The Bone Conjurer

by Alex Archer

  “I would never, Mr. Ravenscroft. Cooke didn’t go immediately home from the airport. He met a woman on the old Carroll Street Bridge. He must have arranged for them to meet before arriving in the States.”

  Cooke going behind his back with the goods? The bastard had come highly recommended after Serge had worked his magic. Ben did not tolerate those who tried to screw with him.

  “The sniper followed the backup plan, as discussed,” Harris said.

  “Good.” The backup plan did not allow for Cooke to live.

  “The artifact, unfortunately, was sacrificed in the process.”

  “Damn!” Ben slammed a fist onto the desktop.

  Harris flinched, tugged at his tie.

  Ben tried not to get his hands dirty. He remained invisible in any business transaction. A liaison had been necessary to meet Cooke. He’d sent out an idiot when he should have taken care of this himself.

  “The sniper got this.” Harris approached the desk and reached inside his suit coat. He placed a black-and-white photograph on Ben’s desk. “He sent it to me on my cell phone. Then I, er, lost contact with him.”

  Not picking it up, but instead drawing the slightly curved photo toward him with the edge of his thumb, Ben leaned over the image. It was blurred, but some details showed on the two faces. He recognized Cooke from the one meeting he’d arranged during an art exhibit at a gallery in the Village.

  There was enough clarity to ascertain the figure talking to Cooke was indeed a woman. A dark ski cap hugged her head. Prominent cheekbones suggested beauty. Mouth open, as if talking, she couldn’t have known her conversation was being observed.

  Tilting his head to reduce the glare on the photo, Ben sought more in the grainy depths of her eyes. Something about her was familiar. But he couldn’t recall seeing her in person. He attended so many damned parties he felt sure he’d slapped palms with half of New York over the past year alone. If he ever wanted to pursue politics, he’d certainly gotten flesh-pressing down pat.

  The door to his right opened. The photographer shoved his head through. “Ready, Mr. Ravenscroft.”

  “Five minutes,” he said. When the door closed, the clicking sound of the mechanics bit at the base of Ben’s skull, threatening the imminent migraine. “What happened?”

  Watching the door with wary suspicion, Harris finally decided the coast was clear.

  “After the sniper shots they went over the bridge railing.”

  “He got them both?”

  “We’re still waiting to verify bodies, sir.”

  Ben rolled his eyes and pushed back in the chair. Again, he propped his feet up and clasped his hands on his lap. He didn’t look at Harris. To give him any regard was more than the man deserved right now.

  Bodies. He didn’t do bodies. What a fiasco.

  “And the sniper is gone?” he asked.

  “No, uh…”

  “What the hell is it, man?”

  “I went looking for him.”

  Ben picked up on the man’s increasing anxiety. More so than when he’d initially entered the office. The rancid sweat from Harris’s armpits blasted over any lingering waves of clove.

  “Why would you go looking for him? Didn’t you maintain radio contact?”

  “He didn’t contact me as arranged. I found him…dead.”

  “How?”

  “Broken neck. His weapon was still in place. Nothing was removed from the body. I have no idea who did it. I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Sorry?” Ben shook his head and glanced out the window. He saw nothing. Not the clear winter-white sky, nor the acres of steel skyscrapers.

  The sniper was dead. That was good. One less witness. And yet, an unknown had gone after his sniper? That was not good. Add one unidentified witness to the list.

  Had Cooke placed his own man on the scene? He couldn’t have, or else why would he kill him?

  Ben calmed his racing thoughts.

  “You disappoint me, Harris. The operation was thoroughly botched. And not even an artifact in hand.”

  “I’m unsure if the exchange was made.”

  “You say exchange.” Ben studied the bead of sweat running down Harris’s forehead. “Was there an exchange?”

  “I feel it was intended, but the sniper reported nothing was exchanged before they went over the bridge railing.”

  “What about after, do you suppose?”

  “After?” Harris sputtered. “Difficult to imagine either survived. Two shots were fired. Both found their mark. If the bullet didn’t do it, the toxic sludge would have smothered them, surely.”

  “The canal is a hell of a lot cleaner than most believe. Men have fallen in before, and emerged with nothing more than a case of hepatitis A.”

  Ben took the photo and tapped the edge sharply on the stone desktop. So it all ended right here?

  No. There was too much at stake. And now with the unknown who’d taken out the sniper, the risk in not following through could prove deadly. Someone had too much information.

  He needed that skull. A life depended on it. He wasn’t about to let it be swept under the carpet until he’d heard confirmation of two bodies. And when the bodies were found, would the skull also be found?

  “Do we have a man on the inside?”

  “The inside, sir?”

  “The police. We need someone on location at the NYPD when the bodies are found. The artifact mustn’t wind up shelved in the municipal evidence closet, never to be claimed or seen again.”

  “I’ll ensure it happens.”

  “Do so. Did you remove the sniper’s weapon?”

  “I did.”

  “No clue whatsoever to our mystery killer?”

  “No, sir, but I’m looking into it.”

  “I want a lead within eight hours. That will be all.”

  Harris bowed and turned sharply to leave the office.

  Ben tucked the photo inside his suit coat. He drew out his phone and tapped Serge’s number.

  “No.” He set the phone on the desk. “Not yet.”

  He didn’t want the man involved until the right moment.

  Ben gazed at the phone. Could Serge be the mystery man who took out the sniper? What reason would he have to do so? If he guessed Ben was tracking the skull, he would have gone directly after it. To imagine Serge killing a sniper was difficult. It just didn’t fit. He had no knowledge of weapons, as far as Ben knew. He was a big man, but one of those wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly sorts.

  The meeting room door opened again.

  “On my way,” Ben called.

  He pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk and took out a syringe. Tugging his shirt out from his trousers, he grabbed a wodge of middle-age bulge. The autoinjector pierced the flesh. His skin warmed and tingled.

  What a way to start the day.

  5

  Annja took the subway stairs two at a time to emerge a few blocks away from Columbia University. She spied the Olive Tree Deli and made a note not to forget to eat today. She’d forgone breakfast in lieu of excitement over her current find. The skull, tucked in the reassembled box and nestled in its lamb’s wool, joggled in the pack on her back.

  Her cell phone rang and Bart McGilly’s name flashed on the screen.

  He started right in. “Annja, one of these days your messages are not going to be funny anymore. You were joking about swimming in the Gowanus Canal. What kind of monsters do your producers think you’ll find in that filthy water?”

  “Sorry, Bart. I wasn’t kidding. I’ve still the lingering scum in my bathtub to prove it. I don’t know what’s in that water—and please, if you know, don’t tell me—but it certainly wasn’t a day at the beach. And it had nothing to do with Chasing History’s Monsters.”

  “Seriously? Annja, don’t do this to me. So there’s a body? For real?”

  “Young. Probably late twenties would be my guess. Male. Dark hair and slender.”

  “How’d he end up in the canal?”

  “Sniper shot to the bra
in.”

  His silence could be interpreted as surprise, but Annja pictured Bart grasping his throat and shaking his head. There she goes again, his silent thoughts broadcast loudly over the greater consciousness.

  “It’s not like I seek out these sorts of situations, Bart.”

  “Oh, really? Because with your record a guy would be inclined to believe that is exactly what you do. What, do you listen to the police scanner? Track nefarious transactions online?”

  “Is that possible?” she wondered curiously as she stepped onto the university grounds and followed the sidewalk south.

  “Annja.” Bart sighed.

  “I got an e-mail from a guy with an artifact he wanted me to look at.”

  “So anytime a stranger pings wanting to show you something, you just make a date? Wait. Don’t answer that one. I don’t want to know. I’ll send a team out to check the canal. Do you know who the victim is? Who was shooting at—hell, the both of you? Are you okay?”

  “It’s just an abrasion, but I almost got a pierced ear out of the deal.” She spoke quickly to alleviate his gasping protest. “After the first bullet, I thought it wisest to get the hell out of there. Down was the only way I could come up with at the time. As for the dead man, his Internet ID was Sneak. At least in the archaeology forum where he found me it is. I don’t know who he is. Didn’t have any ID in his backpack.”

  “In his—you removed evidence from the body?”

  Bart groaned. Annja imagined him clenching his fists in frustration.

  “Had to, Bart. I’m not going to let a valuable artifact get flushed through the canal like a hunk of sewage. Speaking of which—no, I don’t even want to know. A skull was in his backpack, along with a bunch of funky tools. I’m thinking he was a thief because there was a stethoscope and some kind of hand drill. Oh, and lock-pick tools.”

  “I need to take a look at the tools, Annja. All of them are evidence. Have you touched them? Of course you have.”

  “Sorry.”

  “How did you meet this guy?”

  “Online.”

  “Right. At the Dangerous Dating Depot?”

  “Oh, Bart, you made a funny.”

  “No, I’m trying to fit myself into the strange world you seem to navigate with startling ease. You said there was a skull?”

  “It’s why I agreed to meet the guy in the first place.” Annja turned down a tree-lined sidewalk toward Schermerhorn Hall.

  “So you have the skull. What are you doing with it now? Or do I want to know?”

  “I’m an archaeologist, Bart. Skulls are our thing. Don’t you know we bone botherers like to tote around various bits and bones to keep us company?”

  Another groan. She was having far too much fun teasing him when she knew the situation was serious. A dead thief could account for that.

  “I’m taking it to a professor at Columbia right now. Going to have him date it and see if I can begin to place it on a historical time line. If I can do that I might be able to track it to a point of origin. And then we’ll have an M.O. on the thief. Maybe.”

  “What makes you think your alleged thief isn’t just a wacko? A killer? What if it’s a random skull? Annja, what if it’s from one of his kills?”

  “You surprise me, Bart. I didn’t think you jumped to conclusions so easily. And why would someone kill for a random skull?”

  “Why would someone kill and not go after said random skull?”

  Annja glanced over her shoulder. She was sure she hadn’t been followed because she kept a keen eye to her periphery. No snow today; in fact, it was warmer by fifteen degrees, so it felt almost tropical. In a thirty-degree kind of way.

  “It’s pretty hard to go after something sitting at the bottom of the canal. Besides, it’s an infant skull.”

  “A baby? Christ, Annja, it doesn’t add up.”

  “It does from my end of the stick. It’s an artifact, Bart, not a victim. At least, not from this century.”

  “I hate working on crimes against children. It’s so sad. Fine. I’m heading out to the canal. You keep an eye over your shoulder. And please, promise me, you won’t meet any more strangers without having them vetted by me first?”

  “I can’t promise…”

  “Woman, you are going to give me a heart attack.”

  “Hey, that reminds me, we haven’t had a decent meal out lately.”

  “Because you’re always trekking across the world, posing for TV cameras and sticking your nose in danger.”

  “You love me for it, admit it.”

  Bart’s sigh made her smile. She’d successfully redirected him from her dangerous dabbling with the criminal mien.

  “Give me a call after you’ve talked to the professor, will you? I’ve got some time tomorrow night. We can meet and you can bring along the evidence you’ve contaminated. How about Tito’s?”

  “Sounds like a plan. Me and my contaminants can make it.”

  Tito’s was one of their favorite places to meet over a plate of Cuban pulled pork with sweet plantains.

  Bart was one of few friends Annja had in the city, and she valued that friendship tremendously. Though she couldn’t deny he was also a handsome single man who, on more than a few occasions, sat closer to her than a friend should, stared into her eyes longer than a friend should and made her think of him much more than the average friend should.

  The redbrick front of Schermerhorn Hall popped into view through a line of lindens. “I’ll talk to you later. Thanks, Bart.”

  6

  Schermerhorn Hall, a four-story colonial redbrick building, sat just off Amsterdam Avenue. Annja liked the street name. How cool would it have been to live in the seventeenth century when New York was New Amsterdam?

  “Not as cool as you wish,” she admonished.

  While it was interesting to conjecture a life lived in a previous century, the appeal of it only lasted until Annja reminded herself of lacking plumbing, sanitation, medicine and the Internet.

  The building was quiet as she entered. Classes must be in session, she thought. As she passed various classrooms the doors were open to reveal dark quiet rooms. No one about. Odd.

  Professor Danzinger was the rock star of the Sociology and Anthropology department. At least in the minds of the attending females. Pushing sixty, the man was still in fine form. Tall, slender and with a head full of curly salt-and-pepper hair, a quick glance would place him onstage, guitar in hand. Closer observation—perhaps a genial handshake, as well—would discover he would have to play backup for Mick Jagger, for the lines creasing his face.

  Annja recalled he actually did play guitar—sometimes during class—which only made the girls swoon all the more.

  An excellent teacher, most students claimed to learn more from one semester of Practical Archaeology than they did all year during some of the more advanced classes. Danzinger frequently guest taught at universities across the country, and Annja had been lucky to have him for a semester herself in her undergrad days.

  She remembered him fondly, and she’d had the requisite crush on him, too. But she’d never dated him, as some of her classmates had.

  She peeked inside the open doorway to the anthropology lab and found him bent over a high-powered microscope. Curly hair spiraled down the side of his face. A tatter-sleeved T-shirt revealed thin yet muscular arms. He was wearing brown leather pants so worn they looked like the cow wouldn’t take them back. And bare feet.

  “Annja, don’t stare, it isn’t polite.”

  She entered the lab, swinging the box containing the skull like a bright-eyed schoolgirl dangling her purse as she watched the football star walk by.

  Plopping the box on the lab table with a clunk helped to chase away the silliness in her. So she had her goofball moments. Sue her.

  “Fancy little box.” Professor Danzinger pushed from the counter and gave her a wink. He moved in an erratic, over-caffeinated, no-time-to-sit-still motion that made her wonder if he didn’t moonlight in a band on weekend
s. “Is that the newest fashion in purses for hip, young archaeologists?”

  “No, I prefer my backpack. And it’s not mine. It belongs to the thief who gave it to me.”

  “Ah, a thief.”

  “Alleged thief.”

  The professor leaned a hip against the counter, propping an elbow and crossing his legs at the ankle. He signaled beyond her. “Where is he?”

  “Dead. His body is floating somewhere in the Gowanus Canal.”

  “Too bad. Drowned?”

  “No, bullet.”

  That got a lift of brow from him. She respected him too much to make up a story, and he was one of those who could take anything a person said as if it were merely a weather report. “Truth earned respect” was one of his favorite mantras.

  “Annja, you do have an interesting assortment of acquaintances. I seem to recall a nervous junior movie producer tagging along with you last time we met. Doogie something or other?”

  “Doug Morrell. Television producer, and jumpy hyperactive is his normal state. I’d hate to see him on caffeine.”

  “He produces your show?”

  “It’s not my show, but yes, he does.”

  “I saw the show a few months ago. Who’s the bimbo?”

  “Why? You interested?”

  Flash of white teeth. “Always.”

  “Good ol’ Professor Danzinger. Always on the make.”

  “Sleeping with the professor won’t get you an A, but it does promise a night to remember.”

  She felt a blush rise in her cheeks. Annja glanced about the room, unconcerned for the stacked femurs or plaster casts of hands and faces. Just don’t let him see my red face, she thought.

  Danzinger, blessedly nonchalant, nodded toward the box. “So let’s take a look, because I know my flirtations will get me nowhere with you.”

  “Oh, they might,” she said, trying to sound blasé.

  “Really?” He tugged the box toward him and leaned over the counter, bringing him closer to her. So close she could smell the spicy cologne and wonder why she never did invest in the extracurricular extra credit the professor had offered.