Relic (Pendergast, Book 1)

by Preston, Douglas

  “It’s nice to see someone so interested in natural history,” Smithback said sarcastically.

  As he stepped out, the smell of rotting flesh hit him with redoubled force; it seemed to fill the air like a Maine fog. “How do you stand it?” he managed to gasp to the elevator man.

  “Stand what?” the man said, pausing as he rolled the hoistway doors shut.

  A cheerful voice came ringing down the corridor. “Welcome!” An elderly man shouted over the sound of the forced-air ducts as he grasped Smithback’s hand. “Nothing but zebra cooking today. You miss the rhinoceros. But come in anyway, come in, please!” Smithback knew his thick accent was Austrian.

  Jost Von Oster ran the osteological preparation area, the Museum Laboratory in which animal carcasses were reduced to bones. He was over eighty, but looked so pink, cheerful, and plump that most people thought he was much younger.

  Von Oster had started at the Museum in the late twenties, preparing and mounting skeletons for display. His crowning achievement in those days had been a series of horse skeletons, mounted walking, trotting, and galloping. It was said that these skeletons had revolutionized the way animals were exhibited. Von Oster had then turned to creating the lifelike habitat groups popular in the forties, making sure every detail—down to the saliva on an animal’s mouth—looked perfectly real.

  But the era of the habitat group had passed, and Von Oster had eventually been relegated to the Bug Room. Disdaining all offers of retirement, he cheerfully presided over the osteological lab, where animals—now mostly collected from zoos—were turned into clean white bones for study or mounting. However, his old skills as a master habitat sculptor were still intact, and he had been called in to work on a special shaman life-group for the Superstition exhibition. It was the painstaking preparation of this display group that Smithback wanted to include as one chapter in his book.

  Following Von Oster’s gesture, Smithback stepped into the preparation area. He’d never seen this famous room before. “So glad you could come see my workshop,” Von Oster said. “Not many people down here now, what with these dreadful killings. Very glad indeed!”

  The workshop looked more like a bizarre industrial kitchen than anything else. Deep stainless-steel tanks lined one wall. On the ceiling near the tanks hung massive pulleys, chains, and grappling hooks for handling the larger carcasses. A drain was drilled into the center of the floor, a small broken bone caught in its grill. In a far corner of the workshop a stainless-steel gurney stood, bearing a large animal. If it hadn’t been for the large, hand-lettered sign taped to one leg of the gurney, Smithback wouldn’t have guessed that the creature had once been a Sargasso Sea Dugong; it was now almost fully decomposed. Around the corpse lay picks, pliers, tiny knives.

  “Thanks for taking time to see me,” Smithback managed.

  “Not at all!” Von Oster exploded. “I wish we could give tours, but you know this area is off limits to the tourists, the more is the pity. You should have been here for the rhinoceros. Gott, she was something!”

  Walking briskly across the room, he showed Smithback the maceration tank containing the zebra carcass. Despite a hood drawing the vapors away, the smell was still strong. Von Oster lifted the lid and stood back like a proud cook.

  “What you think of zat!”

  Smithback looked at the soupy brown liquid filling the vat. Under the muddy surface lay the macerating zebra carcass, its flesh and soft tissues slowly liquefying.

  “It’s a little ripe,” Smithback said weakly.

  “What you mean, ripe? It just perfect! Under here we got the burner. It keep the water at an even ninety-five degrees. See, first we gut the carcass and drop it in the vat here. Then it rot and in two weeks we pull the plug and drain everything down the sink. What we got left is this big pile of greasy bones. So then we refill the vat and add a little alum and boil those bones. You don’t want to boil them too long, they get soft.”

  Von Oster paused again for air. “You know, just like when they cook the chicken too long. Phhhhtui! Bad! But those bones still greasy, so we wash them mit the benzene. That make them pure white.”

  “Mr. Von Oster—” Smithback began. If he didn’t redirect this interview quickly, he would never get out. And he couldn’t stand the smell much longer. “I was wondering if you could tell me a little about the shaman group you worked on. I’m writing a book about Superstition. You remember our conversation?”

  “Ja, ja! Of course!” He charged over to a desk and pulled out some drawings. Smithback switched on his microcassette recorder.

  “First, you paint the background on a double-curved surface, so you get no corners, see? You want the illusion of depth.”

  Von Oster began describing the process, his voice pitched with excitement. This is going to be good, Smithback thought. The guy’s a writer’s dream.

  Von Oster went on for a long time, stabbing the air, making sweeping gestures, taking deep breaths between his heavily accented sentences. When he was finished, he beamed at Smithback. “Now, you want to see the bugs?” he asked.

  Smithback couldn’t resist. The bugs were famous. It was a process Von Oster himself had invented, but was now in use by all the large natural history museums in the country: the beetles would strip a small carcass of its flesh, leaving behind a cleaned, perfectly articulated skeleton.

  The “safe” room that housed the beetles was hot and humid, and little larger than a closet. The beetles, called dermestids, came from Africa and lived in white porcelain tubs with slick sides, roofed with screens. The beetles slowly crawled over rows of dead, skinned animals.

  “What are those things?” Smithback asked, peering at the bug-covered carcasses inside the tubs.

  “Bats!” said Von Oster. “Bats for Dr. Huysmans. It will take about ten days to clean up those bats.” He pronounced it “zose bets.”

  Between the odors and the bugs, Smithback had had enough. He stood up and extended his hand toward the old scientist. “I gotta go. Thanks for the interview. And those bugs are really something.”

  “You’re most welcome!” Von Oster responded. “Now, wait. Interview, you say. Who you writing this book for?” The idea had suddenly occurred to him that he’d been interviewed.

  “For the Museum,” said Smithback. “Rickman’s in charge of it.”

  “Rickman?” Von Oster’s eyes suddenly narrowed.

  “Yes. Why?” Smithback asked.

  “You working for Rickman?” Von Oster said.

  “Not really. She’s just, well, interfering mostly,” Smithback said.

  Von Oster broke into a pink grin. “Ach, she poison, that one! Why you working for her?”

  “That’s just the way it happened,” Smithback said, gratified at having found an ally. “You wouldn’t believe the kind of crap she’s put me through. Oh, God.”

  Von Oster clapped his hands. “I believe it! I believe it! She making trouble everywhere! This exhibit, she making all kind of trouble!”

  Suddenly Smithback was interested. “How so?” he asked.

  “She in there every day, saying zis not good, zat not good. Gott, that woman!”

  “That sounds like her,” Smithback said with a grim smile. “So what wasn’t good?”

  “That, what you call it, that Kothoga tribe stuff. I was in there just yesterday afternoon and she was carrying on. ‘Everybody leave the exhibition! We bring in Kothoga figurine!’ Everybody had to drop work and leave.”

  “The figurine? What figurine? What’s so sensitive about it?” It suddenly occurred to Smithback that something so upsetting to Rickman might someday be useful to him.

  “That Mbwun figurine, big deal in the exhibition. I not know much about. But she was very upset, I tell you!”

  “Why?”

  “Like I tell you, that figurine. You not heard? Lots of talk about it, very very bad. I try not to hear.”

  “What kind of talk would that be, for instance?”

  Smithback listened to the old man for qui
te a while longer. Finally, he backed himself out of the workshop, Von Oster pursuing as far as the elevator.

  As the doors rolled shut, the man was still talking. “You unlucky, working for her!” he called after Smithback just before the elevator lurched upward. But Smithback didn’t hear him. He was busy thinking.

  20

  As the afternoon drew to a close, Margo looked up wearily from her terminal. Stretching, she punched a command to the printer down the hall, then sat back, rubbing her eyes. Moriarty’s case write-up was finally done. A little rough around the edges, perhaps; not as comprehensive as she would have liked; but she couldn’t afford to spend any more time on it. Secretly, she was rather pleased, and found herself eager to take a printout up to Moriarty’s office on the fourth floor of the Butterfield Observatory, where the project team for the Superstition exhibition was housed.

  She thumbed through her staff directory, looking for Moriarty’s extension. Then she reached for her phone and dialed the four-digit number.

  “Exhibition central,” drawled a voice. There were loud good-byes in the background.

  “Is George Moriarty there?” Margo asked.

  “I think he’s down at the exhibition,” the voice responded. “We’re locking up here. Any message?”

  “No, thanks,” Margo replied, hanging up. She looked at her watch: almost five. Curfew time. But the exhibition was being unveiled Friday evening, and she’d promised Moriarty the material.

  As she was about to get up, she remembered Frock’s suggestion that she call Greg Kawakita. She sighed, picking up the phone again. Better give him a try. Chances are he’d be out of the building now, and she could just leave a message on phone-mail.

  “Greg Kawakita speaking,” came the familiar baritone voice.

  “Greg? This is Margo Green.” Stop sounding so apologetic. It’s not like he’s a department head or anything.

  “Hi, Margo. What’s up?” She could hear the clacking of keys coming over the line.

  “I have a favor to ask. It’s a suggestion of Dr. Frock’s, actually. I’m doing an analysis of some plant specimens used by the Kiribitu tribe, and he suggested I run them through your Extrapolator. Perhaps it will find some genetic correspondences in the samples.”

  There was silence. “Dr. Frock thought it might be a useful test of your program, as well as a help to me,” she urged.

  Kawakita paused. “Well, you know, Margo, I’d like to help you out, I really would. But the Extrapolator really isn’t in shape yet to be used by just anybody. I’m still chasing down bugs, and I couldn’t vouch for the results.”

  Margo’s face burned. “Just anybody?”

  “Sorry, that was a poor choice of words. You know what I mean. Besides, it’s a really busy time for me, and this curfew won’t help matters any. Tell you what, why don’t you check with me again in a week or two? Okay? Talk to you then.”

  The line went dead.

  Margo stood up, grabbed her jacket and purse, and went down the hall to retrieve her printout. She knew he was planning to postpone her indefinitely. Well, to hell with Kawakita. She’d hunt Moriarty down and give him the copy before she left. If nothing else, it might get her that guided tour of the exhibition, maybe find out what all the fuss was about.

  A few minutes later, Margo walked slowly across the deserted Selous Memorial Hall. Two guards were stationed at the entrance, and a single docent stood inside the information center, locking away ledgers and arranging sale items in preparation for the next day’s visitors. Assuming there are any, thought Margo. Three policemen stood just under the huge bronze statue of Selous, talking among themselves. They didn’t notice Margo.

  Margo found her thoughts returning to the morning’s talk with Frock. If the killer wasn’t found, the security measures could get stricter. Maybe her dissertation defense would be delayed. Or the entire Museum could be closed. Margo shook her head. If that happened, she was Massachusetts-bound for sure.

  She headed for the Walker Gallery and the rear entrance to Superstition. To her dismay, the large iron doors were closed, and a velvet rope was suspended between two brass posts in front of them. A policeman stood beside the sign, motionless.

  “Can I help you, Miss?” he said. His nameplate read F. BEAUREGARD.

  “I’m going to see George Moriarty,” Margo replied. “I think he’s in the exhibition galleries. I have to give him something.” She brandished the printout in front of the policeman, who looked unimpressed.

  “Sorry, Miss,” he said. “It’s past five. You shouldn’t be here. Besides,” he said more gently, “the exhibition’s been sealed until the opening.”

  “But—” Margo began to protest, then turned and walked back toward the rotunda with a sigh.

  After rounding a corner, she stopped. At the end of the empty hallway she could see the dim vastness of the Hall. Behind her, Officer F. Beauregard was out of sight around the corner. On impulse, she veered sharply left through a small, low passage that opened into another, parallel walkway. Maybe it wasn’t too late to find Moriarty, after all.

  She moved up a wide flight of stairs, and, looking carefully around before proceeding, walked slowly into a vaulted hall devoted to insects. Then she turned right and entered a gallery that ran around the second level of the Marine Hall. Like everyplace else in the Museum, it felt eerie and deserted.

  Margo descended one of the twin sweeping staircases to the granite floor of the main hall. Moving more slowly now, she passed by a life-size walrus habitat group and a meticulously constructed model of an underwater reef. Dioramas such as these, originally fashioned in the thirties and forties, could no longer be made, she knew—they had become much too expensive to produce.

  At the far end of the Hall was the entrance to the Weisman Gallery, where the larger temporary exhibitions were held. This was one of the suite of galleries in which the Superstition exhibition was being mounted. Black paper covered the inside of the double glass doors, fronted by a large sign that read: GALLERY CLOSED. NEW EXHIBITION IN PROGRESS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING.

  The left-hand door was locked. The right one, however, pushed open easily.

  As casually as possible, she looked over her shoulder: nobody.

  The door hissed shut behind her, and she found herself in a narrow crawl space between the outer walls of the gallery and the back of the exhibition proper. Plywood boards and large nails were strewn around in disarray, and electrical cables snaked across the floor. On her left a huge structure of Sheetrock and boards, hammered clumsily together and supported by wooden buttresses, looked very much like the back side of a Hollywood set. It was the side of the Superstition exhibition that no Museum visitor would ever see.

  She moved carefully down the crawl space, scouting for some way to get into the exhibition. The light was poor—metal-shielded light bulbs, spaced about twenty feet apart—and she didn’t want to stumble and fall. Soon she came across a small gap between the wooden panels—just big enough, she decided, to squeeze through.

  She found herself in a large, six-sided anteroom. Gothic arches in three of the walls framed passages that receded into the gloom. Most of the light came from several backlit photographs of shamans high up on the walls. She looked speculatively at the three exits. She had no idea where she was in the exhibition—where it began, where it ended, or which way she should go to find Moriarty. “George?” she called softly, somehow unable to raise her voice in the silence and gloom.

  She took the central passage to another dark hall, longer than the last and crowded with exhibits. At intervals, a brilliant spot illuminated some artifact: a mask, a bone knife, a strange carving covered with nails. The artifacts appeared to float in the velvet darkness. Crazy, dim patterns of light and shadow played across the ceiling.

  At the far end of the gallery, the walls narrowed. Margo had the odd feeling that she was walking back into a deep cave. Pretty manipulative, she thought. She could see why Frock was upset.

  She went deep
er into the gloom, hearing nothing but her own footsteps padding on the thick carpet. She couldn’t see the exhibits until she was almost on top of them, and she wondered how she’d retrace her steps to the room of the shamans. Perhaps there would be an unlocked exit—a well-lit unlocked exit—someplace else in the exhibit.

  Ahead of her, the narrow hall forked. After a moment’s hesitation, Margo chose the right-hand passage. As she continued, she noticed small alcoves to either side, each containing a single grotesque artifact. The silence was so intense that she found herself holding her breath.

  The hall widened into a chamber, and she stopped in front of a set of Maori tattooed heads. They weren’t shrunken—the skulls were clearly still inside, preserved, the label said, by smoking. The eye sockets were stuffed with fibers, and the mahogany-colored skins glistened. The black, shriveled lips were drawn back from the teeth. There were six of them, a crowd grinning hysterically, bobbing in the night. The blue tattoos were breathtakingly complex: intricate spirals that intersected and reintersected, curving in endless patterns around the cheeks and nose and chin. The tattooing had been done in life, the label said, and the heads preserved as a sign of respect.

  Just beyond, Margo could see the gallery narrowing to a point. A massive, squat totem pole stood before it, lit from beneath by a pale, orange light. The shadows of giant wolf heads and birds with cruel, hooked beaks thrust upward from the pole and splashed across the ceiling, gray against black. Certain she had reached a dead end, Margo approached the totem pole unwillingly. Then she noticed a small opening, ahead and on the left, leading into an alcove. She continued slowly, walking as quietly as possible. Any thought of calling out again for Moriarty had long since vanished. Thank God I’m nowhere near the Old Basement, she thought.

  The alcove held a display of fetishes. Some were simple stones carved in the shapes of animals, but the majority were monsters depicting the darker side of human superstition. Another opening brought Margo into a long, narrow room. Thick black felt covered all of the room’s surfaces, and a dim blue light filtered from hidden recesses. The ceiling was low above Margo’s head. Smithback would have to go through here on his hands and knees, she thought.