The Bone Vault

2

Rust-colored steel containers, each the size of a boxcar on a freight train, were stacked by the dozens and lined up in rows for acre after acre in the dark shipyard. Pierre Thibodaux’s limousine was stopped at the gate by a night watchman, who flashed his beam at the two of us in the backseat. Thibodaux’s French accent was lost on the weary sentry, who was probably coming to the end of his shift as the hour approached midnight.

“Say what?”

“We are here to meet some people from the Metropolitan Museum, somewhere in-”

I leaned forward and folded back the leather cover on my wallet, holding my gold and blue badge under the nose of the guard. “I’m Alexandra Cooper, district attorney’s office. There are some detectives inside the yard who are waiting for us.”

I checked the rear page of the evening’s program, on which I had scribbled down the location Mike Chapman had given to me when I called him from my cell phone fifteen minutes earlier. “They’re in front of lot G-eight. Which way is that?”

The watchman pressed the buzzer that unlocked the chain-link fence and pointed his finger, illuminated by the lighted end of his cigarette. “Go to your left, couple of hundred yards. Can’t miss the big oranges on the side of the stack of Tropicana containers. Hang a right and drive in past them. Your cops are already there.”

The fact that the freight yard happened to be across the river from Manhattan in Newark, New Jersey, hadn’t put Chapman off in the least. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had control of the property, so he figured it was worth his time to explore the situation. Any fears that my New York County identification would not serve to get us inside were short-lived.

The Lincoln Town Car glided like a swan among the huge, awkward metal bins, piled high and patiently awaiting shipment to myriad destinations around the world. It came to a stop against the rear of a tractor trailer truck, which was parked between two containers, and had a ramp rolled up into its gaping end.

Thibodaux was out of the car before the driver shut the engine off. I saw Mike approach and introduce himself to the director, on his way over to help me out of the car.

“Lon Chaney coming, too, or can we get right to work?”

He took my hand and I climbed out onto the graveled roadway, grateful that Nina had borrowed my gown and left me wearing a black satin pantsuit. After I had called Mike at home and asked him to meet me here, I sent her off to dinner with Jake.

“Who’s the frog?”

“New director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He got the call about this in the middle of a reception he was having tonight. Asked my advice about what to do when he learned the body had been found. It took a while to make him understand that reporting the fact was not optional. He’s hoping this is a story that won’t have legs.” I shook my head.

“Cleopatra taking the big sleep in Port Newark? Probably worth only eight or nine days of tabloid headlines.”

“Who’s here, besides you and Lenny?”

“The two suits are museum flunkies. They’re the ones that got the call from the truck driver, just before six o’clock. Came out to see for themselves before they screamed for the big cheese. The trucker is sitting in the cab, finishing his hero and listening to the ball game. Extra innings, Yanks and Red Sox all tied up after ten. Your boy Pettitte pitched great the first seven innings. Joe should never have taken him out. The two square-badges are security for the shipyard. It’s their dog that sniffed out the stiff.”

Square-badges was police slang for civilian guards hired by private businesses, shopping malls to shipyards.

“Where is she?”

Mike’s back was to the truck, and he pumped his thumb over his shoulder. “Up the ramp. Resting comfortably in the care of Tri-State Transit.”

“Never unloaded?”

“Nope. Routine is they start hauling the goods off the truck as soon as they drive into the yard. Most of the items are packed inside wooden crates, labeled and ready for overseas shipping. Truckers set them down on the ground, and then they’re winched over into containers that get loaded onto the freighters for transport. Whole place looks like my Lionel train set on steroids.”

I looked around at the endless rows of giant boxes, towering over us and stretching in every direction as far as I could see.

“Once they’re out of the truck, security has the dogs smell around them, incoming and outgoing. Looking for drugs or dead bodies. Back in the nineties, there were an embarrassing number of incidents out here. Wise guys were using the yard as a wide-open warehouse for cocaine storage and a staging area for shipping nose candy everywhere in Europe you could imagine.”

“Jersey police? Port Authority cops?”

“Not involved yet. That’s why the square-badges. Shippers worked out a compromise that the owners of these lots would hire their own patrols. Only call in the cops when they got a crime.”

“I think I’m getting what they call mixed signals here. Thibodaux believes there’s a corpse in the sarcophagus that doesn’t belong there. That’s why I called you to meet us out here. Isn’t there a crime in this?”

“Lucky Pierre might be right. But the mopes who found Cleo have seen too many mummy movies. Curse of the Pharaohs and all that crap. They cracked open the crate, but then the lid was so heavy they could barely move it. Took four of them to lift it just a couple of inches-expecting to find a stash of white powder-but one guy sees a head sticking through some dangling pieces of linen instead. Dropped the stone so fast I’m surprised it didn’t splinter into a million pieces.”

“So they never bothered to call the Jersey authorities?”

“They’re afraid to open the box up again. Think they’re doomed to the fate of Lord Carnavon if it turns out to be an actual mummy and they disturb it. They called the museum and got switched over to the curator in charge of Egyptian art. He’s the tall, bald guy talking to your buddy Pierre. The rent-a-cops told him that if he wants to know what made the dog howl, he better get his own ass out here and have a look inside.”

“And the other one in the business suit?”

“The heavyset one in the middle is in charge of the shipping department. He’s responsible for the whole load that came out on the truck. The two of ‘em are sweating up a storm. That’s more excitement than they’ve had in any museum since Murf the Surf made off with the crown jewels.”

“Why’s she still on the truck?”

“‘Cause once the crates are down to two rows per stack, they just walk the dog onto the ramp and let him cruise around before they do all the work of unloading. Saves time and aggravation in case they have to seize a truck or ship something back to its place of origin. Rin Tin Tin was frothing at the mouth when he hit the crate with the body.”

Pierre Thibodaux took a piece of paper from the hand of the shipping manager and walked back over to talk to us. “I don’t understand how this could have happened, Mr. Chapman. We’ve got a state-of-the-art security system at the Met, as you might imagine. Billions of dollars’ worth of paintings and sculptures, priceless masterpieces. It’s…it’s inconceivable-”

“Slow down. Let’s work this backwards. Is this your tractor trailer?”

Thibodaux looked at the tracking order in his hand and then back to the truck, to check the lettering on its side. “This is one of our contractors. We own a number of vans, of course, since we’re constantly moving pieces about. But on many of the larger jobs like this,” he said, gesturing around him at the dozens of cartons that had come off the back end, “we hire out the work to companies like Tri-State.”

“Common carrier,” I said quietly to Mike.

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Just hold the thought, Detective. I’ll connect the dots for you later on.”

He turned back to Thibodaux. “So there’s no question but that this mother lode left the Met early today?”

The director handed me the receipt he had just taken from the shipping manager. Mike aimed a flashlight on the wrinkled paper, which was stamped with today’s date: Tuesday, May 21, 10:43A.M.

“Was the whole shipment from the museum, or did the driver stop anywhere else along the way to pick up or drop off other crates?”

“No, we keep a pretty tight financial rein on things like this. Mr. Lissen, he’s the fellow over there who runs the department, knows the dimensions of the trucks we rent. And he’s got the measurements of all the lots going out. Makes a point of trying to fill them as full as he can, so we get our money’s worth.”

“How do you inventory the contents?”

“An age-old system, Mr. Chapman.” Thibodaux was rubbing his brow as he stepped back to lean against the adjacent container. “We’ve got more than two million objects at the Met, and the moment one arrives it’s assigned a number. An accession number.”

“Hey, Lenny,” Mike yelled to the detective he’d brought to Newark with him, who had his notepad out, talking to the truck driver. “Wanna gown up, hike up that ramp, and check something for me?”

Thibodaux looked up at us again. “The very first work of art to enter the Met’s collection back in 1870 was a coffin. Ironic, isn’t it? The Garland Sarcophagus. Roman marble, from the third centuryB.C. Every employee at the museum knows that. Item number 70.1. The first gift acquired in 1870, the year we were founded.

“Anyway, Mr. Chapman, that’s the system. After 1970, all four digits of the year were used, followed by the order in which the piece came into the collection.”

“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.”