The Bone Vault - Linda Fairstein (36 page)

"No government protection?"

"First half of the twentieth century in Africa? The natives didn't have a prayer. Only the missionaries tried to intercede for them. They kept some of the best records of plundered graves. These aren't the relics of cavemen. They're the remains of Khoisans--bushmen and Hottentots--many of whom have living descendants who have heard these stories all their lives." "You think this had anything to do with Katrina's decision to go back to South Africa?"

"Everything. She had taken a job at the McGregor Museum."

I remembered that from our conversation with Hiram Bellinger. He thought it was a waste of her education. The McGregor specialized in natural history but had no European art department.

"So," Mike said slowly, "so you think you know why she wanted that job at the McGregor?"

"The bone vault, Detective. She wanted to get into their bone vault."

30

"What's a bone vault?"

"Nothing you're going to find in any museum directory, Mike. It's how Katrina and I referred to the stash of skeletons that every museum has in one hideaway or another. The South African Museum in Cape Town, they've got a locked storeroom with more than a thousand cartons full of somebody's grandmothers and grandfathers."

"And the McGregor?" "Up in Kimberley. One hundred and fifty dusty boxes of bones, sitting under white fluorescent lights."

"None on display?"

"No. The curators got wise to the controversy a few years later than the Americans. Took down the hanging skeletons in the late nineties."

"So, where's the McGregor vault?"

"That's the trick. She was going to try to find it and help to get the remains identified. To return them to the families that have been asking for them."

Mercer was fascinated. "Can they actually be identified at this point?"

"Some can. I think there's a new DNA process."

"Mitochondrial DNA," I told her. Tracing genetic material through the maternal line, through bone and hair.

"Katrina was to replace a woman who used to work at the McGregor, a friend of mine who had actually started to catalog the remains when they were taken off display three years ago. She had been doing this as a personal measure, hoping the day would come when the indigenous communities would be able to win their return." "This friend of yours started to inventory them?"

"You didn't know how dangerous museum work could be, did you? Shortly after she undertook her project, she began to get death threats. First mailed to her office at the museum, then on her answering machine at home. Vague, of course, and anonymous, but good enough to scare her. She left South Africa and moved back to Kenya. It was after she left that the skeletons were all moved into storage and locked up."

"Why? What had she found?"

"Very specific information. Some of the entries had names of the bodies attached to the labels, even specifying the farms from which the corpses had been dug up. Bones that could be given to family members to help restore their dignity and validate their existence."

"And the others?"

"Simply an acquisition tag that says `Bush-Hottentot' or whatever their local tribe was. They were considered subhuman, Mike. Their bones were displayed just as if they were animals. These people were denigrated in death as they had been in life."

"So you've got an organization to get into the locked rooms and retrieve the bones?"

"That's a very formal word for it, Mercer. Might be more accurate to call it a cabal. If we organized, there wouldn't be one of us to get inside the employment office of any museum."

"You enlisted Katrina?"

"I awakened her. I opened her eyes." Clem looked down at her notebook on the table in front of her. "These were atrocities committed in the name of science and education, and some of us feel we can do something to right them."

"Who else, besides Katrina, was involved with your work here in New York?"

She took a deep breath and shook her head. "You find out who killed her, and then I'll give you specific names. I can't put anyone else in harm's way until you do."

I placed my hand on top of her book. "It's not just their help we need. How can we know whether or not they're in danger if we don't know who they are?"

Clem stood firm. "Let me sleep on it. Let me hear what you know and with whom you've already talked." She raised her hand to cover her mouth, stifling a yawn, then stood and began to walk around the room, as if she were trying to shake off the jet lag. In London, it was well into the early hours of the next day.

"We should save some of this until the morning," I said, signaling Mike to cut off the questioning.

"These partners of yours, how do you communicate with each other?"

Clem yawned again and I tapped my watch face as I looked at Mike and Mercer.

"So if we let you get some sleep, you game to come down to Alex's office with us in the morning? Fill in the rest of these blanks?"

"That's why I'm here."

Clem walked us to the door of her suite, talking as she did.

"You must miss your job terribly," I said, remembering that Clem had told me she had given up the chance to work in her field, temporarily, for the less controversial role of working in the exquisite refurbished Round Reading Room of the British Museum.

"I had my reasons," she said, grinning. "It so happens that lovely library is directly above the African galleries. I'm not without my allies there. We're still stirring up trouble."

I arranged to pick her up at the Park Avenue entrance to the hotel in the morning, on my way down to the office, and we said good night.

"Ten-fifteen? I'm ready to eat the ferns in the lobby," Mike said. "Anybody for dinner at Lumi?" We drove the short distance to the chic little restaurant on the corner of Seventieth Street and Lexington Avenue, and Mercer followed in his car. Lumi herself took us to the corner table, next to the ma�tre d's stand, after I told her we needed a quiet place to talk about an investigation.

Over drinks we discussed Clem's information and came up with a plan for the following morning. I would draft an e-mail for her to send to a group of museum employees, to see whether anyone could be drawn out to talk to Clem about Katrina.

Mercer and I had our favorite pasta--cavatelli with peas and tiny bits of prosciutto--while Mike took forever to work on the osso buco he ordered whenever we ate there. While we were waiting for our espresso, Mercer's beeper went off. He excused himself and walked up the two steps from the restaurant door to the sidewalk.

He came back to the table to tell us he had to leave.

"It's your girl, Alex. Angel Alfieri, the fourteen-year- old."

The china cup clattered against the saucer as it dropped from my fingers. "They found her? Is she okay?"

"She's alive. It wasn't Felix--the cabdriver--that she went off with. Looks like she holed up with Ralphie, to make Felixand her girlfriend jealous." "Thank--"

"Don't thank anybody yet. We got a hostage situation. She's in Ralphie's apartment, up on Paladino, and he's holding a loaded gun to her head."

31

I pushed away from the table and stood up to leave. Just as quickly, Mercer clamped a hand on my shoulder and I dropped back into my seat.

"I'll baby-sit. Do whatcha gotta do," Mike said.

Mercer was a member of the hostage squad, an elite group of detectives selected and trained to negotiate with some of the most unstable criminals in the most life-threatening situations. They responded to bank robbers with automatic weapons, holding dozens of citizens after a silent alarm trapped them at the crime scene; domestics in which a psychotic or intoxicated husband had a butcher knife to his wife's throat; and political disputes when dissidents invaded a consulate or residence. The cops chosen for the assignment came from every unit in the department. In addition to their regular squad duties, they were on call for these emergency situations whenever they arose.

Mercer had the intelligence, patience, and personal skills for the job. I had watched him coax deranged felons and jealous paramours out of their weapons several times in the years I had known him. Mike's temperament made him completely unsuitable for the job. He had no tolerance for a perp's threats or demands, and a shorter fuse than even I possessed.

We both watched as Mercer headed out the door to try to save the life of a kid who had jumped into water and was in way too deep over her head. I remembered that she had fabricated the forcible rape charge when Felix told her that he had had better sex with her girlfriend, who had Ralphie's name tattooed on her rear end. Undoubtedly, this was Angel's opportunity to get back at both of them by throwing herself at Ralphie.

"C'mon. Time to go home. We got a lot to do tomorrow."

I walked to Mike's car, unable to focus on the next day's work, completely distracted by the thought of the young girl looking into the barrel of a gun and wondering whether I had helped to drive her there.

"One favor?" I asked.

Mike pursed his lips and gave me a firm, "No."

"Ride up First Avenue, please? I swear I won't get out of the car. I just want to know whether her mother's out there. I'd like to see if she needs anything."

"What you really want to see is the kid, and you know you can't. Sticking you in her face would be like grinding sand in an open wound. I'll humor you, blondie, but only so I don't have to listen to you whine." We reached the projects a few minutes before midnight. There was a police barricade at each end of the block. A lieutenant with a bullhorn was standing on the sidewalk, and Emergency Services had set up klieg lights that were directed at a window on the sixth floor. A small crowd had gathered on the pavement, behind the row of wooden horses guarded by uniformed cops, who were encouraging the onlookers to move along. An ambulance was double-parked at the curb in case the bargaining process was unsuccessful.

I searched for Mercer among the group closest to the lieutenant in charge, but I couldn't find his head. That was a good sign. He had probably been sent into the building to try to soothe the angry young man and convince him to open the apartment door and release his captive.

"There's nothing to see. It's a work in progress, Coop. Nobody hurt. They've got the right man for the job." Mike reached over and took my hand off the dashboard, squeezing it tightly as he did.

Three more officers came running from the opposite side of the street, passing in front of us to sprint to the building. They each wore the hostage squad uniform, a short black bomber jacket with a bright red logo emblazoned across the back:TALK TO ME . They were followed at a more leisurely pace by a uniformed boss, a beefy guy with a captain's shield pinned above a stack of ribbons and medals.

"Hey, Chapman, whaddaya think? You're at some goddamn drive-in movie with your date? Get your ass out of the car and make yourself useful. Send the bimbo for a cup of coffee."

The captain slammed his fist down on the hood of the car, yelling across the top of it to a lieutenant standing closer to the building. "Hey, Bannerman. You know Chapman here? Homicide? Throw him in the mix."

Mike opened the car door to protest. "I've been rejected for hostage work more times than you've gotten laid. I'm no good--"

"Forget negotiating. The kid's got a gun in there. Who the hell knows which way this thing is gonna turn. Last month out in Queens the team wound up with a homicide/suicide. All the smooth talk in the world didn't help. Perp shot his captive in the head, then opened his mouth and plugged himself. We're taking every bit of backup we can get at this point. Act like a cop, not a prima donna. Yo, Bannerman, put this guy to work."

Then the captain leaned his elbow on the rim of the window. "You, sweetheart, why don't you grab a gypsy cab and go wait for Detective On-the-Job at home, snug under the covers?"

"Captain Ekersly, I'd like you to meet Alexandra Cooper. Assistant district attorney, New York County, in charge of--"

"Sex. Nice to meet you. Raymond Ekersly. You do good work, my guys tell me. I don't know what the hell you're thinking, up here holding hands with this cowboy when I got better things for him to do, but I suggest you get out of our way, okay? See you in court."

"I can just stay here while--"

"Vito. See that radio car with two auxiliaries sitting in it, up the block? Walk the DA up there and tell them to take her wherever she wants to go." Ekersly turned back to me. "Your place or his, sweetheart?"

"Coop's indicted people for less than that, Cap. She's not your sweetheart. She's nobody's sweetheart, okay?"

"I can't catch a break either way. Get to work, guys. I give up. East Side. Seventieth Street." I opened the door and stepped out of the car as the captain walked toward the projects.

"Your office at nine? You and Clem?" Mike asked.

"Sure. You know I won't be able to sleep." I hesitated before going on. "You want to come by when--when this is over, for a drink?"

"Always the optimist. Who knows when it'll be over? I'll really be ready to sack it in if this ends peacefully. Don't worry, I'll call you with the results. Have a nightcap on me."

I waved him off and followed Vito to the neighborhood auxiliary car, where two civilians who liked to dress up and play cop were keeping the street safe. Six months ago, I thought as I settled myself into the backseat, Mike would have been on my doorstep the moment this crisis passed, to assuage my concern and distract me from my thoughts about the role I had played in igniting it. Now he had someone he wanted to be with at home. At moments like this I would have to learn to adjust emotionally to that new arrangement.

I barely spoke on the ride downtown to my apartment, wondering what Angel had said or done to cause Ralphie to flip out on her. Maybe she had taunted him with the fact that she was sleeping with him only to get back at Felix, or maybe he had become enraged when she disclosed that his girlfriend had been unfaithful. Mercer had to strike exactly the right chord to connect with the kid, or there was likely to be a homicide on my conscience.

When the driver reached the red light at the corner of Seventy-first Street and Second Avenue, he pulled over in front of an all-night deli. "You mind if we stop a minute and get some coffee, ma'am?"