Within sight of the front door, Gail knelt and shrugged out of her backpack. While I kept an eye out for anyone approaching the building from the road, Gail took out her tablet and opened an app. I moved closer and watched over her shoulder.
A few minutes passed before Gail had the proper information. She keyed the app and announced, “That’s it. I moved the security system into the daytime mode. We should be able to pick the lock and walk right in.”
“Are you’re confident of that?” I asked.
She nodded, stood, and patted me on the shoulder. “Yeah, I’m confident. Let’s go.”
We moved out of the shadows to the glass doors of the museum’s entrance. A halogen light cast a yellow glow on the entrance. I listened, but other than a semi on the highway, I couldn’t hear vehicles or people. Gail took a set of lock-picks from her jacket and knelt in front of the door. I stood behind her, watching the open fields of the park and blocking her from anyone’s view.
“Okay, we’re in,” Gail said after a minute.
“Really, is that fast?” I asked.
Gail pulled the right-hand door open and motioned me inside. “Not real fast, but fast enough. The gloves make it harder to feel.”
She closed the door behind us and flicked the lock back on. By the glow of a couple of fluorescent lights, from the emergency system, the interior of the museum looked new. Glass cases with various shards and intact pots were arranged around the room and murals of scenes depicting the mounds when people lived there, graced the walls. Several large totem poles rose nearly to the ceiling.
Gail drew her shotgun and a small LED light. She turned on the light and motioned me to follow her. Ignoring the display cases, even the ones with life-size depictions of what I assumed to be realistic representations of the natives, Gail headed straight for a door in the back. I drew my shotgun and another light and moved behind her. I moved more cautiously than Gail and I watched for guards or anything else that might be moving inside the museum.
Stopping at the office door, Gail knelt and picked that lock in half the time as the front door. She opened the door, stepped inside, and shone her light around the cluttered room. The office wasn’t personalized except for a single framed photo next to a computer monitor on the small wood desk. Shelves lined the side walls, the back wall was a set of windows that looked out on the plains, and the massive mound centered there. Gail shone her light along the shelves as she moved to the desk and sat down.
I followed her in and pulled the door most of the way shut. Keeping the door open a crack, I watched the museum while she booted up the computer. Gail inserted a thumb drive into a USB port and let the virus program worm its way into the computer’s operating system. I split my time between watching for any sign of our being discovered and trying to figure out what she was doing.
I finally gave up wondering. “Excuse me, but I thought we were here to find some kind of spirit or poltergeist or something mystical, why are you looking in the computer?”
She looked up from the screen long enough to shake her head. “Jesse, these academic types are anal when it comes to things they unearth. The inventory will be itemized with the find location and the storage location. However, I guess we could search the old fashion way and check every item in the storehouse with an EMF meter—”
“EMF? Electromagnetic field?” I interrupted.
“Yep. As I was saying, we could use the meter to check everything until we locate whatever they’ve unearthed. It might take a few nights, but hey, if that’s how you want to do it.”
“So Ms.-I’m-the-expert-and-you’re-ignorant wants to be funny tonight, eh?” I asked, trying to hit a humorous tone. From the frown that came on Gail’s face, I figured I’d missed the mark.
“Are you really that petty?” she asked.
“No, just teasing,” I said, irritated at the defensiveness in my voice, “which is what I thought you were doing.”
“I was teasing; I’m not sure what you were doing. I told you the security system is disabled, you can leave the door if you want to see what I’m doing. Besides, you might notice something I’d miss. It helps to have two pairs of eyes on things.”
I took another glance around the museum’s interior, closed the door, and joined Gail. When I was at her shoulder, she pointed out an inventory list she’d called up. “The list gives date of acquisition, location of the find, finder, a description of the item, and last but most importantly, where it’s stored.”
“But if it’s killing these Profs in their homes, wouldn’t they have the items on them?”
“Not necessarily. Assuming they were together in the find; whatever they disturbed could be systematically eliminating everyone who violated whatever cockamamie curse had been placed.”
“I see, like King Tut’s tomb. It was supposed to have a curse on anyone who disturbed it. I read once that it turned out to be some mold infection that each of the original finders inhaled.”
Gail shook her head. “Don’t believe everything you read. Dad told me about that curse. It was a very effective one, killed quite a few archeologists before a hunter tracked down the cause and neutralized it.”
“You’re kidding, no, sorry, I can’t keep saying ‘you’re kidding’ every time you tell me something. Tell you what; you smile if you’re joking so this ignorant ol’ southern boy isn’t deceived by
