Pinsky asked him how old.
And he goes, “Old-old.”
And Pinsky looked at the guy and said, “Like a hundred years . . . what?”
And Okuda goes: “Like freaking neolithic old.”
And that’s basically how it all started.
Grove looked at his watch. It said 9:07. He closed the binder. He had been sitting in the archive room for nearly an hour, reading and rereading the ranger’s diary. He had a knotted feeling in the pit of his stomach.
The phone was sitting on a file cabinet across the room. Grove went over and dialed 8-2-1, and after a single ring Okuda’s voice was on the other end.
“The Ackermans, Helen and Richard,” Grove said into the phone.
“Who?” Okuda sounded sleepy.
“The hikers, the people that found the Iceman.”
“The Ackermans . . . right.”
“How do I get in touch with them?”
After a pause Okuda said, “I’m sure we’ve got their contact information somewhere around here. Gimme a minute, and I’ll bring it in.”
“Great, thanks.”
Grove hung up the phone and went back over to the ID bin, checking for any other possible sources. He crouched down by the tightly packed rows of binders, tilting his head so he could read the sideways labels, which were mostly cryptic interdepartmental code such as PALEO-3-XX-ID and PERSONAL EAX-4-O3 and QUANT-OX. His gut burned, and his head swam with dizziness. He hadn’t consumed anything other than coffee since he had returned on the red-eye from Vegas the previous night, and he hadn’t enjoyed much sleep. Was that why he kept having these damned spells? He needed to eat something, and he needed to talk to Tom Geisel, and he needed to talk to Maura County. But all that would have to wait because he was on fire. He had found a doorway into Sun City, and he had that amazing, delicious, secret feeling that a criminologist sometimes gets when a break is imminent. But this time, more than any other case he had worked on in the past, he sensed the strange clockwork of unseen forces at work.
He had first noticed it the previous week, when he had gone out to Colorado to profile the forest preserve murder, the dead garbage man, and the dizziness had washed over him. He had not mentioned it to the Denver doctors, but the fainting spell had been accompanied by a rush of something much more inchoate than dizziness, something like a transmission of images, maybe even fragments of memory, coursing through his brain, far too rapidly to grasp onto anything. He had noticed it again when he had first glimpsed the Iceman. A flood of images slamming through his mind’s eye. But now, as the mystery of Sun City unfolded like an onion being peeled, Grove sensed something inexplicable catalyzing events, as though each successive layer was revealing something underneath the truth.
The sound of knocking pierced his rumination, and he looked up from the bin. “Yeah, come in!”
A thin, bald, suntanned man appeared in the doorway, a sheepish look on his slender face. “The kid said I’d find you in here.”
Grove found himself staring at Terry Zorn. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“We need to talk.”
Grove stood up. “I thought you were staying in Vegas to work the Kenly case.”
“Yeah, well, I got to thinking.”
“Is that right?”
“Those things I said to you, about being a joke, about being washed up and all.” Zorn paused, licking his lips, glancing around the room as though he were having trouble putting it into words. “I just wanted you to know . . . I meant every goddamn word I said.”
Laughter burst out of the Texan.
Grove rolled his eyes.
Finally Zorn got himself under control and said, “Okay, so y’all got something cookin’ in that big brain of yours.”
“What do you want, Terry?”
“I want to help, I want to work the case.” Zorn’s face hardened then. “I’m sorry I got uppity on ya. That was wrong. But I’m with ya now, and I want this guy as bad as y’all.”
Grove looked at him. “You’re serious now.”
Zorn shrugged. “You got a theory, let’s run it down. Let’s do some detective work.”
“No more bullshit?”
Zorn gave him an “honest Injun” gesture.
“And I’m still the lead on Sun City?”
“Always.”
“And you’re going to back me all the way down the line?”
“It’s a privilege to work with ya, Ulysses, really.”
After a long moment Grove pointed at the ID bin. “Okay, here’s the thing: I think the probability is very high that the Sun City perp is somewhere in that file. I won’t lie to you, Terry, it’s gonna take a lot of thumb-work, a lot of reading, but I think he’s in there somewhere.”
Zorn grinned at him. “Then let’s get busy and find the murderin’ son of a bitch.”
7
Breaking Open the Dark
Later that morning, alone in her motel room, scrolling through her e-mails, Maura County came across the following message from her mother:
Subj: hello sweetheart
Date: 3/17/05 10:12:57 AM Pacific standard time
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Honey, I’m just following up on that little talk we had last week (the one about fixing you up with a nice man—ha!) I saw Roger Simonton in the A&P yesterday and he told me about his boy Carl being almost done with law school. (Hint-hint!) I understand the young man goes to Loyola University in Chicago and spent last summer working in the Peace Corps with the Jesuits in some god-awful place in the South Pacific. He sounds like such an interesting boy and the best part about him is he’s single! Wouldn’t it be nice to have a lawyer in the family? Ha-ha! But seriously, honey, I would think you would have so much in common with this boy with your love of rocks and old bones and history and things. In case you’re interested his name is Carl Simonton (a good Catholic boy!) and his phone number is (312) 986-3411. I’m not pressuring you, honey. I’m just passing along the information. A mother worries, right? Anyhoo, I hope you’re taking those calcium and glucosamine pills. Remember all the osteoporosis you have to look forward to. Just kidding. Ta, honey!
Love,
Mom
Maura laid her head on the edge of the motel room desk and let out an exasperated sigh. Dressed in a ratty pink Go-Gos sweatshirt, her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail (in lieu of a much-needed shampoo), she felt like screaming. On top of all the stress of the Iceman project, she still had to contend with constant dispatches from her mother. She adored her mom but sometimes wanted to strangle the woman. Reaching for her pack of cigarettes, she pulled out the last bent soldier from the package, lit it up, then pressed the Reply icon on her e-mail desktop and quickly pecked out the following response:
Subj: re: hello sweetheart
Date: 3/17/05 11:19:12 AM Pacific standard time
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Dear Mom—
Thanks for your concern but I’ve decided to run away and join the circus. I’ve fallen madly in love with the human torso and we’ve decided to get married. His name is Wolfgang Cockenlacher, and he’s such a neat guy—he’s a practicing atheist and leans a little toward necrophilia in his sexual preference, and of course there’s the lack of limbs, but nobody’s perfect, right? He’s determined to make an honest woman out of me! We’re registered at Madam Xena’s House of Pain and Adult Book Emporium for wedding gifts—or feel free to send money in small unmarked bills. We’re looking at a spring wedding (mostly because that’s when Wolfy gets out of jail on that totally unfair morals charge brought against him by the bearded lady). Ta-ta!
Love,
Maura
Maura snubbed out the cigarette in a soap dish overflowing with butts. Her motel room was designated nonsmoking, but she didn’t care. She was a tangle of nerves lately. Especially with the mummy project going in such a completely unexpected and
disturbing direction. Maura wondered what her mother would say if she knew her daughter was actually developing a schoolgirl crush on an obsessive black FBI profiler—a man who also happened to be married. Maura hated herself for even noticing the ring on Ulysses Grove’s finger. What the hell was wrong with her? Was she that desperate?
She glanced across the room at the cluttered bedside table. Amid the bottles of moisturizer, baby oil, and Chap-Stick—the Alaskan spring was playing havoc with Maura’s fair skin—was a stack of files at least six inches deep fanning across the table, most of it background on famous mummified remains found through the ages that she had asked one of the editorial assistants back at the magazine to fax to her in Alaska. She got up, went over to the table, and rifled through the files. Finally she located the baby-blue plastic folder that Okuda had given her the previous evening, and inside it she found the e-mail list of leading archaeologists. She returned to her laptop with the list under her arm.
She began typing the following e-mail to be copied to all the research institutions on Okuda’s list:
Subj: Fwd: An open invitation to the archeological community
Date: 3/17/05 11:33:07 AM Pacific standard time
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Dr. Patel—
Your organization was referred to me as a potentially excellent resource for an unprecedented project that I am currently researching. I realize this is a completely unsolicited request, and if you are too busy or unable to participate for whatever reason, please accept my best wishes. But if you are the slightest bit intrigued, please read on....
You are probably familiar with the Mount Cairn Iceman discovered a year ago in Alaska’s Lake Clark National Park. This adult neolithic male, carbon-dated back to the mid- to early Copper Age, is the most perfectly preserved find of its kind in the history of the field. But the most interesting aspect to this discovery is the apparent cause of death.
At first, it was thought that the Iceman had died of natural causes—perhaps had fallen or had become too exhausted at such a high altitude to survive—but recent X-rays of the body have revealed wounds in the mummy that could not possibly have been self-inflicted. Experts suspect a “wrongful death.” Murder, human sacrifice, or some other version of foul play.
Attached you will find diagrams and analysis showing the exact position of the body, the injuries, the cause of death, and a fascinating addendum written by an actual FBI profiler, speculating on the signature, modus operandi, and possible motives of the Iceman’s killer.
During the course of writing a series of articles on this subject, I have come up with an idea inspired by the FBI’s database of modern serial crimes. Dubbed VICAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program), the bureau’s database is used to cross-reference and inform the investigations of current unsolved crimes. Since the Iceman was killed 6,000-plus years ago, why not develop a similar database for the ancient world? Why not create a sort of VICAP program for the mummy record?
This is where you and your organization come into the picture. I would like to invite you or a representative of your organization to report similar causes of death you have observed in the archeological record from the last six millennia.
You do not have to concentrate only on the Copper Age. Any era is appropriate. What I am looking for are causes of death found upon examination of mummified remains—or in the fossil record—that match or at least approximate the attached MO.
I should also add that if you are located anywhere near the Bay Area—or are planning to visit this area in the near future—please let me know as we can make accommodations for you and your staff to visit the DISCOVER offices. A sort of miniconfer-ence is planned for the near future, so if you are interested in attending, please let me know.
Thank you in advance, and all the best wishes—
Maura County, Contributing Editor
Class Mark Publishing
415-567-1259 (wk)
415-332-1856 (cell)
The FBI agents kept Michael Okuda hopping throughout the rest of that day. The profilers wanted contact information on the dozens of people who had come into close proximity to the mummy during those frantic days immediately following its discove ry—including the hikers, the ranger, the deputy, the detective, any stray onlookers who might have left their names and addresses, the lab driver who transported the remains to the U of A, and even the research assistants who had helped clean and prepare the specimen for analysis. On top of all that, the profilers required a private, dedicated room with a single, isolated phone line. The room was no problem—there were plenty of deserted cubbyholes in the lower levels of the Schliemann Building—but the isolated phone line was a bitch. Okuda had to run a fifty-foot duplex cable into an archive room and steal one of Dr. Mathis’s extensions behind her back. The lab director wanted nothing to do with Grove and Zorn, and had made herself scarce that day, which was fine with Okuda. He didn’t need the added stress of having Mathis looking over his shoulder all day, asking him where the hell those mitochondrial test results were, while he tried to make the FBI guys happy.
But as the afternoon waned, the stress started pressing down on Okuda. The line of dope he had done that morning had long since worn off, leaving him jittery and nauseated. He couldn’t eat. He had trouble concentrating on Grove’s myriad of questions, and he found it difficult to focus on the mitochondrial readouts. One particular question gnawed at Okuda: what did Keanu’s tattoos mean?
Grove had inquired about this repeatedly, and it seemed like such a non sequitur. If Grove was pursuing a garden-variety copycat, why worry about deciphering the tattoos? Did Grove think the copycat had somehow translated them? And what made this all the more troubling for Okuda was the fact that the meaning of the tattoos was a subject over which he had agonized himself for months. Years ago, on a postgraduate fellowship at Harvard, Okuda had worked with the infamous Archimedes Project—an international group of scholars dedicated to collating dead languages and symbols into a workable database. Okuda had been a whiz at symbology and pictography, especially those of pre-Sumerian origins. But the strange markings on the backs of the Mount Cairn mummy’s knees continued to perplex Okuda, and haunt his dope-fueled dreams:
Those jagged petals, which had always reminded Okuda of tiny arrowheads, most certainly meant something trenchant and inexorable, perhaps even primal, to the Iceman. But they continued to remain elusive. Which was why Okuda was so intrigued by Grove’s keen interest in them.
By late afternoon, the young Asian was exhausted. He told the profilers they would have to come back the following morning because the lab needed attention, and Okuda had made plans for the evening. Thankfully, Special Agent Grove found enough mercy in his heart to stop for the evening. Okuda liked Grove. The other guy, Zorn, was a difficult prick, but Grove seemed like a decent human being, thoughtful and cultured. After the profilers departed, Okuda hurried into the southwest lower-level men’s room and snorted enough dope to anesthetize a rhinoceros. By six o’clock that evening, the lab was nearly deserted and Okuda was in the mood to relax.
He didn’t feel like going home to his pathetic little studio apartment, which was located in the depressing student ghetto of Hausman Flats, so he called Wendy Hecht, his girlfriend, a grad student working on her PhD in physical anthropology, and he invited her over to the lab to hang out and maybe watch a movie. They did that sometimes. There was a plasma screen in the staff lounge, and a stack of DVDs, and Okuda knew how to disable the mag lock so they could have some privacy from the prying gazes of passing janitors.
Forty-five minutes later, Miss Hecht appeared outside the ground-floor loading dock entrance. A bosomy Jewish girl of indeterminate age, she wore denim and flannel, and carried a narrow brown paper sack containing a bottle of Quervo Gold tequila and a couple of lemons. Okuda gave her a sloppy kiss and led her down the rear stairs into the secure area, breaking several cardinal rules of laboratory securi
ty protocol.
They were hurrying, hand in hand, down the central corridor toward the lounge, like naughty children, when Miss Hecht whispered, “Any chance for a lowly doctoral candidate to sneak another peek at the Schliemann’s crown jewel?”
Okuda didn’t even break stride. “My dear, if you want me to drop my trousers you just have to ask.”
“Very funny. C’mon, Mikey, is he out of the freezer today?”
Okuda sighed. “Yes, he’s still articulated, and yes, you can take another look, but just for a second.”
He ushered her around a corner, then hustled her through the dry lab. They tiptoed through the wet containment wing until they reached the door of Keanu’s chamber. They gazed through the thermo-glass like two kids staring longingly through a toy store window.
The dark, leathery shape lay prone on the table, arms like cinnamon sticks, skin like bark. Centuries in ice will burn a rictus of a grin into a face—a curing back of the lips. The specimen looked to Okuda as though he were smiling at the ceiling. Another thought flickered across Okuda’s mind: he looks different.
“All right, the peep show’s over, c’mon,” Okuda whispered, gently tugging at his girlfriend’s arm.
“Hold on a second.”
“C’mon, now.”
Okuda dragged Miss Hecht and her tequila out of the wet containment wing, then hastened her back down long, empty corridors buzzing with dead fluorescent light. They reached the lounge and glanced over their shoulders, ever the mischievous children checking for parents. The lab remained as silent as a coal mine.
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