White Fire p-13 Page 2

  Now she had another idea for her thesis, an even better one, and she was willing to do almost anything to see it happen.

  Examining herself in the mirror, she rearranged a few strands of hair, touched up her conservative lipstick, adjusted her gray worsted suit jacket, and gave her nose a quick powdering. She hardly recognized herself; God, she might even be mistaken for a Young Republican. So much the better.

  She exited the ladies’ room and walked briskly down the hall, her conservative pumps clicking professionally against the hard linoleum. Her advisor’s door was shut, as usual, and she gave it a brisk, self-confident rap. A voice inside said, “Come in.”

  She entered. The office was, as always, neat as a pin, the books and journals all lined up flush with the edges of the bookshelves, the comfortable, masculine leather furniture providing a cozy air. Professor Greg Carbone sat behind his large desk, its acreage of burnished mahogany unbroken by books, papers, family photographs, or knickknacks.

  “Good morning, Corrie,” Carbone said, rising and buttoning his blue serge suit. “Please sit down.”

  “Thank you, Professor.” She knew he liked to be called that. Woe to the student who called him Mister or, worse, Greg.

  He settled back down as she did. Carbone was a strikingly handsome man with salt-and-pepper hair, wonderful teeth, trim and fit, a good dresser, articulate, soft-spoken, intelligent, and successful. Everything he did, he did well, and as a result he was an accomplished asshole indeed.

  “Well, Corrie,” Carbone began, “you are looking well today.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Carbone.”

  “I’m excited to hear about your new idea.”

  “Thanks.” Corrie opened her briefcase (no backpacks at John Jay) and took out a manila file folder, placing it on her knee. “I’m sure you’ve been reading about the archaeological investigation going on down in City Hall Park. Next to the location of the old prison known as the Tombs.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “The parks department has been excavating a small cemetery of executed criminals to make way for a new subway entrance.”

  “Ah yes, I did read about that,” said Carbone.

  “The cemetery was operational from 1858 to 1865. After 1865, all execution burials were moved to Hart Island and remain unavailable.”

  A slow nod from Carbone. He looked interested; she felt encouraged.

  “I think this would make for a great opportunity to do an osteological study of those skeletons — to see if severe childhood malnourishment, which as you know leaves osteological markers, might correlate with later criminal behavior.”

  Another nod from Carbone.

  “I’ve got it all outlined here.” She laid a proposal on the table. “Hypotheses, methodology, control group, observations, and analysis.”

  Carbone laid a hand on the document, drew it toward himself, opened it, and began perusing.

  “There are a number of reasons why this is a great opportunity,” she went on. “First, the city has good records on most of these executed criminals — names, rap sheets, and trial records. Those who were orphans raised in the Five Points House of Industry — about half a dozen — also have some childhood records. They were all executed in the same way — hanging — so the cause of death is identical. And the cemetery was used for only seven years, so all the remains come from roughly the same time period.”

  She paused. Carbone was slowly turning over the pages, one after another, apparently reading. There was no way to tell what he was thinking; his face was a blank.

  “I made a few inquiries, and it seems the parks department would be open to having a John Jay student examine the remains.”

  The slow turning of the pages paused. “You already contacted them?”

  “Yes. Just a feeler—”

  “A feeler…You contacted another city agency without seeking prior permission?”

  Uh-oh. “Obviously I didn’t want to bring you a project that might get shot down later by outside authorities. Um, was that wrong?”

  A long silence, and then: “Did you not read your undergraduate handbook?”

  Corrie was seized with apprehension. She had in fact read it — when she’d been admitted. But that was over a year ago. “Not recently.”

  “The handbook is quite clear. Undergraduate students are not to engage other city departments except through official channels. This is because we’re a city institution, as you know, a senior college of the City University of New York.” He said this mildly, almost kindly.

  “I…Well, I’m sorry, I didn’t recall that from the handbook.” She swallowed, feeling a rising panic — and anger. This was such unbelievable bullshit. But she forced herself to keep her cool. “It was just a couple of phone calls, nothing official.”

  A nod. “I’m sure you didn’t deliberately violate university regulations.” He began turning the pages again, slowly, one after the other, not looking up at her. “But in any case I find other problems with this thesis proposal of yours.”

  “Yes?” Corrie felt sick.

  “This idea that malnourishment leads to a life of crime…It’s an old idea — and an unconvincing one.”

  “Well, it seems to me worth testing.”

  “Back then, almost everyone was malnourished. But not everyone became a criminal. And the idea is redolent of…how shall I put it?…of a certain philosophy that crime in general can be traced to unfortunate experiences in a person’s childhood.”

  “But malnourishment — severe malnourishment — might cause neurological changes, actual damage. That isn’t philosophy; that’s science.”

  Carbone held up her proposal. “I can already predict the outcome: you’ll discover that these executed criminals were malnourished as children. The real question is why, of all those hungry children, only a small percentage went on to commit capital crimes. And your research plan does not address that. I’m sorry, this won’t fly. Not at all.”

  And, opening his fingers, he let her document drop gently to his desk.

  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 was my 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. Historic remains.”

  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 fictional detective, and we only deal in nonfiction here. 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 Times this 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.