Aaron Elkins: Dead men’s hearts

Damn Haddon, he had gotten to her again. She was still fuming. It wasn’t simply because of the schedule change- although that would have been enough-but because of his uncanny ability to set her off just by being himself. She was not an emotional person. She hated emotional people, and she hated herself when she blew up, the way she had back there. What had been the point? How many times had they been over the same ground, and where was it ever going to get them? But Clifford Haddon, like no other person she had ever known, could turn her into a ranting screamer just byopening his mouth. It was amazing, really. Sometimes, especially when he’d been at his Scotch, he could set her teeth on edge just by walking into a room. Those smarmy, prissy speeches, that horrible little pharaoh’s tuft of beard, that narrow-minded, self-righteous…

And why was it only her? That was what was so frustrating, that nobody else ever blew their stack. Haddon hadn’t aced only her out of the picture, after all; he had cut the time that Jerry would have to show the library as well, and what had Jerry’s reaction been?

Duh, sure, chief, what else?

No, that wasn’t fair. Jerry wasn’t dumb, she knew that, he honestly didn’t give a damn. He was probably glad of the change. Leaving him out of it altogether probably would have made him happiest of all. It was too bad she couldn’t be more like her easygoing, take-things-in-his-stride husband when it came to dealing with their despicable boss, she thought, not quite meaning it. But thank God he was always there to provide TLC and propping-up after one of her sessions with Haddon. She’d probably need some tonight.

A few steps ahead of her, Ragheb stopped at the warped and leaning metal gate of an unroofed, stucco-walled enclosure jutting out from the rear of the laundry building. Her eyes had gotten used to the darkness now. Even without the flashlight she could see the welter of junk through the open gate: corroded bed frames, a toilet bowl broken in two, knotted tangles of filthy, moldering clothing, some rust-cankered, mysterious engine parts reputed to be from a 1925 motorcycle.

Ragheb waited for her to precede him. He spoke English. “Moomy in here, madam,” he said politely.

Unexpectedly, she caught herself hesitating. Out here, at the furthest perimeter of the Horizon compound and of the city itself, shielded by the bulk of the buildings, the familiar traffic sounds from the Corniche were muted and distant. The civilized aroma of bougainvillea and hibiscus from the well-planted grounds was faint, the ashy, primeval smell of the vast, unseen Eastern Desert strong and mysterious. Even the familiar, friendly Ragheb was suddenly exotic and inscrutable. A rare, chill breeze from the desert eddied about her, raising the tiny hairs on the back of her neck.

“Well, then,” she said, and her own too-loud voice made her start. “Let’s just see what we have.” Firmly, she led the way into the enclosure.

Thirty seconds later, grim-faced, she told Ragheb to go back and get Haddon.

They came scurrying in a line behind the director, who had commandeered Ragheb’s flashlight and made for the storage area double-time, his bearded chin well out ahead of his feet, a man who intended to set things straight, by God.

But when he reached the enclosure, he lost impetus. Standing at the entrance, swaying a little, he flashed the light from mound to mound of junk. “Well then, where is it? Don’t keep us in suspense.”

TJ used her own penlight to direct his larger beam to the sandy ground near a rough, oil-stained workbench built into one of the corners. There, next to two rusted five-gallon cans of congealed roofing tar, one of them on its side, a stained, dun-colored, unevenly globular object gleamed dully in the artificial light.

Jerry was the first to speak. “A skull. I guess there isn’t much doubt about its being human.”

“There’s more than the skull,” TJ said. She bounced her thin line of light to other objects scattered in an eight- or nine-foot radius over the junk-littered ground: a snarled, grisly clump consisting of a scapula and humerus held together by a few tattered shreds of ligament, the entire mess caught up in a twisted, filthy galabiya; a thigh bone with the ends gnawed away; a sacrum and an innominate bone, also held together by a few threads of fiber. A few feet from the skull was what appeared to be a turban, collapsed and filthy. Near the sacrum was a cracked, curled sandal.

“An Arab,” Jerry said. “The jackals must have been at him. There’s still some dried flesh left, but not much.”

Arlo shivered. “I wonder how long he’s… it’s been here.”‘

“Who knows?” Jerry said. He leaned over, peering at the femur, hands on his knees. “Ten years, twenty years…”

“Impossible,” Haddon said curtly. “This area was in regular use until-when was it?”

“Until the big rains five years ago, so they’ve been here less than that,” TJ said. “Five years at most. And I doubt if the jackals can get into the compound. Dogs, more likely, or those monster rats.”

Arlo’s face, pasty at the best of times, was distinctly greenish in the light from the flashlights. He looked away as Haddon shone his light directly onto the skull.

“Who is it?” the director demanded, sounding thoroughly aggrieved. “How did he get in? What the devil was he doing in here?”

No one answered. “Nobody’d better touch anything,” Jerry said.

Haddon’s lips turned down. “Perish the thought.”

“And I think we’d better notify the police.”

“The police?” Haddon turned on him. “Good God, Jerry, have you ever dealt with the Egyptian police? Why would we want to drag them into this? This-this person has been dead for years and no one’s missed him yet, have they? I think it’s clear enough what happened. The poor beggar got in here somehow, hoping to find something worth stealing in the collection and had the misfortune to die in flagrante delicto. Claimed by the Grim Reaper in the very act of plunder.”

His light darted erratically through the jumble of discarded objects. “Ha, see that piece right there? He must have come in here-”

“Why here!” TJ said. She waved her own smaller beam over the mounds of debris. “What would he want in here?”

“Now how would I possibly know that? Who knows what was in the heart of a dead man? Perhaps he heard someone coming and ran in here to hide. Perhaps he was hiding until nightfall, when he could make his, er, getaway more easily. Whatever it was, he simply had the bad luck to die in the interim.”

“Of what?” TJ persisted. “Old age? Gallstones? Guilt?”

“Whatever the reason,” Haddon said sweetly, “we can rest secure in the knowledge that the unfortunate gentleman is in the arms of Osiris and beyond caring what we make of him. I hardly see the need to stir things up at this late date, and particularly not now, with the Gustafsons here, busily putting their noses into every corner, not to mention that accursed camera crew. And don’t forget the anticipated arrival of the man known to one and all as the Skeleton Detective tomorrow evening. God in heaven! No, it seems to me it would save a great deal of commotion all around if we simply disposed of his remains without bothering anybody.”

“You’re kidding!” TJ exclaimed.

“With dignity, of course,” Haddon added.

“We could bury him right in the compound,” Arlo volunteered, earning a surprised glance from Haddon. It was not common for Arlo to address the director without having been spoken to first. “In the northeast corner, where Lambert used to bury his garbage. Nobody uses it anymore.”

“Do I understand you to be volunteering for the assignment?” Haddon asked.