Two girls in their early twenties shied away from Elliot, backing into the corner of the tent where twin lawn chairs flanked an ice chest. Both wore khaki shorts and flannel shirts straight off the rack and hiking boots with tread as fresh as they were. One was blonde, the other brunette. Mondragon obviously still knew how to pick them. Both wore their hair in ponytails and matching expressions of horror on their faces. They were way out of their depth here.
"You get used to it," Elliot said, knowing full well that neither would be reassured in the slightest.
She turned back to the business at hand and stepped into the past. The tent had no floor, granting free access to the ground. The sand slanted steeply down in the center, where the mummy bundle had been exposed. The wrappings had been torn, revealing the desiccated body within. The blankets appeared authentic, though she would have to await formal fiber analysis. There were no visible layers of cotton or other stuffing, and if there had been anything of value buried along with the corpse, it was nowhere in sight. It smelled so badly she was surprised neither of the girls had vomited after closing themselves inside to dodge the confrontation with Lonetree and Kent, but she wouldn't have been able to smell it over the odor of the bundle regardless, a wicked biological stench like raw meat rolled in sewage and left on a hot sidewalk to bake. She recognized the telling smell, yet there was something about it that wasn't quite right, something she couldn't clearly express. That wasn't all. There were other minuscule details that seemed somehow inconsistent. The ground surrounding the bundle was crusted and dark, but not to the degree she would have expected. Perhaps the arid conditions of the desert had contributed, but it still nagged at her. There were no trepanation holes in the skull, and it appeared more rounded and smooth than most she had seen, even through the straggly hair. The brow was less prominent and the remaining teeth appeared to be in reasonable shape. She had no doubt this was a younger specimen, possibly early- to mid-twenties at a guess, but still...
She knelt and traced the skin with her fingertips. It was brittle and dry, wrinkled into crisp folds in places it might have otherwise sagged in life. Where she touched the rope, the braid frayed easily. She drew her fingers away and sniffed them, noting the almost sweet aroma of wood fire. The corpse had obviously been smoked, which was a common means of preservation. Many of the mummies she had studied had been cured in such a fashion.
Elliot couldn't fathom why she was allowing such niggling details to bother her. Maybe it was simply her nature to be overly critical, possibly leading her to look for flaws in what would be a diamond of a discovery that would shed new light on an important mystery to which she had devoted a great measure of her career to solving.
That has to be it
, she thought. She shook her head to chastise herself and climbed back out of the hole. Grabbing a shovel from the mess of tools on the ground by the entrance, she nodded in passing to the girls, who still whispered nervously despite the voices on the other side resuming a more civil tone, and headed back outside, welcoming a deep breath of fresh air.
Lonetree was already headed back across the desert in the direction of the cars with the two silent officers trailing at his heels, while Mondragon and the deputy appeared to be wrapping up their conversation. Elliot walked around to the back of the tent and stared toward the eastern horizon. The sun had yet to reach its zenith, though the heat radiating from the sand made the bushes seem to waver. Closing her eyes, she imagined bodies committed to the dirt, held in the Sonoran's firm embrace while the winds ceaselessly altered the landscape and only sporadic rainfall attempted to impede the relentless shifting of the sand.
When she opened her eyes again, she became the breeze, but instead of conspiring to hide the secrets the land protected, she prepared to uncover them.
And it was only a matter of time before she did.
VIII
Denver, Colorado
A black, unmarked Caprice had pulled to the curb in front of Carver's townhouse at the precise moment Hawthorne had said it would. He had been packed and ready, but had been watching the crime scene unit separating molecules into atoms when he had heard the horn. The driver, who had introduced himself only as Travis, was perhaps a couple years older than Carver. Through the Plexiglas shield separating them, Carver could see little more than the man's right shoulder and the side of his face, except for his green eyes in the rear view mirror, which made an effort to purvey the disinterest of a chauffeur, but Carver could feel the weight of their reflected stare upon him.
Carver had tried to ask questions of the driver, but Travis either hadn't heard him or had done a remarkable job of pretending, so he had leaned back in the seat and watched the town retreat through the side window. He had recognized the route to Denver International Airport right away, though now that they had left the city behind in favor of the sunflowers and wild grasses of the eastern plains, there was no disguising their destination. Thus it came as something of a surprise when the sedan turned from the two-lane highway onto an unmarked gravel road and drove to the south until they reached the ruins of an old farmhouse. Little remained of the structure apart from a haphazard mound of broken timber through which the crumbled concrete of the foundation peered. Two rusted metal "T"s marked its passing like twin tombstones, the laundry wires formerly stretched between now long gone, or perhaps consumed by the wild growth of brambles and tumbleweeds.
The car ground to a halt and Travis came around to open Carver's door. He left it standing ajar, climbed back into the driver's seat, and closed his door. Carver eased out and rapped on the driver's window.
"What are we doing here?" he asked, but Travis only favored him with a look of indifference before turning back to the wheel. "I know you can hear--"
Carver was cut off by the sound of a ringing phone. He glanced at Travis curiously, then followed the sound toward the mound of rubble. It rang twice more while he heaved aside weathered boards embedded with rusted nails before he found the cell phone tucked into a crack in the concrete foundation beneath.
He flipped back the cover to reveal a touch screen. In the center of the display was a green thumbprint, which he covered with his own, unlocking a row of hidden icons. He brought it to his ear.
"Carver," he said.
"Hang up and walk twenty yards due south. You will find a circle of bare earth in a cluster of sunflowers. Stand in the very center."
There was a faint click as the call was ended.
Carver looked back at the car. Travis hadn't moved an inch, his hands at ten and two, his eyes staring somewhere between.
What in the world was going on here? None of this was standard protocol, and he'd never seen a cellular device operated by fingerprint. He was growing increasingly unnerved by all of the secrecy and the cryptic nature of the assignment. Who was this Hawthorne and had he really run this new assignment past Moorehead?
He walked to the south through briars that grabbed at his slacks, nettles knitting into his socks and shoelaces, and pondered what he knew about Hawthorne. If he was going to demand answers, then he had better formulate the right questions. Moorehead had introduced Hawthorne as a Special Agent, yet had made no mention of which branch or division, and hadn't deferred to Hawthorne per se, but had been visibly uncomfortable in the scarred man's presence. They had pulled Carver from a high-profile case with techs still swabbing blood from his study and unanswered questions regarding the enigma that was Tobin Schwartz. There were only a few reasons for such an abrupt reassignment. Either he had stepped on some important toes through the course of his investigation, the FBI was preparing to make him the scapegoat, or perhaps he hadn't been reassigned at all, but rather...
"It isn't over," he said to himself, pushing through a wall of sunflowers that towered over him with blossoms the size of platters, and into a small clearing no more than four feet in diameter. The soil had been recently turned. It was flat beneath his feet, but raised slightly in a ring around the circumference. The ground vibrated ever so slightly. They were scrambling the cellular signal, he realized. Possibly electromagnets or--
The phone rang again and he answered it.
"I'm here."
"On the ground to the west you will find a small gray stone. Beneath it is a data cable. Plug it into the jack on your phone." The voice was computer enhanced, not muffled or garbled with distortion, but changing from one real voice to another entirely mid-sentence. The first had been a man, then a woman, and now he was talking to a child.
Carver knelt, removed the rock, and exposed the cord. He rose and stretched it to reach. Standing on his toes to see over the sunflowers, he found only what he expected: vast fields of nothingness.
"Who is this?" Carver asked. "Why all the cloak-and-dagger--?"
"You are now downloading all of the information you currently require," a husky woman's voice interrupted. "A private Westwind light jet will be awaiting your arrival on the tarmac. The pilot will not be informed of his flight plan until after takeoff. We trust you not to share any of this information with anyone, without exception. You are to trust no one." The voice changed to that of a man with a British accent. "An agent will meet you when you land."
"I don't understand what you want me to do. Where am I going and why--?"
"You disappoint me, Special Agent Carver. Don't let it happen again."
The call was terminated, leaving Carver to stare blankly at the silent phone. The screen registered the download was complete, so he unplugged the cable, dropped it on the ground, and kicked dirt over it.
This entire situation was maddening, but what options did he have? Perhaps after viewing the data file things would begin to make some sort of sense, but still, why the need for so much secrecy?
You are to trust no one
. How melodramatic.
He pushed through the tangle of greenery and headed toward the car, where Travis waited by the open rear door. The man had to be more than he appeared for whoever pulled his strings to trust him with as many details as they did. And from whom were they trying to disguise their plans?
Travis climbed back into the car when Carver neared and was already pulling forward when he closed his door. As they drove back to the highway, Carver glanced back at the abandoned house in time to see a miniature mushroom cloud of dirt and tatters of vegetation rise into the air beyond.
He felt the weight of the phone in his palm and pondered what kind of information it might contain.
What in the name of God had he gotten himself into?
IX
Sinagua Ruins
36 Miles Northeast of Flagstaff, Arizona
After a couple false starts and some sharp prodding, the desert finally gave up its ghosts. Elliot had uncovered a swatch of dirty fabric no more than ten yards from the tent, leaving just enough exposed for the two undergrads to make themselves useful. They were now cordoning off the grid around it while she continued her pursuit of more. She felt like a human divining rod, attuned to the faint vibrations with which the earth spoke. There was a spiritual element to her search, as though the dead cried out in whispers to be found, eager to share the mysteries of long lost lives. They called to her from everywhere at once, urging her to slice through the ground to release them like so much spilled blood. It was her imagination, she knew, a product of her education, experience, and desires. She had learned enough about various cultures and their burial rites to have a fundamental understanding of their trends and patterns, and had exhumed enough bodies through the years to recognize the type of ground a grieving family would select for interment. People didn't randomly bury their dead. Much thought was invested into finding the proper location, possibly near loved ones, or in a precise spot favored by either the deceased or their gods. Did the two bundles contain young lovers? Siblings? Did they know each other in life or were they only now acquainted in death? Were there whole families together in the ground beneath her feet, an entire culture?
She knelt on the sand before a clump of sage. Its roots pointed back out of the sand as if trying to free itself to scuttle away. The rational part of her suspected that the growth of the roots had perhaps been obstructed, forcing them to seek another route, while the irrational part reached down and slid her hand into the fine grains, feeling for the land's pulse.
After a moment, she stood and gently shoveled away small amounts of sand until she met with resistance no more than eight inches down. She fell to her knees and brushed away the dirt to reveal another patch of filthy, putrid blanket.
"Here's another!" she called back over her shoulder. While she wanted nothing more than to attack the ground with the shovel and tear open the bundle like a Christmas gift, she summoned her patience and waited for proper excavation.
"We're going to need a few more hands if you keep finding bodies," Mondragon said.
"A few? If they're anything like Mary-Kate and Ashley over there, we're going to need hundreds."
"You were just like them once."
"Take that back."
Mondragon smiled. "You turned out well enough."
"I had some excellent instructors along the way."
"You give me too much credit. It's easy when you have such an amazing student." He placed his hand on her shoulder and allowed it to linger just long enough to become uncomfortable. Elliot waited a heartbeat longer before extricating herself from beneath it. She tried to maintain an amicable smile.
"Any news on the carbon dating?" she asked, breaking the awkward silence.
"Not yet, which is odd considering they usually fast-track the results for me. I just called again about fifteen minutes ago and all I could get out of them was that they were having some sort of computer troubles that didn't allow them to access the data. If they can't recover the results, they worry they'll have to start all over again."