More Bitter Than Death: An Emma Fielding Mystery - By Dana Cameron Page 0,44

the traces were reburied by the snow. And there was no…Garrison was not out on the ice when I got there, that much is for sure.”

He sucked his teeth, unconvinced. “You would have noticed?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to say: Because I’m an archaeologist, damn it! Don’t you ever watch the Discovery Channel? Right next door to a forensic investigator, hell, I’m doing it a few hundred or thousand years after the fact, instead of hours or minutes or days, and that makes me better at it, to my mind! Because I’m paranoid as hell. Because I’ve been through this before…

“It’s sort of a thing with me,” I said. “You know, seeing how sites get formed. I practice at home, identifying what my husband’s been eating based on the crumbs and plates; what he’s been doing when I’m not there. Noticing that the cats have been fighting while I’m gone, that sort of thing.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And how can you tell the cats have been fighting if you’re not there? They get scratched?”

“No. Tufts of hair on the carpet or couch.”

“Oh. You must be a lot of fun to live with.”

I shrugged. “But I’m pretty sure about what I saw last night.”

Walton barked a laugh. “If you had any idea of how sketchy eyewitness accounts can be…”

“But I do have an idea,” I said, thinking of the hundreds of documents I’d evaluated for what was said and what was left unsaid. “And this isn’t like I was observing the color of someone’s eyes or what football team shirt they were wearing. This was whether someone had come down the steps before me or not.”

“Gotcha.” He smiled, maybe at my earnestness, maybe my naïveté, and I noticed how photographically cute he was, snowflakes on eyebrows.

We were coming to the top of the stairs. The gurney was being loaded into the ambulance, and I noticed that there was a growing crowd gathering outside the side doors, wide-eyed and whispering. So much for Scott trying to keep things quiet until the official announcement. I didn’t want to be a part of the show, not with this audience, so I made as if to leave.

Walton put his hand out. “You wait right here, a minute.” He turned his head and hollered. “Hey, Mark? Detective Church? Over here.”

The two conferred for an instant, but before I could blink, I was being handed over to the second officer. I would have passed him by in any crowd: just below medium height, not-quite-stocky frame, short blond hair that was just barely visible beneath a navy blue baseball cap, he looked like any number of junior corporate types up in New Hampshire for the skiing.

“Hi there, how’re you doing?” he asked me with an unexpected smile that knocked me for a loop. “I’m Mark Church.”

I found myself smiling back, and then he launched into the questions. They were the same that Walton had asked me, and he went over them like he already knew what was going on here.

“I don’t know what it was,” I said as I finished telling him about the loud cracking noise I’d heard, “but now I wonder if it mightn’t be significant.”

“That’s good, that’s real good, thank you,” he said, beaming, and I felt like I’d won a ribbon.

By the time he was done, there was quite the crowd by the side door. I cast about desperately and caught Walton’s eye.

I hurried over to him. “Maybe you could do me a favor? Maybe you could let me know when you find out whether it was a heart attack, or something? I’d just feel better knowing, you know—” Here I stopped because I didn’t know why I’d feel better knowing, or even how I could plausibly lie about what earthly reason I might have for wanting to know.

“Because of your grandfather,” Officer Walton filled in.

“Yeah.” I shrugged and smiled a little. Jesus, Emma, what is your problem? Why are you doing this?

“I’ll see what I can do. You staying here?”

“Yes. Well, I gave you my room number, but here’s my card too.” I wrote my cell phone number on it in ballpoint, so it wouldn’t run.

He looked at it, nodding slowly, then handed me one of his own. “You don’t hear from me in a couple of days, give me a call. If I can help, I will.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that.”

And then there was nothing else for me to do but go back into the hotel. I didn’t really fancy