Relic

by Douglas Preston

  “But his collections were superb!” Smithback protested feebly.

  “Mr. Smithback, I am not convinced that you [74] understand the nature of this assignment.” There was a long silence. The tapping began again. “Do you really think that the Museum hired you, and is paying you, to document failure and controversy?”

  “But failure and controversy are part of science, and who’s going to read a book that—”

  “There are many corporations that give money to the Museum, corporations that might very well be disturbed by some of this,” Mrs. Rickman interrupted. “And there are volatile ethnic groups out there, ready to attack, that might take strong exception.”

  “But we’re talking about things that happened a hundred years ago, while—”

  “Mr. Smithback!” Mrs. Rickman had only raised her voice a little, but the effect was startling. A silence fell. “Mr. Smithback, I must tell you quite frankly …” She paused, then stood up briskly and walked around the desk until she was standing directly behind the writer.

  “I must tell you,” Mrs. Rickman continued, “that it seems to be taking you longer than I thought to come around to our point of view. You are not writing a book for a commercial publisher. To put it bluntly, we’re looking for the kind of favorable treatment you gave the Boston Aquarium in your previous—ahem—assignment.” She moved in front of Smithback, perching stiffly on the edge of the desk. “There are certain things we expect, and indeed, that we have a right to expect. They are—” she ticked them off on bony fingers.

  “One: No controversy.

  “Two: Nothing that might offend ethnic groups.

  “Three: Nothing that might harm the Museum’s reputation.

  “Now, is that so unreasonable?” She lowered her voice and, leaning forward, squeezed Smithback’s hand with her dry one.

  “I ... no.” Smithback struggled with an almost overwhelming urge to withdraw his hand.

  [75] “Well, then, that’s settled.” She moved behind the desk, and slid the manuscript over to him.

  “Now, there’s one small matter we need to discuss.” She enunciated very precisely. “There were a few spots in the manuscript where you quoted some interesting comments by people ‘close to the exhibition,’ but neglected to identify the exact sources. Nothing important, you understand, but I’d like a list of those sources—for my files, nothing more.” She smiled expectantly.

  Alarms rang in Smithback’s head. “Well,” he replied carefully, “I’d like to help you out, but the ethics of journalism won’t let me.” He shrugged his shoulders. “You know how it is.”

  Mrs. Rickman’s smile faded quickly, and she opened her mouth to speak. Just then, to Smithback’s relief, the phone rang. He got up to leave, gathering his manuscript together. As he was closing the door, he heard a sharp intake of breath.

  “Not another!”

  The door hissed shut.

  = 14 =

  D’Agosta just couldn’t get used to the Hall of the Great Apes. All those big grinning chimps, stuffed, hanging out of the fake trees, with their hairy arms and hilarious realistic dicks and big human hands with real fingernails. He wondered why it had taken so long for scientists to figure out that man was descended from the apes. Should’ve been obvious the first time they clapped eyes on a chimp. And he’d heard somewhere that chimps were just like humans, violent, excitable, always beating hell out of each other, even murdering and eating each other. Jesus, he thought, there must be some other way to get around the Museum without going through this hall.

  “This way,” said the guard, “down this stairway. It’s pretty awful, Lieutenant. I was coming in at—”

  “I’ll hear that later,” said D’Agosta. After the kid, D’Agosta was ready for anything. “You say he’s wearing a guard’s uniform. You know him?”

  “I don’t know, sir. It’s hard to tell.”

  The guard pointed down the dim stairs. The stairway [77] opened onto some kind of courtyard. The body lay at the bottom, in shadow. Everything was streaked and splattered in black—the floor, the walls, the overhead light. D’Agosta knew what the black was.

  “You,” he said, turning to one of several policemen following him, “get some lights in here. I want the place dusted and swept for fibers pronto. Is the SOC unit on its way? The man’s obviously dead, so keep the ambulance people out for a while. I don’t want them messing things up.”

  D’Agosta looked down the stairs again. “Jesus H. Christ,” he said, “whose footprints are those? Some jackass walked right through that pool of blood, it looks like. Or maybe our murderer decided to leave us a fat clue.

  There was a silence.

  “Are those yours?” He turned to the guard. “What’s your name?”

  “Norris. Eric Norris. As I was saying, I—”

  “Yes or no?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Shut up. Are those the shoes?”

  “Yes. See, I was—”

  “Take the shoes off. You’re ruining the carpet.” Fucking doorshaker, D’Agosta thought. “Take them to the forensics lab. Tell them to seal ‘em in a crime bag, they’ll know what to do. Wait for me there. No, don’t wait for me there. I’ll call you later. I’ll have a few questions for you. No, take the fucking shoes off right here.” He didn’t want another Prine on his hands. What was it about this Museum, people liked to go around wading in blood? “You’ll have to walk over there in your socks.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  One of the cops behind D’Agosta snickered.

  D’Agosta looked at him. “You think it’s funny? He tracked blood all over the place. It’s not funny.”

  D’Agosta moved halfway down the stairwell. The [78] head was lying in a far corner, face down. He couldn’t see it all that well, but he knew that he’d find the top of the skull punched out, the brains floating around somewhere in all that gore. God, what a mess a body could be if it wanted to.

  A step sounded on the stairway behind him. “SOC,” said a short man, followed by a photographer and several other men in lab coats.

  “Finally. I want lights there, there, and there, and wherever else the photographer wants ‘em. I want a perimeter set up, I want it set up five minutes ago, I want every speck of lint and grain of sand picked up. I want TraceChem used on everything. I want—well, what else do I want? I want every test known to man, and I want that perimeter observed by everyone, got it? No fuck-ups this time.”

  D’Agosta turned. “Is the Crime Lab team on the premises? And the coroner’s investigator? Or are they out for coffee and croissants?” He patted the breast pocket of his jacket, looking for a cigar. “Put cardboard boxes over those footprints. And you guys, when you’re done, squeegee a trail around the body so we can walk without tracking blood everywhere.”

  “Excellent.” D’Agosta heard a low, mellifluous voice behind him.

  “Who the hell are you?” he said, turning to see a tall, slender man, wearing a crisp black suit, leaning against the top of the stairwell. Hair so blond it was almost white was brushed straight back above pale blue eyes. “The undertaker?”

  “Pendergast,” the man said, stepping down and holding out his hand. The photographer, cradling his equipment, pushed past him.

  “Well, Pendergast, you better have a good reason to be here, otherwise—”

  Pendergast smiled. “Special Agent Pendergast.”

  “Oh. FBI? Funny, why aren’t I surprised? Well, how-do, Pendergast. Why the hell don’t you guys phone [79] ahead? Listen, I got a headless, de-brained stiff down there. Where’re the rest of you, anyway?”

  Pendergast withdrew his hand. “There’s just me, I’m afraid.”

  “What? Don’t kid me. You guys always travel around in packs.”

  The lights popped on, and the gore around them was bathed in brilliance. Everything that previously appeared black was suddenly illuminated, all the various shades of the body’s secret workings made visible. Something D’Agosta suspected was Norris’s breakfa
st was also visible, lying amidst a wash of body fluids. Involuntarily, D’Agosta’s jaw started working. Then his eye caught a piece of skull with the dead guard’s crew cut still on it, lying a good five feet from the body.

  “Oh Jesus,” said D’Agosta, stepping back, and then he lost it. Right in front of the FBI guy, in front of SOC, in front of the photographer, he blew his own breakfast. I can’t believe it, he thought. The first time in twenty-two years, and it’s happening at the worst possible moment.

  The coroner’s investigator appeared on the stairs, a young woman in a white coat and plastic apron. “Who’s the officer in charge?” she asked, sliding on her gloves.

  “I am,” said D’Agosta, wiping his mouth. He looked at Pendergast. “For a few more minutes, anyway. Lieutenant D’Agosta.”

  “Dr. Collins,” the investigator replied briskly. Followed by an assistant, she walked down to an area near the body that was being squeegeed free of blood. “Photographer,” she said, “I’m turning the body over. Full series, please.”

  D’Agosta averted his gaze. “We got work to do, Pendergast,” he said authoritatively. He pointed at the vomit. “Don’t clean that up until the SOC has finished with these stairs. Got it?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “I wanna know ingress and egress as soon as possible. [80] See if you can ID the body. If it’s a guard, get Ippolito down here. Pendergast, let’s go up to the command post, get coordinated, or liaised, or whatever the hell you call it, and then let’s return when the team is done for a looksee.”

  “Capital” said Pendergast.

  Capital? thought D’Agosta. The guy sounded deep South. He’d met types like this before, and they were hopeless in New York City.

  Pendergast leaned forward and said quietly, “The blood splattered on the wall is rather interesting.”

  D’Agosta looked over. “You don’t say.”

  “I’d be interested in the ballistics on that blood.”

  D’Agosta looked straight into Pendergast’s pale eyes. “Good idea,” he said finally. “Hey, photographer, get a close-up series of the blood on the wall. And you, you—”

  “McHenry, sir.”

  “I want a ballistic analysis done on that blood. Looks like it was moving fast at a sharp angle. I want the source pinpointed, speed, force, a full report.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want it on my desk in thirty minutes.”

  McHenry looked a little unhappy.

  “Okay, Pendergast, any more ideas?”

  “No, that was my only one.”

  “Let’s go.”

  In the temporary command post, everything was in place. D’Agosta always saw to that. Not one piece of paper was loose, not one file was out, not one tape recorder sitting on a desk. It looked good, and now he was glad that it did. Everyone was busy, the phones were lit up, but things were under control.

  Pendergast slipped his lean form into a chair. For a formal-looking guy, he moved like a cat. Briefly, D’Agosta gave him an overview of the investigation. [81] “Okay, Pendergast,” he concluded. “What’s your jurisdiction here? Did we fuck up? Are we out?”

  Pendergast smiled. “No, not at all. As far as I can tell, I would not have done anything differently myself. You see, Lieutenant, we’ve been in the case from the very beginning, only we didn’t realize it.”

  “How so?”

  “I’m from the New Orleans field office. We were working on a series of killings down there, some very odd killings. Not to get into specifics, but the victims had the backs of their skulls removed, and the brains extracted. Same modus operandi.”

  “No shit. When was this?”

  “Several years ago.”

  “Several years ago? That—”

  “Yes. They went unsolved. First it was ATF, because they thought drugs might have been involved, then it was FBI when ATF couldn’t make any progress. But we couldn’t do anything with it, the trail was cold. And then yesterday, I read a wire service report about the double murder here in New York. The MO is too, ah, too peculiar not to make an immediate connection, don’t you think? So I flew up last night. I’m not even officially here. Although I will be tomorrow.”

  D’Agosta relaxed. “So you’re from Louisiana. I thought you might be some new boy in the New York office.”

  “They’ll be here,” said Pendergast. “When I make my report tonight, they’ll be in on it. But I will be in charge of the case.”

  “You? No way, not in New York City.”

  Pendergast smiled. “I will be in charge, Lieutenant. I’ve been pursuing this case for years and I am, frankly, interested in it.” The way Pendergast said interested sent a strange sensation down D’Agosta’s back. “But don’t worry, Lieutenant, I am ready and willing to work with you, side by side, in perhaps a different way than the New York office might. If you’ll meet me halfway, that [82] is. This isn’t my turf and I’m going to need your help. How about it?”

  He stood up and held out his hand. Christ, D’Agosta thought, the boys in the New York office will take him apart in two and a half hours and ship the pieces back to New Orleans.

  “Deal,” said D’Agosta, grasping his hand. “I’ll introduce you around, starting with the security director, Ippolito. Provided you answer one question. You said the MO of the New Orleans killings was the same. What about the bite marks we found in the brain of the older boy? The claw fragment?”

  “From what you told me about the autopsy, Lieutenant, the ME was only speculating about the bite marks,” Pendergast replied. “I’ll be interested to hear the salivase results. Is the claw being tested?”

  Later, D’Agosta would remember that his question had been only half answered. Now, he simply replied, “It’s being done today.”

  Pendergast leaned back in his chair and made a tent of his fingers, his eyes looking off into space. “I’ll have to pay a visit to Dr. Ziewicz when she examines today’s unpleasantness.”

  “Say, Pendergast? You aren’t by any chance related to Andy Warhol, are you?”

  “I don’t care much for modern art, Lieutenant.”

  The crime scene was packed but orderly, everyone moving swiftly and speaking in undertones, as if in deference to the dead man. The morgue crew had arrived but was standing out of the way, patiently observing the proceedings. Pendergast stood with D’Agosta and Ippolito, the Museum’s Security Director.

  “Indulge me if you will,” Pendergast was saying to the photographer. “I’d like a shot from here, like this.” Pendergast demonstrated briefly. “And I’d like a series from the top of the stairs, and a sequence coming down.

  [83] Take your time, get a nice play of line, shadow, and light going.”

  The photographer looked carefully at Pendergast, then moved off.

  Pendergast turned to Ippolito. “Here’s a question. Why was the guard—what did you say his name was, Mr. Ippolito, Jolley, Fred Jolley?—down here in the first place? This wasn’t part of his rounds. Correct?”

  “That’s right,” Ippolito said. He was standing in a dry spot near the entrance to the courtyard, his face a poisonous green.

  D’Agosta shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “Indeed,” Pendergast said. He looked out into the courtyard beyond the stairwell, which was small and deep, brick walls rising on three sides. “And he locked the door behind himself, you say. We have to assume he went outside here, or was headed in that direction. Hmm. The Taurid meteor shower was peaking at about that time last night. Perhaps Jolley here is an aspiring astronomer. But I doubt it.” He stood still for a minute, looking around. Then he turned back toward them. “I believe I can tell you why.”

  Christ, a real Sherlock Holmes, thought D’Agosta. “He came down the stairwell to indulge a habit of his. Marijuana. This courtyard is an isolated and well-ventilated spot. A perfect place to, ah, smoke some weed.”

  “Marijuana? That’s just a guess.”

  “I believe I see the roach,” said Pendergast, pointing into the cour
tyard. “Just where the door meets the jamb.”

  “I can’t see a thing,” said D’Agosta. “Hey, Ed. Check out the base of the door. Right there. What is it?”

  “A joint,” said Ed.

  “What’s the matter with you guys, can’t find a fucking joint? I told you to pick up every grain of sand, for Chrissake.”

  “We haven’t done that grid yet.”

  “Right.” He looked at Pendergast. Lucky bastard. Probably wasn’t the guard’s joint anyway.

  “Mr. Ippolito,” Pendergast drawled, “is it common for your staff to use illicit drugs while on duty?”

  “Absolutely not, but I’m not convinced it was Fred Jolley that—”

  Pendergast shut him up with a wave of the hand. “I assume you can account for all these footprints.”

  “Those belong to the guard who found the body,” said D’Agosta.

  Pendergast bent down. “These completely cover any local evidence that may remain,” he said, frowning. “Really, Mr. Ippolito,” he said, “you should have your men better trained in how to preserve a crime scene.”

  Ippolito opened his mouth, then closed it again. D’Agosta suppressed a smirk.

  Pendergast was walking carefully back underneath the stairwell, where a large metal door stood partially open. “Orient me, Mr. Ippolito. This door under the stairwell goes where?”

  “A hallway.”

  “Leading to—?”

  “Well, there’s the Secure Area down to the right. But it’s not possible the killer went that way, because …”

  “Excuse me for contradicting you, Mr. Ippolito, but I’m sure the killer did go that way,” Pendergast replied. “Let me guess. Beyond the Secure Area is the Old Basement, am I right?”

  “Right,” said Ippolito.

  “Where the two children were found.”

  “Bingo,” said D’Agosta.

  “This Secure Area sounds interesting, Mr. Ippolito. Shall we take a stroll?”