The Bone Vault - Linda Fairstein (43 page)

Now panic set in. I looked up at the shelves over my head. Dozens and dozens of mason jars lined the walls above me. The only light in the room was the iridescence emitted by the bright pink dye that illuminated all of the bottled skeletal remains. Some kind of prehistoric crawlers were in those bottles, unidentifiable wet specimens that glowed against the darkness of the room.

I took another step forward, sliding on the slippery substance from the broken jars that coated the floor. Two more steps and I heard a crunching noise below my heel, as though I was walking on some kind of hard-shelled insect. My foot slipped on the wet slime, and again I grabbed for the shelf. The entire rack was on wheels and it rattled wildly as my bug phobia took firm hold.

I reached out my left hand to feel for the door, still clutching the end of the metal shelves. I gripped the knob when I found it and pulled hard with both hands. It wouldn't give. Stay calm, I told myself. It was hard to open from the other side, so now it's just stuck again. I yanked with all my strength, my hands greasy from the sweat I was working up. I couldn't budge the knob in either direction.

I felt along the side of the door for a light switch. Nothing. There was no fresh air in the room, and some sightless fossil with a prickly snout and a snakelike body was eye level with me, daring me to rescue both of us from this claustrophobic cell.

Patting the pockets of my jacket and pants was another useless gesture. I opened the lid on my cell phone and powered it up, but was unable to dial any number from this black hole in the museum basement. I used the point of my pen to try to jimmy the catch on the lock, but it was way too old and sticky to respond.

Feeling behind me, I stepped back and began to scream for Mike. I yelled as loud as I could, kicking against the door like Shirley Denzig had done at my garage the night before. I stopped yelling and listened for the sound of footsteps, but the walls were so thick that I doubted he could hear me any better than I could hear him.

Now the fumes from the liquid I'd released were filling the room. I mustn't get dizzy, I told myself. I did not want to be down on this floor with whatever had dripped out of the large jar, that much I knew.

Turning in place, I looked again to the far end of the space. In the ghoulish pink glow I could make out the square design of a small window high on the wall that might give out onto the courtyard. It was covered with a shade, and too tiny to get through, but if I could break it open it would give me some air and maybe someone would hear my shouts.

Behind me, I thought I heard the doorknob rattle. I spun around, stepped toward it and yelled Mike's name again as loud as I could. Nothing. Had I imagined the noise?

I wiped the sweat from my forehead but the thought was already planted in my brain: What if this was no accident? What if we had surprised the killer by coming down to the basement tonight? What if he--or she--had trapped me in this room after I walked in alone, and then gone back to do something even worse to Mike? What if Mike never got here to open this door?

I moved to rest my back on the rack but I landed against it harder than I had intended. It rocked and swayed, and the small set of wheels on the end closest to me spun off and whirled across the room. The shelves slanted downward, and everything hurtled to the floor.

Glass jars crashed and split into pieces, spraying their contents all over the floor. The odor was unbearable, and I coughed and choked on the fumes as they rose from beneath me and invaded my mouth and nose. I was almost panting because of my fear, and the faster the breaths came, the more the odor was drawn into my nostrils and throat.

Animal bones slid off the shelves and over my head and shoulders. I took three steps toward the window and reached up to brush something out of my hair.

Beetles. Thousands of beetles had been stored in the jars and now littered the room, some of them landing on my body as they fell. I choked again, this time fighting back the urge to be sick.

What had Zimm told us? Beetles were used all over the museum to eat the flesh off dead specimens. These must have been sealed into jars with their last meals, then left to rot on dusty trays in the deserted room.

The rational spirit within me kept saying that someone would surely find me before daylight. My other internal voice reminded me that whoever had slammed the door shut would be back to finish me off, if these awful creatures didn't do it first.

I walked as carefully as I could toward the wall with the window. Beneath it was a metal tank, the same kind of enormous vat that Zimm had shown us--the kind in which the prehistoric fish had been stored in its alcohol bath. Would the lid of that tank support me so that I could climb up onto it and try to break open a pane of the small glass opening behind the window shade?

Again the jiggling sound of the doorknob, and this time, with renewed urgency, I froze in place and screamed, "Michael! Mike Chapman. Get me out of here. I can't breathe."

Exquisite silence. I coughed and gagged on the dreadful smell that permeated my clothing and everything else in the room.

I pressed on the lid of the six-foot-long tank. It felt like a thin layer of stainless steel, and I was concerned about putting my weight on top of it. I could make out the label affixed to it because of the oversize lettering in bright red ink. There was a skull and crossbones with the wordsFIRE HAZARD .

Of course it was a fire hazard. A tank that big full of alcohol to serve as a preservative would be enough to light up the west side of town. Add that to my list of ways to kill someone in this museum.

I looked back up at the window. These were double- glazed, we had been told, as another climate control. I had nothing except the wooden heel of my shoe with which to try to break one of the panes. So far, I had managed to destroy everything else made of glass. I might as well take a shot at this. Before removing a shoe and exposing my foot to whatever was slopping around on the floor, I lifted the lid of the container to see how sturdy its support would be. I didn't need to drown myself in ethyl alcohol.

I removed a tissue from my jacket pocket, as a precaution, and covered my mouth as I opened the vat. But there was no strong smell of alcohol at all, so I used both hands to rest the top against the wall.

The pink iridescence above my head highlighted something gray inside the box. I bent over to see what was there. I gazed at the face of a small mummified head.

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I let the lid drop back into place and decided to take my chances that it would hold me. I didn't believe in the mummy's curse but there were way too many dead things in this room to keep me from losing control before too long. Hoisting myself onto the end of the vat's closed surface, I pulled off my shoes and stood atop it in my bare feet.

Pushing the faded shade to the side, I raised my hand and began to bang away at the windowpane. It seemed like nothing short of a sledgehammer would have any effect.

Again there was a noise at the door. I poised myself, arm in the air with my weapon aimed at it. The door opened and the light in the hallway reflected off the top of Mike Chapman's black hair.

"You getting high from these fumes, blondie? I got a box of Krazy Glue I can give you to take home. What the--"

"Somebody locked me in here!"

"Will you get down from there? What are you doing by that window? You can't kill yourself by jumpingup from the basement to the courtyard. Save your strength."

"The missing princess--the mummy from the sarcophagus that Katrina was in? She's in this vat."

"You afraid she's gonna walk? That why you're standing up there, looking like something scared the crap out of you? C'mon, let's get going. Get off that thing."

"I can't."

"What do you mean you can't? Let's go."

"Look at the floor, Mike."

"This room's a mess. Must be some kind of lab. How can you stand it in here with that smell?"

"I broke those jars. It's not a lab. It wasn't like that when I got in here." "Why'd you do that?"

"I didn't do it. I didn't mean to do it. Someone locked me in here."

"What are you talking about? The door wasn't locked. It was just tight. I had to lean all my weight against it, but I don't have a key."

"Didn't you hear me screaming the first two times you tried the door? You should have let me know you were there."

"What first two times? I just came down here looking for you now, 'cause you weren't back at the staircase where we said we'd meet. I gave you an extra ten minutes, then just started trying all the doors. This was the last one."

"I'm telling you that someone closed me in here, then came back and locked the door. I heard them jiggling the handle, I swear to you. I'm not crazy."

He walked toward me, crunching broken glass and beetle shells on his way. "These creepy crawlies got to you, Coop. It was just your imagination. Zimm and I were the only ones over here."

"Zimm? We left him in the other building."

"Yeah, but he decided to catch up with us. See if he could be useful. I sent him back."

Somebody had been playing with the door when I was locked inside. Why had Zimm followed us here? "It's not my imagination. I'm not moving till you tell me you believe me."

Mike stood in front of me, reaching up to grab my legs behind my knees. "I forgot my cape. We'll do it fireman's carry and not Sir Walter Raleigh style. Forgive me."

He lifted me over his shoulder and across the littered floor, my shoes in hand, to the hallway. Then he went back inside and looked into the steel container.

"Egyptian princess. Twelfth Dynasty. That girl just can't find a quiet place to sleep. C'mon, I need to clean you up before we go upstairs."

I took Mike's hand and let him lead me down the corridor. There was a men's room next to the stairwell and he took me inside.

He ran cold water, soaked a paper towel in it, and began to wipe my face and hands. "It's a bad night when a broad a couple of thousand years older than you looks better than you do."

I bent my head toward him and shook it at him. "I'm getting used to that fact. Anything stuck there? Any b --" "Clean as a whistle." He handed me his comb and I ran it through my hair.

"I know you think I'm exaggerating, but I'm telling you the truth."

"Later, kid. We got people waiting for us upstairs. And now I gotta call crime scene and get them working on the mummy. And you," he said, tugging on a strand of my hair, "you're not out of my sight for a nanosecond, got it?"

I nodded and walked up the dingy staircase in front of him.

Retracing our path to the fourth floor, I knocked on the door and identified myself to Mercer. He opened it and told me that Mamdouba wanted to talk to me. He had come to ask me a question and expressed his annoyance that I was down in the basement with Mike.

Mike walked to the turret with me and held the door for me to go into Mamdouba's office. The curatorial director was standing at the window, having pulled himself up to full height and assumed the most clipped, formal version of his manner.

"Inasmuch as I have been gracious enough to be your host, in President Raspen's absence, and inasmuch as I have cooperated with you in every way possible, I think it is extremely rude--to say the very least--that you have brought Miss Clementine Qisukqut into this museum tonight." Mamdouba raised his finger to shake at me. He was furious. "Police business, that I have great respect for. Trusting you and your detectives is one thing. But sneaking in here with a former employee who was discharged from this institution--discharged because of her untrustworthiness, her calumny--well,this, I tell you, Miss Cooper, withthis you have broken every rule. Your little trick on me is over. You'll have to go. At once."

My apologies were lame and unsuccessful. I tried to interrupt to tell him that we had just found the mummy from the sarcophagus, but Mamdouba wouldn't be distracted from his tirade. The more I tried to excuse our ruse, the angrier he became.

"But you even joked about the fact that she was coming to town."

"To town, perhaps. To my museum, without my permission--no."

I wanted to know who had blown Clem's cover. I didn't think the leak was all that serious, since Clem's e- mails to some in the museum group had suggested that she might arrive in Manhattan that very night, but Mamdouba's discovery certainly foiled our plans for the rest of the night. He wouldn't tell me anything.

"Bring your Trojan horses in here, madam. Now that you've made a fool of me, let me tell them what to expect from this point forward."

I wasn't sure whether to move. "Get your friends," he barked. "It's almost ten o'clock. I'd like to go home.Get them!"

He stood in the doorway of his anteroom and watched Mike and me walk back the short distance as though it were a gangplank. I opened the door and gave Mercer and Clem the word that someone had spotted her, and that Mamdouba was waiting to rap our knuckles and kick us out into the night.

Clem caught up with me as we walked toward the corner office. "Don't blame yourself. I'm sure it's my fault. I was getting a little frisky with those last e-mails. I'll let you read them. I think I was too excited to exercise much caution. Zimm probably figured out I was already here. He may have thought he had to blow the whistle on me, for his own sake."

The four of us took our places in the curator's circular turret. Clem spoke first. "This is not the way I hoped to come back, Mr. Mamdouba. I think you know how much respect I have for this great museum, for the work of my colleagues, for--"

The bantam administrator wanted no explanations. He gave Clem a tongue-lashing for her unauthorized entry into the facility from which she had been banned months ago. I broke in to try to convince him that she had only come at my urging, at my direction. Mike jumped in to defend me, and only Mercer stood with calm reserve, behind Clem's chair, his powerful hands on her tiny shoulders.

"This will mark the end of your comings and goings, Miss Cooper." Mamdouba crushed the subpoena and threw it in the wastebasket.

"May I have a moment with you?" I motioned to the anteroom. I did not want to be discussing witnesses and evidence in front of Clem, but I wanted to impress upon the director of curatorial affairs the kind of access we needed from him and why we had taken the chance that we did. Traipsing through his displays in the daytime, with dozens of police officers in the midst of hundreds of schoolchildren, would be far less appealing than our clumsy efforts to operate more discreetly after dark. He also needed to know about our discovery in the basement, which we hadn't disclosed to Clem.