Free Dead Men's Hearts by Aaron Elkins

floor, legs crossed, linen skirt stretched stiffly across the thighs as a writing surface…”
    “Exactly,” Gideon said. “And here’s the clincher: this ridge along the finger bone.” He held it so that they could see it clearly, although he knew they were unlikely to make anything of it. Even his students had a hard time with the individual phalanges of the fingers. Too many of them— twenty-eight, counting both hands—and too much alike.
    “This is the first joint of the right index finger, and the ridge we’re looking at is on the palmar surface. It’s where the flexor ligament attaches. Ordinarily you can barely see it—”
    “I can barely see it now,” Jerry said.
    “—but it can get enlarged like this from grasping something between finger and thumb, firmly and for long periods of time.”
    “A stylus,” TJ said under her breath. “Well, how about that.”
    “There’s no way to be sure,” Gideon said, “but it all adds up to a scribe. Put all these skeletal things together, throw in the fact that we’re talking about a Fifth Dynasty Theban, and that’s what you come up with. At least, it’s what I come up with.”
    He brushed bone crumbs from his hands, well content. “Not that it gets us any closer to what he was doing in the junk heap.”
    “Who cares?” TJ said, beginning to put the bones back in the carton. “This has been really neat. Maybe I should have been a physical anthropologist.”
    They were saying good night in the patio, at the foot of the stairs that led to Gideon’s upper-floor room, when he said: “I suppose I ought to mention this to Dr. Haddon. I’d feel a little funny not saying anything.”
    “Up to you,” Jerry said, “but if it was me, I wouldn’t. Personally, I don’t think he’d be real thrilled to find out we got you involved in this.”
    “Thrilled?” TJ said with a laugh. “He’d have a fit…” She frowned. “That reminds me. There was something funny this morning—I forgot to mention it to you, Jerry. Something Dr. H said.”
    Her husband looked leery. “Do I want to know this?”
    “Oh, it’s nothing bad. It just makes me wonder about his—well, he asked me what happened to the head that was there last night.”
    Jerry frowned. “The what?”
    “In the enclosure. He seems to think he saw a yellow jasper head in there, near the bones, or maybe it was quartzite. Look, keep this to yourselves, will you? I wasn’t supposed to talk about it. Not that it matters. Bruno already knows.”
    Jerry stood leaning on the railing, silent and contemplative, pulling on his pipe.
    “You mean he said it was there last night, but not this morning?” Gideon asked.
    “Right. And it worried me, because—look, Gideon, this is not for public consumption either, but he got a little tiddly last night, which he tends to do most nights, no big deal, never during working hours, but this is the first time that he ever—well, hallucinated, I guess you’d have to call it. He even thought he remembered pointing it out.”
    “He did,” Jerry said quietly.
    TJ swung to face him. “Did what?”
    “Point it out.”
    She stared at him. “Jerry, I was right there. If he—”
    “He didn’t say it was a head. He said… I don’t remember his exact words… he was flashing his light around, and he said, ”What’s that piece over there,“ or, ”See that thing over there,“ or something like that. Don’t you remember?”
    “No!”
    “Well,” Jerry said, “there was a lot of excitement, you were arguing with him—”
    “What was he pointing at? How do you know it was a head? Did you actually see anything?”
    “No, I wasn’t really paying attention. But maybe Ragheb saw it, or Ario.”
    TJ shook her head. “No. I asked them, even though Dr. H told me not to.”
    “Huh? Why would he tell you not to?”
    “I think he thinks he was dreaming himself.” She hunched her shoulders. “He was pretty well potted, Jerry.”
    “Yeah, he was that.” Jerry