Gooch turned and left and a moment later David emerged from the courthouse. He straightened his Stetson, watched Gooch’s retreating back.
‘Your friend always looks guilty of something,’ David said.
‘So do you,’ Whit said. They walked along the grass of the courthouse yard. Two news vans, from Corpus Christi affiliates, sat like squat little vultures on the opposite side of the square. Whit hardly gave them a glance, grateful that his ever-casual attire made him look more like a latecomer paying an overdue fine than the county’s JP/coroner. David slowed, as though wanting to stop and linger and talk to them. Already baking in the heat were two competing journalists, electrifying their audiences with overwrought prose: Port Leo remains rocked by the brutal double homicide… A tragic end for elderly lovers… leaves unanswered questions. Horror neatly filed into worn phrases to boost ratings. Those reporters had never heard Patch’s booming laugh, watched Thuy’s delicate hands move while she told a story, smelled the soft jasmine of her perfume.
‘Big story,’ David said as he started the engine. ‘What we do is going to be watched. Carefully.’
‘You should bone up on your preening,’ Whit said.
‘You might want to get a white shirt and tie,’ David said. He pulled the car past the reporters, giving them a friendly little wave. Whit saw him wince as he powered up the window, favoring the shoulder that had been shot months ago, as he always did. Whit wondered if the shoulder still troubled him or if David used it as a merit badge.
‘You’re not going to ask me about how my questioning of your girlfriend went?’ David asked as they headed out of Port Leo, along Highway 35.
‘No,’ Whit said. ‘I’m not worried.’
‘Did you know she inherits the whole shebang?’ David changed lanes, whipped around a slow-moving pickup. He said it as easily as asking if Whit wanted the radio on.
Whit was silent a moment too long.
‘All of Patch’s money, land, all of it. He cut out his other niece. I just talked with his attorney in Corpus. Patch made the changes less than a month ago.’
‘I don’t think Lucy knows. She told me they’d each get half.’
‘So she said. She looked like she pissed her pants when I told her,’ David said. ‘Man, I love driving. Even in this traffic. Wish I had a BMW, something sweet to point down the road. Lucy can afford one now. That estate, with the land, it’s gonna be many pretty pennies.’ He glanced over at Whit. ‘Maybe she can spring for that shirt and tie, Your Honor.’
13
‘All right, here’s the skinny on your bones.’ Dr Parker sat across from David and Whit in a borrowed office at the morgue, where the forensic anthropology team had set up temporary shop. ‘When I’m looking at bones I can only tell you so much. I don’t have a way, from visual inspection, to tell you this man died in 1800 or 1900 or what have you unless maybe it was in the past three years. And these boys been dead way longer than three years. You want more specific, you call UT and get in the long line for carbon-14 dating, but that’s real expensive and you don’t need it.’
He cleared his throat, moved aside a stack of photos from the dig. ‘You got three skeletons at the site. Three skulls, three partial rib cages, six tibia, and an odd number of finger bones and teeth. All died of bullet wounds. Sam got shot between the eyes, Tom and Uriah got shot in the back of the head. The fracture patterns…’
‘You name them?’ David asked.
‘Sure, I name ’em,’ Parker said. ‘Helps me to remember they were once breathing people, happy, sad, hauling all the same baggage we carry around right now. Rotate through the alphabet like hurricanes. Up to S now. Let’s see.’ He shuffled papers. ‘Now I can look at the skeletal remains and tell quite a bit. But because the disarticulation was so severe, we’re making some guesses here. Sam was male, five six, European ancestry, about twenty-two at his death, right-handed. Tom was male, five five, European ancestry, about twenty-eight at his death, left-handed. Uriah was male, five eight, European ancestry, about thirty at his death, right-handed. I could be off, in that we might have matched the wrong long bones to the wrong skulls. But, hell, you got to start somewhere.’
‘So they weren’t Karankawas or Comanches,’ Whit said. His own voice sounded too quiet, still processing what David had told him about Lucy.
‘No.’ Parker opened another file. ‘Now, these other relics: the nails, iron latches, and locks. I sent those to my friend Iris Dominguez over at A amp;M-Corpus. She has books to help identify historical implements. Lots of latches were distinctive, being handmade back then, used to mark the work of a craftsman. Dr Dominguez says two of the latches come from a Spanish furniture-builder, Olivarez in Barcelona, active from 1770 until the late 1820s. The latches date from a design made around 1818. Another latch comes from a New Orleans furniture-making concern, LaBorde, active from 1800 until the American Civil War. The nails and the locks don’t offer so much, less room for distinction.’
‘This Olivarez and LaBorde, they made coffins?’ Whit said.
‘Not to our knowledge. They made chests, containers, furniture.’
Chests, Whit thought.
‘So some point after 1818 is a reasonable guess? If our three boys have been dead so long, no one should have known about them being there,’ David said.
‘Maybe not. We even found a smaller bone chip in the grass near the surface. The bones therefore have to have been dug up first, then dumped back into the hole, covered some, then your murder victims were dumped on top. It really is strange.’
‘What if… Sam and Tom and Uriah had been buried with something else?’ Whit said slowly. The latches. The locks, he thought.
Dr Parker was quiet for a moment. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You said these latches and locks could have come from chests. What do buried chests suggest to you?’
David gave a short little laugh. ‘What, buried treasure? That’s ridiculous.’
‘Dr Parker?’ Whit asked. ‘Is it?’
Parker gave a thin smile under his Yankees cap. ‘I don’t know if there’s a historical basis for it. I’m an anthropologist, not an archaeologist.’
‘Your Honor,’ David said, with great patience in his tone. ‘Don’t go off on a wild-goose-’
‘I’m just saying. How do you explain these relics? David, you grew up on the coast, too. You’ve heard the legends. Sunken treasures off the coasts from Spanish ships caught in storms. Or Jean Laffite. He pirated in the Gulf. Patch used to tell stories about him and buried treasure. That crazy old hermit, Black Jack, that lived out on the Point and claimed to be one of Laffite’s men.’ He thought then of the book Patch had borrowed from the library: Jean Laffite, Pirate King.
‘But they’re just stories,’ David said. ‘Nothing more. Maybe these guys got buried with their belongings. That seems far more reasonable to me.’
‘They weren’t pharaohs,’ Whit said. ‘If they were killed and robbed, the robbers would have taken the chests with them.’
David rubbed his face. ‘These men could have been buried in the chests themselves. We didn’t find anything that suggested buried treasure at the site. I mean, honestly, do you hear yourself?’
‘I’ll send you a complete report when I’m done,’ Dr Parker said. He seemed eager to be away from this argument. ‘What do you want done with the boys when I’m finished?’
‘The county will bury them properly,’ Whit said. ‘You can send them all back to my office.’
David stood, shook hands with Parker. Parker clapped a hand on Whit’s shoulder.
‘Buried treasure,’ Parker said. ‘Wouldn’t that be something?’
‘Wouldn’t it, though?’ Whit said.
‘I’ve got your autopsies.’ Dr Elizabeth Contreras gestured them to seats across from her metal-topped desk. She looked tired as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.
‘Thanks for the fast turnaround,’ Whit said.
‘Their times of death were between midnight and four a.m. on Tuesday morning. Mr Gilbert’s wound patterns are consistent with your typical garden-use shovel.’