Bestiary

surprise in his eyes.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, breathing a sigh of relief, “you could have given me some warning.”

“I did,” Carter said, “but Ms. Wynette was louder.”

Del plopped back on a high stool behind him with his hands in his lap. “Nice of you to drop by,” he said. “After all this time, I’m glad you remembered where to find us.”

“Okay, I get it,” Carter said, knowing that he would be catching some flak. “I’m sorry I haven’t been more on top of this.”

“Just tell me it’s not because you’ve been on top of something else.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re not horsing around with somebody — like maybe that Miranda kid who was working on the dig at Pit 91?”

“What in the world would make you even say that?” Carter replied.

Del shrugged. “I just couldn’t think of anything else big enough to keep you away. Especially something that Beth wouldn’t know about. She had no idea where you were last Sunday, and she called here looking for you today.” He bent down and picked up a can of Sprite resting on the floor beneath the worktable. “It’s just not like you, Bones.”

And Carter knew he was right; it wasn’t. But he should have planned for this confrontation. He should have come up with some excuse in advance. “I’ve had Gunderson breathing down my neck about the NAGPRA problems,” he improvised. “Unless we want to wind up consigning these bones to some Native American burial ground, I’ve got to cross every i and dot every t.”

“That’s cross every t and dot every i,” Del corrected him.

“Oh. Right.”

Del gave him a long look and shook his head. “Anybody ever tell you you’re the worst liar on earth?” He sipped from the soda can, then put it safely back on the floor, away from the exposed fossils. “But I figure you’ll tell me the truth when you’re ready.”

“Mind if I ask you one question?” Carter said, stepping up to the worktable to survey what Del was doing.

“Shoot.”

“How come you nearly jumped out of your skin when I showed up a few seconds ago?”

Del didn’t look up, but cocked his head slightly, as if in embarrassment. “No reason,” he said. “It’s just that it does get a little spooky down here at times.”

Carter laughed. “You? The guy who’s crawled into caves on his belly? Who’s slept alone on fossil beds in Kazakhstan?”

Del smiled. “Yeah, well, there’s something about this guy,” he said, referring to the tar-blackened bones before him, “that sort of gets to you after a while. You get the feeling his ghost is looking over your shoulder. A couple of times I’ve apologized out loud when I’ve had to scrape extra hard on the plaster and tar.”

“Did he say you’re excused?”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Del replied, indicating that the ribbing was at an end. “Why don’t you roll up your sleeves and help me out here?”

“Glad to,” Carter said, literally rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt.

“You can start by telling me what happened to the mystery object.”

“The what?”

“The thing he’d been holding in his hand when he died. The thing that I can only presume you stashed somewhere for safekeeping.” Del glanced across the table at Carter. “Tell me you do know where it is.”

Carter nodded and turned around. He fished in his pocket for the padlock key, found it, then realized, with a terrible start, that he wouldn’t need it. The padlock on the drawer holding the bones of the La Brea Woman — the same drawer where he’d concealed the mystery object — was open, hanging loose on the hasp. There were long, deep scratches on the metal cabinet all around it.

He pulled the loose padlock away and yanked open the drawer, dreading what he might find — or not find — there.

All that was left in the drawer was the white handkerchief in which he’d wrapped the object when he’d stashed it here. The bones were gone, the skull was gone. The paper lining of the drawer bore only the faint imprint of the skeletal fragments that had been safely stored here for so many decades.

Until Carter had intruded on them.

“I should have known,” Del said from behind him; from his perspective, he would not be able to see that the drawer had been plundered. “It’s a safe bet you wouldn’t have let it go far.” Carter heard him putting a new tape in the boom box.

Carter was flabbergasted. He couldn’t imagine how this could have happened. He stood staring into the empty drawer, as if by doing so he could conjure up the bones again. As if he could will them back into the cabinet where they belonged.

The new tape started, Johnny Cash this time. Del had gone back to work on the bones of the La Brea Man. “Bring it on,” Del said exuberantly. “Let us solve, once and for all, the riddle of the secret stone.” Del’s theory was that it would prove to be a sacred artifact of some kind.

Carter didn’t know what to do, or say.

“Carter? You okay?” Del finally said.

“It’s gone,” Carter mumbled.

“What’s gone? The stone?” Del quickly came to his side and stared into the open drawer.

“It’s all gone,” Carter said.

“What is? What was in here?”

“La Brea Woman was in here.”

“Jesus,” Del said as he absorbed the magnitude of what Carter was saying. He plucked the handkerchief up, just to see if there was anything left under it, then let it drop back into the drawer. “How’d they know she was here?”

“How’d who know she was here?”

“The protestors, the NAGPRA people.” He looked at Carter as if wondering why he hadn’t already put it together, too. “They wanted her bones back, too; they wanted to inter them in some sacred burial ground. And now they’ve got ’em.” He scratched his head. “But how the hell did they get down here? Hector isn’t exactly easy to get around.”

Was that it? Carter wondered. Was it simply the supporters of William Blackhawk Smith and the Native American grave repatriation act? Was it only an elaborate and cunning theft?

“But why,” Carter asked, “would they have taken her, and not him?” he said, glancing back at the bones of the La Brea Man laid out on the worktable. It would have been so easy to make off with it all.

Even Del had to think for a second. “They must have done it between the time you stashed the stone in the drawer and we brought the man’s bones down. If you’d been around more, you’d have noticed it sooner.” He was sorry it had come out that way, but in fact it was true — and Del, too, had had a stake in deciphering the mystery object. He was angry. “We’ve got to call the police. Maybe the FBI. I don’t even know who’d have jurisdiction in something like this.”

But that was the last thing Carter wanted to have happen. It would surely be the last nail in his own coffin at the Page Museum and, considering what had happened at NYU, probably his professional career. One disaster could be forgiven, two would brand him forever as either criminally incompetent, or cursed.

And he didn’t believe that was what had happened, anyway. It just felt to Carter as though something else was going on here, something more… elusive.

“Let me have a day to figure this out,” Carter said.

“To figure what out? Some crazy bastard snuck down here, jimmied the lock, and stole the bones. It doesn’t take Detective Columbo to see what happened here.”

“You’re probably right.” He turned to Del. “But let me think this through. Once it comes to light…” He didn’t have to finish the sentence for Del to see what he was getting at. “Okay?”

Del swallowed his own eagerness to get the police on the case and said, “Okay, Bones. I get it.” He shook