“What the hell?” blurted the CT tech.

The image now glowing on the monitor was so unexpected that the room had fallen completely still. Were a living patient lying on the CT table, Maura would have had no difficulty identifying the small metallic object embedded in the calf, an object that had shattered the slender shaft of the fibula. But that bit of metal did not belong in Madam X’s leg.

A bullet did not belong in Madam X’s millennium.

“Is that what I think it is?” said the CT tech.

Robinson shook his head. “It has to be postmortem damage. What else could it be?”

“Two thousand years postmortem?”

“I’ll-I’ll call you back, Simon.” Robinson disconnected his cell phone. Turning to the cameraman, he ordered: “Shut it off. Please shut it off now. ” He took a deep breath. “All right. All right, let’s-let’s approach this logically.” He straightened, gaining confidence as an obvious explanation occurred to him. “Mummies have often been abused or damaged by souvenir hunters. Obviously, someone fired a bullet into the mummy. And a conservator later tried to repair that damage by rewrapping her. That’s why we saw no entry hole in the bandages.”

“That isn’t what happened,” said Maura.

Robinson blinked. “What do you mean? That has to be the explanation.”

“The damage to that leg wasn’t postmortem. It happened while this woman was still alive.”

“That’s impossible.”

“I’m afraid Dr. Isles is right,” said the radiologist. He looked at Maura. “You’re referring to the early callus formation around the fracture site?”

“What does that mean?” asked Robinson. “Callus formation?”

“It means the broken bone had already started the process of healing when this woman died. She lived at least a few weeks after the injury.”

Maura turned to the curator. “Where did this mummy come from?”

Robinson’s glasses had slipped down his nose yet again, and he stared over the lenses as though hypnotized by what he saw glowing in the mummy’s leg.