Douglas Preston - Thunderhead

“I was thinking the same thing,” Nora said. “If that’s the case, once we’ve made camp and set up communications with the outside world, he’ll calm down.”

“I think so. But then again, he might not.”

There was another silence.

“So?” Sloane prompted at last.

“So what?”

“Are we lost?” she asked gently.

Nora sighed. “I don’t know. Guess we’ll find out tomorrow.”

Aragon grunted. “If this is indeed an Anasazi road, it’s unlike any other I’ve encountered. It’s as if the Anasazi wanted to eradicate any trace of its existence.” He shook his head. “I sense a darkness, a malignancy, about this road.”

Nora looked at him. “Why do you say that?”

Silently, the Mexican reached into the pack and removed the test tube containing the flakes of black paint, cradling it in his palm. “I performed a PBT with luminol on one of these samples,” he said quietly. “It came up positive.”

“I’ve never heard of that test,” Nora said.

“It’s a simple test used by forensic anthropologists. And police. It identifies the presence of human blood.” He gazed at her, his dark eyes in shadow. “That wasn’t paint you saw. It was human blood. But not just blood: layers upon layers upon layers of crusted, dried blood.”

“My God,” Nora said. The passage from the Coronado report came back to her unbidden: “Quivira in their language means ‘The House of the Bloody Cliff.’” Perhaps “bloody cliff” was not merely symbolic, after all . . .

Aragon removed a small padded bag and carefully pulled out the small skull they had discovered at Pete’s Ruin. He handed it to Nora. “After I discovered that, I decided to take a closer look at the skull you found. I reassembled the pieces in my tent last night. It belongs to a young girl, maybe nine or ten years old. Definitely Anasazi: you can see how the back of the skull was flattened by a hard cradleboard when the child was a baby.” He turned it over carefully in his hands. “At first, I thought she had died an accidental death, perhaps hit by a falling stone. But when I looked more closely, I noticed these.” He pointed to a series of grooves on the back of the skull, near the center. “These were made with a flint knife.”

“No,” Sloane whispered.

“Oh, yes. This little girl was scalped.”

20

SKIP KELLY SAUNTERED DOWN A SHADED WALKWAY of the Institute’s manicured campus, rubbing bleary eyes. It was a breathtaking summer morning, warm and dry and full of promise. The sun threw a silken illumination over building and lawn, and a warbler was sitting in a lilac bush, pouring out its heart in rapturous song.

“Shut the hell up,” Skip growled. The bird complied.

Ahead of him lay a long, low Pueblo Revival structure, clothed in the same subdued earth tones as the rest of the Institute’s campus. A small wooden sign was set into the ground before it, ARTIFACTUAL ASSEMBLAGES spelled out in sans serif bronze letters. Skip opened the door and walked inside.

The door closed behind him with a squeal of metal, and he winced. Christ, what a headache. His mouth was parched and tasted of mildew and old socks, and he dug a piece of chewing gum out of his pocket. Oh, man. Better switch to beer. It was the same thing he thought every morning.

He looked around, grateful for the dim illumination. He was in a small antechamber, bare of furnishings save for two display cases and an uncomfortable-looking wooden bench. Doors led off in all directions, most of them unmarked.

Another squeal of metal on frame, and one of the far doors opened. A woman stepped out and approached him. Skip looked at her without interest. Mid-thirties, tall, short dark hair, round oversized glasses, and a corduroy skirt.

The woman extended her hand. “You must be Skip Kelly. I’m Sonya Rowling, senior lab technician.”

“Nice outfit,” he replied, shaking the proffered hand. Dressed up for the Brady Bunch reunion, he thought. Nora, I’ll get you for this.

If the woman heard the compliment, she gave no sign. “We expected you an hour ago.”

“Sorry about that,” Skip mumbled in reply. “Overslept.”

“Follow me.” The woman turned on her heel and walked back through the doorway. Skip followed her down a passage and around a corner into a large room. Unlike the antechamber, the space was filled with equipment: long metal tables, covered with tools, plastic trays, and printouts; desks piled high with books and three-ring binders. The walls were hidden by row upon row of metal drawers, all closed. In the corner nearest the door, a young man was standing in front of a keyboard, talking animatedly on the phone.

“As you can see, this is where the real work gets done,” the woman said. She waved at a relatively empty desk. “Have a seat and we’ll get you started.”

Gingerly, Skip eased himself down beside Sonya Rowling. “God, am I hung,” he muttered.

Rowling turned her owlish eyes toward his. “I beg your pardon?”

“Hung. Hung over, I mean,” Skip added hastily.

“I see. Perhaps that explains your lateness. I’m sure it won’t happen again.” Something in Rowling’s gaze made Skip sit up a little straighter.

“Your sister says you have a natural talent for labwork. That’s what I intend to find out in the next couple of weeks. We’ll start you off slowly, see what you can do. Have you had much field experience?”

“Nothing formal.”

“Good. Then you won’t have any bad habits to unlearn.” When Skip raised his eyebrows, she explained. “The public thinks fieldwork is the be-all and end-all of archaeology. But the truth is for every hour spent at the field, five are spent in the lab. And that’s where most of the important discoveries are made.”

She reached over and pulled a long metal tray with a hinged top toward them. Lifting the lid, Rowling reached inside and carefully removed four oversized Baggies. Each had the words PONDEROSA DRAW scribbled hastily across the top in black marker. Skip could see that many more sealed Baggies lay in the dim recesses of the tray.

“What’s all this?” Skip asked.

“Ponderosa Draw was a remarkable site in northeastern Arizona,” Rowling replied. “Note I say was, not is. For reasons we don’t fully understand, potsherds of many different styles were found there, scattered in apparent confusion. Perhaps the place was some kind of trading center. In any case, the owner of the land was an amateur archaeologist with more enthusiasm than sense. Over three summers in the early twenties he dug the whole site and collected every last sherd he could find. Scoured the site clean, above and below the surface.” She gestured at the bags. “Only problem was, he tossed all his finds together in a single pile, paying no attention to location, strata, anything. The entire provenance of the site was lost. The sherds were eventually given to the Museum of Indian Antiquities, but were never examined. We inherited them when we acquired the museum’s collection three years ago.”

Skip stared at the bags, frowning. “I thought I was going to work on Nora’s Rio Puerco stuff.”

Rowling pursed her lips. “The Rio Puerco dig was a model of archaeological discipline. Material was carefully gathered and recorded with a minimum of on-site intrusion. We stand to learn a great deal from your sister’s finds. Whereas this . . .” She gestured at the bags, letting the sentence drop.

“I get the picture,” Skip said, his scowl deepening. “This site is broken already. There’s nothing I can do to make it worse. And you’re going to make me cut my teeth on it.”

Rowling’s pursed lips curved into what might have been the shadow of a smile. “You catch on fast, Mr. Kelly.”