Read Online The Bone Vault - Linda Fairstein by Linda Fairstein - Free Book Online Page B

in my rookie year in the office, when we both had other assignments, and had spent a great deal of time together, on and off the job.

    "Wipe the mustard off your chin before we get to Thibodaux's office."

    "See what I mean? I take it back. You must have been a pain in the ass already by the time you were six. It's in your blood. Where'd you hang out?"

    "Second floor, paintings and sculpture. That's where I saw my first Degas." I had started taking ballet lessons when I was five years old. The elegance of the movement and the beauty of the music had always been a refuge for me, and to this day I continued to take classes whenever I could fit them into my unpredictable schedule. As a child, I had often sat spellbound in front of the painting of two dancers practicing in their white tulle dresses with large yellow ribbons on their backs, stretching their legs along the barre before they began their exercise on pointe, hoping to grow up to be just like them. "Me, I went straight over here," Mike said, pointing across the hall past the bottom of the Grand Staircase. "Arms and armor." The Met had a stunning collection, and although my brothers spent hours wandering around the cases filled with gilded parade armor, presentation swords, and rapiers, I raced past them to get to my dancers and the other portraiture I loved so much.

    I asked the woman at the information desk the way to the museum director's office. She called ahead to Thibodaux's secretary, who told her we were expected.

    "This is where I got hooked on battles and warriors. Couldn't get enough of that stuff." Mike had an encyclopedic knowledge of military history. I knew he had studied the field at college, but it had never occurred to me to ask how his interest had originated.

    We walked through the galleries of Greek and Roman art to find the bank of elevators to take us upstairs. "They've got more than fourteen thousand objects in there, from knights in chain mail to samurai swords. There's an armor workshop in the basement. Uncle Sam used it in World War Two, copying medieval designs to make flak jackets for the army."

    A middle-aged woman was standing by the elevator door when we got out. "Miss Cooper? I'm Eve Drexler, Mr. Thibodaux's assistant." I introduced her to Mike and we accompanied her down the hallway. Her ankle-length flowered print dress swished between her legs as she walked to the door of the office, ushering us past the secretary and into a lavishly decorated room with large windows. The sunny view looked across Fifth Avenue to the handsome town houses that had been converted years ago into the prestigious private girls' school Marymount. The perks of the directorate were obvious. An ancient hero, sculpted in bronze, was battling a centaur on Thibodaux's desk, a Savonnerie carpet ran the length of the room, and paintings by recognizable Masters-- C�zanne, Goya, Brueghel--were hung on three of the walls.

    "Miss Cooper, Mr. Chapman, won't you sit down?"

    The director reached out to shake hands with us, and moved from his chair to join us at a conference table. An ornate silver tray holding an antique coffeepot that had probably served an emperor or queen had been placed in front of Ms. Drexler, who poured for each of us into an ordinary mug.

    "I've been trying to get as much information for you about that shipment as I possibly could," Thibodaux began, opening a folder which contained a sheaf of papers.

    Drexler seated herself at the far end of the table, opposite her boss, while Chapman and I were next to each other. She opened a leather-bound notebook and seemed to be dating the top page, noting the time and writing down each of our names. Mike flipped open the cardboard cover of his steno pad, a clean one for the beginning of a new case, and made similar notations.

    "I've made copies of the bill of lading so you can take them along. Have you learned anything this morning from the medical examiner?" "Nope. They'll be doing the autopsy