Effigies (8 page)

Faye couldn’t decide whether Joe was the least dangerous man on Earth or the most dangerous man on Earth.

“We need to hide these things in plain sight,” she said. “If Sheriff Rutland asks to see them, we’ll show them to her, but we don’t want to call her attention to your special skills.”

“Why would she…you don’t think she thinks I killed Mr. Calhoun, do you, Faye?”

“I don’t know what she thinks, but you and I both know you’ve got the skills.” She swiped her hand across the table, raking Joe’s treasures into an empty storage box, then she set it on a shelf alongside dozens of identical boxes. After labeling the box and writing the identifying number in her field notebook, she tossed the notebook into a desk drawer and said. “Remember, Joe. Leave the deadly weapons at work.”

Joe looked bereft.

“Okay, how’s this: Leave the deadly weapons at work, for the time being.”

“I’m not the only one that carries this stuff around.”

Faye scanned the surface of Chuck’s work table, which was covered with neat piles of ancient weapons and the razor-sharp flakes that were the by-product of their manufacture. If she had to pick the most dangerous person she’d met in Neshoba County, she’d have to name Chuck. He was the kind of scientist who chose to study inanimate objects precisely because they weren’t people. She didn’t think Chuck liked people and their inexplicable ways all that much. She wondered where he’d been when Calhoun was killed.

Picturing the detachment in Chuck’s eyes, she remembered someone else whose glance had chilled her. Preston Silver. He knew Calhoun, to be sure, but Faye had the feeling that a man with those eyes wouldn’t hesitate to kill someone who crossed him.

Chapter Eight

Sunday

Day 3 of the Neshoba County Fair

It had seemed so reasonable when she agreed to work on a Sunday. Faye’s workweek had begun late on Thursday afternoon. She and her colleagues had lost half of Friday to their confrontation with Mr. Calhoun. They’d happily accepted Dr. Mailer’s offer to let them frolic at the Fair on company time. Ordinarily, Faye would feel fresh as a daisy after such light service. Of course, she’d been willing to pay her boss back by working today.

But that was before she’d been chased by a tractor, and it was before she stumbled onto a brutally murdered man. It was before she’d sat up all night, wondering whether she and Joe were prime suspects. Faye didn’t want to work today. She wanted to sleep like she’d been drugged.

As she brushed her teeth over the bathroom sink, elbow-to-elbow with Toneisha, a knock sounded at their door. Sheriff Rutland was standing there, looking far less bleary-eyed and rumpled than Faye felt after only an hour of sleep.

“Since the murder occurred right across the street from you archaeologists’ work site, and since there was no love lost between you people and the murder victim, I’m trying to establish alibis. Just to be complete. I know where you were, Faye. Why don’t you have some breakfast downstairs while I talk to your roommate?”

Faye found her colleagues downstairs eating sweet rolls and comparing notes. The sheriff had already questioned them all, and she’d found that their alibis were uniformly frail. Mailer was alone in his hotel room. So was Chuck. Oka Hofobi was home with his parents, which wasn’t actually much of an alibi, since the odds that his parents would allow him to remain alibi-free were nil. Toneisha and Bodie had been drinking in the room Bodie shared with Joe.

Toneisha and the sheriff entered the room. Both women stopped for a cup of coffee before settling down at the table next to Faye.

“I have never in my life heard such a flimsy set of alibis. Couldn’t just one of you manage to be in a public place so that someone you never met could be a witness?” Neely asked.

“Wouldn’t guilty people have great alibis, since they can plan ahead?” Bodie asked.

“Usually. Except for the stupid ones. But you people aren’t stupid, so let’s move on. Anybody got any ideas they want to share?”

“Did Calhoun do much damage to the mound before he died?” Chuck asked, cementing Faye’s opinion of where his priorities lay.

“Not that I could tell,” Neely said, “although I did have more pressing worries.” Chuck didn’t respond, since she didn’t provide him with the information he needed. Instead, he went back to the buffet for seconds.

Dr. Mailer’s cell phone trilled, and he retreated to a corner to take the call. Neely lowered her voice and continued. “I know that Chuck isn’t the only person in these parts that cared more about that mound than he did about Carroll Calhoun. If any of you wants to talk to me in private about that, I’m all ears.”

Dr. Mailer approached their table, handing the phone to the sheriff. As she took it, he cocked an eyebrow at his crew. “It seems that we have been summoned by the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.”

“What for?” Toneisha asked.

“The Tribal Council would like to hear more about Carroll Calhoun’s mound. They’ve heard what their lawyers have to say, but their cultural committee wants to hear what we archaeologists know. And they’re asking Sheriff Rutland to come, because they’re exceedingly interested in her take on the law and how it pertains to that mound. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Chief himself was there.”

The group was quiet for a moment, remembering what they’d learned about his forty-year tenure in tribal government. During his tenure as elected Chief, the Choctaws had built casinos and resorts. They had attracted manufacturing interests that ranged from plastics to automotive components to greeting cards. They weren’t just the largest employer in Neshoba County. They were among the largest employers in the state of Mississippi. Yet when the Chief entered tribal politics, a third of the homes on the reservation had been without electricity and only a tenth had indoor plumbing. It was a safe bet that they all had those things now.

“I’d like to meet the Chief,” Bodie offered.

“I don’t know how much ‘meeting’ we’re going to get to do,” Dr. Mailer said. “I expect they just want to pick our brains. Now why don’t we go try to get a little work done?”

Faye wanted to crawl into the shady spot underneath the trailer and get a little sleep, but her pride wouldn’t let her, so she just kept her eyes on her work. Sometimes she had trouble getting those eyes to focus, but she stayed upright and mostly awake.

Toneisha and Bodie, who hadn’t suffered through the same difficult night as Faye and Joe, were energetic and chatty half the time. Now and then, as if they suddenly remembered that a man had been murdered not far from where they stood, they fell silent. The absence of their youthful banter only served to highlight the poignance of the silent Calhoun house across the street.

Under other circumstances, it might have been a glorious day at work. They’d found a soil stratum that was peppered with varicolored flakes of stone. It didn’t take much imagination to picture long-ago flintknappers, lots of them, gathered here to make stone tools. Dr. Mailer had expected to find activity centers like this—separate areas for sleeping and toolmaking and pottery manufacture. Judging by this single snapshot in time, he just might be right. He was buzzing around, happy and nervous, rubbing his hands together like a man trying to erase his anxiety. Faye was happy for him.

Chuck, on the other hand, was absolutely getting on her nerves. He, too, could hardly be happier. They were digging up the stuff of his dreams, the physical evidence of ancient toolmakers. He had chastised everyone present at least once for violating his notion of proper field technique, and he was starting in on Oka Hofobi for the second time when the young Choctaw cracked.

“Chuck. I know what I’m doing, just as well as you do. Maybe better. Would you get out of my face?”

Then, instead of waiting for Chuck to back off, Oka Hofobi had brushed the red dust off his pants legs and stalked off to the trailer. More than an hour passed before he emerged. In the meantime, Chuck ruled over the team with obsessive care, and Dr. Mailer let him.

Oka Hofobi was taking a little too long to clean his gear and put it away for the night. Faye walked over intending to help, but when she saw his face, she realized that the man had simply wanted a little privacy. It was too late to back away gracefully, so she just said, “Did you have a hard day? I thought I was going to have a heat stroke, and I’m from Florida.”

“My day started out fine, but it took a turn for the worse about lunchtime. Ma called. She and my father heard about the council meeting tonight. Word sure gets around fast in these parts, but I should be used to that by now. They want to come, and I reckon they will. The Council’s not big on closed meetings.”

“You’re worried about what your parents will say?”

“No. They probably won’t talk at all. They’ll probably just…
sit
there.”

Faye hefted a box of cleaned equipment and walked alongside Oka Hofobi toward the shed, saving him a trip. “I remember when my mother could embarrass me just by the way she sat. You’ve got a Ph.D. now. I think you can move past that.”

“It’s not that I’m ashamed. It’s more that I don’t want to make them ashamed. I’m sure you know that indigenous people and archaeologists have never gotten along all that well. Things have eased up since the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act passed. At least we’ve got some legal assurance that human burials will be treated with respect. Unfortunately, that’s not enough for people like my brother.”

“Davis?”

“Yeah. When Ma went away to school, she came back proud. She wanted to learn as much about her culture as she could. Then, when the time came, she wanted that for Davis. Instead, he came back mad. These days, he’s especially mad at me.”

“Because you chose to be a ‘graverobber’?”

Oka Hofobi’s eyes flicked toward the ground at the insulting sound of the word. “It’s more than that. Historically, there’s been a lot of racism sort of built into archaeology. Take the wheel. None of America’s indigenous peoples invented the wheel. For a long time, that meant they were considered to be less technologically sophisticated than the rest of the world. Then somebody said, ‘Hey! They didn’t have horses, or any other animal big enough to haul a cart. And a lot of those civilizations were built in muddy or hilly places where wheels just wouldn’t roll. They didn’t invent the wheel because it didn’t work
for them
.’ I became an archaeologist to correct those mistakes. Davis just got mad. And I think he’s going to stay that way.”

“Maybe I’m biased, but your way seems to be more constructive. You could open so many doors.” Faye knew she sounded as optimistic and naïve as Dr. Mailer, but she wanted her words to be true.

“Yeah, well, when the Tribal Council is staring me down tonight, I’ll try to remember that.”

“Sounds to me like your mom and dad will be staring right back. Is that why they want to go? To make sure the Council knows you have their support?”

“That’s why my mother’s coming. She listens to me when I talk, and I’m starting to make her see my vision of archaeology. It’s a way for me to pay respect to my ancestors by getting to know how they lived.”

“Your father doesn’t agree.”

He set the box he was carrying on a shelf and pulled out a bandanna out of his back pocket to wipe the sweat off his neck. “My father—well, that explanation doesn’t fly with him. He says he knows all he needs to know about his ancestors, because his father explained it to him with the ancient stories he learned from his own father. Now, bear in mind that our family’s been Baptist for just about ever. My folks have found a way to reconcile their ancestors’ stories with the Christian Bible, which I think is pretty cool. I’m looking for a way to reconcile all those things with science, but that’s just a little too much for my dad. Digging up his ancestors’ possessions is disrespectful, he tells me. It shows that I doubt the old stories that are so precious to him. And to my mother, too.”

“You’ve really been able to sway your mother’s opinions that much?”

“Not so much. She just wants me to be happy, so she goes along with my foul modern notions. Just because my parents have got fancy executive jobs, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t very traditional people. I mean, just look at my name.”

“I’ve noticed that most Choctaws have plain old English-sounding names like Sam and Martha.” Faye set her box down on top of Oka Hofobi’s. Everyone else had stored their tools and hurried away, so she pulled out her keys and locked the door as they left.

“Yeah,” he said, wiping his dusty hands on the seat of his khakis, “my brother and sisters have names like Sarah and Jane and Davis, but I came last. Not that they don’t have Choctaw names, too. We all do. It’s just that their birth certificates show names that the rest of America can understand. My parents got serious about their heritage just in time to give me a legal name that screamed ‘Choctaw!’ every time I wrote it on a high school term paper.”

“So you don’t like it?”

“No, I do. Quite a lot, actually. I just feel like I’ll spend a whole lifetime growing into it.”

“What does it mean?”

“Uh…it means ‘Deep Water,’” Oka Hofobi said, wrinkling his brow as if he felt pretentious even saying such a thing.

Faye pictured a small boy playing alone outdoors, digging up arrowheads, rinsing them in the clear creek waters, turning them over and over in his hands to admire the wet stone. She remembered her mother saying that she, Faye, had been born with the fierce and thoughtful personality that still marked her.
You were your own self from the minute you opened your eyes,
her mother had said. Maybe Oka Hofobi’s parents had seen the depth in their baby’s eyes and chosen just the right name for him.

“Dr. Mailer calls you Oke. Do you like that? Or do you prefer to go by your whole name?”

“Oke doesn’t really mean anything. If I’m going to be hung with a name worth living up to, then I’d rather use it all instead of chopping it up. Ma and Pa wouldn’t dream of calling me anything else.”