A Perfect Obsession

“The security footage is somehow jimmied.”

Craig looked over at him. “Egan has our people working with their people. None of them can figure out how the tape was fixed. And if it wasn’t fixed, there’s another way in here.”

“Yeah? Under the ground?” Mike asked.

“Yeah, under the ground.”

Mike groaned. He was older; he actually had the seniority. But the two of them had been working together for years, and they had a great relationship.

Mike walked down the rows of tombs—those sealed and those not—muttering as he leaned over the shelves of the dead, pushing at the walls.

Craig did the same. It was eerie work; he tried not to look at the skeletal remains beneath their decaying shrouds. He thought about Shaw and the historical people.

They probably wouldn’t be happy. They worked with delicate chisels and tiny brushes, and he was pushing aside nearly two-hundred-year-old remains in his attempt to find what he was looking for.

It seemed, however, that he hit nothing but the solid granite on which the city sat.

“Special Agent Frasier!”

He nearly bumped his head, startled by the uniformed officer who had come to talk to him.

“There’s a rep here from the mayor’s office. She’s with Henry Willoughby, Aldous Digby and Roger Gleason. They’re waiting to talk to you in the storage area,” the officer told him.

“Yeah, of course,” Craig said. He glanced at Mike and shrugged.

The body was gone. Jeannette had been taken to the morgue.

The forensic team had gone over the area with a fine-tooth comb.

It had to be opened back up to the archaeologists, anthropologists and historians who would record the find and see that the remains were reinterred in a cemetery in Brooklyn or the Bronx.

He and Mike walked back out past the broken wall to where Roger Gleason was waiting with Henry Willoughby and Aldous Digby and a young woman in a smart pin-striped business suit. Her heels were too high for the marble steps that led to an uneven basement floor, but she represented the mayor, so he figured her attire had to be proper.

“Special Agents,” she said, addressing him and Mike and offering her hand in a shake. “I’m Sandra Adair from the mayor’s office. Naturally, we’re grateful for the federal interests here. And we’re appalled about the murder of Ms. Gilbert. But, gentlemen, we’ve spoken with Assistant Director Egan, and we’ve all agreed that it’s time to let the historians get back to work. Are we all in agreement?”

“Yes, I believe it’s all right for the work to continue,” Craig said politely. “With Ms. Gilbert now in the tender hands of the medical examiner, Professor Shaw and Professor Digby may continue their documentation of the long dead.”

He kept his voice modulated, trying to hide his irritation.

Willoughby lowered his head, smiling, no doubt aware of Craig’s feelings. Sandra Adair seemed oblivious, and Roger Gleason apparently didn’t care one way or another; he wasn’t reopening for business yet.

“Well, then, thank you, and, naturally, we’ll be anxious to hear that you’ve solved the murder of Ms. Gilbert,” Adair said. “Mr. Willoughby, I’ll leave it to you to call the experts back in. Oh, by the way, Special Agent Frasier. I don’t believe your phone has been working down here. I have a message for you from Detective McBride. He wants you to call him.”

“Thank you,” Craig said.

She turned to head back up the old marble steps. He gritted his teeth and then stepped forward to help her. She was annoying, but he didn’t want to see her flat on the ground with a broken ankle.

“We’re okay?” Digby asked. He let out a sigh. “To be honest, I’m anxious to do this work, but I’m equally anxious to get in and out.”

“Yes, we’ll need John Shaw,” Willoughby said as Craig headed up the stairs.

Craig turned back to Digby. “Professor, you were here when Ms. Gilbert was found. Is there anything in particular you noted? Anything you could tell us that might help in any way?”

Digby was thoughtful.

“The floor,” he said.

“The floor?”

“People had already been in, of course. But, there’s always a kind of a film—time and decay—on the floor. Now that I’ve had time to think, there was something a little off. It seemed to me that much of it was...too clean.”

“Was that before or after the body was found?” Craig asked him.

“When we first came down, I thought it odd. The tombs, the shrouds, the coffins all had that film. But the floor seemed clean. Right at the start.”

Before Craig could comment, Willoughby got down to business. “I’ll call Shaw so we can get moving. This is going to take weeks.”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Willoughby,” Craig said. He headed out then and didn’t look back.

He heard Mike speaking with Gleason, thanking him for his concern for the city.

Then Mike headed up after him.

An officer was at the main Gothic-arched doorway, keeping watch over who entered and exited. Craig nodded and headed out to the street, aware that Mike was with him.

“Rat terrier,” Mike said.

“Pardon?”

“It’s not really her fault. I mean, there’s no reason to stop the experts from their cataloging and corpse inspections,” he said drily. “She’s doing her job, that Ms. Adair. She’s just nervous-looking and yappy—like a rat terrier.”

Craig grinned. “Yesterday we dealt with an asshole—according to McBride—and today a rat terrier.”

“Yeah, but at least you don’t have to pretend to be polite to an asshole!” Mike said.