The Scorpion's Tail

by Douglas Preston

  “Crap. No GPS signal.”

  “Are we lost?” Nora asked, her irritation rising.

  “No, no! Just not sure…if this is the right turn.”

  Nora waited while Corrie fiddled with the GPS. “Damn, I thought these things worked with satellite signals. The map has gone blank.”

  “They do,” said Nora, “but you have to download the underlying maps ahead of time if you’re going out of cell range. It’s a trick we archaeologists know only too well.”

  “Crap,” muttered Corrie again.

  Nora started to get out of the Navigator.

  “What are you doing?” Corrie asked.

  “I’m going to tell you which way to go.”

  She walked around the vehicle and examined the dividing tracks: one going right, the other straight. Then she turned and got back in.

  “Take a right,” she said.

  Corrie stared at her. “How’d you do that?”

  Nora couldn’t suppress a smile. “Tire tracks. You were in here a couple of days ago, right? So I looked for the fresh tracks in the dirt. I mean, it’s not likely anybody else is going to be out in this godforsaken place. So you keep driving and stop at each turn, while I figure out which way to go.”

  Corrie nodded, looking put out—whether at the discovery that she was lost or at not anticipating the ease of the solution, Nora didn’t know.

  They drove on, and at each fork Nora got out and examined the tracks, looking for a soft spot where tread marks would be preserved. Finally, around eleven thirty, they came around a ridge—and there, suddenly, was the town of High Lonesome, stretched out in front of them.

  When Nora emerged from the vehicle, she was stunned. She’d seen her share of ghost towns, but nothing like this. All of a sudden, the drive seemed worth it.

  “I can’t believe a place like this could survive into the twenty-first century,” she said, looking around.

  “I thought you might say that.”

  As Nora walked down the main street, she paused to look at the buildings on either side, some with weathered signs still intact. There was a two-story hotel (HOTEL HIGH LONESOME, SALOON, ROOMS), a livery stable, a bath house, and at the far end of the street, a church. The first story of the church was made from stone and adobe. The spire was of weathered wood and remained standing, but crooked, like the tower of Pisa.

  The town was perched on a mesa, looking out over a desert so vast it was like infinity made real. She could see, in the far distance, the immense expanse of the Jornada del Muerto, a brutally harsh desert patched in tan, red, black, and gray, running up against the mountains. It was a crisp fall day, the sky a robin’s-egg blue, the air cool and refreshing. Nora was suddenly glad Corrie had talked her into this, and what was left of her irritation melted away.

  “Not bad, right?” Corrie asked, brushing her short brown hair out of her face and looking around.

  “Hell, no,” Nora replied. And, after a pause: “This is why I love New Mexico. It’s full of amazing places like this. You’re lucky to have landed in the Albuquerque office.”

  “Think so? Albuquerque seems like such a dump.”

  “It has a few charms. You just have to find them. And look at the bright side—you’ll never be bored, considering its sky-high crime rate, underfunded police department, and incompetent DA’s office.”

  “Do I detect a note of disparagement?”

  Nora laughed. “I’m not telling you anything that everyone in New Mexico doesn’t know already.”

  They got back into the Navigator and drove slowly down the main street, veering right at the church. As if on cue, a conspiracy of ravens, disturbed by their arrival, flapped out of the belfry, croaking their annoyance. They passed a bedraggled schoolhouse overgrown with chamisa, surrounded by a picket fence. Reaching the end of town, they approached a building that stood off by itself, partially collapsed, its eroded adobe walls like so many rotten brown teeth. Corrie brought the car to a halt and they got out.

  “I wonder what this big building was doing out here, all alone?” asked Nora.

  “Whorehouse, I’ll bet.”

  “You know,” said Nora, “I actually think you’re right.”

  Reaching into the rear seat, Nora pulled out the backpack containing her excavation tools, water, and lunch. She shouldered the backpack and breathed deeply of the fresh air. High Lonesome. If ever a place lived up to its name, this was it. Despite all the work still waiting for her at Tsankawi, this was going to be an interesting day—perhaps very interesting.

  It was unlikely, she thought, that the body would turn out to be a homicide—it was probably an accident, someone who got lost and died of thirst or heat. She took a moment to examine the ruined building. Dry, split vigas lay strewn about where the roof had collapsed. A cellar door, half-buried in sand, opened on the basement, into which fresh footprints led.

  “It’s down through that cellar door,” Corrie said, “against the far wall, partially exposed.”

  Nora nodded. “Okay. Let me take a look.”

  “Do you mind if I come down and watch? I promise to stay out of the way.”

  Nora hesitated. She didn’t particularly like people breathing down her neck as she worked. “Looks kind of cramped down there.”

  “It’s actually something I should do, as the agent of record on the case. If possible.”

  That was Corrie all over again, pushing the limit. “Okay,” said Nora after a moment. “Watch out for rattlers.”

  She took off the backpack and pushed it through the old door, got on her hands and knees, and crawled through and then down the slope of sand. Once at the bottom, there was just enough headroom to stand up. Here and there, small holes could be seen: exploratory trenches or—more likely—the amateur relic hunter, digging for finds. As her eyes adjusted, she saw against the far wall an area where the drifting sand had been cleared away. She went over and saw an exposed skull and forearm.

  “What do you think?” Corrie said, behind her.

  Nora didn’t answer right away. She felt a creeping sense of dismay. “Well, it’s going to be quite a job. To do a proper excavation, I’d have to remove everything down to the basement floor around him. That’s a lot of sand.” She hesitated. “I’m not sure this is a job that can be completed in an afternoon.”

  “You can’t just dig up the body?”

  Nora sighed. People didn’t seem to understand how archaeology worked. They’d seen too many Indiana Jones movies. “No. We don’t just dig up stuff, and I thought you knew that.”

  Corrie looked disconcerted.

  Nora went on. “You need to excavate down to what we call the ‘horizon’—in this case, the cellar floor. There may be artifacts or items left on the floor around him. You have to go layer by layer—and with this loose sand, you’d have to do it with brushes.”

  “Okay, you’re the expert.”

  Corrie sounded a little tense, and Nora wondered why. Probably the rookie thing again, trying to cover up her lack of self-confidence.

  These sorts of explanations—of what she was doing and why—were one reason why Nora didn’t like rubberneckers at a dig. But she kept this to herself. Now, eyes fully adjusted, she realized there was actually enough indirect light available, and she would not need a headlamp. She set her pack down to one side, some distance from the body, unzipped it, and laid out her equipment—Day-Glo string, stakes, measuring bar, trowel, brushes, kneepads, face mask, hair net, and nitrile gloves. She always brought extras and, as she put on hers, she nodded to Corrie.

  “You too.”

  “Right. Of course.”

  Briskly, with a practiced hand, Nora measured out and set up a grid, staked it, and strung it—four square-meter quads. She took some pictures and sketched it in her notebook, then entered the data into an iPad loaded with Proficio, the archaeological software program she used for small digs like this. The program would not only record every layer and artifact in situ in three dimensions but also archive it all
into a searchable database.

  She took out a medium-size paintbrush and, kneeling, began to brush the sand away from the cranium. Working around the loose hair, she started uncovering the face. There was still a lot of desiccated flesh, and as she proceeded she realized this was in fact a mummy, preserved by the high desert air—and a fragile one, at that. Little pieces of flesh were barely clinging to the bone, requiring the utmost care. She felt that sense of dismay returning. This was no simple job. She worked slowly, trying to keep everything together, pausing from time to time to take pictures.

  Inch by inch, the face came to light.

  “Holy crap,” Corrie said from over her shoulder. “Look at that face. He must have died in agony.”

  Nora, too, was taken aback. The man’s demise was clearly written in his expression: the mouth open as if screaming, protruding tongue brown and mottled as a dried morel, desiccated lips drawn back from brown teeth in a rictus of pain and horror.

  Nora worked on the remains for another hour, then sat back on her haunches and glanced at her watch. Almost two o’clock. Despite the grisliness of the task, she realized she was both hungry and thirsty.

  “Lunch?” she asked Corrie.

  “Okay.”

  Nora eased herself to a standing position, feeling her bones creak. Grabbing her lunch bag, she climbed out of the cellar and into the strong sunlight. She took a seat on a viga and removed a large roast beef sandwich, packed by her brother, Skip—they shared a house in Santa Fe, and Skip did almost all the cooking, in return for a break on the rent.

  Nora took a bite and then glanced at Corrie, who was standing off to one side, looking away.

  “No lunch for you?”

  “No, no,” Corrie said. “I’m, ah, on a diet.”

  Nora stared at her slim figure. “You mean, you forgot to pack one. Right?”

  “Well, yeah, but don’t worry. I’ll be fine. I’ve just been a little distracted lately. You know, with work.”

  Nora took half of the sandwich, oozing mayonnaise and horseradish sauce, and held it out. “Here. I can’t eat it all.”

  Hesitating, Corrie took it and sat down.

  They ate in silence for a minute, and then Nora broke the news. “I hate to tell you this, but this isn’t a day’s worth of work. Not by a long shot.”

  “You can’t hurry it up?”

  “No,” said Nora, annoyed all over again, “I can’t. You yourself said you wanted it done properly. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, those remains are as delicate as paper.”

  “But…it isn’t like it’s a prehistoric burial. All I need to know is if it’s a homicide or not.”

  Nora stared at her. “I’m doing you and the FBI a favor. If I’m going to do this, I’ve got to do it the right way—the way I know how. Okay?”

  “So when can you finish?”

  Nora really couldn’t spare the time right now. She had to bring this to a close as gently as possible. “At the rate my own dig is going, I’d say in two weeks.”

  “What! Are you serious? My boss would have a fit.”

  “I don’t give a damn about your boss and his fits. You’ve got a bigger problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Me. I’m up against a deadline—remember? I did you a favor, just rearranging things sufficiently to come out here today.”

  “I know that, and I’m grateful. But—” Corrie swept her hand toward the caved-in cellar in frustration— “you can see for yourself this is important.”

  Nora sighed. “It might be. It’s also a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Santa Fe—nine hours round trip. And it’s two o’clock already: we need to leave here in an hour, and even so I won’t get home until eight. That’s a lot of driving to get in three hours of work.”

  There was a silence.

  “Here’s what I propose,” Nora said. “I can return to help after I’ve completed the dig at Tsankawi. The excavation is mostly complete, and we’re moving on to documenting and stabilizing the site. I should be finished there in two to three weeks.”

  “Thanks,” Corrie said after a moment. “But you know as well as I do that in two weeks, there’s going to be nothing left here besides spade marks and boot prints.”

  Nora took a sip of water. She hadn’t considered that, but Corrie might be right. Word could get out, or someone else might just find it. She looked around: at the remarkably preserved ghost town, at the magnificent desert view.

  “You agreed to this,” Corrie said. “Please finish it. You can’t just leave me in the lurch.”

  Although Nora shook her head, Corrie’s point struck home. And she had to admit; she was intrigued by that body and the expression on its face. She swore silently; she should have followed her initial instincts and said no right up front. “There is one possibility,” she said slowly.

  Corrie turned toward her.

  “I come back tomorrow—with camping gear. That way, I can put in twelve to fourteen hours instead of three…and complete the work in two days.” Adelsky, she thought, was ready to take charge at Tsankawi; he could deal with documenting the worksite: photography, artifact descriptions, database work. It would be good practice for him.

  “Camping?” Corrie asked. “My supervisor isn’t going to go for that at all.”

  “Well, you don’t have to come. It’s not as if you can help with the work, anyway.”

  “You can’t camp out here alone!”

  “I’ll bring my brother. He’d love this place. And he’s got a Remington twelve-gauge he’s quite handy with.”

  “What about your dog? I couldn’t allow him at the site.”

  “That’s Mitty, Skip’s dog, but he’s temporarily staying with our aunt, who just lost her husband and needed companionship. Look, I can’t promise. I’ll have to get permission from the Institute’s new president, but I think, if it’s only two days, she’ll be cool with it.”

  “But…I’ve got to be here with you. That’s just the way the FBI works. I’ll have to get permission, too.”

  “Well, hurry up and get it, then—because that’s the best I can do.” But even as she spoke, Nora’s eyes crept back toward the cellar, and the mystery that lay within.

  9

  WHEN NORA HAD called the president’s office the next morning to ask about taking two days off to work for the FBI, the president’s assistant had said brightly, “What a coincidence! I was just about to ring you. Dr. Weingrau wants to see you in her office at ten.”

  As Nora approached the hand-carved door to the president’s outer office, she felt uneasy, but she wasn’t sure why. Dr. Marcelle Weingrau had accepted the position after a long search by the Institute’s board, following the scandalous disgrace and imprisonment of the previous president. She had arrived at the Institute only a month ago and hadn’t yet introduced herself to the staff beyond a single formal meeting. Nora got the sense she was going to be a distant and chilly leader.

  In her previous position, Weingrau had been a dean and professor of anthropology at Boston University, and Nora thought that maybe her formality could be chalked up to the culture of her New England background. Once out west, she might loosen up a little. Her CV had been circulated at the time of her hire, and Nora was interested to see that her PhD was in the anthropology of the Maya of the Guatemalan Highlands, where she had lived for several years, and that she was fluent in both Spanish and K’iche’. Nora had looked up some of her publications and found them respectable, if rather jargon-heavy, and she was curious to get to know her better.

  “Come in and have a seat,” said Dr. Weingrau’s assistant. Weingrau’s door was shut, but Nora could hear her talking to someone: a man with a deep voice.

  Nora sat down, and a few minutes later Weingrau opened the door. “Ah, Nora, glad to see you. Come in.”

  Nora entered the beautiful old office. She had often been in here when it was occupied by a previous president, where it had been decorated with historic Pueblo Indian pots and Navajo rugs from the Institute’s c
ollection. But Weingrau had taken those out to make space for a wall of her diplomas, along with pictures of her among the Maya of Guatemala, interspersed with Chagall and Miró prints. While Nora liked those artists well enough, the images seemed out of place in the Spanish Colonial office.

  A young man rose from a chair next to the desk.

  “I wanted you to meet Dr. Connor Digby, our newest curator.”

  The man took a step forward. He had a square jaw and classic Ivy League good looks, with a blue blazer, khaki pants, and a repp tie to match. He held out his hand with a brilliant smile.

  “Nora Kelly,” she said, taking it. “Pleased to meet you, Connor.” She maintained her smile. She hadn’t been aware that appropriation had been made for another curatorial salary, although God knew the Institute could use the manpower.

  “Connor is an authority on the Mogollon culture and did his fieldwork at the Casas Grandes site in Mexico.” Weingrau continued, “Nora is our resident expert in the ancient Pueblo culture of the Southwest, and she also has extensive experience in historical archaeology, in both California and New York. I’m sure you will find you have a lot of interests in common.”

  “I’m sure we will,” said Digby.

  “Connor has just finished up working in Mexico for INAH,” Weingrau said. “He’ll be joining the Institute as a senior curator.”

  Senior curator? Suddenly things made more sense. That was her current title: if she got the promotion, that would leave an opening. So Digby would move into her current job. Did this mean she was getting the promotion? She tried to control her facial expression, remain calm and collected, not think too far ahead.

  “Please, have a seat.”

  They sat in leather chairs on either side of Weingrau’s desk.

  Weingrau went on to describe Nora’s work with the Institute, and then she explained to Nora in more detail Digby’s experience and background, what he’d be doing, and why he’d be useful at this critical time in the Institute’s history.

  Nora listened, waiting to hear about her promotion and wondering to herself how the curators would feel about Digby being brought in for a senior position from the outside. But as Weingrau went on, describing how the two of them were going to collaborate, Nora began to realize that talk of the promotion might not be on this meeting’s agenda, after all.