LC 04 - Skeleton Crew (48 page)

"I suppose I'm a little skittish."

"More than a little, but I can't say as I blame you. I came up to
tell you that Bobbie and Luke are going to pick up some dinner.
Harper thought you might want some time to get dressed."

Lindsay looked at herself in the dresser mirror. Her hair was a
tangled mess, her face was black and blue, and she had put on her
baggiest nightshirt.

"Are you sure you want to go off somewhere with me?"

"Well, when the bruises go away, you comb your hair and put
on some nice clothes, you won't look too bad." Lindsay picked up
a pillow and threw it at him as she went into the bathroom.

"Are you sure you feel up to this?" Harper asked, as she set up TV
trays around the room for everyone.

"If I get to feeling bad, I'll just go back to bed. But I wasn't getting very much rest. My mind is too restless. And I ache so many
places, I can't find a comfortable sleeping position."

"Want a sleeping pill?"

Lindsay shook her head. "No. I'm trying to get my brain back.
It doesn't seem to be working too well."

"It was going pretty strong during debriefing," Harper said. "That was fun. I was thinking, for the book, why don't you write
up your scenario and let me put it in as an appendix?"

"I'll do that."

Bobbie and Luke brought back a bucket of fried chicken,
shrimp, french fries, slaw, fried apples, mashed potatoes, and more
varied desserts than they could possibly eat. Lindsay curled up on
the corner of the couch and nibbled at her food, listening to the
others talk.

"Aren't you hungry?" asked Harper.

"Not much. I wish I were."

"You feeling nauseated?" Harper asked. John looked up, concerned.

"No, I'm just not hungry. I'll just sit here and listen to you
guys." She wanted to ask them not to monitor her, but they were
being kind, and that would be ungrateful. "My front teeth are a little loose, too," she said. "Hitting the ship face-first knocked the
regulator out of my mouth."

"Oh, no," said Bobbie. "And we got fried chicken."

"That's fine. I've enjoyed the shrimp. Please, I've enjoyed what
I've eaten. I just don't feel like eating very much. Lewis, tell us
about the museum."

Lewis was not a man who planned small things. Really, his
plans sounded fun-they also sounded as though he would have
to do a tremendous selling job to the Board of Regents.

"Why don't you build a replica?" asked Lindsay.

"What?" asked Lewis.

"A full-size replica of one of the galleons, filled with reproductions of the things in it. One that people could go in and look
around-turn the capstan and work the pumps."

Lewis didn't say anything for a long time. "I like that idea. After
I talk them into the museum, that may be my next project. What
made you think of that?"

"Standing on the deck of the Concepcion. As decayed as she was,
there was something, I don't know-it was an exciting feeling, as
brief as it was."

"Good idea, Chamberlain." Even Trey was catching Lewis's
enthusiasm.

"I doubt the university will go along with it," said Lindsay.

"Maybe and maybe not," Lewis said, with just a hint of a twinkle in his eye.

Lindsay lapsed into listening mode again as Lewis told John
about Nate's project. "We found the ship before we got a chance
to plug in the data for the gold coins Lindsay found on the beach."

Lindsay was curious how the program worked. He "found"
the Estrella in experimental trials using data for the cannons and
other items. But those items were thrown from the ship. How
could his program predict which way the storm carried the
Estrella after the crew ditched the cargo? Meteorologists couldn't
predict the last storm. Artifacts that were thrown overboard
before the wreck should be treated differently from artifacts that
washed away after the wreck. She imagined that Nate accounted
for that in defining his variables. He'd have to. She asked Lewis
about it.

"How the artifact was lost figures into the program. He's
adapted his own model from other models explaining how different objects travel through a cultural system and become a part of
the archaeological record-adding natural underwater current
activity as a component in the model. Of course, he has to also take
into consideration the shape and mass of the object. It's very
complex."

So is bullshit, thought Lindsay. But she didn't say it.

"Looks like he'd need a lot of data on small-current vectors."
Luke had his forehead wrinkled as if he was trying to think of how
much data that would be.

"He has notebooks full of data he's been collecting and keying
into the system," said Lewis. "I'm almost sorry we found the
wreck before he could try it. Almost. It is a relief to know that we
have it and not Jones. I've sent several notebooks of his
unrecorded data to be keyed in by graduate students. It ought to
be done in a couple of weeks. We can test his program on the coins
Lindsay found. If he turns up the site, we're in the money, so to
speak."

"Did you ever figure out what that thing was I found?" Bobbie
asked Lindsay.

"No. I asked Steven Nemo if it could be used to catch fish or
anything and I'm afraid I've let myself in for a lifetime of fishing
jokes." Lindsay paused. "If you guys don't mind, I'd like to go to
bed. Please don't leave. You won't bother me at all. In fact, it will
be comforting to hear your voices out here. Besides, it looks like
we still have food left."

Lindsay crawled into bed, sleepier than when she napped earlier. She wouldn't tell Lewis that, he might take offense. She smiled
as her head hit the pillow. She almost drifted off to sleep, but
awoke with a start.

She knew what the coins were for. Keith was staking the coins
out on the ocean bottom on a length of fishing line and letting
them drift with the current. He'd go back later, measure and record
the place where the coin drifted, put the stake in the new spot and
start over. He would repeat that until he had a description of the
path the coin took reaching the shore. And he had done this for
years. It probably worked. He had found at least three ships that
we know of. Maybe more. He probably wouldn't have told his
father, afraid Boote would give out his secret. All he had to do was
to take all the data and work an average approximation of how the
coins moved through the water. That's why he searched the
beaches, especially after a storm. Looking for coins from shipwrecks. If he could find coins, he could find the ship. He didn't
need to go all the way back 440 years ago. Just the last storm
would do.

It was really a better experiment than Nate's convoluted program because he was taking a direct measure of an object
and applying the conclusions to that same object. Keith Teal, in
effect, had taken Occam's razor to Nate's program-variables
shouldn't be multiplied needlessly. Keith used only coins-he
only needed coins. And he didn't need all the other data, just his
average vectors. He didn't need all Nate's fancy complex
variables.

Lindsay sat up in bed, struggling to remember all those things
in her head that made shadows but would not show themselves.
She got out of bed quickly and dressed. Harper was asleep on the
couch. She took her key and tiptoed to the door and locked it
behind her on the way out. As she descended the stairs, she
thought she heard voices. It sounded as though Dale the security
guard and William the meteorologist were talking by the front
desk.

She went down to the lab to her desk to search for Keith's post
card that Boote had loaned her. It must have fallen out of her notebook. She searched every drawer. She went to Carolyn's and
Korey's desks, thinking that perhaps the card had fallen on the floor and either Korey or Carolyn might have picked it up.
Nothing in Korey's drawers or around his workplace. Carolyn
had a phone message from the Smithsonian weighted down with
a book about the Chinese box. Lindsay gave it a brief glance"lacquer's main ingredient from Oriental lacquer tree is urushiol.
Ha ..."-the rest was covered up. Lindsay searched the desk
drawers. Nothing. She looked on the floor.

"Hi. Dr. Chamberlain, isn't it?"

Lindsay started and looked up. It was one of the new security
guards. "Hi. Yes, I'm Dr. Chamberlain. I'm sorry. I forgot your
name."

"Tom Bowers. Shouldn't you be in bed? The last time I saw
you-

"I know, I looked half dead. I lost a post card and felt the need
to find it. How is everything here?"

"Fine. Our friend Dale is manning the front desk just fine;
Robert is at the warehouse. It's all very quiet."

"This job must be quite a change of pace for you guys."

"You can say that again. Is archaeology always this exciting?"

"It's always exciting, just not usually so-adventurous."

"Robert and I are gearing up for a lot of treasure hunters. I'm
glad we've got a few National Guardsmen here."

"Me, too. I can't find my post card, so I think I'll go on up to
bed."

"I'll lock up," said Bowers. "Oh, there's some stuff pinned to
that bulletin board in the kitchen. Someone may have found it and
stuck it up there."

"That's a good thought. I'll go look."

Lindsay walked back to the kitchen. The board was filled with
pieces of paper. She began looking through them for the card. The
back door opened and Nate entered.

"Nate," said Lindsay, "what are you doing here?"

"Looking for an opportunity to get you alone. I need my notebooks back."

"You mean Keith's notebooks, don't you? The ones he recorded
his coin data in, the ones that match the handwriting on the postcard I got from Boote."

"Whoever's, I want them."

"I don't have them."

"No one else would take them."

Lindsay eased back toward the hallway door. It opened and
Bowers entered. Lindsay sighed.

"I'm glad to see you. Will you walk me back to my room?"

"No, Dr. Chamberlain. I can't do that."

LINDSAY REMEMBERED WILLIAM Kuzniak saying that Nate was after
Lewis to get new security guards. Of course-why couldn't she
have remembered that while she was upstairs working out all
those other things?

"You and Robert are the divers who shot Nate aren't you? Did
you mean to hit him, or were you simply giving Trey a reason to
call the Coast Guard to maintain a close presence and harass
Evangeline Jones to keep her out of the running for the galleon?"

"You're right, Nate, she's quick," said Bowers. He looked at
Lindsay. Tom Bowers was one of those people who looked friendly
no matter what he was doing. "Too bad about the concussion. I'll
bet if you had been thinking straight, you would have been
quicker and avoided this situation." He walked over to the cabinet
and got a bottle of whiskey.

"I was thinking the same thing," Lindsay said. "Nate, for the
record, it was you who hit me and left me in the dam, wasn't it?"

"Yes. Who would have thought you could get away in a hurricane? But I'm glad you found the galleon."

"I'll bet you are. You wouldn't have found it with that lame program of yours. You've been dry-labbing your data, haven't you?
How long did you think you could get away with that? There
would come a time when Lewis and your committee would examine your data closely and realize you were faking your successes."

"Lewis. All this is his damn fault," Nate swore. "He wants
results, all the time, results. It's a good program. I'm just not finished."

"It's not Lewis's fault. He pushes all of us-me, Harper,
Carolyn, Trey-even John. We just tell him our boundaries and he
backs off. You didn't have to kill people, for heaven's sake."

"Kill people? Nate, what's she talking about?"

"Who do you think's generating all these dead bodies?"
Lindsay asked.

"You said it was the pirates," said Tom, looking uncertainly at
Nate.

"No. It was Nate," said Lindsay. "That must have really infuriated you, Nate-Keith, the man everyone referred to as a beach
bum, coming up with a better method than yours for finc.ing
wrecks."

"My program is a simulation of ocean dynamics. Finc_ing
wrecks is just part of it. His was just a bunch of observations."

"Your program is a hodgepodge of incomplete data. You
thought enough of Keith's observations to steal them from him.
Was that what you argued about with Keith the night Mike Altman
saw you?"

"Keith wanted me to guarantee him a cut, a big cut. I couldn't
give him a guarantee that would satisfy him."

"So you killed him. And you attacked Boote when you wer t to
steal the rest of Keith's notebooks-and the cross."

"Shut up."

"Look, Nate-" said Tom.

"She's lying."

"She's got some of it right," Tom said. "Look, we agreed :hat
we'd just get her drunk and leave her somewhere so people wculd
think she was crazy, or hit on the head too hard."

"He killed Denton, too." Lindsay wished William or Dale or
someone would come to the kitchen for water. But everyone went
to the break room when they wanted something in the night. She
thought about screaming, but she was too far away from everyone-no one would hear and it would force them into action.