“Trudy,” I said, “dig over here. That’s where we’ll find the torso.”
She rolled her eyes, as if to say, But we found the fingers over there.
“Dr. Hannah,” she said, “there’s something—”
I lifted my hand. “Eggers, forget the earthwork. I need you sifting over here for foot bones. I’ll take care of this femur.” I eyed them. “And let’s not fall victim to laxity and sloth, people. We have a mission here. She’s depending on us.”
I clapped my hands together. “Chop-chop,” I said.
No one moved. “What?” I asked. “Just what is the problem here?”
Trudy leaned forward and grabbed an animal skin that was lying in the pit. When she removed it, there was another sphere, just like the last one, half exposed in the mud. She lifted her eyebrows. “It’s not that simple,” she said.
I dropped to my knees. “Who found this?” I asked.
Eggers gestured with his spade. “Trudy had the honor this time,” he said.
I examined the sphere, though it was obviously of the same variety — similar shape, palm-printed texture, pitted striations from river weeds. It was electric to the touch. “Do you know what this means?” I asked.
Eggers smiled. “That we’ve found a two-headed Clovis?”
“Curb that insolence,” I said. “This means we have a grave on our hands. No hunter-gatherer would carry two of these heavy, ungainly things. These spheres were placed here, with great significance, by the people Keno left behind.”
“Why here?” Trudy asked. “What’s significant about this place?”
Ignoring the casino and the highway, I tried to see the landscape as it was twelve thousand years ago. Distant bluffs marked the final reach of a great glacial hand, its long fingers of ice clutched in a last grip — reaching southward, yet receding north. Mist and fog would have been constant, with curtains of cold whipping off the ice, and all around were places where the retreating glaciers deposited their icebound cargo — boulders, bones, and minerals, all churned up from a thousand glacial quarries. Might this have been a place of reverence to Clovis, a place of connection to a hundred thousand years of icy past? Or was this where the ice handed them pink quartz and obsidian, carted here from Canada?
“Trudy,” I said, “Keno will tell us. If we ask the right questions, she’ll let us know.”
Her eyes lacked focus. She didn’t seem to be listening.
“Trudy?” I waved my hand in front of her face.
She lifted her hand and pointed toward the road. Gerry’s cruiser was pulling up, followed by Sheriff Dan’s Blazer and a powder-blue sedan from which emerged two men in matching yellow parkas. The four of them consulted, then inspected my van, the men in yellow shining flashlights in all the windows, even though it was broad daylight.
In the distance, we saw Gerry gesture wildly, then point in our direction.
“That’s not a good sign, is it?” Trudy asked.
Eggers fell in beside me. The three of us stood in a row, shielding our eyes. “Things don’t look so bad,” Eggers said. “The cops never talked it over before arresting me before.”
“Arresting you for what?” Trudy asked. “Speeding in that pink Porsche of yours?”
“It’s champagne,” Eggers said.
“Let’s keep some focus here,” I told them.
Did Eggers really have a Porsche?
That’s when Sheriff Dan kicked the tire of my van and nodded his head, and the four of them headed our way, one of the men in yellow talking on a radio as they marched in the cold. I know it’s hard to believe, dear colleagues of tomorrow, but history was once governed by the laws of private property, and anthropology, more often than not, was a crime.
Eggers clapped once and rubbed his hands together. “Trudy, you go on. Dr. Hannah and I will take care of things. We’ll cover for you.”
Trudy laughed. “Cover for me? You’re the one who snared the deputy’s dog.”
“Come, now,” I cautioned them. “We’re a team. Both of you better hit the road quick. I’ll face this menace alone.”
Eggers wouldn’t budge. “Some team,” he said. “What happened to ‘Today, we are scientists’ and ‘Today, we commit to the dead’?”
“Yeah,” Trudy said, “don’t we have a mission?”
“Would you two just get out of here?” I asked. “I know how these guys operate. I know their language.”
“I fear no authority,” Eggers said. “Growing up in the guest quarters of your own house will teach you that. So will weekly boxing matches with a father who never, never let you win.”
“I’m not scared of them,” Trudy added. “I’ve come up against North Korean MPs.”
“Get out of here,” I told them. “Now.”
Eggers pushed off and began walking away. Trudy fell in behind.
I turned to face our new guests.
When Gerry was close enough to shout, he pointed at me.
“That’s him,” he yelled. “He’s the one who killed my dog.”
Sheriff Dan entered our camp, flanked by his team. He strode up to me, his eyes gray and dry in the cold, his voice down-homey yet formal.
“Morning, Henry,” he said, the crop of his jacket flapping in the wind. “How’s your father? I haven’t crossed paths with him in some time.”
By “crossed paths,” Sheriff Dan meant the funeral.
“Dad’s fine,” I said. “He’s coping.”
“Dog killer,” Gerry said.
Sheriff Dan ignored him. “Things sure haven’t been the same down at the courthouse without Janis. Everyone feels your loss.”
Sheriff Dan was my father’s age, so when he said this, sounding as though it came from the heart, I had to nod, even though I barely knew the man. He hailed from the upstanding side of town, lived on a street where people didn’t pirate cable television, didn’t clear their sidewalks by snowblowing the drifts into neighbors’ yards. The Sheriff Dans of the world paced off the jurisdiction of their existence with passes through the Rotary Youth car washes, Sunday Fellowship pancake breakfasts, and the occasional ant line out to the cemetery. I kept my distance from them: they’d smile and tell jokes as they cinched people’s handcuffs; they’d affably discuss church events as they evicted the poor. They were happy to go through the motions of life, seemed to connect truly to no one, and were therefore capable of anything.
I eyed the men in yellow parkas. They both had broomy mustaches and thinning hair. I couldn’t tell them apart behind their sunglasses. One of them pointed to the figures walking away toward the casino, their forms sharp, then dull in jets of wind. “Are those your associates?” he asked.
“Not at all,” I said.
He just stared at me.
Then his partner handed me a photo of a black Subaru, up on blocks in front of a corncrib. “Do you recognize this car?” he asked.
I shook my head no.
He produced another photo, held it close to my face. “What about this one?”
This picture showed a warehouse floor filled with mechanical parts, some of them spray-painted black. “I’m not sure I see a car,” I said.