LC 02 - Questionable Remains (3 page)

Lindsay was a minimalist when it came to furnishing her
house, a trait she got from her mother. The living room had
a couch and two rocking chairs facing the fireplace. The
mission-style oak pieces had tan, leather-covered cushions
and were draped with lap comforters. A painting of
Mandrake, the only original painting she owned, commissioned from a local artist, hung over the fireplace. Her other
paintings were copies. Lindsay could not hope to afford or
acquire original Vermeers. The woman quietly pouring milk
hung on a wall over the kitchen table; the woman reading a
letter was over a desk in her bedroom; the woman looking
over her shoulder hung opposite the front door, greeting guests as they entered her house. It was the quiet gentleness
of the everyday lives of the women in the pictures that
appealed to her, just as what she saw in many of the archaeological sites she excavated: people going about the commonplace tasks of living.

Lindsay sat propped up in her four-poster bed, comfortable in her green cotton nightshirt, reading the latest osteology journal. The television on a table against the wall
beyond the foot of her bed went mainly unnoticed as it
flashed the news of the day, but as she turned a page in the
journal a scene on TV caught her eye. She aimed the remote
at the television and turned up the volume. Denny
Ferguson's cocounsel, the angry young woman in the dark
blue suit, was talking to a reporter. The lettering at the bottom of the picture said her name was Sarah Kelley Banks.

"I am absolutely outraged," she was saying, "that a
man's life depended on the testimony of that woman."
Lindsay cocked an eyebrow as Sarah Banks went on to
attack her professionalism and competence. She hit the off
button when the reporter announced that Lindsay could not
be reached for comment.

The shrill ring of the telephone startled Lindsay. She
glared at the device on the nightstand as if it were a traitor,
letting the machine answer it. At the sound of Derrick's
voice on the speaker, she picked up the receiver.

"Derrick, I'm here," she said.

"Good. I called late, hoping you'd be home. How'd it go
today?"

"The jury convicted him."

"I'm glad."

"Derrick, do you think I'm arrogant, manipulative, and
unprofessional?"

Derrick gave a surprised laugh. "Self-assured, yes.
Manipulative? Definitely not. And you're the most professional person I know. What's this about?"

Lindsay told him about the angry confrontation.

"Well, I can see why they might be choking on sour
grapes. Forget them. I have some good news."

"I could use some good news. What is it?" She settled
into her pillows and looked at the smiling face of Derrick in
the picture at her bedside.

"I'm going to be the principal investigator of the Cold
River Site this summer."

"Derrick, that's great." Cold River was potentially a huge
site, probably covering more than fifty acres. It had seven
mounds. The largest covered four acres and rose to a level
of fifteen feet. The site had been known to archaeologists for
more than a hundred years, but the landowners had never
given permission to dig. The land was in different hands
now and permission had been granted to the University of
Tennessee, where Derrick was working on his doctorate. It
was a gem of a site. Lindsay let the sound of Derrick's easy
voice soothe the tension of the day from her.

"I won't be able to come see you for a while," he said with
regret. "We're starting excavation in the spring."

"I know you must have a lot to do to prepare," she said.
"I'11 put Cold River on my summer itinerary."

"Bring your dancing shoes."

"Always, when I see you."

"I miss you, Lindsay."

"I miss you, too. I wish you were here," she said. He was
silent. Lindsay imagined the look of surprise on his face.

"I'll come if you need me," he said.

"I need you, but don't come. I'll be fine. It's just the trial
and Mr. Kim. It's so sad."

"I know," he said.

"I'm pleased about Cold River," Lindsay told him.

"So am I," he said.

The March winds lingered into April, and it was unseasonably cold as Lindsay showed the students at Barrow Elementary School how much you can learn about people
by examining their tombstones. Lindsay and the class of sixteen young students were in the old cemetery beside
Baldwin Hall. Campus lore said it was where the university buried deceased students in centuries gone by when it
was inconvenient to ship the bodies back home. The story
may have been true, but the graveyard was actually the
remnants of the old City of Athens Cemetery, encroached on
over the years by the expanding university. Most of the residents had been exhumed long ago and moved elsewhere so
that only a fraction of an acre of the cemetery remained on
the campus. Lindsay had just finished talking about identifying the different kinds of rock the tombstones were carved
from and asked if there were any questions.

"Can we dig one up and look at the bones?" asked a nineyear-old dressed in a red and black UGA sweatshirt.

Lindsay was saved from answering by Sally, who had
come to tell her she had a phone call from Max Gilbert, the
prosecutor of Denny Ferguson. She left the students and
their teacher with Sally and hurried to see what he wanted.

"I have some bad news," he told Lindsay when she
picked up her office phone. "Denny Ferguson is on the
loose."

"How?" asked Lindsay, clutching the telephone.

"Sometime after midnight last night he complained of
severe stomach pains and had a fever. The county jailer on
duty called for a doctor, who thought it was his appendix
and had him sent to the hospital. He found himself in a
momentarily unguarded hospital room and walked out.
Simple as that."

"What do you think he will do?"

"Try to get as far away from here as possible. He does
have a lot of relatives who could hide him, and that's bad,
but I don't want you to worry, just be cautious. Normally,
these guys are caught within forty-eight hours."

Lindsay hung up the phone. She decided not to tell Derrick. He would probably interrupt his work to come
down, and she didn't want to be the cause of that. Besides,
the prosecutor was right. Ferguson would be caught soon if
he stayed in the area. The life of a fugitive is hard, particularly when his face has been seen on TV by nearly everyone.

Ferguson's escape caused a flurry of news items about
the role of Lindsay's testimony in his conviction. His
lawyers talked about the tyranny of expert witnesses and
how their credentials and reputation can unduly interfere
with some jury members' exercise of their own good judgment. Sarah K. Banks gave a teary interview, saying that
Denny was afraid he was going to be put to death for something he didn't do. No wonder he bolted, she told the interviewer. He felt as though he had no hope for justice.

Denny Ferguson was not caught within forty-eight hours.
Two months passed before Max Gilbert, the county prosecutor, called to tell her, "A car stolen from the hospital parking lot about the time of Ferguson's escape turned up in
South Carolina. It's a safe bet it was him. He'll turn up. He's
not smart enough to stay hidden for too long. Maybe we'll
get lucky and Unsolved Mysteries or one of those programs
will pick up the story."

Lindsay thought that sounded as if they didn't have a clue
where to look for Ferguson, but she had stopped worrying
about it. If he had a grudge against her, he would have tried
something before now. She directed her attention to her
plans for the summer: a leisurely trip through North Georgia
and Tennessee, visiting archaeological sites. The three she
was most interested in were directed by friends she had
gone to graduate school with who were in the process of finishing up their doctoral programs: Brian Parker's Royce Site,
Jane Burroughs' Rock Shelter Site, and, of course, Derrick
Bellamy's Cold River Site. She had spent the larger part of
spring quarter planning her trip. If Denny Ferguson came
after her, at least she would be a moving target.

"There's a call for you." Susan Gitten leaned from the
door of Lindsay's cabin, yelling to her. "Do you want me to
tell them you've gone?"

Lindsay turned from stroking her horse's neck and
glanced at her Land Rover, packed and ready to go. "Yes ...
no. I'll take it." She rested her cheek on Mandrake's velvetsoft nose, gave his neck another pat, and walked to the cabin.

"Lindsay Chamberlain," she said.

"Dr. Chamberlain, this is Sheriff Howard, over in
Cordwain. We met last year at that cemetery flooding
thing."

"I remember. What can I do for you?"

"A farmer up here's found a skeleton in a field he's plowing. I wonder if you'd come take a look. I got a deputy
guarding it right now." Lindsay looked at her watch. She
had planned to be on the road by now, but then, she had
also vowed to have a leisurely trip and a flexible schedule.
"We don't have anybody here who can tell us what to do
with it," he added, as he gave her directions to the farm.

"I'll leave right now. It should take about forty minutes."

"Thanks. I sure do appreciate this. It's probably an Indian
burial ground he's stumbled on, then again ..."

LINDSAY SAW THEM standing in the field: two men in
uniform, slim with military bearing, and another man
dressed in work clothes. A large green tractor was sitting
idle a few feet away. A woman in a print housedress stood
at the edge of the field. Next to her a young boy about
twelve sat cross-legged, petting a dog lying beside him. A
girl of about five pulled at the woman's hand, straining to
see what had gotten the grown-ups' attention. All faces
turned toward Lindsay as she parked her vehicle and
walked across the plowed field.

The sheriff held out his hand to Lindsay. "This is Miles
Lambert. He owns the land. This is my deputy, Mike
Murray. Glad you could come."

Lindsay smiled and shook each hand in turn. "No problem," she said as she looked down to where two ribs lay on
the surface of the ground.

"Lambert thinks it may be a dog he buried a few years
ago," said the sheriff, as Lindsay kneeled to look at the yellowed bones. She picked them up and stood to examine
them.

"No, I'm afraid they're human," she said.

The sheriff shook his head. "Well, damn."

"How can you tell?" asked the deputy. "I've seen some
pretty big dogs."

"If you look over at that dog, you'll see his rib cage is a
different shape from ours. It's a consequence of walking on
four legs rather than two."

Lindsay watched as they squinted at the dog, who sat up
and wagged his tail as if expecting to be called. They looked
at the ribs again, not seeing what Lindsay saw. Lindsay
asked the young boy to bring his dog over, which he did
eagerly. The dog was a large black and tan hound that
wagged its tail and sniffed with mild interest in the direction of the bones.

"What's his name?" Lindsay asked the boy.

"Casey," he told her.

Lindsay petted the dog and said his name. He licked her
hand and gave her his paw. She shook it, then held the rib
bones next to his chest. It was obvious from the comparison
that the ribs could not be those of a dog.

"I see what you mean now," said the sheriff. The others
nodded in agreement.

"These are the left sixth and seventh ribs of a human,"
Lindsay said. "They've been in the ground a good while,
well over a hundred years from the looks of it. But ground
that is routinely fertilized," she motioned toward the field,
"has an effect on bones that can make them look older than
they are. I need to see all of the skeleton to be sure of its
age."

"I've got some shovels," Lambert offered.

"I have excavation equipment in the Rover," said
Lindsay. "It probably will take the rest of today and most of
tomorrow, maybe longer."

"Deputy Murray here will help," said the sheriff, and
Lindsay was somewhat surprised when the deputy readily
agreed.

"I got a camera in the car," he said.

Mr. Lambert was able to supply her with a makeshift
screen to sift the surrounding dirt for items that might
belong with the bones.

Lindsay drew a tentative outline in the soil indicating
where she believed the grave's edges would be, then sat
down in the plowed ground and began gently moving
away dirt with her trowel. She started where the ribs had
protruded through to the surface, and she quickly found
more bone. After an hour or so the sheriff realized that this
was going to be a slow and meticulous task. He left the
deputy in Lindsay's charge and drove back to his office. The
Lamberts had left earlier. Lindsay heard Mrs. Lambert
admonish her children not to bother them while they
worked.

Mike proved adept at excavating and at sifting the fill
taken out of the burial. The ground was soft and the task
went more quickly than she had expected. By noon the
upper half of the skeleton was partially uncovered. She was
brushing dirt away from the forehead of the skull when, to
the side of the excavation, she spied a pair of small tan feet
with pink toenails in tiny brown sandals. She looked up into
the wide-eyed cherubic face of the little girl she had seen
earlier. The girl was staring down at the protruding skull.