The Scorpion's Tail Read online

  Now Weingrau was describing the office Digby was to have—next to hers, an office that had been vacant for a while. Nora would be glad, Weingrau knew, to show him around, introduce him to the others in the dirt herd, and help make space for him in the lab. She concluded: “You two will be working closely together. Not on the same projects, of course, but I imagine you’ll find areas of synergy.”

  Smile plastered on her face, Nora nodded, careful to keep looking interested. But a new and disagreeable thought had just occurred to her. Did this mean that, instead of getting a replacement for her old job, she now had a rival for the promotion to chief? But no, that wasn’t possible: even in the current political climate, promotions were largely based on merit and seniority. She had far more experience than Digby, had published a great deal more, and was at least five years older than him—she’d have to check his CV. Besides, there were her many years of service to the Institute to consider. She was just being paranoid…these days, not necessarily a bad thing.

  Finally the meeting came to an end. Digby rose, shook her hand again, and went off to get a tour of the storage rooms. As Nora rose to leave, Weingrau asked, “And what was it you wanted to see me about?”

  Christ, Nora had almost forgotten. “It wasn’t anything really important,” she said. “I went up to the site I mentioned yesterday—the one the FBI want excavated? It’s way out in the Azul Mountains. It’s a difficult location, and it’s going to take two more days of work. Will it be all right if I complete it? Bruce Adelsky has got the Tsankawi excavation well in hand. Skip will join me, if you can spare him from the institute.”

  “Of course,” said Weingrau. “Take the days—even more if you need them. This is just the sort of thing we should be doing to help rehabilitate our image with the community. Thank goodness,” she added, “that we now have Connor to take up the slack.”

  Nora left the office with that last sentence ringing in her mind.

  10

  CORRIE WAS SURPRISED when Morwood readily agreed to her proposal—until it occurred to her that maybe he was just happy to get her out of the office for a couple of days. If that was the case, so be it: she’d treat this case as if it were the most important in the world, and not betray a hint of the dismay and frustration she felt. Nora had worked things out with her assistant, Adelsky, and saw to it he had a list of assignments that would keep him busy running the dig for at least a couple of days.

  They had returned to the ghost town two evenings before, with all the necessary gear and food. Nora had worked from dawn until dusk the following day and had been at it again that morning at six. By sunset she’d finished uncovering the body and the surrounding basement floor. Now, at ten that night, they were sitting around a pleasant fire after consuming a well-earned steak dinner. Nora was an experienced camper, and her brother, Skip, had come along to cook, tend the camp, and provide musical entertainment. Corrie found him a decent enough guy, tall and gangly with an unruly mop of brown hair, poorly cut. He was an excellent cook, and the tents he set up were as tight as a drum. Corrie liked how he fussed around camp, making sure everything was perfect. And while his guitar strumming and renditions of old cowboy songs weren’t likely to get him a recording contract, Corrie found it nice to be out there, under a bowl of stars by a dying fire, listening to unfamiliar melodies on an out-of-tune Gibson. His most endearing quality, Corrie thought, was an insatiable curiosity, and once he’d heard the story about the miners who had died trapped in the cave-in, he wouldn’t rest until he’d visited the ruined cemetery, examined every tombstone, and asked dozens of questions, most of which Corrie couldn’t answer.

  Corrie was relieved that the excavation was finally done. Nora’s painfully slow work on the corpse had almost driven her around the bend. For hours it was brush, brush, brush; then a few squirts of air from a finger bellows to clear away the sand; then more brush, brush, brush. But she knew the enormity of the favor the archaeologist was doing her and the long hours she was putting in. By the end of that day, Nora had uncovered the entirety of the body. It was a bizarre and gruesome sight, and it only deepened the mystery of what the man had been doing here and how he died. Tomorrow morning, after Nora finished documenting the site, they would remove the body and associated items, place them in evidence lockers, and drive it all back to Albuquerque. Corrie felt glad to have had these days away from the office: it was the first time since the shooting that she had felt somewhat normal. Still, she privately hoped the case would turn out to be nothing and—her penance complete—Morwood would move her on to something more relevant.

  “All right,” said Skip, sitting on a log before the fire, “now that we’re off the clock, anyone for a little nip of sotol?” He fished a bottle out of his pack and held it up, sparkling in the firelight, giving it a little shake.

  “Ugh,” said Nora. “You know I can’t stand that stuff.”

  “What’s sotol?” Corrie asked.

  Nora shook her head. “Trust me: just don’t. Have a beer instead.” She opened the cooler and pulled two Coronas from the ice, offering one to Corrie. The bottle looked tempting, with shavings of ice sliding down the frosty neck. Corrie considered whether she was, indeed, off the clock and decided she was.

  She took it.

  “Smart choice,” said Nora, flipping the cap off her beer and taking a sip. “And, Skip, go easy on that stuff.”

  “I will, I will.”

  A silence settled as they stared into the fire.

  “I wonder if the skeletons of those miners are right beneath us somewhere,” Skip said at last. “That’s roughly where the gold mine was—right? Think of it: a slow death of hunger and thirst. Or maybe suffocation—in pitch blackness, too.” His voice lowered. “You know, people who die in awful ways like that don’t stay quiet. Their spirits get…restless.”

  Nora threw her beer cap at him. “Don’t start spinning one of your damned ghost stories, trying to scare us half to death.”

  “So,” Corrie said. “Now that you’ve uncovered the body: What do you think?”

  “Well, it doesn’t look like we have a murder on our hands. Not an obvious one, anyway.”

  “Not obvious. But still possible?”

  “It’s hard to say. The fetal position of the corpse is very strange, as if he was poisoned or maybe freezing to death. Or, perhaps, hallucinating—if you look at his arm, it’s almost as if he’s pushing someone, or something, away.”

  “And that grimace,” said Skip, who’d done his share of kibitzing from a distance. “A million dollars’ worth of CG couldn’t create a face that scary.”

  “We’ll do a thorough workup back at the lab,” Corrie said. “Toxicology, pathology, everything. If he was poisoned, we’ll know.”

  “Maybe he died of bad taste,” Skip said. “Did you get a load of that shirt he’s wearing?”

  Nora ignored this. “The artifacts I uncovered with the body do suggest a few possibilities for investigation.”

  “Such as?” Corrie asked.

  “The rock hammer and folding shovel he was carrying? Looks like he might have been a prospector. I’m also curious to see what’s in that satchel of his. Maybe some ID.”

  “We’ll do a thorough inventory of his belongings at the lab,” said Corrie.

  Nora hesitated. “I had another idea. That canvas pack lying next to him? It isn’t a backpack. It’s a pannier used to pack a mule.”

  Skip gave a low whistle. “Are you thinking—?”

  “Yes.”

  Corrie looked at Nora. “What is it?”

  “All pack saddles have two panniers: one for each side. That means the mate to this pannier might be around here somewhere. And with it, maybe the skeleton of his mule.”

  Corrie shuddered. “Tomorrow, we’ll search the town.”

  11

  THEY GOT UP before sunrise—except Skip, who had overindulged in the sotol, despite Nora’s warnings. As Corrie hauled herself out of her bag into the chill air, she was grateful Nora had ris
en earlier to build up the fire and make a pot of camp coffee. As she and Nora sat sipping the bitter brew, the sun climbed over the eastern mountaintops, throwing a lonely yellow light through the ghost town. It was like an Edward Hopper painting, Corrie thought, all long shadows and dark windows.

  “Let’s see if we can find our fellow’s missing pannier,” said Nora, setting down her empty cup. “And the bones of his ride.”

  “Right.”

  They decided to split up, Corrie taking one side of the town and Nora the other. As Corrie walked among the ruins, the ravens once again rose up and wheeled overhead, cawing and croaking. There were plenty of old fence posts and other places to tie a horse or a mule—almost too many, in fact.

  And then she had an idea—why tie up a horse when you could just turn it out in a corral?

  She headed over to the livery stables, and there—just as she hoped—was an old set of corrals behind the ruined building. Most of the posts lay on the ground; but half a century ago, the corral might have been intact enough to hold an animal overnight.

  She went in and looked around. The corrals were overgrown with dead bunchgrass, and tumbleweeds had piled against the fences. The area was strewn with old trash—broken bottles turning purple in the sun, curling strands of barbed wire, rusted harness buckles and dried-up leather straps.

  She paused. There, up against the far corner of the corral, was a patch of white. She went over and found the skull of a large animal, half-buried in sand. The remains of a leather halter were tied around it. She kicked aside some tumbleweeds and exposed more bones—the horse or mule had died at the fence. Nearby, at what had evidently been the gate of the corral, she found a piece of rotten canvas the same weight and color as the pannier in the basement. This was it, then—the missing pack animal. Some rotting clothes lay nearby, falling out of the remains of a canvas pannier.

  As she poked around, she made another discovery: a coil of climbing rope and a loop of wire holding rusted pitons, chocks, and carabiners. Corrie had enough experience to recognize this immediately as rock climbing gear.

  She called for Nora, who was across the way. The archaeologist came over.

  “Poor thing,” said Nora, peering at the scattering of bones. “What a way to die.”

  Corrie nodded as Nora knelt beside the bones. “Looks like we can start to reconstruct the subject’s last day. He turned the mule loose in the corral and left one pannier and the saddle by the gate. He carried the other pannier back to his basement shelter. And that’s where he died, evidently in agony—leaving the pack animal shut up in the corral to die as well.”

  “Maybe not,” Nora said, as she swept away the sand that partially buried the skull.

  “What do you mean?”

  Nora pointed, and immediately Corrie understood. The archaeologist had uncovered the front of the skull, and in it, Corrie could see what was unmistakably a bullet hole. It had gone in the skull, but there was no exit hole.

  Nora carefully shook the skull and heard a rattling sound. She peered inside and saw the bullet, distorted and flattened. “This mule was shot,” she said.

  “Why would he shoot his own animal?” Corrie asked.

  “We don’t know he did. We also don’t know why he died in that strange position, all curled up. There are a lot of things here that don’t make sense.”

  They fell quiet for a moment.

  “What do you make of the climbing gear?” Corrie finally asked.

  “I’ll bet he was searching the old gold mine below the rim of the mesa.”

  Corrie nodded again. “Let’s get all this stuff into evidence lockers.”

  By ten everything had been removed, packed, and sealed except the body itself. Skip had finally risen and cooked everyone a huge breakfast of blueberry pancakes, bacon, and eggs.

  “Moving that corpse is going to be a challenge,” Skip said, his mouth full of bacon. “The thing’s as delicate as a butterfly’s wing.” He crammed another strip of bacon into his mouth and chewed noisily.

  “It’s going to take all three of us,” said Nora.

  After breakfast, they returned to the basement, bringing along a body bag and a large, coffin-like evidence locker. The man was curled up against the basement wall, dressed in an oilcloth duster worn over a checked shirt and canvas pants held up by leather suspenders. The clothes were so desiccated their edges were brown and crumbling to dust. Large sections of his skin were coming off in dry sheets. The remains of an old cowboy hat lay near his head. One hand clutched his chest and the other was thrown out as if pushing something away.

  “All right,” Nora said. “Here’s how we’re going to move the body. We’re going to lay the open body bag on the floor next to it, and then the three of us will place our hands under the body and, on the count of three, lift it in one smooth motion and put it in the bag. Then we put the bag in the locker. Okay?”

  Both Corrie and Skip nodded.

  They slid their gloved hands underneath: Nora at the shoulders, Corrie at the hips, and Skip at the knees.

  “One, two, three.” They raised the body up—it was remarkably light—and gently placed it on the unzipped bag.

  A strange and unpleasant smell wafted up, reminiscent of very old cheese. Corrie tried to breathe through her mouth.

  “Perfect,” said Nora.

  “Hey,” said Skip. “Something fell out of his clothes.” He pointed to an object lying on the plastic next to the corpse. It was about the size of a hand, wrapped in a piece of leather and tied around the middle with a thong.

  Corrie bent down to look at it more closely. The leather was splitting, and she could see a gleam from inside.

  “Let’s open this up,” she said. “Nora, you agree?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  Corrie photographed it, and then Nora picked it up with her gloved hands. “Wow,” she said, hefting it. “Heavy.” She delicately picked at the leather knot, worked it open, and unfolded the stiff leaves of leather.

  It revealed a spectacular golden cross, encrusted with what looked like gemstones, gleaming faintly in the gloomy light of the cellar.

  “Sweet mother of fuck!” said Skip.

  “Beautiful,” Corrie murmured.

  Holding it in one hand, Nora fished a loupe out of her pocket, put it to her eye, and examined it, turning the object this way and that.

  “Is it real?” Skip asked.

  “It’s heavy,” Nora said after a long moment, “and there isn’t a trace of tarnish. No doubt about it—it’s solid gold. The workmanship is incredible—the granulation and filigree work is so fine it’s almost microscopic. And I’m pretty sure all these stones are real, as well—rubies, sapphires, emeralds, turquoise, lapis.”

  “Where did it come from?” Corrie asked.

  Nora hesitated. “If I had to guess, I’d say Spanish colonial, probably seventeenth or eighteenth century. It’s got to be one of the finest gold objects I’ve ever seen.”

  “So what’s it worth?” asked Skip after another brief silence.

  Nora scoffed. “You would ask. From an archaeological point of view, it’s priceless.”

  “But if you were to sell it, what could you get?”

  Nora hesitated. “I really have no idea. A hundred thousand? Half a million? This is unlike anything I’ve seen in a museum.”

  Skip whistled. “What was this old dude doing, schlepping around something like this out in the middle of nowhere?”

  Damn good question, Corrie thought.

  Skip suddenly grew animated. “Hey, maybe there’s more treasure on him! Let’s check it out!”

  “Whoa!” said Nora sharply as Skip reached toward the body. “No searching!”

  “We’ll examine the remains back at the lab,” Corrie said, “and if there’s anything else to be discovered, we’ll find it then. So let’s put that gold cross into the box along with the body and get the hell back to Albuquerque. Having something like that in our possession way out here is making me re
ally, really nervous.”

  12

  WELCOME TO MY pathology lab,” said Nigel Lathrop, his plummy British accent filling the lab as he held open the door.

  Corrie didn’t much like the “my” in that sentence, but she kept a friendly smile plastered on her face as she followed him in. Morwood had dropped a couple of veiled warnings about getting along with Lathrop. The forensic pathologist had apparently been with the Albuquerque FO forever, and had acquired a reputation as a harmless eccentric of whom everyone professed to be fond. In truth, Morwood hinted he was a pain in the ass—and that one of Corrie’s jobs was to win him over.

  “He’s a jack of all trades,” Morwood had told her, “dating back to a time when forensic science wasn’t so specialized. He handled the basics: a touch of fiber and hair analysis, fingerprints, some blood spatter analysis, blood typing—stuff that they wanted done fast and didn’t need to be sent to a national lab.” He was likely, Morwood noted, to be less than thrilled at her advanced expertise in forensic anthropology. And if he didn’t like you, he could easily manage to slow things down or—worse—find himself mystified by something easily identifiable to anyone else.

  Corrie promised to get along with him at all costs. As a result, she was both curious and apprehensive as she shook the man’s hand, as cool and dry as an iron railing. Lathrop was a small, lean man with a pointy gray beard, thin lips, and a springy step. He affected a hearty manner, but there wasn’t much of a friendly look on his face.

  They were in a drab laboratory space in the basement of the Albuquerque Field Office, surrounded by equipment that was not aging well. She followed him, edging past stacks of shipping boxes—delivered but not yet opened—and into the cramped, brightly lit operating theater. It was dominated by three rolling, guttered tables displaying the recent finds in High Lonesome: the mummified corpse, still zippered in a white body bag; another table with plastic boxes containing the mule skeleton; and a third spread with rotting artifacts.