“No idea.”

“When Margaret Mead came back from the South Pacific, among the treasures she brought were shrunken heads. Maori tribesmen shrunken heads. They were on display for decades in the museum. It was only recently that they were withdrawn from exhibit. Anna wanted to bring them out of mothballs for the big exhibition. Taking on Margaret Mead is like taking on Mother Teresa. And trust me, Anna thinks she’s the reincarnation of Mead, taken to a higher level and a haughtier locale.”

“Why higher?”

“‘Cause she’s queen of all things primitive in a damnart museum, not surrounded by stuffed squirrels and T. rex fossils in Natural History.”

I made some notes to ask Ms. Friedrichs about her feelings about the repatriation of human remains.

“You know this guy Timothy Gaylord?” Mike asked.

“Now there’s a man with problems. Nobody knows quite what to do with mummies these days.” Clem laughed. “The Met’s got a fortune invested in Egyptian tomb relics. Used to be quite acceptable to dig up the dead. We put ours away.”

“Your what?”

“Mummies. The anthropology department at Natural History also has a vast collection of mummies, even though nobody associates us with that kind of thing. They’re mostly stored now, too. In big black metal boxes. Some of them were sent on loan from the Met half a century ago and never returned. Boy, did Gaylord want those back.”

“Do you know where in the museum they store those mummies?” I was thinking that might be a likely place to secrete a sarcophagus without calling attention to it. Maybe even hide the remains of the princess that were removed to make room for Katrina.

“Used to be in the tower attic. But it got so cramped up there that I think they moved most of them to the basement.” An even more logical place to keep the heavy limestone coffin, as we originally figured.

There was a knock on the door and Laura opened it to say good morning and see if there were things she needed to do. I got her started on some assignments.

“I’ll leave you and Clem to handle the mail,” I told Mike. “I’m going to the grand jury, then to Sarah’s office to see how she’s managing the cases that came in over the weekend. And Timothy Gaylord. Would you give him a call to find out when we can meet with him later today?”

The meeting with Sarah and several of the assistants in our unit took almost two hours. An end-of-semester party at Columbia College had turned into a drunken orgy, and a Barnard freshman woke up naked in the bed of a guy she had never seen before and didn’t remember meeting. A homeless woman had been raped while sleeping on the seat of a subway train, in the last car, shortly after it pulled out of the Times Square station. And a teacher at a local high school was arrested for exchanging top grades for oral sex with four of the sophomore girls in his biology class.

“Where’s Mike?” I asked, after greeting Laura and coming back into my office.

“Two guys from the DA’s squad came by looking for you. Told him something urgent was up and he flew out of here with them.”

It was unlike him to leave without an explanation, but I assumed I would get one soon.

Clem handed me the printouts of her latest e-mail responses. “On the Natural History side, nothing from Mamdouba. That doesn’t surprise me, though. Socarides is the guy in charge of African mammals. His is sort of intriguing.”

It began with a courteous salutation and the appropriate expression of concern about Katrina’s death. Then he launched into a defensive description of the uses of arsenic in taxidermy, asking for Clem’s telephone number so he could learn as soon as possible what Katrina had said about her health in the weeks before she died.

“The others are from the Met staff. Bellinger and Friedrichs. I’d expect to hear from them. She worked so closely with Hiram, and I think she trusted him. And Anna-well, it would be strange if she didn’t express her condolences. Nothing out of the ordinary. If I’d ever thought I’d have so many dinner invitations, though, I would have been back for a visit long before this. You’ve got everyone vying for my companionship.”

“Keep tapping away at the keyboard, if you don’t mind. Answer them all, okay? When you get some conversation going, why don’t you mention that Katrina talked to you about the bones she was looking for. See if that gooses anybody.”

I was on the phone with one of the guys in the Special Victims Unit when Mike reappeared in my doorway. “It’s only a little bit past noon and I got my first collar. Piece of cake.”

“A homicide I don’t know about?”

“Nope. Part of your fan club.” He made a ratcheting noise with the teeth of his handcuffs as he closed them and lifted the back flap of his blazer to loop them into the waist of his pants. “Your favorite stalker.”

“Shirley Denzig? Picketing with the S and M group?”

“Yeah. Joe Roman and the guys from the squad came by to let you know they got a call she was downstairs, so I went along in case they needed me to ID her.”

“But how did she know about the demonstration? Why’d she come?”

“The all-news radio station was running it. Courthouse brouhaha. Sex crimes prosecutor steps in shit at the DA’s office. She couldn’t wait to get here and add to your aggravation. They’re fingerprinting upstairs as we speak. Grand larceny, three counts, from the cases at the Waldorf. Aggravated harassment for the calls to you. Oh, and we tossed in criminal possession of a weapon, third degree, for the loaded gun she’s got in her backpack.”

CPW third degree was probably the charge that would bring Denzig the most jail time.

“That should make you feel better. Remind me to tell you about last night,” I said.

“You’re joking, aren’t you? Something happened after we split?”

“Save it for the right moment, okay?” I nodded in Clem’s direction. No need to spook a witness with reminders of how crazily some of our defendants behave, how loosely tethered they are to reality.

I felt an enormous surge of relief at the news of Denzig’s apprehension.

“You need to sign a corroborating affidavit for the complaint.”

“A pleasure, Detective. Which of my esteemed colleagues is catching today?”

Mike lowered his voice. “McKinney’s giving it to Ellen Gunsher.”

“Not a prayer,” I practically shouted the words at Mike, coming out from behind my desk to pass him to get to McKinney’s office down at the end of the hallway.

He grabbed my elbow as I tried to brush by. “The gun. That’s what she’s supposed to handle. That’s what her unit does. Let it go, Coop.”

I pulled away and kept walking. “I’m not letting that case be assigned to a lawyer who’s too cowardly to set foot in a courtroom, just because she’s in bed with McKinney. What for? So she can plead it out to some cheap charge when I’m not looking?”

“He in?” I asked McKinney’s secretary. The door to his office was closed.

“Can’t be disturbed. There’s a meeting-”

I knocked and turned the handle. “Hate to interrupt when you’ve got so much on your plate.” McKinney was stretched out on the worn leather sofa on the far side of his office, his shoes off and tucked beneath the small conference table in the middle of the room. Gunsher was standing by the hot plate under the window, brewing two cups of tea.

“Shirley Denzig. That’s already been assigned. Sorry, there’s been a phone dump and-”

“Yeah, Alex, but now there’s a gun,” he said, sitting upright and fishing for his loafers with his toes. “Who was working on it?”

“I made sure not to know. Chinese wall and all that. I’m just a witness. Sarah assigned someone to it ages ago.”

“Well, Ellen can take it over and-”

“That’s not happening, Pat. Someone with trial experience who can deal with three traveling salesmen who aren’t going to want to come to town to testify-”