Reliquary (12 page)

Silence descended on the lab for a moment. Then, as if on cue, the two men slowly returned to the unidentified skeleton. Soon, murmurs of dissent began to rise once again. Margo sighed deeply and turned back toward the electrophoresis equipment. She had at least a morning’s worth of cataloging to get through.

Her eye moved toward the X rays. They’d raised a fearful stink with the lab in order to get them that morning. Maybe she ought to take a quick look before starting the cataloging.

She slid out the first series, clipping them to the viewer. Three shots of the unidentified skeleton’s upper torso. As she expected, they showed--much less clearly--what they had already observed from direct examination: a skeleton suffering bizarre bone deformities, with a grotesque thickening and ridging of almost every osteological process in the body.

She pulled them down and slid the next series into the clips. Another set of three views, this time of the lumbar region.

She saw it immediately: four small spots, crisp and white. Curious, she swiveled the magnifier over for a closer look. The four spots were sharp triangles, arranged in a precise square at the very bottom of the spine, completely enclosed in a fused mass of bony growth. They had to be metal, Margo knew: only metal would be that opaque to X rays.

She straightened up. The two men were still bending over the cadaver, their mutterings floating toward her across the quiet room.

“There’s something over here you should take a look at,” she said.

Brambell reached the viewer first and peered closely. He stepped away, adjusted his horn-rims, and peered again.

Frock rumbled over a moment later, curious, brushing against the Medical Examiner’s legs in his haste. “If you
don’t
mind,” he said, using the heavy wheelchair to crowd Brambell off to the side. He leaned forward, face inches from the viewer.

The room fell silent except for the hiss of air from the duct above the gurney. For once, Margo thought, both Brambell and Frock were completely baffled.

= 13 =

It was the first time D’Agosta had been in the Chief’s office since Horlocker’s appointment, and he gazed around in disbelief. It looked to him like a suburban steakhouse trying to go upscale. The heavy fake-mahogany furniture, the low lighting, the thick drapes, the cheap Mediterranean-style ironwork fixtures with the ripply yellow glass. It was so perfect, it made him want to ask a waiter to bring him a Gibson.

Chief Redmond Horlocker sat behind a vast desk absolutely bare of paper. In the nearest wing chair, Waxie had settled his bulk comfortably and was describing their movements of the previous day. He had just gotten to the point where the three of them had been set upon by a mob of enraged homeless, and he, Waxie, was holding them at bay so that D’Agosta and Hayward could escape. Horlocker listened, his face impassive.

D’Agosta’s gaze fastened on Waxie, growing ever more animated as he talked. He considered speaking up himself, but long experience told him it wouldn’t make any difference. Waxie was a precinct captain; he didn’t get many chances to come down to One Police Plaza and impress the head honcho. Maybe the end result would be more manpower allocated to the case. Besides, a little voice in the back of D’Agosta’s head said this was going to be one of those cases where the shit-rain would fall especially hard. Even though he was officially in charge, it didn’t hurt to let Waxie take some credit. The more visible you were at the beginning, the closer they mowed your ass at the end.

Waxie finished his story, and there was a silence as Horlocker let a bit of
gravitas
build up in the room. Then he cleared his throat.

“Your take, Lieutenant?” he asked, turning to D’Agosta.

D’Agosta straightened up. “Well, sir, it’s too early to tell whether there’s a connection or not. It bears looking into, though, and I could use some extra manpower to--”

The antique phone jangled, and Horlocker picked up the receiver, listening for a moment. “It can wait,” he said curtly, then hung up and turned back to D’Agosta.

“You a
Post
reader?” he asked.

“Sometimes,” D’Agosta replied. He knew where this was leading.

“And you know this Smithback who’s writing all the garbage?”

“Yes, sir,” said D’Agosta.

“He a friend of yours?”

D’Agosta paused. “Not exactly, sir.”

“Not exactly,” the Chief repeated. “In that book of his about the Museum Beast, Smithback made it seem like you two were bosom buddies. To hear him tell it, the pair of you single-handedly saved the world during that little problem at the Museum of Natural History.”

D’Agosta kept quiet. The role he’d played in the disastrous opening-night party for the
Superstition
exhibition was ancient history. And nobody in the new administration wanted to give him any credit for it.

“Well, your not-exactly pal Smithback is running us ragged, chasing down all the crank calls his reward offer has generated.
That’s
where your extra manpower has gone. You should know that better than anyone.” The Chief shifted irritably in his huge leather throne. “So you’re telling me that the homeless murders and the Wisher murder have the same MO.”

D’Agosta nodded.

“Okay. Now we don’t like homeless being murdered here in New York. It’s a problem. It doesn’t look good. But when we get socialites being murdered, then we got a
real
problem. You get my drift?”

“Absolutely,” said Waxie.

D’Agosta said nothing.

“What I’m saying is, we’re concerned about the homeless murders, and we’re going to try to take care of it. But look, D’Agosta, we’ve got homeless dying every day. Between you and me, they’re a dime a dozen. We both know it. On the other hand, I got a whole city on my butt about this headless debutante. The mayor wants that case
solved
.” He leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk, a magnanimous look settling across his features. “Look, I know you’re going to need more help on this. So I’m going to keep Captain Waxie here on the case. I’ve put someone else on the precinct desk to free him up.”

“Yes, sir!” said Waxie, straightening up.

As he listened, something inside D’Agosta crumpled and died. A walking disaster like Waxie was exactly what he didn’t need. Now instead of more manpower, he’d have to nursemaid Waxie through every step. He’d better put him on some peripheral assignment, where he couldn’t screw up. But that led to a whole new chain-of-command problem: putting a precinct captain on a case being run by a lieutenant in the Homicide Division. Just how the hell was
that
going to fall out?

“D’Agosta!” the Chief snapped.

D’Agosta looked up. “What?”

“I asked you a question. What’s going on at the Museum?”

“They’ve completed tests on the Wisher corpse and have released it to the family,” D’Agosta replied.

“And the other skeleton?”

“They’re still trying to identify it.”

“What about the teeth marks?”

“There seems to be some disagreement about their origin.”

Horlocker shook his head. “Jesus, D’Agosta. I thought you said those people knew what they were doing. Don’t make me sorry I took your advice and moved those corpses out of the Morgue.”

“We’ve got the Chief ME and some top Museum staff working on it. I know these people personally, and there aren’t any better--”

Horlocker sighed loudly and waved his hand. “I don’t care about their pedigrees. I want results. Now that you’ve got Waxie on the case, things should move faster. I want something by the end of the day tomorrow. Got that, D’Agosta?”

D’Agosta nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” The Chief waved his hand. “Then get to it, you two.”

= 14 =

It was, Smithback thought, the most bizarre demonstration he had seen in the ten years he had lived in New York. The signs had been professionally painted. The sound system was first-class. And Smithback felt distinctly under dressed.

The crowd was remarkably diverse: Central Park South and Fifth Avenue ladies, dressed in diamonds and Donna Karan, along with young bankers, bond salesmen, commodity traders, and various young turks eager for civil disobedience. There were also some well-dressed prep school teenagers. But what astonished Smithback was the size of the crowd. There must have been two thousand people milling around him. And whoever organized the rally obviously had political clout: their permit allowed them to close off Grand Army Plaza on a weekday rush hour. Behind a series of well-manned police barricades and ranks of television cameras were endless lines of angry traffic.

Smithback knew that this group represented tremendous wealth and power in New York City. Their demonstration was no joke--not for the mayor, not for the police chief, not for anyone involved in New York City politics. These people simply did not go into the streets and hold demonstrations. And yet, here they were.

Mrs. Horace Wisher stood on a large redwood platform in front of the gilded victory statue at the intersection of Central Park South and Fifth Avenue. She was speaking into a microphone, the powerful PA system amplifying her crisp tones into an unavoidable presence. Behind her was a massive full-color blowup of the now-famous childhood picture of her daughter Pamela.

“How long?” she asked the assembled throng. “How long are we going to let our city die? How long are we going to tolerate the murders of our daughters, our sons, our brothers, our sisters, our parents? How long are we going to live in fear, in our own homes and in our own neighborhoods?”

She gazed over the crowd, listening to the rising murmur of assent.

She began again more softly. “My ancestors came to New Amsterdam three hundred years ago. It has been our home ever since. And it has been a good home. When I was a little girl, my grandmother used to take me for evening walks in Central Park. We used to walk home alone from school after nightfall. We did not even lock the door to our townhouse.

“Why has nothing been done, while crime, drugs, and murder have reared up all around us? How many mothers will have to lose their children before we say,
enough
!”

She stood back from the microphone, collecting herself. A murmur of anger was beginning to ripple through the crowd. This woman had the simplicity and dignity of a born orator. Smithback held his cassette recorder higher, scenting another front-page story.

“The time has come,” Mrs. Wisher said, her voice rising once again, “to take back our city. To take it back for our children and grandchildren. If it means executing drug dealers, if it means erecting a billion dollars in new prison space, it must be done. This is war. If you don’t believe me, look at the statistics. Every day they are killing us. One thousand nine hundred murders in New York City last year. Five murders a day. We are at war, my friends, and we are losing. Now we must fight back with everything we’ve got. Street by street, block by block, from Battery Park to the Cloisters, from East End Avenue to Riverside Drive, we must take back our city!”

The angry murmur had grown. Smithback noticed that more younger men were now joining the throng, attracted by the noise and the crowd. Hip flasks and pint bottles of Wild Turkey were being passed around.
Gentlemen bankers, my ass,
he thought.

Suddenly, Mrs. Wisher turned and pointed. Smithback turned to see a flurry of activity beyond the barricade: a sleek black limousine had pulled up, and the mayor, a small balding man in a dark suit, stepped out, accompanied by several aides. Smithback waited, eager to see what would happen. The size of this rally had obviously taken the mayor by surprise, and now he was scrambling to get involved, to show his concern.

“The mayor of New York!” Mrs. Wisher cried as the mayor made his way toward the podium with the help of several policemen. “Here he is, come to speak to us!”

The voice of the crowd rose.

“But he shall
not
speak!” cried Mrs. Wisher. “We want action, Mr. Mayor, not talk!”

The crowd roared.

“Action!” she cried. “Not talk!”

“
Action
!” roared the crowd. The young men began jeering and whistling.

The mayor was stepping up to the podium now, smiling and waving. It appeared to Smithback that the mayor was asking Mrs. Wisher for the microphone. She took a step backward. “We don’t want to hear another speech!” she cried. “We don’t want to hear any more
bullshit
!”
And with that she ripped the microphone out of its plug and stepped down from the platform, leaving the mayor standing alone above the crowd, a plastic smile frozen on his face, deprived of any possibility of being heard over the roar.

More than anything, it was her final expletive that caused the crowd to explode. A great unintelligible roar rose up and the crowd surged toward the podium. Smithback watched, a strange sensation rippling up his spine as the assembled group turned dangerously angry before his eyes. Several empty liquor bottles came sailing toward the stage, one shattering not five feet from the mayor. The groups of younger men had consolidated into a single body, and they began muscling their way toward the stage, cursing and jeering. Smithback caught a few isolated words:
Asshole. Faggot. Liberal scum.
More pieces of trash came flying out of the crowd, and the mayor’s aides, realizing all was lost, quickly hustled him off the stage and back into his limousine.

Well,
Smithback thought,
interesting to see how mob mentality affects all classes.
He couldn’t remember having seen quite so brief or so fine a display of mob oratory as Mrs. Wisher’s. As the sense of menace faded and the crowd began dissolving into seething knots, the journalist threaded his way toward a park bench to jot down his impressions while they were fresh. Then he checked his watch: five-thirty. He stood up and began trotting northwest through the Park. Better get in position, just in case.

= 15 =

As Margo jogged around the corner onto 65th Street, her portable radio tuned to an all-news channel, she stopped short, surprised to see a familiar lanky form lounging against the front railing of her apartment building, cowlick rearing above the long face like a brunette antler.