LC 04 - Skeleton Crew (11 page)

"What can you tell me about this skeleton?"

"I can tell you he is definitely male. He did not die when the
ship went down-"

"Oh, how do you know that?"

"He appears to be wrapped in sailcloth. That's what they did
with passengers and crew who died aboard ship. They apparently
didn't have time to give him a burial at sea, indicating that he
probably died shortly before or during the storm. He could, for
example, have fallen from a yardarm while trying to adjust the
sails. Ships were hazardous places, especially during bad
weather."

"Do you think you will be able to tell how he died?"

"There is a good chance."

"Will you be able to find out anything else about him?"

"We should be able to learn a lot about him. Human bones are
not dead tissue. They are remodeled and changed throughout our
lives, reflecting what we do, or have done to us. Our bones can
speak very eloquently for us after we're gone."

"What happens to him now?"

"This morning we are going to take him up. It has to be done
carefully, particularly because we have delicate fabric remains to
protect. Then he will go to the lab and be put in a series of baths
with decreasing percentages of seawater until his environment is
gradually changed from salt water to fresh water."

"Why do you have to do that?"

"All these artifacts have been buried underwater for over 440
years," said Trey. "They have to gradually get accustomed to being
out of water. The wood, for example, will always have to be kept
in a climate-controlled environment, even after we rinse the salt
water out, or it will disintegrate."

The interviewer turned to Lewis. "This dam, and everything
that goes with it, is very expensive. What is going to come out of
this that will be worth the money spent on it? We now have Tang
because we went to the moon. What will we get from this?"

"If our own history is not of value, if discovering information
about early nutrition and progression of diseases is not of value, if
uncovering forgotten ways of building and manufacturing things
is not of value, if the study of ocean currents and weather is not of
value, if devising excavation techniques that can be generalized to,
for example, underwater rescue, has no value, and if employing
people and putting all this money into the regional economy
has no value, then I suppose all we get from it is our curiosity
satisfied."

Lindsay couldn't help but be reminded of the silver galleon and
its possible value of hundreds of millions of dollars. It worried her.

The interviewer nodded and smiled as Lewis spoke, showing
perfectly capped teeth.

"So you plan to glean a lot of information from this site?"

"Yes. Every time archaeologists dig a site, we hope to collect as
much information as we can. It's how we add to our knowledge
base. It's what we do. It's what makes us who we are."

The cameraman stayed and filmed Lindsay and her crew carefully placing the bones in plastic tubs and laying wet cloths over
them. After a few minutes he moved on to film the hoisting of a
large rib of the ship to the top of the dam.

"Well, I suppose it's good publicity." Lindsay carefully lifted
each vertebra from the soil and laid it in the tub on a piece of wet
cloth.

"Lewis wasn't half bad," Bobbie said.

"He handled the questions pretty well. Better than I would
have, for sure," agreed Lindsay.

"I'd have told the broad to hang it up after that crack about the
Bermuda Triangle," one of the night crew said with a snicker.

"Yeah," said the other, "they've always got to know what the
monetary payoff is. Don't they care anything about knowledge?
You want us to take these bones to the barge?"

Lindsay shook her head and stood up, stretching her legs. "No,
put them by the field desk." If Trey and Lewis took the television
crew to the lab, she might take the bones with her and get to work
on them.

After the people from the night crew left, Lindsay gave her unit
over to other members of the excavation crew, who troweled out
the mud and put it into buckets. Lewis had come back and was
working several feet away. Lindsay wondered if it was just for
show. She watched him work on what appeared to be figurines. He
did seem to know what he was doing. He lifted his trowel and one
of the figurines came up with it, apparently hanging from the bottom of the trowel.

"What in the... ?" he said.

Lindsay squatted down to look. He took the object away from
the trowel then put it back.

"It's a magnet," he said.

"It looks like a chess piece," said Lindsay.

He rubbed the piece gently, then asked for someone to bring
him some water. Jeff handed him his canteen and Lewis washed
off the piece, revealing a yellowed, detailed carving of a woman
with a crown.

"You're right. A queen," he said.

Their talk caught the attention of one of the cameramen and he
came to film what they were doing. Lewis picked another piece
from the mud and washed it off. This one was a black horse with
a rider.

"A knight," he said.

"Cool," said the cameraman.

"They played games on ships to pass the time," said Lewis. "I
imagine this belonged to one of the officers. What's unusual is the
magnet on the bottom."

"Why do you think they would have that?" he asked.

"So they wouldn't glide off the chessboard when the ship rocked," said Lewis and Lindsay together.

"It's a unique find," Lewis said as he went back to work with
enthusiasm.

No matter how high up you get on the ladder, thought Lindsay,
the interesting find still brings out that feeling of excitement.

"Here is an ivory pawn," he said, washing off the piece.

Lindsay supposed that Jeff was going to have to forget about
his canteen of water for a while.

"No," said Lindsay, when the piece was rinsed. "That's a first
proximal phalange of a foot."

"I believe you are right," Lewis agreed, smiling up at her.

"Is it human?" the cameraman asked.

"Sure is," Lindsay replied.

"Was he the one playing chess?" he asked, zooming in on the
bone in Lewis's hand.

Lewis and Lindsay briefly looked at each other.

Lindsay didn't see John that evening, but he sent a message asking
her out to dinner the following night. She spent the remainder of
the day with Carolyn, who took possession of the skeleton as if it
were her relative, and began separating the bone from the fabric
stuck to it. She took great care to handle the cranium upside down
in case some brain tissue had survived in the anaerobic environment of the mud.

"I'll have the fabric separated in no time and you can look at the
skull. I know Cisco wants the analysis done quickly. Just keep it
wet."

"By the way," said Korey, "he left this for you. Said it was
loaded with the latest."

He handed Lindsay a black laptop computer much like the one
she had at home.

"Nice," said Lindsay, opening it up. "The guy knows how to
give a girl a gift."

"You work for Cisco, you get good equipment," Carolyn said.

Lindsay examined her workstation for the first time and found
it furnished with books, anthropometric measuring devices, a digital camera, cranial rests, and enough record forms for the entire
crew of the ship if they were found. She plugged in the computer and Windows came up immediately. She looked at the programs
available to her: word processing, a great statistical package, an
artifact mapping program, a program for computing stature from
long bones, and the latest software for recording and analyzing
ethnic origin from skull measurements. She put in some numbers
out of her head to see where on the map the program located the
source. Not bad.

"The skull has quite a bit of damage under the textile," Carolyn
called over to her.

Lindsay went over to see. There was a depression fracture of
the left parietal on the temporal line, and two more depression
fractures on the left side partially overlaying each other atop the
lambdoidal suture-between the left parietal and the occipital.

Lindsay touched the indentations in the skull. She was, after all,
a forensic anthropologist, and she recognized murder by bluntforce trauma to the head when she saw it.

CAROLYN LOOKED AT the skull suspiciously. Lindsay could see it in
her eyes. She wasn't sure, but it didn't look right. "Was that caused
by a fall from the mast to the deck or something?" Carolyn asked,
finally.

"No," Lindsay said. "Force was applied to an immobile head,
not the other way around."

"You're saying something hit this guy?" Korey came to look.
"Probably the lateen mizzen yard. They were head height and real
killers on ships."

When Lindsay didn't say anything, they stared at her.

"You don't think that's it, do you?" Carolyn asked.

"I need to examine the skull thoroughly before I commit."

"Cisco is going to love this," Carolyn said, nodding her head.

"Let's not say anything to Cisco until I've had a go at the entire
skeleton," Lindsay warned.

Carolyn cleaned the skull and, to their disappointment, there
was no brain tissue remaining inside. She wrapped it in soft, wet
cloths and handed it over to Lindsay. The undamaged face was
long and thin with no healed breaks or unusual characteristics.
The teeth were in good condition and not very worn. With the
head spanner and calipers Lindsay recorded twenty-three different measurements on the face, cranium, and underside before setting the skull on the donut ring and placing the cloth over it. She
keyed in the measurements and asked for the various indices and
watched as the program located the ethnic origin on the matrix.
She clicked a menu item and asked for a map. It placed the origin
of HSkR1 as southern Spain.

Lindsay pushed aside the computer and again concentrated on
the skull, examining the fractures. She ran her fingers over the arc of the semicircular indentation. With the calipers she measured the
size, depth, and beveling angle of each fracture. She reached for
the camera.

"You want me to take the photographs for you?" Korey's voice
startled her. She hadn't known he was behind her. "I have a setup
over here."

"That would be nice. I'd also like some detailed drawings of the
fractures when you can get to them."

"Sure thing."

"Well?" asked Carolyn.

"Well, what?" Lindsay handed over the skull to Korey.

"Well, you know what," Carolyn countered.

"Yes, some unknown person hit him over the head."
Furthermore, Lindsay thought she knew what the weapon was. If
she was right, it was a tool still in common use today. In fact, she
had a similar one in her shed at home.

"I knew it," Carolyn said, grinning and fairly jumping with
excitement.

"Well, let's not spread this around."

"Can I see you a moment, Chamberlain?" Lindsay swiveled in
her chair. She hadn't heard Trey come into the lab, hadn't realized
it was quitting time at the site. Trey's voice had an edge to it. Had
something else happened? Lindsay followed him to the far end of
the lab.

"You weren't telling Taylor about the possibility of another
galleon, were you?"

"No."

"What were you talking about with her just then? I heard you
tell her not to tell anyone-about what?"

"We were talking about HSkR1. He was murdered. I didn't
want it to become general knowledge. I was afraid it would attract
too many curiosity seekers."

Trey put his head down. "Chamberlain, I'm sorry."

"It's all right. I'm sure his next of kin are all dead now."

"I'm glad you have a sense of humor."

"I don't. I'm wondering why you jumped to a conclusion like
that."

"I'm sorry. I've been thinking about what you said-about how
many people know about ... you know, and it worries me. I have
awful visions of this area becoming overrun with treasure hunters if the rumor of a silver galleon gets out. That TV interviewerwhat was her name? Grey? She asked about treasure. I'm sure it
was just because this was a galleon, and the discovery of the Atocha
in Florida is still on everyone's mind, but-"

"You explained to her that it would have been unheard of for
the Spanish government to send gold and silver over to the
Indians?"

Trey's mouth quivered into half a smile. "I think I made her
understand." He paused a moment. The tenuous uplift of his
mouth fell back to a frown.

"Someone told King-Smith-Falcon that there were irregularities
in the bidding process. They were the third bidder and are asking
for an audit of the process. I imagine we have Hardy Denton to
thank for that. If that isn't enough, Eva Jones had her lawyer send
us a letter ordering us to stop harassing and slandering her ... or
else."

"Then she must be feeling heat from the Coast Guard."