Blue Labyrinth

“Which are?”

“Burials, mummies, and ‘prepared skeletons’—dead bodies collected by anthropologists, often from battlefields during the Indian wars — and brought back to the Museum. Something of a lost art. We’ve been forced to return a lot of these to the tribes in recent years.”

D’Agosta glanced into an open doorway. He could make out row after row of wooden cabinets with rippled glass doors, within which lay i

After passing another dozen or so storage rooms, Sandoval showed D’Agosta into a lab full of workbenches and soapstone-topped tables. The stench was fainter here. Skeletons of various animals sat on metal frames atop the benches, in various stages of completion. A few desks were pushed up against the far wall, computers and a variety of tools sitting on them.

“That was Marsala’s desk,” Sandoval said, pointing at one.

“Did he have a girlfriend?” D’Agosta asked.

“Not that I know of.”

“What did he do in his off hours?”

Sandoval shrugged. “He didn’t talk about it. He more or less kept to himself. This lab was practically his home — he worked long hours. Didn’t have much of an outside life, it seemed to me.”

“You say he was a prickly guy, hard to work with. Was there anyone in particular that he clashed with?”

“He was always getting into spats.”

“Anything that really stood out?”

Sandoval hesitated. D’Agosta waited, notebook in hand.

“There was one thing,” Sandoval said at last. “About two months back, a curator of mammalogy came in with a suite of extremely rare, almost extinct bats he’d collected in the Himalayas. Marsala put them in some of the dermestid beetle trays. Then he… messed up. He didn’t check them as frequently as he should have, left them too long. That wasn’t like Marsala at all, but at the time he seemed to have something on his mind. Anyway, if you don’t take the specimens out of the trays in time, they can be ruined. The hungry beetles chew through the cartilage and the bones get disarticulated and then they eat the bones themselves. That happened to the bat specimens. The bat scientist — he’s a little crazy, like a lot of curators — went nuts. Said some terrible things to Marsala in front of the whole Osteology staff. Really pissed Marsala off, but he couldn’t do anything about it, because he was the one at fault.”

“What was the name of this mammalogy curator?”

“Brixton. Richard Brixton.”

D’Agosta wrote down the name. “You said Marsala had something else on his mind. Any idea what it was?”

Sandoval thought a moment. “Well, around that time he’d started working with a visiting scientist on some research.”

“Is that uncommon?”

“On the contrary — it’s very common.” Sandoval pointed out the door toward a room across the hall. “That’s where visiting scientists examine bones. They’re coming in and out all the time. We get scientists from all over the world. Marsala didn’t usually work with them, though — his attitude problem and all that. In fact, this was the first scientist he’d worked for in almost a year.”

“Did Marsala say what kind of research it was?”

“No. But at the time, he’d seemed pretty pleased with himself. As if he anticipated a feather in his cap or something.”

“You recall this scientist’s name?”

Sandoval scratched his head. “I think it was Walton. But it might have been Waldron. They have to sign in and out, get credentialed. Frisby keeps a list. You could find out that way.”

D’Agosta looked around the room. “Anything else I should know about Marsala? Anything unusual, or odd, out of character?”

“No.” Sandoval blew his nose with a mighty honk.

“His body was found in the Gastropod Alcove off the Hall of Marine Life. Can you think of any reason why he should have been in that section of the Museum?”

“He never went there. Bones — this lab — was all he cared about. That’s not even on the way out.”

D’Agosta made another notation.

“Any other questions?” Sandoval asked.

D’Agosta glanced at his watch. “Where can I find Frisby?”

“I’ll take you there.” And Sandoval led the way out of the lab and up the corridor — heading back into the foulest section of the department.

8

Dr. Finisterre Paden backed away from the X-ray diffraction machine he had been hunched over, only to find himself ricocheting off what appeared to be a pillar of black cloth. He recoiled with a sharp expostulation and found himself staring up at a tall man clad in a black suit, who had somehow materialized behind him and must have been hovering, inches away, as he worked.

“What on earth?” Paden said furiously, his small, portly frame jiggling with affront. “Who let you in here? This is my office!”

The man did not react, and continued gazing down at him with eyes the color of white topaz and a face so finely modeled that it could have been carved by Michelangelo.

“Look here, who are you?” Paden asked, regaining his curatorial equilibrium. “I’m trying to get some work done and I can’t have people barging in!”

“I’m sorry,” said the man in a soothing voice, taking a step back.

“Well, so am I,” said Paden, somewhat mollified. “But this is really an imposition. And where’s your visitor’s badge?”

The man reached into his suit and removed a brown leather wallet.

“That’s no badge!”

The wallet fell open, revealing a dazzle of blue and gold.

“Oh,” said Paden, peering closely. “FBI? Good Lord.”

“The name is Pendergast, Special Agent A. X. L. Pendergast. May I sit down?”

Paden swallowed. “I suppose so.”

With a graceful flourish, the man parked himself in the only chair in the office other than Paden’s and crossed his legs, as if readying himself for a long stay.

“Is this about the murder?” Paden asked breathlessly. “Because I wasn’t even in the Museum when that happened. I don’t know anything about it, never met the victim. On top of that, I’ve no interest in gastropods. In my twenty years here, never been in that hall, not even once. So if that’s what…”

His voice trailed off as the man slowly raised a delicate hand. “It isn’t about the murder. Won’t you sit, Dr. Paden? It is your office, after all.”

Paden took a wary seat at the worktable, folded and unfolded his arms, wondering what this was about, why Museum security hadn’t notified him, and if he should answer questions or perhaps call a lawyer. Except he had no lawyer.

“Really, Dr. Paden, I do ask your forgiveness for the sudden intrusion. I have a small problem I need your help with — informally, of course.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

The man extended one hand, closed. Like a magician, he opened it slowly to reveal a blue stone. Paden, relieved that it was a mere identification problem, took the stone and examined it. “Turquoise,” he said, turning it over. “Tumbled.” He took a loupe off the worktable, placed it in his eye, and looked more closely. “It appears to be natural stone, not stabilized and certainly not reconstituted, oiled, or waxed. A fine, gemmy specimen, of an unusual color and composition. Most unusual, in fact. I’d say it’s worth a fair amount of money, perhaps more than a thousand dollars.”

“What makes it so valuable?”

“Its color. Most turquoise is sky blue, often with a greenish cast. But this stone is an unusually deep, deep blue, almost in the ultraviolet spectrum. That, along with its surrounding golden matrix, is very rare.”

He removed the loupe, held the stone back out to the FBI agent. “I hope I’ve been of assistance.”

“Indeed you have,” came the honeyed return, “but I was hoping you might tell me where it came from.”

Paden took it back, examined it for a longer period of time. “Well, it’s certainly not Iranian. I’d guess it’s American — southwestern. Startling deep-azure color with a golden spiderweb matrix. I would say this most likely comes from Nevada, with Arizona or Colorado as outside possibilities.”