The Bone Vault

7

Mike was still chewing on his hot dog as we jogged up the several tiers of steps at the entrance of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue at Eighty-second Street shortly after 2P.M.

“Shootings, stabbings, strangulations. Drownings, decapitations, defenestrations. Beatings, bombings, bludgeonings-” He had a manner of death for every riser as we maneuvered our way around sun-bathing students and sightseers. “Hey, watch it, Houdini, will ya?” An amateur magician was performing tricks for a crowd of onlookers and from under his cloak released a pigeon that practically landed on Mike’s head. “A dove I wouldn’t mind, but these guys stink.”

He skipped a beat to wave off the bird. “Robberies, rapes, rubouts. I’ve had everything else, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a homicide by poison. You?”

“Just the guy who put Drano in his wife’s martini.”

“Yeah, but she didn’t die.”

“Almost. Burned a hole in her gut.”

“Doesn’t count in my squad. She lived to tell about it. Jeez, I forget how huge this place is.”

“Quarter of a mile long, more than a million square feet in area.”

“How do you know that?”

“I read it in the program last night, before things got crazy.”

The four sets of double doors were wide open, freshening the interior with the mild breeze of the May afternoon. The Great Hall was a spectacular space, elegant and airy beneath the high, domed ceiling and filled with light.

“My dad used to bring me here all the time.”

“Mine, too.” My father began to buy art after the success of his medical invention, and had a small but impressive collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European paintings, Flemish to Florentine.

“Saturday morning?”

“As soon as the doors opened.”

“Same for us. It was my reward, after five days of school-my daily torture-and before I had to hang out in church all day on Sunday. You think we would have hit it off if we met here back when we were six or seven? I picture you all decked out in patent leather Mary Janes with starched crinolines and dopey little headbands on.”

“Wrong kid. I was a total tomboy, except for my ballet slippers.”

“You probably weren’t quite so bossy yet, then, were you?”

We were having the identical thought. As different as our backgrounds were, we had probably stood in this very space on the very same day many times during our childhood. Mike Chapman was half a year older than I. His father, Brian, had died of a massive coronary just forty-eight hours after turning in his gun and shield. Twenty-six years as a cop had earned him the respect and admiration of his favorite son, who was a junior at Fordham University when Brian died so suddenly. Although Mike completed college and graduated the following spring, he enrolled in the Police Academy shortly afterward.

Mike had risen through the department like a rocket. He had spent most of the years since his promotion to the detective bureau in the elite Manhattan North Homicide Squad, which was home to some of the best men-and a smattering of women-in the NYPD. His days and nights were devoted to solving the steady stream of killings that occurred on his half of the island, north of Fifty-ninth Street. We had met in my rookie year in the office, when we both had other assignments, and had spent a great deal of time together, on and off the job.

“Wipe the mustard off your chin before we get to Thibodaux’s office.”

“See what I mean? I take it back. You must have been a pain in the ass already by the time you were six. It’s in your blood. Where’d you hang out?”

“Second floor, paintings and sculpture. That’s where I saw my first Degas.” I had started taking ballet lessons when I was five years old. The elegance of the movement and the beauty of the music had always been a refuge for me, and to this day I continued to take classes whenever I could fit them into my unpredictable schedule. As a child, I had often sat spellbound in front of the painting of two dancers practicing in their white tulle dresses with large yellow ribbons on their backs, stretching their legs along the barre before they began their exercise on pointe, hoping to grow up to be just like them.

“Me, I went straight over here,” Mike said, pointing across the hall past the bottom of the Grand Staircase. “Arms and armor.” The Met had a stunning collection, and although my brothers spent hours wandering around the cases filled with gilded parade armor, presentation swords, and rapiers, I raced past them to get to my dancers and the other portraiture I loved so much.

I asked the woman at the information desk the way to the museum director’s office. She called ahead to Thibodaux’s secretary, who told her we were expected.

“This is where I got hooked on battles and warriors. Couldn’t get enough of that stuff.” Mike had an encyclopedic knowledge of military history. I knew he had studied the field at college, but it had never occurred to me to ask how his interest had originated.

We walked through the galleries of Greek and Roman art to find the bank of elevators to take us upstairs. “They’ve got more than fourteen thousand objects in there, from knights in chain mail to samurai swords. There’s an armor workshop in the basement. Uncle Sam used it in World War Two, copying medieval designs to make flak jackets for the army.”

A middle-aged woman was standing by the elevator door when we got out. “Miss Cooper? I’m Eve Drexler, Mr. Thibodaux’s assistant.” I introduced her to Mike and we accompanied her down the hallway. Her ankle-length flowered print dress swished between her legs as she walked to the door of the office, ushering us past the secretary and into a lavishly decorated room with large windows. The sunny view looked across Fifth Avenue to the handsome town houses that had been converted years ago into the prestigious private girls’ school Marymount. The perks of the directorate were obvious. An ancient hero, sculpted in bronze, was battling a centaur on Thibodaux’s desk, a Savonnerie carpet ran the length of the room, and paintings by recognizable Masters-Cézanne, Goya, Brueghel-were hung on three of the walls.

“Miss Cooper, Mr. Chapman, won’t you sit down?”

The director reached out to shake hands with us, and moved from his chair to join us at a conference table. An ornate silver tray holding an antique coffeepot that had probably served an emperor or queen had been placed in front of Ms. Drexler, who poured for each of us into an ordinary mug.

“I’ve been trying to get as much information for you about that shipment as I possibly could,” Thibodaux began, opening a folder which contained a sheaf of papers.

Drexler seated herself at the far end of the table, opposite her boss, while Chapman and I were next to each other. She opened a leather-bound notebook and seemed to be dating the top page, noting the time and writing down each of our names. Mike flipped open the cardboard cover of his steno pad, a clean one for the beginning of a new case, and made similar notations.

“I’ve made copies of the bill of lading so you can take them along. Have you learned anything this morning from the medical examiner?”

“Nope. They’ll be doing the autopsy right about now.” Mike reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out one of the head shots taken at the morgue this morning. “Brought this along to see whether you happened to know this girl. Maybe she worked here or something.”

Thibodaux took the Polaroid shot, glanced at it, almost doing a double take before turning it facedown on the table. “No, she’s not at all familiar to me. But we are a very big place, Mr. Chapman, and I can’t say for a moment that I know half the people who work here.”

“You looked startled.”

“Well, I am, eh? Such a young woman, it’s a terrible thing. I never expected she would look-so-well, so alive as she does. To be in a coffin like that for some time, well-”

“What do you mean, ‘for some time’?”

“I have absolutely no idea how long she was there, it’s just that I assume she didn’t die yesterday, Mr. Chapman.”

“What’s that assumption based on?”

“Here, why don’t you look these papers over. Eve has made this set for you.” He passed a copy of the multipage document and we started to read it together. “While it is clear that the truck went to New Jersey directly from the museum, the shipment was made up of objects from a number of other institutions. As you can see, there are records of which crates came in when, and from which other museums.”

I scanned the top few pages, squinting at the tiny typewritten descriptions of the various sources. There were amphorae on loan from the Smithsonian, African masks from the American Museum of Natural History, mummy cases from the extensive collection at the Brooklyn Museum, and Asian paintings from the Getty.

“I think you’ve just made our job about a thousand times more difficult. These things all appear to be mixed into the same crates as your own stuff. Why’d that happen?”

“Well, Detective, Mr. Lissen, our shipping manager, tells me that’s because they were repackaged after they arrived here, depending on where they were being sent. We’re in the final planning stages of a huge show that we’ll be mounting next year, and in exchange for some of the treasures that belong to us but are on loan in museums around the world, we’re sending out some of our other art to help fill in those gaps.”

Thibodaux rubbed his eyes before speaking again. He looked paler than he had in formal dress standing on the floodlit platform at the Temple of Dendur yesterday evening. He had probably not slept at all last night, worrying how this dreadful discovery would affect his museum. His French accent seemed more pronounced today, perhaps because of his exhaustion.

“This sarcophagus-number 1983.752-it’s listed on page twelve of that inventory.”

Chapman flipped to find it. “This coffin came back to you last fall. It had been on loan to the Chicago Art Museum, right?”

“So it appears.”

“And it’s been here ever since then. You know where?”

“I don’t, but I’m sure someone can tell you where. Exactly.” Thibodaux rose and walked to his desk, opening the drawer and shaking two tablets into his hand. He washed them down with some ice water that was in a crystal pitcher next to his blotter. This was a headache that would not go away with pills.

“And the other stuff in that crate was all from local institutions, am I reading this right?”

Thibodaux came back and picked up his folder. “Yes, that particular box was full of things going to Cairo, mostly from Natural History, right across Central Park, and from the Brooklyn Museum as well. Some were to stay in Egypt, others had final destinations in other parts of Africa.

“You see the enormity of this problem, Detective? There are almost three thousand people who work inside the Met. We’ve got eight acres of buildings, hundreds of galleries and service areas. There’s a fire department, several restaurants, an infirmary, and a power plant. I can’t even begin to think about having you disturb everyone here, on account of-of…” He gestured to the small Polaroid, on which he had rested his mug.

“Of the young woman who might well have met her death within these walls?” Mike had already dubbed his victim Saint Cleo, and he would fight to bring her murderer to some kind of justice whether or not he ever found out who she was.

“It probably makes sense for us to start talking with Mr. Lissen, and with whomever is in charge of the Egyptian department as well. Weren’t they the gentlemen who were out there in Newark last night?” I tried to take the conversation over from Chapman, who was clearly put off by Thibodaux’s dismissal of the deceased.

“Trustees, curators, artists, students. If you’ve never been in a museum, Detective, you’ll have no understanding of what this all entails.”

“Maybe your French flics haven’t looped the Louvre too often, Mr. T., but I’ve probably spent as much time in this place as you spend looking down your nose at people like me. What would make you think I’ve never been in a museum? ‘Cause I’m a police officer?”

Thibodaux had just turned a dangerous corner. Mike hated that familiar upper-class assumption that he was just another dumb cop, and every time we came up against it in a case investigation, it infuriated him more and more.

“It’s just a manner of speaking. I never meant to offend you.” He looked across the table to Eve Drexler. “Why don’t you call and get Lissen up here, for the detective to speak with.”

“Came here the first time when I was four years old.” Mike was talking to me now. “My dad had his picture taken right in this office, when the police department gave the museum the guns he recovered.”

I didn’t understand what he was referring to, and Thibodaux listened as intently as I did.

“During a raid on a whorehouse, back before I was born, my father and his partner recovered a stash of guns, mixed in with a load of other stolen property. Laid in a warehouse for years, the old property clerk’s office. Meanwhile, he’s telling everyone how beautiful they are, decorated in gold, chiseled steel, and carved ivory with initials on the handle. Story got up to headquarters and someone finally took a look at the stuff.”

Thibodaux stared at Chapman with a bit more interest. “Catherine the Great-the empress’s pistols and hunting guns?”

“Made by Johann Grecke, the royal gunmaker, 1786. Right before they would have been destroyed to make room for the new evidence storage unit, the department had Pop bring them to the curator here. They traced the original owner, he donated them back to the Met, and we were all right in this fancy room for the ceremony. First time I ever saw a bottle of champagne and ate cake off an antique plate. Used to come as often as I could to look at my dad’s treasures.”

“Let me apologize, Detective. I didn’t mean to imply that I thought you were ignorant of the museum. Five million visitors walk in and out of these doors every year, seeing only the objects encased in glass or the canvases hanging on the walls. They never think about what goes on behind the scenes, out of view, to make a place like this work so brilliantly, to give life to all these inanimate things.”

He was turning the charm on now, trying to play up to Chapman and work the hardship angle to his advantage.

Eve Drexler hung up the phone and came back to the table. “Mr. Lissen will be here in ten minutes. I’ve ordered a fresh pot of coffee. And I’ve asked some of the curators who might be useful to your inquiry to be on standby.” She was a model of efficiency.

“Thank you.” The director picked up his folder again and continued to scrutinize the entries. Eve walked behind us to gather the empty mugs from which Mike and I had been drinking. She left them on an enameled tray on a satinwood commode next to the door, turning back to remove Thibodaux’s and replace it with a fresh one. She picked up the photograph of the dead girl that he had been using as a coaster and took it over to his desk, peeking at it with curiosity as she placed it on the blotter.

I watched her reaction as she reached for the picture again. “Pierre, didn’t you recognize this young woman? She was here for meetings with us a number of times last year. Look again. I think it’s Katrina Grooten.”