The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

away over the centuries. She picked up one of the nuggets and felt a whisper of a chill on her neck.
    “Wrist bones,” she murmured.
Human.
    “My guess is, these are all from a single individual. Yes, this does bring back the memories. The heat and the dust. The thrill of being right in the thick of it, when you think that at any instant, your trowel might collide with history. Before these old joints gave out. Before I somehow became old, something I never expected to be. I used to think I was immortal.” He gave a sad laugh, a sound of bewilderment that the decades could have fled by so quickly, leaving him trapped in a broken-down body. He looked down at the container of bones and said, “This unfortunate man no doubt thought that he, too, was immortal. Until he watched his comrades go insane with thirst. Until his army crumbled around him. I’m sure he never imagined that this would be their end. This is what the passage of centuries does to even the most glorious of empires. Wears them down to mere sand.”
    Josephine gently set the wrist bone back in the container. It was nothing more than a deposit of calcium and phosphate. Bones served their purpose, and their owners died and abandoned them, much as one abandoned a walking stick. These fragments were all that remained of a Persian soldier doomed to perish in a foreign desert.
    “He’s part of the lost army,” she said.
    “I’m almost certain of it. One of the doomed soldiers of Cambyses.”
    She looked at him. “You were there with Kimball Rose.”
    “Oh, it was his excavation, and he paid a pretty penny for it. You should have seen the team he assembled! Dozens of archaeologists. Hundreds of diggers. We were there to find one of the holy grails of archaeology, as elusive as the lost Ark of the Covenant or the tomb of Alexander. Fifty thousand Persian soldiers simply vanished in the desert, and I wanted to be there when they were uncovered.”
    “But they weren’t.”
    Simon shook his head. “We dug for two seasons, and all we found were bits of bone and metal. The remains of stragglers, no doubt. They were such meager spoils that neither Kimball nor the Egyptian government had any interest in keeping any of it. So it came to us.”
    “I didn’t know that you worked with Kimball Rose. You never even mentioned that you knew him.”
    “He’s a fine archaeologist. An exceedingly generous man.”
    “And his son?” she asked quietly. “How well did you know Bradley?”
    “Ah, Bradley.” He set the box back on the shelf. “Everyone wants to know about Bradley. The police. You. But the truth is, I scarcely remember the boy. I can’t believe that any son of Kimball’s would be a threat to you. This investigation has been quite unfair to his family.” He turned to her, and the sudden intensity of his gaze made her uneasy. “He has only your best interests in mind.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Of all the applicants I could have hired, I chose you. Because he said I should. He’s been looking out for you.”
    She backed away.
    “You really had no idea?” he said, moving toward her. “All along, he’s been your secret friend. He asked me not to say a word, but I thought it was time you should know. It’s always good to know who our friends are, especially when they’re so generous.”
    “Friends don’t try to kill you.” She turned and hobbled away, back through the canyon of crates.
    “What are you talking about?” he called out.
    She continued through the maze, intent only on reaching the exit. She could hear him following her, his cane tapping against the concrete.
    “Josephine, the police are completely wrong about him!”
    She rounded a bend in the maze and saw the door ahead, hanging ajar.
Didn’t we close it? I’m sure we closed it.
    Simon’s cane tapped closer. “Now I’m sorry I told you,” he said. “But you really ought to know how generous Kimball has been to you.”
    Kimball?
    Josephine turned. “How does he even know about me?” she asked.
    Just as the basement lights went black.

TWENTY-FOUR
     
    Night had already fallen when Jane stepped out of her Subaru and dashed through the pounding rain to the Crispin Museum entrance. The front door was unlocked and she pushed into the building, letting in a whoosh of wet wind that sent museum brochures flying off the reception desk and scattering across the damp floor.
    “Time to start building an ark yet?” asked the patrolman standing guard near the