“So if you die, how will your replacement find anything in here?”
He stared at her.
Corrie realized she had gone too far. After all, if they’d thrown out the records, it would have made her visit academic. She looked at the nervous, sweating face of Darren Schmitz—it was like an oven inside the trailer—and suddenly felt sorry for him. She shook her head. “I apologize if I seem a little impatient. I appreciate that you’re trying to help. Let me show you what I’m looking for, and maybe you’ll have some ideas about where I might find it.” She put down her briefcase, opened it, and slipped out a file. “Here are the X-rays we took at the FBI lab of a homicide victim’s teeth. Those crowns are unusual—they’re cast in a stainless steel alloy and then finely machined and polished. The work was almost certainly done in the Soviet Union in the forties, give or take.”
The man stared at the X-rays. “Stainless steel?”
“Yes. We don’t often employ that material for crowns in America, outside of pulpectomies in pediatric dentistry. You’d know that better than I. But the victim was an adult, murdered in 1947…and here in New Mexico.”
The man looked up. “Well, the only thing that comes to mind is a filing cabinet devoted to X-rays of dental oddities and pathologies. It was the hobby of a dentist in a practice we acquired years ago.”
“Okay, let’s start there.”
Within five minutes, Corrie found herself staring at sepia-colored X-rays of the precise four crowns she was searching for. She was incredulous at her stroke of luck. They’d found them in the cabinet of oddities, in a section labeled UNCOMMON ALLOY DENTAL WORK. And right there, paper-clipped to the X-rays, was the name and Santa Fe address of the patient, as well as a date: August 3, 1945.
Corrie felt a flush of triumph. What a coup. Lime was going to be thrilled. She couldn’t wait to get back to the office and tell him.
As she slipped into her car, her cell phone rang. Glancing at it, she saw it was Watts.
“I’m afraid we’ve got bad news,” he said when she picked up.
“What’s up?”
“Kidnapping and potential homicide.”
Instantly, she forgot her triumph. “Who?”
“Noam Bitan.”
47
AS THE SUN crossed the meridian on its journey to the western horizon, the dig was progressing at its own swift pace. Nora couldn’t have asked for a better site. The sand was clean, with no artifacts or rocks or anything to slow them down. The area was concentrated—only nine square meters. The work moved even faster when Tappan, with growing impatience, rolled up his sleeves and joined Nora and Emilio. Cecilia Toth came along with a magnetometer at Nora’s request to see if they could image anything down below. Scott was back at base camp, organizing the equipment.
At seven in the evening, when they had reached two meters of depth—six feet—Nora halted work for the magnetometer survey.
The others climbed out as Toth booted up the ungainly looking machine and began adjusting dials. When it was ready, she trundled it down a ramp into the excavated area and began wheeling it like a lawn mower over the flat floor of the excavation.
“Whoa!” she said, halting in the middle of the very first pass. She leaned over the machine, fiddling with the dials.
“What is it?” Tappan asked.
“Just a glitch.” She messed around for a while, then said: “I’ve got to reboot the thing.”
She worked quickly, spidery fingers moving expertly over the controls. Nora and the rest waited.
“This is crazy,” Cecilia said in irritation. “Let me try again.”
More waiting. Finally, Cecilia looked up, brushed back her hair, and frowned. “Either there’s a killer magnetic field here, or the machine is malfunctioning.”
“Bring it out of the hole,” Tappan said. “See if it works at a distance.”
Toth wheeled it back up the slope.
“Farther,” said Tappan.
She moved it fifty feet from the site and booted it up again. “It seems to be working now. But the magnetic field is really distorted.”
Tappan reached into his pocket and took out a compass. Nora watched as he walked in a circle around the dig. Then he came up to her and held out the compass. “Look.”
“That’s not north,” said Nora.
“No, it’s not. As I walked around the site, the needle remained pointing at the center of the dig. There’s clearly some magnetic object down there.”