Carved in Bone

“or were some missing and presumed dead?”
    “Don’t know,” he said. “We’ve got some people doing research on the history of the place. Looking for records, first-person accounts. If we’re lucky, we might find a sixty-year-old who was doing time there and lived to tell the tale.”
    As we walked the site, I noticed rectangular depressions in the ground–low spots where I could see traces of foundations, barely discernible amid the bushes and vines that had been swallowing them for the past four decades.
    I wasn’t convinced that searching the ruins would tell us any more than searching the cemetery would–I’d not noticed signs of recent disturbance here, either, at least not yet–but the site was complex, and I didn’t want to rush to pull the plug.
    I was poking around the ruins of the dormitory when I heard the call of nature, so I headed for the nearest line of trees. As I neared the tree line, I stepped on an old flagstone, a two-foot-square island of flat sandstone in a sea of weeds. The stone wobbled slightly beneath me as my weight shifted. I took my next step, then stopped and turned back to the flagstone. I put an exploratory foot on it and bore down gently. It did not move. I put my full weight on it and leaned forward, and when I did, it rocked again, barely perceptibly.
    I trampled the weeds along one side of the stone and knelt. Using the triangular tip of my trowel, I dug two small handholds beneath the edge, then wiggled my fingers into the dirt and lifted. The stone was heavier than I’d expected–it was a couple of inches thick, and must have weighed a hundred pounds or more–so I was unable to budge it from my kneeling position. Getting to my feet, I bent down, then reminded myself, lift with your legs, not your back. Crouching, I did my best imitation of an Olympic weight-lifter, grunting with the strain. The stone came up slowly at first, but the higher it tipped, the less effort it required. By the time I had it on edge, I could balance it with one hand.
    I could also see, within the hole that had been covered by the flagstone, a large metal can–a one-gallon paint can, perhaps?–its top thinned and perforated by years of rust, transformed into metallic lacework. I called Angie over and showed her my find. She photographed the can, its hiding place, the flagstone covering, and the surroundings. Then she carefully eased the can out of the ground and set it atop the stone. As she did, water sluiced through the perforations in the lid. She tried peering inside, but it was too dark and murky to make out anything. She eyed my trowel. “You think you could get that lid off without maiming yourself?”
    “I’ll try.” I slid the tip through the biggest of the perforations in the lid, wiggling it gently to widen the opening. Once it was several inches in, I pried gently upward. The trowel tore the crumbling metal easily, and it took only a minute to sever the lid completely.
    “The forensic can opener,” Angie cracked. “First time I’ve seen one of those in action.”
    Using the blade like a spatula, I lifted the lid–a small, rusty pancake–until it cleared the rim. Inside the can, barely visible above the murky water, was the edge of a small, soggy book.
    Angie plucked it from its watery grave. It was a hard-covered black book, bearing no title or label. It appeared to be a journal or ledger book, but its pages were stuck tight, so its meaning remained as effectively sealed, at least for now, as it had been in its hiding place. Angie carefully sealed it in a double layer of ziplock bags, and labeled a seal on the outer bag with a black Sharpie. “I’d like to get this to the lab pretty quick,” she said. “Maybe air-dry it overnight, so it doesn’t start to mold. If our documents examiner’s still there by the time we get back, I’ll hand it straight off to her.”
    “You’re the boss,” I said. “And my ride back to civilization. Whenever you want to go, just say the word.”
    Five minutes later we were on the road to Tallahassee, with a camera-full of photos of ruins and one lone piece of evidence. Potential evidence. For all we knew, the book’s pages–its fused, soggy pages–were as blank as the empty eye orbits of a skull.

Copyright
    This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is