The Bone Vault

41

Everyone moved at once.

Mercer stood up and stepped closer to Poste’s enclosure. Kerry left us and eased herself in behind his position. Above us, the two snipers lifted their guns to their shoulders.

“Take it slow, Erik. Step back from the girl. Leave Clem alone. I want to hear what you have to say.”

Within seconds, Poste must have complied with the order to get away from Clem. Mercer held his arm up in the air, circling his forefinger and thumb to signal things were okay for the moment.

Kerry walked back to us. “He’s got something in his hand. Like a small arrow, best they can tell. He’s been rubbing it up and down his forearm, sort of scratching himself, while he was speaking to Mercer. That last time? He leaned over behind Clem and began to dig the point of it into the back of her hand.”

“The guns?”

“He put them down when he started to talk.”

“Which is worse?” I said aloud to no one in particular.

“There’s a whole shelf full of sharp objects that the camera’s picking up. It’s scanning around now, while he’s pacing. Arrows of all sizes. A lot of primitive weapons,” Kerry said, listening to the transmission that was going to her and to Mercer.

“Poison-tipped hunting darts,” Mike said. “Probably part of Papa’s stash.”

“Your friend wanted bones?” Kerry asked. “All around her. Human skulls, shelf on top of shelf. A couple of skeletons hanging right over her head.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Mike muttered.

“He’s spooked now,” Kerry said. “He’s trying to figure out how Mercer knew he was so close to your witness.”

“Can’t he see the camera?”

“It’s lens is smaller than a pea, Coop. It’s just above him, flush against the wooden boards. With good light he’d have trouble spotting it, and he’s got no light at all.”

Mercer tried to connect to him again. “You gotta let Clem out of there. Then you and I can strike a deal, okay?”

“It’s too late for a deal. I know that.”

“Why? You haven’t hurt her, have you? She’ll be okay.”

“And you’ll just forget about her timid little friend? Katrina? Will you do that for me?” He was teasing Mercer now, knowing we were as stymied as he was.

Mercer put his hands on his waist and stretched his neck back. He had tried for an hour to keep Poste from mentioning the dead girl. Once Katrina got in the mix, Poste knew he was looking at a long haul in state prison. No one-way ticket home.

“He’s picked up a head from the shelf. Nope, put it down. Back to the weapons. Some kind of ax or hatchet.” Kerry’s commentary was chilling. With all the sophisticated weaponry in the hands of the cops who ringed the museum attic, Poste had Clem locked inside with a stockpile of primitive death tools.

“Katrina figured it out. Well, that’s not really true. It was Clementine here who planted the seed. D’you know what happened to the big-game hunters when the animals died out? When the men who were glorified by this museum-Akeley and Lang and Chapin-were finished killing them off, quite unnecessarily?”

“Why don’t you tell me, Erik.”

“They became grave diggers. That’s what she calls them, don’t you?”

“He’s back at her side,” Kerry whispered. “He’s prodding her in the spine with an arrow. A different one this time.” She slipped from our alcove and walked into place a foot or two away from Mercer, ready to assist him.

“You’re dead meat if you move from here, Coop. My orders,” Mike said, following behind Kerry.

From each corner of the room, teams started to move closer to where we were centered. No one was going to let Poste do any damage to Clem. Some boss was struggling to decide how and when to break in on him. At some point, when the talking stalled and the hostage was at risk of serious physical harm, the team would resort to brute force.

“I don’t understand what you mean, Erik. Tell me what you’re talking about.”

“Came a time when there were no longer animals to sell to the great museums of America and Europe. The greedy bastards had wiped out some of the most extraordinary creatures on the face of the earth. White rhinos, okapi, forest gorillas. You can count them on your fingers today.”

“That’s not your father’s fault. That didn’t-”

“We’ve got company, haven’t we, Wallace? A lot of company listening in on our chat? The acoustics up here don’t favor you, Detective. Sounds like you’ve got all your cops back in place.”

“What’s your beef against Clem? Just open the door and we’ll get Mamdouba up here to talk to you. He’ll give you anything of your father’s that you want.”

“Imagine what the man was reduced to, Wallace. All his skill, all his passion. You do something unique, do it for a lifetime, better than anybody in the entire world. All of a sudden your universe implodes, your heart’s torn out of you, you become an anachronism, and you can’t even support your family. The animals may have become scarce, Mercer, but there was no shortage of human remains.”

Now I had no one to repeat to me the transmissions of the visual scene of Erik Poste and Clem inside the enclosure as I stood alone in my slim alcove. I could only judge danger by the reflex reactions of the men above me on the catwalk. Erik must have been right on top of Clem.

“Everybody wanted them, every museum in the world. Not just here. Even in Africa. Paid the hunters-paid anyone who’d do it, actually-to dig up the graves. Old ones, new ones. Made no difference. Clem knows it, don’t you? These proud institutions competed against each other for human remains.”

“Clem knew about your father?”

“No, no, she never made that connection until today. How could she? They’d taken his name off everything in this place long ago. She was close, though. Awfully close.”

“Katrina, did she realize it?”

“That last night in December. Fell into her lap, really.”

More noise now, coming from the stairwell. Four men, like a quartet of weight lifters, were carrying a battering ram down the long corridor. They were moving into position to break down the door to Poste’s hideout. Clearly they felt Clem was at greater risk inside, with the guns, the axes, and the killer.

Mercer, Mike, and Kerry stepped farther back and made way for the Emergency Services team. I froze as I saw them each draw their guns, Kerry and Mercer gesturing as they received directions through their earpieces about how to take the room behind the battering ram.

“Want to tell me how that happened, Erik?”

“Not really, Wallace. Then what else will we have to talk about? That might end our conversation-”

The ram crashed through the door. I clenched my teeth, waiting for the sound of gunshots.