Cemetery Road

“Yeah. I was vague in the article, because the guy who found it didn’t want to be named.”

Nadine gives me a look that says she fully expects me to take her into my confidence. When I hesitate, she says, “It’s in the vault.”

“Okay. Six weeks ago—just as the county started tearing down the old factory in anticipation of the Chinese deal going through—old Bob Mortimer, the antique dealer, came into possession of some books from the attic of a local antebellum home. Folded into one he found some papers. Three sheets were early nineteenth-century maps that turned out to be hand-drawn by a guy named Benjamin L. C. Wailes.”

“The famous historian mentioned in your story.”

“Right. The first geologist in this part of Mississippi. Wailes’s maps are like the Bible of archaeology in this region.”

“And this new map showed what, exactly? Indian mounds?”

“Yes, but also the concentric semicircular ridges Buck had heard about. Plus some depressions that might be holes for wooden posts, like Mayan stelae. Posts oriented into a Woodhenge, a huge circle for astronomical observations.”

“Like Stonehenge?”

“Exactly like that. Or Cahokia, a similar site up in Illinois. Anyway, as soon as Buck saw the map, he intuited the whole history of the place. He figured a succession of tribes had built over the original earthwork of that first Neolithic culture, because the site was so good. And once Buck saw that Wailes map, nothing was going to stop him from digging.”

“And a week ago, the county conveniently finished tearing down the old factory. Even the parking lot, right?”

“Yep. Of course, no one was going to give him legal permission to dig there. The Chinese won’t either, once all the papers go through.”

“And soon there’ll be a billion-dollar paper mill sitting on top of it. So he did it guerrilla style.” Nadine smiles with fond admiration. “Who bailed him out of jail? I’m guessing you.”

“I should have left him there. Maybe he’d still be alive.”

She sips her tea and checks on the French tourists. “So why hasn’t the state come in and roped off the site?”

“Normally they would. But that mill—plus the interstate and the new bridge to service it—is going to transform all of southwest Mississippi. It’s like the Nissan plant going to Canton. The goddamn governor is going to be out there in an hour blessing the ground. Trump’s commerce secretary is flying in for a photo op, for God’s sake. In a perfect world, MDAH would have shut it down yesterday, if not over the weekend. Buck’s case was very strong. As I wrote in the article, a lot of archaeologists believe Poverty Point was a pre-pottery culture. That its builders only used carved stone bowls obtained from other tribes. But the potsherds Buck found help support the theory that Poverty Point was the original pottery-making center of the Lower Mississippi Valley. There’s no tempering material mixed into the clay of the fragments he found. He also found drilled beads that match Poverty Point artifacts, as well as what are called Pontchartrain projectiles. He had no doubt about what he’d discovered. But a boatload of academics could be hired to refute his assertions. So. While the Department of Archives and History may have the legal power to act in this situation, we live in the real world.”

Nadine laughs. “You call Mississippi the real world?”

“Sadly, yes. The only thing that could change the equation is bones. And that’s what Buck went back last night to find.”

She looks confused. “I thought Buck died in the river.”

I shake my head. “Quinn told me he went back to the mill site last night.”

“You think he was killed there, then dumped upstream?”

“We found his truck at Lafitte’s Den, half an hour ago.”

“We?”

“Denny Allman. My drone pilot.”

Nadine shakes her head. “I know that kid. Reads way over his age level.” The bell on the front door rings, but Nadine only glances in that direction. “So who would have caught Buck at the mill site? There aren’t lights out there anymore, right? It’s Bumfuck, Egypt.”

“The night after I ran my story about Buck, somebody posted guards out there. They patrol all night.”

“Who?”

“Maybe the Chinese? Maybe the county. I don’t know yet.”

“You think security guards killed him?”

I shrug. “Seems unlikely, and risky, but who knows? That could explain the body being moved. Guards at the mill site would have to explain how he died.”

Nadine purses her lips, pondering all I’ve told her. “Tell me why finding bones would make such a difference.”

I’m about to answer when a short man wearing a coat and tie steps up into the banquette. He’s about sixty, and he’s holding a James Patterson novel, but he’s staring intently at me. He looks oddly familiar (as have hundreds of people I’ve seen since getting back to town), but I can’t place him. Then Nadine says, “Hello, Dr. Bortles.”

He gives her a tight smile but keeps his eyes on me. “Do you remember me, Mr. McEwan?”

“Sure,” I tell him, racking my memory for anything to add. “You’re the … dentist, right?”

“Orthodontist. I came over because I was very disheartened to read your story on Buck Ferris’s recent digging by the river.”

Oh boy. Here it comes. “The Watchman prints the news, Dr. Bortles.”

He smirks at this. “Bad news, in that instance.”

“I could debate that. But even if you’re right, what’s your thesis? I’m not supposed to print bad news?”

He makes a sour face, as though he’s being forced to converse with an idiot. “You know, it’s easy for you to stir this up. You don’t live here anymore, not really. After your father passes, you’ll go back to Washington and spend your nights on TV, telling people how smart you are. What do you care if this town dries up and blows away?”

“I happen to care a lot about that.”

“Then stop printing stories about crazy Buck Ferris and his Indians. Keep it up, and you can rename this town Poverty Point. Nobody will have a job that pays more than minimum wage.”

Anger flares in my gut, but I force myself to stay in my seat. I look closer at him, at the meticulous comb-over, the plastic surgery around his eyes, the Apple watch with the $5,000 band. “Buck Ferris wasn’t crazy,” I tell him. “But you don’t have to worry about Buck anymore. Somebody killed him.”

Shock blanks the orthodontist’s face. “What?”

“The next thing I’ll be printing about Buck is his obituary.”

Dr. Bortles stands blinking like a rodent after someone hit the lights in a dirty kitchen, disoriented but not entirely unhappy. “Do you mean that he died? Or that someone killed him?”

“Read tomorrow’s paper and find out.”

Bortles shakes his head. “Well. You can’t say he didn’t ask for it.”

My right fist tightens, and I’m halfway out of my chair when Nadine touches my arm and gives me a sharp look.

“Why don’t you let us finish our conversation, Doctor?” she says in a syrupy Southern voice that bears little resemblance to her own.

The round-faced Bortles looks surprised, then indignant. He’s clearly unaccustomed to being dismissed by anyone. “You’ve certainly gotten rude all of a sudden, Ms. Sullivan.”

Nadine gives him the too-broad smile of a woman whose mouth wouldn’t melt butter. “I never knew you were an asshole before, Doctor. Now I do.”

Bortles draws himself up to his full five feet six inches and in a pompous voice announces, “I will never buy another book in this shop. You have lost my patronage, Ms. Sullivan. Forever.”

The French tourists are watching from their table.

“Then why are you still standing here?” Nadine asks. She waves in Bortles’s face with mock solicitude. “Toodle-loo. You have a blessed day.”

Bortles huffs a couple of times but doesn’t manage any coherent response. Then he marches out, dropping his book loudly on a display table before slamming the door and filling the shop with the high clanging of the bell.

“Well,” I say. “You are something, Ms. Sullivan.”

She waves her hand in disgust. “The only reason I can do that is because I have some money. If I relied on this store to put food on my table, I’d have had to sit here and listen to that shit.”

I nod, dispirited. “That prick is probably an accurate reflection of how most people in town will feel about Buck’s death.”

“Were you telling the truth? Is Buck’s obit the next thing you’ll write about him? Or are you going to blow this story wide open tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. I need more facts before I can do anything.”

She nods thoughtfully. “You never answered my question. Why were bones the Holy Grail of Buck’s little Indiana Jones excursion?”

I smile. Like any good lawyer, she doesn’t lose the thread of the narrative, no matter the distractions. “You’re the lawyer.”

“Oh. Does Mississippi have some kind of grave-desecration statute? I know they differ from state to state.”

“Mississippi does, thank God. Anybody who comes across human remains in this state must report them. And a discovery like that stops whatever’s going on around it. Even major construction. Doesn’t matter whether the land is public or private.”

“Oh, man. The local politicians would crap their drawers.” Nadine is working it all out in her mind. “But for how long? It’s one thing if a team comes in, catalogs things, then moves them to a museum. But you can’t move a Poverty Point. That’s like discovering the pyramids.”

“You’re right. That level of find would kill the paper mill. The Chinese would move on to one of their alternate sites. Arkansas or Alabama.”

“Is the paperwork not fully completed? They’re breaking ground in less than an hour, for God’s sake.”

“That’s all for show. Gold shovels and glad-handing. The Chinese company has an office here and reps, but nothing’s final-final. The associated state projects are finishing the planning stage. The I-14 route is on the verge of final approval, but technically the mill is at binding letters of intent. There’s still due diligence to be done. If the Chinese really wanted to, they could fold up their tents and leave next week.”

Nadine sits back in her chair. “I’d say that’s a motive for murder.”

“I’m not sure how many people truly understand that risk at this point.”

“Does it matter? Anybody who fears the worst could have killed Buck. Even some hotheaded version of Dr. Bortles.”

“I guess so. Well, the powers that be will want this to go down as an accidental death. But it’ll be tough to hide. Buck has a massive skull wound, maybe from a rifle bullet, maybe a rock.”

Nadine is studying me as though trying to see behind my eyes. “What are you thinking, Marshall? I know you. You’re going to go out there and try to dig up some bones yourself, aren’t you?”

I take another long sip of coffee. “I’m not anxious to get my skull caved in. But Buck was right. Old B. L. C. Wailes wouldn’t have wasted time drawing maps of nothing. I think there are bones out there, thousands of them. The bones of people who were living in this county four millennia ago, and maybe five or six. Right where you and I grew up.”

Nadine steeples her fingers and smiles the way my favorite English teacher used to, as if she’s about to test me in some private way. “In a vacuum,” she intones, “I’d say that’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard. But the way things are now …” She sighs.

“Go on.”

“Bortles is an asshole, but he raised a real dilemma. What if you go out tonight and dig up some bones? You trace out the Woodhenge and uncover a major archaeological site. A new Poverty Point. Would you kill the paper mill deal to do that? Would you kill the future of this town to do it?”

There’s surprising passion in her voice. “Killing that mill deal wouldn’t kill the town.”

“Don’t be so sure.” She raises her right forefinger, and again I flash back to school. “The new white-flight neighborhoods in the eastern part of the county have brought in some money from Jackson, and there’s some smaller commercial activity going on—indie retail, like my store—and some light industry. But to really survive, Bienville has to have something like that paper mill. Hundreds of jobs that pay sixty or seventy grand, with good benefits. God knows how many ancillary jobs will be created. The construction alone will be a bonanza for this town. Then—”

I lift my right hand to stop her. “You’re right, no question. The bridge and the interstate alone mean hundreds of millions. Even the ancillary stuff …” I look up into her bright eyes. “They killed Buck, Nadine. You know? They murdered him.”

“Who’s ‘they,’ Marshall?”

I sigh heavily. “Quinn Ferris thinks the Poker Club did it.”

“The venerable Bienville Poker Club,” Nadine whispers. She raises her hands and makes a mock show of reverence. “The descendants of the hallowed founders. I’d say Quinn’s instincts are dead-on, as usual.”

“I’m about to see most of them at the groundbreaking ceremony. I may try to talk to a few.”

The front bell rings again. Nadine looks over to see a familiar customer, an older lady, who walks to the mystery section. Turning back to me, she whispers, “What does Jet say about all this?”

“I haven’t spoken to Jet.”

She looks surprised. “Why not?”

“She’s out of town today, taking a deposition in that suit over rigged construction bids. She probably hasn’t even heard Buck’s dead.”

Nadine slowly shakes her head. “That’s going to hit her hard. But she’s going to have some ideas about who did it. She knows more about the Poker Club than we ever will.”

“Because she married into it,” I say in a sour voice. I look at my watch, then gulp the rest of my coffee. “I need to get moving if I’m going to make it.”

“You want a go cup?”

“No, thanks.” I start to stand, but Nadine reaches out and catches my right forearm, holding me in my seat.

“One second.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I see something in your eyes. Something I haven’t seen before. Not even when you talked about your divorce. Or … your son.”

A cold blade slices through my heart. “I’m okay.”

“Come on. This is me. When you came in, you said the river got to you this morning. Did it make you think about Adam? The day he drowned?”

God, this woman knows me. After a few seconds, I nod. “It’s like Buck’s death pulled a cork on something, and the past came rushing out. It feels like water rising over my head.”

She nods slowly. “Should you talk to somebody?”

“I’m talking to you.”

“A professional.”

“Come on. I haven’t talked to a shrink since I was fifteen.”

“Maybe you didn’t need to. Do you want to come back here after lunch?”

“No, I’m fine.” I move to get up again, but something holds me in my place. “I think how I feel has as much to do with my dad as Adam.”

“That was the start of your problems, right? Him blaming you for Adam’s death.”

“Yeah. And it was my fault, as much as something can be your fault when you’re fourteen. The thing is, after Dad stopped hunting for Adam’s body, he finally apologized. This was like four months after the memorial service. I’m pretty sure my mother made him do it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because he didn’t mean it. Dad wasn’t sorry he’d blamed me. He’s blamed me every day since. That was the central fact of my life for three years. He never said it out loud again. But he never truly made eye contact with me after that day. Not unless I caught him staring at me when he thought I was preoccupied. And when I did catch him, I could read his mind like a neon sign blinking on his forehead.”

“Don’t say it, Marshall.”

“Why are you here? That’s what the sign said. Why are you here when he’s gone? Where’s the justice in that?”

“That’s your guilt talking,” Nadine insists. “You’re flagellating yourself. Your father’s a good man. He just couldn’t—”

“Sure, sure,” I say angrily. “A hero to millions. The Conscience of Mississippi, right? But to me? He was a living rebuke. Never mind that the tower climb could have killed Adam just as easily.”

Nadine takes my hands in hers. “Don’t you get it? This is why you’re back here. You didn’t come only because your mother needed you, or even because he’s sick. You came because you have to settle this between you. You have to forgive each other before he goes.”

I appreciate Nadine’s efforts, but very gently I remove my hands from hers. “That’s not going to happen. I’ve been alone with him several times now, hard as that is, and he hasn’t said one word about it. He just sits there and yells at the television. The news, of course.”

“He’ll get there,” she says with absolute assurance. “He probably carries unimaginable guilt for doing that to you. He had to blame somebody. He could have blamed God, but he didn’t believe in God. You were handier.”

For five seconds I allow myself to recall the black hole of my life from the end of ninth through tenth grade. The black hole that Buck Ferris pulled me out of. I sigh heavily, then stand. “Thanks for the coffee. Also the floor show with Dr. Bortles. I’ll update you tomorrow morning.”

She walks me to the door. “Hey, have you heard the rumor about the party tonight? On the roof of the Aurora?”

“The celebration of the mill deal? What about it?”

“They say Jerry Lee Lewis is going to be there. He’s supposed to play a set, like he used to in the old days.”

“No way. Isn’t he like eighty-five or something?”

“Eighty-two.” Nadine has gotten that glint in her eye. “But the Killer still brings it.”

“They said Trump was coming to the groundbreaking ceremony, too, but all we get is the secretary of commerce.”

“I’ve got faith in Jerry Lee.”

“That’d be something to see, all right. But I’m not invited.”

Nadine looks genuinely surprised. “But the Mathesons are co-hosting. Surely Jet or Paul—”

“I’m persona non grata since writing that piece about Buck’s discovery.”

Nadine stops at the door and turns to me with her mischievous smile. “Well, I’m invited. Why don’t you be my plus-one?”

I start to decline, but this is Nadine. And the party would be a damn good opportunity to study a lot of people who are profiting off the paper mill deal. “Can I get back to you in a bit?”

She shrugs. “Open invitation.”

“I’m a little confused,” I say, unable to resist needling her. “I heard you were gay.”

She laughs out loud. “Come to the party with me, and we’ll kill that rumor for good. People will have us engaged by morning.”

As I open the door, her smile fades, and she follows me outside.

“Take a hard look at the Poker Club at the groundbreaking,” she says. “They’re bastards to a man. They’ve ruled this town for a hundred and fifty-three years, and not one of them would lose a minute’s sleep over killing Buck.”

“I actually hope that’s not true.”

She points at a display of mysteries and thrillers in her front window. “Despite my trade, the truth is there’s not much mystery to real-life murders. Cui bono, honey. That’s the only question that matters. I’d bet my store that one of those Poker Club assholes killed Buck. But don’t kid yourself about what it would mean to take them on. They’d kill you, too. Wouldn’t hesitate. Keep that in mind during your editorial meetings.”

With that, Nadine goes inside and closes her door, leaving me to walk away with the muted ring of her bell in my ears.

CHAPTER 9

THE RIDE FROM Nadine’s to the paper mill site takes ten to fifteen minutes. The land called the “industrial park” sits below the bluff south of town, where four or five large factories and a few smaller ones operated from the 1940s through the 1980s and ’90s, before going through down cycles, changes of ownership by second- and third-tier companies, and finally the sheriff chaining the gates shut. It’s the same story all over the South—all over America, really.

I drive along the bluff most of the way, thinking about Buck and who might have killed him. Both his widow and Nadine believe the Bienville Poker Club must be behind the crime. I don’t disagree in principle, but I’ve yet to see any evidence. Before I forget, I text Ben Tate, my editor at the Watchman, and ask him to find out who employed the security guards who started covering the industrial park after we published our story on Buck and whether any were on duty last night.

Again the river dominates my view for most of the route, this time on my right, as I drive south along the bluff, which is mostly covered with kudzu here. Searching the Sirius channels for some of the music Buck and I used to play together, I realize I’m thinking about my son, whom Nadine mentioned back in her bookshop. He was in my mind earlier, at the cemetery wall, just below the dark drama of Adam and my father. My talk with Nadine dispelled the clouds of sediment that memory raised, and during the drive along the bluff my little boy rises from the deep darkness.

I got married fourteen years ago, to a colleague in Washington. Her name is Molly McGeary, and quite a few TV viewers still remember her. After starting as a reporter at the Washington Times, Molly became one of the first print journalists to make the jump to television. First she moved to USA Today as a political reporter. Then a producer at NBC happened to catch her on a panel at a conference in New York, and she was off. In no time she was making appearances on the Today show, covering Washington stories and the business side of the entertainment sector.

At the time I married Molly, I believed I loved her. But looking back later, I realized I was in that situation where everyone you know—lifelong friends, colleagues, old classmates—has already been married for years and is having children, some their second or third child. Faced with this, you start wondering if you were put on earth merely to work and have a succession of sexual relationships that ultimately go nowhere. That kind of anxiety skews your objectivity, makes you persuade yourself that you’re feeling things you’re really not. You believe you ought to be feeling those things, so eventually—with the help of your parents, your cajoling friends, and a romantic co-conspirator—you do. That was my state of mind before I went to Iraq. By the time I got back, I knew that life could be snatched away at any moment, and the only sensible thing to do was get married and start procreating.

Molly and I were still in the glow of infatuation when we walked down the aisle. The first year was a good one. But after she got pregnant—a planned decision—the reality of having a child started to come home to us, and particularly to her. To my consternation, as the fetus grew inside her, and she ballooned up in the later months, she began to feel that our baby was a parasitical being, sapping the life from her, changing her irrevocably. At first I thought Molly was only half-serious. And surely, I reasoned, such feelings must be common among professional women? They would inevitably pass. But within two weeks of delivering Adam (yes, I named my son after my dead brother), I witnessed something I had never quite understood before: postpartum depression.

With the clarity of hindsight, I now believe Molly never recovered from that condition—not while we were together. We consulted a parade of medical experts, tried several promising therapies, and went to great lengths to get first-class child care so that Molly could return to her career. Nothing worked. Two years passed like that—a mostly wonderful time for Adam and me, but for Molly a sort of shadow play that never quite became real. She stayed emotionally muted, exhausted, and irritable when she did feel alert. She resented the demands of motherhood, but also the demands of her job. And then—just as I was considering a radical job change to try to improve the situation—I discovered that death had been hovering over us once more, just as it had when I was fourteen.