Reliquary

= 3 =

THE PHONE RANG abruptly, shattering the stillness of the small museum office. Margo Green, face mere inches from her computer terminal, sat back guiltily in her chair, a shock of short brown hair falling across her eyes.

The phone rang again, and she moved to answer it, then hesitated. No doubt it was one of the computer jocks in data processing, calling to complain about the enormous amount of CPU time her cladistic regression program was soaking up. She settled back and waited for the phone to stop ringing, the muscles of her back and legs pleasantly sore from the previous night’s workout. Picking up the hand trainer from her desk, she began squeezing it in a routine so familiar it had grown almost instinctive. Another five minutes and her program would be finished. Then they could complain all they wanted.

She knew about the new cost-cutting policy requiring that large batch jobs be submitted for approval. But that would have meant a flurry of e-mail before she could run the program. And she needed the results right away.

At least Columbia, where she’d been an instructor until accepting the assistant curatorship at the New York Museum of Natural History, wasn’t always in the midst of some new round of budget cutting. And the more the Museum got into financial trouble these days, the more it seemed to rely on show instead of substance. Already, Margo had noticed the early buildup for next year’s blockbuster exhibition, 21st Century Plagues.

She glanced up at the screen to check the progress of her regression program, then put down the hand trainer, reached into her bag and drew out the New York Post. The Post and a cup of black Kilimanjaro coffee had become her weekday morning ritual. There was something refreshing about the Post’s truculent attitude, like that of the Fat Boy in The Pickwick Papers. Besides, she knew she’d catch hell from her old friend Bill Smithback if he ever found out she’d missed a single homicide article carrying his byline.

She smoothed the tabloid on her knees, grinning at the headline despite herself. It was vintage Postean, a screaming 96-point banner that covered three-quarters of the front page:

SEWAGE CORPSE

IDENTIFIED AS MISSING DEB

She glanced down at the opening paragraph. Sure enough, it was Smithback’s work. Second front-page article this month, she thought; on the strength of this, Smithback would be strutting and primping, even more impossible to be around than usual.

She quickly skimmed the article. It was quintessential Smithback: sensationalist and macabre, full of loving attention to the gruesome details. In the opening paragraphs, he quickly summarized the facts that were by now well known to all New Yorkers. The “beautiful trust-funder” Pamela Wisher, known for her marathon late-night carousings, had disappeared two months earlier from a basement club on Central Park South. Ever since, her “smiling face with its dazzling teeth, vacant blue eyes, and expensive blond hair” had been plastered at every street corner from 57th to 96th. Margo had often seen the color photocopies of Wisher as she jogged to the Museum from her apartment on West End Avenue.

Now, the article breathlessly announced, the remains found the previous day—“buried in raw sewage” in Humboldt Kill and “locked in a bony embrace” with another skeleton—had been identified as Pamela Wisher’s. The second skeleton remained unidentified. An accompanying photo showed Wisher’s boyfriend, the young Viscount Adair, sitting on the curb in front of the Platypus Lounge with his head in his hands, minutes after learning of her grisly death. The police were, of course, “taking vigorous action.” Smithback closed with several man-on-the-street quotations of the “I hope they fry the bastard who did this” variety.

She lowered the paper, thinking of the grainy face of Pamela Wisher staring out at her from the numerous posters. She deserved a better fate than becoming New York’s big story of the summer.

The shrill sound of the phone again interrupted Margo’s thoughts. She glanced over at her terminal, pleased to see that the program had finished at last. Might as well answer it, she thought; she’d have to get this lecture over with sooner or later.

“This is Margo Green,” she said.

“Dr. Green?” came the voice. “About time.”

The thick Queens accent was distantly familiar, like a half-forgotten dream. Gruff, authoritarian. Margo searched her memory for the face belonging to the voice on the other end of the phone.

…All we can say is that a body has been found on the premises, under circumstances we are currently investigating…

She sat back in surprise.

“Lieutenant D’Agosta?” she asked.

“We need you in the Forensic Anthropology lab,” D’Agosta said. “Right away, please.”

“Can I ask—?”

“You may not. Sorry. Whatever you’re doing, forget it and come downstairs.” The line went dead with a sharp click.

Margo held the phone away from her face, looking at the mouthpiece as if waiting for further explanation. Then she opened her carryall and replaced the Post—carefully covering a small semiautomatic pistol in the process—pushed the chair away from the computer, and stepped quickly out of her office.