A Treasure Deep (20 page)

“I don’t know, Sergeant. I think that all
depends on your friend here. I suppose I could overlook
things.”

Montulli hunkered down to make eye contact.
“I know you have a problem with authority figures, Vince, but I’m
going to give you some advice. You’re a big boy now so you can make
up your own mind, but if I was in your situation, I’d take Mr.
Sachs’s kind offer here and leave quietly—or I can slap on the
cuffs. What’s it going to be, sport?”

“Okay, okay, just make him let go.”

Montulli rose. “Ball’s in your court, Mr.
Sachs.”

Perry let go, and Vince popped to his feet,
backing up several steps. He shook his hand vigorously. “I
should—”

“Watch it!” Montulli snapped. “You’re not out
of this yet. Now take off.”

Vince scowled, threw Perry a hard look, and
then started down the hill without a word, his friends close
behind.

“I’m sorry that happened,” Perry said. “I try
to stay away from confrontations.”

“You seem pretty good at it. I’ve wanted to
do something like that to Vince since the first time I met him. His
father’s the same way. The acorn didn’t fall far from the tree on
that one. More’s the pity.” Montulli turned to the others. “What
are you folks doing up here?”

“We read about the treasure and wanted to see
for ourselves,” Tucker said.

“You’re not seeing anything up here today. So
you can go home.”

“Why are you siding with him?” Tucker
asked.

“I’m not siding with him or anyone else. This
is a crime scene, and you’re interfering with an investigation. Now
go home.”

“Crime scene?” Branson asked. “What kind of
crime? I need facts for the story.”

“Not now, David,” Montulli said. “Now go
on.”

“But . . . ,” Branson began.

“I said, not now,” Montulli snapped. “I’ve
got my hands full. Now unless you want to spend time in my jail for
interfering with an investigation, you best head back down the
hill—all of you. ”

“I need facts,” Branson insisted. “I can’t
write a story without details and facts.”

“It didn’t stop you yesterday,” Montulli shot
back. “Now beat it.”

To Perry’s relief, they grumbled but left.
Branson remained for a moment, stammered, pursed his lips in
indignation, and then followed the others back to the road. “You
handled that well.”

Montulli shrugged. “I’ve been at it for a
while. Most of the people out here are good, quiet, and respectful.
Some of them, however, wake up stupid each morning.”

“We all struggle with sin nature,” Perry
remarked.

“That sounds like church talk,” Montulli
said. “You one of them churchgoers?”

“That’s one way of putting it, but yes, I’m a
Christian.”

“That’s probably a good thing, because you
may need all the help you can get. Okay, it’s time to get to
work.”

“How can I help?”

“Tell me where the body is.” Perry did,
explaining how the body was discovered. “Did you touch
anything?”

“Yes,” Perry admitted. “I touched the body in
searching for a pulse, and Jack also touched the tarp.” He
explained about the pit and how they discovered the body.

Montulli frowned. “How many people were
working up here yesterday?”

“Maybe twenty or so,” Perry replied.

“Twenty-two,” Jack corrected. “That’s not
counting two visits by the mayor.”

“Yeah, the mayor,” Montulli said somberly. “I
should let you know she’s on her way.”

“Oh, great,” Gleason said.

Montulli continued. “Here is what is going to
happen. I need to see the body, but I want to limit the number of
people tracking in and out to the crime scene. So I want everyone
but Mr. Sachs to stay here. There should be two deputies arriving
anytime. They’ll cordon off the crime scene area. Sometime this
morning a homicide detective from Bakersfield will show up. At that
point, he’ll take charge of the investigation.

“I will also need to speak to each of you
individually. The boys from homicide will want to talk to you and
your crew. I assume they will be available.”

“They will,” Perry said.

“Good. I’m going to walk up the hill to the
site. I’m going to do so through the undisturbed grass. Less likely
to step on the killer’s footprints that way. I want you,” he said,
pointing to Perry, “to follow directly behind me.”

“You’re the boss,” Perry said.

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Montulli
said. He was looking down the hill. A car had just parked. “I think
the real boss just got here.”

Perry watched Anne Fitzgerald exit the
car.

“YOU KNOW HIM?” Montulli asked.

“No,” Perry mumbled. He and the deputy
sheriff were staring down into the pit. The lifeless body lay prone
on the moldering wood planks Perry had uncovered the previous
evening, the head twisted awkwardly to one side. Perry could see
the face clearly. The senseless taking of a life bothered him

“What’s he lying on?” Montulli asked
pointing.

“Planks, wood planks.”

“Did you put them there?”

“No, we uncovered them last night during our
excavation.”

“So that’s what you’ve been looking for?
That’s the treasure?”

Perry said nothing. Things had gone from
difficult to impossible in a short time. According to the
communications on Sergeant Montulli’s handheld radio, the other
officers had arrived on scene just in time to turn back another
small crowd of curious townspeople. Montulli had put in a call for
additional officers so the first group could do the job of taping
off the crime scene.

“Mr. Sachs,” Montulli said, “I asked you a
question.”

“The planks are the lid of a coffin.”

Montulli screwed his face in disgust. “You
mean the victim is lying on someone else’s coffin?”

Perry nodded. “And before you ask, yes, the
coffin is . . . occupied.”

Perry could sense the confusion in Montulli.
The deputy gazed at the open grave and blinked several times. He
started to speak, but then stopped.

“Did you open the casket?”

“It’s not a casket,” Perry explained, “at
least not as we use the term today. It’s a crude coffin and very
old.”

“This just gets more and more interesting. Of
course, it makes your problems even worse.”

“How’s that?”

“There are laws about desecrating
graves.”

“That’s pushing it a bit, Sergeant,” Perry
replied with a frown. “This isn’t a public cemetery. For that
matter it isn’t a private one either.”

“Do you know, for a fact, that that coffin
down there is the only one?”

Perry thought of the survey results and the
other five dark objects it revealed. “No.”

Montulli opened his mouth to speak but was
stopped by the crackle of his radio and the voice of one of the
other deputies. “We’ve got a bit of a situation here,” the distant
deputy said. “Mayor Fitzgerald is insisting that she should be
allowed to come up.”

“Oh, brother,” Montulli said. Then he keyed
his radio. “What’s the crowd situation?”

“Clear for the moment. We made them leave.
They weren’t happy. You may be getting a few phone calls
later.”

“That’s why I get the big bucks,” Montulli
mumbled loud enough for Perry to hear. “All right. You bring her up
and try not to step on anything that might be evidence.”

Perry chuckled. “Your mayor is a
handful.”

“She’s a good woman, Sachs, a real good
woman. She just has a bit of the bulldog in her, that’s all. She
takes her work seriously.”

“So you don’t find her annoying or
troublesome?”

“Of course I do. She is insistent to a fault,
she pokes her nose in places it doesn’t belong, and she makes more
work for me. However, she does it for good reasons.”

For a moment, Perry considered telling
Montulli about his meeting with Anne the night before but decided
against it. The image of the town’s mayor knocking back a tumbler
of scotch was something he didn’t want to be responsible for.

Montulli’s radio came to life again but with
a woman’s voice. The words sounded distant and indistinct. “ . . .
on, come on, Deputy. Can’t you move any faster?”

“It’s a crime scene, Mayor,” the voice Perry
had heard moments earlier said. “We move slowly through crime
scenes.”

“If you don’t speed it up, I’m going to pass
you.”

“No, ma’am, you’re not. I told you the drill.
You walk directly behind me . . .” Then before the radio went dead,
Perry heard the deputy mumble, “Hazardous duty pay.”

“He keyed his mike,” Montulli explained.
“Apparently he wanted me to know the mayor’s mood.”

“And to know what he’s going through.”

“Yeah, that too.” Montulli took a deep breath
as if steeling himself for the onslaught of hurricane Anne. “You
know that I’m closing the site down.”

“I figured you would,” Perry said. “I need to
ask that you open it again as soon as possible.”

“Why?”

“What we’re doing here is important,” Perry
explained. “More important than you know.”

“Now you see there, Mr. Sachs, that’s part of
the problem. I don’t know what you’re doing here, and you have been
less than cooperative in that area.”

“I have my reasons.”

“I’ll just bet you do, but that’s coming to
an end.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you’re going to be telling us
exactly what you’re doing here, and you’re going to be telling us
today.”

“I can’t do that,” Perry said.

“You seem to think you have a choice in the
matter, but you don’t. A crime has occurred on your work site, a
murder no less. What you’re doing here will be deemed as material
to the case. You don’t want to obstruct justice, do you?”

“Perry!”

Someone shouted his name. Perry turned to see
Jack motioning him to come to the grove. Even across the twenty
yards of pasture that separated them, he could see that Jack was
not happy.

“May I?” Perry asked.

“Yeah, but I’m going with you.”

“Don’t trust me?”

“The mayor doesn’t need to see this,” he
said, motioning to the body. “And no, I don’t trust anyone.”

Once in the shade of the oak grove Perry
quickly assessed the mood of his friends. Jack’s jaw was set tight
like a clamp, Gleason looked stunned, and even Brent appeared
shell-shocked. Dr. Curtis simply looked bewildered.

“May I have a moment?” Jack asked and started
away from Montulli.

“No,” Montulli snapped. “Whatever you have to
say to Mr. Sachs, you can say in front of me.”

Jack made eye contact with Perry, and the
communication was clear: Something was wrong. “They’re gone.”

At first the comment made no sense to Perry,
but then meaning hit him like a tsunami. He snapped his head around
and looked to the north end of the grove. A plastic worktable was
where it had been the night before; a few baseball-sized stones
rested on its surface, stones used to hold papers down against the
unrelenting breezes that swept through the camp. Under the table
was something that should not have been there: a gray, heavy
plastic box the size of a footlocker. The lid was open.

“Everything?” Perry asked.

“I’m afraid so.”

“It’s my fault,” Gleason said. “I’m
responsible.”

“No,” Brent chimed in quickly. “I blew it.
Mr. Lane told me to lock the stuff in the trailer, but I didn’t. I
guess I was too caught up in what we found.”

“I’m responsible for the documents,” Gleason
said. He was morose. “I should have double-checked Brent. He’s my
intern. The responsibility is mine.”

“What?” Montulli asked, clearly confused.
“What was taken?”

“What about the duplicates?” Perry asked, too
taken aback to be angry.

“I have those back at my room,” Gleason
said.

“Someone had better fill me in,” Montulli
said. “I’ve had enough of this cryptic talk.”

Perry turned to the deputy. “That gray box
over there is our secure document box. It contained the printouts
of our surveys, among other things. It’s supposed to be locked in
the trailer when we leave. We were planning around-the-clock work,
but we sent the crew home early after we did our core samples.”

“Didn’t want them around while you were
digging, eh?” Montulli suggested.

“Our crew is the best, but experience has
taught us that a bad apple can get into any group.” Perry felt his
ire rise. His site had been violated in several ways: trespass,
theft, and murder.

“So one of your crew may have stolen the
documents.”

“Probably the murderer,” Perry said.

“How do you know they’re not the same person?
Maybe one of your crew is the murderer. He, or she, would know
exactly where to look for the documents.”

“That doesn’t explain who the dead man is,”
Perry said.

“I’m so sorry,” Brent moaned. “I’m an idiot.
There’s no excuse for such a bonehead mistake.”

“Was there anything else of value in the
box?” Montulli asked.

“Nothing could be more valuable, Sergeant,”
Perry said. “We have duplicates, but someone out there now knows
everything about the site.”

“Finally,” a woman’s voice said. Perry turned
to see Anne Fitzgerald tromping through the grass. Walking in front
of her was one of Montulli’s men. “Did I miss anything?”

“Hello, Madam Mayor,” Montulli said. “Yes,
I’d say you missed a great deal.”

Perry found one of the folding chairs and sat
down. The day couldn’t get worse.

THE ROOM WAS cleaner than Perry had expected. The
walls were white and appeared freshly painted. The floor was
covered in cheap, uninspired brown vinyl tile. In the center of the
room sat a gray metal table large enough for six people. The chairs
were made of the same gray metal. On one wall was a large mirror.
It didn’t take a genius to know that the mirror was a screen that
allowed people in the other room to view interviews and
interrogations. He resisted the urge to wave.