Section A. See these? They’re called anomalies.” He pointed out rounded lines on the screen. “This is the known grave. Compare it to Section A.”
“It looks the same,” Emma said.
“Yes, but look at the difference in depth,” he replied. “According to the screen, whatever is in Section A is only buried a little over four feet deep. That’s much shallower than the six feet for the older grave.”
Emma examined the squiggly lines on the screens. A chill chased over her. What if someone had recently buried a body? And what if they had returned last night to move it? She tried to think if anyone had gone missing recently.
Ryan.
No. It’d been ten years, and she refused to believe her brother was dead. She looked up. “Maybe it’s from the Civil War time and a landowner buried their gold or silver here.”
“Not impossible,” Randy said. “But wouldn’t it have been found in 2000?”
9
Can you tell how long ago the ground was disturbed?” Sam asked, staring at the screen on the GPR machine. He’d like to believe gold or silver was buried in the pit, but he had a bad feeling about the site.
“I’d say there were a lot of years between the slave graves and this one.”
“Can you tell if there’s a body in it?” Nate asked.
“Afraid not, but the disturbance matches the size of the graves,” he said. “It’ll take excavating to know for sure what’s down there.”
“Something we’ll start this afternoon,” Nate said.
Randy nodded. “I have an appointment in Jackson later this afternoon, but you have the equipment assigned to you for a week.” He turned to Emma. “Would you like me to show you how to operate it?”
“That would be great,” Emma said. “But how will we know when we reach the bottom?”
“You’ll have to keep checking the screen. When you reach compacted ground, it will look like this.” He pointed to the fairly straight lines below the pit.
Sam listened in as Randy explained how to operate the GPR machine. When he finished, Randy handed Emma a sheet of paper. “These are step-by-step instructions if you forget, but if you need to, give me a call,” he said.
“Thanks.” Emma studied the sheet of paper as Randy walked away.
Nate turned to Sam. “Do you think we need to get a court order since this is National Park Service property?”
Sam rubbed the back of his neck. The only other time he’d had to excavate on park service land was when a dog had dug up a human bone, making a court order unnecessary. But this wasn’t as cut and dried. “What do you think?” he asked, glancing at Emma.
She looked up from the instruction sheet. “Since someone hot-wired the backhoe and excavated this area, I believe my superintendent will view it as a crime scene and give the go-ahead. Nate, do you want to check? Or do you want me to do it?”
“Since it’s your site and your supervisor, why don’t you,” he said.
While Emma walked a short distance away until she was out of the trees and made the phone call, Sam brought up the flowers again.
“And she doesn’t have a clue who they’re from?” Nate asked.
Sam shook his head. “There’re no security cameras unless a neighbor has one, and even then, I doubt it’d capture anything at the apartment building.”
“Flowers. And a message with no name.” Nate rubbed his jaw. “My suspicious nature makes me think the shooting could be connected to her receiving flowers—the shooter pointing out that she can’t hide from him?”
A real possibility. “That makes sense.”
“I heard you talking to Trey about it. If he’d sent the flowers, he would’ve wanted credit.” The sheriff checked his watch. “I’m leaving for the jail shortly. I’ll follow up with him on this.”
Sam looked up as Emma came closer. “The superintendent agreed that it sounded like there was enough evidence to warrant a thorough investigation without a court order,” she said.
Nate blew out a breath. “Good. I hate getting court orders. Especially with Judge Tate out of town. The only other judge available gives me a hard time.”
“Getting a court order would have been easy compared to going through a 106 compliance review,” she said. “Believe me, you don’t want to do that.”
From Nate’s mystified expression, Emma had lost him at the 106 compliance review part. “This is a historic site and that means you would be dealing with the historical society,” Sam said. “There would be paperwork involved and a committee who would rule on whether you