Diablo Mesa(15)

Just get it over with, she told herself, working the brush around the sides and uncovering more bizarre brown skin, pitted and scaly like some ancient reptile’s. At least, she thought—hoped—it was skin. One more sweep of the brush brought both eye sockets into full view, yawning, unexpectedly huge—and Nora stopped, rearing back in surprise at the sight.

“What the hell?” somebody cried out in a choked voice.

Nothing else was said. A silence of pure astonishment fell over the group, and only the wind could be heard, rustling through the prairie grass.





8



NORA STARED AT what the last few brushstrokes had uncovered: a large, domed head covered in lizard-like skin; two eye sockets that gaped like hollow caves; two holes for a nose; wrinkled stubs for ears; and thin, dry lips drawn back in a snarl from white teeth. A murmur of incomprehension drifted down into the shallow hole from the crowd above.

As alien as the head had looked at first glance, Nora began to realize it was simply too human in aggregate to be anything but a person. What was throwing her and everyone else off was the scaly skin texture; the smoothed-out—almost dissolved—facial features; and the eye cavities, whose shadowy depths made them look much larger than they actually were.

It was human—but it was certainly no Native American burial. Spanish, perhaps?

Ignoring the buzz of talk from above, she resumed brushing away the sand in larger strokes and quickly uncovered the neck area—along with the rotting collar of a modern checked shirt and a thin gold necklace with a Catholic medallion of Saint Christopher. Another hush fell as she cleared more sand away from the posterior part of the head, revealing the cause of death: an obvious bullet hole in the left temple, behind the ear, which had exited the right, taking much of the rear section of the skull with it.

She stopped and stood up, brushing sand from her clothes, then climbed out of the hole. Tappan’s face had gone white. She spoke to him in a calm voice. “It’s not, obviously, a prehistoric burial,” she said. “I think what we have here is a murder victim.” Taking a deep breath, she turned toward her brother. “Skip, I guess you’d better retrieve that shell casing from the trash. Don’t touch it with your fingers this time—it’s evidence. Use tweezers and place it in one of my artifact bags. It seems we’re dealing with a burial and a crime scene.”

Finally, Tappan spoke. “A crime scene?”

“You can see as well as I the execution-style shot to the head, the clean entrance hole, the gaping exit wound. This is not a suicide: dead people can’t bury themselves. And obviously this is not an alien—right? Not with a Saint Christopher medal and a checked shirt collar.”

After a moment, Tappan nodded. The color had returned to his features. “Of course. I see that. But what about the strange-looking skin, and the lack of features? It may be human, but it’s no ordinary corpse.”

“I haven’t a clue about that,” said Nora. “All I know is, we need to report this.”

“To whom?”

“Since we’re on federal land, to the FBI. And as it turns out, I know the right person to contact in the Albuquerque Field Office.”

“Really?” Tappan looked at her speculatively. “And who might that be?”

“Special Agent Corinne Swanson.”





9



THIS IS SOME desolate country out here,” said Special Agent Morwood, behind the wheel of his candy-apple-red pickup truck as they headed south of Vaughn, New Mexico, on Route 285. The road stretched ahead of them like a gray slash through a landscape of grass and chamisa, with a few splotches of April flowers visible here and there. “I’ve been back with the Albuquerque FO for half a dozen years, and rarely do we have a case out in these parts.”

“Why is that?” Special Agent Corrie Swanson asked.

He chuckled. “Nobody lives here. There’s nobody to get into trouble.”

The truck hummed on the highway, going ninety, but the land was so empty it almost felt to Corrie like they weren’t moving. They were being followed by the Evidence Response Team van, with two ERT technicians. Theirs were the only vehicles on the road, as far as Corrie could tell.

“Be sure to give me plenty of advance notice of our turnoff,” Morwood said.

He had asked Corrie to navigate, and she was doing so with her iPhone. They had gone out of cellular range a while ago, but the GPS still seemed to be working. She hoped to God she wouldn’t get them lost.

“It’s another forty miles, sir.”

“Christ.” He drove for a while in silence. “So, Corrie, I’ve been thinking: How would you feel if I put you in charge of this case? I’ll be your junior partner, so to speak. All the decisions are going to be yours. Of course, I’ll step in if I think there’s a problem, but for the most part I’m going to let you take the lead.”

“Thank you, sir. I appreciate that very much.” She knew, as an FBI agent with just over a year’s field experience under her belt, that this was the next step in the “ghosting” process: to run her own case, with her mentor acting as a junior partner. She tried to tamp down her nervousness and excitement. After all, it couldn’t be as dangerous, or as complicated, as the two major cases she’d already worked on since joining the Albuquerque FO.