Aaron Elkins: Dead men’s hearts

“Ugh. Yes. Phooey.” She was spitting dust. “Nothing that a few weeks in traction won’t fix. What about you?”

“Yes, fine.”

Well, pretty much. The van had tipped slowly enough to let him prop himself against the roof and the back of the front seat before it had turned completely over, but the tire iron- he’d brought it up front with him-had gouged him in the thigh, which had hurt a little, and somewhere along the way he had bitten his cheek again in the same spot, which had hurt like hell but wasn’t anything serious. He realized abruptly that the engine was still running and quickly reached down- reached up, rather-to switch off the ignition, then cautiously peeked through a corner of the space where the windshield had been to check their bearings.

They were in a kind of nook or cul-de-sac, a mini-box canyon off the main box canyon. Apparently the van had swerved into it, then flipped when it rode up onto the sloping talus at the foot of the cliffs, rolling into the troughlike center of the little bay. A good thing too; only twenty or thirty feet ahead of them-all around them, in fact-were truck-sized boulders that had fallen from above, a collision with any one of which would surely have resulted in more to complain about than a bitten cheek.

There was another good thing: the hollow from which Forrest had been firing was out of sight around a spur of rock, and if they couldn’t see where he was, then he couldn’t see where they were either. That, Gideon assured himself, was what the laws of geometrical optics said, and who was he to question the laws of geometrical optics?

Not only that, but geography was cooperating too. They were on the same side that Forrest was on; behind him, so to speak. The perpendicular spur that thrust out from the cliff to create their little bay was a promontory of the same massive organ-pipe formation in one of whose upper hollows Forrest had been crouching to fire. But that was at the other end of it, and to get from there to here, to a place where he could see them again, Forrest would have to go the long way around, behind the sinuous outcropping, because on the canyon side it reared up, sheer and columnar, with no visible path or ledge around it.

The problem for Forrest would be that he had no way of knowing that the van had turned over, since he couldn’t see the bay. As far as he knew, it could come rattling back out at any moment, spewing nuts and bolts like a cartoon car and heading full-tilt for the entrance again. And if he was stuck behind the outcropping when it did, there would be nothing to stop their getting through. On the other hand, he could hardly keep his position at the canyon’s mouth because Gideon and Julie might already be scrambling up the bay’s back wall and out of his grasp.

In other words, Forrest Freeman had himself a predicament. And if Forrest Freeman’s past behavior was any indication, what he would do would be to worry for a while before doing anything else. That meant that they ought to have seven or eight minutes before he showed up above them with his rifle; five minutes while he dithered and another two or three while he worked his way around the promontory, if that was what he decided to do.

Gideon turned back to Julie. “Let’s get out of this thing. We’ll stand a lot better chance out there-there are caves and outcroppings all over the place-than we will waiting in here for him to come pick us off.”

“I won’t argue with that,” she said. “I think the front window’s the easiest way out. Go ahead, I’ll follow you.”

“Right.” He pulled himself through, glanced warily at the deserted cliff top, and reached back in to help her get out.

She was up on her right elbow with a puzzled look on her face, tugging awkwardly at the junk that lay over her extended left foot. “Ow. Damn.”

“Julie, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

“No… I don’t think so. My ankle’s caught… Damn! There’s this stupid bar…”

“I’ll give you a hand.” He clambered back in, hauling himself to her side on his elbows.

“No, it’s not going to work,” she said, straining at her foot. “Damn!”

A glance made the problem clear. When the van had flipped, two of the three passenger seat rows had come loose, and one of them had fallen over Julie’s leg and been wedged firmly into the buckled ceiling. The steel reinforcing bar that ran along its base had come down across her ankle, pinning her hiking-booted foot to the crushed roof.

He tried to maneuver her foot out of its steel-rimmed trap without success-there wasn’t enough room to move it- then tugged fruitlessly at the bar.

“You’re lucky you didn’t lose your foot,” he said.

“That’s me,” she said grimly, “lucky Julie.”

He made her lie back, then managed to get both aims around the seat, pulling from his cramped position and putting all the strength of his legs and back into it. It didn’t budge, didn’t feel as if anything short of a crane could get it to budge.

He fell back. “Can you get your foot out of the boot?”

“I don’t know.” She fumbled at the laces, blocked by the mass of the seat. “No, it’s hard to get hold-”

“Here, let me-”

Her hand came down on his wrist. “Gideon, there’s no time! He could be here any minute. You go!”

“And leave you?” He laughed, but he felt as if something had punched him in the throat. “Forget it.” He went back to her boot laces.

Her fingers dug into his wrist. Her face was very close. “Gideon, go! It’s our only chance.”

“But-”

“I’ll be all right. We’ll be all right. I know you’ll think of something.”

“I-Julie, I-”

“Go, already!”

I know you’ll think of something.

He had been unable to reply. He’d stroked her cheek, pulled himself back out of the car, and run for the cliff. And he had scrambled up the rocky wall with the mindless, pumping strength of a desert animal, seeming to throw himself from outcropping, to boulder, to crevice, to ridge, every second expecting to see Forrest appear on the rim above him, rifle in hand.

Forrest.

How could he not have realized it? He should have put it all together in Abydos, when TJ had told him about the ornaments missing from the el-Amarna Museum. But he hadn’t; not until they were practically in Forrest’s sights, not until Julie showed him what was in the ledger. “Head of young woman or girl, inscribed…” that is, of course, engraved. With hollows for the insertion of faience eyes, channels for eyebrows of gold, perforations for golden earrings, drilled holes for a wig of delicate golden strands…

Hadn’t Arlo stood right mere in the museum and flatly told him the damn things weren’t jewelry? Of course they weren’t jewelry. They were inlays; gold and faience inlays and decorations to adorn the head of an A mama statuette. And when everything was assembled-head, inlays, and body-whoever had them would have something that no one else in the world had. An intact, complete Amarna Period statuette. Museums and collectors had burned to own one for decades, but none had ever been recovered.

No wonder the head had been worth killing over. And no wonder Haddon had had to go. He’d seen the head. He could describe it accurately. And if he could describe it, then eventually, when it came on the market as it surely would, it could be traced back to Horizon House and to the people who were there at the time. So he had to be disposed of, and disposed of before returning to Luxor, where he was chafing to show it to everyone in sight.

It wouldn’t have been hard for Forrest to murder the old Egyptologist. Haddon liked his after-dinner drinks and after-dinner monologues; finding people to sit through them was his problem. Forrest could easily enough have gotten himself invited to Haddon’s stateroom. Once there, how difficult would it have been to use Haddon’s bathroom at some point and emerge with four or five crushed-up antidepressant pills? How difficult to find a way to slip them into Haddon’s brandy or Scotch?