Tess Gerritsen - The Keepsake

“How do you get everything out through that opening?”

“That’s exactly how the Egyptians would have removed the viscera. Through a small wound on the left side. Whoever preserved this body was familiar with the ancient methods. And clearly adhered to them.”

“What are these ancient methods? How, exactly, do you make a mummy?” asked Jane.

Dr. Robinson looked at his associate. “Josephine knows more about it than I do. Maybe she’ll explain it.”

“Dr. Pulcillo?” said Jane.

The young woman still looked shaken by the discovery of the bullet. She cleared her throat and straightened. “A large part of what we know comes down to us from Herodotus,” she said. “I guess you could call him a Greek travel writer. Twenty-five hundred years ago, he roamed the ancient world and recorded what he learned. The problem is, he was known to get details wrong. Or get snookered by the local tour guides.” She managed a smile. “It makes him seem human, doesn’t it? He was like any tourist in Egypt today. Probably hounded by trinket sellers. Duped by crooked tour guides. Just another innocent abroad.”

“What did he say about making mummies?”

“He was told that it all starts with a ritual washing of the corpse in dissolved natron.”

“Natron?”

“It’s essentially a mixture of salts. You can reproduce it by blending plain old table salt and baking soda.”

“Baking soda?” Jane gave an uneasy laugh. “I’ll never look at a box of Arm and Hammer the same way again.”

“The washed body is then laid out on wooden blocks,” Pulcillo continued. “They use a razor-sharp blade of Ethiopian stone-probably obsidian-to slice a small incision like the one you see here. Then, with some sort of hooked instrument, they pull out the organs, dragging them out through the hole. The empty cavity is rinsed, and they pack dry natron inside. Natron is poured over the body as well, to dehydrate it for forty days. Sort of like salting a fish.” She paused, staring as Maura’s scissors cut through the last strips covering the face.

“And then?” prodded Jane.

Pulcillo swallowed. “By then it’s lost about seventy-five percent of its weight. The cavity is stuffed with linen and resin. The mummified internal organs might be returned as well. And…” She stopped, her eyes widening as the final wrappings fell away from the head.

For the first time, they saw the face of Madam X.

Long black hair was still affixed to the scalp. The skin was stretched taut over prominent cheekbones. But it was the lips that made Jane recoil. They had been sewn together with crude stitches, as though joined by the tailor of Frankenstein’s monster.

Pulcillo shook her head. “That-that’s all wrong!”

“The mouth isn’t usually sewn shut?” asked Maura.

“No! How would you eat in the afterlife? How would you speak? This is like condemning her to eternal hunger. And eternal silence.”

Eternal silence.Jane looked down at the ugly stitches and wondered: Did you say something to offend your killer? Did you speak back to him? Insult him? Testify against him? Is this your punishment, to have your lips bound together for eternity?

The corpse now lay fully revealed, her body stripped of all wrappings, her flesh little more than shriveled skin clinging to bones. Maura sliced into the torso.

Jane had witnessed Y-incisions before, and always before, she’d found herself recoiling from the odors as the blade first cut into the chest cavity. Even the freshest of corpses released a stench of decay, however faint, like the sulfurish scent of bad breath. Except that the subjects weren’t breathing. Dead breath was what Jane called it, and just a whiff of it could nauseate her.

But Madam X emitted no such sickening odors as the knife cut into her thorax, as Maura methodically snapped apart ribs, as the chest wall was lifted like an ancient breastplate to reveal the chest cavity. What wafted up was a not-unpleasant scent that reminded her of incense. Instead of backing away, Jane leaned closer and took a deeper whiff. Sandalwood, she thought. Camphor. And something else, something that reminded her of licorice and cloves.

“Now, this is not what I expected,” said Maura. She lifted a dried nugget of spice from the cavity.

“It looks like star anise,” said Jane.

“Not traditional, I take it?”

“Myrrh would be traditional,” said Pulcillo. “Melted resin. It was used to mask the stench and help stiffen the corpse.”

“Myrrh’s not exactly easy to obtain in large quantities,” said Robinson. “It might explain why substitute spices were used.”

“Substitute or not, this body looks very well preserved.” Maura pulled wads of linen from the abdomen and placed them in a basin for later inspection. Staring into the hollowed-out torso, she said, “It’s as dry as leather in here. And there’s no odor of decay.”

“So how will you figure out the cause of death?” asked Frost.

“With no organs?”

“I can’t. Not yet.”

He looked at the CT scan on the light box. “What about the head? There’s no brain, either.”

“The cranium’s intact. I didn’t see any fractures.”

Jane stared at the corpse’s mouth, at the crude stitches sewing the lips together, and she winced at the thought of a needle piercing tender flesh. I hope it was done after death and not before. Not when she could feel it. Shuddering, she turned to look at the CT scan.

“What’s this bright thing?” she said. “It looks like it’s in the mouth.”

“There are two metallic densities in her mouth,” said Maura.

“One appears to be a dental filling. But there’s also something in the oral cavity, something much larger. It may explain why her mouth was sewn shut-to secure that object in place.” She picked up scissors.

The suture material was not mere thread, but dried leather, the strips rock-hard. Even after she’d cut through them, the lips adhered together as though permanently frozen in place, the mouth a tight slit that would have to be pried open.

Maura introduced the tip of a hemostat between the lips, metal grating against teeth as she gently widened the opening. The jaw joint suddenly gave a shocking snap and Jane flinched as the mandible broke off. The lower jaw sagged open, revealing straight teeth that were so cosmetically perfect, any modern orthodontist would be proud to claim the alignment as his work.

“Let’s see what this thing is in her mouth,” said Maura. Reaching in with the hemostat, she pulled out an oblong-shaped gold coin, which she set on the steel tray, where it landed with a soft clang. They all stared in astonishment.

Jane suddenly burst out laughing. “Someone,” she said, “has a sick sense of humor.”

Stamped on the gold were words in English:

IVISITED THE PYRAMIDS

CAIRO,EGYPT

Maura turned over the object. On the reverse side were three engraved symbols: an owl, a hand, and a bent arm.

“It’s a cartouche,” said Robinson. “A personal seal. They sell these souvenirs all over Egypt. Tell a jeweler your name, and he’ll translate it into hieroglyphs and engrave it right on the spot for you.”

“What do these symbols mean?” asked Frost. “I see an owl. Is that like a sign of wisdom or something?”

“No, these glyphs aren’t meant to be read as ideograms,” said Robinson.

“What’s an ideogram?”

“That’s a symbol that represents exactly what’s illustrated. For instance, a picture of a running man would mean the word run. Or two fighting men would mean the word war. ”

“And that’s not what these are?”

“No, these symbols are phonograms. They represent sounds, like our own alphabet.”

“So what does it say?”