The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

in my students. Instead they come into my class with visions of
Tomb Raider.
Hauling dirt isn’t what they have in mind.” He paused, reading Jane’s face. “You’re disappointed.”
    “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