LC 02 - Questionable Remains (21 page)

"I am a liaison between foreign teams-baseball, soccerand companies that sell equipment. I met Jennifer and Ken
through a mutual friend of her late husband."

"I see. What did you think of Ken?" Lindsay asked.

"He was all right. Reckless-too reckless, as it turned
out," he answered.

"Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to kill
him?" asked Lindsay.

"No. I don't believe anyone wanted to or did. It was a
tragic accident. These murder rumors are simply fueled by
other people. I'm sure it's been hard on the Lamberts since
Mrs. Lambert's brother disappeared. They want to blame
someone. That's natural. Blaine Hillard's family is just plain
greedy. Look, I only came here to ask you to drop this.
There's nothing to find. It was an accident. If the authorities
found nothing, why do you think you can?"

Lindsay said nothing. There was nothing she could say
that wouldn't sound arrogant.

On the way back to her room, Lindsay got the envelopes
from the motel safe. In her room she undressed, put on her
robe, and stretched out on the bed with the photographs.
She looked first at the ones of Blaine Hillard. There were
pictures of the front and back of his skull, as well as his full
skeleton laid out anatomically. On the whole, not bad, but
she wished she had more. She wished she had the bones.

Most of the bones of Blaine Hillard were still articulated,
as Lindsay would have expected. The skull still had a scalp
of hair, not a full mass but fine wisps. Thin pieces of dry
parchment skin were stretched over bone here and there.
She took a hand lens from her purse and began a slow, careful examination of the bones in the photographs. The first
thing she observed was that Blaine had his right ninth rib on backward, or rather, upside down. She smiled to herself.
The skeleton of Blaine Hillard had two left ribs that were
supposed to occupy the ninth position. One had been
placed upside down to make it a right rib. The bones were
commingled. This seemed to be a pretty obvious error. She
wondered why it wasn't caught. Perhaps because the person identifying the bones was only interested in identity,
since cause of death seemed fairly straightforward, or perhaps because the examiner was not a forensic specialist.

Starting at the first rib, she began examining them one by
one. After finding one out-of-place bone, she couldn't be
confident now that others weren't, so if she found anything,
she might not know which person it belonged to.

Lindsay found nothing on the ribs except rows of parallel
grooves, indicating the bones had been gnawed by rodents.
She was mildly disappointed. Ribs are a good place to find
evidence of knife and gunshot wounds. She examined the
long bones and joints. Blaine Hillard's surgeon appeared
competent. The repaired knee joint looked good.

After looking at everything she could on the bones that
were visible, she turned her attention to the skull. The back
of the head was crushed and most of the skin was gone on
the lower part of the skull. Probably the falling debris from
the cave-in had crushed the cranium, but she examined it
closely several times with the lens. Abruptly, she stopped at
an injury in the right upper part of the occipital. Just jutting
out from a crushed portion of the skull was a depression
fracture that looked to be hook-shaped. It could be part of
the injury from the rock fall, or not. It was hard to see in the
photograph. But it looked suspiciously like the depression
that the end of a crowbar or a similar weapon would make.

Lindsay stared at the picture for several minutes, trying
to find more clues around the site of the wound. She
jumped when the telephone rang.

"Hello," she said into the phone.

"Lindsay Chamberlain?"

The voice was familiar. "Yes, this is Lindsay," she said.

"This is John West. I tried your car phone, then your
house, then Susan Gitten. She gave me your motel number."

"I'm sorry you had to call so many places. What can I do
for you?"

"Nothing. I need to tell you what I found in the back of
my truck. I would have called sooner, but it didn't occur to
me. Because of the land settlement, we have enemies we
didn't have before, and I thought it was one of them. But I
couldn't figure out how it got in the bed of my truck without making a hole anywhere. It was as if it had dropped
from the air. Then I remembered your tire, the one I tossed
into my truck, and I realized what it must be."

"What did you find?" she asked.

"A bullet. I believe someone shot your tire, Lindsay
Chamberlain."

LINDSAY DIDN'T SAY anything for a moment. She
gripped the receiver and nervously glanced at the door to
make sure she had locked it. "A bullet?" she whispered.

"I don't know that it came from your tire, but I don't
know where else it could have come from. I went along the
highway where you had the flat and looked for bullet casings or some other evidence. I found nothing."

"Who would have shot at me?"

"Who are your enemies?" He paused, then added,
"Besides me. I don't kill my enemies; I take them to court.
Or lecture them to death." Lindsay smiled. "Emily tells me
you have had trouble with a man you convicted with your
testimony?"

"Yes," Lindsay said, "that could be. His family is very
angry. But-" She hesitated, then decided to confide in him,
mostly because she was alone and he was on the other end
of the phone. "At the next site I went to after I left you-a
conquistador camp," she added, so he would know it was
not an Indian site-"one of the crew was murdered."

He was silent a moment. "Hmmm. A coincidence?"

"I don't know." Lindsay told him about the Lamberts,
about the skeleton in their field, about the cavers who were
killed, and about what the Lamberts asked her to do.

"So, Rabbit, your curiosity's got you stuck to a tar-man."
He chuckled. Lindsay knew he was not referring to the Joel
Chandler Harris story, but to Indian lore from whence the
story originated. "Sounds like you need greedy wolf to get
you out," he said.

"Do you know one who'll take my place?"

"I know one who might cut you loose and let you walk
away," he said.

He sounds like Derrick, thought Lindsay. "I have only one
more person to talk to, then I'll be finished."

"I hope that's not prophetic."

"I didn't mean it exactly like that." She laughed. "Besides,
if it is Denny Ferguson or his family, my walking away from
this won't help."

"I talked to the FBI about the bullet," he said.

"FBI?" she asked.

"You were in the national forest when you had your accident. The FBI has jurisdiction. I don't know what they will
do, but they know about it."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. You're a high-maintenance kind of girl.
Your boyfriend must have his hands full."

Lindsay didn't know if he was trying to make her mad,
make her defend herself, or just take her mind off her fear.
Perhaps all of the above. "He probably believes he does."

"Are you alone now at your motel?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Has anything happened while you have been in Cave
City?" he asked.

Lindsay hesitated. Craig Gillett's coming to visit her
would hardly be considered in the category of something
that happened, but it felt like it, the way he looked at her
with his dark eyes, the way he wanted to come into her
room. There was something frightening about him. She hesitated a little too long and John spoke again.

"Something has happened."

"No, not really. Just the boyfriend of the prime suspect
came to see me. I talked to him in the coffee shop. He just
kind of gave me the creeps is all."

"Why do you do this?" he asked.

"I don't know. I just like the Lamberts and wanted to help
them. I plan to talk to the guy who identified the skeletons,
then give everything I have to the Lamberts and to the
police."

"I would stick to that plan. Well, Little-Rabbit-who-digsup-my-ancestors, I'll say goodnight. Keep your door
locked. Do you have a pencil?"

"What? Yes."

"Write down my phone number. If you need anything,
give me a call."

She wrote down the number John West gave her, thanked
him again, and rang off. With the phone back on its cradle
and the room silent, Lindsay felt very alone. Every footfall
past her door made her edgy. She double-checked the lock
on the door, then went to take a shower.

This is silly, she thought as she soaped herself. The bullet
may have come from somewhere else. It may have fallen out of
something else he put in his truck, or someone may have shot at
him and he just didn't see the bullet hole. Then she thought
about the rumors that had begun about her, the things that
had happened at her house. A thought struck her like a bullet and she stood letting the warm water wash over her. All
the things that had happened were events that should make
her want to go home-the attack on her reputation, the calls
and visits to her home. Someone wanted to scare her into
going home. If she didn't, what then? Would they escalate
to something more dangerous? Was that what the bullet
was, an escalation? What about poor dead Gil Harris?
Where did he fit into this? Tomorrow she would call Agent
McKinley and talk him into telling her what he had found
at the crime scene.

Lindsay awoke to the ringing of the telephone. She looked at the clock-almost 1:30 in the morning. "Hello,"
she said.

"Lindsay, sweetheart. Is everything all right over there?"
It was a voice filled with concern.

"Derrick? Yes, fine. Is everything okay with you?" She
was wide awake now.

"Yes. I got an interesting call from someone who calls you
Rabbit and thought you could use some comfort from someone close," he said.

"John West called you?" she said.

"Yes. He had quite a time finding my number. He was
sufficiently worried about you that he went to Brian's site at
midnight to get it," said Derrick.

"He told you about the bullet he found in his truck?" she
asked.

"Yes, and that you had a visitor who frightened you.
Lindsay, I'm really worried about this."

"I know, I'm sorry. I'm worried enough now that, after I
tell the orthopedist who identified the bones that he comingled them, I'm leaving this alone. I've been shot before, and
I didn't like it. I've done all I can do here anyway."

"I'm glad to hear it. Do you want me to come over?"

"No. It's too far for you to drive tonight. I'll be fine. I'm
sorry you're worried. It's not certain that the tire was shot,
anyway."

"Just don't do any more investigating. You have a lot of
people who care about what happens to you."

"John is just trying to get on my good side so I'll stop digging up his ancestors," she said.

"I'm glad he was concerned enough to track us both
down. I don't like thinking about you alone in a motel
room," he said.

"I'm fine. They have good locks on the door."

"I love you, Lindsay. Take care of yourself."

"I am. I love you, too."

"Call if you need me."

It took her a while to get back to sleep. She stared into the
darkened room, dimly illuminated by the night-light in the
bathroom. Her eyes focused on the lamp sitting on the left
side of the dresser. It had been on the other side. She
remembered thinking that it was in a bad place because it
would interfere with opening the television cabinet to the
right of the dresser. She hadn't moved it because she hadn't
wanted to watch the TV. The maid? No. She remembered
that it was there after the visit from the maid. But someone
had moved the lamp. Why? To open the TV cabinet. Why?
To search it. When? When she was out of the room. Lindsay
thought about that. Thought about when she was out of her
room and when she saw the lamp. It had to be when she
was having dinner with Jennifer Darnell. But it could have
been before that. She was in and out often. Lindsay got out
of bed and checked to be sure she had locked her door and
got back into bed. It was a while before she finally fell asleep
wondering who had moved the lamp in her room.

Roberto's scheme worked. Pardo changed his plans and began his
journey back to Santa Elena. Piaquay took the news well that the
Spanish were not coming to Chilhaxul. If they were running
away, then perhaps they would go home. That was all he wanted
from them. But he did not surrender his plan of revenge on
Calderon. The news that Calderon was planning an expedition of
his own filled Piaquay with satisfaction. The news was brought to
him by Cocunae, who did not mind pleasing both sides if harmony could be preserved and his own interests were maintained, and
who also had learned early that information is as much a tradable
commodity as deerskins.

Cocunae told Piaquay the story of the Uktena. Piaquay knew it,
of course, or rather, a variation of the story, but he listened
patiently while the young trader unfolded his narration.