Chapter 29
I NEVER MEANT to kill my brother. I never set out to hate my father. I never dreamed I would bury my own son. Nor could I have imagined that I would betray the childhood friend who saved my life, or win a Pulitzer Prize for telling a lie.
All these things I have done, yet most people I know would call me an honorable man. I wouldn’t go that far. But I try to be a good man, and most of the time, I believe I succeed. How is this possible? These are complicated times.
And it’s not easy to be good.
HUNCHED ON HIS knees, Buck Ferris pulled a ball of fired clay from the sandy soil beside the Mississippi River, then got to his feet with a groan and climbed out of the hole beside the foundation pier. It was difficult to be certain about the era by moonlight, and he couldn’t risk a light—not here. And yet … he was certain. The sphere sitting in his palm had been fired a few centuries before Moses started wandering through the desert with the children of Israel. Ferris had been an archaeologist for forty-six years, but he’d never discovered anything like this. He felt as though the little ball were vibrating in his hand. The last human to touch this clay had lived nearly four thousand years ago—two millennia before Jesus of Nazareth walked the sands of Palestine. Buck had waited all his life to find this artifact; it dwarfed everything he’d ever done. If he was right, then the ground upon which he stood was the most important undiscovered archaeological site in North America.
“What you got there, Buck?” asked a male voice.
Blue-white light stabbed Ferris’s eyes. He nearly pissed himself, he was so stunned. He’d thought he was alone on the vast, low-lying ground of the industrial park. A quarter mile to the west, the eternal river flowed past, oblivious.
“Who are you?” Ferris asked, throwing up his left hand to shield his eyes. “Who is that?”
“You were warned not to disturb this ground,” said the man behind the light. “It’s private property.”
The speaker had a refined Southern accent that tickled Buck’s memory. He couldn’t quite place it, though. Nor could Buck say much in his own defense. He’d applied for permission to dig in this earth seven times over the past forty years, and he’d been turned down every time. But five days ago, the county had cleared the debris of the electroplating factory that had stood here since World War II. And two days from now, a Chinese company would begin building a new paper mill in its place. If anyone was going to find out what lay beneath this ground, it was now—the consequences be damned.
“Where did you come from?” Buck asked. “I didn’t see anybody when I came down here.”
“Oh, Buck … You always were a good ol’ boy. Why couldn’t you have left well enough alone?”
“Do I know you?” Ferris asked, certain that he’d heard that voice before.
“You
