Linda Fairstein: The Bone Vault

“It was in one of the two most magnificent rooms in the city of New York, at the Temple of Dendur in our sister museum across the park-a mere week ago-that my colleague Pierre Thibodaux first learned of the discovery of Miss Grooten’s body.

“We inform you about the conclusion of this tragedy today in this other stunning arena here at the planetarium, part of our spectacular Museum of Natural History.” He gestured around him at the superb new facility at the Rose Center, the most powerful virtual-reality simulator in the world.

Mamdouba was not wrong. Both of these brilliant institutions were the city’s finest showcases. Acres and acres of exhibits, millions and millions of paintings, objects, specimens, and artifacts. Thousands of dedicated scholars and scientists who devoted their lives to assembling these unrivaled collections of art, in one case, and scientific wonders in the other.

“Over time,” Mamdouba went on, “we have reflected within our walls and our laboratories the society in which we live, in which we study and are educated. Overcoming the ignorance of those who went before us has become an inevitable part of our process of growth, whether it was about evolution or the environment, about racial stereotypes, animal extinction, or space exploration.”

I couldn’t think of any places in the entire country that were responsible for the education and enlightenment of more people than the Metropolitan and the Natural History Museum. How ironic, then, and how bizarre, that a quiet young scholar had met her death because of her work beneath these roofs.

Mamdouba was finishing his remarks. “That the scientific community once used human beings from primitive cultures for their research in such profoundly disturbing ways has caused every museum in the world to do some soul-searching. That animal specimens were so necessary for examination and studies that affected their own viability on our earth created a paradox in terms of conserving those very creatures that have become endangered.”

He went on about scientists and visionaries, explorers and anthropologists and paleontologists, the mission and the paradox, the vision and the tragedy. The reporters stayed until he spoke his piece, riveted again by the marvels that had been brought together under this splendid tangle of rooftops.

When he finished speaking and the reporters departed, I sat in my plush seat and waited for the chief to dismiss the detectives. I closed my eyes.

When I opened them five minutes later, having dozed off, some motion in the seat bottom of my chair jolted me awake. The room was empty, except for Mike, Mercer, and me.

“Liftoff,” Mike said. “Time to wake up. Zimm’s got us tickets for the fiveA.M. early bird special. He’s in the control room with the janitor. Thinks you deserve a private display.”

Speakers and woofers that vibrated to give the audience the sense of a real space launch at the start of the show were wired into each seat. Mercer was holding a bag of microwaved popcorn that he must have found in some lab worker’s office, and Mike was pouring Clem’s minibar bottles of scotch and vodka into three plastic cups.

Tom Hanks’s voice-over began a narration about our search for other forms of life in the universe.

“There’s Orion,” Mike said, pointing over Mercer’s head to a formation of bright stars.

“Last thing I want to see this morning is a hunter.”

“How about Andromeda, the princess?”

I sipped at my drink and smiled at him. “Don’t go there.”

“She was chained to a rock, left to be devoured by a sea monster, to appease the gods. Saved by-well, by one of those winged horses whose names I never remember. Let’s just say saved by Mercer and me. We’d never let it happen to you, kid.”

We clicked our plastic cups and the glorious night sky above us began to move.

The two institutions that form the backdrop for Alexandra Cooper’s investigation are among the most extraordinary museums in the world. They have contributed immeasurably to the culture of our country for more than a century.

In addition to the many pleasure-filled hours I have spent inside their walls, there are wonderful books that reveal their histories and the range of their treasures. Among those I found most helpful were:Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads by Stephen Asma;Give Me My Father’s Body by Kenn Harper;Making the Mummies Dance by Thomas Hoving;Dinosaurs in the Attic by Douglas Preston;The Mummy Congress by Heather Pringle;Merchants and Masterpieces by Calvin Tompkins; andA Gathering of Wonders by Joseph Wallace. As always, the archives ofThe New York Times had a splendid assortment of facts and features.

The usual suspects sustained me throughout the long process of writing the story. Robert Morgenthau, the great District Attorney of New York County, and my devoted colleagues in the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit of that office, and in the Special Victims Unit of the NYPD, will always be the best in the business. Nothing makes me prouder than the thirty years I spent working shoulder to shoulder with each of them. The men and women of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York, pathologists and serologists, were my heroes before September 11, 2001, and will be forever.

I am grateful to everyone at Scribner and Pocket Books, and to Esther Newberg at ICM, for standing beside me patiently every step of the way and supporting me so enthusiastically.

The booksellers, librarians, and loyal readers who hold me in their hands have all my thanks.

Friends and family make everything possible, over and over again. And my adored husband, Justin Feldman, who is cheerleader and critic, believed in me from the beginning, which is the greatest gift.

Linda Fairstein, America’s foremost expert on crimes of sexual assault and domestic violence, led the Sex Crimes Unit of the District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan for twenty-five years prior to her retirement in 2002. A fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, she is a graduate of Vassar College and the University of Virgina School of Law. Her first novel,Final Jeopardy, which introduced the character Alexandra Cooper, was published in 1996 to critical and commercial acclaim and was made into an ABC Movie of the Week starring Dana Delaney.Likely to Die in 1997,Cold Hit in 1999, andThe Deadhouse in 2001 also achieved international-bestseller status. Her nonfiction bookSexual Violence was aNew York Times Notable Book in 1994. She lives with her husband in Manhattan and on Martha’s Vineyard.