The Bone Vault - Linda Fairstein (3 page)

"You see any markings on that crate?" Mike had walked to the foot of the ramp. Lenny Dove, who was assigned to the same squad as Mike at Manhattan North Homicide, had put on a crime scene outfit, complete with lab gown and plastic gloves. He was squatting beside the packing box, shining his light across the slats, which had been broken apart by the security officers.

"Got a label for you. Has the Met logo. Says, `1983.752. Limestone sarcophagus.'"

"Handwritten?"

"Typed."

"C'mon, blondie. Alley-oop. Better leave those spikes in the car." He handed me the proper cover for my clothes, hands, and feet.

I kicked off my shoes and followed Mike up, stepping with my gauze booties on the rungs of the metal ladder that hung off the left corner of the truck and swinging my leg over onto the hard wooden floor. Pierre Thibodaux started up after me.

"Not so fast, Mr. T. We'll call if we need you."

"But, I--uh--I'd like to know--"

"Give us a few minutes up here, okay? It's not exactly like viewing hours at your local funeral parlor. Have a little respect for the dead. We're not open for business yet."

Thibodaux backed off and rejoined his two colleagues. The truck's well was pitch-black and airless. Mike pulled on latex gloves and he and Lenny trained torch- sized beams along the floor so we could see our way over to the exposed sarcophagus.

"Stand back, Coop. It's not gonna be pretty."

"I've seen--"

"You've seen nothing, kid. Take a few steps over there till I say otherwise."

I moved a few paces away, backing into another crated package.

"On the count of three, Lenny," Mike said, positioning himself on the same side of the ancient box as his partner, but at the end closer to me.

"One, two, three." At the same moment, they attempted to lift the stone lid from its base. Unable to move it more than an inch, they couldn't look inside before dropping the weighty piece in place. But the brief exposure had released a powerful odor. Not the hideous stench of putrefaction I had expected. There was the sickly sweetness of heavy perfume, laced with a bitter, pungent smell that kicked its way out of the coffin and into our dark, crowded space. I gagged on the thick combination that filled the truck's hot confines. Even the dog, resting his chin on his paws as he sat at his master's feet a few lengths away from the eighteen-wheeler, picked up his head and softly howled. He had scented some unmistakable marker of death hours earlier.

"Slide it, Lenny. Just lift and slide."

This time, Mike had walked around to the opposite side, facing his sergeant at the far end. On the third count, they hoisted the lid just high enough to clear the lip of the coffin and eased it back six or seven inches. Mike picked up the flashlight, looked in, and I started toward him.

"Hold it right there, Coop. Close it up, Lenny."

I had my nose and mouth covered with both hands, fighting the urge to be sick. The dog was on his feet now, pacing and whining, straining at his lead.

"I'll draw you a picture, kid. Go on back down." I knew Mike's moods and this wasn't one to mess with. I'd called him here to help me, and I had no choice but to follow his orders.

As I held on to the ladder and stepped off the truck, I saw him drop to his knees and move the flashlight slowly across the lower sides of the casket. Every now and then he ran his gloved hands back and forth along the surface, as though feeling for imperfections.

I joined Thibodaux and waited for Mike and Lenny to stop whispering to each other. Within minutes, they stripped off their gloves and threw them on the floor beside the crates, climbing down to tell us what they had found. "You okay? You look like a beached tuna, gasping for breath."

I hadn't realized that I was ferociously gulping in the clean night air to rid my lungs of the foul smell. "What could you see?"

"First of all, you oughtta get your money back for that coffin, Mr. T. Full of holes. It's the fluids from whatever that body's been wrapped in that leaked through the cracks and attracted the dog's attention this evening. I had my snout right up against them, on the floor, and couldn't smell a thing. But that's just what those shepherds are trained for. Drugs and death."

"So the box and body probably could have made it into a container and out of the country without detection?"

Mike nodded at me. "Till you pull back that lid, it takes a professional nose to get what's just beginning to seep through."

"Could you--"

"There's a body, no question about it. And somebody tried to wrap her in linen cloth, to give it the semblance of a mummy, I guess. But we can't play games with something like this out here in a filthy shipyard in the middle of the night. We've got to get this whole setup to the morgue."

"Her? Are you sure it's a woman?" "It's just a good guess at this point. Hair a little longer than yours," Mike said, as I instinctively reached for mine, hanging limply against the nape of my neck. "A bit darker in color, with a shiny silver barrette. Small physique, and thin. That's all I can give you tonight."

Mike poked the small of my back to move me away from Thibodaux. We left him talking to Lenny Dove, who was taking down his office telephone number and making arrangements to see him the following afternoon.

"Where was she being shipped to?"

"A long cruise. A sweltering summer voyage to the Cairo Museum on the high seas. There wasn't even a date set for transport yet. Cleo would have been like soup by the time she got home to Egypt."

"What do you want to do?"

"There's only one place to go with this, and the oxymoronic nickname `Garden State' doesn't figure in my plans."

The last case Mike and I had worked together, the previous winter, had involved a prosecutor's office in New Jersey. Charges of corruption and incompetence had complicated the murder investigation of Lola Dakota, a distinguished professor who had been the target of hired killers in an operation that our Jersey counterparts had completely bungled. "We're on the same wavelength here, aren't we? You want to take the body back to our medical examiner's office, right?" I asked.

"No better place. Why risk this anywhere else? You worried about a little legal technicality like jurisdiction?" Mike beamed his best grin at me. "I'm the beauty of this operation. You're the brains. Figure out how to get us there, blondie."

"Ignore the fact that we're standing in the middle of a shipyard in Newark, New Jersey. Battaglia always says he's got global jurisdiction." The district attorney, Paul Battaglia, was a genius at capturing cases well beyond the borders of New York County. He had gone after international banking cartels when every other prosecutor in America had ignored them, recovering millions of dollars in restitution and fines from financial institutions worldwide. He liked creative lawyering.

"It's a beautifully clear spring night and I can practically touch Manhattan island from here. Strawberry Fields, roses in Spanish Harlem, the great white lights of Broadway...we're just a hop, skip, and a jump away. Doesn't that count?"

"Don't expect to see that reasoning in my brief for the court."

"I'm ready to tell the truck driver to rev up his engines. You got the balls to do this?"

I retrieved my cell phone from the car and dialed my secretary's number, reaching her voice mail to leave a message for the morning. "Hey, Laura, it's Alex. As soon as you get in and pick this up, would you Xerox a few copies of the Criminal Procedure Law, section 20.40, on geographical jurisdiction? I'll need to have one set ready for Battaglia and me, and another set for McKinney."

"Cleo was never actually in the state of Jersey, right? Never left the back of the truck. Never made landfall."

"And the truck is a common carrier, Mr. Chapman. If we've got a homicide, it can be prosecuted in any county in which the carrier passed during the trip. We don't know how long our victim has been dead, do we?"

"Well, I could make an educated--"

"I'm begging you not to do that. Right now I'm still operating in good faith that she may have died on Tenth Avenue, on her approach to the Lincoln Tunnel, or before she got on the entrance ramp to the George Washington Bridge. Either way, it establishes jurisdiction for us. By the time a forensic pathologist states an accurate time of death, I'll be more likely to know exactly where she was when she was killed, which may not be something I want to hear this very minute."

"And she'll be more likely to have a professional autopsy and a shot at a successful prosecution if we get her home. Let's get the truck back on the road and explain all this to the medical examiner. I'll be in your office in the morning, after you break the news to Battaglia. Have Thibodaux get you home safe and sound." "Will you guys ride shotgun behind the truck?" I asked Mike. "I'm about to hijack my first corpse."

3

I slipped my key in the lock, opened my apartment door, and went to the kitchen without turning on the overhead light. I held a glass against the edge of the automatic ice maker and let four or five cubes drop into it. The decanter on the bar had been refilled by my housekeeper, and I listened as the Dewar's I poured crackled over the frozen pieces and floated them to the top. The glass cooled my hand, and I held it pressed against my forehead for several seconds before I took my first sip.

Walking to the bathroom, I removed my watch and set it on the dressing table. It was almost 2A.M. , and I had to be at my desk before eight, ready to meet with a detective who needed help with a complaining witness whose story about a sexual assault did not make sense. I took off my wrinkled suit and draped it over the back of the chair. It was unlikely I'd ever want to see it again after it was returned from the dry cleaner; it might be headed to the thrift shop. I was sure I could never wear it without thinking of the body in the coffin in the back of the truck.

I turned the water on and waited until steam filled the room, clouding the mirror so I didn't have to look at my own reflection. I was too tired to deal with that. The circles under my eyes had as many rings as the oldest redwoods in the forests. I opened the cabinet to find some kind of bath oil that would have a calming effect. I pushed aside the rosemary and lavender to read the label on the chamomile. Nina Baum and Joan Stafford, my closest friends, would know exactly what to use. My luck, I'd slather myself with something invigorating rather than soothing.

I showered and washed my hair, then toweled it dry as I carried my drink into the bedroom. The alarm was already set for six-thirty, so I folded back the soft cotton sheet and settled onto the bed, relishing the comfort of the cool, dark room.

A hand stroked my thigh beneath the covers. I turned my head and saw Jake's dark hair against the pale yellow bedding. "Smooth marble finish, perfectly sculpted. Must be the Venus de Milo."

I rolled over and caressed his head, kissing him on the ear. "Wrong museum, wrong continent, wrong broad. This one's got arms." I ran my hand along the length of his spine.

He started to sit up and turn on the light.

"Please don't. The light, I mean. I'm just trying to wind down for a few minutes. This is a nice surprise." I continued to rub his thigh.

We had tried living together at his place for a few weeks around the New Year, but I had found it too difficult to give up my independence. I was in love with Jake, but not ready to make a permanent commitment while we both had such strong professional pulls. His job took him out of town for long and erratic periods of time, and mine required an intensity of focus that made it hard to be available when he was between assignments. I did not need the artificial compromise of one apartment to stay faithful to him.

Jake turned onto his side and crossed his leg on top of mine. He put his hand on my chin, turning my face to his and kissing my mouth, over and over again until I responded to him. I rested my head on the pillow and he played with the ringlets that were forming around my face, first with his fingers and then with his lips.

"When you didn't call within the hour, Nina and I figured that the message she heard delivered to Thibodaux at the party was right. There's a dead girl?"

I nodded my head, sat up, and reached for the scotch.

"Somewhere downtown, Nina said."

"Newark, actually. Mike's got her over at the ME's office now. We'll have a better idea of the whole thing tomorrow. I'm just wired from being out there at the shipyard. You're supposed to be calming me down and taking my mind off my work. Isn't that why you're here?" I slid down lower on the bed and wrapped Jake in an embrace.

"I'm mostly here so you didn't worry all night about me being seduced by the old dame dripping in sapphires. She doubled back for me the minute you left. Ruth Gerst's her name."

"Is she really a trustee of the Met?" "Most definitely. Toying with giving them her late husband's entire collection of Greek and Roman sculpture. Wants me to come up to her country house in Greenwich and see it sometime."

"Where was Nina when I needed her?"

"Quentin was making her crazy. He was furious that Thibodaux didn't do the big fireworks finale. Quentin had apparently sold a highlights special to one of the cable networks and now he's got no grand ending to deliver. Nina and I finally rescued each other, had a lovely dinner, and I managed to cross-examine her mercilessly about all the crazy things you two used to do together. I dropped her off at the Regency."

"At least she gets to sleep late and have room service in the morning. No such luck for us."

"I wasn't sure that you'd be happy that I let myself in. I know your stalker hasn't been heard from in a couple of months, but I didn't think this was the night to experiment with letting you come home alone."

"Much as I hate to wish her on someone else, she's obviously found a new target." One of the witnesses in an old case of mine had been harassing me all winter, showing up at my apartment lobby from time to time, with doormen and cops scrambling unsuccessfully to snare her. "No sign of her in ages. Maybe her parents had her institutionalized after all."

"Shhhhh. Don't think about her now. Don't think about anything." Jake's mouth brushed down the side of my neck, finding my shoulder blade, and then moving on to my left breast. "No, it's not Venus. This is definitely not marble."