A Rumor of Bones: A Lindsay Chamberlain Mystery (7 page)

Burial 23 was a healthy white woman, 18 or 19
years old. She stood five feet, ten inches-tall for a
woman about 60 years ago-at the time of her death.
It had been a crime of hate, so Lindsay imagined. You
would have to hate someone to look her in the eye and
kill her. The woman had been talking to someone. She
had thrown up her left hand in defense as the killer
had raised a gun and shot her in the face. She had
known her attacker. Lindsay smiled to herself. Frank
always told her that even if Homer hadn't written
about it, she could have described the Trojan War if
anyone had ever uncovered a wooden hoof.

Lindsay took some graph paper and a pencil and
began to draw the skull, but stopped halfway through
the drawing. She wanted to reconstruct the face. An
examination of the supply cabinet yielded the things
she needed to make a mold of the skull. She piled
everything on the table and began working.

When she finished, Lindsay sat back and inspected
her work. Facing her was a plaster replica of the skull.
Not bad, she thought. She looked at her watch. It was
late, 3:00 A.M. She would get only an hour's sleep.

"Great," she told the skull. "I'm going to be dead
on my feet at the site, and it's your fault. Maybe I can
sneak a nap during lunch."

She took the plaster skull to her tent and put it in a
box under the table. Tomorrow she would call a friend
at the university and ask him to send her the kit she
would need to reconstruct the face.

Lindsay didn't nap during lunch. Instead, she picked
up some of Derrick's duties. Careful not to make any
serious mistake with the measurements, she double
checked as she recorded the numbers she saw on the
rod through the scope. It was her bad luck that Frank
had assigned her to a task that required concentration.

"What's this I hear about Burial 23?"

Lindsay turned to face Ned, who was glowering at
her. His Burnside-style mustache and sideburns had
been neatly trimmed, giving him the appearance of a
Civil War general in jeans and T-shirt.

"You been for a shave and hair cut?" she asked.

"Don't change the subject"

"What have you heard?" she asked.

"Frank told me that you found someone in the
ground who wasn't supposed to be there"

Lindsay almost laughed. "That's right, and I told her
so, too."

Ned did not smile. "You know what I mean."

"I'm in the process of analyzing the bones"

"Why didn't you just cover it back up?"

"That would've been illegal. Ned, why are you in
such a hurry?"

"I just want the site dug"

"Everything seems to be going fine. I really don't
understand-"

Frank walked up next to them. "Ned, the scouts will
be here in a couple of days. Do you want to take half
of them and open up another section?"

"Yes, but I need some professional crew as well."

"We are almost finished up here, then-"

"Tell Lindsay to cover up any more bodies she
finds." He marched away.

Lindsay shook her head as she and Frank watched
him recruit some of the field school students to help
him mark off Section 4 to prepare for digging. They
could hear the students protest being pulled off the
structure they were working on.

"How about dinner?" Frank asked Lindsay.

"I'm exhausted" Lindsay rubbed her eyelids with
her finger tips.

"What? From this little mapping?" asked Frank.

"I stayed up all night last night."

"Doing what?"

"Just working with the bones"

Frank frowned. "Pack up the transit. You've done
enough work for one day. If I had known you had
been up all night, I wouldn't have piled all that extra
work on you."

"I was on my own time. I was working on Burial
23"

"All night`? Doing what?"

"Making a cast of the skull. I'm going to reconstruct her face."

Frank eyed her for a moment. "Why?" he asked.

"Someone shot her and dumped her in the middle
of nowhere and left her there for 60 years. I want to at
least know what she looked like."

"She was shot?" said Frank

"Yes. I found a bullet in the cranium."

She thought he might remind her not to take time
away from the site on a task that was not really their
responsibility. But what he said was, "I'd like you to
spend some of your free time with me" He pushed a
wayward strand of hair behind her ear. "I'll go get us
a pizza. You might find you're hungry after all."

Frank walked to his car. Lindsay stood for a long
time watching him drive out of sight.

"Damn!" Michelle came hurrying up to Lindsay.
"He got away before I could catch him. Do you know
Ned came and commandeered some of my crew? He
didn't even ask. At least he could have taken that
damn Jeremy."

"Jeremy? Isn't he that smart-mouthed kid?" asked
Lindsay as she motioned for the student holding the
survey rod to pack it in. "What's he up to now?"

"Just his usual royal pain-in-the-ass routine. Always sarcastic. I have to watch him all the time, or
he'll mess up something in the structure."

"Have you mentioned him to Frank"

"Yeah, but Frank thinks Jeremy's just being a
normal student. You know, immature and irresponsible. Frank says he will straighten up when he understands what he is supposed to do. At the house he
keeps trying to sneak upstairs to the girls' section. I've
asked Ned to make him stay downstairs, but Ned
won't even talk to him. I don't know why Frank let Ned supervise the male students in the house. He is
hardly ever there"

"You want me to talk to Frank?"

"I'd like you to take Jeremy off my hands. Next
time you open up burials, let him sift the fill. He can't
screw up much there"

"Sure"

Lindsay packed and stored the transit, then went to
her tent. She stretched out on her bed and was asleep
when Frank returned with the pizza. He quietly called
her name and entered the darkened tent. She raised her
head, confused for a moment.

"I think you need sleep more than you need pizza."
He kissed her cheek and left.

The next day was hectic. Thomas pestered her to let
him do a burial, so she put him and Sally on Burial
24. The sheriff and Derrick arrived about the time that
Thomas went ballistic with excitement. Frank and
Lindsay were standing in a structure, discussing a
cache of animal bones when Thomas jumped up and
shouted, "It's an atlatl!"

"What now?" groaned Frank.

Lindsay walked to the burial. "What you got?" She
directed her question to Sally, who grinned up at her.

"His ribs are covered with copper gorgets"

Lindsay peered at the mass of green oxidized
copper overlaying the bones. "See, the copper preserved the wood," said Thomas. "It is an atlatl."

"I think it's probably the sternum," said Lindsay
calmly.

"I doubt there'd be any throwing sticks at this site,"
said Frank. "Atlatis were much earlier."

"Some isolated places still used them in historic
times," Ned answered. "This may be evidence supporting my hypothesis."

"Look at the shape," insisted Thomas. "It looks just
like an atlatl.

"You can't see much of the shape. We'll see when
it's excavated," said Lindsay.

"Look at this," said Sally, pointing to a cache of
fancy arrowheads. "Think we have the chief here?"

Frank was sitting on his haunches, looking into the
burial. He gave Sally an annoyed look as if to say,
Don't encourage Thomas. "There is no way to know,"
he said. "The only thing we can say is that he did have
a high status"

"Or she," said Sally.

"It will be a he," said Frank.

"It looks like a she. Look at the brow ridge."

"I think when you uncover the pelvis, you'll find it
is a he," said Frank.

Lindsay looked up to see the sheriff and Derrick
peering into the burial along with everyone else.
"Found something special?" he asked.

Lindsay and Frank stood up to greet him. "Looks
like we uncovered a VIP," said Frank. "At least he has
quite a collection of grave goods"

"And an atlatl," Thomas boasted. "You don't find
too many of them because they are made of wood.
Being next to the copper preserved it."

Lindsay rolled her eyes upward.

"Atlatl?" asked the sheriff.

"Throwing stick," said Lindsay. "You use it with a
spear to give extra leverage when you throw. But this
is the breast bone."

"Well, look at this!" shouted Thomas. "Tell me it's
not a banner stone." He picked up a smooth stone and
handed it to Frank.

"A banner stone is used to weight an atlatl," Derrick explained for the sheriff's benefit.

They looked up at Lindsay and grinned, as if suddenly the great Lindsay could be mistaken, humbled
by the likes of Thomas. Derrick, however, winked his
"I'm with you, kid" wink at her. The sheriff grinned
as if he were witnessing a contest.

Lindsay could see this was becoming a matter of
face. "That's most likely the head of a club, not a
banner stone"

"Don't some people think that's what a banner
stone is really for, to make it double as a war club?"
asked Thomas.

"We'll see when it gets uncovered," Frank said,
smiling at Lindsay. Turning to the sheriff, he said,
"Is this social or business?"

"Business, but it can wait for the outcome of the
controversy here. I'd just as soon wait."

"We can't take it up until it's photographed, and
the preparation for that will take a while," said Frank.
"We can go have a Coke and talk if you want."

"Lindsay better come, too," he said. They walked
over to the eating area, which was out of the sun and
out of hearing distance.

"Don't you all get so excited that you rip out all the
artifacts before they're recorded," Frank shouted back
at the crew.

They sat at the table, and Derrick reached into the
cooler and pulled out bottles of soda for everyone .

"Ah, this is good," said the sheriff. "It still has ice in it." He allowed everyone to take a few sips of drink
before he said anything else. Then he told them, "Derrick found more bones."

Lindsay was silent for a moment, then realized he
meant bones of another child. "Oh, no," she whispered.

"I know," said the sheriff. "I'm keeping it quiet until
we can identify them. I thought you might go back
with me and take a look."

They drank their drinks in silence. Lindsay sipped
slowly so she would not finish too soon. After a while
Sally shouted and waved for them to come over.

Thomas and Sally had cleaned the dirt from the
chest area of the burial. A series of green copper plates
covered most of the front of the rib cage. A long bone
or wooden looking object lay in the center of the chest,
surrounded and half covered by the copper. Sally said,
"I think you can see something now, Lindsay."

Lindsay reached down with a tongue depressor and
gently tried to lift a plate. The copper was fused to the
underlying bone. "I'm afraid the answer may have to
wait until the burial is finished and photographed,"
she said. She tried the uppermost plate. It came loose,
and she could see the shape of the object in question
and how it had been articulated to the now-vanished
costal cartilage. "The sternum," she said.

"Are you sure?" said Thomas with great disappointment but no chagrin in his voice.

Lindsay thought that Ned looked even more disappointed than Thomas.

"Yes. Take a look."

"Looks like a sternum to me," said Derrick.

"Well, your reputation is still intact." Frank was
smiling at her.

"Was it ever in question?" Lindsay feigned surprise. "I had no idea. Amazing how you can build it
up over the years and almost lose it in a moment." She
rose, wiped off her hands on Frank's shirt front, and
left with the sheriff and Derrick for another grim task
in town.

"As a kid I had an interest in medieval weapons,
bows and such," said the sheriff as he drove them to
his office. "I thought I knew almost all the different
kinds of weapons, but I never heard of an atlatl."

"It was quite an ingenious device," said Derrick,
leaning forward from his seat in the back. "The
throwing stick, in effect, lengthens the thrower's arm.
The leverage increases the power of the spear by several times. If you tie a banner stone onto it, the stone
increases the mass and you can get even more power
in the throw."

"Interesting," said the sheriff. "I guess these Indians were more inventive than I thought." He turned
his head to Lindsay. "Pretty touch-and-go for a
moment back there for you"

"Not really," Derrick answered for her. "Lindsay
knows her bones. At a party in graduate school, some
of us took Sebastian-he was one of our skeletons in
the osteology lab-took him apart and added a few
animal bones to the mix. We blindfolded Lindsay,
and she identified every bone, even which side it belonged, by only the feel. But the most fantastic thing
was the skull. We substituted Fred, a kind of twin to
Sebastian. The department had ordered a male and a
female, but got two males. We had to scrounge
around for a female. I won't tell you where. But
anyway, Fred looked just like Sebastian to all of us, but Lindsay knew the difference as soon as she got
her fingers on the skull. We called her the Great
Lindsay after that."

The sheriff, grinning, turned to Lindsay. "Is that
true?"

"Yes. But it wasn't that big of a deal. All the diagnostic characteristics of bones can be felt. Still, I
wouldn't have been able to live it down if Thomas, of
all people, had been right."

"Why him?" asked the sheriff.

"This is Thomas's first course in archaeology," she
said. "Since I have a Ph.D. I'm expected to know
more." She grinned. "The other day he thought he had
a long house. That's kind of like an Indian government building-but it was only a couple of rows of
trees"