Lethal Legacy (29 page)

She pursed her lips. “Which ones do you want?”

“I’m not playing that game, Jill. We want them
all.”

She started walking briskly up the long ramp that
led to the elevator. Mike and I were several paces behind her.

“Stay on her ass, Coop. I’ll be back to get you.
Let me slip outside and see if I can spot the hatch while the crime scene’s
still taped off. See if it was disturbed recently.”

Mike separated from us in the lobby of the
building, and Jill and I continued on to her office, past another uniformed cop
who’d been posted at the door. She encouraged me to take a seat in the
anteroom, but I insisted on following her to her desk.

Reluctantly, she opened a file drawer and removed
a list of the current board members and handed it to me.

I scanned it and could see that the addresses of the
names that interested me most—Jasper Hunt and Jonah Krauss—were nearby, on the
East Side of Manhattan.

I asked Jill about other members whose names had
not come up so far in the case, in part to educate myself and in part to let
her think we’d be moving too fast, with too many trustees, for her to try to
run interference.

When we finished talking, I used her phone to call
Laura and let her know I’d been sidetracked by the discovery of Barr’s body.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s Friday and very quiet
down here.”

“Any calls?”

“McKinney’s secretary. Says he wants you to check
in with him by the hour if you’re not coming in today. Battaglia’s orders. I’m
only the messenger.”

“Not to worry. I’m behaving like Pat’s new best
friend.”

“And Moffett’s law secretary called about that
familial search issue in the Griggs case,” Laura said. “Is Mr. Fine the
defendant’s lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“Moffett let him go back to California ’cause he
hadn’t finished writing his decision, so he won’t announce it until Wednesday,
when Fine can be back in town. I’ve got you calendared to be up in court at ten
a.m.”

“Thanks, Laura. We’ve waited eight years for a
good lead in Kayesha’s case. One more week won’t be a deal breaker.”

“I’ll call you if anything else comes up. Tell
Mike not to work you too hard.”

Ten minutes later, Mike came through the door of
Jill’s office. He had been running, I guessed, from the way he was panting.

“You mind stepping out, Jill? I need a minute with
Alex.”

She was almost bristling now, put out in every way
possible and cut off from her staff. She left the room without answering.

“First of all, it’s like a mob scene on the
street. We’ll have to try to duck out with some cover on the Fortieth Street
side, unless you want your puss all over the news. The staff comes and goes by
the old carriage entrance—shipping and receiving now—so maybe an RMP can pull
in and take us to my car.”

“Employees?”

“Nah. Lieutenant Peterson’s playing hardball out
there. He’s let a few of the curators in, in case CSU needs them as they work their
way around. Everybody else has been told to take the day off and come back on
Monday.”

“What then?”

“I haven’t seen so many guys in uniform since the
Paddy’s Day parade. Only this time they’re sober,” Mike said. “And if you think
that good-looking army of cops—and the shitload of yellow tape that’s wrapped
around the entire circumference of Bryant Park—hasn’t attracted every crime
reporter in town, you’d be mistaken.”

“And the hatch?”

“Couldn’t have made it easier unless somebody shot
the body out of a rocket launcher.”

“How?”

“Look, Coop. Yesterday afternoon, that end of the
park was teeming with workmen. Say our boy was anywhere in the ’hood and saw
the staging area setting up for the ball game. Here’s his golden opportunity.”

“Well, you’re assuming he’s familiar with the
library.”

“Damn right I am. This scheme wasn’t launched by
some junkie looking to get high. Five o’clock last night, the whole place goes
dark. Everybody scatters for home.”

“Tina’s dead?”

“Killed in the lab. What did Dr. Assif say? Maybe
the evening before. No struggle. She knew the guy, I’m thinking. Trusted him.
Maybe they were hanging out together for a reason. Hoist on her own petard.”

“What?”

“The weapon. I’ll bet the weapon came right off
the top of her desk,” Mike said. “Now back to last night.”

“Yeah, but if the killer doesn’t work in the lab,
how did he get back in to get her body?”

“He had her ID tag. Swiped it and came back.
Covered her little body with a tarp, took it out of the freezer, and dollied it
down the hall, down the ramp, down to the stacks.”

“It must be so sinister there at night.”

“Nobody around to get in his way. Push up the
hatch and roll one more tarp among all the others,” Mike said. “Count on the
fact that he’s a Red Sox fan to even think of screwing up a Yankee game like
that.”

“It’s incredibly risky,” I said. “Smarter just to
leave the body in the freezer. Who knows when it would have been found?”

“You’re not thinking, Blondie. My guy didn’t go
there for the body. That was just pure carpe diem. Carpe corpse. My killer went
back for the books.”

“What books?” I asked.

“The ones I found under the water tank. The one
that had the map inside,” Mike said, doodling on a paper on Jill’s blotter.
“I’m figuring he might have had them stashed in the freezer with Barr’s body,
then moved them upstairs last night after he disposed of her.”

“So when did he leave the library?”

“Who says he left?”

“That’s a chilling thought.”

“You know how enormous this place is—above and
below ground? That’s why nobody’s getting in until it’s swept by Scully’s
finest.”

“What if he just walked
out
the door this
morning?”

“Who?”

“Your killer. I mean, security wasn’t letting
people in, but nobody said anything about letting anyone out. Especially with
all the commotion outside, and the staff gathering at the entrance. What if he
passed for a detective and just walked into the crowd?”

Mike’s eyebrows raised. “You think too much.
That’s one of your problems.”

“So why am I wasting time with this list of
trustees, Mike? Your scenario doesn’t quite fit what I’d assume would be the
modus operandi of all the deep-pocketed Seconds and Thirds, the Juniors and
Seniors who sit on this board. Or Minerva Hunt.”

“Partners in crime. Some grunt getting paid to do
the dirty work. What did Jill Gibson tell you the other day? That map thieves
steal to order. We ought to talk to that master thief, Eddy Forbes. See if his
parole officer can lean on him to squeal. If he’s got anything to give, maybe
you can cut him a deal. Forbes can’t be the only library rat ever running
around loose in the stacks. He might know some of the other players.”

“I’m yours for the day,” I said.

“Start making your wish list. Your afternoon
itinerary,” Mike said, opening Jill’s office door. “I just need to call the
morgue and see when they’re going to autopsy Barr, grab Mercer, and then we’re
off.”

Jill was sitting in the alcove of the executive
suite. She stood up as we came toward her, and Mike asked if he could use the
phone on the desk.

I was staring at a portrait that hung on the end
wall of the narrow room as Mike dialed.

“Jasper Hunt,” Jill said to me. “The First. Done
by the great Thomas Eakins, while he was teaching in New York at the Art
Students League in the 1880s.”

It wasn’t the striking figure of Hunt that had
caught my attention.

“Look at that, Mike,” I said. “Look at his hand.”

“I’ll be damned. It’s Hunt and his armadillo.”

“Armillary, not armadillo,” Jill said, in a
humorless effort to correct Mike. “The brass rings represent the principal
circles of the heavens.”

I walked closer to look at the detail. Jasper
Hunt’s hand was resting on the brass skeleton of the sphere.

“It’s the one.” There was no question from the
markings and detail portrayed that it was the weapon that had killed Karla
Vastasi.

“You know the painting?” Jill asked. “We’re so
fortunate that Mr. Hunt gave this to us. You don’t see many Eakinses outside of
Philadelphia.”

I couldn’t think of anything else except
connecting the lethal antique to Jasper Hunt himself. But Jill continued
explaining the significance of the art to us.

“Important men often had their portraits done with
their armillaries. It was such a complex device that it was used to represent
the height of wisdom.”

“Sit tight for a few hours, Jill. We’ll call you
later.” Mike hung up the phone. “Saddle up, Coop.”

He broke into a run and I trailed behind him, out
of the executive suite, down the great staircase to the lobby. “I’m all turned
around,” he said. “Which way is the map division?”

I pointed to the north end of the hall and tried
to stay with him as he picked up speed. He threw open the door and startled
Bea, who was sitting at her computer.

“How long will it take you to work up a historical
footprint?”

“Depends on the location. You picked a good day,
Detective,” she said, winking at him. “I seem to have some time on my hands.
What’s the address?”

Mike gave her the number of the brownstone on East
Ninety-third Street in which Tina Barr had last lived, the building in which
Karla Vastasi had been murdered.

“There’s a whole row of houses there that have
been in the Hunt family for more than a hundred years. Tell me anything about
those properties you can learn from your maps, Bea. Dig me up some footprints
as fast as you can.”

TWENTY-FOUR

It was only eleven-thirty in the morning, but I
felt as though a week had passed since Mike called me about Tina Barr’s body.

A patrol car had backed in to the receiving bay of
the library and the three of us were able to get through, without incident, the
crowd of photographers, reporters, and local ghouls feasting on rumors of the
dead girl in the park.

Mike examined the key wrapped in his handkerchief.
It was old-fashioned—a long, cylindrical shaft with a notched tip, and an
ornate bow to grasp and turn.

“You got an evidence bag?” he asked the driver of
the patrol car.

“Yeah.”

Mike dropped the key in the manila envelope and
made a note of the cop’s name and shield number. “Get this down to the lab
right now and voucher it. Ask for Ralph Salvietti. He’s been assigned to the
case. Tell him Chapman needs this yesterday, okay?”

It was a short drive up Park past the corner of
Fifty-ninth Street, where a new luxury tower had opened a couple of years ago
amid the stately old buildings that lined the avenue for the next thirty-five
blocks.

We were throwing out ideas as we walked to the
building, adding to the ever-growing list of chores.

“Who’s going to check with the shipping companies
and post office to see whether Tina mailed some of her belongings off, like to
her mother?” I asked. “She must have done something with her possessions when
she cleaned out of the apartment.”

“I got Al Vandomir doing postal, UPS, FedEx, and
all the storage locations near the apartment and the library,” Mercer said.

Every item one of us thought to add to the list
led to three or four more. The squad working on each murder—Karla Vastasi and
now Tina Barr—would be expanded to a task force and the media would pump up the
fear factor across the city. Any witnesses we couldn’t reach today would be on
notice of the scope of the investigation by the time the morning news dropped
on their doorsteps.

I asked the concierge for Jonah Krauss’s office,
and we were directed to the forty-third floor. The elevator interior was sleek
and high-tech, with two small-screen televisions—one that ran the local
all-news station and the other, a stock ticker.