The Bone Vault

by Linda Fairstein

  Angel refused to pick up her head when I walked into the conference room. She had a box of tissues in front of her and had gone through a handful before I arrived. Mrs. Alfieri was standing at the window and staring out, with her handkerchief balled up in her hand.

  “Does it feel any better to tell the truth? Isn’t it a relief?” I asked Angel. She didn’t seem to agree with me.

  “You both lied to me. You told me what I said to you was just gonna stay with us.”

  “I had to tell your mother the truth,” Vandomir said. “She’s got to know she can walk out every night and do her job without having you bringing men into the house. Miss Cooper was right. Family court will take you away from your home if your mother can’t control you.”

  Mrs. Alfieri turned to look at her daughter, too pained to raise her voice above a whisper. “You lied to him, Angel. You lied to all of us. Now you know how it feels when someone does that to you.”

  I tried to get her to understand the gravity of her encounter with Felix. “Do you know how lucky you are to be alive? You meet a total stranger in a taxicab and start having sex with him. Bring him into your house, where your two little brothers are asleep, not knowing what he’s capable of doing to you or to them.”

  “So?” Angel was still sullen and angry.

  It ripped me apart to see a kid like this who had a roof over her head and a parent who cared, and was still on a clear path to self-destruction. “You know where I spent my night? Standing beside the body of a young woman-not much older than you, probably. Somebody killed her and then stuffed her inside a box, hoping she’d never be found. She’ll never be going home again. The people who loved her will never see her alive.”

  Angel looked at me now, trying to figure out whether I was serious. “And yesterday afternoon I was at the morgue, looking at the autopsy pictures of another girl who was murdered, probably by a guy she met at a club the night before. Ever hear the wordautopsy? Know what that means?”

  “Tell her what it is, Miss Cooper.” Her mother walked closer to us, resting her arms on the back of one of the chairs. “Listen to her, Angel. This is what happens when somebody kills you. It ain’t enough that you’re already dead. They gotta cut you all up and take you apart, piece by piece. Then they sew you back up like you was a rag doll.”

  Better than my own big needle, I thought. That image grabbed the kid’s attention and had her looking to Vandomir for salvation from the two women who were making her day so difficult.

  “What happens to Felix now?”

  “He stays in jail. But it’s a different charge. It’s called statutory rape.” I explained to her that even though she had been a willing participant in her sexual relationship with the forty-eight-year-old man, the law deemed her incapable of consent. She was underage, and he would still be punished, although the sanctions were far less serious than those for forcible rape.

  “Laura will type up a new complaint,” I said to Vandomir, “and Angel can sign the corroborating affidavit. I want you to take the two of them down to the witness aid unit to get them hooked up for some counseling, okay? They can both use it.”

  I walked back to Laura’s alcove, almost tripping over Ellen Gunsher, who was on her way down the hall to Pat McKinney’s suite. The pair spent an inordinate amount of time behind his closed door, leading to endless office gossip about the inappropriate nature of their friendship. If Ellen needed as much supervision as McKinney claimed he was providing, she must have been even more dense than she revealed at trial division meetings on those rare occasions when she opened her mouth.

  Gunsher’s arrival gave me breathing room. McKinney wouldn’t look for me while she was hanging out with him, so there was no point even knocking on his door.

  I picked up the phone and dialed Jake’s number on my private line, trying to find a tone of voice that was not too accusatory. His assistant, Perry Tabard, answered and told me Jake was in the studio in the middle of a taping. “Would you ask him to call me as soon as he wraps it up? It’s pretty important.”

  “Shall I give him a message?”

  There was no point telling him what the problem was. I needed reassurance from Jake that he had not betrayed my confidence last night, and I didn’t want a middleman to get it.

  Before I could finish my conversation with Perry, Laura buzzed me on the intercom. Mike Chapman was on the phone.

  “Hey, Coop, how fast can you get your ass up to the ME’s office?”

  “Half an hour. I just need to turn over the rest of today’s schedule to Sarah.” My deputy and close friend, Sarah Brenner, had returned earlier in the spring from a six-month maternity leave. Our professional styles were so similar that I relied on her to run the fortymember unit as my partner. It was shortly after she gave birth that I had my terrifying encounter with the underbelly of the academic community at an elite Manhattan college, without benefit of her guidance and judgment. I was delighted to have her back at my side.

  “Great. Meet me at Dr. Kestenbaum’s.”

  “The girl-did you learn anything last night? Will they be able to figure out who she is or when she died?”

  “Save your cross-examination for the courtroom and step on it. You’re about to have a lesson in theology.”

  “I’ve already said my prayers for the deceased. Now I want some answers to my questions.” I was thinking of Battaglia’s directive and anxious to get results for him.

  “Dr. K. will give you all the answers you want. You’re going to meet your first Incorruptible.”

  “Mywhat?”

  “Unless he was an altar boy in my parish, chances are the killer never set eyes on one either.”

  “What’s an Incorruptible? What does it have to do with our victim?”

  “She’s perfectly preserved, Coop. No decomposition, no decay. We’ll have her identified before the end of the week. It’s a natural phenomenon-happened to a few of the saints every now and then over the centuries.

  “I’d have to think our perp closed the lid on Cleo and figured all he was leaving behind in his trail was a box of bones.”

  6

  I signed the visitors’ log at the entrance desk of the morgue. An interpreter was explaining to a middle-aged man, in Mandarin, what the process would be for the viewing of his father, who had been stabbed to death during a dispute in a gambling parlor in Chinatown. The attendant pressed the release button on the door that led to the elevators, and I followed a cop carrying an evidence envelope as he got on one and headed to the fourth floor.

  Mike was sitting at Kestenbaum’s desk, holding a phone to one ear and a cup of coffee in his other hand. “Yeah, loo, we got some good photos. Coop’ll take me up to the museum later on. I got a feeling this case is gonna be more culture than is good for a guy like me.” He paused to listen to his lieutenant. “No, Dr. K. is still in the basement with Cleo. Call you later.”

  “How’d you get pictures? McKinney told me he overruled you on having crime scene come in to process the truck. You should have called-”

  “Relax. You think you’re the only snake charmer who can get some results in the middle of the night? I called Hal Sherman at home,” Mike said, referring to the ace Crime Scene Unit detective. “He doesn’t need to be stroked by you in order to put in a little overtime on a serious caper. Screw McKinney.”

  “So who else knew about this before daybreak?”

  “Besides Lenny, the two of us, the mopes in the shipyard? Guess it’s Hal and the guys and ghouls who work downstairs on the graveyard shift. It was pretty quiet here when we brought the body in.”

  “Mike, the truth. Did you tell anyone about this?”

  “Like who? Whaddaya mean?”

  “Anyone you shouldn’t have. At one of the papers?”

  “Are you crazy? I’m not the one who likes the limelight. The less frigging coverage I have, the better I work, the sounder I sleep. Today it’s news. Tomorrow, it’s a stack of garbage tied up in piles and left out on the sidewalk with the t
rash, dogs lifting their legs to piss all over yesterday’s headliners and legends.”

  “Battaglia’s ripped. The story’s out, and he’s blaming me for telling Jake. He assumes Jake is the leak.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t believe he’d do something stupid like that, but he was with me when I heard the news, and he was waiting for me when I got home early this morning.”

  “In bed? As bad as you looked when you left me in Newark?”

  I smiled. “I’d better forget my own problems and focus on the more important things. Like Incorruptibles.”

  “Guess you’d have to be a good Catholic like me to know all about the saints, kid, and how to preserve a body without any decay.”

  Kestenbaum entered his office and motioned to Mike to stay at the desk. “It’s actually a tradition that started with the Jews. Check out the Old Testament. It’s the way Joseph had his father buried by our forefathers, Alex.”

  “Gospel According to Saint John, doc. Jesus was wound in linen clothes and anointed with spices.”

  “What are you two talking about?” I had been raised in the Jewish faith, my mother having converted before her marriage to my father.

  “Last night I figured it was going to take weeks to make an identification of our victim. That there would be natural decay, speeded up by her being enclosed in the sarcophagus. Maybe there’d be nothing left for DNA, or Dr. K. would have to do mitochondrial DNA on the hair, which takes so much longer. But she’s perfectly preserved.”

  “You mean, someone took steps to do that?”

  “Not intentionally. Not by cutting her up, the way they did to the Pharaohs. This one is natural, just like with the saints. You explain it, doc.”

  “Even as physicians, we learn that for millennia, early Jews and Christians tried to preserve human bodies against decomposition by wrapping them in linens, then saturating them with herbs and plant residues like aloe and myrrh. The Egyptians perfected the method, copied later by Europeans, of eviscerating the corpse and removing the internal organs, to prevent natural gases from causing decay.”

  “Forget taking out the viscera.” Chapman took over the lead in the conversation. “There’s not an external mark on Cleo’s body, is there, doc?”

  “Not one. This was not a medical preservation. The killer couldn’t have dreamed his prey would show up in this condition.”

  “You gotta think miracles. For centuries the corporal remains of saints were thought to be responsible for miracles in our Church. The Holy Ghost once took up residence inside them, making them sacred. That’s how come they healed the sick, made blind men see, and let cripples walk again. In the Middle Ages, Church officials began to dig up the bodies of saints and martyrs and nuns, hundreds of years after their deaths. Like Saint Zita, she’s always been one of my favorites.”

  “I’ve never heard of her.”

  “I’ll take you to see her myself. Tuscany, in Lucca. All laid out in a little glass case, looking like she’s taking a nap. She’s the patron saint of domestic servants-that’s why my old lady likes her so much. Lived in the thirteenth century. When the medieval wise men decided to exhume Zita because of all the miracles associated with her, they were amazed to find that her body was completely intact, without a trace of decay.”

  I had never heard of this phenomenon and looked at Kestenbaum to see whether he knew of it, or whether Chapman was bluffing. The pathologist nodded.

  “Saint Bernadette, too, in France. She died in 1879, and they dug her up thirty years later.”

  “Yeah, but the churchmen who did the digging were all religious people who must have been looking for miracles.”

  Kestenbaum corrected me. “They had surgeons present to witness the exhumations, along with the mayor of the little village and people unrelated to the Church.”

  Chapman continued, “They unscrewed the lid of the wooden coffin and there was the sister’s body, perfectly preserved.”

  “It must have smelled like-”

  “No odor of putrefaction at all. The only change noticed by the nuns who had prepared her for burial was the pallor of her complexion. She was wizened, but all the skin and hair was right in place, her nails were shining, and her hands still clutched a rosary, which had rusted.”

  “But surely, beneath the skin-”

  “I’m telling you, they did this to her two or three times. They reburied her and brought her up again. There are lots of witnesses. Muscles and ligaments were all in good condition.”

  “Why did they do it?”

  “Incorruptibility used to be one of the requisites for canonization, until some of our boys began to cheat and do it the surgical way. Like Saint Margaret of Cortona. Turns out she wasn’t preserved naturally. Had a little medical intervention. Did it by the Egyptian method, then put her back in the coffin and pretended it had happened naturally.

  “But Bernadette was a real phenomenon. The third time they brought her up was when they began to take relics. Pieces of her bones that doctors and priests removed from her corpse. Part of the body of the saint to help perform more miracles.”

  “They cut out the poor woman’s bones?”

  “Ribs, muscles. If they found gallstones they took them, too. Looking for proof of divine grace, trying to memorialize the person who was responsible for attracting this powerful good.”

  “So, you’re telling me that Bernadette was mummified? Naturally, not like the Egyptians did with the removal of all the body organs?”

  “It really was miraculous, at least in the Church if not to science. I mean, the way she was buried, nobody expected it. She’d been very ill at the time she died, and the chapel in which she’d been interred was so humid that everybody expected the flesh had decayed. After all, the rosary was rusty, the crucifix inside the coffin had turned green, and even her habit was damp.”

  I shuddered at Mike’s description. “This must have been very rare. Zita, Bernadette-”

  “Saint Ubald of Gubbio, Blessed Margaret of Savoy. You want me to go on? I know my saints and virgins better than I know Yankee statistics. Had my knuckles rapped enough times back in parochial school for catechisms I couldn’t follow, but when they got to this kind of stuff, it grabbed me.”

  “I’m missing something here. You two have figured out who our victim is? You’re not trying to tell me she’s some kind of saint, are you?”

  “She’s Saint Cleo to me, working her only little miracle for us. I never thought we’d find anything under those linen wraps. I figured that body would be partially if not fully decomposed. You gotta think the person who put her in that box and stuck a shipping label on it to sit on the blacktop in Newark during the summer heat, or in the hold of a freighter headed for Cairo, wouldn’t have expected there’d be anything left to make a visual ID of his victim.”

  “You’ve done the autopsy?” I asked Kestenbaum.

  “Later today. But we’ve unwrapped the linen and taken the photos. Mike’s right. The body is completely intact, in remarkable condition.”

  “Maybe she just died recently, within the week.”

  “Unlikely. I’d say she’s been dead for months, maybe the better part of a year. I’ll have a better idea after I get to work, but the skin has some discoloration and it’s shriveled a bit, the muscles have atrophied, and the lashes on her left eyelid have come out and are stuck to the brow.”

  “And she’s dressed in winter clothing, am I right, doc?”

  “Yeah. Nothing you’d wear at the end of May. Heavy woolen slacks and a four-ply cashmere sweater with long sleeves and a crewneck.”

  Kestenbaum removed a few Polaroid photos from the pocket of his lab coat and passed them to me. I lifted the one on top for a close look and passed the others to Mike.

  The young woman stared back at me with a sober expression. It was remarkable to think that she had been dead for any period of time greater than a few days. She appeared to be about thirty years old. Her skin had a strange cast, but I co
uld not tell how much of that was due to the poor quality of the Polaroid shot in the dim light of the morgue basement.

  “I’m telling you, Coop, she’s an Incorruptible.”

  Her sandy brown hair seemed to be falling out of her scalp, but otherwise, she appeared to be perfectly preserved.

  “She’s going to tell us what we need to know. Where she’s been all this time-”

  “Any ideas, doc?”

  “Think about the way the saints were buried. A number of pathologists have studied these cases, just as religious historians have. Most of the Incorruptibles, before canonization, were interred in burial vaults beneath the altars of churches. Not only was it hallowed ground but it was also cool and the area was often lined with heavy stone. The temperature was usually quite low beneath the floor, even when the seasons changed. That’s what you’re going to be looking for, Mike. Someplace cool and dry that would naturally preserve this body.”

  “What happened to her?” I studied her small face, with its high cheekbones and thin, straight nose.

  “I’ll work on that. You and Chapman figure out who she is and who wanted her dead.”

  “No signs of trauma?”

  “None.”

  “You don’t think she could have died naturally, do you?” I suddenly worried that we did not even have a crime victim here.

  Chapman shook his head. “Like a premature burial? Cleo just got in the box because she didn’t feel well, and someone closed the lid? I don’t think so, Coop. How about you, doc?”

  Kestenbaum wasn’t the guessing type. He’d wait and let the science of the postmortem procedure tell him what had caused the young woman’s death. That’s why I was surprised when he answered Mike.

  “Don’t quote me on this before I give you a call later on today. In all likelihood, it’s poison. I’d say it’s arsenic.”

  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.