“Miss Cooper, Mr. Chapman, won’t you sit down?”

The director reached out to shake hands with us, and moved from his chair to join us at a conference table. An ornate silver tray holding an antique coffeepot that had probably served an emperor or queen had been placed in front of Ms. Drexler, who poured for each of us into an ordinary mug.

“I’ve been trying to get as much information for you about that shipment as I possibly could,” Thibodaux began, opening a folder which contained a sheaf of papers.

Drexler seated herself at the far end of the table, opposite her boss, while Chapman and I were next to each other. She opened a leather-bound notebook and seemed to be dating the top page, noting the time and writing down each of our names. Mike flipped open the cardboard cover of his steno pad, a clean one for the beginning of a new case, and made similar notations.

“I’ve made copies of the bill of lading so you can take them along. Have you learned anything this morning from the medical examiner?”

“Nope. They’ll be doing the autopsy right about now.” Mike reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out one of the head shots taken at the morgue this morning. “Brought this along to see whether you happened to know this girl. Maybe she worked here or something.”

Thibodaux took the Polaroid shot, glanced at it, almost doing a double take before turning it facedown on the table. “No, she’s not at all familiar to me. But we are a very big place, Mr. Chapman, and I can’t say for a moment that I know half the people who work here.”

“You looked startled.”

“Well, I am, eh? Such a young woman, it’s a terrible thing. I never expected she would look-so-well, so alive as she does. To be in a coffin like that for some time, well-”

“What do you mean, ‘for some time’?”

“I have absolutely no idea how long she was there, it’s just that I assume she didn’t die yesterday, Mr. Chapman.”

“What’s that assumption based on?”

“Here, why don’t you look these papers over. Eve has made this set for you.” He passed a copy of the multipage document and we started to read it together. “While it is clear that the truck went to New Jersey directly from the museum, the shipment was made up of objects from a number of other institutions. As you can see, there are records of which crates came in when, and from which other museums.”

I scanned the top few pages, squinting at the tiny typewritten descriptions of the various sources. There were amphorae on loan from the Smithsonian, African masks from the American Museum of Natural History, mummy cases from the extensive collection at the Brooklyn Museum, and Asian paintings from the Getty.

“I think you’ve just made our job about a thousand times more difficult. These things all appear to be mixed into the same crates as your own stuff. Why’d that happen?”

“Well, Detective, Mr. Lissen, our shipping manager, tells me that’s because they were repackaged after they arrived here, depending on where they were being sent. We’re in the final planning stages of a huge show that we’ll be mounting next year, and in exchange for some of the treasures that belong to us but are on loan in museums around the world, we’re sending out some of our other art to help fill in those gaps.”

Thibodaux rubbed his eyes before speaking again. He looked paler than he had in formal dress standing on the floodlit platform at the Temple of Dendur yesterday evening. He had probably not slept at all last night, worrying how this dreadful discovery would affect his museum. His French accent seemed more pronounced today, perhaps because of his exhaustion.

“This sarcophagus-number 1983.752-it’s listed on page twelve of that inventory.”

Chapman flipped to find it. “This coffin came back to you last fall. It had been on loan to the Chicago Art Museum, right?”

“So it appears.”

“And it’s been here ever since then. You know where?”

“I don’t, but I’m sure someone can tell you where. Exactly.” Thibodaux rose and walked to his desk, opening the drawer and shaking two tablets into his hand. He washed them down with some ice water that was in a crystal pitcher next to his blotter. This was a headache that would not go away with pills.

“And the other stuff in that crate was all from local institutions, am I reading this right?”

Thibodaux came back and picked up his folder. “Yes, that particular box was full of things going to Cairo, mostly from Natural History, right across Central Park, and from the Brooklyn Museum as well. Some were to stay in Egypt, others had final destinations in other parts of Africa.

“You see the enormity of this problem, Detective? There are almost three thousand people who work inside the Met. We’ve got eight acres of buildings, hundreds of galleries and service areas. There’s a fire department, several restaurants, an infirmary, and a power plant. I can’t even begin to think about having you disturb everyone here, on account of-of…” He gestured to the small Polaroid, on which he had rested his mug.

“Of the young woman who might well have met her death within these walls?” Mike had already dubbed his victim Saint Cleo, and he would fight to bring her murderer to some kind of justice whether or not he ever found out who she was.

“It probably makes sense for us to start talking with Mr. Lissen, and with whomever is in charge of the Egyptian department as well. Weren’t they the gentlemen who were out there in Newark last night?” I tried to take the conversation over from Chapman, who was clearly put off by Thibodaux’s dismissal of the deceased.

“Trustees, curators, artists, students. If you’ve never been in a museum, Detective, you’ll have no understanding of what this all entails.”

“Maybe your French flics haven’t looped the Louvre too often, Mr. T., but I’ve probably spent as much time in this place as you spend looking down your nose at people like me. What would make you think I’ve never been in a museum? ‘Cause I’m a police officer?”

Thibodaux had just turned a dangerous corner. Mike hated that familiar upper-class assumption that he was just another dumb cop, and every time we came up against it in a case investigation, it infuriated him more and more.

“It’s just a manner of speaking. I never meant to offend you.” He looked across the table to Eve Drexler. “Why don’t you call and get Lissen up here, for the detective to speak with.”

“Came here the first time when I was four years old.” Mike was talking to me now. “My dad had his picture taken right in this office, when the police department gave the museum the guns he recovered.”

I didn’t understand what he was referring to, and Thibodaux listened as intently as I did.

“During a raid on a whorehouse, back before I was born, my father and his partner recovered a stash of guns, mixed in with a load of other stolen property. Laid in a warehouse for years, the old property clerk’s office. Meanwhile, he’s telling everyone how beautiful they are, decorated in gold, chiseled steel, and carved ivory with initials on the handle. Story got up to headquarters and someone finally took a look at the stuff.”

Thibodaux stared at Chapman with a bit more interest. “Catherine the Great-the empress’s pistols and hunting guns?”

“Made by Johann Grecke, the royal gunmaker, 1786. Right before they would have been destroyed to make room for the new evidence storage unit, the department had Pop bring them to the curator here. They traced the original owner, he donated them back to the Met, and we were all right in this fancy room for the ceremony. First time I ever saw a bottle of champagne and ate cake off an antique plate. Used to come as often as I could to look at my dad’s treasures.”

“Let me apologize, Detective. I didn’t mean to imply that I thought you were ignorant of the museum. Five million visitors walk in and out of these doors every year, seeing only the objects encased in glass or the canvases hanging on the walls. They never think about what goes on behind the scenes, out of view, to make a place like this work so brilliantly, to give life to all these inanimate things.”