Linda Fairstein - The Bone Vault

“And those others, was she close to them?”

“Professionally. I’d tell you to talk to them, but the interns come and go. The salary is low, this facility is a throwback to another age-so kids just out of school find it a bit inconvenient for socializing-and it’s hard to get to. I’ll have to check to see who overlapped with Katrina.”

“Are you single?” Mike was looking for a wedding ring as Bellinger gestured with his left hand, but there was none.

“No, I’m married.”

“Your wife?”

Bellinger smiled. “Works for a music production company.”

“Classical?”

“No. Pop, rock and roll, rap, whatever’s hot.”

“Kind of a Jack Sprat thing, huh?” Chapman said. “You eat no fat, she eats no lean.”

“Just gives me even more appreciation for the quiet within these walls.”

“Ever hang out with Katrina?”

“Museum functions. Command performances when Thibodaux wanted to trot us out for the trustees. Nothing personal.”

“Guess you won’t have to answer to Pierre any longer.”

“You’ve probably heard that I wasn’t part of his fan club. Too much P. T. Barnum and not enough emphasis on scholarship and education. I’m grateful to him for some terrific acquisitions he made for the Cloisters, but we didn’t have very much in common.”

“Is that why you assigned Ms. Grooten as the Cloisters’ liaison for the show that was being planned for next year with the Museum of Natural History? Wasn’t that a lot of responsibility for an intern?”

“Katrina was extremely knowledgeable, Detective. Far more scholarly than many of her peers, and I worked with her quite closely on the project. I realize the exhibition is going to be a meaningful source of revenue for both museums. To me, anything that takes me away from my research is a waste of time. I thought it would be a good opportunity for Katrina to mix with other people at both institutions, get to make some acquaintances that would give her more of a life in the city. Get her noticed by some of the higher-ups.”

“Did she enjoy it?”

“Seemed to. I think she had quite a good time exploring all our treasures to look for the animals that could be featured. Bestiaries were creations of medieval art originally, so they’re everywhere in our work. And I also got a sense that she looked forward to the meetings. Making friends, spending time downtown, coming out of her shell a bit.”

“Has another intern taken over where she left off?”

“That was my plan,” Bellinger said. “But time was getting short so I’ve taken on much of it myself, as you can see. Seemed like more trouble than it was worth to start training someone all over again.”

In the far corner of the room, assembled on a table, were a variety of objects that depicted an array of fantastic animals. “That fresco of the lion is from Spain. According to the old bestiaries, lions slept with their eyes open, as paragons of watchfulness. And this,” he said, walking over and picking up a whimsical brass figure, “this was one of Katrina’s favorites.”

“What is it?”

“An aquamanile. The priests used them to wash their hands during the celebration of Mass. This one’s a wyvern.”

“A what?”

“A two-legged dragon, swallowing a man. His tail curves over his wings, forming the handle with which to pour.” He surveyed the menagerie. “Double-headed eagles, devil’s helpers with cloven hooves, lions restrained by apes, Harpies-with their angelic faces and false music-luring sailors to their death. Katrina adored these creatures.”

“So when did you take over the exhibition project coordination?”

“After Katrina resigned at the end of the year.”

“If she was so happy with this kind of work, weren’t you surprised that she was quitting?”

“I’ve learned not to invest a great deal of emotional energy in bonding with the graduate students. It’s usually a short stay. They’re parking here briefly before they go back to school for their doctorates, or this place is just too damn unexciting for them. At least Katrina had a valid excuse. I mean, what can you say when someone tells you she’s been raped?”

Mercer and I exchanged glances. “When, exactly?”

“Not when it happened. Not for more than a month. But the whole thing had a much more profound impact on her than she had anticipated. It began to affect her work, even her relationships with other people here.”

“And that’s why she discussed the rape with you?”

“In confidence, yes. Because she was conflicted about what to do. I’ll walk you through the areas she spent time in, Ms. Cooper. These buildings are a series of chapels and gardens and arcades. As beautiful as they are, they’re rather foreboding, with statues of grotesques and effigies of the dead all around. We don’t get the heavy foot traffic that the main Metropolitan museum gets. It can be fairly-shall I say-haunting up here on our hilltop, especially late at night when there’s no one to keep you company. I believe Katrina was attacked about a year ago, am I right?”

“In June.”

“Well, one night in August, while she was working alone on a sketch of a stone monster in the vault of the Langon Chapel, she was startled by one of the guards who had come in to do a routine security check. She hadn’t heard his footsteps, I guess, and she looked up to see him standing over her. She let out a scream. She scared him as much as she scared herself.”

“Didn’t she know him?”

“That’s just it. He had changed out of his uniform to go off duty, and came back to check out everything one more time. Katrina had never seen him in jeans and a T-shirt, with a baseball cap on. She didn’t recognize him. The next morning, she was in at the crack of dawn, waiting for me, to explain what had happened.”

“Why?”

“She wanted to quit. She felt horribly guilty. The guard was an African-American, and she knew she had insulted him terribly by responding to his appearance with fright. That’s the day she told me that she had been sexually assaulted.

“And she told me how ashamed she was, because she kept reacting with fear every time she saw an unfamiliar black face, anxious that it was the man who attacked her.”

That kind of response was all too common. Victims whose assailants were unapprehended had a generalized terror, irrational even to them, that the next stranger they encountered, if he was the same race as their rapist, might be the person who was responsible for the crime. They knew he was out there somewhere, and they started at the sight of any person they didn’t know.

“Did she tell you whether she could identify her rapist?”

“According to what she toldme, he’d been wearing a ski mask. That’s what had her so strung out. Katrina had no idea if the rapist was someone she’d ever seen before or not. His black hands and neck were all she saw clearly. So here was poor Lloyd, who’d just gone back into the chapel one more time to make sure she was okay that night, and she jumped out of her skin when she saw him.”

“Did she quit?”

Bellinger answered softly, “I wouldn’t let her. I asked her to tell me the story of the attack, and she did. I spoke to Lloyd about it that very same day, and he sought her out to try to calm her. Told her he understood completely.

“Quite frankly, I thought a lot of it had to do with the fact that she was raised in South Africa. Katrina tried very hard to convince herself that she had no prejudices or racial bias. Her family had been in Cape Town for generations, and she talked from time to time about the horrors of apartheid on a society. I’m not sure she could ever have been responsible for testifying in a case that would have sent a black man to jail, no matter what he had done to her.”