I feel it in my bones. I sniff it in the air, as recognizable as the scent of hot sand and savory spices and the sweat of a hundred men toiling in the sun. These are the smells of Egypt’s western desert, and they are still vivid to me, although that country is nearly half a globe away from the dark bedroom where I now lie. Fifteen years have passed since I walked that desert, but when I close my eyes, in an instant I am there again, standing at the edge of the tent camp, looking toward the Libyan border, and the sunset. The wind moaned like a woman when it swept down the wadi. I still hear the thuds of pickaxes and the scrape of shovels, can picture the army of Egyptian diggers, busy as ants as they swarmed the excavation site, hauling their gufa baskets filled with soil. It seemed to me then, when I stood in that desert fifteen years ago, as if I were an actress in a film about someone else’s adventure. Not mine. Certainly it was not an adventure that a quiet girl from Indio, California, ever expected to live.
The lights of a passing car glimmer through my closed eyelids. When I open my eyes, Egypt vanishes. No longer am I standing in the desert gazing at a sky smeared by sunset the color of bruises. Instead I am once again half a world away, lying in my dark San Diego bedroom.
I climb out of bed and walk barefoot to the window to look out at the street. It is a tired neighborhood of stucco tract homes built in the 1950s, before the American dream meant mini mansions and three-car garages. There is honesty in the modest but sturdy houses, built not to impress but to shelter, and I feel safely anonymous here. Just another single mother struggling to raise a recalcitrant teenage daughter.
Peeking through the curtains at the street, I see a dark-colored sedan slow down half a block away. It pulls over to the curb, and the headlights turn off. I watch, waiting for the driver to step out, but no one does. For a long time the driver sits there. Perhaps he’s listening to the radio, or maybe he’s had a fight with his wife and is afraid to face her. Perhaps there are lovers in that car with nowhere else to go. I can formulate so many explanations, none of them alarming, yet my skin is prickling with hot dread.
A moment later the sedan’s taillights come back on, and the car pulls away and continues down the street.
Even after it vanishes around the corner, I am still jittery, clutching the curtains in my damp hand. I return to bed and lie sweating on top of the covers, but I cannot sleep. Although it’s a warm July night, I keep my bedroom window latched, and insist that my daughter, Tari, keeps hers latched as well. But Tari does not always listen to me.
Every day, she listens to me less.
I close my eyes and, as always, the visions of Egypt come back. It’s always to Egypt that my thoughts return. Even before I stood on its soil, I’d dreamed about it. At six years old, I spotted a photograph of the Valley of the Kings on the cover of National Geographic, feeling instant recognition, as though I were looking at a familiar, much-beloved face that I had almost forgotten. That was what the land meant to me, a beloved face I longed to see again.
And as the years progressed, I laid the foundations for my return. I worked and studied. A full scholarship brought me to Stanford, and to the attention of a professor who enthusiastically recommended me for a summer job at an excavation in Egypt’s western desert.
In June, at the end of my junior year, I boarded a flight to Cairo.
Even now, in the darkness of my California bedroom, I remember how my eyes ached from the sunlight glaring on white-hot sand. I smell the sunscreen on my skin and feel the sting of the wind peppering my face with desert grit. These memories make me happy. With a trowel in my hand and the sun on my shoulders, this was the culmination of a young girl’s dreams.
How quickly dreams become nightmares. I’d boarded the plane to Cairo as a happy college student. Three months later, I returned home a changed woman.
I did not come back from the desert alone. A monster followed me.
In the dark, my eyelids spring open. Was that a footfall? A door creaking open? I lie on damp sheets, heart battering itself against my chest. I am afraid to get out of bed, and afraid not to.
Something is not right in this house.
After years of hiding, I know better than to ignore the warning whispers in my head. Those urgent whispers are the only reason I am still alive. I’ve learned to pay heed to every anomaly, every tremor of disquiet. I notice unfamiliar cars driving up my street. I snap to attention if a co-worker mentions that someone was asking about me. I make elaborate escape plans long before I ever need them. My next move is already planned out. In two hours, my daughter and I can be over the border and in Mexico with new identities. Our passports, with new names, are already tucked away in my suitcase.
We should have left by now. We should not have waited this long.
But how do you convince a fourteen-year-old girl to move away from her friends? Tari is the problem; she does not understand the danger we’re in.
I pull open the nightstand drawer and take out the gun. It is not legally registered, and it makes me nervous, keeping a firearm under the same roof with my daughter. But after six weekends at the shooting range, I know how to use it.
My bare feet are silent as I step out of my room and move down the hall, past my daughter’s closed door. I conduct the same inspection that I have made a thousand times before, always in the dark. Like any prey, I feel safest in the dark.
In the kitchen, I check the windows and the door. In the living room, I do the same. Everything is secure. I come back up the hall and pause outside my daughter’s bedroom. Tari has become fanatical about her privacy, but there is no lock on her door, and I will never allow there to be one. I need to be able to look in, to confirm that she is safe.
The door gives a loud squeak as I open it, but it won’t wake her. As with most teenagers, her sleep is akin to a coma. The first thing I notice is the breeze, and I give a sigh. Once again, Tari has ignored my wishes and left her window wide open, as she has so many times before.
It feels like sacrilege, bringing the gun into my daughter’s bedroom, but I need to close that window. I step inside and pause beside the bed, watching her sleep, listening to the steady rhythm of her breathing. I remember the first time I laid eyes on her, red-faced and crying in the obstetrician’s hands. I had been in labor eighteen hours, and was so exhausted I could barely lift my head from the pillow. But after one glimpse of my baby, I would have risen from bed and fought a legion of attackers to protect her. That was the moment I knew what her name would be. I thought of the words carved into the great temple at Abu Simbel, words chosen by Ramses the Great to proclaim his love for his wife.
NEFERTARI, FOR WHOM THE SUN DOTH SHINE
My daughter, Nefertari, is the one and only treasure that I brought back with me from Egypt. And I am terrified of losing her.
Tari is so much like me. It’s as if I am watching myself sleeping. When she was ten years old, she could already read hieroglyphs. At twelve, she could recite all the dynasties down to the Ptolemys. She spends her weekends haunting the Museum of Man. She is a clone of me in every way, and as the years pass there is no obvious trace of her father in her face or her voice or, most important of all, her soul. She is my daughter, mine alone, untainted by the evil that fathered her.
But she is also a normal fourteen-year-old girl, and this has been a source of frustration these past weeks as I’ve felt darkness closing in around us, as I lie awake every night, listening for a monster’s footsteps. My daughter is oblivious to the danger because I have hidden the truth from her. I want her to grow up strong and fearless, a warrior woman who is unafraid of shadows. She does not understand why I pace the house late at night, why I latch the windows and double-check the doors. She thinks I am a worrywart, and it’s true: I do all the worrying for both of us, to preserve the illusion that all is right with the world.
That is what Tari believes. She likes San Diego and she looks forward to her first year in high school. She’s managed to make friends here, and heaven help the parent who tries to come between a teenager and her friends. She is as strong-willed as I am, and were it not for her resistance, we would have left town weeks ago.
A breeze blows in the window, chilling the sweat on my skin.
I set the gun down on the nightstand and cross to the window to close it. For a moment I linger, breathing in cool air. Outside, the night has fallen silent, except for a mosquito’s whine. A prick stings my cheek. The significance of that mosquito bite does not strike me until I reach up to slide the window shut. I feel the icy breath of panic rush up my spine.
There is no screen over the window. Where is the screen?
Only then do I sense the malevolent presence. While I stood lovingly watching my daughter, it was watching me. It has always been watching, biding its time, waiting for its chance to spring. Now it has found us.
I turn and face the evil.
TWO
Dr. Maura Isles could not decide whether to stay or to flee.
She lingered in the shadows of the Pilgrim Hospital parking lot, well beyond the glare of the klieg lights, beyond the circle of TV cameras. She had no wish to be spotted, and most local reporters would recognize the striking woman whose pale face and bluntly cut black hair had earned her the nickname Queen of the Dead. As yet no one had noticed Maura’s arrival, and not a single camera was turned in her direction. Instead, the dozen reporters were fully focused on a white van that had just pulled up at the hospital’s lobby entrance to unload its famous passenger. The van’s rear doors swung open and a lightning storm of camera flashes lit up the night as the celebrity patient was gently lifted out of the van and placed onto a hospital gurney. This patient was a media star whose newfound fame far outshone any mere medical examiner’s. Tonight Maura was merely part of the awestruck audience, drawn here for the same reason the reporters had converged like frenzied groupies outside the hospital on a warm Sunday night.
All were eager to catch a glimpse of Madam X.
Maura had faced reporters many times before, but the rabid hunger of this mob alarmed her. She knew that if some new prey wandered into their field of vision, their attention could shift in an instant, and tonight she was already feeling emotionally bruised and vulnerable. She considered escaping the scrum by turning around and climbing back into her car. But all that awaited her at home was a silent house and perhaps a few too many glasses of wine to keep her company on a night when Daniel Brophy could not. Lately there were far too many such nights, but that was the bargain she had struck by falling in love with him. The heart makes its choices without weighing the consequences. It doesn’t look ahead to the lonely nights that follow.
The gurney carrying Madam X rolled into the hospital, and the wolf pack of reporters chased after it. Through the glass lobby doors, Maura saw bright lights and excited faces, while outside in the parking lot she stood alone.
She followed the entourage into the building.
The gurney rolled through the lobby, past hospital visitors who stared in astonishment, past excited hospital staff waiting with their camera phones to snap photos. The parade moved on, turning down the hallway and toward Diagnostic Imaging. But at an inner doorway, only the gurney was allowed through. A hospital official in suit and tie stepped forward and blocked the reporters from going any farther.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to stop you right here,” he said. “I know you all want to watch this, but the room’s very small.” He raised his hands to silence the disappointed grumbles. “My name is Phil Lord. I’m the public relations officer for Pilgrim Hospital, and we’re thrilled to be part of this study, since a patient like Madam X comes along only every, well, two thousand years.” He smiled at the expected laughter. “The CT scan won’t take long, so if you’re willing to wait, one of the archaeologists will come out immediately afterward to announce the results.” He turned to a pale man of about forty who’d retreated into a corner, as though hoping he would not be noticed. “Dr. Robinson, before we start, would you like to say a few words?”
Addressing this crowd was clearly the last thing the bespectacled man wanted to do, but he gamely took a breath and stepped forward, nudging his drooping glasses back up the bridge of his beakish nose. This archaeologist bore no resemblance at all to Indiana Jones. With his receding hairline and studious squint, he looked more like an accountant caught in the unwelcome glare of the cameras. “I’m Dr. Nicholas Robinson,” he said. “I’m curator at—”
“Could you speak up, Doctor?” one of the reporters called out.
“Oh, sorry.” Dr. Robinson cleared his throat. “I’m curator at the Crispin Museum here in Boston. We are immensely grateful that Pilgrim Hospital has so generously offered to perform this CT scan of Madam X. It’s an extraordinary opportunity to catch an intimate glimpse into the past, and judging by the size of this crowd, you’re all as excited as we are. My colleague Dr. Josephine Pulcillo, who is an Egyptologist, will come out to speak to you after the scan is completed. She’ll announce the results and answer any questions then.”
“When will Madam X go on display for the public?” a reporter called out.
“Within the week, I expect,” said Robinson. “The new exhibit’s already been built and—”
“Any clues to her identity?”
“Why hasn’t she been on display before?”
“Could she be royal?”
“I don’t know,” said Robinson, blinking rapidly under the assault of so many questions. “We still need to confirm it’s a female.”
“You found it six months ago, and you still don’t know the sex?”
“These analyses take time.”
“One glance oughta do it,” a reporter said, and the crowd laughed.
“It’s not as simple as you think,” said Robinson, his glasses slipping down his nose again. “At two thousand years old, she’s extremely fragile and she must be handled with great care. I found it nerve-racking enough just transporting her here tonight, in that van. Our first priority as a museum is preservation. I consider myself her guardian, and it’s my duty to protect her. That’s why we’ve taken our time coordinating this scan with the hospital. We move slowly, and we move with care.”
“What do you hope to learn from this CT scan tonight, Dr. Robinson?”
Robinson’s face suddenly lit up with enthusiasm. “Learn? Why, everything! Her age, her health. The method of her preservation. If we’re fortunate, we may even discover the cause of her death.”
“Is that why the medical examiner’s here?”
The whole group turned like a multieyed creature and stared at Maura, who had been standing at the back of the room. She felt the familiar urge to back away as the TV cameras swung her way.
“Dr. Isles,” a reporter called out, “are you here to make a diagnosis?”
“Why is the ME’s office involved?” another asked.
That last question needed an immediate answer, before the issue got twisted by the press.
Maura said, firmly: “The medical examiner’s office is not involved. It’s certainly not paying me to be here tonight.”
“But you are here,” said Channel 5’s blond hunk, whom Maura had never liked.
“At the invitation of the Crispin Museum. Dr. Robinson thought it might be helpful to have a medical examiner’s perspective on this case. So he called me last week to ask if I wanted to observe the scan. Believe me, any pathologist would jump at this chance. I’m as fascinated by Madam X as you are, and I can’t wait to meet her.” She looked pointedly at the curator. “Isn’t it about time to begin, Dr. Robinson?”
She’d just tossed him an escape line, and he grabbed it. “Yes. Yes, it’s time. If you’ll come with me, Dr. Isles.”
She cut through the crowd and followed him into the Imaging Department. As the door closed behind them, shutting them off from the press, Robinson blew out a long sigh.
“God, I’m terrible at public speaking,” he said. “Thank you for ending that ordeal.”
“I’ve had practice. Way too much of it.”
They shook hands, and he said: “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Dr. Isles. Mr. Crispin wanted to meet you as well, but he had hip surgery a few months ago and he still can’t stand for long periods of time. He asked me to say hello.”
“When you invited me, you didn’t warn me I’d have to walk through that mob.”
“The press?” Robinson gave a pained look. “They’re a necessary evil.”
“Necessary for whom?”
“Our survival as a museum. Since the article about Madam X, our ticket sales have gone through the roof. And we haven’t even put her on display yet.”
Robinson led her into a warren of hallways. On this Sunday night, the Diagnostic Imaging Department was quiet and the rooms they passed were dark and empty.
“It’s going to get a little crowded in there,” said Robinson.
“There’s hardly space for even a small group.”
“Who else is watching?”
“My colleague Josephine Pulcillo; the radiologist, Dr. Brier; and a CT tech. Oh, and there’ll be a camera crew.”
“Someone you hired?”
“No. They’re from the Discovery Channel.”
She gave a startled laugh. “Now I’m really impressed.”
“It does mean, though, that we have to watch our language.” He stopped outside the door labeledCT and said softly: “I think they may be already filming.”
They quietly slipped into the CT viewing room, where the camera crew was, indeed, recording as Dr. Brier explained the technology they were about to use.
“ CTis short for ‘computed tomography.’ Our machine shoots X-rays at the subject from thousands of different angles. The computer then processes that information and generates a three-dimensional image of the internal anatomy. You’ll see it on this monitor. It’ll look like a series of cross sections, as if we’re actually cutting the body into slices.”
As the taping continued, Maura edged her way to the viewing window. There, peering through the glass, she saw Madam X for the first time.
In the rarefied world of museums, Egyptian mummies were the undisputed rock stars. Their display cases were where you’d usually find the schoolchildren gathered, faces up to the glass, every one of them fascinated by a rare glimpse of death. Seldom did modern eyes encounter a human corpse on display, unless it wore the acceptable countenance of a mummy. The public loved mummies, and Maura was no exception. She stared, transfixed, even though what she actually saw was nothing more than a human-shaped bundle resting in an open crate, its flesh concealed beneath ancient strips of linen. Mounted over the face was a cartonnage mask—the painted face of a woman with haunting dark eyes.
But then another woman in the CT room caught Maura’s attention. Wearing cotton gloves, the young woman leaned into the crate, removing layers of Ethafoam packing from around the mummy. Ringlets of black hair fell around her face. She straightened and shoved her hair back, revealing eyes as dark and striking as those painted on the mask. Her Mediterranean features could well have appeared on any Egyptian temple painting, but her clothes were thoroughly modern: skinny blue jeans and a Live Aid T-shirt.
“Beautiful, isn’t she?” murmured Dr. Robinson. He’d moved beside Maura, and for a moment she wondered if he was referring to Madam X or to the young woman. “She appears to be in excellent condition. I just hope the body inside is as well preserved as those wrappings.”
“How old do you think she is? Do you have an estimate?”
“We sent off a swatch of the outer wrapping for carbon fourteen analysis. It just about killed our budget to do it, but Josephine insisted. The results came back as second centuryBC .”
“That’s the Ptolemaic period, isn’t it?”
He responded with a pleased smile. “You know your Egyptian dynasties.”
“I was an anthropology major in college, but I’m afraid I don’t remember much beyond that and the Yanomamo tribe.”
“Still, I’m impressed.”
She stared at the wrapped body, marveling that what lay in that crate was more than two thousand years old. What a journey it had taken, across an ocean, across millennia, all to end up lying on a CT table in a Boston hospital, gawked at by the curious. “Are you going to leave her in the crate for the scan?” she asked.
“We want to handle her as little as possible. The crate won’t get in the way. We’ll still get a good look at what lies under that linen.”
“So you haven’t taken even a little peek?”
“You mean have I unwrapped part of her?” His mild eyes widened in horror. “God, no. Archaeologists would have done that a hundred years ago, maybe, and that’s exactly how they ended up damaging so many specimens. There are probably layers of resin under those outer wrappings, so you can’t just peel it all away. You might have to chip through it. It’s not only destructive, it’s disrespectful. I’d never do that.” He looked through the window at the dark-haired young woman. “And Josephine would kill me if I did.”
“That’s your colleague?”
“Yes. Dr. Pulcillo.”
“She looks like she’s about sixteen.”
“Doesn’t she? But she’s smart as a whip. She’s the one who arranged this scan. And when the hospital attorneys tried to put a stop to it, Josephine managed to push it through anyway.”
“Why would the attorneys object?”
“Seriously? Because this patient couldn’t give the hospital her informed consent.”
Maura laughed in disbelief. “They wanted informed consent from a mummy ?”
“When you’re a lawyer, every i must be dotted. Even when the patient’s been dead for a few thousand years.”
Dr. Pulcillo had removed all the packing materials, and she joined them in the viewing room and shut the connecting door. The mummy now lay exposed in its crate, awaiting the first barrage of X-rays.
“Dr. Robinson?” said the CT tech, fingers poised over the computer keyboard. “We need to provide the required patient information before we can start the scan. What shall I use as the birth date?”
The curator frowned. “Oh, gosh. Do you really need a birth date?”
“I can’t start the scan until I fill in these blanks. I tried the year zero, and the computer wouldn’t take it.”
“Why don’t we use yesterday’s date? Make it one day old.”
“Okay. Now the program insists on knowing the sex. Male, female, or other?”
Robinson blinked. “There’s a category for other ?”
The tech grinned. “I’ve never had the chance to check that particular box.”
“Well then, let’s use it tonight. There’s a woman’s face on the mask, but you never know. We can’t be sure of the gender until we scan it.”
“Okay,” said Dr. Brier, the radiologist. “We’re ready to go.”
Dr. Robinson nodded. “Let’s do it.”
They gathered around the computer monitor, waiting for the first images to appear. Through the window, they could see the table feed Madam X’s head into the doughnut-shaped opening, where she was bombarded by X-rays from multiple angles. Computerized tomography was not new medical technology, but its use as an archaeological tool was relatively recent. No one in that room had ever before watched a live CT scan of a mummy, and as they all crowded in, Maura was aware of the TV camera trained on their faces, ready to capture their reactions. Standing beside her, Nicholas Robinson rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, radiating enough nervous energy to infect everyone in the room. Maura felt her own pulse quicken as she craned for a better view of the monitor. The first image that appeared drew only impatient sighs.
“It’s just the shell of the crate,” said Dr. Brier.
Maura glanced at Robinson and saw that his lips were pressed together in thin lines. Would Madam X turn out to be nothing more than an empty bundle of rags? Dr. Pulcillo stood beside him, looking just as tense, gripping the back of the radiologist’s chair as she stared over his shoulder, awaiting a glimpse of anything recognizably human, anything to confirm that inside those bandages was a cadaver.
The next image changed everything. It was a startlingly bright disk, and the instant it appeared, the observers all took in a sharply simultaneous breath.
Bone.
Dr. Brier said, “That’s the top of the cranium. Congratulations, you’ve definitely got an occupant in there.”
Robinson and Pulcillo gave each other happy claps on the back. “This is what we were waiting for!” he said.
Pulcillo grinned. “Now we can finish building that exhibit.”
“Mummies!” Robinson threw his head back and laughed. “Everyone loves mummies!”
New slices appeared on the screen, and their attention snapped back to the monitor as more of the cranium appeared, its cavity filled not with brain matter but with ropy strands that looked like a knot of worms.
“Those are linen strips,” Dr. Pulcillo murmured in wonder, as though this was the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen.
“There’s no brain matter,” said the CT tech.
“No, the brain was usually evacuated.”
“Is it true they’d stick a hook up through the nose and yank the brain out that way?” the tech asked.
“Almost true. You can’t really yank out the brain, because it’s too soft. They probably used an instrument to whisk it around until it was liquefied. Then they’d tilt the body so the brain would drip out the nose.”
“Oh man, that’s gross,” said the tech. But he was hanging on Pulcillo’s every word.
“They might leave the cranium empty or they might pack it with linen strips, as you see here. And frankincense.”
“What is frankincense, anyway? I’ve always wondered about that.”
“A fragrant resin. It comes from a very special tree in Africa. Valued quite highly in the ancient world.”
“So that’s why one of the three wise men brought it to Bethlehem.”
Dr. Pulcillo nodded. “It would have been a treasured gift.”
“Okay,” Dr. Brier said. “We’ve moved below the level of the orbits. There you can see the upper jaw, and…” He paused, frowning at an unexpected density.
Robinson murmured, “Oh my goodness.”
“It’s something metallic,” said Dr. Brier. “It’s in the oral cavity.”
“It could be gold leaf,” said Pulcillo. “In the Greco-Roman era, they’d sometimes place gold-leaf tongues inside the mouth.”
Robinson turned to the TV camera, which was recording every remark. “There appears to be metal inside the mouth. That would correlate with our presumptive date during the Greco-Roman era—”
“Now what is this ?” exclaimed Dr. Brier.
Maura’s gaze shot back to the computer screen. A bright starburst had appeared within the mummy’s lower jaw, an image that stunned Maura because it should not have been present in a corpse that was two thousand years old. She leaned closer, staring at a detail that would scarcely cause comment were this a body that had arrived fresh on the autopsy table. “I know this is impossible,” Maura said softly. “But you know what that looks like?”
The radiologist nodded. “It appears to be a dental filling.”
Maura turned to Dr. Robinson, who appeared just as startled as everyone else in the room. “Has anything like this ever been described in an Egyptian mummy before?” she asked. “Ancient dental repairs that could be mistaken for modern fillings?”
Wide-eyed, he shook his head. “But it doesn’t mean the Egyptians were incapable of it. Their medical care was the most advanced in the ancient world.” He looked at his colleague. “Josephine, what can you tell us about this? It’s your field.”
Dr. Pulcillo struggled for an answer. “There—there are medical papyri from the Old Kingdom,” she said. “They describe how to fix loose teeth and make dental bridges. And there was a healer who was famous as a maker of teeth. So we know they were ingenious when it came to dental care. Far ahead of their time.”
“But did they ever make repairs like that ?” said Maura, pointing to the screen.
Dr. Pulcillo’s troubled gaze returned to the image. “If they did,” she said softly, “I’m not aware of it.”
On the monitor, new images appeared in shades of gray, the body viewed in cross section as though sliced through by a bread knife. She could be bombarded by X-rays from every angle, subjected to massive doses of radiation, but this patient was beyond fears of cancer, beyond worries about side effects. As X-rays continued to assault her body, no patient could have been more submissive.
Shaken by the earlier images, Robinson was now arched forward like a tightly strung bow, alert for the next surprise. The first slices of the thorax appeared, the cavity black and vacant.
“It appears that the lungs were removed,” the radiologist said.
“All I see is a shriveled bit of mediastinum in the chest.”
“That’s the heart,” said Pulcillo, her voice steadier now. This, at least, was what she’d expected to see. “They always tried to leave it in situ.”
“Just the heart?”
She nodded. “It was considered the seat of intelligence, so you never separated it from the body. There are three separate spells contained in the Book of the Dead to ensure that the heart remains in place.”
“And the other organs?” asked the CT tech. “I heard those were put in special jars.”
“That was before the Twenty-first Dynasty. After around a thousandBC , the organs were wrapped into four bundles and stuffed back into the body.”
“So we should be able to see that?”
“In a mummy from the Ptolemaic era, yes.”
“I think I can make an educated guess about her age when she died,” said the radiologist. “The wisdom teeth were fully erupted, and the cranial sutures are closed. But I don’t see any degenerative changes in the spine.”
“A young adult,” said Maura.
“Probably under thirty-five.”
“In the era she lived in, thirty-five was well into middle age,” said Robinson.
The scan had moved below the thorax, X-rays slicing through layers of wrappings, through the shell of dried skin and bones, to reveal the abdominal cavity. What Maura saw within was eerily unfamiliar, as strange to her as an alien autopsy. Where she expected to see liver and spleen, stomach and pancreas, instead she saw snake-like coils of linen, an interior landscape that was missing all that should have been recognizable. Only the bright knobs of vertebral bone told her this was indeed a human body, a body that had been hollowed out to a mere shell and stuffed like a rag doll.
Mummy anatomy might be alien to her, but for both Robinson and Pulcillo this was familiar territory. As new images appeared, they both leaned in, pointing out details they recognized.
“There,” said Robinson. “Those are the four linen packets containing the organs.”
“Okay, we’re now in the pelvis,” Dr. Brier said. He pointed to two pale arcs. They were the top edges of the iliac crests.
Slice by slice, the pelvis slowly took shape, as the computer compiled and rendered countless X-ray beams. It was a digital striptease as each image revealed a tantalizing new peek.
“Look at the shape of the pelvic inlet,” said Dr. Brier.
“It’s a female,” said Maura.
The radiologist nodded. “I’d say it’s pretty conclusive.” He turned and grinned at the two archaeologists. “You can now officially call her Madam X. And not Mister X.”
“And look at the pubic symphysis,” said Maura, still focused on the monitor. “There’s no separation.”
Brier nodded. “I agree.”
“What does that mean?” asked Robinson.
Maura explained. “During childbirth, the infant’s passage through the pelvic inlet can actually force apart the pubic bones, where they join at the symphysis. It appears this female never had children.”
The CT tech laughed. “Your mummy’s never been a mommy.”
The scan had moved beyond the pelvis, and they could now see cross sections of the two femurs encased in the withered flesh of the upper thighs.
“Nick, we need to call Simon,” said Pulcillo. “He’s probably waiting by the phone.”
“Oh gosh, I completely forgot.” Robinson pulled out his cell phone and dialed his boss. “Simon, guess what I’m looking at right now? Yes, she’s gorgeous. Plus, we’ve discovered a few surprises, so the press conference is going to be quite the—” In an instant he fell silent, his gaze frozen on the screen.
“What the hell?” blurted the CT tech.
The image now glowing on the monitor was so unexpected that the room had fallen completely still. Were a living patient lying on the CT table, Maura would have had no difficulty identifying the small metallic object embedded in the calf, an object that had shattered the slender shaft of the fibula. But that bit of metal did not belong in Madam X’s leg.
A bullet did not belong in Madam X’s millennium.
“Is that what I think it is?” said the CT tech.
Robinson shook his head. “It has to be postmortem damage. What else could it be?”
“Two thousand years postmortem?”
“I’ll—I’ll call you back, Simon.” Robinson disconnected his cell phone. Turning to the cameraman, he ordered: “Shut it off. Please shut it off now. ” He took a deep breath. “All right. All right, let’s—let’s approach this logically.” He straightened, gaining confidence as an obvious explanation occurred to him. “Mummies have often been abused or damaged by souvenir hunters. Obviously, someone fired a bullet into the mummy. And a conservator later tried to repair that damage by rewrapping her. That’s why we saw no entry hole in the bandages.”
“That isn’t what happened,” said Maura.
Robinson blinked. “What do you mean? That has to be the explanation.”
“The damage to that leg wasn’t postmortem. It happened while this woman was still alive.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I’m afraid Dr. Isles is right,” said the radiologist. He looked at Maura. “You’re referring to the early callus formation around the fracture site?”
“What does that mean?” asked Robinson. “Callus formation?”
“It means the broken bone had already started the process of healing when this woman died. She lived at least a few weeks after the injury.”
Maura turned to the curator. “Where did this mummy come from?”
Robinson’s glasses had slipped down his nose yet again, and he stared over the lenses as though hypnotized by what he saw glowing in the mummy’s leg.
It was Dr. Pulcillo who answered the question, her voice barely a whisper. “It was in the museum basement. Nick—Dr. Robinson found it back in January.”
“And how did the museum obtain it?”
Pulcillo shook her head. “We don’t know.”
“There must be records. Something in your files to indicate where she came from.”
“There are none for her,” said Robinson, at last finding his voice. “The Crispin Museum is a hundred thirty years old, and many records are missing. We have no idea how long she was stored in the basement.”
“How did you happen to find her?”
Even in that air-conditioned room, sweat had broken out on Dr. Robinson’s pale face. “After I was hired three years ago, I began an inventory of the collection. That’s how I came across her. She was in an unlabeled crate.”
“And that didn’t surprise you? To find something as rare as an Egyptian mummy in an unlabeled crate?”
“But mummies aren’t all that rare. In the 1800s, you could buy one in Egypt for only five dollars, so American tourists brought them home by the hundreds. They turn up in attics and antiques stores. A freak show in Niagara Falls even claims they had King Ramses the First in their collection. So it’s not all that surprising that we’d find a mummy in our museum.”
“Dr. Isles?” said the radiologist. “We’ve got the scout film. You might want to take a look at it.”
Maura turned to the monitor. Displayed on the screen was a conventional X-ray like the films she hung on her own viewing box in the morgue. She did not need a radiologist to interpret what she saw there.
“There’s not much doubt about it now,” said Dr. Brier.
No. There’s no doubt whatsoever. That’s a bullet in the leg.
Maura pulled out her cell phone.
“Dr. Isles?” said Robinson. “Whom are you calling?”
“I’m arranging for transport to the morgue,” she said. “Madam X is now a medical examiner’s case.”
THREE
“Is it just my imagination,” said Detective Barry Frost, “or do you and I catch all the weird ones?”
Madam X was definitely one of the weird ones, thought Detective Jane Rizzoli as she drove past TV news vans and turned into the parking lot of the medical examiner’s building. It was only eightAM , and already the hyenas were yapping, ravenous for details of the ultimate cold case—a case that Jane had greeted with skeptical laughter when Maura had phoned last night. The sight of the news vans made Jane realize that maybe it was time to get serious, time to consider the possibility that this was not, after all, some elaborate practical joke being played on her by the singularly humorless medical examiner.
She pulled into a parking space and sat eyeing the vans, wondering how many more cameras would be waiting out here when she and Frost came back out of the building.
“At least this one shouldn’t smell bad,” Jane said.
“But mummies can give you diseases, you know.”
Jane turned to her partner, whose pale and boyish face looked genuinely worried. “What diseases?” she asked.
“Since Alice has been away, I’ve been watching a lot of TV. Last night I saw this show on the Discovery Channel, about mummies that carry these spores.”
“Ooh. Scary spores.”
“It’s no joke,” he insisted. “They can make you sick.”
“Geez, I hope Alice gets home soon. You’re getting overdosed on the Discovery Channel.”
They stepped out of the car into cloying humidity that made Jane’s already unruly dark hair spring into frizzy waves. During her four years as a homicide detective, she had made this walk into the medical examiner’s building many times, slip-sliding across ice in January, dashing through rain in March, and slogging across pavement as hot as ash in August. These few dozen paces were familiar to her, as was the grim destination. She’d believed this walk would become easier over time, that one day she’d feel immune to any horrors the stainless-steel table might serve up. But since her daughter Regina’s birth a year ago, death held more terror for her than it ever had before. Motherhood didn’t make you stronger; it made you vulnerable and afraid of what death could steal from you.
Today, though, the subject waiting in the morgue inspired fascination, not horror. When Jane stepped into the autopsy suite anteroom, she crossed straight to the window, eager for her first glimpse of the subject on the table.
Madam Xwas what The Boston Globe had called the mummy, a catchy moniker that conjured up a vision of sultry beauty, a Cleopatra with dark eyes. Jane saw a dried-out husk wrapped in rags.
“She looks like a human tamale,” said Jane.
“Who’s the girl?” asked Frost, staring through the window.
There were two people in the room whom Jane did not recognize. The man was tall and gangly, professorial glasses perched on his nose. The young woman was a petite brunette wearing blue jeans beneath an autopsy gown. “Those must be the museum archaeologists. They were both going to be here.”
“ She’san archaeologist? Wow.”
Jane gave him an annoyed jab with her elbow. “Alice leaves town for a few weeks, and you forget you’re a married man.”
“I just never pictured an archaeologist looking as hot as her.”
They pulled on shoe covers and autopsy gowns and pushed into the lab.
“Hey, Doc,” said Jane. “Is this really one for us?”
Maura turned from the light box, and her gaze, as usual, was dead serious. While the other pathologists might crack jokes or toss out ironic comments over the autopsy table, it was rare to hear Maura so much as laugh in the presence of the dead. “We’re about to find out.” She introduced the pair Jane had seen through the window. “This is the curator, Dr. Nicholas Robinson. And his colleague, Dr. Josephine Pulcillo.”
“You’re both with the Crispin Museum?” asked Jane.
“And they’re very unhappy about what I’m planning to do here,” said Maura.
“It’s destructive,” said Robinson. “There has to be some other way to get this information besides cutting her open.”
“That’s why I wanted you to be here, Dr. Robinson,” said Maura. “To help me minimize the damage. The last thing I want to do is destroy an antiquity.”
“I thought the CT scan last night clearly showed a bullet,” said Jane.
“Those are the X-rays we shot this morning,” said Maura, pointing to the light box. “What do you think?”
Jane approached the display and studied the films clipped there. Glowing within the right calf was what certainly looked to her like a bullet. “Yeah, I can see why this might’ve freaked you out last night.”
“I did not freak out. ”
Jane laughed. “You were as close to it as I’ve ever heard you.”
“I admit, I was damn shocked when I saw it. We all were.” Maura pointed to the bones of the right lower leg. “Notice how the fibula’s been fractured, presumably by this projectile.”
“You said it happened while she was still alive?”
“You can see early callus formation. This bone was in the process of healing when she died.”
“But her wrappings are two thousand years old,” said Dr. Robinson. “We’ve confirmed it.”
Jane stared hard at the X-ray, struggling to come up with a logical explanation for what they were looking at. “Maybe this isn’t a bullet. Maybe it’s some sort of ancient metal thingie. A spear tip or something.”
“That is not a spear tip, Jane,” said Maura. “It’s a bullet.”
“Then dig it out. Prove it to me.”
“And if I do?”
“Then we have a hell of a mind bender, don’t we? I mean, what are the possible explanations here?”
“You know what Alice said when I called her about it last night?” Frost said. “‘Time travel.’ That was the first thing she thought.”
Jane laughed. “Since when did Alice go woo-woo on you?”
“It’s theoretically possible, you know, to travel back in time,” he said. “Bring a gun back to ancient Egypt.”
Maura cut in impatiently: “Can we stick to real possibilities here?”
Jane frowned at the bright chunk of metal that looked like so many she had seen before glowing in countless X-rays of lifeless limbs and shattered skulls. “I’m having trouble coming up with any of those,” she said. “So why don’t you just cut her open and see what that metal thing is? Maybe these archaeologists are right. Maybe you’re jumping to conclusions, Doc.”
Robinson said, “As curator, it’s my duty to protect her and not let her be mindlessly ripped apart. Can you at least limit the damage to the relevant area?”
Maura nodded. “That’s a reasonable approach.” She moved to the table. “Let’s turn her over. If there’s an entrance wound, it will be in the right calf.”
“It’s best if we work together,” said Robinson. He went to the head, and Pulcillo moved to the feet. “We need to support the whole body and not put strain on any part of her. So if four of us could pitch in?”
Maura slipped gloved hands beneath the shoulders and said, “Detective Frost, could you support the hips?”
Frost hesitated, eyeing the stained linen wrappings. “Shouldn’t we put on masks or something?”
“We’re just turning her over,” said Maura.
“I’ve heard they carry diseases. You breathe in these spores and you get pneumonia.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Jane. She snapped on gloves and stepped up to the table. Sliding her hands beneath the mummy’s hips, she said: “I’m ready.”
“Okay, lift,” said Robinson. “Now rotate her. That’s it…”
“Wow, she hardly weighs anything,” said Jane.
“A living human body’s mostly water. Remove the organs, dry out the carcass, and you end up with just a fraction of its former weight. She probably weighs only around fifty pounds, wrappings and all.”
“Kind of like beef jerky, huh?”
“That’s exactly what she is. Human jerky. Now let’s ease her down. Gently.”
“You know, I wasn’t kidding about the spores,” said Frost. “I saw this show.”
“Are you talking about the King Tut curse?” said Maura.
“Yeah,” said Frost. “ That’swhat I’m talking about! All those people who died after they went into his tomb. They breathed in some kind of spores and got sick.”
“Aspergillus,” said Robinson. “When Howard Carter’s team disturbed the tomb, they probably breathed in spores that had collected inside over the centuries. Some of them came down with fatal cases of aspergillus pneumonia.”
“So Frost isn’t just bullshitting?” said Jane. “There really was a mummy’s curse?”
Annoyance flashed in Robinson’s eyes. “Of course there was no curse. Yes, a few people died, but after what Carter and his team did to poor Tutankhamen, maybe there should have been a curse.”
“What did they do to him?” asked Jane.
“They brutalized him. They sliced him open, broke his bones, and essentially tore him apart in the search for jewels and amulets. They cut him up in pieces to get him out of the coffin, pulling off his arms and legs. They severed his head. It wasn’t science. It was desecration.” He looked down at Madam X, and Jane saw admiration, even affection in his gaze. “We don’t want the same thing to happen to her.”
“The last thing I want to do is mangle her,” said Maura. “So let’s unwrap her just enough to find out what we’re dealing with here.”
“You probably won’t be able to just unwrap her,” said Robinson. “If the inner strips were soaked in resin, as per tradition, they’ll be stuck together as solid as glue.”
Maura turned to the X-ray for one more look, then reached for a scalpel and tweezers. Jane had watched Maura slice other bodies, but never before had she seen her hesitate so long, her blade hovering over the calf as though afraid to make the first cut. What they were about to do would forever damage Madam X, and Drs. Robinson and Pulcillo both were watching with outright disapproval in their eyes.
Maura made the first cut. This was not the usual confident slice into flesh. Instead, she used the tweezers to delicately lift the band of linen so that her blade slit through successive layers of fabric, strip by strip. “It’s peeling away quite easily,” she said.
Dr. Pulcillo frowned. “This isn’t traditional. Normally the bandages would be doused in molten resin. In the 1830s, when they unwrapped mummies, they sometimes had to pry the bandages off.”
“What was the point of the resin, anyway?” asked Frost.
“To make the wrappings stick together. It gave them rigidity, like making a papier-mâché container to protect the contents.”
“I’m already through the final layer,” Maura said. “There’s no resin adhering to any of this.”
Jane craned forward to catch a glimpse of what lay under the wrapping. “That’s her skin? It looks like old leather.”
“Dried skin is precisely what leather is, Detective Rizzoli,” said Robinson. “In a way.”
Maura reached for the scissors and gingerly snipped away the strips, exposing a larger patch of skin. It looked like brown parchment wrapped around bones. She glanced, once again, at the X-ray, and swung a magnifier over the calf. “I can’t find any entry hole in the skin.”
“So the wound’s not postmortem,” said Jane.
“It goes along with what we see on that X-ray. That foreign body was probably introduced while she was still alive. She lived long enough for the fractured bone to start mending. For the wound to close over.”
“How long would that take?”
“A few weeks. Perhaps a month.”
“Someone would have to care for her during that time, right? She’d have to be fed and sheltered.”
Maura nodded. “This makes the manner of death all the more difficult to determine.”
Robinson asked, “Manner of death? What do you mean?”
“In other words,” said Jane, “we’re wondering if she was murdered.”
“Let’s settle the most pressing issue first.” Maura reached for the knife. Mummification had toughened the tissues to the consistency of leather, and the blade did not cut easily into the withered flesh.
Glancing across the table, Jane saw Dr. Pulcillo’s lips tighten, as though to stifle a protest. But as much as she might object to the procedure, the woman could not look away. They all leaned in, even spore-phobic Frost, their attention glued to that exposed patch of leg as Maura picked up forceps and plunged the tips into the incision. It took only seconds of digging around in the shriveled flesh before the teeth of the forceps clamped down on the prize. Maura dropped it onto a steel tray, and it gave a metallic clang.
Dr. Pulcillo sucked in a sharp breath. This was no spear tip, no broken bit of knife blade.
Maura finally stated the obvious. “I think we can now safely say that Madam X is not two thousand years old.”
FOUR
“I don’t understand,” Dr. Pulcillo murmured. “The linen was analyzed. The carbon dating confirmed the age.”
“But that’s a bullet,” said Jane, pointing to the tray. “A twenty-two. Your analysis was all screwed up.”
“It’s a well-respected lab! They were certain about the date.”
“You could both be right,” said Robinson quietly.
“Yeah?” Jane looked at him. “I’d like to know how.”
He took a deep breath and stepped back from the table, as though needing the space to think. “I see it come up for sale from time to time. I don’t know how much of it is genuine, but I’m sure there are caches of the real thing out there on the antiquities market.”
“What?”
“Mummy wrappings. They’re easier to find than the bodies themselves. I’ve seen them on eBay.”
Jane gave a startled laugh. “You can go online and buy mummy wrappings?”
“There was once a thriving international trade in mummies. They were ground up and used as medicines. Carted off to England for fertilizer. Wealthy tourists brought them home and held unwrapping parties. You’d invite your friends over to watch while you peeled away the linen. Since amulets and jewels were often among the wrappings, it was sort of like a treasure hunt, uncovering little trinkets for your guests.”
“That was entertainment?” said Frost. “Unwrapping a corpse?”
“It was done in some of the finest Victorian homes,” Robinson said. “It goes to show you how little regard they had for the dead of Egypt. And when they’d finish unwrapping the corpse, it would be disposed of or burned. But the wrappings were often kept as souvenirs. That’s why you still find stashes of them for sale.”
“So these wrappings could be ancient,” said Frost, “even if the body isn’t.”
“It would explain the carbon fourteen dating. But as for Madam X herself…” Robinson shook his head in bewilderment.
“We still can’t prove this was homicide,” said Frost. “You can’t convict someone based on a gunshot wound that was already healing.”
“I kind of doubt she volunteered for mummification,” said Jane.
“Actually,” said Robinson, “it’s possible that she did.”
Everyone turned to stare at the curator, who looked perfectly serious.
“Volunteer to have her brains and organs ripped out?” said Jane. “No, thanks.”
“Some people have bequeathed their bodies for precisely that purpose.”
“Hey, I saw that show, too,” said Frost. “Another one on Discovery Channel. Some archaeologist actually mummified a guy.”
Jane stared down at the wrapped cadaver. She imagined being encased in layer after layer of smothering bandages. Being bound in a linen straitjacket for a thousand, two thousand years, until a day when some curious archaeologist would decide to strip away the cloth and reveal her shriveled remains. Not dust to dust, but flesh to leather. She swallowed. “Why would anyone volunteer for that?”
“It’s a type of immortality, don’t you think?” said Robinson.
“An alternative to rotting away. Your body preserved. Those who love you never have to surrender you to decay.”
Those who love you.Jane glanced up. “You’re saying this could have been an act of affection?”
“It would be a way to hold on to someone you love. To keep them safe from the worms. From rotting.”
The way of all flesh, thought Jane, and the temperature in the room suddenly seemed to plummet. “Maybe it’s not about love at all. Maybe it’s about ownership.”
Robinson met her gaze, clearly unsettled by that possibility. He said softly: “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
Jane turned to Maura. “Let’s get on with the autopsy, Doc. We need more information to work with.”
Maura crossed to the light box, removed the leg X-rays, and replaced them with the CT scan films. “Let’s turn her onto her back again.”
This time, as Maura cut through the linen strips covering the torso, she wasted no effort on preservation. They now knew this was no ancient cadaver she was cutting into; this was a death investigation, and the answers lay not in the linen strips but in the flesh and bone itself. The cloth parted, revealing the torso’s brown and shrunken skin through which the outlines of ribs were visible, arching up in a bony vault beneath its parchment tent. Moving toward the head, Maura pried off the painted cartonnage mask and began to snip at the strips covering the face.
Jane looked at the CT films hanging on the light box, then frowned at the exposed torso. “The organs are all taken out during mummification, right?”
Robinson nodded. “Removal of the viscera slows down the process of putrefaction. It’s one of the reasons the bodies don’t decay.”
“But there’s only one little wound on the belly.” Jane pointed to a small incision on the left, sewn closed by ungainly stitches.
“How do you get everything out through that opening?”
“That’s exactly how the Egyptians would have removed the viscera. Through a small wound on the left side. Whoever preserved this body was familiar with the ancient methods. And clearly adhered to them.”
“What are these ancient methods? How, exactly, do you make a mummy?” asked Jane.
Dr. Robinson looked at his associate. “Josephine knows more about it than I do. Maybe she’ll explain it.”
“Dr. Pulcillo?” said Jane.
The young woman still looked shaken by the discovery of the bullet. She cleared her throat and straightened. “A large part of what we know comes down to us from Herodotus,” she said. “I guess you could call him a Greek travel writer. Twenty-five hundred years ago, he roamed the ancient world and recorded what he learned. The problem is, he was known to get details wrong. Or get snookered by the local tour guides.” She managed a smile. “It makes him seem human, doesn’t it? He was like any tourist in Egypt today. Probably hounded by trinket sellers. Duped by crooked tour guides. Just another innocent abroad.”
“What did he say about making mummies?”
“He was told that it all starts with a ritual washing of the corpse in dissolved natron.”
“Natron?”
“It’s essentially a mixture of salts. You can reproduce it by blending plain old table salt and baking soda.”
“Baking soda?” Jane gave an uneasy laugh. “I’ll never look at a box of Arm and Hammer the same way again.”
“The washed body is then laid out on wooden blocks,” Pulcillo continued. “They use a razor-sharp blade of Ethiopian stone—probably obsidian—to slice a small incision like the one you see here. Then, with some sort of hooked instrument, they pull out the organs, dragging them out through the hole. The empty cavity is rinsed, and they pack dry natron inside. Natron is poured over the body as well, to dehydrate it for forty days. Sort of like salting a fish.” She paused, staring as Maura’s scissors cut through the last strips covering the face.
“And then?” prodded Jane.
Pulcillo swallowed. “By then it’s lost about seventy-five percent of its weight. The cavity is stuffed with linen and resin. The mummified internal organs might be returned as well. And…” She stopped, her eyes widening as the final wrappings fell away from the head.
For the first time, they saw the face of Madam X.
Long black hair was still affixed to the scalp. The skin was stretched taut over prominent cheekbones. But it was the lips that made Jane recoil. They had been sewn together with crude stitches, as though joined by the tailor of Frankenstein’s monster.
Pulcillo shook her head. “That—that’s all wrong!”
“The mouth isn’t usually sewn shut?” asked Maura.
“No! How would you eat in the afterlife? How would you speak? This is like condemning her to eternal hunger. And eternal silence.”
Eternal silence.Jane looked down at the ugly stitches and wondered: Did you say something to offend your killer? Did you speak back to him? Insult him? Testify against him? Is this your punishment, to have your lips bound together for eternity?
The corpse now lay fully revealed, her body stripped of all wrappings, her flesh little more than shriveled skin clinging to bones. Maura sliced into the torso.
Jane had witnessed Y-incisions before, and always before, she’d found herself recoiling from the odors as the blade first cut into the chest cavity. Even the freshest of corpses released a stench of decay, however faint, like the sulfurish scent of bad breath. Except that the subjects weren’t breathing. Dead breath was what Jane called it, and just a whiff of it could nauseate her.
But Madam X emitted no such sickening odors as the knife cut into her thorax, as Maura methodically snapped apart ribs, as the chest wall was lifted like an ancient breastplate to reveal the chest cavity. What wafted up was a not-unpleasant scent that reminded her of incense. Instead of backing away, Jane leaned closer and took a deeper whiff. Sandalwood, she thought. Camphor. And something else, something that reminded her of licorice and cloves.
“Now, this is not what I expected,” said Maura. She lifted a dried nugget of spice from the cavity.
“It looks like star anise,” said Jane.
“Not traditional, I take it?”
“Myrrh would be traditional,” said Pulcillo. “Melted resin. It was used to mask the stench and help stiffen the corpse.”
“Myrrh’s not exactly easy to obtain in large quantities,” said Robinson. “It might explain why substitute spices were used.”
“Substitute or not, this body looks very well preserved.” Maura pulled wads of linen from the abdomen and placed them in a basin for later inspection. Staring into the hollowed-out torso, she said, “It’s as dry as leather in here. And there’s no odor of decay.”
“So how will you figure out the cause of death?” asked Frost.
“With no organs?”
“I can’t. Not yet.”
He looked at the CT scan on the light box. “What about the head? There’s no brain, either.”
“The cranium’s intact. I didn’t see any fractures.”
Jane stared at the corpse’s mouth, at the crude stitches sewing the lips together, and she winced at the thought of a needle piercing tender flesh. I hope it was done after death and not before. Not when she could feel it. Shuddering, she turned to look at the CT scan.
“What’s this bright thing?” she said. “It looks like it’s in the mouth.”
“There are two metallic densities in her mouth,” said Maura.
“One appears to be a dental filling. But there’s also something in the oral cavity, something much larger. It may explain why her mouth was sewn shut—to secure that object in place.” She picked up scissors.
The suture material was not mere thread, but dried leather, the strips rock-hard. Even after she’d cut through them, the lips adhered together as though permanently frozen in place, the mouth a tight slit that would have to be pried open.
Maura introduced the tip of a hemostat between the lips, metal grating against teeth as she gently widened the opening. The jaw joint suddenly gave a shocking snap and Jane flinched as the mandible broke off. The lower jaw sagged open, revealing straight teeth that were so cosmetically perfect, any modern orthodontist would be proud to claim the alignment as his work.
“Let’s see what this thing is in her mouth,” said Maura. Reaching in with the hemostat, she pulled out an oblong-shaped gold coin, which she set on the steel tray, where it landed with a soft clang. They all stared in astonishment.
Jane suddenly burst out laughing. “Someone,” she said, “has a sick sense of humor.”
Stamped on the gold were words in English:
IVISITED THE PYRAMIDS
CAIRO,EGYPT
Maura turned over the object. On the reverse side were three engraved symbols: an owl, a hand, and a bent arm.
“It’s a cartouche,” said Robinson. “A personal seal. They sell these souvenirs all over Egypt. Tell a jeweler your name, and he’ll translate it into hieroglyphs and engrave it right on the spot for you.”
“What do these symbols mean?” asked Frost. “I see an owl. Is that like a sign of wisdom or something?”
“No, these glyphs aren’t meant to be read as ideograms,” said Robinson.
“What’s an ideogram?”
“That’s a symbol that represents exactly what’s illustrated. For instance, a picture of a running man would mean the word run. Or two fighting men would mean the word war. ”
“And that’s not what these are?”
“No, these symbols are phonograms. They represent sounds, like our own alphabet.”
“So what does it say?”
“This isn’t my area of expertise. Josephine can read it.” He turned to his colleague and suddenly frowned. “Are you feeling all right?”
The young woman had gone as pale as any corpse that had ever been stretched out on the morgue table. She stared at the cartouche as though she saw some undreamed-of horror in those symbols.
“Dr. Pulcillo?” said Frost.
She glanced up sharply, as though startled to hear her name.
“I’m fine,” she murmured.
“What about these hieroglyphs?” Jane asked. “Can you read them?”
Pulcillo’s gaze dropped back to the cartouche. “The owl—the owl is the equivalent of our M sound. And the little hand beneath it, that would sound like a D. ”
“And the arm?”
Pulcillo swallowed. “It’s pronounced like a broad A. As in car. ”
“ M-D-Ah?What kind of name is that?”
Robinson said, “Something like Medea, maybe? That would be my guess.”
“Medea?” said Frost. “Isn’t there some Greek tragedy written about her?”
“It’s a tale of vengeance,” said Robinson. “According to the myth, Medea falls in love with Jason of the Argonauts, and they have two sons. When Jason leaves her for another woman, Medea retaliates by slaughtering her own sons and murdering her female rival. All to get back at Jason.”
“What happens to Medea?” asked Jane.
“There are various versions of the tale, but in them all, she escapes.”
“After killing her own kids?” Jane shook her head. “That’s a lousy ending, having her go free.”
“Perhaps that’s the point of the story: that some who commit evil never face justice.”
Jane looked down at the cartouche. “So Medea’s a murderer.”
Robinson nodded. “She’s also a survivor.”
FIVE
Josephine Pulcillo stepped off the city bus and walked in a daze along busy Washington Street, oblivious to the traffic and the relentless thump of car stereos. At the corner she crossed the road, and even the sharp squeal of tires skidding to a stop a few feet away did not shake her as deeply as what she had seen that morning, in that autopsy suite.
Medea.
Surely it was a coincidence. A startling one, but what else could it be? Most likely the cartouche wasn’t even an accurate translation. Trinket sellers in Cairo would tell you any tale in hopes of taking your dollars. Dangle enough money in front of them and they’d brazenly swear that Cleopatra herself had worn some worthless piece of junk. Perhaps the engraver had been asked to write Maddie or Melody or Mabel. It was far less likely that the hieroglyphs were meant to spell out Medea, since it was a name rarely heard except in the context of Greek tragedy.
She flinched as a horn blared and turned to see a black pickup truck crawling along the street beside her. The window rolled down, and a young man called out: “Hey gorgeous, want a ride? There’s plenty of room on my lap!”
One rude gesture involving her middle finger was all it took to let him know what she thought of his offer. He gave a laugh and the truck roared off, spewing exhaust. Her eyes were still watering from the fumes as she climbed the stairs and stepped into her apartment building. Pausing by the lobby mailboxes, she dug through her purse for her mailbox key and suddenly gave a sigh.
She crossed to Apartment 1A and knocked.
The door swung open and a bug-eyed alien peered out. “You found your keys yet?” the alien asked.
“Mr. Goodwin? That is you, isn’t it?”
“What? Oh, sorry. These old eyes aren’t what they used to be. Need Robocop glasses just to see the darn screw heads.” The building superintendent pulled off his pair of magnifying goggles, and the bug-eyed alien transformed to an utterly ordinary man in his sixties, unruly tufts of gray hair standing up on his head like miniature horns. “So did that key ring ever turn up?”
“I’m sure I just misplaced it at work. I’ve managed to make copies of my car keys and apartment keys, but—”
“I know. You want the new mailbox key, right?”
“You said you’d have to change the lock.”
“I did it this morning. Come on in and I’ll give you the new key.”
Reluctantly, she followed him into his apartment. Once you stepped into Mr. Goodwin’s lair, it could be a good half hour before you escaped. Mr. Goodwrench was what the tenants called him, for reasons that were apparent as she walked into his living room—or what ought to be a living room. Instead it was a tinkerer’s palace, every horizontal surface covered with old hair dryers and radios and electronic gizmos in various stages of being dismantled or reassembled. Just a hobby of mine, he’d once told her. No need to throw anything away ever again. I can fix it for you!
You just had to be willing to wait a decade or more for him to get around to it.
“I hope you find that key ring of yours,” he said as he led her past dozens of repair projects gathering dust. “Makes me nervous, having loose apartment keys floating around out there. The world is full of creeps, you know. And did you hear what Mr. Lubin’s been saying?”
“No.” She didn’t want to hear what grumpy Mr. Lubin across the hall had to say.
“He’s seen a black car casing our building. It drives by real slow every afternoon, and there’s a man at the wheel.”
“Maybe he’s just looking for a parking place. That’s the reason I hardly drive my car anywhere. Besides the price of gas, I hate giving up my parking spot.”
“Mr. Lubin’s got a keen eye for these things. Did you know he used to work as a spy?”
She gave a laugh. “Do you really think that’s true?”
“Why wouldn’t it be? I mean, he wouldn’t lie about something like that.”
You have no idea what some people lie about.
Mr. Goodwin opened a drawer, setting off a noisy rattle, and pulled out a key. “Here you go. I’ll have to charge you forty-five bucks for changing the lock.”
“Can I just add it to my rent check?”
“Sure thing.” He grinned. “I trust you.”
I’m the last person you should be trusting.She turned to leave.
“Oh, wait. I got your mail here again.” He crossed to the cluttered dining room table and gathered up a stack of mail and a package, all bundled together with a rubber band. “The mailman couldn’t fit this into your box, so I told him I’d give it to you.” He nodded at the package. “I see you ordered something else from L.L. Bean, eh? You must like that company.”
“Yes, I do. Thank you for holding my mail.”
“So do you buy clothes or camping gear from them?”
“Clothes, mostly.”
“And they fit you okay? Even through the mail?”
“They fit me fine.” With a tight smile, she turned to leave before he could start asking her where she bought her lingerie. “See you later.”
“Me, I’d just as soon try on clothes before I buy ’em,” he said.
“Never could get a decent fit through mail order.”
“I’ll give you the rent check tomorrow.”
“And you keep looking for those keys, okay? You’ve got to be careful these days, especially a pretty girl like you, living all alone. Not a good thing if your keys end up in the wrong hands.”
She bolted out of his apartment and started up the stairs.
“Hold on!” he called out. “There’s one more thing. I almost forgot to ask you. Do you know anyone named Josephine Sommer?”
She froze on the steps, her arms clamped around the bundle of mail, her back rigid as a board. Slowly she turned to look at him. “What did you say?”
“The mailman asked me if that might be you, but I told him no, your name was Pulcillo.”
“Why—why did he ask that question?”
“Because there’s a letter in there with your apartment number and the last name says Sommer, not Pulcillo. He figured it might be your maiden name or something. I told him you were single, as far as I knew. Still, it is your apartment number, and there aren’t too many Josephines around, so I figured it must be meant for you. That’s why I kept it in with the rest of your mail.”
She swallowed. “Thank you,” she murmured.
“So is it you?”
She didn’t respond. She just kept climbing the stairs, even though she knew he was watching her and waiting for an answer. Before he had the chance to lob another question, she ducked into her apartment and shut the door.
She was hugging the bundle of mail so tightly she could feel her heart slamming against it. She yanked off the rubber band and dumped the mail onto her coffee table. Envelopes and glossy catalogs spilled across the surface. Shoving aside the box from L.L. Bean, she sifted through the swirl of mail until she spotted an envelope with the nameJOSEPHINE SOMMER written in an unfamiliar hand. It had a Boston postmark, but there was no return address.
Somebody in Boston knows this name. What else do they know about me?
For a long time she sat without opening the envelope, afraid to read its contents. Afraid that, once she opened it, her life would change. For this one last moment, she could still be Josephine Pulcillo, the quiet young woman who never spoke of her past. The underpaid archaeologist who was content to hide away in the Crispin Museum’s back room, fussing over bits of papyrus and scraps of linen.
I’ve been careful, she thought. So careful to keep my head down and my eyes on my work, yet somehow the past has caught up with me.
Taking a deep breath, she finally tore open the envelope. Tucked inside was a note with only six words written in block letters. Words that told her what she already knew.
THE POLICE ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS.
SIX
The docent at the Crispin Museum appeared ancient enough to be exhibited in a display case herself. The gray-haired little gnome was barely tall enough to peer over the counter of the reception desk as she announced: “I’m sorry, but we don’t open until exactly tenAM . If you’d like to come back in seven minutes, I’ll sell you the tickets then.”
“We’re not here to tour the museum,” said Jane. “We’re with Boston PD. I’m Detective Rizzoli and this is Detective Frost. Mr. Crispin is expecting us.”
“I wasn’t informed.”
“Is he here?”
“Yes. He and Miss Duke are in a meeting upstairs,” the woman said, clearly enunciating the title Miss and not Ms., as though to emphasize that in this building, old-fashioned rules of etiquette still applied. She came around from behind the counter, revealing a plaid kilt-skirt and enormous orthopedic shoes. Pinned to her white cotton blouse was a name tag:MRS. WILLEBRANDT, DOCENT. “I’ll take you to his office. But first I need to lock up the cash box. We’re expecting a large crowd again today, and I don’t want to leave it unattended.”
“Oh, we can find the way to his office,” said Frost. “If you’ll tell us where it is.”
“I don’t want you to get lost.”
Frost gave her his best charm-the-old-ladies smile. “I was a Boy Scout, ma’am. I promise, I won’t get lost.”
Mrs. Willebrandt refused to be charmed. She eyed him dubiously through steel-rimmed spectacles. “It’s on the third floor,” she finally said. “You can take the elevator, but it’s very slow.” She pointed to a black grille cage that looked more like an ancient death trap than an elevator.
“We’ll take the stairs,” said Jane.
“They’re straight ahead, through the main gallery.”
Straight ahead,however, was not a direction that one could navigate in this building. When Jane and Frost stepped into the first-floor gallery, they confronted a maze of display cases. The first case that greeted them contained a life-sized wax figure of a nineteenth-century gentleman garbed in a fine woolen suit and waistcoat. In one hand he held a compass; in the other, he clutched a yellowed map. Though he faced them through the glass, his eyes looked elsewhere, focused on some lofty and distant destination that only he could see.
Frost leaned forward and read the plaque at the gentleman’s feet. “‘Dr. Cornelius M. Crispin, Explorer and Scientist, 1830 through 1912. The treasures he brought home from around the world were the beginnings of the Crispin Museum Collection.’” He straightened. “Wow. Imagine listing that as your occupation. Explorer. ”
“I think rich guy would be more accurate.” Jane moved on to the next case, where gold coins glittered under display lights. “Hey, look. This says these are from the kingdom of Croesus.”
“Now there was a rich guy.”
“You mean Croesus was for real? I thought he was just some fairy tale.”
They continued to the next case, which was filled with pottery and clay figurines. “Cool,” said Frost. “These are Sumerian. You know, this is really old stuff. When Alice gets home, I’m going to bring her here. She’d love this museum. Funny how I never even heard of it before.”
“Everyone’s heard of it now. Nothing like a murder to put your place on the map.”
They wandered deeper into the maze of cases, past marble busts of Greeks and Romans, past rusted swords and glinting jewelry, their footsteps creaking on old wood floors. So many cases were crammed into the gallery that the passages between them were narrow alleys, and every turn brought a fresh surprise, another treasure that demanded their attention.
They emerged at last into an open area near the stairwell. Frost started up the steps to the second floor, but Jane did not follow him. Instead, she was drawn toward a narrow doorway, framed in faux stone.
“Rizzoli?” said Frost, glancing back.
“Hold on a minute,” she said, gazing up at the seductive invitation that beckoned from the doorway lintel:COME. STEP INTO THE LAND OF THE PHARAOHS.
She could not resist.
Moving through the doorway, she found the space beyond so dimly lit that she had to pause as her eyes adjusted to the shadows. Slowly a room filled with wonders revealed itself.
“Wow,” whispered Frost, who had followed.
They stood in an Egyptian burial chamber, its walls covered with hieroglyphs and funerary paintings. Displayed in the room were tomb artifacts, illuminated softly by discreetly placed spotlights. She saw a sarcophagus, gaping open as though awaiting its eternal occupant. A carved jackal head leered from atop a stone canopic jar. On the wall hung funerary masks, dark eyes staring eerily from painted faces. Beneath glass, a papyrus scroll lay open to a passage from the Book of the Dead.
Against the far wall was a vacant glass case. It was the size of a coffin.
Peering into it, she saw a photograph of a mummy resting inside a crate, and an index card with the handwritten notice:FUTURE RESTING PLACE OF MADAM X. WATCH FOR HER ARRIVAL!
Madam X would never make an appearance here, yet already she’d served her purpose, and crowds were now turning up at the museum. She’d drawn in the curious, the hordes seeking morbid thrills eager for a glimpse of death. But one thrill seeker had taken it a step further. He had been twisted enough to actually make a mummy, to gut a woman, to salt and pack her cavities with spices. To wrap her in linen, binding her naked limbs and torso strip by strip, like a spider spinning silken threads around its helpless prey. Jane stared at that empty case and considered the prospect of eternity inside that glass coffin. Suddenly the room seemed close and airless, and her chest felt as constricted as if she were the one bound head-to-toe, strips of linen strangling her, suffocating her. She fumbled at the top button of her blouse to loosen her collar.
“Hello, Detectives?”
Startled, Jane turned to see a woman silhouetted in the narrow doorway. She was dressed in a formfitting pantsuit that flattered her slender frame, and her short blond hair gleamed in a backlit halo.
“Mrs. Willebrandt told us you’d arrived. We’ve been waiting upstairs for you. I thought you might have gotten lost.”
“This museum is really interesting,” said Frost. “We couldn’t help taking a look around.”
As Jane and Frost stepped out of the tomb exhibit, the woman offered a brisk and businesslike handshake. In the brighter light of the main gallery, Jane saw that she was a handsome blonde in her forties—about a century younger than the docent they’d encountered at the front desk. “I’m Debbie Duke, one of the volunteers here.”
“Detective Rizzoli,” said Jane. “And Detective Frost.”
“Simon’s waiting in his office, if you’d like to follow me.” Debbie turned and led the way up the stairs, her stylish pumps clicking against the well-worn wooden steps. On the second-floor landing, Jane was once again distracted by an eye-catching exhibit: A stuffed and mounted grizzly bear had its claws bared as though about to slash anyone coming up the stairs.
“Did one of Mr. Crispin’s ancestors shoot this thing?” asked Jane.
“Oh.” Debbie glanced back with a look of distaste. “That’s Big Ben. I’ll have to check, but I think Simon’s father brought that thing home from Alaska. I’m just learning about the collection myself.”
“You’re new here?”
“Since April. We’re trying to recruit new volunteers, if you know anyone who’d like to join us. We’re especially looking for younger volunteers, to work with the children.”
Jane still couldn’t take her eyes off those lethal-looking bear claws. “I thought this was an archaeology museum,” she said. “How does this bear fit in?”
“Actually, it’s an everything museum, and that’s what makes it so hard to market ourselves. Most of this was collected by five generations of Crispins, but we also have a number of donated items. On the second floor, we display a lot of animals with fangs and claws. It’s strange, but that’s where the kids always seem to end up. They like to stare at carnivores. Bunnies bore them.”
“Bunnies can’t kill you,” said Jane.
“Maybe that’s what it is. We all like to be scared, don’t we?” Debbie turned and continued up the stairs.
“What’s up on the third floor?” Frost asked.
“More display space. I’ll show you. We use it for our rotating exhibits.”
“So you bring in new stuff?”
“Oh, we don’t have to bring in anything. There’s so much stored down in the basement that we could probably change that exhibit every month for the next twenty years and never repeat ourselves.”
“So what have you got up there now?”
“Bones.”
“You mean human?”
Debbie gave him a quietly amused look. “Of course. How else do we catch the attention of a hopelessly jaded public? We could show them the most exquisite Ming vase, or a carved ivory screen from Persia, and they’d turn their backs and go straight for the human remains.”
“And where do these bones come from?”
“Trust me. These are well documented. They were brought back from Turkey a century ago by one of the Crispins. I can’t remember which one, probably Cornelius. Dr. Robinson thought it was time to get them out of storage and back in the public eye. This exhibit’s all about ancient burial practices.”
“You sound like an archaeologist yourself.”
“Me?” Debbie laughed. “I’ve just got a lot of time on my hands, and I love beautiful things. So I think museums are worth supporting. Did you see the exhibit downstairs? Aside from the mounted carnivores, we have treasures that deserve to be seen. That’s what the museum should focus on, not stuffed bears, but you have to give the public what it wants. That’s why we had such high hopes for Madam X. She would have brought in enough cash to keep our heat turned on, at least.”
They reached the third floor and walked into the Ancient Cemeteries exhibit. Jane saw glass cases containing human bones arranged on sand, as though just uncovered by the archaeologist’s trowel. While Debbie walked briskly past them, Jane found herself falling behind, staring at skeletons curled into fetal positions, at a dead mother’s bony limbs lovingly embracing the fragmented remains of a child. The child could not have been much older than her own daughter, Regina. A whole village of the dead lies here, thought Jane. What sort of man would so brutally rip these people from their resting places and ship them to be ogled in a foreign land? Did Simon Crispin’s ancestor feel any inkling of guilt as he’d wrenched these bones from their graves? Old coins or marble statues or human bones—all were treated the same by the Crispin family. They were items to be collected and displayed like trophies.
“Detective?” said Debbie.
Leaving behind the silent dead, Jane and Frost followed Debbie into Simon Crispin’s office.
The man who sat waiting for them looked far frailer than she’d expected. His hair had thinned to white wisps, and brown age spots blotted his hands and scalp. But his piercing blue eyes were agleam with keen interest as he shook hands with his two visitors.
“Thank you for seeing us, Mr. Crispin,” said Jane.
“I wish I could have attended the autopsy myself,” he said.
“But my hip hasn’t quite healed from surgery, and I’m still hobbling around with a cane. Please, sit down.”
Jane glanced around at the room, which was furnished with a massive oak desk and armchairs upholstered in frayed green velvet. With its dark wood paneling and Palladian windows, the room looked like it belonged in a genteel club from an earlier century, a place where gentlemen sipped sherry. But like the rest of the building, the room showed its age. The Persian carpet was worn almost threadbare, and the yellowing volumes in the barrister’s bookcase appeared to be at least a hundred years old.
Jane sat in one of the velvet chairs, feeling dwarfed by the throne-sized furniture, like a child playing queen for a day. Frost, too, settled into one of the massive chairs, but instead of looking kingly, he looked vaguely constipated on his velvet throne.
“We’ll do all we can to help you with this investigation,” said Simon. “Dr. Robinson’s the one in charge of daily operations. I’m afraid I’m rather useless since I broke my hip.”
“How did it happen?” asked Jane.
“I fell into an excavation pit in Turkey.” He saw Jane’s raised eyebrow and smiled. “Yes, even at the ripe old age of eighty-two, I was working in the field. I’ve never been merely an armchair archaeologist. I believe one has to get one’s hands dirty or you’re nothing but a hobbyist. ” The note of contempt he used for that last word left no doubt what he thought of such dabblers.
Debbie said, “You’ll be back in the field before you know it, Simon. At your age, it just takes time to heal.”
“I don’t have time. I left Turkey seven months ago, and I’m worried the excavation’s turned into a mess.” He gave a sigh. “But it couldn’t be as big a mess as we’re dealing with here.”
“I assume Dr. Robinson told you what we found in the autopsy yesterday,” said Jane.
“Yes. And to say that we’re shocked is an understatement. This is not the kind of attention any museum wants.”
“I doubt it’s the kind of attention Madam X wanted, either.”
“I wasn’t even aware we had a mummy in our collection until Nicholas discovered her during his inventory.”
“He said that was back in January.”
“Yes. Soon after I had my hip operation.”
“How does a museum lose track of something as valuable as a mummy?”
He gave a sheepish smile. “Visit any museum with a large collection, and chances are you’ll find basements as disorganized as ours. We’re a hundred and thirty years old. In that time, over a dozen curators and hundreds of interns, docents, and other volunteers have worked under this roof. Field notes get lost, records go missing, and items get misplaced. So it’s not surprising we’ve lost track of what we own.” He sighed. “I’m afraid I must assume the largest burden of blame.”
“Why?”
“For too long, I left the operational details entirely in the hands of Dr. William Scott-Kerr, our former curator. I was abroad so much, I didn’t know what was happening here at home. But Mrs. Willebrandt saw his deterioration. How he began to misplace papers or affix the wrong labels to displays. Eventually he became so forgetful, he couldn’t identify even common implements. The tragedy is, this man was once brilliant, a former field archaeologist who’d worked all over the world. Mrs. Willebrandt wrote me about her concerns, and when I got home, I could see we had a serious problem. I didn’t have the heart to immediately dismiss him, and as it turned out, I didn’t have to. He was struck by a car and killed, right outside this building. Only seventy-four years old, but it was probably a blessing, considering the grim prognosis had he lived.”
“Was it Alzheimer’s?” asked Jane.
Simon nodded. “The signs were probably there for a decade, but William managed to cover it up well. The collection was left in complete disarray. We didn’t realize how bad things were until I hired Dr. Robinson three years ago, and he discovered that accession ledgers were missing. He couldn’t find documentation for a number of crates in the basement. In January, when he opened up the crate containing Madam X, he had no idea what was inside it. Believe me, we were all stunned. We had no inkling there was ever a mummy in the collection.”
“Miss Duke told us that most of the collection comes down from your family,” said Frost.
“Five generations of Crispins have personally wielded trowels and shovels. Collecting is our family passion. Unfortunately, it’s also a costly obsession, and this museum has sucked up what was left of my inheritance.” He sighed again. “Which leaves it where it is today—short of funds and dependent on volunteers. And donors.”
“Could that be how Madam X ended up here?” asked Frost.
“From a donor?”
“Donated artifacts do come our way,” Simon said. “People want a safe home for some prized antiquity that they can’t properly care for. Or they want a nice little plaque with their name on a permanent display for everyone to see. We’re willing to take almost anything.”
“But you have no record of a donated mummy?”
“Nicholas found no mention of one. And believe me, he searched. He made it his mission. In March we hired Josephine to help us with the Madam X analysis, and she couldn’t track down the mummy’s origins, either.”
“It’s possible Madam X was added to the collection when Dr. Scott-Kerr was curator,” said Debbie.
“The guy with Alzheimer’s,” said Jane.
“Right. And he could have misplaced the paperwork. It would explain things.”
“It sounds like a reasonable theory,” said Jane. “But we have to pursue other theories as well. Who has access to your basement?”
“The keys are kept at the reception desk, so pretty much everyone on staff does.”
“Then anyone on your staff could have placed Madam X in the basement?”
There was a moment’s silence. Debbie and Simon looked at each other, and his face darkened. “I don’t like what you’re implying, Detective.”
“It’s a reasonable question.”
“We are a venerable institution, staffed by excellent people, most of them volunteers,” said Simon. “Our docents, our student interns—they’re here because they’re dedicated to preservation.”
“I wasn’t questioning anybody’s dedication. I just wondered who had access.”
“What you’re really asking is, Who could have stashed a dead body down there?”
“It’s a possibility we have to consider.”
“Trust me, we’ve had no murderers employed here.”
“Can you be absolutely certain of that, Mr. Crispin?” Jane asked quietly, but her gaze left him no easy escape. She could see that her question had disturbed him. She had forced him to confront the awful possibility that someone he knew, now or in the past, could have brought death into this proud bastion of learning.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Crispin,” she finally said. “But things may be a little disrupted here for a while.”
“What do you mean?”
“Somehow a dead body ended up in your museum. Maybe she was donated to you a decade ago. Maybe she was placed here recently. The problem is, you have no documentation. You don’t even know what else is in your collection. We’re going to need to take a look at your basement.”
Simon shook his head in bewilderment. “And just what are you expecting to find?”
She didn’t answer the question; she didn’t need to.
SEVEN
“Is this absolutely necessary?” said Nicholas Robinson. “Do you have to do it this way?”
“I’m afraid we do,” said Jane, and handed him the search warrant. As he read it, Jane stood by with her team of three male detectives. Today she and Frost had brought in Detectives Tripp and Crowe for the search, and they all waited as Robinson took a painfully long time examining the warrant. The ever-impatient Darren Crowe give a loud huff of frustration, and Jane shot him an annoyed look of Cool it, a pointed reminder that she was in charge of this team, and he’d better toe the line.
Robinson frowned at the paperwork. “You’re searching for human remains?” He looked up at Jane. “Well, of course you’ll find them here. This is a museum. And I assure you, those bones on the third floor are ancient. If you’d like me to point out the relevant dental evidence—”
“It’s what you have stored in the basement that interests us. If you’ll unlock the door down there, we can get started.”
Robinson glanced at the other detectives who stood nearby and spotted the crowbar in Detective Tripp’s hands. “You can’t just go breaking open crates! You could damage priceless artifacts.”
“You’re welcome to observe and advise. But please don’t move anything or touch anything.”
“Why are you turning this museum into a crime scene?”
“We’re concerned that Madam X may not be the only surprise in your collection. Now, please come down with us to the basement.”
Robinson swallowed hard and looked at the senior docent, who’d been watching the confrontation. “Mrs. Willebrandt, would you call Josephine and tell her to come in right away? I need her.”
“It’s five minutes to ten, Dr. Robinson. Visitors will be arriving.”
“The museum will have to stay closed today,” said Jane. “We’d prefer that the media not catch wind of what’s going on. So please lock the front doors.”
Her order was pointedly ignored by Mrs. Willebrandt, who kept her gaze on the curator. “Dr. Robinson?”
He gave a resigned sigh. “It appears we have no choice in the matter. Please do as the police say.” Opening a drawer behind the reception desk, he took out a set of keys, then led the way past the wax statue of Dr. Cornelius Crispin, past the Greek and Roman marble busts, to the stairwell. A dozen creaking steps took them down to the basement level.
There he paused. Turning to Jane, he said: “Do I need an attorney? Am I a suspect?”
“No.”
“Then who is? Tell me that much at least.”
“This may date back to before your employment here.”
“How far back?”
“To the previous curator.”
Robinson gave a startled laugh. “That poor man had Alzheimer’s. You don’t really think old William was storing dead bodies down here, do you?”
“The door, Dr. Robinson.”
Shaking his head, he unlocked the door. Cool, dry air spilled out. They stepped into the room, and Jane heard startled murmurs from the other detectives as they glimpsed the vast storage area, filled with row upon row of crates stacked almost to the ceiling.
“Please keep the door closed, if you could,” said Robinson.
“This is a climate-controlled area.”
“Man,” said Detective Crowe. “This is going to take us forever to look through all of these. What’s in these crates, anyway?”
“We’re more than halfway through our inventory,” said Robinson. “If you’d only give us another few months to complete it, we’d be able to tell you what every crate contains.”
“A few months is a long time to wait.”
“It’s taken me a year just to inspect those rows there, all the way to the back shelves. I can personally vouch for their contents. But I haven’t yet opened the crates at this end. It’s a slow process because one needs to be careful and document everything. Some of the items are centuries old and may already be crumbling.”
“Even in a climate-controlled room?” asked Tripp.
“The air-conditioning wasn’t installed until the 1960s.”
Frost pointed to a crate on the bottom of a stack. “Look at the date stamped on that one. ‘1873. Siam.’”
“You see?” Robinson looked at Jane. “There may be treasures here that haven’t been unpacked in a hundred years. My plan was to go through these crates systematically and document everything.” He paused. “But then I discovered Madam X and the inventory came to a halt. Otherwise, we’d be further along by now.”
“Where did you find her crate?” asked Jane. “Which section?”
“Down this row, back against the wall.” He pointed to the far end of the storage area. “She was at the bottom of the stack.”
“You looked in the crates that were on top of hers?”
“Yes. They contained items acquired during the 1910s. Artifacts from the Ottoman Empire, plus a few Chinese scrolls and pottery.”
“The 1910s?” Jane thought of the mummy’s perfect dentition, the amalgam filling in her tooth. “Madam X was almost certainly more recent than that.”
“Then how did she end up underneath older crates?” asked Detective Crowe.
“Obviously someone rearranged things in here,” said Jane. “It would have made her less accessible.”
As Jane gazed around the cavernous space, she thought of the mausoleum in which her grandmother had been interred, a marble palace where every wall was etched with the names of those who rested within the crypts. Is this what I’m looking at now? A mausoleum packed with nameless victims? She walked toward the far end of the basement, where Madam X had been found. Two lightbulbs overhead had burned out in this area, throwing the corner into shadow.
“Let’s start our search here,” she said.
Together Frost and Crowe pulled the top crate off the stack and lowered it to the floor. On the lid was scrawled:MISCELLANEOUS. CONGO. Frost used a crowbar to pry up the lid, and at his first glimpse of what lay inside, he flinched back, bumping against Jane.
“What is it?” she asked.
Darren Crowe suddenly laughed. Reaching into the crate, he pulled out a wooden mask and held it over his face. “Boo!”
“Be careful with that!” said Robinson. “It’s valuable.”
“It’s also creepy as hell,” murmured Frost, staring at the mask’s grotesque features carved into wood.
Crowe set the mask aside and pulled out one of the crumpled newspapers used to cushion the crate’s contents. “London Times, 1930. I’d say this crate predates our perp.”
“I really must protest,” said Robinson. “You’re touching things—contaminating things. You should all be wearing gloves.”
“Maybe you should wait outside, Dr. Robinson,” said Jane.
“No, I won’t. The safety of this collection is my responsibility.”
She turned to confront him. Mild-mannered though he appeared, he stubbornly stood his ground as she advanced, his eyes blinking furiously behind his glasses. Outside this museum, if confronted by a police officer, Nicholas Robinson would probably respond deferentially. But here on his own territory, in defense of his precious collection, he appeared fully prepared to engage in hand-to-hand combat.
“You’re rampaging through here like wild cattle,” he said.
“What makes you think there are more bodies down here? What kind of people do you think work in museums?”
“I don’t know, Dr. Robinson. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Then ask me. Talk to me, instead of tearing apart crates. I know this museum. I know the people who’ve worked here.”
“You’ve been curator here for only three years,” said Jane.
“I also worked here as a summer intern when I was in college. I knew Dr. Scott-Kerr, and he was utterly harmless.” He glared at Crowe, who had just fished a vase out of the open crate. “Hey! That’s at least four hundred years old! Treat it with respect!”
“Maybe it’s time for you and me to step outside,” said Jane.
“We need to talk.”
He shot a worried glance at the three detectives, who had started opening another crate. He reluctantly followed her out of the basement and up the stairs to the first-floor gallery. They stood by the Egyptian exhibit, its faux tomb entrance looming above them.
“Exactly when were you an intern here, Dr. Robinson?” Jane asked.
“Twenty years ago, during my junior and senior years in college. When William was curator, he tried to bring in one or two college students every summer.”
“Why are there no interns now?”
“We no longer have money in our budget to pay their expenses. So we find it almost impossible to attract any students. Besides, when you’re young, you’d rather be working out in the field anyway, with other kids your age. Not confined to this dusty old building.”
“What do you remember about Dr. Scott-Kerr?”
“I liked him quite a bit,” he said. And a smile flickered on his lips at the memory. “He was a little absentminded even then, but he was always pleasant, always generous with his time. He gave me a great deal of responsibility right off the bat, and that made it the best experience I could have had. Even if it did set me up for disappointment.”
“Why?”
“It raised my expectations. I thought I’d be able to land a job just like it when I finished my doctorate.”
“You didn’t?”
He shook his head. “I ended up working as a shovel bum.”
“What does that mean?”
“A contract archaeologist. These days, that’s pretty much the only kind of job one can get with a fresh archaeology degree. They call it cultural resource management. I worked at construction sites and military bases. I dug test pits, looking for any evidence of historic value before the bulldozers moved in. It’s a job only for young people. There are no benefits, you’re always living out of a suitcase, and it’s damn hard on the knees and back. So when Simon called me three years ago to offer me this job, I was glad to hang up my shovel, even if I’m earning less than I did in the field. Which explains why this position went vacant for so long after Dr. Scott-Kerr died.”
“How can a museum operate without a curator?”
“By letting someone like Mrs. Willebrandt run the show, if you can believe it. She left the same displays in the same dusty cases for years.” He glanced toward the reception desk, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “And you know what? She hasn’t changed a whit since I was an intern. That woman was born ancient.”
Jane heard footsteps thump on the stairwell and turned to see Frost trudging up the basement steps. “Rizzoli, you’d better come down and see this.”
“What did you find?”
“We’re not sure.”
She and Robinson followed Frost back down to the basement storeroom. Spilled wood shavings littered the floor where the detectives had searched through several more crates.
“We were trying to pull that crate down, and I braced myself against the wall,” said Detective Tripp. “It kind of gave way behind me. And then I noticed that. ” He pointed toward the bricks.
“Crowe, shine your flashlight this way, so she can see it.”
Crowe aimed his beam and Jane frowned at the wall, which was now bowed outward. One of the bricks had fallen away, leaving a gap through which Jane could see only blackness beyond.
“There’s a space back there,” said Crowe. “When I shine my light through, I can’t even see a back wall.”
Jane turned to Robinson. “What’s behind these bricks?”
“I have no idea,” he murmured, staring in bewilderment at the bowed wall. “I always assumed these walls were solid. But it’s such an old building.”
“How old?”
“At least a hundred and fifty years. That’s what the plumber told us when he came to update the restroom. This was once their family residence, you know.”
“The Crispins?”
“They lived here in the mid-1800s, then the family moved into a new home out in Brookline. That’s when this building was turned into the museum.”
“Which direction does this wall face?” asked Frost.
Robinson thought about it. “That would be facing the street, I think.”
“So there’s no building on the other side of this.”
“No, just the road.”
“Let’s pull some of these bricks out,” said Jane, “and see what’s on the other side.”
Robinson looked alarmed. “If you start removing bricks, it could all collapse.”
“But this obviously isn’t a weight-bearing wall,” said Tripp.
“Or it would already have fallen.”
“I want you all to stop right now,” said Robinson. “Before you go any further, I need to speak to Simon.”
“Then why don’t you go ahead and call him?” said Jane.
As the curator walked out, the four detectives remained in place, a silent tableau poised for his departure. The instant the door shut behind him, Jane’s attention shot back to the wall.
“These lower bricks aren’t even mortared together. They’re just stacked up, loose.”
“So what’s holding up the top of that wall?” asked Frost.
Gingerly, Jane eased out one of the loose bricks, half expecting the rest of them to come tumbling down. But the wall held. She glanced at Tripp. “What do you think?”
“There’s got to be a brace on top supporting the upper third.”
“Then it should be safe to pull out these lower ones, right?”
“It should be. I guess.”
She gave a nervous laugh. “You fill me with such confidence, Tripp.” As the three men stood by and watched, she gently eased out another loose brick, and another. She couldn’t help noticing that the other detectives had backed away, leaving her alone at the base of the wall. Despite the gap she’d now opened, the structure continued to hold. Peering through, she confronted only pitch blackness.
“Give me your flashlight, Crowe.”
He handed it to her.
Dropping to her knees, she shone the beam through the gap. She could make out the rough surface of a facing wall a few yards away. Slowly she panned across it, and her beam came to a sudden halt on a niche carved into the stone. On a face that stared back at her from the darkness.
She stumbled backward, gasping.
“What?” said Frost. “What did you see in there?”
For a moment, Jane could not speak. Heart thudding, she stared at the gap in the bricks, a dark window into a chamber she had no wish to explore. Not after what she’d just glimpsed in those shadows.
“Rizzoli?”
She swallowed. “I think it’s time to call the ME.”
EIGHT
This was not Maura’s first visit to the Crispin Museum.
A few years ago, soon after her move to Boston, she had found the museum listed in a guidebook to area attractions. On one cold Sunday in January, she had stepped through the museum’s front door, expecting to compete with the usual weekend sightseers, the usual harried parents tugging along bored children. Instead she’d entered a silent building staffed by a lone docent at the reception desk, an elderly woman who had taken Maura’s entrance fee and then ignored her. Maura had walked alone through gallery after gloomy gallery, past dusty glass cases filled with curiosities from around the world, past yellowed tags that looked as if they had not been replaced in a century. The struggling furnace could not drive the chill from the building, and Maura had kept on her coat and scarf during the entire tour.
Two hours later, she had walked out, depressed by the experience. Depressed, also, because that solitary visit seemed to symbolize her life at the time. Recently divorced and without friends in a new city, she was a solitary wanderer in a cold and gloomy landscape where no one greeted her or even seemed aware of her existence.
She had not returned to the Crispin Museum. Until today.
She felt a twinge of that same depression as she stepped into the building, as she once again breathed in its scent of age. Though years had passed since she’d last set foot here, the gloom she’d felt on that January day instantly resettled upon her shoulders, a reminder that her life, after all, had not really changed. Although she was now in love, she still wandered alone on Sundays—particularly on Sundays.
But today’s official duties demanded her attention as she followed Jane down the stairs to the basement storage area. By now, the detectives had made the hole in the wall large enough for her to squeeze through. She paused at the chamber entrance and frowned at the pile of bricks that had been pulled loose.
“Is it safe to go in there? Are you sure it won’t collapse?” Maura asked.
“It’s supported by a cross brace at the top,” said Jane. “This was meant to look like a solid wall, but I think there may have been a door here at one time, leading to a hidden chamber.”
“Hidden? For what purpose?”
“To stash valuables? To hide booze during Prohibition? Who knows? Even Simon Crispin has no idea what this space was intended for.”
“Did he know it existed?”
“He said he’d heard stories when he was a kid about a tunnel connecting this building with one across the street. But this chamber’s just a dead end.” Jane handed her a flashlight. “You first,” she said. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Maura crouched at the hole. She felt the gazes of the detectives silently watching her, waiting for her reaction. Whatever waited inside that chamber had disturbed them, and their silence made her reluctant to proceed. She could not see into the space, but she knew that something foul waited in the darkness—something that had been shut away so long, the air within seemed rank and chill. She dropped to her knees and squeezed through the opening.
Beyond, she found a space just high enough for her to stand. Reaching out straight in front of her, she felt nothing. She turned on her flashlight.
A disembodied face squinted back at her.
She sucked in a shocked breath and jerked back, colliding with Jane, who had just squeezed into the space behind her.
“I guess you saw them,” said Jane.
“Them?”
Jane turned on her flashlight. “There’s one right here.” The beam landed on the face that had just startled Maura. “And a second one’s here.” The beam shifted, landing on a second niche, which held another face, grotesquely shriveled. “And finally there’s a third one right here.” Jane aimed her flashlight at a stone ledge just above Maura. The wizened face was framed by a waterfall of lustrous black hair. Brutal stitches bound the lips together, as though condemning them to eternal silence.
“Tell me these aren’t real heads,” said Jane softly. “Please.”
Maura reached in her pocket for gloves. Her hands felt chilled and clumsy, and she fumbled in the darkness to pull latex over clammy fingers. As Jane aimed her beam up at the ledge, Maura gently pulled the head from its stone shelf. It felt startlingly weightless and was compact enough to rest in her palm. The curtain of hair was unbound, and she flinched as silky strands brushed across her bare arm. Not mere nylon, she thought, but real hair. Human hair.
Maura swallowed. “I think this is a tsantsa. ”
“A what?”
“A shrunken head.” Maura looked at Jane. “It seems to be real.”
“It could also be old, right? Just some antique the museum collected from Africa?”
“South America.”
“Whatever. Couldn’t these be part of their old collection?”
“They could be.” Maura looked at her in the darkness. “Or they could be recent.”
The museum staff stared at the three tsantsas resting on the museum’s lab table. Mercilessly lit by the glare of exam lights, every detail of the heads was illuminated, from their feathery eyelashes and eyebrows to the elaborate braiding of the cotton strings that bound their lips closed. Crowning two of the heads was long, jet-black hair. The hair of the third had been cut in a blunt bob that looked like a woman’s wig perched atop a far-too-small doll’s head. The heads were so diminutive, in fact, that they could easily be mistaken for mere rubber souvenirs, were it not for the clearly human texture of the brows and lashes.
“I have no idea why these were behind that wall,” Simon murmured. “Or how they got there.”
“This building is full of mysteries, Dr. Isles,” said Debbie Duke. “Whenever we update the wiring or fix the plumbing, our contractors find some new surprise. A bricked-up space or a passage that serves absolutely no purpose.” She looked across the table at Dr. Robinson. “You remember that fiasco with the lighting last month, don’t you? The electrician had to break down half the third-floor wall just to figure out where the wires tracked. Nicholas? Nicholas?”
The curator was staring so intently at the tsantsas that only when he heard his name called again did he glance up. “Yes, this building’s something of a puzzle,” he said. And he added, softly: “It makes me wonder what else we haven’t found behind these walls.”
“So these things are real?” asked Jane. “They’re actually shrunken human heads?”
“They’re definitely real,” said Nicholas. “The problem is…”
“What?”
“Josephine and I scanned all the inventory records we could locate. According to the accession ledgers, this museum does indeed have tsantsas in the collection. They were added in 1898, when they were brought back from the upper Amazon basin by Dr. Stanley Crispin.” He looked at Simon. “Your grandfather, I believe.”
Simon nodded. “I’d heard we had them in our collection. I never knew what became of them.”
“According to the curator who worked here in the 1890s, the items are described as follows.” Robinson flipped to the page in the ledger. “‘Ceremonial Jivaro trophy heads, both in excellent condition.’”
Registering the significance of that description, Maura glanced up at him. “Did you say both ?”
Robinson nodded. “According to these records, there are only two in the collection.”
“Could a third have been added later, but never recorded?”
“Certainly. That’s one of the issues we’ve been struggling with, our incomplete records. That’s why I began the inventory, so I could finally get a handle on what we have.”
Maura frowned at the three shrunken heads. “So now the question is, which one is the new addition? And how recent is it?”
“I’m betting on her being the new one.” Jane pointed to the tsantsa with the bobbed hair. “I swear I saw a haircut just like that on my barista this morning.”
“First of all,” said Robinson, “it’s almost impossible to tell, just by appearance, if a tsantsa is male or female. Shrinking the head distorts the features and makes the sexes look alike. Second, the hair of some traditional tsantsas may be cut short like that one. They’re unusual, but the haircut doesn’t really tell us anything.”
“So how do you tell a traditional shrunken head from a modern copy?” asked Maura.
“You will permit me to handle them?” Robinson asked.
“Yes, of course.”
He crossed to the cabinet to get gloves and pulled them on as deliberately as a doctor about to perform delicate surgery. This man would be meticulous no matter what his profession, Maura thought. She could not remember any medical school classmate more exacting than Nicholas Robinson.
“First,” he said, “I should explain what constitutes a genuine Jivaro tsantsa. It was one of my particular interests, so I know a bit about them. The Jivaro people live along the border between Ecuador and Peru, and they regularly raid each other’s tribes. Warriors will take anyone’s head—men, women, children.”
“Why take the heads?” asked Jane.
“It has to do with their concept of the soul. They believe that people can have up to three different types of souls. There’s an ordinary soul, which is what everyone possesses at birth. Then there’s an ancient vision soul, and it’s something you have to earn through ceremonial efforts. It gives you special powers. If someone earns an ancient vision soul, and then he’s murdered, he transforms into the third kind—an avenging soul, who will pursue his killer. The only way to stop an avenging soul from exacting retribution is to cut off the head and turn it into a tsantsa. ”
“How do you make a tsantsa ?” Jane looked down at the three doll-sized heads. “I just don’t see how you can shrink a human head down to something that small.”
“Accounts of the process are contradictory, but most reports agree on a few key steps. Because of the tropical environment, the process had to be started immediately after death. You take the severed head and slice open the scalp in a straight line, from the crown all the way to the base of the neck. Then you peel the skin away from the bone. It actually comes off quite easily.”
Maura looked at Jane. “You’ve seen me do almost the same thing at autopsy. I peel the scalp away from the skull. But my incision goes across the crown, ear to ear.”
“Yeah, and that’s the part that always grosses me out,” said Jane. “Especially when you peel it over the face.”
“Oh yes. The face,” said Robinson. “The Jivaro peel that off, too. It takes skill, but the face comes off, along with the scalp, all in one piece. What you have, then, is a mask of human skin. They turn it inside out and scrape it clean. Then the eyelids are sewn shut.” He lifted one of the tsantsas and pointed to the almost invisible stitches. “See how delicately it’s been done, leaving the eyelashes looking completely natural? This is really skillful work.”
Was that a note of admiration in his voice? Maura wondered. Robinson did not seem to notice the uneasy looks that Maura and Jane exchanged; he was focused entirely on the craftsmanship that had turned human skin into an archaeological oddity.
He turned the tsantsa over to look at the neck, which was merely a leathery tube. Coarse stitches ran up the back of the neck and the scalp, where they were almost hidden by the thick hair. “After the skin is removed from the skull,” he continued, “it’s simmered in water and plant juices, to melt away the last of the fat. When every last bit of flesh and fat is scraped away, it all gets turned right-side out again, and the incision in the back of the head is sewn up, as you can see here. The lips are fastened together using three sharpened wooden skewers. The nostrils and ears are plugged with cotton. At this point, it’s just a floppy sack of skin, so they stuff hot stones and sand into the cavity to sear the skin. Then it’s rubbed with charcoal and hung over smoke, until the skin shrinks down to the consistency of leather. This whole process doesn’t take long. Probably not more than a week.”
“And what do they do with it?” asked Jane.
“They come home to their tribe with their preserved trophies and celebrate with a feast and ritual dances. They wear their tsantsas like necklaces, hung by a cord around the warrior’s neck. A year later, there’s a second feast, to transfer the power from the victim’s spirit. Finally, a month after that, there’s a third celebration. That’s when the last touches are performed. They take the three wooden skewers out of the lips and thread cotton string through the holes and braid it. And they add the ear ornaments. From then on, the heads are seen as bragging rights. Whenever the warrior wants to display his manhood, he wears his tsantsa around his neck.”
Jane gave a disbelieving laugh. “Just like guys today, with their gold chains. What is it with macho men and necklaces?”
Maura surveyed the three tsantsas on the table. All were of similar size. All had braided lip strings and delicately sutured eyelids. “I’m afraid I can’t see any difference among these three heads. They all appear skillfully crafted.”
“They are,” said Robinson. “But there’s one important difference. And I’m not talking about the haircut.” He turned and looked at Josephine, who had been standing silently at the foot of the table. “Can you see what I’m talking about?”
The young woman hesitated, loath to step any closer. Then she pulled on gloves and moved to the table. She picked up the heads one by one and studied each under the light. At last she picked up a head with long hair and beetle-wing ornaments. “This one isn’t Jivaro,” she said.
Robinson nodded. “I agree.”
“Because of the earrings?” asked Maura.
“No. Earrings like those are traditional,” said Robinson.
“Then what made you choose that particular one, Dr. Pulcillo?” said Maura. “It looks pretty much like the other two.”
Josephine stared down at the head in question, and her black hair spilled over her shoulders, the strands as dark and glossy as the tsantsa ’s, the colors so eerily similar they could have blended one into the other. Just for an instant, Maura had the unsettling impression that she was staring at the same head, before and after. Josephine alive, Josephine dead. Was that why the young woman was so reluctant to touch it? Did she see herself in those shriveled features?
“It’s the lips,” said Josephine.
Maura shook her head. “I don’t see any difference. All three have their lips sewn shut with cotton thread.”
“It has to do with Jivaro ritual. What Nicholas just said.”
“Which part?”
“That the wooden pegs are eventually removed from the lips and cotton string is threaded through the holes.”
“All three of these have cotton thread.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t happen until the third feast. Over a year after the kill.”
“She’s absolutely right,” said Robinson, looking pleased that his young colleague had picked up on precisely the detail he’d wanted her to notice. “The lip pegs, Dr. Isles! When they’re left in for a whole year, they leave gaping holes behind.”
Maura studied the heads on the table. Two of the tsantsas had large holes punched through the lips. The third did not.
“No pegs were used in this one,” said Robinson. “The lips were simply stitched together, right after the head was removed. This one isn’t Jivaro. Whoever made it took a few shortcuts. Maybe he didn’t know exactly how it should be done. Or this was merely meant to be sold to tourists, or bartered as trade goods. But it’s not a ceremonial specimen.”
“Then what are its origins?” asked Maura.
Robinson paused. “I really can’t tell you. I can only say that it is not authentic Jivaro.”
With gloved hands, Maura lifted the tsantsa from the table. She had held severed human heads in her palms before, and this one, minus its skull, was startlingly light, a mere husk of dried skin and hair.
“We can’t even be certain of its sex,” said Robinson. “Although its features, distorted though they are, seem feminine to me. Too delicate to be a man’s.”
“I agree,” said Maura.
“What about the skin color?” asked Jane. “Does that tell us its race?”
“No,” said Robinson. “The process of shrinking darkens the skin. This could even be a Caucasian. And without a skull, without any teeth to x-ray, I can’t tell you how old this specimen is.”
Maura turned the tsantsa upside down and stared into the neck opening. It was startling to see merely a hollow space rather than cartilage and muscle, trachea and esophagus. The neck was half collapsed, the dark cavity hidden from view. Suddenly she flashed back to the autopsy she’d performed on Madam X. She remembered the dry cave of a mouth, the glint of metal in the throat. And she remembered the shock she’d felt at her first glimpse of the souvenir cartouche. Had the killer left a similar clue tucked into this victim’s remains?
“Could I have more light?” she said.
Josephine swung a magnifying lamp toward her, and Maura aimed the beam into the neck cavity. Through the narrow opening, she could just make out a pale mass balled up within. “It looks like paper,” she said.
“That wouldn’t be unusual,” said Robinson. “Sometimes you find crumpled newspapers stuffed inside, to help maintain the shape of the head for shipping. If it’s a South American newspaper, then at least we’ll know something about its origins.”
“Do you have forceps?”
Josephine retrieved a pair from the workroom drawer and handed them to her. Maura introduced the forceps into the neck opening and grasped what was inside. Gingerly she tugged, and crumpled newspaper emerged. Smoothing out the page, she saw it was printed in neither Spanish nor Portuguese, but English.
“The Indio Daily News ?” Jane gave a startled laugh. “It’s from California.”
“And look at the date.” Maura pointed to the top of the page.
“It’s only twenty-six years old.”
“Still, the head could be much older,” said Robinson. “That newspaper could have been stuffed in there later, just for shipping.”
“But it does confirm one thing.” Maura looked up. “This head wasn’t part of the museum’s original collection. She could be another victim, added as recently as…” She paused, her gaze suddenly focused on Josephine.
The young woman had gone pale. Maura had seen that sickly color before, on the faces of young cops observing their first autopsies, and she knew that it usually heralded a nauseated dash to the sink or a stagger toward the nearest chair. Josephine did neither; she simply turned and walked out.
“I should check on her.” Dr. Robinson stripped off his gloves.
“She didn’t look well.”
“I’ll see how she’s doing,” Frost volunteered, and he followed Josephine out of the room. Even after the door swung shut, Dr. Robinson stood staring after him, as though debating whether he should follow.
“Do you have the records from twenty-six years ago?” asked Maura. “Dr. Robinson?”
Suddenly aware that she’d said his name, he turned to her. “Excuse me?”
“Twenty-six years ago. The date of this newspaper. Do you have documents from that period?”
“Oh. Yes, we have found a ledger from the 1970s and 1980s. But I don’t recall any tsantsa mentioned in it. If it came in during that time, it wasn’t recorded.” He looked at Simon. “Do you remember?”
Wearily, Simon shook his head. He appeared drained, as if he’d aged ten years in the last half hour. “I don’t know where that head came from,” he said. “I don’t know who put it behind that wall or why.”
Maura stared at the shrunken head, its eyes and lips sewn shut for eternity. And she said softly: “It looks like someone has been compiling a collection all his own.”
NINE
Josephine was desperate to be left alone, but she could think of no graceful way to brush off Detective Frost. He’d followed her upstairs to her office and was now standing in her doorway, watching her with a look of concern. He had mild eyes and a kind face, and his shaggy blond hair made her think of the towheaded twin boys she often saw whooshing down the slide in the neighborhood playground. Nevertheless, he was a policeman, and policemen frightened her. She shouldn’t have left the room so abruptly. She shouldn’t have called attention to herself. But a glimpse of that newspaper had hit her like a fist, stealing her breath, rocking her off her feet.
Indio, California. Twenty-six years ago.
The town where I was born. The year that I was born.
It was yet another eerie connection to her past, and she didn’t understand how it could be possible. She needed time to think about this, to figure out why so many old and secret ties to her own life should be hidden in the basement of the obscure museum where she had taken a job. It’s as if my own life, my own past, has been preserved in this collection. Even as she mentally struggled for an explanation, she was forced to smile and keep up the small talk with Detective Frost, who refused to leave her doorway.
“Are you feeling better?” he asked.
“I got a little light-headed in there. Probably low blood sugar.” She sank into her chair. “I shouldn’t have skipped breakfast this morning.”
“Do you need a cup of coffee or something? Can I get one for you?”
“No, thank you.” She managed a smile, hoping it would be enough to send him on his way. Instead, he stepped into her office.
“Did that newspaper have some special significance to you?” Frost asked.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just that I noticed you looked really startled when Dr. Isles opened it up and we saw it was from California.”
He was watching me. He’s still watching me.
Now was not the time to let him see how close she was to panic. As long as she kept her head down, as long as she stayed on the periphery and played the role of the quiet museum employee, the police would have no reason to glance her way.
“It’s not just the newspaper,” she said. “It’s this whole creepy situation. Finding bodies—and body parts—in this building. I think of museums as sanctuaries. Places of study and contemplation. Now I feel like I’m working in a house of horrors and I’m just wondering when the next body part’s going to pop up.”
He gave a sympathetic smile, and his boyishness made him look like anything but a policeman. She judged him to be in his midthirties, yet there was something about him that made him seem much younger, and even callow. She saw his wedding ring and thought: There’s yet another reason to keep this man at arm’s length.
“To be honest, I think this place is already pretty creepy,” said Frost. “You’ve got all those bones displayed on the third floor.”
“Those bones are two thousand years old.”
“Does that make them less disturbing?”
“It makes them historically significant. I know it doesn’t seem like much of a difference. But something about the passage of time gives death a sense of distance, doesn’t it? As opposed to Madam X, who could be someone we might actually have known.” She paused, feeling a chill. And said, softly: “Ancient remains are easier to deal with.”
“They’re more like pottery and statues, I guess.”
“In a way.” She smiled. “The dustier the better.”
“And that appeals to you?”
“You sound like you can’t understand it.”
“I’m just wondering what kind of person chooses to spend a lifetime studying old bones and pottery.”
“ What’s a girl like you doing in a job like this?Is that the question?”
He laughed. “You’re the youngest thing in this whole building.”
Now she, too, smiled, because it was true. “It’s the connection with the past. I love to pick up a pottery shard and imagine the man who spun the clay on his wheel. And the woman who used that pot to carry water. And the child who one day dropped it and broke it. History’s never been dead for me. I’ve always felt it was alive and pulsing in those objects you see in the museum cases. It’s in my blood, something I was born with, because…” Her voice trailed off as she realized she’d strayed into hazardous territory. Don’t talk about the past.
Don’t talk about Mom.
To her relief, Detective Frost did not pick up on her sudden wariness. His next question wasn’t about her at all. “I know you haven’t been here too long,” he said, “but did you ever get the feeling things weren’t quite right here?”
“How do you mean?”
“You said that you feel as if you’ve been working in a house of horrors.”
“That was a figure of speech. You can understand it, can’t you, after what you just found behind the basement wall? After what Madam X turned out to be?” The temperature in her air-conditioned office seemed to keep dropping. Josephine reached back to pull on the sweater she’d hung on her chair. “At least my job isn’t nearly as horrifying as yours must be. You wonder why I choose to work with pottery and old bones. And I wonder why someone like you would choose to work with—well, fresh horrors.” She looked up and saw a glimmer of discomfort in his eyes because this time, the question was directed at him. For a man accustomed to interrogating others, he did not seem eager to reciprocate with personal details of his own.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I’m not allowed to ask questions. Only answer them.”
“No, I’m just wondering what you meant.”
“Meant?”
“When you said someone like you. ”
“Oh.” She gave a sheepish laugh. “It’s just that you strike me as such a nice person. A kind person.”
“And most policemen aren’t?”
She flushed. “I keep digging the hole deeper, don’t I? Really, I meant it as a compliment. Because I’ll admit, most policemen scare me a little.” She looked down at her desk. “I don’t think I’m the only one who feels that way.”
He sighed. “I’m afraid you may be right. Even though I think I’m the least scary person in the world.”
But I’m afraid of you anyway, she thought. Because I know what you could do to me if you learned my secret.
“Detective Frost?” Nicholas Robinson had appeared in her doorway. “Your colleague needs you back downstairs.”
“Oh. Right.” Frost shot a smile at Josephine. “We’ll talk more later, Dr. Pulcillo. And get something to eat, why don’t you?”
Nicholas waited until Frost had left the room, then he said to her: “What was that all about?”
“We were just chatting, Nick.”
“He’s a detective. I don’t think they just chat. ”
“It’s not as if he was interrogating me or anything.”
“Is something bothering you, Josie? Something that I should know about?”
Though his question put her on guard, she managed to say calmly: “Why would you think that?”
“You’re not yourself. And it’s not just because of what happened today. Yesterday, when I came up behind you in the hallway, you almost jumped out of your skin.”
She sat with her hands on her lap, grateful that he could not see them tighten into two knots. In the short time they’d worked together, he had become eerily astute at reading her moods, at knowing when she needed a good laugh and when she needed to be left alone. Surely he could see that this was one of the times she wanted to be alone, yet he did not retreat. It was unlike the Nicholas she knew, a man who was unfailingly respectful of her privacy.
“Josie?” he said. “Do you want to talk about anything?”
She gave a rueful laugh. “I guess I’m mortified that I blew it so badly with Madam X. That I didn’t realize we were dealing with a fake.”
“That carbon fourteen analysis threw us both off. I was just as wrong as you were.”
“But your background isn’t Egyptology. That’s why you hired me, and I screwed up.” She leaned forward, massaging her temples. “If you’d hired someone more experienced, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“You didn’t screw up. You’re the one who insisted on the CT scan, remember? Because you didn’t feel completely confident about her. You were the one who led us to the truth. So stop beating yourself up about this.”
“I made the museum look bad. I made you look bad, for hiring me.”
He didn’t respond for a moment. Instead he pulled off his glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief. Always carrying linen handkerchiefs was one of those anachronistic little habits of his that she found so endearing. Sometimes Nicholas reminded her of a gentleman bachelor from an earlier, more innocent time. A time when men would stand up if a woman walked into the room.
“Maybe we should look at the bright side of all this,” he said.
