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His beam paused at a frieze depicting beheaded bodies laid out by the hundreds on the ground, their heads lying in rows nearby. The ground was splattered with blood, and the ancient artist had added such realistic details as lolling tongues.
They moved through a long series of passageways until they came to a room that was smaller than the others. A large fresco on one side showed the same scene of weighing the heart depicted earlier, only much larger. The hideous, slavering form of Ammut squatted nearby.
“The Hall of Truth,” Wicherly said. “Even the pharaoh was judged, or in this case, Senef, who was almost as powerful as a pharaoh.”
McCorkle grunted, then disappeared into the next chamber, and the rest followed. It was another spacious room with a vaulted ceiling, painted with a night sky full of stars, the walls dense with hieroglyphics. An enormous granite sarcophagus sat in the middle, empty. The walls on each side were interrupted by four black doors.
“This is an extraordinary tomb,” said Wicherly, shining the light around. “I had no idea. When you called me, Dr. Menzies, I thought it would be something small but charming. This is stupendous. Where in the world did the museum get it?”
“An interesting story,” Menzies replied. “When Napoleon conquered Egypt in 1798, one of his prizes was this tomb, which he had disassembled, block by block, to take back to France. But when Nelson defeated the French in the Battle of the Nile, a Scottish naval captain finagled the tomb for himself and reassembled it at his castle in the Highlands. In the nineteenth century, his last descendant, the 7th Baron of Rattray, finding himself strapped for cash, sold it to one of the museum’s early benefactors, who had it shipped across the Atlantic and installed while they were building the museum.”
“The baron let go of one of England’s national treasures, I should say.”
Menzies smiled. “He received a thousand pounds for it.”
“Worse and worse! May Ammut swallow the greedy baron’s heart for selling the ruddy thing!” Wicherly laughed, casting his flashing blue eyes on Nora, who smiled politely. His attentiveness was becoming obvious, and he seemed not at all discouraged by the wedding band on her finger.
McCorkle began to tap his foot impatiently.
“This is the burial chamber,” Wicherly began, “which the ancients called the House of Gold. Those antechambers would be the Ushabti Room; the Canopic Room, where all the pharaoh’s preserved organs were stored in jars; the Treasury of the End; and the Resting Place of the Gods. Remarkable, isn’t it, Nora? What fun we’ll have!”
Nora didn’t answer immediately. She was thinking about just how massive the tomb was, and how dusty, and how much work lay ahead of them.
Menzies must have been thinking the same thing, because he turned to her with a smile that was half eager, half rueful.
“Well, Nora,” he said. “It should prove an interesting six weeks.”
Chapter 11
Gerry Fecteau slammed the door to solitary 44 hard, causing a deafening boom throughout the third floor of Herkmoor Correctional Facility 3. He smirked and winked at his companion as they paused outside the door, listening while the sound echoed through the vast cement spaces before dying slowly away.
The prisoner in 44 was a big mystery. All the guards were talking about him. He was important, that much was clear: FBI agents had come to visit him several times and the warden had taken a personal interest. But what most impressed Fecteau was the tight lid on information. For most new prisoners, it didn’t take long for the rumor mill to grind out the accusation, the crime, the gory details. But in this case, nobody even knew the prisoner’s name, let alone his crime. He was referred to simply by a single letter: A.
On top of that, the man was scary. True, he wasn’t physically imposing: tall and slender with skin so pale it looked like he might have been born in solitary. He rarely spoke, and when he did, you had to lean forward to hear him. No, it wasn’t that. It was the eyes. In his twenty-five years in corrections, Fecteau had never before seen eyes that were so utterly cold, like two glittering silvery chips of dry ice, so far below zero they just about smoked.
Christ, it gave Fecteau a chill just thinking about them.
There was no doubt in Fecteau’s mind this prisoner had committed a truly heinous crime. Or series of crimes, a Jeffrey Dahmer type, a cold-blooded serial killer. He looked that scary. That’s why it gave Fecteau such satisfaction when the order came down that the prisoner was to be moved to solitary 44. Nothing more needed to be said. It was where they sent the hard cases, the ones who needed softening up. Not that solitary 44 was any worse than the other cells in Herkmoor 3 Solitary-all the cells were identical: metal cot, toilet with no seat, sink with only cold ru
Fecteau and his partner, Benjy Doyle, stood on either side of the cell door, making no noise, waiting for the drummer to start up again. He’d paused, as he always did for a few minutes when a new prisoner was installed. But the pause never lasted long.
Then, as if on schedule, Fecteau heard a faint soft-shoe shuffle start up again inside solitary 45. This was followed by the popping sound of lips, and then a low tattoo of fingers drumming against the metal rail of the bed. A little more soft-shoe, some snatches of humming… and then, the drumming. It started slowly, and quickly accelerated, a rapid roll breaking off into syncopated riffs, punctuated with a pop or a shuffle, a never-ending sonic flood of inexhaustible hyperactivity.
A smile spread across Fecteau’s face and his eyes met those of Doyle.
The drummer was a perfect inmate. He never shouted, screamed, or threw his food. He never swore, threatened the guards, or trashed his cell. He was neat and tidy, keeping his hair groomed and his body washed. But he had two peculiar characteristics that kept him in solitary: he almost never slept, and he spent his waking hours-all his waking hours-drumming. Never loudly, never in-your-face. The drummer was utterly oblivious to the outside world and the many curses and threats directed at him. He did not even seem to be aware that there was an outside world, and he continued on, never varying, never ruffled or disturbed, totally focused. Curiously, the very softness of the drummer’s sounds were the most unendurable aspect of them: Chinese water torture of the ear.
In transferring the prisoner known as A to solitary, Fecteau and Doyle had had orders to deprive the man of all his possessions, including-especially including, the warden had made clear-writing instruments. They had taken everything: books, sketches, photographs, journals, notebooks, pens and inks. The prisoner was left with nothing-and with nothing to do but listen:
Ba-da-ba-da-ditty-ditty-bop-hup-hup-huppa-huppa-be-bop-be-bop-ditty-ditty-ditty-boom! Ditty-boom! Ditty-boom! Ditty-bada-boom-bada-boom-ba-ba-ba-boom! Ba-da-ba-da-pop! Ba-pop! Ba-pop! Ditty-ditty-datty-shuffle-shuffle-ditty-da-da-da-dit! Ditty-shuffle-tap-shuffle-tap-da-da-dadadada-pop! Dit-ditty-dit-ditty-dap! Dit-ditty…
Fecteau had heard enough. It was already getting under his skin. He gestured toward the exit with his chin, and he and Doyle headed hurriedly back down the hall, the sounds of the drummer dying away.
“I give him a week,” said Fecteau.
“A week?” Doyle replied with a snort. “The poor bastard won’t last twenty-four hours.”