Free Dream Factories and Radio Pictures by Howard Waldrop

the captain up at his home at 4:00  A.M. The Los Angeles County coroner was already there when Teeheezal arrived on his horse.
    The door of the house had been broken down. The man had been strangled and then thrown back behind the bed where it lay twisted with one foot out the open windowsill.
    “Found him just like that, the neighbors did,” said Patrolman Buster. “Heard the ruckus, but by the time they got dressed and got here, whoever did it was gone.”
    Teeheezal glanced out the broken door. The front of the museum across the way was lit with electric lighting.
    “Hmmm,” said the coroner, around the smoke from his El Cubano cigar. “They’s dust all over this guy’s py-jamas.” He looked around. “Part of a print on the bedroom doorjamb, and a spot on the floor.”
    Patrolman Buster said, “Hey! One on the front door. Looks like somebody popped it with a dirty towel.”
    The captain went back out on the front porch. He knelt down on the lawn, feeling with his hands.
    He spoke to the crowd that had gathered out front. “Who’s a neighbor here?” A man stepped out, waved. “He water his yard last night?”
    “Yeah, just after he got off work.”
    Teeheezal went to the street and lay down.
    “Buster, look here.” The patrolman flopped down beside him. “There’s some lighter dust on the gravel, see it?” Buster nodded his thin face. “Look over there, see?”
    “Looks like mud, Chief.” They crawled to the right to get another angle, jumped up, looking at the doorway of the museum.
    “Let’s get this place open,” said the chief.
    * * *
    “I was just coming over; they called me about Fielding’s death, when your ruffians came barging in,” said the museum director, whose name was Carter Lord. “There was no need to rush me so.” He had on suit pants but a pajama top and a dressing gown.
    “Shake a leg, pops,” said Patrolman Buster.
    There was a sign on the wall near the entrance: The Treasures of Pharaoh Rut-en-tut-en, April 20–June 13.
    The doors were steel; there were two locks Lord had to open. On the inside was a long push bar that operated them both.
    “Don’t touch anything, but tell me if something’s out o’ place,” said Teeheezal.
    Lord used a handkerchief to turn on the light switches.
    He told them the layout of the place and the patrolmen took off in all directions.
    There were display cases everywhere, and ostrich-looking fans, a bunch of gaudy boxes, things that looked like coffins. On the walls were paintings of people wearing diapers, standing sideways. At one end of the hall was a big upright wooden case. Patrolman Buster pointed out two dabs of mud just inside the door, a couple of feet apart. Then another a little further on, leading toward the back, then nothing.
    Teeheezal looked around at all the shiny jewelry. “Rich guy?” he asked.
    “Priceless,” said Carter Lord. “Tomb goods, buried with him for the afterlife. The richest find yet in Egypt. We were very lucky to acquire it.”
    “How come you gettin’ it?”
    “We’re a small, but a growing museum. It was our expedition—the best untampered tomb. Though there were skeletons in the outer corridors, and the outside seal had been broken, I’m told. Grave robbers had broken in but evidently got no further.”
    “How come?”
    “Who knows?” asked Lord. “We’re dealing with four thousand five hundred years.”
    Patrolman Buster whistled.
    Teeheezal walked to the back. Inside the upright case was the gray swaddled shape of a man, twisted, his arms across his chest, one eye closed, a deep open hole where the other had been. Miles of gray curling bandages went round and round and round him, making him look like a cartoon patient in a lost hospital.
    “This the guy?”
    “Oh, heavens no,” said Carter Lord. “The Pharaoh Rut-en-tut-en’s mummy is on loan to the Field Museum in Chicago for study. This is probably some priest or minor noble who was buried for some reason with him. There