Linda Fairstein: The Bone Vault

Mercer’s goal was to find out what had become of Clem. It would be one thing to force an end to Poste’s standoff if he was alone, but if he had Clem, and she was still alive, it would be an entirely different operation. He didn’t want to start his conversation with the subject of the body in the sarcophagus. There would be little way to fool Poste out of the knowledge that he was facing a life sentence for the murder of Katrina Grooten.

Develop an intimacy, Mercer had told me when I had asked him about how men and women were trained to do this work. Start by grounding the subject and connecting him to people and things he cared about, wanted to see again.

Mercer kept talking, even though there was no response from within the storeroom. “I’ve got a patrol officer bringing your wife over here, Erik. She wants to see you. She wants you to come out of there safe and sound. Nobody gets hurt, that’s the plan.”

Mike put his mouth to my ear. “What if he hates his wife, huh? That’d be the last straw for some guys I know. They’d just as soon blow their brains out than have to face the little woman after a night like this.”

Mercer went on speaking for more than ten minutes without any kind of response. He had been given enough of a briefing before he came upstairs to know what in this world meant something to Poste. “The kids, Erik. Think about your children.”

Still no sign of life.

“I’ve been talking to Mamdouba and he was telling me about your father, about the work he did in Africa, how brave he was. What a great character he was.”

Kerry backed up to where we were standing, toying with the small receiving device wrapped around her ear. Someone was transmitting information to her. She looked up and my eyes followed her glance.

One of the men on the catwalk was making motions with both of his hands. He looked like a mime, pretending to be lowering a rope to the ground. I couldn’t see anything dropping.

I held my hands out, palms upward, and mouthed to Kerry, “What’s going on?”

Mike put his mouth against my ear again and whispered. “Fiberoptic camera. It’s no thicker than a sewing needle. They can slip it between the slats on top of the storage room and we’ll be able to see what’s inside. Who’s with him, whether she’s-you know.”

Three minutes later, Kerry nodded her head and gave us a thumbs-up. “Clem’s there. Looks like she’s alive.” Information kept coming in from whoever was viewing the monitor at the command center within the museum. “She’s bound and gagged. Looks like gauze. No movement except her eyes.” She paused to receive more word. “Yeah, her eyes are open. She’s okay.”

No doubt the gauze was the same kind of old linen rag that had been wrapped, mummy fashion, around the body of Katrina Grooten.

“He’s got a pistol in his hand,” Kerry said, “and a rifle across his lap. He’s sitting next to the girl. He’s got her lying on the floor, hogtied from behind.”

“Can Mercer hear the commentary, too?”

“Exactly what I’m getting. It’s being relayed to both of us.”

The negotiators were not permitted to decide whether or when to take the door. These new high-tech devices took much of the guesswork out of the job. If the perp wasn’t cooperating, the chief of detectives would eventually make the call about whether to storm the storeroom or wait until fear, hunger, or exhaustion caused the bad guy to give in.

“Talk to me,” Mercer said again, calmly and evenly. “Talk to me, Erik. We’ve got to resolve this situation.”

Those three words were the squad’s motto for a good reason. They had to get the subject to open up. Find out what it is that would draw him out of the situation. If they could absorb him in conversation-sports, weather, stamp collecting, European paintings-they could keep him preoccupied, away from his captive, and they could eventually wear him down.

It had worked dozens of times, I knew. When it failed, the results were deadly.

Mercer focused on the work of Willem Van der Poste. Someone, maybe in a phone call to the wife, had suggested that Erik had idolized his late father. “Mamdouba’s got photographs in his office, Erik. Fascinating pictures of your father. Pictures of you as a young boy with him.”

It seemed to me that Mercer had talked for more than half an hour before he got a reaction of any kind. Poste didn’t speak a word until Mercer asked him to put down his guns.

“I know you’ve got them in there, Erik. You’re not going to shoot anyone. You want to tell me what we can do to bring you out of there?”

“You all figure I won’t use the guns, do you?”

The sound of his voice echoed in the corridor. It was Poste, all right. It sounded eerily calm, but greatly magnified. I didn’t think that was his intention, but rather a product of the acoustics in the vast hall.

“How about you let the girl out, Erik? Then we can-”

“What’s in it for me, Mr. Wallace? You’re going to allow me to go home?” Poste laughed.

“I’m going to find out what has you so upset, and see if we can fix it. Mamdouba says-”

“Don’t give me any crap about Elijah Mamdouba. Nobody can fix it, Wallace. It’s a different world now. My father was their hero. The men who were putting this place together thought he was the best thing that ever happened to them. Today, he’s a pariah here. I’d come with him as a child, when we sailed back from Africa. Everyone who worked in the museum worshiped the ground he walked on.”

“That’s still true.”

“They’re all about saving the planet and preserving the species now. You think it was scientists who brought back all those creatures downstairs? They were hunters, for Chrissakes. They did it for sport. At least my father was honest about it. Rich Brits and Americans. Piles of money to throw away on trips to the heart of darkness. If these people didn’t like to kill the beasts, Wallace, how the hell do you think they filled the dioramas downstairs?”

Mercer didn’t have an answer. “Did you go with him on safari when you were a kid?”

“It had all changed by then. When my father was young, before ‘civilization’ reached Africa,” Poste said mockingly, “the supply of wildlife seemed inexhaustible. He learned to shoot to defend his home and family, to put food on the table.”

I could hear scuffling now, as though he was changing position.

“Those fools who came over on expedition would shoot whatever they could find. ‘You’ve got your elephant,’ my father would say. ‘You’ve got what you came here for.’ ‘We’ll have another one then. One for the museum, two for me. And after that, Willem, we’ll take some gorillas. Maybe shoot a cannibal or two.’You might have been in danger, Wallace. The old T.R. spirit. Bully. Everything was bully.”

Mercer had him going. The way I understood it, this was a good thing, for Clem’s sake.

“And your father?”

“He warned the sportsmen, the museum trustees, all about the situation. Told them there weren’t enough animals to satisfy them. Nobody listened to him.”

“But his things, his collections are all-”

“They’re all forgotten is what they are. I used to hold on to his great hands, all callused and hard, and walk through the halls with him. His name was everywhere, on all the display labels. He was a giant to these people-the board, the administrators. ‘That one’s mine, Erik,’ he used to tell me. And then the story to go with it. ‘That crowned eagle, see it? It had picked up a monkey-a full-grown one-to carry off for a feast. Got it with one shot, right in its own nest.’ Now Willem Van der Poste is taboo. Everything that once was his is stuck in a box or a closet. Mamdouba? He couldn’t find an elephant tusk if his life depended on it.”