The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel Read Free Page B

tool was relatively recent. No one in that room had ever before watched a live CT scan of a mummy, and as they all crowded in, Maura was aware of the TV camera trained on their faces, ready to capture their reactions. Standing beside her, Nicholas Robinson rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, radiating enough nervous energy to infect everyone in the room. Maura felt her own pulse quicken as she craned for a better view of the monitor. The first image that appeared drew only impatient sighs.
    “It’s just the shell of the crate,” said Dr. Brier.
    Maura glanced at Robinson and saw that his lips were pressed together in thin lines. Would Madam X turn out to be nothing more than an empty bundle of rags? Dr. Pulcillo stood beside him, looking just as tense, gripping the back of the radiologist’s chair as she stared over his shoulder, awaiting a glimpse of anything recognizably human, anything to confirm that inside those bandages was a cadaver.
    The next image changed everything. It was a startlingly bright disk, and the instant it appeared, the observers all took in a sharply simultaneous breath.
    Bone.
    Dr. Brier said, “That’s the top of the cranium. Congratulations, you’ve definitely got an occupant in there.”
    Robinson and Pulcillo gave each other happy claps on the back. “This is what we were waiting for!” he said.
    Pulcillo grinned. “Now we can finish building that exhibit.”
    “Mummies!” Robinson threw his head back and laughed. “Everyone loves mummies!”
    New slices appeared on the screen, and their attention snapped back to the monitor as more of the cranium appeared, its cavity filled not with brain matter but with ropy strands that looked like a knot of worms.
    “Those are linen strips,” Dr. Pulcillo murmured in wonder, as though this was the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen.
    “There’s no brain matter,” said the CT tech.
    “No, the brain was usually evacuated.”
    “Is it true they’d stick a hook up through the nose and yank the brain out that way?” the tech asked.
    “Almost true. You can’t really yank out the brain, because it’s too soft. They probably used an instrument to whisk it around until it was liquefied. Then they’d tilt the body so the brain would drip out the nose.”
    “Oh man, that’s gross,” said the tech. But he was hanging on Pulcillo’s every word.
    “They might leave the cranium empty or they might pack it with linen strips, as you see here. And frankincense.”
    “What
is
frankincense, anyway? I’ve always wondered about that.”
    “A fragrant resin. It comes from a very special tree in Africa. Valued quite highly in the ancient world.”
    “So that’s why one of the three wise men brought it to Bethlehem.”
    Dr. Pulcillo nodded. “It would have been a treasured gift.”
    “Okay,” Dr. Brier said. “We’ve moved below the level of the orbits. There you can see the upper jaw, and…” He paused, frowning at an unexpected density.
    Robinson murmured, “Oh my goodness.”
    “It’s something metallic,” said Dr. Brier. “It’s in the oral cavity.”
    “It could be gold leaf,” said Pulcillo. “In the Greco-Roman era, they’d sometimes place gold-leaf tongues inside the mouth.”
    Robinson turned to the TV camera, which was recording every remark. “There appears to be metal inside the mouth. That would correlate with our presumptive date during the Greco-Roman era—”
    “Now what is
this
?” exclaimed Dr. Brier.
    Maura’s gaze shot back to the computer screen. A bright starburst had appeared within the mummy’s lower jaw, an image that stunned Maura because it should not have been present in a corpse that was two thousand years old. She leaned closer, staring at a detail that would scarcely cause comment were this a body that had arrived fresh on the autopsy table. “I know this is impossible,” Maura said softly. “But you know what that looks like?”
    The radiologist nodded. “It appears to be a