by Alan Baxter
Crowley gritted his teeth. It was a fair expectation. Who the hell approached a well-armed active shooter, gunning specifically for you? He swallowed, cut across another row and moved again, low and fast. His back and legs burned with the effort of running hunched so low, his heart hammered with exertion and adrenaline.
Two more rows over, the shooter stopped moving. Crowley risked a look through the windows of the two rows of cars still between them and saw the man resting on the hood of a green sedan, settled in awaiting his shot. He was still looking the direction Crowley had been going. Now or never, Crowley thought. He moved another few meters away, then slipped between the cars and came around behind the shooter. The man was twenty paces away, looking in the wrong direction. Crowley ran on feet as silent as he could, but the man sensed him and spun. Then Crowley was on top of him. As the rifle swung up and around, Crowley delivered a solid punch to the man’s gaping jaw. He staggered, the rifle barked and flashed, heat burning past Crowley’s forearm. Tough bugger, he didn’t go down. Crowley batted the weapon aside, and hit him again. This time he fell, stunned.
Crowley grabbed the rifle and dropped the mag out, sent it skittering across the asphalt, and ran for Blucifer. As he neared the giant blue mustang, Rose roared up along the row of cars, eyes wide in concern over the wheel. He waved her down and she popped the passenger door for him to jump in.
“Go!” he said, and the tires squealed as she floored it.
Crowley twisted in the seat, saw the attacker rise groggily between the parked cars. He lifted an automatic pistol into view and popped off several quick shots, but they all went wide. The man was clearly still too stunned to shoot straight.
“Are you okay?” Rose asked.
Crowley pulled up his sleeve to check where that one shot had grazed him. A very slight wound, but almost no blood. He spared a moment to wrap a handkerchief around his arm, then patted himself down, taking a moment to assess for any pain. Just aching muscles and the dying surge of adrenaline. “Yeah. I’m okay.”
Rose stared at the road ahead. She pulled out onto the highway, and headed toward Denver. Regardless of the seeming calm, Crowley kept an eye out for pursuit.
“Close one,” he said after a minute, for want of conversation.
“That man.” Rose’s voice hitched. “Just murdered like that.”
“Yeah.”
“And nearly us too!”
Crowley took deep breaths, steadying himself. “Nearly. You did good getting the car so quickly.”
“What has Lily got herself into?”
What indeed? Crowley wondered. And an unasked question hung heavy in the air between them. Had Lily already met the same fate as the young man?
“So where next?” Crowley wondered aloud. “We’re a bit out of leads. Where might Lily have gone after the airport?”
“Assuming she left the airport.”
“Yes, assuming that.”
“There’s that Egyptian mummy exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science,” Crowley said. “Worth a try. We might find some other experts there too, and perhaps they’ll have suggestions of things we can follow up.”
Chapter 29
Denver Museum of Nature and Science
The Denver Museum of Nature and Science was unimpressive from the outside. Blocky and industrial, pale brown, it looked more like a warehouse than a place of knowledge and learning. But Rose knew better than to judge books by their covers. As they entered, unsure of what they were expecting to find, she fought against the rising certainty that they had hit a dead end. The young man, jerking dead from Crowley’s grasp in a sudden and violent attack, had disturbed her deeply. And she could see in Crowley’s eyes that it had affected him too. He was no stranger to death and killing, not unaccustomed to violence, but setting was everything. In the theater of war, death was a given and while it was a shocking, it was also expected. She imagined he would react entirely differently in that environment. The unexpected nature of the young man’s demise, the public and disdainful impact of it, had her and Crowley on edge. And though she surged with grief every time the thought arose, she couldn’t imagine Lily still alive. How could her sister have avoided a similar fate if that man’s life had been snuffed out so easily? So openly?
With no other direction presenting itself, they made their way up to the mummies exhibit. They paused at the entrance and read from a placard there.
“Mummies: New Secrets from the Tombs” is a rare glimpse at a collection of mummies from The Field Museum in Chicago, many displayed for the first time. Using modern technology and noninvasive research techniques, scientists avoided the hazards of unwrapping the fragile specimens and uncovered a wealth of new discoveries. Medical scanning, DNA sampling and advanced computer modeling revealed a storehouse of natural and cultural information with extraordinary detail.
“That’s pretty incredible when you think about it,” Rose said.
“They won’t even take them from the tombs soon.” Crowley grinned. “Maybe they won’t even go to the tombs. Just scan them from outside with a drone.”
“Sitting in a basement somewhere, with a nice cup of tea on hand?” Rose asked.
“Maybe!”
They wandered through, looking at displays. Large glass cases contained all manner of wrapped bodies and sarcophagi. Colorful wall displays explained the history of their archeology, shelves held canopic jars and models of heads. One section described how they used technology to rebuild the faces of long decayed people, recreating what someone looked like two thousand or more years ago.
Along with the expected Egyptian exhibits, there were preparations for the afterlife practiced by the ancient Peruvian cultures of Chinchorro, Paracas, Chancay and Nazca. Their methods apparently predating those of Egypt by 2,000 years. They looked at a Predynastic mummy from Egypt, one of the oldest in the world, apparently mummified naturally in the hot, dry sand about 5,500 years ago. The display suggested that some scholars believed this natural process gave the ancient Egyptians the idea for artificial mummification. There were animal mummies, considered offerings to the gods and pets for the afterlife. A crocodile, a cat, a baboon, birds and a gazelle. A walk-in tomb featured fragments of real stone sarcophagi and an intricately painted coffin. Rose stood for a long time looking at two women, wrapped in linen and enclosed in painted coffins, wondering at the lives they might have led. She took time to admire a scale model of an Egyptian temple, amazed by its detail.
Crowley sighed, turned in a slow circle. “This all feels like we’re on the right track,” he said. “But we need something concrete.”
“A real lead.” Rose agreed with the sentiment, assuming she pushed aside her concerns that they were already too late. She needed to act as though Lily were still alive, because otherwise the whole thing was pointless. And Lily might be alive, it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility. If nothing else, she owed it to Lily to keep focused as if her sister were still living and able to be found.
“I’ll show Lily’s picture around to the museum staffers,” Crowley said. “See if anyone recognizes her.”
“Okay, good idea.” Rose pulled her picture of Lily from her bag, a different one to the half-profile Crowley had. “Take mine too, see what you can find. I’m going to keep looking around in here.”
Crowley reached out, took the photo. “You okay? I mean, besides the obvious?”
“Yeah. I’m struggling, I don’t mind admitting that.” She sighed. “Perhaps I just need a break, but we’re not likely to get one any time soon. The trail is getting colder by the minute.”
Crowley took her hand, squeezed it gently. “I get it. Relax here, as much as you can. See if you can spot anything that might have caught Lily’s eye. It might give us a new lead. I’ll ask around. Be back in ten or fifteen minutes.”
“Okay.”
“Then perhaps we need to give ourselves a rest. Go and get a proper meal, find somewhere to stay tonight and get a good sleep. It’s pointless to run oursel
ves ragged.”
Rose smiled. “You’re probably right.”
“Of course I am. I’m always right.”
She grinned crookedly. “Don’t do that. You’re all right all the time you’re not being a dick.” She leaned forward and quickly kissed his cheek to show she was joking.
He absently put one hand to where her lips had touched him and she experienced a moment of regret. She didn’t want to give him any mixed signals. They had to focus on Lily. “You got it, Ms. Black,” he said. “No more dick. Just one hundred per cent Crowley.” He smiled, and turned away, heading for the entrance to the exhibit.
She watched him go, then continued to browse. Her own fascination with history and archeology was reason enough, her interest piqued by every item, every snippet of information. But the added relevance of her sister’s interest made Rose ache to understand everything. Surely there were answers hidden in these academic phrases, these cold and clinical explanations. Some deeper meaning that would give her insight into her sister’s passions and help Rose find the missing woman.
She reached a display with four canopic jars, the funerary storage vessels that held the vital organs of the deceased after the mummification process. Of the four in this display, each was inscribed with a different stylized head: a human, a falcon, a baboon, and a jackal. A jackal! Rose’s breath caught, finally recognizing something with at least a tenuous connection to Anubis. Surely if Lily had been here, this would be an item that captured her interest. It was the only representation of Anubis Rose had seen thus far.
She looked around to find Crowley, to show him, but he wasn’t anywhere she could see. No doubt trawling the other parts of the exhibit with Lily’s picture. She smiled softly. He was a good man, a genuinely caring man. He bent over backward to help her. She would never take that for granted.
She spotted a museum docent eyeing her suspiciously, the museum-issued shirt wrinkled and strangely oversized on the woman’s short form. Rose smiled, thinking perhaps this guide would have more information about the display, about the jackal-inscribed jar. She opened her mouth to speak but the woman turned on her heel and hurried away.
Rose frowned. Odd, she thought to herself, watching the guide’s wide butt whip out of sight around a corner. Shaking her head, Rose went back to inspecting the display. She read the signage, made a circuit of the glass case. Nothing there caught her interest beside the canopic jar itself. She needed to know why these four jars were marked as they were. What was the significance of the jackal design? She looked around again for a museum staffer, wondering if the one who had run off might have returned, when both her upper arms were seized in painful grips. She jumped, struggled, but the two uniformed men were giving her no quarter for escape.
One grimaced as he tightened his grip. “You need to come with us.”
Chapter 30
Denver Museum of Nature and Science
Rose sat in a tiny office in the back corridors of the museum. Her jaw ached where she ground her teeth in frustration. Her wrist stung, chafed by the handcuff gripping it too tightly, the other end secured to the back upright of the straight-backed chair she sat on. Those goons who grabbed her weren’t police, just museum security. They had no right to detain her, certainly not to physically restrain her. They had taken her bag away and left it on the desk outside the room she had been locked in. Anger seethed through every fiber of her, and no little fear. After what had happened to her sister’s friend, what might have happened to Lily herself, Rose knew a lot of her anger was a cover for her terror. And where was Crowley? Was he oblivious to all this? Was he locked in another office somewhere else? She decided not to mention him unless someone else did, just in case he was still under their radar.
Through the tiny window in the door she saw one of the security guards talking with a man in a suit. The suited man glanced at the door and grinned. He said something else to the guard then came into the office. He closed and locked the door behind him, then sat facing her, a narrow aluminum desk between them. He remained silent, impassive. Rose sneered inwardly. She wanted to demand to know what was going on, demand he unlock the handcuff painfully securing her to the chair. She wanted to remind him his men weren’t any kind of police and all of this was highly illegal. At least, she assumed it was. Did different rules apply in America? Regardless, she realized he was playing a petty power game, waiting for her to talk first. Stubbornness was one of her best skills. She forced herself to relax and stare at him. They remained that way for what felt like an age.
Finally the man lets out an exasperated sigh. “My name is Hargrave.”
Rose nodded, kept silent.
Hargrave clicked his tongue in annoyance. “So, you’re back, eh? Which one did you plan on stealing this time?”
Shock washed over Rose. She knew she had never been here before, and for a micro-second she had felt a thrill of relief. He had the wrong person. But of course, he thought she was Lily. Stand them next to each other and the differences were legion. See each of them a few days apart and no one could tell the difference, it seemed. That only added to her anger. But she chose to play dumb.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t waste my time. I’m more than happy to involve the police, but frankly, all I really care about is the jar. Assuming you haven’t already sold it on the black market, you can return it and I’ll forget the whole thing. I’m a reasonable man, and I hate paperwork.”
“Return the jar?” she asked, trying to buy time to think.
“Yes. Simple as that.” Hargrave raised a warning finger. “And I’ll be able to tell if it’s a fake. Don’t think you can trick me.”
Rose realized she had to buy space with a little honesty. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” As Hargrave opened his mouth to speak again, anger glittering in his eyes, she added, “You want my sister.”
He barked a laugh, and then flashed a pitying smile. “You don’t really think I’ll believe that, do you?”
Rose drew a deep breath, calmed herself in order to speak slowly and clearly. It wouldn’t help if they got into a shouting match. “I know how this sounds. My sister is missing. I’m trying to find her and I believe she was here five days ago, maybe less.” Hargrave’s insistence on the theft and Rose’s culpability removed all doubt that Lily had been to the museum. There was some hope in that. At least she had made it out of the hellish airport.
Hargrave shook his head. “I don’t believe you. One of our docents recognized you as the woman who asked a thousand questions about the jackal-headed canopic jar... the one that disappeared later that night.”
Rose frowned. “The jar is still there. I was just looking at it moments ago.”
“That’s a reproduction, to keep the display intact.” He paused thoughtfully. “How did you manage it? Hid inside an office and slipped in after hours, I suppose. But to avoid all the security measures? Impressive.”
Rose sighed, shook her head. “It wasn’t me. It was my sister, Lily. I really need to find her, she might be in danger. Look in my bag, out there on the desk. I’ve got pictures.”
Hargrave’s brow furrowed. He turned and went out into the front office. He returned with her bag, locking the door behind him again. It disturbed Rose that he kept locking them in. He put the bag on the small table between them and sat down again.
Rose used her free hand to reach into the bag, then sighed, remembering that Crowley had the pictures. “Actually, my friend has the pictures I was thinking about,” she said, reluctantly admitting she wasn’t in the museum alone. “He was asking around about my sister, to see if anyone here remembered her.”
Hargrave rolled his eyes. “Your friend has them. Of course. And you’re going to stick to the sister story?”
Rose wished she had some photos on her phone or something. Why hadn’t she thought to do that, in case the hard copies were lost? It was infuriating. “It’s true! We both want the same thing, to find my sister!”
Chapter 31
Denver Museum of Nature and Science
Rose stared at Hargrave’s retreating back, shock making her tremble. Or was it rage? In all honesty, probably equal measures of each. Maybe she could convince him to look back at CCTV footage from the museum. They must have plenty of records. He could compare her and Lily and see for himself that they looked alike, but not the same. Then again, CCTV might be grainy; this guy might simply refuse to see it. He claimed to want to avoid involving the police but was reluctant to resolve the situation otherwise. She struggled at the cuff attaching her to the wooden chair, but it was too tight to slip out from. And securely fastened to the back, between two horizontal bracing bars. No way to slip it off the leg or anywhere else. Rose growled, low in her throat, angry and upset.
His threat hung heavy in the air. Ten minutes. She paused, thoughts tickling at her mind. She forced herself to sit still for a moment, took a couple of long, deep steadying breaths. Why was he so eager to make some kind of deal with her? What paperwork would there be for him if the police were called? She assumed he would be interviewed and it would be the cops doing all the paperwork. A smile ticked one side of her mouth briefly. He was trying to play her, calling her bluff. If someone had really stolen something from a museum, the police would be called as a matter of course. She suddenly found that she didn’t trust Hargrave at all. Something wasn’t right.
In any case, she certainly couldn’t produce the stolen canopic jar, so there was no trade to be made anyway. Clearly Lily had taken the relic, but what for? Rose would give anything for a chance to study the thing in detail, maybe figure out some of Lily’s thinking that way. Perhaps the replica in the museum exhibit was accurate and there might be details she couldn’t see from the display case.