“I presented the case at our weekly meeting on Friday. The chief had a good idea. Whoever killed your victim had to do some heavy lifting. Getting the body from wherever death occurred to the place where he-or she-wrapped her in the old linen cloths. Then removed the lid of the limestone box, or at least had to slide it open and back into place.”

“Help us, doc. What’s your point?” We had parked on Columbus Avenue.

“Amylase. Possibly on the deceased’s clothing. Or the linen. Maybe even on the exterior of the sarcophagus.”

“Remind me. Amylase?”

“It’s an enzyme found in body fluids. Saliva, tears-”

“We’re not gaining any ground with this crew if I suggest the killer cried at the crime scene or kissed her good-bye.” My impatience was palpable.

“And sweat,” Kestenbaum said, finishing his sentence. “The person who did these things is very likely to have perspired, and we might well have a fair amount of DNA if his sweaty hands were on the clothing or coffin.”

“You’ll know-?”

“It’s a very sophisticated test that we aren’t equipped to do here. We’re outsourcing the evidence to a private lab in Maryland.”

“Best-case scenario?”

“We might be able to tell you who lifted Grooten’s body into the box and closed the lid on her.”

We entered the museum on West Seventy-seventh Street, heading directly for the basement offices of the joint bestiary exhibition. I called Laura as we walked, and she patched me through to Clem.

“All quiet.”

“Give this one a try. Not a group mailing, but just to a few of them. The ones who’ve been answering personally. Tell them that the police want a sample of your DNA. Say that you’ve been told there was evidence that was found with Katrina’s body, okay?”

“Was there really-?”

“I don’t mean to be rude, Clem, but I can’t answer your questions now. I can only ask for your help.”

We sent her back to work and continued on our way. Security buzzed the group at work belowground, and minutes later, Zimm appeared to lead us downstairs. Mercer had arrived about a quarter of an hour earlier. The three of us left the graduate student in his office and made our way down the dark hallway to the conference room in which the Met curators were working. Erik Poste and Hiram Bellinger rose to greet us and Gaylord finished a telephone conversation before extending a hand.

“What’s this about DNA?” he asked. “You’ve got no business-”

“Put the brakes on, pal,” Mike said, motioning with his hand, suggesting that the three men resume their seats at the table. “Who was that you were talking to? Mamdouba?”

“No, that was Eve Drexler, actually. Something about taking evidence from us like we were suspects in this case.”

The old axiom had proved itself once again, only now the technology had changed. Telegraph, telephone, tell a woman. Clem had spread the word about DNA to Eve, and she had alerted her team between the time we got out of the car and down the stairs.

“Just a precaution, Mr. Gaylord. You see, every curator and worker at Natural History has to give a DNA sample.”

“That’s understandable, Detective. They’re working with animal specimens, doing genetic analysis and tracking evolutionary patterns. They can’t take the chance of confusing their own DNA with some relic or biological sample.” He had declined Mike’s suggestion to be seated and was pacing at the head of the table. “We work with art and ancient decorative objects,” he said, incorporating Poste and Bellinger in his response. “If you’re implying that I-I-we, had anything at all to do-”

Erik Poste tried to present a calmer face on behalf of the Metropolitan curators. “You make this sound like a game. Why don’t you tell us what you know, Mr. Chapman? If there was some legitimate purpose to this scientific exercise, I think we’d find a way to work with you.”

“Hey, I look like a man with time on his hands to play games? I got a girl who specializes in funeral exhibits and becomes one. I got an airborne man who goes off a flying buttress without wings or a safety net. I got a Scythian arm that fell into a jaguar den-you wanna talk exercise or you think maybe we got a job to do?”

“When we say we’re interested in DNA evidence, gentlemen, we’re not limited to blood and semen. Detective Wallace made an arrest last month in which the defendant was identified from saliva he left on the rim of a beer bottle at the crime scene,” I told them.

“And I popped a guy in a homicide because we got his skin cells on the doorknob of the victim’s bedroom.”

“Skin cells?”

“Yeah, they slough off, just when we’re holding on to something with ordinary contact. Windowsills, steering wheel of a car, the lid of a sarcophagus.”

Maybe it was just the close atmosphere in the windowless cubicle, but the three men seemed to be squirming.

“It’s painless, boys,” Mike said. “I’ll stop by the Met tomorrow with my Q-tips and plastic vials, and it will be over in a flash. Meanwhile, Mr. Gaylord, can we take you down the hall to ask you a few more questions?”

Gaylord sucked on the stem of his pipe as he followed me around to Zimm’s office. There was no tobacco in its bowl, so I assumed this was a habit of his.

“D’you mind if we displace you for a bit?”

“Not at all,” the young man answered. “By the way, Ms. Cooper, you know that girlfriend of Katrina’s I told you about, the one who moved to London?”

“Yeah. The one whose name you couldn’t remember.”

“Clementine. I just heard from her today. I guess you guys have already been in touch with her.” He looked from my face to Mike’s to try to draw a response.

“We’re trying to encourage her to come to Manhattan. We’re hoping she has some information that will help us solve the murder. We’ll talk about it later, Zimm, okay?”

Gaylord sat at the only desk in the room, his body perched sideways on the chair, one leg crossed over the other. The pipe seemed glued to his lower lip.

Mike was interested in basics. “Ms. Grooten was found in a coffin that was the responsibility of your department. You know more about the Egyptian collection than anyone in the museum. I expect there are things that you have control of that-”

“Look, Chapman, there were six or seven sarcophagi over here all the time. The shipments moved in and out regularly. Nothing anyone would take notice of. People here carted them around all the time.”

“Yeah, but you must have had special knowledge about how to do it. I mean, it took two of us to lift the lid on the piece the night we found it. How could anyone do that alone? Maybe I need you to tell us it would have taken more than one person to do that?”

“I assume you go to the movies, don’t you?The Ten Commandments?Cleopatra? You’ve seen all those slaves building the pyramids and hoisting the sphinxes into place. Weights and pulleys, Chapman, just like the old Egyptians. Put a rope around the top and slide it off,” he said, pounding on the desktop in front of him. “Drop your body inside, ease the lid back in place. A bit of privacy is all one needs.”

“Over at your shop, too?”

“You’ve seen the maze in our basement. I can’t say one would be any worse than the other. Let me ask you, has Mamdouba opened up his collection of mummies to you yet?”

“No, he hasn’t. I had no idea there were any here until today. Can you show them to us?”

“If I knew where they were, I’d have spirited some of my own out of here long before now. The Met sent some on loan half a century ago and we’ve not seen them since. They’ve got one of the most famous mummies in the world here. Copper Man. The copper oxide gives him a rather unique green cast. Comes from the Atacama Desert in Chile, where my conference was held this past week. A several-thousand-year-old miner who was pinned in a shaft while hammering for copper. J. P. Morgan bought him for this museum in 1905. Clem can tell you more about him than I can.”