Tess Gerritsen - The Keepsake

“I can’t just order her to come home.”

“She’s your wife, isn’t she?”

He gave a snort. “I’d like to see Gabriel try telling you what to do. That wouldn’t be pretty.”

“I can be reasoned with and so can Alice. She’s been visiting her parents way too long and you need her back. Just call her.”

Frost sighed. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Alice and I-well, we’ve been having problems. Ever since she started law school, it’s like I can’t talk to her. It’s like nothing I say is worth listening to. She spends all day with those smart-ass professors and when she comes home, what’re we supposed to talk about?”

“What you did at work, maybe?”

“Yeah, I tell her about our latest arrest and she asks me if police brutality was involved.”

“Oh, man. She’s gone to the dark side?”

“She thinks we are the dark side.” He glanced at her. “You’re lucky, you know? Gabriel’s one of us. He gets what we do.”

Yes, she was lucky; she was married to a man who understood the challenges of law enforcement. But she knew how quickly even good marriages could fall apart. Last Christmas, she’d watched her parents’ marriage collapse over dinner. She’d seen their household destroyed by one stray blonde. And she knew that Barry Frost was now standing on the threshold of marital disaster.

She said, “My mom’s annual neighborhood barbecue is coming up soon. Vince Korsak will be there, so it’ll be like a team reunion. Why don’t you join us?”

“Is this a pity invitation?”

“I was planning to ask you anyway. I’ve invited you before, but you hardly ever took me up on it.”

He sighed. “That was because of Alice.”

“What?”

“She hates cop parties.”

“Do you go to her law school parties?”

“Yeah.”

“So what the hell?”

He shrugged. “I just wanna keep her happy, you know?”

“I really hate to say this.”

“Then don’t, okay?”

“Alice is kind of a bitch, isn’t she?”

“Jesus. Why’d you have to say it?”

“Sorry. But she is.”

He shook his head. “Is there anyone who’s on my side?”

“I am on your side. I’m looking out for you. That’s why I told you to stay a million miles away from that Josephine woman. I’m just glad you finally understand why I said it.”

His hands tightened on the wheel. “I wonder who she really is. And what the hell she’s hiding.”

“We should hear back about her fingerprints tomorrow.”

“Maybe she’s running from an ex-husband. Maybe that’s all this is about.”

“If she were running from some creep, she would have told us that, don’t you think? We’re the good guys. Why would she run from the police unless she’s guilty of something?”

He stared at the road. The turnoff to Chaco Canyon was still thirty miles ahead. “I can’t wait to find out,” he said.

After merely ten minutes of standing in the New Mexico heat, Jane vowed she’d never again complain about summer in Boston. Seconds after she and Frost had stepped out of their air-conditioned rental car, sweat was blooming on her face, and the sand felt hot enough to sear right through her shoe leather. The glare of the desert sun was so painfully bright that she was squinting even behind the new sunglasses that she’d bought at a gas station along the way. Frost had picked up matching sunglasses, and with his suit and tie, he could have passed for Secret Service or maybe one of those Men in Black, were it not for the fact his face was flushed an alarming shade of red. Any minute now he would keel over from heatstroke.

So how does this old guy manage?

Professor Emeritus Alan Quigley was seventy-eight years old, yet he was crouched down at the bottom of the excavation trench, patiently digging through the stony soil with his trowel. His Tilley Hat, battered and filthy, looked nearly as old as he was. Though he worked in the shade of a tarp, the heat alone would have felled a much younger man. In fact, the college students on his team had already broken off work for the afternoon and were napping in the nearby shade while their far older professor just kept chipping away at the rocks and scooping loose soil into a bucket.

“You get into a rhythm,” said Quigley. “The Zen of digging, I call it. These young kids, they attack it full-bore, all that nervous energy. They think it’s a treasure hunt and they’re in a rush to find the gold before anyone else does. Or before the semester ends, whichever comes first. They exhaust themselves, or they find only dirt and rocks and they lose interest. Most of them do, anyway. But the serious ones, the rare ones who stick with it, they understand that a human lifetime is just a blink of the eye. In a single season, you can’t dig up what took centuries to accumulate.”

Frost pulled off his sunglasses and mopped the sweat from his forehead. “So, uh, what are you digging for down there, Professor?”

“Garbage.”

“Huh?”

“This is a trash midden. An area where refuse was discarded. We’re looking for broken pottery, animal bones. You can learn a lot about a community by examining what they chose to throw away. And this was a most interesting community here.” Quigley rose to his feet, grunting with the effort, and swiped a sleeve across his weathered brow. “These old knees are about ready for replacement again. That’s what goes first in this profession, the damn knees.” He clambered up a ladder and emerged from the trench.

“Isn’t this a magnificent spot?” he said, gazing around at the valley, where ancient ruins studded the landscape. “This canyon was once a ceremonial site, a place for sacred rituals. Have you toured the park yet?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Jane. “We just flew into Albuquerque today.”

“You come all the way from Boston, and you aren’t going to take a look at Chaco Canyon? One of the finest archaeological sites in the country?”

“Our time’s limited, Professor. We came to see you.”

He gave a snort. “Then take a look around you, because this site is my life. I’ve spent forty seasons in this canyon, whenever I wasn’t teaching in the classroom. Now that I’m retired from the university, I can devote myself entirely to digging.”

“For trash,” said Jane.

Quigley laughed. “Yes. I suppose one could look at it that way.”

“Is this the same site where Lorraine Edgerton was working?”

“No, we were over there, across the canyon.” He pointed to a tumble of stone ruins in the distance. “I had a team of students working with me, both undergraduate and graduate level. It was the usual mix. Some of them were actually interested in archaeology, but some were here just for the credits. Or to have a good time and maybe get laid.”

That was not a word she expected out of a seventy-eight-year-old’s mouth, but then this was a man who’d lived and worked for most of his career alongside randy college students.

“Do you remember Lorraine Edgerton?” asked Frost.

“Oh, yes. After what happened, I certainly remember her. She was one of my graduate students. Thoroughly dedicated and tough as nails. As much as they wanted to blame me for what happened to Lorraine, she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself.”

“Who wanted to blame you?”

“Her parents. She was their only child, and they were devastated. Since I was supervising the dig, of course they thought I should be held responsible. They sued the university, but that didn’t bring their daughter back. In the end, it probably caused her father’s heart attack. Her mother died a few years after that.” He shook his head. “It was the strangest thing, how the desert just swallowed that girl up. She waved goodbye one afternoon, rode off on her motorbike, and vanished.” He looked at Jane. “And now you say her body’s turned up in Boston?”