Linda Fairstein - The Bone Vault

“You didn’t stay in Africa?”

“I was sent off to boarding school in New England. My mother’s health was quite fragile. She was hospitalized for long spells while I was growing up. I developed a preference for art, which was Mother’s influence.”

“Are any of your father’s things here, in the Natural History museum?”

Poste extended his hand, palm upward, deferring to Mamdouba. “Oh, surely. Many, many of our finest African exhibits were brought back to us by Willem. I can arrange for you to see a catalog of the items, if you wish,” Mamdouba said.

Mamdouba played to Chapman now, smiling a bit too broadly. “I imagine by the time you’re through with this investigation, you’ll be asking me to sign you up for one of our safaris, Detective.”

“Don’t count on it. I’m a Discovery channel guy. The only safari you’ll get me on is in my Naugahyde chair in front of the television set. No mosquitoes, no wild boars, no hungry cannibals. Just tell me if you’ve got any vaults down here, okay, sir?”

I was ready to break up the group and take them down the hall, one at a time, to an empty lab that had been set aside for us. Mike wanted to ask each of them whether they had known Pablo Bermudez, the worker who fell off the Met roof, and I had scores of questions about their contact with Katrina.

“Any of you done any foreign travel this year?” Mike asked.

Each one of them nodded. He threw out a random sampling of foreign cities, then got to London. Both Bellinger and Poste responded that they had been there.

“When did you go, and with whom?”

“Can’t be sure of the date,” said Erik Poste. “Late March, if I’m not mistaken. Alone. I’d been to an auction of great Masters in Geneva and stopped there on the way back. Did a bit of museum business at some galleries. Twenty-four-hour layover.”

“And you?”

“January,” Bellinger answered. “Pierre Thibodaux took me along. The British Museum was thinking of deaccessioning some medieval objects. He wanted my opinion. Spent an afternoon there with him looking them over.”

“Just the two of you on the trip?”

“And Eve. Eve Drexler. Just along for the ride, as far as I could tell. A perk for being a loyal soldier.”

I put down my coffee and stared across the table at Bellinger. “Museum security’s pretty tight these days. Do you recall signing in and showing any identification to be admitted?”

Bellinger took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Probably so. Sure, sure.”

“Do you remember how Eve Drexler signed in?”

He ran a finger around the rim of his mug. “I haven’t the faintest idea. There was nothing particularly significant about-”

There was a knock on the door before Mark Zimmerly opened it and came in.

“Excuse me, Mr. Mamdouba, but I need to speak with you immediately.”

Ever careful of his manners, the curator tried to calm the agitated young man. “In just a minute, Zimm. Step outside and I’ll join you shortly.”

Zimm hesitated before speaking, but looked to Chapman for help and decided not to wait. “You got a third-grade class from Scarsdale, sir. They’re freaking out up there, the kids are screaming bloody murder.”

Mamdouba stood up and moved briskly to the door, hoping to cut off the next sentence before any of the guests heard whatever the problem was.

“What is it, Zimm?” Mike asked. He beat the older man to the exit, ready to help.

“It’s in a diorama, in one of the display cases on the main floor. It’s-it’s…an arm. A severed human arm.”

The heavily tattooed upper arm of a large man was on the floor inside the glass case.

In the background, a halo of clouds floated over Box Canyon, above a purple haze that set the background for the jaguar diorama. The three carnivorous felines sat self-satisfied among the cacti and shrubs as they had for fifty years, but now they looked as though they had just enjoyed a fresh meal.

The slow-moving security guards had closed the gallery and ushered the frightened schoolchildren out of the building.

Mike and I stood in front of the glass, while Elijah Mamdouba and Richard Socarides had stepped back from the exhibit into the dimly lit corridor. Socarides was doing the curatorial version of “not my job.”

“Elijah, African mammals is upstairs. I’ve not got a thing to do with the Americans. I couldn’t begin to tell you what’s gone on here.”

“Looks like that’s got some age on it,” I said to Mike, bending over with my hands on my knees. “Like it had been tanned, almost, and preserved. Like an animal hide.”

He had stepped away briefly to call his lieutenant and ask for the Crime Scene Unit to come over to do a run.

“Mr. Mamdouba, how do you get into these things, these dioramas?”

“Quite difficult, Mr. Chapman. Most of these are sealed. It’s really a big production to get inside. When we do restoration, or when we touch up those wonderful background paintings, we have to remove the entire plate-glass window.”

“I’m a bit more familiar with these, Detective. If Elijah doesn’t mind. There’s a door on the side of each diorama. Locked, of course. But above each one is a catwalk.”

“A catwalk?”

“Technicians have to get inside every few months to change the lightbulbs. We’ve had terrible problems with lighting, you see. Fluorescent bulbs damaged many of the animals. Faded my poor zebra stripes terribly. It’s narrow up on top, but that would be the way to drop something in with the animals.”

“And the keys to those doors, who would have them?”

“Everyone who works in restoration, most of the tech guys, and there are probably a few masters floating around among curators and even custodians.” Socarides reached into his pocket and came out with a chain, isolating a small key. He started to walk to the bronze door alongside the diorama.

“Whoa, buddy. We got a larceny here. Stolen limb, I suppose, and maybe a trespass. I got a couple of guys on the way over here to dust for prints and retrieve that arm from the case. Let’s not be putting our paws on anything just yet.”

It took almost an hour for the two detectives to arrive at the museum with their boxes of equipment. They set about meticulously examining the doorway before one of them climbed up to the catwalk. It was set fifteen feet above the diorama, so they ended up calling for a custodial crew and directed the removal of the window.

I waited for them to remove the arm with their gloved hands before trying to look it over.

“This guy’s got some miles on him,” Mike said. “Glad to know we didn’t screw up the commissioner’s body count overnight.”

A small sticker was taped to the skin on its underside. Mike read from the tag: “68.3206.”

He turned to Mamdouba. “Looks like a museum exhibit. Year and acquisition number.”

The director of curatorial affairs seemed to be relieved. “That’s a Metropolitan object. It’s not our tracking system. What a cruel joke this is.”

“They got human arms in an art museum?”

Mamdouba shrugged his shoulders.

I wrote the number on my legal pad. We would be seeing Thibodaux later today. I took Mike to the side while the detectives got the information they needed to complete their paperwork from Mamdouba.

“What’s your guess?”

“Sometime between the close of business yesterday, and admission time this morning, some clown decided to feed the jaguars. Is it an unconnected bad joke? Or a message for the two of us? Maybe Katrina’s killer is trying to throw us off guard. Depends on who has control of this grotesque piece of art. Must have been lifted out of some museum storage area.”