LC 04 - Skeleton Crew (26 page)

She had lunch on top of the dam with Gina and Juliana. The
catered brown bag held a banana, a package of peanuts, an apple
turnover, and the two sandwiches of the day-egg salad. She
hated egg salad. Lewis could provide a little extra for at least two
choices for sandwiches, she thought. She took a few bites and
folded it back up in the plastic wrap. She peeled the paper off an
apple turnover and took a bite.

"Who do you think killed that guy?" asked Gina.

"Which guy?" asked Juliana. "The Spanish sailor or that
Denton person?"

"Denton. What about it, Lindsay?" asked Gina. "Scuttlebutt has
it that you're investigating."

"By the way, the night crew found it last night," said Juliana.

"Found what?" asked Lindsay and Gina together.

"The scuttlebutt. It was in the same section as the brass bell discovered yesterday."

"And that is what?" asked Lindsay. They looked at her over their sandwiches. "Sorry. I don't know all the parts of a ship yet."

"It's a water barrel where the sailors got a drink when they
were thirsty."

"Ah," said Lindsay, "that makes sense."

"What?"

"Watercooler, scuttlebutt, gossip ..."

"Oh, yeah," said Gina. "Interesting. Some things don't change."

"I'm surprised it wasn't lost in the storm," said Juliana. "Wasn't
it on the top deck usually?"

Gina nodded. "Forecastle, I think. Maybe it got wedged
between something, like the belfry. But getting back to the topicare you investigating?"

"I'm asking some questions. Lewis naturally wants to know
what's going on."

"Well, what is going on?"

"I really don't know. 1haven't been able to find out much."

"Well, I heard that the guy was killed in the warehouse,"
Juliana commented.

"It doesn't look like you guys need any information from me,"
Lindsay said. "By the way, has Ramirez talked to you?"

"Just asked us if we knew the guy," said Gina. Juliana nodded.

"Did you?"

"Is this an interrogation?" Gina grinned over her apple
turnover.

"Sure," said Lindsay.

"I didn't know him," said Gina.

"Me neither," agreed Juliana. "But I think Sarah's avoiding
Ramirez. I saw her about to come into the lab yesterday and duck
out when she saw Ramirez in there."

"Why would she do that?" asked Lindsay.

"I assume it's because she didn't want to talk to him," Juliana
answered, stuffing her food wrappings back into the paper sack
and taking a bite out of her apple.

"How about you and West?" asked Gina.

"He was really upset when you and the others went missing,"
Juliana said.

"We're doing okay. John's a good guy."

"Tell me," asked Gina. "What's Harper like? She has Trey's
head turned."

"She's funny," said Lindsay, "and very smart."

"She'd have to be, to do those translations," said Juliana.

"You know, I've been on a lot of digs," Gina said. "But I've
never had something like this diary. It's strange to read about this
ship, then come work on it, creepy sometimes. Like that pomander
I found. When I read that in the diary, it sent chills up my spine. It
was his, and he was the last person to touch it and I held it in my
hand, the next person to touch it."

"Why don't you do a paper on just that artifact?" asked
Lindsay. "What it is, how it was made, who used them. You can
connect the spices in the pomander with their role in exploration.
Then you can add the personal vignette-like a short case study of
its use."

"That's a great idea," Gina said.

"I'll bet you can get it published, too," Juliana said. "Lewis is
going to see to it that everything out of this site gets published."

"I'm as impressed as the next person with Lewis's ability to get
things done, but he can't do everything. Journals are juried by people not unlike Lewis. He won't be able to control what is accepted
for publication. But if you write a good article, it will likely get
published."

"What if you get Lewis or somebody to be coauthor?" Juliana
asked.

Lindsay had to concede that point. She could see that the number of articles Lewis would get from this dig would be what her
aunt called a gracious plenty.

"Do you think the diarist ... you know, we need to give him a
name. I don't know why he couldn't have just signed the thing,"
said Gina. "Anyway, do you think he will mention the murder?"

"I would think so," Lindsay replied. "It probably was a pretty
big deal. Then again, it happened right around the time of the
storm. The diary may just end abruptly."

"Oh, I hope not," said Juliana. She peeled the banana. "You
know, Jeff complains about these lunches, but I think they're pretty
good."

After lunch, Lindsay got a ride from one of John's crew over to
St. Magdalena. He was the young man who checked her in when
she arrived.

"Thanks for the ride-Luke, isn't it?"

"Luke Youngdeer."

He had a heartbreaker smile, and the way his shoulder-length black hair blew in the breeze of the speeding boat, Lindsay
guessed he had several of the female crew charmed.

"Luke, I understand you helped search for us. I thank you for
it."

"Glad to do it."

"How do you like it out here in the water?" she asked.

"I love it. I wish this job would last forever. Is Bobbie working
at the dam today, do you know?"

"No. She's diving today," Lindsay told him.

Luke Youngdeer maneuvered the boat into a slot at the dock.
"Here you are, safe and sound."

"Thanks." Lindsay climbed out and tied the boat to the dock.
Luke hopped out after her to secure the aft end.

"If you need to come back before the barge comes for the day,
here's my beeper number." He searched all of his pockets before he
found a dog-eared business card with his name and number on it.

"Thank you, Luke. I appreciate it."

They walked down the dock together. "Do you know where
Bobbie's crew is diving today? How deep they planned to go?"

"No, sorry," said Lindsay, wondering why he wanted to know
the depth. Then she realized. Luke was probably a diver, too.
Knowing the depth, he could get an idea of how long they'd stay
down, and how long they'd have to wait between dives. In other
words, how long Bobbie would be gone.

Luke waved as he disappeared toward the lab. Lindsay
stopped at the warehouse. Isaac was at his post sorting the carbon
fraction from dirt samples. Lindsay hadn't seen him at the dam.
She wondered if he got to do anything else. Briefly, almost in passing, she wondered if he could have killed Denton. But why? What
motive would he have had? She realized that, although she had
been telling everyone that the murderer was probably no one at
the site, she really didn't know. She didn't know very many people here. She really didn't know them at all.

ISAAC JONES STOOD at the sink dressed in cutoffs and a rubber
apron. He reminded Lindsay of a grandaddy longlegs-all skinny
arms, legs, elbows, and knees.

"Hi," she greeted him, looking over the racks of bits of drying
pieces of carbon.

Isaac stepped away from the sink, wiping some sweat from his
brow. He grabbed a Coke he had sitting on a table and took a long
swallow.

"Hi. Gets hot in here."

"I can imagine. Did Ramirez come talk to you?"

"Yeah. Jeeze. I felt like a suspect."

"I'm afraid all of us are suspects, simply because we're here.
But they'll rule us out quickly."

Isaac sat down on his stool and stretched his long legs. "I know,
but he was killed here-in my sink. Creepy." He shivered.

"Isaac, why were there water and flotation debris in the sink
that night?"

He hung his head a moment. "The one time I don't clean everything up, I get caught. I always finish whatever bag I'm working
on before I shut down and clean up. Always. Except last Tuesday.
I was working late. Some of the guys asked me if I wanted to go to
Florida to have dinner and mess around. I wanted to go, but I had
to hurry and shower to get ready. I didn't think it would matter if
I left this just once."

"That's the way it always happens," said Lindsay. "Did you
notice anything different when you returned?"

"That's what that FBI agent wanted to know. You know, my
parents wanted me to be a lawyer or some kind of corporate something or other. They didn't like archaeology at all. Now I'm a sus pect in a murder investigation because I shirked my duties. That's
going to be a double whammy for my dad."

Lindsay decided she was going to have to let Isaac get this off
his chest before she could get any information from him. She listened to his anxieties and sympathized.

"What does your dad do?"

"He's a U.S. marshal."

"Really? That's interesting."

"I thought it was great when I was a kid. While all the other
kids played Star Wars characters, I was always a cowboy-a little
retro-kid. But you can see my problem. He's a very straight kind of
guy. The thought that I'm mixed up in this, well-"

"You aren't really mixed up in it. Ramirez talked to everybody.
Me, Lewis, John, Trey-I don't think any of us had anything to do
with his death. Anyway, did you notice anything different?"

"Not really. Some water splashed on the floor, but we use a lot
of water in this place. I didn't think anything of it."

"No overturned chairs or anything?"

"No. Nothing like that."

"Did you find anything on the floor, in the sink, or with the
carbon fraction?"

Isaac shook his head. "No."

"Do you know the security guard here?"

"Dale Delosier. He's a retired cop."

"What's he like?"

Isaac shrugged. "All right, I guess. I don't know him very well.
He comes on duty after I leave. I've just met him in passing when
I've been working late."

"Anything out of the ordinary about him?"

"No. Just that he shows no interest in what we do here. That's
kind of strange to me. Everyone else who visits here is really interested in the excavation-ship's timbers, everything. But that's
hardly anything against him. This just isn't his thing."

"Does he stay on the island?"

"No. He comes on the six o'clock ferry."

"Do you know if there are any docks on the island other than
the ones we use or the ferry uses?"

"No. But you'd better ask the bio people."

"If I can get them to speak to me."

"They aren't so bad. It's mainly Mike and Tessa. The others are pretty nice and like to know what's going on with the dig. Besides,
you really can't blame them. We did kind of push them out."

"That's true. Thanks for talking with me. If you think of anything, let me know."

"Sure-you and Agent Ramirez."

Lindsay walked to the lab. Carolyn and Korey were bent over
their work. Carolyn was working on a ceramic jar the size of a fist.
Korey was busy with an encrusted piece of iron.

"Hi, you guys look absorbed," said Lindsay.

"Cisco is going to have to get some more people in here if he
wants all these artifacts processed," said Carolyn. "Right now, all
we can do is stabilize them as they come in."

"Two of you don't seem to be enough," agreed Lindsay.

"The problem is, he doesn't want to bring any more people to
stay on the island. We're maxed out right now. And he doesn't
want to send the artifacts off."

"What about ferrying some more workers in?" asked Lindsay.

"I'm going to have to ask him to do that if he keeps pushing like
he's been doing."

Lindsay sat down at her station and worked on her bone analysis reports. After the bones were through the desalinization
process and dried, she would make another, more thorough, examination. But right now, preliminary reports to the funding agencies
were coming due.

When she grew tired of the reports, she called up the Web and
searched for the history of diving. She was surprised at how far
back diving for wrecks and the use of compressed air went. A
drawing of a bellows adorned the tomb wall of the governor of
Thebes. Jeremiah 6:29 mentions the use of bellows. Aristotle, in the
fourth century B.C., wrote about "instruments for drawing air from
above the water and thus [men] were able to remain a long time
under the sea." Bobbie was right-Alexander the Great, a student
of Aristotle, descended into the sea in a contraption called a
Colimpha. In the first century A.D., Hero wrote a manuscript called
Pneumatica about the use of air pressure and vacuum. In 1240,
Roger Bacon invented a machine for breathing underwater. The
bends was actually recognized as far back as the seventeenth century when it was called "a bubble in the viper's eye."

Lindsay searched for the term "dysbaric osteonecrosis" and
found more hits than she could look at. Ultimately, she'd have to go to the library and search the medical journals, but for now she
scanned a few of the entries. One source said the condition was
rarely seen in recreational divers, and most often in saturation
divers-whatever they were.

"Do either of you guys know what a saturation diver is?"

Korey and Carolyn both looked up and shrugged..

"That's a diver who has to stay at a great depth a long time."

Lindsay looked up at John coming toward her desk. "Hi," she
greeted.

He pulled up a chair and sat down beside her. "You become saturated when your tissues absorb as much nitrogen as they can hold
at your depth." He leaned against her and looked at her computer.

"You planning on doing some deep diving?"

"No, I'm certainly not. Why would anyone stay down that
long?"

"You got to do a job, it takes a while. After you're saturated,
decompression time doesn't increase the longer you stay. So you
get the job done, decompress at the end."

"How do you use the bathroom?" asked Carolyn.

John looked over at her and laughed. "You usually work out of
some kind of pressurized underwater habitat or diving bell."