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

anyway?” asked Frost.
    “To make the wrappings stick together. It gave them rigidity, like making a papier-mâché container to protect the contents.”
    “I’m already through the final layer,” Maura said. “There’s no resin adhering to any of this.”
    Jane craned forward to catch a glimpse of what lay under the wrapping. “That’s her skin? It looks like old leather.”
    “Dried skin is precisely what leather is, Detective Rizzoli,” said Robinson. “In a way.”
    Maura reached for the scissors and gingerly snipped away the strips, exposing a larger patch of skin. It looked like brown parchment wrapped around bones. She glanced, once again, at the X-ray, and swung a magnifier over the calf. “I can’t find any entry hole in the skin.”
    “So the wound’s not postmortem,” said Jane.
    “It goes along with what we see on that X-ray. That foreign body was probably introduced while she was still alive. She lived long enough for the fractured bone to start mending. For the wound to close over.”
    “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