Cemetery Road Read online

  I nod, then shiver as the air-conditioning chills my sweaty shirt. “I just watched them pull him out.”

  She shakes her head, then drops her rag and turns away from the gleaming machine. “Accident?”

  “Between you and me? No way.”

  She sucks in her lips and looks down at her counter, absorbing the news. “Was it the Indian artifacts? The threat to the paper mill?”

  “I think so. Which, if you include residents of the county, gives us about thirty-six thousand suspects.”

  “That sounds about right. You want coffee? I figured you’d be out at the groundbreaking.”

  “I’m going, but I needed my caffeine.”

  Her eyes probe mine with almost physical thoroughness. “You need something stronger than that. Are you okay? Seriously.”

  I look down at the oversized muffins under the glass. “That scene at the river . . . no good for me.”

  She reaches over the counter and squeezes my hand, then turns to prepare my coffee. “You going to sit? Or you in too much of a hurry?”

  “Do you have time to sit?”

  She looks around the store and smiles again. “Be there in a sec. How’s your dad doing?”

  “’Bout the same,” I lie, from habit.

  As I survey the eight café tables, I hear the couple speaking French while consulting a guidebook. On the round table before them lie copies of Richard Grant’s Dispatches from Pluto and Richard Wright’s Native Son. Anticipating the conversation Nadine and I will have, I detour into the book-signing nook, a C-shaped banquette set on a large dais raised two feet above the rest of the café.

  The walls above the banquette are covered with signed author photos, most black-and-white. Facing me as I take a seat are Rick Bragg, Chris Offutt, Kathryn Stockett, John Grisham, and Pat Conroy (that one signed shortly before his death). Above these, a dozen more photos climb toward the ceiling. Behind me hangs a collection of signed photos given to Nadine by loyal customers. These include Eudora Welty, James Dickey, and Donna Tartt, as well as Mississippi blues singers Sam Chatmon and Son Thomas. Placed side by side to my left are signed publicity shots of the young Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, wearing their 1950s duds. Jerry Lee is considered practically a native son, since he hails from Ferriday, Louisiana, just forty miles down the river. Rarest of all is a signed photo of Bobbie Gentry, the reclusive singer of “Ode to Billie Joe.”

  Waiting for Nadine, I recall a weekend when Buck recruited a group of musician friends from around the South to play this store. Despite the superior musicianship, Buck included me both nights. We had two guitars, a mandolin, a fiddle, a bass, a harmonica, and a trap kit. After one set, the crowd got so big that people spilled out into the street, and rather than interfere, the cops closed Second Street to auto traffic and gave us a block party. Sometimes living in a small town is cool.

  Nadine walks lightly up the steps to the nook and sets a heavy china mug in front of me. She joins me at the table with a cup of green tea and gives me a smile designed to buck up my spirits.

  “No avoidance today,” she says. “The river, I mean. It was bad, huh?”

  “Bad enough. To tell you the truth, I feel like I killed Buck.”

  Her eyes darken. “Oh, come on. That’s bullshit.”

  “Is it? I knew when I published that story it would make people furious. I tried to argue him out of it, but Buck wanted it in the paper. It was so unlike him to stir up controversy. All the years he lived here, he never did anything like that. He went out of his way not to. But this was like a mission for him. A life quest.”

  “Why was it so important to him? I’m guessing you know a lot more than you put in the paper.”

  “Some. But I hadn’t talked to him in a couple of days. I was really sort of waiting for the next shoe to drop.”

  “I guess it has.” Nadine blows air across her tea. “Just not the way you were hoping.”

  “I was hoping the Department of Archives and History would come in here and take over the site. They’ve got a lot of power in these situations. They appoint their own board, and in theory are immune to political pressure. They can place a preservation easement on public land—which the mill site is—and that would give them control of the site. At least while they survey and assess it.”

  “That’s exactly what people are afraid of, right? It would have delayed construction?”

  “No doubt.”

  “Possibly even ended it?”

  “If the site is what Buck believed it was.”

  “Which is what? A site like Poverty Point? A potential UNESCO World Heritage site?”

  “Yep. And I think it is. Poverty Point is only forty miles from here, as the crow flies. And there are remnants of that same culture down at Anna’s Bottom, north of Natchez. Buck believed that a deeper strata might hold evidence of an even older culture, like the one at Watson Brake, Louisiana. That’s only seventy miles from here, and it predates both the Giza pyramids and Stonehenge.”

  Nadine is smiling with what looks like wistfulness. “My dad took me to Poverty Point when I was a little girl. I never told you that. It’s one of my few good memories of him. We had a picnic there. When you think about people living along the river before the pyramids, that’s pretty mind-blowing.”

  “If only Buck had made his finds in the middle of nowhere, rather than an industrial park.”

  Nadine pulls a wry face. “One that was nearly awarded Superfund status for its toxic sludge. What did you leave out of your article?”

  “Mostly Buck’s persistence. About thirty years back, some small clues got him thinking there might have been an ancient civilization near here, one that vastly predated the known tribes. The Indians we’re famous for—the Natchez, mainly—were relative latecomers. They’re fascinating because they were sun-worshipping, corn-growing mound-builders, like the Maya. Buck first made his reputation by documenting their involvement with the French and English in slave trading.”

  “The Indians were involved in the slave trade?”

  “Big time. Anyway, the electroplating factory that used to sit on the paper mill site was built during World War Two. Buck had heard rumors that the construction workers turned over artifacts every day with their bulldozers. He tracked down a few old-timers, checked out the relics they’d given to their kids. But it was all later-era stuff—1500 to 1730. A lot of guys would have quit there, but Buck had seen descriptions of the site that predated even its agricultural use. Before that land was plowed up during the early 1800s by tobacco and cotton farmers, there were supposedly semicircular rings on the ground—raised concentric ridges facing the river, possibly built up on an older bend where the river used to flow. That’s exactly how Poverty Point is oriented.”

  “I remember.” Nadine is nodding and smiling as though reliving her childhood picnic. “Buck couldn’t prove that?”

  “No. Most of the acreage around the factory had been graded flat and paved over. The company refused to let him dig out there—even on the fringes—and Buck was so busy with other projects that he just let it go.”

  Nadine sips her tea. “So what made him suddenly dig at the mill site this month? Finding that mysterious map?”

  “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 t
his 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 o
f 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?”