Authors: Alex Archer
Annja woke on her living room floor. Something smelled off. Her wrist pulsed with pain. Rolling to her side, she was startled to see the drops of blood beneath her left hand. For a puncture wound, she’d lost a lot of blood.
She examined the wound. It no longer bled. Skin tissue had puckered around the tiny entry circle on the underside of her wrist. She didn’t want to probe it. It hadn’t gone through and out the other side, though it had damn well felt as if it had.
Serge, her less than welcome guest, had shoved something deep into the bone. And he’d twisted.
“Like taking a freaking core sample or something,” she said, testing her voice.
She sat up, cradling her wrist, and blinked away the wooziness still toying with clear thinking. The light in the room was dull, which told her she’d passed out for some time. It must be late afternoon. It started getting dark early this time of year.
“Not smart, Annja. Why didn’t you pull the sword on him?”
Because when he’d slammed her against the wall, impact had stolen the senses from her. She hadn’t been thinking clearly.
Looking around she saw her door was still open. “Oh, man.”
Dragging herself to a half-conscious stagger, she closed the door. Her neighbor across the hall hadn’t noticed? The guy was a night owl. He was probably still sleeping. It was very likely he hadn’t heard a thing when Serge had been tossing bits of her life around.
With a glance at the carnage of said life, Annja shook her head. Earlier she’d only been worried about dusting. Now she was going to need a bobcat with a loader on the front.
She wandered into the bathroom to clean her wound. Shampoo bottles, face cream and tubes of toothpaste and athletic rub were splayed across the floor. The towels she kept tucked beneath the sink cupboard were strewn, half of them landing in the tub. There wasn’t much in here she worried about getting broken or damaged.
She didn’t want to look at the green screen setup. That had cost her a few grand. Though she received money from royalties on her books, and
Chasing History’s Monsters
paid her a nice fee, Annja was a penny pincher. And it was never a day at the park explaining things like this to the insurance company. She’d have to report a break-in again. But she couldn’t tell anyone about Serge if she wanted the insurance check.
If the guy had been looking for a skull why would he open her toothpaste and squeeze that out? This vandalism was just plain malicious.
Clearing out the sink, she turned on the hot water, then some cold. The phone rang while the water was running. Watching the pink blood trickle over her wrist, Annja vacillated whether or not to answer.
Remembering her call to Bart last night she dashed for it, spraying water across the bathroom floor.
She picked up on the fifth ring. “Hello?”
“Annja, we got an ID on the body lifted from the canal this morning,” Bart said.
“That was quick.” She stepped across a scatter of books, noting the volume on Scythian metalwork was cracked down the spine. Stupid Serge. Even if insurance did cover it, she’d never find another; it was irreplaceable.
“Who and, more important,
what
was he?”
“Marcus Cooke,” Bart said. “He also goes by the alias Travis Traine, and a few others. He’s a thief, Annja, and a damn good one. He’s hit museums in the States, Europe and a few royal caches in Germany and Poland. The guy likes colored stuff, rubies and emeralds. Interpol has been after him for years.”
“Big-time thief. So why was he interested in a crusty old skull?”
“Exactly. Jewel thieves don’t usually go in for anything they can’t immediately fence.”
Annja leaned against the desk. “There is gold on the skull, but I doubt that would amount to any more than a few hundred bucks in value.”
“You didn’t mention gold before. An infant’s skull with gold on it? I’d have to stretch the definition of
colored stuff
to think it would interest a thief who has only stolen jewels.”
“Maybe he was hard up? When was his last big job?”
“That we know of? In 2003. It’s been years, which means little. The man could have changed his M.O. So if we allow he’s changed his habits, or had just added artifacts to his repertoire, there’s still one question. Why do you think Marcus Cooke chose to contact you, Annja? Have you ever heard of this guy or come in contact with him before last night?”
She remembered Serge expressing his surprise the thief had come to her.
You’re just an archaeologist.
Just. As in no better than any other.
It was true. Just because she hosted a TV show didn’t make her better than half the archaeologists who devoted all their time to their passion. But the way Serge had muttered it had offended her. And she didn’t upset easily.
“He saw me on TV and probably thought I looked trustworthy.”
“Professional thieves do not fence stolen goods with television personalities, Annja.”
“Oh, so now I’m a fence?” She toed a plastic file of recipe cards detailing notes from a dig in Wales that had toppled on the floor. “Bart, please. Like I told you, I exchanged a few e-mails with the guy, then bam.”
“You always arrange to meet strangers?”
“Not always. Sometimes they arrange to meet me.” Or she found them waiting in her living room with nasty tools and a taste for bone. “You know I can’t resist a mysterious artifact, Bart. A skull to me is like a cache of stolen credit cards to you. Yes?”
“I hate credit-card scams. So much paperwork involved. All right, so we’ll agree the answer to why the thief chose you will never be solved. And he probably didn’t intend to make you a fence, just wanted your opinion on its value.”
“Agreed.”
“You get a clue on the skull yet? Someone killed for it. Is it made completely of gold?”
“There is some decorative gold between the cranial sutures. Total? Probably less than a few ounces. I left it with Professor Danzinger at Columbia this morning. He’s unable to date the thing because they don’t have the proper equipment at the university, but he did find some interesting markings on the skull interior.”
“Inside it? How does a person get anything inside a skull?”
“Very carefully.”
Should she tell him about Serge’s visit?
Annja was always cautious about telling Bart too much about the fiascos she found herself involved in. But she wasn’t stupid. If having a detective back her up would advance the case, and she read Bart’s mood as helpful, she’d ask.
She wasn’t sure if police involvement was wise at this point in the game. It may hinder her by requiring she turn over the skull as evidence.
On the other hand, Serge had hurt her. The stab wound still pulsed with a dull ache. But what had he been trying to accomplish with the weird instrument?
She’d have to see if she could find a match on the Internet. If she knew who used a tool like that, and what for, that may give clue to who the heck Serge was. But what would she look under? Bone core samples? Bone biopsy tools?
She did not like knowing someone was walking around the city with a literal piece of her. Her DNA. The last time someone had gotten a piece of her DNA she’d come close to being cloned.
“I need a look at the evidence you have, Annja.”
“Of course. I’ll pack up the tools and get them to you.”
“What about the skull?”
“Not in my hands at the moment.”
“So you’re going to sit tight until you get word from the professor?” Bart asked. “Or do I sense you’ve already formed a plan to track the origins of this thing? Something that’ll see you in more trouble than a pretty young woman like you should be in?”
Pretty? Had he ever called her pretty? Maybe, but if so, she’d never noticed. Hmm, she’d take the compliment. Lately, they were few and far between.
“Bart, please.” She sat on the floor and tugged a pillow to her lap. “I’m so not like that.”
His chuckle tweaked her to smile. All right, she was exactly like that. And that Bart knew as much meant a lot to her.
She did have other friends. Some. There were the women on the
Chasing History’s Monsters
crew. And Doug Morrell was a friend. An irritating one, but that’s what friends were for, to irritate.
“I’ll keep you updated,” she said to him. “Let me know if you learn more about the thief. Like where he’s been the past few days. You can track his movements, can’t you?”
“Possibly. But I’ll need more reason to do so than curiosity. I may need a certain skull as evidence to trace to its origins. Would you turn it over if you did have it in hand?”
“Probably not.”
“Annja.”
“Bart, don’t press on this one. You handle the police business. Let me follow the skull’s trail.”
“Annja, you were shot at last night. So I am going to press. I’m getting a sense that you’re only telling me half of what’s going on. And why is that not unusual?”
He cared about her; she knew that. It felt great. Sometimes too great. Because the moment she let down her staunch defenses and let her innate neediness rise, then look out. Sometimes a girl had to resist what she wanted most. A pat on the back, a compliment.
Yeah, too risky.
“So you’ll let me know if you come up with more info on Marcus Cooke?” she asked, avoiding his accusing question. “Anything that can point me to where the skull was found, unearthed and/or stolen is going to help me a lot.”
“What if it’s just another skull?”
“Men don’t kill for just another skull, Bart. I’ve had a look at it. There are some amazing carvings inside. It’s special—I can feel it. But it will help to know if it was taken from a dig, or a museum, or a private collection.”
She made a mental note to get online and do a search for infant skulls.
“Hey, Annja?”
“What?”
“Are we still going to dinner tomorrow night?”
“Uh…”
“Annja? How else will you hand off the tools to me?”
“It’s a date. And not even because of business. I want to see you, Bart. It’s been too long. Talk to you soon.”
She’d hand over the thief’s tools but there was no way she’d give Bart the skull.
She hung up and went to bandage her wrist. She kept an arsenal of medical supplies stored in her medicine cabinet—which were presently strewn all over the floor.
“He was looking for a skull. It couldn’t possibly fit it in this narrow cabinet. This wasn’t necessary,” she muttered.
Minutes later, she’d dabbed the wound with alcohol and bandaged it with medical tape. It had stopped bleeding. She’d be fine. Heck, she took bullets and knife slashes all the time. This was nothing.
“You are so not the Rambo you sometimes think you are, Annja,” she reminded herself.
Thoughts to start picking up her trashed loft were counterattacked by the rumbling reminder from her gut that she hadn’t eaten yet. Picking through the debris on the kitchen floor and over the counters, she found a box of cereal Serge hadn’t emptied onto the floor. That he had emptied others and unscrewed all the jars astounded her.
“Who’s going to hide a skull in a cereal box?” she muttered as she poured the cereal into one of two bowls remaining in the cupboard. “Really. Did the guy think he’d find the prize at the bottom of the box?”
The fridge was relatively undisturbed. She knew that was because she hadn’t gotten groceries lately, and there wasn’t much to toss around. She poured milk over the chunks of colored sugar and fortified whole grain, plucked a spoon from a pile of scattered flatware and padded into the living room to sit before her now-clean desk and looked at her laptop.
“And to think I was complaining about how messy this desk was. Guy did me a favor. Too bad he doesn’t dust.”
The cereal was a rough go at first. Her aching jaw reminded her she’d taken a few more punches than she’d delivered.
Pressing the spoon over the cereal so it sank deeper into the milk and would become soggy and easier to chew, she moused her way to the archaeological site and found a few replies to her post.
BestMan573 wrote, You’ve seen one skull, you’ve seen them all. Though it does resemble that of a newborn. Where’d you say you found this? By the way, love the online pic!
“Must not be an anthropologist,” she commented on his blasé dismissal of skulls. “And no, I’m not going to tell anyone I found this in some dead man’s backpack. Online pic? Must have seen my bio at the
Chasing
site.”
In that picture, taken on a lavender-streaked Scottish moor, she wore a boonie hat, cargo shorts and hiking boots. Not at all sexy. But indicative of her true self.
PinkRibbonGirl started by saying she was only in the seventh grade. Annja worked the numbers and figured she must be about twelve years old.
Hi! I’m so excited to be talking to you. I think you have the Skull of Sidon. I just found out about it a week ago, and thought it would be an awesome idea for my history report. I handed the outline in to my teacher and she nixed the idea. Said I couldn’t write about necrophilia in middle school. It wasn’t very becoming of a young girl. I didn’t even know what necrophilia was until I looked it up. Eww!
“What comes out of kids’ mouths today,” Annja said. “The poor teachers. If it isn’t bad enough they have to deal with gangs and cell phones and ADHD, there’s the class brain in the front row writing about necrophilia.”
She chuckled and clicked on the next e-mail.
NewBattleRider commented on the various skulls in history.
There are many black magic rituals involving skulls. Blood is drunk from the cranium to gain immortality. In medieval Cathay, rituals to honor gods involved skull bowls lined with brass or copper that blood was drank out of. The Knights Templar used to worship heads, which could be construed as a skull. That would jive with the cross pattée on the gold.
None of them felt right. The cross pattée felt like a red herring. A common marking. Could have been a goldsmith’s mark or some kind of freemasonry symbol, Annja thought.
She reconsidered the Knights Templar. Head worshipping?