The Bone Vault - Linda Fairstein (12 page)

"Oh, no. Must be at least a dozen more like this scattered about within the building, as well as space we rent outside."

"Anybody else getting hot flashes?" Mike pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his brow.

Anna laughed. "All of these fragile works of art have different needs. Those sculptures that survived in the deserts for centuries like it hot and dry inside. My department--things from the South Pacific islands and the ocean people--thrive in a damp environment. There are climate controls all over the museum-- thousands of sensors. You can go to all extremes of temperature, hot or cold, damp or dry, just by moving from gallery to gallery."

"And you can tell me what the weather is in every section, more reliable than those schmucks I listen to every night on TV?"

"We certainly can," Anna said, "because we manufacture our own weather conditions."

I knew Mike was trying to figure out where within a museum Katrina Grooten's body could have been best kept without decomposing. Would her killer have known how these temperatures and conditions would affect a human body? Or would it have proved to be a circumstance that accidentally worked against his interest, preserving the remains so that they were recognized and identified before leaving the country?

"You're welcome to come back here any time to go through all of these storerooms, Detective," Poste said, locking up behind us. "I think you'll need an army to help you do it."

"You got a list of all your employees, Maury?" Chapman asked Lissen as we reentered the hallway. "Names, dates of birth, social security numbers?"

"Yeah, Eve was going to print it out for you. They're all bonded. Won't find any criminals in my department. The thieves all work upstairs in archaeology and anthropology, if you ask me, robbing the graves and stealing these pots and pans from other countries." Lissen wasn't the first one to complain about the ethics involved in museum acquisitions. "Other workmen?"

"You got a sea of 'em down here. They got offices in the subbasement for locksmiths, plumbers, electricians. They roam around this place like it was the wide open spaces."

We turned another corner and reached a divide between sections of the corridor. The lights dimmed even more and the ceiling dipped to a mere eight feet. Poste and Friedrichs led us across a low barrel vault, which ran north to south through the center of the building, deep below the museum, and brought us out on its other side.

Mike had stopped in the middle and called out to us, "What's in here?"

"One of the original structural features of the museum," Poste said. "It's long been obsolete."

"Let's have a look."

We all turned back to join Mike.

"This was constructed in the middle of the nineteenth century," Anna said. "An enormous storm drain-off for the Central Park reservoir."

We walked ten or fifteen feet into its mouth, and the temperature dropped noticeably. There were ghostly figures of bronze bacchanals and carved Asian dragons, heavy pieces of furniture and fluted columns. Most of these neglected or unwanted artworks had been dressed in plastic shrouds and left to guard this useless tunnel.

Mike used the point of his pen to lift the covers and poke around the objects.

"Even art goes in and out of vogue, Mr. Chapman. Something that was all the rage for collectors a century ago gets cycled out. Some of the greats have staying power, but--"

"Anything Egyptian in here, Mr. Poste?"

"I'd be surprised if there isn't. We can light this for you more properly when you come back. There are a couple of areas like this which just aren't the first priority to be fixed up with our limited funding."

Our walking tour continued until we had circumnavigated the entire museum basement, peering into storerooms and skirting empty corners. Erik Poste wasn't wrong; it would pay to come back here with reinforcements in serious numbers. Perhaps we could convince the chief of detectives to let us have some cadets from the Academy to scour the vast space for us.

We left our three escorts near the front door, where a uniformed guard was waiting to let us out. The museum had closed at five-fifteen, and it was just after seven in the evening. Even though it was dusk, the Fifth Avenue steps remained a place for groups of all sorts to congregate. Three rappers were doing moonwalks at the bottom of the staircase, a juggler was trying to keep six balls in the air while playing the harmonica, and a bespectacled kid was reading aloud fromUlysses to the accompaniment of her friend's guitar.

We stayed to the far south and descended the three tiers. "You think you could actually kill someone in that museum?" I asked.

"I'll let Dr. K. figure that one out. You could sure as hell stick her there to rest for a few months without any interruption, except by chance. Or probably even have the coffin moved in and out, without anybody being the wiser. I never gave any thought to how big that place is. Kind of like an iceberg below the main display floors."

"Millions of objects that never see the light of day." I pulled my cell phone from my handbag and dialed Nina's hotel, leaving her a voice mail about where to meet us for dinner.

Mike and I were the first to arrive at the restaurant on Second Avenue near Sixty-fourth Street.

"Buona sera,Signorina Cooper. You going to be four tonight?" "Yes, Giuliano. Do you mind if we borrow your office for a few minutes?"

He laughed and told Adolfo to unlock the door at the foot of the staircase. Mike and I went down and turned on the small television set, switching the channel to find Alex Trebek. One of our common bonds was a devotion to the Final Jeopardy! question at the end of the daily quiz show. For the decade throughout which we had worked together, Mike had found a way at almost every crime scene or station house to get to the tube in time for the last question, to bet on it against me and against Mercer.

"Tonight's category, ladies and gentlemen, is `The Cinema,'" Trebek said, stepping back to reveal a giant screen with those two words printed on it.

There were some topics I didn't challenge Chapman on, and others that were completely my domain. This was one we both knew and loved.

"Twenty dollars."

"Dinner, Coop. For four."

"You're on."

"Tonight's Final Jeopardy! answer is: William Shatner starred in this movie, filmed completely in the universal language Esperanto."

The nauseatingly cheerful music bounced along in the background as two of the three puzzled contestants stared blankly at the board. The only one of them who ventured a guess at a title was wrong, and I told Chapman that I didn't have the faintest idea. Before Trebek read the studio audience the question, Chapman tweaked the back of my neck. "And a good bottle of wine with that dinner, too. Right, blondie?"

I laughed and swatted his hand away. "Anything you say. Just let go of me."

"What isIncubus ? Nineteen sixty-five. A man possessed by demon spirits. Only Shatner outing worse than that one isBig Bad Mama, " he said, shutting off the TV and walking out of the office, "where you actually get to see his pubic hair in one of the scenes. Chow time."

"And you make it so appetizing, too."

Fenton had our drinks ready at the bar, where Mercer had greeted Nina as they were waiting for us to come back upstairs.

"Let's have some fried zucchini for the table while we're talking," Chapman told Adolfo. Nina embraced Mike, whom she had not seen in several months, and Mercer finished telling her that Vickee was less than two weeks away from delivering the child Mike referred to as "our baby." He was the first on our team to start a family, and the significance of that was not lost on either Mike or me.

"Cheers!" We clicked glasses and caught up briefly before Mike asked Mercer to tell us what he had learned about Katrina Grooten.

"I couldn't sneak the folder out so I just made some notes. The sergeant was sitting right next to the Xerox machine."

"Whose case?"

"Cathy Daughtrey's."

"No wonder I don't know about it." I've tried several times to have her transferred out of the squad. She had burned out somewhere along the way, and never went the extra mile needed to solve the difficult cases. She would do anything possible to avoid taking direction from me or from Sarah Brenner, because it always meant more legwork than she wanted to do.

"Happened almost a year ago, just about this time of night. Monday, June eleventh. Katrina Grooten, twenty- nine years old. Employed at the Cloisters.

"Sixty-one says she left the museum a little before eight and was walking her bicycle down the steep path, through the park, on her way home. That was a small apartment near Dyckman. Says a gunman pulled her off the path behind a rock, made her undress, and raped her at gunpoint."

"She give a 'scrip?"

"Male black. Tall, slim." "That's it?"

"Face was covered with a ski mask. Couldn't see anything but the skin color on his hands and the back of his neck. That's why she refused to pursue the matter. Went to the hospital to be examined. Cathy interviewed her there. But Grooten herself didn't see any point in coming to look at photos 'cause she couldn't make an--"

"But DNA? Forget the corporeal ID." I was impatient to know why I hadn't gotten the opportunity to talk Katrina Grooten into letting us investigate and build the case.

"He didn't ejaculate. No seminal fluid. No DNA."

"Did we have any other cases like that in the park? Any other crimes to which we could have linked this one?"

"A couple of robberies with a guy who used a ski mask. No arrests, no suspects."

"Witnesses? Nobody coming from or going to the museum?"

"The Cloisters is closed on Monday. Just a few of the staff working there. She thinks she was one of the last ones to leave."

"Any record in the file that Cathy called me before closing out the case?" I believe in getting every victim into our office to be talked to by a member of the legal staff of our unit, whether or not it is a long shot, to see if there is any way to develop the facts into a stronger case or determine if the crime is the work of a serial offender or a convicted rapist on parole.

"Nope. Just EC'd it and the boss signed off on it."

"Exceptional clearance? And she didn't bother to call me for approval?"

"Your best friend here likes to think she runs the NYPD, and not just my life," Chapman said to Nina, trying to make sense of this conversation for her. "In case you don't realize it, Coop, a lieutenant can actually close out a case without your permission."

"Whole song and dance in there about Ms. Grooten being from South Africa. She felt that too many black men had suffered in prisons in her country for crimes they didn't commit, so she didn't want to take the chance of starting a manhunt when she couldn't even identify the rapist."

"Great. So we got a bleeding heart. She's got a Dutch name--descended from Boers, who killed more Africans than you or I could count," Chapman said, holding his empty glass up in the air for Fenton to see, ordering another round of drinks. "Meantime, one of the brothers be having a field day in my neck of the woods and she decides she's gonna give him a pass. America the Beautiful. And nobody notices a mope running around the park with a ski mask on in the middle of June, his dick hanging out of his pants." "Who was the outcry witness?" The first person Katrina called from the hospital might suggest the name of the friend or relative to whom she was closest, in whom she confided.

"She didn't make any calls. She told Cathy she had no family in this country. And she didn't want anyone at the museum to know what had happened. Katrina said she planned to be going back to Cape Town before the end of the year anyway."

"What'd she do at the museum?" Chapman asked.

"Worked on medieval art. How's this for weird, considering her final resting place? Had an expertise in tomb sculpture."

11

"Nobody's touched the story yet. You lead a charmed life, Alex."

Battaglia had the morning newspapers stacked on his desk, and someone from the public relations office had gone through them to check for crime-related clippings before I showed up on his office doorstep shortly after 8A.M. on Thursday.

I had scanned them myself before leaving my apartment. Below the fold on page A1 of theTimes was the feature on Pierre Thibodaux's sudden resignation. Trustees gave opinions in unsourced quotes, and art critics gnawed at some of the questionable purchases made during his tenure. Everyone was surprised at the timing of the announcement, and some even speculated at a behind-the-scenes scandal involving fiscal impropriety or a masterpiece of questionable provenance.

No mention was made of a dead woman found in an ancient sarcophagus. Thibodaux himself had made only a vague reference to the unfortunate coincidence of an ongoing police investigation. His assistant explained that he would hold a press conference in a week's time, after he'd had an opportunity to brief the board members in private on his decision.

"Mickey Diamond called me at home late last night," I told the boss. "He said they didn't want to go with it because no one over at the museum would confirm the girl's ID and the paper was spooked about the next-of-kin thing. Afraid to print something and find out she had family here who would only learn about her death that way."

"Since when are they so sensitive? Truth of the matter is, as one of the other reporters put it to me, Katrina Grooten wasn't really `anybody.' Pretty pathetic commentary on their values."

"Paul, I spoke to Jake about the leak." He had returned my call shortly after I left the office. He'd also tried to get through to my cell phone, but it wasn't working--just as Anna Friedrichs had described-- while we were in the museum basement. So Jake had come over after dinner, when he finished working. "He didn't do it. He wouldn't lie to me."

"It's dead in the water. I trust it won't happen again." "Have you heard from your counterpart in New Jersey?"

"A casual inquiry. I didn't get the sense he'd want to fight for jurisdiction of the case unless he knew it could be solved with very little effort. Or until you solve it for him."