The Scorpion's Tail

by Douglas Preston

  14

  SPECIALIST BRAD HUCKEY, head of the Albuquerque Evidence Response Team, stepped out of the ERT van and transferred his shades from his Dallas Cowboys cap to the bridge of his nose in order to survey the area without getting blinded. The ERT photographer, Milt Alfieri, and a second crime scene investigator, Don Ketterman, climbed out and stood beside him, looking around.

  “Wow,” said Alfieri. “Could be a movie set.”

  The special agent in charge of the case was arriving in a separate vehicle, a Jeep Cherokee belonging to the Socorro County Sheriff’s Office. It parked to one side, and the agent—it could only be the agent—got out of the passenger side, the sheriff getting out the other, wearing a big silver star.

  Huckey could hardly believe his eyes. He’d never seen an agent so young. What the hell was the FBI coming to, hiring women like this who probably couldn’t do five push-ups? One of those affirmative action hires, for sure. But at least she wasn’t hard to look at.

  He turned to Alfieri and gave a low whistle. “Check that out.”

  The special agent came over, pale skin and brown hair in a short cut, along with the sheriff, who looked almost as young as she was. One of his ears was bandaged. He was a real piece of work, too—sporting six-guns on both hips.

  The agent stuck out her hand, which—he noticed—was missing the end of one finger. “Corinne Swanson.”

  “Brad Huckey.”

  “Milt Alfieri.”

  “Don Ketterman.”

  “Homer Watts.”

  Homer. What a name. Huckey almost expected to see a piece of straw sticking out of the guy’s bandaged ear. Looking at those guns, Huckey wondered if he’d heard of the internet. Or even electricity.

  They all stood around in the sun shaking hands while ravens circled and croaked overhead.

  “Thanks for coming all this way,” said Swanson. “Not exactly the best road in the state.”

  “I’ll say,” said Huckey. “So where’s the crime scene?”

  She pointed to a ruined building just beyond the town. “The body was found in the basement. We’re not sure yet if it’s actually a crime scene, though.”

  Huckey’s two associates began unloading their equipment. “Any idea what the building was?” he asked.

  “Pretty sure it was a house of ill repute,” said Watts.

  Huckey gave a laugh. “Not much of a whorehouse, if you ask me. So what’s the history of this town, Homer?”

  Watts removed his cowboy hat, gave his brow a swipe with his forearm, and fitted it back on. “It was a hopping little place for a while, when the gold mine was producing. But then the gold started petering out; there was a cave-in with lots of victims, and the town was abandoned shortly afterward.”

  “Victims, you say?”

  “A dozen men. Trapped inside.”

  Huckey nodded. He’d always had an amateur interest in gold mining. When this was over, it would probably be worth coming back here for a look-see. There might well be valuable antique or curio stuff here, ripe for the taking. And, given his day job, he was an expert at finding just that kind of shit. Take that old well, for example, in the shadow of what looked like the remains of a stable—people had no idea how many valuables got lost down a well. This one, of course, hadn’t seen a bucket in probably a hundred years.

  They walked to the ruined whorehouse and stopped at the entrance to the basement. It was half-blocked with sand. Huckey crouched and looked in, shining a light around.

  “Hey, Corinne,” he said, “give me the rundown here.”

  Swanson crouched next to him. “The body was over there against the far wall,” she said. “You can see the excavated area. We’ve already removed and screened most of the sand.”

  Huckey turned. “Don, let’s set up and rescreen it all—just in case.”

  He grabbed a shovel and descended, Milt following. Ketterman handed down shovels, a saw, a sledgehammer, and a screen on a frame. Huckey unfolded the screen.

  “You guys, just shovel all this shit from one side to the other, through the screen.”

  Huckey pulled on a face mask and got to work, shoveling and tossing each shovelful through the screen. Dust rose up. He was damned glad it was a cool fall day; in the summer it would be hell down in that whorehouse basement. As the fine, dry sand fell through the screen, a bunch of stuff bounced up—broken bottles, cheap flatware, buttons, tobacco tins, nails—but it was all worthless, nothing contemporaneous with the body.

  Suddenly, a bone bounced off the screen.

  “Whoa there,” said Huckey. He went over and picked it up, turning it over. “Look what we got here! A humerus!” He glanced over to where the FBI agent was watching them, at the cellar door. “Looks like you missed one,” he called up, waving the bone at her.

  She slid down the sand and came over, slipping on nitrile gloves. He handed it to her. She looked at it for a moment. “Um, I believe that’s a sheep’s tibia.”

  Huckey stared at her for a moment. Unbelievable, this FBI agent. He leaned back and let out a belly laugh. “A sheep’s tibia? Are you shitting me? I’ve been identifying bones my entire life and, trust me, I know a human humerus when I see one.” He turned. “Alfieri, bag that as evidence.” He flipped it to Alfieri, who caught it and put it in a Ziploc bag, labeling it with a Sharpie.

  Huckey turned back to the FBI girl with a grin. “Sheep’s tibia, my ass.”

  She looked like she was about to talk back, but she managed to button it up—and good for her. It was her own damn fault she’d made herself look like an idiot.

  “Okay, we’re going to keep going. If you don’t mind, we need some elbow room down here.”

  The agent stalked out, positioning herself once again in the doorway to watch them work.

  In an hour they had finished with the sand, finding nothing else of interest. Huckey cast his eye around for places where something might have been hidden. Most of his work on the ERT involved bashing down walls, ripping out ceilings, and tearing apart furniture and cars, looking for drugs or money. But be the setting new or old, he had a sixth sense for where stuff was hidden—and it never failed him.

  “Let’s have a look in that.” He pointed to a big coal stove in the corner, once used to heat the place. He tried to open the metal door, but it was rusted shut.

  “Bring over the sledgehammer.”

  Ketterman came over, his sleeves rolled up, carrying the implement.

  “Bust that open.”

  Ketterman loved bashing in stuff, and a few well-timed blows smashed the cast-iron top. Huckey knelt and, pulling out the iron pieces, sorted through the interior, finding nothing. He looked around. Where else might someone have hidden things in 1945?

  “Something got walled up here,” he said, pointing to an area where the adobe bricks had covered an opening.

  Ketterman ditched the sledgehammer for a Pulaski and swung the spike side of it into the wall. A few blows busted through the adobe, revealing a space.

  Huckey shined the light in, but there was nothing there but an old root cellar with broken mason jars.

  A voice came down. “Excuse me?”

  Huckey turned to see Swanson peering down through the open door.

  “Yes?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like? We’re searching.”

  “Is it necessary to break things up like that?”

  Huckey stared at her. “What do you mean?”

  “This is a historic site.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. “We’re feds; we’re searching a crime scene. This is how it’s done.”

  The face vanished. Huckey shook his head, wondering why the hell she was so concerned about a ruined whorehouse. He couldn’t believe what kind of agents they were minting these days.

  They next chopped into a small closet, finding nothing.

  “Let’s go to the first floor.”

  Crawling out of the basement, they ducked through the ruined doorway into t
he ground floor. The ceiling had partially caved in, but there was still quite a lot to search.

  “Watch out for the rotten floor,” Huckey warned.

  It was a pretty lame whorehouse, he felt, with a single sitting room, a bar, some busted chairs and tables, a lot of broken whiskey bottles and glasses, and an ancient upright piano. A staircase went up to the sky, the second floor having completely fallen in.

  The piano was an obvious place to hide something. He nodded at it. “Hey, Don, make some music, will you?”

  Ketterman, still wielding the Pulaski, walked over and, taking aim, gave it a tremendous blow in the side, at the joint. It made a huge jangling noise. He hit it again and again, the side piece finally breaking loose. He looked in with a flashlight.

  “Wait a damn minute,” said Watts, the sheriff, standing in the door, that FBI girl behind him. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “What does it look like?” Huckey was now thoroughly annoyed at this kibitzing.

  “This isn’t some meth kitchen,” said Watts. “Have a little respect.”

  “Yeah, we could unscrew and take apart that piano and be here all week, but that isn’t how we operate. We do this all the time, and nobody’s going to play ‘Chopsticks’ on this shit piano again.”

  “This is a remarkably well-preserved ghost town, and it shouldn’t be damaged any more than necessary. Just because it’s federal land and you’re feds doesn’t mean you can do whatever you please.”

  “Let me explain something to you, Homer,” said Huckey. “You’ve got your jurisdiction. I’ve got mine. I’m head of this FBI Evidence Response Team, and this is how we do things. You aren’t the first to complain, okay? Nobody likes to see their shit smashed up. But this is how it’s done. Why don’t you go play with your six-shooters?” He scoffed. “Shit, the double-stack magazines in my Sig hold more rounds than your whole rig.”

  “If you shoot it right, it only takes one,” the kid copper replied.

  They stared at each other a moment in silence.

  “But given your concern,” Huckey said, suddenly going easy on the guy, “We’ll be gentle with the piano. Right, Don? Go easy on the piano. What’s left of it, anyway.”

  “Right.”

  They moved through the rooms, pulling up floorboards and breaking through lathe and plaster in areas where something might be hidden. But there was nothing. Huckey didn’t like the way Swanson and Watts followed them around, monitoring what they were doing. And all this after having to get up at four in the morning, with a hangover no less, to get down here.

  “Let’s check the shitter,” Huckey said.

  It stood behind the ruins, a crooked rectangle against the blue sky. Ketterman went in with the Pulaski. With a few blows he knocked out the rotten foundation and toppled the thing like a tree, exposing a hole below, partly filled with sand.

  “Gotta dig it out.”

  With the screen set up, they started digging. No actual crap was left, just sand and dirt, but as they shoveled, some interesting things appeared on the screen—some coins, a bunch of broken whiskey bottles, a pair of glasses—and then, suddenly, the gleam of gold.

  “Hey, check this out!” Ketterman held it up while Alfieri photographed. It was a single Indian head gold piece.

  Swanson and Watts came over.

  “From 1908,” said Huckey, taking it. “Looks like someone dropped it in the shit pile.”

  “We should put that into evidence,” said Swanson, “even though it’s probably not connected to the body.”

  Huckey put it in an evidence container and sealed it. Damn, he was going to come back here and really turn the place over. In fact, might be a good idea to pull back on the official search in order to leave some good stuff for later. He wished to hell he hadn’t searched the shitter with all these people around.

  “Now for the rest of the town. We can do this quickly—and, out of respect for your wishes, as gently as possible.”

  “Thank you,” said the sheriff.

  Huckey didn’t answer. “Show us where the mule skeleton and saddle were found.”

  Swanson brought them over to the livery stables. Huckey could see where the mule bones had been dug from the ground. They set up a screen, and Ketterman began shoveling all around and tossing the dirt on the screen. More useless crap showed up, along with some bones.

  Huckey held one up. “Another sheep?” he asked Swanson with a grin.

  “No, that’s a mule.”

  He tossed the bone away. “At least you got that one right.”

  They went through the rest of the town from one end to the other, photographing every room and searching the more obvious places, but nothing of note came to light. This time, Huckey made sure they didn’t look too hard.

  They ended up back at the van. Huckey consulted the search order. They were coming to the interesting part: the search of the gold mine below the mesa.

  “Says here,” Huckey read from the ERT outline—the one Swanson herself had written—“that the body was found with climbing and rappelling equipment. So they think he may have been down in the mine, or planning to go down. Also says here…Wait a minute. I’m going down with Swanson?”

  “That’s what it says,” the girl said.

  “Who the hell decided that?”

  “I did. You did bring the gear, right?”

  Huckey stared. “Sure, I brought the gear, but I thought Don and I were going to use it. You know how to rappel?”

  Swanson nodded.

  Huckey tried to hide his annoyance. “Well, I’ll be damned. Okay, let’s get the gear and have at it.”

  15

  THE GOLD CROSS lay in a plastic tray lined with black velvet, below a stereo zoom microscope set at low power. Nora was moving the stage around, examining the cross. Orlando Chavez entered, his gray hair swept dramatically back from his patrician face, tumbling almost to his shoulders. A tweed jacket and a bolo tie with a chunk of turquoise heavy enough to sink a body announced him as both a professor and a westerner. Chavez was the Institute’s expert in Spanish colonial history, and he was by far Nora’s favorite person in the entire place. She had known him ever since she was a graduate student working on her dissertation.

  “My, my,” he said, smacking his lips as if contemplating a beautiful piece of cake. “How is it you’re always in the thick of every ruckus around here? Let’s have a look.”

  Nora yielded the eyepieces. He peered in, bushy eyebrows moving comically as he stared. Nora waited as he moved the stage around, examining the cross with minute attention.

  “May I turn it over?” he asked.

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll handle it. The FBI gave me strict protocols.” She pulled on nitrile gloves, turned the cross over, and peeled the gloves off, dropping them in the trash. She hated wearing those gloves.

  More minutes of staring. Finally, Chavez eased back from the eyepieces, blinking, and expelled a breath of air.

  “What do you think?”

  “Well…” He fitted his thick black-framed glasses on once more and rolled back the chair. “Remarkable.”

  Nora waited. Chavez always liked to draw things out.

  “Based on the style, technique, workmanship, design, and so forth, I’d say this cross was made in Mexico City and brought up into New Mexico via the Camino Real for use in a mission church. It probably dates back to before the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.”

  “Any evidence it’s stolen property? That was something the FBI agent wanted to know.”

  “I would have known if a Spanish colonial artifact of this quality was stolen in recent times. But I’ve never seen it before. So I’d say probably not.”

  “What is it worth? The FBI wanted to know that, too.”

  “It’s exceptionally fine work for its age. Historically it’s of great value. I would say on the open market you could get at least a hundred thousand dollars for an artifact like this.”

  Nora whistled. “What else can you tell me about its history?�
�

  Chavez smoothed his hair back with a knotted hand. “You probably noticed the cross is heavily worn.”

  “I did.”

  “Most mission artifacts aren’t, you know. This was carried around a great deal. Maybe it belonged to a traveling friar as a personal holy relic. Or it traveled a lot for some other reason.”

  “And the gemstones? What can you tell me about them?”

  He looked back into the stereo zoom. “The stones are beautiful but crudely finished. That’s one reason why I say it’s pre-Revolt. It looks to me like there’s an emerald, some turquoises, a gorgeous jade, jasper, and a pigeon blood garnet of amazing quality. I would guess they are all of New World origin.”

  “Where did our man get it?”

  Chavez shook his head. “It might have belonged to an old Spanish family. A Christian Indian might have hidden it during the Pueblo Revolt and it passed down secretly through his family—that’s been documented. Quite a few Indians continued to practice in secret as Christians after the Revolt. In fact, many pre-Revolt religious items survive today in the Pueblos, closely guarded in the kivas.”

  At that moment, Nora felt a presence behind them and turned to see Connor Digby enter the lab. He greeted them and came over. “I heard about the amazing find. Mind if I take a look?”

  “Of course not,” said Nora, getting up from the chair so he could sit down. Digby had gotten rid of the blue blazer and repp tie pretty quickly, and now wore a casual jacket and open-necked shirt. Since his hire he’d been quiet and unobtrusive, getting his office in order, moving in his books and journals, and in general keeping a low profile. He had been friendly and quite deferential to Nora. He struck her as a genuinely nice guy who wanted to fit in and get along with everyone.

  Digby peered through the eyepieces and gave a low whistle. “That is something. How old is it?”

  “Pre-Revolt,” said Chavez. “I would guess at least four hundred years old.”

  “Amazing.” Digby got up. “Sorry to interrupt, but I just had to see what all the fuss was about. I’ll get out of your hair now.”