Текст книги "White Fire"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

2

The famous – some might say infamous—“Red Museum” at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice had started as a simple collection of old investigative files, physical evidence, prisoners’ property, and memorabilia that, almost a hundred years ago, had been put into a display case in a hall at the old police academy. Since then, it had grown into one of the country’s largest and best collections of criminal memorabilia. The crème de la crème of the collection was on display in a sleek new exhibition hall in the college’s Skidmore, Owings & Merrill building on Tenth Avenue. The rest of the collection – vast rotting archives and moldering evidence from long-ago crimes – remained squirreled away in the hideous basement of the old police academy building on East Twentieth Street.

Early on at John Jay, Corrie had discovered this archive. It was pure gold – once she’d made friends with the archivist and figured out her way around the disorganized drawers and heaping shelves of stuff. She had been to the Red Museum archives many times in search of topics for papers and projects, most recently in her hunt for a topic for her Rosewell thesis. She had spent a great deal of time in the old unsolved-case files – those cold cases so ancient that all involved (including the possible perps) had definitely and positively died.

Corrie Swanson found herself in a creaking elevator, descending into the basement, one day after the meeting with her advisor. She was on a desperate mission to find a new thesis topic before it became too late to complete the approval process. It was mid-November already, and she was hoping to spend the winter break researching and writing up the thesis. She was on a partial scholarship, but Agent Pendergast had been making up the difference in tuition, and she was absolutely determined not to take one penny more from him than necessary. If her thesis won the Rosewell Prize, with its twenty-thousand-dollar grant, she wouldn’t have to.

The elevator doors opened to a familiar smell: a mixture of dust and acidifying paper, underlain by an odor of rodent urine. She crossed the hall to a pair of dented metal doors, graced with a sign that said RED MUSEUM ARCHIVES, and pressed the bell. An unintelligible rasp came out of the antiquated speaker; she gave her name, and a buzzer sounded to let her in.

“Corrie Swanson? How good to see you again!” came the hoarse voice of the archivist, Willard Bloom, as he rose from a desk in a pool of light, guarding the recesses of the storage room stretching off into the blackness behind him. He presented a rather cadaverous figure, stick-thin, with longish gray hair, yet underneath was charming and grandfatherly. She didn’t mind the fact that his eyes often wandered over various parts of her anatomy when he thought she wasn’t paying attention.

Bloom came around with a veined hand extended, which she took. The hand was surprisingly hot, and it gave her a bit of a start.

“Come, sit down. Have some tea.”

Some chairs had been set around the front of his desk, with a coffee table and, to the side, a battered cabinet with a hot plate, kettle, and teapot, an informal seating area in the midst of dust and darkness. Corrie flopped into a chair, setting her briefcase down with a thump next to her. “Ugh,” she said.

Bloom raised his eyebrows in mute inquiry.

“It’s Carbone. Once again he rejected my thesis idea. Now I have to start all over again.”

“Carbone,” Bloom said in his high-pitched voice, “is a well-known ass.”

This piqued her interest. “You know him?”

“I know everyone who comes down here. Carbone! Always fussing about getting dust on his Ralph Lauren suits, wanting me to play step-n-fetchit. As a result, I can never find anything for him, poor man…You know the real reason he keeps rejecting your thesis ideas, right?”

“I figure it’s because I’m a junior.”

Bloom put a finger to his nose and gave her a knowing nod. “Exactly. And Carbone is old school, a stickler for protocol.”

Corrie had been afraid of this. The Rosewell Prize for the year’s outstanding thesis was hugely coveted at John Jay. Its winners were often senior valedictorians, who went on to highly successful law enforcement careers. As far as she knew, it had never been won by a junior – in fact, juniors were quietly discouraged from submitting theses. But there was no rule against it, and Corrie refused to be deterred by such bureaucratic baggage.

Bloom held up the pot with a yellow-toothed smile. “Tea?”

She looked at the revolting teapot, which did not appear to have been washed in a decade. “That’s a teapot? I thought it was a murder weapon. You know, loaded with arsenic and ready to go.”

“Always ready with a riposte. But surely you know most poisoners are women? If I were a murderer, I’d want to see my victim’s blood.” He poured out the tea. “So Carbone rejected your idea. Surprise, surprise. What’s plan B?”

“That wasmy plan B. I was hoping you might be able to give me some fresh ideas.”

Bloom sat back in his chair and sipped noisily from his cup. “Let’s see. As I recall, you’re majoring in forensic osteology, are you not? What, exactly, are you looking for?”

“I need to examine some human skeletons that show antemortem or perimortem damage. Got any case files that might point to something like that?”

“Hmm.” His battered face screwed up in concentration.

“The problem is, it’s hard to come by accessible human remains. Unless I go prehistoric. But that opens up a whole other can of worms with Native American sensitivities. And I want remains for which there are good written records. Historicremains.”

Bloom sucked down another goodly portion of tea, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Bones. Ante– or perimortem damage. Historic. Good records. Accessible.” He closed his eyes, the lids so dark and veiny they looked like he might have been punched. Corrie waited, listening to the ticking sounds in the archives, the faint sound of forced air, and a pattering noise she feared was probably rats.

The eyes sprang open again. “Just thought of something. Ever heard of the Baker Street Irregulars?”

“No.”

“It’s a very exclusive club of Sherlock Holmes devotees. They have a dinner in New York every year, and they publish all sorts of Holmesian scholarship, all the while pretending that Holmes was a real person. Well, one of these fellows died a few years back, and his widow, not knowing what else to do, shipped his entire collection of Sherlockiana to us. Perhaps she didn’t know that Holmes was a fictionaldetective, and we only deal in nonfictionhere. At any rate, I’ve been dipping into it now and then. Lot of rubbish, mostly. But there was a copy in there of Doyle’s diary – just a photocopy, unfortunately – and it made entertaining reading for an old man stuck in a thankless job in a dusty archive.”

“And what did you find, exactly?”

“There was something in there about a man-eating bear.”

Corrie frowned. “A man-eating bear? I’m not sure—”

“Come with me.”

Bloom went to a bank of switches and struck them all with the flat of his palm, turning the archives into a flickering sea of fluorescent light. Corrie fancied she could hear the rats scurrying and squealing away as the tubes blinked on, one aisle after another.

She followed the archivist as he made his way down the long rows between dusty shelving and wooden cabinets with yellowed, handwritten labels, finally reaching an area in the back where library tables were piled with cardboard boxes. Three large boxes sat together, labeled BSI. Bloom went to one box, rummaged through it, hauled out an expandable folder, blew off the dust, and began sorting through the papers.

“Here we are.” He held up an old photocopy. “Doyle’s diary. Properly, of course, the man should be referred to as ‘Conan Doyle,’ but that’s such a mouthful, isn’t it?” In the dim light, he flipped through the pages, then began to read aloud:

…I was in London on literary business. Stoddart, the American, proved to be an excellent fellow, and had two others to dinner. They were Gill, a very entertaining Irish MP, and Oscar Wilde…

He paused, his voice dying into a mumble as he passed over some material, then rising again as he reached a passage he deemed important.

…The highlight of the evening, if I may call it that, was Wilde’s account of his lecture tour in America. Hard to believe, perhaps, but the famed champion of aestheticism attracted huge interest in America, especially in the West, where in one place a group of uncouth miners gave him a standing ovation…

Corrie began to fidget. She had so little time to waste. She cleared her throat. “I’m not sure Oscar Wilde and Sherlock Holmes are quite what I’m looking for,” she said politely. But Bloom continued to read, holding up his finger for attention, his reedy voice riding over her objections.

…Towards the close of the evening, Wilde, who had indulged a great deal in Stoddart’s excellent claret, told me, sotto voce, a story of such singular horror, of such grotesque hideousness, that I had to excuse myself from the table. The story involved the killing and eating of eleven miners some years previous, purportedly by a monstrous “grizzled bear” in a mining camp called Roaring Fork. The actual details are so abhorrent I cannot bring myself to commit them to paper at this time, although the impression left on my mind was indelible and one that will, unfortunately, follow me to the grave.

He paused, taking a breath. “And there you have it. Eleven corpses, eaten by a grizzly bear. In Roaring Fork, no less.”

“Roaring Fork? You mean the glitzy ski resort in Colorado?”

“The very one. It started life as a silver boomtown.”

“When was this?”

“Wilde was there in 1881. So this business with the man-eating bear probably took place in the 1870s.”

She shook her head. “And how am I supposed to turn this into a thesis?”

“Nearly a dozen skeletons, eaten by a bear? Surely they will display exquisite perimortem damage – tooth and claw marks, gnawing, crunching, biting, scraping, worrying.” Bloom spoke these words with a kind of relish.

“I’m studying forensic criminology, not forensic bearology.”

“Ah, but you know from your studies that many, if not most, skeletal remains from murder victims show animal damage. You should see the files we have on that. It can be very difficult to tell the difference between animal marks and those left by the murderer. As far as I can recall, no one has done a comprehensive study of perimortem bone damage of this kind. It would be a most original contribution to forensic science.”

Very true, Corrie thought, surprised at Bloom’s insight. And come to think of it, what a fabulous and original subject for a thesis.

Bloom went on. “I have little doubt at least some of the poor miners were buried in the historic Roaring Fork cemetery.”

“See, that’s a problem. I can’t go digging up some historic cemetery looking for bear victims.”

A yellow smile appeared on Bloom’s face. “My dear Corrie, the only reason I brought this up at all was because of the fascinating little article in the Timesthis very morning! Didn’t you see it?”

“No.”

“The original ‘boot hill’ of Roaring Fork is now a stack of coffins in a ski equipment warehouse. You see, they’re relocating the cemetery on account of development.” He looked at her and winked, his smile broadening.

3

Along the Cote d’Azur in the South of France, on a bluff atop Cap Ferrat, a man in a black suit, surrounded by bougainvillea, rested on a stone balcony in the afternoon sun. It was warm for the time of year, and the sunlight gilded the lemon trees that crowded the balcony and descended the steep hill to the Mediterranean, ending in a strip of deserted white beach. Beyond could be seen a field of yachts at anchor, the rocky terminus of the cape topped by an ancient castle, behind which ran the blue horizon.

The man reclined in a chaise longue covered with silk damask, beside a small table on which sat a salver. His silvery eyes were half closed. Four items sat on the tray: a copy of Spenser’s Faerie Queene; a small glass of pastis; a beaker of water; and a single unopened letter. The salver had been brought out two hours ago by a manservant, who now awaited further orders in the shade of the portico. The man who had rented the villa rarely received mail. A few letters bore the return address of one Miss Constance Greene in New York; the rest came from what appeared to be an exclusive boarding school in Switzerland.

As time passed, the manservant began to wonder whether the sickly gentleman who had hired him at excessively high wages might have suffered a heart attack – so motionless had he been these past few hours. But no – a languid hand now moved, reaching for the beaker of water. It poured a small measure into the glass of pastis, turning the yellow liquid a cloudy yellowish green. The man then raised the glass and took a long, slow drink before replacing it on the tray.

Stillness returned, and the shadows of afternoon grew longer. More time passed. The hand moved again, as if in slow motion, again raising the cut-crystal glass to pale lips, taking another long, lingering sip of the liqueur. He then picked up the book of poetry. More silence as the man appeared to read, turning the pages at long intervals, one after another. The afternoon light blazed its last glory on the façade of the villa. From below, the sounds of life filtered upward: a distant clash of voices raised in argument, the throbbing of a yacht as it moved in the bay, birds chattering among the trees, the faint sound of a piano playing Hanon.

And now the man in the black suit closed the book of poetry, laid it upon the salver, and turned his attention to the letter. Still moving as if underwater, he plucked it up and, with a long, polished nail, slit it open, unfolded it, and began to read.

Nov. 27

Dear Aloysius,

I’m mailing this to you c/o Proctor, in hopes he’ll pass it along. I know you’re still traveling and probably don’t want to be bothered, but you’ve been gone almost a year and I figured maybe you were about ready to come home. Aren’t you itching by now to end your leave of absence from the FBI and start solving murders again? And anyway, I just had to tell you about my thesis project. Believe it or not, I’m off to Roaring Fork, Colorado!

I got the most amazing idea for a thesis. I’ll try to be brief because I know how impatient you are, but to explain I do have to go into a little history. In 1873, silver was discovered in the mountains over the Continental Divide from Leadville, Colorado. A mining camp sprang up in the valley, called Roaring Fork after the river flowing through it, and the surrounding mountains became dotted with claims. In May of 1876, a rogue grizzly bear killed and ate a miner at a remote claim in the mountains – and for the rest of the summer the bear totally terrorized the area. The town sent out a number of hunting teams to track and kill it, to no avail, as the mountains were extremely rugged and remote. By the time the rampage stopped, eleven miners had been mauled and horribly eaten. It was a big deal at the time, with a lot of local newspaper articles (that’s how I learned these details), sheriff’s reports, and such. But Roaring Fork was remote and the story died pretty quickly once the killings stopped.

The miners were buried in the Roaring Fork cemetery, and their fate was pretty much forgotten. The mines closed up, Roaring Fork dwindled in population, and in time it almost became a ghost town. Then, in 1946, it was bought up by investors and turned into a ski resort – and now of course it’s one of the fanciest resorts in the world – average home price over four million!

So that’s the history. This fall, the original Roaring Fork cemetery was dug up to make way for development. All the remains are now stacked in an old equipment shed high up on the ski slopes while everyone argues about what to do with them. A hundred and thirty coffins – of which eight are the remains of miners killed by the grizzly. (The other three were either lost or never recovered.)

Which brings me to my thesis topic:

A Comprehensive Analysis of Perimortem Trauma in the Skeletons of Eight Miners Killed by a Grizzly Bear, from a Historic Colorado Cemetery

There has never been a large-scale study of perimortem trauma on human bones inflicted by a large carnivore. Ever! You see, it isn’t often that people are eaten by animals. Mine will be the first!!

My thesis advisor, Prof. Greg Carbone, rejected my two earlier topics, and I’m glad the bastard did, if you’ll excuse my language. He would have rejected this one, too, for reasons I won’t bore you with, but I decided to take a page out of your book. I got my sweaty hands on Carbone’s personnel file. I knew the man was too perfect to be real. Some years back, he’d been boning an undergraduate student in one of his classes – and then was dumb enough to flunk her when she broke it off. So she complained, not about the sex, but the bad grade. No laws were broken (the girl was twenty), but the scumbag gave her an F when she deserved an A. It was all hushed up, the girl got her A and had her tuition “refunded” for the year – a way of paying her off without calling it that, no doubt.

You can find anybody these days, so I tracked her down and gave her a call. Her name’s Molly Denton and she’s now a cop in Worcester, Mass. – a decorated lieutenant in the homicide department, no less. Boy, did she give me the lowdown on my advisor! So I went into the meeting with Carbone armed with a couple of nukes, just in case.

I wish you’d been there. It was beautiful. Before I even got into my new thesis idea, I mentioned all nice and polite that we had a mutual acquaintance: Molly Denton. And I gave him a big fat smirk, just to make sure he got the message. He went all pale. He couldn’t wait to change the subject back to my thesis, wanted to hear about it, listened attentively, instantly agreed it was the most marvelous thesis proposal he’d heard in years, and promised he would personally shepherd it through the faculty committee. And then – this is the best part – he suggested I leave “as soon as possible” for Roaring Fork. The guy was butter in my hands.

Winter break just started, and so I’m off to Roaring Fork in two days! Wish me well. And if you feel like it, write me back c/o your pal Proctor, who will have my forwarding address as soon as I know it.

Love,

Corrie

P.S. I almost forgot to tell you one of the best things about my thesis idea. Believe it or not, I first learned about the grizzly bear killings from the diary of Arthur Conan Doyle! Doyle heard it himself from no less than Oscar Wilde at a dinner party in London in 1889. It seems Wilde was a collector of horrible stories, and he’d picked up this one on a lecture tour of the American West.

The manservant, standing in the shadows, watched his peculiar employer finish reading the letter. The long, white fingers seemed to droop, and the letter slid to the table, as if discarded. As the hand moved to pick up the glass of pastis, the evening breeze gently lofted the papers and wafted them over the railing of the balcony, over the tops of the lemon trees; then they went gliding off into blue space, fluttering and turning aimlessly until they had vanished from view, unseen, unnoticed, and completely disregarded by the pale man in the black suit, sitting on a lonely balcony high above the sea.

4

The Roaring Fork Police Department was located in a classic, Old West – style Victorian red-brick building, impossibly picturesque, that stood in a green park against a backdrop of magnificent snowy peaks. In front of it was a twelve-foot statue of Lady Justice, covered with snow, and – rather oddly – not wearing the traditional blindfold.

Corrie Swanson had loaded up with books about Roaring Fork and she had read all about this courthouse, which was noted for the number of famous defendants who had passed through its doors, from Hunter S. Thompson to serial killer Ted Bundy. Roaring Fork, she knew, was quite a resort. It had the most expensive real estate in the country. This proved to be annoying in the extreme, as she found herself forced to stay in a town called Basalt, eighteen winding miles down Route 82, in a crappy Cloud Nine Motel, with cardboard walls and an itchy bed, at the stunning price of $109 a night. It was the first day of December, and ski season was really ramping up. From her work-study jobs at John Jay – and money left over from the wad Agent Pendergast had pressed on her a year back, when he’d sent her away to stay with her father during a bad time – she had saved up almost four thousand dollars. But at a hundred and nine dollars a night, plus meals, plus the ridiculous thirty-nine bucks a day she was paying for a Rent-a-Junker, she was going to burn through that pretty fast.

In short, she had no time to waste.

The problem was, in her eagerness to get her thesis approved, she had told a little lie. Well, maybe it wasn’t such a little lie. She had told Carbone and the faculty committee that she’d gotten permission to examine the remains: carte blanche access. The truth was, her several emails to the chief of the Roaring Fork Police Department, whom she determined had the power to grant her access, had gone unanswered, and her phone calls had not been returned. Not that anyone had been rude to her – it was just a sort of benign neglect.

By marching into the police station herself the day before, she’d finally finagled an appointment with Chief Stanley Morris. Now she entered the building and approached the front desk. To her surprise it was manned, not by a burly cop, but by a girl who looked to be even younger than Corrie herself. She was quite pretty, with a creamy complexion, dark eyes, and shoulder-length blond hair.

Corrie walked up to her, and the girl smiled.

“Are you, uh, a policeman?” Corrie asked.

The girl laughed and shook her head. “Not yet.”

“What, then – the receptionist?”

The girl shook her head again. “I’m interning at the station over the winter vacation. Today just happens to be my day to man the reception desk.” She paused. “I would like to get into law enforcement someday.”

“That makes two of us. I’m a student at John Jay.”

The girl’s eyes widened. “No kidding!”

Corrie extended her hand. “Corrie Swanson.”

The girl shook it. “Jenny Baker.”

“I have an appointment with Chief Morris.”

“Oh, yes.” Jenny consulted an appointment book. “He’s expecting you. Go right in.”

“Thanks.” This was a good beginning. Corrie tried to get her nervousness under control and not think about what would happen if the chief denied her access to the remains. At the very least, her thesis depended on it. And she had already spent a fortune getting here, nonrefundable airplane tickets and all.

The door to the chief’s office was open, and as she entered the man rose from behind his desk and came around it, extending a hand. She was startled by his appearance: a small, rotund, cheerful-looking man with a beaming face, bald pate, and rumpled uniform. The office reflected the impression of informality, with its arrangement of old, comfortable leather furniture and a desk pleasantly disheveled with papers, books, and family photographs.

The chief ushered her over to a little sitting area in one corner, where an elderly secretary brought in a tray with paper coffee cups, sugar, and cream. Corrie, who had arrived the day before yesterday and was still feeling a bit jet-lagged, helped herself, refraining from her usual four teaspoons of sugar only to see Chief Morris put no less than five into his own cup.

“Well,” Morris said, leaning back, “sounds like you’ve got a very interesting project going here.”

“Thank you,” Corrie said. “And thanks for meeting me on such short notice.”

“I’ve always been fascinated with Roaring Fork’s past. The grizzly bear killings are part of local lore, at least for those of us who know the history. So few do these days.”

“This research project presents an almost perfect opportunity,” Corrie said, launching into her carefully memorized talking points. “It’s a real chance to advance the science of forensic criminology.” She waxed enthusiastic as Chief Morris listened attentively, his chin resting pensively on one soft hand. Corrie touched on all the salient points: how her project would surely garner national press attention and reflect well on the Roaring Fork Police Department; how much John Jay – the nation’s premier law enforcement college – would appreciate his cooperation; how she would of course work closely with him and follow whatever rules were laid down. She went into a revisionist version of her own story: how she’d wanted to be a cop all her life; how she’d won a scholarship to John Jay; how hard she’d worked – and then she concluded by enthusing over how much she admired his own position, how ideal it was having the opportunity to work in such an interesting and beautiful community. She laid it on as thick as she dared, and she could see, with satisfaction, that he was responding with nods, smiles, and various noises of approval.

When she was done, she gave as natural a laugh as she could muster, and said she’d been talking way too much and would love to hear his thoughts.

At this Chief Morris took another sip of coffee, cleared his throat, praised her for her hard work and enterprise, told her how much he appreciated her coming in, and – again – how interesting her project sounded. Yes, indeed. He would have to think about it, of course, and consult with the local coroner’s office, and with the historical society, and a few others, to get their views, and then the town attorney should probably be brought into the loop…And he finished off his coffee and put his hands on the arm of his chair, looking as if he was getting ready to stand up and end the meeting.

A disaster. Corrie took a deep breath. “Can I be totally frank with you?”

“Why, yes.” He settled back in his chair.

“It took me ages to scrape together the money for this project. I had to work two jobs in addition to my scholarship. Roaring Fork is one of the most expensive places in the country, and just being here is costing me a fortune. I’ll go broke waiting for permission.”

She paused, took a breath.

“Honestly, Chief Morris, if you consult with all those people, it’s going to take a long time. Maybe weeks. Everyone’s going to have a different opinion. And then, no matter what decision you make, someone will feel as if they were overridden. It could become controversial.”

“Controversial,” the chief echoed, alarm and distaste in his voice.

“May I make an alternative suggestion?”

The chief looked a bit surprised but not altogether put out by this. “Certainly.”

“As I understand it, you have the full authority to give me permission. So…” She paused and then decided to just lay it out, completely unvarnished. “I’d be incredibly grateful if you’d please just give me permission right now, so I can do my research as quickly as possible. I only need a couple of days with the remains, plus the option to take away a few bones for further analysis. That’s all. The quicker this happens, the better for everyone. The bones are just sitting there. I could get my work done with barely anyone noticing. Don’t give people time to make objections. Please, Chief Morris – it’s soimportant to me!”

This ended on more of a desperate note than she intended, but she could see that, once again, she had made an impression.

“Well, well,” the chief said, with more throat clearings and hemmings and hawings. “I see your point. Hmmm. We don’t want controversy.”

He leaned over the edge of his chair, craned his neck toward the door. “Shirley? More coffee!”

The secretary came back in with two more paper cups. The chief proceeded once again to heap an astonishing amount of sugar into the cup, fussing with the spoon, the cream, stirring the cup endlessly while his brow remained furrowed. He finally laid down the plastic spoon and took a good long sip.

“I’m very much leaning toward your proposal,” he said. “Very much. I’ll tell you what. It’s only noon. If you like I’ll take you over now, show you the coffins. Of course you can’t actually handle the remains, but you’ll get an idea of what’s there. And I’ll have an answer for you tomorrow morning. How’s that?”

“That would be great! Thank you!”

Chief Morris beamed. “And just between you and me, I think you can depend on that answer being positive.”

And as they stood up, Corrie had to actually restrain herself from hugging the man.