Tess Gerritsen: The Keepsake

Today, though, the subject waiting in the morgue inspired fascination, not horror. When Jane stepped into the autopsy suite anteroom, she crossed straight to the window, eager for her first glimpse of the subject on the table.

Madam Xwas what The Boston Globe had called the mummy, a catchy moniker that conjured up a vision of sultry beauty, a Cleopatra with dark eyes. Jane saw a dried-out husk wrapped in rags.

“She looks like a human tamale,” said Jane.

“Who’s the girl?” asked Frost, staring through the window.

There were two people in the room whom Jane did not recognize. The man was tall and gangly, professorial glasses perched on his nose. The young woman was a petite brunette wearing blue jeans beneath an autopsy gown. “Those must be the museum archaeologists. They were both going to be here.”

“ She’san archaeologist? Wow.”

Jane gave him an annoyed jab with her elbow. “Alice leaves town for a few weeks, and you forget you’re a married man.”

“I just never pictured an archaeologist looking as hot as her.”

They pulled on shoe covers and autopsy gowns and pushed into the lab.

“Hey, Doc,” said Jane. “Is this really one for us?”

Maura turned from the light box, and her gaze, as usual, was dead serious. While the other pathologists might crack jokes or toss out ironic comments over the autopsy table, it was rare to hear Maura so much as laugh in the presence of the dead. “We’re about to find out.” She introduced the pair Jane had seen through the window. “This is the curator, Dr. Nicholas Robinson. And his colleague, Dr. Josephine Pulcillo.”

“You’re both with the Crispin Museum?” asked Jane.

“And they’re very unhappy about what I’m planning to do here,” said Maura.

“It’s destructive,” said Robinson. “There has to be some other way to get this information besides cutting her open.”

“That’s why I wanted you to be here, Dr. Robinson,” said Maura. “To help me minimize the damage. The last thing I want to do is destroy an antiquity.”

“I thought the CT scan last night clearly showed a bullet,” said Jane.

“Those are the X-rays we shot this morning,” said Maura, pointing to the light box. “What do you think?”

Jane approached the display and studied the films clipped there. Glowing within the right calf was what certainly looked to her like a bullet. “Yeah, I can see why this might’ve freaked you out last night.”

“I did not freak out. ”

Jane laughed. “You were as close to it as I’ve ever heard you.”

“I admit, I was damn shocked when I saw it. We all were.” Maura pointed to the bones of the right lower leg. “Notice how the fibula’s been fractured, presumably by this projectile.”

“You said it happened while she was still alive?”

“You can see early callus formation. This bone was in the process of healing when she died.”

“But her wrappings are two thousand years old,” said Dr. Robinson. “We’ve confirmed it.”

Jane stared hard at the X-ray, struggling to come up with a logical explanation for what they were looking at. “Maybe this isn’t a bullet. Maybe it’s some sort of ancient metal thingie. A spear tip or something.”

“That is not a spear tip, Jane,” said Maura. “It’s a bullet.”

“Then dig it out. Prove it to me.”

“And if I do?”

“Then we have a hell of a mind bender, don’t we? I mean, what are the possible explanations here?”

“You know what Alice said when I called her about it last night?” Frost said. “‘Time travel.’ That was the first thing she thought.”

Jane laughed. “Since when did Alice go woo-woo on you?”

“It’s theoretically possible, you know, to travel back in time,” he said. “Bring a gun back to ancient Egypt.”

Maura cut in impatiently: “Can we stick to real possibilities here?”

Jane frowned at the bright chunk of metal that looked like so many she had seen before glowing in countless X-rays of lifeless limbs and shattered skulls. “I’m having trouble coming up with any of those,” she said. “So why don’t you just cut her open and see what that metal thing is? Maybe these archaeologists are right. Maybe you’re jumping to conclusions, Doc.”

Robinson said, “As curator, it’s my duty to protect her and not let her be mindlessly ripped apart. Can you at least limit the damage to the relevant area?”

Maura nodded. “That’s a reasonable approach.” She moved to the table. “Let’s turn her over. If there’s an entrance wound, it will be in the right calf.”

“It’s best if we work together,” said Robinson. He went to the head, and Pulcillo moved to the feet. “We need to support the whole body and not put strain on any part of her. So if four of us could pitch in?”

Maura slipped gloved hands beneath the shoulders and said, “Detective Frost, could you support the hips?”

Frost hesitated, eyeing the stained linen wrappings. “Shouldn’t we put on masks or something?”

“We’re just turning her over,” said Maura.

“I’ve heard they carry diseases. You breathe in these spores and you get pneumonia.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Jane. She snapped on gloves and stepped up to the table. Sliding her hands beneath the mummy’s hips, she said: “I’m ready.”

“Okay, lift,” said Robinson. “Now rotate her. That’s it…”

“Wow, she hardly weighs anything,” said Jane.

“A living human body’s mostly water. Remove the organs, dry out the carcass, and you end up with just a fraction of its former weight. She probably weighs only around fifty pounds, wrappings and all.”

“Kind of like beef jerky, huh?”

“That’s exactly what she is. Human jerky. Now let’s ease her down. Gently.”

“You know, I wasn’t kidding about the spores,” said Frost. “I saw this show.”

“Are you talking about the King Tut curse?” said Maura.

“Yeah,” said Frost. “ That’swhat I’m talking about! All those people who died after they went into his tomb. They breathed in some kind of spores and got sick.”

“Aspergillus,” said Robinson. “When Howard Carter’s team disturbed the tomb, they probably breathed in spores that had collected inside over the centuries. Some of them came down with fatal cases of aspergillus pneumonia.”

“So Frost isn’t just bullshitting?” said Jane. “There really was a mummy’s curse?”

Annoyance flashed in Robinson’s eyes. “Of course there was no curse. Yes, a few people died, but after what Carter and his team did to poor Tutankhamen, maybe there should have been a curse.”

“What did they do to him?” asked Jane.

“They brutalized him. They sliced him open, broke his bones, and essentially tore him apart in the search for jewels and amulets. They cut him up in pieces to get him out of the coffin, pulling off his arms and legs. They severed his head. It wasn’t science. It was desecration.” He looked down at Madam X, and Jane saw admiration, even affection in his gaze. “We don’t want the same thing to happen to her.”

“The last thing I want to do is mangle her,” said Maura. “So let’s unwrap her just enough to find out what we’re dealing with here.”

“You probably won’t be able to just unwrap her,” said Robinson. “If the inner strips were soaked in resin, as per tradition, they’ll be stuck together as solid as glue.”

Maura turned to the X-ray for one more look, then reached for a scalpel and tweezers. Jane had watched Maura slice other bodies, but never before had she seen her hesitate so long, her blade hovering over the calf as though afraid to make the first cut. What they were about to do would forever damage Madam X, and Drs. Robinson and Pulcillo both were watching with outright disapproval in their eyes.