Beth’s eyebrows went up. “Are you—taking a human skull for a walk?”
I looked at Cope and set him on top of Beth’s crossword puzzle. “Max Brödel.”
“That’snotMax Brödel,” she said, pushing Cope away with the end of her pen.
“No, I mean Brödel of the medical illustration books I sold you. I want to take a look at them.”
“I’ve already sold one,” she said while walking around the counter to stand in front of me. “Sebby, what’s going on? Is Calvin still missing? No one’s told me anything.”
I held a hand up to stop her. “Which one did you sell?”
“Which Brödel book?Operative Gynecology,” Beth replied, perplexed.
“I want to seeThe Vermiform Appendix and Its Diseases.” I sidestepped Beth and went to her large glass case of rare and antique collectables. For a brief moment, a copy of Edgar Allan Poe’sTamerlanehad resided here last Christmas. That really did seem like ages ago. I moved around to the back side, opened the sliding door, and gently removed the big hardcover reference book.
“Hey. What are you, an amateur?” Beth tossed me a pair of cloth gloves.
I missed, picked them up from the case top, and tugged the gloves on before opening the book. I carefully flipped through the pages as Beth joined me. “Calvin was kidnapped by someone who has a fairly intimate understanding of both Victorian America and medicine.”
I could feel Beth staring at me. Gauging what to say—what wasokayto say. “How do you know?” she inquired, voice uncharacteristically gentle.
“On each message I got, there were drawings of human body parts. And from the very start of all this, I was bothered by how…clinicalthey were. Not romanticism art of the time period, but medical art. Hand-drawn with a purposeful, antiquated appearance.” I kept flipping until I came upon an intense, lifelike drawing of a woman’s torso, complete with muscular structures and indicators for doctors on how to make incisions. I tapped the page. “Purposeful because the Collector was copying the work of Max Brödel, a pioneer in his field at Johns Hopkins University at the turn of the century, who would be a history lesson for the medical students of today!”
I shut the book and declared loudly, like a real-life game of Clue, “I accuse Dr. Asquith in Vinegar Hill with a benzodiazepine!”
I THANKEDPop, said goodbye, and hung up. Neil was driving over the Manhattan Bridge, the early-setting sun already dipping over the horizon with the promise of another cold, wintry night on its way. He reached with one hand to change the whispering radio station from metal to jazz. A concession to me without an argument.
“I hope your father got more information to work with than I did,” Neil remarked. “Dr. Asquith wasn’t at the ME’s office when I called. She never returned from her lunch break.”
“My dad had a meeting with an administrator at NYU,” I answered. “She’s an old friend of, and occasionally something more to, Benjamin Dover. She’s actually the one who filed a missing person report on him.”
I looked at Neil briefly. He had one hand draped casually over the wheel. The BMW—I’d been told—handled night and day compared to the CSU van he occasionally drove to scenes throughout the five boroughs. Whatever that meant. But anyway. Neil looked pretty cool in that seat, exuding a gentle, authentic confidence I’d never quite seen before. Dirty distortion cast by the overhead lights of the bridge reshaped his face as we passed under them.
Neil glanced sideways. “I’m listening.”
“While attempting to make a name for himself and get noticed by magazines likeNational Geographic, Dover apparently discovered the ideal subject for a project in a museum in Pennsylvania.”
“UPenn.”
“Bingo. This administrator claims the story goes: He checked out the skull, like a library book. And went on an adventure around the world, taking photos of Cope among modern paleontologists, at museum exhibits, dig sites—you get the idea.”
“Hmm.”
“Apparently a few better-known journalists thought it was a tacky project—called him out on it. Dover never returned Cope to UPenn, maybe out of fear they’d report his indiscretion to the cops or something. But I don’t think they even noticed its absence until AMNH requested the artifact.”
“Howcould they not?”
“It could have been overlooked during a catalog overhaul of manual to electronic. This was in like ’94—’95?”
“Even if they had caught on to Dover never having returned the artifact, the Art Crime Team didn’t exist with the FBI yet,” Neil continued thoughtfully.
“And local police tend to have better things to look into,” I concluded. “Anyway. I guess he figured enough time had passed that no one would remember the events that chased him out of his budding photojournalism career. So he signed what his sometimes bed-friend described as a ‘high-six-fucking-figure’ contract.”
“For pictures of a skull?” Neil asked, looking at me in disbelief.
“And the story. It’s a good story,” I admitted. “Plus, when Quinn and I—er—were in his apartment, I saw some of the photos. They’re impressive. He had a real eye, at least back then.”
Neil made a turn as we got off the bridge and entered Brooklyn. “How does Dr. Asquith tie into this? You’re really certain it’s not Rossi?”
