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“Let’s get out of their way,” says Wells.
“Just a minute.”
An old wooden box sits in a niche in the wall.
“I haven’t seen one of those in an Angra scene before.”
Wells follows me over.
“Don’t touch it,” he says.
“Okay.”
I don’t use my hand, but I flip the latch and push open the top of the case.
“Dammit,” says Wells.
“Watch the language.”
Inside is a skull on a deep blue velvet pillow. Its metal teeth glitter and it has lips and a nose made of hammered gold. Its eyes are like elaborate silver brooches, each set with a blue stone in the middle. Rubies flow down the top of the skull from an old head wound, each ruby smaller than the one before it, so they form a line of blood down to the eye sockets.
“Ever seen anything like it?” I say.
“No. And that’s the last playing around you get to do today. Get out of the tunnel. Grown-ups have to work.”
We crawl out of the hole and back into the subway. Wells stands and brushes dirt off his pants. The forensic team pushes past us, wrapped up in sterile white Tyvek suits. Julie Sola comes over to me.
“I guess no one’s in there.”
“No one’s used that place in a while. Those chop-shop crazies sure weren’t working in there. And they sure didn’t make that skull.”
“Whose skull?” says Sola.
“Good question.”
“I’m disturbed,” says Wells. “After the hospital, this isn’t what I was expecting.”
“This was probably their rehearsal space.”
Wells shakes his head.
“No. It’s more than that. Maybe forensics will tell us what. DNA. Dental records for the skull.”
“Forget that. The teeth were gold too.”
“That’s disappointing.”
“That’s not what bugs me.”
“What does?” says Sola.
“That the place was abandoned awhile ago. That means whatever the Angra groupies were doing in there—assuming it was them—they finished.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” says Wells.
He looks back at the hole.
“We need to seal off this whole part of the tunnel.”
