Blue Labyrinth Read Online Free PDF

hall was part of your normal shift?”
    Whittaker nodded.
    “When does the Museum close on Saturdays?”
    “Six.”
    “How often do you patrol this hall, after hours?”
    “It varies. The rotation can be anywhere from half an hour to every forty-five minutes. I have a card I have to swipe as I go along. They don’t like us to make our rounds on a regular schedule.”
    D’Agosta took out of his pocket a floor plan of the Museum he had grabbed on the way in. “Could you draw on here your rounds of duty or whatever you call it?”
    “Sure.” Whittaker fumbled a pen out of his pocket and drew a wandering line on the map, encompassing much of the floor. He handed it back to D’Agosta.
    D’Agosta scrutinized it. “Doesn’t look like you normally go into this particular alcove.”
    Whittaker paused for a moment, as if this might be a trick question. “Not usually. I mean, it’s a cul-de-sac. I walk past it.”
    “So what made you look into it at eleven PM last night?”
    Whittaker dabbed at his brow. “The blood had run out into the middle of the floor. When I shone my light in, the… the beam picked it up.”
    D’Agosta recalled all the blood from the SOC photographs. A reconstruction of the crime indicated that the victim, an older technician named Victor Marsala, had been bludgeoned over the head with a blunt instrument in this out-of-the way alcove, his body stuffed beneath the display case, minus watch, wallet, and pocket change.
    D’Agosta consulted his tablet. “Any special events going on yesterday evening?”
    “No.”
    “No sleepovers, private parties, IMAX shows, after-hours tours? Things of that nature?”
    “Nothing.”
    D’Agosta already knew most of this, but he liked to go over familiar ground with a witness, just in case. The coroner’s report indicated that the time of death had been around ten thirty. “In the forty minutes leading up to your discovery of the body, did you see anyoneor anything unusual? A tourist after hours, claiming to be lost? A Museum employee out of his or her normal working area?”
    “I didn’t see anything odd. Just the usual scientists and curators working late.”
    “And this hall?”
    “Empty.”
    D’Agosta nodded out past the alcove, toward a discreet door in the far wall with a red EXIT sign over it. “Where does that lead?”
    Whittaker shrugged. “Just the basement.”
    D’Agosta considered. The South American gold hall wasn’t far away, but it hadn’t been touched, nothing had been stolen or disturbed. It was possible Marsala, on his way out after completing a late-night assignment, had disturbed some bum, taking a catnap in this desolate corner of the Museum, but D’Agosta doubted the story was even that exotic. What was unusual about the case was that the killer had apparently managed to leave the Museum without notice. The only way out at that time of the night was through a heavily guarded checkpoint on the lower level. Was the killer a Museum employee? He had a list of everyone working late that night, and it was surprisingly long. Then again, the Museum was a big place with a staff of several thousand.
    He asked Whittaker a few more perfunctory questions, then thanked him. “I’m going to look around, you can head back on your own,” he said.
    He spent the next twenty minutes poking around the alcove and adjoining areas, regularly referring to the crime scene photos on his tablet. But there was nothing new to see, nothing to find, nothing that appeared to have been overlooked.
    Fetching a sigh, D’Agosta stuffed the iPad back into his briefcase and headed off in the direction of the public relations department.

O bserving an autopsy ranked low on the list of Lieutenant Peter Angler’s favorite activities. It wasn’t that he had a problem with the sight of blood. In his fifteen years on the force, he’d seen more than his share of dead bodies—shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, run over, poisoned, pancaked on the sidewalk, cut in pieces on