The Bone Vault

by Linda Fairstein

  “And Katrina, what did she do exactly?”

  “Everything at the Cloisters, including the stones of the chapels themselves, was purchased from ruins in Europe and reconstructed here. Some were of provenances that were easily traced and proved, while others were just scraps of rock, vandalized as the monasteries broke up over the centuries. This poor fellow,” Bellinger said, crouching as he spoke, “was found facedown, being used as part of a bridge to cross a stream in the Alps.”

  I kneeled beside him and rubbed my hand over the enormous black slab bearing the praying figure of a man.

  “So Katrina studied the art form, learning who the sculptors were and how to recognize a particular style of carving or identifiable family traits. It’s a continuing effort to verify what we have, and to know when to purchase valuable pieces should they come up for sale on the European market.”

  I circled the room, looking at all the dead figures in whose company Katrina Grooten had spent her days.

  “These sarchophagi,” I said, gesturing at the many tombs that lined the walls, some piled on top of each other. “Are there more like these in storage?”

  “Plenty of them.”

  “Here?”

  “Some here and some at the Met. They’ve got a vast basement, you know.”

  “Any reason for Katrina to have some of the others shipped up to the Cloisters? I mean, from periods other than the Middle Ages.”

  “She’s done it, I know. To compare styles. To help scholars who come here to research the way funereal art has changed over the ages.”

  “Ever had any Egyptian pieces here?” Mike asked.

  “I wouldn’t doubt it. Shipments come in and out from the Met all the time.”

  Mercer was moving in another direction. “Was Ms. Grooten involved in anything controversial while she was here?”

  Bellinger turned to walk us back toward the exit. “Not that I can think of. She didn’t normally operate at a high enough level to cross the big shots at the Met. The bestiary project was an exception, and there she was just on the committee acting in my stead. I wouldn’t have thought she’d ruffle any feathers while sitting in for me.”

  Mercer was thumbing through the file as we moved along. “What’s the reference in here to the ‘flea market fiasco,’ two years back? It’s in a memo from you to Thibodaux.”

  Bellinger stopped in his tracks. “The young scholars are so idealistic. It wasn’t a big deal. Katrina just had to be made to understand the commercial side of museum work.”

  I repeated Mercer’s question. “What exactly was the fiasco about?”

  “We got word-”

  “Who’swe?”

  “I was with Pierre Thibodaux and Erik Poste at a convention in Geneva. Word got around the place that one of those unusual finds had been made at a local flea market. A small medieval ivory, a carving of a hound chasing a rabbit, very similar to the large version that appears in the stonework outside.” Bellinger took a few steps. “I wanted it, for obvious reasons. And Thibodaux was willing to pay the price.”

  “Was Katrina there?”

  “Oh, no. But it’s a small world, this museum business. She had heard the rumor about the piece even before I flew back here. Anyway, we tried to buy the ivory but it was too late. It had been promised to the Copenhagen museum.”

  “What was Erik Poste’s role in this?”

  “Just that it made him furious while the squabbling about who would get the piece was going on, before the Danes firmed it up. Poste wanted Pierre to spend the money on something major for his European painting department rather than on some little rabbit that I coveted. A great portrait, or an artist like Bazille who’s underrepresented in the Met collection, rather than a six-inch piece of walrus tusk. We argued, but that happens among us all the time. You can’t hold a grudge around here, Ms. Cooper.”

  “And the carving?”

  The reclusive scholar smiled. “One of Thibodaux’s favorite smugglers-”

  “Smugglers?”

  “Yes, Ms. Cooper, you heard me. Pierre has a few favorites he relies on when he doesn’t get his own way with his checkbook. It’s an old tradition in this field. Anyway, Pierre’s man managed to get the piece out of Switzerland in about a week’s time, before the arrangements were made to ship it to Copenhagen. For his usual four percent commission. A month later, it was in one of our storerooms deep below Fifth Avenue.”

  “You stole the carving.”

  “Surely you don’t prosecute crimes that occur in Europe?” Bellinger laughed. “That’s been the nature of this work since museums first opened their doors. Some treasures came home in grand style, like Lord Elgin stealing the Greek marbles and setting them up for all the world to see in the British Museum. Others arrived more quietly and were bartered around town in secret. If there weren’t grave robbers and petty thieves, I’m afraid there would be far fewer works of art in public institutions everywhere in the world.”

  “And your precious little object?”

  “Will go on display after the summer. There wasn’t much of a scandal. We sent the Danes something of ours that they’d been longing for, and I got my ivory. All that was needed was a cooling-down period. People forget after a year or so. They quiet down.”

  “And Grooten?”

  “She learned as we all did. If you’re looking for a selfless way to help humanity, Detective, join the Red Cross. If you’re going to work in a museum, get used to the fact that most of what you see has been stolen from beneath someone’s nose. The great archaeologists who dug in Egypt and Turkey and Pompeii, they all believed what they recovered belonged to them personally. Took the urns and coins and jewels home to display on their own mantels and bandy about at their gaming clubs. Gave them away as gifts. Sold them to the highest bidder.”

  I looked around the room at the assortment of tombstones from France, Belgium, Spain, and England. Lords and ladies at rest together, far from their intended graves.

  “The spoils of war and the looted booty of imperial rule, Ms. Cooper. The Trojans did it, the British did it, the Germans did it, and may I add, even the American troops serving in the European and Pacific theaters did it during the Second World War. The only pretty part of this museum acquisition work is what you finally see behind the glass display cabinets.”

  I was standing beside one such case, mounted on a pedestal, as Bellinger spoke to us. It held the upraised statue of a man’s arm, completely silvered and bejeweled, with its long golden fingers raised in a position of blessing. The legend at its base described it as the reliquary of a bishop, and I could see the crystal windows in the arm that once displayed his sainted bones. I wondered what had become of the rest of the poor man’s remains.

  When we reached the top of the staircase through which we had entered, opposite the gift shop and the cloakroom, Bellinger started to say good-bye.

  Mike withdrew a small glassine envelope from his pocket. “What kind of tickets do you use for checking coats here?”

  Bellinger looked over his shoulder but there was no one inside. The day had been too mild.

  “The usual. A small square with a number on it.”

  “Like this?” Mike asked, showing him the stub that Dr. Kestenbaum had given to us.

  “Identical. Ours are blue. All the city-partnered museums use the same system, just different-colored tags.”

  “Who uses red ones? The Met?”

  “No, they’ve got white ones, if I’m not mistaken. The one you’ve got there is from the Museum of Natural History.”

  15

  Mercer led us down the steep incline from the Cloisters exit ramp and across the cobblestoned parking lot. Using a map that the case detective had sketched after her interview with Katrina Grooten, he tried to reconstruct the route the young woman had taken the night of her attack almost one year earlier.

  “What did you think of Hiram Bellinger?” Mike asked.

  “Not what I expected. I thought we’d get old and stodgy.” As soon a
s we reached the bottom of the shallow steps down which Grooten had steered her bicycle, we were engulfed by the thick foliage of shrubs and bushes.

  “Somebody could have been waiting for her back here,” Mercer said, pointing into an area where the greenery stood as high as his shoulders.

  “Like Grooten was a particular target?”

  “Yeah, if it was someone from the museum who did it, or who set her up.”

  “I thought you’d had some ski mask robberies in Fort Tryon Park.”

  “So this was either one more random victim in the pattern, or a copycat trying to make it look like the others.”

  “How about Lloyd, the guard who freaked her out?”

  Mercer tapped Mike on the back of the head, steering us up the hill again. “Don’t be putting the blame on the old black guy, Chapman.”

  “There’s no question the rapist was a black man. Everybody’s in the mix till we say they’re not. And besides, I didn’t like this Bellinger guy a fraction as much as Coop did.”

  “He’s white, Mike.” Mercer laughed.

  “Too white for my taste. How do you know he didn’t set her up? Claims he didn’t know her all that well, but seems to me he went out of his way to try to urge her to stay here. What was that about? C’mon. We got stuff to do. I’m going right down to Central Park West, check out this coatroom business. You with me?”

  I nodded my head. “What was your beep?”

  Mercer had been paged toward the end of the meeting and returned the call when we stepped outside the museum. “Beth Israel North. A nurse walked into the room of a ninety-one-year-old patient and found a man in bed with her. His pants were down and he had removed her hospital gown. The nurse screamed but the perp pulled his trousers up and ran out. They think it’s a guy who delivered flowers to the room next door. Crime scene dusted the vase and we got a call in to the florist. I’m going to stop by the hospital and see if I can get statements from the staff.”

  “The patient, too?”

  “She’snon compos. ”

  “Call the florist?”

  “Hospital security already did. The guy hires homeless men from local shelters to make his deliveries.”

  “That’s comforting.” I looked at my watch. “It’s almost four-thirty. Want to meet at my place when you’re done? We’ll go through Katrina’s personnel file and figure out how to tackle this thing. I’ll have Sarah assign someone to work with you on the new case.”

  I got into Mike’s department car and we wound our way down the circular drive to get on the West Side Highway going south. I took out my cell phone and dialed Ryan Blackmer.

  “Any more e-mails from your cyber monster?”

  “All quiet. Harry works a four to twelve. So that means Brittany doesn’t get home from her after-school activities till almost dinnertime.”

  “I got an idea. Why don’t you suggest tomorrow’s meet be at the Museum of Natural History? What kid doesn’t love that place? Dinosaur bones, butterfly exhibits, the planetarium. They could meet in front by the statue of Teddy Roosevelt. That gives the backup team lots of cover with the crowds around. I’m sure the guys can find a crummy hotel within a block or two, between Columbus and Amsterdam.”

  “Not bad. I’ll suggest it.”

  There were a few places in town that were naturals for pedophiles. In winter, the Christmas tree and ice-skating rink at Rockefeller Center were a magnet for men who wanted to rub up against the rear ends of little girls who stood mesmerized by the lights of the huge evergreen and the practiced spins of the twirling skaters. Summer guaranteed a slew of girls and boys in public swimming pools, jumping on top of each other and enjoying the horseplay.

  Among the year-round havens were the city’s museums and zoos, which delivered busloads of kids every day to wander through the exhibits, usually oblivious to the hungry adults who lurked in rest rooms and around the concession stands.

  “Can you switch me over to Sarah?”

  Ryan put me on hold and forwarded the call. “How bad has it been?”

  “I’m fine,” she answered. “You making any progress?”

  “Just getting some background filled in. Anything new?”

  “Awful case up at the hospital.”

  “Mercer was just with us. He’s on his way over there now. I told him I’d ask you to put someone on it, but you’re already ahead of me.”

  “I checked out the name and social security number the perp gave to the florist, who pays him per diem. Doesn’t match. So we have no idea who the guy really is. Staked out the shelter but he hasn’t been there very long, so they don’t expect him to show up tonight.

  “And I’ve had one walk-in you should know about. Thirty-nine-year-old woman who claims she’s been in an S and M relationship with a guy for two years. I’m doing a search warrant now for his apartment.”

  “For the equipment?”

  “Whips, chains, a pulley system in the ceiling that drops out with restraints for her hands and feet. And the videotapes.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of every time he whips her. I don’t think we have any sex crimes, ‘cause she consented to everything sexual. But the assault charge will stick.” New York’s highest court had made it clear that you can’t consent to being assaulted. “She’s got scars and bruising all over her back and buttocks. Permanent. It’s painful just to look at her body.”

  “Need any help with it?”

  “Will you have time to look over the tapes in the morning, if Lieutenant West comes back with anything from the warrant?”

  “I’ll be there first thing.”

  “I don’t want to authorize an arrest until you give us the goahead. You took so much heat the last time we had one of these. What’ll really make you sick is that the perp is a lawyer. Brooklyn Law School, master’s in taxation from NYU.”

  We had prosecuted another high-profile sadomasochist recently, and despite the fact that he had beaten his victim with wooden batons and dripped hot candle wax on her body, one of the tabloid columnists-fueled by his excessive daily intake of alcohol-saw fit to criticize our unit, and the college student who had been restrained overnight in his apartment.

  “See you in the morning.”

  There was no place to leave the car on Central Park West. The great old museum, made up now of twenty-three interconnected buildings, was ringed by the buses that had come to pick up students at the end of the day. Mike turned onto Seventy-seventh Street and parked in front of the original building facade, throwing his parking permit in the windshield.

  We were conscious that it was getting late in the day, and we walked briskly down the path and under the immense arch, below the chiseled granite markings:AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY.

  This was probably the first institution visited by every child who grew up within range of New York City. Indian artifacts, dioramas with mammals of all sorts, fossils, skeletons, bugs, mollusks, meteorites, minerals, gems, and now a hall of biodiversity. It was more fun than every other colossal collection of things, and any kid you talked to would be likely to name it as his or her favorite city destination.

  As I brushed past the guard at the door, he put out an arm to try to slow me down. “We close at five forty-five, young lady. That gives you less than half an hour.”

  Mike went up to the information desk and asked for the nearest coat-check facility.

  “Are you a member?”

  “I’m a cop.” He flashed his shield and the elderly volunteer blanched.

  “Oh, well. It’s, um, just follow that blue arrow across the lobby.”

  The spaces within the museum were vast. We zigzagged through the crowds of classes and Scout troops on field trips, making our way around the sixty-foot-long war canoe, peopled by half-naked natives from British Columbia who had been paddling against the same current since I’d first come here as a toddler.

  The line was long as kids stood restlessly to retrieve backpacks and lunch boxes that had been checked on their ar
rival. Mike didn’t have the patience to wait. Again, he flashed his badge at the man who was returning their belongings.

  “Let me see your claim checks, please?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The ticket stubs. I’d like to see them.”

  The attendant offered up a giant roll of numbered claims in his left hand. “Like this?”

  Mike reached for the end of the check that was dangling and ripped it off. He held it against the one Kestenbaum had found in Katrina’s pants pocket, which Mike had taken with us to voucher as evidence, and it matched exactly. “Where’s the lost and found?”

  “Something you misplaced today, sir?”

  “Nope. My girlfriend here is kind of absentminded. Left her snowshoes and gloves at the museum last year and wants to get them ready for the season.”

  “You want to be going to security then. Follow the signs past the IMAX theater and around to the front of the building. It’s right before you get to the Hall of Planet Earth.”

  Mike was practically trotting now, as I raced behind him. The Northwest Coast Indians hall seemed endless, with its displays of men in loincloths and women in animal skins cooking over open fires and curing meat on racks above their heads.

  “You know what’s completely different from the Met in the way this place is laid out?”

  “The light, for one thing.”

  I had never realized how dark it was in these huge corridors. Once inside the exhibits, there was no natural light, and none of the openness of the art museum. The cases were backlit, but there was a cool darkness that enveloped the entire place.

  I followed as Mike turned the corner and entered the enormous central gallery reserved for North American mammals. Again the darkness of the hall was striking, with dim, glass-fronted cabinets displaying the familiar great-antlered caribou and herds of bison in clusters.