“Margo?” Frock called.
She walked over to the examining table.
“My dear,” Frock said, pushing his wheelchair away and gesturing toward the microscope, “please examine this groove running down the right femur.”
The Stereozoom was on lowest power, yet it was still like gazing into another world. The brown bone leaped into view, revealing the ridges and valleys of a miniature desert landscape.
“What do you make of this?” he asked.
It wasn’t the first time Margo had been called to give an opinion in a dispute, and she didn’t relish the role. “It looks like a natural fissure in the bone,” she said, keeping her voice neutral. “Part of the suite of bone spurs and ridges that seem to have affected the skeleton. I wouldn’t necessarily say it was caused by a tooth.”
Frock settled back in his wheelchair, not quite able to mask a smile of triumph.
Brambell blinked. “I’m sorry?” he asked in disbelief. “Dr. Green, I don’t mean to contradict you, but that’s a longitudinal tooth mark if ever I saw one.”
“I don’t mean to contradict you, Dr. Brambell.” She switched the stereozoom to higher power, and the small fissure immediately turned into a vast canyon. “But I can see some natural pores along the inside, here.”
Brambell bustled over and looked into the eyepieces, holding his old horn-rims to one side. He stared at the image for several moments, then stepped away much more slowly than he had approached.
“Hmm,” he said, replacing his glasses. “It pains me to say it, Frock, but you may have a point.”
“You mean Margo may have a point,” said Frock.
“Yes, of course. Very good, Dr. Green.”
Margo was spared a reply by the ringing of the lab phone. Frock wheeled over and answered it energetically. Margo watched him, realizing that this was the first time she had really stopped to look at her old adviser since D’Agosta’s call had brought them back together the week before. Though still portly, he seemed thinner than she remembered from their days together at the Museum. His wheelchair, too, was different: old and scuffed. She wondered, in sudden sympathy, if her mentor had fallen on hard times. Yet if so, it hadn’t seemed to affect him adversely. If anything, he looked more alert, more vigorous, than during his tenure as Anthropology Department chairman.
Frock was listening, clearly upset about something. Margo’s gaze drifted away from him and up to the laboratory window and its gorgeous view of Central Park. The trees were rich with the dark green foliage of summer, and the reservoir shimmered in the brilliant light. To the south, several rowboats drifted lazily across the pond. She thought how infinitely preferable it would be in one of those boats—basking in the sun—instead of here in the Museum, pulling apart rotten bodies.
“That was D’Agosta,” Frock said, hanging up with a sigh. “He says our friend here is going to have some company. Close the blinds, will you? Artificial light is preferable for microscope work.”
“What do you mean, company?” Margo asked sharply.
“That’s how he put it. Apparently, they discovered a badly decomposed head during a search of some railroad tunnels yesterday afternoon. They’re sending it over for analysis.”
Dr. Brambell muttered something in fervent Gaelic.
“Does the head belong…” Margo began, then nodded in the direction of the corpses.
Frock shook his head, a somber expression on his face. “Apparently it’s unrelated.”
Silence descended on the lab for a moment. Then, as if on cue, the two men slowly returned to the unidentified skeleton. Soon, murmurs of dissent began to rise once again. Margo sighed deeply and turned back toward the electrophoresis equipment. She had at least a morning’s worth of cataloging to get through.
Her eye moved toward the X rays. They’d raised a fearful stink with the lab in order to get them that morning. Maybe she ought to take a quick look before starting the cataloging.
She slid out the first series, clipping them to the viewer. Three shots of the unidentified skeleton’s upper torso. As she expected, they showed—much less clearly—what they had already observed from direct examination: a skeleton suffering bizarre bone deformities, with a grotesque thickening and ridging of almost every osteological process in the body.
She pulled them down and slid the next series into the clips. Another set of three views, this time of the lumbar region.
She saw it immediately: four small spots, crisp and white. Curious, she swiveled the magnifier over for a closer look. The four spots were sharp triangles, arranged in a precise square at the very bottom of the spine, completely enclosed in a fused mass of bony growth. They had to be metal, Margo knew: only metal would be that opaque to X rays.
She straightened up. The two men were still bending over the cadaver, their mutterings floating toward her across the quiet room.
“There’s something over here you should take a look at,” she said.
Brambell reached the viewer first and peered closely. He stepped away, adjusted his horn-rims, and peered again.
Frock rumbled over a moment later, curious, brushing against the Medical Examiner’s legs in his haste. “If you don’t mind,” he said, using the heavy wheelchair to crowd Brambell off to the side. He leaned forward, face inches from the viewer.
The room fell silent except for the hiss of air from the duct above the gurney. For once, Margo thought, both Brambell and Frock were completely baffled.
= 13 =
IT WAS THE FIRST time D’Agosta had been in the Chief’s office since Horlocker’s appointment, and he gazed around in disbelief. It looked to him like a suburban steakhouse trying to go upscale. The heavy fake-mahogany furniture, the low lighting, the thick drapes, the cheap Mediterranean-style ironwork fixtures with the ripply yellow glass. It was so perfect, it made him want to ask a waiter to bring him a Gibson.
Chief Redmond Horlocker sat behind a vast desk absolutely bare of paper. In the nearest wing chair, Waxie had settled his bulk comfortably and was describing their movements of the previous day. He had just gotten to the point where the three of them had been set upon by a mob of enraged homeless, and he, Waxie, was holding them at bay so that D’Agosta and Hayward could escape. Horlocker listened, his face impassive.
D’Agosta’s gaze fastened on Waxie, growing ever more animated as he talked. He considered speaking up himself, but long experience told him it wouldn’t make any difference. Waxie was a precinct captain; he didn’t get many chances to come down to One Police Plaza and impress the head honcho. Maybe the end result would be more manpower allocated to the case. Besides, a little voice in the back of D’Agosta’s head said this was going to be one of those cases where the shit-rain would fall especially hard. Even though he was officially in charge, it didn’t hurt to let Waxie take some credit. The more visible you were at the beginning, the closer they mowed your ass at the end.
Waxie finished his story, and there was a silence as Horlocker let a bit of gravitas build up in the room. Then he cleared his throat.
“Your take, Lieutenant?” he asked, turning to D’Agosta.
D’Agosta straightened up. “Well, sir, it’s too early to tell whether there’s a connection or not. It bears looking into, though, and I could use some extra manpower to—”
The antique phone jangled, and Horlocker picked up the receiver, listening for a moment. “It can wait,” he said curtly, then hung up and turned back to D’Agosta.
“You a Post reader?” he asked.