Reliquary Read Online Free PDF Page A

Smithback if he ever found out she’d missed a single homicide article carrying his byline.
    She smoothed the tabloid on her knees, grinning at the headline despite herself. It was vintage Post ean, a screaming 96-point banner that covered three-quarters of the front page:
     
    SEWAGE CORPSE
    IDENTIFIED AS MISSING DEB
     
    She glanced down at the opening paragraph. Sure enough, it was Smithback’s work. Second front-page article this month, she thought; on the strength of this, Smithback would be strutting and primping, even more impossible to be around than usual.
    She quickly skimmed the article. It was quintessential Smithback: sensationalist and macabre, full of loving attention to the gruesome details. In the opening paragraphs, he quickly summarized the facts that were by now well known to all New Yorkers. The “beautiful trust-funder” Pamela Wisher, known for her marathon late-night carousings, had disappeared two months earlier from a basement club on Central Park South. Ever since, her “smiling face with its dazzling teeth, vacant blue eyes, and expensive blond hair” had been plastered at every street corner from 57th to 96th. Margo had often seen the color photocopies of Wisher as she jogged to the Museum from her apartment on West End Avenue.
    Now, the article breathlessly announced, the remains found the previous day--“buried in raw sewage” in Humboldt Kill and “locked in a bony embrace” with another skeleton--had been identified as Pamela Wisher’s. The second skeleton remained unidentified. An accompanying photo showed Wisher’s boyfriend, the young Viscount Adair, sitting on the curb in front of the Platypus Lounge with his head in his hands, minutes after learning of her grisly death. The police were, of course, “taking vigorous action.” Smithback closed with several man-on-the-street quotations of the “I-hope-they-fry-the-bastard-who-did-this” variety.
    She lowered the paper, thinking of the grainy face of Pamela Wisher staring out at her from the numerous posters. She deserved a better fate than becoming New York’s big story of the summer.
    The shrill sound of the phone again interrupted Margo’s thoughts. She glanced over at her terminal, pleased to see that the program had finished at last. Might as well answer it, she thought; she’d have to get this lecture over with sooner or later.
    “This is Margo Green,” she said.
    “Dr. Green?” came the voice. “About time.”
    The thick Queens accent was distantly familiar, like a half-forgotten dream. Gruff, authoritarian. Margo searched her memory for the face belonging to the voice on the other end of the phone.
    ... All we can say is that a body has been found on the premises, under circumstances we are currently investigating ...
    She sat back in surprise.
    “Lieutenant D’Agosta?” she asked.
    “We need you in the Forensic Anthropology lab,” D’Agosta said. “Right away, please.”
    “Can I ask--?”
    “You may not. Sorry. Whatever you’re doing, forget it and come downstairs.” The line went dead with a sharp click.
    Margo held the phone away from her face, looking at the mouthpiece as if waiting for further explanation. Then she opened her carryall and replaced the Post --carefully covering a small semiautomatic pistol in the process--pushed the chair away from the computer, and stepped quickly out of her office.

= 4 =
    Bill Smithback strolled nonchalantly past the grand facade of Nine Central Park South, a stately McKim, Mead, and White building of brick and carved limestone. A brace of doormen stood beneath the gold-trimmed awning that stretched to the curb. He could see a variety of other service people standing at attention inside the opulent lobby. As he’d feared, it was one of those ridiculously overstaffed parkfront apartment buildings. This was going to be tough. Very tough.
    He turned the corner of Sixth Avenue and paused, considering how best to proceed. He felt in the outside pocket of his