Effigies (10 page)

Another council member, an elderly man, laughed. “Sounds like we Choctaws have been big into manufacturing for a long, long time.”

Faye saw the tension in Mailer’s shoulders ease a bit. He laughed, too. “You could say that. We’re just sifting through the trash they left behind—flint chips left over from knapping stone tools—but my flintknapping specialists tell me that your ancestors were very good at what they did.” He nodded at Joe and Chuck, as if to acknowledge their expertise.

Faye noticed Neely’s eyes follow Mailer’s gaze. She didn’t like him calling the sheriff’s attention to Joe’s special skills.

The elderly man chuckled again. “If they weren’t, then they didn’t eat.” He grew more serious. “Oka Hofobi. You realize that you must be our representative in this.”

The younger man nodded in assent.

“It always concerns us when our ancestors’ possessions are uncovered and studied. It has not been so long since their bones were treated the same way. How do you think your colleagues would like it if their grandmothers’ bones were on display in museums?”

Faye cast a glance over her shoulder. Davis was leaning forward in his chair, intense and focused. His father’s eyes were glued to him.

“It’s my job to ask my colleagues that very question. I ask it often.”

Toneisha and Bodie nodded vigorously to confirm Oka Hofobi’s words.

“I’m deeply interested in my culture,” the young Choctaw continued. “I love it. That’s why I chose to do what I do.”

“We aren’t against archaeology, only its misapplication,” the Chief interjected. “In 1981, this Council drafted a resolution asking the Corps of Engineers and others planning to develop our historic lands to hire archaeologists to survey land before development destroyed our people’s historical record. We urged everyone involved, the government included, to apply pressure to make sure this was done. I would like to think we made a difference. You, Oka Hofobi, are young. You are in a unique position to make a difference for a very long time. Do not throw away this opportunity. Do not shame us.”

Oka Hofobi, his mother, his father, his brother—all of them kept their eyes fastened on the Chief’s face. Perhaps it was out of respect for him. Or perhaps it was a convenient way to keep from looking at each other.

Faye had come straight to the council meeting in her work clothes. Given a chance, she would have changed, but staying for dinner with the Nails had forced her to make do with cleaning up at their bathroom sink.

She hadn’t been especially dirty. It had been a week since Neshoba County had had much rain, so the dry red dust had mostly brushed off her clothes. Still, she hadn’t dressed to be on television.

Why was she surprised to find that the council had called a press conference? A business entity that, like the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, had 9,000 employees would be well-versed in handling the media. And, when summoned by the Choctaws, the media had turned out in their honor.

Or that’s what Faye had assumed until she saw the shock on the faces of the Council. This was not a pre-rehearsed press conference. Someone had alerted the media to this informal meeting and caught the Council members flat-footed.

Who would have done it? As always, the answer to that question was buried in another one.
Who stood to gain from this publicity?

Not the archaeologists, whose client would prefer they kept a low profile. And not the Council, who were muttering among themselves, trying to regroup. Perhaps one of the farmers who had shown up at the mound to defend Mr. Calhoun’s property rights wanted some public attention to that cause.

Or maybe one of the Choctaws wanted more attention paid to the tribe’s grievance. Faye sneaked a glance at Davis. His expression was remote, shielded. He seemed like a man who would become impatient with the Council’s deliberate approach to an issue that, in his view, should arouse action and passion. Faye would bet money that it was Davis who called in the reporters.

Television stations from as far away as Jackson had sent camera crews. Someone was there from the state public radio network. Newspaper reporters shuffled forward, hoping for a quote. Gathered on the sidewalk outside the Council Hall, they converged on the Chief, who hadn’t lived his life in politics without acquiring some media management skills. Thinking on his feet, he spread his arms to encompass them and said warmly, “Thank you all for coming out tonight. We’ve had a most productive meeting.”

A sandy-haired young man thrust a microphone in the Chief’s direction and asked, “Is this about the murder of Carroll Calhoun? The tribe can’t be happy with his attempt to bulldoze that mound.”

A young woman, either the chief’s press secretary or just someone with good instincts, stepped forward to take the question, standing between her boss and controversy. “Mr. Calhoun was found in a place where…well, where illegal activity was going on. The fact that he was killed just after he threatened to destroy an important piece of history may have been just a coincidence. We grieve with Mrs. Calhoun for her husband’s untimely death.”

The microphone holder lunged even closer. Sheriff Rutland moved forward to a spot where she could insert herself between the reporter and his prey with a single step.

“They say that Calhoun was killed by a Choctaw arrowhead,” the reporter continued.

Chuck caught everyone concerned off-guard by reaching over the reporter’s shoulder and grabbing the microphone right out of his hand. “Could you try not to display your ignorance? An arrow is a projectile. The man’s throat was cut, so if the killer had any sense, he would have used a single-edged blade to keep from cutting his own hand off with the other edge. And I’m guessing a crime lab doesn’t have anybody qualified to assess whether it was made by Choctaws, so why don’t you leave that line of questioning alone, too?”

The expressions on the faces around Faye were comical. Every last one of the council members seemed to be wondering who in the heck this guy was. The reporters looked overjoyed, because anything unexpected is news. Besides, Chuck had all the earmarks of somebody who might say absolutely anything.

Faye could almost hear the gears in the sheriff’s head turning. She was asking herself,
Who is this guy who knows so much about a murder weapon he hasn’t seen?

And Mailer had the terrified expression of a man whose client was not going to like reading the morning papers. His client, a huge firm contracted by the highway department to conduct pre-construction tasks, expected subcontractors to get to the site, do the job, deliver a bill—preferably a small one—then leave, so that nothing got in the way of getting the road built. Publicity was a bad thing. Publicity could stop a road construction project dead.

“Can you tell me who you are, sir?” the reporter asked.

“My name is Chuck Horowitz, and I’m a lithics analyst with the highway project west of town. We’re working for SGM&T.”

Faye’s heart sank. He’d just mentioned their client on TV. In the context of a murder investigation. Poor Dr. Mailer.

Chuck plunged deeper into ticklish political territory. “We’re just trying to do our work, but the Choctaws here don’t think we should. They think human history should just stay buried, so that their tender sensibilities can be protected. Why? So that, eventually, some idiot like Carroll Calhoun can destroy it?”

Great. Now he’d spoken ill of the dead. And the entire Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.

“There’s so much history here. So much. Every flake of stone, every chip, tells a story. I could sit all day every day, and let those chips talk to me. In a big pile of flakes like this,” Chuck held out his two cupped hands, “there might be two that fit together, but it’s worth spending a week to find them, because it’s
history
. Somebody broke that stone apart hundreds of years ago, and I’m putting it back together. I don’t have time for people who want to stop me.”

Even better. Now he sounded crazy. Their client would be thrilled.

Was Chuck crazy? Could he have killed Calhoun because of his threat to the history that Chuck found so sacred? Faye wavered. She barely knew the man, but she didn’t want to think so. It was as if some primitive instinct wanted her to believe that no one in her personal circle of acquaintances could ever pick up a sharpened stone and slice a man’s throat with it.

If asked to practice psychology without a license, Faye would have said that Chuck wasn’t crazy, but that he reminded her of the articles she’d read about autism and Asperger’s syndrome. She understood that empathy was difficult for people with those disorders. Chuck hadn’t seemed to understand that his leering made her uncomfortable and, right now, he seemed oblivious to the fact that he should pay some bit of respect to the recently dead. And to the elected leadership of a sovereign nation.

As she thought of it, Chuck’s chosen profession, fitting stone flakes together in a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle with an unknown number of missing pieces, required a near-autistic attention to detail. Compassion stirred, and she wished someone would protect Chuck from himself.

Neely Rutland stepped up to the task. She took the microphone from Chuck’s hand so deftly that he didn’t have time to fight her for it, then she said, “The murder is under investigation, and discussing its details would jeopardize that investigation. There are no suspects as yet, and there is no reason to believe that the killer is Choctaw. Or white. Or black. Or anything else. We just don’t know. Thank you folks for coming out, but we’re going home now.”

Chapter Nine

Monday

Day 4 of the Neshoba County Fair

Faye was still hauling the day’s equipment out of the trailer when the sheriff’s car pulled up. Would the whole summer pass before she got a solid hour’s worth of work done?

Dr. Mailer turned to Chuck and said, “You know, I forgot to stock up on bottled water. Would you drive to the convenience store and get a few cases? If one of you had a heat stroke, it wouldn’t look good for me.”

Chuck nodded, striking out for his truck at top speed. It didn’t seem to occur to him to say, “Hey! Why don’t you send somebody without a Ph.D.?” And it certainly didn’t occur to him to dawdle. It seemed to Faye that Chuck was cooperative when asked to do something for a reason that made sense to him. She suspected he would balk if, for instance, Mailer insisted that Chuck use a filing system that he didn’t like, just because he was the boss.

“Smooth,” she said to Mailer. “You didn’t want Chuck and the sheriff in the same place at the same time?”

“If I’d been really smooth, you’d never have noticed that I was getting rid of Chuck. I wonder what the sheriff wants.”

It seemed that the sheriff wanted Faye. “You were going to show me some…was it ‘sickle shine’?”

“Close. It was ‘sickle sheen.’ Let’s go look at some rocks.”

Faye ushered the sheriff into Chuck’s domain, grateful that he wasn’t around to see them fingering his prized possessions. She shuffled through the storage boxes on the shelves that ringed his office, carefully avoiding the box full of Joe’s homemade weapons. It only took a moment to put her hands on some good examples.

She laid them out on Chuck’s desk. “Now, understand that we’re talking seat-of-the-pants work. To get real answers that’ll be defensible in court, you’re going to need analyses that your forensics lab probably can’t do. They should send the blade out to experts—”

The look on Neely’s face said that her murder weapon wasn’t going anywhere. “—or maybe you can bring some experts in. There are people who are wizards with a microscope. Judging by the patterns of use-wear, they could tell you whether a tool had been used to scrape hides or carve antler.”

“What about that sickle sheen you were going to show me?”

“Here’s some.” Faye held out a blade very similar in shape to the one that had killed Carroll Calhoun. “When you see sickle sheen, then there’s a good chance that your tool is old, and that it was used in a prehistoric agricultural society.”

“And that would help me how?”

“If it’s new, then your suspect probably either made it or bought it from somebody who did. There might be a bill of sale and a flintknapper who could identify the buyer. If it’s old, then, again, the killer could have bought it, which would give you a receipt to look for. Or you could be dealing with a collector. A farmer, for instance, can build up quite a collection of stone tools during a lifetime of walking a plowed field.”

“No kidding. My father framed a bunch of his best pieces. He laid them out on brown velvet and built a shadow box frame to hold them. He had a bowl full of run-of-the-mill arrowheads just sitting out on the table next to his recliner where he could look at them whenever he wanted to. Somebody stole one during a football party one time, years ago. Can you believe it? Everybody around here’s got a bowl of arrowheads, and somebody stole one of Daddy’s. He didn’t speak to Preston Silver for a week, thinking he was the thief, but he and Preston patched things up. Then he suspected Carroll Calhoun. Never did get it back.” Neely picked up a spear point and turned it over in her hand, running a finger along its still-sharp edge.

“How’d he know it was missing?”

“They were like his babies. He knew their color and shape. He liked the way they felt in his hand. He still likes me to put that bowl in his lap so he can pick them up and look them over, one by one.”

“Would your father know who the collectors are around here? Maybe somebody would recognize the murder weapon.”

“My father doesn’t even know who I am any more.”

Faye could have bitten her tongue out for making Neely admit that.

The sheriff recovered quickly. “An old tool wouldn’t necessarily point to a collector. It could implicate a Choctaw. Or one of your archaeologists. And a new tool could point to a collector, too. Like you said, people buy brand-new arrowheads from flintknappers all the time. It’s an art form, just like painting or sculpture. And I understand that some people don’t just like to make stone tools. They like to practice shooting their homemade arrows.”

Faye thought fast. Bodie just happened to be the Florida state atlatl champion, a competition that required him to fit a homemade spear to a spear thrower of ancient design. If Calhoun had been felled by a spear through the heart, Bodie would have been Faye’s first suspect. Except he was so soft-hearted, she wasn’t sure he could stomp a cockroach.

Should she say something about Bodie’s accomplishment? Since anyone with an Internet connection had immediate access to the information, it seemed unwise not to mention it to the sheriff. The sheriff would find out eventually, and then she’d wonder what else Faye wasn’t telling her. Which could lead to some uncomfortable questions like
Do you know anybody else with that kind of primitive skill?

“You do know that Bodie, Dr. Mailer’s assistant, is one of the best spear throwers around? Not that I think that makes him a suspect. If he’d wanted to kill Calhoun, he could have done it from fifty paces.”

So could Joe. What was more, Joe had actually put a spear through a man’s throat once, but there was no need for Neely to know that. Joe was a practical man, who couldn’t conceive of why he’d want to enter a contest to prove himself, so there was no official record of his skill. Joe saw no value in aiming at a target, not when he couldn’t eat it. Faye had enjoyed many a dinner featuring rabbits that Joe had felled with stone projectiles.

“Besides, there’s not much overlap in skill between throwing a spear at a target and holding a blade in your hand and slicing someone’s throat with it,” Faye pointed out, hoping that Neely would leave Bodie alone. “Anyway, back to the question of sickle sheen, anybody who works with lithics could take a look at your murder weapon and give you a fairly good idea of its age—even if it’s a modern fake, and somebody purposely tried to simulate edge wear. You could use that knowledge to guide your investigation, but in the end, you’ll need a lab to confirm it.”

“The murder weapon looks a lot like this one,” Neely said, pointing to the tool Faye had selected as a prime example of sickle sheen. “So you can tell any flintknapping friends you’ve got to rest easy.”

Faye nearly lost her poker face.

A knock on the door saved her from blurting out something stupid. Dr. Mailer stuck his head in and beckoned to Faye. Someone stood close behind him.

“Chuck is back.” Mailer’s tone of voice was pleasant and even, but his clenched jaw said that he wished Chuck had stayed gone just a little longer. “Joe told him that the sheriff was interested in learning how to distinguish ancient tools from modern reproductions. Chuck would just love to spend some time showing her his reference collection.”

It couldn’t have been more obvious that Mailer didn’t want Chuck left alone with the sheriff. Faye squeezed through the doorway and crowded herself onto the entry stairs where the two men waited. She closed the door behind her, and she could tell that Mailer was glad she did. “I don’t think that’s necessary, Chuck. I’ve shown the sheriff a good example of sickle sheen, which is really all she’s interested in today. She knows that she’ll eventually have to have the murder weapon examined by an expert. I’ll tell her that you have some recommendations when she’s ready to select a lab.”

Chuck’s response was quick and eager. “I could examine the weapon for her.”

His face was flushed at the thought of using his esoteric knowledge for something concrete and useful. Faye doubted very much that the sheriff would consider using someone who’d been in direct conflict with the victim barely a day before he died, but she said, “Thanks, Chuck. I’ll tell her.”

She backed through the door and shut it behind her, hoping Chuck didn’t follow. It was, after all, his office. The door stayed shut.

The sheriff, whose poker face was better than Faye’s, was waiting quietly. “This is his office?” She gestured toward the door.

“Chuck’s? Or Dr. Mailer’s?”

“The…unusual…one.”

“That would be Chuck.”

Neely shoved the points around on Chuck’s desk, shuffling them like dominos.

“Whoever sits in this office has access to all this stuff and more. So, I guess, do all the rest of you. But this guy…you said his name was Chuck? He’s the one that worries me.”

Faye couldn’t argue with her.

Before the sheriff had even reached her car, another car pulled into the makeshift parking lot in the Nails’ side yard. When a slender black man emerged from the car, Faye realized that they were being graced with the presence of a retired congressman. And that he wasn’t happy.

Judd strode directly toward the sheriff. “Your receptionist said you were out here, and I needed to talk to you right away, so I just drove out.” His voice was high-pitched and agitated.

Faye didn’t like the tremor in his hands, not when she’d heard him tell everybody at the Neshoba County Fair that his health problems included high blood pressure and God-knew-what-else. She stepped forward, putting a hand on his elbow to steady him, and turned to Bodie. “We need a chair.”

Bodie got to the trailer and back with a chair in seconds. He helped the older man ease himself into the desk chair.

“Wouldn’t you like to talk privately?” the sheriff asked. “These folks—”

Judd started talking, blurting his story out quickly, as if he couldn’t bother to wait and listen to what she had to say.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve read the newspaper article about Mr. Calhoun’s death. Well, not the part about his death. I just couldn’t stop reading the part that described where he was found. He was in a marijuana field, wasn’t he? Well, that got me to thinking about something that happened not too long before I was beaten. Before someone tried to kill me.” He took a ragged breath.

“Chuck,” Mailer said quietly. “The man needs a drink of water.”

As if relieved to be given something useful to do, Chuck ripped the shrinkwrap off one of the cases that he’d just bought, and plucked out a water bottle. Removing the cap, he held out the open bottle with a gesture that was almost tender. His manner made Faye feel a little tender towards him, too.

“One day not long before the beating, I’d gotten up early to go fishing. My favorite spot was very near here, close to where the creek goes under the road. It had been a dry summer and the creek was low. There wasn’t much water in my regular fishing hole, so I followed the creek further into the woods than I’d ever been before, looking for a better spot. I walked quite a ways, and I remember passing an open field that was planted with a crop I didn’t recognize.”

He paused and drew a long sip from the bottle. “I know now that it must have been a marijuana field that I saw, but I was a preacher’s kid and it was a simpler time. I don’t think I even knew what marijuana was. Anyway, right after I passed that field, I remember walking past an overgrown cemetery that was on top of a little hill.”

Oka Hofobi said, “You must have been way out in the woods. I’ve walked over most of the land around here, time and again. I don’t know of any cemeteries near here.”

“You spend a lot of time trespassing?” the sheriff asked tartly.

“Not since I learned better.”

Judd lowered his face into his hands. Faye thought for a second that he was going to faint, but he pulled himself together and looked up at Dr. Mailer. “There are some pills in the glove box of my car, and there’s one or two that I could use right about now. I’ve got too darn many meds to carry them in my pockets.”

Mailer nodded to Chuck, who hurried to the car.

Oka Hofobi pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. “I’ll call my doctor.”

Judd waved a hand at him and shook his head. “Lord, no. This happens a lot. More often than I’d like, that’s for certain. If I keel over, go ahead and call. Otherwise, just let me sit here and breathe for a minute.”

Chuck had crossed the yard quickly, at an easy lope. He brought with him a prescription bottle and a case with multiple compartments, one for each day of the week. “I didn’t know which you needed.”

Judd took the bottle. “My wife keeps that big one filled with all the stuff I have to take every day. This one’s for angina. When the chest pain comes, I’m supposed to take one of these.” He put a pill under his tongue and closed his eyes.

Faye stepped away from the crowd of archaeologists hovering around Judd and beckoned to the sheriff. “Maybe he wasn’t being lynched that day. Maybe somebody knew he saw their field of pot and wanted to shut him up before he called in the law.”

Neely looked over her shoulder at the sick man. “I don’t know, Faye. Mr. Judd is smart and well-spoken, and Lord knows teenage boys are cocky beasts. He was probably a lynching waiting to happen. Maybe it just comes from growing up around here and hearing the stories about what things were like in the sixties, but my gut tells me that his attack was racially motivated. I’ll give your theory some thought, but I’ve got my hopes set on an interview I’m doing this afternoon. The guy’s a former Klansman and he’s got cancer. I think he’s willing to talk before he dies.”