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I’m surprised he can see straight.”
    “Now what in the world does
he
have to be depressed about?” Arlo asked. “We’re the ones who have to work for him.”
    Jerry laughed. “If you had to be Clifford Haddon, you wouldn’t be depressed?”
    “You certainly have a point there,” Arlo said, pressing his eyes with his fingertips. “Well, I guess I’d better get to bed too.”
    “Not me,” Jerry said, stretching. “I left Forrest and his crew over in the annex with some six-packs and pizza, and I bet they’re still there. I know I could use a couple of beers.”
    “God knows, so could I,” TJ said fervently.
    “You can say that again,” said Arlo after a moment’s reflection.

    Chapter Five
    Whatever aura of mystery had hung over the storage enclosure the night before, it was not in evidence in the dusty, flat 9 a.m. sunlight of the next morning. The enclosure looked like what it was, a squalid, fifteen-square-foot pen crammed with the household and workplace castoffs of years. Most of it—the shabby, anonymous clothing, the moldy automobile cushions, the time-grayed newspapers—was peacefully disintegrating. Some—the broken toilet bowl, the warped plastic coat hangers—would be around for future generations of archaeologists to potter blissfully among.
    Major Yussef Saleh and Sergeant Monir Gabra of the Qena Governate Police, Criminal Investigation Division, had been pottering for half an hour. They were not blissful. They had located, in addition to the bones found the night before, the other half of the pelvis, a few long bones and ribs they took to be human, and several irregular smaller pieces that they thought might be human hand or foot bones. They had found no signs of foul play and hoped they would not; sorting through the broken tools, discarded utensils, and rusty, unidentifiable pieces of metal in search of a probable blunt or pointed instrument of death was a task neither of them cared to think about.
    Following proper police procedure, the bones had not been disturbed until they had been photographed and their positions sketched and described. Then, kneeling on a cracked rubber that that they had found among the junk, they delicately turned over the skull.
    After a moment, the two men looked at each other with puzzled expressions.
    “Yes?” Clifford Haddon glanced up, not pleased to be interrupted. When he saw that it was Major Saleh, his tone became more cordial. “Ah, yes, Major, may I help you?”
    “Will you come with us, please?”
    Haddon stiffened. Spots of deeper color popped out on his pink throat. “Come with you—where?”
    “To the storage enclosure,” Saleh said. “I would like to ask you about something if you can spare a few minutes.”
    “The—” The spots disappeared. “Oh, yes, certainly. Of course, Major.” He stood up and looked at TJ. “Will you come too, please, Dr. Baroff?”
    “Certainly, Dr. Haddon,” TJ said, formality for formality. The object, she supposed, was to impress the Egyptian police with the businesslike decorum of Horizon House. Well, what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.
    She closed the budget file on which she had been briefing him so that he could continue to delude the visiting Gustafsons into thinking that he had his finger on the pulse of Horizon House’s operations, and rose to join them. She knew perfectly well why Haddon had asked her to come along. He was afraid the officers might ask him something he didn’t know the answer to—which covered one hell of a lot of ground—and he wanted TJ, who took her administrative role as assistant director seriously, at his side to bail him out.
    Well, fine. Anything was better than sitting alone in a room with him, trying to explain item after item, none of which he knew anything about, but on all of which he was maddeningly ready to lecture her at mind-numbing length.
    “You’ve found something, then?” Haddon asked the major as the four of them followed the network of