Relic

by Douglas Preston

  There was a short silence. D’Agosta had a sudden flash of the gutted dog he’d seen that morning. The trick is not to think too much. Don’t think about your own Vinnie, eighth birthday just next week.

  Dr. Ziewicz took a deep breath. “We have here a Caucasian male, a boy, age about, ah, ten to twelve years, height, well, I can’t give a height for this one because it’s decapitated. Maybe four feet ten inches, maybe five feet? Weight, about ninety pounds. This is very approximate. The state of the body is such that I can see no other identifying marks. Eye color and facial features indeterminate due to massive head trauma.”

  “No anterior wounds or marks on the feet, legs, or genitals. Fred, please sponge off the abdominal area ... thank you. There are an undetermined number of large lacerations proceeding from the left anterior pectoral region at a hundred and ninety degree angle downward [61] through the costals, sternum, and terminating at the right anterior abdominal region. This is a massive wound, perhaps two feet long and a foot wide. It appears that the pectoralis minor and pectoralis major are separated from the external thoracic cavity, the external and internal intercostals are separated, and the body is eviscerated to a great degree. The sternal process has been split and the rib cage exposed. Massive hemorrhaging in the aortal—it’s hard to see before cleaning and exploration.

  “Fred, clean the edge of the thoracic cavity. The viscera that are clearly exposed and fully protuberant are the stomach, small and large intestines. The retroperitoneal organs appear to be in situ.

  “Sponge the neck off, Fred. The neck area shows signs of trauma, some bruising, perhaps indicative of extravasation, possible spinal dislocation.

  “Now for the head ... dear God.”

  In the silence, Fred cleared his throat.

  “The head is decapitated between the axial process and the atlas. The entire occipital portion of the calvarium and half the parietal process have been crushed, or rather seemingly punched through and removed, by means unknown, leaving a hole perhaps ten inches in diameter. The skull is empty. The entire brain appears to have fallen out or been extracted through this hole ... The brain, or what is left of it, is in a pan here to the right of the head, but there is no indication of its original position vis-à-vis the body.”

  “It was found in pieces near the body,” said D’Agosta.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. But where’s the rest of it?”

  “That’s all there was.”

  “No. Something’s missing. You got full scene-of-crime series for this?”

  “Of course,” said D’Agosta, trying not to show his annoyance.

  “The brain is severely traumatized. Fred, bring me a number 2 scalpel and transverse speculum. The brain [62] appears to have been severed at the medulla oblongata. The pons Varolii is intact, but separate. The cerebellum shows surface lacerations but is otherwise intact. There is little evidence of bleeding, indicating postmortem trauma. There’s the body of fornix, attached. The cerebrum has been completely severed from the mesencephalon and the mesencephalon has been bisected and—look, Fred, there’s no thalamoid region. And no pituitary. That’s what’s missing.”

  “What’s that?” asked D’Agosta. He willed himself to look more closely. The brain, sitting in a stainless-steel pan, looked a hell of a lot more liquid than solid. He turned away. Baseball. Think about baseball. A pitch, the sound of a bat ...

  “The thalamus and the hypothalamus. The body’s regulator.”

  “The body’s regulator,” repeated D’Agosta.

  “The hypothalamus regulates body temperature, blood pressure, heartbeat, and the metabolism of fats and carbohydrates. Also the sleep-wake cycle. We think it holds the centers of pleasure and pain. It’s a very complicated organ, Lieutenant.” She looked fixedly at him, anticipating a question. D’Agosta mumbled dutifully, “How does it do all that?”

  “Hormones. It secretes hundreds of regulatory hormones into the brain and bloodstream.”

  “Yeah,” D’Agosta replied. He stepped back. The baseball soaring deep into center field, the center fielder dropping back, glove raised ...

  “Fred come over here and look at this,” Ziewicz said sharply.

  Fred bent over the pan. “It looks like ... Well, I don’t know ...”

  “Come on, Fred,” Ziewicz coaxed.

  “Well, it looks almost like—“ Fred paused. “Like a bite was taken out.”

  “Exactly. Photographer!” Delbert rushed forward. [63] “Get this. Looks just like when one of my kids takes a bite out of a cake.”

  D’Agosta leaned forward, but he could see nothing special in the gray, bloody mess.

  “It’s semicircular, like a human’s, but it appears larger, more ragged than you’d expect. We’ll take sections. Let’s test for the presence of salivase enzymes, Fred, just in case. Take this to the lab, tell them to flashfreeze it and microsection here, here, and here. Five sections each. Stain at least one with eosinophil. Stain one with salivase activating enzyme. Anything else you or they can think of.”

  As Fred left, Ziewicz continued. “I am now bisecting the cerebrum. The posterior lobe is bruised, consistent with removal from the cranium. Photograph. The surface shows three parallel lacerations or incisions, approximately four millimeters apart, about half an inch deep. I am parting the first incision. Photograph. Lieutenant, see how these lacerations start wide and then converge? What do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” D’Agosta said, peering a little closer. It’s just a dead brain, he thought.

  “Long fingernails, maybe? Sharpened fingernails? I mean, do we have a homicidal psychopath on our hands?”

  Fred returned from the lab, and they continued working on the brain for what seemed an eternity to D’Agosta. Finally, Ziewicz told Fred to put it in the refrigerator.

  “I will now examine the hands,” she spoke into the microphone. She removed a plastic bag from the right hand and carefully resealed it. Then she lifted the hand, rotated it, examined the fingernails. “There is foreign matter under the thumb, index, and ring fingers. Fred, three well slides.”

  “He’s just a kid,” D’Agosta said. “You’d expect his fingernails to be dirty.”

  “Perhaps, Lieutenant,” Ziewicz replied. She scraped [64] the material into small depressions in the slides, one finger at a time. “Fred, the stereozoom? I want to look at this.”

  Ziewicz placed the slide on the stage, peered down, and adjusted the instrument.

  “Normal fingernail dirt under the thumb, from the looks of it. Same with the others. Fred, full analysis, just in case.”

  There was nothing of interest on the left hand.

  “I will now,” Ziewicz continued, “examine the longitudinal trauma to the anterior portion of the body. Del, photographs, here, here, and here, and whatever else you think will show the wound best. Close-ups of the areas of penetration. It looks like the killer has done our Y-incision for us, wouldn’t you say, Lieutenant?”

  “Yeah,” D’Agosta said, swallowing hard.

  There were a series of rapid flashes.

  “Forceps,” Ziewicz continued. “Three ragged lacerations begin just above the left nipple in the greater pectoral, penetrating and eventually separating the muscle. I am opening and probing the first laceration at the point of entry. Clamp there, Fred.

  “I am now probing the wound. There is unidentified foreign matter here. Fred, a glassine? It looks like clothing material, perhaps from the victim’s shirt. Photograph.”

  The flash popped, and then she held up a small piece of what looked like bloody lint, dropping it into the glassine envelope. She continued probing in silence for a few moments.

  “There is another piece of foreign material deep in the muscle, about four centimeters directly below the right nipple. It is lodged on a rib. It appears to be hard. Photograph. Stick a flag in there, Fred.”

  She extracted it and held it up, a bloody lump poised at the end of the long forceps.

  D’Agosta ventured forward. “What
is it? Rinse it off, maybe, and see?”

  [65] She glanced at him with a slight smile. “Fred, bring me a beaker of sterile water.”

  As she dipped the object in and stirred, the water turned brownish red.

  “Keep the water, we’ll see if there’s anything else in it,” she said, holding her find to the light.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” said D’Agosta. “It’s a claw. A fucking claw.”

  Ziewicz turned to her assistant. “That will be a charming snippet of monologue for our tape, won’t it, Fred?”

  = 11 =

  Margo dumped her books and papers on the sofa and glanced at the clock perched atop the television: ten-fifteen. She shook her head. What an unbelievable, horrible day. Staying all those extra hours had only netted three new paragraphs on her dissertation. And she still had to work on the display-case copy for Moriarty. She sighed, sorry she’d ever agreed to the project.

  Reflected neon light from a liquor store across the avenue struggled through the lone window of Margo’s living room, throwing the room into electric-blue chiaroscuro. She turned on the small overhead light and leaned against the door, scanning the disorder slowly. Normally, she was neat to excess. But now after just one week of neglect, textbooks, letters of sympathy, legal documents, shoes, and sweaters were scattered across the furniture. Empty cartons from the Chinese restaurant downstairs lay neglected in the sink. Her old Royal typewriter and a fan of research papers were spread out on the hardwood floor.

  [67] The shabby neighborhood—not-yet-gentrified upper Amsterdam Avenue—had given her father another reason why she should return home to Boston. “This is no place for a girl like you to live, Midge,” he had said, using her childhood nickname. “And that Museum is no place to work. Cooped up day after day with all those dead, stuffed creatures, things in jars. What kind of a life is that? Come back and work for me. We’d get you a house in Beverly, maybe Marblehead. You’ll be happier there, Midge, I know you will.”

  When she noticed her answering machine was blinking, Margo pressed the message button.

  “It’s Jan,” the first message began. “I got back into town today, and I just heard. Listen, I’m really, really sorry to hear about your father’s death. I’ll call back later, okay? I want to talk to you. Bye.”

  She waited. Another voice came on. “Margo, this is your mother.” And then a click.

  She squeezed her eyes tightly for a moment, then took a deep breath. She wouldn’t call Jan, not just yet. And she wouldn’t return her mother’s call, either; not until tomorrow, at least. She knew what her mother would say: You have to come home to your father’s business. It’s what he would have wanted. You owe it to both of us.

  Turning away, she settled herself cross-legged in front of the typewriter, and stared at the curators’ notes, catalogue data, and accession listings Moriarty had given her. It was due the day after tomorrow, he’d said, and the next chapter of her dissertation was due the following Monday.

  She glanced at the papers for another minute or two, collecting her thoughts. Then she began to type. A few moments later, she stopped and stared into the dusk. She remembered how her father used to make omelettes—the only thing he knew how to cook—on Sunday mornings. “Hey, Midge,” he would always say. “Not bad for an old ex-bachelor, huh?”

  [68] Several of the lights outside had been shut off as the shops closed. Margo looked out at the graffiti, the boarded-up windows. Maybe her father was right: Poverty wasn’t much fun.

  Poverty. She shook her head, remembering the last time she’d heard that word, remembering the expression on her mother’s face as she’d pronounced it. The two of them had been sitting in the cool, dark office of her father’s executor, listening to all the complex reasons why her father’s debt-to-equity ratio and lack of estate planning was forcing liquidation—unless some family member were to step in to keep his business afloat.

  She wondered about the parents of the two little boys. They must have had high hopes for their children, too, she thought. Now, they’ll never know disappointment. Or happiness. Then her thoughts moved to Prine. And the blood on his shoes.

  She got up and turned on more lights. Time to start dinner. Tomorrow, she’d lock herself in her office, get that chapter finished. Work on the Cameroon write-up for Moriarty. And put off making a decision—for one more day, at least. By next week’s meeting with Frock, she promised herself, she’d have made up her mind.

  The telephone rang. Automatically, she picked it up.

  “Hello,” she said. She listened for a moment. “Oh. Hello, Mother.”

  = 12 =

  Night came early to the Museum of Natural History. As five o’clock neared, the early spring sun was already setting. Inside, the crowds began to thin. Tourists, schoolchildren, and harried parents streamed down the marble staircases toward the exits. Soon the echoes and shouts and clatter of footsteps in the vaulted halls died away. One by one, the exhibit cases went dark, and as the night wore on, the remaining lights threw crazed shadows across the marble floors.

  A lone guard wandered along a hall, making his rounds, swinging a long key chain and humming. It was the beginning of his shift, and he was dressed in the standard Museum-issue blue-and-black guard uniform. Long ago the novelty of the Museum had worn off.

  The whole joint gives me the creeps, he thought. Look at that son of a bitch in there. Goddamn native shit. Who the hell would pay to look at this stuff? Half of it’s got curses on it, anyway.

  The mask leered at him out of a dark case. He hurried [70] on to the next station, where he turned a key in a box. The box recorded the time: 10:23 P.M. As he moved into the next hall, he had the unsettling impression—as he had so often—that his echoing footfalls were being carefully duplicated by some unseen presence.

  He came to the next station and turned the key. The box clicked, and registered 10:34 P.M.

  It only took four minutes to get to the next station. That gave him six minutes for a toke.

  He ducked into a stairwell, closing and locking the door behind him, and peered down toward the darkened basement, where another door opened to an interior courtyard. His hand went for the light switch at the top of the stairs, but then withdrew. No sense calling attention to himself. He gripped the metal handrail tightly as he crept downward. In the basement, he made his way along the wall until he felt a long horizontal handle. He pushed, and frigid night air streamed in. He wedged open the door and lit up a joint, inhaling the bitter smoke with pleasure as he leaned out into the courtyard. A thin light from the deserted cloister beyond gave a pale illumination to his movements. The faint hum of passing traffic, muffled by so many intervening walls, passages, and parapets, seemed to come from another planet. He felt, with relief, the warm rush of the cannabis—another long night made bearable. Smoke finished, he flicked the roach into the dark, ran his fingers through his crew cut, stretched.

  Halfway up the stairs, he heard the door slam shut below. He stopped, feeling a sudden chill. Had he left the door open? No. Shit, what if someone had seen him toke up? But they couldn’t have smelt the smoke, and in the dark, it would’ve looked just like a cigarette.

  There was a strange, rotten odor in the air that had nothing to do with weed. But no light flicked on, no footstep sounded on the metal steps. He started up toward the landing above.

  Just as he reached it, he sensed a swift movement on [71] the stairs behind him. He spun around, and a hard jerk on his chest shoved him backward against the wall. The last thing he saw were his shadowy entrails rolling and slipping down the stairs. After a moment, he stopped wondering where all that gore had suddenly come from.

  = 13 =

  Tuesday

  Bill Smithback sat in a heavy chair, watching the sharp, angular figure of Lavinia Rickman behind her birchwood veneer desk, reading his rumpled manuscript. Two bright red fingernails tapped on the glossy finish. Smithback knew that the fingernail ditty did not bode well. A very gray Tuesday morning sat outside the windows.


  The room was not a typical Museum office. The untidy stacks of papers, journals, and books that seemed a fixture in other offices were missing. Instead, the shelves and desk were decorated with knickknacks from around the world: a storyteller doll from New Mexico, a brass Buddha from Tibet, several puppets from Indonesia. The walls were painted light institutional green, and the room smelled of pine air freshener.

  Additional curios were arranged on both sides of her desk, as formal and symmetrical as shrubs in a French garden: an agate paperweight, a bone letter opener, a Japanese netsuke. And in the center of the motif hovered Rickman herself, bent primly over the manuscript. The [73] swirled stiff orange hair, Smithback thought, didn’t go well with the green walls.

  The tapping speeded, then slowed as Rickman turned the pages. Finally she flicked over the last page, gathered the loose sheets together, and squared them in the precise center of the desk.

  “Well,” she said, looking up with a bright smile. “I have a few small suggestions.”

  “Oh,” said Smithback.

  “This section on Aztec human sacrifice, for example. It’s much too controversial.” She licked her finger daintily and found the page. “Here.”

  “Yes, but in the exhibition—“

  “Mr. Smithback, the exhibition deals with the subject tastefully. This, on the other hand, is not tasteful. It’s far too graphic.” She zipped a Magic Marker across his work.

  “But it’s entirely accurate,” Smithback said, wincing inwardly.

  “I am concerned with emphasis, not accuracy. Something can be entirely accurate but have the wrong emphasis, and thus give the wrong impression. Allow me to remind you that we have a large Hispanic population here in New York.”

  “Yes, but how is this going to offend—”

  “Moving on, this section on Gilborg simply must go.” She zipped another line across another page.

  “But why—?”

  She leaned back in her chair. “Mr. Smithback, the Gilborg expedition was a grotesque failure. They were looking for an island that did not exist. One of them, as you are so zealous in pointing out, raped a native woman. We were careful to keep all mention of Gilborg out of the exhibition. Now, is it really necessary to document the Museum’s failures?”