Burial Ground Read Online Free PDF Page A

David said.
    “Tell me about it,” Willie said. “But there it was, big as hell, filling and all. Coroner showed it to me. That’s why I’m having my own autopsy done. Rest of the family’s mad as hell. They want me to leave him in peace. But I want to know if this guy screwed up my father’s autopsy. Isn’t anything wrong with wanting to know how your father died, is there?”
    I shook my head. “No.”
    “I mean, maybe it wasn’t an accident. I know Carter Wascom’s got second thoughts about selling him the land. That’s why Dad went to talk to him. Or maybe there’s something about that treasure somebody doesn’t want to be found.”
    “You think Wascom could have murdered your father?” I asked.
    “I don’t know. But I’m damn sure gonna find out.”
    I took a deep breath.
    “Willie, are you hiring us to do a survey or find the truth about your father’s death?”
    Willie gave a lopsided smile. “Way I figure, Dr. Graham, you do one and you may end up doing the other. You ready to go?”
    “Now?”
    “Sure,” Willie said. “I can drive you up and show you where it happened and then I’ll take you around to see old Absalom.”
    “The man who found the artifacts?”
    “That’s him. He’s a slippery old rascal, but he keeps his eyes open. He won’t talk to a cop but maybe he’ll talk to an archaeologist.”
    “All right,” I said, turning around to get my notebook and a topographic map.
    Absalom wasn’t the only slippery person in this business, I thought, as we walked out to Willie’s Bronco. T-Joe’s son was a pretty slick character himself.
    St. Francisville, half an hour north of Baton Rouge, perches on the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi. The first settlement, Bayou Sara, was long ago claimed by the river. The present town has a Gothic courthouse, an antebellum Episcopal cemetery, and several antique shops. The people are largely from English and Scottish stock, unlike the Cajuns spread out along the floodplain to the south.
    There’s also a nuclear reactor, about five miles south of the town itself. It was built in the seventies, when nuclear energy sounded like a good idea. The company’s customers have been paying for it ever since. Sensitive to the term nuclear , the utility company has posted signs describing it as an energy center , as if omitting the offensive word could change popular opinion or make utility rates go down.
    It was just south of the reactor plant that we turned, heading left, toward the river, in the shade of moss-bearded oaks and pecans. Willie tensed as we left the highway, and I knew he was thinking about returning to where his father had died.
    “We went horseback riding up here last Saturday,” he said. “Me, my mom and dad, my sisters, and some of our cousins. Then we had a cochon d’lait .” He exhaled, his eyes straight ahead. “My Dad was a good driver. No alcohol in his body. They said he wasn’t going more than fifty, but he hit the wheel hard enough to bust up his mouth.”
    He pulled to the side of the road and pointed to a telephone pole on the opposite side. The pole was new, but there was a scatter of glass on the roadway next to it.
    “He snapped the pole when he hit it,” Willie explained. “They put up a new one right afterward. I prowled around in the ditch when they were finished but I didn’t find anything.”
    I was staring at the roadway.
    “You see it, too, then,” Willie said.
    “What’s that?” I asked
    “Nothing.” He pointed down at the dark asphalt. “That’s the problem, see what I mean?”
    I heard David’s breath suck in, and I knew he was starting to doubt Willie’s sanity.
    Then I understood what Willie was talking about.
    “There aren’t any skid marks,” I said.
    “Right.” Willie nodded with a grim smile. “He just plowed right into it like it wasn’t even there.”
    He put the Bronco into gear and pulled back onto the roadway.
    “Why did the owner of Greenbriar sell your family the