Burial Ground (7 page)

“I could come,” she offered, voice unsteady. “I mean, I could call into work …”

“Better you go on to your job. I’m betting it’ll turn out to be nothing. And I’ll call you as soon as I find him.”

I scribbled a note to Marilyn and went back out to my red ’86 Blazer. I’d told the truth about David and me being in tight places before, and the dents in the Blazer’s body proved it. But there’d never been a case where he’d set out to go thirty miles. and disappeared. It gave me a feeling I seldom had, one that I didn’t especially enjoy.

I drove home first to check my phone. Sure enough, it was off the hook, where Digger had lurched at me. He was pawing on the back door now, hoping we were going for a ride, but I didn’t have time to explain, so I threw him a Milk Bone and headed back out.

The morning rush hour was still on, and as I raced up the ramp to the freeway I had to slow for a pickup truck loaded with mattresses, lumbering along in the right lane. The white Acura Integra behind me would probably whip across the caution reflectors at the end of the on ramp to get past us both, and I squeezed the wheel, ready. But nothing happened. I fitted in neatly and the Integra took its time as well.

It was hard for me to imagine that there were people in the world who faced this traffic every morning.

By the time I came down off the interstate, at the north edge of the city, the traffic had evaporated, though I noticed the Integra was still back there. Now we had a four-lane straightaway for almost twenty miles, past the evil-smelling refinery, past the Civil War site of Port Hudson, all the way to Thompson Creek, which cuts across the base of the hills and divides the first terrace of the Mississippi from the loess bluffs for which Natchez is famous.

As I went, I kept my eye out for wrecked or abandoned Landcruisers, but David’s vehicle was not on the side of the highway. At Thompson Creek, I even pulled over and got out to look down into the creek itself, but all I saw was a family picnicking.

That was when I noticed the Integra had stopped a hundred yards behind me. I stared at it for a second, tempted to walk back and ask if I was being followed, but then I told myself that David’s disappearance had given me a dose of paranoia.

I left the four-lane and climbed into the hills then, over-taking a milk truck without much room to spare. The turn-off to the Dupont property was just ahead and I shot past it. A couple of miles further on, at a convenience store, I whipped into the parking lot and turned around. As I nosed back into the southbound lane, I saw the Integra coming up fast and caught a look of astonishment on the driver’s face.

And I’m sure she saw the annoyed look on mine.

P. E. Courtney
.

I didn’t know what kind of game she was playing, but I knew I could shake her now, because by the time she got turned around I’d have vanished down the side road.”

Why the hell was she following me, though? Nosiness? Or was it something more sinister? Could she have something to do with David’s disappearance? Was Freddie St. Ambrose involved? It seemed unlikely: Freddie would screw you on a business deal, but he was not known for his physical prowess. His style was to sit in his air conditioning and make trouble over the phone. Still, David was gone. And it didn’t help to know that T-Joe had died not far from where David had said he was going.

I wheeled right, off the highway, and floored it as I arrowed down the tar top, toward the river. She’d be back down on the four-lane before she figured out that she’d lost me, and by that time she’d have passed three or four places I might have turned.

I came out of a turn and braked. A quarter-mile ahead something—a car, it looked like—was blocking the road. My heart started into free fall. As I neared, though, I saw it was a sheriff’s vehicle, with a deputy standing beside it to halt traffic.

A wreck. My God, he’d gone off the road into the ditch and they hadn’t found him until this morning…

But then I saw that standing with the deputy were a couple of men in navy blue uniforms with red trim. The men held shotguns.

I slowed to a halt and the deputy plodded over to peer into my car.

“Morning, sir. You got business back here?”

One of the men in dark blue had taken up a position on the other side, and was eyeing my passenger compartment.

“I’m working for the Duponts,” I said. “They bought some land back here from Greenbriar Plantation.”

The deputy nodded.

“Something the matter?” I asked.

“Couple of inmates broke out of Angola yesterday,” the deputy said, spitting in the road. “You seen anybody suspicious? Hitchhikers, say?”

I shook my head. “No. But isn’t this a little far south? They’d have to have gone twenty miles, not to mention passing St. Francisville.”

The man on the other side of my vehicle came around the front. He was beefy, with rings under his eyes. The patch on his shoulder said
Louisiana State Penitentiary
.

“Stole a boat,” he said sourly. “We found it half a mile upstream. They probably snuck past St. Francisville last night, when the ferry wasn’t working. Then the current put ’em ashore down here. We’ve got the chase team on the power plant grounds.”

“I’ll keep a lookout,” I said. “By the way, have you seen a man in a brown Toyota Landcruiser? He was supposed to be working up near Greenbriar. He’s one of my people.”

The guard shook his head and the deputy looked blank. They’d both stepped back to let me pass when I saw them staring over my shoulder and I heard a car stopping behind me. I turned my head and froze: the Integra.

I walked back to her car and jerked her door open, almost spilling her into the road.

“Get out of me car,” I said. “I want to find out what’s going on.”

Her mouth went open in surprise, and a few seconds later the deputy was standing next to me.

“What’s going on?”

I turned to face him. “This woman’s been following me from Baton Rouge.”

He looked at me, then at her, and then back at me.

“And you’re complaining?”

“One of my people is missing.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” she said.

“You think she had something to do with it?” the deputy asked. The two guards were now standing beside him, grateful for the break in the monotony.

“I know I keep running into her,” I said and realized as soon as I’d said it how weak it sounded.

“I’ll trade places with you,” the second guard said.

“This is harassment,” I protested. “She followed me from Baton Rouge.”

The deputy spat in the roadway again, then leaned down until his face was close to hers.

“Miss, you carrying a gun or a knife?”

“Of course not.”

“You mean any harm to this man?”

“No.”

The lawman straightened up and shrugged.

“Well, I don’t see I can stop her from driving down a public road.”

“Thank you,” she said with a sweetness of which I’d never have thought her capable. I wheeled and walked back to the Blazer.

“Be careful and don’t pick up anybody,” the deputy called after me. “Same for you, ma’am. If you know each other, it’d be a good thing to travel together …”

But I was already driving away.

She stayed behind me all the way to Absalom Moon’s shack. But by then I didn’t care about her, because what I saw when I slowed to pull into his yard sent fear rippling through me: A brown Landcruiser was parked next to the chicken house. There was no sign of movement from the house as I stopped in the yard.

David had been here but the place looked deserted.

S
IX

I walked over to the Landcruiser, dimly aware that the Integra was pulling into the yard after me. I put my hand on the hood:
cold
.

“What’s going on?” I heard her call, as she crossed the yard toward me. Another power outfit, white slacks with a black coat.

“Maybe you can tell me,” I said acidly. “You’ve been following me all day.”

“I was headed over to your office to talk to you,” she said, her tone defensive. “I wanted to see if you’d heard any more about the Tunica job. I mean, since T-Joe Dupont got killed.”

“You know about that?”

“I read the paper. So what’s going on? Did he sign the contract before he died?”

“We’re working for the family,” I said. “But you still didn’t say why you were here.”

“I thought maybe I could help,” she said.

“I never made any agreement to work with you,” I told her. “I never said I’d cut you in on any of my business. And following me around sure as hell doesn’t make me any more likely to work with you.”

“I saw you leaving and I didn’t know what to do, so I followed.” She gave a little shrug. “It was just an impulse.”

“And that’s why you happened to run into me jogging yesterday?”

“That was an accident. I always jog there. I was glad to see you out walking. It’s good for you.”

“Out walking—” I cut myself off. “Look, let me make this short and sweet: I’ve worked without you for ten years. Believe it or not, there’re plenty of people besides you who know something about the archaeology of these parts. I don’t intend to subcontract you, especially not now. Not if you were the last archaeologist on earth.”

She flinched at my words, or maybe it was just the sunlight in her eyes. I started to turn around and head up onto the porch, but her voice caught me:

“Alan, you
need
me,” she said.

I stared at her. “What?”

“I’m an expert on contact period artifacts. I studied under the best. You’re good, but you’re a specialist in prehistory. Only 20 percent of the projects you’ve done have involved sites with a major historic component, and almost none of those have been contact period.”

“How do you know all that?” I asked.

She folded her arms and looked me in the eyes.

“Do you think I’m a total idiot? I told you I did an analysis. After I decided I liked Louisiana, I settled on Baton Rouge instead of New Orleans because Baton Rouge is the capital and the state’s archaeology bureaucracy is here, as well as the state university. There are also three viable contract archaeology firms. I researched every one of them. Don’t you think I talked to people before I came down here? Freddie St. Ambrose is a sleaze. That’s his reputation. I knew CEI did good work, and I knew you, though smaller than CEI, did good work, too. One day two months ago I flew down here and spent two days in the Division of Archaeology, checking their report files for who did what. That’s how I know your track record.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“I even saw you come into the office one of those days, to talk to Morgan. You were upset about one of your reports he’d reviewed.”

My mouth must have come open a couple of inches. I vaguely recalled that a woman had been sitting at one of the big tables in the reading room, her head buried in some reports. I’d been more concerned that day with protesting a written comment one of the archaeology police had made about our shovel-testing regime.

Maybe, I told myself, P. E. Courtney wasn’t a
total
loss.

“I want to work
with
you, not against you,” she said.

It didn’t make much sense to argue the point in a barnyard.

“You can help me if you can tell me where David Goldman is,” I said. “That’s his Landcruiser. Nobody’s seen him since yesterday. He came here to talk to the man who lives in this house. And he never came back.”

P. E. Courtney frowned. “People don’t just disappear,” she said.

I started up the steps to the rickety porch. “No?” I pounded on the door frame. “Mr. Moon? Are you in there? This is Alan Graham. We met yesterday.”

The front door was open, revealing a torn screen that allowed me to look down the hallway that ran the length of the dwelling. It was too dim inside for me to make out the interior, and I hesitated to go into someone’s home without permission. If Absalom had been here he’d surely have been outside by now.

“You don’t think they were both kidnapped,” she said. “By those convicts, I mean.”

I shrugged. I didn’t know
what
to think. But there were beginning to be too many coincidences: the death of T-Joe, the escape of the two convicts, David’s disappearance.

“I think it’s time to call the sheriff,” I told her.

She nodded. “Do you want to use your phone or mine?”

I took my flip phone out of my Blazer and she eyed it with disdain.

“Yours is bigger than mine,” she said, and produced a telephone the size of a cigarette pack.

“It’s called the Old Archaeology.”

“I’m not trying to be confrontational,” she said. “You can use my phone.”

If it hadn’t been important to find David I’d have told her what was on my mind. Instead, I waited while she got first Directory Assistance and then the number of the West Feliciana Sheriff’s Office. When the connection was complete, she handed the phone to me.