Burial Ground (24 page)

“That’s true. I told you I was interested in the contact period. I thought if I could get into Angola there might be some clues about where the Tunica were before and after they went to the Trudeau site. I called Warden Goodeau and he sounded interested. So I went down to the State Land Office and looked at the old ownership maps.”

“You did this without telling anybody?”

“You mean without telling
you
? This was the other day. We weren’t exactly on the best terms, remember? But, for the record, if you were going to cut me in on the Dupont survey, I was going to cut you in on whatever I found.”

“But in the meantime, if I had to do additional work to back up any of the finds at T-Joe’s, I’d be running smack up against your permit to work on Angola and the surrounding area.”

“Well …”

“By the way, does the
surrounding area
include the Trudeau site, where they found the original Tunica Treasure?”

Her eyes dropped. “They said they wouldn’t give anybody a permit for that site because it was too sensitive.”

“An understatement.” I got up, my anger returning. “So you were going to box me in. Get access to any collections from the area covered by your permit and keep me from using them until you were finished, which means long enough to keep me from finishing my report to T-Joe.”

“Alan, it wasn’t like that. I wanted you to let me work with you searching for the lost village. That’s all. I didn’t even want more than a polite acknowledgment. I just didn’t want to be left out in the cold when another discovery like the Tunica Treasure was made. I wanted to be there.” She gave a tiny shrug. “The permit was just a kind of insurance policy.”

“And to think I was starting to trust you.”

Her eyes met my own. “And you still can. Look, I hadn’t written up the proposal for the Angola work. I was just exploring what was possible. But you can go with me tomorrow to talk to Goodeau. I’ll tell him we’re going to work together. Will that make you feel better?”

“You have an appointment with Goodeau tomorrow?”

“Yes. I made it the day before yesterday He was very obliging. He said he was working all Saturday and he’d be glad to see me.”

“I see. But if I hadn’t found out about this, you’d still be meeting him alone.”

“I realized afterward I ought to tell you. I just never got up the nerve.”

It was my turn to look surprised. “You? A lack of nerve?”

“I can understand if you’re mad. But I wanted to be a part of the project…” She let out her breath slowly. “Look, I’ll back off. I’ll call Goodeau and tell him I’ve changed my mind. You’re a good archaeologist and a good person, and I don’t want to screw you up.”

My anger started to melt, despite my suspicion that she was taking me for a sucker.

“And you’re a good archaeologist, too,” I heard myself say. “At least, a good archaeologist wrote the Polhugh report. It’s just that …”

“I know. I push too much.”

“You said it.”

She nodded. “So I’ll tell Goodeau never mind.”

“Now hold up on that.” My mouth had run away with me again.

“But…” I saw the hope in her eyes. Without the glasses she looked almost approachable.

“Maybe we can work something out,” I conceded. “It’s been years since anybody was allowed to work at Angola. I’d hate to see the chance lost.”

“We can work together,” she said. “All we need is funding.”

“Is that all?”

“Don’t look so cynical. The State Archaeologist said they have some money left in their grant fund, if we can find a match, and the warden said he knew people who might put up some money.”

“Okay,” I said, sighing. “We’ll work together.”

“You won’t be sorry.”

I didn’t answer, just got up slowly. “What time tomorrow?”

“The appointment’s at ten.”

“I’ll pick you up at eight-thirty,” I said.

She shook her head. “I’ll pick
you
up.”

I started to say something, then held my tongue.

“Okay,” I said. “At my office.”

She nodded and followed me to the door. “Take care,” she said and I nodded, standing on the landing for a second in the night air. A little voice told me I was being a damn fool.

T
WENTY-ONE

The morning newspaper gave the story of the capture. Ben Picote, seventeen, of Marksville, had been captured by sheriff’s deputies only a hundred yards or so from where we’d left him. Ballistics tests were being made on his rifle and an autopsy was being planned on the body of Absalom Moon. Moon’s body had been found, according to the story, by a pair of hunters. Since it wasn’t hunting season, I wondered who had written the story. It didn’t matter, though, because they’d kept us out of it, mainly, I suspected, because we’d been gone by the time the story had been put together. There was no mention of a treasure or, indeed, of any motive, other than the suggestion that Ben had been caught trespassing. I tore out the article and stuck it in my pocket. Then I fed Digger, ate a couple of pieces of cheese toast, and drove to the office.

Marilyn’s wrath was untamable.

“You didn’t come in at all yesterday and now you’re taking off again with that woman?” she fumed. “I had to forge your name to all the paychecks. I’m working Saturdays because I don’t have enough help in the office and you have crew working overtime because of the Corps deadline, which means time and a half we can’t pay, and if another check from the Corps doesn’t come in soon there won’t be another payday no matter
who
signs.”

I nodded absently, having heard it all before.

“Maybe a check’ll be at the box today,” I said.

David hobbled in then, his leg in a cast, and Marilyn flew to his side for help.

“Alan’s going off with that woman.”

David blinked and lurched against the sorting table.

“Is this serious?” he asked. “Or just a one-nighter?”

Gator grinned. “He’s already had one night. Now he’s going for the whole month.”

“That’s enough,” I said. Then I told them about our appointment with Warden Goodeau. “There’s the chance of getting another project. Besides, it’s the only way to keep her from blocking us if we run into anything that requires further work.”

Marilyn, ever jealous of her position and fearful of interlopers, snarled a one-syllable word that rhymed with
witch
.

David, as usual, applied logic.

“You know the Tunicas would raise hell if anybody did any work at Angola or Trudeau,” he said. “Anything anybody finds is likely to be grave goods and the law says—”

“The Tunicas are all wrapped up in their new casino,” I said. “And Ghecko sounds like he’ll allow the permit to go through. You want to be here sitting on your ass while somebody else does the work up there? Remember, there’re Indian mounds a thousand years old right outside the prison gates. They don’t have anything to do with the Tunica. And there was a Poverty Point site three thousand years old where the prison hospital is right now. Who the hell knows what else is out there?”

David nodded. “That’s true enough.”

Marilyn spun on her heel. “Remind me to say
I told you so
when that woman stabs you in the back.”

I shrugged, then went into my office and signed paychecks, and when I glanced up
that woman
was standing in my doorway, looking the same, with the designer glasses and Liz Claiborne clothes, as she had the day I’d met her.

“I don’t think your secretary likes me,” she said.

“Let’s go,” I told her, hoping to get out before Marilyn sent something sailing at both our heads.

It took exactly an hour to reach the prison gates. In the old days, there’d been twenty miles of winding two-lane from U.S. 61, north of St. Francisville, with the bramble over-grown loess hills looming on either side. In recent years the road had been broadened, with the worst curves of the old road straightened out. The parish had lost something, I thought, replacing atmosphere with business.

A mile before the end of the road is the community of Tunica, and beyond it, overlooking the river, is the spot where the original Tunica Treasure was found. The road swings right at Tunica, arrowing between the river at the base of the hills, and the old railroad bed on the right. Once, this had been the domain of the Tunicas, who had been pushed south from their original home in Mississippi. But before them, there had been other tribes, most long lost in the mists of history. The Tunicas and their treasure was a great story, but there were other stories here that could also stand telling, if only we had the data.

We slowed at the prison entrance and a guard lumbered out of the gatehouse and asked our business. When Pepper told him it was to meet the warden the guard seemed unimpressed and told us to get out so the car could be searched. Afterward, he gave us plastic visitors’ badges and told us to drive over to the green administration building.

We parked, got out, and locked the car.

“This is the first time I’ve been in a prison,” Pepper said, looking around her. A trustee in white T-shirt and dungarees was busy in the garden beside the green building, and in the distance a couple of guards on horseback watched a column of inmates headed for the fields.

“It’s not a fun place,” I said, thinking of what I’d read about the prison’s history. In the early fifties, some convicts had gotten so desperate they’d caused a national scandal by cutting their Achilles tendons. Things had never been that bad since, but the sprawling penal farm, a miasmal stretch of river mud stuck between the Mississippi and the hills, would never be a pleasant place.

We went to the front door and a trustee opened it for us. A guard in the corridor told us the warden’s office was at the end.

“God,” Pepper said, shuddering, “I keep expecting to pass one of these rooms and see the electric chair inside.”

“Nah. They use a needle now,” I said.

We came to the end, where a bulletin board graced the flaking green wall. The board was filled with Civil Service fliers and notices of hearings on various subjects, from increasing the number of law books in the prison library to a grievance about the quality of food.

I opened the door of the reception room and followed Pepper in.

The receptionist, a middle-aged woman with garish red hair, looked up from a computer screen.

“Yes?”

Pepper handed over her business card and the woman reached down for the glasses that hung from her neck on a black ribbon.

“Dr. Courtney,” she said. “Yes.” She swiveled on her chair and peered in my direction. “And this is…?”

“Dr. Graham,” Pepper said. “The warden knows him.”

“Does he?” the woman said, unimpressed. “Well, Warden Goodeau is on the farm right now. You can wait there…” She nodded at a couch and some straight-backed chairs. “He ought to be back in a little while.”

Pepper and I exchanged looks.

“All right,” Pepper said and sat down. I took a seat in one of the chairs.

I looked out the window and tried to imagine what it would be like to spend ten or fifteen years in the fields under the eyes of the men on horses.

I was still wondering at ten-thirty when the door opened and Levi Goodeau stepped in, removing his straw hat.

“Sorry to be late,” he said, smiling at Pepper. “We had a little problem out at Camp J.”

The secretary handed him a message slip.

“A call from the governor’s office,” she said.

Goodeau scanned the pink piece of paper. “I’ll take care of it.” He stuffed it in his shirt pocket and motioned us toward a door at the rear of the room. “Come on into my office.”

Pepper went after him and I followed. The warden’s office was a step up from the drab surroundings outside, with paneled walls and some framed photographs of Goodeau with politicians. I recognized the governor, one of the state’s two senators, and, oddly, a photo of the warden in work clothes alongside a similarly clad Jimmy Carter.

“Habitat for Humanity,” Goodeau said, nodding at the picture. “I gave a couple of weeks a few years back, when I was on the faculty of the university. President Carter was one of the people I met. Nice man.”

“You’re a sociologist,” I said, taking a seat in one of the cushioned chairs.

“That’s right,” Goodeau said. “Came from Tunica, right down the road. I was in prison administration for a few years and then I got my doctorate at LSU. Did a lot of consulting for Corrections. They tolerated me because I was a home boy, but when the governor picked me for warden here, the stuff nearly hit the fan. The old-timers thought I was just a do-gooder. Said I couldn’t ever keep things from falling apart.”

“Old-timers like young Briney,” I suggested.

He nodded. “He’s one. But there’re lots like him. Grew up as part of this system and can’t stand to see anything change. I can deal with Briney because his father and I are old fishing buddies. But some of the others…” He shook his head.

“It must be a hard job,” Pepper said.

Goodeau smiled. “It’s not easy. This place has a reputation as one of the hardest prisons in the country. What we get here are the worst the state has to offer—the first offenders, the embezzlers, and the drug cases mostly go to one of the other prisons. We, we get the lifers, or the ones with twenty years, or…” He sighed. “The ones with death sentences.”