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Chapter 36
Captain Hayward looked down at the huge puddle of blood on the linoleum floor of the office, all smeared about by the frantic and useless efforts of the EMTs trying to restart a heart that had been obliterated by a point-blank 9mm round fired from a Browning Hi. The scene was now being carefully examined, sorted, tagged, and bottled by the forensic teams and a variety of specialized crime scene investigators.
She backed out of the office, leaving it to the experts to make sense of what was clearly a senseless, tragic act. She had another assignment: to speak with the victim before she was taken to the hospital.
She found Nora Kelly waiting in the staff lounge, with her husband, Bill Smithback; the chairman of the Anthropology Department, Hugo Menzies; and several EMTs, police officers, and museum guards. The EMTs were arguing with Kelly about whether she would go to the hospital for a checkup and treatment.
“I want the guards and museum staff out,” said Hayward. “Except Drs. Kelly and Menzies.”
“I’m not going,” said Smithback. “I’m not leaving my wife.”
“You can stay, then,” said Hayward.
One of the EMTs, who had obviously been arguing with Nora for a while, leaned in for one last try. “Listen here, miss, your neck is bruised and you might have a concussion. The effects can be delayed. We’ve got to take you in for tests.”
“Don’t ‘miss’ me. I’m a Ph.D.”
“The paramedic’s right,” Smithback added. “You need to go for at least a quick exam.”
“Quick? I’ll be in the emergency room all day. You know what St. Luke’s is like!”
“Nora, we can get along quite well without you today,” Menzies said. “You’ve had a terrible shock-”
“With all due respect, Hugo, you know as well as I do that with Dr. Wicherly… Oh, God, this is terrible!” She choked up for a moment, and Hayward used the opportunity to speak.
“I know this is a bad time, Dr. Kelly, but can I ask you a few questions?”
Nora wiped her eyes. “Go ahead.”
“Can you tell me what happened leading up to the attack?”
Nora took a deep, steadying breath. Then she proceeded to relate the events that had occurred in her office just ten minutes before, as well as the pass Wicherly had made at her a few days before. Hayward listened without interrupting, as did her husband, Smithback, his face darkening with anger.
“Bastard,” he muttered.
Nora waved an impatient hand at him. “Something happened to him today. He wasn’t the same person. It was like he had… a seizure of some kind.”
“Why were you in the museum so early?” Hayward asked.
“I had-have-a busy day ahead of me.”
“And Wicherly?”
“I understand he came in at three A.M.”
Hayward was surprised. “What for?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Did he go into the tomb?”
It was Menzies who answered. “Yes, he did. The security log shows he entered the tomb just after three, spent half an hour in there, then left. Where he was between then and the attack, we don’t know. I looked all over for him.”
“I assume you checked his background before you hired him. Did he have a criminal record, a history of aggression?”
Menzies shook his head. “Absolutely nothing like that.”
Hayward looked around and saw to her relief that Visconti had been assigned to the museum that day. She motioned him over.
“I want you to take statements from Dr. Menzies and the guard who shot Wicherly,” she said. “We can get Dr. Kelly’s when she returns from the hospital.”
“No way,” Nora said. “I’m ready to give a statement now.”
Hayward ignored her. “Where’s the M.E.?”
“Went to the hospital with the body.”
“Get him on the radio.”
A moment later, Visconti handed her a radio. Then he led Menzies off to take a statement.
“Doctor?” Hayward spoke into the radio. “I want an autopsy performed as soon as possible. I want you to look for lesions to the temporal lobe of the brain, particularly to the ventromedial frontal cortex… No, I’m not a neurosurgeon. I’ll explain later.”
She handed the radio back to Visconti, then cast a firm eye on Nora. “You’re going to the hospital. Now.” She gestured to the EMTs. “Help her to her feet and get moving.”
Then she turned to Smithback. “I want to talk to you privately, in the hall.”
“But I want to go with my wife-”
“We’ll have a police car take you after we speak, sirens, the works. You’ll get there at the same time as the ambulance.”
She exchanged a brief word with Nora, gave her a reassuring pat on her shoulder, and then nodded Smithback into the hall. They found a quiet corner and Hayward faced the journalist.
“We haven’t spoken in a while,” she said. “I was hoping you might have something to share with me.”
At the question, Smithback looked a little uncomfortable. “I published that story we talked about. Two, even. They didn’t shake free any leads-at least none that I heard about.”
Hayward nodded, waiting. Smithback glanced at her, then glanced away. “Every trail I tried turned cold. That’s when I… paid a visit to the house.”
“House?”
“You know. His house. The one where he held Viola Maskelene.”
“You snuck in? I didn’t know they’d finished the investigation. When did the crime scene tape come down?”
Now Smithback looked even more uncomfortable. “It wasn’t down.”
“What?” Hayward raised her voice. “You trespassed on an active crime scene?”
“It wasn’t all that active!” Smithback said quickly. “I only saw one cop the whole time I was there!”
“Look, Mr. Smithback, I don’t want to hear any more. I can’t and won’t have you operating extralegally-”
“But it was in the house that I found it.”
Hayward stopped and looked at him.
“Well, it’s nothing I can prove. It’s just a theory, really. At first I really thought it was something, but later on… Anyway, that’s why I didn’t call you about it earlier.”
“Out with it.”
“In a coat closet, I found a bunch of Diogenes’s coats.”
Hayward crossed her arms, waiting.
“Three were very expensive cashmere or camel’s-hair, elegant, Italian-designed. Then there were a couple of big, bulky, itchy tweed jackets, also expensive but of a totally different style-you know, stodgy English professor.”
“And?”
“I know this sounds strange, but something about those tweeds-well, they almost seemed like a disguise. Almost as if Diogenes-”
“Has an alter ego,” Hayward said. She realized where this was going, and she was suddenly very interested.
“Right. And what kind of alter ego would wear tweeds? A professor.”
“Or a curator,” Hayward said.
“Exactly. And then it dawned on me he’s probably a curator in the museum. I mean, they’re all saying the diamond heist had to have been an inside job. He didn’t have a partner-maybe he himself was the inside man. I know it sounds a little crazy…” His voice trailed off, uncertain.
Hayward looked at him intently. “Actually, I think it’s far from crazy.”
Smithback stopped to glance at her in surprise. “You do?”
“Absolutely. It fits the facts better than any other theory I’ve heard. Diogenes is a curator in this museum.”
“But it just doesn’t make sense. Why would Diogenes steal the diamonds… and then pound them into dust and mail them back here?”
“Maybe he has some personal grudge against the museum. We won’t know for sure until we catch him. Good job, Mr. Smithback. There’s just one more thing.”
Smithback’s gaze narrowed. “Let me guess.”
“That’s right. This conversation never took place. And until I say otherwise, these speculations are to go no further. Not even to your wife. And certainly not to the New York Times. Are we clear?”