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    He finally tore himself away from the mummy and turned toward the door.
    The latch clicked, and he stumbled into the outer room, nearly tripping into Lorraine Mathis’s arms. The scientist jerked away with a mortified look on her face. Maura County stepped forward with concern knitting her expression. “Ulysses, you look like you saw a ghost. What’s wrong?”
    Grove took another deep breath. He had to cope with another jolt of dizziness before he could speak. “The MRI . . . the one that told you it was a wrongful death.”
    Mathis frowned at him. “ What ? What are you talking about?”
    â€œThe MRI you did on the mummy.”
    â€œIt was an X-ray actually,” Okuda chimed in. “We’re publishing a piece on it next month in Scientific American .”
    Grove looked at the young Asian. “Did it show a sharp trauma wound to the first cervical vertebra?”
    Okuda stared at him for a moment, then shot a glance at Mathis, who was staring at the profiler. The silence stretched.

3
    Puzzle Box
    â€œIt could have been anything—warfare, murder, a dispute over land,” Lorraine Mathis commented as she scuttled back and forth across her cluttered office. She already had her coat on, and was banging drawers and turning things off and generally making “leaving” noises. She had apparently run out of patience for Grove and his sudden, mysterious interest in the Iceman’s demise. “The anthropology part is all speculation, anyway,” she added with a dismissive wave of her hand. “And besides, I thought that was your bailiwick, Agent Grove.”
    Grove sat across the room, near the door, his attaché on his lap, his hands folded on top of the briefcase. He hadn’t revealed much about his stunning discovery in the wet containment room, but he could tell that all those present could sense his nervous excitement. “I’m just wondering what the pathology has been so far,” he said with monumental deference in his voice, trying to tease as much information as possible from the harridan of a director. “After all, I’m used to getting to crime scenes a little sooner than this.”
    Mathis showed no amusement in her heavily mascaraed eyes as she buttoned her coat. “I’ll have Michael make copies of the X-rays and the initial reports.”
    Grove told her that would be great.
    She looked at him. “Is that it?”
    Grove offered her a smile. “I’m wondering if there’s anything else you can tell me about the victim. The Iceman himself.”
    â€œIn regard to what?”
    Grove shrugged. “I don’t know . . . in regard to background, I guess . . . cultural stuff.”
    The woman sighed as she slipped on a pair of elegant calfskin gloves. She looked like an impatient mother waiting for her children to clean their room.
    Maura County was perched next to Grove on a file cabinet, scribbling feverishly in her notebook. Okuda stood in the far corner, wringing his delicate little hands, taking everything in, looking a little shaky. The office was situated in the depths of the lower level, a four-hundred-square-foot swamp of paper and loose-leaf binders crammed into every available inch of shelf space. The stale air smelled of toner and ink and Mathis’s acrid perfume, and the glare of the overhead fluorescents only added to the stolid, institutional quality of the place.
    â€œI’m sorry, Agent Grove,” Mathis finally offered, “but I’m just not in tour-guide mode at present. You understand. I’ve got a funding committee breathing down my neck, and hearings coming up in June with the BLM and the Association of Indigenous Peoples over who owns the remains. I’m sure you see how my thoughts would be elsewhere.”
    Grove managed another placating smile. “I understand completely.”
    She went over to the door and paused, tying a scarf around her gray-streaked hair.