“So far I haven’t learned anything we didn’t see in McDowell’s notes.”
“I doubt I can add anything useful. Whatever I remember can’t really be trusted after all these years.”
“You told McDowell that you doubted any of your students could be involved in her disappearance. Do you still believe that?”
“Nothing’s changed my mind. Look, Detective, these were all good kids. Lazy, some of them. And inclined to drink a bit too much when they went into town.”
“And how often was that?”
“Every few days. Not that there’s much to do in Gallup, either. But then look at this canyon. There’s nothing here except the Park Service building, the ruins, and a few campsites. Tourists do come through during the day, and that’s something of a distraction because they hang around asking us questions. Other than that, the only amusement is a trip into town.”
“You mentioned tourists,” said Frost.
“Detective McDowell covered that ground. No, I don’t recall any psychopathic killers among them. But then, I wouldn’t know one if I saw him. I certainly wouldn’t remember his face, not after a quarter of a century.”
And that was the gist of the problem, thought Jane. After twenty-five years, memories vanish or, even worse, remake themselves. Fantasies become truth. She gazed out the window at the road leading out of the canyon. It was little more than a dirt track, swirling with hot dust. For Lorraine Edgerton, it had been the road to oblivion. What happened to you out in that desert? she wondered. You climbed aboard your motorbike, rolled out of this canyon, and slipped through some wormhole in time, to emerge twenty-five years later, in a crate in Boston. And the desert had long ago erased all traces of that journey.
“Can we keep this photo, Professor?” asked Frost.
“You’ll return it, won’t you?”
“We’ll keep it safe.”
“Because it’s the only group picture I have from that season. I’d have trouble remembering them all without these photos. When you take on ten students every year, the names start to add up. Especially when you’ve been doing this as long as I have.”
Jane turned from the window. “You take ten students every year?”
“I limit it to ten, just for logistics. We always get more applications than we can accept.”
She pointed to the photo. “There are only nine students there.”
He frowned at the picture. “Oh, right. There was a tenth, but he left early in the summer. He wasn’t here when Lorraine vanished.”
That explained why McDowell’s case file contained interviews with only eight of Lorraine’s fellow students.
“Who was the student? The one who left?” she asked.
“He was one of the undergrads. He’d just finished his sophomore year. A very bright fellow, but extremely quiet and a bit awkward. He didn’t really fit in with the others. The only reason I accepted him was because of his father. But he wasn’t happy here, so a few weeks into the season he packed up and left the dig. Took an internship elsewhere.”
“Do you remember the boy’s name?”
“Certainly I remember his last name. Because his father’s Kimball Rose.”
“Should I know that name?”
“Anyone in the field of archaeology should. He’s the modern-day version of Lord Carnarvon.”
“What does that mean?”
“He has money,” said Frost.
Quigley nodded. “Exactly. Mr. Rose has plenty of it, made in oil and gas. He has no formal training in archaeology, but he’s a very talented and enthusiastic amateur, and he funds excavations around the world. We’re talking about tens of millions of dollars. If it weren’t for people like him, there’d be no grants, no money to pay for turning over even a single rock.”
“Tens of millions? And what does he get back for all that money?” asked Jane.
“Get? Why, the thrill, of course! Wouldn’t you like to be the first person to step into a newly opened tomb? The first to peek into a sealed sarcophagus? He needs us and we need him. That’s how archaeology has always been done. A union between those with the money and those with the skills.”
“Do you remember his son’s name?”
“I wrote it in here somewhere.” He opened his book of field notes and began flipping through the pages. Several snapshots fell out onto the desk, and he pointed to one of the photos. “There, that’s him. I remember his name now. Bradley. He’s the young man in the middle.”
Bradley Rose sat at a table, pottery shards spread out before him. The other two students in the photo were otherwise distracted, but Bradley stared directly at the camera, as though studying some interesting new creature he’d never seen before. In almost every way he appeared ordinary: average build, a forgettable face, a look of anonymity that would easily be lost in a crowd. But his eyes were arresting. They reminded Jane of the day she’d visited the zoo and stared through the fence at a timber wolf, whose pale eyes had regarded her with unsettling interest.
“Did the police ever question the man?” asked Jane.
“He left us two weeks before she vanished. They had no reason to.”
“But he knew her. They’d worked together on the dig.”
“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t that make him someone worth talking to?”
“There was no point. His parents said he was home with them in Texas at the time. An airtight alibi, I should think.”
“Do you remember why he left the dig?” asked Frost. “Did something happen? Did he not get along with the other students?”
“No, I think it was because he got bored here. That’s why he took that internship out in Boston. That annoyed me, because I would have taken on a different student if I’d known Bradley wouldn’t stick it out here.”
“Boston?” Jane cut in.
“Yes.”
“Where was this internship?”
“Some private museum. I’m sure his father pulled strings to get him in.”
“Was it the Crispin Museum?”
Professor Quigley thought about it. Then he nodded. “That may have been the one.”
EIGHTEEN
Jane had heard that Texas was big, but as a New England girl, she had no real appreciation of just what big really meant. Nor had she imagined how bright the Texas sun was, or how hot the air could be, as hot as dragon’s breath. The three-hour drive from the airport took them through miles of scrub brush, through a sunbaked landscape where even the cattle looked different-rangy and mean, unlike the placid Guernseys she saw on pleasant green farms in Massachusetts. This was a foreign country, a thirsty country, and she fully expected the Rose estate to look like the arid ranches they passed along the way, low-slung and spread out, with white corral fences enclosing parched brown acreage.
So she was surprised when the mansion loomed into view.
It was set on a lushly planted hill that looked shockingly green above the endless expanse of scrubland. A lawn swept down from the home like a velvet skirt. In a paddock enclosed by white fences, half a dozen horses were grazing, their coats gleaming. But it was the residence that held Jane’s gaze. She’d expected a ranch house, not this stone castle with its crenellated turrets.
They drove to the massive iron gate and stared up in wonder.
“How much, do you think?” she asked.
“I’m guessing thirty million,” said Frost.
“That’s all? It’s got, like, fifty thousand acres.”
“Yeah, but it’s Texas. Land’s gotta be cheaper than at home.”
When thirty million dollars sounded cheap, thought Jane, you know you’ve stepped into an alternative universe.
A voice over the gate intercom said: “Your business?”
“Detectives Rizzoli and Frost. We’re from Boston PD. We’re here to see Mr. and Mrs. Rose.”