Airtight Case by Beverly Connor Read Free Book Online Page A

only what is left: those things that are not destroyed, or fail to rot or erode, or that get left in some protected place, or are cherished and passed down through the generations. Those things are the only clues, presenting the archaeologist, like the detective, with the challenge of turning biased data into a representative truth. Now, with only scattered parts of foundations remaining, the Gallows farmstead looked as if it had been constructed entirely from rocks. The buildings, the house, barns, fences, corncribs, smokehouse, and springhouse actually had been built from large hewn timbers cut from the surrounding forest. Only the foundations and chimneys were made of stone.
    Lindsay took a long drink of water from her water bottle, then poured some of it over her head and let the cool drops trickle down her healed face. She looked longingly to the east where but a few hundred yards away the forest was still as thick, lush, and cool as it had been almost 170 years ago when this farmstead was settled. Directly east were the Great Smoky Mountains, Lindsay’s favorite place in the world, heaven-on-earth, a place where Francisco Lewis, head of the Division of Archaeology and Anthropology, thought Lindsay could rest and heal.
    “After all,” he reminded her, “you were planning to spend a few days for me at the Gallows site anyway, before . . .”
    Before... before the incident . . . a mere three months ago . . . it seemed like a lifetime . . . it seemed like yesterday.
    Like everyone else, Lewis had let what happened to Lindsay go unnamed. It was just as well. Easier not to think about if it didn’t have a name—only a number on an open case file that was at a dead end. Dead end. That almost described her, if things had been a little different.
    But if Lewis had thought a stay at the Gallows farmstead was going to be restful, it was because he hadn’t met the site director, Claire Burke, who at that moment was bearing down on Lindsay like an angry goat. Lindsay had a strong urge to run for the cover of the forest. She could make it, too; her legs were longer. But she was saved when Claire caught site of Adam Sterling and veered toward him as if he were a Claire magnet.
    “What are you doing?” Her words were clipped like small bursts of machine-gun fire. “Not what I told you to do.” Ratta tat tat.
    “This site’s older than we thought, dammit.” Like everyone else, Adam’s tolerance for Claire’s dictatorial ways was wearing thin. “This trench needs to be deeper. Look at this pit profile. I’m not to the bottom.”
    Lindsay could hear his loud voice even where she was. He stood, holding his shovel in one hand, sweat dripping from his face and arms. Byron Rogers, looking hot and red-faced behind his long beard, climbed out of the shallow trench from behind Adam and lumbered toward the water barrel, eager to take a break while Claire and Adam went a round.
    “You’re wasting time and money. It’s not older.” Claire scowled. “You’ve read the proposal, or you should have. We have clear documentation of the age of the farmstead. And that looks like pit bottom to me. Now you’ll do what I say, or you can find . . . ”
    “. . . a job elsewhere,” Lindsay whispered to herself. She’d heard Claire’s threat many times.
    “Documentation, shit. Marina identified clay pipes and salt-glazed stoneware that she said . . .”
    “A couple of artifacts from an older period mean nothing. They could have been family heirlooms.”
    Adam’s teeth were clenched and his muscles taut. “Claire, I know how to read a profile. I know what I’m doing. I’m not some freshman who wants to be an archaeologist, and I don’t make stupid mistakes.”
    Lindsay saw Erin look up at Adam from her digging, probably feeling the sting of his words. Sharon looked up briefly and continued to work. Bill, her husband, stopped and listened. Joel, absorbed as always in what he was doing, never looked up.
    As much as she hated to,