Twelve niches, three bodies to a niche… All very neat, very precise. At the next to the last niche, she stopped. Then she stepped back into the middle of the tunnel, trying hard not to think about the implications of what she was seeing, keeping her mind strictly on the facts. At any archaeological site, it was important to take a moment to stand still, to be quiet, to quell the intellect and simply absorb the feel of the place. She gazed around, trying to forget about the ticking clock, to blot out her preconceptions. A basement tunnel, pre-1890, carefully walled-up niches, bodies and clothes of some thirty-six young men and women. What was it built for? She glanced over at Pendergast. He was still at the far end, examining the bricked-up wall, prying out a bit of mortar with a knife.
She returned to the alcove, carefully noting the position of each bone, each article of clothing. Two sets of britches, with nothing in the pockets. A dress: filthy, torn, pathetic. She looked at it more closely. A girl’s dress, small, slender. She picked up the brown skull nearby. A young female, a teenager, perhaps sixteen or seventeen. She felt a wave of horror: just underneath it was her mass of hair, long golden tresses, still tied in a pink lace ribbon. She examined the skulclass="underline" same poor dental hygiene. Sixteen, and already her teeth were rotting. The ribbon was of silk and a much finer quality than the dress; it must have been her prized possession. This glimmering of humanity stopped her dead for a moment.
As she felt for a pocket, something crackled under her fingers. Paper. She fingered the dress, realizing that the piece of paper wasn’t in a pocket at all, but sewn into the lining. She began to pull it from the alcove.
“Anything of interest, Dr. Kelly?”
She started at the medical examiner’s voice. Van Bronck. His tone had changed: now he sounded arrogant. He stood over her.
She glanced around. In her absorption, she had not heard him return. Pendergast was by the entrance to the barrow, in urgent discussion with some uniformed figures peering down from above.
“If you call this sort of thing interesting,” she said.
“I know you’re not with the ME’s office, so that must make you an FBI forensics expert.”
Nora colored. “I’m not a medical doctor. I’m an archaeologist.”
Dr. Van Bronck’s eyebrows shot up and a sardonic smile spread over his face. He had a perfectly formed little mouth that looked as if it had been painted on by a Renaissance artist. It glistened as it articulated the precise words. “Ah. Not a medical doctor. I believe I misunderstood your colleague. Archaeology. How nice.”
She had not had an hour; she had not even had half an hour.
She slid the dress back into the alcove, shoving it into a dusty crevice in the back. “And have you found anything of interest, Doctor?” she asked as casually as she could.
“I’d send you my report,” he said. “But then, I could hardly expect you to understand it. All that professional jargon, you know.” He smiled, and now the smile did not look friendly at all.
“I’m not finished here,” she said. “When I am, I’d be glad to chat further.” She began to move toward the last alcove.
“You can continue your studies after I remove the human remains.”
“You’re not moving anything until I’ve had a chance to examine it.”
“Tell that to them.” He nodded over her shoulder. “I don’t know where you got the impression this was an archaeological site. Fortunately, that’s all been straightened out.”
Nora saw a group of policemen sliding into the barrow, heavy evidence lockers in their hands. The space was soon filled with a cacophony of curses, grunts, and loud voices. Pendergast was nowhere to be seen.
Last to enter were Ed Shenk and Captain Custer. Custer saw her and came forward, picking his way gingerly across the bricks, followed by a brace of lieutenants.
“Dr. Kelly, we’ve gotten orders from headquarters,” he said, his voice quick and high-pitched. “You can tell your boss he’s sadly confused. This is an unusual crime scene, but of no importance to present-day law enforcement, particularly the FBI. It’s over a hundred years old.”
And there’s a building that needs to be built, Nora thought, glancing at Shenk.
“I don’t know who hired you, but your assignment’s over. We’re taking the human remains down to the ME’s office. What little else is here will be bagged and tagged.”
The cops were dropping the evidence lockers onto the damp floor, and the chamber resounded with hollow thuds. The ME began removing bones from the alcoves with rubber-gloved hands and placing them into the lockers, tossing the clothing and other personal effects aside. Voices mingled with the rising dust. Flashlight beams stabbed through the murk. The site was being ruined before her eyes.
“Can my men escort you out, miss?” said Captain Custer, with exaggerated courtesy.
“I can find my own way,” Nora replied.
The sunlight temporarily blinded her. She coughed, breathed in the fresh air, and looked around. The Rolls was still parked at the street. And there was Pendergast, leaning against it, waiting.
She marched out the gate. His head was tilted away from the sun, his eyes half closed. In the bright afternoon light, his skin looked as pale and translucent as alabaster.
“That police captain was right, wasn’t he?” she said. “You’ve got no jurisdiction here.”
He slowly lowered his head, a troubled look on his face. She found her anger evaporating. He removed a silk handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his forehead. Almost as she watched, his face reassumed its habitual opaque expression, and he spoke. “Sometimes, there’s no time to go through proper channels. If we’d waited until tomorrow, the site would have been gone. You see how quickly Moegen-Fairhaven works. If this site were declared of archaeological value, it would shut them down for weeks. Which of course they could not allow to happen.”
“But it is of archaeological value!”
Pendergast nodded. “Of course it is. But the battle is already lost, Dr. Kelly. As I knew it would be.”
As if in response, a large yellow excavator fired up, its motor coughing and snarling. Construction workers began to appear, emerging from trailers and truck cabs. Already the blue lockers were coming out of the hole and being loaded into an ambulance. The excavator lurched and made a lumbering move toward the hole, its bucket rising, iron teeth dribbling dirt.
“What did you find?” Pendergast asked.
She paused. Should she tell him about the paper in the dress? It was probably nothing, and besides, it was gone.
She tore the hastily scribbled pages from the pad and returned it to him. “I’ll write up my general observations for you this evening,” she said. “The lumbar vertebrae of the victims seem to have been deliberately opened. I slipped one into my pocket.”
Pendergast nodded. “There were numerous shards of glass embedded in the dust. I took a few for analysis.”
“Other than the skeletons, there were some pennies in the alcoves, dated 1872, 1877, and 1880. A few articles in the pockets.”
“The tenements here were erected in 1897,” murmured Pendergast, almost to himself, his voice grave. “There’s our terminus ante quem. The murders took place before 1897 and were probably clustered around the dates of the coins — that is, the 1870s.”