Burial Ground by Malcolm Shuman

few inches from my own.
    “You know what I did when I was a junior in high school? Me and some friends broke into a hospital to get some dope. Got caught big as shit. I dragged my family through the courts. And you know what? My dad never stopped supporting me. As much as I shamed him I was still his son. Oh, he let me sit in jail a few months. Said it was something him and the judge worked out to teach me a lesson. But once I came out it was over with. That’s the kind of man he was, and the bastard killed him is gonna pay.”
    “Did the pathologist send the tooth to Chloe Messner?” I asked.
    “I had to threaten the son-of-a-bitch. Said he didn’t know what she could say about it, that it wasn’t from Dad’s mouth, so what was there to do with it?”
    Professional jealousy. I’d seen enough of that before.
    “Yeah. So I was thinking about the project. Ain’t worth getting nobody else killed.”
    “No,” I said. “But I’d like to have a little more time to work on it. We’ll take precautions.”
    I didn’t add that I didn’t have the foggiest notion what kind.
    “And then there’s those damn convicts,” he said. “Have they caught ’em yet?”
    “Not yet,” I said. “But they always do.”
    “Sure, but meanwhile…” He shrugged. “Look, have you all found anything so far?”
    “No archaeological deposits,” I said truthfully. “We were hoping Absalom could help us more.”
    Willie shook his head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with that man,” he said. “Carter told me Absalom’s turned up missing, too.”
    He wove to the other side of the room. “My sister said I was throwing money down the drain, that Absalom probably found those things ten miles away, that nobody ever wanted that land for anything but hunting, that’s why Carter sold it to us, because he saw a dumb coonass who didn’t know what land around here was worth. Then she turned around and said I was trying to swindle her. She’s held it against me ever since I had my problem with the law. Like I don’t know what I did to the folks. Now she figures I’ve got some other reason for going through with it. Families!”
    He turned an anguished face to my own. “Dad had it all worked out: the nature trails, picnic spots, the lake. He was gonna make our own little piece of paradise right here. He ended up dead because of it.”
    “I still think it’s a good dream,” I said quietly.
    “Dream,” he repeated. “That’s what it was, all right. A daydream nobody in their right mind would’ve had.”
    “It isn’t over,” David argued from the bed.
    Willie advanced on the bed, squinting. “That old man, Absalom, didn’t disappear for nothing. And you ain’t in that bed for nothing.”
    “I fell down in the woods,” David said. “It can happen anywhere.”
    “But it happened there. And if somebody killed Dad, that means there may be somebody out there who doesn’t want you or anybody else to find anything. I can’t ask you to keep going if you might get killed.”
    I looked at David and he gave a little nod.
    “I understand your being worried,” I said quietly. “But we aren’t about to give up if you don’t.”
    Willie stared me in the eye and then looked over at David.
    “You don’t think I’m a dumb coonass, like my dad?”
    “Never thought that about either of you,” I said.
    Willie pounded his fist against his thigh. “Guys, you gotta find whatever it is. You gotta make sense of why my dad died.”
    “We’ll do our best,” I promised.
    I guided him to the door and closed it behind him.
    When I turned back to the bed I heard David exhale. “I hope he makes it home.” He took another sip from his water glass and grimaced.
    “If I’m gonna risk my ass for this, seems like you could bring me something to drink ?”
    “Soon as you’re off painkillers,” I promised.
    He grunted. “Alan …”
    “Yeah?”
    “What if we don’t find squat?”
    “Oh, I think we’ll find something ,” I