The Scorpion's Tail (Nora Kelly #2)(15)

“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.”