The Scorpion's Tail (Nora Kelly Book 2)

by Douglas Preston

  “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.”

  “No worries,” said Nora, taking the seat again as Digby left.

  She turned to Chavez. “Anything else I should tell the FBI in my report?”

  Chavez pursed his lips. “Can you get them to donate it to the Institute after they’re done with it?”

  Nora frowned. The question of ownership of the cross hadn’t occurred to her before. “Unless it’s stolen,” she said, “I imagine it belongs to the man’s descendants.”

  “Ah, right, of course. Well, there’s one other thing I wanted to show you. Turn it over again, might you?”

  Nora complied.

  “You see those stamps?”

  Nora looked. There were indeed two sort of rounded stamp marks in the soft gold, symbols of some kind, almost worn away.

  “Those are probably assay or fineness marks—if you could get a clear picture for me, blown up, I’ll look into them. That should be most helpful in determining its date and provenance.”

  And he emphasized this observation with a furrowing of his bushy eyebrows.

  16

  CORRIE WATCHED AS Huckey dumped a pack loaded with rappelling gear at the edge of the mesa. He unzipped it and started pulling stuff out—two harnesses, rope, carabiners, belay and jumar devices. It was good equipment, most of it brand-new. A precipitous road had once descended from the rimrock to the canyon, but it was long gone in a series of landslides, leaving no way down except by rope. She could see, about seventy feet below, a huge pile of tailings forming a flat landing area, where the mine entrance was.

  She stepped into the harness, clipped on the carabiners and descender, put on gloves and helmet. She watched as Huckey anchored the line to a massive juniper at the edge of the cliff and made sure he fixed the rope correctly. She didn’t trust him at all and was determined to double-check everything he did.

  The descent was a vertical face of hard igneous rock. They would land on top of the tailings pile, next to a rickety shaft house and cart tracks going out to the tip at the end of the platform.

  “We’re going to rappel down,” said Huckey, “and jumar back up. You sure you know how to do that?”

  “Yes,” said Corrie. She had learned the basics in an elective course at Quantico and taken a couple of climbing courses in Albuquerque since, figuring it would be a useful skill. Now she was glad she had—although she wasn’t exactly thrilled about having to partner with Huckey.

  Morwood’s words about getting along with everyone rang in her mind. Working with this jackass was a test she was determined to pass.

  Huckey went first, and she saw, to her relief, that he did indeed know exactly what he was doing. In fact, he was so expert at it that she figured he must be ex-military. He certainly had the build. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  When he reached the bottom and detached, he signaled and she started down. A few minutes later, they both stood in front of the mine entrance.

  “So you think the guy explored, or intended to explore, this mine?” Huckey asked.

  “I do.”

  “Well, let’s see if we can find what he was looking for. Maybe he was trying to get to the bodies of those miners.”

  They both put on headlamps and entered the tunnel. Huckey went first, and Corrie followed. It was a crude horizontal passageway drilled and blasted straight into the rock, with no timbering or bracing. A set of rails for ore carts ran down the middle.

  “Imagine,” Huckey said. “Trapped by a cave-in. No food, no light, no air. I wonder what got them first.” He sniffed. “At least it doesn’t stink in here. I was afraid it might smell like beef jerky.” He snickered.

  “A dozen men lost their lives,” Corrie said. “Have a little respect.”

  Huckey muttered something under his breath, but his speculations on the fate of the miners ceased.

  About fifty feet in, the natural light started dimming. Huckey stopped and shined his light around on the floor, covered with wind-blown sand and dust.

  “I don’t see any footprints. Doesn’t look like anybody’s been in here for a long, long time,” he said.

  Corrie nodded, then paused to take a few pictures with her FBI-issued camera.

  They moved forward, Corrie stopping every few minutes to take photographs. Aside from the tracks, the tunnel was empty, until after about a hundred yards they came across a derailed wooden and iron cart, half full of rocks. Corrie took another series of photos and collected two samples of rock for analysis. Beyond the cart stood a rusted iron machine outfitted with a cylindrical hammer, screw, and lever.

  “Bet you’ve never seen one of those before,” Huckey said.

  “What is it?”

  “Portable ore crusher. You put a big piece of rock in there, turn the screw, and break it into pieces that can be lifted and sorted more easily.”

  “Right.”

  They went deeper, moving slowly. The air seemed to get colder and thicker, and the only light was now their headlamps: a gradual turn in the tunnel had put the entrance out of sight. They continued down the tunnel for another hundred yards or so before arriving at a massive cave-in. Here and there, Corrie could see the remnants of what looked like fruitless, almost pitiful attempts to dig past it.

  She stared at the pile of wood and broken stone, at the collapsed ceiling, recalling what Fountain, the lawyer, had said back at the High Lonesome graveyard. The bodies, she knew, must still lie somewhere behind this rubble. Even though they were deep in the horizontal shaft, a chill wind seemed to stir her hair, and she shivered in the close and listening dark.

  “Guess the jerky’s beyond that rockfall,” Huckey said. She could see him glancing side
ways at her, waiting for a reaction.

  She took a deep breath and managed to stay silent.

  “Uh-oh.” Huckey’s flashlight illuminated a rotting wooden box, stenciled with Atlas Mining Co. on the side, followed by tnt.

  “This is probably the cause of that cave-in,” Huckey said. “It’s a cinch they wouldn’t have tried using it to free the miners—that would have just made things worse.”

  He leaned over and gave the box lid a nudge with his foot. It came off, exposing decayed wax-covered sticks and bundles of wire.

  “Jesus,” said Corrie, taking a step back.

  “Watch out,” said Huckey, glancing at her. “It could go off at any moment. Let me move it.”

  “Wait … you’re going to pick it up? I don’t think that’s a good idea—”

  But Huckey was already hoisting the rotten box. Gripping it in both arms, he stomped across the ground past her … and then tripped on a rock, dropping the box at Corrie’s feet. With a crash of splintering wood, sticks of TNT flew everywhere.

  Corrie leapt back with a scream, falling in her panic to get away and ending up with her ass in the sand and her back against the fallen rubble—only to hear Huckey laughing uproariously amid the rising cloud of dust.

  “What the fuck!” she yelled.

  Huckey was laughing so hard it took him a moment to get enough breath to speak. “You should have seen the expression on your face when I dropped that box! You looked like a sheep struck by lightning!” He gasped and roared, doubling over. “I figured you didn’t know squat about TNT—and obviously I figured right. That stuff isn’t like dynamite; it won’t go off without a blasting cap. And the older it gets, the more inert it becomes. Sure you don’t want to spend another year or two at the Academy before venturing out here into the field, Corinne?”

  Corrie steadied herself and got to her feet, the manic pounding of her heart quickly dying down, her terror rapidly replaced by an anger that could no longer be contained. She turned to face Huckey. “You bastard,” she said.

  “Hey, I was just having a little fun. Come on—because you’re in the FBI, you aren’t allowed to take a joke? If you’re going to hang with the guys, you’d better get used to a little ribbing.”

  “The guys?” Corrie replied. “You mean, the ones with a dick between their legs? ’Cause that sure doesn’t apply to you. Only a dickless wonder would find that schoolboy prank so hilarious, especially in a setting like this. You’re pissed because I pointed out that bone you found was from a sheep—which it is—and you can’t stand a woman showing you up. You’re the one who’d better get used to it, because I’m going to be director of the FBI when your paleo-troglodyte ass is still digging up ancient shit piles and bashing down walls.”

  While she was busy ripping him a new one, Huckey’s face had gone very, very pale. She halted, breathing hard, having run out of air and insults. He stared at her, balling his fists, and for a moment she thought he might knock her lights out. But he didn’t.

  “Now I’m going to finish the search,” she said, moderating her voice. “Do me a favor and don’t speak another fucking word to me.”

  *

  While she completed a cautious examination of the cave-in, Huckey left the tunnel and waited outside. Heading back to the entrance, she went into the rickety old wooden building and peered around the sun-flecked interior, taking more pictures. A set of massive iron gears and other strange machinery loomed in the darkness, covered with cobwebs and dust. But there was no hint that the dead man had ever set foot down here, and no clue about what he might have been looking for. They went back to where the rope was dangling down the cliff. Corrie set up the apparatus and jugged her way back up, followed by Huckey, who remained silent and dark.

  She found the other two agents waiting at the top. Watts was some distance away, strolling through the ghost town.

  “Find anything?” they asked Huckey, who brushed past them without answering. He climbed out of his harness, pulled up the rappelling rope and coiled it, and shoved it and the gear into the bag. He slung it over his shoulder.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he said to his companions without turning around.

  17

  IN THE CRAMPED, quiet atmosphere of the pathology lab, Corrie paused and stepped back to admire her handiwork. This was the first time she had done a real facial reconstruction, outside of class, and she was pleased with how it was turning out. Even more, she was dying of curiosity to see the end result—to look on the actual face of a victim seventy-five years gone, brought back to life. It gave her a strange, almost religious feeling to be able to resurrect faces of the dead.

  Every other method of IDing the body had failed. She had gotten good fingerprints, but there were no hits in the database. The man had had no dental work, and he seemed to have taken pretty good care of his teeth. The preliminary pathogen report showed no signs of disease beyond a touch of cirrhosis, and the toxicology labs came back clean. The DNA SNPs had turned up no hits, either, nor any intersections with commercial DNA databases. His racial makeup appeared to be generic Western European, most likely English/Scots/Irish. Reconstructing the face was a last resort—but she nevertheless had high confidence she could pull it off.

  She had cast the cleaned-up skull in resin and used that as a foundation, filling in the undercuts with Plasticine, including the nasal cavity and orbital fissure. Then she’d put in clay eyeballs. Next came the key step—affixing twenty-one multicolored sticks vertically to precise points on the skull’s surface. Each of these sticks showed the average tissue depths for a person of his race (Caucasian), sex (male), age (about fifty-five), and build (skinny). Then, using Plasticine, she had laid on the facial muscles in sequence—first the temporalis, then the masseter, buccinator, and occipitofrontalis. She worked with great care, making sure everything was done as precisely as possible, because even the smallest deviation could make a person unrecognizable. It was amazing how the human eye could pick up the tiniest variations in the anatomy of the face—millions of years of evolution at work, no doubt.

  “What are all these plastic sticks?” came a voice behind her. She just about jumped out of her skin, then spun around to see Lathrop coming up behind her and peering over her shoulder, the smell of Listerine quickly filling her nostrils.

  “You gave me a start,” she said.

  “You were working so intently I hated to interrupt. Now tell me what you’re up to, Corinne.” He indicated the many-colored sticks bristling from the skull. “Are those depth measurements?”

  “Exactly,” she said, struggling to project an off hand air. “I have a long way to go.”

  “Did you learn this at John Jay?”

  “It was my specialty. Usually it takes two people to do this kind of thing—a forensic anthropologist and an artist—but I studied both in order to do reconstructions end to end.”

  “Impressive,” said Lathrop. He pulled up a roller chair and sat down. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to watch. Back in the day, we didn’t study forensic facial reconstruction—it was still in its infancy.”

  Corrie didn’t especially enjoy working with people watching her, but she said as gamely as possible: “If you want to watch, that’s fine.”

  “Do you use any particular methodology?”

  “I follow the method outlined by Taylor and Angel in Craniofacial Identification in Forensic Medicine. It’s old-fashioned, but I think it gives the best results—certainly better than the new computational forensics.”

  “Indeed? Why is that?”

  “The computational algorithms suck, at least for now. It’s not at all like the sci-fi forensic stuff you see on TV shows. The problem is, computer faces look too real, too specific. When you display them, they’re so realistic people don’t recognize possible variations. But with a model, they do. The slightly artificial, generic look of a model is actually an advantage, and it’s easier for someone to look at it and say, ‘Hey, that looks like Uncle Joe!’ For now,
at least, you can lay putty and clay over bone with your fingers in a way computers can’t.”

  “Curious.”

  “We were lucky in that there was still some soft tissue on the face and more on the body. I was able to measure how much fat was present, which is extremely important for facial appearance.”

  “The fellow looked rather lean to me.”

  “He had no fat at all.”

  “Perhaps he was starving.”

  “Perhaps. But the man did have the remains of a last meal in his stomach—beef jerky, whiskey, and beans.”

  “Camp food,” said Lathrop. “Breakfast of champions. Was there any poison? I haven’t seen the tox labs yet.”

  “The first round came up negative. They’re working on some of the more exotic toxins now.”

  Corrie realized she’d let her excitement get away from her and had gone on at greater length than she’d intended. Now she turned back to the model and finished laying on the muscles, while Lathrop breathed down her neck. She added little dabs of clay to build up the tissue depth to the precise point at each of the twenty-one markers, smoothing it out bit by bit.

  “Amazing to see a man’s face start to come to life,” Lathrop murmured. “What’s the full process?”

  “I’ll add eyelids and then sculpt the nose, lips, and soft tissues of the neck. Then I’ll add the ears and age the face, putting in the wrinkles and sags you might expect to see on a fifty-fiveyear-old man. Finally, I’ll paint it. That’s when it really pops. We’re lucky to know so much about this guy—that he was going bald; that his hair was brown and gray; that he had a deep tan and leathery skin from a lifetime outdoors.”

  “And you’re confident we’ll end up with a good likeness?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “Capital.” Lathrop checked his watch. He rolled his chair back and got up. “I’ve got to run on home and cook dinner, but I can’t wait to see the finished product. Will it be done tomorrow?”

  “I hope so.”

  From somewhere, Lathrop suddenly pulled out a folder and placed it on the table next to her. “My horse versus mule paper,” he said, with a tone implying he’d only just remembered it. He leaned over her, once again just a little too close for her liking.