April glances around and then nods. “Yeah, Bud confronted Frank out at the island on Indian Lake. Supposedly they were placing artifacts for a fake dig with some funders, but Dursten said…that his dad attacked Bud. Threw one of the artifacts at him. Then Frank made Dursten help weigh down the body so it would sink in the lake. And Dursten even had to bury the murder weapon.” April’s chin tenses as she holds back tears. “That’s what really broke him. He cared about Bud. And then he had to see…and help…”

  I think of Naomi’s video. She knew Bud had been murdered, and that’s why she thought she might be next.

  “Can we prove anything you’ve said about Bud’s murder?” I ask as I hand her a tissue. “Would Dursten testify?”

  “He doesn’t have to,” April says. “He told me he filmed it. Set everything up with those little Flip cameras.”

  “Why?”

  She dabs under her eyes. “Blackmail. That’s the real win for Morgan, for all of them. They don’t need funders to write checks. They need them to do bad things, so they can blackmail them for the rest of their life.”

  I’d only seen two rituals, sex and drugs, not great, but probably not something that would send people to jail. Unless Morgan planned something more.

  “Where are these videos?” Luna asks.

  “I don’t know. I tried to get him to tell me, but he was so focused on finding Naomi. I couldn’t let that happen. Not until he’s better.”

  “Can you store more than one video on a Flip camera?” I ask, suddenly feeling dumb for not even considering it.

  April nods. “Sure, up to thirty minutes, I think.”

  I rush over to my truck, digging into my bag until I find the Flip with Naomi’s video. I hand it to April. “Can you show me?”

  She turns the Flip on and presses a button, and there’s Naomi’s video again, her scared eyes. She moves her thumb and the video skips to show darkness, dirt, and then focuses on a light. The shape of Bud. Frank rushing toward him with the chief’s ax held high as he smashes it onto his face.

  A scream I know well, poor Dursten yelling at his father. Crying out for poor Bud now face down in the dirt.

  I remember Naomi’s words: He knows. He will do anything to stop me, unless we stop him first.

  Dursten had tried and failed. Now it was up to us.

  * * *

  —

  As we leave the entrance to Quaiapen’s Fort at dawn, I remember reading how the colonists burned the fort, and there were at least one hundred Native people in it, survivors of the Great Swamp Massacre. Killing half, capturing the other is what the history book said.

  Linda almost added more to that count. Thankfully, she was arrested and can’t harass Naomi or her family for a long while, hopefully.

  There are phone calls to make. We confirm Naomi’s midwife auntie will meet her and the baby at the hospital where the ambulance is taking her and Julia now. Mal will drive Red Bird home, then she’ll go spend the day resting at her mother’s with Gracie.

  “You’re sure you don’t want me to go?” Mal asks, trying to stifle a yawn as we approach her car.

  “You need sleep,” I say, feeling so grateful for her help getting Naomi’s family. “I need to see this to the end.”

  “I’ll stay with Syd,” Luna says.

  Mal turns and gives Luna a hug. “Thank you.” Then she kisses me softly and gets into the car. Red Bird gives me a little wave as they pull away.

  We return to my truck and I call Ellis to tell him about Naomi’s family belongings in the fort with the remains, so he can bring members of the tribe to gather them.

  Now that I have the evidence on the Flip camera, I can finally get the attention of the special agents. There will be a time for that, but not yet.

  “Can you drive me back to the Founders Society?” Shawna asks. “My dad told me what he needs to build a case, but I’m sure after tonight, they won’t let me stay much longer.”

  “So you knew Naomi wanted to take the land back?” I ask her.

  “That summer we found a letter from the governor of Plymouth to the sachem leasing the land where the Founders Society sits. The lake and land.”

  “Indian Lake?” I say, realizing this was why Shawna suddenly wanted to help out Morgan. The same reason Shawna and Naomi were so focused on doing their own thing that summer instead of what I asked. They were researching to protect their future, while to them, I was unnecessarily digging up the past.

  “Red Bird always said Indian Lake would be returned to our tribe,” Shawna explains. “Most people thought it was some old legend that aunties tell us over the campfire. But I believed her. And now, my dad thinks it might be legitimate.”

  “I need to go there, too. I have a breakfast shift,” April says.

  “Can’t you take the day off?” I ask.

  “I’m getting my own place,” she says. “And Naomi may be back with me. I hope she works things out with her mom, but that’s changed before.”

  All the work April had been doing to try to help her friend keep her baby. A chance her birth mother was never given. “Of course,” I say and the four of us pile into my truck.

  The drive is quiet, and when I pull into the circle drive and see someone hanging a 300Th Anniversary banner across the porch, I realize this is the last day.

  “Well, that’s a sign,” Shawna says as we approach after I park in the main lot.

  Morgan strides out, her hands in front of her in a crisp white dress. “Do you all need some breakfast?”

  “I need to get to work,” Shawna says and steps around Morgan, heading inside.

  “Same,” April says, following close behind and disappearing past the guy holding the door open.

  “Quite the dedicated bunch.” Morgan nods at Luna. “I don’t know you.”

  Luna grins. “I know lots about you.”

  “What an accent.” Morgan grins right back. “You must be the one from Oklahoma. The kidnapped one?”

  Luna raises her eyebrows at me. “They are good at research here.”

  “My favorite part of the job,” Morgan says. “Now, Syd, it seems Naomi has been found. And some remains? Are they the remains?”

  “They are,” I say, thinking of how Naomi had carefully laid the mother and child together. “The police are involved, and it’s on tribal land, so it may get complicated.”

  “That was tribal land?” Morgan says, appearing upset. “We’ll never get them back tonight. We’ll have to think of something else. Bigger. Better. You with me?”

  Of course, the blackmail recordings. Thank God she can’t do whatever messed-up thing she was planning with those bones. She’s watching me carefully, and for a moment I consider confronting her, but even though Naomi is safe, there is more justice to be done. “I’ve never been more focused on anything.”

  “Then let’s go.” Morgan gestures for us to follow and we do.

  I don’t know what I was expecting the day after two arrests, but fresh flowers, a bar cart, and folks dressed in all white for brunch was not it. There are several more security guards, however.

  Morgan waves to a group of women in the corner, who are staring at Luna and me. Obviously we don’t belong, for several reasons. We continue down the long hallway toward Morgan’s showroom.

  “We’ll have the board meeting in here,” she says, not mentioning why, but maybe the bloodstain didn’t clean up. “Honestly, Frank needed a break from Linda and Dursten. He will be focused. We are so close. For us, this has been a five-year plan. For our ancestors, three hundred years in the making.”

  Luna continues to walk around the room, staring at the renderings and models of the Founders Experience. She stops at the head of the sachem’s daughter.

  “That’s messed up.” She leans close to the glass. I notice a slight bump at her waist and realize she still has Linda’s gun. I’d said it was left in the fort, and the police were meeting with tribal police to do a search.

  There’s a knock on the door, and Oliver pops his head inside. “So sorry, Morgan, but the governor’s office called. He’s not coming.”

  “Bugger him.” Morgan raises her hands in exasperation. “We don’t need him after tonight.”

  Oliver ducks his head as he leaves, and Morgan returns to Shawna and her stack of books.

  “I need more details for my speech,” she says. “Help me paint a picture of a great queen. Beautiful. Powerful. Alluring in every sense.”

  “Sure,” Shawna says, not hiding her unease very well. “I need a couple more hours.”

  There’s another knock and Johnny Cakes—shirtless and in his buckskins—is at the door. “Tad needs your final approval.” He pauses to look at me. “He said you need to check on your campers. Rumors are starting about Bud.”

  Shit. I hadn’t even considered how Bud’s death would impact Murphy and the other kids who really cared about him. “I’ll go right now,” I say and turn to Luna. “Can you stay with Shawna?”

  I don’t want her alone in this place, and it doesn’t hurt that Luna is armed. I hand Luna the Flip and nod toward Morgan’s laptop.

  “You want some help, Shawna?” Luna asks as she slides a chair over. “Let’s fire up this computer.”

  44

  I text my boss, Jo, about the Flip camera evidence of Frank murdering Bud. She immediately responds that the blood on the ax was confirmed as Bud’s, and they’re testing for prints.

  However, I really doubt Frank’s are in the system. And I still don’t trust that if I hand the camera over to the police, it won’t somehow get erased. Hopefully, Luna can get the footage uploaded somewhere safe.

  At the Big Dig platform, the campers have gathered wildflowers and are creating a makeshift memorial. There’s a bouquet of Queen Anne’s lace and several flat rocks stacked on each other.

  As I approach, they turn to me, all carrying sadness in their own ways. Trenton has a hoodie pulled low. The twins stare at the ground. Both Tally and Elise are arranging the flowers, their eyes red.

  “Bud is dead,” Murphy says, tears in his eyes under the brim of his floppy fishing hat. “They found him in Indian Lake. Where we’d canoe, he was…under the water.”

  “I’m really sorry,” I say, “but I know that working with you all was the best part of his job.”

  Seeing that Bud had such an impact on these kids, and likely many hundreds of others through the decades, eases some of my anger. He obviously was making some bad decisions, ones that go against the reason we chose to become archeologists, but he did share a love for history with future generations. And isn’t that what I want, too? What intrigued me about the Founders Experience was creating a way for people to understand, to appreciate, to learn from the past. To move toward a better future.

  Maybe in the beginning, his intentions had been as sincere as mine. But little by little, we can shift off course. As mad as I’ve been at him, maybe part of it was my own fear that I’ve made some questionable decisions myself.

  Trenton starts to walk away. “Hey, what’s going on?” I call after him.

  He wipes his eyes. “Nothing.”

  Tally loops her arm into his. “My dad said that thing, that ax we found, that’s what killed him.”

  Murphy sniffs. “I bet that really hurt. Who would do that to Bud?”

  “He was a good dude,” the twins say at the same time.

  “We need his hat.” Elise stares up at me. “Can you get it? Please, Syd?”

  “Sure,” I say and notice Murphy has something. “What’s that?”

  He holds out a piece of crumpled paper that’s scuffed with dirt. “I found this in the area near the ax blade. I think whoever buried the blade wanted this gone, too.”

  I unfold it and read the words from another warden entry:

  I never meant to chase her, yet I did not slow at her screams.

  I wanted to cry out, run from those men, but all she heard was my own steps of pursuit. Is that why she leapt from my grasp? Is that why she called only for her God, Cautantowwit, who her people say made man of wood and must have cursed her heart to stone?

  Is that why she sank?

  Swallowed whole by the land of her people; the land we have claimed under the watchful Eye of Providence.

  I pray no other will try to take her, but my men hunger almost as much as our God.

  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, but there is power in what remains of the vessel.

  Her bones belong to me.

  Something about this entry upset Bud, and there’s only one person who will know the reason.

  “I’ll be right back.” I take the piece of paper with me. “I’m going to get that hat.”

  I leave the kids to building the memorial, and hurry toward the main office. I’ve spent a lot of my life not trusting my instincts. Part of that goes all the way back to what happened with Luna in Oklahoma. But another part is we’re taught to only trust what we can see. But how can we when so much evidence is created by the victors trying to keep the spoils, generation after generation?

  Even this camp seems idyllic, for the few able to go here, but beneath the earth are bodies of the murdered people of this land. Those lives not left in peace, but brought back to the surface to display, and to carry on with the narratives that put many of them there.

  I approach the main office, and Les is leaving in a hurry. Tad’s office door is open, and I see Bud’s hat on his desk. Guess he did find the key.

  Tad is slumped over. I knock on the door, and he doesn’t move. “I need Bud’s hat.”

  I approach him at the desk. As I get closer, I see the red book, the warden’s journal. And there’s a black calligraphy pen next to it.

  I move around the desk and grab his hand, twist to see ink on his fingers. I flip open the journal, and the last pages look freshly written. “This is all fake.” I think of the copy of the entry that Dursten had buried. If it wasn’t about the past, it was about the present. Naomi.

  “This entry is about you watching them take her.”

  “No, not all of it, only the parts—”

  “You sell?” I throw it back on the desk. “Everything about this place is a lie. The best kind. The one we tell ourselves over and over. The founding of this country. The American Dream that only came true by making it a nightmare for those who were already here.

  “You were there,” I continue, the truth is nauseating. “Naomi ran to get away, and you let her be captured by those men.” I smack the page onto the desk. “You turned her over to Linda, who is completely unstable. You put Naomi’s life in danger forcing her back to that woman’s house. For what, her family’s bones? For some fake ritual with Morgan for money?”

  Tad raises his hands as if he has no role. “Naomi fought the progress we were making. Threatened us with old treaties. Not ideal to give her to Linda, I’ll grant you, but there was no alternative.”

  I bite back what I want to say, as the trickster would prefer, but suddenly, the need is gone.

  Leaning over the desk, I say, “You terrorized her. Sending those photos. Threatening her with jail and taking her baby away.”

  “Oh, this is how you feel?” Tad shakes his head at me. “You were on her side all along. On the tribe’s side. I bet you helped them steal that skeleton.”

  I really hate his smug face. “Naomi wanted her ancestor returned to the ground. I’m sure the tribe will be happy to see you in court.”

  Tad’s whole face twists. “We’ll get them back.”

  “That’s not all the police have,” I say. “I gave them Bud’s murder weapon.”

  He stands up. “Who killed him?” There’s emotion in his blue eyes, his pain is a relief to see.

  “Your pal Frank killed him because he was helping Naomi a little too much. Making her case for owning this land.”

  He rears back. “You’re lying.”

  “No, Tad, the worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves. You knew that Bud went with Frank and Dursten onto that island. You knew he never came back.”

  “It could have been Naomi. Or someone from the tribe. A man like Frank—”

  “There’s a video. That can’t be a surprise, working with Morgan.” I wait a moment for him to adjust to me seeing him more clearly. “You’re the one with all the knowledge, right? The warden?”

  “Morgan was changing everything for the better.”

  “Really? The rituals. I’ve seen two of them, Tad. That’s really what your ancestors wanted?”

  His shoulder drops. “I thought…rituals would connect people to the past. Morgan and Frank said it’d be for money to get this Founders Experience off the ground. But the blackmail…”

  “And Bud’s life, Tad. Almost Naomi and her child. Is this who you are?”

  Tad stands, facing me fully now. “We’re too close, Syd. None of us can stop what we’ve begun.”

  I grab Bud’s hat off his desk and leave because he doesn’t matter anymore. He’s a liar, protecting himself and his version of history no matter the cost.

  I return to the kids, and we circle around the stones and flowers placed on the platform overlooking the project Bud spent forty years on. I think of the photo of him at that Jamestown dig in the book. Decades of digging, and yet, there was nothing about work in his office. Certainly not in the space we shared for BIA. I know we approached our jobs differently, but documentation is fundamental, otherwise it’s like the dig never happened. Unless that’s what he wanted?

  The kids are staring at me. “Sorry, I was thinking about Bud. Do you want to share some memories?”

  “He listened to us,” says Mick. “And he snored.”

  “He really did,” says Olin. “Like a freight train.”

  “He explained things that we didn’t understand,” says Tally.

  “I understood!” Murphy crosses his arms. “He told me I’d have his job someday.”

 

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