was piled in a tray to be sifted and floated later.
