“How long would that take?”

“A few weeks. Perhaps a month.”

“Someone would have to care for her during that time, right? She’d have to be fed and sheltered.”

Maura nodded. “This makes the manner of death all the more difficult to determine.”

Robinson asked, “Manner of death? What do you mean?”

“In other words,” said Jane, “we’re wondering if she was murdered.”

“Let’s settle the most pressing issue first.” Maura reached for the knife. Mummification had toughened the tissues to the consistency of leather, and the blade did not cut easily into the withered flesh.

Glancing across the table, Jane saw Dr. Pulcillo’s lips tighten, as though to stifle a protest. But as much as she might object to the procedure, the woman could not look away. They all leaned in, even spore-phobic Frost, their attention glued to that exposed patch of leg as Maura picked up forceps and plunged the tips into the incision. It took only seconds of digging around in the shriveled flesh before the teeth of the forceps clamped down on the prize. Maura dropped it onto a steel tray, and it gave a metallic clang.

Dr. Pulcillo sucked in a sharp breath. This was no spear tip, no broken bit of knife blade.

Maura finally stated the obvious. “I think we can now safely say that Madam X is not two thousand years old.”

FOUR

“I don’t understand,” Dr. Pulcillo murmured. “The linen was analyzed. The carbon dating confirmed the age.”

“But that’s a bullet,” said Jane, pointing to the tray. “A twenty-two. Your analysis was all screwed up.”

“It’s a well-respected lab! They were certain about the date.”

“You could both be right,” said Robinson quietly.

“Yeah?” Jane looked at him. “I’d like to know how.”

He took a deep breath and stepped back from the table, as though needing the space to think. “I see it come up for sale from time to time. I don’t know how much of it is genuine, but I’m sure there are caches of the real thing out there on the antiquities market.”

“What?”

“Mummy wrappings. They’re easier to find than the bodies themselves. I’ve seen them on eBay.”

Jane gave a startled laugh. “You can go online and buy mummy wrappings?”

“There was once a thriving international trade in mummies. They were ground up and used as medicines. Carted off to England for fertilizer. Wealthy tourists brought them home and held unwrapping parties. You’d invite your friends over to watch while you peeled away the linen. Since amulets and jewels were often among the wrappings, it was sort of like a treasure hunt, uncovering little trinkets for your guests.”

“That was entertainment?” said Frost. “Unwrapping a corpse?”

“It was done in some of the finest Victorian homes,” Robinson said. “It goes to show you how little regard they had for the dead of Egypt. And when they’d finish unwrapping the corpse, it would be disposed of or burned. But the wrappings were often kept as souvenirs. That’s why you still find stashes of them for sale.”

“So these wrappings could be ancient,” said Frost, “even if the body isn’t.”

“It would explain the carbon fourteen dating. But as for Madam X herself…” Robinson shook his head in bewilderment.

“We still can’t prove this was homicide,” said Frost. “You can’t convict someone based on a gunshot wound that was already healing.”

“I kind of doubt she volunteered for mummification,” said Jane.

“Actually,” said Robinson, “it’s possible that she did.”

Everyone turned to stare at the curator, who looked perfectly serious.

“Volunteer to have her brains and organs ripped out?” said Jane. “No, thanks.”

“Some people have bequeathed their bodies for precisely that purpose.”

“Hey, I saw that show, too,” said Frost. “Another one on Discovery Channel. Some archaeologist actually mummified a guy.”

Jane stared down at the wrapped cadaver. She imagined being encased in layer after layer of smothering bandages. Being bound in a linen straitjacket for a thousand, two thousand years, until a day when some curious archaeologist would decide to strip away the cloth and reveal her shriveled remains. Not dust to dust, but flesh to leather. She swallowed. “Why would anyone volunteer for that?”

“It’s a type of immortality, don’t you think?” said Robinson.

“An alternative to rotting away. Your body preserved. Those who love you never have to surrender you to decay.”

Those who love you.Jane glanced up. “You’re saying this could have been an act of affection?”

“It would be a way to hold on to someone you love. To keep them safe from the worms. From rotting.”

The way of all flesh, thought Jane, and the temperature in the room suddenly seemed to plummet. “Maybe it’s not about love at all. Maybe it’s about ownership.”

Robinson met her gaze, clearly unsettled by that possibility. He said softly: “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

Jane turned to Maura. “Let’s get on with the autopsy, Doc. We need more information to work with.”

Maura crossed to the light box, removed the leg X-rays, and replaced them with the CT scan films. “Let’s turn her onto her back again.”

This time, as Maura cut through the linen strips covering the torso, she wasted no effort on preservation. They now knew this was no ancient cadaver she was cutting into; this was a death investigation, and the answers lay not in the linen strips but in the flesh and bone itself. The cloth parted, revealing the torso’s brown and shrunken skin through which the outlines of ribs were visible, arching up in a bony vault beneath its parchment tent. Moving toward the head, Maura pried off the painted cartonnage mask and began to snip at the strips covering the face.

Jane looked at the CT films hanging on the light box, then frowned at the exposed torso. “The organs are all taken out during mummification, right?”

Robinson nodded. “Removal of the viscera slows down the process of putrefaction. It’s one of the reasons the bodies don’t decay.”

“But there’s only one little wound on the belly.” Jane pointed to a small incision on the left, sewn closed by ungainly stitches.

“How do you get everything out through that opening?”

“That’s exactly how the Egyptians would have removed the viscera. Through a small wound on the left side. Whoever preserved this body was familiar with the ancient methods. And clearly adhered to them.”

“What are these ancient methods? How, exactly, do you make a mummy?” asked Jane.

Dr. Robinson looked at his associate. “Josephine knows more about it than I do. Maybe she’ll explain it.”

“Dr. Pulcillo?” said Jane.

The young woman still looked shaken by the discovery of the bullet. She cleared her throat and straightened. “A large part of what we know comes down to us from Herodotus,” she said. “I guess you could call him a Greek travel writer. Twenty-five hundred years ago, he roamed the ancient world and recorded what he learned. The problem is, he was known to get details wrong. Or get snookered by the local tour guides.” She managed a smile. “It makes him seem human, doesn’t it? He was like any tourist in Egypt today. Probably hounded by trinket sellers. Duped by crooked tour guides. Just another innocent abroad.”

“What did he say about making mummies?”

“He was told that it all starts with a ritual washing of the corpse in dissolved natron.”

“Natron?”

“It’s essentially a mixture of salts. You can reproduce it by blending plain old table salt and baking soda.”

“Baking soda?” Jane gave an uneasy laugh. “I’ll never look at a box of Arm and Hammer the same way again.”

“The washed body is then laid out on wooden blocks,” Pulcillo continued. “They use a razor-sharp blade of Ethiopian stone-probably obsidian-to slice a small incision like the one you see here. Then, with some sort of hooked instrument, they pull out the organs, dragging them out through the hole. The empty cavity is rinsed, and they pack dry natron inside. Natron is poured over the body as well, to dehydrate it for forty days. Sort of like salting a fish.” She paused, staring as Maura’s scissors cut through the last strips covering the face.