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Maddock and Bones dropped down into the underground chamber and made their way around the altar stone to where the body lay. Most of the flesh had rotted away, leaving a teal and purple tracksuit to cover the skeleton. Thick brown hair, frosted at the tips and parted in the middle, clung to the skeleton.
“A tracksuit and a boy band haircut. This has got to be a nineties kid,” Bones said.
“The bone structure suggests a young man,” Maddock said.
Bones tugged at his ponytail, his gaze locked on the remains. “I wonder what happened to him. Doesn’t feel like a place a guy would go to off himself.”
“Maybe he fell through the trapdoor, hit his head, crawled over here, and died?” Maddock offered.
“There’s a major flaw in your theory.” Bones raised his index finger like a teacher correcting a pupil. “Who closed the trapdoor behind him? There’s no ladder or anything to stand on.”
“Fair point. That leaves foul play,” Maddock said.
“The symbols around this altar are weird.” Bones circled the altar and snapped some photos. “Maybe he was killed in a cult ritual. We should inspect the body for obvious injuries.”
“That’s a job for the police,” Maddock said.
“What can I say? I’m naturally curious.” Bones used the tip of his Recon knife to lower the zipper of the track jacket. He opened the jacket and whistled. “Mystery solved.” Three of the victim’s ribs were broken, and fractures ran through two more. A closer inspection of the skull revealed it too had been fractured.
“This guy was beaten to death,” Maddock said.
Bones looked sadly down at the skeleton. “What happened, bro? Robbery? Did you owe somebody money? Have information someone wanted?”
Maddock spotted something out of place inside the ribcage. He carefully removed it and held it up. It was a small cylinder, capped on both ends. Six rings of ivory with letters marked on the surface of each encircled the disc. “Maybe whoever killed him was looking for this.”
“A cryptex,” Bones said.
A cryptex was a small vault in which secret messages could be hidden. It could only be opened by rotating the letters to spell a keyword. They also contained vials of acid or some other substance that would shatter and destroy the message should someone try to break into it.
“It was inside his rib cage. He must have swallowed it to keep his killers from finding it,” Maddock said.
“This vacation has taken an interesting turn,” Bones said.
“This is a matter for the police,” Maddock said.
“I disagree. Egyptian symbols, a hidden door, an underground chamber, an altar stone, a cryptex someone died to protect? This is one hundred percent a job for us. The cops wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“I don’t like it. It’s trouble we don’t need.”
“Dude, how would we explain any of our actions tonight? Do you think they’ll believe we’re treasure hunters who weren’t searching for anything? That we found the trapdoor by accident, climbed through it, and stumbled across the body of a murder victim. Then we poked around the body, but only out of curiosity, and just happened to find a puzzle box with a secret message inside.”
“That’s what happened.”
“What matters is what the authorities believe happened,” Bones said. “And they aren’t going to believe that many coincidences happened at once. The circumstantial evidence suggests we would at least know something about this.”
Maddock knew Bones was right. Their story was too incredible to be believed.
“I say we find a way to open the cryptex and see what’s inside,” Bones said. “If it’s not something up our alley, we put it back where we found it and find a way to leave an anonymous tip.”
“The guy has been down here for decades,” Maddock said. “I suppose a few more weeks won’t make a difference.”
“That’s what I’m talking about.” Bones paused, furrowed his brow.
“What’s wrong?”
“I just realized yet another of my vacations has been interrupted by...whatever you want to call the crap we get into.”
“This time is different,” Maddock said.
“How so?”
Maddock flashed a grin. “For once, you’re not complaining about it.”
