“Don’t you find it odd that the site manager is being sent off to do research someplace else?”
“Not if that’s what needed doing,” Jake replied calmly. “Milo could site-manage. I could do it myself.”
“Do you have any opinions on who would go after your boss with a tomahawk?”
“Oh, sure. Some local in favor of the strip-mining deal who wanted to make the Cullowhees look bad. I see racial overtones, don’t you?”
Pilot Barnes shook his head. “I see a long case,” he sighed, “with the sheriff gone, and me supposed to put up hay tomorrow. Why me, Lord?”
“Are you sure he was murdered?” asked Elizabeth, wide-eyed.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Pilot patiently. “People don’t generally sneak up and hit themselves on the back of the head with a tomahawk.”
“I guess not.” She nodded. “By the way, do you know Wesley Rountree?”
This was a name none of the others had mentioned. A new lead, thought Pilot. “Is he one of the people connected with this project?” he asked.
“Oh, no. He’s the sheriff of Chandler Grove, Georgia, where my cousins live. I just thought you might know him, since you’re in law enforcement too.”
“No, ma’am,” said the deputy, forgoing the desire to tell her that he was not acquainted with Wyatt Earp or Buford Pusser either. “Now could you give me a statement about what happened tonight?”
Elizabeth told him about her evening, describing the encounter between Mary Clare and Tessa Lerche as tactfully as she could. She had not left the church since supper, she said, and she had no information relevant to the incident.
“Actually, I’m not an anthropologist,” she admitted. “I came on this dig because I thought it sounded interesting.”
“Who invited you?”
“Um… Milo Gordon. He’s my brother’s roommate, and…”
“I see,” said Pilot Barnes. And he did.
The next morning at nine, Dr. Putnam found Pilot Barnes going through a pile of papers on Duncan Johnson’s desk. He halted his search periodically to take gulps of coffee from a mug on the top of the filing cabinet.
“What did you lose?” asked Dr. Putnam. “Not evidence, I hope.”
“Nope. I’m hunting the address of that sheriff’s convention at the beach.”
“I thought you’d be wanting to wash your hands of this case, Pilot.”
The deputy shrugged. A certain kind of person always made that joke sooner or later. He said, “I just think he ought to be told. If he still wants me to handle it, that’s fine.”
“Well, I figured you’d want to get in touch with him, so I hurried through your autopsy first thing. Can’t sleep of a morning anyway anymore.”
“What did you find?”
“Oh, it was just what it looked like. Somebody bashed his head in with that ridiculous tomahawk, and that’s exactly what killed him. I’ll give you a typed-up version in two-dollar words this afternoon. This one doesn’t need to go to the state lab, though, so you go right on ahead with the investigation. Did the tomahawk tell you anything?”
“The handle was rough bark, which doesn’t take fingerprints. There was a paper seal on the bottom saying Made in Taiwan. They sell them at Cherokee for four bucks.”
Dr. Putnam shook his head. “All I can say is, when it comes my time to go, I hope I don’t die in a
Pilot Barnes, who had found the number of the sheriff’s hotel and was busy dialing it, did not reply. Dr. Putnam had nothing further to report on the Lerche case, but he wouldn’t have missed the forthcoming conversation for the world. He settled down in the straight chair and began to leaf through Duncan Johnson’s current copy of
“Official police call for Sheriff Duncan Johnson,” said Pilot Barnes in his most matter-of-fact tone. He drummed his fingers on the desk while he waited for the harassed receptionist to sort through one hundred sheriffs’ messages for the whereabouts of Sheriff Johnson. “Yeah. I’m still here. He-what? Okay. When do you think that’ll be? Well, ask him to call his office.” He hung up the phone with more force than necessary.
Dr. Putnam, who was helping himself to coffee, raised his eyebrows expectantly.
The deputy scowled. “He went deep-sea fishing with the guys from Buncombe County. They’re staying overnight on the boat.”
The doctor’s eyes twinkled. “Call out the Coast Guard! Boy, wouldn’t I love to see Duncan Johnson’s face when the floating feds hauled him off that fishing boat.”
Pilot Barnes, who had been thinking of doing just that, did not smile. “I guess it’s up to me, then,” he said, but he wrote the phone number of Duncan Johnson’s hotel on the front of the phone book.
CHAPTER NINE
MILO WATCHED it grow light. Across the valley the intersecting planes of woods and pasture changed from gray to green against the black shapes of the mountains. He had grown tired of fighting for sleep at five in the morning and slipped out of the church. He filled the bucket at the nearby stream so that he could start the coffee before the others woke up. Alex used to get up early too, Milo thought. Many mornings he would come into the office straight from a hot shower in the gym, following his morning run. He used to ask Milo to join him, but Milo never took him up on it. He would always answer that during his career as all-night security person he had seen enough sunrises to last him a lifetime. He wasn’t awake now to appreciate the beauty of the morning.
“Milo?” Elizabeth peered out of the side door of the church, yawning sleepily. “What time is it?”
“Quarter past dawn,” said Milo absently.
“How long have you been out here?”
“I don’t know. I thought I’d make coffee as long as I was up.”
“Is it ready? The deputy up at the site might like some.”
Milo looked down at the bucket of water beside him. “I forgot to make it.”
Elizabeth sighed. “Wait here.”
In a few minutes she had returned with the camp stove, the large yellow coffee funnel, and a pot to boil the water in. Scooping water from the bucket into the pot, Elizabeth said, “I’ll brew it up out here. That way I won’t wake up anyone inside, and you won’t be alone.”
“I don’t feel like talking,” said Milo.
“Very likely not,” nodded Elizabeth. “But why don’t you think out loud?”
“I just can’t believe Alex is dead,” said Milo. “To Alex death wasn’t an inevitability, it was a puzzle.”
“How so?” asked Elizabeth quietly as she spooned coffee into the filter.
“A corpse was a puzzle. What could it tell us by this bruise or that distortion of bones? I guess I always thought of Alex as manipulating death… to make it tell us things. Now he’s just another case for some other examiner. An occipital fracture to be catalogued with the rest.”
“Not to you. He’ll never be just another case to you. The question is: where do we go from here?”
Milo, startled out of his reverie, looked at her for the first time. “What do you mean?”
“The project. Do we pack it in, or what? The others will be wanting to know.”
Milo was looking toward the path that led to the excavation site. The woods were still dark, so that the path seemed to be a strip of light that stopped abruptly at the trees.
“You realize, of course, that there is a murderer out there, and he could be waiting to pick off the rest of us?” Elizabeth shivered.
“Of course I realize it! Why else would I be hesitating about finishing the project? I want to do this as a memorial to Alex-but I can’t let his students get killed in the process.”
“I’m going inside to get the cups,” said Elizabeth.
When she came back, Milo had not moved. He was still staring out across the valley, lost in thought. Elizabeth poured the coffee. “You know, Alex’s death may not have anything to do with the project,” she remarked, trying to
