Reliquary

“Yeah,” Harriman said. “She got your number, all right. Wrapped you around her little finger. While the real story is taking place somewhere else.”

“And what real story might that be?”

“Such as the identity of the second skeleton. Or even, where they took the bodies.” Harriman eyed Smithback as he nonchalantly drained his beer. “You mean you didn’t know? Too busy talking to nutcases in railroad tu

Smithback glanced back at the reporter, struggling to conceal his surprise. Was this some kind of false lead? But no; the cool eyes behind the tortoise-shell glasses were scornful, but serious. “Haven’t been able to find that out yet,” he said guardedly.

“You don’t say.” Harriman slapped him on the back. “Hundred thousand bucks reward, huh? That might just pay your salary for the next two years. If the Post doesn’t go belly up again.” He laughed, dropped a five-dollar bill on the counter, and turned to go.

Smithback watched Harriman’s retreating back with irritation. So the bodies had been moved from the Medical Examiner’s office. He should have learned that himself. But where? There had been no funeral arrangements, no burial. They must be in a lab somewhere, a lab with better equipment than the NYME. Someplace secure, not like Columbia or Rockefeller University, with students wandering around everywhere. After all, Lieutenant D’Agosta was in charge of the case. He was a cool customer, Smithback knew. Not the kind of guy to do something rash. Why would D’Agosta move the bodies…

D’Agosta.

Suddenly, Smithback guessed—no, he knew—where the bodies must be.

Draining his glass, he slid off the stool and moved across the plush red carpet to a bank of phones in the front foyer. Dropping a quarter in the nearest one, he dialed a number.

“Curley here,” said a voice thick with age.

“Curley! It’s Bill Smithback. How you doing?”

“Fine, Dr. Smithback. Haven’t seen you around for a while.” Curley, who checked badges at the staff entrance to the Museum of Natural History, called everyone Doctor. Princes lived and died; dynasties rose and fell; but Curley, Smithback knew, would remain in his ornate bronze pillbox, checking IDs forever.

“Curley, what time on Wednesday night did those ambulances come in? You know, the two that drove in together?” Smithback spoke fast, praying that the ancient guard didn’t know he’d become a reporter after leaving his writing assignment at the Museum.

“Well, let’s see,” Curley said in his unhurried way. “Can’t say I remember anything like that, Doctor.”

“Really?” Smithback asked, crestfallen. He’d been absolutely sure.

“Not unless you mean that one that came in with the lights and sirens off. But that was early Thursday, not Wednesday.” Smithback could hear Curley rustling through his log. “Yup, just after five A.M., it was.”

“That’s right, Thursday. What was I thinking of?” Smithback thanked Curley and hung up exultantly.

Gri

It made perfect sense. He knew that D’Agosta had used the Museum’s laboratory on other cases, not least of all the Museum Beast murders. It was a high-security lab in a high-security museum. No doubt he’d have called in that pompous old curator, Frock. And maybe Frock’s ex-assistant, Margo Green, Smithback’s own friend from his days at the Museum.

Margo Green, Smithback thought. That merited some looking into.

He called the bartender over. “Paddy, I think I’ll stay on Islay, but switch distilleries. Laphroaig, please. The fifteen-year-old.”

He took a sip of the marvelous whisky. Ten bucks a shot, but worth every pe

= 11 =

SERGEANT HAYWARD descended a long metal staircase, opened a narrow door filmed in brown rust, and stepped out onto an abandoned railroad siding. Behind her, D’Agosta emerged from the doorway, hands in pockets. Murky sunlight filtered down through a series of gratings far above their heads, illuminating dust motes in the still air. D’Agosta looked first left, then right. In both directions, the tracks dissolved into the gloom of the tu

“Where’s the Captain?” Hayward asked.

“He’s coming,” said D’Agosta, scraping the underside of his heel on the metal rail of the siding. “You go ahead.” He watched Hayward move catlike down the tu

Waxie, on the other hand, had slowed considerably in the two hours since they’d visited the brownstone basement where the first body had been found more than three months before. It was a damp room, crammed with old boilers. Rotting wires dangled from the ceiling. Hayward had pointed out the mattress tucked behind a blackened furnace, littered with empty plastic water bottles and torn newspapers: the dead man’s living space. There was an old bloodstain on the mattress, three feet in diameter, heavily chewed on by rats. Above it, a pair of ragged athletic socks were draped over a pipe, covered in a furry mantle of green mold.

The body found there had been Hank Jasper, Hayward said. No witnesses, no known relatives or friends. The case file had been equally useless: no photographs or scene reports, just some routine paperwork, a brief report referring to “extensive lacerations” and a badly crushed skull, and the notice of a quick burial at Potter’s Field on Hart Island.

Nor had they found much of anything in the defunct Columbus Circle station bathroom, where the second body had been discovered: a lot of trash, and a half-hearted attempt to clean up the red blizzard of blood that clung to the ancient tile sinks and cracked mirrors. No ID on that one at all: the head was missing.

There was a stifled curse behind him, and D’Agosta turned to see the round form of Captain Waxie emerging from the rusted door. He looked around distastefully, his pasty visage shining u

“Jesus, Vi

Fu