“My God,” Margo murmured. “So he did kill his wife.”
“It’s just an arrest,” D’Agosta told her. “Let’s keep going.”
Margo moved through the next several issues. About a week later, another related notice appeared. It had become more important now and was given its own story.
MUSEUM SCIENTIST ACCUSED OF UXORICIDE BODY OF WIFE SOUGHT IN WIDENING SCANDAL.
SUSPECT TALKED ABOUT MURDERING WIFE IN DAYS PRIOR TO HER DISAPPEARANCE — UNCOMMUNICATIVE UNDER EXAMINATION — MUSEUM’S PRESIDENT DENIES INSTITUTION’S INVOLVEMENT
NEW YORK, AUG. 23.—Dr. Evans Padgett was officially arraigned today in connection with the disappearance and presumed murder of his wife, Ophelia Padgett. Mrs. Padgett had been known by friends and neighbors as suffering from a wasting and painful disease, along with increasing signs of mental disturbance. Dr. Padgett first came under suspicion when colleagues at the New York Museum of Natural History, where he is a curator, told police that he had referred on several occasions to his desire to end his wife’s life. Said colleagues reported that Dr. Padgett had claimed a certain patent medicine or nostrum was responsible for his wife’s present condition, and made veiled allusions to “relieving her of her misery.” Since his arrest, Padgett himself has made no statement to either police or to the prosecuting bodies, but rather has maintained a resolute silence. He is presently in custody at The Tombs awaiting trial. When asked for comment, the president of the Museum said only that he would have no words on the distressing events beyond observing that the institution itself obviously had no role in the disappearance.
D’Agosta scoffed. “Even back then, the Museum was more concerned with protecting its reputation than helping solve a crime.” He paused. “Wonder what this patent medicine was. Probably loaded with cocaine or opium.”
“The condition doesn’t sound like your standard drug addiction. Wasting… that was nineteenth-century-speak for terminal. Now, that’s interesting…” She paused.
“What?”
“It’s just that one of the tests I conducted on the skeleton did show some anomalous mineralization. Perhaps Ophelia Padgett was suffering from a bone disorder or other degenerative condition.”
D’Agosta watched as she moved forward through the newspaper’s later issues. There were one or two brief mentions of the upcoming trial; another brief dispatch stating the trial was under way. And then, on November 14, 1889:
Dr. Evans Padgett, of Gramercy-Lane, who had been accused of murdering his wife, Ophelia, was today acquitted of all charges laid against him by the presiding judge in the King’s Courtroom at 2 Park Row. Although certain eyewitnesses came forth to describe Padgett’s veiled statements about ending his wife’s existence, and circumstantial evidence was presented by the attorney for the State of New York, Dr. Padgett was declared exonerated because no corpus delicti could be found, despite the most diligent search by the Manhattan constabulary forces. Padgett was set free by the bailiff and allowed to leave the Court a free man as of noon on this day.
“No corpus delicti,” D’Agosta said. “Of course there was no body. The old guy had it macerated in the Osteology vats and then stuck the bones into the collection, labeling them Hottentot!”
“The science of forensic anthropology wasn’t very advanced in 1889. Once she was reduced to a skeleton, they’d never have been able to identify her. The perfect crime.”
D’Agosta slumped in his chair. He felt a lot more tired now than when he’d entered the room. “But what the hell does it mean? And why would this phony scientist steal one of her bones?”
Margo shrugged. “It’s a mystery.”
“Great. Instead of solving a week-old murder, we’ve uncovered a century-old one.”
29
Where did we come from? How did our lives begin? How did we end up on this speck of dust called Earth, surrounded by the countless other specks of dust that make up the universe? In order to answer these questions, we have to go back billions of years, to a time before that universe existed. To a time when there was nothing — nothing but darkness…
D’Agosta turned from the gentle curve of the one-way glass and rubbed his bleary eyes. He’d heard the presentation five times already and could probably recite the damn thing by heart.
Stifling a yawn, he looked around the dim confines of the Museum’s video security room. Actually, it wasn’t really the video security room — the actual name of the room was Planetarium Support. It housed the computers, software, and banks of NAS drives and image servers that drove the fulldome video at the heart of the Museum’s planetarium. The room was tucked into a corner of the sixth floor, hard by the upper section of the planetarium’s dome — hence the curved glass in the far wall. As far as D’Agosta could make out, while the Museum had been quite proactive in installing security cameras, it hadn’t occurred to anyone that they might actually need to be viewed at some later date. Hence, the monitors for viewing archival security images had been retrofitted into Planetarium Support, and the technology for playing back those images was borrowed from the planetarium computers — no doubt some bean counter’s idea of economizing resources.
The problem was, during visiting hours the room’s lights had to be dimmed to a point where they were almost completely off — otherwise, the glow would bleed out through the one-way glass in the planetarium’s dome and spoil the illusion for the tourists in their seats below. The video monitors for examining the security footage all faced away from that single window. And it was cramped: D’Agosta and two of his detectives, Jimenez and Conklin, had to sit practically in each other’s laps while working the three available security playback workstations. D’Agosta had been sitting here in the dark for hours now, staring at the grainy little screen, and a nasty headache was beginning to form just behind his eyeballs. But something drove him on: a tickle of fear that, unless the videotapes scored a hit, the case was going to go cold again.
All of a sudden the dark room filled with a brilliant explosion of light: in the planetarium beyond and below the window, the Big Bang had just taken place. D’Agosta should have remembered this — after all, he’d heard the intro start up just the minute before — but once again it took him by surprise and he jumped. He shut his eyes, but it was too late: already, he could see stars dancing crazily behind his shut eyelids.
“Goddamn it!” he heard Conklin say.
Now thunderous music intruded into the cramped space. He sat motionless, eyes closed, until the stars went away and the music decreased slightly in volume. Then he opened his eyes again, blinked, and tried to focus on the screen before him.
“Anything?” he asked.
“No,” said Conklin.
“Nada,” said Jimenez.
He’d known it was a silly question even as he asked it — the moment they saw something, they’d sing out. But he’d asked anyway, in the crazy hope that simply by articulating it he might force something to happen.
The tape he was watching — a view of the main entrance to the Hall of Marine Life, five PM to six PM, Saturday, June 19, the day Marsala had been murdered — came to an end without showing anything of interest. He moused the window closed, rubbed his eyes again, drew a line through the corresponding entry on a clipboard that sat between him and Jimenez, then pulled up the security program’s main menu to select another, as-yet-unwatched video. With a distinct lack of enthusiasm, he chose the next video in the series: Hall of Marine Life, main entrance camera, six PM to seven PM, once again from June 12. He began running through the video stream, first at true speed, then at double speed, then — as the hall became completely empty — at eight times speed.