Alex Archer - The Bone Conjurer

“Sorry.”

“How did you meet this guy?”

“Online.”

“Right. At the Dangerous Dating Depot?”

“Oh, Bart, you made a funny.”

“No, I’m trying to fit myself into the strange world you seem to navigate with startling ease. You said there was a skull?”

“It’s why I agreed to meet the guy in the first place.” Annja turned down a tree-lined sidewalk toward Schermerhorn Hall.

“So you have the skull. What are you doing with it now? Or do I want to know?”

“I’m an archaeologist, Bart. Skulls are our thing. Don’t you know we bone botherers like to tote around various bits and bones to keep us company?”

Another groan. She was having far too much fun teasing him when she knew the situation was serious. A dead thief could account for that.

“I’m taking it to a professor at Columbia right now. Going to have him date it and see if I can begin to place it on a historical time line. If I can do that I might be able to track it to a point of origin. And then we’ll have an M.O. on the thief. Maybe.”

“What makes you think your alleged thief isn’t just a wacko? A killer? What if it’s a random skull? Annja, what if it’s from one of his kills?”

“You surprise me, Bart. I didn’t think you jumped to conclusions so easily. And why would someone kill for a random skull?”

“Why would someone kill and not go after said random skull?”

Annja glanced over her shoulder. She was sure she hadn’t been followed because she kept a keen eye to her periphery. No snow today; in fact, it was warmer by fifteen degrees, so it felt almost tropical. In a thirty-degree kind of way.

“It’s pretty hard to go after something sitting at the bottom of the canal. Besides, it’s an infant skull.”

“A baby? Christ, Annja, it doesn’t add up.”

“It does from my end of the stick. It’s an artifact, Bart, not a victim. At least, not from this century.”

“I hate working on crimes against children. It’s so sad. Fine. I’m heading out to the canal. You keep an eye over your shoulder. And please, promise me, you won’t meet any more strangers without having them vetted by me first?”

“I can’t promise…”

“Woman, you are going to give me a heart attack.”

“Hey, that reminds me, we haven’t had a decent meal out lately.”

“Because you’re always trekking across the world, posing for TV cameras and sticking your nose in danger.”

“You love me for it, admit it.”

Bart’s sigh made her smile. She’d successfully redirected him from her dangerous dabbling with the criminal mien.

“Give me a call after you’ve talked to the professor, will you? I’ve got some time tomorrow night. We can meet and you can bring along the evidence you’ve contaminated. How about Tito’s?”

“Sounds like a plan. Me and my contaminants can make it.”

Tito’s was one of their favorite places to meet over a plate of Cuban pulled pork with sweet plantains.

Bart was one of few friends Annja had in the city, and she valued that friendship tremendously. Though she couldn’t deny he was also a handsome single man who, on more than a few occasions, sat closer to her than a friend should, stared into her eyes longer than a friend should and made her think of him much more than the average friend should.

The redbrick front of Schermerhorn Hall popped into view through a line of lindens. “I’ll talk to you later. Thanks, Bart.”

Schermerhorn Hall, a four-story colonial redbrick building, sat just off Amsterdam Avenue. Annja liked the street name. How cool would it have been to live in the seventeenth century when New York was New Amsterdam?

“Not as cool as you wish,” she admonished.

While it was interesting to conjecture a life lived in a previous century, the appeal of it only lasted until Annja reminded herself of lacking plumbing, sanitation, medicine and the Internet.

The building was quiet as she entered. Classes must be in session, she thought. As she passed various classrooms the doors were open to reveal dark quiet rooms. No one about. Odd.

Professor Danzinger was the rock star of the Sociology and Anthropology department. At least in the minds of the attending females. Pushing sixty, the man was still in fine form. Tall, slender and with a head full of curly salt-and-pepper hair, a quick glance would place him onstage, guitar in hand. Closer observation—perhaps a genial handshake, as well—would discover he would have to play backup for Mick Jagger, for the lines creasing his face.

Annja recalled he actually did play guitar—sometimes during class—which only made the girls swoon all the more.

An excellent teacher, most students claimed to learn more from one semester of Practical Archaeology than they did all year during some of the more advanced classes. Danzinger frequently guest taught at universities across the country, and Annja had been lucky to have him for a semester herself in her undergrad days.

She remembered him fondly, and she’d had the requisite crush on him, too. But she’d never dated him, as some of her classmates had.

She peeked inside the open doorway to the anthropology lab and found him bent over a high-powered microscope. Curly hair spiraled down the side of his face. A tatter-sleeved T-shirt revealed thin yet muscular arms. He was wearing brown leather pants so worn they looked like the cow wouldn’t take them back. And bare feet.

“Annja, don’t stare, it isn’t polite.”

She entered the lab, swinging the box containing the skull like a bright-eyed schoolgirl dangling her purse as she watched the football star walk by.

Plopping the box on the lab table with a clunk helped to chase away the silliness in her. So she had her goofball moments. Sue her.

“Fancy little box.” Professor Danzinger pushed from the counter and gave her a wink. He moved in an erratic, over-caffeinated, no-time-to-sit-still motion that made her wonder if he didn’t moonlight in a band on weekends. “Is that the newest fashion in purses for hip, young archaeologists?”

“No, I prefer my backpack. And it’s not mine. It belongs to the thief who gave it to me.”

“Ah, a thief.”

“Alleged thief.”

The professor leaned a hip against the counter, propping an elbow and crossing his legs at the ankle. He signaled beyond her. “Where is he?”

“Dead. His body is floating somewhere in the Gowanus Canal.”

“Too bad. Drowned?”

“No, bullet.”

That got a lift of brow from him. She respected him too much to make up a story, and he was one of those who could take anything a person said as if it were merely a weather report. “Truth earned respect” was one of his favorite mantras.

“Annja, you do have an interesting assortment of acquaintances. I seem to recall a nervous junior movie producer tagging along with you last time we met. Doogie something or other?”

“Doug Morrell. Television producer, and jumpy hyperactive is his normal state. I’d hate to see him on caffeine.”

“He produces your show?”

“It’s not my show, but yes, he does.”

“I saw the show a few months ago. Who’s the bimbo?”

“Why? You interested?”

Flash of white teeth. “Always.”

“Good ol’ Professor Danzinger. Always on the make.”

“Sleeping with the professor won’t get you an A, but it does promise a night to remember.”

She felt a blush rise in her cheeks. Annja glanced about the room, unconcerned for the stacked femurs or plaster casts of hands and faces. Just don’t let him see my red face, she thought.

Danzinger, blessedly nonchalant, nodded toward the box. “So let’s take a look, because I know my flirtations will get me nowhere with you.”