: Emerson Littlefield
: The Indian Mound Murder Midge Sumpter Mystery Number Two
: BookBaby
: 9798350971644
: The Indian Mound Murder
: 1
: CHF 5.30
:
: Krimis, Thriller, Spionage
: English
: 248
: kein Kopierschutz
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
A well-known college anthropology professor is found dead in his team's exploratory trench in an ancient Paleo-Indian midden resting within the pine woods of rural North Florida. No one knows how he got there, or when. Two detectives attempt to unravel the confusing details of the murder as they interview ex-Army Rangers, anthropology professors, students, and an old hermit who often visits the mound to listen to its spirits.

Emerson Littlefield is a retired high school and college English professor who writes full time. He lives on a small farm near Calistoga, California at the northern end of Napa Valley, where he and his wife grow Cabernet Sauvignon.

ChapterOne
Very Early Monday Morning, about 2:30.

The Soft and Noisy Darkness

She could hear the sounds in the darkness. It might be big: a bear? A deer? Someone moving about the camp? Of course, even small critters—possums, raccoons, rats—could make more noise than you’dthink.

But noise or no noise, she had to pee, so she took the flashlight with her, scanned the ground carefully so she wasn’t squatting over poison oak or a cottonmouth. She wished there was a portolet, but there wasn’tone.

The dark was nearly complete out here. Once lights went out at the camp and everyone was asleep, the darkness closed in, absolute and stifling. It was almost a physical sensation, like weight or constriction. When the moon shone, there was some light, but the moon tonight was only the thinnest crescent, and she couldn’t have said whether it was waxing or waning. Wasn’t her thing. There were stars visible, but cloud cover and the thick humidity obscured most ofthem.

There was a noticeable rustle over by the Indian mound, and she shone her flashlight in that direction. An armadillo, caught by the light, froze for an instant and then scampered away far faster than she would have thought. That was slightly scary, she thought; but armadillos were harmless, though digging in the mound they were likely to disturb ancient remains. Nothing she could do about it in the middle of thenight.

When she was far enough from her tent to make it sanitary, but not so far that she’d get lost in the woods or risk stepping on a cottonmouth in the middle of the night—who wants to get bitten in the bum by a snake in the middle of the night?—she scanned the ground carefully, squatted, and turned off the flashlight forprivacy.

She could hear breathing. It was heavy and regular and slow. For an instant, she couldn’t tell whether it was hers or someone else’s. She was breathing hard herself because squatting to do your business was a little taxing, especially when, even at night, the temperatures were in the eighties and the September humidity was at least as high as the temperature. She wasn’t sure of her conversions, but wasn’t the low eighties Fahrenheit somewhere around thirty Celsius? She occupied her mind with such trivia as a matter ofhabit.

But thinking of temperatures didn’t obscure