The Bone Vault

13

“See any Hessians?” Mike Chapman called out to Mercer Wallace, who was leaning against the massive granite stones that formed a wall bordering the grouping of monasteries that had been moved from Europe to this rocky cliff three-quarters of a century ago. It was shortly after twelve on a sunny May afternoon, and we climbed the circular walk to join Mercer on the ledge overlooking the Hudson River.

“You are standing, my friends, on the highest piece of land on the island of Manhattan, accessible by the deepest subway station in the city-not that you would give a thought to any form of public transportation, Coop,” Mike continued. “Almost lost to the Brits in the affair of the outposts.”

Mercer turned to listen to the military history of this extraordinary piece of open public land on the northern end of Manhattan, his huge frame posed against the wide stretch of water below.

“General Washington left the garrison here and headed north, while Cornwallis surrounded this place with warships, Highlanders, British troops, and Hessians. They took the fort, killed most of the Americans, and were encamped here until these heights were refortified. That’s why the Long Hill outwork was renamed for William Tryon, the last English governor of New York.”

The Cloisters Museum stood on a spectacular hilltop in Fort Tryon Park, the last of the New York City parklands designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. John D. Rockefeller had given the city the buildings and more than sixty acres of unique urban land, with paved walks, terraces, and rocky terrain covering the area from the old ramparts of the original fort to the peak on which the imported ruins had been reset and enclosed in a contemporary setting.

My eyes swept the vista, leaving the river to follow the pathway that led directly down from our perch through the densely wooded area. Katrina Grooten had set off from the museum along one of those sloping walks on an evening last June, into the hands of a modern-day highwayman who had pulled her into the thickets that shielded them from view while he assaulted her.

“Hiram Bellinger is waiting for us inside.” Mercer led us around the impressive structure and down to the entrance that faced the parking lot. The Romanesque-style doorway, adorned with animals and birds, both real and imaginary, led to a series of arched steps. We were among only a handful of visitors, and I felt as though I had stepped back a few centuries into a medieval church as I made my way upward, passing the occasional window framed with tiny panes of leaded glass.

“Cool in here,” Mike said.

The thick walls, constructed of enormous pieces of stone, lowered the temperature at least ten degrees as we stepped inside. I’m sure Mike was wondering, as I was, whether this nouveau monastery’s chill would have been conducive to preserving a dead body. The machine-made wrought-iron hand railings were the only reminder that we had not entered a time warp.

At the top of the staircase a lone guard pointed the way to the curator’s office. Beyond the splendid marble capitals of the Cuxa Cloister, one of the five French monasteries re-created here, we crossed through a serene garden and over to the tower that housed the museum’s administrative wing.

I knocked on the door that bore the signHIRAM BELLINGER, CURATOR-MEDIEVAL ART, expecting it to be opened by a churlish old recluse who had spent decades with his nose in his antique manuscripts. Hiram Bellinger didn’t fit the description. He couldn’t have been any older than Mercer, perhaps forty-two at most. His khaki slacks, tasseled loafers, and cotton turtleneck under an open-collared button-down shirt gave him the look of a country squire.

Books were stacked everywhere around the large room, and from its setting high above the museum, I could see for miles up the Hudson.

“Hard to work on a day like this, so I’m happy to have the interruption. The medieval monks liked isolation, Ms. Cooper. Almost as much as I do. The Benedictines preferred mountaintops while the Cisterians chose remote river valleys. I’ve been fortunate enough to find the closest imitation of a monastic setting that any big city offers.”

Bellinger invited us to sit around a circular table in the middle of the room. He moved several open volumes of books to the windowsill and pushed other mounds of them to one side of the tabletop.

“How can I help you?”

“We’d like to talk to you about Katrina. Katrina Grooten.”

“I still can’t believe what I’ve heard,” he said, rearranging his papers and sitting next to me.

“Exactly what is it that you’ve heard?”

“That she’s dead. That she never actually left New York to go back home, which is what she told us she was doing.” He shook his head. “That someone killed her.”

“We intend to find out who. And why. We need to start with some information about Katrina. What she did, whom she knew, how she lived-”

“And who she pissed off.” Mike’s manner jarred with the refined calm of Bellinger’s aerie.

“That last would be a very short list. But I’ll give it some thought. Katrina could get under your skin if she found an issue, a passion that engaged her. But most of the time she was quiet, almost to the point of being withdrawn.”

“How long had you known her?”

“I hired her, in fact. Almost three years ago.”

“Where did you meet?”

“She showed up at the Met, résumé in hand, like most other graduate students with a degree in art history. They teach, they get more degrees, they work in museums.”

“There is a medieval art collection in the main building, too, isn’t there?”

“Of course. A very good one. That’s the reason Katrina applied there. But when her application was circulated, it wound up on my desk. Her interests suited my needs perfectly.”

“Why is that?”

“She had just completed an apprenticeship at the Musée des Augustins. Do you know it?”

None of us did.

“Toulouse, in France. It’s very much like the Cloisters, except it survived in its original site. The museum is an old convent building, quite sumptuous. In addition to the church buildings, it houses a remarkable art collection. Rubens, Van Dyck, Ingres, Corot. Most people are attracted to the art. Katrina immersed herself in the Gothic and Romanesque sculpture. She had a wonderful eye for medieval treasures. I invited her to join our operation.”

“How many of you are there working up here?”

“With support staff, just over a hundred. Librarians, bookshop personnel, security, janitorial. I’ve got an assistant curator, a good number of restorers, and then half a dozen interns, like Katrina.”

“And those others, was she close to them?”

“Professionally. I’d tell you to talk to them, but the interns come and go. The salary is low, this facility is a throwback to another age-so kids just out of school find it a bit inconvenient for socializing-and it’s hard to get to. I’ll have to check to see who overlapped with Katrina.”

“Are you single?” Mike was looking for a wedding ring as Bellinger gestured with his left hand, but there was none.

“No, I’m married.”

“Your wife?”

Bellinger smiled. “Works for a music production company.”

“Classical?”

“No. Pop, rock and roll, rap, whatever’s hot.”

“Kind of a Jack Sprat thing, huh?” Chapman said. “You eat no fat, she eats no lean.”

“Just gives me even more appreciation for the quiet within these walls.”

“Ever hang out with Katrina?”

“Museum functions. Command performances when Thibodaux wanted to trot us out for the trustees. Nothing personal.”

“Guess you won’t have to answer to Pierre any longer.”

“You’ve probably heard that I wasn’t part of his fan club. Too much P. T. Barnum and not enough emphasis on scholarship and education. I’m grateful to him for some terrific acquisitions he made for the Cloisters, but we didn’t have very much in common.”

“Is that why you assigned Ms. Grooten as the Cloisters’ liaison for the show that was being planned for next year with the Museum of Natural History? Wasn’t that a lot of responsibility for an intern?”

“Katrina was extremely knowledgeable, Detective. Far more scholarly than many of her peers, and I worked with her quite closely on the project. I realize the exhibition is going to be a meaningful source of revenue for both museums. To me, anything that takes me away from my research is a waste of time. I thought it would be a good opportunity for Katrina to mix with other people at both institutions, get to make some acquaintances that would give her more of a life in the city. Get her noticed by some of the higher-ups.”

“Did she enjoy it?”

“Seemed to. I think she had quite a good time exploring all our treasures to look for the animals that could be featured. Bestiaries were creations of medieval art originally, so they’re everywhere in our work. And I also got a sense that she looked forward to the meetings. Making friends, spending time downtown, coming out of her shell a bit.”

“Has another intern taken over where she left off?”

“That was my plan,” Bellinger said. “But time was getting short so I’ve taken on much of it myself, as you can see. Seemed like more trouble than it was worth to start training someone all over again.”

In the far corner of the room, assembled on a table, were a variety of objects that depicted an array of fantastic animals. “That fresco of the lion is from Spain. According to the old bestiaries, lions slept with their eyes open, as paragons of watchfulness. And this,” he said, walking over and picking up a whimsical brass figure, “this was one of Katrina’s favorites.”

“What is it?”

“An aquamanile. The priests used them to wash their hands during the celebration of Mass. This one’s a wyvern.”

“A what?”

“A two-legged dragon, swallowing a man. His tail curves over his wings, forming the handle with which to pour.” He surveyed the menagerie. “Double-headed eagles, devil’s helpers with cloven hooves, lions restrained by apes, Harpies-with their angelic faces and false music-luring sailors to their death. Katrina adored these creatures.”

“So when did you take over the exhibition project coordination?”

“After Katrina resigned at the end of the year.”

“If she was so happy with this kind of work, weren’t you surprised that she was quitting?”

“I’ve learned not to invest a great deal of emotional energy in bonding with the graduate students. It’s usually a short stay. They’re parking here briefly before they go back to school for their doctorates, or this place is just too damn unexciting for them. At least Katrina had a valid excuse. I mean, what can you say when someone tells you she’s been raped?”

Mercer and I exchanged glances. “When, exactly?”

“Not when it happened. Not for more than a month. But the whole thing had a much more profound impact on her than she had anticipated. It began to affect her work, even her relationships with other people here.”

“And that’s why she discussed the rape with you?”

“In confidence, yes. Because she was conflicted about what to do. I’ll walk you through the areas she spent time in, Ms. Cooper. These buildings are a series of chapels and gardens and arcades. As beautiful as they are, they’re rather foreboding, with statues of grotesques and effigies of the dead all around. We don’t get the heavy foot traffic that the main Metropolitan museum gets. It can be fairly-shall I say-haunting up here on our hilltop, especially late at night when there’s no one to keep you company. I believe Katrina was attacked about a year ago, am I right?”

“In June.”

“Well, one night in August, while she was working alone on a sketch of a stone monster in the vault of the Langon Chapel, she was startled by one of the guards who had come in to do a routine security check. She hadn’t heard his footsteps, I guess, and she looked up to see him standing over her. She let out a scream. She scared him as much as she scared herself.”

“Didn’t she know him?”

“That’s just it. He had changed out of his uniform to go off duty, and came back to check out everything one more time. Katrina had never seen him in jeans and a T-shirt, with a baseball cap on. She didn’t recognize him. The next morning, she was in at the crack of dawn, waiting for me, to explain what had happened.”

“Why?”

“She wanted to quit. She felt horribly guilty. The guard was an African-American, and she knew she had insulted him terribly by responding to his appearance with fright. That’s the day she told me that she had been sexually assaulted.

“And she told me how ashamed she was, because she kept reacting with fear every time she saw an unfamiliar black face, anxious that it was the man who attacked her.”

That kind of response was all too common. Victims whose assailants were unapprehended had a generalized terror, irrational even to them, that the next stranger they encountered, if he was the same race as their rapist, might be the person who was responsible for the crime. They knew he was out there somewhere, and they started at the sight of any person they didn’t know.

“Did she tell you whether she could identify her rapist?”

“According to what she toldme, he’d been wearing a ski mask. That’s what had her so strung out. Katrina had no idea if the rapist was someone she’d ever seen before or not. His black hands and neck were all she saw clearly. So here was poor Lloyd, who’d just gone back into the chapel one more time to make sure she was okay that night, and she jumped out of her skin when she saw him.”

“Did she quit?”

Bellinger answered softly, “I wouldn’t let her. I asked her to tell me the story of the attack, and she did. I spoke to Lloyd about it that very same day, and he sought her out to try to calm her. Told her he understood completely.

“Quite frankly, I thought a lot of it had to do with the fact that she was raised in South Africa. Katrina tried very hard to convince herself that she had no prejudices or racial bias. Her family had been in Cape Town for generations, and she talked from time to time about the horrors of apartheid on a society. I’m not sure she could ever have been responsible for testifying in a case that would have sent a black man to jail, no matter what he had done to her.”

“But she did resign eventually?”

“Several months later, just around the Christmas holidays. I found her note in the file,” he said, walking back to his desk. “She was anxious to get out of town before the New Year. If I remember correctly, there was a big ice storm predicted right about the time she was supposed to leave. It didn’t surprise us that she wanted to get out before it stranded her here.”

Mike Chapman rolled his eyes at me. “Yeah, Ms. Cooper decided to hibernate during that one, right? It was a killer.”

I had tried to put the images of last December’s frigid encounter with a greedy murderer out of my thoughts. Mercer got us back on track. “Between August, when she told you about the rape, and the end of the year, did you notice any change in her behavior?”

“Everyone I knew had a change in behavior, Mr. Wallace. After September eleventh.”

I breathed in and bit my lip, remembering the devastating aftermath of the terrorist attacks.

“Maybe that’s why I minimized Katrina’s distress. We were all so incredulous. So frightened and self-absorbed. She just never pulled out of it. Things like that episode with Lloyd. And her lack of spirit, her general malaise.”

“What malaise?”

“I suppose I don’t have to tell you three investigators about what occurs. The rape changed Katrina’s whole life. She didn’t trust anyone after that. Wasn’t able to stay here late and work. Had trouble getting to the Cloisters, because she didn’t want to walk or bike through the park, yet she didn’t have the money for cab fare every day. What is it called? PTSD?”

Post-traumatic stress disorder. Many victims of violent crime suffer from it for months or even years after an attack. Symptoms vary widely, from sleeplessness and eating disorders to weight loss and dysfunctions of every kind. There are scores of survivors whose recovery is fast and full; they never forget the attack but have the emotional and physical resources to move forward. There are far too many others without the support system to regain the stability of their former lives for months or even years after the occurrence of the crime.

“Who told you about that?”

“Her counselor, actually. As soon as Katrina told me, I asked her whether I could speak with the woman who was helping her deal with the rape.”

“Do you know who she is? Her name, I mean?” The medical record in the file Mercer had seen had a check mark next to the box that said Katrina Grooten had refused an appointment for follow-up psychological care.

Bellinger was still standing at his desk, flipping through his Rolodex cards. “Loselli. Harriet Loselli. Would you like her number?”

“I got that,” Mike said. “What I’d like is to hear her talk for once without that miserable, whiny, you-cops-are-all-insensitive-bastards recording that goes off from her weaselly little mouth whenever one of us hits the emergency room with a victim.”

There were superb rape crisis counseling units at hospitals all over the city, run by experienced psychologists and social workers, staffed with volunteers who went out on cases at all hours of the day and night. How did Katrina wind up with Harriet? The most obnoxious, ignorant, and self-centered of the crew, she was unlikely to have dealt with the depth of Katrina Grooten’s problems and concerns.

“Did you actually speak with Loselli?”

“Yes, Katrina gave her permission to talk with me.”

“About these psychological reactions?”

“Not really. My main concern was her physical condition.”

Mercer put down his pen and we all focused on Bellinger. “What do you mean?”

“From the time she disclosed the rape to me in August, I began to keep an eye out for her. When I knew she was going to be working late, I sent her home in a car. If I noticed she wasn’t eating, I’d bring an extra sandwich for lunch. By midfall, I’d certainly say by October, I didn’t think she looked very well at all.”

“Did you speak with her about it?”

“I don’t know about your office, Ms. Cooper, but we’ve got pretty strict institutional guidelines about sexual harassment. Puts a supervisor in kind of a catch-22 position. ‘You’re not looking very well today, Katrina. Seems to me like you’ve dropped a few pounds. That old spark I used to see fly when we discussed the one-point-three-million-dollar purchase we expected the museum to make on a tapestry from Bordeaux, it just isn’t there in your eyes anymore.’ Uh-uh. Only gets a guy in trouble. I talked it over with my wife and she told me it was none of my business. Leave it alone.”

“Did you tell anyone else?”

“Sure. Pierre Thibodaux. He’s the boss. I put it right in his lap. I told him I thought one of our rising stars had a problem and needed our help if we were going to hang on to her.”

“What did he do?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. You know what his response was? When I told him that she had been raped leaving work a few months earlier, he told me to forget about our telephone conversation. He told me that he wanted me to destroy any records I was keeping about the fact that she had been assaulted.”

“What?” Chapman asked.

I whispered to Mercer the same word that Bellinger spoke aloud: “Lawsuit. All he was concerned about was the museum’s potential liability. ‘Pierre,’ I said, ‘this girl is suffering. There’s something seriously wrong with her, and someone here needs to intervene.’ He refused to deal with that aspect of it. It’s all about money to him, all the time. He kept insisting that Katrina was probably setting up a case to sue the museum.”

“I don’t get it,” Mike said, looking at me.

“Sure you do. Cloisters employee working late, probably to make a deadline for a research project or exhibition.” Bellinger nodded in agreement as I talked. “Leaves the museum alone and is attacked, still on the grounds. No one is ever caught or charged with the crime. Victim suffers from generic psychological ailment. Maybe she’s going to feel better some day, after lots of expensive therapy. Maybe she’s not. Museum dangles half a million dollars in front of her nose to keep her quiet. Don’t scare the tourists, don’t upset the coworkers.”

“Did Thibodaux know the girl you were talking about was Katrina Grooten? I mean, did you mention her name?” Mike was clearly drawn back to the reaction when he had shown her photograph to the director, who claimed not to recognize her.

Bellinger thought for a few moments. “I’m not sure whether I did. Pierre had met her a couple of times. But that would have been at group meetings or large social occasions. I’m not sure I thought he would have known her. It shouldn’t have mattered who she was, frankly, once I brought the gravity of this to his attention.”

“Anyone else you told?”

“Yes. I tried two of the women next. Thought that might strike a responsive chord with the sisterhood.” Bellinger shook his head as he spoke. “They both knew her from the planning sessions for the big exhibit. Eve Drexler, who’s Thibodaux’s assistant, and Anna Friedrichs, who’s the curator in one of the other departments at the Met.”

“Yes, we saw both of them yesterday. How did they react?”

“I was foolish to think that Eve would do anything to cross Thibodaux. She listened to everything I told her and asked me to keep her informed. But she basically advised me not to worry about it. It was just a ‘woman’s problem’ and Katrina would get over it.”

“And Anna?”

“She was good. She’s the one who urged me to call the counselor. Anna had noticed the changes, too. She felt the phone call would have more weight coming from me, since Katrina worked directly for me. So I called.”

“What did Harriet say?”

“I told her my concern. I described the changes in Katrina since the summer. How she had lost weight and become listless. That lately, she had become apathetic about her work, which was very uncharacteristic of her.”

It not only sounded like post-traumatic stress, but also like the beginning of an overlay of arsenic poisoning.

“I asked Harriet whether she thought Katrina should see a physician, whether there was something medically wrong that might be causing this deterioration. You haven’t told me how Katrina died, of course,” Bellinger said, looking at Mike, “so perhaps my secondguessing is all irrelevant.”

Mike didn’t offer any assistance. “What did she say?”

“Harriet? That she could handle this herself. That counseling like this was her specialty. She had only been seeing Katrina since late summer, so the differences were not as startling to her as they were to some of us who had known her before she was assaulted. But she led me to believe that she was the expert, so I left it alone. Harriet told me all the symptoms I mentioned were consistent with rape trauma syndrome.”

“Did you and Katrina continue to talk about it, too?”

“Not really. By the beginning of November, she was already hinting to me that she was thinking about going home, to Cape Town. Her father was there-”

“Do you have a telephone number for him?”

“It’s in the personnel folder here. I don’t think it will do you much good. She told me her father was in a nursing home. Early-onset Alzheimer’s, if I’m not mistaken. I told her I thought it was crazy for her to go back there, for two reasons.”

“What were they?”

“I thought she needed to get well before she went home. Brought out that stubborn streak she had. She got all fired up about the medical care in South Africa and how advanced it was. That if there was something psychological impeding her recovery, it would do her good to get out of this environment, where the rape occurred. And that if it was medical as I suspected-and she doubted that, by the way, because she placed such faith in Harriet-then the best doctors in the world were in Cape Town.”

“And your second reason for thinking she shouldn’t leave?”

“The work she was doing.”

“They don’t have tombs in Africa?” Mike asked. “They don’t have museums?”

“Of course they do. But nothing like her specialty. She had already applied for a job. I’d written a letter of recommendation, which you’ll also see in the file.”

“For what kind of position?”

“The McGregor Museum. It’s in Kimberley, South Africa.”

“They’ve got a medieval art department?” I asked.

“Botany. Archaeology. Cultural history. Zoology. Natural history. Science, not medieval art. They’re what you do at the McGregor. That was my point, Ms. Cooper. Katrina was such a promising student in this highly competitive field. But all of the medieval studies programs are limited to the European and American institutions. She was throwing away ten years of her education.”

“But it was her home, Mr. Bellinger.”

“Her mother was dead. Her father didn’t know her any longer. She’d gone to university in England, so her friends were scattered all over the world.That wasn’t home, in South Africa. She was beginning to make herself a decent life here.” Bellinger was pacing now and was getting more agitated as he spoke about his efforts to stop Katrina from leaving New York. “Anna Friedrichs and I were hoping to restore her health and well-being. I’d talked to Eve about letting her transfer her work to the main branch of the Met so she didn’t have to deal with coming through Fort Tryon Park every day.”

“Sounds like you wanted to keep her around,” Mike said.

“Very much so. I even suggested a leave of absence. Go home for the holidays. Visit her father. See that there was nothing left for her in Cape Town. Now I can only imagine the pressure she was experiencing if someone here was trying to kill her all that time.”

Bellinger hesitated, then looked across his desk to Mike and Mercer. “Are you going to tell me? Am I entitled to know how she died?”

“Poison, most probably.”

He pulled out his chair and sat down, throwing his head back and studying a gargoyle in the arch of the ceiling. The last thing I expected to hear him do was laugh.

“I hope to hell it wasn’t arsenic. I’ve got enough of it here to do in all of us.”