Linda Fairstein - The Bone Vault

“Am I under oath, Miss Cooper?” He glared at me. “This dealer, they say, went so far as to create phony collections. Made up a fancy tale about an Edwardian collector in London who had owned the antiquities in question since the 1920s. Even baked the descriptive labels of the objects in an oven to give them some age.”

“And you bought them.”

“With a good number of other museums bidding on them. Yes, we actually bought some of them. I mean, think of it, Miss Cooper. Had this kind of legal reasoning taken hold a century ago, the museums of this country would be pitiful places. Wouldn’t be a blessed thing in them.”

“Is this about export policies or is it about theft, Mr. Thibodaux?”

“I’m stepping down, Miss Cooper. I’m hoping, quite frankly, that there will be a place for me back at the Louvre.”

“Shit, what an advantage your paisanos had. They’ve been stealing for centuries. Napoléon wiped out the Egyptians in his 1789 campaign. Brought boatloads back to France.” Mike removed a Polaroid photo of the severed arm that the crime scene guys had taken for us. “This appendage has one of your acquisition tags stuck on it. I’m sure it’s mismarked but I’d like you to see it.”

Thiboudaux looked at the mottled limb. “Someone’s having a bit of sport at your expense. President Raspen must be wild.”

“Why?”

“Actually, it was my idea to send this over to be used in the bestiary exhibition. A most unusual treasure for a great art museum like the Metropolitan.”

Who figured Thibodaux for a loony sense of humor? “A human arm? A real one?”

“I can’t tell you how we fought to get this piece. It came from the Hermitage, which had a stunning collection of Scythian objects.”

“Scythian? I’m not familiar-”

“It’s a remote mountainous region in western Siberia. They left great treasures of solid gold. Much of it was appropriate for the joint show because they were known for their decoration of mythical beasts. The Russians wound up with all this art, which is little known by the rest of the world.”

“And you brought it here?”

“My predecessors did, Montebello and Hoving. The Scythians were great fighters and kept herds of Mongolian ponies. So there were wonderfully worked leather saddles and gilded horse paraphernalia.”

“The arm, sir, what the hell is that doing here?”

“These people lived in the Altai mountains, where the temperatures were quite frozen in the winters. Birds, animals, entire human bodies were preserved for centuries, more perfectly than in the dry deserts of Egypt.”

Once again I was thoroughly confused. Would Katrina Grooten have been in such pristine condition because she had been in cold storage, or a warm, desiccated crypt? And why was it that all these cultural mavens knew as much about safeguarding bodies as a forensic pathologist?

“This is the arm, Detective, of a Scythian warlord, probably third centuryA.D. Somehow, they preserved these human hides, just like animals.” He put the photograph down on the windowsill and pointed at the serpentine tattoos that covered the deep brown skin. “See the combat motif, Mr. Chapman? Two stags facing off, muscles taut and legs poised to leap. And there, an eagle swooping down to grab its prey in its beak.”

The mere mention of the wordwarlord had caught Mike’s attention. “This guy’s got something to teach all these tattoo-crazy broads today. If I see one more shamrock or rose or heart on the cheeks of somebody’s ass or hiding in their cleavage-I mean, so pedestrian.”

Thibodaux glanced up at Mike.

“I’m not talking romance or my personal life. I’m talking dead bodies I come across. This one’s got style. So where was it?”

“It left the Met months ago. You ought to check with Mamdouba’s people. Someone must have pinched it out of the exhibition stock to stir up trouble over at Natural History.”

“Who knew it was there? Any of your people on the committee?”

“All of them, I would think. But all of Mamdouba’s folks, too.”

Thibodaux seemed to have charmed himself with his presentation of his knowledge of Scythian art and history. He was more at ease than when we had arrived.

Then Mike took another direction. “We found out an interesting little fact on Friday that we thought you could help us with.”

The director tilted his head and nodded, confident he had gained Mike’s respect.

“Katrina Grooten didn’t exactly have a formal send-off. Nobody got to go to her apartment and pick out her favorite suit or little black dress to be laid out in. It was a kind of come-as-you-are deal, you know?”

Thibodaux tensed again.

“She had on some cheap woolen slacks and dingy old underwear. But the odd thing is-and Ms. Cooper here is my expert on retail-she had on a cashmere sweater. Hand-knit, high-end, ritzy Madison Avenue label. So we check it out. Is this just a coincidence or do you know somebody named Penelope Thibodaux?”

“My late wife, Chapman. I assume you were smart enough to make that connection yourself.” He was angry now, almost spitting out words in Mike’s direction.

“So you didn’t know the Grooten girl, but your wife did?”

“My wife never met her. Look, I didn’t recognize that photograph you showed me the first day. Surely you understand that. That-that-death pallor and, how do you say, that morgue shot, it didn’t look anything at all like the young woman who worked here. I swear to you I wasn’t trying to mislead you. And even then, I didn’t remember her name. The last time I saw Ms. Grooten, she looked so full of life, so-”

“When was that?”

“Believe me, I’ve tried very hard to recall the circumstances.”

“The sweater, you wanna tell us about that?”

“That would have been last summer. Late in August, perhaps. Eve can give you a date. It was at my apartment. Not what you’re thinking, Detective. A cocktail party, a celebration for some of the trustees.”

“And Katrina, why would she be at something like that?”

“We were courting donors for the Cloisters, trying to raise interest-and money-for some items coming on the market. Bellinger put the whole thing together. I’m sure it was his decision to include staff. And to decide which staff.”

“Why at your place?”

He pointed out the window. “The apartment we live in-excuse me, I live in-is owned by the Met. It’s a penthouse on Fifth Avenue. We do a lot of entertaining there. On this particular occasion it was a very warm night. I had the caterer set the bar up out on my terrace. The view is quite magnificent, looking over the museum and the entire park. I remember that a girl, an employee, that is, was cold. Actually shivering.”

“But you said it was warm.”

“That’s what was so unusual. Everyone else was enjoying the chance to be outside. I noticed how uncomfortable she was.”

I thought of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress. This would only have been two months after Katrina’s brutal assault. I thought also of the signs of arsenic poisoning that Dr. Kestenbaum had described. Chills had been one of them.

“I offered her the opportunity to go inside, of course. But she felt that Hiram Bellinger very much wanted her to be part of the conversation with the trustees, since she was so knowledgeable about the pieces.” He fidgeted a bit. “I told her that I still had some of Penelope’s clothes in the apartment. I’m afraid I still hadn’t absorbed the finality of my wife’s death.”

“So you took her into the bedroom?”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Detective. No. I went in and found this sweater in one of the drawers. Quite frankly, I didn’t know what it was made of, if it’s the value that concerns you. I brought it out to the young woman and told her I’d be pleased if she kept it. It would be a favor tome, since Penelope was-well-gone.”