Shadows In The Night

Some of them had died or disappeared in that effort.

History suggested that Amenmose had been murdered. As a criminology student, Harley was to be in on the discovery and would seek and find whatever evidence those who had managed his secret burial might have left behind.

Not that, to Henry’s mind, Amenmose hadn’t deserved murder. He had usurped power every step of the way. He’d abused officials below him. It had even been intimated that he had attempted to kill those in power above him.

“I think we’ve gotten all the manual labor done for the evening and we’re going to pack it in, maybe drive to that little town for some dinner. Want to come with us? You should. You’d enjoy it. Or shall we bring you back something?” Harley asked him.

“Next time, Harley, I’ll come with you all,” he promised. “There’s so much in here! I’m not going to go touching anything until we’ve had a chance to work with the preservation measures, but I do intend to look at everything.”

Earlier that week, they had finally discovered the secret site of the tomb of Amenmose. And, of course, since then, Henry Tomlinson had been on cloud nine. This was a dream come true, a fantasy realized, the culmination of a lifetime of love and dedication.

Harley laughed softly. “Yes! You did it, Dr. Tomlinson.”

“I did, didn’t I?”

The Amenmose find was among the most important ancient Egyptian discoveries of the past few years; he couldn’t have been more excited about being a major player in that discovery. And even now, at the end of an exhausting day—and even though he truly enjoyed the young people working with him—he was far too fascinated to leave. There were a dozen or so coffins to be studied, one of them presumably that of Amenmose; the group wouldn’t consider opening them until everyone was back at the museum in Cairo. But he could study the canopic jars they’d found thus far. There were also other artifacts that had been carefully moved into the prep tent. So much to observe and to describe! And there were the broken coffins, which had probably been as meticulously set as any of the others, but had been in the section where a partial cave-in had taken place. Several of those outer and inner coffins had split and exposed their mummies. Henry Tomlinson was fascinated to see what study was possible before the mummies were packed and crated and prepared for the trip to Cairo, where options for preservation were far more sophisticated, and where the mummies could be X-rayed and DNA could be tested.

Oh! It was all so monumental.

Amenmose had been a priest in the days when another priest, Ay, had ruled Egypt as regent. Ay had done so for a well-known pharaoh, the boy king, Tutankhamen. As regent, Ay had wielded immense power. He’d gone on to become pharaoh in his own right—after the death of Tut at the age of nineteen.

Amenmose, according to ancient texts, had tried to usurp some of that power. And he’d had his own followers in the court, making him a dangerous man. Because of this he had feared for his immortal life—and his wife had kept his burial plans a complete secret, shared only with members of his family. Naturally, legend had it that many of his most loyal followers—rather than give away any secrets—had been willing to die with him, sealed alive in a grave for eternity.

“Dr. Tomlinson, you worked so hard. And wow! You triumphed. You should celebrate. Come out with us. Is there nothing I can do to convince you?” Harley asked. She still had that wonderful smile, as if she were the one who was far older and wiser. “Nothing’s going to disappear. We’ll go have some dinner and drinks and come on back. There are plenty of men on guard here. And,” she added, “you really deserve a little celebration with us. Think of it—you researched and imagined and looked into the ancient Egyptian mind and you made the discovery. It’s your shining moment. You’re another Carter with his Tutankhamen, Dr. Tomlinson. Do you realize that?”

“Oh, no, no,” Henry demurred. He shook his head firmly. “A celebration is tempting, but I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t. I do promise that I’ll come with all of you on another day. Harley! Look at this! I feel like, as the song says, I have treasures untold.”

Harley laughed. “You saw The Little Mermaid?” she asked.

He stared at her, feeling a bit chagrined. “Oh! Yes, I get it, you wouldn’t think that I’d see a children’s movie...” He laughed, too. “Remember, I do have great nieces and nephews! Anyway...”

He started walking as he spoke. “Harley, these are such treasures! This broken coffin.” He gestured at it. “Damaged by time and by that cave-in, however many centuries ago. And this fellow, Harley. It almost looks as if he was buried alive. Wrapped up alive and screaming.”

“I don’t think you can embalm anyone and have that person come out of the process alive,” Harley reminded him, amused. “That’s only in fiction. We both know what was involved in Egyptian embalming, and just how many factors could’ve had an effect on the mummy’s appearance. Screaming mummies belong to B movies, right? And when you think about it, weird mummies are all the more reason you should come with us.”

“Why is that?”

Harley didn’t answer. The flap opened again and Jensen Morrow, another of the students, poked his head in to answer.

He’d obviously heard the question.

“Ooh! ’Cause you shouldn’t be alone with scary old stuff when you have cool kids like us to hang out with!” Jensen said.

They all laughed. Jensen was a good-looking, dark-haired young man who loved the study he was involved in, and Dr. Henry Tomlinson liked him very much, as well. Jensen played hard, but he worked harder. He came from money; his father was an inventor who’d come up with a special cleaning product. And yet Jensen never acted like money, never acted pretentious or entitled the way some rich kids did.

“Tempting, tempting, tempting,” Henry said again. “But I’m going to stay.”

Jensen raised his eyebrows at Harley. “Hey, girl, then it’s you and me heading out. The old man here isn’t coming. That’s okay. We’re bringing back the goods. Just the two of us, since Belinda Gray is waiting for a video chat with her fiancé—military, as we know!—in Iraq. Roger Eastman agreed to help one of the tech guys investigate some computer info they’re picking up. I hate to say it, but we’re getting chatter about an insurgent group starting up. And Joe Rosello said he wants to learn more about the excavation equipment. He’s working with that pretty Egyptian girl, our translator, and learning about hoists.”

“Hoists? Yeah, right!” Harley said. “Satima. She is pretty, and thank goodness we have her. I’m just grateful she filled in at the last minute when the older gentleman we’d hired wound up ill. If I know our friend Joe at all, I know he’s very happy!” she said to Henry. “We won’t go far, since we seem to be feeling a wee bit nervous! And we won’t be late. We’ll bring you something to eat and see if you want to be social when we get back, okay? If, and only if, you’re absolutely positive you don’t want to take a ride with this handsome, if ridiculous, guy and me?”

Henry laughed. “Oh, Harley, you’re a sweetheart, but give it up. You know I’m not coming.”

She grimaced, a delightful movement of her face. “Yes, I do,” she admitted. “But we—your devoted students—have to try. I’ll bring you a special treat for dinner.”

“Don’t worry about me, guys. I’ll be fine.”

“Sorry, we will worry about you. At least we can make sure you eat. I’m willing to bet you’re going to be up all night—and you won’t even notice that you haven’t slept,” Harley said.

He smiled and made a shooing motion with his hands. “Go! Get on out with you. Be young and have fun and don’t become an obsessive old curmudgeon like me. Jensen, get her out of here!”

“Yes, sir!” Jensen said.

Harley still hung back. “You’re neither obsessive nor old,” she insisted. “Okay, wait. Maybe you are obsessive. Anyway, we’ll be back by nine or so, and like I said, I’ll bring you something delicious.”

“Sounds lovely! See you soon.”

And at last, Harley and Jensen left.

Dr. Henry Tomlinson turned his attention back to Unknown Mummy #1 for several long moments. Many pharaohs and royalty and even esteemed but lesser men, like Amenmose, ended up with unknowns in their tombs—servants needed in the next life.

Almost the entire lid of the coffin had been torn open. That afternoon, two of the students had painstakingly cleared out the rubble around the mummy. But Henry felt as if he was indeed looking at remnants featured in a B horror flick; the thing really did appear to be a man who’d been wrapped up with his mouth open in horror, left to silently scream into eternity.

Mummies weren’t wrapped like this alive. Unless, of course...

He’d never been intended to be a mummy?

He’d been a murder victim.

Could this unidentified mummy be Amenmose himself? he wondered excitedly. They hadn’t identified the man’s tomb.

Great question, but it wasn’t scientific to jump to conclusions. X-rays would give them an image of the insides—and that would probably tell them if the facial contortions had happened because of some accident in the drying process or if he had somehow been wrapped alive!

No, it couldn’t be Amenmose, Henry decided. According to the ancient texts and all the information at his disposal, Amenmose had died before burial. Besides, they’d discovered one coffin in an inner tomb, deep in a hidden recess—again, just as the ancient texts had said. Amenmose’s enemies might have defiled his tomb if those who loved him hadn’t concealed his remains. The mummy here, found in the outer chamber, couldn’t be Amenmose—not unless there was a great deal they were missing! “Sorry, old boy. Lord only knows what happened to you,” Henry told the mummy.

“Hey!”

The inner flap to the preparation tent opened again. Henry looked over to see that it was Alchemy’s director at large, Ned Richter.

He was smiling. As he should have been. Their day had been fantastic.

“Hey,” Henry said. He liked Richter okay. Although not an Egyptologist himself, the man was studious and yet always ready help out with manual labor when needed.

Henry didn’t like Richter’s wife, Vivian, so much. She was an Egyptologist, too—at least in her own mind, he thought with a snort. Okay, so she did have her master’s degree from Brown; she was just annoying as hell and she didn’t think clearly or reason anything out. She was an attractive enough woman with short dark hair and dark eyes, and she claimed the maternal side of her father’s family had been Egyptian.

She liked to pretend that she knew what she was talking about.

She seldom did.