One Grave Too Many

as far as he remembered, this area hadn’t seen much washing out. Diane was glad for that. Digging in a soggy pit that had been filled with animal carcasses didn’t bear thinking about.
    When they finished marking the search lanes, the search area was about sixty feet by sixty feet, with the pit in the center. The north section was down a slope through thick underbrush terminating in another erosion gully, which took most of the runoff that used to go into the dump pit.
    Starting at one end, they walked slowly down the strips with Diane setting the pace, scrutinizing the ground, using long sticks to gently move away leaves and other detritus to uncover bare ground. Diane wanted to finish this search before they stopped for lunch. She didn’t expect to find any clues dropped by the perpetrator, but did expect to identify bones scavenged and dragged out by animals.
    The temperature climbed quickly. It was forecast to reach a hundred today. It felt like it had already topped out. Diane’s tee shirt was wet and her skin hot. She took a drink of water from a boda bag she had slung across her shoulder. She came upon the end of a long bone. It wasn’t human. She sunk a green flag in the ground beside it.
    A searcher let out a short laugh. “I found an arrowhead.” His colleagues laughed with him. Under the circumstances, the archaeologists thought such a find to be ironic.
    When they reached the end of the marked lines, they had completed half the search area. Switching to the remaining search lines, they began the slow search process again, looking and setting flags into the ground.
    “I found a patella,” said one of the guys.
    “Human?” asked another.
    “Do animals have them?” he asked.
    “Damn straight,” said a third guy. “My dog’s kept jumping out of place and he’d be all stiff-legged. He had to have surgery to tack it down. Cost me a fortune, but he’s fine now.”
    “Go ahead and put a red flag beside it,” said Diane. “I’ll check it out later.”
    There was more conversation during the last half of the search. But as Diane glanced at them, they never took their eyes off the ground. When the last leg of the initial survey was finished, there were small patches of flags around the pit from five to twenty-six feet—marking places where, in all probability, animals had dragged carrion from the pit. There were very few yellow flags. Diane wondered in passing if the guy had marked the arrowhead or simply picked it up.
    “Let’s break for lunch,” she said, rubbing her sore back. “I know it’s sort of a late lunch. And I thank you for the good job you’re doing.”
    They had all brought packed lunches and now looked for comfortable shade to sit down in and eat. The only shade was in the surrounding woods several yards from their search area. Diane found a rock beside Jonas Briggs and sat down with her peanut butter sandwich, apple and bottled water. She was more tired than she thought she should be. Must be old age creeping up on me, she thought, but there was Jonas, looking as refreshed as when he started. She took a long drink of water.
    When she was in the jungle digging, on those occasions when she was close enough to get back to the compound in a reasonable amount of time, she’d sometimes drive a couple of hours or more and arrive so hot and tired she’d collapse on the cot in one of the two rooms she rented from the mission school. Ariel would come with a bottle of water, pat her arm and snuggle up to her. As hot as Diane was, Ariel’s warm little body was always a comfort. She’d tell Diane everything that had happened at the mission that day or what she’d learned in school. Diane would tell her a story, and before long she wasn’t tired anymore. Sometimes the worst of her feelings was regret—that terrible wishing that more than anything she had taken Ariel out of the country. The wish sucked at her heart, hurting all the way to her throat, filling her eyes with tears.
    “The Abercrombies are letting the crew bed down on the floor of their den,” said Jonas, jolting Diane from her thoughts. “Mrs. Abercrombie’s a very gracious woman. She’s fixing us all supper this evening.”
    “That certainly is nice of her.”
    “It seems as though she likes to entertain, but her husband doesn’t. This is her chance. Lucky for us.”
    Diane tucked away her sad thoughts and asked the crew members what each of them did. Two were looking for positions at universities, three