“Sweet mother of fuck!” said Skip.

“Beautiful,” Corrie murmured.

Holding it in one hand, Nora fished a loupe out of her pocket, put it to her eye, and examined it, turning the object this way and that.

“Is it real?” Skip asked.

“It’s heavy,” Nora said after a long moment, “and there isn’t a trace of tarnish. No doubt about it—it’s solid gold. The workmanship is incredible—the granulation and filigree work is so fine it’s almost microscopic. And I’m pretty sure all these stones are real, as well—rubies, sapphires, emeralds, turquoise, lapis.”

“Where did it come from?” Corrie asked.

Nora hesitated. “If I had to guess, I’d say Spanish colonial, probably seventeenth or eighteenth century. It’s got to be one of the finest gold objects I’ve ever seen.”

“So what’s it worth?” asked Skip after another brief silence.

Nora scoffed. “You would ask. From an archaeological point of view, it’s priceless.”

“But if you were to sell it, what could you get?”

Nora hesitated. “I really have no idea. A hundred thousand? Half a million? This is unlike anything I’ve seen in a museum.”

Skip whistled. “What was this old dude doing, schlepping around something like this out in the middle of nowhere?”

Damn good question, Corrie thought.

Skip suddenly grew animated. “Hey, maybe there’s more treasure on him! Let’s check it out!”

“Whoa!” said Nora sharply as Skip reached toward the body. “No searching!”

“We’ll examine the remains back at the lab,” Corrie said, “and if there’s anything else to be discovered, we’ll find it then. So let’s put that gold cross into the box along with the body and get the hell back to Albuquerque. Having something like that in our possession way out here is making me really, really nervous.”

12

“WELCOME TO MY pathology lab,” said Nigel Lathrop, his plummy British accent filling the lab as he held open the door.

Corrie didn’t much like the “my” in that sentence, but she kept a friendly smile plastered on her face as she followed him in. Morwood had dropped a couple of veiled warnings about getting along with Lathrop. The forensic pathologist had apparently been with the Albuquerque FO forever, and had acquired a reputation as a harmless eccentric of whom everyone professed to be fond. In truth, Morwood hinted he was a pain in the ass—and that one of Corrie’s jobs was to win him over.

“He’s a jack of all trades,” Morwood had told her, “dating back to a time when forensic science wasn’t so specialized. He handled the basics: a touch of fiber and hair analysis, fingerprints, some blood spatter analysis, blood typing—stuff that they wanted done fast and didn’t need to be sent to a national lab.” He was likely, Morwood noted, to be less than thrilled at her advanced expertise in forensic anthropology. And if he didn’t like you, he could easily manage to slow things down or—worse—find himself mystified by something easily identifiable to anyone else.

Corrie promised to get along with him at all costs. As a result, she was both curious and apprehensive as she shook the man’s hand, as cool and dry as an iron railing. Lathrop was a small, lean man with a pointy gray beard, thin lips, and a springy step. He affected a hearty manner, but there wasn’t much of a friendly look on his face.

They were in a drab laboratory space in the basement of the Albuquerque Field Office, surrounded by equipment that was not aging well. She followed him, edging past stacks of shipping boxes—delivered but not yet opened—and into the cramped, brightly lit operating theater. It was dominated by three rolling, guttered tables displaying the recent finds in High Lonesome: the mummified corpse, still zippered in a white body bag; another table with plastic boxes containing the mule skeleton; and a third spread with rotting artifacts.

Lathrop exchanged his tweed jacket for a white lab coat hanging from a rack. He pulled a pair of nitrile gloves from a wall holder, snapped them on, and tied on a face mask and a hair cover. Corrie followed suit.

“Well, well, what do we have here?” he said, approaching the large examination gurney. Bending over the body bag, he unzipped it swiftly and spread the opening wide, peering down with pursed lips.

“Help me transfer this.”

She helped him with the bag. The mummified body was still desiccated in its fetal position, one arm raised, the other tucked underneath, covered in a duster. After they set it down, sand dribbled from cracks and fissures in its dried flesh and rotten clothing, forming little piles.

Lathrop circled the body, hands clasped behind his back, making various hmmms and aaahs.

He moved on to the other tables and glanced over the mule bones, the rotting panniers, and then paused at the cross, lying next to its former leather wrapping. He gently picked it up and turned it over, then held it up to the light.

“Impressive!” he said, laying it back down and turning to her. “Looks like I have quite a lot of work ahead. When would you like the report?”

Corrie cleared her throat. “Actually, I was expecting to work with you.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Oh?”

Corrie suppressed a swell of annoyance. “I have a degree in forensic anthropology, which is why I was assigned to this case. Didn’t Special Agent Morwood discuss this with you?”