Linda Fairstein - The Bone Vault

“Where is it?”

“Adjacent to the library. But again, in a separate building that you can only get into with a special security pass.” Mamdouba was not pleased. “Very well, Zimm. After you show these people what they need to see, I’d still like to have a chat with you in my office.”

He told us he would be available for any further questions that we had, but excused himself to go back upstairs.

“Didn’t mean to jam you up.”

“Not a problem, Detective. Everybody’s so jumpy here about security, but you get a feel for people who respect the same things you do. It’s not like Katrina was going to make off with first editions of hand-colored Audubon drawings from the collection. This place intrigued her, in a positive way. I don’t think she’d ever been exposed to phenomena like this before.”

Mike parked himself on a stool across the counter from Zimm. “You have anything going on with her?”

The kid blushed again. “Nah. Went out for margaritas a couple of times after meetings, but she really wasn’t interested in anything else. Not with me.”

“How about Mamdouba? He and Katrina have any special relationship?”

Zimm looked at Mike as though he were crazy. “Him? That guy is all business all the time. You know what he’s most interested in now? Burning whoever let Katrina break the rules. He’s probably more concerned about that than the fact that she’s dead. This may be the only kind of bureaucracy worse than academia, and I’m bouncing back and forth between the two of them.”

“Don’t try city government next. The two of us could outdo you in a flash with bureaucratic rules. And one other piece of advice: You meet a nice kid like Katrina and you wanna get laid? Get rid of the spiders. Especially the ones you got at home next to the bed.” Mike kicked the stool away and stood up. “We want the same back-door view she had. The museum you don’t see on the school tour. Is that going to be a problem for you?”

Zimm seemed energized by the idea. He rested his jar of roaches next to the tarantula. “I get my degree next month. I’m outta here.” He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder like a hitchhiker. “Off to Chicago, to the Field Museum. Assistant curator of the department. Want to see anything else about the exhibition before we start walking?”

“If I give you a museum acquisition number, can you tell us where the piece is right now?”

The entomologist was ready to show off his computer program. He clicked off the screen with the alphabetical list of items and waited while Mike opened his notepad to the page he wanted.

“It’s from the Met: 1983.752.”

“Limestone sarcophagus, right? Mamdouba had me looking this one up yesterday.”

Mike nodded and Zimm double-clicked, bringing up a color photo of the ancient coffin. The pale beige slab that had looked so macabre in the darkened hollow of the big truck seemed almost elegant as photographed against the faux-marble backdrop of the museum display.

As he read aloud a description of the markings, Mike and I studied the image on the screen. Just as Hal Sherman had told me, there were ornate carvings with rows of wild animals inscribed in exquisite detail, everything from boars and hyenas to wading birds and elephants. But for its grisly diversion to Port Newark, it would have been a perfect object for the bestiary show.

“Is this, um-the newspaper said Katrina was found in-”

“Yeah, this is it. What else does the entry mention?”

While Zimm printed out two pages of information, he straightened up and recited the rest from memory. “The piece came in on December first of last year. Timothy Gaylord-he’s the Egyptian curator-sent it over from the Met for consideration in the exhibition.”

“Where was it kept while it was here?”

“The oversize things like that? They were all in the basement of ichthyology.”

“Fish?”

“Yup.”

“Why there?”

“I guess it was just a question of where there was the most room for storage on the lower level. They’ve got a back door there that opens onto the loading dock. It would be the logical place to bring the heaviest pieces in and out.”

Mike scanned the printout. “This doesn’t say when the sarcophagus left here.”

“According to our records, it never did.”

“Can you reverse the process? Can you plug in the dates-say, last Monday or Tuesday-and see what items shipped out of here?”

Zimm went back to his computer program. He entered May 20 and May 21 into the search for outgoing loads. “Looks like one of our own trucks picked up some things to be transferred to the Smithsonian. Light stuff, though. Birds, shells, mollusks.”

“The week before?”

“Yeah, here’s a bigger truck. See? Here’s a shipment going back to the Met on the fifteenth of May. Some heavy limestone in it. Probably stuff that’s been rejected from the show. This sarcophagus wasn’t the only one they were looking at. They had lots of Egyptian objects that were submitted. Hmmm. An Indian funeral stele with scenes from the life of Buddha.” He brought up a picture, which showed Prince Siddhartha, who later became Buddha, riding off on his horse to renounce his nobility.

Mike leaned in over the young man’s shoulder to read through the list. “Sandstone. A four-foot-tall Cambodian statue of Ganesha, the Hindu god with an elephant’s head. And a bronze statue of Theseus fighting the Minotaur. What do these initials mean?”

“Somebody from the Met team has to sign out the pieces here, sending them back. That last one, that’s signed by the head of European sculpture.”

“Whoa, here’s some Egyptian stuff going back.”

“Like what?”

“The coffin of some guy named Khumnakht. A false door from the tomb of Metjetji. Who signed for this?”

Zimm brought up the signature. “Timothy Gaylord. I’ll print it out.”

Mike grabbed the pages as they came out of the machine.

“Want this one, too? Looks like another big sarcophagus that we shipped up to the Cloisters the week before. May eighth. Some guy named Ermengol, also carved in limestone. The whole block of stone is supported by three lions, and I think one of them has a pig in his mouth.” He was more riveted by the animal images than by our mission.

“Signed out by?”

“Bellinger. Hiram Bellinger.”

“Can you search through your programs to see whether Katrina signed in or out on anything?”

“Did that already, for Mamdouba. Nope. Somebody over her head would have to do that. She wouldn’t have had that authority.”

“How about a cross-check, to see whether any other exhibits are missing. Things that have not been signed out-like the sarcophagus-but have disappeared.”

“Ditto on Mamdouba. That’s going to take a lot longer to do, but we’ve got a team of students who are trying to do a hand count right now. So far, three other items can’t be located. But they’re all small things. Pilfering, probably. Like a seven-inch silver drinking vessel from medieval Germany, shaped like a stag. Kinds of things that people could easily sneak out of here. Not quite as startling as shipping out that coffin.”

Mike straightened up. “Can you take us to where the fishes sleep?”

“Ichthyology? Why not?” Zimm locked the door behind him and led us back up the drab stairway we had descended earlier. “Sorry for all the steps. It’s the only way in and out of this basement. We’re kind of landlocked down here. So you guys do any DNA on her body?”

I could tell from the expression on Mike’s face that he was as surprised by the question as I was. “You know anything about Katrina’s murder besides what you’ve read in the papers?”

“Nope. But I wasn’t sure whether Mamdouba told you that all of us who work here, they’ve got our genetic profiles on record. They’ve got our DNA.”