Reliquary

by Douglas Preston

  Smithback pressed his advantage. “Face it, Bryce, you got scooped. I got the interview with Mrs. Wisher and you didn’t.”

  Harriman’s face darkened: He’d hit a nerve there. The guy had probably been scolded by his editor.

  “Yeah,” Harriman said. “She got your number, all right. Wrapped you around her little finger. While the real story is taking place somewhere else.”

  “And what real story might that be?”

  “Such as the identity of the second skeleton. Or even, where they took the bodies.” Harriman eyed Smithback as he nonchalantly drained his beer. “You mean you didn’t know? Too busy talking to nutcases in railroad tunnels, I guess.”

  Smithback glanced back at the reporter, struggling to conceal his surprise. Was this some kind of false lead? But no; the cool eyes behind the tortoise-shell glasses were scornful, but serious. “Haven’t been able to find that out yet,” he said guardedly.

  “You don’t say.” Harriman slapped him on the back. “Hundred thousand bucks reward, huh? That might just pay your salary for the next two years. If the Post doesn’t go belly up again.” He laughed, dropped a five-dollar bill on the counter, and turned to go.

  Smithback watched Harriman’s retreating back with irritation. So the bodies had been moved from the Medical Examiner’s office. He should have learned that himself. But where? There had been no funeral arrangements, no burial. They must be in a lab somewhere, a lab with better equipment than the NYME. Someplace secure, not like Columbia or Rockefeller University, with students wandering around everywhere. After all, Lieutenant D’Agosta was in charge of the case. He was a cool customer, Smithback knew. Not the kind of guy to do something rash. Why would D’Agosta move the bodies…

  D’Agosta.

  Suddenly, Smithback guessed—no, he knew—where the bodies must be.

  Draining his glass, he slid off the stool and moved across the plush red carpet to a bank of phones in the front foyer. Dropping a quarter in the nearest one, he dialed a number.

  “Curley here,” said a voice thick with age.

  “Curley! It’s Bill Smithback. How you doing?”

  “Fine, Dr. Smithback. Haven’t seen you around for a while.” Curley, who checked badges at the staff entrance to the Museum of Natural History, called everyone Doctor. Princes lived and died; dynasties rose and fell; but Curley, Smithback knew, would remain in his ornate bronze pillbox, checking IDs forever.

  “Curley, what time on Wednesday night did those ambulances come in? You know, the two that drove in together?” Smithback spoke fast, praying that the ancient guard didn’t know he’d become a reporter after leaving his writing assignment at the Museum.

  “Well, let’s see,” Curley said in his unhurried way. “Can’t say I remember anything like that, Doctor.”

  “Really?” Smithback asked, crestfallen. He’d been absolutely sure.

  “Not unless you mean that one that came in with the lights and sirens off. But that was early Thursday, not Wednesday.” Smithback could hear Curley rustling through his log. “Yup, just after five A.M., it was.”

  “That’s right, Thursday. What was I thinking of?” Smithback thanked Curley and hung up exultantly.

  Grinning, he returned to the bar. With one phone call, he’d discovered what Harriman had no doubt been searching for—unsuccessfully—for days.

  It made perfect sense. He knew that D’Agosta had used the Museum’s laboratory on other cases, not least of all the Museum Beast murders. It was a high-security lab in a high-security museum. No doubt he’d have called in that pompous old curator, Frock. And maybe Frock’s ex-assistant, Margo Green, Smithback’s own friend from his days at the Museum.

  Margo Green, Smithback thought. That merited some looking into.

  He called the bartender over. “Paddy, I think I’ll stay on Islay, but switch distilleries. Laphroaig, please. The fifteen-year-old.”

  He took a sip of the marvelous whisky. Ten bucks a shot, but worth every penny. A hundred thousand might just pay your salary for the next two years, Harriman had teased. Smithback decided that, after the next front-page story, he’d have to hit Murray up for a raise. Nothing like striking while the iron was hot.

  = 11 =

  SERGEANT HAYWARD descended a long metal staircase, opened a narrow door filmed in brown rust, and stepped out onto an abandoned railroad siding. Behind her, D’Agosta emerged from the doorway, hands in pockets. Murky sunlight filtered down through a series of gratings far above their heads, illuminating dust motes in the still air. D’Agosta looked first left, then right. In both directions, the tracks dissolved into the gloom of the tunnel. He noticed that Hayward had an unusual way of moving below ground, a kind of silent, wary step.

  “Where’s the Captain?” Hayward asked.

  “He’s coming,” said D’Agosta, scraping the underside of his heel on the metal rail of the siding. “You go ahead.” He watched Hayward move catlike down the tunnel, her flashlight throwing a narrow beam into the darkness ahead. Any hesitation he felt at letting this petite woman lead the way had evaporated as he watched the ease with which she handled herself underground.

  Waxie, on the other hand, had slowed considerably in the two hours since they’d visited the brownstone basement where the first body had been found more than three months before. It was a damp room, crammed with old boilers. Rotting wires dangled from the ceiling. Hayward had pointed out the mattress tucked behind a blackened furnace, littered with empty plastic water bottles and torn newspapers: the dead man’s living space. There was an old bloodstain on the mattress, three feet in diameter, heavily chewed on by rats. Above it, a pair of ragged athletic socks were draped over a pipe, covered in a furry mantle of green mold.

  The body found there had been Hank Jasper, Hayward said. No witnesses, no known relatives or friends. The case file had been equally useless: no photographs or scene reports, just some routine paperwork, a brief report referring to “extensive lacerations” and a badly crushed skull, and the notice of a quick burial at Potter’s Field on Hart Island.

  Nor had they found much of anything in the defunct Columbus Circle station bathroom, where the second body had been discovered: a lot of trash, and a half-hearted attempt to clean up the red blizzard of blood that clung to the ancient tile sinks and cracked mirrors. No ID on that one at all: the head was missing.

  There was a stifled curse behind him, and D’Agosta turned to see the round form of Captain Waxie emerging from the rusted door. He looked around distastefully, his pasty visage shining unnaturally in the half-light.

  “Jesus, Vinnie,” he said, picking his way over the tracks toward D’Agosta. “What the hell are we doing? I told you before, this isn’t any job for a police captain. Especially on a Sunday afternoon.” He nodded his head in the direction of the dark tunnel. “That cute little thing put you up to this, didn’t she? Amazing set of knockers. You know, I offered her a job as my personal assistant. Instead, she chose to stay on rousting detail, dragging bums out of holes. Go figure.”

  Funny thing about that, D’Agosta thought, imagining what life under Waxie would be like for a woman as attractive as Hayward.

  “And now my damn radio’s gone on the fritz,” Waxie said irritably.

  D’Agosta pointed upward. “Hayward tells me they don’t work underground. Not reliably, anyway.”

  “Great. How are we supposed to call for backup?”

  “We don’t. We’re on our own.”

  “Great,” Waxie repeated.

  D’Agosta looked at Waxie. Beads of sweat had sprung up along his upper lip, and his dough-colored jowls, usually firm, were starting to sag. “This is your jurisdiction, not mine,” D’Agosta said. “Just think how good it will make you look if this turns out to be big: taking charge right away, visiting the scene personally. For a change.” He fingered his jacket pocket for a cigar, then decided against it. “And think how bad it will look if these deaths are connected somehow, and the press starts talking about how you just look
ed the other way.”

  Waxie scowled at him. “I’m not running for mayor, Vinnie.”

  “I’m not talking about being mayor. All I know is, when the rain of shit begins to fall like it always does, your ass will be covered.”

  Waxie grunted, looking somewhat mollified.

  D’Agosta could see Hayward’s light playing down the tracks toward them, and soon the woman appeared again out of the gloom.

  “Almost there,” she said. “It’s one more down.”

  “Down?” said Waxie. “Sergeant, I thought this was the lowest level!”

  Hayward said nothing.

  “So how are we supposed to go down?” D’Agosta asked her.

  Hayward nodded in the direction from which she’d come. “North along the tracks about four hundred yards, there’s another staircase along the right wall.”

  “What if a train comes?” Waxie asked.

  “This is a deserted stem,” Hayward said. “No trains have come along here in a long time.”

  “How do you know?”

  Hayward silently played her beam along the rails beneath their feet, illuminating the thick orange rust. D’Agosta’s eyes traveled up the flashlight beam until they reached Hayward’s face. She did not look very happy.

  “Is there anything unusual about the next level?” D’Agosta asked quietly.

  Hayward was silent for a moment. “Ordinarily, we only sweep the upper levels. But you hear stories. They get crazier the lower you go.” She paused. “That’s why I suggested backup,” she said pointedly.

  “People living down here?” Waxie asked, sparing D’Agosta the necessity of a reply.

  “Of course.” Hayward made a face as if Waxie should know better. “Warm in the winter, no rain or wind. Only people they have to worry about down here are the other moles.”

  “So when was the last time they rousted that level?”

  “They don’t roust the lower levels, Captain.”

  “Why not?”

  There was a silence. “Well, for one thing, you can’t find the deeper moles. They’ve got night vision, living in the dark. You hear something, and by the time you’ve turned around, they’re gone. They only do a couple random sweeps a year with dogs trained to find bodies. And even they don’t go that deep. Besides, it’s very dangerous. Not all the moles come down here just for shelter. Some come to hide. Some are running from something, the law, usually. Still others are predatory.”

  “What about that article in the Post?” D’Agosta asked. “It said there was some kind of underground community. Didn’t sound all that hostile.”

  “That was under Central Park, Lieutenant, not the West Side railyards,” Hayward said. “Some areas are tamer than others. And don’t forget that article mentioned something else. Something about cannibals.” She smiled sweetly.

  Waxie opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again, swallowing loudly.

  They began moving down the tracks in silence. As they walked, D’Agosta realized he was unconsciously fingering his S&W Model 4946 double-action. Back in ’93, there’d been some controversy in the department about moving to a 9-millimeter semiautomatic. Now D’Agosta was glad he had it.

  The staircase, when they reached it, was fronted by a steel door canted at a crazy angle across the doorframe. Hayward pulled it open, then moved to one side. D’Agosta stepped through and immediately felt his eyes begin to water. A smell like ammonia violated his nostrils.

  “I’ll go first, Lieutenant,” Hayward said.

  D’Agosta stepped aside. No argument there.

  The lime-coated staircase descended to a landing, then made a turn. D’Agosta felt his watering eyes begin to sting. The smell was searing, indescribable.

  “What the hell is that?” he asked.

  “Piss,” said Hayward matter-of-factly. “Mostly. Plus other things you don’t want to hear about.”

  Behind them, Waxie’s wheezing became more pronounced.

  They stepped through a ragged opening into a dark, humid space. As Hayward played her light about, D’Agosta saw that they were in what looked like the cavernous end of an old tunnel. But there were no tracks here: just a rough dirt floor, scattered with pools of oil and water and the charred remains of small campfires. Garbage lay strewn everywhere: old newspapers; a torn pair of pants; an old shoe; a plastic diaper, freshly soiled.

  D’Agosta could hear Waxie blowing hard behind him. He was beginning to wonder why the Captain had abruptly stopped complaining. Maybe it’s the stench, he thought.

  Hayward was moving toward a passage that led away from the cavern. “Over here,” she said. “The body was found in a cubby down this way. We’d better stay close. Watch out you don’t get piped.”

  “Piped?” D’Agosta asked.

  “Someone reaches out from the dark and whacks you over the head with a pipe.”

  “I don’t see anyone,” D’Agosta said.

  “They’re here,” Hayward replied.

  Waxie’s breathing became more labored.

  They began following the passage, moving slowly. Hayward periodically pointed her light along the sides of the tunnel. Every twenty feet, a large rectangular space had been cut into the rock: work and storage areas, she explained, of railway crews a century before. Filthy bedding lay in many of the cubbyholes. Frequently, large brown rats, disturbed by the light, would stir among the trash, waddling away from the flashlight beams with insolent slowness. But there were no signs of people.

  Hayward stopped, removed her police cap, and drew a damp strand of hair back into place behind one ear. “The report said it was the cubby directly across from a collapsed iron catwalk,” she said.

  D’Agosta tried breathing through his hand, and when that didn’t help he loosened his tie and pulled his shirt collar over his mouth, as a kind of mask.

  “Here it is.” Hayward shone her beam on a rusted heap of iron struts and I-beams. She swept the flashlight across the tunnel, locating the cubby. From the outside, it looked just like the others: five feet across, three feet deep, cut into the rock about two feet above grade.

  D’Agosta stepped closer and peered in. Naked bedding lay askew, caked thickly with dried blood. Blood was also spattered about the walls, along with bits of something that D’Agosta didn’t want to think about. There was the ubiquitous packing crate, tipped over and partly crushed. The floor of the cubby was lined with newspapers. The stench was beyond description.

  “This guy,” Hayward whispered, “was also found without his head. They identified him from prints. Shasheen Walker, thirty-two years old. Rap sheet as long as your arm, a serious user.”

  At any other time, D’Agosta would have found it ludicrous to hear a police officer whispering. Now, he felt somehow glad. There was a long silence while D’Agosta played his own light around. “Did they find the head?” he asked at last.

  “Nope,” said Hayward.

  The foul little den showed zero signs of a police search. Thinking he’d rather be anywhere else, doing anything else, D’Agosta reached into the cubby, took hold of a corner of a filthy blanket, and jerked it back.

  Something brown tumbled out of the folds and rolled toward the nearest edge. What was left of its mouth was wide open in a frozen scream.

  “I guess they didn’t look too hard,” D’Agosta said. He heard a small moan escape from Waxie. “You okay, Jack?” he asked, glancing back.

  Waxie said nothing. His face looked like a pale moon, hovering in the noisome dark.

  D’Agosta turned his light back on the head. “We’re gonna have to get an SOC team down here for a full series.” He reached for his radio, then remembered it wouldn’t work.

  Hayward edged forward. “Lieutenant?”

  D’Agosta paused. “Yes?”

  “The moles left this place alone because someone died in it. They’re superstitious that way, some of them. But as soon as we leave, they’re going to clean this whole mess up, get rid of the head themselves, and you’ll never find it. More
than anything else, they don’t want cops down here.”

  “How the hell will they know we were here?”

  “I keep telling you, Lieutenant, they’re around. Listening.”

  D’Agosta shone his light about. The corridor was silent and dead. “So what’s your point?”

  “If you want the head, you’re going to have to take it with you.”

  “Shit,” breathed D’Agosta. “Okay, Sergeant, we’ll have to improvise. Grab that towel over there.”

  Stepping in front of the motionless Waxie, Sergeant Hayward picked up a water-logged towel and spread it on the damp concrete next to the head. Then, pulling the sleeve of her uniform over her hand, she nudged the head toward the towel with her wrist.

  D’Agosta watched with mixed disgust and admiration as Hayward gathered the ends of the towel into a ball. He blinked his eyes, trying to wipe away the smart of the foul reek. “Let’s go. Sergeant, you may do the honors.”

  “No problem.” Hayward lifted the towel, holding it away from her body.

  As D’Agosta stepped forward, shining his flashlight back down the corridor toward the staircase, there was a sudden whistling sound and a bottle came winging out of the dark, just missing Waxie’s head. It shattered loudly on the wall. Farther down the passageway, D’Agosta could hear a rustling noise.

  “Who’s there?” he yelled. “Halt! Police officers!”

  Another bottle came flying wildly out of the dark. D’Agosta realized, with a strange crawly feeling at the base of his spine, that he could feel, but not see, shapes moving toward them.

  “There’s only three of us, Lieutenant,” Hayward said, tension suddenly evident in her dusky voice. “May I suggest we get the hell out of here?”

  There was a raspy call from out of the dark, then a shout and the sound of running. He heard a neigh of terror at his shoulder and turned to see Waxie, still transfixed.

  “For Chrissakes, Captain, get hold of yourself!” D’Agosta shouted.

  Waxie began to whimper. From the other side, D’Agosta heard a hissing noise, and he turned to see Hayward’s petite figure standing tense and erect. Her slender hands were at her sides with the knuckles pointed in, the towel and its burden dangling from her fingers. She took another deep, hissing breath, as if in preparation. Then she looked around quickly and turned back toward the staircase, once again holding the head at arm’s length.