The Bone Vault - Linda Fairstein (44 page)

I followed him out to the anteroom and closed the door behind us, for privacy. I made my pitch and explained how the search warrants would have to be executed, and what other requests I would make to the grand jury to compel his cooperation, but he had reached the end of his very short rope. The subpoena was only a piece of paper. He could rip it up and throw it away, but we still had the power to hold him in contempt.

"This is an institution of science, Miss Cooper. Make your case somewhere else. Go back to the Metropolitan. That's where the dead girl worked, no? You have abused the privilege of being inside our walls, madam." The little man was screaming now.

The door opened behind me and both Mike and Mercer joined us in the anteroom. Mike was ready for an argument while Mercer, as usual, took the diplomatic approach. He backed me away with a motion of his arm, and I took a seat on a nearby sofa to let him cool Mamdouba down.

"Ms. Cooper's been known to step in shit from time to time. Maybe this wasn't her brightest idea," Mike said, "but we're trying to solve a murder without shutting your doors to the public."

"You'd have absolutely no reason to do that. No right. We won't stand for it. You don't even know where this girl died. All you have is a body somewhere in New Jersey." He lowered himself into the chair at his assistant's desk and wiped the sweat from the back of his neck.

"And a coat check from a cold day last December, right here in your lobby. And maybe enough arsenic to finish off every one of us. Let's all be sensible," Mercer said. "Why don't we work out a schedule that meets with your approval. We'd like to keep you on our side, sir, okay?"

The two detectives outlined the way they wanted to proceed. Mamdouba was too agitated to listen closely. There would be no way to work out an agreement tonight.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Wallace. It's very late, I'm quite tired, and I need to speak to the president herself before I can give you an answer." He got up and walked to the door of his office, standing back as he pulled it open so we could go in and claim our trespassing Inuit.

I stood at the entrance and looked inside the perfectly round room. No one was there. Clementine Qisukqut had vanished. 38

Elijah Mamdouba brushed past me and strode to the center of his suite. He swept around and shook his fist at me. "Your fault, Miss Cooper. Enough games."

I was dumbfounded. My heart was pounding and my head ached as if it were caught in a vise. It was as if two people were staring at a picture and seeing entirely different things: I knew something terrible had happened to Clem, while the director assumed she was the cause of the trouble.

Mercer raced in and started for the first of four doors that were set back into the walls of the room.

"Don't touch that, Detective." Again, Mamdouba was shouting at us. "She's playing with all of us. You step into the tiger's lair and you are surprised when the tiger bites you? We had no reason to trust Miss Clementine, and neither did you."

It was as though her disappearance had relieved him of all the tension the evening's events had created. He leaned forward, hands on his thighs, and broke into the heartiest of belly laughs.

Mercer opened the first door only to find an empty coat closet, wire hangers on hiatus until the chill of fall returned. He pulled at the next knob to reveal a small bathroom, toilet and sink. Mike was livid. "What the hell are you laughing about? Where's the girl?" He crossed the room and turned another handle. Pitch black. He stepped forward into the darkness and reemerged immediately. "Where are the lights?"

"She's run away on you, Mr. Chapman. There's the devil in that--"

Mike poked his head into the opening and yelled Clem's name. "It's a goddamn stairwell, Mercer. I can't see a friggin' thing in there."

He backed up around the large desk and bumped into Mamdouba, sticking him in the chest with his forefinger. "I don't give a fat rat's ass if Teddy Roosevelt falls off his horse and the animals come alive in their cages. Get every guard in this place on his feet, sound whatever kind of alarm you've got, get me a handful of flashlights, and tell me where the hell these stairs go. Coop, go back and get the floor plans. Hoof it."

Mercer was on Mamdouba's phone with the chief of detectives' office. "Get Emergency Services here. Send me some patrol cars. Close off the streets around the museum.... Theywhat ? Don't tellme they can't. They do it to blow up Snoopy and those rubber cartoon characters for the Thanksgiving Day parade. Shut it down tighter than a crab's ass. You got subway entrances north and south of the place. Block 'em off."

I ran back to our workroom and grabbed the maps off the top of the desk. "What's wrong with you, man? Why the hell didn't you tell us there's a secret staircase in there? You think Clem came over here from London to play games? Someone grabbed her right from under our noses. Use your brain." Mike stormed back to the staircase. "What does this lead to and who had access to it?"

Mamdouba was in his fourth mood swing of the night. The displeasure that had turned to defiance and then briefly become hysteria had now sobered to misery. "It's not a secret. There's no reason for anyone to know about it. It's, uh, it's vestigial."

"I left my thesaurus at the station house. Help me."

Mamdouba had called the security command center and alarms were screeching overhead and echoing in the vast hallways beyond.

"Vestigial.Useless, like your appendix. Built a century ago, when these corner towers were constructed. They've been out of use ever since elevators were put in. The steps are narrow and dark and dangerous. Nobody uses them."

Now Mercer was talking to the head of the hostage negotiation squad: "That's the point. We don't know who's got her or where she is. It's not premature. You damn well better have a team up here because if we find the girl and she's alive, I'm gonna need all the help I can get. Pronto."

Three guards rushed into the room, the leader looking to Mamdouba for information and direction. "That flashlight. Toss it," Mike said.

"Do it." Mamdouba nodded his head.

Mercer took another flashlight out of the second guard's hand and threw it to me, grabbing a third for himself.

"I'm going up. You go down," Mike said to Mercer. I started to follow them into the darkened stairwell but Mike shouted at me to go back. "You're only trouble, blondie. Stay here with the guards and man the phone. Chief of D's on the way."

Mamdouba was playing with a panel of light switches on the landing. I could hear the click as he flipped them but no lights came on.

His office had erupted into total chaos as guards responded from stations all around the museum. The one who seemed to be their leader was giving them orders to fan out and start scouring every crevice of the building, looking for a short, dark-skinned woman with black hair. They were not licensed to carry weapons, so most of them had only their flashlights in hand.

Within minutes, three patrol cars had arrived at the museum. A uniformed sergeant and three cops were the first to get to Mamdouba's office. "Hey, Al, what gives?"

"You know anything about the murder investigation, the girl who was found--?"

"Chapman's case? Seen it in the papers. Body in the back of the truck somewhere in Jersey. You caught the guy tonight? Who's missing?"

I gave them the briefest version of the events to get them going. The sergeant sent two guys to follow Mercer and Mike, while he and his driver remained with me.

"What's her 'scrip?"

I tried to be patient as I told them what Clem looked like, so they could send out a radio broadcast to the other officers arriving at the museum, as well as to those patrolling the neighborhood.

"Name?"

I spelled it for him while the driver took notes.

"Odd one."

"Inuit."

"What?"

"Eskimo."

"APB the North Pole, Al." The sergeant laughed, as concerned about the situation as Mamdouba had been at first.

Mike and a young cop came back into the room. "You want to get reamed at Compstat next month, Paddy? Stand here making stupid friggin' jokes while you're about to notch up one more murder count in your precinct. Get me every man available in Manhattan North."

"Now you're joking. It's just a museum."

"You ever been up on five, Coop? Or beyond it, to the attic?"

I shook my head in the negative as Mike went on. "We're gonna tear it apart upstairs. You won't believe what it looks like. You could rent out rooms to a dozen people and no one would know they're living up there. Or dead. There's a zillion cubbyholes and lockers and cases. Where's Mercer? Anyone with Mercer? Call him, Coop."

I dialed his phone from Mamdouba's desk and was sent into his voice mail. He must have reached the basement already, where his cell phone wouldn't work. I tried Zimm's extension and got no answer.

"Do you know who else is working in the basement?" I asked Mamdouba.

"Several of the team were here until an hour ago. Gaylord, Poste, Bellinger, Friedrichs. They were all up here. But it's late, they may be gone. Zimm, I told him not to leave until he heard from me, in case I needed any last-minute errands completed tonight."

Mike was giving orders to NYPD cops, who were arriving in pairs every five minutes or so, and to the bewildered security guards. "You see anything alive and moving under this roof, corral him or her and bring 'em..."

He looked at me, not knowing what to say.

"IMAX theater. Off the main lobby."

"Paddy." He turned his attention to the sergeant. "Interns, grad students, science dorks, janitors. Nobody leaves. What did they see, what did they hear? Bones. I want anyone who knows where the bones are."

Mamdouba muttered softly, "They are everywhere, Mr. Chapman. Upstairs and down."

The sergeant had a police walkie-talkie and was communicating with his men on the street. "Somebody at every entrance, every doorway. Dumpsters in the courtyard, check 'em. Flood the place with whoever shows up."

"Can you turn off that damn system already?" Mike was on the phone with headquarters again. The internal alarms had been clanging for twenty minutes. If there was anyone who had not realized there was an emergency, he had already met the taxidermists. Mercer was practically panting when he came back into the office. "Door from the staircase doesn't open on three. On two is an office like this one. Lock must be a hundred years old. Shouldered into it and it gave way. Dusty, empty, nothing in the closets except bottles full of lizards. First floor's a bookshop. Took it all the way down to the basement."

"Where the exhibition offices are? See any of the--"

"No, you heard Clem. Can't get there from here. It's spookier than shit."

"Herps." Mamdouba again.

"What?"

"Snakes. Herpetology. They're all dead, Mr. Wallace."

"You still do not want to be in there. Tank after tank-- pythons, constrictors, anacondas--all in some kind of alcohol solution."

"You see anyone?"

"Nope. This one's a labyrinth of storerooms and closets. Racks of metal shelves on wheels with specimens. I left the cop who followed on that side. Call him some backup, will you? Still as a tomb. He's checking out every inch of it."

"Did you get over to--?" "The exhibition area? Yeah. Had to climb back up to the lobby and over to where we've been in before. Got the kid to go--"

"Zimm?"

"Yeah. Told him what happened and sent him--"

"How'd he react to the news about Clem?"

"Seemed appropriately freaked out. I have him doing a sweep to see who's still here, round them up. I'll go back to meet him and let him take us through every back alley he knows down there. Sarge, I need guys to open every door."

"Did Zimm say he knew Clem would be here tonight?"

"Mike, I didn't stop to do an interview. I'm trying to find her alive, okay?"

"Anyone else there?"

"That sour broad. Anna Friedrichs. She's dragging up here after me, taking her sweet time." Mike handed Mercer the basement floor plans that Clem had helped him to decipher. "Take this with you when you go back down. Sarge, your walkie-talkies. Give 'em up." Mamdouba, who had been speaking on the phone, now turned to us. "Mr. Socarides is still in his office. Mammals. He'll go with you to the fifth floor, Mr. Chapman. He's responsible for--well, for many of the bones."

"Humans?"

"Animals. But he knows the storage area."

I thumbed through the pages detailing collections and donations.

"Can he help with these names?"

"Certainly."

"We'll bring this list with us, then."

"You're not coming, kid. Go with Mercer. Help him."

"Stay put, Alex."

Mercer didn't want me in his way either. I wasn't exactly a goodluck charm.

Each of them took a few of the men and women in blue and set out on their paths to the nether reaches of the gigantic museum. Twenty-three buildings. Seven hundred and twenty-three rooms. We didn't need a precinct to search it, we needed an army. Now the noise was coming from the street outside. I walked to the window and looked down at the intersection of Columbus Avenue and West Seventy- seventh Street. Dozens of RMP's were blocking the intersection, and several big trucks of the Emergency Services Unit were positioned beneath the old granite facade. Sirens wailed the arrival of more and more officers, and flashing red bubbles atop black unmarked cars signaled the presence of detectives and police brass.

Anna Friedrichs looked terrified when she entered the room. "Is Clem all right? Have you found her?"

I told her how Clem had disappeared. "Did you read her e-mails today? Did you know she was coming to New York?"

"By the end of the day we all knew she was coming to town to talk with the police. But later in the week, I thought. It was Zimm who just told me she hinted about coming tonight."

"He told you that? When?"

"Now. Just now. She trusted him, I guess. Said she'd look to see if his light was on when she got to the museum. He took that to mean at night. Tonight."

"Get him up here." I flapped my hand in Mamdouba's direction. "If you can't reach him by phone, send two of your men to bring him up here immediately. D'you know who else he told?" I asked, turning back to Friedrichs.