Linda Fairstein - The Bone Vault

“I’ll need to take emergency leave from work.”

“Would it help if I called your office and explained the situation?”

“That would make matters much worse, Ms. Cooper. No one at either museum must know yet that I’m coming to talk to you. Is that possible?”

“Of course. We’ll put you up in a hotel. You’ll be working with me and with the homicide detective assigned to the case. Now, I’m going to need your name. The complete name and address, so we can book the e-ticket. You’ll just have to show your passport when you arrive at the desk to pick it up.”

“Clementine Qisukqut. Let me spell it for you. It’s an Inuit name.”

I copied it onto the pad as she spoke the letters. “So when you told Katrina in your e-mail that you had gone home for the Christmas holidays, that was to-?”

“Greenland. My father and grandfather were both miners. Worked the zinc mines in Canada, right up near the Arctic Circle. My mother loved that old American folk song about the miner-the forty-niner-and his daughter, Clementine. I might be the only Inuit with that given name.”

She was beginning to loosen up. Her chosen screen name-for the “oh my darling” of the song’s refrain-became more obvious now.

“May I ask what kind of work you’re doing in London?”

“I’ve got a job in the British Museum.”

“Anthropology?”

“Not yet. You may have learned from Mr. Mamdouba or your other sources that I was let go. It’s an awfully incestuous world, this museum business. I would never have landed a job here if I needed my references from Natural History. I tried something different.”

“Doing what?”

“They’ve just reopened the great Round Reading Room in the British Museum. I’ve used my undergraduate degree in library science to get a position here for the time being. But they mustn’t know I’m going to the States to work on a museum matter. They’d sort the whole thing out if someone were to tell on me.”

“You have my word on that. Let me make your travel arrangements and get back to you within the hour. I can’t thank you enough for doing this.”

“I’ve lost a good friend, Ms. Cooper.” Clem’s voice dropped off. “I hadn’t really worried too much at first, knowing she’d have her hands full once she reached home in South Africa. New job, readjusting to life there, dealing with her father and his dreadful illness. Has anyone told Mr. Grooten about Katrina?”

“Our detectives notified the police there, who went to the nursing home to pay him a visit and explain it to him in person. His dementia is so advanced he didn’t even seem to know who Katrina was.”

“It’s such a tragedy, on every level. And then once I heard that she’d been here on business in January, I assumed things were fine. That she’d settle in back home and once she did, she’d get in touch with me.”

The morgue would give me final word on this, but it seemed unlikely from what we knew at this point that Katrina had been abroad this winter. “January? Are you certain that she was in London then?”

“That’s what one of my mates told me. Used to work in medieval art, and he’d met her in the States. Said that Katrina Grooten had spent the afternoon in a meeting at the museum with two other people from the Met. He’d seen her name signed in for a visitor’s pass. I thought she’d been here briefly, on her way home. Many of the U.S. flights to South Africa stop in London. It’s not unusual to break up the trip that way. Just figured she didn’t have enough time to see me on her way out.”

“That visitors’ log, do you think you can find me a copy for that date in January?”

“Perhaps the friend who told me about it can scout it up. I’ll leave him a message now. Why don’t you give me a fax number, and if he finds it he can get it to your office tomorrow, while I’m traveling?”

“That’s a good idea.” I knew our office would be closed, so I gave her the number at the homicide squad. “It’s awfully good of you to do this.”

“Of course I should be helping you.” She almost whispered her response. “I’m afraid it may be my fault that she’s dead.”

I tried to get her to explain what she meant but she refused to talk about it.

I dialed Ed Flannery’s home number. He was in charge of all our witness travel arrangements. “You’re flying her in without McKinney’s approval? No Saturday-night stay-over? No reduced fare?”

“Battaglia’ll sign off on it, Ed. Promise. Get the best price you can. And she can’t stay at one of our usual flophouses. Security’s an issue. Book a room and put it in my name. I don’t want her to appear anywhere on the register.”

We usually put witnesses up at midprice hotels in the city, bound by our per diem budget. On more than one occasion, violent crimes had been committed in the same facilities. Push-in robberies, room burglaries, and on one recent occasion a businesswoman was assaulted in the suite adjacent to our victim’s as she was followed by a serial rapist after she checked in and wheeled her suitcase to her room without a hotel bellman.

“You tell me. Our credit isn’t all that good in the five-star hotels.”

“I’ll call the Regency. They’ve done it for us before.” The owners were among the most philanthropic family in town, and the nicest, and I was certain they would do a favor for us in the midst of a murder investigation. Nina had stayed there last week and I was familiar with all the amenities. “And nobody would think to look there for one of our witnesses, that’s for sure. Call me back when you’ve got the flight information.”

Then I called Mike. “Our Clem? He’s a she. Clementine. We’re bringing her over tomorrow. Can you meet her at the Jetway when she lands at JFK and speed her through customs and immigration?”

“Don’t we have some interviews to do tomorrow at the museum? And then Pierre Thibodaux. I’ll get Mercer to pick her up.”

“Fine.” I repeated all her information for him, and told him I’d get back to him about the flight and hotel.

“What kind of name is that?”

“Inuit.” I laughed. “She’s from Uummannaq, Greenland.”

“Oh, Eskimo.”

“Used to be. Inuit now.”

“Like the friggin‘ Washington Redskins, huh? Now it’s gotta be the Uummannaq Inuits. Well, Clem’ll be my first Eskimo. Don’t introduce her to that sadomasochist you’re prosecuting. He ever makes someone try to spell this one’s name, they’d get beaten to a pulp. What are you guys doing today?”

“Val’s set up on the dining room table. She’s got to finish drafting some plans before we go back in the morning. Nina and I are going riding. And you?”

“Might actually catch a break. Last night was quiet so I’ll stay home today, unless I get called in on something new. Took my sainted mother to Mass and now I’m good for six months.”

I waited until Ed called back with firm plans before passing the travel details on to Mike.

Nina and I drove to the stables off South Road and rented horses for an afternoon beach ride.

We made our way slowly through the thickly wooded area until we crossed through the tall beach grass of the wetlands, around Tisbury Great Pond, and onto the wide expanse of pristine white sand that bordered the Atlantic for miles. Nina and I came to Black Point Beach whenever she visited me on the island, and I came often when I was here alone.

More than a decade ago, during the summer after law school when I had taken the bar exam, I was engaged to be married in a ceremony at my home on the island. I had bought the house with my fiancé, Adam Nyman, who had been a surgical resident at the University Hospital in Charlottesville while I was a student there. Nina had been with me for the week before the wedding. She was going to be the matron of honor, as I had been the maid of honor for her several years earlier. And it was Nina who had to break the news to me that Adam-the last person scheduled to arrive because of his inflexible rotation in the residency-had been killed by another driver, who sideswiped his car on the highway in Connecticut, sending it crashing over the side of an old bridge and into the riverbed below.