Tess Gerritsen - The Keepsake

She reached for her crutches and started up the hall to Simon’s office.

His door was open, but he had turned off the lights. Peering into the gloom, she saw him sitting near the window. The weather had taken a violent turn, and he was gazing out at the lightning. Fierce gusts rattled the window and sheets of rain splattered the glass as though tossed by angry gods.

“Simon?” she said.

He turned. “Ah, Josephine. Come and watch. Mother Nature is providing us with quite a spectacle today.”

“May I ask you something? It’s about an entry in this ledger.”

“Let me see it.”

She thumped across the room on her crutches and handed the book to him. Squinting in the gray light, he murmured: “Various bones. Fragment of a dagger.” He looked up. “What was your question?”

“Your name is listed as the collector. Do you remember bringing home these items?”

“Yes, but I haven’t taken a look at them in years.”

“Simon, these were collected from the western desert. The blade’s described as possibly Persian, third centuryBC.”

“Ah, of course. You want to examine it for yourself.” He grabbed his cane and pushed himself to his feet. “Well then, let’s take a look and see if you agree with my assessment.”

“You know where these items are stored?”

“I know where they should be. Unless someone’s moved them elsewhere since I last saw them.”

She followed him up the hall, toward the ancient elevator. She had never trusted the contraption and usually avoided taking it, but now that she was on crutches she had no choice but to step in. As Simon closed the black grille cage, she felt as if the jaws of a trap had suddenly snapped shut. The elevator gave an alarming shudder and slowly creaked down to the basement level, where she was relieved to step out safely.

He unlocked the storage area. “If I recall correctly,” he said, “these items were quite compact, so they’d be stored on the back shelves.” He led her into the maze of crates. The Boston police had completed their survey, and the floor was still littered with wood shavings and stray Styrofoam peanuts. She followed Simon down a narrow passage into the older section of the storage area, past crates stamped with the names of enticingly exotic locales.JAVA. MANCHURIA. INDIA. At last they arrived at a towering set of shelves, on which dozens of boxes were stored.

“Oh, good,” said Simon, pointing to a modest-sized box with the matching date and accession number. “It’s right within reach.” He pulled it off the shelf and set it on a nearby crate. “It feels a bit like Christmas, doesn’t it? Peeking at something that no one’s looked at in a quarter century. Ah, look what we have!”

He reached inside and pulled out a container of bones.

Most were merely fragments, but she recognized a few dense nuggets that had endured intact while other parts of the skeleton had cracked and worn away over the centuries. She picked up one of the nuggets and felt a whisper of a chill on her neck.

“Wrist bones,” she murmured. Human.

“My guess is, these are all from a single individual. Yes, this does bring back the memories. The heat and the dust. The thrill of being right in the thick of it, when you think that at any instant, your trowel might collide with history. Before these old joints gave out. Before I somehow became old, something I never expected to be. I used to think I was immortal.” He gave a sad laugh, a sound of bewilderment that the decades could have fled by so quickly, leaving him trapped in a broken-down body. He looked down at the container of bones and said, “This unfortunate man no doubt thought that he, too, was immortal. Until he watched his comrades go insane with thirst. Until his army crumbled around him. I’m sure he never imagined that this would be their end. This is what the passage of centuries does to even the most glorious of empires. Wears them down to mere sand.”

Josephine gently set the wrist bone back in the container. It was nothing more than a deposit of calcium and phosphate. Bones served their purpose, and their owners died and abandoned them, much as one abandoned a walking stick. These fragments were all that remained of a Persian soldier doomed to perish in a foreign desert.

“He’s part of the lost army,” she said.

“I’m almost certain of it. One of the doomed soldiers of Cambyses.”

She looked at him. “You were there with Kimball Rose.”

“Oh, it was his excavation, and he paid a pretty penny for it. You should have seen the team he assembled! Dozens of archaeologists. Hundreds of diggers. We were there to find one of the holy grails of archaeology, as elusive as the lost Ark of the Covenant or the tomb of Alexander. Fifty thousand Persian soldiers simply vanished in the desert, and I wanted to be there when they were uncovered.”

“But they weren’t.”

Simon shook his head. “We dug for two seasons, and all we found were bits of bone and metal. The remains of stragglers, no doubt. They were such meager spoils that neither Kimball nor the Egyptian government had any interest in keeping any of it. So it came to us.”

“I didn’t know that you worked with Kimball Rose. You never even mentioned that you knew him.”

“He’s a fine archaeologist. An exceedingly generous man.”

“And his son?” she asked quietly. “How well did you know Bradley?”

“Ah, Bradley.” He set the box back on the shelf. “Everyone wants to know about Bradley. The police. You. But the truth is, I scarcely remember the boy. I can’t believe that any son of Kimball’s would be a threat to you. This investigation has been quite unfair to his family.” He turned to her, and the sudden intensity of his gaze made her uneasy. “He has only your best interests in mind.”

“What do you mean?”

“Of all the applicants I could have hired, I chose you. Because he said I should. He’s been looking out for you.”

She backed away.

“You really had no idea?” he said, moving toward her. “All along, he’s been your secret friend. He asked me not to say a word, but I thought it was time you should know. It’s always good to know who our friends are, especially when they’re so generous.”

“Friends don’t try to kill you.” She turned and hobbled away, back through the canyon of crates.

“What are you talking about?” he called out.

She continued through the maze, intent only on reaching the exit. She could hear him following her, his cane tapping against the concrete.

“Josephine, the police are completely wrong about him!”

She rounded a bend in the maze and saw the door ahead, hanging ajar. Didn’t we close it? I’m sure we closed it.

Simon’s cane tapped closer. “Now I’m sorry I told you,” he said. “But you really ought to know how generous Kimball has been to you.”

Kimball?

Josephine turned. “How does he even know about me?” she asked.

Just as the basement lights went black.

Night had already fallen when Jane stepped out of her Subaru and dashed through the pounding rain to the Crispin Museum entrance. The front door was unlocked and she pushed into the building, letting in a whoosh of wet wind that sent museum brochures flying off the reception desk and scattering across the damp floor.

“Time to start building an ark yet?” asked the patrolman standing guard near the desk.

“Yeah, it’s wet out there.” Grimly, Jane shrugged out of her dripping slicker and hung it on a coat hook.

“Never seen so much rainfall in a single summer, and I’ve lived here all my life. I hear it’s all because of global warming.”

“Where is everyone?” Jane said, cutting off the conversation so brusquely that his face tightened. After what had happened tonight, she was in no mood to talk about the weather.