all right,” Robert Casewell said. “The meeting’s over.” He jerked his head at the other man. “You and I need to get together, Fenton. Come up with something that makes sense.”
“What I proposed makes sense. You just need to open up your thinking.”
The director muttered something under his breath, nodded at Tory, then walked out the door. Not sure what she was supposed to do now, she gave Fenton a tentative smile. “I heard a little,” she admitted. “I know what you mean about budget problems. They never seem to go away, do they?”
“They will if I can get people to listen.” Fenton, who was maybe three inches taller than her, with the slightest bit of thickening around his waist and a thatch of windblown hair, smiled down at her. “I’m not a walking encyclopedia about the lava beds, but if you’ve got a question, maybe I can answer it.”
Can you? Can you tell me whether I really saw a man who must be at least a hundred and fifty years old, who looked at me with the most compelling eyes I’ve ever seen? Stammering a little and hating herself for sounding half-bright, she explained that she’d been out on her own this morning but had decided she needed a map and game plan so she wouldn’t risk getting lost. “I love hiking, but I have the suspicion I could get disoriented in short order around here. It’s amazing. From a distance everything looks so level, but once you really look at it, you see all those hills and valleys.”
“Yeah, there’s enough of them, all right. You’re here alone?”
Wary in the way of a woman who has learned to navigate the world on her own, she simply shrugged. She should grab a map, ask a couple of questions and get out of here, but after what she’d experienced this morning, a roof felt inordinately comforting.
“So am I,” Fenton was saying. He introduced himself as Fenton James and she felt obliged to introduce herself in turn. When he stuck out his hand, she did the same. “I’ve been here about three weeks now,” he said. “I thought everyone came as part of a group, mostly families on vacation, sometimes college students or history buffs. Couldn’t you find anyone who wanted to stare at nothing with you?”
Something about Fenton’s tone didn’t sit right with her, but she didn’t have time to analyze what that was. “I’m on my way to a job,” she said, dismissing the understatement. “I just have time for a day or two of poking around.”
“Two days. Most people are in and out in an afternoon, unless they take in the caves, which I can’t understand why. Where’s this job of yours? I can’t imagine anyone having to go through here to get to a job.”
Why Fenton cared what she was up to remained beyond her. However, talking to the man had already taken her thoughts miles away from what she’d seen, or thought she’d seen, earlier. Even if he was trying to hit on her, setting him straight gave her something to do. Besides, he said he’d been at the lava beds for three weeks. If he’d noticed something unexplainable, maybe they could compare reactions. But she doubted that he’d been left feeling as if a huge chunk of what she thought of as her civilized nature had been sucked from him. Keeping the telling as brief as possible, she let him know she was part of the team selected to study some Native American ruins on the Oregon coast.
“How did you accomplish that?” he exclaimed. “My God, that’s the find of the century! The opportunity for—what are you? An archaeologist?”
“Anthropologist.”
“Whatever.” He shrugged. “I never understood the difference.”
She could have told him that an archaeologist dealt with the physical world while anthropologists concerned themselves with things social and spiritual, but what was the point? “You’ve heard of the Alsea discovery, I take it,” she said instead.
“Who hasn’t? I’d give anything to be part of it. The chance for making one’s mark, well—say, maybe you can explain something for me.” He rested his arm on the counter, the gesture bringing him a little closer to her. Although the air still held a high desert morning chill, she thought she caught a whiff of perspiration. “The site was discovered over a year ago. What’s the holdup? I mean, I’d think everyone would be hot to trot getting their discoveries written up in the press and all. There’s Pulitzer Prize potential there, you know.”
Maybe. Maybe not. At the moment that was a moot point.
“What’s going on?” he persisted. “Why isn’t everyone up to their eye teeth in pottery and weapons?”
“It isn’t that easy.” The sun had reached the window to her left, inviting her to come outside and experience the morning. If she did, would she find only other visitors, or would a look at the horizon reveal someone who couldn’t possibly exist? “There’s an incredible amount of red tape.”
“I suppose so. What is it, the government wanting a piece of the pie?”
There’d been concern about impact on the environment expressed by both state and federal agencies, as well as more than one politician trying to make a name for himself. And the Oregon Indian Council had insisted that they, not university staff, should be responsible for safeguarding artifacts, only they weren’t interested in the artifacts so much as protecting what they insisted was sacred ground. Once, the strip of land between ocean and mountains had been sacred to the Alsea Indians, but the culture that had lived there no longer existed. That was what she’d argued alongside Dr. Grossnickle during three trips to Washington, D.C. Finally, after more legal maneuvering than she wanted to think about, the Indians’ claim had been dismissed.
Things were now clear for work to begin. That’s what she told Fenton, the explanation as brief as she could make it.
“At least we don’t get much of that around here.” He gave her what he must think was a conspiratorial smile. “There’s an Indian council, but they don’t care what we do here. At least if they don’t like something, I haven’t heard about it. Not that I’d have time to deal with any opposition. I’ve got my hands full trying to put this park on solid financial footing.”
She listened with half an ear while Fenton explained that because of governmental cutbacks, the park was hard-pressed to match last year’s budget, let alone plan for the future. He’d left a “choice position”—his words—with a San Francisco bank to spearhead a budget drive here, but so far all he’d met with was opposition. “Casewell calls my plan manipulation. Deception. I call it a stroke of genius. You tell me, what’s wrong with capitalizing on a few ghost sightings?”
She’d been glancing at the window, both eager to be outside and grateful for the room and its proof of normalcy. Now Felton’s comment captured her full attention. “Ghost sightings?”
He shrugged, his gesture casual when she was on edge. “Spirits. Ghosts. Whatever you want to call them.” Although they were alone, he leaned closer and would have whispered in her ear if she hadn’t pulled back. “I’ll tell you because you’re in the same business, so to speak. Most people, they come here, take a look around and say how amazing it is that the Indians held out so long, then go on their way. But some of them, particularly those who walk around Captain Jack’s Stronghold, say they feel something there.”
“Something?”
Again he shrugged his maddening shrug. “You tell me. I’ve never felt anything, but I’d have to be fourteen kinds of a fool not to realize there’s a potential in this. The way I look at it, people with overactive imaginations stand where the Indians stood and they convince themselves that the Modocs left something of themselves behind when they were hauled off to the reservation. I think folks want to believe that. That way they don’t have to feel guilty about what was done to the Indians.”
“Maybe.” She hedged. “But you’re not talking about something that actually exists.” Or does he? “How can you capitalize on that?”
He gave her what she thought might be a sly wink. “The power of suggestion. A few well-placed leaks to the press and we’ll have people