Pendergast [07] The Book of the Dead(46)

She moved on, passing into the Hall of the Chariots, stopping for a cursory visual check, and then stuck her head into the burial chamber. All seemed in order. She was on the verge of turning back when she caught the whiff of something sour. Her nose wrinkled instinctively as she searched for its source. There, on one of the nearby pillars, was a splatter of something wet and chunky.

She raised her radio. “M. Johnson calling Central. Do you read?”

“This is Central. Ten-four, Mary.”

“We need a cleanup crew down here in the Tomb of Senef. Burial chamber.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Vomit.”

“Christ. Not the night guards again?”

“Who knows? Maybe the techies, having themselves a big old time.”

“We’ll get maintenance on it.”

Johnson snapped the radio off and did a brisk turn around the perimeter of the burial chamber. In her experience, piles of vomit seldom dropped alone: better to find out the rest of the bad news right away. Despite her size, she was a very fast walker, and she had completed more than half the circuit when her left shoe skidded on the slick floor and her momentum carried her sideways and down, landing her hard on the polished stone.

“Crap!”

She sat there, shaken but unhurt. She’d slipped in a puddle of something dark and coppery-smelling, and she’d broken the fall with both hands. When she held her hands up, she immediately recognized the substance as blood.

“Lord almighty.”

She rose with care, looked around automatically for something to wipe her hands on, found nothing, and decided to go ahead and wipe them on her pants, since they were already ruined. She unhooked her radio.

“Johnson calling Central, do you read?”

“Roger that.”

“Got a pool of blood here, too.”

“What’s that you say? Blood? How much?”

“Enough.”

A silence. From the large pool of blood she’d slipped in, a dribbling trail of splatters led toward the huge, open granite sarcophagus that stood in the center of the room. The flank of the sarcophagus, engraved in hieroglyphics, had a prominent smear of gore along its side, as if something had been hoisted over and dropped inside.

Suddenly, the very last thing in the world Johnson wanted to do was look inside that sarcophagus. But something—perhaps her strong sense of duty—made her walk slowly forward. Her radio, held unheeded in one hand, squawked.

“Enough?” Central squawked again in a high voice. “What’s that supposed to mean, enough?”

She reached the lip of the sarcophagus and looked inside. A body lay on its back. The body was human—that much she knew—but beyond that, she could tell nothing. The face was gashed and scored beyond recognition. The breastbone was split and the ribs yanked open like a set of double doors. Where the lungs and other organs should be was nothing but a red cavity. But what would really stick with her, and haunt her nightmares for years to come, was the pair of electric-blue Bermuda shorts the victim wore.

“Mary?” came the squawking radio.

Johnson swallowed, unable to answer. Now she noticed a smaller trail of blood and gore, dribbling its way into one of the small rooms that branched off from the burial chamber. The mouth of the room was dark and she couldn’t see inside.

“Mary? Do you read?”

She slowly lifted the radio to her lips, swallowed again, found her voice. “I read you.”

“What’s going on?”

But Mary Johnson was slowly backing away from the sarcophagus, eyes on the little dark doorway in the far corner. No need to go in there. She’d seen enough. She continued backing up, then carefully turned her bulk around. And then, as she approached the exit to the burial chamber, something seemed to go wrong with her legs.

“Mary! We’re sending security down right away! Mary!”

Johnson took another step, wobbled, then felt herself sink to the ground, as if borne down by an irresistible force. She rolled into a sitting position, then toppled backward almost in slow motion, coming to rest against the door lintel.

That was how they found her, eight minutes later, wide awake and staring at the ceiling, tears rolling out of her eyes.





22





Captain of Homicide Laura Hayward arrived after most of the crime scene investigation work had already been completed. She preferred it that way. She had come up through the homicide ranks and knew the scene-of-crime investigators didn’t need a captain breathing down their necks to do good work.

At the entrance to the Egyptian gallery, where the crime scene perimeter had been erected, she passed through a knot of police and museum security personnel, talking in hushed, funereal voices. She spotted the museum’s security director, Jack Manetti, and nodded at him to accompany her. She stepped up to the tomb’s threshold, then paused, breathing in the close and dusty air, taking stock.