The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

softly: “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
    Jane turned to Maura. “Let’s get on with the autopsy, Doc. We need more information to work with.”
    Maura crossed to the light box, removed the leg X-rays, and replaced them with the CT scan films. “Let’s turn her onto her back again.”
    This time, as Maura cut through the linen strips covering the torso, she wasted no effort on preservation. They now knew this was no ancient cadaver she was cutting into; this was a death investigation, and the answers lay not in the linen strips but in the flesh and bone itself. The cloth parted, revealing the torso’s brown and shrunken skin through which the outlines of ribs were visible, arching up in a bony vault beneath its parchment tent. Moving toward the head, Maura pried off the painted cartonnage mask and began to snip at the strips covering the face.
    Jane looked at the CT films hanging on the light box, then frowned at the exposed torso. “The organs are all taken out during mummification, right?”
    Robinson nodded. “Removal of the viscera slows down the process of putrefaction. It’s one of the reasons the bodies don’t decay.”
    “But there’s only one little wound on the belly.” Jane pointed to a small incision on the left, sewn closed by ungainly stitches.
    “How do you get everything out through that opening?”
    “That’s exactly how the Egyptians would have removed the viscera. Through a small wound on the left side. Whoever preserved this body was familiar with the ancient methods. And clearly adhered to them.”
    “What
are
these ancient methods? How, exactly, do you make a mummy?” asked Jane.
    Dr. Robinson looked at his associate. “Josephine knows more about it than I do. Maybe she’ll explain it.”
    “Dr. Pulcillo?” said Jane.
    The young woman still looked shaken by the discovery of the bullet. She cleared her throat and straightened. “A large part of what we know comes down to us from Herodotus,” she said. “I guess you could call him a Greek travel writer. Twenty-five hundred years ago, he roamed the ancient world and recorded what he learned. The problem is, he was known to get details wrong. Or get snookered by the local tour guides.” She managed a smile. “It makes him seem human, doesn’t it? He was like any tourist in Egypt today. Probably hounded by trinket sellers. Duped by crooked tour guides. Just another innocent abroad.”
    “What did he say about making mummies?”
    “He was told that it all starts with a ritual washing of the corpse in dissolved natron.”
    “Natron?”
    “It’s essentially a mixture of salts. You can reproduce it by blending plain old table salt and baking soda.”
    “Baking soda?” Jane gave an uneasy laugh. “I’ll never look at a box of Arm and Hammer the same way again.”
    “The washed body is then laid out on wooden blocks,” Pulcillo continued. “They use a razor-sharp blade of Ethiopian stone—probably obsidian—to slice a small incision like the one you see here. Then, with some sort of hooked instrument, they pull out the organs, dragging them out through the hole. The empty cavity is rinsed, and they pack dry natron inside. Natron is poured over the body as well, to dehydrate it for forty days. Sort of like salting a fish.” She paused, staring as Maura’s scissors cut through the last strips covering the face.
    “And then?” prodded Jane.
    Pulcillo swallowed. “By then it’s lost about seventy-five percent of its weight. The cavity is stuffed with linen and resin. The mummified internal organs might be returned as well. And…” She stopped, her eyes widening as the final wrappings fell away from the head.
    For the first time, they saw the face of Madam X.
    Long black hair was still affixed to the scalp. The skin was stretched taut over prominent cheekbones. But it was the lips that made Jane recoil. They had been sewn together with crude stitches, as though joined by the tailor of Frankenstein’s monster.
    Pulcillo shook her head. “That—that’s all wrong!”
    “The mouth isn’t usually sewn shut?” asked Maura.
    “No! How would you eat in the afterlife? How would you speak? This is like condemning her to eternal hunger. And eternal silence.”
    Eternal silence.
Jane looked down at the ugly stitches and wondered: Did you say something to offend your killer? Did you speak back to him? Insult him? Testify against him? Is this your punishment, to have your lips bound together for eternity?
    The