Pendergast 03 - The Cabinet of Curiosities

by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Dou­glas Pre­ston & Lin­coln Child

THE CAB­INET OF CU­RIOSI­TIES

By Dou­glas Pre­ston and Lin­coln Child

Bone­yard

ONE

PEE-​WEE BOX­ER SUR­VEYED the job­site with dis­gust. The fore­man was a scum­bag.

The crew were a bunch of losers. Worst of all, the guy han­dling the Cat didn’t know jack about hy­draulic ex­ca­va­tors. Maybe it was a union thing; maybe he was friends with some­body; ei­ther way, he was jerk­ing the ma­chine around like it was his first day at Queens Vo-​Tech. Box­er stood there, beefy arms fold­ed, watch­ing as the big buck­et bit in­to the brick rub­ble of the old ten­ement block. The buck­et flexed, stopped sud­den­ly with a squeal of hy­draulics, then start­ed again, swing­ing this way and that. Christ, where did they get these jok­ers?

He heard a crunch of foot­steps be­hind him and turned to see the fore­man ap­proach­ing, face caked in dust and sweat. “Box­er! You buy tick­ets to this show, or what?”

Box­er flexed the mus­cles of his mas­sive arms, pre­tend­ing not to hear. He was the on­ly one on the site who knew con­struc­tion, and the crews re­sent­ed him for it. Box­er didn’t care; he liked keep­ing to him­self.

He heard the ex­ca­va­tor rat­tle as it carved in­to the sol­id wall of old fill. The low­er stra­ta of old­er build­ings lay open to the sun, ex­posed like a fresh wound: above, as­phalt and ce­ment; be­low, brick, rub­ble, then more brick. And be­low that, dirt. To sink the foot­ings for the glass apart­ment tow­er well in­to bedrock, they had to go deep.

He glanced out be­yond the work­site. Be­yond, a row of Low­er East Side brown­stones stood stark­ly in the bril­liant af­ter­noon light. Some had just been ren­ovat­ed. The rest would soon fol­low. Gen­tri­fi­ca­tion.

“Yo! Box­er! You deaf?”

Box­er flexed again, fan­ta­siz­ing briefly about sink­ing his fist in­to the guy’s red face.

“Come on, get your ass in gear. This isn’t a peepshow.”

The fore­man jerked his head to­ward Box­er’s work de­tail. Not com­ing any clos­er, though. So much the bet­ter for him. Box­er looked around for his shift crew. They were busy pil­ing bricks in­to a Dump­ster, no doubt for sale to some pi­oneer­ing yup­pie around the cor­ner who liked crap­py-​look­ing old bricks at five dol­lars each. He be­gan walk­ing, just slow­ly enough to let the fore­man know he wasn’t in any hur­ry.

There was a shout. The grind­ing of the ex­ca­va­tor ceased sud­den­ly. The Cat had bit in­to a brick foun­da­tion wall, ex­pos­ing a dark, ragged hole be­hind it. The op­er­ator swung down from the idling rig. Frown­ing, the fore­man walked over, and the two men start­ed talk­ing an­imat­ed­ly. “Box­er!” came the fore­man’s voice. “Since you ain’t do­ing squat, I got an­oth­er job for you.” Box­er al­tered his course sub­tly, as if that was the way he’d al­ready been go­ing, not look­ing up to ac­knowl­edge he had heard, let­ting his at­ti­tude con­vey the con­tempt he felt for the scrawny fore­man. He stopped in front of the guy, star­ing at the man’s dusty lit­tle work­boots. Small feet, small dick.

Slow­ly, he glanced up.

“Wel­come to the world, Pee-​Wee. Take a look at this.”

Box­er gave the hole the mer­est glance.

“Let’s see your light.”

Box­er slipped the ribbed yel­low flash­light out of a loop in his pants and hand­ed it to the fore­man.

The fore­man switched it on. “Hey, it works,” he said, shak­ing his head at the mir­acle. He leaned in­to the hole. The guy looked like an id­iot, stand­ing dain­ti­ly on tip­toe atop a fall­en pile of brick, his head and tor­so in­vis­ible with­in the ragged hole. He said some­thing but it was too muf­fled to make out. He with­drew.

“Looks like a tun­nel.” He wiped his face, smear­ing the dust in­to a long black line. “Whew, stinks in there.”

“See King Tut?” some­one asked.

Ev­ery­one but Box­er laughed. Who the hell was King Tut?

“I sure as shit hope this isn’t some kind of ar­chae­olog­ical deal.” He turned to Box­er. “Pee­Wee, you’re a big, strong fel­la. I want you to check it out.”

Box­er took the flash­light and, with­out a glance at the wee­nies around him, hoist­ed him­self up the col­lapsed pile of bricks and in­to the hole the ex­ca­va­tor had cut in­to the wall. He knelt atop the bro­ken bricks, shin­ing his light in­to the cav­ity. Be­low was a long, low tun­nel. Cracks dog­legged up through the walls and across the ceil­ing. It looked just about ready to col­lapse. He hes­itat­ed.

“You go­ing in, or what?” came the voice of the fore­man.

He heard an­oth­er voice, a whiny im­ita­tion. “But it’s not in my union con­tract.” There were guf­faws.

He went in.

Bricks had spilled down in a talus to the floor of the tun­nel. Box­er half scram­bled, half slid in, rais­ing clouds of dust. He found his feet and stood up, shin­ing the light ahead. It lanced through the dust, not get­ting far. From in­side, the place seemed even dark­er. He wait­ed for his eyes to ad­just and the dust to set­tle. He heard con­ver­sa­tion and laugh­ter from above, but faint­ly, as if from a great dis­tance.

He took a few steps for­ward, shin­ing the beam back and forth. Thread­like sta­lac­tites hung from the ceil­ing, and a draft of foul-​smelling air licked his face. Dead rats, prob­ably.

The tun­nel ap­peared to be emp­ty, ex­cept for a few pieces of coal. Along both sides were a long se­ries of arched nich­es, about three feet across and five high, each crude­ly bricked up. Wa­ter glis­tened on the walls, and he heard a cho­rus of faint drip­ping sounds. It seemed very qui­et now, the tun­nel block­ing all noise from the out­side world.

He took an­oth­er step, an­gling the flash­light beam along the walls and ceil­ing. The net­work of cracks seemed to grow even more ex­ten­sive, and pieces of stone jut­ted from the arched ceil­ing. Cau­tious­ly, he backed up, his eye stray­ing once again to the bricked-​up nich­es along both walls.

He ap­proached the clos­est one. A brick had re­cent­ly fall­en out, and the oth­ers looked loose. He won­dered what might be in­side the nich­es. An­oth­er tun­nel? Some­thing de­lib­er­ate­ly hid­den?

He shined the light in­to the brick-​hole, but it could not pen­etrate the black­ness be­yond. He put his hand in, grasped the low­er brick, and wig­gled it. Just as he thought: it, too, was loose. He jerked it out with a show­er of lime dust. Then he pulled out an­oth­er, and an­oth­er. The foul odor, much stronger now, drift­ed out to him.

He shined the light in again. An­oth­er brick wall, maybe three feet back. He an­gled the light to­ward the bot­tom of the arch, peer­ing down­ward. There was some­thing there, like a dish. Porce­lain. He shuf­fled back a step, his eyes wa­ter­ing in the fetid air. Cu­rios­ity strug­gled with a vague sense of alarm. Some­thing was def­inite­ly in­side there. It might be old and valu­able. Why else would it be bricked up like that?

He re­mem­bered a guy who once found a bag of sil­ver dol­lars while de­mol­ish­ing a brown­stone. Rare, worth a cou­ple thou­sand. Bought him­self a slick new Kub­ota rid­ing mow­er. If it was valu­able, screw them, he was go­ing to pock­et it.

He plucked at his col­lar but­tons, pulled his T-​shirt over his nose, reached in­to the hole with his flash­light arm, then res­olute­ly ducked his head and shoul­ders in af­ter it and got a good look.

For a mo­ment he re­mained still, frozen in place. Then his head jerked back in­vol­un­tar­ily, slam­ming against the up­per course of bricks. He dropped the light in­to the hole and stag­gered away, scrap­ing his fore­head this time, lurch­ing back in­to the dark, his feet back­ing in­to bricks. He fell to the floor with an in­vol­un­tary cry.

For a mo­ment, all was silent. The dust swirled up­ward, and far above there was a fee­ble glow of light from the out­side world. The stench swept over him. With a gasp he stag­gered to his feet, head­ing for the light, scram­bling up the slide of bricks, falling, his face in the dirt, then up again and scrab­bling with both hands. Sud­den­ly he was out in the clear light, tum­bling head­first down the oth­er side of the brick pile, land­ing face­down with a stun­ning blow. He vague­ly heard laugh­ter, which ceased as soon as he rolled over. And then there was a rush to his side, hands pick­ing him up, voic­es talk­ing all at once.

“Je­sus Christ, what hap­pened to you?”

“He’s hurt,” came a voice. “He’s all bloody.”

“Step back,” said an­oth­er.

Box­er tried to catch his breath, tried to con­trol the ham­mer­ing of his heart.

“Don’t move him. Call an am­bu­lance.”

“Was it a cave-​in?”

The yam­mer­ing went on and on. He fi­nal­ly coughed and sat up, to a sud­den hush.

“Bones,” he man­aged to say.

“Bones? Whad­dya mean, bones?”

“He’s not mak­ing any sense.”

Box­er felt his head be­gin to clear. He looked around, feel­ing the hot blood run­ning down his face. “Skulls, bones. Piled up. Dozens of them.”

Then he felt faint and lay down again, in the bright sun­light.

TWO

NO­RA KEL­LY LOOKED out from the win­dow of her fourth-​floor of­fice over the cop­per rooftops of the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry, past the cupo­las and minarets and gar­goyle-​haunt­ed tow­ers, across the leafy ex­panse of Cen­tral Park. Her eye came to rest at last on the dis­tant build­ings along Fifth Av­enue: a sin­gle wall, un­bro­ken and mono­lith­ic, like the bai­ley of some lim­it­less cas­tle, yel­low in the au­tumn light. The beau­ti­ful vista gave her no plea­sure.

Al­most time for the meet­ing. She be­gan to check a sud­den swell of anger, then re­con­sid­ered. She would need that anger. For the last eigh­teen months, her sci­en­tif­ic bud­get had been frozen. Dur­ing that time, she had watched the num­ber of mu­se­um vice pres­idents swell from three to twelve, each pulling down two hun­dred grand. She had watched the Pub­lic Re­la­tions De­part­ment turn from a sleepy lit­tle of­fice of ge­nial old ex-​news­pa­per re­porters to a suite of young, smart­ly dressed flacks who knew noth­ing about ar­chae­ol­ogy, or sci­ence. She had seen the up­per ech­elons at the Mu­se­um, once pop­ulat­ed by sci­en­tists and ed­uca­tors, tak­en over by lawyers and fund-​rais­ers. Ev­ery nine­ty-​de­gree an­gle in the Mu­se­um had been con­vert­ed in­to the cor­ner of­fice of some func­tionary. All the mon­ey went to putting on big fund-​rais­ers that raised more mon­ey for yet more fund-​rais­ers, in an end­less cy­cle of onanis­tic vig­or.

And yet, she told her­self, it was still the New York Mu­se­um: the great­est nat­ural his­to­ry mu­se­um in the world. She was lucky to have this job. Af­ter the fail­ure of her most re­cent ef­forts—the strange ar­chae­olog­ical ex­pe­di­tion she’d led to Utah, and the abrupt ter­mi­na­tion of the planned Lloyd Mu­se­um—she need­ed this job to work out. This time, she told her­self, she would play it cool, work with­in the sys­tem.

She turned away from the win­dow and glanced around the of­fice. Sys­tem or no sys­tem, there was no way she could com­plete her re­search on the Anasazi-​Aztec con­nec­tion with­out more mon­ey. Most im­por­tant­ly, she need­ed a care­ful se­ries of ac­cel­er­ator mass spec­trom­eter C-14 dates on the six­ty-​six or­gan­ics she had brought back from last sum­mer’s sur­vey of south­ern Utah. It would cost $18,000, but she had to have those damn dates if she was ev­er go­ing to com­plete her work. She would ask for that mon­ey now, let the oth­er stuff wait.

It was time. She rose and head­ed out the door, up a nar­row stair­case, and in­to the plush trap­pings of the Mu­se­um’s fifth floor. She paused out­side the first vice pres­ident’s of­fice to ad­just her gray suit. That was what these peo­ple un­der­stood best: tai­lored cloth­ing and a smart look. She ar­ranged her face in­to a pleas­ant­ly neu­tral ex­pres­sion and poked her head in the door.

The sec­re­tary had gone out to lunch. Bold­ly, No­ra walked through and paused at the door to the in­ner of­fice, heart pound­ing. She had to get the mon­ey: there was no way she could leave this of­fice with­out it. She steeled her­self, smiled, and knocked. The trick was to be nice but firm.

“Come in,” said a brisk voice.

The cor­ner of­fice be­yond was flood­ed with morn­ing light. First Vice Pres­ident Roger Bris­bane III was sit­ting be­hind a gleam­ing Bauhaus desk. No­ra had seen pic­tures of this space back when it be­longed to the mys­te­ri­ous Dr. Frock. Then it had been a re­al cu­ra­tor’s of­fice, dusty and messy, filled with fos­sils and books, old Vic­to­ri­an wing chairs, Ma­sai spears, and a stuffed dugong. Now, the place looked like the wait­ing room of an oral sur­geon. The on­ly sign that it might be a mu­se­um of­fice was a locked glass case sit­ting on Bris­bane’s desk, in­side of which re­posed a num­ber of spec­tac­ular gem­stones—cut and un­cut—wink­ing and glim­mer­ing in lit­tle nests of vel­vet. Mu­se­um scut­tle­butt held that Bris­bane had in­tend­ed to be a gemol­ogist, but was forced in­to law school by a prag­mat­ic fa­ther. No­ra hoped it was true: at least then he might have some un­der­stand­ing of sci­ence.

She tried to make her smile as sin­cere as pos­si­ble. Bris­bane looked sleek and self­as­sured. His face was as cool, smooth, and pink as the in­side of a conch—exquisite­ly shaved, pat­ted, groomed, and eau-​de-​cologned. His wavy brown hair, thick and glossy with health, was worn slight­ly long.

“Dr. Kel­ly,” said Bris­bane, ex­pos­ing a rack of per­fect or­thodon­try. “Make your­self at home.”

No­ra dropped gin­ger­ly in­to a con­struc­tion of chrome, leather, and wood that pur­port­ed to be a chair. It was hideous­ly un­com­fort­able and squeaked with ev­ery move­ment.

The young VP threw him­self back in his chair with a rus­tle of worsted and put his hands be­hind his head. His shirt­sleeves were rolled back in per­fect creas­es, and the knot of his En­glish silk tie formed an im­pec­ca­bly dim­pled tri­an­gle. Was that, No­ra thought, a bit of make­up on his face, un­der and around his eyes, hid­ing a few wrin­kles? Good God, it was. She looked away, re­al­iz­ing she was star­ing too hard.

“How go things in the rag and bone shop?” Bris­bane asked.

“Great. Fine. There’s just one small thing I want­ed to talk to you about.”

“Good, good. I need­ed to talk to you, too.”

“Mr. Bris­bane,” No­ra be­gan quick­ly, “I—”

But Bris­bane stopped her with a raised hand. “No­ra, I know why you’re here. You need mon­ey.”

“That’s right.”

Bris­bane nod­ded, sym­pa­thet­ical­ly. “You can’t com­plete your re­search with a frozen bud­get.”

“That’s right,” re­peat­ed No­ra, sur­prised but wary. “It was a tremen­dous coup to get the Murchi­son Grant to do the Utah Anasazi sur­vey, but there’s no way I can fin­ish the work with­out a re­al­ly good se­ries of car­bon-14 dates. Good dates are the foun­da­tion for ev­ery­thing else.” She tried to keep her voice pleas­ant­ly obe­di­ent, as if ea­ger to play the in­genue.

Bris­bane nod­ded again, his eyes half closed, swivel­ing slight­ly in his chair. De­spite her­self, No­ra be­gan to feel en­cour­aged. She hadn’t ex­pect­ed as sym­pa­thet­ic a re­ac­tion. It seemed to be work­ing.

“How much are we talk­ing about?” Bris­bane asked.

“With eigh­teen thou­sand dol­lars, I could get all six­ty-​six sam­ples dat­ed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, which has the best mass spec­trom­eter lab­ora­to­ry for car­bon-14 dat­ing in the world.”

“Eigh­teen thou­sand dol­lars. Six­ty-​six sam­ples.”

“That’s right. I’m not ask­ing for a per­ma­nent bud­get in­crease, just a one-​time grant.”

“Eigh­teen thou­sand dol­lars,” Bris­bane re­peat­ed slow­ly as if con­sid­er­ing. “When you re­al­ly think about it, Dr. Kel­ly, it doesn’t seem like much, does it?”

“No.”

“It’s very lit­tle mon­ey, ac­tu­al­ly.”

“Not com­pared to the sci­en­tif­ic re­sults it would bring.”

“Eigh­teen thou­sand. What a co­in­ci­dence.”

“Co­in­ci­dence?” No­ra sud­den­ly felt un­easy.

“It just hap­pens to be ex­act­ly what you are go­ing to need to cut out of your bud­get next year.”

“You’re cut­ting my bud­get?”

Bris­bane nod­ded. “Ten per­cent cuts across the board. All sci­en­tif­ic de­part­ments.”

No­ra felt her­self be­gin to trem­ble, and she gripped the chrome arms of the chair. She was about to say some­thing, but, re­mem­ber­ing her vow, turned it in­to a swal­low.

“The cost of the new di­nosaur halls turned out to be more than an­tic­ipat­ed. That’s why I was glad to hear you say it wasn’t much mon­ey.”

No­ra found her breath, mod­ulat­ed her voice. “Mr. Bris­bane, I can’t com­plete the sur­vey with a cut like that.”

“You’re go­ing to have to. Sci­en­tif­ic re­search is on­ly a small part of the Mu­se­um, Dr. Kel­ly. We’ve an obli­ga­tion to put on ex­hi­bi­tions, build new halls, and en­ter­tain the pub­lic.”

No­ra spoke hot­ly. “But ba­sic sci­en­tif­ic re­search is the lifeblood of this Mu­se­um. With­out sci­ence, all this is just emp­ty show.”

Bris­bane rose from his chair, strolled around his desk, and stood be­fore the glass case. He punched a key­pad, in­sert­ed a key. “Have you ev­er seen the Tev Mirabi emer­ald?”

“The what?”

Bris­bane opened the case and stretched a slen­der hand to­ward a cabo­chon emer­ald the size of a robin’s egg. He plucked it from its vel­vet cra­dle and held it up be­tween thumb and fore­fin­ger. “The Tev Mirabi emer­ald. It’s flaw­less. As a gemol­ogist by av­oca­tion, I can tell you that emer­alds of this size are nev­er flaw­less. Ex­cept this one.”

He placed it be­fore his eye, which popped in­to house­fly-​like mag­ni­fi­ca­tion. He blinked once, then low­ered the gem.

“Take a look.”

No­ra again forced her­self to swal­low a re­join­der. She took the emer­ald.

“Care­ful. You wouldn’t want to drop it. Emer­alds are brit­tle.”

No­ra held it gin­ger­ly, turned it in her fin­gers.

“Go ahead. The world looks dif­fer­ent through an emer­ald.”

She peered in­to its depths and saw a dis­tort­ed world peer­ing back, in which moved a bloat­ed crea­ture like a green jel­ly­fish: Bris­bane.

“Very in­ter­est­ing. But Mr. Bris­bane—”

“Flaw­less.”

“No doubt. But we were talk­ing about some­thing else.”

“What do you think it’s worth? A mil­lion? Five? Ten? It’s unique. If we sold it, all our mon­ey wor­ries would be over.” He chuck­led, then placed it to his own eye again. The eye swiveled about be­hind the emer­ald, black, mag­ni­fied, wet-​look­ing. “But we can’t, of course.”

“I’m sor­ry, but I don’t get your point.”

Bris­bane smiled thin­ly. “You and the rest of the sci­en­tif­ic staff. You all for­get one thing: it is about show. Take this emer­ald. Sci­en­tif­ical­ly, there’s noth­ing in it that you couldn’t find in an emer­ald a hun­dredth its size. But peo­ple don’t want to see any old emer­ald: they want to see the biggest emer­ald. Show, Dr. Kel­ly, is the lifeblood of this Mu­se­um. How long do you think your pre­cious sci­en­tif­ic re­search would last if peo­ple stopped com­ing, stopped be­ing in­ter­est­ed, stopped giv­ing mon­ey? You need col­lec­tions: daz­zling ex­hi­bi­tions, colos­sal me­te­orites, di­nosaurs, plan­etar­iums, gold, do­do birds, and gi­ant emer­alds to keep peo­ple’s at­ten­tion. Your work just doesn’t fall in­to that cat­ego­ry.”

“But my work is in­ter­est­ing.”

Bris­bane spread his hands. “My dear, ev­ery­one here thinks their re­search is the most in­ter­est­ing.”

It was the “my dear” that did it. No­ra rose from her chair, white-​lipped with anger. “I shouldn’t have to sit here jus­ti­fy­ing my work to you. The Utah sur­vey will es­tab­lish ex­act­ly when the Aztec in­flu­ence came in­to the South­west and trans­formed Anasazi cul­ture. It will tell us—”

“If you were dig­ging up di­nosaurs, it would be dif­fer­ent. That’s where the ac­tion is. And it hap­pens that’s al­so where the mon­ey is. The fact is, Dr. Kel­ly, no­body seems ter­ri­bly con­cerned with your lit­tle piles of pot­sherds ex­cept your­self.”

“The fact is,” said No­ra hot­ly, “that you’re a mis­car­ried sci­en­tist your­self. You’re on­ly play­ing at be­ing a bu­reau­crat, and, frankly, you’re over­do­ing the role.”

As soon as No­ra spoke she re­al­ized she had said too much. Bris­bane’s face seemed to freeze for a mo­ment. Then he re­cov­ered, gave her a cool smile, and twitched his hand­ker­chief out of his breast pock­et. He be­gan pol­ish­ing the emer­ald, slow­ly and repet­itive­ly. Then he placed it back in the case, locked it, and then be­gan pol­ish­ing the case it­self, first the top and then the sides, with de­lib­er­ation. Fi­nal­ly he spoke.

“Do not ex­cite your­self. It hard­ens the ar­ter­ies and is al­to­geth­er bad for your health.”

“I didn’t mean to say that, and I’m sor­ry, but I won’t stand for these cuts.”

Bris­bane spoke pleas­ant­ly. “I’ve said what I have to say. For those cu­ra­tors who are un­able or un­will­ing to find the cuts, there’s no prob­lem—I will be hap­py to find the cuts for them.” When he said this, he did not smile.

No­ra closed the door to the out­er of­fice and stood in the hall­way, her mind in tur­moil. She had sworn to her­self not to leave with­out the ex­tra mon­ey, and here she was, worse off than be­fore she went in. Should she go to Col­lopy, the Mu­se­um’s di­rec­tor? But he was se­vere and un­ap­proach­able, and that would sure­ly piss off Bris­bane. She’d al­ready shot her mouth off once. Go­ing over Bris­bane’s head might get her fired. And what­ev­er else she did, she couldn’t lose this job. If that hap­pened, she might as well find an­oth­er line of work. Maybe she could find the mon­ey some­where else, rus­tle up an­oth­er grant some­where. And there was an­oth­er bud­get re­view in six months. One could al­ways hope . . .

Slow­ly, she de­scend­ed the stair­case to the fourth floor. In the cor­ri­dor she paused, sur­prised to see the door to her of­fice wide open. She looked in­side. In the place she had been stand­ing not fif­teen min­utes be­fore, a very odd-​look­ing man was now framed by the win­dow, leaf­ing through a mono­graph. He was wear­ing a dead black suit, severe­ly cut, giv­ing him a dis­tinct­ly fu­ne­re­al air. His skin was very pale, whiter than she had ev­er seen on a liv­ing body. His blond hair, too, was al­most white, and he turned the pages of the mono­graph with as­ton­ish­ing­ly long, slen­der, ivory fin­gers.

“Ex­cuse me, but what are you do­ing in my of­fice?” No­ra asked.

“In­ter­est­ing,” the man mur­mured, turn­ing.

“I’m sor­ry?”

He held up a mono­graph, The Geochronol­ogy of San­dia Cave. “Odd that on­ly whole Fol­som points were found above the San­dia lev­el. High­ly sug­ges­tive, don’t you think?” He spoke with a soft, up­per-​class south­ern ac­cent that flowed like hon­ey.

No­ra felt her sur­prise turn­ing to anger at this ca­su­al in­va­sion of her of­fice.

He moved to­ward a book­case, slid the mono­graph back in­to its place on the shelf, and be­gan pe­rus­ing the oth­er vol­umes, his fin­ger tap­ping the spines with small, pre­cise move­ments. “Ah,” he said, slip­ping out an­oth­er mono­graph. “I see the Monte Verde re­sults have been chal­lenged.”

No­ra stepped for­ward, jerked the mono­graph out of his hand, and shoved it back on­to the shelf. “I’m busy at the mo­ment. If you want an ap­point­ment, you can call. Please close the door on your way out.” She turned her back, wait­ing for him to leave. Ten per­cent. She shook her head in weary dis­be­lief. How could she pos­si­bly man­age it?

But the man didn’t leave. In­stead, she heard his mel­liflu­ous plan­ta­tion voice again. “I’d just as soon speak now, if it’s all the same to you. Dr. Kel­ly, may I be so bold as to trou­ble you with a vex­atious lit­tle prob­lem?”

She turned. He had ex­tend­ed his hand. Nes­tled with­in it was a small, brown skull.

THREE

NO­RA GLANCED FROM the skull back to the vis­itor ’s face. “Who are you?” Re­gard­ing him more care­ful­ly now, she no­ticed just how pale his blue eyes were, how fine his fea­tures. With his white skin and the clas­si­cal planes of his face, he looked as if he’d been sculpt­ed of mar­ble.

He made a deco­rous ges­ture some­where be­tween a nod and a bow. “Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast, Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

No­ra’s heart sank. Was this more spillover from the trou­ble-​plagued Utah ex­pe­di­tion? Just what she need­ed. “Do you have a badge?” she asked weari­ly. “Some kind of ID?”

The man smiled in­dul­gent­ly, and slipped a wal­let out of his suit pock­et, al­low­ing it to fall open. No­ra bent down to scru­ti­nize the badge. It cer­tain­ly looked re­al—and she had seen enough of them over the last eigh­teen months.

“All right, all right, I be­lieve you. Spe­cial Agent—” She hes­itat­ed. What the hell was his name? She glanced down but the shield was al­ready on its way back in­to the folds of his suit.

“Pen­der­gast,” he fin­ished for her. Then he added, al­most as if he had read her thoughts: “This has noth­ing to do with what hap­pened in Utah, by the way. This is an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent case.”

She looked at him again. This dap­per study in black and white hard­ly looked like the Gmen she had met out west. He seemed un­usu­al, even ec­cen­tric. There was some­thing al­most ap­peal­ing in the im­pas­sive face. Then she glanced back down at the skull. “I’m not a phys­ical an­thro­pol­ogist,” she said quick­ly. “Bones aren’t my field.”

Pen­der­gast’s on­ly re­ply was to of­fer her the skull.

She reached for it, cu­ri­ous de­spite her­self, turn­ing it over care­ful­ly in her hands.

“Sure­ly the FBI has foren­sic ex­perts to help them with this sort of thing?”

The FBI agent mere­ly smiled and walked to the door, clos­ing and lock­ing it. Glid­ing to­ward her desk, he plucked the phone from its cra­dle and laid it gen­tly to one side. “May we speak undis­turbed?”

“Sure. What­ev­er.” No­ra knew she must sound flus­tered, and was an­gry at her­self for it. She had nev­er met some­one quite so self-​as­sured.

The man set­tled him­self in­to a wood­en chair op­po­site her desk, throw­ing one slen­der leg over the oth­er. “Re­gard­less of your dis­ci­pline, I’d like to hear your thoughts on this skull.”

She sighed. Should she be talk­ing to this man? What would the Mu­se­um think? Sure­ly they would be pleased that one of their own had been con­sult­ed by the FBI. Maybe this was just the kind of “pub­lic­ity” Bris­bane want­ed.

She ex­am­ined the skull once again. “Well, to start with, I’d say this child had a pret­ty sad life.”

Pen­der­gast made a tent of his fin­gers, rais­ing one eye­brow in mute query.

“The lack of su­tu­ral clos­ing in­di­cates a young teenag­er. The sec­ond mo­lar is on­ly just erupt­ed. That would put him or her at around thir­teen, give or take a few years. I would guess fe­male, by the gracile brow ridges. Very bad teeth, by the way, with no or­thodon­try. That sug­gests ne­glect, at least. And these two rings in the enam­el in­di­cate ar­rest­ed growth, prob­ably caused by two episodes of star­va­tion or se­ri­ous ill­ness. The skull is clear­ly old, al­though the con­di­tion of the teeth sug­gests a his­toric, as op­posed to pre­his­toric, dat­ing. You wouldn’t see this kind of tooth de­cay in a pre­his­toric spec­imen, and any­way it looks Cau­ca­soid, not Na­tive Amer­ican. I would say it’s at least sev­en­ty-​five to a hun­dred years old. Of course, this is all spec­ula­tion. Ev­ery­thing de­pends on where it was found, and un­der what con­di­tions. A car­bon-14 date might be worth con­sid­er­ing.” At this un­pleas­ant re­minder of her re­cent meet­ing, she paused in­vol­un­tar­ily.

Pen­der­gast wait­ed. No­ra had the dis­tinct feel­ing that he ex­pect­ed more. Feel­ing her an­noy­ance re­turn­ing, she moved to­ward the win­dow to ex­am­ine the skull in the bright morn­ing light. And then, as she stared, she felt a sud­den sick feel­ing wash over her.

“What is it?” Pen­der­gast asked sharply, in­stant­ly aware of the change, his wiry frame ris­ing from the chair with the in­ten­si­ty of a spring.

“These faint scratch­es at the very base of the oc­cip­ital bone . . .” She reached for the loup that al­ways hung around her neck and fit­ted it to her eye. Turn­ing the skull up­side down, she ex­am­ined it more close­ly.

“Go on.”

“They were made by a knife. It’s as if some­one were re­mov­ing tis­sue.”

“What kind of tis­sue?”

She felt a flood of re­lief as she re­al­ized what it was.

“These are the kind of marks you would ex­pect to see caused by a scalpel, dur­ing a post­mortem. This child was au­top­sied. The marks were made while ex­pos­ing the up­per part of the spinal cord, or per­haps the medul­la ob­lon­ga­ta.”

She placed the skull on the ta­ble. “But I’m an ar­chae­ol­ogist, Mr. Pen­der­gast. You’d do bet­ter to use the ex­per­tise of some­one else. We have a phys­ical an­thro­pol­ogist on staff, Dr. Wei­den­re­ich.”

Pen­der­gast picked the skull up, seal­ing it in a Zi­ploc bag. It dis­ap­peared in­to the folds of his suit with­out a trace, like a ma­gi­cian’s trick. “It is pre­cise­ly your ar­chae­olog­ical ex­per­tise I need. And now,” he con­tin­ued briskly, re­plac­ing the tele­phone and un­lock­ing the door in swift eco­nom­ical move­ments, “I need you to ac­com­pa­ny me down­town.”

“Down­town? You mean, like head­quar­ters?”

Pen­der­gast shook his head.

No­ra hes­itat­ed. “I can’t just leave the Mu­se­um. I’ve got work to do.”

“We won’t be long, Dr. Kel­ly. Time is of the essence.”

“What’s this all about?”

But he was al­ready out of her of­fice, strid­ing on swift silent feet down the long cor­ri­dor. She fol­lowed, un­able to think of what else to do, as the agent led the tor­tu­ous back way down a se­ries of stair­cas­es, through Birds of the World, Africa, and Pleis­tocene Mam­mals, ar­riv­ing at last in the echo­ing Great Ro­tun­da.

“You know the Mu­se­um pret­ty well,” she said as she strug­gled to keep up.

“Yes.”

Then they were out the bronze doors and de­scend­ing the vast sweep of mar­ble stairs to Mu­se­um Drive. Agent Pen­der­gast stopped at the base and turned in the bright fall light. His eyes were now white, with on­ly a hint of col­or. As he moved, she sud­den­ly had the im­pres­sion of great phys­ical pow­er be­neath the nar­row suit. “Are you fa­mil­iar with the New York Ar­chae­olog­ical and His­toric Preser­va­tion Act?” he asked.

“Of course.” It was the law that stopped dig­ging or con­struc­tion in the city if any­thing of ar­chae­olog­ical val­ue was un­cov­ered, un­til it could be ex­ca­vat­ed and doc­ument­ed.

“A rather in­ter­est­ing site was un­cov­ered in low­er Man­hat­tan. You’ll be the su­per­vis­ing ar­chae­ol­ogist.”

“Me? I don’t have the ex­pe­ri­ence or au­thor­ity—”

“Fear not, Dr. Kel­ly. I’m afraid we’ll find your tenure all too brief.”

She shook her head. “But why me?”

“You’ve had some ex­pe­ri­ence in this, ah, par­tic­ular kind of site.”

“And just what kind of site is that?”

“A char­nel.”

She stared.

“And now,” he said, ges­tur­ing to­ward a ’59 Sil­ver Wraith idling at the curb, “we must be on our way. Af­ter you, please.”

FOUR

NO­RA STEPPED OUT of the Rolls-​Royce, feel­ing un­com­fort­ably con­spic­uous. Pen­der­gast closed the door be­hind her, look­ing serene­ly in­dif­fer­ent to the in­con­gruity of the el­egant ve­hi­cle parked amid the dust and noise of a large con­struc­tion site.

They crossed the street, paus­ing at a high chain-​link fence. Be­yond, the rich af­ter­noon light il­lu­mi­nat­ed the skele­tal foun­da­tions of a row of old build­ings. Sev­er­al large Dump­sters full of bricks lined the perime­ter. Two po­lice cars were parked along the curb and No­ra could see uni­formed cops stand­ing be­fore a hole in a brick re­tain­ing wall. Near­by stood a knot of busi­ness­men in suits. The con­struc­tion site was framed by for­lorn ten­ements that winked back at them through emp­ty win­dows.

“The Moe­gen-​Fairhaven Group are build­ing a six­ty-​five-​sto­ry res­iden­tial tow­er on this site,” said Pen­der­gast. “Yes­ter­day, about four o’clock, they broke through that brick wall, there. A work­er found the skull I showed you in a bar­row in­side. Along with many, many more bones.” No­ra glanced in the in­di­cat­ed di­rec­tion. “What was on the site be­fore?”

“A block of ten­ements built in the late 1890s. The tun­nel, how­ev­er, ap­pears to pre­date them.”

No­ra could see that the ex­ca­va­tor had ex­posed a clear pro­file. The old re­tain­ing wall lay be­neath the nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry foot­ings, and the hole near its base was clear­ly part of an ear­li­er struc­ture. Some an­cient tim­bers, burned and rot­ten, had been piled to one side.

As they walked along the fence, Pen­der­gast leaned to­ward her. “I’m afraid our vis­it may be prob­lem­at­ic, and we have very lit­tle time. The site has changed alarm­ing­ly in just the last few hours. Moe­gen-​Fairhaven is one of the most en­er­get­ic de­vel­op­ers in the city. And they have a re­mark­able amount of, ah, pull. No­tice there are no mem­bers of the press on hand? The po­lice were called very qui­et­ly to the scene.” He steered her to­ward a chained gate in the fence, manned by a cop from whose belt dan­gled cuffs, ra­dio, night­stick, gun, and am­mu­ni­tion. The com­bined weight of the ac­cou­trements pulled the belt down, al­low­ing a blue-​shirt­ed bel­ly to hang com­fort­ably out.

Pen­der­gast stopped at the gate.

“Move on,” said the cop. “Noth­ing to see here, pal.”

“On the con­trary.” Pen­der­gast smiled and dis­played his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. The cop leaned over, scowl­ing. He looked back up in­to the agent’s face, then back down, sev­er­al times.

“FBI?” He hiked up his belt with a metal­lic jan­gle.

“Those are the three let­ters, yes.” And Pen­der­gast placed the wal­let back in his suit.

“And who’s your com­pan­ion?”

“An ar­chae­ol­ogist. She’s been as­signed to in­ves­ti­gate the site.”

“Ar­chae­ol­ogist? Hold on.”

The cop am­bled across the lot, stop­ping at the knot of po­lice­men. A few words were ex­changed, then one of the cops broke away from the group. A brown-​suit­ed man fol­lowed at a trot. He was short and heavy­set, and his pulpy neck bulged over a tight col­lar. He took steps that were too big for his stub­by legs, giv­ing his walk an ex­ag­ger­at­ed bounce.

“What the hell’s this?” he pant­ed as he ap­proached the gate, turn­ing to the new­ly ar­rived cop. “You didn’t say any­thing about the FBI.”

No­ra no­ticed that the new cop had gold cap­tain’s bars on his shoul­ders. He had thin­ning hair, a sal­low com­plex­ion, and nar­row black eyes. He was al­most as fat as the man in the brown suit.

The cap­tain looked at Pen­der­gast. “May I see your iden­ti­fi­ca­tion?” His voice was small and tight and high.

Pen­der­gast once again re­moved his wal­let. The cap­tain took it, ex­am­ined it, and hand­ed it back through the gate.

“I’m sor­ry, Mr. Pen­der­gast, the FBI has no ju­ris­dic­tion here, par­tic­ular­ly the New Or­leans of­fice. You know the pro­ce­dure.”

“Cap­tain—?”

“Custer.”

“Cap­tain Custer, I am here with Dr. No­ra Kel­ly, of the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry, who has been placed in charge of the ar­chae­olog­ical sur­vey. Now, if you’ll let us in—”

“This is a con­struc­tion site,” broke in the brown-​suit­ed man. “We’re try­ing to build a build­ing here, in case you hadn’t no­ticed. They’ve al­ready got a man look­ing at the bones. Christ Almighty, we’re los­ing forty thou­sand dol­lars a day here, and now the FBI?”

“And who might you be?” Pen­der­gast asked the man, in a pleas­ant voice.

His eyes flick­ered from side to side. “Ed Shenk.”

“Ah, Mr. Shenk.” In Pen­der­gast’s mouth, the name sound­ed like some kind of crude im­ple­ment. “And your po­si­tion with Moe­gen-​Fairhaven?”

“Con­struc­tion man­ag­er.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “Of course you are. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Shenk.” Im­me­di­ate­ly, he turned back to the cap­tain, ig­nor­ing Shenk com­plete­ly.

“Now, Cap­tain Custer,” he con­tin­ued in the same mild voice, “am I to un­der­stand that you will not open the gate and al­low us to pro­ceed with our work?”

“This is a very im­por­tant project for the Moe­gen-​Fairhaven Group, and for this com­mu­ni­ty. Progress has been slow­er than it should be, and there’s con­cern at the very high­est lev­els. Mr. Fairhaven vis­it­ed the site him­self yes­ter­day evening. The last thing they want is more de­lays. I’ve had no word about FBI in­volve­ment, and I don’t know any­thing about any ar­chae­olog­ical busi­ness—” He stopped. Pen­der­gast had tak­en out his cell phone.

“Who’re you call­ing?” Custer de­mand­ed.

Pen­der­gast said noth­ing, the smile still on his face. His fin­gers flew over the tiny but­tons with amaz­ing speed.

The cap­tain’s eyes dart­ed to­ward Shenk, then away again.

“Sal­ly?” Pen­der­gast spoke in­to the phone. “Agent Pen­der­gast here. May I speak with Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er?”

“Now, look—” be­gan the cap­tain.

“Yes, please, Sal­ly. You’re a trea­sure.”

“Per­haps we could dis­cuss this in­side.” There was a rat­tling of keys. Cap­tain Custer be­gan to un­lock the gate.

“If you could kind­ly in­ter­rupt him for me, I’d be so grate­ful.”

“Mr. Pen­der­gast, there’s no need for this,” said Custer. The gate swung open. “Sal­ly? I’ll call back,” said Pen­der­gast, snap­ping the phone shut.

He stepped past the gate, No­ra at his side. With­out paus­ing or speak­ing, the FBI agent took off across the rub­bled ground, trot­ting di­rect­ly to­ward the hole in the brick wall. The oth­ers, tak­en by sur­prise, be­gan to fol­low. “Mr. Pen­der­gast, you have to un­der­stand—” the cap­tain said as he strug­gled to keep up. Shenk fol­lowed an­gri­ly, like a bull. He stum­bled, cursed, kept com­ing.

As they ap­proached the hole, No­ra could see a faint glow with­in, and a flash of light. A pause, an­oth­er flash. Some­one was tak­ing pic­tures.

“Mr. Pen­der­gast—” Cap­tain Custer called.

But the lithe FBI agent was bound­ing up the pile of rub­ble. The oth­ers halt­ed at the base, breath­ing heav­ily. No­ra fol­lowed Pen­der­gast, who had al­ready van­ished in­to the dark hole. She paused on the bro­ken wall and peered down.

“Do come in,” said Pen­der­gast, in his most invit­ing south­ern voice.

She scram­bled down the fall­en bricks, com­ing to a stop on the damp floor. There was an­oth­er flash of light. A man in a white lab­coat was bent over, ex­am­in­ing some­thing in a small arched niche. A pho­tog­ra­pher stood at an­oth­er niche with a four-​by-​five cam­era, brack­et­ed by two slave flash units.

The man in the white coat straight­ened up, peer­ing at them through the dust. He had a thick shock of gray hair that, com­bined with his round black-​framed glass­es, made him look faint­ly like an old Bol­she­vik rev­olu­tion­ary.

“Who the dev­il are you, barg­ing in like this?” he cried, his voice echo­ing down the bar­row. “I was not to be dis­turbed!”

“FBI,” rapped out Pen­der­gast. His voice was now to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent: sharp, stern, of­fi­cious. With a snap of leather, he shoved his badge to­ward the man’s face.

“Oh,” the man said, fal­ter­ing. “I see.”

No­ra looked from one to the oth­er, sur­prised at Pen­der­gast’s ap­par­ent abil­ity to read peo­ple in­stant­ly, then ma­nip­ulate them ac­cord­ing­ly.

“May I ask you to please va­cate the site while my col­league, Dr. Kel­ly, and I make an ex­am­ina­tion?”

“Look here, I’m in the mid­dle of my work.”

“Have you touched any­thing?” It came out as a threat.

“No . . . not re­al­ly. Of course, I’ve han­dled some of the bones—”

“You han­dled some of the bones?”

“Con­sis­tent with my re­spon­si­bil­ity to de­ter­mine cause of death—”

“You han­dled some of the bones?” Pen­der­gast pulled a thin pad and a gold pen from his jack­et pock­et and made a note, shak­ing his head in dis­gust. “Your name, Doc­tor?” “Van Bron­ck.”

“I’ll make a note of it for the hear­ing. And now, Dr. Van Bron­ck, if you’ll kind­ly let us pro­ceed.”

“Yes, sir.”

Pen­der­gast watched as the ME and the pho­tog­ra­pher climbed la­bo­ri­ous­ly out of the tun­nel. Then he turned to No­ra and spoke in a low, rapid voice. “It’s your site now. I’ve bought us an hour, maybe less, so make the best of it.”

“The best of what?” No­ra asked in a pan­ic. “Just what am I sup­posed to be do­ing? I’ve nev­er—”

“You’re trained in ways that I’m not. Sur­vey the site. I want to know what hap­pened here. Help me un­der­stand it.”

“In an hour? I don’t have any tools, any­thing to store sam­ples—”

“We’re al­most too late as it is. Did you no­tice they had the precinct cap­tain on the site? As I said, Moe­gen-​Fairhaven pulls an enor­mous amount of weight. This will be our on­ly chance. I need the max­imum amount of in­for­ma­tion in the min­imum amount of time. It’s ex­treme­ly im­por­tant.” He hand­ed her the pen and pad, then with­drew two slen­der pen­lights from his coat and passed one to her.

No­ra switched it on. For its size, the pen­light was very pow­er­ful. She looked around, tak­ing note of her sur­round­ings for the first time. It was cool and silent. Motes drift­ed in the sin­gle ban­ner of light stream­ing through the bro­ken hole. The air smelled cor­rupt, a mix­ture of fun­gus, old meat, and mold. She breathed it in deeply nev­er­the­less, try­ing to fo­cus. Ar­chae­ol­ogy was a slow, me­thod­ical busi­ness. Here, faced with a tick­ing clock, she bare­ly knew where to be­gin.

She hes­itat­ed an­oth­er mo­ment. Then she be­gan to sketch the tun­nel. It was about eighty feet long, ten feet high at the arch, bricked up at the ends. The ceil­ing was filmed with cracks. The dust cov­er­ing the floor had been re­cent­ly dis­turbed, more so than could be ex­plained by the pres­ence of a sin­gle med­ical ex­am­in­er: No­ra won­dered how many con­struc­tion work­ers and po­lice­men had al­ready wan­dered through here.

Half a dozen nich­es ran along both walls. She walked along the wet floor of the tun­nel, sketch­ing, try­ing to get an over­all sense of the space. The nich­es, too, had once been bricked up, but now the bricks had been re­moved and were stacked be­side each al­cove. As she turned the flash­light in­to each niche, she saw es­sen­tial­ly the same thing: a jum­ble of skulls and bones, shreds of cloth­ing, bits of old flesh, gris­tle, and hair.

She glanced over her shoul­der. At the far end, Pen­der­gast was mak­ing his own ex­am­ina­tion, pro­file sharp in the shaft of light, quick eyes dart­ing ev­ery­where. Sud­den­ly he knelt, peer­ing in­tent­ly not at the bones, but at the floor, pluck­ing some­thing out of the dust.

Com­plet­ing her cir­cuit, No­ra turned to ex­am­ine the first niche more close­ly. She knelt in front of the al­cove and scanned it quick­ly, try­ing to make sense of the char­nel heap, do­ing her best to ig­nore the smell.

There were three skulls in this niche. The skulls were not con­nect­ed to the back­bones—they had been de­cap­itat­ed—but the rib cages were com­plete, and the leg bones, some flexed, were al­so ar­tic­ulat­ed. Sev­er­al ver­te­brae seemed to have been dam­aged in an un­usu­al way, cut open as if to ex­pose the spinal cord. A snarled clump of hair lay near­by. Short. A boy’s. Clear­ly, the corpses had been cut in­to pieces and piled in the niche, which made sense, con­sid­er­ing the di­men­sions of the al­cove. It would have been in­con­ve­nient to fit a whole body in the cramped space, but one sev­ered in­to parts . . .

Swal­low­ing hard, she glanced at the cloth­ing. It ap­peared to have been thrown in sep­arate­ly from the body parts. She reached out a hand, paused with an ar­chae­ol­ogist’s ha­bit­ual re­straint, then re­mem­bered what Pen­der­gast had said. Care­ful­ly, she be­gan lift­ing out the cloth­ing and bones, mak­ing a men­tal list as she did so. Three skulls, three pairs of shoes, three ar­tic­ulat­ed rib cages, nu­mer­ous ver­te­brae, and as­sort­ed small bones. On­ly one of the skulls showed marks sim­ilar to the skull Pen­der­gast had orig­inal­ly shown her. But many of the ver­te­brae had been cut open in the same way, from the first lum­bar ver­te­bra all the way to the sacrum. She kept sort­ing. Three pairs of pants; but­tons, a comb, bits of gris­tle and des­ic­cat­ed flesh; six sets of leg bones, feet out of their shoes. The shoes had been tossed in sep­arate­ly. If on­ly I had sam­ple bags, she thought. She pulled some hair out of a clump—part of the scalp still at­tached—and shoved it in her pock­et. This was crazy: she hat­ed work­ing with­out prop­er equip­ment. All her pro­fes­sion­al in­stincts re­belled against such hasty, care­less work.

She turned her at­ten­tion to the cloth­ing it­self. It was poor and rough, and very dirty. It had rot­ted, but, like the bones, showed no signs of ro­dent gnaw­ing. She felt for her loup, fit­ted it to her eye, and looked more close­ly at a piece of cloth­ing. Lots of lice; dead, of course. There were holes that seemed to be the re­sult of ex­ces­sive wear, and the cloth­ing was heav­ily patched. The shoes were bat­tered, some with hob­nails worn com­plete­ly off. She felt in the pock­ets of one pair of pants: a comb, a piece of string. She went through an­oth­er set of pock­ets: noth­ing. A third set yield­ed a coin. She pulled it out, the fab­ric crum­bling as she did so. It was a U.S. large cent, dat­ed 1877. She slipped ev­ery­thing hasti­ly in­to her own pock­ets.

She moved to an­oth­er al­cove and again sort­ed and in­ven­to­ried the re­mains as fast as she could. It was sim­ilar: three skulls and three dis­mem­bered bod­ies, along with three sets of cloth­ing. She felt in the pock­ets of the pants: a bent pin and two more pen­nies, 1880 and 1872. Her eyes re­turned to the bones: once again, those strange marks on the ver­te­brae. She looked more close­ly. The lum­bar ver­te­brae, al­ways the lum­bar, opened care­ful­ly—al­most sur­gi­cal­ly—and pried apart. She slipped one of them in­to her pock­et.

She went down the tun­nel, ex­am­in­ing each niche in turn, scrib­bling her ob­ser­va­tions in Pen­der­gast’s note­book. Each niche held ex­act­ly three corpses. All had been dis­mem­bered in the same fash­ion, at the neck, shoul­ders, and hips. A few of the skulls had the same dis­sec­tion marks she’d no­ticed on the spec­imen Pen­der­gast first showed her. All of the skele­tons dis­played se­vere trau­ma to the low­er spinal col­umn. From her cur­so­ry ex­am­ina­tion of skull mor­phol­ogy, they seemed to fit with­in the same age brack­et—thir­teen to twen­ty or so—and were a mix­ture of male and fe­male, with male pre­dom­inat­ing. She won­dered what the foren­sic ex­am­in­er had dis­cov­ered. There would be time to find that out lat­er.

Twelve nich­es, three bod­ies to a niche . . . All very neat, very pre­cise. At the next to the last niche, she stopped. Then she stepped back in­to the mid­dle of the tun­nel, try­ing hard not to think about the im­pli­ca­tions of what she was see­ing, keep­ing her mind strict­ly on the facts. At any ar­chae­olog­ical site, it was im­por­tant to take a mo­ment to stand still, to be qui­et, to quell the in­tel­lect and sim­ply ab­sorb the feel of the place. She gazed around, try­ing to for­get about the tick­ing clock, to blot out her pre­con­cep­tions. A base­ment tun­nel, pre-1890, care­ful­ly walled-​up nich­es, bod­ies and clothes of some thir­ty-​six young men and wom­en. What was it built for? She glanced over at Pen­der­gast. He was still at the far end, ex­am­in­ing the brickedup wall, pry­ing out a bit of mor­tar with a knife.

She re­turned to the al­cove, care­ful­ly not­ing the po­si­tion of each bone, each ar­ti­cle of cloth­ing. Two sets of britch­es, with noth­ing in the pock­ets. A dress: filthy, torn, pa­thet­ic. She looked at it more close­ly. A girl’s dress, small, slen­der. She picked up the brown skull near­by. A young fe­male, a teenag­er, per­haps six­teen or sev­en­teen. She felt a wave of hor­ror: just un­der­neath it was her mass of hair, long gold­en tress­es, still tied in a pink lace rib­bon. She ex­am­ined the skull: same poor den­tal hy­giene. Six­teen, and al­ready her teeth were rot­ting. The rib­bon was of silk and a much fin­er qual­ity than the dress; it must have been her prized pos­ses­sion. This glim­mer­ing of hu­man­ity stopped her dead for a mo­ment.

As she felt for a pock­et, some­thing crack­led un­der her fin­gers. Pa­per. She fin­gered the dress, re­al­iz­ing that the piece of pa­per wasn’t in a pock­et at all, but sewn in­to the lin­ing. She be­gan to pull it from the al­cove.

“Any­thing of in­ter­est, Dr. Kel­ly?”

She start­ed at the med­ical ex­am­in­er’s voice. Van Bron­ck. His tone had changed: now he sound­ed ar­ro­gant. He stood over her.

She glanced around. In her ab­sorp­tion, she had not heard him re­turn. Pen­der­gast was by the en­trance to the bar­row, in ur­gent dis­cus­sion with some uni­formed fig­ures peer­ing down from above.

“If you call this sort of thing in­ter­est­ing,” she said.

“I know you’re not with the ME’s of­fice, so that must make you an FBI foren­sics ex­pert.” No­ra col­ored. “I’m not a med­ical doc­tor. I’m an ar­chae­ol­ogist.”

Dr. Van Bron­ck’s eye­brows shot up and a sar­don­ic smile spread over his face. He had a per­fect­ly formed lit­tle mouth that looked as if it had been paint­ed on by a Re­nais­sance artist. It glis­tened as it ar­tic­ulat­ed the pre­cise words. “Ah. Not a med­ical doc­tor. I be­lieve I mis­un­der­stood your col­league. Ar­chae­ol­ogy. How nice.”

She had not had an hour; she had not even had half an hour.

She slid the dress back in­to the al­cove, shov­ing it in­to a dusty crevice in the back. “And have you found any­thing of in­ter­est, Doc­tor?” she asked as ca­su­al­ly as she could.

“I’d send you my re­port,” he said. “But then, I could hard­ly ex­pect you to un­der­stand it. All that pro­fes­sion­al jar­gon, you know.” He smiled, and now the smile did not look friend­ly at all.

“I’m not fin­ished here,” she said. “When I am, I’d be glad to chat fur­ther.” She be­gan to move to­ward the last al­cove.

“You can con­tin­ue your stud­ies af­ter I re­move the hu­man re­mains.”

“You’re not mov­ing any­thing un­til I’ve had a chance to ex­am­ine it.”

“Tell that to them.” He nod­ded over her shoul­der. “I don’t know where you got the im­pres­sion this was an ar­chae­olog­ical site. For­tu­nate­ly, that’s all been straight­ened out.”

No­ra saw a group of po­lice­men slid­ing in­to the bar­row, heavy ev­idence lock­ers in their hands. The space was soon filled with a ca­copho­ny of curs­es, grunts, and loud voic­es. Pen­der­gast was nowhere to be seen.

Last to en­ter were Ed Shenk and Cap­tain Custer. Custer saw her and came for­ward, pick­ing his way gin­ger­ly across the bricks, fol­lowed by a brace of lieu­tenants.

“Dr. Kel­ly, we’ve got­ten or­ders from head­quar­ters,” he said, his voice quick and high­pitched. “You can tell your boss he’s sad­ly con­fused. This is an un­usu­al crime scene, but of no im­por­tance to present-​day law en­force­ment, par­tic­ular­ly the FBI. It’s over a hun­dred years old.”

And there’s a build­ing that needs to be built, No­ra thought, glanc­ing at Shenk.

“I don’t know who hired you, but your as­sign­ment’s over. We’re tak­ing the hu­man re­mains down to the ME’s of­fice. What lit­tle else is here will be bagged and tagged.”

The cops were drop­ping the ev­idence lock­ers on­to the damp floor, and the cham­ber re­sound­ed with hol­low thuds. The ME be­gan re­mov­ing bones from the al­coves with rub­ber-​gloved hands and plac­ing them in­to the lock­ers, toss­ing the cloth­ing and oth­er per­son­al ef­fects aside. Voic­es min­gled with the ris­ing dust. Flash­light beams stabbed through the murk. The site was be­ing ru­ined be­fore her eyes.

“Can my men es­cort you out, miss?” said Cap­tain Custer, with ex­ag­ger­at­ed cour­tesy. “I can find my own way,” No­ra replied.

The sun­light tem­porar­ily blind­ed her. She coughed, breathed in the fresh air, and looked around. The Rolls was still parked at the street. And there was Pen­der­gast, lean­ing against it, wait­ing.

She marched out the gate. His head was tilt­ed away from the sun, his eyes half closed. In the bright af­ter­noon light, his skin looked as pale and translu­cent as al­abaster.

“That po­lice cap­tain was right, wasn’t he?” she said. “You’ve got no ju­ris­dic­tion here.”

He slow­ly low­ered his head, a trou­bled look on his face. She found her anger evap­orat­ing. He re­moved a silk hand­ker­chief from his pock­et and dabbed at his fore­head. Al­most as she watched, his face re­as­sumed its ha­bit­ual opaque ex­pres­sion, and he spoke. “Some­times, there’s no time to go through prop­er chan­nels. If we’d wait­ed un­til to­mor­row, the site would have been gone. You see how quick­ly Moe­gen-​Fairhaven works. If this site were de­clared of ar­chae­olog­ical val­ue, it would shut them down for weeks. Which of course they could not al­low to hap­pen.”

“But it is of ar­chae­olog­ical val­ue!”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “Of course it is. But the bat­tle is al­ready lost, Dr. Kel­ly. As I knew it would be.”

As if in re­sponse, a large yel­low ex­ca­va­tor fired up, its mo­tor cough­ing and snarling. Con­struc­tion work­ers be­gan to ap­pear, emerg­ing from trail­ers and truck cabs. Al­ready the blue lock­ers were com­ing out of the hole and be­ing load­ed in­to an am­bu­lance. The ex­ca­va­tor lurched and made a lum­ber­ing move to­ward the hole, its buck­et ris­ing, iron teeth drib­bling dirt.

“What did you find?” Pen­der­gast asked.

She paused. Should she tell him about the pa­per in the dress? It was prob­ably noth­ing, and be­sides, it was gone.

She tore the hasti­ly scrib­bled pages from the pad and re­turned it to him. “I’ll write up my gen­er­al ob­ser­va­tions for you this evening,” she said. “The lum­bar ver­te­brae of the vic­tims seem to have been de­lib­er­ate­ly opened. I slipped one in­to my pock­et.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “There were nu­mer­ous shards of glass em­bed­ded in the dust. I took a few for anal­ysis.”

“Oth­er than the skele­tons, there were some pen­nies in the al­coves, dat­ed 1872, 1877, and 1880. A few ar­ti­cles in the pock­ets.”

“The ten­ements here were erect­ed in 1897,” mur­mured Pen­der­gast, al­most to him­self, his voice grave. “There’s our ter­mi­nus ante quem. The mur­ders took place be­fore 1897 and were prob­ably clus­tered around the dates of the coins—that is, the 1870s.”

A black stretch limou­sine slid up be­hind them, its tint­ed win­dows flar­ing in the sun. A tall man in an el­egant char­coal suit got out, fol­lowed by sev­er­al oth­ers. The man glanced around the site, his gaze quick­ly ze­ro­ing in on Pen­der­gast. He had a long, nar­row face, eyes spaced wide apart, black hair, and cheek­bones so high and an­gu­lar they could have been fash­ioned with a hatch­et.

“And there’s Mr. Fairhaven him­self, to en­sure there are no more un­to­ward de­lays,” Pen­der­gast said. “I think this is our cue to leave.”

He opened the car door for her, then climbed in him­self. “Thank you, Dr. Kel­ly,” he said, in­di­cat­ing to his driv­er to start the car. “To­mor­row we will meet again. In a more of­fi­cial ca­pac­ity, I trust.”

As they eased out in­to the Low­er East Side traf­fic, No­ra looked at him. “How did you learn about this site, any­way? It was just un­cov­ered yes­ter­day.”

“I have con­tacts. Most help­ful in my line of work.”

“I’ll bet. Well, speak­ing of con­tacts, why didn’t you just try your friend the po­lice com­mis­sion­er again? Sure­ly he could have backed you up.”

The Rolls turned smooth­ly on­to East Riv­er Drive, its pow­er­ful en­gine purring. “Com­mis­sion­er?” Pen­der­gast blinked over at her. “I don’t have the plea­sure of his ac­quain­tance.”

“Then who were you call­ing back there, then?”

“My apart­ment.” And he smiled ev­er so slight­ly.

FIVE

WILLIAM SMITH­BACK JR. stood, quite self-​con­scious­ly, in the door­way of Café des Artistes. His new suit of dark blue Ital­ian silk rus­tled as he scanned the dim­ly lit room. He tried to keep his nor­mal slouch in check, his back ram­rod straight, his bear­ing dig­ni­fied, aris­to­crat­ic. The Ar­mani suit had cost him a small for­tune, but as he stood in the en­try­way he knew it had been worth ev­ery pen­ny. He felt so­phis­ti­cat­ed, ur­bane, a bit like Tom Wolfe—though of course he didn’t dare try the full rig, white hat and all. The pais­ley silk hand­ker­chief pok­ing out of his pock­et was a nice touch, though per­haps a bit flam­boy­ant, but then again he was a fa­mous writ­er—al­most fa­mous any­way, if on­ly his last damn book had inched up two more slots it would have made the list—and he could get away with such touch­es. He turned with what he hoped was ca­su­al el­egance and arched an eye­brow in the di­rec­tion of the maître d’, who im­me­di­ate­ly strode over with a smile.

Smith­back loved this restau­rant more than any oth­er in New York City. It was de­cid­ed­ly un­trendy, old-​fash­ioned, with su­perb food. You didn’t get the Bridge and Tun­nel crowd in here like you did at Le Cirque 2000. And the Howard Chan­dler Christie mu­ral added just the right touch of kitsch.

“Mr. Smith­back, how nice to see you this evening. Your par­ty just ar­rived.”

Smith­back nod­ded grave­ly. Be­ing rec­og­nized by the maître d’ of a first-​class restau­rant, al­though he would be loath to ad­mit it, meant a great deal to him. It had tak­en sev­er­al vis­its, sev­er­al well-​dropped twen­ties. What clinched it was the ca­su­al ref­er­ence to his po­si­tion at the New York Times.

No­ra Kel­ly sat at a cor­ner ta­ble, wait­ing for him. As usu­al, just see­ing her sent a lit­tle elec­tric cur­rent of plea­sure through Smith­back. Even though she’d been in New York well over a year, she still re­tained a fresh, out-​of-​place look that de­light­ed him. And she nev­er seemed to have lost her San­ta Fe tan. Fun­ny, how they’d met un­der the worst pos­si­ble of cir­cum­stances: an ar­chae­olog­ical ex­pe­di­tion to Utah in which they’d both al­most lost their lives. Back then, she’d made it clear she thought him ar­ro­gant and ob­nox­ious. And here they were, two years lat­er, about to move in to­geth­er. And Smith­back couldn’t imag­ine ev­er spend­ing a day apart from her.

He slid in­to the ban­quette with a smile. She looked great, as al­ways: her cop­per-​col­ored hair spilling over her shoul­ders, deep green-​brown eyes sparkling in the can­dle­light, the sprin­kling of freck­les on her nose adding a per­fect touch of boy­ish­ness. Then his gaze dropped to her clothes. Now, those left some­thing to be de­sired. God, she was ac­tu­al­ly dirty.

“You won’t be­lieve the day I had,” she said.

“Hum.” Smith­back ad­just­ed his tie and turned ev­er so slight­ly, al­low­ing the light to catch the el­egant­ly cut shoul­der of his suit.

“I swear, Bill, you aren’t go­ing to be­lieve it. But re­mem­ber, this is off the record.”

Now Smith­back felt slight­ly hurt. Not on­ly had she failed to no­tice the suit, but this busi­ness about their con­ver­sa­tion be­ing off the record was un­nec­es­sary. “No­ra, ev­ery­thing be­tween us is off the record—”

She didn’t wait for him to fin­ish. “First, that scum­bag Bris­bane cut my bud­get ten per­cent.”

Smith­back made a sym­pa­thet­ic noise. The Mu­se­um was per­pet­ual­ly short of mon­ey.

“And then I found this re­al­ly weird man in my of­fice.”

Smith­back made an­oth­er noise, sly­ly mov­ing his el­bow in­to po­si­tion be­side his wa­ter glass. Sure­ly she’d no­tice the dark silk against the white nap of the table­cloth.

“He was read­ing my books, act­ing like he owned the place. He looked just like an un­der­tak­er, dressed in a black suit, with re­al­ly white skin. Not al­bi­no, just white.”

An un­com­fort­able feel­ing of déjà vu be­gan to well up in Smith­back’s mind. He dis­missed it.

“He said he was from the FBI, and he dragged me down­town, to a build­ing site where they’d un­cov­ered—”

Abrupt­ly, the feel­ing re­turned. “Did you say FBI?” No way. Not him. It couldn’t be. “Yes, the FBI. Spe­cial Agent—”

“Pen­der­gast,” Smith­back fin­ished for her.

Now it was No­ra’s turn to look as­ton­ished. “You know him?”

“Know him? He was in my book on the Mu­se­um mur­ders. That book of mine you said you read.”

“Oh yeah, right. Right.”

Smith­back nod­ded, too pre­oc­cu­pied to be in­dig­nant. Pen­der­gast was not back in Man­hat­tan on a so­cial vis­it. The man showed up on­ly when there was trou­ble. Or maybe he just seemed to al­ways bring trou­ble with him. Ei­ther way, Smith­back hoped to God it wasn’t trou­ble like the last time.

The wait­er ap­peared and took their or­ders. Smith­back, who’d been an­tic­ipat­ing a small dry sher­ry, or­dered a mar­ti­ni in­stead. Pen­der­gast. Oh, God. As much as he’d ad­mired the man, he hadn’t been sor­ry to see him and his black suit head­ing back to New Or­leans.

“So tell me about him,” No­ra said, lean­ing back in her chair.

“He’s . . .” Smith­back paused, feel­ing un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly at a loss for words. “He’s un­ortho­dox. Charm­ing, a south­ern aris­to­crat, lots of dough, old fam­ily mon­ey, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals or some­thing. I re­al­ly don’t know what his re­la­tion­ship is with the FBI. He seems to have free rein to poke in­to any­thing he likes. He works alone and he’s very, very good. He knows a lot of im­por­tant peo­ple. As far as the man per­son­al­ly, I don’t know any­thing about him. He’s a ci­pher. You nev­er know what he’s re­al­ly think­ing. Christ, I don’t even know his first name.”

“He can’t be that pow­er­ful. He got trumped to­day.”

Smith­back arched his eye­brows. “What hap­pened? What did he want?”

No­ra told him about their hasty vis­it to the char­nel pit at the con­struc­tion site. She fin­ished just as their morel and black truf­fle quenelles ar­rived.

“Moe­gen-​Fairhaven,” said Smith­back, dig­ging a fork in­to the mousse, re­leas­ing a heav­en­ly aro­ma of musk and the deep for­est. “Weren’t those the guys that got in trou­ble for rip­ping down that SRO with­out a per­mit—when there were still peo­ple liv­ing there?”

“The sin­gle-​room oc­cu­pan­cy on East First? I think so.”

“Nasty bunch.”

“Fairhaven was ar­riv­ing in a stretch limo just as we left.”

“Yeah. And in a Rolls, you said?” Smith­back had to laugh. When he’d been in­ves­ti­gat­ing the Mu­se­um mur­ders, Pen­der­gast went around in a Buick. The con­spic­uous­ness of a Rolls had to mean some­thing—ev­ery­thing Pen­der­gast did served a pur­pose. “Well, you rode in style, any­way. But this re­al­ly doesn’t sound like some­thing Pen­der­gast would be in­ter­est­ed in.”

“Why not?”

“It’s an in­cred­ible site, but it is over a hun­dred years old. Why would the FBI, or any law en­force­ment agen­cy, be in­ter­est­ed in a crime scene that’s an­cient his­to­ry?”

“It isn’t an or­di­nary crime scene. Three dozen young peo­ple, mur­dered, dis­mem­bered, and walled up in a sub­ter­ranean crawlspace. That’s one of the biggest se­ri­al killings in U.S. his­to­ry.”

Their wait­er re­turned, slid­ing a dish in front of Smith­back: steak au poivre, cooked rare. “No­ra, come on,” he said, lift­ing his knife ea­ger­ly. “The mur­der­er is long dead. It’s a his­tor­ical cu­rios­ity. It’ll make a great sto­ry in the pa­per—come to think of it—but I still can’t see why the FBI would take an in­ter­est.”

He felt No­ra glow­er­ing at him. “Bill, this is off the record. Re­mem­ber?”

“It’s al­most pre­his­toric, No­ra, and it would make a sen­sa­tion­al sto­ry. How could it pos­si­bly hurt—?”

“Off the record.”

Smith­back sighed. “Just give me first shot, No­ra, when the time comes.”

No­ra smirked. “You al­ways get first shot, Bill. You know that.”

Smith­back chuck­led and sliced a ten­der cor­ner off his steak. “So what did you find down there?”

“Not much. A bunch of stuff in the pock­ets—some old coins, a comb, pins, string, but­tons. These peo­ple were poor. I took a ver­te­bra, a hair sam­ple, and . . .” She hes­itat­ed. “There was some­thing else.”

“Out with it.”

“There was a piece of pa­per sewed in­to the lin­ing of one girl’s dress. It felt like a let­ter. I can’t stop think­ing about it.”

Smith­back leaned for­ward. “What’d it say?”

“I had to put the dress back be­fore I could take a clos­er look.”

“You mean it’s still there?”

No­ra nod­ded.

“What are they go­ing to do with the stuff?”

“The ME took away the bones, but they said they were go­ing to bag the rest. I got the sense they were ea­ger to lose track of the stuff in some ware­house. The quick­er they can get rid of it, the less chance it’ll be de­clared an ar­chae­olog­ical site. I’ve seen de­vel­op­ers tear up a site just to make sure that when the ar­chae­ol­ogists ar­rive there’s noth­ing left to ex­am­ine.”

“That’s il­le­gal, isn’t it? Aren’t they sup­posed to stop if it’s im­por­tant?”

“If the site’s gone, how can you prove it was im­por­tant? De­vel­op­ers de­stroy dozens of ar­chae­olog­ical sites in Amer­ica in just this way, ev­ery sin­gle day.”

Smith­back mum­bled his righ­teous in­dig­na­tion as he made head­way in­to the steak. He was fam­ished. No­body did steak like Café des Artistes. And the help­ings were de­cent, man­sized, none of this nou­velle cui­sine crap, the tip­py lit­tle struc­ture of food in the mid­dle of a gi­ant white plate splashed with Jack­son Pol­lock–like drib­bles of sauce . . .

“Why would the girl sew the let­ter in­to her dress?”

Smith­back looked up, took a swig of red wine, an­oth­er bite of steak. “Love let­ter, per­haps?”

“The more I think about it, the more I think it could be im­por­tant. It would at least be a clue to who these peo­ple were. Oth­er­wise, we may nev­er find out, with their clothes gone and the tun­nel de­stroyed.” She was look­ing at him earnest­ly, her en­trée un­touched. “Damn it, Bill, that was an ar­chae­olog­ical site.”

“Prob­ably torn up by now, like you said.”

“It was late in the day. I stowed the dress back in the al­cove.”

“They prob­ably re­moved it with the rest of the stuff, then.”

“I don’t think so. I stuffed it in­to a crevice in the rear of the al­cove. They were rush­ing. They could eas­ily have missed it.”

Smith­back saw the gleam in No­ra’s hazel eyes. He’d seen that look be­fore.

“No way, No­ra,” he said quick­ly. “They must have se­cu­ri­ty at the site. It’s prob­ably lit up brighter than a stage. Don’t even think about it.” Next thing, she would in­sist on his com­ing along.

“You’ve got to come with me. Tonight. I need that let­ter.”

“You don’t even know if it is a let­ter. It might be a laun­dry slip.”

“Bill, even a laun­dry slip would be an im­por­tant clue.”

“We could be ar­rest­ed.”

“No, you won’t.”

“What’s this you shit?”

“I’ll dis­tract the guard while you go over the fence. You can make your­self in­con­spic­uous.” As she spoke, No­ra’s eyes grew brighter. “Yes. You can be dressed like a home­less bum, say, just pok­ing through the garbage. If they catch you, the worst they’ll do is make you move on.”

Smith­back was aghast. “Me? A bum? No way. You be the bum.”

“No, Bill, that won’t work. I have to be the hook­er.”

The last fork­ful of steak froze halfway to Smith­back’s mouth.

No­ra smiled at him. Then she spoke. “You just spilled brandy sauce all down the front of your nice new Ital­ian suit.”

SIX

NO­RA PEERED AROUND the cor­ner of Hen­ry Street, shiv­er­ing slight­ly. It was a chilly night, and her scant black mi­ni-​dress and sil­ver span­dex top pro­vid­ed lit­tle warmth. On­ly the heavy make­up, she thought, added any R-​fac­tor to her per­son. In the dis­tance, traf­fic droned through Chatham Square, and the vast black bulk of the Man­hat­tan Bridge loomed omi­nous­ly near­by. It was al­most three o’clock in the morn­ing, and the streets of the Low­er East Side were de­sert­ed.

“What can you see?” Smith­back asked from be­hind her.

“The site’s pret­ty well lit. I can on­ly see one guard, though.”

“What’s he do­ing?”

“Sit­ting in a chair, smok­ing and read­ing a pa­per­back.”

Smith­back scowled. It had been de­press­ing­ly easy to trans­form him to bum­hood. His rangy frame was draped in a shiny black rain­coat over a checked shirt, a dirty pair of jeans, and tat­tered Keds. There had been no short­age of cheesy old cloth­ing in Smith­back’s clos­et to choose from. A bit of char­coal on the face, olive oil rubbed in­to the hair, and a tote con­sist­ing of five nest­ed plas­tic bags with un­washed clothes at the bot­tom com­plet­ed the dis­guise.

“What’s he look like?” Smith­back asked.

“Big and mean.”

“Cut it out.” Smith­back was in no mood for hu­mor. Dressed as they were, they had been un­able to flag down a cab in the Up­per West Side, and had been forced to take the sub­way. No­body had ac­tu­al­ly propo­si­tioned her, but she had got­ten plen­ty of stares, with fol­low-​up glances at Smith­back that clear­ly read, What’s a high-​priced call girl do­ing with that bum? The long ride, with two trans­fers, had not im­proved Smith­back’s mood.

“This plan of yours is pret­ty weak,” Smith­back said. “Are you sure you can han­dle your­self?” He was a mask of ir­ri­ta­tion.

“We both have our cell phones. If any­thing hap­pens, I’ll scream bloody mur­der and you call 911. But don’t wor­ry—he’s not go­ing to make trou­ble.”

“He’s go­ing to be too busy look­ing at your tits,” said Smith­back un­hap­pi­ly. “With that top, you might as well not be wear­ing any­thing.”

“Trust me, I can take care of my­self. Re­mem­ber, the dress is in the sec­ond to last niche on the right. Feel along the rear wall for the crevice. Once you’re safe­ly out, call me. Now, here goes.”

She stepped out in­to the street­light and be­gan walk­ing down the side­walk to­ward the con­struc­tion en­trance, her pumps mak­ing a sharp click­ing noise on the pave­ment, her breasts bounc­ing. As she got close, she stopped, fished in her lit­tle gold hand­bag, and made an ex­ag­ger­at­ed lit­tle moue. She could al­ready feel the guard’s eyes on her. She dropped a lip­stick, bent down to pick it up—mak­ing sure he got a good look up her dress in the pro­cess—and touched up her lips. Then she fished in the bag again, cursed, and looked around. She let her eyes fall on the guard. He was star­ing back, the book ly­ing un­heed­ed in his lap.

“Shit. Left my cigarettes back at the bar.” She flashed him a smile.

“Here,” he said, ris­ing hasti­ly. “Take one of mine.”

She si­dled over and ac­cept­ed the cigarette through the gap in the chain-​link gate, po­si­tion­ing her­self to en­sure his back would be turned to the con­struc­tion site. She hoped to God Smith­back would work fast.

The guard with­drew a lighter, tried to stick it through the gate, failed. “Just a minute, let me un­lock this.”

She wait­ed, cigarette in hand.

The gate swung open and he flicked the lighter. She ap­proached and bent over the flame, draw­ing the smoke in, hop­ing she wouldn’t cough. “Thanks.”

“Sure,” said the guard. He was young, sandy-​haired, nei­ther fat nor thin, a lit­tle dopey­look­ing, not ter­ri­bly strong, clear­ly flus­tered by her pres­ence. Good.

She stood there, tak­ing an­oth­er drag. “Nice night,” she said.

“You must be cold.”

“A lit­tle.”

“Here, take this.” With a gal­lant flour­ish he took off his coat and draped it over her shoul­ders.

“Thanks.” The guard looked as if he could hard­ly be­lieve his good for­tune. No­ra knew she was at­trac­tive; knew that her body, with all her years spent back­pack­ing in the re­mote desert, wasn’t too bad, ei­ther. The heavy make­up gave her a sense of se­cu­ri­ty. Nev­er in a mil­lion years would he lat­er be able to iden­ti­fy the ar­chae­ol­ogist from the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry. In an odd way the out­fit made her feel sassy, bold, a lit­tle sexy.

She heard a dis­tant rat­tle; Smith­back must be climb­ing over the chain-​link fence. “You work here ev­ery night?” she said hasti­ly.

“Five nights a week,” the guard said, his Adam’s ap­ple bob­bing. “Now that con­struc­tion’s be­gun. You, er, live around here?”

She nod­ded vague­ly to­ward the riv­er. “And you?”

“Queens.”

“Mar­ried?”

She saw his left hand, where she had pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed a wed­ding band, slide be­hind his gun hol­ster. “Not me.”

She nod­ded, took an­oth­er drag. It made her dizzy. How could peo­ple smoke these things? She wished Smith­back would hur­ry up.

She smiled and dropped the butt, grind­ing it un­der her toe.

In­stant­ly the pack was out. “An­oth­er?”

“No,” she said, “try­ing to cut back.”

She could see him eye­ing her span­dex top, try­ing to be sub­tle. “You work in a bar?” he asked, then col­ored. Awk­ward ques­tion. No­ra heard an­oth­er sound, a few falling bricks.

“Sort of,” she said, pulling the jack­et tighter around her shoul­ders.

He nod­ded. He was look­ing a lit­tle bold­er now. “I think you’re very at­trac­tive,” he said, hasti­ly, blurt­ing it out.

“Thanks,” she said. God, it was a thir­ty-​sec­ond job. What was tak­ing Smith­back so long?

“Are you, ah, free lat­er?”

De­lib­er­ate­ly, she looked him up and down. “You want a date?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure.”

There was an­oth­er, loud­er sound: the rat­tling of a chain-​link fence. Smith­back climb­ing out? The guard turned to­ward it.

“What kind of date?” No­ra asked.

He looked back at her, no longer try­ing to hide the roam­ing of his las­civ­ious eyes. No­ra felt naked be­neath his gaze. There was an­oth­er rat­tle. The guard turned again and this time saw Smith­back. He was pret­ty hard to miss: cling­ing to the top of the fence, try­ing to un­snag his filthy rain­coat.

“Hey!” the guard yelled.

“For­get him,” said No­ra hasti­ly. “He’s just some bum.”

Smith­back strug­gled. Now he was try­ing to slip out of his rain­coat, but had on­ly suc­ceed­ed in be­com­ing more tan­gled.

“He’s not sup­posed to be in there!” the guard said.

This, un­for­tu­nate­ly, was a guy who took his job se­ri­ous­ly.

The man clapped his hand to his gun. “Hey you!” he yelled loud­er. “Hey!” He took a step to­ward the writ­er.

Smith­back strug­gled fran­ti­cal­ly with the rain­coat.

“Some­times I do it for free,” No­ra said.

The guard swiveled back to her, eyes wide, the bum on the fence in­stant­ly for­got­ten. “You do?”

“Sure. Why not? Cute guy like you . . .”

He grinned like an id­iot. Now she no­ticed his ears stuck out. What a wee­nie, so ea­ger to cheat on his wife. Cheap, too.

“Right now?” he asked.

“Too cold. To­mor­row.” She heard a rip­ping sound, a thud, a muf­fled curse. “To­mor­row?” He looked dev­as­tat­ed. “Why not now? At your place.”

She took off the coat and gave it back to him. “Nev­er at my place.”

He took a step to­ward her. “There’s a ho­tel around the cor­ner.” He reached over, try­ing to snake an arm around her waist.

She skipped back light­ly with an­oth­er smile as her cell phone rang. Flood­ed with re­lief, she flipped it open.

“Mis­sion ac­com­plished,” came Smith­back’s voice. “You can get away from that creep.”

“Sure, Mr. Mc­Nal­ly, I’d love to,” she said warm­ly. “That sounds nice. See you there.” She made a smack­ing kiss in­to the phone and snapped it shut.

She turned to the guard. “Sor­ry. Busi­ness.” She took an­oth­er step back.

“Wait. Come on. You said—” There was a note of des­per­ation in the guard’s voice.

She took a few more steps back and shut the chain-​link gate in his face. “To­mor­row. I promise.”

“No, wait!”

She turned and be­gan walk­ing quick­ly down the side­walk.

“Hey, come on! Wait! La­dy, please!” His des­per­ate pleas echoed among the ten­ements.

She ducked around the cor­ner. Smith­back was wait­ing, and he hugged her briefly. “Is that creep fol­low­ing?”

“Just keep go­ing.”

They be­gan run­ning down the side­walk, No­ra wob­bling on her high heels. They turned the far cor­ner and crossed the street, then paused, pant­ing and lis­ten­ing. The guard was not fol­low­ing.

“Christ,” said Smith­back, sink­ing against a wall. “I think I broke my arm falling off that god­damn fence.” He held up his arm. His rain­coat and shirt had been torn and his bleed­ing el­bow stuck out of the hole.

No­ra ex­am­ined it. “You’re fine. Did you get the dress?”

Smith­back pat­ted his grimy bag.

“Great.”

Smith­back looked around. “We’re nev­er go­ing to find a cab down here,” he said with a groan.

“A cab wouldn’t stop any­way. Re­mem­ber? Give me your rain­coat. I’m freez­ing.”

Smith­back wrapped it around her. He paused, grin­ning. “You look kind of . . . sexy.”

“Stow it.” She be­gan walk­ing to­ward the sub­way.

Smith­back skipped af­ter her. At the en­trance to the sub­way, he stopped. “How about a date, la­dy?” he leered. “Hey la­dy, please!” He im­itat­ed the guard’s last, de­spair­ing en­treaties.

She looked at him. His hair was stick­ing out in all di­rec­tions, his face had be­come even filth­ier, and he smelled of mold and dust. He couldn’t have looked more ridicu­lous.

She had to smile. “It’s go­ing to cost you big-​time. I’m high-​class.”

He grinned. “Di­amonds. Pearls. Green­backs. Nights danc­ing in the desert un­der the coy­ote moon. Any­thing you want, ba­by.”

She took his hand. “Now, that’s my kind of john.”

SEV­EN

NO­RA LOCKED THE door to her of­fice, placed the pack­et on a chair, and cleared her desk of pa­pers and tot­ter­ing stacks of pub­li­ca­tions. It was just past eight in the morn­ing, and the Mu­se­um seemed to be still asleep. Nev­er­the­less, she glanced at the win­dow set in­to her of­fice door, and then—with a guilty im­pulse she did not quite un­der­stand—walked over to it and pulled down the blind. Then she care­ful­ly cov­ered the desk­top with white acid-​free pa­per, taped it to the cor­ners, laid an­oth­er sheet on top, and placed a se­ries of sam­ple bags, stop­pered test tubes, tweez­ers, and picks along one edge. Un­lock­ing a draw­er of her desk, she laid out the ar­ti­cles she had tak­en from the site: coins, comb, hair, string, ver­te­bra. Last­ly, she laid the dress atop the pa­per. She han­dled it gen­tly, al­most gin­ger­ly, as if to make up for the abuse it had en­dured over the last twen­ty-​four hours.

Smith­back had been be­side him­self with frus­tra­tion the night be­fore, when she had re­fused to slit open the dress im­me­di­ate­ly and see what, if any­thing, was writ­ten on the pa­per hid­den in­side. She could see him in her mind’s eye: still in his hobo out­fit, drawn up to a height of in­dig­na­tion on­ly a jour­nal­ist with a need to know could feel. But she’d been un­moved. With the site de­stroyed, she was de­ter­mined to squeeze ev­ery bit of in­for­ma­tion out of the dress that she could. And she was go­ing to do it right.

She took a step back from the desk. In the bright light of the of­fice, she could ex­am­ine the dress in great de­tail. It was long, quite sim­ple, made of coarse green wool. It looked nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry, with a high col­laret-​style neck­line; a trim bodice, falling in long pleats. The bodice and pleats were lined with white cot­ton, now yel­lowed.

No­ra slid her hand down the pleats and, right be­low the waist­line, felt the crin­kle of pa­per. Not yet, she told her­self as she sat down at the desk. One step at a time.

The dress was heav­ily stained. It was im­pos­si­ble to tell, with­out a chem­ical anal­ysis, what the stains were—some looked like blood and body flu­ids, while oth­ers could be grease, coal dust, per­haps wax. The hem­line was rubbed and torn, and there were some tears in the fab­ric it­self, the larg­er ones care­ful­ly sewn up. She ex­am­ined the stains and tears with her loup. The re­pairs had been done with sev­er­al col­ored threads, none green. A poor girl’s ef­fort, us­ing what­ev­er was at hand.

There was no sign of in­sect or ro­dent dam­age; the dress had been se­cure­ly walled up in its al­cove. She switched lens­es on the loup and looked more close­ly. She could see a sig­nif­icant amount of dirt, in­clud­ing black grains that looked like coal dust. She took a few of these and placed them in a small glas­sine en­ve­lope with the tweez­ers. She re­moved oth­er par­ti­cles of grit, dirt, hair, and threads, and placed them in ad­di­tion­al bags. There were oth­er specs, even small­er than the grit; she lugged over a portable stere­ozoom mi­cro­scope, laid it on the ta­ble, and brought it in­to fo­cus.

Im­me­di­ate­ly, dozens of lice leapt in­to view, dead and dry, cling­ing to the crude­ly wo­ven fab­ric, in­ter­min­gled with small­er mites and sev­er­al gi­ant fleas. She jerked her head back in­vol­un­tar­ily. Then, smil­ing at her­self, she took a clos­er, more stud­ied look. The dress was a rich land­scape of for­eign bi­ol­ogy, along with an ar­ray of sub­stances that could oc­cu­py a foren­sic chemist for weeks. She won­dered how use­ful such an anal­ysis would be, con­sid­ered the cost, and tem­porar­ily shelved the idea. She brought the for­ceps for­ward to take more sam­ples.

Sud­den­ly, the si­lence in her of­fice seemed all too ab­so­lute; there was a crawl­ing sen­sa­tion at the base of her neck. She swiveled, gasped; Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast was stand­ing be­hind her, hands be­hind his back.

“Je­sus!” she said, leap­ing out of the chair. “You scared the hell out of me!”

Pen­der­gast bowed slight­ly. “My apolo­gies.”

“I thought I locked that door.”

“You did.”

“Are you a ma­gi­cian, Agent Pen­der­gast? Or did you sim­ply pick my lock?”

“A lit­tle of both, per­haps. But these old Mu­se­um locks are so crude, one can hard­ly call it ‘pick­ing.’ I am well known here, which re­quires me to be dis­creet.”

“Do you think you could call ahead next time?”

He turned to the dress. “You didn’t have this yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.”

“No. I didn’t.”

He nod­ded. “Very re­source­ful of you, Dr. Kel­ly.”

“I went back last night—”

“No de­tails of any ques­tion­able ac­tiv­ities, please. How­ev­er, my con­grat­ula­tions.”

She could see he was pleased.

He held out his hand. “Pro­ceed.”

No­ra turned back to her work. Af­ter a while, Pen­der­gast spoke. “There were many ar­ti­cles of cloth­ing in the tun­nel. Why this dress?”

With­out a word, No­ra care­ful­ly turned up the pleats of the dress, ex­pos­ing a crude­ly sewn patch in the cot­ton lin­ing. Im­me­di­ate­ly, Pen­der­gast moved clos­er.

“There’s a piece of pa­per sewn in­side,” she said. “I came up­on it just be­fore they shut down the site.”

“May I bor­row your loup?”

No­ra lift­ed it over her head and hand­ed it to him. Bend­ing over the dress, he ex­am­ined it with a thor­ough pro­fes­sion­al­ism that sur­prised and im­pressed No­ra. At last he straight­ened up.

“Very hasty work,” he said. “You’ll note that all the oth­er stitch­ing and mend­ing was done care­ful­ly, al­most lov­ing­ly. This dress was some girl’s prize gar­ment. But this one stitch was made with thread pulled from the dress it­self, and the holes are ragged—I would guess they were made with a splin­ter of wood. This was done by some­one with lit­tle time, and with no ac­cess to even a nee­dle.”

No­ra moved the mi­cro­scope over the patch, us­ing its cam­era to take a se­ries of pho­tographs at var­ious mag­ni­fi­ca­tions. Then she fixed a macro lens and took an­oth­er se­ries. She worked ef­fi­cient­ly, aware that Pen­der­gast’s eyes were up­on her.

She put the mi­cro­scope aside and picked up the tweez­ers. “Let’s open it up.”

With great care, she teased the end of the thread out and be­gan to un­do the patch. A few min­utes of painstak­ing work and it lay loose. She placed the thread in a sam­ple tube and lift­ed the ma­te­ri­al.

Un­der­neath was a piece of pa­per, torn from the page of a book. It had been fold­ed twice.

No­ra put the patch in­to yet an­oth­er Zi­ploc bag. Then, us­ing two pairs of rub­ber-​tipped tweez­ers, she un­fold­ed the pa­per. In­side was a mes­sage, scratched in crude brown let­ters. Parts of it were stained and fad­ed, but it read un­mis­tak­ably:

i a M MarY GreeNe, agt 19 years, No. 16 WaT­Ter sTreeT

No­ra moved the pa­per to the stage of the stere­ozoom and looked at it un­der low pow­er. Af­ter a mo­ment she stepped back, and Pen­der­gast ea­ger­ly took her place at the eye­pieces. Min­utes went by as he stared. Fi­nal­ly he stepped away.

“Writ­ten with the same splin­ter, per­haps,” he said.

No­ra nod­ded. The let­ters had been formed with lit­tle scratch­es and scrapes.

“May I per­form a test?” Pen­der­gast asked.

“What kind?”

Pen­der­gast slipped out a small stop­pered test tube. “It will in­volve re­mov­ing a tiny sam­ple of the ink on this note with a sol­vent.”

“What is that stuff?”

“An­ti­hu­man rab­bit serum.”

“Be my guest.” Strange that Pen­der­gast car­ried foren­sic chem­icals around in his pock­ets. What did the agent not have hid­den in­side that bot­tom­less black suit of his?

Pen­der­gast un­stop­pered the test tube, re­veal­ing a tiny swab. Us­ing the stere­ozoom, he ap­plied it to a cor­ner of a let­ter, then placed it back in its tube. He gave it a lit­tle shake and held it to the win­dow. Af­ter a mo­ment, the liq­uid turned blue. He turned to face her.

“So?” she asked, but she had al­ready read the re­sults in his face.

“The note, Dr. Kel­ly, was writ­ten in hu­man blood. No doubt the very blood of the young wom­an her­self.”

EIGHT

SI­LENCE DE­SCEND­ED IN the Mu­se­um of­fice. No­ra found she had to sit down. For some time noth­ing was said; No­ra could vague­ly hear traf­fic sounds from be­low, the dis­tant ring­ing of a phone, foot­steps in the hall. The full di­men­sion of the dis­cov­ery be­gan to sink in: the tun­nel, the thir­ty-​six dis­mem­bered bod­ies, the ghast­ly note from a cen­tu­ry ago.

“What do you think it means?” she asked.

“There can be on­ly one ex­pla­na­tion. The girl must have known she would nev­er leave that base­ment alive. She didn’t want to die an un­known. Hence she de­lib­er­ate­ly wrote down her name, age, and home ad­dress, and then con­cealed it. A self-​cho­sen epi­taph. The on­ly one avail­able to her.”

No­ra shud­dered. “How hor­ri­ble.”

Pen­der­gast moved slow­ly to­ward her book­shelf. She fol­lowed him with her eyes.

“What are we deal­ing with?” she asked. “A se­ri­al killer?”

Pen­der­gast did not an­swer. The same trou­bled look that had come over him at the digsite had re­turned to his face. He con­tin­ued to stand in front of the book­shelf.

“May I ask you a ques­tion?”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded again.

“Why are you in­volved in this? Hun­dred-​and-​thir­ty-​year-​old se­ri­al killings are not ex­act­ly with­in the purview of the FBI.”

Pen­der­gast plucked a small Anasazi bowl from the shelf and ex­am­ined it. “Love­ly Kayen­ta black-​on-​white.” He looked up. “How is your re­search on the Utah Anasazi sur­vey go­ing?”

“Not well. The Mu­se­um won’t give me mon­ey for the car­bon-14 dates I need. What does that have to—”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“Dr. Kel­ly, are you fa­mil­iar with the term, ‘cab­inet of cu­riosi­ties’?”

No­ra won­dered at the man’s abil­ity to pile on non se­quiturs. “Wasn’t it a kind of nat­ural his­to­ry col­lec­tion?”

“Pre­cise­ly. It was the pre­cur­sor to the nat­ural his­to­ry mu­se­um. Many ed­ucat­ed gen­tle­men of the eigh­teenth and nine­teenth cen­turies col­lect­ed strange ar­ti­facts while roam­ing the globe—fos­sils, bones, shrunk­en heads, stuffed birds, that sort of thing. Orig­inal­ly, they sim­ply dis­played these ar­ti­facts in cab­inets, for the amuse­ment of their friends. Lat­er—when it be­came clear peo­ple would pay mon­ey to vis­it them—some of these cab­inets of cu­riosi­ties grew in­to com­mer­cial en­ter­pris­es. They still called them ‘cab­inets of cu­riosi­ties’ even though the col­lec­tions filled many rooms.”

“What does this have to do with the mur­ders?”

“In 1848, a wealthy young gen­tle­man from New York, Alexan­der Marysas, went on a hunt­ing and col­lect­ing ex­pe­di­tion around the world, from the South Pa­cif­ic to Tier­ra del Fuego. He died in Mada­gas­car, but his col­lec­tions—most ex­traor­di­nary col­lec­tions they were—came back in the hold of his ship. They were pur­chased by an en­trepreneur, John Cana­day Shot­tum, who opened J. C. Shot­tum’s Cab­inet of Nat­ural Pro­duc­tions and Cu­riosi­ties in 1852.”

“So?”

“Shot­tum’s Cab­inet was the build­ing that once stood above the tun­nel where the skele­tons were found.”

“How did you find all this out?”

“Half an hour with a good friend of mine who works in the New York Pub­lic Li­brary. The tun­nel you ex­plored was, in fact, the coal tun­nel that ser­viced the build­ing’s orig­inal boil­er. It was a three-​sto­ry brick build­ing in the Goth­ic Re­vival style pop­ular in the 1850s. The first floor held the cab­inet and some­thing called a ‘Cy­clo­rama,’ the sec­ond floor was Shot­tum’s of­fice, and the third floor was rent­ed out. The cab­inet seems to have been quite suc­cess­ful, though the Five Points neigh­bor­hood around it was at the time one of Man­hat­tan’s worst slums. The build­ing burned in 1881. Shot­tum died in the fire. The po­lice re­port sus­pect­ed ar­son, but no per­pe­tra­tor was ev­er found. It re­mained a va­cant lot un­til the row of ten­ements was built in 1897.”

“What was on the site be­fore Shot­tum’s Cab­inet?”

“A small hog farm.”

“So all those peo­ple must have been mur­dered while the build­ing was Shot­tum’s Cab­inet.”

“Ex­act­ly.”

“Do you think Shot­tum did it?”

“Im­pos­si­ble to know as of yet. Those glass frag­ments I found in the tun­nel were most­ly bro­ken test tubes and dis­til­la­tion ap­pa­ra­tus. On them, I found traces of a va­ri­ety of chem­icals that I have yet to an­alyze. We need to learn a great deal more about J. C. Shot­tum and his cab­inet of cu­riosi­ties. I won­der if you would be so kind as to ac­com­pa­ny me?”

He oblig­ing­ly opened the door to her of­fice, and No­ra au­to­mat­ical­ly fol­lowed him in­to the hall­way. He con­tin­ued talk­ing as they walked down the hall and took an el­eva­tor to the fifth floor. As the el­eva­tor doors hissed open, No­ra sud­den­ly came to her sens­es.

“Wait a minute. Where are we go­ing? I’ve got work to do.”

“As I said, I need your help.”

No­ra felt a short jolt of ir­ri­ta­tion: Pen­der­gast spoke so con­fi­dent­ly, as if he al­ready owned her time. “I’m sor­ry, but I’m an ar­chae­ol­ogist, not a de­tec­tive.”

He raised his eye­brows. “Is there a dif­fer­ence?”

“What makes you think I’d be in­ter­est­ed?”

“You al­ready are in­ter­est­ed.”

No­ra fumed at the man’s pre­sump­tion, al­though what he said was per­fect­ly true. “And just how will I ex­plain this to the Mu­se­um?”

“That, Dr. Kel­ly, is the na­ture of our ap­point­ment.”

He point­ed to a door at the end of the hall, with the name of the oc­cu­pant in gold let­ter­ing on a wood­en plaque.

“Oh, no,” groaned No­ra. “No.”

They found Roger Bris­bane en­sconced in his Bauhaus chair, crisp Turn­bull & Ass­er shirt rolled up at the cuffs, look­ing ev­ery inch the lawyer. His prized gems still nes­tled in their glass box, the on­ly touch of warmth in the cold im­mac­ulate of­fice. He nod­ded to­ward two chairs op­po­site his desk. It did not look like Bris­bane was in a good mood.

“Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast,” Bris­bane said, glanc­ing from his ap­point­ment book up to Pen­der­gast with­out ac­knowl­edg­ing No­ra. “Now, why is that name fa­mil­iar?”

“I’ve done work in the Mu­se­um be­fore,” said Pen­der­gast, in his creami­est drawl.

“Who did you work for?”

“You mis­ap­pre­hend. I said I did work in the Mu­se­um, not for it.”

Bris­bane waved his hand. “What­ev­er. Mr. Pen­der­gast, I en­joy my qui­et morn­ings at home. I fail to see what the emer­gen­cy was that re­quired my pres­ence in the of­fice at such an hour.”

“Crime nev­er sleeps, Mr. Bris­bane.” No­ra thought she de­tect­ed a note of dry hu­mor in Pen­der­gast’s voice.

Bris­bane’s eyes veered to­ward No­ra, then away again. “Dr. Kel­ly’s re­spon­si­bil­ities are here. I thought I made that clear on the tele­phone. Nor­mal­ly the Mu­se­um would be de­light­ed to help the FBI, but I just don’t see how we can in this par­tic­ular case.”

In­stead of an­swer­ing, Pen­der­gast’s gaze lin­gered on the gems. “I didn’t know the fa­mous Mogul Star Sap­phire had been tak­en off pub­lic dis­play. That is the Mogul Star, is it not?”

Bris­bane shift­ed in his chair. “We pe­ri­od­ical­ly ro­tate the ex­hibits, to give vis­itors a chance to see things that are in stor­age.”

“And you keep the, ah, ex­cess in­ven­to­ry here.”

“Mr. Pen­der­gast, as I said, I fail to see how we can help you.”

“This was a unique crime. You have unique re­sources. I need to make use of those re­sources.”

“Did the crime you men­tion take place in the Mu­se­um?”

“No.”

“On Mu­se­um prop­er­ty?”

Pen­der­gast shook his head.

“Then I’m afraid the an­swer is no.”

“Is that your fi­nal word on the sub­ject?”

“Ab­so­lute­ly. We don’t want the Mu­se­um mixed up in any way with po­lice work. Be­ing in­volved in in­ves­ti­ga­tions, law­suits, sor­did­ness, is a sure way to draw the Mu­se­um in­to un­wel­come con­tro­ver­sy. As you well know, Mr. Pen­der­gast.”

Pen­der­gast re­moved a piece of pa­per from his vest pock­et and laid it in front of Bris­bane.

“What’s this?” Bris­bane said, with­out look­ing at it.

“The Mu­se­um’s char­ter with the City of New York.”

“What rel­evance is that?”

“It states that one of the re­spon­si­bil­ities of Mu­se­um em­ploy­ees is to per­form pro bono pub­lic ser­vice to the City of New York.”

“We do that ev­ery day by run­ning the Mu­se­um.”

“Ah, but that is pre­cise­ly the prob­lem. Up un­til fair­ly re­cent­ly, the Mu­se­um’s An­thro­pol­ogy De­part­ment reg­ular­ly as­sist­ed the po­lice in foren­sic mat­ters. It was part of their du­ties, as a mat­ter of fact. You re­mem­ber, of course, the in­fa­mous Ash­can Mur­der of Novem­ber 7, 1939?”

“Pity, I must have missed that par­tic­ular piece in the Times that day.”

“A cu­ra­tor here was in­stru­men­tal in solv­ing that case. He found the burned rim of an or­bit in an ash­can, which he was able to iden­ti­fy as pos­itive­ly hu­man—”

“Mr. Pen­der­gast, I am not here for a his­to­ry les­son.” Bris­bane rose out of his chair and flicked on his jack­et. “The an­swer is no. I have busi­ness to at­tend to. Dr. Kel­ly, please re­turn to your of­fice.”

“I am sor­ry to hear that. There will be ad­verse pub­lic­ity, of course.”

At these two words, Bris­bane paused, then a cold smile crept on­to his face. “That sound­ed re­mark­ably like a threat.”

Pen­der­gast con­tin­ued in his ge­nial, south­ern fash­ion. “The truth is, the char­ter clear­ly calls for ser­vice to the City out­side of reg­ular cu­ra­to­ri­al du­ties. The Mu­se­um has not been keep­ing its con­tract with the City of New York now for close to a decade, de­spite the fact that it re­ceives mil­lions in tax dol­lars from the cit­izens of New York. Far from pro­vid­ing pub­lic ser­vice, you have now closed your li­brary to all but Ph.D.’s; you have closed your col­lec­tions to ev­ery­one ex­cept so-​called ac­cred­it­ed aca­demics; and you charge fees for ev­ery­thing, all in the name of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights. You have even be­gun sug­gest­ing an ad­mis­sion fee, de­spite the fact that this is clear­ly barred by your char­ter. It says right here: . . . for the Cre­ation of a Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry for the City of New York, to be Open and Free to all Mem­bers of the Pub­lic, with­out Re­stric­tion . . .”

“Let me see that.”

Bris­bane read it, his smooth brow con­tract­ing in­to the faintest wrin­kle.

“Old doc­uments can be so in­con­ve­nient, don’t you think, Mr. Bris­bane? Like the Con­sti­tu­tion. Al­ways there when you least want it.”

Bris­bane let it drop to the desk, his face red­den­ing for a mo­ment be­fore re­turn­ing to its usu­al healthy pink. “I’ll have to take this up with the board.”

Pen­der­gast smiled slight­ly. “An ex­cel­lent start. I think per­haps the Mu­se­um can be left to work this lit­tle prob­lem out on its own—what do you think, Mr. Bris­bane?—pro­vid­ed I am giv­en what lit­tle help I need from Dr. Kel­ly.”

There was a si­lence. Then Bris­bane looked up, a new look in his eyes. “I see.”

“And I as­sure you I will not take up an un­due amount of Dr. Kel­ly’s time.”

“Of course you won’t,” said Bris­bane.

“Most of the work will be archival in na­ture. She’ll be on the premis­es and avail­able, should you need her.”

Bris­bane nod­ded.

“We will do all we can to avoid un­pleas­ant pub­lic­ity. Nat­ural­ly, all this would be kept con­fi­den­tial.”

“Nat­ural­ly. It is al­ways best that way.”

“I just want to add that Dr. Kel­ly did not seek me out. I have im­posed this du­ty on her. She has al­ready in­formed me she would rather be work­ing on her pot­sherds.”

“Of course.”

An opaque veil had dropped over Bris­bane’s face. It was hard for No­ra to tell what he was think­ing. She won­dered if this lit­tle hard­ball play of Pen­der­gast’s was go­ing to dam­age her prospects at the Mu­se­um. It prob­ably would. She dart­ed a re­proach­ful glance to­ward Pen­der­gast.

“Where did you say you were from?” Bris­bane asked.

“I didn’t. New Or­leans.”

Bris­bane im­me­di­ate­ly pushed him­self back in his chair, and with a smile said: “New Or­leans. Of course. I should have known from the ac­cent. You’re a rather long way from home, Mr. Pen­der­gast.”

Pen­der­gast bowed, hold­ing the door open for No­ra. She stepped through it, feel­ing shocked. Down the hall, she halt­ed and spoke to Pen­der­gast. “You to­tal­ly blind­sid­ed me back there. I had no idea what you were up to un­til we were in Bris­bane’s of­fice. I don’t ap­pre­ci­ate it.”

Pen­der­gast turned his pale eyes on her. “My meth­ods are un­ortho­dox, but they have one ad­van­tage.”

“And what is that?”

“They work.”

“Yeah, but what about my ca­reer?”

Pen­der­gast smiled. “May I of­fer a pre­dic­tion?”

“For what it’s worth, why not?”

“When this is over, you will have been pro­mot­ed.”

No­ra snort­ed. “Right. Af­ter you black­mailed and hu­mil­iat­ed my boss, he’s go­ing to pro­mote me.”

“I’m afraid I don’t suf­fer pet­ty bu­reau­crats glad­ly. A very bad habit, but one I find hard to break. Nev­er­the­less, you will find, Dr. Kel­ly, that hu­mil­ia­tion and black­mail, when used ju­di­cious­ly, can be mar­velous­ly ef­fec­tive.”

At the stair­well, No­ra paused once again.

“You nev­er an­swered my ques­tion. Why is the FBI con­cerned with killings that are over a cen­tu­ry old?”

“All in good time, Dr. Kel­ly. For now, let it suf­fice to say that, on a pure­ly per­son­al lev­el, I find these killings rather—ah—in­ter­est­ing.”

Some­thing in the way Pen­der­gast said “in­ter­est­ing” sent the faintest of shud­ders through No­ra.

Men of Sci­ence

ONE

THE MU­SE­UM’S VAST Cen­tral Archives lay deep in the base­ment, reach­able on­ly through sev­er­al sets of el­eva­tors, wind­ing cor­ri­dors, stairs, and pas­sage­ways. No­ra had nev­er been to the Archives be­fore—she did not, in fact, know any­body who ev­er had—and as she de­scend­ed deep­er and deep­er in­to the bow­els of the Mu­se­um, she won­dered if per­haps she had made a wrong turn some­where.

Be­fore ac­cept­ing the job at the Mu­se­um, she had tak­en one of the tours that thread­ed their way through its end­less gal­leries. She had heard all the statis­tics: it was phys­ical­ly the largest mu­se­um in the world, con­sist­ing of two dozen in­ter­con­nect­ed build­ings built in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, form­ing a bizarre maze of more than three thou­sand rooms and al­most two hun­dred miles of pas­sage­ways. But mere num­bers could not cap­ture the claus­tro­pho­bic feel­ing of the end­less, de­sert­ed cor­ri­dors. It was enough, she thought, to give the Mino­taur a ner­vous break­down.

She stopped, con­sult­ed her map, and sighed. A long brick pas­sage­way ran straight ahead, il­lu­mi­nat­ed by a string of light bulbs in cages; an­oth­er ran off from it at right an­gles. Ev­ery­thing smelled of dust. She need­ed a land­mark, a fixed point to get her bear­ings. She looked around. A pad­locked met­al door near­by had a weath­ered sign: Ti­tan­oth­eres. A door across the hall from it read: Chal­icotheres and Tapiroids. She checked the over­sized map, fi­nal­ly lo­cat­ing her po­si­tion with dif­fi­cul­ty. She wasn’t lost, af­ter all: it was just ahead and around the cor­ner. Fa­mous last words, she thought, walk­ing for­ward, hear­ing the echo­ing rap of her heels against the con­crete floor.

She stopped at a mas­sive set of oak­en doors, an­cient and scarred, marked Cen­tral Archives. She knocked, lis­ten­ing to the rap re­sound cav­ernous­ly on the far side. There came a sud­den rat­tle of pa­pers, the sound of a dropped book, a great clear­ing of phlegm. A high­pitched voice called out, “Just a mo­ment, please!”

There was a slow shuf­fling, then the sound of nu­mer­ous locks be­ing un­fas­tened. The door opened, re­veal­ing a short, round, el­der­ly man. He had a vast­ly hooked red nose, and a fringe of long white hair de­scend­ed from the gleam­ing dome above it. As he looked up at her, a smile of greet­ing broke out, dis­pelling the air of melan­choly on his veined face.

“Ah, come in, do come in,” he said. “Don’t let all these locks fright­en you. I’m an old man, but I don’t bite. For­tu­nate senex!”

No­ra took a step for­ward. Dust lay ev­ery­where, even on the worn lapels of the man’s jack­et. A lamp with a green shade cast a small pool of light on the old desk, piled high with pa­pers. On one side sat an el­der­ly Roy­al type­writ­er, per­haps the on­ly thing in the room not cov­ered in dust. Be­yond the desk, No­ra could see cast-​iron shelves laden with books and box­es stretch­ing back in­to a gloom as deep as the ocean. In the dim­ness, it was im­pos­si­ble to judge how far the room ex­tend­ed.

“Are you Rein­hart Puck?” No­ra asked.

The man set up a vig­or­ous nod­ding, his cheeks and bow tie flap­ping in re­sponse. “At your ser­vice.” He bowed, and for an alarmed mo­ment No­ra thought he might reach out to kiss her hand. In­stead, there was an­oth­er loud sound of phlegm be­ing forced against its will some­where with­in his wind­pipes.

“I’m look­ing for in­for­ma­tion on—on cab­inets of cu­riosi­ties,” No­ra con­tin­ued, won­der­ing if that was the cor­rect plu­ral­iza­tion.

The man, busy re-​lock­ing the door, glanced over, his rheumy eyes light­ing up. “Ah! You’ve come to the right place. The Mu­se­um ab­sorbed most of the old cab­inets of ear­ly New York. We have all their col­lec­tions, their pa­pers. Where shall we be­gin?” He slammed the last bolt home, then rubbed his hands to­geth­er, smil­ing, clear­ly hap­py to be of ser­vice to some­one.

“There was a cab­inet of cu­riosi­ties in low­er Man­hat­tan known as Shot­tum’s Cab­inet.”

He wrin­kled his brow. “Shot­tum’s . . . Ah, yes. Yes, in­deed. Quite pop­ular these days, Shot­tum’s. But first things first. Please sign the reg­is­ter, and then we can get start­ed.” He mo­tioned her to fol­low him around the desk, where he pro­duced a leather-​bound ledger, so old and rubbed that No­ra was tempt­ed to ask for a quill pen. She took the prof­fered ball­point, wrote in her name and de­part­ment.

“Why all the locks and bolts?” she asked, hand­ing back the pen. “I thought all the re­al­ly valu­able stuff, the gold and di­amonds and the rest, was kept in the Se­cure Area.”

“It’s the new ad­min­is­tra­tion. Added all this red tape, af­ter the un­pleas­ant­ness a few years back. It’s not as if we’re all that busy, you know. Just re­searchers and doc­tor­al can­di­dates, or the oc­ca­sion­al wealthy pa­tron with an in­ter­est in the his­to­ry of sci­ence.” He re­turned the reg­is­ter, then shuf­fled over to a huge bank of old ivory light switch­es, big as clothes pegs, and snapped a few on. Deep in the vast space there was a flick­er, then an­oth­er, and a dim light ap­peared. Puck set off to­ward it at a slow hob­ble, his feet scrap­ing on the stone floor. No­ra fol­lowed, glanc­ing up at the dark walls of shelv­ing. She felt as if she were walk­ing through a dark for­est to­ward the dis­tant glow of a wel­com­ing cot­tage.

“Cab­inets of cu­riosi­ties, one of my fa­vorite sub­jects. As you no doubt know, Dela­courte’s was the first cab­inet, es­tab­lished in 1804.” Puck’s voice echoed back over his stooped shoul­ders. “It was a mar­velous col­lec­tion. A whale eye­ball pick­led in whiskey, a set of hip­po teeth, a mastodon tusk found in a bog in New Jer­sey. And of course the last do­do egg, of a Ro­drigues Soli­taire to be ex­act. The egg was brought back live in a crate, but then af­ter they put it on dis­play it ap­peared to have hatched, and—Aha, here we are.”

He stopped abrupt­ly, reached up to drag a box down from a high shelf, and opened its lid. In­stead of the Shot­tum’s Cab­inet ma­te­ri­al No­ra hoped for, in­side was a large eggshell, bro­ken in­to three pieces. “There’s no prove­nience on these things, so they didn’t ac­ces­sion them in­to the main Mu­se­um col­lec­tion. That’s why we’ve got them here.” He point­ed rev­er­ent­ly at the pieces of shell, lick­ing his lips. “Dela­courte’s Cab­inet of Nat­ural His­to­ry. They charged twen­ty­five cents ad­mis­sion, quite a sum at the time.”

Re­plac­ing the box, he slid a thick three-​ring binder off an ad­join­ing shelf and be­gan flip­ping through it. “What would you like to know about the Dela­courte Cab­inet?”

“It was ac­tu­al­ly Shot­tum’s Cab­inet of Nat­ural Pro­duc­tions and Cu­riosi­ties that I was in­ter­est­ed in. John Cana­day Shot­tum.” No­ra swal­lowed her im­pa­tience. It would clear­ly be use­less to rush Mr. Puck.

“Yes, yes, Shot­tum’s.” He re­sumed his shuf­fling down the row of box­es, binders, and books.

“How did the Mu­se­um ac­quire these cab­inets?” she asked.

“Once the Mu­se­um opened, with free ad­mis­sion, it put most of them out of busi­ness. Of course, a lot of the stuff the old cab­inets dis­played were fakes, you know. But some of it held re­al sci­en­tif­ic val­ue. As the cab­inets went bankrupt, Mc­Fad­den, an ear­ly cu­ra­tor here, bought them up for the Mu­se­um.”

“Fakes, you said?”

Puck nod­ded por­ten­tous­ly. “Sewing two heads on­to a calf. Tak­ing a whale bone and dy­ing it brown, say­ing it came from a di­nosaur. We have some of those.”

As he moved on to the next row, No­ra has­tened to keep up, won­der­ing how to guide this flood of in­for­ma­tion in the di­rec­tion she want­ed.

“Cab­inets were all the rage. Even P. T. Bar­num once owned a cab­inet known as Scud­der’s Amer­ican Mu­se­um. He added live ex­hibits. And that, young la­dy, was the be­gin­ning of his cir­cus.”

“Live ex­hibits?”

“He dis­played Joice Heth, a wiz­ened old black wom­an who Bar­num claimed was George Wash­ing­ton’s 161-year-​old nurse. Ex­posed as a fraud by the fa­ther of our own Tin­bury Mc­Fad­den.”

“Tin­bury Mc­Fad­den?” No­ra was start­ing to pan­ic. Would she ev­er get out of here?

“Tin­bury Mc­Fad­den. A cu­ra­tor here back in the late nin­teenth cen­tu­ry. He had a par­tic­ular in­ter­est in cab­inets of cu­riosi­ties. Queer fel­low. Just up and dis­ap­peared one day.”

“I’m in­ter­est­ed in Shot­tum’s Cab­inet. John Cana­day Shot­tum.”

“We’re get­ting there, young la­dy,” said Puck, with the slight­est touch of ir­ri­ta­tion. “We don’t have much from Shot­tum’s. It burned in 1881.”

“Most of the stuff was col­lect­ed by a man named Marysas. Alexan­der Marysas,” No­ra said, hop­ing to keep his mind on the sub­ject at hand.

“Now, there was an odd fel­low. Marysas came from a rich New York fam­ily, died in Mada­gas­car. I be­lieve the chief made an um­brel­la out of his skin to pro­tect his ba­by grand­son from the sun . . .”

They fol­lowed a labyrinthine path be­tween shelves groan­ing with pa­pers, box­es, and bizarre ar­ti­facts. Puck snapped more ivory switch­es; more lights went on ahead of them, while oth­ers winked out be­hind, leav­ing them in an is­land of light sur­round­ed by a vast ocean of dark­ness. They came to an open area in the shelves where some large spec­imens stood on oak plat­forms—a wool­ly mam­moth, shriv­eled but still huge; a white ele­phant; a gi­raffe miss­ing its head. No­ra’s heart sank when Puck stopped.

“Those old cab­inets would do any­thing to draw the pay­ing pub­lic. Take a look at this ba­by mam­moth. Found freeze-​dried in Alas­ka.” He reached un­der­neath it and pressed some­thing; there was a soft click and a trap­door flopped open in the bel­ly.

“This was part of a sideshow rou­tine. A la­bel said the mam­moth had been frozen for 100,000 years and that a sci­en­tist was go­ing to thaw it out and try to re­vive it. Be­fore the sideshow opened, a small man would climb in through that trap­door. When the place had filled with spec­ta­tors, an­oth­er man pos­ing as a sci­en­tist would come out and give a lec­ture and start warm­ing the thing with a bra­zier. Then the man in­side would start mov­ing the trunk and mak­ing nois­es. Cleared the place out in sec­onds.” Puck chuck­led. “Peo­ple were a lot more in­no­cent back then, weren’t they?” He reached un­der and care­ful­ly closed the trap­door.

“Yes, yes,” said No­ra. “This is very in­ter­est­ing, Mr. Puck, and I ap­pre­ci­ate the tour. But I’m pressed for time, and I re­al­ly would like to see the Shot­tum ma­te­ri­al now.”

“We’re here.” Puck rolled a met­al lad­der in­to place, climbed up in­to the gloom, and de­scend­ed with a small box.

“O terque quaterque beati! Here’s your Mr. Shot­tum. It wasn’t the most in­ter­est­ing cab­inet, I’m afraid. And since it burned, we don’t have much from it—just these few pa­pers.” Puck opened the box, peered in­side. “Great heav­ens, what a mess,” he clucked dis­ap­prov­ing­ly. “I don’t un­der­stand, con­sid­er­ing . . . Ah, well, when you’re done with these, I can show you the Dela­courte pa­pers. Much more com­pre­hen­sive.”

“I’m afraid there won’t be time, at least not to­day.”

Puck grunt­ed with dis­sat­is­fac­tion. No­ra glanced at him, felt a stab of pity for the lone­ly old man.

“Ah, here’s a let­ter from Tin­bury Mc­Fad­den,” Puck said, pluck­ing a fad­ed pa­per from the box. “Helped Shot­tum clas­si­fy his mam­mals and birds. He ad­vised a lot of the cab­inet own­ers. Hired him­self out.” He rum­maged some more. “He was a close friend of Shot­tum’s.”

No­ra thought for a mo­ment. “Can I check out this box?”

“Have to look at it in the Re­search Room. Can’t let it leave the Archives.”

“I see.” No­ra paused, think­ing. “You said Tin­bury Mc­Fad­den was a close friend of Shot­tum’s? Are his pa­pers in here, too?”

“Are they here? Good heav­en, we’ve got moun­tains of his pa­pers. And his col­lec­tions. He had quite a cab­inet him­self, on­ly he nev­er dis­played it. Left it to the Mu­se­um, but none of the stuff had any prove­nience and was full of fakes, so they stuck it down here. For his­tor­ical pur­pos­es. No sci­en­tif­ic val­ue, they said.” Puck sniffed. “Not wor­thy of the main col­lec­tion.”

“May I see it?”

“Of course, of course!” And Puck was shuf­fling off again in a new di­rec­tion. “Right around the cor­ner.”

They stopped at last be­fore two shelves. The up­per was full of more pa­pers and box­es. On top of one box was a promis­so­ry note, with a fad­ed in­ven­to­ry of items trans­ferred from J. C. Shot­tum to T. F. Mc­Fad­den, as pay­ment for Ser­vices Ren­dered and Promised. The low­er shelf was stuffed with a va­ri­ety of cu­ri­ous ob­jects. Glanc­ing over them, No­ra saw stuffed an­imals wrapped in wax pa­per and twine, du­bi­ous-​look­ing fos­sils, a dou­ble-​head­ed pig float­ing in a glass jer­oboam, a dried ana­con­da curled in­to a gi­ant five-​foot knot, a stuffed chick­en with six legs and four wings, and a bizarre box made out of an ele­phant’s foot.

Puck blew his nose like a trum­pet, wiped his eyes. “Poor Tin­bury would turn over in his grave if he knew that his pre­cious col­lec­tion end­ed up down here. He thought it had price­less sci­en­tif­ic val­ue. Of course, that was at a time when many of the Mu­se­um’s cu­ra­tors were am­ateurs with poor sci­en­tif­ic cre­den­tials.”

No­ra point­ed to the promis­so­ry note. “This seems to in­di­cate Shot­tum gave Mc­Fad­den spec­imens in ex­change for his work.”

“A stan­dard prac­tice.”

“So some of these things came from Shot­tum’s Cab­inet?”

“With­out a doubt.”

“Could I ex­am­ine these spec­imens, too?”

Puck beamed. “I’ll move all of it to the Re­search Room and set it up on ta­bles. When it’s ready, I’ll let you know.”

“How long will that take?”

“A day.” His face red­dened with the plea­sure of be­ing of use.

“Don’t you need help mov­ing these things?”

“Oh, yes. My as­sis­tant, Os­car, will do it.”

No­ra looked around. “Os­car?”

“Os­car Gibbs. He usu­al­ly works up in Os­te­ol­ogy. We don’t get many vis­itors down here. I call him down for spe­cial work like this.”

“This is very kind of you, Mr. Puck.”

“Kind? The plea­sure’s all mine, I as­sure you, my dear girl!”

“I’ll be bring­ing a col­league.”

An un­cer­tain look cloud­ed Puck’s face. “A col­league? There are rules about that, what with the new se­cu­ri­ty and all . . .” He hes­itat­ed, al­most em­bar­rassed.

“Rules?”

“On­ly Mu­se­um staff al­lowed. The Archives used to be open to ev­ery­body, but now we’ve been re­strict­ed to Mu­se­um staff. And trustees.”

“Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast is, ah, con­nect­ed with the Mu­se­um.”

“Agent Pen­der­gast? Yes, the name’s fa­mil­iar . . . Pen­der­gast. I re­mem­ber him now. The south­ern gen­tle­man. Oh, dear.” A mo­men­tary look of dis­tress crossed the man’s face. “Well, well, as you wish. I’ll ex­pect you both to­mor­row at nine o’clock.”

TWO

PATRICK MUR­PHY O’SHAUGH­NESSY sat in the precinct cap­tain’s of­fice, wait­ing for him to get off the phone. He had been wait­ing five min­utes, but so far Custer hadn’t even looked in his di­rec­tion. Which was just fine with him. O’Shaugh­nessy scanned the walls with­out in­ter­est, his eyes mov­ing from com­men­da­tion plaques to de­part­men­tal shoot­ing tro­phies, light­ing at last up­on the paint­ing on the far wall. It showed a lit­tle cab­in in a swamp, at night, un­der a full moon, its win­dows cast­ing a yel­low glow over the wa­ters. It was a source of end­less amuse­ment to the 7th Precinct that their cap­tain, with all his man­ner­isms and his pre­ten­sions to cul­ture, had a vel­vet paint­ing proud­ly dis­played in his of­fice. There had even been talk of get­ting an of­fice pool to­geth­er, so­lic­it­ing do­na­tions for a less re­volt­ing re­place­ment. O’Shaugh­nessy used to laugh along with them, but now he found it pa­thet­ic. It was all so pa­thet­ic.

The rat­tle of the phone in its cra­dle brought him out of his rever­ie. He looked up as Custer pressed his in­ter­com but­ton.

“Sergeant Noyes, come in here, please.”

O’Shaugh­nessy looked away. This wasn’t a good sign. Her­bert Noyes, re­cent­ly trans­ferred from In­ter­nal Af­fairs, was Custer’s new per­son­al as­sis­tant and nu­mero uno ass-​kiss­er. Some­thing un­pleas­ant was def­inite­ly up.

Al­most in­stant­ly, Noyes en­tered the of­fice, the usu­al unc­tu­ous smile break­ing the smooth lines of his fer­ret-​like head. He nod­ded po­lite­ly to Custer, ig­nored O’Shaugh­nessy, and took the seat clos­est to the cap­tain’s desk, chew­ing gum, as usu­al. His skin­ny form bare­ly made a dent in the bur­gundy-​col­ored leather. He’d come in so fast it was al­most as if he’d been hov­er­ing out­side. O’Shaugh­nessy re­al­ized he prob­ably had been.

And now, at last, Custer turned to­ward O’Shaugh­nessy. “Pad­dy!” he said in his high, thin voice. “How’s the last Irish cop on the force do­ing these days?”

O’Shaugh­nessy wait­ed just long enough to be in­so­lent, and then an­swered: “It’s Patrick, sir.”

“Patrick, Patrick. I thought they called you Pad­dy,” Custer went on, some of the hearty blus­ter gone.

“There are still plen­ty of Irish on the force, sir.”

“Yeah, yeah, but how many are named Patrick Mur­phy O’Shaugh­nessy? I mean, is that Irish or what? That’s like Chaim Moishe Finkel­stein, or Vin­nie Scar­pet­ta Got­ti del­la Gam­bi­no. Eth­nic. Very eth­nic. But hey, don’t get me wrong. Eth­nic’s good.”

“Very good,” Noyes said.

“I’m al­ways say­ing we need di­ver­si­ty on the force. Right?”

“Sure,” O’Shaugh­nessy replied.

“Any­way, Patrick, we’ve got a lit­tle prob­lem here. A few days ago, thir­ty-​six skele­tons were un­cov­ered at a con­struc­tion site here in the precinct. You may have heard of it. I su­per­vised the in­ves­ti­ga­tion my­self. It’s a Moe­gen-​Fairhaven de­vel­op­ment. You know them?”

“Sure I do.” O’Shaugh­nessy glanced point­ed­ly at the over­sized Mont­blanc foun­tain pen in Custer’s shirt pock­et. Mr. Fairhaven had giv­en them as Christ­mas presents to all the precinct cap­tains in Man­hat­tan the year be­fore.

“Big out­fit. Lots of mon­ey, lots of friends. Good peo­ple. Now these skele­tons, Patrick, are well over a cen­tu­ry old. It’s our un­der­stand­ing that some ma­ni­ac back in the eigh­teen hun­dreds mur­dered these peo­ple and hid them in a base­ment. With me so far?”

O’Shaugh­nessy nod­ded.

“Have you ev­er had any ex­pe­ri­ence with the FBI?”

“No, sir.”

“They tend to think work­ing cops are stupid. They like to keep us in the dark. It’s fun for them.”

“It’s a lit­tle game they play,” said Noyes, with a small bob of his shiny head. It was hard to make a crew cut look oily, but some­how Noyes man­aged.

“That’s ex­act­ly right,” Custer said. “You know what we’re say­ing, Patrick?”

“Sure.” They were say­ing he was about to get some shit-​stink as­sign­ment in­volv­ing the FBI: that’s what he knew.

“Good. For some rea­son, we’ve got an FBI agent pok­ing around the site. He won’t say why he’s in­ter­est­ed. He’s not even lo­cal, from New Or­leans, be­lieve it or not. But the guy’s got pull. I’m still look­ing in­to it. The boys in the New York of­fice don’t like him any more than we do. They told me some sto­ries about him, and I didn’t like what I heard. Wher­ev­er this guy goes, trou­ble fol­lows. You with me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“This guy’s been call­ing all over the place. Wants to see the bones. Wants to see the pathol­ogist’s re­port. Wants ev­ery­thing un­der the sun. He doesn’t seem to get that the crime’s an­cient his­to­ry. So now, Mr. Fairhaven is con­cerned. He doesn’t want this get­ting blown out of pro­por­tion, you know? He’s gonna have to rent those apart­ments. You get my drift? And when Mr. Fairhaven gets con­cerned, he calls the may­or. The may­or calls Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er. The com­mis­sion­er calls the com­man­der. And the com­man­der calls me. Which means that now I’m con­cerned.”

O’Shaugh­nessy nod­ded. Which means now I’m sup­posed to be con­cerned, which I’m not.

“Very con­cerned,” said Noyes.

O’Shaugh­nessy al­lowed his face to re­lax in­to the most un­con­cerned of looks.

“So here’s what’s go­ing to hap­pen. I’m go­ing to as­sign you to be this guy’s NYPD li­ai­son. You stick to him like a fly to, er, hon­ey. I want to know what he’s do­ing, where he goes, and es­pe­cial­ly what he’s up to. But don’t get too friend­ly with the guy.”

“No, sir.”

“His name is Pen­der­gast. Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast.” Custer turned over a piece of pa­per. “Christ, they didn’t even give me his first name here. No mat­ter. I’ve set up a meet­ing with you and him to­mor­row, two P.M. Af­ter that, you stay with him. You’re there to help him, that’s the of­fi­cial line. But don’t be too help­ful. This guy’s ticked off a lot of peo­ple. Here, read for your­self.”

O’Shaugh­nessy took the prof­fered file. “Do you want me to re­main in uni­form, sir?”

“Hell, that’s just the point! Hav­ing a uni­formed cop stick­ing to him like a limpet is go­ing to cramp his style. You get me?”

“Yes, sir.”

The cap­tain sat back in his chair, look­ing at him skep­ti­cal­ly. “Think you can do this, Patrick?”

O’Shaugh­nessy stood up. “Sure.”

“Be­cause I’ve been notic­ing your at­ti­tude re­cent­ly.” Custer put a fin­ger to the side of his nose. “A friend­ly word of ad­vice. Save it for Agent Pen­der­gast. Last thing you, of all peo­ple, need is more at­ti­tude.”

“No at­ti­tude, sir. I’m just here to pro­tect and serve.” He pro­nounced sairve in his best Irish brogue. “Top of the mornin’ to you, Cap­tain.”

As O’Shaugh­nessy turned and left the of­fice, he heard Custer mut­ter “wise ass” to Noyes.

THREE

“A PER­FECT AF­TER­NOON to take in a mu­se­um,” said Pen­der­gast, look­ing up at a low­er­ing sky.

Patrick Mur­phy O’Shaugh­nessy won­dered if it was some kind of joke. He stood on the steps of the Eliz­abeth Street precinct house, star­ing off in­to nowhere. The whole thing was a joke. The FBI agent looked more like an un­der­tak­er than a cop, with his black suit, blond­white hair, and movie-​cliché ac­cent. He won­dered how such a piece of work ev­er got his ass through Quan­ti­co.

“The Metropoli­tan Mu­se­um of Art is a cul­tur­al paradigm, Sergeant. One of the great art mu­se­ums of the world. But of course you knew that. Shall we go?”

O’Shaugh­nessy shrugged. Mu­se­ums, what­ev­er, he was sup­posed to stay with this guy. What a crap­py as­sign­ment.

As they de­scend­ed the steps, a long gray car came glid­ing up from where it had been idling at the cor­ner. For a sec­ond O’Shaugh­nessy could hard­ly be­lieve it. A Rolls. Pen­der­gast opened the door.

“Drug seizure?” O’Shaugh­nessy asked.

“No. Per­son­al ve­hi­cle.”

Fig­ures. New Or­leans. They were all on the take down there. Now he had the guy pegged. Prob­ably up here on some kind of drug busi­ness. Maybe Custer want­ed in. That’s why he put him, of all the cops in the precinct, on this guy’s ass. This was look­ing worse by the minute.

Pen­der­gast con­tin­ued hold­ing the door. “Af­ter you.”

O’Shaugh­nessy slid in the back, sink­ing im­me­di­ate­ly in­to creamy white leather.

Pen­der­gast ducked in be­side him. “To the Metropoli­tan Mu­se­um,” he told the driv­er. As the Rolls pulled away from the curb, O’Shaugh­nessy caught a glimpse of Cap­tain Custer stand­ing on the steps, star­ing af­ter them. He re­sist­ed the im­pulse to flip him the bird.

O’Shaugh­nessy turned to Pen­der­gast and gave him a good look. “Here’s to suc­cess, Mis­ter FBI Agent.”

He turned away to look out the win­dow. There was a si­lence on the oth­er side.

“The name is Pen­der­gast,” came the soft voice, fi­nal­ly.

“What­ev­er.”

O’Shaugh­nessy con­tin­ued to look out the win­dow. He al­lowed a minute to pass, and then he said: “So what’s at the mu­se­um? Some dead mum­mies?”

“I have yet to meet a live mum­my, Sergeant. How­ev­er, it is not the Egyp­tian De­part­ment we are go­ing to.”

A wise guy. He won­dered how many more as­sign­ments he’d have like this. Just be­cause he made a mis­take five years ago, they all thought he was Mis­ter Ex­pend­able. Any time there was some­thing fun­ny com­ing down the pike, it was al­ways: We’ve got a lit­tle prob­lem here, O’Shaugh­nessy, and you’re just the man to take care of it. But it was usu­al­ly just pen­ny-​ante stuff. This guy in the Rolls, he looked big-​time. This was dif­fer­ent. This looked il­le­gal. O’Shaugh­nessy thought of his long-​gone fa­ther and felt a stab of shame. Thank God the man wasn’t around to see him now. Five gen­er­ations of O’Shaugh­nessys in the force, and now ev­ery­thing gone to shit. He won­dered if he could hack the eleven more years re­quired be­fore an ear­ly sev­er­ance pack­age be­came avail­able.

“So what’s the game?” O’Shaugh­nessy asked. No more suck­er work: he was go­ing to keep his eyes open and his head up on this one. He didn’t want any stray shit to fall when he wasn’t look­ing up.

“Sergeant?”

“What.”

“There is no game.”

“Of course not.” O’Shaugh­nessy let out a lit­tle snort. “There nev­er is.” He re­al­ized the FBI agent was look­ing at him in­tent­ly. He con­tin­ued look­ing away.

“I can see that you’re un­der a mis­ap­pre­hen­sion here, Sergeant,” came the drawl. “We should rec­ti­fy that at once. You see, I can un­der­stand why you’d jump to that con­clu­sion. Five years ago, you were caught on a surveil­lance tape tak­ing two hun­dred dol­lars from a pros­ti­tute in ex­change for re­leas­ing her. I be­lieve they call it a ‘shake­down.’ Have I got that right?”

O’Shaugh­nessy felt a sud­den numb­ness, fol­lowed by a slow anger. Here it was again. He said noth­ing. What was there to say? It would have been bet­ter if they’d cashiered him.

“The tape got sent to In­ter­nal Af­fairs. In­ter­nal Af­fairs paid you a vis­it. But there were dif­fer­ing ac­counts of what hap­pened, noth­ing was proven. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the dam­age was done, and since that time you’ve seen your ca­reer—how should I put it?—re­main in sta­sis.”

O’Shaugh­nessy con­tin­ued look­ing out the win­dow, at the rush of build­ings. Re­main in sta­sis. You mean, go nowhere.

“And you’ve caught noth­ing since but a se­ries of ques­tion­able as­sign­ments and gray-​area er­rands. Of which you no doubt con­sid­er this one more.”

O’Shaugh­nessy spoke to the win­dow, his voice de­lib­er­ate­ly tired. “Pen­der­gast, I don’t know what your game is, but I don’t need to lis­ten to this. I re­al­ly don’t.”

“I saw that tape,” said Pen­der­gast.

“Good for you.”

“I heard, for ex­am­ple, the pros­ti­tute plead­ing with you to let her go, say­ing that her pimp would beat her up if you didn’t. Then I heard her in­sist­ing you take the two hun­dred dol­lars, be­cause if you didn’t, her pimp would as­sume she had be­trayed him. But if you took the mon­ey, he would on­ly think she’d bribed her way out of cus­tody and spare her. Am I right? So you took the mon­ey.”

O’Shaugh­nessy had been through this in his own mind a thou­sand times. What dif­fer­ence did it make? He didn’t have to take the mon­ey. He hadn’t giv­en it to char­ity, ei­ther. Pimps were beat­ing up pros­ti­tutes ev­ery day. He should’ve left her to her fate.

“So now you’re cyn­ical, you’re tired, you’ve come to re­al­ize that the whole idea of pro­tect and serve is far­ci­cal, es­pe­cial­ly out there on the streets, where there doesn’t even seem to be right or wrong, no­body worth pro­tect­ing, and no­body worth serv­ing.”

There was a si­lence.

“Are we through with the char­ac­ter anal­ysis?” O’Shaugh­nessy asked.

“For the mo­ment. Ex­cept to say that, yes, this is a ques­tion­able as­sign­ment. But not in the way you’re think­ing.”

The next si­lence stretched in­to min­utes.

They stopped at a light, and O’Shaugh­nessy took an op­por­tu­ni­ty to cast a covert glance to­ward Pen­der­gast. The man, as if know­ing the glance was com­ing, caught his eye and pinned it. O’Shaugh­nessy al­most jumped, he looked away so fast.

“Did you, by any chance, catch the show last year, Cos­tum­ing His­to­ry?” Pen­der­gast asked, his voice now light and pleas­ant.

“What?”

“I’ll take that as a no. You missed a splen­did ex­hi­bi­tion. The Met has a fine col­lec­tion of his­tor­ical cloth­ing dat­ing back to the ear­ly Mid­dle Ages. Most of it was in stor­age. But last year, they mount­ed an ex­hi­bi­tion show­ing how cloth­ing evolved over the last six cen­turies. Ab­so­lute­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. Did you know that all ladies at Louis XIV’s court at Ver­sailles were re­quired to have a thir­teen-​inch waist or less? And that their dress­es weighed be­tween thir­ty and forty pounds?”

O’Shaugh­nessy re­al­ized he didn’t know how to an­swer. The con­ver­sa­tion had tak­en such a strange and sud­den tack that he found him­self mo­men­tar­ily stunned.

“I was al­so in­ter­est­ed to learn that in the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry, a man’s cod­piece—”

This tid­bit was mer­ci­ful­ly in­ter­rupt­ed by a screech of brakes as the Rolls swerved to avoid a cab cut­ting across three lanes of traf­fic.

“Yan­kee bar­bar­ians,” said Pen­der­gast mild­ly. “Now, where was I? Ah yes, the cod­piece . . .”

The Rolls was caught in Mid­town traf­fic now, and O’Shaugh­nessy be­gan to won­der just how much longer this ride was go­ing to take.

The Great Hall of the Metropoli­tan Mu­se­um was sheet­ed in Beaux Arts mar­ble, dec­orat­ed with vast sprays of flow­ers, and al­most un­bear­ably crowd­ed. O’Shaugh­nessy hung back while the strange FBI agent talked to one of the har­ried vol­un­teers at the in­for­ma­tion desk. She picked up a phone, called some­one, then put it down again, look­ing high­ly ir­ri­tat­ed. O’Shaugh­nessy be­gan to won­der what this Pen­der­gast was up to. Through­out the ex­tend­ed trip up­town he’d said noth­ing about his in­tend­ed plan of ac­tion.

He glanced around. It was an Up­per East Side crowd, for sure: ladies dressed to the nines click­ing here and there in high heels, uni­formed schoolchil­dren lined up and well be­haved, a few tweedy-​look­ing aca­demics wan­der­ing about with thought­ful faces. Sev­er­al peo­ple were star­ing at him dis­ap­prov­ing­ly, as if it was in bad taste to be in the Met wear­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer’s uni­form. He felt a rush of mis­an­thropy. Hyp­ocrites.

Pen­der­gast mo­tioned him over, and they passed in­to the mu­se­um, run­ning a gaunt­let of tick­et tak­ers in the pro­cess, past a case full of Ro­man gold, plung­ing at last in­to a con­fus­ing se­quence of rooms crowd­ed with stat­ues, vas­es, paint­ings, mum­mies, and all man­ner of art. Pen­der­gast talked the whole time, but the crowds were so dense and the noise so deaf­en­ing, O’Shaugh­nessy caught on­ly a few words.

They passed through a qui­eter suite of rooms full of Asian art, fi­nal­ly ar­riv­ing in front of a door of shiny gray met­al. Pen­der­gast opened it with­out knock­ing, re­veal­ing a small re­cep­tion area. A strik­ing­ly good-​look­ing re­cep­tion­ist sat be­hind a desk of blond wood. Her eyes widened slight­ly at the sight of his uni­form. O’Shaugh­nessy gave her a men­ac­ing look.

“May I help you?” She ad­dressed Pen­der­gast, but her eyes con­tin­ued to flick­er anx­ious­ly to­ward O’Shaugh­nessy.

“Sergeant O’Shaugh­nessy and Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast are here to see Dr. Welles­ley.”

“Do you have an ap­point­ment?”

“Alas, no.”

The re­cep­tion­ist hes­itat­ed. “I’m sor­ry. Spe­cial Agent—?”

“Pen­der­gast. Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

At this she flushed deeply. “Just a mo­ment.” She picked up her phone. O’Shaugh­nessy could hear it ring­ing in an of­fice just off the re­cep­tion area.

“Dr. Welles­ley,” the sec­re­tary said, “there is a Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast from the FBI and a po­lice of­fi­cer here to see you.”

The voice that echoed out of the of­fice was eas­ily heard by all. It was a crisp, nonon­sense voice, fem­inine, yet cold as ice, and so un­re­lieved­ly En­glish it made O’Shaugh­nessy bris­tle.

“Un­less they are here to ar­rest me, Heather, the gen­tle­men can make an ap­point­ment like ev­ery­one else. I am en­gaged.”

The crash of her tele­phone hit­ting the cra­dle was equal­ly un­mis­tak­able.

The re­cep­tion­ist looked up at them with high ner­vous­ness. “Dr. Welles­ley—”

But Pen­der­gast was al­ready mov­ing to­ward the of­fice from which the voice had is­sued. This is more like it, O’Shaugh­nessy thought, as Pen­der­gast swung open the door, plac­ing him­self square­ly in the door­way. At least the guy, for all his pre­ten­sions, was no pushover. He knew how to cut through the bull­shit.

The un­seen voice, laden with sar­casm, cut the air. “Ah, the prover­bial cop­per with his foot in the door. Pity it wasn’t locked so you could bat­ter it down with your trun­cheon.”

It was as if Pen­der­gast had not heard. His flu­id, hon­eyed voice filled the of­fice with warmth and charm. “Dr. Welles­ley, I have come to you be­cause you are the world’s fore­most au­thor­ity on the his­to­ry of dress. And I hope you’ll per­mit me to say your iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Greek pe­plos of Vergina was most thrilling to me per­son­al­ly. I have long had an in­ter­est in the sub­ject.”

There was a brief si­lence. “Flat­tery, Mr. Pen­der­gast, will at least get you in­side.” O’Shaugh­nessy fol­lowed the agent in­to a small but very well-​ap­point­ed of­fice. The fur­ni­ture looked like it had come di­rect­ly from the mu­se­um’s col­lec­tion, and the walls were hung with a se­ries of eigh­teenth-​cen­tu­ry wa­ter­col­ors of opera cos­tumes. O’Shaugh­nessy thought they might be the char­ac­ters of Fi­garo, Rosi­na, and Count Al­ma­vi­va from The Bar­ber of Seville. Opera was his sole, and his se­cret, in­dul­gence.

He seat­ed him­self, cross­ing and then un­cross­ing his legs, shift­ing in the im­pos­si­bly un­com­fort­able chair. No mat­ter what he did, he still seemed to take up too much space. The blue of his uni­form seemed un­bear­ably gauche amid the el­egant fur­nish­ings. He glanced back up at the wa­ter­col­ors, al­low­ing the bars of an aria to go through his head.

Welles­ley was an at­trac­tive wom­an in her mid-​for­ties, beau­ti­ful­ly dressed. “I see you ad­mire my pic­tures,” she said to O’Shaugh­nessy, eye­ing him shrewd­ly.

“Sure,” said O’Shaugh­nessy. “If you like danc­ing in a wig, pumps, and strait­jack­et.”

Welles­ley turned to Pen­der­gast. “Your as­so­ciate has a rather queer sense of hu­mor.”

“In­deed.”

“Now what can I do for you gen­tle­men?”

Pen­der­gast re­moved a bun­dle from un­der his suit, loose­ly wrapped in pa­per. “I would like you to ex­am­ine this dress,” he said, un­rolling the bun­dle across the cu­ra­tor’s desk. She backed up slight­ly in hor­ror as the true di­men­sions of its filth were ex­posed to view.

O’Shaugh­nessy thought he de­tect­ed a pe­cu­liar smell. Very pe­cu­liar. It oc­curred to him that maybe, just maybe, Pen­der­gast wasn’t on the take—that this was for re­al.

“Good lord. Please,” she said, step­ping far­ther back and putting a hand be­fore her face. “I do not do po­lice work. Take this re­volt­ing thing away.”

“This re­volt­ing thing, Dr. Welles­ley, be­longed to a nine­teen-​year-​old girl who was mur­dered over a hun­dred years ago, dis­sect­ed, dis­mem­bered, and walled up in a tun­nel in low­er Man­hat­tan. Sewn up in­to the dress was a note, which the girl wrote in her own blood. It gave her name, age, and ad­dress. Noth­ing else—ink of that sort does not en­cour­age pro­lix­ity. It was the note of a girl who knew she was about to die. She knew that no one would help her, no one would save her. Her on­ly wish was that her body be iden­ti­fied—that she not be for­got­ten. I could not help her then, but I am try­ing to now. That is why I am here.” The dress seemed to quiver slight­ly, and O’Shaugh­nessy re­al­ized with a start that the FBI agent’s hand was trem­bling with emo­tion. At least, that’s how it looked to him. That a law of­fi­cer would ac­tu­al­ly care about some­thing like this was a rev­ela­tion.

The si­lence that fol­lowed Pen­der­gast’s state­ment was pro­found.

With­out a word, Welles­ley bent down over the dress, fin­gered it, turned up its lin­ing, gen­tly stretched the ma­te­ri­al in sev­er­al di­rec­tions. Reach­ing in­to a draw­er of her desk, she pulled out a large mag­ni­fy­ing glass and be­gan ex­am­in­ing the stitch­ing and fab­ric. Sev­er­al min­utes passed. Then she sighed and sat down in her chair.

“This is a typ­ical work­house gar­ment,” she said. “Stan­dard is­sue in the lat­ter part of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. Cheap woolen fab­ric for the ex­te­ri­or, scratchy and coarse but ac­tu­al­ly quite warm, lined with undyed cot­ton. You can see from the pat­tern cuts and stitch­ing that it was prob­ably made by the girl her­self, us­ing fab­ric is­sued to her by the work­house. The fab­rics came in sev­er­al ba­sic col­ors—green, blue, gray, and black.”

“Any idea which work­house?”

“Im­pos­si­ble to say. Nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry Man­hat­tan had quite a few of them. They were called ‘hous­es of in­dus­try.’ They took in aban­doned chil­dren, or­phans, and run­aways. Harsh, cru­el places, run by the so-​called re­li­gious.”

“Can you give me a more pre­cise date on the dress?”

“Not with any ac­cu­ra­cy. It seems to be a rather pa­thet­ic im­ita­tion of a style pop­ular in the ear­ly eigh­teen eight­ies, called a Maude Makin. Work­house girls usu­al­ly tried to copy dress­es they liked out of pop­ular mag­azines and pen­ny press ad­ver­tise­ments.” Dr. Welles­ley sighed, shrugged. “That’s it, I’m afraid.”

“If any­thing else comes to mind, I can be con­tact­ed through Sergeant O’Shaugh­nessy here.”

Dr. Welles­ley glanced up at O’Shaugh­nessy’s name tag, then nod­ded.

“Thank you for your time.” The FBI agent be­gan rolling up the dress. “That was a love­ly ex­hi­bi­tion you cu­rat­ed last year, by the way.”

Dr. Welles­ley nod­ded again.

“Un­like most mu­se­um ex­hi­bi­tions, it had wit. Take the houp­pelande sec­tion. I found it de­light­ful­ly amus­ing.”

Con­cealed in its wrap­per, the dress lost its pow­er to hor­ri­fy. The feel­ing of gloom that had set­tled over the of­fice be­gan to lift. O’Shaugh­nessy found him­self echo­ing Custer: what was an FBI agent do­ing mess­ing around with a case 120 years old?

“Thank you for notic­ing what none of the crit­ics did,” the wom­an replied. “Yes, I meant it to be fun. When you fi­nal­ly un­der­stand it, hu­man dress—be­yond what is nec­es­sary for warmth and mod­esty—can be mar­velous­ly ab­surd.”

Pen­der­gast stood. “Dr. Welles­ley, your ex­per­tise has been most valu­able.”

Dr. Welles­ley rose as well. “Please call me Sophia.” O’Shaugh­nessy no­ticed her look­ing at Pen­der­gast with new in­ter­est.

Pen­der­gast bowed and smiled. Then he turned to go. The cu­ra­tor came around her desk to see him through the wait­ing room. At the out­er door, Sophia Welles­ley paused, blushed, and said, “I hope to see you again, Mr. Pen­der­gast. Per­haps soon. Per­haps for din­ner.” There was a brief si­lence. Pen­der­gast said noth­ing.

“Well,” said the cu­ra­tor crisply, “you know where to reach me.”

They walked back through the thronged, trea­sure-​laden halls, past the Khmer de­vatars, past the reli­quar­ies en­crust­ed with gems, past the Greek stat­ues and the Red At­tic vas­es, down the great crowd­ed steps to Fifth Av­enue. O’Shaugh­nessy whis­tled an as­trin­gent lit­tle cho­rus of Sade’s “Smooth Op­er­ator.” If Pen­der­gast heard, he gave no sign.

Mo­ments lat­er, O’Shaugh­nessy was slid­ing in­to the white leather co­coon of the Rolls. When the door shut with a sol­id, re­as­sur­ing thunk, blessed si­lence re­turned. He still couldn’t fig­ure out what to make of Pen­der­gast—maybe the guy, for all his ex­pen­sive tastes, was on the up-​and-​up. He sure as hell knew this: he was go­ing to keep his eyes and ears open.

“Across the park to the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry, please,” Pen­der­gast told the driv­er. As the car ac­cel­er­at­ed in­to traf­fic, the agent turned to O’Shaugh­nessy. “How is it that an Irish po­lice­man came to love Ital­ian opera?”

O’Shaugh­nessy gave a start. When had he men­tioned opera?

“You dis­guise your thoughts poor­ly, Sergeant. While you were look­ing at the draw­ings from The Bar­ber of Seville, I saw your right in­dex fin­ger un­con­scious­ly tap­ping the rhythm to Rosi­na’s aria, ‘Una voce poco fa.’”

O’Shaugh­nessy stared at Pen­der­gast. “I bet you think you’re a re­al Sher­lock Holmes.”

“One does not of­ten find a po­lice­man with a love of opera.”

“What about you? You like opera?” O’Shaugh­nessy threw the ques­tion back at him.

“I loathe it. Opera was the tele­vi­sion of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry: loud, vul­gar, and gar­ish, with plots that could on­ly be called in­fan­tile.”

For the first time, O’Shaugh­nessy smiled. He shook his head. “Pen­der­gast, all I can say is, your pow­ers of ob­ser­va­tion aren’t near­ly as formidable as you seem to think. Je­sus, what a philis­tine.”

His smile widened as he saw a look of ir­ri­ta­tion cloud the FBI agent’s face for no more than an in­stant. He had fi­nal­ly got­ten to him.

FOUR

NO­RA USH­ERED PEN­DER­GAST and the dour-​look­ing lit­tle po­lice­man through the door­way of Cen­tral Archives, a lit­tle re­lieved she’d had no trou­ble find­ing her way this time.

Pen­der­gast paused in­side the door, in­hal­ing deeply. “Ah­hh. The smell of his­to­ry. Drink it in, Sergeant.” He put out his hands, fin­gers ex­tend­ed, as if to warm them on the doc­uments with­in.

Rein­hart Puck ad­vanced to­ward Pen­der­gast, head wag­ging. He wiped his shin­ing pate with a hand­ker­chief, then stuffed the cloth in­to a pock­et with awk­ward fin­gers. The sight of the FBI agent seemed to both please and alarm him. “Dr. Pen­der­gast,” he said. “A plea­sure. I don’t think we’ve met since, let’s see, the Trou­bles of ’95. Did you take that trip to Tas­ma­nia?”

“I did in­deed, thank you for re­mem­ber­ing. And my knowl­edge of Aus­tralian flo­ra has in­creased pro­por­tion­ate­ly.”

“And how’s the, er, your de­part­ment?”

“Splen­did,” said Pen­der­gast. “Al­low me to in­tro­duce Sergeant O’Shaugh­nessy.”

The po­lice­man stepped out from be­hind Pen­der­gast, and Puck’s face fell. “Oh, dear. There is a rule, you see. Non-​Mu­se­um em­ploy­ees—”

“I can vouch for him,” said Pen­der­gast, a note of fi­nal­ity in his voice. “He is an out­stand­ing mem­ber of the po­lice force of our city.”

“I see, I see,” Puck said un­hap­pi­ly, as he worked the locks. “Well, you’ll all have to sign in, you know.” He turned away from the door. “And this is Mr. Gibbs.”

Os­car Gibbs nod­ded curt­ly. He was small, com­pact, and African-​Amer­ican, with hair­less arms and a close­ly shaven head. For his size, his build was so sol­id he seemed fash­ioned out of butch­er-​block. He was cov­ered with dust and looked dis­tinct­ly un­hap­py to be there.

“Mr. Gibbs has kind­ly set up ev­ery­thing for you in the Re­search Room,” said Puck. “We’ll go through the for­mal­ities, and then if you’ll be so good as to fol­low me?”

They signed the book, then ad­vanced in­to the gloom, Puck light­ing the way, as be­fore, by the banks of ivory switch­es. Af­ter what seemed an in­ter­minable jour­ney, they ar­rived at a door set in­to the plas­tered rear wall of the Archives, with a small win­dow of glass and met­al mesh­ing. With a heavy jan­gle of keys, Puck la­bo­ri­ous­ly un­locked it, then held it open for No­ra. She stepped in­side. The lights came up and she al­most gasped in as­ton­ish­ment.

Pol­ished oak pan­el­ing rose from a mar­ble floor to an or­nate, plas­tered and gild­ed ceil­ing of Ro­co­co splen­dor. Mas­sive oak­en ta­bles with claw feet dom­inat­ed the cen­ter of the room, sur­round­ed by oak chairs with red leather seats and backs. Heavy chan­de­liers of worked cop­per and crys­tal hung sus­pend­ed above each ta­ble. Two of the ta­bles were cov­ered by a va­ri­ety of ob­jects, and a third had been laid out with box­es, books, and pa­pers. A mas­sive, bricked-​up fire­place, sur­round­ed by pink mar­ble, stood at the far end of the room. Ev­ery­thing was hoary with the ac­cu­mu­lat­ed pati­na of years.

“This is in­cred­ible,” said No­ra.

“Yes, in­deed,” said Puck. “One of the finest rooms in the Mu­se­um. His­tor­ical re­search used to be very im­por­tant.” He sighed. “Times have changed. O tem­po, O mores, and all that. Please re­move all writ­ing in­stru­ments from your pock­ets, and put on those linen gloves be­fore han­dling any of the ob­jects. I will need to take your brief­case, Doc­tor.” He glanced dis­ap­prov­ing­ly at the gun and hand­cuffs dan­gling from O’Shaugh­nessy’s ser­vice belt, but said noth­ing.

They laid their pens and pen­cils in­to a prof­fered tray. No­ra and the oth­ers slid on pairs of spot­less gloves.

“I will with­draw. When you are ready to leave, call me on that tele­phone. Ex­ten­sion 4240. If you want pho­to­copies of any­thing, fill out one of these sheets.”

The door eased shut. There was the sound of a key turn­ing in a lock.

“Did he just lock us in?” O’Shaugh­nessy asked.

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “Stan­dard pro­ce­dure.”

O’Shaugh­nessy stepped back in­to the gloom. He was an odd man, No­ra thought; qui­et, in­scrutable, hand­some in a Black Irish kind of way. Pen­der­gast seemed to like him. O’Shaugh­nessy, on the oth­er hand, looked as if he didn’t like any­body.

The agent clasped his hands be­hind his back and made a slow cir­cuit of the first ta­ble, peer­ing at each ob­ject in turn. He did the same with the sec­ond ta­ble, then moved to the third ta­ble, laden with its as­sort­ed pa­pers.

“Let’s see this in­ven­to­ry you men­tioned,” he said to No­ra.

No­ra point­ed out the promis­so­ry note with the in­ven­to­ry she had found the day be­fore. Pen­der­gast looked it over, and then, pa­per in hand, made an­oth­er cir­cuit. He nod­ded at a stuffed okapi. “That came from Shot­tum’s,” he said. “And that.” He nod­ded to the ele­phant’s-​foot box. “Those three pe­nis sheaths and the right whale bac­ulum. The Ji­varo shrunk­en head. All from Shot­tum’s, pay­ment to Mc­Fad­den for his work.” He bent down to ex­am­ine the shrunk­en head. “A fraud. Mon­key, not hu­man.” He glanced up at her. “Dr. Kel­ly, would you mind look­ing through the pa­pers while I ex­am­ine these ob­jects?”

No­ra sat down at the third ta­ble. There was the small box of Shot­tum’s cor­re­spon­dence, along with an­oth­er, much larg­er, box and two binders—Mc­Fad­den’s pa­pers, ap­par­ent­ly. No­ra opened the Shot­tum box first. As Puck had not­ed, the con­tents were in a re­mark­able state of dis­ar­ray. What few let­ters were here were all in the same vein: ques­tions about clas­si­fi­ca­tions and iden­ti­fi­ca­tions, tiffs with oth­er sci­en­tists over var­ious ar­cane sub­jects. It il­lu­mi­nat­ed a cu­ri­ous cor­ner of nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry nat­ural his­to­ry, but shed no light on a heinous nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry crime. As she read through the brief cor­re­spon­dence, a pic­ture of J. C. Shot­tum be­gan to form in her mind. It was not the im­age of a se­ri­al killer. He seemed a harm­less enough man, fussy, nar­row, a lit­tle queru­lous per­haps, bristling with aca­dem­ic ri­val­ries. The man’s in­ter­ests seemed ex­clu­sive­ly re­lat­ed to nat­ural his­to­ry. Of course, you can nev­er tell, she thought, turn­ing over the musty pages.

Find­ing noth­ing of par­tic­ular in­ter­est, No­ra turned to the much larg­er—and neater—box­es of Tin­bury Mc­Fad­den’s cor­re­spon­dence. They were most­ly notes from the long-​dead cu­ra­tor on var­ious odd sub­jects, writ­ten in a fa­nat­ical­ly small hand: lists of clas­si­fi­ca­tions of plants and an­imals, draw­ings of var­ious flow­ers, some quite good. At the bot­tom was a thick pack­et of cor­re­spon­dence to and from var­ious men of sci­ence and col­lec­tors, held to­geth­er by an an­cient string that flew apart when she touched it. She rif­fled through them, ar­riv­ing fi­nal­ly at a pack­et of let­ters from Shot­tum to Mc­Fad­den. The first be­gan, “My Es­teemed Col­league.”

I here­with trans­mit to you a Cu­ri­ous Rel­ic said to be from the Isle of Kut, off the coast of In­do­chine, de­pict­ing a simi­an in coito with a Hin­doo god­dess, carved from wal­rus ivory. Would you be so kind as to iden­ti­fy the species of simi­an?

Your col­league, J. C. Shot­tum

She slid out the next let­ter:

My Dear Col­league,

At the last meet­ing at the Lyceum, Pro­fes­sor Black­wood pre­sent­ed a fos­sil which he claimed was a De­vo­ni­an Age crinoid from the Mont­moren­cy Dolomites. The Pro­fes­sor is sad­ly mis­tak­en. LaFleuve him­self iden­ti­fied the Mont­moren­cy Dolomites as Per­mi­an, and needs make a cor­rec­tive note of it in the next Lyceum Bul­letin . . .

She flipped through the rest. There were let­ters to oth­ers as well, a small cir­cle of like­mind­ed sci­en­tists, in­clud­ing Shot­tum. They were all ob­vi­ous­ly well ac­quaint­ed with one an­oth­er. Per­haps the killer might be found in that cir­cle. It seemed like­ly, since the per­son must have had easy ac­cess to Shot­tum’s Cab­inet—if it wasn’t Shot­tum him­self.

She be­gan to make a list of cor­re­spon­dents and the na­ture of their work. Of course, it was al­ways pos­si­ble this was a waste of time, that the killer might have been the build­ing’s jan­itor or coal man—but then she re­mem­bered the crisp, pro­fes­sion­al scalpel marks on the bones, the al­most sur­gi­cal dis­mem­ber­ments. No, it was a man of sci­ence—that was cer­tain.

Tak­ing out her note­book, she be­gan jot­ting notes.

Let­ters to/from Tin­bury Mc­Fad­den:

COR­RE­SPON­DENT J. C. Shot­tum

SUB­JECTS OF COR­RE­SPON­DENCE Nat­ural his­to­ry, an­thro­pol­ogy, the Lyceum

PO­SI­TION Own­er, Shot­tum’s Cab­inet of Nat­ural Pro­duc­tions and Cu­riosi­ties New York

DATES OF COR­RE­SPON­DENCE 1869–1881

COR­RE­SPON­DENT Prof. Al­bert Black­wood

SUB­JECTS OF COR­RE­SPON­DENCE The Lyceum, the Mu­se­um

PO­SI­TION Founder, New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry

DATES OF COR­RE­SPON­DENCE 1865–1878

COR­RE­SPON­DENT Dr. Asa Stone Gilcrease

SUB­JECTS OF COR­RE­SPON­DENCE Birds

PO­SI­TION Or­nithol­ogist New York

DATES OF COR­RE­SPON­DENCE 1875–1887

COR­RE­SPON­DENT Col. Sir Hen­ry C. Throck­mor­ton, Bart., F.R.S.

SUB­JECTS OF COR­RE­SPON­DENCE African mam­mals (big game)

PO­SI­TION Col­lec­tor, ex­plor­er sports­man Lon­don

DATES OF COR­RE­SPON­DENCE 1879–1891

COR­RE­SPON­DENT Prof. Enoch Leng

SUB­JECTS OF COR­RE­SPON­DENCE Clas­si­fi­ca­tion

PO­SI­TION Tax­onomist, chemist New York

DATES OF COR­RE­SPON­DENCE 1872–1881

COR­RE­SPON­DENT Miss Guen­evere LaRue

SUB­JECTS OF COR­RE­SPON­DENCE Chris­tian mis­sions for Bor­rio­boola-​Gha, in the African Con­go

PO­SI­TION Phi­lan­thropist New York

DATES OF COR­RE­SPON­DENCE 1870–1872

COR­RE­SPON­DENT Du­mont Burleigh

SUB­JECTS OF COR­RE­SPON­DENCE Di­nosaur fos­sils, the Lyceum

PO­SI­TION Oil­man, col­lec­tor Cold Spring, New York

DATES OF COR­RE­SPON­DENCE 1875–1881

COR­RE­SPON­DENT Dr. Fer­di­nand Huntt

SUB­JECTS OF COR­RE­SPON­DENCE An­thro­pol­ogy, ar­chae­ol­ogy

PO­SI­TION Sur­geon, col­lec­tor Oys­ter Bay, Long Is­land

DATES OF COR­RE­SPON­DENCE 1869–1879

COR­RE­SPON­DENT Prof. Hi­ram Howlett

SUB­JECTS OF COR­RE­SPON­DENCE Rep­tiles and am­phib­ians

PO­SI­TION Her­petol­ogist Stormhaven, Maine

DATES OF COR­RE­SPON­DENCE 1871–1873

The penul­ti­mate name gave her pause. A sur­geon. Who was Dr. Fer­di­nand Huntt? There were quite a few let­ters from him, writ­ten in a large scrawl on heavy pa­per with a beau­ti­ful­ly en­graved crest. She flipped through them.

My Dear Tin­bury,

With re­gard to the Odin­ga Na­tives, the bar­bar­ic cus­tom of Male Par­tum is still quite preva­lent. When I was in the Vol­ta I had the du­bi­ous priv­ilege of wit­ness­ing child­birth. I was not al­lowed to as­sist, of course, but I could hear the shrieks of the hus­band quite clear­ly as the wife jerked on the rope af­fixed to his gen­italia with ev­ery con­trac­tion she ex­pe­ri­enced. I treat­ed the poor man’s in­juries—se­vere lac­er­ations—fol­low­ing the birth . . .

My Dear Tin­bury,

The Olmec Jade phal­lus I here­with en­close from La Ven­ta, Mex­ico, is for the Mu­se­um, as I un­der­stand you have noth­ing from that ex­treme­ly cu­ri­ous Mex­ican cul­ture . . .

She sort­ed through the pack­et of cor­re­spon­dence, but it was again all in the same vein: Dr. Huntt de­scrib­ing var­ious bizarre med­ical cus­toms he had wit­nessed in his trav­els across Cen­tral Amer­ica and Africa, along with notes that had ap­par­ent­ly ac­com­pa­nied ar­ti­facts sent back to the Mu­se­um. He seemed to have an un­healthy in­ter­est in na­tive sex­ual prac­tices; it made him a prime can­di­date in No­ra’s mind.

She felt a pres­ence be­hind her and turned abrupt­ly. Pen­der­gast stood, arms clasped be­hind his back. He was star­ing down at her notes, and there was a sud­den look on his face that was so grim, so dark, that No­ra felt her flesh crawl.

“You’re al­ways sneak­ing up on me,” she said weak­ly.

“Any­thing in­ter­est­ing?” The ques­tion seemed al­most pro for­ma. No­ra felt sure he had al­ready dis­cov­ered some­thing im­por­tant, some­thing dread­ful, on the list—and yet he did not seem in­clined to share it.

“Noth­ing ob­vi­ous. Have you ev­er heard of this Dr. Fer­di­nand Huntt?”

Pen­der­gast gave the name a cur­so­ry glance, with­out in­ter­est. No­ra be­came aware of the man’s con­spic­uous lack of any scent what­so­ev­er: no smell of to­bac­co, no smell of cologne, noth­ing.

“Huntt,” he said fi­nal­ly. “Yes. A promi­nent North Shore fam­ily. One of the ear­ly pa­trons of the Mu­se­um.” He straight­ened up. “I’ve ex­am­ined ev­ery­thing save the ele­phant’s-​foot box. Would you care to as­sist me?”

She fol­lowed him over to the ta­ble laid out with Tin­bury Mc­Fad­den’s old col­lec­tions, a de­cid­ed­ly mot­ley as­sort­ment. Pen­der­gast’s face had once again re­cov­ered its poise. Now Of­fi­cer O’Shaugh­nessy, look­ing skep­ti­cal, emerged from the shad­ows. No­ra won­dered what, ex­act­ly, the po­lice­man had to do with Pen­der­gast.

They stood be­fore the large, grotesque ele­phant’s foot, re­plete with brass fit­tings.

“So it’s an ele­phant’s foot,” O’Shaugh­nessy said. “So?”

“Not just a foot, Sergeant,” Pen­der­gast replied. “A box, made from an ele­phant’s foot. Quite com­mon among big-​game hunters and col­lec­tors in the last cen­tu­ry. Rather a nice spec­imen, too, if a lit­tle worn.” He turned to No­ra. “Shall we look in­side?”

No­ra un­clasped the fit­tings and lift­ed the top of the box. The gray­ish skin felt rough and nub­bled be­neath her gloved fin­gers. An un­pleas­ant smell rose up. The box was emp­ty.

She glanced over at Pen­der­gast. If the agent was dis­ap­point­ed, he showed no sign.

For a mo­ment, the lit­tle group was still. Then Pen­der­gast him­self bent over the open box. He ex­am­ined it a mo­ment, his body im­mo­bile save for the pale blue eyes. Then his fin­gers shot for­ward and be­gan mov­ing over the sur­face of the box, press­ing here and there, alight­ing at one spot for a mo­ment, then scut­tling on. Sud­den­ly there was a click, and a nar­row draw­er shot out from be­low, rais­ing a cloud of dust. No­ra jumped at the sound.

“Rather clever,” said Pen­der­gast, re­mov­ing a large en­ve­lope, fad­ed and slight­ly foxed, from the draw­er. He turned it over once or twice, spec­ula­tive­ly. Then he ran a gloved fin­ger be­neath the seam, eas­ing it open and with­draw­ing sev­er­al sheets of cream-​laid pa­per. He un­fold­ed them care­ful­ly, passed his hand across the top­most sheet.

And then he be­gan to read.

FIVE

TO MY COL­LEAGUE, Tin­bury Mc­Fad­den

Ju­ly 12, 1881

Es­teemed Col­league,

I write these lines in earnest hope that you will nev­er have need to read them; that I will be able to tear them up and dash them in­to the coal scut­tle, prod­ucts of an over­worked brain and fevered imag­ina­tion. And yet in my soul I know my worst fears have al­ready been proven true. Ev­ery­thing I have un­cov­ered points in­con­tro­vert­ibly to such a fact. I have al­ways been ea­ger to think the best of my fel­low man—af­ter all, are we not all mould­ed from the same clay? The an­cients be­lieved life to have gen­er­at­ed spon­ta­neous­ly with­in the rich mud of the Nile; and who am I to ques­tion the sym­bol­ism, if not the sci­en­tif­ic fact, of such be­lief? And yet there have been Events, Mc­Fad­den; dread­ful events that can sup­port no in­no­cent ex­pla­na­tion.

It is quite pos­si­ble that the de­tails I re­late here­in may cause you to doubt the qual­ity of my mind. Be­fore I pro­ceed, let me as­sure you that I am in full com­mand of my fac­ul­ties. I of­fer this doc­ument as ev­idence, both to my dread­ful the­orem and to the proofs I have un­der­tak­en in its de­fense.

I have spo­ken be­fore of my grow­ing doubts over this busi­ness of Leng. You know, of course, the rea­sons I al­lowed him to take rooms on the third floor of the Cab­inet. His talks at the Lyceum proved the depth of his sci­en­tif­ic and med­ical knowl­edge. In tax­on­omy and chem­istry he has few, if any, peers. The no­tion that en­light­en­ing, per­haps even for­ward-​reach­ing, ex­per­iments would be tak­ing place be­neath my own roof was a pleas­ant one. And, on a prac­ti­cal note, the ad­di­tion­al hard cur­ren­cy of­fered by his rent was not un­wel­come.

At first, my trust in the man seemed ful­ly jus­ti­fied. His cu­ra­to­ri­al work at the Cab­inet proved ex­cel­lent. Al­though he kept high­ly ir­reg­ular hours, he was un­fail­ing­ly po­lite, if a lit­tle re­served. He paid his rent mon­ey prompt­ly, and even of­fered med­ical ad­vice dur­ing the bouts of grippe that plagued me through­out the win­ters of ’73 and ’74.

It is hard to date with any pre­ci­sion my first glim­mer­ings of sus­pi­cion. Per­haps it be­gan with what, in my per­cep­tion, was a grow­ing sense of se­cre­tive­ness about the man’s af­fairs. Al­though he had promised ear­ly on to share the for­mal re­sults of his ex­per­iments, ex­cept for an ini­tial joint in­spec­tion when the lease was signed I was nev­er in­vit­ed to see his cham­bers. As the years passed, he seemed to grow more and more ab­sorbed in his own stud­ies, and I was forced to take on much of the cu­ra­to­ri­al du­ties for the Cab­inet my­self.

I had al­ways be­lieved Leng to be rather sen­si­tive about his work. You will no doubt re­call the ear­ly and some­what ec­cen­tric talk on Bod­ily Hu­mours he pre­sent­ed to the Lyceum. It was not well re­ceived—some mem­bers even had the ill breed­ing to tit­ter on one or two oc­ca­sions dur­ing the lec­ture—and hence­forth Leng nev­er re­turned to the sub­ject. His fu­ture talks were all mod­els of tra­di­tion­al schol­ar­ship. So at first, I as­cribed his hes­itan­cy to dis­cuss per­son­al work to this same in­nate cir­cum­spec­tion. How­ev­er, as time went on, I be­gan to re­al­ize that what I had thought to be pro­fes­sion­al shy­ness was, in fact, ac­tive con­ceal­ment.

One spring evening ear­li­er this year, I had oc­ca­sion to stay on very late at the Cab­inet, fin­ish­ing work on an ac­cu­mu­la­tion of doc­uments and prepar­ing the ex­hi­bi­tion space for my lat­est ac­qui­si­tion, the dou­ble-​brained child, of which we have pre­vi­ous­ly spo­ken. This lat­ter task proved far more en­gross­ing than the tire­some pa­per­work, and I was rather sur­prised to hear the city bell toll mid­night.

It was in the mo­ments fol­low­ing, as I stood, lis­ten­ing to the echoes of the bell die away, that I be­came aware of an­oth­er sound. It came from over my head: a kind of heavy shuf­fling, as if of a man bear­ing some heavy bur­den. I can­not tell you why pre­cise­ly, Mc­Fad­den, but there was some­thing in that sound that sent a thrill of dread cours­ing through me. I lis­tened more in­tent­ly. The sound died away slow­ly, the foot­steps re­treat­ing in­to a more dis­tant room.

Of course there was noth­ing for me to do. In the morn­ing, as I re­flect­ed on the event, I re­al­ized the cul­prit was un­doubt­ed­ly my own tired nerves. Un­less some more sin­is­ter mean­ing should prove to be at­tached to the foot­steps—which seemed a re­mote pos­si­bil­ity—there was no cause for ap­proach­ing Leng on the mat­ter. I as­cribed my alarm to my own per­verse state of mind at the time. I had suc­ceed­ed in cre­at­ing a rather sen­sa­tion­al back­drop for dis­play­ing the dou­ble-​brained child, and no doubt this, along with the late hour, had roused the more mor­bid as­pects of my imag­ina­tion. I re­solved to put the mat­ter be­hind me.

It chanced that some few weeks lat­er—the fifth of Ju­ly, last week, to be pre­cise—an­oth­er event took place to which I most earnest­ly com­mend your at­ten­tion. The cir­cum­stances were sim­ilar: I re­mained late at the Cab­inet, prepar­ing my up­com­ing pa­per for the Lyceum jour­nal. As you know, writ­ing for learned bod­ies such as the Lyceum is dif­fi­cult for me, and I have fall­en in­to cer­tain rou­tines which ease the pro­cess some­what. My old teak­wood writ­ing desk, the fine vel­lum pa­per up­on which this note is now be­ing writ­ten, the fuch­sia-​col­ored ink made by M. Dupin in Paris—these are the pet­ty niceties which make com­po­si­tion less oner­ous. This evening, in­spi­ra­tion came rather more eas­ily than usu­al, how­ev­er, and around half past ten I found it nec­es­sary to sharp­en some new pens be­fore work could con­tin­ue. I turned away from my desk briefly to ef­fect this. When I re­turned I found, to my ut­most as­ton­ish­ment, that the page on which I had been at work had been soiled with some small num­ber of inkstains.

I am most fas­tid­ious with a pen, and was at a loss to ex­plain how this came about. It was on­ly when I took up my blot­ter to clear away the stains that I re­al­ized they dif­fered slight­ly in col­or from the fuch­sia of my pen, be­ing a some­what lighter shade. And when I blot­ted them aside, I re­al­ized they were of a thick­er, more vis­cous, con­sis­ten­cy than my French ink.

Imag­ine my hor­ror, then, when a fresh drop land­ed up­on my wrist as I was in the act of lift­ing the blot­ter from the pa­per.

Im­me­di­ate­ly, I lift­ed my eyes to the ceil­ing above my head. What dev­il­ment was this? A small but widen­ing crim­son stain was leach­ing be­tween the floor­boards of Leng’s cham­bers over­head.

It was the work of a mo­ment to mount the stairs and pound up­on his door. I can­not de­scribe pre­cise­ly the se­quence of thoughts that ran through my mind—fore­most among them, how­ev­er, was fear that the Doc­tor had fall­en vic­tim to foul play. There had been ru­mors cir­cu­lat­ing through the neigh­bor­hood of a cer­tain vi­cious and preda­to­ry mur­der­er, but one pays lit­tle heed to the gos­sip of the low­er class­es, and alas, death is a fre­quent vis­itor to the Five Points.

Leng an­swered my fran­tic sum­mons in due course, sound­ing a tri­fle wind­ed. An ac­ci­dent, he said through the door: he had cut his arm rather severe­ly dur­ing an ex­per­imen­tal pro­ce­dure. He de­clined my of­fers of as­sis­tance, and said he had al­ready done the nec­es­sary su­tur­ing him­self. He re­gret­ted the in­ci­dent, but re­fused to open the door. At last I went away, riv­en by per­plex­ity and doubt.

The morn­ing fol­low­ing, Leng ap­peared at my doorstep. He had nev­er called on me at my res­idence be­fore, and I was sur­prised to see him. I ob­served that one arm had been ban­daged. He apol­ogized pro­fuse­ly for the in­con­ve­nience of the pre­vi­ous night. I in­vit­ed him in­side, but he would not stay. With an­oth­er apol­ogy, he took his leave.

I watched with un­set­tled heart as he de­scend­ed the walk and stepped in­to an om­nibus. I pray you will do the hon­or of un­der­stand­ing me when I say that Leng’s vis­it, com­ing up­on the heels of such strange events at the Cab­inet, had pre­cise­ly the op­po­site ef­fect to which he had in­tend­ed. I felt now more sure than ev­er that, what­ev­er it was he was about, it would not stand up to scruti­ny in the hon­est light of day.

I fear I can write no more this evening. I will hide this let­ter in­side the ele­phant’s-​foot box that, along with a group of cu­riosi­ties, is be­ing for­ward­ed to you at the Mu­se­um in two days’ time. God will­ing, I will find the for­ti­tude to re­turn to this and con­clude it on the mor­row.

Ju­ly 13, 1881

I must now sum­mon the strength of will to com­plete my nar­ra­tive.

In the af­ter­math of Leng’s vis­it, I found my­self in the grip of a ter­rif­ic in­ter­nal strug­gle. A sense of sci­en­tif­ic ide­al­ism, cou­pled per­haps with pru­dence, ar­gued that I should take the man’s ex­pla­na­tion at its face val­ue. Yet an­oth­er in­ner voice ar­gued that it was be­hold­en on me, as a gen­tle­man and a man of hon­or, to learn the truth for my­self.

At last I re­solved to dis­cov­er the na­ture of the man’s ex­per­iments. If they proved be­nign, I could be ac­cused of in­quis­itive­ness—noth­ing more.

Per­haps you will con­sid­er me the vic­tim of un­man­ly feel­ings in this mat­ter. I can on­ly say that those vile crim­son drops now seemed as im­print­ed up­on my brain as they had been up­on my wrist and my writ­ing-​pa­per. There was some­thing about Leng—about the man­ner in which he had looked at me, there up­on my doorstep—that made me feel al­most a stranger in my own home. There was some man­ner of chill spec­ula­tive­ness be­hind those in­dif­fer­ent-​look­ing eyes that froze my blood. I could no longer tol­er­ate hav­ing the man un­der my roof with­out know­ing the full breadth of his work.

By some per­son­al caprice un­fath­omable to me, Leng had re­cent­ly be­gun do­nat­ing his med­ical ser­vices to a few lo­cal Hous­es of In­dus­try. As a re­sult, he was in­vari­ably ab­sent from his cham­bers dur­ing the lat­ter part of the af­ter­noon. It was on Mon­day last, Ju­ly 11, that I saw him through the front win­dows of the Cab­inet. He was cross­ing the av­enue, clear­ly on his way to the work­hous­es.

I knew this was no ac­ci­dent: fate had af­ford­ed me this op­por­tu­ni­ty.

It was with some trep­ida­tion that I as­cend­ed to the third floor. Leng had changed the lock on the door lead­ing in­to his room, but I re­tained a skele­ton key which turned the wards and un­shot the bolt. I let the door fall open be­fore me, then stepped in­side.

Leng had dec­orat­ed the front room in­to the sem­blance of a par­lor. I was struck by his choice of dec­ora­tion: gaudy sport­ing prints were on the walls, and the ta­bles were aclut­ter with tabloids and pen­ny-​dread­fuls. Leng had al­ways struck me as a man of el­egance and re­fine­ment; yet this room seemed to re­flect the tastes of un­cul­tured youth. It was the sort of dive a pool-​room tramp or a girl of low breed­ing would find invit­ing. There was a pall of dust over ev­ery­thing, as if Leng had spent lit­tle time in the par­lor of late.

A heavy bro­cade cur­tain had been hung over the door­way lead­ing in­to the rear rooms. I lift­ed it aside with the end of my walk­ing stick. I thought I had been pre­pared for al­most any­thing, but what I found was, per­haps, what I least ex­pect­ed.

The rooms were al­most en­tire­ly emp­ty. There were at least half a dozen large ta­bles, here and there, whose scarred sur­faces bore mute tes­ti­mo­ny to hours of ex­per­imen­tal la­bor. But they were de­void of fur­nish­ing. There was a strong am­mo­ni­ac smell in the air of these rooms that al­most choked me. In one draw­er I found sev­er­al blunt scalpels. All the oth­er draw­ers I ex­am­ined were emp­ty, save for dust mites and spi­ders.

Af­ter much search­ing, I lo­cat­ed the spot in the floor­boards through which the blood had seeped a few nights be­fore. It seemed to have been etched clean with acid; aqua re­gia, judg­ing by the odor. I glanced around at the walls then, and no­ticed oth­er patch­es, some large, oth­ers small, that al­so seemed to in­di­cate re­cent clean­ing.

I must con­fess to feel­ing rather a fool at that mo­ment. There was noth­ing here to ex­cite alarm; noth­ing that would rouse the faintest trace of sus­pi­cion in even the most per­spi­ca­cious po­lice­man. And yet the sense of dread re­fused to whol­ly leave me. There was some­thing about the odd­ly dec­orat­ed par­lor, the smell of chem­icals, the metic­ulous­ly cleaned walls and floor, that trou­bled one. Why were these hid­den back rooms clean, while the par­lor had been al­lowed to gath­er dust?

It was at that mo­ment I re­mem­bered the base­ment.

Years be­fore, Leng had asked, in an off­hand way, if he could use the old coal tun­nel in the base­ment for stor­ing ex­cess lab­ora­to­ry equip­ment. The tun­nel had fall­en in­to dis­use a few years ear­li­er, with the in­stal­la­tion of a new boil­er, and I had no need of it my­self. I had giv­en him the key and prompt­ly for­got­ten the mat­ter.

My feel­ings on de­scend­ing the cel­lar stair­way be­hind the Cab­inet can scarce­ly be de­scribed. On one oc­ca­sion I halt­ed, won­der­ing if I should sum­mon an es­cort. But once again, sane rea­son­ing pre­vailed. There was no sign of foul play. No—the on­ly thing for it was to pro­ceed my­self.

Leng had af­fixed a pad­lock to the coal cel­lar door. See­ing this, I was mo­men­tar­ily over­come by a sense of re­lief. I had done my ut­most; there was noth­ing else but mount the stairs. I even went so far as to turn around and take the first step. Then I stopped. The same im­pulse that had brought me this far would not let me leave un­til I had seen this bad busi­ness through.

I raised my foot to kick in the door. Then I hes­itat­ed. If I could con­trive to re­move the lock with a pair of bolt cut­ters, I rea­soned, Leng would think it the work of a sneak-​thief.

It was the work of five min­utes to re­trieve the nec­es­sary im­ple­ment and cut through the hasp of the lock. I dropped it to the ground, then pushed the door wide, al­low­ing the af­ter­noon light to stream down the stair­way be­hind me.

Im­me­di­ate­ly up­on en­ter­ing, I was over­whelmed with far dif­fer­ent sen­sa­tions than those that had gripped me on the third floor. What­ev­er work had ceased in Leng’s cham­bers was, clear­ly, still ac­tive here.

Once again, it was the odor I no­ticed first. As be­fore, there was a smell of caus­tic reagents, per­haps mixed with formalde­hyde or ether. But these were masked by some­thing much rich­er and more pow­er­ful. It was a scent I rec­og­nized from pass­ing the hog butcheries on Pearl and Wa­ter Streets: it was the smell of a slaugh­ter­house.

The light fil­ter­ing down the rear stairs made it un­nec­es­sary for me to ig­nite the gas lamps. Here, too, were nu­mer­ous ta­bles: but these ta­bles were cov­ered with a com­pli­cat­ed sprawl of med­ical in­stru­ments, sur­gi­cal ap­pa­ra­tus, beakers, and re­torts. One ta­ble con­tained per­haps three score small vials of light am­ber liq­uid, care­ful­ly num­bered and tagged. A vast ar­ray of chem­icals were ar­ranged in cab­inets against the walls. Saw­dust had been scat­tered across the floor. It was damp in places; scuff­ing it with the toe of my boot, I dis­cov­ered that it had been thrown down to ab­sorb a rather large quan­ti­ty of blood.

I knew now that my ap­pre­hen­sions were not en­tire­ly with­out mer­it. And yet, I told my­self, there was still noth­ing to raise alarm here: dis­sec­tions were, af­ter all, a cor­ner­stone of sci­ence.

On the clos­est ta­ble was a thick sheaf of care­ful­ly jot­ted notes, gath­ered in­to a leather-​bound jour­nal. They were penned in Leng’s dis­tinc­tive hand. I turned to these with re­lief. At last, I would learn what it was Leng had been work­ing to­wards. Sure­ly some no­ble sci­en­tif­ic pur­pose would emerge from these pages, to give the lie to my fears.

The jour­nal did no such thing.

You know, old friend, that I am a man of sci­ence. I have nev­er been what you might call a God-​fear­ing fel­low. But I feared God that day—or rather, I feared his wrath, that such un­holy deeds—deeds wor­thy of Moloch him­self—had been com­mit­ted be­neath my roof.

Leng’s jour­nal spelt it out in un­wa­ver­ing, di­abol­ical de­tail. It was per­haps the clear­est, most me­thod­ical set of sci­en­tif­ic notes it has been my eter­nal mis­for­tune to come across. There is no kind of ex­plana­to­ry gloss I can place up­on his ex­per­iments; noth­ing, in fact, I can do but spell it all out as plain­ly and suc­cinct­ly as I can.

For the last eight years, Leng has been work­ing to per­fect a method of pro­long­ing hu­man life. His own life, by ev­idence of the no­ta­tions and record­ings in the jour­nal. But—be­fore God, Tin­bury—he was us­ing oth­er hu­man be­ings as ma­te­ri­al. His vic­tims seemed made up al­most en­tire­ly of young adults. Again and again, his jour­nal men­tioned dis­sec­tions of hu­man cra­ni­ums and spinal columns, the lat­ter on which he seems to have fo­cused his de­praved at­ten­tions. The most re­cent en­tries cen­tered par­tic­ular­ly on the cau­da equina, the gan­glion of nerves at the base of the spine.

I read for ten, then twen­ty min­utes, frozen with fas­ci­na­tion and hor­ror. Then I dropped the ab­hor­rent doc­ument back on­to the ta­ble and stepped away. Per­haps I was a lit­tle mad at that point, af­ter all; be­cause I still con­trived to find log­ic in all of this. Body-​snatch­ing the re­cent dead from grave­yards is an un­for­tu­nate but nec­es­sary prac­tice in the med­ical cli­mate of our day, I told my­self. Ca­dav­ers for med­ical re­search re­main in crit­ical­ly short sup­ply, and there is no way to sup­ply the need with­out re­sort­ing to grave-​rob­bing. Even the most re­spectable sur­geons need re­sort to it, I told my­self. And even though Leng’s at­tempts at ar­ti­fi­cial­ly pro­long­ing life were clear­ly be­yond the pale, it was still pos­si­ble he might un­in­ten­tion­al­ly achieve oth­er break­throughs that would have ben­efi­cial ef­fects . . .

It was at that point, I be­lieve, that I first no­ticed the sound.

To my left, there was a ta­ble I had not tak­en note of be­fore. A large oil­cloth had been spread over it, cov­er­ing some­thing large and rather bulky. As I watched, the faint sound came again, from be­neath the oil­cloth: the sound of some an­imal dis­pos­sessed of tongue, palate, vo­cal cords.

I can­not ex­plain where I found the strength to ap­proach it, oth­er than my own over­pow­er­ing need to know. I stepped for­ward, and then—be­fore my res­olu­tion could fal­ter—I gripped the greasy cloth and drew it away.

The sight un­cov­ered in that dim light will haunt me un­til my last day. It lay up­on its stom­ach. A gap­ing hole lay where the base of the spine had once been. The sound I had heard was, it seemed to me, the es­cap­ing gas­es of de­cay.

You might have thought me in­ca­pable of reg­is­ter­ing fresh shock at this point. Yet I no­ticed, with a ris­ing sense of un­re­al­ity, that both the corpse and the wound ap­peared fresh.

I hes­itat­ed for per­haps five, per­haps ten sec­onds. Then I drew clos­er, my mind pos­sessed by one thought, and one thought on­ly. Could this be the body that had bled so pro­fuse­ly on Leng’s floor? How, then, to ex­plain the raw­ness of the wound? Was it pos­si­ble—even con­ceiv­able—that Leng would make use of two corpses with­in the span of a sin­gle week?

I had come this far: I had to know all. I reached for­ward, gin­ger­ly, to turn the body and check its li­vid­ity.

The skin felt sup­ple, the flesh warm in the hu­mid sum­mer cel­lar. As I turned the body over and the face was ex­posed, I saw to my tran­scen­dent hor­ror that a blood-​soaked rag had been knot­ted around the mouth. I snatched my hand away; the thing rolled back on­to the ta­ble, face up­wards.

I stepped back, reel­ing. In my shock, I did not im­me­di­ate­ly un­der­stand the ter­ri­ble im­port of that blood-​soaked rag. I think if I had, I would have turned and fled that place—and in so do­ing been spared the fi­nal hor­ror.

For it was then, Mc­Fad­den, that the eyes above the rag flut­tered open. They had once been hu­man, but pain and ter­ror had riv­en all hu­man­ity from their ex­pres­sion.

As I stood, trans­fixed by fear, there came an­oth­er low moan.

It was, I knew now, not gas es­cap­ing from a corpse. And this was not the work of a man who traf­ficked with body snatch­ers, with corpses stolen from grave­yards. This poor crea­ture on the ta­ble was still alive. Leng prac­ticed his abom­inable work on those who still lived.

Even as I watched, the hor­ri­ble, pitiable thing on the ta­ble moaned once more, then ex­pired. Some­how, I had the pres­ence of mind to re­place the body as I had found it, cov­er it with the oil­cloth, close the door, and climb up out of that char­nel pit in­to the land of the liv­ing . . .

I have bare­ly moved from my cham­bers with­in the Cab­inet since. I have been try­ing to gath­er courage for what I know in my heart re­mains to be done. You must see now, dear col­league, that there can be no mis­take, no oth­er ex­pla­na­tion, for what I found in the base­ment. Leng’s jour­nal was far too com­pre­hen­sive, too di­abol­ical­ly de­tailed, for there to be any mis­ap­pre­hen­sion. As fur­ther ev­idence, on the at­tached sheet I have re­pro­duced, from mem­ory, some of the sci­en­tif­ic ob­ser­va­tions and pro­ce­dures this mon­strous man record­ed with­in its pages. I would go to the po­lice, ex­cept I feel that on­ly I can—

But hark! I hear his foot­step on the stair even now. I must re­turn this let­ter to its hid­ing place and con­clude to­mor­row.

God give me the strength for what I must now do.

SIX

ROGER BRIS­BANE LEANED back in his of­fice chair, his eyes roam­ing the glass ex­panse of desk that lay be­fore him. It was a long, en­joy­able per­am­bu­la­tion: Bris­bane liked or­der, pu­ri­ty, sim­plic­ity, and the desk shone with a mir­ror-​like per­fec­tion. At last, his gaze came to the case of jew­els. It was that time of day when a lance of sun­light shot through the case, turn­ing its oc­cu­pants in­to glit­ter­ing spheres and ovals of en­tan­gled light and col­or. One could call an emer­ald “green” or a sap­phire “blue,” but the words did no jus­tice to the ac­tu­al col­ors. There were no ad­equate words for such col­ors in any hu­man lan­guage.

Jew­els. They last­ed for­ev­er, so hard and cold and pure, so im­per­vi­ous to de­cay. Al­ways beau­ti­ful, al­ways per­fect, al­ways as fresh as the day they were born in unimag­in­able heat and pres­sure. So un­like hu­man be­ings, with their opaque rub­bery flesh and their odor­if­er­ous de­scent from birth to the grave—a sto­ry of drool, se­men, and tears. He should have be­come a gemol­ogist. He would have been much hap­pi­er sur­round­ed by these blooms of pure light. The law ca­reer his fa­ther had cho­sen for him was noth­ing more than a vile pa­rade of hu­man fail­ure. And his job in the Mu­se­um brought him in con­tact with that fail­ure, day in and day out, in stark il­lu­mi­na­tion.

He turned to lean over a com­put­er print­out with a sigh. It was now clear the Mu­se­um should nev­er have bor­rowed one hun­dred mil­lion for its new state-​of-​the-​art plan­etar­ium. More cuts were need­ed. Heads would have to roll. Well, at least that shouldn’t be too hard to ac­com­plish. The Mu­se­um was full of use­less, tweedy, over­paid cu­ra­tors and func­tionar­ies, al­ways whin­ing about bud­get cuts, nev­er an­swer­ing their phones, al­ways off on some re­search trip spend­ing the Mu­se­um’s mon­ey or writ­ing books that no­body ev­er read. Cushy jobs, sinecures, un­able to be fired be­cause of tenure—un­less ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances ex­ist­ed.

He put the print­out through a near­by shred­der, then opened a draw­er and pulled out sev­er­al tied pack­ets of in­ter-​of­fice cor­re­spon­dence. The mail of a dozen like­ly can­di­dates, in­ter­cept­ed thanks to a man in the mail­room who had been caught or­ga­niz­ing a Su­per Bowl pool on Mu­se­um time. With any luck, he’d find plen­ty of ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances in­side. It was eas­ier—and eas­ier to jus­ti­fy—than scan­ning e-​mail.

Bris­bane shuf­fled the pack­ets with­out in­ter­est. Then he stopped, glanc­ing at one of them. Here was a case in point: this man Puck. He sat in the Archives all day long, do­ing what? Noth­ing, ex­cept caus­ing trou­ble for the Mu­se­um.

He un­tied the pack­et, rif­fled through the en­velopes with­in. On the front and back of each were dozens of lines for ad­dress­es. The en­velopes had a lit­tle red tie string and could be reused un­til they fell apart, sim­ply by adding a new name to the next blank line. And there, on the sec­ond-​to-​last line was Puck’s name. And fol­low­ing it was No­ra’s name.

Bris­bane’s hand tight­ened around the en­ve­lope. What was it that ar­ro­gant FBI agent, Pen­der­gast, had said? Most of the work will be archival in na­ture.

He un­wound the string and slid out a sin­gle piece of pa­per. A whiff of dust rose from the en­ve­lope and Bris­bane hasti­ly raised a pro­tec­tive tis­sue to his nose. Hold­ing the pa­per at arm’s length, he read:

Dear Dr. Kel­ly,

I found an­oth­er small box of pa­pers on Shot­tum’s Cab­inet, which some­how had been re­cent­ly mis­placed. Not near­ly as as­ton­ish­ing as what you have al­ready un­cov­ered, yet in­ter­est­ing in its own way. I will leave it for you in the Archives Read­ing Room.

P.

Col­or crept in­to Bris­bane’s face, then drained out again. It was just as he thought: she was still work­ing for that ar­ro­gant FBI agent, and she was con­tin­uing to en­list Puck’s help. This thing had to be stopped. And Puck had to go. Just look at this note, Bris­bane thought: man­ual­ly typed on what was clear­ly an an­cient type­writ­er. The very in­ef­fi­cien­cy of it made Bris­bane’s blood boil. The Mu­se­um was not a wel­fare pro­gram for ec­centrics. Puck was a fos­silized anachro­nism who should have been put out to pas­ture long be­fore. He would gath­er suit­able ev­idence, then draw up a rec­om­mend­ed ter­mi­na­tion list for the next Ex­ec­utive Com­mit­tee meet­ing. Puck’s name would be at the top.

But what about No­ra? He re­mem­bered the words of the Mu­se­um di­rec­tor, Col­lopy, at their re­cent meet­ing. Douce­ment, douce­ment, the di­rec­tor had mur­mured.

And soft­ly it would be. For now.

SEV­EN

SMITH­BACK STOOD ON the side­walk, mid­way be­tween Colum­bus and Am­ster­dam, gaz­ing spec­ula­tive­ly up at the red-​brick fa­cade be­fore him. One hun­dred eight West Nine­ty-​ninth Street was a broad, pre­war apart­ment house, un­em­bar­rassed by any dis­tin­guish­ing ar­chi­tec­ture, bright in the noon­day sun. The bland ex­te­ri­or didn’t both­er him. What mat­tered lay with­in: a rent-​sta­bi­lized, two-​bed­room apart­ment, near the Mu­se­um, for on­ly eigh­teen hun­dred a month.

He stepped back to­ward the street, giv­ing the neigh­bor­hood a once-​over. It wasn’t the most charm­ing Up­per West Side neigh­bor­hood he had seen, but it had pos­si­bil­ities. Two bums sat on a near­by stoop, drink­ing some­thing out of a pa­per bag. He glanced at his watch. No­ra would be ar­riv­ing in five min­utes. Christ, this was go­ing to be an up­hill bat­tle any­way, if on­ly those bums would take a walk around the cor­ner. He fished in­to his pock­et, found a five dol­lar bill, and saun­tered over.

“Nice day if it don’t rain,” he said.

The bums eyed him sus­pi­cious­ly.

Smith­back bran­dished the five. “Hey, guys, go buy your­self lunch, okay?”

One of them grinned, ex­pos­ing a row of de­cay­ing teeth. “For five bucks? Man, you can’t buy a cup of Star­bucks for five bucks. And my legs hurt.”

“Yeah,” said the oth­er, wip­ing his nose.

Smith­back pulled out a twen­ty.

“Oh, my aching legs—”

“Take it or leave it.”

The clos­est bum took the twen­ty and the pair rose to their feet with histri­on­ic groans and snif­fles. Soon they were shuf­fling to­ward the cor­ner, head­ing no doubt to the near­by liquor store on Broad­way. Smith­back watched their re­treat­ing backs. At least they were harm­less rum­mys, and not crack­heads or worse. He glanced around and saw, right on sched­ule, a blade-​thin wom­an in black come click­ing down the block, a bright, fake lip­stick smile on her face. The re­al es­tate bro­ker.

“You must be Mr. Smith­back,” she said in a smok­er’s croak as she took his hand. “I’m Mil­lie Locke. I have the key to the apart­ment. Is your, er, part­ner here?”

“There she is now.” No­ra had just round­ed the cor­ner, cot­ton trench­coat bil­low­ing, knap­sack thrown over her shoul­der. She waved.

When No­ra ar­rived the agent took her hand, say­ing, “How love­ly.”

They en­tered a dingy lob­by, lined on the left with mail­box­es and on the right with a large mir­ror: a fee­ble at­tempt to make the nar­row hall look big­ger than it ac­tu­al­ly was. They pressed the but­ton for the el­eva­tor. There was a whir and a rat­tle some­where over­head.

“It’s a per­fect lo­ca­tion,” said Smith­back to No­ra. “Twen­ty-​minute walk to the Mu­se­um, close to the sub­way sta­tion, a block and a half from the park.”

No­ra did not re­spond. She was star­ing at the el­eva­tor door, and she did not look hap­py.

The el­eva­tor creaked open and they stepped in. Smith­back wait­ed out the ex­cru­ci­at­ing­ly long ride, silent­ly will­ing the damn el­eva­tor to hur­ry up. He had the un­pleas­ant feel­ing that he, not just the apart­ment, was un­der­go­ing an in­spec­tion.

At last they got out at the sixth floor, took a right in a dim hall­way, and stopped in front of a brown met­al door with an eye­hole set in­to it. The re­al es­tate bro­ker un­locked four sep­arate locks and swung the door open.

Smith­back was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised. The apart­ment faced the street, and it was clean­er than he ex­pect­ed. The floors were oak; a bit warped, but oak nev­er­the­less. One wall was ex­posed brick, the oth­ers paint­ed sheetrock.

“Hey, what do you think?” he said bright­ly. “Pret­ty nice, huh?”

No­ra said noth­ing.

“It’s the bar­gain of the cen­tu­ry,” said the bro­ker. “Eigh­teen hun­dred dol­lars, rent-​sta­bi­lized. A/C. Great lo­ca­tion. Bright, qui­et.”

The kitchen had old ap­pli­ances, but was clean. The bed­rooms were sun­ny with south­fac­ing win­dows, which gave the lit­tle rooms a feel­ing of space.

They stopped in the mid­dle of the liv­ing room. “Well, No­ra,” Smith­back asked, feel­ing un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly shy, “what do you think?”

No­ra’s face was dark, her brow fur­rowed. This did not look good. The re­al es­tate bro­ker with­drew a few feet, to give them the pre­tense of pri­va­cy.

“It’s nice,” she said.

“Nice? Eigh­teen hun­dred bucks a month for an Up­per West Side two-​bed­room? In a pre­war build­ing? It’s awe­some.”

The re­al es­tate bro­ker leaned back to­ward them. “You’re the first to see it. I guar­an­tee you it’ll be gone be­fore sun­set.” She fum­bled in her purse, re­moved a cigarette and a lighter, flicked on the lighter, and then with both hands poised inch­es apart, asked, “May I?”

“Are you all right?” Smith­back asked No­ra.

No­ra waved her hand, took a step to­ward the win­dow. She ap­peared to be look­ing in­tent­ly at some­thing far away.

“You did talk to your land­lord about mov­ing out, didn’t you?”

“No, not quite yet.”

Smith­back felt his heart sink a lit­tle. “You haven’t told him?”

She shook her head.

The sink­ing feel­ing grew more pro­nounced. “Come on, No­ra. I thought we’d de­cid­ed on this.”

She looked out a win­dow. “This is a big move for me, Bill. I mean, liv­ing to­geth­er . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Smith­back glanced around at the apart­ment. The re­al es­tate bro­ker caught his eye, quick­ly looked away. He low­ered his voice. “No­ra, you do love me, right?”

She con­tin­ued look­ing out the win­dow. “Of course. But . . . this is just a re­al­ly bad day for me, okay?”

“It’s no big deal. It’s not like we’re en­gaged.”

“Let’s not talk about it.”

“Not talk about it? No­ra, this is the apart­ment. We’re nev­er go­ing to find a bet­ter one. Let’s set­tle the bro­ker’s fee.”

“Bro­ker’s fee?”

Smith­back turned to the agent. “What did you say your fee was for this place?”

The agent ex­haled a cloud of smoke, gave a lit­tle cough. “I’m glad you asked. It’s quite rea­son­able. Of course, you can’t just rent an apart­ment like this. I’m do­ing you a spe­cial fa­vor just show­ing it to you.”

“So how much is this fee?” No­ra asked.

“Eigh­teen.”

“Eigh­teen what? Dol­lars?”

“Per­cent. Of the first year’s rent, that is.”

“But that’s—” No­ra frowned, did the cal­cu­la­tion in her head. “That’s close to four thou­sand dol­lars.”

“It’s cheap, con­sid­er­ing what you’re get­ting. And I promise you, if you don’t go for it, the next per­son will.” She glanced at her watch. “They’ll be here in ten min­utes. That’s how much time you have to make your de­ci­sion.”

“What about it, No­ra?” Smith­back asked.

No­ra sighed. “I have to think about this.”

“We don’t have time to think about it.”

“We have all the time in the world. This isn’t the on­ly apart­ment in Man­hat­tan.”

There was a brief, frozen si­lence. The re­al es­tate bro­ker glanced again at her watch.

No­ra shook her head. “Bill, I told you. It’s been a bad day.”

“I can see that.”

“You know the Shot­tum col­lec­tion I told you about? Yes­ter­day we found a let­ter, a ter­ri­ble let­ter, hid­den among that col­lec­tion.”

Smith­back felt a feel­ing akin to pan­ic creep­ing over him. “Can we talk about this lat­er? I re­al­ly think this is the apart­ment—”

She round­ed on him, her face dark. “Didn’t you hear what I said? We found a let­ter. We know who mur­dered those thir­ty-​six peo­ple!”

There was an­oth­er si­lence. Smith­back glanced over at the re­al es­tate bro­ker, who was pre­tend­ing to ex­am­ine a win­dow frame. Her ears were prac­ti­cal­ly twitch­ing. “You do?” he asked.

“He’s an ex­treme­ly shad­owy fig­ure named Enoch Leng. He seems to have been a tax­onomist and a chemist. The let­ter was writ­ten by a man named Shot­tum, who owned a kind of mu­se­um on the site, called Shot­tum’s Cab­inet. Leng rent­ed rooms from Shot­tum and per­formed ex­per­iments in them. Shot­tum grew sus­pi­cious, took a look in­to Leng’s lab when he was away. He dis­cov­ered that Leng had been kid­nap­ping peo­ple, killing them, and then dis­sect­ing out part of their cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem and pro­cess­ing it—ap­par­ent­ly, for self­ad­min­is­tered in­jec­tions.”

“Good God. What for?”

No­ra shook her head. “You’re not go­ing to be­lieve this. He was try­ing to ex­tend his life span.”

“That’s in­cred­ible.” This was a sto­ry—a gi­gan­tic sto­ry. Smith­back glanced over at the re­al es­tate bro­ker. She was now in­tent­ly ex­am­in­ing the door jambs, her next ap­point­ment seem­ing­ly for­got­ten.

“That’s what I thought.” No­ra shud­dered. “God, I just can’t get that let­ter out of my head. All the de­tails were there. And Pen­der­gast—you should have seen how grim his face was while he was read­ing it. Looked as if he was read­ing his own obit­uary or some­thing. And then this morn­ing, when I went down to check on some more Shot­tum ma­te­ri­al that had turned up, I learn that or­ders had come down for some con­ser­va­tion work in the Archives. All the Shot­tum pa­pers were in­clud­ed. And now, they’re gone. You can’t tell me that’s co­in­ci­dence. It was ei­ther Bris­bane or Col­lopy, I’m sure of that, but of course I can’t come right out and ask them.”

“Did you get a pho­to­copy?”

The dark look on No­ra’s face lift­ed slight­ly. “Pen­der­gast asked me to make one af­ter we first read the let­ter. I didn’t un­der­stand his hur­ry then. I do now.”

“Do you have it?”

She nod­ded to­ward her brief­case.

Smith­back thought for a mo­ment. No­ra was right: the con­ser­va­tion or­ders, of course, were no co­in­ci­dence. What was the Mu­se­um cov­er­ing up? Who was this man Enoch Leng? Was he con­nect­ed to the ear­ly Mu­se­um in some way? Or was it just the usu­al Mu­se­um para­noia, afraid to let out any in­for­ma­tion that wasn’t buffed and pol­ished by their PR peo­ple? Then of course there was Fairhaven, the de­vel­op­er, who al­so hap­pened to be a big con­trib­utor to the Mu­se­um . . . This whole sto­ry was get­ting good. Very good.

“Can I see the let­ter?”

“I was go­ing to give it to you for safe­keep­ing—I don’t dare bring it back in­to the Mu­se­um. But I want it back tonight.”

Smith­back nod­ded. She hand­ed him a thick en­ve­lope, which he shoved in­to his brief­case. There was a sud­den buzz of the in­ter­com.

“There’s my next ap­point­ment,” said the bro­ker. “Should I tell them you’re tak­ing it, or what?”

“We’re not,” said No­ra de­ci­sive­ly.

She shrugged, went to the in­ter­com, and buzzed them in.

“No­ra,” Smith­back im­plored. He turned to the re­al es­tate agent. “We are tak­ing it.”

“I’m sor­ry, Bill, but I’m just not ready.”

“But last week you said—”

“I know what I said. But I can’t think about apart­ments at a time like this. Okay?”

“No, it’s not okay.”

The door­bell rang and the bro­ker moved to open the door. Two men came in—one bald and short, one tall and beard­ed—gave the liv­ing room a quick look, swept through the kitchen and in­to the bed­rooms.

“No­ra, please,” Smith­back said. “Look, I know this move to New York, the job at the Mu­se­um, hasn’t been as smooth as you hoped. I’m sor­ry about that. But that doesn’t mean you should—”

There was a lengthy in­ter­val while the show­er was be­ing turned on, then off. And then the cou­ple were back in the liv­ing room. The in­spec­tion had tak­en less than two min­utes.

“It’s per­fect,” said the bald one. “Eigh­teen per­cent bro­ker’s fee, right?”

“Right.”

“Great.” A check­book ap­peared. “Who do I make it out to?”

“Cash. We’ll take it to your bank.”

“Now wait just a minute,” Smith­back said, “we were here first.”

“I’m so sor­ry,” said one of the men po­lite­ly, turn­ing in sur­prise.

“Don’t mind them,” said the bro­ker harsh­ly. “Those peo­ple are on their way out.”

“Come on, Bill.” No­ra be­gan urg­ing him to the door.

“We were here first! I’ll take it my­self, if I have to!”

There was a snap as the man de­tached the check. The bro­ker reached for it. “I’ve got the lease right here,” she said, pat­ting her bag. “We can sign it at the bank.”

No­ra dragged Smith­back out the door and slammed it shut. The ride down­stairs was silent and tense.

A mo­ment lat­er, they were stand­ing on the street. “I’ve got to get back to work,” No­ra said, look­ing away. “We can talk about this tonight.”

“We cer­tain­ly will.”

Smith­back watched her stride down Nine­ty-​ninth Street in the slant­ing light, the trench­coat curl­ing away from her per­fect lit­tle be­hind, her long cop­per hair swing­ing back and forth. He felt strick­en. Af­ter all they had been through, she still didn’t want to live with him. What had he done wrong? Some­times he won­dered if she blamed him for pres­sur­ing her to move east from San­ta Fe. It wasn’t his fault the job at the Lloyd Mu­se­um had fall­en through and her boss here in Man­hat­tan was a prize ass­hole. How could he change her mind? How could he prove to her that he re­al­ly loved her?

An idea be­gan to form in his mind. No­ra didn’t re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the pow­er of the press, par­tic­ular­ly the New York Times. She didn’t re­al­ize just how cowed, how docile and co­op­er­ative, the Mu­se­um could be when faced with bad pub­lic­ity. Yes, he thought, this would work. She would get the col­lec­tions back, and get her car­bon-14 dat­ing fund­ed, and more. She would thank him in the end. If he worked fast, he could even make the ear­ly edi­tion.

Smith­back heard a hearty yell. “Hey, friend!”

He turned. There were the two bums, fiery-​faced now, hold­ing on to each oth­er, stag­ger­ing up the side­walk. One of them lift­ed a pa­per bag. “Have a drink on us!”

Smith­back took out an­oth­er twen­ty and held it up in front of the big­ger and dirt­ier of the two. “Tell you what. In a few min­utes, you’ll see a thin la­dy dressed in black come out of this build­ing with two guys. Her name’s Mil­lie. Give her a re­al­ly big hug and kiss for me, will you? The slop­pi­er the bet­ter.”

“You bet!” The man snatched the bill and stuffed it in­to his pock­et.

Smith­back went down the street to­ward Broad­way, feel­ing marginal­ly bet­ter.

EIGHT

AN­THO­NY FAIRHAVEN SET­TLED his lean, mus­cu­lar frame in­to the chair, spread a heavy linen nap­kin across his lap, and ex­am­ined the break­fast that lay be­fore him. It was mi­nus­cule, yet ar­rayed with ex­ces­sive care on the crisp white damask: a chi­na glass of tea, two wa­ter bis­cuits, roy­al jel­ly. He drained the tea in a sin­gle toss, nib­bled ab­sent­ly at the crack­er, then wiped his lips and sig­naled the maid for his pa­pers with a curt mo­tion.

The sun streamed in through the curved glass wall of his break­fast atri­um. From his van­tage point atop the Metropoli­tan Tow­er, all of Man­hat­tan lay pros­trate at his feet, glit­ter­ing in the dawn light, win­dows wink­ing pink and gold. His own per­son­al New World, wait­ing for him to claim his Man­ifest Des­tiny. Far be­low, the dark rect­an­gle of Cen­tral Park lay like a gravedig­ger’s hole in the midst of the great city. The light was just clip­ping the tops of the trees, the shad­ows of the build­ings along Fifth Av­enue ly­ing across the park like bars.

There was a rus­tle and the maid laid the two pa­pers be­fore him, the New York Times and the Wall Street Jour­nal. Fresh­ly ironed, as he in­sist­ed. He picked up the Times and un­fold­ed it, the warm scent of newsprint reach­ing his nos­trils, the sheets crisp and dry. He gave the pa­per a lit­tle shake to loosen it, and turned to the front page. He scanned the head­lines. Mid­dle East peace talks, may­oral elec­tion de­bates, earth­quake in In­done­sia. He glanced be­low the fold.

Mo­men­tar­ily, he stopped breath­ing.

NEW­LY DIS­COV­ERED LET­TER SHEDS LIGHT ON

19TH-​CEN­TU­RY KILLINGS

BY WILLIAM SMITH­BACK JR.

He blinked his eyes, took a long, deep breath, and be­gan to read.

NEW YORK—Oc­to­ber 8. A let­ter has been found in the archives of the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry that may help ex­plain the gris­ly char­nel dis­cov­ered in low­er Man­hat­tan ear­ly last week.

In that dis­cov­ery, work­men con­struct­ing a res­iden­tial tow­er at the cor­ner of Hen­ry and Cather­ine streets un­earthed a base­ment tun­nel con­tain­ing the re­mains of thir­ty-​six young men and wom­en. The re­mains had been walled up in a dozen al­coves in what was ap­par­ent­ly an old coal tun­nel dat­ing from the mid­dle of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. Pre­lim­inary foren­sic anal­ysis showed that the vic­tims had been dis­sect­ed, or per­haps au­top­sied, and sub­se­quent­ly dis­mem­bered. Pre­lim­inary dat­ing of the site by an ar­chae­ol­ogist, No­ra Kel­ly, of the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry, in­di­cat­ed that the killings had oc­curred be­tween 1872 and 1881, when the cor­ner was oc­cu­pied by a three-​sto­ry build­ing hous­ing a pri­vate mu­se­um known as “J. C. Shot­tum’s Cab­inet of Nat­ural Pro­duc­tions and Cu­riosi­ties.” The cab­inet burned in 1881, and Shot­tum died in the fire.

In sub­se­quent re­search, Dr. Kel­ly dis­cov­ered the let­ter, which was writ­ten by J. C. Shot­tum him­self. Writ­ten short­ly be­fore Shot­tum’s death, it de­scribes his un­cov­er­ing of the med­ical ex­per­iments of his lodger, a tax­onomist and chemist by the name of Enoch Leng. In the let­ter, Shot­tum al­leged that Leng was con­duct­ing sur­gi­cal ex­per­iments on hu­man sub­jects, in an at­tempt to pro­long his own life. The ex­per­iments ap­pear to have in­volved the sur­gi­cal re­moval of the low­er por­tion of the spinal cord from a liv­ing sub­ject. Shot­tum ap­pend­ed to his let­ter sev­er­al pas­sages from Leng’s own de­tailed jour­nal of his ex­per­iments. A copy of the let­ter was ob­tained by the New York Times.

If the re­mains are in­deed from mur­dered in­di­vid­uals, it would be the largest se­ri­al killing in the his­to­ry of New York City and per­haps the largest in U.S. his­to­ry. Jack the Rip­per, Eng­land’s most fa­mous se­ri­al killer, mur­dered sev­en wom­en in the Whitechapel dis­trict of Lon­don in 1888. Jef­frey Dah­mer, Amer­ica’s no­to­ri­ous se­ri­al killer, is known to have killed at least 17 peo­ple.

The hu­man re­mains were re­moved to the Med­ical Ex­am­in­er’s of­fice and have been un­avail­able for ex­am­ina­tion. The base­ment tun­nel was sub­se­quent­ly de­stroyed by Moe­gen-​Fairhaven, Inc., the de­vel­op­er of the tow­er, dur­ing nor­mal con­struc­tion ac­tiv­ities. Ac­cord­ing to Mary Hill, a spokesper­son for May­or Ed­ward Mon­te­fiori, the site did not fall un­der the New York Ar­chae­olog­ical and His­toric Preser­va­tion Act. “This is an old crime scene of lit­tle ar­chae­olog­ical in­ter­est,” Ms. Hill said. “It sim­ply did not meet the cri­te­ria spelled out in the Act. We had no ba­sis to stop con­struc­tion.” Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Land­marks Preser­va­tion Com­mis­sion, how­ev­er, have tak­en a dif­fer­ent view, and are re­port­ed­ly ask­ing a state sen­ator and the New York In­ves­ti­ga­tor’s of­fice to as­sem­ble a task force to look in­to the mat­ter.

One ar­ti­cle of cloth­ing was pre­served from the site, a dress, which was brought to the Mu­se­um for ex­am­ina­tion by Dr. Kel­ly. Sewn in­to the dress, Dr. Kel­ly found a piece of pa­per, pos­si­bly a note of self-​iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, writ­ten by a young wom­an who ap­par­ent­ly be­lieved she had on­ly a short time to live: “I am Mary Greene, agt [sic] 19 years, No. 16 Wat­ter [sic] Street.” Tests in­di­cat­ed the note had been writ­ten in hu­man blood.

The Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion has tak­en an in­ter­est in the case. Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast, from the New Or­leans of­fice, has been ob­served on the scene. Nei­ther the New York nor the New Or­leans FBI of­fices would com­ment. The ex­act na­ture of his in­volve­ment has not been made pub­lic, but Pen­der­gast is known as one of the high­est rank­ing spe­cial agents in the South­ern Re­gion. He has worked on sev­er­al high-​pro­file cas­es in New York be­fore. The New York City Po­lice De­part­ment, mean­while, has shown lit­tle in­ter­est in a crime that oc­curred more than a cen­tu­ry ago. Cap­tain Sher­wood Custer, in whose precinct the re­mains were found, says the case is pri­mar­ily of his­tor­ical in­ter­est. “The mur­der­er is dead. Any ac­com­plices must be dead. We’ll leave this one to the his­to­ri­ans and con­tin­ue to de­vote our re­sources to crime pre­ven­tion in the twen­ty-​first cen­tu­ry.”

Fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of the let­ter, the New York Mu­se­um re­moved the Shot­tum Cab­inet col­lec­tion from the mu­se­um archives. Roger Bris­bane, First Vice Pres­ident of the Mu­se­um, called the move “part of a long-​sched­uled, on­go­ing con­ser­va­tion pro­cess, a co­in­ci­dence that has noth­ing to do with these re­ports.” He re­ferred all fur­ther ques­tions to Har­ry Medok­er in the Mu­se­um’s Pub­lic Re­la­tions De­part­ment. Mr. Medok­er did not re­turn sev­er­al tele­phone calls from the Times.

The sto­ry con­tin­ued on an in­side page, where the re­porter de­scribed the de­tails of the old mur­ders with con­sid­er­able rel­ish. Fairhaven read the ar­ti­cle to the end, then turned back and read the first page once again. The dry leaves of the Times made a faint rustling sound in his hands, echoed by the trem­bling of the dead leaves cling­ing to the pot­ted trees on the bal­cony out­side the atri­um.

Fairhaven slow­ly laid down the pa­per and looked out once again over the city. He could see the New York Mu­se­um across the park, its gran­ite tow­ers and cop­per roofs catch­ing the new­ly mint­ed light. He flicked his fin­ger and an­oth­er cup of tea ar­rived. He stared at the cup with­out plea­sure, tossed it down. An­oth­er flick of his fin­ger brought him a phone.

Fairhaven knew a great deal about re­al es­tate de­vel­op­ment, pub­lic re­la­tions, and New York City pol­itics. He knew this ar­ti­cle was a po­ten­tial dis­as­ter. It called for firm, prompt ac­tion.

He paused, think­ing who should re­ceive the first tele­phone call. A mo­ment lat­er he di­aled the may­or’s pri­vate num­ber, which he knew by heart.

NINE

DOREEN HOL­LAN­DER, OF 21 In­di­an Feath­er Lane, Pine Creek, Ok­la­homa, had left her hus­band twen­ty-​six sto­ries over­head, mum­bling and snor­ing in their ho­tel room. Gaz­ing across the broad ex­panse of Cen­tral Park West, she de­cid­ed now was the per­fect time to view Mon­et’s wa­ter lilies at the Metropoli­tan Mu­se­um. She’d want­ed to get a glimpse of the fa­mous paint­ings ev­er since see­ing a poster at her sis­ter-​in-​law’s house. Her hus­band, ser­vice tech­ni­cian for Ok­la­homa Ca­ble, hadn’t the faintest in­ter­est in art. Chances were, he’d still be asleep when she re­turned.

Con­sult­ing the vis­itor’s map the ho­tel had so gen­er­ous­ly vol­un­teered, she was pleased to dis­cov­er the mu­se­um lay just across Cen­tral Park. A short walk, no need to call for an ex­pen­sive taxi. Doreen Hol­lan­der liked walk­ing, and this would be the per­fect way to burn off those two crois­sants with but­ter and mar­malade she had un­wise­ly eat­en for break­fast.

She start­ed off, cross­ing in­to the park at the Alexan­der Hum­bolt gate, walk­ing briskly. It was a beau­ti­ful fall day, and the big build­ings on Fifth Av­enue shone above the tree­tops. New York City. A won­der­ful place, as long as you didn’t have to live here.

The path dropped down and soon she came to the side of a love­ly pond. She gazed across. Would it be bet­ter to go around it to the right, or to the left? She con­sult­ed her map and de­cid­ed the left-​hand way would be short­er.

She set off again on her strong far­mgirl legs, in­hal­ing the air. Sur­pris­ing­ly fresh, she thought. Bi­cy­clists and Rollerbladers whizzed past as the road curved along­side the pond. Soon, she found her­self at an­oth­er fork. The main path swerved north­ward, but there was a foot­path that con­tin­ued straight, in the di­rec­tion she was go­ing, through a wood. She con­sult­ed her map. It didn’t show the foot­path, but she knew a bet­ter route when she saw it. She con­tin­ued on.

Quick­ly, the path branched, then branched again, wan­der­ing aim­less­ly up and down through hillocks and lit­tle rocky out­crops. Here and there through the trees, she could still make out the row of skyscrap­ers along Fifth Av­enue, beck­on­ing her on, show­ing her the way. The woods grew more dense. And then she be­gan to see the peo­ple. It was odd. Here and there, young men stood idly, hands in pock­ets, in the woods, wait­ing. But wait­ing for what? They were nice-​look­ing young men, well dressed, with good hair­cuts. Out be­yond the trees a bright fall morn­ing was in progress, and she didn’t feel the slight­est bit afraid.

She hur­ried on as the woods grew thick­er. She stopped to con­sult her map, a lit­tle puz­zled, and dis­cov­ered that she was in a place called the Ram­ble. It was a well-​cho­sen name, she de­cid­ed. Twice she had found her­self turned com­plete­ly around. It was as if the per­son who had de­signed this lit­tle maze of paths want­ed peo­ple to get lost.

Well, Doreen Hol­lan­der was not one to get lost. Not in a tiny patch of woods in a city park, when af­ter all she had grown up in the coun­try, roam­ing the fields and woods of east­ern Ok­la­homa. This walk was turn­ing in­to a lit­tle ad­ven­ture, and Doreen Hol­lan­der liked lit­tle ad­ven­tures. That was why she had dragged her hus­band to New York City to be­gin with: to have a lit­tle ad­ven­ture. Doreen forced her­self to smile.

If this didn’t beat all—now she was turned around yet again. With a rue­ful laugh she con­sult­ed her map. But on the map, the Ram­ble was marked sim­ply as a large mass of leafy green. She looked around. Per­haps one of the nice-​look­ing men could help her with di­rec­tions.

But here, the woods were dark­er, thick­er. Nev­er­the­less, through a screen of leaves, she saw two fig­ures. She ap­proached. What were they do­ing in there? She took an­oth­er step for­ward, pulled a branch aside, and peered through. The peer turned in­to a stare, and the stare turned in­to a mask of frozen hor­ror.

Then, abrupt­ly, she backed away, turned, and be­gan re­trac­ing her steps as quick­ly as she could. Now it was all clear. How per­fect­ly dis­gust­ing. Her on­ly thought was to get out of this ter­ri­ble place as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. All de­sire to see Mon­et’s wa­ter lilies had flown from her head. She hadn’t want­ed to be­lieve it, but it was all true. It was just as she’d heard tell on the 700 Clubon tele­vi­sion, New York City as a mod­ern Sodom and Go­mor­rah. She hur­ried along, her breath com­ing in short gasps, and she looked back on­ly once.

When the swift foot­steps came up be­hind her, she heard noth­ing and ex­pect­ed noth­ing. When the black hood came down hard and tight over her head, and the sud­den wet stench of chlo­ro­form vi­olat­ed her nos­trils, the last vi­sion in her mind was of a twist­ed spire of salt glit­ter­ing in the des­olate light of an emp­ty plain, a plume of bit­ter smoke ris­ing in the dis­tance.

TEN

THE EM­INENT DR. Fred­er­ick Wat­son Col­lopy sat in state be­hind the great nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry leather-​bound desk, re­flect­ing on the men and wom­en who had pre­ced­ed him in this au­gust po­si­tion. In the Mu­se­um’s glo­ry years—the years, say, when this vast desk was still new—the di­rec­tors of the Mu­se­um had been true vi­sion­ar­ies, ex­plor­ers and sci­en­tists both. He lin­gered ap­pre­cia­tive­ly over their names: Byrd, Throck­mor­ton, An­drews. Now, those were names wor­thy to be cast in bronze. His ap­pre­ci­ation waned some­what as he ap­proached the more re­cent oc­cu­pants of this grand cor­ner of­fice—the un­for­tu­nate Win­ston Wright and his short-​tenured suc­ces­sor, Olivia Mer­ri­am. He felt no lit­tle sat­is­fac­tion in re­turn­ing the of­fice to its for­mer state of dig­ni­ty and ac­com­plish­ment. He ran a hand along his welltrimmed beard, laid a fin­ger across his lip in thought­ful med­ita­tion.

And yet, here it was again: that per­sis­tent feel­ing of melan­choly.

He had been called up­on to make cer­tain sac­ri­fices in or­der to res­cue the Mu­se­um. It dis­tressed him that sci­en­tif­ic re­search was forced to take sec­ond place to galas, to glit­ter­ing new halls, to block­buster ex­hi­bi­tions. Block­buster—the word tast­ed re­pel­lent in the mouth. And yet, this was New York at the dawn of the twen­ty-​first cen­tu­ry, and those who did not play the game would not sur­vive. Even his grand­est fore­bears had their own cross­es to bear. One bent with the winds of time. The Mu­se­um had sur­vived—that was the im­por­tant, that was the on­ly, point.

He then re­flect­ed on his own dis­tin­guished sci­en­tif­ic lin­eage: his great-​grand-​un­cle Amasa Gree­nough, friend to Dar­win and famed dis­cov­er­er of the chiti­nous monk­fish of the In­do­chine; his great-​aunt Philom­ena Wat­son, who had done sem­inal work with the na­tives of Tier­ra del Fuego; his grand­fa­ther Gard­ner Col­lopy, the dis­tin­guished her­petol­ogist. He thought of his own ex­cit­ing work re-​clas­si­fy­ing the Pongi­dae, dur­ing the heady days of his youth. Per­haps, with luck and a good­ly al­lowance of years, his tenure here at the Mu­se­um would ri­val the great di­rec­tors of the past. Per­haps he, too, would have his name graven in bronze, en­shrined in the Great Ro­tun­da for all to see.

He still couldn’t shake the feel­ing of melan­choly that had set­tled around him. These re­flec­tions, nor­mal­ly so sooth­ing, seemed not to help. He felt a man out of place, old-​fash­ioned, su­per­an­nu­at­ed. Even thoughts of his love­ly young wife, with whom he had sport­ed so de­light­ful­ly that very morn­ing be­fore break­fast, failed to shake the feel­ing.

His eye took in the of­fice—the pink mar­ble fire­places, the round tow­er win­dows look­ing out over Mu­se­um Drive, the oak pan­el­ing with its pati­na of cen­turies, the paint­ings by Audubon and De Cle­fisse. He re­gard­ed his own per­son: the somber suit with its old-​fash­ioned, al­most cler­ical cut, the starched white shirt­front, the silk bow tie worn as a sign of in­de­pen­dence in thought and deed, the hand­made shoes, and above all—as his eye fell on the mir­ror above the man­tel—the hand­some and even el­egant face, if a touch se­vere, that wore its bur­den of years so grace­ful­ly.

He turned to his desk with a faint sigh. Per­haps it was the news of the day that made him gloomy. It sat on his desk, spread out in glar­ing newsprint: the damnable ar­ti­cle, writ­ten by that same vile fel­low who had caused so much trou­ble at the Mu­se­um back in ’95. He had hoped the ear­li­er re­moval of the of­fend­ing ma­te­ri­als from the Archives would have qui­et­ed things down. But now there was this let­ter to deal with. On ev­ery lev­el, this had the po­ten­tial to be a dis­as­ter. His own staff drawn in; an FBI agent run­ning around; Fairhaven, one of their biggest sup­port­ers, un­der fire—Col­lopy’s head reeled at the pos­si­bil­ities, all too hideous to con­tem­plate. If this thing wasn’t han­dled, it could very well cast a pall on his own tenure, or worse—

Do not go to that place, thought Fred­er­ick Wat­son Col­lopy. He would han­dle it. Even the worst dis­as­ters could be turned around with the right—what was the trendy word?—spin. Yes. That’s what was need­ed here. A very del­icate and art­ful­ly ap­plied spin. The Mu­se­um would not, he thought, re­act inits usu­al knee-​jerk way. The Mu­se­um would not de­cry the in­ves­ti­ga­tion; it would not protest the ri­fling of its archives; it would not de­nounce the un­ac­count­able ac­tiv­ities of this FBI agent; it would not de­ny re­spon­si­bil­ity, evade, or cov­er up. Nor would the Mu­se­um come to the aid of its biggest sup­port­er, Fairhaven. At least, not on the sur­face. And yet, much could be done in cam­era, so to speak. A qui­et word could be strate­gi­cal­ly placed here and there, re­as­sur­ances giv­en or tak­en away, mon­ey moved hith­er and yon. Gen­tly. Very gen­tly.

He de­pressed a but­ton on his in­ter­com, and spoke in a mild voice. “Mrs. Surd, would you be so good as to tell Mr. Bris­bane I should like to see him at his con­ve­nience?”

“Yes, Dr. Col­lopy.”

“Thank you most kind­ly, Mrs. Surd.”

He re­leased the but­ton and set­tled back. Then he care­ful­ly fold­ed up the New York Times and placed it out of sight, in the “To Be Filed” box at the cor­ner of his desk. And, for the first time since leav­ing his bed­room that morn­ing, he smiled.

ELEVEN

NO­RA KEL­LY KNEW what the call was about. She had seen the ar­ti­cle in the morn­ing pa­per, of course. It was the talk of the Mu­se­um, per­haps of all New York. She knew what kind of ef­fect it would have on a man like Bris­bane. She had been wait­ing all day for him to call her, and now, at ten min­utes to five, the sum­mons had fi­nal­ly come. He had wait­ed un­til ten min­utes to five. Let­ting her stew, no doubt. She won­dered if that meant he would give her ten min­utes to clear out of the Mu­se­um. It wouldn’t sur­prise her.

The name­plate was miss­ing from Bris­bane’s door. She knocked and the sec­re­tary called her in.

“Have a seat, please,” said a hag­gard old­er wom­an who was clear­ly in a bad mood.

No­ra sat. God­damned Bill, she thought. What could he have been think­ing? Ad­mit­ted­ly, the guy was im­pul­sive—he tend­ed to act be­fore en­gag­ing his cere­bral cor­tex—but this was too much. She’d have his guts for garters, as her fa­ther used to say. She’d cut off his balls, fix them to a thong, and wear them around her waist like a bo­la. This job was so crit­ical to her—yet here he was, prac­ti­cal­ly typ­ing out the pink slip him­self. How could he have done this to her?

The sec­re­tary’s phone buzzed. “You may go in,” the old­er wom­an said.

No­ra en­tered the in­ner of­fice. Bris­bane stood in front of a mir­ror placed at one side of his desk, ty­ing a bow tie around his neck. He wore black pants with a satin stripe and a starched shirt with moth­er-​of-​pearl but­tons. A tuxe­do jack­et was draped over his chair. No­ra paused in­side the door, wait­ing, but Bris­bane said noth­ing nor in any way ac­knowl­edged her pres­ence. She watched him deft­ly whip one end of the tie over the oth­er, snug the end through.

Then he spoke: “Over the past few hours, I’ve learned a great deal about you, Dr. Kel­ly.”

No­ra re­mained silent.

“About a dis­as­trous field ex­pe­di­tion in the South­west­ern desert, for ex­am­ple, in which your lead­er­ship and even sci­en­tif­ic abil­ities were called in­to ques­tion. And about a cer­tain William Smith­back. I didn’t know you were quite so friend­ly with this William Smith­back of the Times.”

There was an­oth­er pause while he tugged on the ends of the tie. As he worked he craned his neck. It rose out of his col­lar, as pale and scrawny as a chick­en’s.

“I un­der­stand, Dr. Kel­ly, that you brought non-​Mu­se­um per­son­nel in­to the Archives, in di­rect vi­ola­tion of the rules of this Mu­se­um.”

He tight­ened and ad­just­ed. No­ra said noth­ing.

“Fur­ther­more, you’ve been do­ing out­side work on Mu­se­um time, as­sist­ing this FBI agent. Again, a clear vi­ola­tion of the rules.”

No­ra knew it would be fu­tile to re­mind Bris­bane that he him­self, how­ev­er grudg­ing­ly, had au­tho­rized the work.

“Fi­nal­ly, it’s a vi­ola­tion of Mu­se­um rules to have con­tact with the press, with­out clear­ing it through our pub­lic re­la­tions of­fice first. There are good rea­sons for all these rules, Dr. Kel­ly. These are not mere bu­reau­crat­ic reg­ula­tions. They re­late to the Mu­se­um’s se­cu­ri­ty, to the in­tegri­ty of its col­lec­tions and archives, and es­pe­cial­ly its rep­uta­tion. Do you un­der­stand me?”

No­ra looked at Bris­bane, but could find no words.

“Your con­duct has caused a great deal of anx­iety here.”

“Look,” she said. “If you’re go­ing to fire me, get it over with.”

Bris­bane looked at her at last, his pink face form­ing an ex­pres­sion of mock sur­prise. “Who said any­thing about fir­ing? Not on­ly will we not fire you, but you are for­bid­den to re­sign.”

No­ra looked at him in sur­prise.

“Dr. Kel­ly, you will re­main with the Mu­se­um. Af­ter all, you’re the hero of the hour. Dr. Col­lopy and I are unit­ed on this. We wouldn’t dream of let­ting you go—not af­ter that self-​serv­ing, self-​ag­gran­diz­ing news­pa­per piece. You’re bul­let­proof. For now.”

No­ra lis­tened, her sur­prise slow­ly turn­ing to anger.

Bris­bane pat­ted the bow tie, ex­am­ined him­self one last time in the mir­ror, and turned. “All your priv­ileges are sus­pend­ed. No ac­cess to the cen­tral col­lec­tions or the Archives.” “Am I al­lowed to use the girls’ room?”

“No con­tact with any­one on the out­side in­volv­ing Mu­se­um busi­ness. And es­pe­cial­ly no con­tact with that FBI agent or that jour­nal­ist, Smith­back.”

No need to wor­ry about Smith­back, No­ra thought, fu­ri­ous now.

“We know all about Smith­back. There’s a file on him down­stairs that’s a foot thick. As you prob­ably know, he wrote a book about the Mu­se­um a few years back. That was be­fore my time and I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard it wasn’t ex­act­ly No­bel Prize ma­te­ri­al. He’s been per­sona non gra­ta around here ev­er since.”

He looked at her di­rect­ly, his eyes cold and un­wa­ver­ing. “In the mean­time, it’s busi­ness as usu­al. Go­ing to the new Pri­mate Hall open­ing tonight?”

“I wasn’t plan­ning to.”

“Start plan­ning. Af­ter all, you’re our em­ploy­ee of the week. Peo­ple are go­ing to want to see you up and about, look­ing chip­per. In fact, the Mu­se­um will be is­su­ing a press re­lease about our own hero­ic Dr. Kel­ly, point­ing out in the pro­cess how civic-​mind­ed the Mu­se­um is, how we have a long his­to­ry of do­ing pro bono work for the city. Of course, you will de­flect any fur­ther ques­tions about this busi­ness by say­ing that all your work is com­plete­ly con­fi­den­tial.” Bris­bane lift­ed the jack­et from the chair and dain­ti­ly shrugged him­self in­to it, flick­ing a stray thread from his shoul­ders, touch­ing his per­fect hair. “I’m sure you can find a halfway de­cent dress among your things. Just be glad it isn’t one of the fan­cy-​dress balls the Mu­se­um’s so fond of these days.”

“What if I say no? What if I don’t get with your lit­tle pro­gram?”

Bris­bane shot his cuffs and turned to her again. Then his eyes flicked to the door, and No­ra’s gaze fol­lowed.

Stand­ing in the door­way, hands fold­ed be­fore him, was Dr. Col­lopy him­self. The di­rec­tor cut a fear­some, al­most sin­is­ter fig­ure as he silent­ly walked the halls of the Mu­se­um, his thin frame dressed in for­mal sever­ity, his pro­file that of an An­gli­can dea­con’s, his pos­ture rigid and for­bid­ding. Col­lopy, who came from a long back­ground of gen­tle­man sci­en­tists and in­ven­tors, had an enig­mat­ic de­meanor and a qui­et voice that nev­er seemed to be raised. To top it off, the man owned a brown­stone on West End Av­enue in which he lived with a gor­geous new wife, forty years his ju­nior. Their re­la­tion­ship was the sub­ject of end­less com­ment and ob­scene spec­ula­tion.

But to­day, Di­rec­tor Col­lopy was al­most smil­ing. He took a step for­ward. The an­gu­lar lines of his pale face looked much soft­er than usu­al, even an­imat­ed. He ac­tu­al­ly took her hand be­tween his own dry palms, eyes look­ing close­ly in­to hers, and No­ra felt a faint and whol­ly un­ex­pect­ed tin­gle. She abrupt­ly saw what that young wife must al­so have seen—a very vi­tal man was hid­den be­hind that nor­mal­ly im­pen­etra­ble fa­cade. Now, Col­lopy did smile—and when he did so, it was as if a heat lamp was switched on. No­ra felt bathed in a ra­di­ance of charm and vig­or.

“I know your work, No­ra, and I’ve been fol­low­ing it with tremen­dous in­ter­est. To think that the great ru­ins of Cha­co Canyon might have been in­flu­enced, if not built, by the Aztecs—it’s im­por­tant, even ground­break­ing stuff.”

“Then—”

He si­lenced her with a faint pres­sure to her hand. “I wasn’t aware of the cuts in your de­part­ment, No­ra. We’ve all had to tight­en our belts, but per­haps we’ve done so a lit­tle too in­dis­crim­inate­ly.”

No­ra couldn’t help glanc­ing at Bris­bane, but his face had shut down com­plete­ly: it was un­read­able.

“For­tu­nate­ly, we are in a po­si­tion to re­store your fund­ing, and on top of that give you the eigh­teen thou­sand you need for those crit­ical car­bon-14 dates. I my­self have a per­son­al in­ter­est in the sub­ject. I’ll nev­er for­get, as a boy, vis­it­ing those mag­nif­icent Cha­coan ru­ins with Dr. Mor­ris him­self.”

“Thank you, but—”

Again, the faint squeeze. “Please don’t thank me. Mr. Bris­bane was kind enough to bring this sit­ua­tion to my at­ten­tion. The work you are do­ing here is im­por­tant; it will bring cred­it to the Mu­se­um; and I per­son­al­ly would like to do any­thing I can to sup­port it. If you need any­thing else, call me. Call me.”

He re­leased her hand ev­er so gen­tly and turned to Bris­bane. “I must be off to pre­pare my lit­tle speech. Thank you.”

And he was gone.

She looked at Bris­bane, but the face was still an opaque mask. “Now you know what will hap­pen if you do get with the pro­gram,” he said. “I’d rather not go in­to what will hap­pen if you don’t.”

Bris­bane turned back to the mir­ror, gave him­self one last look.

“See you tonight, Dr. Kel­ly,” he said mild­ly.

TWELVE

O’SHAUGH­NESSY FOL­LOWED PEN­DER­GAST up the red-​car­pet­ed steps to­ward the Mu­se­um’s great bronze doors, con­vinced that ev­ery eye in the place was on him. He felt like a jerk in his po­lice­man’s uni­form. He let his hand drop idly to the butt of his gun, and felt grat­ified as a near­by tuxe­doed man gave him a de­cid­ed­ly ner­vous glance. He fur­ther con­soled him­self with the thought that he was get­ting time and a half for this dog-​and-​pony show—and time and a half from Cap­tain Custer was noth­ing to sneeze at.

Cars were lin­ing up along Mu­se­um Drive, dis­gorg­ing beau­ti­ful and not-​so-​beau­ti­ful peo­ple. Vel­vet ropes held back a small, dis­con­so­late-​look­ing group of pho­tog­ra­phers and jour­nal­ists. The flash­es of the pho­tog­ra­phers’ cam­eras were few and far be­tween. A van with the lo­go of a lo­cal tele­vi­sion sta­tion was al­ready pack­ing up and leav­ing.

“This open­ing for the new Pri­mate Hall is rather small­er than oth­ers I’ve at­tend­ed,” said Pen­der­gast as he glanced around. “Par­ty fa­tigue, I ex­pect. The Mu­se­um’s been hav­ing so many these days.”

“Pri­mates? All these peo­ple are in­ter­est­ed in mon­keys?”

“I ex­pect most of them are here to ob­serve the pri­mates out­side the ex­hi­bi­tion cas­es.”

“Very fun­ny.”

They passed through the doors and across the Great Ro­tun­da. Un­til two days ago, O’Shaugh­nessy hadn’t been in­side the Mu­se­um since he was a kid. But there were the di­nosaurs, just like they’d al­ways been. And be­yond, the herd of ele­phants. The red car­pet and vel­vet ropes led them on­ward, deep­er in­to the build­ing. Smil­ing young ladies were po­si­tioned along the way, point­ing, nod­ding, in­di­cat­ing where to go. Very nice young ladies. O’Shaugh­nessy de­cid­ed that an­oth­er vis­it to the Mu­se­um, when he wasn’t on du­ty, might be in or­der.

They wound through the African Hall, past a mas­sive door­way framed in ele­phant tusks, and en­tered a large re­cep­tion area. Count­less lit­tle ta­bles, set with vo­tive can­dles, dot­ted the room. A vast buf­fet heaped with food ran along one wall, book­end­ed by two well-​stocked booze sta­tions. A podi­um had been placed at the far end of the room. In a near­by cor­ner, a string quar­tet sawed in­dus­tri­ous­ly at a Vi­en­nese waltz. O’Shaugh­nessy lis­tened with in­creduli­ty. They were ap­palling. But at least it wasn’t Puc­ci­ni they were butcher­ing.

The room was al­most emp­ty.

At the door stood a man­ic-​look­ing man, a large name tag dis­played be­low his white car­na­tion. He spot­ted Pen­der­gast, rushed over, and seized his hand with al­most fran­tic grat­itude. “Har­ry Medok­er, head of pub­lic re­la­tions. Thank you for com­ing, sir, thank you. I think you’ll love the new hall.”

“Pri­mate be­hav­ior is my spe­cial­ty.”

“Ah! Then you’ve come to the right place.” The PR man caught a glimpse of O’Shaugh­nessy and froze in the act of pump­ing Pen­der­gast’s hand. “I’m sor­ry, Of­fi­cer. Is there a prob­lem?” His voice had lost all its con­vivi­al­ity.

“Yeah,” said O’Shaugh­nessy in his most men­ac­ing tone.

The man leaned for­ward and spoke in most un­wel­com­ing tones. “This is a pri­vate open­ing, Of­fi­cer. I’m sor­ry, but you’ll have to leave. We have no need of out­side se­cu­ri­ty—”

“Oh yeah? Just so you know, Har­ry, I’m here on the lit­tle mat­ter of the Mu­se­um co­caine ring.”

“Mu­se­um co­caine ring?” Medok­er looked like he was about to have a heart at­tack.

“Of­fi­cer O’Shaugh­nessy,” came Pen­der­gast’s mild warn­ing.

O’Shaugh­nessy gave the man a lit­tle clap on the shoul­der. “Don’t breathe a word. Imag­ine how the press would run with it. Think of the Mu­se­um, Har­ry.” He left the man white and shak­ing.

“I hate it when they don’t re­spect the man in blue,” said O’Shaugh­nessy.

For a mo­ment, Pen­der­gast eyed him grave­ly. Then he nod­ded to­ward the buf­fet. “Reg­ula­tions may for­bid drink­ing on the job, but they don’t for­bid eat­ing bli­ni au caviar.”

“Bli­ni auwhat?”

“Tiny buck­wheat pan­cakes topped with crème fraîche and caviar. Delectable.”

O’Shaugh­nessy shud­dered. “I don’t like raw fish eggs.”

“I sus­pect you’ve nev­er had the re­al thing, Sergeant. Give one a try. You’ll find them much more palat­able than a Die Walküre aria, I as­sure you. How­ev­er, there’s al­so the smoked stur­geon, the foie gras, the prosci­ut­to di Par­ma, and the Damariscot­ta Riv­er oys­ters. The Mu­se­um al­ways serves an ex­cel­lent ta­ble.”

“Just give me the pigs in a blan­ket.”

“Those can be ob­tained from the man with the cart on the cor­ner of Sev­en­ty-​sev­enth and Cen­tral Park West.”

More peo­ple were trick­ling in­to the hall, but the crowd was still thin. O’Shaugh­nessy fol­lowed Pen­der­gast over to the food ta­ble. He avoid­ed the piles of sticky gray fish eggs. In­stead, he took a few pieces of ham, cut a slice from a wheel of brie, and with some pieces of French bread made a cou­ple of small ham-​and-​cheese sand­wich­es for him­self. The ham was a lit­tle dry, and the cheese tast­ed a lit­tle like am­mo­nia, but over­all it was palat­able.

“You had a meet­ing with Cap­tain Custer, right?” Pen­der­gast asked. “How did it go?”

O’Shaugh­nessy shook his head as he munched. “Not too good.”

“I ex­pect there was some­one from the may­or’s of­fice.”

“Mary Hill.”

“Ah, Miss Hill. Of course.”

“Cap­tain Custer want­ed to know why I hadn’t told them about the jour­nal, why I hadn’t told them about the dress, why I hadn’t told them about the note. But it was all in the re­port—which Custer hadn’t read—so in the end I sur­vived the meet­ing.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“Thanks for help­ing me fin­ish that re­port. Oth­er­wise, they’d have ripped me a new one.”

“What a quaint ex­pres­sion.” Pen­der­gast looked over O’Shaugh­nessy’s shoul­der. “Sergeant, I’d like to in­tro­duce you to an old ac­quain­tance of mine. William Smith­back.”

O’Shaugh­nessy turned to see a gan­gling, awk­ward-​look­ing man at the buf­fet, a grav­ity-​de­fy­ing cowlick jut­ting from the top of his head. He was dressed in an ill-​fit­ting tuxe­do, and he seemed ut­ter­ly ab­sorbed in pil­ing as much food on­to his plate as pos­si­ble, as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. The man looked over, saw Pen­der­gast, and start­ed vis­ibly. He glanced around un­easi­ly, as if mark­ing pos­si­ble ex­its. But the FBI agent was smil­ing en­cour­ag­ing­ly, and the man named Smith­back came to­ward them a lit­tle war­ily.

“Agent Pen­der­gast,” Smith­back said in a nasal bari­tone. “What a sur­prise.”

“In­deed. Mr. Smith­back, I find you well.” He grasped Smith­back’s hand and shook it. “How many years has it been?”

“Long time,” said Smith­back, look­ing like it had not been near­ly long enough. “What are you do­ing in New York?”

“I keep an apart­ment here.” Pen­der­gast re­leased the hand and looked the writ­er up and down. “I see you’ve grad­uat­ed to Ar­mani, Mr. Smith­back,” he said. “A rather bet­ter cut than those off-​the-​rack Four­teenth Street job-​lot suits you used to sport. How­ev­er, when you’re ready to take a re­al sar­to­ri­al step, might I rec­om­mend Brioni or Ermenegildo Zeg­na?”

Smith­back opened his mouth to re­ply, but Pen­der­gast con­tin­ued smooth­ly. “I heard from Mar­go Green, by the way. She’s up in Boston, work­ing for the Gene­Dyne Cor­po­ra­tion. She asked me to re­mem­ber her to you.”

Smith­back opened his mouth again, shut it. “Thank you,” he man­aged af­ter a mo­ment. “And—and Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta? You keep in touch with him?”

“He al­so went north. He’s now liv­ing in Cana­da, writ­ing po­lice pro­ce­du­rals, un­der the pen name of Camp­bell Dirk.”

“I’ll have to pick up one of his books.”

“He hasn’t made it big yet—not like you, Mr. Smith­back—but I must say the books are read­able.”

By this point, Smith­back had ful­ly re­cov­ered. “And mine aren’t?”

Pen­der­gast in­clined his head. “I can’t hon­est­ly say I’ve read any. Do you have one you could par­tic­ular­ly rec­om­mend?”

“Very fun­ny,” said Smith­back, frown­ing and look­ing about. “I won­der if No­ra’s go­ing to be here.”

“So you’re the guy who wrote the ar­ti­cle, right?” asked O’Shaugh­nessy.

Smith­back nod­ded. “Made a splash, don’t you think?”

“It cer­tain­ly got ev­ery­one’s at­ten­tion,” said Pen­der­gast dry­ly.

“As well it should. Nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry se­ri­al killer, kid­nap­ping and mu­ti­lat­ing help­less kids from work­hous­es, all in the name of some ex­per­iment to ex­tend his own wretched life. You know, they’ve award­ed Pulitzers for less than that.” Peo­ple were ar­riv­ing more quick­ly now, and the noise lev­el was in­creas­ing.

“The So­ci­ety for Amer­ican Ar­chae­ol­ogy is de­mand­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to how the site came to be de­stroyed. I un­der­stand the con­struc­tion union is al­so ask­ing ques­tions. With this up­com­ing elec­tion, the may­or’s on the de­fen­sive. As you can imag­ine, Moe­gen-​Fairhaven wasn’t ter­ri­bly hap­py about it. Speak of the dev­il.”

“What?” Smith­back said, clear­ly sur­prised by this sud­den re­mark.

“An­tho­ny Fairhaven,” Pen­der­gast said, nod­ding to­ward the en­trance.

O’Shaugh­nessy fol­lowed the glance. The man stand­ing in the door­way to the hall was much more youth­ful than he’d ex­pect­ed; fit, with the kind of frame a bi­cy­clist or rock climber might have—wiry, ath­let­ic. His tuxe­do draped over his shoul­ders and chest with a light­ness that made him look as if he’d been born in it. Even more sur­pris­ing was the face. It was an open face, an hon­est-​look­ing face; not the face of the ra­pa­cious mon­ey-​grub­bing re­al es­tate de­vel­op­er Smith­back had por­trayed in the Times ar­ti­cle. Then, most sur­pris­ing of all: Fairhaven looked their way, no­ticed their glance, and smiled broad­ly at them be­fore con­tin­uing in­to the hall.

A hiss­ing came over the PA sys­tem; “Tales from the Vi­en­na Woods” died away ragged­ly. A man was at the podi­um, do­ing a sound check. He re­treat­ed, and a hush fell on the crowd. Af­ter a mo­ment, a sec­ond man, wear­ing a for­mal suit, mount­ed the podi­um and walked to the mi­cro­phone. He looked grave, in­tel­li­gent, pa­tri­cian, dig­ni­fied, at ease. In short, he was ev­ery­thing O’Shaugh­nessy hat­ed.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

“The dis­tin­guished Dr. Fred­er­ick Col­lopy,” said Pen­der­gast. “Di­rec­tor of the Mu­se­um.”

“He’s got a 29-year-​old wife,” Smith­back whis­pered. “Can you be­lieve it? It’s a won­der he can even find the—Look, there she is now.” He point­ed to a young and ex­treme­ly at­trac­tive wom­an stand­ing to one side. Un­like the oth­er wom­en, who all seemed to be dressed in black, she was wear­ing an emer­ald-​green gown with an el­egant di­amond tiara. The com­bi­na­tion was breath­tak­ing.

“Oh, God,” Smith­back breathed. “What a stun­ner.”

“I hope the guy keeps a pair of car­diac pad­dles on his bed­side ta­ble,” O’Shaugh­nessy mut­tered.

“I think I’ll go over and give him my num­ber. Of­fer to spell him one of these nights, in case the old geezer gets wind­ed.”

Good evening, ladies and gen­tle­men, be­gan Col­lopy. His voice was low, grav­el­ly, with­out in­flec­tion. When I was a young man, I un­der­took the re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the Pongi­dae, the Great Apes . . .

The lev­el of con­ver­sa­tion in the room dropped but did not cease al­to­geth­er. Peo­ple seemed far more in­ter­est­ed in food and drink than in hear­ing this man talk about mon­keys, O’Shaugh­nessy thought.

. . . And I was faced with a prob­lem: Where to put mankind? Are we in the Pongi­dae, or are we not? Are we a Great Ape, or are we some­thing spe­cial? This was the ques­tion I faced . . .

“Here comes Dr. Kel­ly,” said Pen­der­gast.

Smith­back turned, an ea­ger, ex­pec­tant, ner­vous look on his face. But the tall, cop­per-​haired wom­an swept past him with­out so much as a glance, ar­row­ing straight for the food ta­ble.

“Hey No­ra! I’ve been try­ing to reach you all day!” O’Shaugh­nessy watched the writ­er hus­tle af­ter her, then re­turned his at­ten­tion to his ham-​and-​cheese sand­wich­es. He was glad he didn’t have to do this sort of thing for a liv­ing. How could they bear it? Stand­ing around, chat­ting aim­less­ly with peo­ple you’d nev­er seen be­fore and would nev­er see again, try­ing to cough up a ves­tige of in­ter­est in their va­pid opin­ions, all to a back­ground ob­bli­ga­to of speechi­fy­ing. It seemed in­con­ceiv­able to him that there were peo­ple who ac­tu­al­ly liked go­ing to par­ties like this.

. . . our clos­est liv­ing rel­atives . . .

Smith­back was re­turn­ing al­ready. His tuxe­do front was splat­tered with fish eggs and crème fraîche. He looked strick­en.

“Have an ac­ci­dent?” asked Pen­der­gast dry­ly.

“You might call it that.”

O’Shaugh­nessy glanced over and saw No­ra head­ing straight for the re­treat­ing Smith­back. She did not look hap­py.

“No­ra—” Smith­back be­gan again.

She round­ed on him, her face fu­ri­ous. “How could you? I gave you that in­for­ma­tion in con­fi­dence.”

“But No­ra, I did it for you. Don’t you see? Now they can’t touch—”

“You mo­ron. My long-​term ca­reer here is ru­ined. Af­ter what hap­pened in Utah, and with the Lloyd Mu­se­um clos­ing, this job was my last chance. And you ru­ined it!”

“No­ra, if you could on­ly look at it my way, you’d—”

“You promised me. And I trust­ed you! God, I can’t be­lieve it, I’m to­tal­ly screwed.” She looked away, then whirled back with re­dou­bled fe­roc­ity. “Was this some kind of re­venge be­cause I wouldn’t rent that apart­ment with you?”

“No, no, No­ra, just the op­po­site, it was to help you. I swear, in the end you’ll thank me—”

The poor man looked so help­less, O’Shaugh­nessy felt sor­ry for him. He was ob­vi­ous­ly in love with the wom­an—and he had just as ob­vi­ous­ly blown it com­plete­ly.

Sud­den­ly she turned on Pen­der­gast. “And you!”

Pen­der­gast raised his eye­brows, then care­ful­ly placed a bli­ni back on his plate.

“Sneak­ing around the Mu­se­um, pick­ing locks, fo­ment­ing sus­pi­cion. You start­ed all this.”

Pen­der­gast bowed. “If I have caused you any dis­tress, Dr. Kel­ly, I re­gret it deeply.”

“Dis­tress? They’re go­ing to cru­ci­fy me. And there it all was, in to­day’s pa­per. I could kill you! All of you!”

Her voice had risen, and now peo­ple were look­ing at her in­stead of at the man at the podi­um, still dron­ing on about clas­si­fy­ing his great apes.

Then Pen­der­gast said, “Smile. Our friend Bris­bane is watch­ing.”

No­ra glanced over her shoul­der. O’Shaugh­nessy fol­lowed the glance to­ward the podi­um and saw a well-​groomed man—tall, glossy, with slicked-​back dark hair—star­ing at them. He did not look hap­py.

No­ra shook her head and low­ered her voice. “Je­sus, I’m not even sup­posed to be talk­ing to you. I can’t be­lieve the po­si­tion you’ve put me in.”

“How­ev­er, Dr. Kel­ly, you and I do need to talk,” Pen­der­gast said soft­ly. “Meet me to­mor­row evening at Ten Ren’s Tea and Gin­seng Com­pa­ny, 75 Mott Street, at sev­en o’clock. If you please.”

No­ra glared at him an­gri­ly, then stalked off.

Im­me­di­ate­ly, Bris­bane glid­ed over on long legs, plant­ing him­self in front of them. “What a pleas­ant sur­prise,” he said in a chill un­der­tone. “The FBI agent, the po­lice­man, and the re­porter. An un­holy trin­ity if ev­er I saw one.”

Pen­der­gast in­clined his head. “And how are you, Mr. Bris­bane?”

“Oh, top form.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“I don’t re­call any of you be­ing on the guest list. Es­pe­cial­ly you, Mr. Smith­back. How did you slith­er past se­cu­ri­ty?”

Pen­der­gast smiled and spoke gen­tly. “Sergeant O’Shaugh­nessy and I are here on law en­force­ment busi­ness. As for Mr. Smith­back—well, I’m sure he would like noth­ing more than to be tossed out on his ear. What a mar­velous fol­low-​up that would make to his piece in to­day’s edi­tion of the Times.”

Smith­back nod­ded. “Thank you. It would.”

Bris­bane stood still, the smile frozen on his face. He looked first at Pen­der­gast, then at Smith­back. His eyes raked Smith­back’s soiled tux. “Didn’t your moth­er teach you that caviar goes in the mouth, not on the shirt?” He walked off.

“Im­be­cile,” Smith­back mur­mured.

“Don’t un­der­es­ti­mate him,” replied Pen­der­gast. “He has Moe­gen-​Fairhaven, the Mu­se­um, and the may­or be­hind him. And he is no im­be­cile.”

“Yeah. Ex­cept that I’m a re­porter for the New York Times.”

“Don’t make the mis­take of think­ing even that lofty po­si­tion will pro­tect you.”

. . . and now, with­out more ado, let us un­veil the Mu­se­um’s lat­est cre­ation, the Hall of Pri­mates . . .

O’Shaugh­nessy watched as a rib­bon be­side the podi­um was cut with an over­sized pair of scis­sors. There was a smat­ter­ing of ap­plause and a gen­er­al drift to­ward the open doors of the new hall be­yond. Pen­der­gast glanced at him. “Shall we?”

“Why not?” Any­thing was bet­ter than stand­ing around here.

“Count me out,” said Smith­back. “I’ve seen enough ex­hi­bi­tions in this joint to last me a life­time.”

Pen­der­gast turned and grasped the re­porter’s hand. “I am sure we shall meet again. Soon.”

It seemed to O’Shaugh­nessy that Smith­back fair­ly flinched.

Soon they were through the doors. Peo­ple drift­ed along the spa­cious hall, which was lined with dio­ra­mas of stuffed chim­panzees, go­ril­las, orangutans, and var­ious mon­keys and lemurs, dis­played in their na­tive habi­tats. With some sur­prise, O’Shaugh­nessy re­al­ized the dio­ra­mas were fas­ci­nat­ing, beau­ti­ful in their own way. They were like mag­ic case­ments open­ing on­to dis­tant worlds. How had these mo­rons done it? But of course, they hadn’t done it—it was the cu­ra­tors and artists who had. Peo­ple like Bris­bane were the dead­wood at the top of the pile. He re­al­ly need­ed to come here more of­ten.

He saw a knot of peo­ple gath­er­ing around one case, which dis­played a hoot­ing chim­panzee swing­ing on a tree limb. There was whis­pered con­ver­sa­tion, muf­fled laugh­ter. It didn’t look any dif­fer­ent from the oth­er cas­es, and yet it seemed to have at­tract­ed half the peo­ple in the hall. O’Shaugh­nessy won­dered what was so in­ter­est­ing about that chim­panzee. He looked about. Pen­der­gast was in a far cor­ner, ex­am­in­ing some strange lit­tle mon­key with in­tense in­ter­est. Fun­ny man. A lit­tle scary, ac­tu­al­ly, when you got right down to it.

He strolled over to check out the case, stand­ing at the fringe of the crowd. There were more mur­murs, some sti­fled laugh­ter, some dis­ap­prov­ing clucks. A be­jew­eled la­dy was ges­tur­ing for a guard. When peo­ple no­ticed O’Shaugh­nessy was a cop, they au­to­mat­ical­ly shuf­fled aside.

He saw that an elab­orate la­bel had been at­tached to the case. The la­bel was made from a plaque of rich­ly grained oak, on which gold let­ters were edged in black. It read:

ROGER C. BRIS­BANE III

FIRST VICE PRES­IDENT

THIR­TEEN

THE BOX WAS made of fruit­wood. It had lain, un­touched and un­need­ed, for many decades, and was now cov­ered in a heavy man­tle of dust. But it had on­ly tak­en one swipe of a soft velour cloth to re­move the sed­iment of years, and a sec­ond swipe to bring out the rich, mel­low sheen of the wood be­neath.

Next, the cloth moved to­ward the brass cor­ners, rub­bing and bur­nish­ing. Then the brass hinges, shined and light­ly oiled. Fi­nal­ly came the gold name­plate, fas­tened to the lid by four tiny screws. It was on­ly when ev­ery inch, ev­ery el­ement, of the box had been pol­ished to bril­liance that the fin­gers moved to­ward the latch, and—trem­bling slight­ly with the grav­ity of the mo­ment—un­snapped the lock, lift­ed the lid.

With­in, the tools gleamed from their beds of pur­ple vel­vet. The fin­gers moved from one to the next, touch­ing each light­ly, al­most rev­er­ent­ly, as if they could im­part some heal­ing gift. As in­deed they could—and had—and would again.

First came the large am­pu­ta­tion knife. Its blade curved down­ward, as did all Amer­ican am­pu­ta­tion knives made be­tween the Rev­olu­tion­ary and Civ­il Wars. In fact, this par­tic­ular set dat­ed from the 1840s, craft­ed by Wie­gand & Snow­den of Philadel­phia. An exquisite set, a work of art.

The fin­gers moved on, a soli­tary ring of cat’s-​eye opal wink­ing con­spir­ato­ri­al­ly in the sub­dued light: metacarpal saw, Catlin knife, bone for­ceps, tis­sue for­ceps. At last, the fin­gers stopped on the cap­ital saw. They ca­ressed its length for a mo­ment, then teased it from its mold­ed slot. It was a beau­ty: long, built for busi­ness, its heavy blade breath­tak­ing­ly sharp. As with the rest of the tools, its han­dle was made of ivory and gut­ta-​per­cha; it was not un­til the 1880s, when Lis­ter’s work on germs was pub­lished, that sur­gi­cal in­stru­ments be­gan to be ster­il­ized. All han­dles from that point on were made of met­al: porous ma­te­ri­als be­came mere col­lec­tor’s items. A pity, re­al­ly; the old tools were so much more at­trac­tive.

It was a com­fort to know that there would be no need for ster­il­iza­tion here.

The box con­tained two trays. With wor­ship­ful care, the fin­gers re­moved the up­per tray—the am­pu­ta­tion set—to ex­pose the still greater beau­ty of the neu­ro­sur­gi­cal set be­low. Rows of skull trephines lay be­side the more del­icate saw blades. And en­cir­cling the rest was the great­est trea­sure of all: a med­ical chain saw, a long, thin band of met­al cov­ered in sharp ser­rat­ed teeth, ivory hand grips at each end. It ac­tu­al­ly be­longed among the am­pu­ta­tion tools, but its great length con­signed it to the low­er tray. This was the thing to use when time, not del­ica­cy, was of the essence. It was a hor­ri­fy­ing-​look­ing tool. It was con­sum­mate­ly beau­ti­ful.

The fin­gers brushed each item in turn. Then, care­ful­ly, the up­per tray was low­ered back in­to po­si­tion.

A heavy leather strop was brought from a near­by ta­ble and laid be­fore the open box. The fin­gers rubbed a small amount of neat’s-​foot oil in­to the strop, slow­ly, with­out hur­ry. It was im­por­tant that there no longer be any hur­ry. Hur­ry had al­ways meant mis­takes, wast­ed ef­fort.

At last, the fin­gers re­turned to the box, se­lect­ed a knife, brought it to the light. Then—with lin­ger­ing, lov­ing care—laid it against the leather strop and be­gan stroking back and forth, back and forth. The leather seemed al­most to purr as the blade was stropped.

To sharp­en all the blades in the sur­gi­cal set to a ra­zor edge would take many hours. But then, there would be time.

There would, in fact, be noth­ing but time.

The Ap­point­ed Time

ONE

PAUL KARP COULD hard­ly be­lieve he was ac­tu­al­ly go­ing to get some. Fi­nal­ly. Sev­en­teen years old and now fi­nal­ly he was go­ing to get some.

He pulled the girl deep­er in­to the Ram­ble. It was the wildest, least vis­it­ed part of Cen­tral Park. It wasn’t per­fect, but it would have to do.

“Why don’t we just go back to your place?” the girl asked.

“My folks are home.” Paul put his arms around her and kissed her. “Don’t wor­ry, this is great right here.” Her face was flushed, and he could hear her breath­ing. He looked ahead for the dark­est, the most pri­vate place he could find. Quick­ly, un­will­ing to lose the mo­ment, he turned off the paved walk and plunged in­to a thick­et of rhodo­den­dron bush­es. She was fol­low­ing, glad­ly. The thought sent a lit­tle shiv­er of an­tic­ipa­tion cours­ing through him. It on­ly seemed de­sert­ed, he told him­self. Peo­ple came in here all the time.

He pushed his way in­to the dens­est part of the thick­et. Even though the au­tumn sun still hov­ered low in the sky, the canopy of sycamores, lau­rels, and aza­leas cre­at­ed a ver­dant halflight. He tried to tell him­self it was cozy, al­most ro­man­tic.

Fi­nal­ly they came to a hid­den spot, a thick bed of myr­tle sur­round­ed by dark bush­es. No one would see them here. They were ut­ter­ly alone.

“Paul? What if a mug­ger—?”

“No mug­ger’s go­ing to see us in here,” he quick­ly said, tak­ing the girl in his arms and kiss­ing her. She re­spond­ed, first hes­itant­ly, then more ea­ger­ly.

“Are you sure this place is okay?” she whis­pered.

“Sure. We’re to­tal­ly alone.”

Af­ter a last look around, Paul lay down on the myr­tle, pulling her be­side him. They kissed again. Paul slid his hands up her blouse and she didn’t stop him. He could feel her chest heav­ing, breasts ris­ing and falling. The birds made a rack­et over their heads, and the myr­tle rose around them like a thick, green car­pet. It was very nice. Paul thought this was a great way for it to hap­pen. He could tell the sto­ry lat­er. But the im­por­tant thing was it was go­ing to hap­pen. No longer would it be a joke among his friends: the last vir­gin of Ho­race Mann’s se­nior class.

With re­newed ur­gen­cy, he pressed clos­er to her, un­did some but­tons.

“Don’t push so hard,” she whis­pered, squirm­ing. “The ground is bumpy.”

“Sor­ry.” They wrig­gled on the thick myr­tle, search­ing for a more com­fort­able spot.

“Now there’s a branch dig­ging in­to my back.”

Sud­den­ly she stopped.

“What?”

“I heard a rus­tle.”

“It’s just the wind.” Paul shift­ed some more and they em­braced again. His fin­gers felt thick and awk­ward as he un­zipped her pants, un­but­toned the rest of her shirt. Her breasts swung free and at the sight he felt him­self grow even hard­er. He put his hand on her bare midriff, slid­ing it down­ward. Her much more ex­pert hand reached him first. As she took him in her cool gen­tle grasp, he gasped and thrust for­ward.

“Ouch. Wait. There’s still a branch un­der­neath me.” She sat up, breath­ing hard, her blond hair falling over her shoul­ders. Paul sat up, too, frus­tra­tion min­gling with de­sire. He could see the flat­tened area where they had been ly­ing. The myr­tle was crushed and be­neath he could see the out­line of the light-​col­ored branch. He stuck his hand through the myr­tle and grabbed it, yank­ing at it an­gri­ly, strug­gling to wrest it free. God­damn branch.

But some­thing was very wrong: it felt strange, cold, rub­bery, and as it came up out of the myr­tle he saw it wasn’t a branch at all, but an arm. Leaves slid away ex­pos­ing the rest of the body, lan­guorous­ly, un­will­ing­ly. As his fin­gers went slack the arm fell away again, flop­ping back in­to the green­ery.

The girl screamed first, scram­bling back­ward, stand­ing, trip­ping, stand­ing up again and run­ning, jeans un­zipped and shirt flap­ping around her. Paul was on his feet but all he seemed able to hear was her crash­ing through the un­der­growth. It had all hap­pened so fast it seemed like some sort of dream. He could feel the lust dy­ing away with­in him, hor­ror flood­ing in to take its place. He turned to run. Then he paused and glanced wild­ly back, driv­en by some im­pulse to see if it were ac­tu­al­ly re­al. The fin­gers were part­ly curled, white skin smeared with mud. And in the dim­ness be­yond, un­der the thick un­der­growth, lay the rest of it. TWO

DR. BILL DOW­SON lounged against the sink, ex­am­in­ing his pre­cise­ly trimmed fin­ger­nails with­out in­ter­est. One more, then lunch. Thank God. A cup of cof­fee and a BLT at the cor­ner deli would hit the spot. He wasn’t sure why he want­ed a BLT, ex­act­ly: maybe it was the li­vid­ity of the last stiff that start­ed him think­ing about ba­con. Any­way, that Do­mini­can be­hind the deli counter had el­evat­ed the sand­wich in­to an art form. Dow­son could prac­ti­cal­ly taste the crisp let­tuce, the tang of toma­to against the may­on­naise . . .

The nurse brought in the clip­board and he glanced up. She had short black hair and a trim body. He glanced at the clip­board with­out pick­ing it up and smiled at her.

“What have we here?” he asked.

“Homi­cide.”

He gave an ex­ag­ger­at­ed sigh, rolled his eyes. “What is that, the fourth to­day? It must be hunt­ing sea­son. Gun­shot?”

“No. Some kind of mul­ti­ple stab­bing. They found it in Cen­tral Park, in the Ram­ble.”

He nod­ded. “The dump­ing ground, eh? Fig­ures.” Great. An­oth­er piece-​of-​shit killing. He glanced at his watch. “Bring it in, please.”

He watched the nurse walk out. Nice, very nice. She re­turned a mo­ment lat­er with a gur­ney, cov­ered by a green sheet.

He made no move to­ward the body. “So, how about that din­ner tonight?”

The nurse smiled. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, Doc­tor.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve told you be­fore. I don’t date doc­tors. Es­pe­cial­ly ones I work with.”

He nod­ded, pushed down his glass­es, and grinned. “But I’m your soul mate, re­mem­ber?”

She smiled. “Hard­ly.”

But he could tell she was flat­tered by his in­ter­est. Bet­ter not push it, though, not these days. Sex­ual ha­rass­ment and all that.

He sighed, eased him­self off the sink. Then he pulled on a fresh pair of gloves. “Turn on the video­cams,” he said to the nurse as he prepped.

“Yes, Doc­tor.”

He picked up the clip­board. “Says here we have a Cau­casian wom­an, iden­ti­fied as Doreen Hol­lan­der, age 27, of Pine Creek, Ok­la­homa. Iden­ti­fied by her hus­band.” He scanned the rest of the top sheet. Then he hung the clip­board on the gur­ney, drew on his sur­gi­cal mask, and with the nurse’s help lift­ed the sheet­ed corpse on­to the stain­less steel ex­am­in­ing ta­ble.

He sensed a pres­ence be­hind him and turned. In the door­way was a tall, slen­der man. His face and hands looked re­mark­ably pale against the black of his suit. Be­hind the man stood a uni­formed cop.

“Yes?” Dow­son asked.

The man ap­proached, open­ing his wal­let. “I’m Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast, Dr. Dow­son. And this is Sergeant O’Shaugh­nessy of the NYPD.”

Dow­son looked him over. This was very ir­reg­ular. And there was some­thing strange about the man: hair so very blond, eyes so very pale, ac­cent so very, very south­ern. “And?”

“May I ob­serve?”

“This an FBI case?”

“No.”

“Where’s your clear­ance?”

“I don’t have one.”

Dow­son sighed with ir­ri­ta­tion. “You know the rules. You can’t just watch for the hell of it.”

The FBI agent took a step clos­er to him, clos­er than he liked, in­vad­ing his per­son­al space. He con­trolled an im­pulse to step back­ward.

“Look, Mr. Pen­der­gast, get the nec­es­sary pa­per­work and come back. Okay?”

“That will be time-​con­sum­ing,” said the man named Pen­der­gast. “It will hold you up con­sid­er­ably. I would ap­pre­ci­ate your cour­tesy in let­ting us ob­serve.”

There was some­thing in the man’s tone that sound­ed a lot hard­er than the mel­liflu­ous ac­cent and gen­teel words sug­gest­ed. Dow­son hes­itat­ed. “Look, with all due re­spect—”

“With all due re­spect, Dr. Dow­son, I’m in no mood to bandy ci­vil­ities with you. Pro­ceed with the au­top­sy.”

The voice was now cold as dry ice. Dow­son re­mem­bered the video­cam was on. He glanced covert­ly at the nurse. He had a strong sense that a hu­mil­ia­tion at the hands of this man might be just around the cor­ner. This would not look good and it might cause trou­ble lat­er. The guy was FBI, af­ter all. Any­way, his own ass was cov­ered: he was on record stat­ing the man need­ed clear­ance.

Dow­son sighed. “All right, Pen­der­gast. You and the sergeant, don scrubs.”

He wait­ed un­til they re­turned, then pulled back the sheet with a sin­gle mo­tion. The ca­dav­er lay on its back: blonde hair, young, fresh. The chill of the pre­vi­ous night had kept it from de­com­pos­ing. Dow­son leaned to­ward the mike and be­gan a de­scrip­tion. The FBI man was look­ing at the corpse with in­ter­est. But Dow­son could see that the uni­formed cop was be­gin­ning to look un­easy, shift­ing from one foot to an­oth­er, lips pressed tight to­geth­er. The last thing he need­ed was a puk­er.

“Is he go­ing to be all right?” Dow­son asked Pen­der­gast in an un­der­tone, nod­ding to the cop.

Pen­der­gast turned. “You don’t have to see this, Sergeant.”

The cop swal­lowed, glanc­ing from the corpse to Pen­der­gast and back again. “I’ll be in the lounge.”

“Drop your scrubs in the bin on your way out,” said Dow­son with sar­cas­tic sat­is­fac­tion.

Pen­der­gast watched the cop leave. Then he turned to Dow­son. “I sug­gest you turn the body over be­fore mak­ing your Y-​in­ci­sion.”

“And why is that?”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded to­ward the clip­board. “Page two.”

Dow­son picked it up, flipped over the top page. Ex­ten­sive lac­er­ations . . . deep knife wounds . . . Looked like the girl had been stabbed re­peat­ed­ly in the low­er back. Or worse. As usu­al, it was hard to make out from the po­lice re­port what had ac­tu­al­ly tak­en place, from a med­ical stand­point. There had been no in­ves­ti­gat­ing ME. It had been giv­en a low pri­or­ity. This Doreen Hol­lan­der didn’t count for much, it seemed.

Dow­son re­turned the clip­board. “Sue, help me turn her over.”

They turned the body, ex­pos­ing the back. The nurse gasped and stepped away.

Dow­son stared in sur­prise. “Looks like she died on the op­er­at­ing ta­ble, in the mid­dle of an op­er­ation to re­move a spinal tu­mor.” Had they screwed up again down­stairs? Just last week—twice—they had sent him the wrong pa­per­work with the wrong corpse. But im­me­di­ate­ly Dow­son re­al­ized this was no hos­pi­tal stiff. Not with dirt and leaves stick­ing to the raw wound that cov­ered the en­tire low­er back and sacrum area.

This was weird. Se­ri­ous­ly weird.

He peered clos­er and be­gan de­scrib­ing the wound for the ben­efit of the cam­era, try­ing to keep the sur­prise out of his voice.

“Su­per­fi­cial­ly, this does not re­sem­ble the ran­dom knife slash­ing, stab­bing, or cut­ting de­scribed in the re­port. It has the ap­pear­ance of—of a dis­sec­tion. The in­ci­sion—if it is one—be­gins about ten inch­es be­low the scapu­la and sev­en inch­es above the belt line. It ap­pears as if the en­tire cau­da equina has been dis­sect­ed out, start­ing at L1 and ter­mi­nat­ing at the sacrum.”

At this, the FBI agent looked at him abrupt­ly.

“The dis­sec­tion in­cludes the filum ter­mi­nale.” Dow­son bent clos­er. “Nurse, sponge along here.”

The nurse re­moved some of the de­bris around the wound. The room had fall­en silent ex­cept for the whirr of the cam­era, and there was a clat­ter­ing sound as twigs and leaves slid in­to the ta­ble’s drainage chan­nel.

“The spinal cord—more pre­cise­ly, the cau­da equina—is miss­ing. It has been re­moved. The dis­sec­tion ex­tends pe­riph­er­al­ly to the neu­ro­fora­men and out to the trans­verse pro­cess­es. Nurse, ir­ri­gate L1 to L5.”

The nurse quick­ly ir­ri­gat­ed the re­quest­ed area.

“The, er, dis­sec­tion has stripped off the skin, the sub­cu­ta­neous tis­sue, and paraspinous mus­cu­la­ture. It ap­pears as if a self-​re­tain­ing re­trac­tor was used. I can see the marks of it here, and here, and here.” He care­ful­ly in­di­cat­ed the ar­eas for the ben­efit of the video.

“The spinous pro­cess­es and lam­inae have been re­moved, along with the lig­amen­tum flavum. The du­ra is still present. There is a lon­gi­tu­di­nal in­ci­sion in the du­ra from L1 to the sacrum, al­low­ing full re­moval of the cord. It has the ap­pear­ance of a . . . of a very pro­fes­sion­al in­ci­sion. Nurse, the stere­ozoom.”

The nurse rolled over a large mi­cro­scope. Quick­ly, Dow­son in­spect­ed the spinous pro­cess­es. “It looks as if a rongeur has been used to re­move the pro­cess­es and lam­inae from the du­ra.”

He straight­ened up, run­ning a gowned arm across his fore­head. This was not a stan­dard dis­sec­tion one would do in med­ical school. It was more like the kind of thing neu­ro­sur­geons prac­ticed in ad­vanced neu­roanato­my class­es. Then he re­mem­bered the FBI agent, Pen­der­gast. He glanced at him, to see how he was tak­ing it. He had seen a lot of shocked peo­ple at au­top­sies, but noth­ing like this: the man looked, not shocked ex­act­ly, so much as grim Death him­self.

The man spoke. “Doc­tor, may I in­ter­rupt with a few ques­tions?”

Dow­son nod­ded.

“Was this dis­sec­tion the cause of death?”

This was a new thought to Dow­son. He shud­dered. “If the sub­ject were alive when this was done, yes, it would have caused death.”

“At what point?”

“As soon as the in­ci­sion was made in the du­ra, the cere­brospinal flu­id would have drained. That alone would have been enough to cause death.” He ex­am­ined the wound again. It looked as if the op­er­ation had caused a great deal of bleed­ing from the epidu­ral veins, and some of them had re­tract­ed—an in­di­ca­tion of live trau­ma. Yet the dis­sec­tor had not worked around the veins, as a sur­geon on a live pa­tient would have done, but had cut right through them. The op­er­ation, while done with great skill, had al­so ap­par­ent­ly been done with haste. “A large num­ber of veins have been cut, and on­ly the largest—whose bleed­ing would have in­ter­fered with the work—have been lig­at­ed. The sub­ject might have bled to death be­fore the open­ing of the du­ra, de­pend­ing on how fast the, er, per­son worked.”

“But was the sub­ject alive when the op­er­ation be­gan?”

“It seems she was.” Dow­son swal­lowed weak­ly. “How­ev­er, it seems no ef­fort was made to keep the sub­ject alive while the, ah, dis­sec­tion was pro­gress­ing.”

“I would sug­gest some blood and tis­sue work to see if the sub­ject had been tran­quil­ized.” The doc­tor nod­ded. “It’s stan­dard.”

“In your opin­ion, Doc­tor, how pro­fes­sion­al was this dis­sec­tion?”

Dow­son did not an­swer. He was try­ing to or­der his thoughts. This had the po­ten­tial of be­ing big and un­pleas­ant. For the time be­ing, no doubt they’d try to keep a low pro­file on this, try to fly it as long as pos­si­ble be­neath the radar of the New York press. But it would come out—it al­ways did—and then there would be a lot of peo­ple sec­ond-​guess­ing his ac­tions. He’d bet­ter slow down, take it one step at a time. This was not the run-​of-​the-​mill mur­der the po­lice re­port in­di­cat­ed. Thank God he hadn’t ac­tu­al­ly be­gun the au­top­sy. He had the FBI agent to thank for that.

He turned to the nurse. “Get Jones up here with the large-​for­mat cam­era and the cam­era for the stere­ozoom. And I want a sec­ond ME to as­sist. Who’s on call?”

“Dr. Lofton.”

“I need him with­in the half-​hour. I al­so want to con­sult with our neu­ro­sur­geon, Dr. Feld­man. Get him up here as soon as pos­si­ble.”

“Yes, Doc­tor.”

He turned to Pen­der­gast. “I’m not sure I can let you stay with­out some kind of of­fi­cial sanc­tion.”

To his sur­prise, the man seemed to ac­cept this. “I un­der­stand, Doc­tor. I be­lieve this au­top­sy is in good hands. I, per­son­al­ly, have seen enough.”

So have I, thought Dow­son. He now felt sure that a sur­geon had done this. The thought made him feel sick.

O’Shaugh­nessy stood in the lounge. He de­bat­ed whether to buy a cup of cof­fee from a vend­ing ma­chine, then de­cid­ed against it. He felt dis­tinct­ly em­bar­rassed. Here he was, sup­posed to be a tough, sar­don­ic New York City cop, and he’d wimped out. All but tossed his cook­ies right there on the ex­am­in­ing room floor. The sight of that poor chub­by naked girl on the ta­ble, blue and dirty, her young face all puffed up, eyes open, leaves and sticks in her hair . . . he shud­dered afresh at the im­age.

He al­so felt a burn­ing anger for the per­son who had done it. He wasn’t a homi­cide cop, had nev­er want­ed to be one, even in the ear­ly days. He hat­ed the sight of blood. But his own sis­ter-​in-​law lived in Ok­la­homa. About this girl’s age, too. Now, he felt he could stand what­ev­er it took to catch that killer.

Pen­der­gast glid­ed through the stain­less steel doors like a wraith. He bare­ly glanced at O’Shaugh­nessy. The sergeant fell in­to step be­hind him, and they left the build­ing and climbed in­to the wait­ing car in si­lence.

Some­thing had def­inite­ly put Pen­der­gast in­to a black mood. The guy was moody, but this was the dark­est he had ev­er seen him. O’Shaugh­nessy still had no idea why Pen­der­gast was sud­den­ly so in­ter­est­ed in this new mur­der, in­ter­rupt­ing his work on the nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry killings. But some­how, this didn’t seem to be the time to ask.

“We will drop the sergeant off at the precinct house,” said Pen­der­gast to his chauf­feur. “And then you may take me home.”

Pen­der­gast set­tled back in the leather seat. O’Shaugh­nessy looked over at him.

“What hap­pened?” he man­aged to ask. “What did you see?”

Pen­der­gast looked out his win­dow. “Evil.” And he spoke no more.

THREE

WILLIAM SMITH­BACK JR., in his best suit (the Amani, re­cent­ly dry-​cleaned), crispest white shirt, and most busi­ness-​like tie, stood on the cor­ner of Av­enue of the Amer­ic­as and Fifty-​fifth Street. His eyes strayed up­ward along the vast glass-​and-​chrome mono­lith that was the Moe­gen-​Fairhaven Build­ing, rip­pling blue-​green in the sun­light like some vast slab of wa­ter. Some­where in that hun­dred-​mil­lion-​dol­lar pile was his prey.

He felt pret­ty sure he could talk his way in­to see­ing Fairhaven. He was good at that kind of thing. This as­sign­ment was a lot more promis­ing than that tourist mur­der in the Ram­ble his ed­itor had want­ed him to cov­er to­day. He con­jured up the griz­zled face of his ed­itor, red eyes bug-​big be­hind thick glass­es, smoke-​cured fin­ger point­ing, telling him that this dead la­dy from Ok­la­homa was go­ing to be big. Big? Tourists were get­ting smoked all the time in New York City. It was too bad, but there it was. Homi­cide re­port­ing was hack­work. He had a hunch about Fairhaven, the Mu­se­um, and these old killings Pen­der­gast was so in­ter­est­ed in. He al­ways trust­ed his hunch­es. His ed­itor wouldn’t be dis­ap­point­ed. He was go­ing to cast his fly on­to the wa­ter, and by God Fairhaven might just bite.

Tak­ing one more deep breath, he crossed the street—giv­ing the fin­ger to a cab­bie that shot past inch­es away, horn blar­ing—and ap­proached the gran­ite and ti­ta­ni­um en­try. An­oth­er vast acreage of gran­ite greet­ed him up­on en­ter­ing the in­te­ri­or. There was a large desk, manned by half a dozen se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers, and sev­er­al banks of el­eva­tors be­yond.

Smith­back strode res­olute­ly to­ward the se­cu­ri­ty desk. He leaned on it ag­gres­sive­ly.

“I’m here to see Mr. Fairhaven.”

The clos­est guard was shuf­fling through a com­put­er print­out. “Name?” he asked, not both­er­ing to look up.

“William Smith­back Jr., of the New York Times.”

“Mo­ment,” mum­bled the guard, pick­ing up a tele­phone. He di­aled, then hand­ed it to Smith­back. A crisp voice sound­ed. “May I help you?”

“This is William Smith­back Jr. of the New York Times. I’m here to see Mr. Fairhaven.”

It was Sat­ur­day, but Smith­back was gam­bling he’d be in his of­fice. Guys like Fairhaven nev­er took Sat­ur­days off. And on Sat­ur­days, they were usu­al­ly less for­ti­fied with sec­re­taries and guards.

“Do you have an ap­point­ment?” the fe­male voice asked, reach­ing down to him from fifty sto­ries.

“No. I’m the re­porter do­ing the sto­ry on Enoch Leng and the bod­ies found at his job­site on Cather­ine Street and I need to speak with him im­me­di­ate­ly. It’s ur­gent.”

“You need to call for an ap­point­ment.” It was an ut­ter­ly neu­tral voice.

“Good. Con­sid­er this the call. I’d like to make an ap­point­ment for”—Smith­back checked his watch—“ten o’clock.”

“Mr. Fairhaven is present­ly en­gaged,” the voice in­stant­ly re­spond­ed.

Smith­back took a deep breath. So he was in. Time to press the at­tack. There were prob­ably ten lay­ers of sec­re­taries be­yond the one on the phone, but he’d got­ten through that many be­fore. “Look, if Mr. Fairhaven is too busy to talk to me, I’ll just have to re­port in the ar­ti­cle I’m writ­ing for the Mon­day edi­tion that he re­fused to com­ment.”

“He is present­ly en­gaged,” the robot­ic voice re­peat­ed.

“No com­ment. That’ll do won­ders for his pub­lic im­age. And come Mon­day, Mr. Fairhaven will be want­ing to know who in his of­fice turned away the re­porter. Get my drift?”

There was a long si­lence. Smith­back drew in some more air. This was of­ten a long pro­cess. “You know when you’re read­ing an ar­ti­cle in the pa­per, and it’s about some sleazy guy, and the guy says I have no com­ment? How does that make you feel about the guy? Es­pe­cial­ly a re­al es­tate de­vel­op­er. No com­ment. I could do a lot with no com­ment.”

There was more si­lence. Smith­back won­dered if she had hung up. But no, there was a sound on a line. It was a chuck­le.

“That’s good,” said a low, pleas­ant, mas­cu­line voice. “I like that. Nice­ly done.”

“Who’s this?” Smith­back de­mand­ed.

“Just some sleazy re­al es­tate de­vel­op­er.”

“Who?” Smith­back was not go­ing to stand be­ing made fun of by some lack­ey.

“An­tho­ny Fairhaven.”

“Oh.” Smith­back was mo­men­tar­ily struck speech­less. He re­cov­ered quick­ly. “Mr. Fairhaven, is it true that—”

“Why don’t you come on up, so we can talk face-​to-​face, like grownup peo­ple? Forty-​ninth floor.”

“What?” Smith­back was still sur­prised at the ra­pid­ity of his suc­cess.

“I said, come up. I was won­der­ing when you’d call, be­ing the am­bi­tious, ca­reerist re­porter that you so ev­ident­ly are.”

Fairhaven’s of­fice was not quite what Smith­back had en­vi­sioned. True, there were sev­er­al lay­ers of sec­re­taries and as­sis­tants guard­ing the sanc­tum sanc­to­rum. But when he fi­nal­ly gained Fairhaven’s of­fice, it wasn’t the vast screw-​you space of chrome-​gold-​ebony-​old­mas­ter-​paint­ings-​African-​prim­itives he’d ex­pect­ed. It was rather sim­ple and small. True, there was art on the walls, but it con­sist­ed of some un­der­stat­ed Thomas Hart Ben­ton lithographs of yeo­man farm­ers. Be­side these was a glassed pan­el—locked and clear­ly alarmed—con­tain­ing a va­ri­ety of hand­guns, mount­ed on a black vel­vet back­drop. The sole desk was small and made of birch. There were a cou­ple of easy chairs and a worn Per­sian rug on the floor. One wall was cov­ered with book­shelves, filled with books that had clear­ly been read in­stead of pur­chased by the yard as fur­ni­ture. Ex­cept for the gun case, it looked more like a pro­fes­sor’s of­fice than that of a re­al es­tate mag­nate. And yet, un­like any pro­fes­sor’s of­fice Smith­back had ev­er been in, the space was metic­ulous­ly clean. Ev­ery sur­face sparkled with an un­blem­ished shine. Even the books ap­peared to have been pol­ished. There was a faint smell of clean­ing agents, a lit­tle chem­ical but not un­pleas­ant.

“Please sit down,” said Fairhaven, sweep­ing a hand to­ward the easy chairs. “Would you care for any­thing? Cof­fee? Wa­ter? So­da? Whisky?” He grinned.

“Noth­ing, thanks,” said Smith­back as he took a seat. He felt the fa­mil­iar shud­der of ex­pec­ta­tion that came be­fore an in­tense in­ter­view. Fairhaven was clear­ly savvy, but he was rich and pam­pered; he no doubt lacked street-​smarts. Smith­back had in­ter­viewed—and skew­ered—dozens like him. It wouldn’t even be a con­test.

Fairhaven opened a re­frig­er­ator and took out a small bot­tle of min­er­al wa­ter. He poured him­self a glass and then sat, not at his desk, but in an easy chair op­po­site Smith­back. He crossed his legs, smiled. The bot­tle of wa­ter sparkled in the sun­light that slant­ed through the win­dows. Smith­back glanced past him. The view, at least, was killer.

He turned his at­ten­tion back to the man. Black wavy hair, strong brow, ath­let­ic frame, easy move­ments, sar­don­ic look in the eye. Could be thir­ty, thir­ty-​five. He jot­ted a few im­pres­sions.

“So,” Fairhaven said with a small, self-​dep­re­cat­ing smile, “the sleazy re­al es­tate de­vel­op­er is ready to take your ques­tions.”

“May I record this?”

“I would ex­pect no less.”

Smith­back slipped a recorder out of his pock­et. Of course he seemed charm­ing. Peo­ple like him were ex­perts at charm and ma­nip­ula­tion. But he’d nev­er al­low him­self to be spun. All he had to do was re­mem­ber who he was deal­ing with: a heart­less, mon­ey-​grub­bing busi­ness­man who would sell his own moth­er for the back rent alone.

“Why did you de­stroy the site on Cather­ine Street?” he asked.

Fairhaven bowed his head slight­ly. “The project was be­hind sched­ule. We were fast­track­ing the ex­ca­va­tion. It would’ve cost me forty thou­sand dol­lars a day. I’m not in the ar­chae­ol­ogy busi­ness.”

“Some ar­chae­ol­ogists say you de­stroyed one of the most im­por­tant sites to be dis­cov­ered in Man­hat­tan in a quar­ter-​cen­tu­ry.”

Fairhaven cocked his head. “Re­al­ly? Which ar­chae­ol­ogists?”

“The So­ci­ety for Amer­ican Ar­chae­ol­ogy, for ex­am­ple.”

A cyn­ical smile broke out on Fairhaven’s face. “Ah. I see. Well of course they’d be against it. If they had their way, no one in Amer­ica would turn over a spade­ful of soil with­out an ar­chae­ol­ogist stand­ing by with screen, trow­el, and tooth­brush.”

“Get­ting back to the site—”

“Mr. Smith­back, what I did was per­fect­ly le­gal. When we dis­cov­ered those re­mains, I per­son­al­ly stopped all work. I per­son­al­ly ex­am­ined the site. We called in foren­sic ex­perts, who pho­tographed ev­ery­thing. We re­moved the re­mains with great care, had them ex­am­ined, and then prop­er­ly buried, all at my own ex­pense. We did not restart work un­til we had di­rect au­tho­riza­tion from the may­or. What more would you have me do?”

Smith­back felt a small twinge. This was not pro­ceed­ing quite as ex­pect­ed. He was let­ting Fairhaven con­trol the agen­da; that was the prob­lem.

“You say you had the re­mains buried. Why? Was there any­thing per­haps you were try­ing to hide?”

At this Fairhaven ac­tu­al­ly laughed, lean­ing back in his chair, ex­pos­ing beau­ti­ful teeth. “You make it sound sus­pi­cious. I’m a lit­tle em­bar­rassed to ad­mit that I’m a man with some small re­li­gious val­ues. These poor peo­ple were killed in a hideous way. I want­ed to give them a de­cent buri­al with an ec­umeni­cal ser­vice, qui­et and dig­ni­fied, free of the whole me­dia cir­cus. That’s what I did—buried them to­geth­er with their lit­tle ef­fects in a re­al ceme­tery. I didn’t want their bones end­ing up in a mu­se­um draw­er. So I pur­chased a beau­ti­ful tract in the Gates of Heav­en Ceme­tery in Val­hal­la, New York. I’m sure the ceme­tery di­rec­tor would be hap­py to show you the plot. The re­mains were my re­spon­si­bil­ity and, frankly, I had to do some­thing with them. The city cer­tain­ly didn’t want them.”

“Right, right,” said Smith­back, think­ing. It would make a nice side­bar, this qui­et buri­al un­der the leafy elms. But then he frowned. Christ, was he get­ting spun here?

Time for a new tack. “Ac­cord­ing to the records, you’re a ma­jor donor to the may­or’s re­elec­tion cam­paign. You get in a pinch at your con­struc­tion site and he bails you out. Co­in­ci­dence?”

Fairhaven leaned back in the chair. “Drop the wide-​eyed, babe-​in-​the-​woods look. You know per­fect­ly well how things work in this town. When I give mon­ey to the may­or’s cam­paign, I am ex­er­cis­ing my con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. I don’t ex­pect any spe­cial treat­ment, and I don’t ask for it.”

“But if you get it, so much the bet­ter.”

Fairhaven smiled broad­ly, cyn­ical­ly, but said noth­ing. Smith­back felt an­oth­er twinge of con­cern. This guy was be­ing very care­ful about what he ac­tu­al­ly said. Trou­ble was, you couldn’t record a cyn­ical grin.

He stood and walked with what he hoped looked like ca­su­al con­fi­dence to­ward the paint­ings, hands be­hind his back, study­ing them, try­ing to frame a new strat­egy. Then he moved to the gun case. In­side, pol­ished weapons gleamed. “In­ter­est­ing choice of of­fice decor,” he said, ges­tur­ing at the case.

“I col­lect the rarest of hand­guns. I can af­ford to. That one you are point­ing at, for ex­am­ple, is a Luger, cham­bered in .45. The on­ly one ev­er made. I al­so have a col­lec­tion of Mer­cedes-​Benz road­sters. But they take up rather more dis­play space, so I keep them at my place in Sag Har­bor.” Fairhaven looked at him, still smil­ing cyn­ical­ly. “We all col­lect things, Mr. Smith­back. What’s your pas­sion? Mu­se­um mono­graphs and chap­books, per­haps: re­moved for re­search, then not re­turned? By ac­ci­dent, of course.”

Smith­back looked at him sharply. Had the guy searched his apart­ment? But no: Fairhaven was mere­ly fish­ing. He re­turned to the chair. “Mr. Fairhaven—”

Fairhaven in­ter­rupt­ed him, his tone sud­den­ly brisk, un­friend­ly. “Look, Smith­back, I know you’re ex­er­cis­ing your con­sti­tu­tion­al right to skew­er me. The big bad re­al es­tate de­vel­op­er is al­ways an easy tar­get. And you like easy tar­gets. Be­cause you fel­lows are all cut from the same cloth. You all think your work is im­por­tant. But to­day’s news­pa­per is lin­ing to­mor­row’s bird cage. It’s ephemera. What you do, in the larg­er scheme of things, is nu­ga­to­ry.”

Nu­ga­to­ry? What the hell did that mean? It didn’t mat­ter: clear­ly it was an in­sult. He was get­ting un­der Fairhaven’s skin. That was good—wasn’t it?

“Mr. Fairhaven, I have rea­son to be­lieve that you’ve been pres­sur­ing the Mu­se­um to stop this in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“I’m sor­ry. What in­ves­ti­ga­tion?”

“The one in­to Enoch Leng and the nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry killings.”

“That in­ves­ti­ga­tion? Why should I care one way or an­oth­er about it? It didn’t stop my con­struc­tion project, and frankly that’s all I care about. They can in­ves­ti­gate it now un­til they’re blue in the face, if they so choose. And I love this phrase all you jour­nal­ists use: I have rea­son to be­lieve. What you re­al­ly mean is: I want to be­lieve but I haven’t a shred of ev­idence. All you fel­lows must’ve tak­en the same Jour­nal­ism 101 class: Mak­ing an Ass of Your­self While Pre­tend­ing to Get the Sto­ry.” Fairhaven al­lowed him­self a cyn­ical laugh.

Smith­back sat stiffly, lis­ten­ing to the laugh­ter sub­side. Once again he tried to tell him­self he was get­ting un­der Fairhaven’s skin. He spoke at last, keep­ing his voice as cool as pos­si­ble.

“Tell me, Mr. Fairhaven, just why is it that you’re so in­ter­est­ed in the Mu­se­um?”

“I hap­pen to love the Mu­se­um. It’s my fa­vorite mu­se­um in the world. I prac­ti­cal­ly grew up in that place look­ing at the di­nosaurs, the me­te­orites, the gems. I had a nan­ny who used to take me. She necked with her boyfriend be­hind the ele­phants while I wan­dered around by my­self. But you’re not in­ter­est­ed in that, be­cause it doesn’t fit your im­age of the greedy re­al es­tate de­vel­op­er. Re­al­ly, Smith­back, I’m wise to your game.”

“Mr. Fairhaven—”

Fairhaven grinned. “You want a con­fes­sion?”

This tem­porar­ily stopped Smith­back.

Fairhaven low­ered his voice to con­fes­sion­al lev­el. “I have com­mit­ted two un­for­giv­able crimes.”

Smith­back tried to main­tain the hard-​bit­ten re­por­to­ri­al look he cul­ti­vat­ed in in­stances like these. He knew this was go­ing to be some kind of trick, or joke.

“My two crimes are these—are you ready?”

Smith­back checked to see if the recorder was still run­ning.

“I am rich, and I am a de­vel­op­er. My two tru­ly un­for­giv­able sins. Mea cul­pa.”

Against all his bet­ter jour­nal­is­tic in­stincts, Smith­back found him­self get­ting pissed off. He’d lost the in­ter­view. It was, in fact, a dead loss. The guy was a slime­ball, but he was re­mark­ably adroit at deal­ing with the press. So far Smith­back had noth­ing, and he was go­ing to get noth­ing. He made one last push any­way. “You still haven’t ex­plained—”

Fairhaven stood. “Smith­back, if you on­ly knew how ut­ter­ly pre­dictable you and your ques­tions are—if you on­ly knew how tire­some and mediocre you are as a re­porter and, I’m sor­ry to say, as a hu­man be­ing—you’d be mor­ti­fied.”

“I’d like an ex­pla­na­tion—”

But Fairhaven was press­ing a buzzer. His voice smoth­ered the rest of Smith­back’s ques­tion. “Miss Gal­lagher, would you kind­ly show Mr. Smith­back out?”

“Yes, Mr. Fairhaven.”

“This is rather abrupt—”

“Mr. Smith­back, I am tired. I saw you be­cause I didn’t want to read about my­self in the pa­per hav­ing re­fused com­ment. I was al­so cu­ri­ous to meet you, to see if you were per­haps a cut above the rest. Now that I’ve sat­is­fied my­self on that score, I don’t see any rea­son to con­tin­ue this con­ver­sa­tion.”

The sec­re­tary stood in the door, stout and un­mov­able. “Mr. Smith­back? This way, please.”

On his way out, Smith­back paused in the out­er­most sec­re­tary’s of­fice. De­spite his ef­forts at self-​con­trol, his frame was quiv­er­ing with in­dig­na­tion. Fairhaven had been par­ry­ing a hos­tile press for more than a decade; nat­ural­ly, he’d got­ten damn good at it. Smith­back had dealt with nasty in­ter­vie­wees be­fore, but this one re­al­ly got un­der his skin. Call­ing him tire­some, mediocre, ephemer­al, nu­ga­to­ry (he’d have to look that up)—who did he think he was?

Fairhaven him­self was too slip­pery to pin down. No big sur­prise there. There were oth­er ways to find things out about peo­ple. Peo­ple in pow­er had en­emies, and en­emies loved to talk. Some­times the en­emies were work­ing for them, right un­der their noses.

He glanced at the sec­re­tary. She was young, sweet, and looked more ap­proach­able than the bat­tle-​ax­es man­ning the in­ner of­fices.

“Here ev­ery Sat­ur­day?” He smiled non­cha­lant­ly.

“Most of them,” she said, look­ing up from her com­put­er. She was cute, with glossy red hair and a small splash of freck­les. He winced in­ward­ly, sud­den­ly re­mind­ed of No­ra.

“Works you hard, doesn’t he?”

“Mr. Fairhaven? Sure does.”

“Prob­ably makes you work Sun­days, too.”

“Oh no,” she said. “Mr. Fairhaven nev­er works on Sun­day. He goes to church.”

Smith­back feigned sur­prise. “Church? Is he Catholic?”

“Pres­by­te­ri­an.”

“Prob­ably a tough man to work for, I bet.”

“No, he’s one of the best su­per­vi­sors I’ve had. He ac­tu­al­ly seems to care about us lit­tle folk.”

“Nev­er would have guessed it,” Smith­back said with a wink, drift­ing out the door. Prob­ably bon­ing her and the oth­er “lit­tle folk” on the side, he thought.

Back on the street, Smith­back al­lowed him­self a most un-​Pres­by­te­ri­an string of oaths. He was go­ing to dig in­to this guy’s past un­til he knew ev­ery de­tail, down to the name of his god­damn ted­dy bear. You couldn’t be­come a big-​time re­al es­tate de­vel­op­er in New York City and keep your hands clean. There would be dirt, and he would find it. Yes, there would be dirt. By God, there would be dirt.

FOUR

MANDY EK­LUND CLIMBED the filthy sub­way stairs to First Street, turned north at Av­enue A, and trudged to­ward Tomp­kins Square Park. Ahead, the park’s ane­mic trees rose up against a sky faint­ly smeared with the pur­ple stain of dawn. The morn­ing star, low on the hori­zon, was fad­ing in­to obliv­ion.

Mandy pulled her wrap more tight­ly around her shoul­ders in a fu­tile at­tempt to keep out the ear­ly morn­ing chill. She felt a lit­tle grog­gy, and her feet ached each time they hit the pave­ment. It had been a great night at Club Pis­soir, though: mu­sic, free drinks, danc­ing. The whole Ford crowd had been there, along with a bunch of pho­tog­ra­phers, the Made­moi­selle and Cos­mo peo­ple, ev­ery­one who mat­tered in the fash­ion world. She re­al­ly was mak­ing it. The thought still amazed her. On­ly six months be­fore, she’d been work­ing at Rod­ney’s in Bis­mar­ck, giv­ing free makeovers. Then, the right per­son hap­pened to come through the shop. And now she was on the test­ing board at the Ford agen­cy. Eileen Ford her­self had tak­en her un­der her wing. It was all com­ing to­geth­er faster than she’d ev­er dreamed pos­si­ble.

Her fa­ther called al­most ev­ery day from the farm. It was fun­ny, kind of cute re­al­ly, how wor­ried he was about her liv­ing in New York City. He thought the place was a den of in­iq­ui­ty. He’d freak if he knew she stayed out till dawn. He still want­ed her to go to col­lege. And maybe she would—some­day. But right now she was eigh­teen and hav­ing the time of her life. She smiled af­fec­tion­ate­ly at the thought of her con­ser­va­tive old fa­ther, rid­ing his John Deere, wor­ry­ing him­self about her. She’d make the call this time, give him a sur­prise.

She turned on­to Sev­enth Street, pass­ing the dark­ened park, keep­ing a wary eye out for mug­gers. New York was a lot safer now, but it was still wise to be care­ful. She felt in­to her purse, hand clos­ing com­fort­ing­ly around the small bot­tle of pep­per spray at­tached to her key chain.

There were a cou­ple of home­less sleep­ing on pieces of card­board, and a man in a thread­bare cor­duroy suit sat on a bench, drink­ing and nod­ding. An ear­ly breeze passed through the list­less sycamore branch­es, rat­tling the leaves. They were just be­gin­ning to turn a jaun­diced yel­low.

Once again, she wished her walk-​up apart­ment wasn’t so far from a sub­way sta­tion. She couldn’t af­ford cabs—not yet, any­way—and walk­ing the nine blocks home at night was a has­sle. At first it had seemed like a cool neigh­bor­hood, but the seed­iness was start­ing to get to her. Gen­tri­fi­ca­tion was creep­ing in, but not fast enough: the dingy squats and the old hol­low build­ings, sealed shut with cin­derblock, were de­press­ing. The Flat­iron Dis­trict would be bet­ter, or maybe even Yorkville. A lot of the Ford mod­els, the ones who’d made it, lived up there.

She left the park be­hind and turned up Av­enue C. Silent brown­stones rose on ei­ther side, and the wind sent trash along the gut­ters with a dry, skit­tery sound. The faint am­mo­ni­ac tang of urine float­ed out from dark door­ways. No­body picked up af­ter their dogs, and she made her way with care through a dis­gust­ing mine­field of dog shit. This part of the walk was al­ways the worst.

She saw, ahead of her, a fig­ure ap­proach­ing down the side­walk. She stiff­ened, con­sid­ered cross­ing the street, then re­laxed: it was an old man, walk­ing painful­ly with a cane. As he ap­proached she could see he was wear­ing a fun­ny der­by hat. His head was bowed, and she could make out its even brim, the crisp black lines of its crown. She didn’t re­call ev­er see­ing any­body wear­ing a der­by, ex­cept in old black-​and-​white movies. He looked very old­fash­ioned, shuf­fling along with cau­tious steps. She won­dered what he was do­ing out so ear­ly. Prob­ably in­som­nia. Old peo­ple had it a lot, she’d heard. Wak­ing up at four in the morn­ing, couldn’t go back to sleep. She won­dered if her fa­ther had in­som­nia.

They were al­most even now. The old man sud­den­ly seemed to grow aware of her pres­ence; he raised his head and lift­ed his arm to grasp his hat. He was ac­tu­al­ly go­ing to tip his hat to her.

The hat came up, the arm ob­scur­ing ev­ery­thing ex­cept the eyes. They were re­mark­ably bright and cold, and they seemed to be re­gard­ing her in­tent­ly. Must be in­som­nia, she thought—de­spite the hour, this old fel­low wasn’t sleepy at all.

“Good morn­ing, miss,” said an old, creaky voice.

“Good morn­ing,” she replied, try­ing to keep the sur­prise from her voice. No­body ev­er said any­thing to you on the street. It was so un–New York. It charmed her.

As she passed him, she sud­den­ly felt some­thing whip around her neck with hor­ri­ble speed.

She strug­gled and tried to cry out, but found her face cov­ered with a cloth, damp and reek­ing with a sick­ly-​sweet chem­ical smell. In­stinc­tive­ly, she tried to hold her breath. Her hand scrab­bled in her purse and pulled out the bot­tle of pep­per spray, but a ter­ri­ble blow knocked it to the side­walk. She twist­ed and thrashed, moan­ing in pain and fear, her lungs on fire; she gasped once; and then all swirled in­to obliv­ion.

FIVE

IN HIS MESSY cu­bi­cle on the fifth floor of the Times build­ing, Smith­back ex­am­ined with dis­sat­is­fac­tion the list he had hand­writ­ten in his note­book. At the top of the list, the phrase “Fairhaven’s em­ploy­ees” had been crossed out. He hadn’t been able to get back in­to the Moe­gen-​Fairhaven Build­ing—Fairhaven had seen to that. Like­wise, “neigh­bors” had al­so been crossed out: he’d been giv­en the bum’s rush at Fairhaven’s apart­ment build­ing, de­spite all his best stratagems and tricks. He’d looked in­to Fairhaven’s past, to his ear­ly busi­ness as­so­ciates, but they were ei­ther full of pho­ny praise or sim­ply re­fused com­ment.

Next, he’d checked out Fairhaven’s char­ities. The New York Mu­se­um was a dead loss—no one who knew Fairhaven would talk about him, for ob­vi­ous rea­sons—but he had more suc­cess with one of Fairhaven’s oth­er projects, the Lit­tle Arthur Clin­ic for Chil­dren. If suc­cess was the right word for it. The clin­ic was a small re­search hos­pi­tal that cared for sick chil­dren with “or­phaned” dis­eases: very rare ill­ness­es that the big drug com­pa­nies had no in­ter­est in find­ing cures for. Smith­back had man­aged to get in pos­ing as him­self—a New York Times re­porter in­ter­est­ed in their work—with­out rous­ing sus­pi­cion. They had even giv­en him an in­for­mal tour. But in the end that, too, had been a snow job: The doc­tors, nurs­es, par­ents, even the chil­dren sang hosan­nas for Fairhaven. It was enough to make you sick: turkeys at Thanks­giv­ing, bonus­es at Christ­mas, toys and books for the kids, trips to Yan­kee Sta­di­um. Fairhaven had even at­tend­ed a few fu­ner­als, which must have been tough. And yet, thought Smith­back grumpi­ly, all it proved was that Fairhaven care­ful­ly cul­ti­vat­ed his pub­lic im­age.

The guy was a pub­lic re­la­tions pro from way back. Smith­back had found noth­ing. Noth­ing.

That re­mind­ed him: he turned, grabbed a bat­tered dic­tio­nary from a near­by shelf, flipped through the pages un­til he reached “n.” Nu­ga­to­ry: of no im­por­tance, tri­fling.

Smith­back put back the dic­tio­nary.

What was need­ed here was some deep­er dig­ging. Be­fore the time when Fairhaven had gone pro with his life. Back when he was just an­oth­er pim­ply high school kid. So Fairhaven thought Smith­back was just an­oth­er run-​of-​the-​mill re­porter, do­ing nu­ga­to­ry work? Well, he’d wouldn’t be laugh­ing so hard when he opened his Mon­day pa­per.

All it took was ten min­utes on the Web to hit pay­dirt. Fairhaven’s class at P.S. 1984, up on Am­ster­dam Av­enue, had re­cent­ly cel­ebrat­ed the fif­teenth an­niver­sary of their grad­ua­tion. They had cre­at­ed a Web page re­pro­duc­ing their year­book. Fairhaven hadn’t shown up for the re­union, and he might not have even known of the Web page—but all the in­for­ma­tion about him from his old year­book was post­ed, for all to see: pho­tos, nick­names, clubs, in­ter­ests, ev­ery­thing.

There he was: a clean-​cut, all-​around kid, smil­ing cock­ily out of a blur­ry grad­ua­tion pho­to­graph. He was wear­ing a ten­nis sweater and a checked shirt—a typ­ical well-​heeled city boy. His fa­ther was in re­al es­tate, his moth­er a home­mak­er. Smith­back quick­ly learned all kinds of things: that he was cap­tain of the swim team; that he was born un­der the sign of Gem­ini; that he was head of the de­bat­ing club; that his fa­vorite rock group was the Ea­gles; that he played the gui­tar bad­ly; that he want­ed to be a doc­tor; that his fa­vorite col­or was bur­gundy; and that he had been vot­ed most like­ly to be­come a mil­lion­aire.

As Smith­back scrolled through the Web site, the sink­ing feel­ing re­turned. It was all so un­speak­ably bor­ing. But there was one de­tail that caught his eye. Ev­ery stu­dent had been giv­en a nick­name, and Fairhaven’s was “The Slash­er.” He felt his dis­ap­point­ment abate just slight­ly. The Slash­er. It would be nice if the nick­name turned up a se­cret in­ter­est in tor­tur­ing an­imals. It wasn’t much, but it was some­thing.

And he’d grad­uat­ed on­ly six­teen years ago. There would be peo­ple who re­mem­bered him. If there was any­thing un­sa­vory, Smith­back would find it. Let that bas­tard crack his pa­per next week and see how fast that smug smile got wiped off.

P.S. 1984. Luck­ily, the school was on­ly a cab ride away. Turn­ing his back on the com­put­er, Smith­back stood up and reached for his jack­et.

The school stood on a leafy Up­per West Side block be­tween Am­ster­dam and Colum­bus, not far from the Mu­se­um, a long build­ing of yel­low brick, sur­round­ed by a wrought iron fence. As far as New York City schools went, it was rather nice. Smith­back strode to the front door, found it locked—se­cu­ri­ty, of course—and buzzed. A po­lice­man an­swered. Smith­back flashed his press card and the cop let him in.

It was amaz­ing how the place smelled: just like his own high school, far away and long ago. And there was the same taupe paint on the cin­derblock walls, too. All school prin­ci­pals must’ve read the same how-​to man­ual, Smith­back thought as the cop es­cort­ed him through the met­al de­tec­tor and to the prin­ci­pal’s of­fice.

The prin­ci­pal re­ferred him to Miss Kite. Smith­back found her at her desk, work­ing on stu­dent as­sign­ments be­tween class­es. She was a hand­some, gray-​haired wom­an, and when Smith­back men­tioned Fairhaven’s name, he was grat­ified to see the smile of mem­ory on her face.

“Oh yes,” she said. Her voice was kind, but there was a no-​non­sense edge to it that told Smith­back this was no pushover granny. “I re­mem­ber Tony Fairhaven well, be­cause he was in my first twelfth-​grade class, and he was one of our top stu­dents. He was a Na­tion­al Mer­it Schol­ar run­ner-​up.”

Smith­back nod­ded def­er­en­tial­ly and jot­ted a few notes. He wasn’t go­ing to tape-​record this—that was a good way to shut peo­ple up.

“Tell me about him. In­for­mal­ly. What was he like?”

“He was a bright boy, quite pop­ular. I be­lieve he was the head of the swim team. A good, all-​around, hard­work­ing stu­dent.”

“Did he ev­er get in­to trou­ble?”

“Sure. They all did.”

Smith­back tried to look ca­su­al. “Re­al­ly?”

“He used to bring his gui­tar to school and play in the halls, which was against reg­ula­tions. He played very bad­ly and it was most­ly to make the oth­er stu­dents laugh.” She thought for a mo­ment. “One day he caused a hall jam.”

“A hall jam.” Smith­back wait­ed. “And then?”

“We con­fis­cat­ed the gui­tar and that end­ed it. We gave it back to him af­ter grad­ua­tion.”

Smith­back nod­ded, the po­lite smile freez­ing on his face. “Did you know his par­ents?”

“His fa­ther was in re­al es­tate, though of course it was Tony who re­al­ly made such a suc­cess in the busi­ness. I don’t re­mem­ber the moth­er.”

“Broth­ers? Sis­ters?”

“At that time he was an on­ly child. Of course, there was the fam­ily tragedy.” Smith­back in­vol­un­tar­ily leaned for­ward. “Tragedy?”

“His old­er broth­er, Arthur, died. Some rare dis­ease.”

Smith­back abrupt­ly made the con­nec­tion. “Did they call him Lit­tle Arthur, by any chance?” “I be­lieve they did. His fa­ther was Big Arthur. It hit Tony very hard.”

“When did it hap­pen?”

“When Tony was in tenth grade.”

“So it was his old­er broth­er? Was he in the school, too?”

“No. He’d been hos­pi­tal­ized for years. Some very rare and dis­fig­ur­ing dis­ease.” “What dis­ease?”

“I re­al­ly don’t know.”

“When you say it hit Fairhaven hard, how so?”

“He be­came with­drawn, an­ti­so­cial. But he came out of it, even­tu­al­ly.”

“Yes, yes. Let me see . . .” Smith­back checked his notes. “Let’s see. Any prob­lems with al­co­hol, drugs, delin­quen­cy . . . ?” Smith­back tried to make it sound ca­su­al.

“No, no, just the op­po­site,” came the curt re­ply. The look on the teach­er’s face had hard­ened. “Tell me, Mr. Smith­back, ex­act­ly why are you writ­ing this ar­ti­cle?”

Smith­back put on his most in­no­cent face. “I’m just do­ing a lit­tle bi­ograph­ical fea­ture on Mr. Fairhaven. You un­der­stand, we want to get a well-​round­ed pic­ture, the good and the bad. I’m not fish­ing for any­thing in par­tic­ular.” Right.

“I see. Well, Tony Fairhaven was a good boy, and he was very an­ti-​drug, an­ti-​drink­ing, even an­ti-​smok­ing. I re­mem­ber he wouldn’t even drink cof­fee.” She hes­itat­ed. “I don’t know, if any­thing, he might have been a lit­tle too good. And it was some­times hard to tell what he was think­ing. He was a rather closed boy.”

Smith­back jot­ted a few more pro for­ma notes.

“Any hob­bies?”

“He talked about mak­ing mon­ey quite a bit. He worked hard af­ter school, and he had a lot of spend­ing mon­ey as a re­sult. I don’t sup­pose any of this is sur­pris­ing, con­sid­er­ing what he’s done. I’ve read from time to time ar­ti­cles about him, how he pushed through this de­vel­op­ment or that over a neigh­bor­hood’s protests. And of course I read your piece on the Cather­ine Street dis­cov­er­ies. Noth­ing sur­pris­ing. The boy has grown in­to the man, that’s all.”

Smith­back was star­tled: she’d giv­en no in­di­ca­tion she even knew who he was, let alone read his pieces.

“By the way, I thought your ar­ti­cle was very in­ter­est­ing. And dis­turb­ing.”

Smith­back felt a flush of plea­sure. “Thank you.”

“I imag­ine that’s why you’re in­ter­est­ed in Tony. Well, rush­ing in and dig­ging up that site so he could fin­ish his build­ing was just like him. He was al­ways very goal-​ori­ent­ed, im­pa­tient to get to the end, to fin­ish, to suc­ceed. I sup­pose that’s why he’s been so suc­cess­ful as a de­vel­op­er. And he could be rather sar­cas­tic and im­pa­tient with peo­ple he con­sid­ered his in­fe­ri­ors.”

Right, thought Smith­back.

“What about en­emies. Did he have any?”

“Let me see . . . I just can’t re­mem­ber. He was the kind of boy that was nev­er im­pul­sive, al­ways very de­lib­er­ate in his ac­tions. Al­though it seems to me there was some­thing about a girl once. He got in­to a shov­ing match and was sus­pend­ed for the af­ter­noon. No blows were ex­changed, though.”

“And the boy?”

“That would have been Joel Am­ber­son.”

“What hap­pened to Joel Am­ber­son?”

“Why, noth­ing.”

Smith­back nod­ded, crossed his legs. This was get­ting nowhere. Time to move in for the kill. “Did he have any nick­names? You know how kids al­ways seem to have a nick­name in high school.”

“I don’t re­mem­ber any oth­er names.”

“I took a look at the year­book, post­ed on your Web site.”

The teach­er smiled. “We start­ed do­ing that a few years ago. It’s proven to be quite pop­ular.”

“No doubt. But in the year­book, he had a nick­name.”

“Re­al­ly? What was it?”

“The Slash­er.”

Her face fur­rowed, then sud­den­ly cleared. “Ah, yes. That.”

Smith­back leaned for­ward. “That?”

The teach­er gave a lit­tle laugh. “They had to dis­sect frogs for bi­ol­ogy class.”

“And—?”

“Tony was a lit­tle squeamish—for two days he tried and tried but he couldn’t do it. The kids teased him about it, and some­body start­ed call­ing him that, The Slash­er. It kind of stuck, as a joke, you know. He did even­tu­al­ly over­come his qualms—and got an A in bi­ol­ogy, as I re­call—but you know how it is once they start call­ing you a name.”

Smith­back didn’t move a mus­cle. He couldn’t be­lieve it. It got worse and worse. The guy was a can­di­date for be­at­ifi­ca­tion.

“Mr. Smith­back?”

Smith­back made a show of check­ing his notes. “Any­thing else?

The kind­ly gray-​haired teach­er laughed soft­ly. “Look, Mr. Smith­back, if it’s dirt you’re look­ing for on Tony—and I can see that it is, it’s writ­ten all over your face—you’re just not go­ing to find it. He was a nor­mal, all-​around, high-​achiev­ing boy who seems to have grown in­to a nor­mal, all-​around, high-​achiev­ing man. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to my grad­ing.”

Smith­back stepped out of P.S. 1984 and be­gan walk­ing, rather mourn­ful­ly, in the di­rec­tion of Colum­bus Av­enue. This hadn’t turned out the way he’d planned, at all. He’d wast­ed a colos­sal amount of time, en­er­gy, and ef­fort, and with­out any­thing at all to show for it. Was it pos­si­ble his in­stincts were wrong—that this was all a wild-​goose chase, a dead end, in­spired by a thirst for re­venge? But no—that would be un­think­able. He was a sea­soned re­porter. When he had a hunch, it was usu­al­ly right. So how was it he couldn’t find the goods on Fairhaven?

As he reached the cor­ner, his eye hap­pened to stray to­ward a news­stand and the front page of a fresh­ly print­ed New York Post. The head­line froze him in his tracks.

EX­CLU­SIVE

SEC­OND MU­TI­LAT­ED BODY FOUND

The sto­ry that fol­lowed was by­lined by Bryce Har­ri­man.

Smith­back fum­bled in his pock­et for change, dropped it on the scarred wood­en counter, and grabbed a pa­per. He read with trem­bling hands:

NEW YORK, Oct. 10—An as-​yet-​uniden­ti­fied body of a young wom­an was dis­cov­ered this morn­ing in Tomp­kins Square Park, in the East Vil­lage. She is ap­par­ent­ly the vic­tim of the same bru­tal killer who mur­dered a tourist in Cen­tral Park two days ago.

In both cas­es, the killer dis­sect­ed part of the spinal cord at the time of death, re­mov­ing a sec­tion known as the cau­da equina, a bun­dle of nerves at the base of the spinal cord that re­sem­bles a horse’s tail, The Post has learned.

The ac­tu­al cause of death ap­pears to have been the dis­sec­tion it­self.

The mu­ti­la­tions in both cas­es ap­pear to have been done with care and pre­ci­sion, pos­si­bly with sur­gi­cal in­stru­ments. An anony­mous source con­firmed the po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the pos­si­bil­ity that the killer is a sur­geon or oth­er med­ical spe­cial­ist.

The dis­sec­tion mim­ics a de­scrip­tion of a sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dure, dis­cov­ered in an old doc­ument in the New York Mu­se­um. The doc­ument, found hid­den in the archives, de­scribes in de­tail a se­ries of ex­per­iments con­duct­ed in the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry by an Enoch Leng. These ex­per­iments were an at­tempt by Leng to pro­long his own life span. On Oc­to­ber 1, thir­ty-​six al­leged vic­tims of Leng were un­cov­ered dur­ing the ex­ca­va­tion of a build­ing foun­da­tion on Cather­ine Street. Noth­ing more is known about Leng, ex­cept that he was as­so­ci­at­ed with the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry.

“What we have here is a copy­cat killer,” said Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Karl C. Rock­er. “A very twist­ed in­di­vid­ual read the ar­ti­cle about Leng and is try­ing to du­pli­cate his work.” He de­clined to com­ment fur­ther on any de­tails of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, ex­cept to say that more than fifty de­tec­tives had been as­signed to the case, and that it was be­ing giv­en “the high­est pri­or­ity.”

Smith­back let out a howl of an­guish. The tourist in Cen­tral Park was the mur­der as­sign­ment that, like a com­plete fool, he’d turned down. In­stead, he had promised his ed­itor Fairhaven’s head on a plat­ter. Now, not on­ly did he have noth­ing to show for his day of pound­ing the pave­ment, but he’d been scooped on the very sto­ry he him­self had bro­ken—and by none oth­er than his old neme­sis, Bryce Har­ri­man.

It was his own head that would be on a plat­ter.

SIX

NO­RA TURNED OFF Canal Street on­to Mott, mov­ing slow­ly through the throngs of peo­ple. It was sev­en o’clock on a Fri­day evening, and Chi­na­town was packed. Sheets of dense­ly print­ed Chi­nese news­pa­pers lay strewn in the gut­ters. The stalls of the fish sell­ers were set up along the side­walks, vast ar­rays of ex­ot­ic-​look­ing fish laid out on ice. In the win­dows, pressed duck and cooked squid hung on hooks. The buy­ers, pri­mar­ily Chi­nese, pushed and shout­ed fran­ti­cal­ly, un­der the cu­ri­ous gaze of pass­ing tourists.

Ten Ren’s Tea and Gin­seng Com­pa­ny was a few hun­dred feet down the block. She pushed through the door in­to a long, bright, or­der­ly space. The air of the tea shop was per­fumed with in­nu­mer­able faint scents. At first she thought the shop was emp­ty. But then, as she looked around once more, she no­ticed Pen­der­gast at a rear ta­ble, nes­tled be­tween dis­play cas­es of gin­seng and gin­ger. She could have sworn that the ta­ble had been emp­ty just a mo­ment be­fore.

“Are you a tea drinker?” he asked as she ap­proached, mo­tion­ing her to a seat.

“Some­times.” Her sub­way had stalled be­tween sta­tions for twen­ty min­utes, and she’d had plen­ty of time to re­hearse what she would say. She would get it over with quick­ly and get out.

But Pen­der­gast was clear­ly in no hur­ry. They sat in si­lence while he con­sult­ed a sheet filled with Chi­nese ideographs. No­ra won­dered if it was a list of tea of­fer­ings, but there seemed to be far too many items—sure­ly there weren’t that many kinds of tea in the world.

Pen­der­gast turned to the shop­keep­er—a small, vi­va­cious wom­an—and be­gan speak­ing rapid­ly.

“Nin hao, lao bin liang. Li ma­ma hao ma?”

The wom­an shook her head. “Bu, ta hai shi lao yang zi, shen ti bu hao.”

“Qing li Dai wo xi­ang ta wen an. Qing gei wo yi bei Wu Long cha hao ma?” The wom­an walked away, re­turn­ing with a ce­ram­ic pot from which she poured a mi­nus­cule cup of tea. She placed the cup in front of No­ra.

“You speak Chi­nese?” No­ra asked Pen­der­gast.

“A lit­tle Man­darin. I con­fess to speak­ing Can­tonese some­what more flu­ent­ly.”

No­ra fell silent. Some­how, she was not sur­prised.

“King’s Tea of Os­man­thus Oo­long,” said Pen­der­gast, nod­ding to­ward her cup. “One of the finest in the world. From bush­es grown on the sun­ny sides of the moun­tains, new shoots gath­ered on­ly in the spring.”

No­ra picked up the cup. A del­icate aro­ma rose to her nos­trils. She took a sip, tast­ing a com­plex blend of green tea and oth­er exquisite­ly del­icate fla­vors.

“Very nice,” she said, putting down the cup.

“In­deed.” Pen­der­gast glanced at her for a mo­ment. Then he spoke again in Man­darin, and the wom­an filled up a bag, weighed it, and sealed it, scrib­bling a price on the plas­tic wrap­ping. She hand­ed it to No­ra.

“For me?” No­ra asked.

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“I don’t want any gifts from you.”

“Please take it. It’s ex­cel­lent for the di­ges­tion. As well as be­ing a su­perb an­tiox­idant.”

No­ra took it ir­ri­ta­bly, then saw the price. “Wait a minute, this is two hun­dred dol­lars?”

“It will last three or four months,” said Pen­der­gast. “A small price when one con­sid­ers—”

“Look,” said No­ra, set­ting down the bag. “Mr. Pen­der­gast, I came here to tell you that I can’t work for you any­more. My ca­reer at the Mu­se­um is at stake. A bag of tea isn’t go­ing to change my mind, even if it is two hun­dred bucks.”

Pen­der­gast lis­tened at­ten­tive­ly, his head slight­ly bowed.

“They im­plied—and the im­pli­ca­tion was very clear—that I wasn’t to work with you any­more. I like what I do. I keep this up, I’ll lose my job. I al­ready lost one job when the Lloyd Mu­se­um closed down. I can’t af­ford to lose an­oth­er. I need this job.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“Bris­bane and Col­lopy gave me the mon­ey I need for my car­bon dates. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me now. I can’t spare the time.”

Pen­der­gast wait­ed, still lis­ten­ing.

“What do you need me for, any­way? I’m an ar­chae­ol­ogist, and there’s no longer any site to in­ves­ti­gate. You’ve got a copy of the let­ter. You’re FBI. You must have dozens of spe­cial­ists at your beck and call.”

Pen­der­gast re­mained silent as No­ra took a sip of tea. The cup rat­tled loud­ly in the saucer when she re­placed it.

“So,” she said. “Now that’s set­tled.”

Now Pen­der­gast spoke. “Mary Greene lived a few blocks from here, down on Wa­ter Street. Num­ber 16. The house is still there. It’s a five-​minute walk.”

No­ra looked at him, eye­brows nar­row­ing in sur­prise. It had nev­er oc­curred to her how close they were to Mary Greene’s neigh­bor­hood. She re­called the note, writ­ten in blood. Mary Greene had known she was go­ing to die. Her want had been sim­ple: not to die in com­plete anonymi­ty.

Pen­der­gast gen­tly took her arm. “Come,” he said.

She did not shrug him off. He spoke again to the shop­keep­er, took the tea with a slight bow, and in a mo­ment they were out­side on the crowd­ed street. They walked down Mott, cross­ing first Ba­yard, then Chatham Square, en­ter­ing in­to a maze of dark nar­row streets abut­ting the East Riv­er. The noise and bus­tle of Chi­na­town gave way to the si­lence of in­dus­tri­al build­ings. The sun had set, leav­ing a glow in the sky that bare­ly out­lined the tops of the build­ings. Reach­ing Cather­ine Street, they turned south­east. No­ra glanced over cu­ri­ous­ly as they passed Hen­ry and the site of Moe­gen-​Fairhaven’s new res­iden­tial tow­er. The ex­ca­va­tion was much big­ger now; mas­sive foun­da­tions and stem walls rose out of the gloom, re­bar pop­ping like reeds from the fresh­ly poured con­crete. Noth­ing was left of the old coal tun­nel.

An­oth­er few min­utes, and they were on Wa­ter Street. Old man­ufac­tur­ing build­ings, ware­hous­es, and de­crepit ten­ements lined the street. Be­yond, the East Riv­er moved slug­gish­ly, dark pur­ple in the moon­light. The Brook­lyn Bridge loomed al­most above them; and to its left, the Man­hat­tan Bridge arced across the dark riv­er, its span of bril­liant lights re­flect­ed in the wa­ter be­low.

Near Mar­ket Slip, Pen­der­gast stopped in front of an old ten­ement. It was still in­hab­it­ed: a sin­gle win­dow glowed with yel­low light. A met­al door was set in­to the first-​floor fa­cade. Be­side it was a dent­ed in­ter­com and a se­ries of but­tons.

“Here it is,” said Pen­der­gast. “Num­ber six­teen.”

They stood in the gath­er­ing dark­ness.

Pen­der­gast be­gan to speak qui­et­ly in the gloom. “Mary Greene came from a work­ing-​class fam­ily. Af­ter her fa­ther’s up­state farm failed, he brought his fam­ily down here. He worked as a steve­dore on the docks. But both he and Mary’s moth­er died in a mi­nor cholera epi­dem­ic when the girl was fif­teen. Bad wa­ter. She had a younger broth­er: Joseph, sev­en; and a younger sis­ter: Con­stance, five.”

No­ra said noth­ing.

“Mary Greene tried to take in wash­ing and sewing, but ap­par­ent­ly it wasn’t enough to pay the rent. There was no oth­er work, no way to earn mon­ey. They were evict­ed. Mary fi­nal­ly did what she had to do to sup­port her younger sib­lings, whom she ev­ident­ly loved very much. She be­came a pros­ti­tute.”

“How aw­ful,” No­ra mur­mured.

“That’s not the worst. She was ar­rest­ed when she was six­teen. It was prob­ably at that point her two younger sib­lings be­came street chil­dren. They called them gut­ter­snipes in those days. There’s no more record of them in any city files; they prob­ably starved to death. In 1871 it was es­ti­mat­ed there were twen­ty-​eight thou­sand home­less chil­dren liv­ing on the streets of New York. In any case, lat­er Mary was sent to a work­house known as the Five Points Mis­sion. It was ba­si­cal­ly a sweat­shop. But it was bet­ter than prison. On the sur­face, that would have seemed to be Mary Greene’s lucky break.”

Pen­der­gast fell silent. A barge on the riv­er gave out a dis­tant, mourn­ful bel­low.

“What hap­pened to her then?”

“The pa­per trail ends at the lodg­ing house door,” Pen­der­gast replied.

He turned to her, his pale face al­most lu­mi­nous in the gloam­ing. “Enoch Leng—Doc­tor Enoch Leng—placed him­self and his med­ical ex­per­tise at the ser­vice of the Five Points Mis­sion as well as the House of In­dus­try, an or­phan­age that stood near where Chatham Square is to­day. He of­fered his time pro bono. As we know, Dr. Leng kept rooms on the top floor of Shot­tum’s Cab­inet through­out the 1870s. No doubt he had a house some­where else in the city. He af­fil­iat­ed him­self with the two work­hous­es about a year be­fore Shot­tum’s Cab­inet burned down.”

“We al­ready know from Shot­tum’s let­ter that Leng com­mit­ted those mur­ders.”

“No ques­tion.”

“Then why do you need my help?”

“There’s al­most noth­ing on record about Leng any­where. I’ve tried the His­tor­ical So­ci­ety, the New York Pub­lic Li­brary, City Hall. It’s as if he’s been ex­punged from the his­tor­ical record, and I have rea­son to think Leng him­self might have erad­icat­ed his files. It seems that Leng was an ear­ly sup­port­er of the Mu­se­um and an en­thu­si­as­tic tax­onomist. I be­lieve there may be more pa­pers in the Mu­se­um con­cern­ing Leng, at least in­di­rect­ly. Their archives are so vast and dis­or­ga­nized that it would be vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble to purge them.”

“Why me? Why doesn’t the FBI just sub­poe­na the files or some­thing?”

“Files have a way of dis­ap­pear­ing as soon as they are of­fi­cial­ly re­quest­ed. Even if one knew which files to re­quest. Be­sides, I’ve seen how you op­er­ate. That kind of com­pe­tence is rare.”

No­ra mere­ly shook her head.

“Mr. Puck has been, and no doubt will con­tin­ue to be, most help­ful. And there’s some­thing else. Tin­bury Mc­Fad­den’s daugh­ter is still alive. She lives in an old house in Peek­skill. She’s nine­ty-​five, but I un­der­stand very much com­pos men­tis. She may have a lot to say about her fa­ther. She may have even known Leng. I have a sense she’d be more will­ing to speak to a young wom­an like your­self than to an agent of the Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“You’ve still nev­er re­al­ly ex­plained why you’ve tak­en such an in­ter­est in this case.”

“The rea­sons for my in­ter­est in the case are unim­por­tant. What is im­por­tant is that a hu­man be­ing should not be al­lowed to get away with a crime like this. Even if that per­son is long dead. We do not for­give or for­get Hitler. It’s im­por­tant to re­mem­ber. The past is part of the present. At the mo­ment, in fact, it’s all too much a part of the present.”

“You’re talk­ing about these two new mur­ders.” The whole city was buzzing with the news. And the same words seemed to be on ev­ery­one’s lips: copy­cat killer.

Pen­der­gast nod­ded silent­ly.

“But do you re­al­ly think the mur­ders are con­nect­ed? That there’s some mad­man out there who read Smith­back’s ar­ti­cle, and is now try­ing to du­pli­cate Leng’s ex­per­iments?”

“I be­lieve the mur­ders are con­nect­ed, yes.”

It was now dark. Wa­ter Street and the piers be­yond were de­sert­ed. No­ra shud­dered again. “Look, Mr. Pen­der­gast, I’d like to help. But it’s like I said. I just don’t think there’s any­thing more I can do for you. Per­son­al­ly, I think you’d do bet­ter to in­ves­ti­gate the new mur­ders, not the old.”

“That is pre­cise­ly what I am do­ing. The so­lu­tion to the new mur­ders lies in the old.”

She looked at him cu­ri­ous­ly. “How so?”

“Now is not the time, No­ra. I don’t have suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion to an­swer, not yet. In fact, I may have al­ready said too much.”

No­ra sighed with ir­ri­ta­tion. “Then I’m sor­ry, but the bot­tom line is that I sim­ply can’t af­ford to put my job in jeop­ardy a sec­ond time. Es­pe­cial­ly with­out more in­for­ma­tion. You un­der­stand, don’t you?”

There was a mo­ment’s si­lence. “Of course. I re­spect your de­ci­sion.” Pen­der­gast bowed slight­ly. Some­how, he man­aged to give even this sim­ple ges­ture a touch of el­egance.

Pen­der­gast asked the driv­er to let him out a block from his apart­ment build­ing. As the Rolls-​Royce glid­ed silent­ly away, Pen­der­gast walked down the pave­ment, deep in thought. Af­ter a few min­utes he stopped, star­ing up at his res­idence: the Dako­ta, the vast, gar­goyle-​haunt­ed pile on a cor­ner of Cen­tral Park West. But it was not this struc­ture that re­mained in his mind: it was the small, crum­bling ten­ement at Num­ber 16 Wa­ter Street, where Mary Greene had once lived.

The house would con­tain no spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion; it had not been worth search­ing. And yet it pos­sessed some­thing less de­fin­able. It was not just the facts and fig­ures of the past that he need­ed to know, but its shape and feel. Mary Greene had grown up there. Her fa­ther had been part of that great post–Civ­il War ex­odus from the farms to the cities. Her child­hood had been hard, but it may well have been hap­py. Steve­dores earned a liv­ing wage. Once up­on a time, she had played on those cob­bles. Her child­ish shouts had echoed off some of those very bricks. And then cholera car­ried away her par­ents and changed her life for­ev­er. There were at least thir­ty-​five oth­er sto­ries like hers, all of which end­ed so cru­el­ly in that base­ment char­nel.

There was a faint move­ment at the end of the block, and Pen­der­gast turned. An old man in black, wear­ing a der­by hat and car­ry­ing a Glad­stone bag, was painful­ly mak­ing his way up the side­walk. He was bowed, mov­ing with the help of a cane. It was al­most as if Pen­der­gast’s mus­ings had con­jured a fig­ure out of the past. The man slow­ly made his way to­ward him, his cane mak­ing a faint tap­ping noise.

Pen­der­gast watched him cu­ri­ous­ly for a mo­ment. Then he turned back to­ward the Dako­ta, lin­ger­ing a mo­ment to al­low the brisk night air to clear his mind. But there was lit­tle clar­ity to be found; in­stead there was Mary Greene, the lit­tle girl laugh­ing on the cob­bles.

SEV­EN

IT HAD BEEN days since No­ra was last in her lab­ora­to­ry. She eased the old met­al door open and flicked on the lights, paus­ing. Ev­ery­thing was as she had left it. A white ta­ble ran along the far wall: binoc­ular mi­cro­scope, flota­tion kit, com­put­er. To the side stood black met­al cab­inets con­tain­ing her spec­imens—char­coal, lithics, bone, oth­er or­gan­ics. The still air smelled of dust, with a faint over­lay of smoke, piñon, ju­niper. It mo­men­tar­ily made her home­sick for New Mex­ico. What was she do­ing in New York City, any­way? She was a South­west­ern ar­chae­ol­ogist. Her broth­er, Skip, was de­mand­ing she come home to San­ta Fe on al­most a week­ly ba­sis. She had told Pen­der­gast she couldn’t af­ford to lose her job here at the Mu­se­um. But what was the worst that could hap­pen? She could get a po­si­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mex­ico, or Ari­zona State. They both had su­perb ar­chae­ol­ogy de­part­ments where she wouldn’t have to de­fend the val­ue of her work to cretins like Bris­bane.

The thought of Bris­bane roused her. Cretins or not, this was the New York Mu­se­um. She’d nev­er get an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty like this again—not ev­er.

Briskly, she stepped in­to the of­fice, clos­ing and lock­ing the door be­hind her. Now that she had the mon­ey for the car­bon-14 dates, she could get back to re­al work. At least that was one thing this whole fi­as­co had done for her: get her the mon­ey. Now she could pre­pare the char­coal and or­gan­ics for ship­ping to the ra­dio­car­bon lab at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan. Once she had the dates, her work on the Anasazi-​Aztec con­nec­tion could be­gin in earnest.

She opened the first cab­inet and care­ful­ly re­moved a tray con­tain­ing dozens of stop­pered test tubes. Each was la­beled, and each con­tained a sin­gle spec­imen: a bit of char­coal, a car­bonized seed, a frag­ment of a corn cob, a bit of wood or bone. She re­moved three of the trays, plac­ing them on the white ta­ble. Then she boot­ed her work­sta­tion and called up the cat­alogue ma­tri­ces. She be­gan cross-​check­ing, mak­ing sure ev­ery spec­imen had the prop­er la­bel and site lo­ca­tion. At $275 a shot for the dat­ing, it was im­por­tant to be ac­cu­rate.

As she worked, her mind be­gan to wan­der back to the events of the past few days. She won­dered if the re­la­tion­ship with Bris­bane could ev­er be re­paired. He was a dif­fi­cult boss, but a boss nonethe­less. And he was shrewd; soon­er or lat­er he’d re­al­ize that it would be best for ev­ery­one if they could bury the hatch­et and—

No­ra shook her head abrupt­ly, a lit­tle guilty about this self­ish line of thought. Smith­back’s ar­ti­cle hadn’t just got­ten her in­to hot wa­ter—it had ap­par­ent­ly in­spired a copy­cat killer the tabloids were al­ready dub­bing “The Sur­geon.” She couldn’t un­der­stand how Smith­back thought the ar­ti­cle would help. She’d al­ways known he was a ca­reerist, but this was too much. A bum­bling ego­ma­ni­ac. She re­mem­bered her first sight of him in Page, Ari­zona, sur­round­ed by bim­bos in bathing suits, giv­ing out au­to­graphs. Try­ing to, any­way. What a joke. She should have trust­ed her first im­pres­sion of him.

Her mind wan­dered from Smith­back to Pen­der­gast. A strange man. She wasn’t even sure he was au­tho­rized to be work­ing on the case. Would the FBI just let one of their agents free­lance like this? Why was he so eva­sive about his in­ter­est? Was he just se­cre­tive by na­ture? What­ev­er the sit­ua­tion, it was most pe­cu­liar. She was out of it now, and glad. Very glad.

And yet, as she went back to the tubes, she re­al­ized she wasn’t feel­ing all that glad. Maybe it was just that this sort­ing and check­ing was te­dious work, but she re­al­ized Mary Greene and her sad life was lin­ger­ing in the back of her mind. The dim ten­ement, the pa­thet­ic dress, the piti­ful note . . .

With an ef­fort, she pushed it all away. Mary Greene and her fam­ily were long gone. It was trag­ic, it was hor­ri­fy­ing—but it was no con­cern of hers.

Sort­ing com­plet­ed, she be­gan pack­ing the tubes in their spe­cial Sty­ro­foam ship­ping con­tain­ers. Bet­ter to break it down in­to three batch­es, just in case one got lost. Seal­ing the con­tain­ers, she turned to the bills of lad­ing and FedEx ship­ping la­bels.

A knock sound­ed at the door. The knob turned, but the locked door mere­ly rat­tled in its frame. She glanced over.

“Who is it?” she called.

The hoarse whis­per was muf­fled by the door.

“Who?” She felt a sud­den fear.

“Me. Bill.” The furtive voice was loud­er.

No­ra stood up with a mix­ture of re­lief and anger. “What are you do­ing here?”

“Open up.”

“Are you kid­ding? Get out of here. Now.”

“No­ra, please. It’s im­por­tant.”

“It’s im­por­tant that you stay the hell away from me. I’m warn­ing you.”

“I’ve got to talk to you.”

“That’s it. I’m call­ing se­cu­ri­ty.”

“No, No­ra. Wait.”

No­ra picked up the phone, di­aled. The of­fi­cer she reached said he would be on­ly too glad to re­move the in­trud­er. They would be there right away.

“No­ra!” Smith­back cried.

No­ra sat down at her work­table, try­ing to com­pose her mind. She closed her eyes. Ig­nore him. Just ig­nore him. Se­cu­ri­ty would be there in a mo­ment.

Smith­back con­tin­ued to plead at the door. “Just let me in for a minute. There’s some­thing you have to know. Last night—”

She heard heavy foot­falls and a firm voice. “Sir, you’re in an off-​lim­its area.”

“Hey! Let go! I’m a re­porter for—”

“You will come with us, please, sir.”

There was the sound of a scuf­fle.

“No­ra!”

A new note of des­per­ation sound­ed strong in Smith­back’s voice. De­spite her­self, No­ra went to the door, un­locked it, and stuck out her head. Smith­back was be­ing held be­tween two burly se­cu­ri­ty men. He glanced at her, cowlick bob­bing re­proach­ful­ly as he tried to ex­tri­cate him­self. “No­ra, I can’t be­lieve you called se­cu­ri­ty.”

“Are you all right, miss?” one of the men asked.

“I’m fine. But that man shouldn’t be here.”

“This way, sir. We’ll walk you to the door.” The men start­ed drag­ging Smith­back off.

“Un­hand me, oaf! I’ll re­port you, Mis­ter 3467.”

“Yes, sir, you do that, sir.”

“Stop call­ing me ‘sir.’This is as­sault.”

“Yes, sir.”

The men, im­per­turbable, led him down the hall to­ward the el­eva­tor.

As No­ra watched, she felt a tur­moil of con­flict­ing emo­tion. Poor Smith­back. What an undig­ni­fied ex­it. But then, he’d brought it on him­self—hadn’t he? He need­ed the les­son. He couldn’t just show up like this, all mys­tery and high dra­ma, and ex­pect her to—

“No­ra!” came the cry from down the hall. “You have to lis­ten, please! Pen­der­gast was at­tacked, I heard it on the po­lice scan­ner. He’s in St. Luke’s–Roo­sevelt, down on Fifty-​ninth. He—”

Then Smith­back was gone, his shouts cut off by the el­eva­tor doors.

EIGHT

NO­BODY WOULD TELL No­ra any­thing. It was more than an hour be­fore the doc­tor could see her. At last he showed up in the lounge, very young: a tired, hunt­ed look in his face and a two-​day growth of beard.

“Dr. Kel­ly?” he asked the room while look­ing at his clip­board.

She rose and their eyes met. “How is he?”

A win­try smile broke on the doc­tor’s face. “He’s go­ing to be fine.” He looked at her cu­ri­ous­ly. “Dr. Kel­ly, are you a med­ical—?”

“Ar­chae­ol­ogist.”

“Oh. And your re­la­tion­ship to the pa­tient?”

“A friend. Can I see him? What hap­pened?”

“He was stabbed last night.”

“My God.”

“Missed his heart by less than an inch. He was very lucky.”

“How is he?”

“He’s in . . .” the doc­tor paused. The faint smile re­turned. “Ex­cel­lent spir­its. An odd fel­low, Mr. Pen­der­gast. He in­sist­ed on a lo­cal anes­thet­ic for the op­er­ation—high­ly un­usu­al, un­heard of ac­tu­al­ly, but he re­fused to sign the con­sent forms oth­er­wise. Then he de­mand­ed a mir­ror. We had to bring one up from ob­stet­rics. I’ve nev­er had quite such a, er, de­mand­ing pa­tient. I thought for a mo­ment I had a sur­geon on my op­er­at­ing ta­ble. They make the worst pa­tients, you know.”

“What did he want a mir­ror for?”

“He in­sist­ed on watch­ing. His vi­tals were drop­ping and he was los­ing blood, but he ab­so­lute­ly in­sist­ed on get­ting a view of the wound from var­ious an­gles be­fore he would al­low us to op­er­ate. Very odd. What kind of pro­fes­sion is Mr. Pen­der­gast in?”

“FBI.”

The smile evap­orat­ed. “I see. Well, that ex­plains quite a bit. We put him in a shared room at first—no pri­vate ones were avail­able—but then we quick­ly had to make one avail­able for him. Moved out a state sen­ator to get it.”

“Why? Did Pen­der­gast com­plain?”

“No . . . he didn’t.” The doc­tor hes­itat­ed a mo­ment. “He be­gan watch­ing the video of an au­top­sy. Very graph­ic. His room­mate nat­ural­ly ob­ject­ed. But it was re­al­ly just as well. Be­cause an hour ago, the things start­ed to ar­rive.” He shrugged. “He re­fused to eat hos­pi­tal food, in­sist­ed on or­der­ing in from Bal­duc­ci’s. Re­fused an IV drip. Re­fused painkillers—no Oxy­Con­tin, not even Vi­codin or Tylenol Num­ber 3. He must be in dread­ful pain, but doesn’t show it. With these new pa­tient-​rights guide­lines, my hands are tied.”

“It sounds just like him.”

“The bright side is that the most dif­fi­cult pa­tients usu­al­ly make the fastest re­cov­ery. I just feel sor­ry for the nurs­es.” The doc­tor glanced at his watch. “You might as well head over there now. Room 1501.”

As No­ra ap­proached the room, she no­ticed a faint odor in the air: some­thing out of place among the aro­mas of stale food and rub­bing al­co­hol. Some­thing ex­ot­ic, fra­grant. A shrill voice echoed out of the open door. She paused in the door­way and gave a lit­tle knock.

The floor of the room was stacked high with old books, and a ri­ot of maps and pa­pers lay across them. Tall sticks of san­dal­wood in­cense were propped in­side sil­ver cups, send­ing up slen­der coils of smoke. That ac­counts for the smell, No­ra thought. A nurse was stand­ing near the bed, clutch­ing a plas­tic pill box in one hand and a sy­ringe in the oth­er. Pen­der­gast lay on the bed in a black silk dress­ing gown. The over­head tele­vi­sion showed a splayed body, grotesque and bloody, be­ing worked on by no few­er than three doc­tors. One of the doc­tors was in the mid­dle of lift­ing a wob­bly brain out of the skull. She looked away. On the bed­side ta­ble was a dish of drawn but­ter and the re­mains of cold­wa­ter lob­ster tails.

“Mr. Pen­der­gast, I in­sist you take this in­jec­tion,” the nurse was say­ing. “You’ve just un­der­gone a se­ri­ous op­er­ation. You must have your sleep.”

Pen­der­gast with­drew his arms from be­hind his head, picked up a dusty vol­ume ly­ing atop the sheets, and be­gan leaf­ing through it non­cha­lant­ly. “Nurse, I have no in­ten­tion of tak­ing that. I shall sleep when I’m ready.” Pen­der­gast blew dust from the book’s spine and turned the page.

“I’m go­ing to call the doc­tor. This is com­plete­ly un­ac­cept­able. And this filth is high­ly un­san­itary.” She waved her hand through the clouds of dust.

Pen­der­gast nod­ded, leafed over an­oth­er page.

The nurse stormed past No­ra on her way out.

Pen­der­gast glanced at her and smiled. “Ah, Dr. Kel­ly. Please come in and make your­self com­fort­able.”

No­ra took a seat in a chair at the foot of the bed. “Are you all right?”

He nod­ded.

“What hap­pened?”

“I was care­less.”

“But who did it? Where? When?”

“Out­side my res­idence,” said Pen­der­gast. He held up the re­mote and turned off the video, then laid the book aside. “A man in black, with a cane, wear­ing a der­by hat. He tried to chlo­ro­form me. I held my breath and pre­tend­ed to faint; then broke away. But he was ex­traor­di­nar­ily strong and swift, and I un­der­es­ti­mat­ed him. He stabbed me, then es­caped.”

“You could have been killed!”

“That was the in­ten­tion.”

“The doc­tor said it missed your heart by an inch.”

“Yes. When I re­al­ized he was go­ing to stab me, I di­rect­ed his hand to a non­vi­tal place. A use­ful trick, by the way, if you ev­er find your­self in a sim­ilar po­si­tion.”

He leaned for­ward slight­ly. “Dr. Kel­ly, I’m con­vinced he’s the same man who killed Doreen Hol­lan­der and Mandy Ek­lund.”

No­ra looked at him sharply. “What makes you say that?”

“I caught a glimpse of the weapon—a sur­geon’s scalpel with a myringo­to­my blade.”

“But . . . but why you?”

Pen­der­gast smiled, but the smile held more pain than mirth. “That shouldn’t be hard to an­swer. Some­where along the way, we brushed up a lit­tle too close to the truth. We flushed him out. This is a very pos­itive de­vel­op­ment.”

“A pos­itive de­vel­op­ment? You could still be in dan­ger!”

Pen­der­gast raised his pale eyes and looked at her in­tent­ly. “I am not the on­ly one, Dr. Kel­ly. You and Mr. Smith­back must take pre­cau­tions.” He winced slight­ly.

“You should have tak­en that painkiller.”

“For what I plan to do, it’s es­sen­tial to keep my head clear. Peo­ple did with­out painkillers for count­less cen­turies. As I was say­ing, you should take pre­cau­tions. Don’t ven­ture out alone on the streets at night. I have a great deal of trust in Sergeant O’Shaugh­nessy.” He slipped a card in­to her hand. “If you need any­thing, call him. I’ll be up and about in a few days.”

She nod­ded.

“Mean­while, it might be a good idea for you to get out of town for a day. There’s a talkative, lone­ly old la­dy up in Peek­skill who would love to have vis­itors.”

She sighed. “I told you why I couldn’t help any­more. And you still haven’t told me why you’re spend­ing your time with these old mur­ders.”

“Any­thing I told you now would be in­com­plete. I have more work of my own to do, more pieces of the puz­zle to fit to­geth­er. But let me as­sure you of one thing, Dr. Kel­ly: this is no frivolous field trip. It is vi­tal that we learn more about Enoch Leng.”

There was a si­lence.

“Do it for Mary Greene, if not for me.”

No­ra rose to leave.

“And Dr. Kel­ly?”

“Yes?”

“Smith­back isn’t such a bad fel­low. I know from ex­pe­ri­ence that he’s a re­li­able man in a pinch. It would ease my mind if, while all this is go­ing on, you two worked to­geth­er—”

No­ra shook her head. “No way.”

Pen­der­gast held up his hand with a cer­tain im­pa­tience. “Do it for your own safe­ty. And now, I need to get back to my work. I look for­ward to hear­ing back from you to­mor­row.”

His tone was peremp­to­ry. No­ra left, feel­ing an­noyed. Yet again Pen­der­gast had dragged her back in­to the case, and now he want­ed to bur­den her with that ass Smith­back. Well, for­get Smith­back. He’d just love to get his hands on part two of the sto­ry. Him and his Pulitzer. She’d go to Peek­skill, all right. But she’d go by her­self.

NINE

THE BASE­MENT ROOM was small and silent. In its sim­plic­ity it re­sem­bled a monk’s cell. On­ly a nar­row-​legged wood­en ta­ble and stiff, un­com­fort­able chair broke the monotony of the un­even stone floor, the damp un­fin­ished walls. A black light in the ceil­ing threw a spec­tral blue pall over the four items up­on the ta­ble: a scarred and rot­ting leather note­book; a lac­quer foun­tain pen; a tan-​col­ored length of In­dia-​rub­ber; and a hy­po­der­mic sy­ringe.

The fig­ure in the chair glanced at each of the care­ful­ly aligned items in turn. Then, very slow­ly, he reached for the hy­po­der­mic. The nee­dle glowed with strange en­chant­ment in the ul­tra­vi­olet light, and the serum in­side the glass tube seemed al­most to smoke.

He stared at the serum, turn­ing it this way and that, fas­ci­nat­ed by its ed­dies, its count­less minia­ture whorls. This was what the an­cients had been search­ing for: the Philoso­pher’s Stone, the Holy Grail, the one true name of God. Much sac­ri­fice had been made to get it—on his part, on the part of the long stream of re­sources who had do­nat­ed their lives to its re­fine­ment. But any amount of sac­ri­fice was ac­cept­able. Here be­fore him was a uni­verse of life, en­cased in a prison of glass. His life. And to think it all start­ed with a sin­gle ma­te­ri­al: the neu­ronal mem­brane of the cau­da equina, the di­ver­gent sheaf of spinal gan­glia with the longest nerve roots of all. To bathe all the cells of the body with the essence of neu­rons, the cells that did not die: such a sim­ple con­cept, yet so damnably com­pli­cat­ed in de­vel­op­ment.

The pro­cess of syn­the­sis and re­fine­ment was tor­tu­ous. And yet he took great plea­sure in it, just as he did in the rit­ual he was about to per­form. Cre­at­ing the fi­nal re­duc­tion, mov­ing from step to step to step, had be­come a re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence for him. It was like the count­less Gnos­tic keys the be­liev­er must per­form be­fore true prayer can be­gin. Or the harp­si­chordist who works his way through the twen­ty-​nine Gold­berg Vari­ations be­fore ar­riv­ing at the fi­nal, pure, un­adorned truth Bach in­tend­ed.

The plea­sure of these re­flec­tions was trou­bled briefly by the thought of those who would stop him, if they could: who would seek him out, fol­low the care­ful­ly ob­scured trail to this room, put a halt to his no­ble work. The most trou­ble­some one had al­ready been pun­ished for his pre­sump­tion—though not as ful­ly pun­ished as in­tend­ed. Still, there would be oth­er meth­ods, oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Plac­ing the hy­po­der­mic gen­tly aside, he reached for the leather-​bound jour­nal, turned over the front cov­er. Abrupt­ly, a new smell was in­tro­duced in­to the room: must, rot, de­com­po­si­tion. He was al­ways struck by the irony of how a vol­ume that, over the years, had it­self grown so de­cayed man­aged to con­tain the se­cret that ban­ished de­cay.

He turned the pages, slow­ly, lov­ing­ly, ex­am­in­ing the ear­ly years of painstak­ing work and re­search. At last, he reached the end, where the no­ta­tions were still new and fresh. He un­screwed the foun­tain pen and laid it by the last en­try, ready to record his new ob­ser­va­tions.

He would have liked to linger fur­ther but did not dare: the serum re­quired a spe­cif­ic tem­per­ature and was not sta­ble be­yond a brief in­ter­val. He scanned the table­top with a sigh of some­thing al­most like re­gret. Though of course it was not re­gret, be­cause in the wake of the in­jec­tion would come nul­li­fi­ca­tion of cor­po­re­al poi­sons and ox­idants and the ar­rest­ing of the ag­ing pro­cess—in short, that which had evad­ed the best minds for three dozen cen­turies.

More quick­ly now, he picked up the rub­ber strap, tied it off above the el­bow of his right arm, tapped the ris­ing vein with the side of a fin­ger­nail, placed the nee­dle against the an­te­cu­bital fos­sa, slid it home.

And closed his eyes.

TEN

NO­RA WALKED AWAY from the red gin­ger­bread Peek­skill sta­tion, squint­ing against the bright morn­ing sun. It had been rain­ing when she’d board­ed the train at Grand Cen­tral. But here, on­ly a few small clouds dot­ted the blue sky above the old river­front down­town. Three­sto­ry brick build­ings were set close to­geth­er, fad­ed fa­cades look­ing to­ward the Hud­son. Be­hind them, nar­row streets climbed away from the riv­er, to­ward the pub­lic li­brary and City Hall. Far­ther still, perched on the rocky hill­side, lay the hous­es of the old neigh­bor­hoods, their nar­row lawns dot­ted with an­cient trees. Be­tween the ag­ing struc­tures lay a scat­ter­ing of small­er and new­er hous­es, a car re­pair shop, the oc­ca­sion­al Span­ish-​Amer­ican mi­ni-​mar­ket. Ev­ery­thing looked shab­by and su­per­an­nu­at­ed. It was a proud old town in un­com­fort­able tran­si­tion, clutch­ing to its dig­ni­ty in the face of de­cay and ne­glect.

She checked the di­rec­tions Clara Mc­Fad­den had giv­en her over the tele­phone, then be­gan climb­ing Cen­tral Av­enue. She turned right on Wash­ing­ton, her old leather port­fo­lio swing­ing from one hand, work­ing her way to­ward Simp­son Place. It was a steep climb, and she found her­self pant­ing slight­ly. Across the riv­er, the ram­parts of Bear Moun­tain could be glimpsed through the trees: a patch­work of au­tum­nal yel­lows and reds, in­ter­spersed with dark­er stands of spruce and pine.

Clara Mc­Fad­den’s house was a di­lap­idat­ed Queen Anne, with a slate mansard roof, gables, and a pair of tur­rets dec­orat­ed with oriel win­dows. The white paint was peel­ing. A wraparound porch sur­round­ed the first floor, set off by a spindle­work frieze. As she walked up the short drive, the wind blew through the trees, send­ing leaves swirling around her. She mount­ed the porch and rang the heavy bronze bell.

A minute passed, then two. She was about to ring again when she re­mem­bered the old la­dy had told her to walk in.

She grasped the large bronze knob and pushed; the door swung open with the creak of rarely used hinges. She stepped in­to an en­try­way, hang­ing her coat on a lone hook. There was a smell of dust, old fab­ric, and cats. A worn set of stairs swept up­ward, and to her right she could see a broad arched door­way, framed in carved oak, lead­ing in­to what looked like a par­lor.

A voice, riv­en with age but sur­pris­ing­ly strong, is­sued from with­in. “Do come in,” it said.

No­ra paused at the en­trance to the par­lor. Af­ter the bright day out­side, it was shock­ing­ly dim, the tall win­dows cov­ered with thick green drapes end­ing in gold tas­sels. As her eyes slow­ly ad­just­ed, she saw an old wom­an, dressed in crepe and dark bom­bazine, en­sconced on a Vic­to­ri­an wing chair. It was so dark that at first all No­ra could see was a white face and white hands, hov­er­ing as if dis­con­nect­ed in the dim­ness. The wom­an’s eyes were half closed.

“Do not be afraid,” said the dis­em­bod­ied voice from the deep chair.

No­ra took an­oth­er step in­side. The white hand moved, in­di­cat­ing an­oth­er wing chair, draped with a lace an­ti­macas­sar. “Sit down.”

No­ra took a seat gin­ger­ly. Dust rose from the chair. There was a rustling sound as a black cat shot from be­hind a cur­tain and dis­ap­peared in­to the dim re­cess­es of the room.

“Thank you for see­ing me,” No­ra said.

The bom­bazine crack­led as the la­dy raised her head. “What do you want, child?”

The ques­tion was un­ex­pect­ed­ly di­rect, and the tone of the voice be­hind it sharp.

“Miss Mc­Fad­den, I want­ed to ask you about your fa­ther, Tin­bury Mc­Fad­den.”

“My dear, you’re go­ing to have to tell me your name again. I am an old la­dy with a fad­ing mem­ory.”

“No­ra Kel­ly.”

The old wom­an’s claw reached out and pulled the chain of a lamp that stood be­side her chair. It had a heavy tas­seled lamp shade, and it threw out a dim yel­low light. Now No­ra could see Clara Mc­Fad­den more clear­ly. Her face was an­cient and sunken, pale veins show­ing through parch­ment-​pa­per skin. The la­dy ex­am­ined her for a few min­utes with a pair of glit­ter­ing eyes.

“Thank you, Miss Kel­ly,” she said, turn­ing off the lamp again. “What ex­act­ly do you want to know about my fa­ther?”

No­ra took a fold­er out of the port­fo­lio, squint­ing through the dim­ness at the ques­tions she’d scrib­bled on the train north from Grand Cen­tral. She was glad she’d come pre­pared; the in­ter­view was be­com­ing un­ex­pect­ed­ly in­tim­idat­ing.

The old wom­an picked up some­thing from a small ta­ble be­side the wing chair: an old­fash­ioned pint bot­tle with a green la­bel. She poured a bit of the liq­uid in­to a tea­spoon, swal­lowed it, re­placed the spoon. An­oth­er black cat, or per­haps the same one, leapt in­to the old la­dy’s lap. She be­gan stroking it and it rum­bled with plea­sure.

“Your fa­ther was a cu­ra­tor at the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry. He was a col­league of John Cana­day Shot­tum, who owned a cab­inet of cu­riosi­ties in low­er Man­hat­tan.”

There was no re­sponse from the old la­dy.

“And he was ac­quaint­ed with a sci­en­tist by the name of Enoch Leng.”

Miss Mc­Fad­den seemed to grow very still. Then she spoke with acidic sharp­ness, her voice cut­ting through the heavy air. It was as if the name had wo­ken her up. “Leng? What about Leng?”

“I was cu­ri­ous if you knew any­thing about Dr. Leng, or had any let­ters or pa­pers re­lat­ing to him.”

“I cer­tain­ly do know about Leng,” came the shrill voice. “He’s the man who mur­dered my fa­ther.”

No­ra sat in stunned si­lence. There was noth­ing about a mur­der in any­thing she had read about Mc­Fad­den. “I’m sor­ry?” she said.

“Oh, I know they all said he mere­ly dis­ap­peared. But they were wrong.”

“How do you know this?”

There was an­oth­er rus­tle. “How? Let me tell you how.”

Miss Mc­Fad­den turned on the light again, di­rect­ing No­ra’s at­ten­tion to a large, old framed pho­to­graph. It was a fad­ed por­trait of a young man in a se­vere, high-​but­toned suit. He was smil­ing: two sil­ver front teeth gleamed out of the frame. A rogu­ish eye­patch cov­ered one eye. The man had Clara Mc­Fad­den’s nar­row fore­head and promi­nent cheek­bones.

She be­gan to speak, her voice un­nat­ural­ly loud and an­gry. “That was tak­en short­ly af­ter my fa­ther lost his right eye in Bor­neo. He was a col­lec­tor, you must un­der­stand. As a young man, he spent sev­er­al years in British East Africa. He built up quite a col­lec­tion of African mam­mals and ar­ti­facts col­lect­ed from the na­tives. When he re­turned to New York he be­came a cu­ra­tor at the new mu­se­um just start­ed by one of his fel­low Lyceum mem­bers. The New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry. It was very dif­fer­ent back then, Miss Kel­ly. Most of the ear­ly Mu­se­um cu­ra­tors were gen­tle­men of leisure, like my fa­ther. They did not have sys­tem­at­ic sci­en­tif­ic train­ing. They were am­ateurs in the best sense of the word. My fa­ther was al­ways in­ter­est­ed in odd­ities, queer things. You are fa­mil­iar, Miss Kel­ly, with the cab­inets of cu­riosi­ties?”

“Yes,” No­ra said as she scrib­bled notes as quick­ly as she could. She wished she had brought a voice recorder.

“There were quite a few in New York at the time. But the New York Mu­se­um quick­ly start­ed putting them out of busi­ness. It be­came my fa­ther’s role at the Mu­se­um to ac­quire these bankrupt cab­inet col­lec­tions. He cor­re­spond­ed with many of the cab­inet own­ers: the Dela­courte fam­ily, Phineas Bar­num, the Cad­walad­er broth­ers. One of these cab­inet own­ers was John Cana­day Shot­tum.” The old la­dy poured her­self an­oth­er spoon­ful from the bot­tle. In the light, No­ra could make out the la­bel: Ly­dia Pinkham’s Veg­etable Ton­ic.

No­ra nod­ded. “J. C. Shot­tum’s Cab­inet of Nat­ural Pro­duc­tions and Cu­riosi­ties.”

“Pre­cise­ly. There was on­ly a small cir­cle of sci­en­tif­ic men in those days, and they all be­longed to the Lyceum. Men of vary­ing abil­ities, I might add. Shot­tum be­longed to the Lyceum, but he was as much a show­man as he was a sci­en­tist. He had opened a cab­inet down on Cather­ine Street, where he charged a min­imal ad­mis­sion. It was most­ly pa­tron­ized by the low­er class­es. Un­like most of his col­leagues, Shot­tum had these no­tions of bet­ter­ing the plight of the poor through ed­uca­tion. That’s why he sit­uat­ed his cab­inet in such a dis­agree­able neigh­bor­hood. He was es­pe­cial­ly in­ter­est­ed in us­ing nat­ural his­to­ry to in­form and ed­ucate the young. In any case, he need­ed help with iden­ti­fy­ing and clas­si­fy­ing his col­lec­tions, which he had ac­quired from the fam­ily of a young man who had been killed by na­tives in Mada­gas­car.”

“Alexan­der Marysas.”

There was a rus­tle from the old la­dy. Once again, she ex­tin­guished the light, shroud­ing the room in dark­ness, throw­ing the por­trait of her fa­ther in­to shad­ow. “You seem to know a great deal about this, Miss Kel­ly,” Clara Mc­Fad­den said sus­pi­cious­ly. “I hope I am not an­noy­ing you with my sto­ry.”

“Not at all. Please go on.”

“Shot­tum’s was a rather wretched cab­inet. My fa­ther helped him from time to time, but it was bur­den­some to him. It was not a good col­lec­tion. Very hap­haz­ard, not sys­tem­at­ic. To lure in the poor, es­pe­cial­ly the urchins, his ex­hibits tend­ed to­ward the sen­sa­tion­al. There was even some­thing he called a ‘gallery of un­nat­ural mon­strosi­ties.’ It was, I be­lieve, in­spired by Madame Tus­saud’s Cham­ber of Hor­rors. There were ru­mors that some peo­ple who went in­to that gallery nev­er came out again. All rub­bish, of course, most like­ly cooked up by Shot­tum to in­crease foot traf­fic.”

Clara Mc­Fad­den re­moved a lace hand­ker­chief and coughed in­to it. “It was around that time a man named Leng joined the Lyceum. Enoch Leng.” Her voice con­veyed a depth of ha­tred.

No­ra felt her heart quick­en. “Did you know Leng?”

“My fa­ther talked about him a great deal. Es­pe­cial­ly to­ward the end. My fa­ther, you see, had a bad eye and bad teeth. Leng helped him get some sil­ver bridge­work and a spe­cial pair of eye­glass­es with an un­usu­al­ly thick lens. He seemed to be some­thing of a poly­math.”

She tucked the hand­ker­chief back in­to some fold of her cloth­ing, took an­oth­er spoon­ful of the elixir. “It was said he came from France, a small moun­tain town near the Bel­gian bor­der. There was talk that he was a baron, born in­to a no­ble fam­ily. These sci­en­tists are all gos­sips, you know. New York City at the time was a very provin­cial place and Leng made quite an im­pres­sion. No one doubt­ed he was a very learned man. He called him­self a doc­tor, by the way, and it was said he had been a sur­geon and a chemist.” She made a vine­gary sound.

Motes drift­ed in the heavy air. The cat’s purr rum­bled on end­less­ly, like a tur­bine.

The stri­dent voice cut the air again. “Shot­tum was look­ing for a cu­ra­tor for his cab­inet. Leng took an in­ter­est in it, al­though it was cer­tain­ly the poor­est cu­ra­to­ri­al ap­point­ment among the cab­inets of cu­riosi­ties. Nev­er­the­less, Leng took rooms on the top floor of the cab­inet.”

So far, all this matched the de­tails pro­vid­ed in Shot­tum’s let­ter. “And when was this?” No­ra asked.

“In the spring of 1870.”

“Did Leng live at the cab­inet?”

“A man of Leng’s breed­ing, liv­ing in the Five Points? Cer­tain­ly not. But he kept to him­self. He was a strange, elu­sive man, very for­mal in his dic­tion and man­ner­isms. No one, not even my fa­ther, knew where he lived. Leng did not en­cour­age in­ti­ma­cy.

“He spent most of his time at Shot­tum’s or the Lyceum. As I re­call, his work at Shot­tum’s Cab­inet was orig­inal­ly sup­posed to last on­ly a year or two. At first, Shot­tum was very pleased with Leng’s work. Leng cat­alogued the col­lec­tion, wrote up la­bel copy for ev­ery­thing. But then some­thing hap­pened—my fa­ther nev­er knew what—and Shot­tum seemed to grow sus­pi­cious of Leng. Shot­tum want­ed to ask him to leave, but was re­luc­tant. Leng paid hand­some­ly for the use of the third floor, and Shot­tum need­ed the mon­ey.”

“What kind of ex­per­iments did Leng per­form?”

“I ex­pect the usu­al. All sci­en­tif­ic men had lab­ora­to­ries. My fa­ther had one.”

“You said your fa­ther nev­er knew what made Shot­tum sus­pi­cious?” That would mean Mc­Fad­den nev­er read the let­ter hid­den in the ele­phant’s-​foot box.

“That’s cor­rect. My fa­ther didn’t press him on the sub­ject. Shot­tum had al­ways been a rather ec­cen­tric man, prone to opi­um and fits of melan­choly, and my fa­ther sus­pect­ed he might be men­tal­ly un­sta­ble. Then, one sum­mer evening in 1881, Shot­tum’s Cab­inet burned. It was such a fierce fire that they found on­ly a few crum­bling re­mains of Shot­tum’s bones. It was said the fire start­ed on the first floor. A faulty gas lamp.” An­oth­er bit­ter noise.

“But you think oth­er­wise?”

“My fa­ther be­came con­vinced that Leng start­ed that fire.”

“Do you know why?”

The la­dy slow­ly shook her head. “He did not con­fide in me.”

Af­ter a mo­ment, she con­tin­ued. “It was around the time of the fire that Leng stopped at­tend­ing the meet­ings at the Lyceum. He stopped com­ing to the New York Mu­se­um. My fa­ther lost touch with him. He seemed to dis­ap­pear from sci­en­tif­ic cir­cles. Thir­ty years must have passed be­fore he resur­faced.”

“When was this?”

“Dur­ing the Great War. I was a lit­tle girl at the time. My fa­ther mar­ried late, you see. He re­ceived a let­ter from Leng. A very friend­ly let­ter, wish­ing to re­new the ac­quain­tance. My fa­ther re­fused. Leng per­sist­ed. He be­gan com­ing to the Mu­se­um, at­tend­ing my fa­ther’s lec­tures, spend­ing time in the Mu­se­um’s archives. My fa­ther be­came dis­turbed, and af­ter a while even fright­ened. He was so con­cerned I be­lieve he even con­sult­ed cer­tain fel­low Lyceum mem­bers he was close to on the sub­ject. James Hen­ry Perce­val and Du­mont Burleigh are two names that come to mind. They came to the house more than once, short­ly be­fore the end.”

“I see.” No­ra scrib­bled some more notes. “But you nev­er met Leng?”

There was a pause. “I met him once. He came to our house late one night, with a spec­imen for my fa­ther, and was turned away at the door. He left the spec­imen be­hind. A graven ar­ti­fact from the South Seas, of lit­tle val­ue.”

“And?”

“My fa­ther dis­ap­peared the next day.”

“And you’re con­vinced it was Leng’s do­ing?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

The old la­dy pat­ted her hair. Her sharp eyes fixed on hers. “My dear child, how could I pos­si­bly know that?”

“But why would Leng mur­der him?”

“I be­lieve my fa­ther found out some­thing about Leng.”

“Didn’t the Mu­se­um in­ves­ti­gate?”

“No one had seen Leng in the Mu­se­um. No one had seen him vis­it my fa­ther. There was no proof of any­thing. Nei­ther Perce­val nor Burleigh spoke up. The Mu­se­um found it eas­ier to smear my fa­ther’s name—to im­ply that he ran away for some un­known rea­son—than to in­ves­ti­gate. I was just a girl at the time. When I grew old­er and de­mand­ed a re­open­ing of the case, I had noth­ing to of­fer. I was re­buffed.”

“And your moth­er? Was she sus­pi­cious?”

“She was dead by that time.”

“What hap­pened to Leng?”

“Af­ter his vis­it to my fa­ther, no­body ev­er saw or heard from him again.”

No­ra took a breath. “What did Leng look like?”

Clara Mc­Fad­den did not an­swer im­me­di­ate­ly. “I’ll nev­er for­get him,” she said at last. “Have you read Poe’s ‘Fall of the House of Ush­er’? There’s a de­scrip­tion in the sto­ry that, when I came up­on it, struck me ter­ri­bly. It seemed to de­scribe Leng pre­cise­ly. It’s stayed with me to this day, I can still quote the odd line of it from mem­ory: ‘a ca­dav­er­ous­ness of com­plex­ion; an eye large, liq­uid, and very lu­mi­nous . . . fine­ly mold­ed chin, speak­ing, in its want of promi­nence, of a want of moral en­er­gy.’ Leng had blond hair, blue eyes, an aquiline nose. Old­fash­ioned black coat, for­mal­ly dressed.”

“That’s a very vivid de­scrip­tion.”

“Leng was the kind of per­son who stayed with you long af­ter he was gone. And yet, you know, it was his voice I re­mem­ber most. It was low, res­onant, strong­ly ac­cent­ed, with the pe­cu­liar qual­ity of sound­ing like two peo­ple speak­ing in uni­son.”

The gloom that filled the par­lor seemed in­ex­pli­ca­bly to deep­en. No­ra swal­lowed. She had al­ready asked all the ques­tions she had planned to. “Thank you very much for your time, Ms. Mc­Fad­den,” she said as she rose.

“Why do you bring all this up now?” the old la­dy asked abrupt­ly.

No­ra re­al­ized that she must not have seen the news­pa­per ar­ti­cle or heard any­thing about the re­cent copy­cat killings of the Sur­geon. She won­dered just what she should say. She looked about the room, dark, frozen in shad­owy Vic­to­ri­an clut­ter. She did not want to be the one to up­set this wom­an’s world.

“I’m re­search­ing the ear­ly cab­inets of cu­riosi­ties.”

The old la­dy trans­fixed her with a glit­ter­ing eye. “An in­ter­est­ing sub­ject, child. And per­haps a dan­ger­ous one.”

ELEVEN

SPE­CIAL AGENT PEN­DER­GAST lay in the hos­pi­tal bed, mo­tion­less save for his pale eyes. He watched No­ra Kel­ly leave the room and close the door. He glanced over at the wall clock: nine P.M. pre­cise­ly. A good time to be­gin.

He thought back over each word No­ra had ut­tered dur­ing her vis­it, look­ing for any triv­ial fact or pass­ing ref­er­ence that he might have over­looked on first hear­ing. But there was noth­ing more.

Her vis­it to Peek­skill had con­firmed his dark­est sus­pi­cions: Pen­der­gast had long be­lieved Leng killed Shot­tum and burned the cab­inet. And he felt sure that Mc­Fad­den’s dis­ap­pear­ance was al­so at the hands of Leng. No doubt Shot­tum had chal­lenged Leng short­ly af­ter plac­ing his let­ter in the ele­phant’s-​foot box. Leng had mur­dered him, and cov­ered it up with the fire.

Yet the most press­ing ques­tions re­mained. Why had Leng cho­sen the cab­inet as his base of op­er­ations? Why did he be­gin vol­un­teer­ing his ser­vices at the hous­es of in­dus­try a year be­fore killing Shot­tum? And where did he re­lo­cate his lab­ora­to­ry af­ter the cab­inet burned?

In Pen­der­gast’s ex­pe­ri­ence, se­ri­al killers were messy: they were in­cau­tious, they left clues. But Leng was, of course, very dif­fer­ent. He was not, strict­ly speak­ing, a se­ri­al killer. He had been re­mark­ably clever. Leng had left a kind of neg­ative im­print wher­ev­er he went; the man seemed de­fined by how lit­tle was known about him. There was more to be learned, but it was deeply hid­den in the mass­es of in­for­ma­tion strewn about his hos­pi­tal room. There was on­ly one way to coax this in­for­ma­tion out. Re­search alone would not suf­fice.

And then there was the grow­ing prob­lem of his in­creas­ing lack of ob­jec­tiv­ity re­gard­ing this case, his grow­ing emo­tion­al in­volve­ment. If he did not bring him­self sharply un­der con­trol, if he did not re­assert his ha­bit­ual dis­ci­pline, he would fail. And he could not fail.

It was time to make his jour­ney.

Pen­der­gast’s gaze shift­ed to the mass­ings of books, maps, and old pe­ri­od­icals that filled half a dozen sur­gi­cal carts in his room. His eyes moved from sur­face to tot­ter­ing sur­face. The sin­gle most im­por­tant piece of pa­per lay on his bed­side ta­ble: the plans for Shot­tum’s Cab­inet. One last time, he picked it up and gazed at it, mem­oriz­ing ev­ery de­tail. The sec­onds ticked on. He laid down the yel­low­ing plat.

It was time. But first, some­thing had to be done about the in­tol­er­able land­scape of noise that sur­round­ed him.

Af­ter his con­di­tion was up­grad­ed from se­ri­ous to sta­ble, Pen­der­gast had him­self trans­ferred from St. Luke’s–Roo­sevelt to Lenox Hill Hos­pi­tal. The old fa­cil­ity on Lex­ing­ton Av­enue had the thick­est walls of any build­ing in the city, save for his own Dako­ta. Even here, how­ev­er, he was as­sault­ed by sounds: the bleat of the blood-​oxy­gen me­ter above his bed; the gos­sip­ing voic­es at the nurs­es’ sta­tion; the hiss­ings and beep­ings of the teleme­try ma­chines and ven­ti­la­tors; the ade­noidal pa­tient snor­ing in the ad­ja­cent room; the rum­ble of the forced-​air ducts deep in the walls and ceil­ing. There was noth­ing he could do that would phys­ical­ly stop these sounds; yet they could be made to dis­ap­pear through oth­er means. It was a pow­er­ful mind game he had de­vel­oped, an adap­ta­tion of Chongg Ran, an an­cient Bhutanese Bud­dhist med­ita­tive prac­tice.

Pen­der­gast closed his eyes. He imag­ined a chess­board in­side his head, on a wood­en ta­ble, stand­ing in a pool of yel­low light. Then he cre­at­ed two play­ers. The first play­er made his open­ing move; the sec­ond fol­lowed. A game of speed chess en­sued; and then an­oth­er, and an­oth­er. The two play­ers changed strate­gies, form­ing adap­tive coun­ter­at­tacks: In­vert­ed Han­ham, Two Knights De­fense, Vi­en­na Gam­bit.

One by one, the more dis­tant nois­es dropped away.

When the fi­nal game end­ed in a draw, Pen­der­gast dis­solved the chess set. Then, in the dark­ness of his mind’s eye, he cre­at­ed four play­ers, seat­ed around a card ta­ble. Pen­der­gast had al­ways found bridge a no­bler and sub­tler game than chess, but he rarely played it with oth­ers be­cause, out­side of his late fam­ily, he had found few wor­thy part­ners. Now the game be­gan, each play­er ig­no­rant of all but his own thir­teen cards, each play­er with his own strate­gies and in­tel­lec­tu­al ca­pa­bil­ities. The game be­gan, with ruffs and slams and deep fi­ness­es. Pen­der­gast toyed with the play­ers, shift­ing Black­wood, Ger­ber, and Stay­man con­ven­tions, posit­ing a for­get­ful de­clar­er, mis­un­der­stood sig­nals be­tween East and West.

By the time the first rub­ber was com­plet­ed, all dis­trac­tions were gone. The nois­es had ceased. In his mind, on­ly a pro­found si­lence reigned. Pen­der­gast turned fur­ther in­ward.

It was time for the mem­ory cross­ing to be­gin.

Sev­er­al min­utes of in­tense men­tal con­cen­tra­tion passed. Fi­nal­ly, he felt ready.

In his mind’s eye, he rose from his bed. He felt light, airy, like a ghost. He saw him­self walk through the emp­ty hos­pi­tal cor­ri­dors, down the stair­well, across the arched foy­er, and out on­to the wide front steps of the hos­pi­tal.

On­ly the build­ing was no longer a hos­pi­tal. A hun­dred and twen­ty years be­fore, it had been known as the New York Rest Home for Con­sump­tives.

Pen­der­gast stood on the steps for a mo­ment, glanc­ing around in the gath­er­ing dusk. To the west, to­ward Cen­tral Park, the Up­per East Side had be­come a patch­work of hog farms, wild lands, and rocky em­inences. Small groups of hov­els sprout­ed up here and there, hud­dled to­geth­er as if for pro­tec­tion against the el­ements. Gas lamps stood along the av­enue, in­fre­quent this far north of the pop­ulous down­town, throw­ing small cir­cles of light down on­to the dusky macadam.

The prospect was vague, in­dis­tinct: de­tail at this lo­ca­tion was unim­por­tant. Pen­der­gast did, how­ev­er, al­low him­self to sam­ple the air. It smelled strong­ly of coal smoke, damp earth, and horse ma­nure.

He de­scend­ed the steps, turn­ing on­to Sev­en­ty-​sixth Street and walk­ing east to­ward the riv­er. Here it was more thick­ly set­tled, new­er brown­stones abut­ting old wood-​and-​frame struc­tures. Car­riages swayed down the straw-​strewn street. Peo­ple passed him silent­ly, the men dressed in long suits with thin lapels, wom­en in bus­tles and veiled hats.

At the next in­ter­sec­tion he board­ed a street­car, pay­ing five cents for the ride down to Forty-​sec­ond Street. There, he trans­ferred to the Bow­ery & Third Av­enue el­evat­ed rail­way, pay­ing an­oth­er twen­ty cents. This ex­trav­agant price en­sured him a palace car, with cur­tained win­dows and plush seats. The steam lo­co­mo­tive head­ing the train was named the Chauncey M. De­pew. As it hur­tled south­ward, Pen­der­gast sat with­out mov­ing in his vel­veteen chair. Slow­ly, he al­lowed sound to in­trude once more in­to his world: first the clat­ter of the wheels on the tracks, and then the chat­ter of his pas­sen­gers. They were en­grossed with the con­cerns of 1881: the pres­ident’s re­cov­ery and the im­mi­nent re­moval of the pis­tol ball; the Columbia Yacht Club sail­ing re­gat­ta on the Hud­son ear­li­er that af­ter­noon; the mirac­ulous cu­ra­tive prop­er­ties of the Wilso­nia Mag­net­ic Gar­ment.

There were still gaps, of course—hazy dark patch­es, like fog—about which Pen­der­gast had lit­tle or no in­for­ma­tion. No mem­ory cross­ing was ev­er com­plete. There were de­tails of his­to­ry that had been ir­re­vo­ca­bly lost.

When the train at last reached the low­er stretch­es of the Bow­ery, Pen­der­gast dis­em­barked. He stood on the plat­form a mo­ment, look­ing around a lit­tle more in­tent­ly now. The el­evat­ed tracks were erect­ed over the side­walks, rather than along the mid­dle of the street, and the awnings be­low were cov­ered in a greasy film of oil drip­pings and ash. The Chauncey M. De­pew gave a shriek, be­gin­ning its fu­ri­ous dash to the next stop. Smoke and hot cin­ders belched from its stack, scat­ter­ing in­to the lead­en air.

He de­scend­ed skele­tal wood­en stairs to ground lev­el, alight­ing out­side a small shop. He glanced at its sign­board: George Wash­ing­ton Aba­cus, Phys­iog­nom­ic Op­er­ator and Pro­fes­sor of the Ton­so­ri­al Art. The broad thor­ough­fare be­fore him was a sea of bob­bing plug hats. Trams and horse­cars went ca­reer­ing down the cen­ter of the road. Ped­dlers of all kinds jos­tled the nar­row side­walk, cry­ing out their trade to all who would lis­ten. “Pots and pans!” called a tin­ker. “Mend your pots and pans!” A young wom­an trundling a steam­ing caul­dron on wheels cried, “Oys­ters! Here’s your brave, good oys­ters!” At Pen­der­gast’s left el­bow, a man sell­ing hot corn out of a ba­by’s per­am­bu­la­tor fished out an ear, smeared it with a but­ter-​soaked rag, and held it out invit­ing­ly. Pen­der­gast shook his head and eased his way in­to the milling crowd. He was jos­tled; there was a mo­men­tary fog, a loss of con­cen­tra­tion; and then Pen­der­gast re­cov­ered. The scene re­turned.

He moved south, grad­ual­ly bring­ing all five sens­es ful­ly alive to the sur­round­ings. The noise was al­most over­whelm­ing: clat­ter­ing horse­shoes, count­less snatch­es of mu­sic and song, yelling, scream­ing, whin­ny­ing, curs­ing. The air was su­per­charged with the odors of sweat, dung, cheap per­fume, and roast­ing meats.

Down the street, at 43 Bow­ery, Buf­fa­lo Bill was play­ing in the Scout of the Plains stage show at the Wind­sor. Sev­er­al oth­er the­aters fol­lowed, huge signs ad­ver­tis­ing cur­rent per­for­mances: Fe­do­ra, Peck’s Bad Boy, The Dark­ness to the North, Kit, the Arkansas Trav­el­er. A blind Civ­il War vet­er­an lay be­tween two en­trances, cap held out im­plor­ing­ly. Pen­der­gast glid­ed past with bare­ly a glance.

At a cor­ner, he paused to get his bear­ings, then turned on­to East Broad­way Street. Af­ter the fren­zy of Bow­ery, he en­tered a more silent world. He moved past the myr­iad shops of the old city, shut­tered and dark at this hour: sad­dleries, millinery shops, pawn­bro­kers, slaugh­ter­hous­es. Some of these build­ings were dis­tinct. Oth­ers—places Pen­der­gast had not suc­ceed­ed in iden­ti­fy­ing—were vague and shad­owy, shroud­ed in that same in­dis­tinct fog.

At Cather­ine Street he turned to­ward the riv­er. Un­like on East Broad­way, all the es­tab­lish­ments here—grog shops, sailors’ lodg­ing hous­es, oys­ter-​cel­lars—were open. Lamps cast lurid red stripes out in­to the street. A brick build­ing loomed at the cor­ner, low and long, streaked with soot. Its gran­ite cor­nices and arched lin­tels spoke of a build­ing done in a poor im­ita­tion of the Neo-​Goth­ic style. A wood­en sign, gold let­ters edged in black, hung over the door:

J. C. SHOT­TUM’S CAB­INET

OF

NAT­URAL PRO­DUC­TIONS

&

CU­RIOSI­TIES

A trio of bare elec­tric bulbs in met­al cages il­lu­mi­nat­ed the door­way, cast­ing a harsh glare on­to the street. Shot­tum’s was open for busi­ness. A hired hawk­er shout­ed at the door. Pen­der­gast could not catch the words above the noise and bus­tle. A large sign­board stand­ing on the pave­ment in front ad­ver­tised the fea­tured at­trac­tions—See the Dou­ble-​Brained Child & Vis­it Our New An­nex Show­ing Be­witch­ing Fe­male Bathers in Re­al Wa­ter.

Pen­der­gast stood on the cor­ner, the rest of the city fad­ing in­to fog as he fo­cused his con­cen­tra­tion on the build­ing ahead, metic­ulous­ly re­con­struct­ing ev­ery de­tail. Slow­ly, the walls came in­to sharp­er fo­cus—the dingy win­dows, the in­te­ri­ors, the bizarre col­lec­tions, the maze of ex­hib­it halls—as his mind in­te­grat­ed and shaped the vast quan­ti­ty of in­for­ma­tion he had amassed.

When he was ready, he stepped for­ward and queued up. He paid his two pen­nies to a man in a greasy stovepipe hat and stepped in­side. A low foy­er greet­ed his eye, dom­inat­ed on the far side with a mam­moth skull. Stand­ing next to it was a moth-​eat­en Ko­di­ak bear, an In­di­an birch­bark ca­noe, a pet­ri­fied log. His eyes trav­eled around the room. The large thigh­bone of an An­te­dilu­vian Mon­ster stood against the far wall, and there were oth­er eclec­tic spec­imens laid out, hel­ter-​skel­ter. The bet­ter ex­hibits, he knew, were deep­er in­side the cab­inet.

Cor­ri­dors ran off to the left and right, lead­ing to halls packed with teem­ing hu­man­ity. In a world with­out movies, tele­vi­sion, or ra­dio—and where trav­el was an op­tion on­ly for the wealth­iest—the pop­ular­ity of this di­ver­sion was not sur­pris­ing. Pen­der­gast bore left.

The first part of the hall con­sist­ed of a sys­tem­at­ic col­lec­tion of stuffed birds, laid out on shelves. This ex­hib­it, a fee­ble at­tempt to in­sin­uate a lit­tle ed­uca­tion, held no in­ter­est to the crowd, which streamed past on the way to less ed­ify­ing ex­hibits ahead.

The cor­ri­dor de­bouched in­to a large hall, the air hot and close. In the cen­ter stood what ap­peared to be a stuffed man, brown and wiz­ened, with severe­ly bowed legs, grip­ping a post. The la­bel pinned be­low it read: Pygmy Man of Dark­est Africa, Who Lived to Be Three Hun­dred Fifty-​Five Years of Age Be­fore Death by Snakebite. Clos­er in­spec­tion re­vealed it to be a shaved orangutan, doc­tored to look hu­man, ap­par­ent­ly pre­served through smok­ing. It gave off a fear­ful smell. Near­by was an Egyp­tian mum­my, stand­ing against the wall in a wood­en sar­coph­agus. There was a mount­ed skele­ton miss­ing its skull, la­beled Re­mains of the Beau­ti­ful Count­ess Adele de Bris­sac, Ex­ecut­ed by Guil­lo­tine, Paris, 1789. Next to it was a rusty piece of iron, dabbed with red paint, marked: The Blade That Cut Her.

Pen­der­gast stood at the cen­ter of the hall and turned his at­ten­tion to the noisy au­di­ence. He found him­self mild­ly sur­prised. There were many more young peo­ple than he had as­sumed, as well as a greater cross sec­tion of hu­man­ity, from high to low. Young bloods and fan­cy men strolled by, puff­ing on cigars, laugh­ing con­de­scend­ing­ly at the ex­hibits. A group of tough-​look­ing youths swag­gered past, sport­ing the red flan­nel fire­men’s shirts, broad­cloth pan­taloons, and greased “soap-​lock” hair that iden­ti­fied them as Bow­ery Boys. There were work­house girls, whores, urchins, street ped­dlers, and bar­men. It was, in short, the same kind of crowd that thronged the streets out­side. Now that the work­day was done for many, they came to Shot­tum’s for an evening’s en­ter­tain­ment. The two-​pen­ny ad­mis­sion was with­in reach of all.

Two doors at the far end of the hall led to more ex­hibits, one to the be­witch­ing ladies, the oth­er marked Gallery of Un­nat­ural Mon­strosi­ties. This lat­ter was nar­row and dark, and it was the ex­hib­it that Pen­der­gast had come to see.

The sounds of the crowds were muf­fled here, and there were few­er vis­itors, most­ly ner­vous, gap­ing young­sters. The car­ni­val at­mo­sphere had changed in­to some­thing qui­eter, more eerie. The dark­ness, the close­ness, the still­ness, all con­spired to cre­ate the ef­fect of fear.

At the first turn of the gallery stood a ta­ble, on which was a large jar of thick glass, stop­pered and sealed, con­tain­ing a float­ing hu­man ba­by. Two minia­ture, per­fect­ly formed arms stuck out from its fore­head. Pen­der­gast peered clos­er and saw that, un­like many of the oth­er ex­hibits, this one had not been doc­tored. He passed on. There was a small al­cove con­tain­ing a dog with a cat’s head, this one clear­ly fake, the sewing marks vis­ible through the thin­ning hair. It stood next to a gi­ant clam, propped open, show­ing a skele­tonized foot in­side. The la­bel copy told the grue­some sto­ry of the hap­less pearl div­er. Around an­oth­er cor­ner, there was a great mis­cel­lany of ob­jects in jars of formalde­hyde: a Por­tuguese man-​of-​war, a gi­ant rat from Suma­tra, a hideous brown thing the size of a flat­tened wa­ter­mel­on, marked Liv­er, from a Wool­ly Mam­moth Frozen in Siberi­an Ice. Next to it was a Siamese-​twinned gi­raffe fe­tus. The next turn re­vealed a shelf with a hu­man skull with a hideous bony growth on the fore­head, la­beled The Rhinoceros Man of Cincin­nati.

Pen­der­gast paused, lis­ten­ing. Now the sounds of the crowd were very faint, and he was alone. Be­yond, the dark­ened hall made one last sharp turn. An elab­orate­ly styl­ized ar­row point­ed to­ward an un­seen ex­hib­it around the cor­ner. A sign read: Vis­it Wil­son One-​Hand­ed: For Those Who Dare.

Pen­der­gast glid­ed around the cor­ner. Here, it was al­most silent. At the mo­ment, there were no oth­er vis­itors. The hall ter­mi­nat­ed in a small al­cove. In the al­cove was a sin­gle ex­hib­it: a glass case con­tain­ing a des­ic­cat­ed head. The shriv­eled tongue still pro­trud­ed from the mouth, look­ing like a che­root clamped be­tween the twist­ed lips. Next to it lay what ap­peared to be a dried sausage, about a foot long, with a rusty hook at­tached to one end by leather straps. Next to that, the frayed end of a hang­man’s noose.

A la­bel iden­ti­fied them:

THE HEAD

OF THE NO­TO­RI­OUS MUR­DER­ER

AND ROB­BER

WIL­SON ONE-​HAND­ED

HUNG BY THE NECK UN­TIL DEAD

DAKO­TA TER­RI­TO­RY

JU­LY 4, 1868

THE NOOSE

FROM WHICH HE SWUNG

THE FORE­ARM STUMP AND HOOK OF WIL­SON ONE-​HAND­ED

WHICH BROUGHT IN A BOUN­TY

OF ONE THOU­SAND DOL­LARS

Pen­der­gast ex­am­ined the cramped room. It was iso­lat­ed and very dark. It was cut off from view of the oth­er ex­hibits by a sharp turn of the cor­ri­dor. It would com­fort­ably ad­mit on­ly one per­son at a time.

A cry for help here would be un­heard, out in the main gal­leries.

The lit­tle al­cove end­ed in a cul-​de-​sac. As Pen­der­gast stared at it, pon­der­ing, the wall wa­vered, then dis­ap­peared, as fog once again en­shroud­ed his mem­ory con­struct and the men­tal im­age fell away. But it did not mat­ter: he had seen enough, thread­ed his way through suf­fi­cient pas­sages, to un­der­stand.

And now—at last—he knew how Leng had pro­cured his vic­tims.

TWELVE

PATRICK O’SHAUGH­NESSY STOOD on the cor­ner of Sev­en­ty-​sec­ond and Cen­tral Park West, star­ing at the fa­cade of the Dako­ta apart­ment build­ing. There was a vast arched en­trance to an in­ner court­yard, and be­yond the en­trance the build­ing ran at least a third of the way down the block. It was there, in the dark­ness, that Pen­der­gast had been at­tacked.

In fact, it prob­ably looked just about like this when Pen­der­gast was stabbed—ex­cept for the old man, of course; the one Pen­der­gast had seen wear­ing a der­by hat. As­ton­ish­ing that the guy had al­most man­aged to over­pow­er the FBI agent, even fac­tor­ing in the el­ement of sur­prise.

O’Shaugh­nessy won­dered again just what the hell he was do­ing here. He was off du­ty. He should be in J. W.’s hoist­ing a few with friends, or mess­ing about his apart­ment, lis­ten­ing to that new record­ing of The Bartered Bride. They weren’t pay­ing him: so why should he care?

But he found, strange­ly enough, that he did care.

Custer, nat­ural­ly, had dis­missed it as a sim­ple mug­ging: “Frig­gin’ rube out-​of-​town­er, no sur­prise he got his ass mugged.” Well, O’Shaugh­nessy knew Pen­der­gast was no rube. The man prob­ably played up his New Or­leans roots just to keep peo­ple like Custer off guard. And he didn’t think Pen­der­gast had got­ten mugged, ei­ther. But now it was time to de­cide: just what was he go­ing to do about it?

Slow­ly, he be­gan to walk to­ward the site of the at­tack.

Ear­li­er in the day, he’d vis­it­ed Pen­der­gast in the hos­pi­tal. Pen­der­gast had hint­ed to him that it would be use­ful—more than use­ful—to have the coro­ner’s re­port on the bones found at the con­struc­tion site. To get it, O’Shaugh­nessy re­al­ized, he would have to go around Custer. Pen­der­gast al­so want­ed more in­for­ma­tion on the de­vel­op­er, Fairhaven—who Custer had made it clear was off-​lim­its. It was then O’Shaugh­nessy re­al­ized he had crossed some in­vis­ible line, from work­ing for Custer to work­ing for Pen­der­gast. It was a new, al­most heady feel­ing: for the first time in his life, he was work­ing with some­one he re­spect­ed. Some­one who wasn’t go­ing to pre­judge him on old his­to­ry, or treat him as a dis­pos­able, fifth-​gen­er­ation Irish cop. That was the rea­son he was here, at the Dako­ta, on his night off. That’s what a part­ner did when the oth­er one got in­to trou­ble.

Pen­der­gast, as usu­al, was silent on the at­tack. But to O’Shaugh­nessy, it had none of the ear­marks of a mug­ging. He re­mem­bered, dim­ly, his days at the acade­my, all the statis­tics on var­ious types of crimes and how they were com­mit­ted. Back then, he had big ideas about where he was go­ing in the force. That was be­fore he took two hun­dred bucks from a pros­ti­tute be­cause he felt sor­ry for her.

And—he had to ad­mit to him­self—be­cause he need­ed the mon­ey.

O’Shaugh­nessy stopped, coughed, spat on the side­walk.

Back at the acade­my, it had been Mo­tive, Means, Op­por­tu­ni­ty. Take mo­tive, for starters. Why kill Pen­der­gast?

Put the facts in or­der. One: the guy is in­ves­ti­gat­ing a 130-year-​old se­ri­al killer. No mo­tive there: killer’s dead.

Two: a copy­cat killer springs up. Pen­der­gast is at the au­top­sy be­fore there’s even an au­top­sy. Christ, thought O’Shaugh­nessy, he must have known what was go­ing on even be­fore the doc­tor did. Pen­der­gast had al­ready made the con­nec­tion be­tween the mur­der of the tourist and the nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry killings.

How?

Three: Pen­der­gast gets at­tacked.

Those were the facts, as O’Shaugh­nessy saw them. So what could he con­clude?

That Pen­der­gast al­ready knew some­thing im­por­tant. And the copy­cat se­ri­al killer knew it, too. What­ev­er it was, it was im­por­tant enough that this killer took a big risk in tar­get­ing him, on Sev­en­ty-​sec­ond Street—not ex­act­ly de­sert­ed, even at nine o’clock in the evening—and had al­most suc­ceed­ed in killing him, which was the most as­ton­ish­ing thing of all.

O’Shaugh­nessy swore. The big mys­tery here was Pen­der­gast him­self. He wished Pen­der­gast would lev­el with him, share more in­for­ma­tion. The man was keep­ing him in the dark. Why? Now that was a ques­tion worth ask­ing.

He swore again. Pen­der­gast was ask­ing a hell of a lot, but he wasn’t giv­ing any­thing in re­turn. Why was he wast­ing a fine fall evening tramp­ing around the Dako­ta, look­ing for clues that weren’t there, for a guy who didn’t want help?

Cool it, O’Shaugh­nessy told him­self. Pen­der­gast was the most log­ical, me­thod­ical guy he’d ev­er met. He’d have his rea­sons. All in good time. Mean­while, this was a waste. Time for din­ner and the lat­est is­sue of Opera News.

O’Shaugh­nessy turned to head home. And that’s when he saw the tall, shad­owy fig­ure come in­to view at the cor­ner.

In­stinc­tive­ly, O’Shaugh­nessy shrank in­to the near­est door­way. He wait­ed. The fig­ure stood on the cor­ner, pre­cise­ly where he him­self had stood on­ly a few min­utes be­fore, glanc­ing around. Then it start­ed down the street to­ward him, slow­ly and furtive­ly.

O’Shaugh­nessy stiff­ened, re­ced­ing deep­er in­to the shad­ows. The fig­ure crept down to the an­gle of the build­ing, paus­ing right at the spot where Pen­der­gast had been as­sault­ed. The beam of a flash­light went on. He seemed to be in­spect­ing the pave­ment, look­ing around. He was dressed in a long dark coat, which could eas­ily be con­ceal­ing a weapon. He was cer­tain­ly no cop. And the at­tack had not been in the pa­pers.

O’Shaugh­nessy made a quick de­ci­sion. He grasped his ser­vice re­volver in his right hand and pulled out his shield with his left. Then he stepped out of the shad­ows.

“Po­lice of­fi­cer,” he said qui­et­ly but firm­ly. “Don’t move. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

The fig­ure jumped side­ways with a yelp, hold­ing up a pair of gan­gly arms. “Wait! Don’t shoot! I’m a re­porter!”

O’Shaugh­nessy re­laxed as he rec­og­nized the man. “So it’s you,” he said, hol­ster­ing his gun, feel­ing dis­ap­point­ed.

“Yeah, and it’s you,” Smith­back low­ered his trem­bling arms. “The cop from the open­ing.”

“Sergeant O’Shaugh­nessy.”

“Right. What are you do­ing here?”

“Same as you, prob­ably,” said O’Shaugh­nessy. Then he stopped abrupt­ly, re­mem­ber­ing he was speak­ing to a re­porter. It wouldn’t be good for this to get back to Custer.

Smith­back mopped his brow with a soiled hand­ker­chief. “You scared the piss out of me.”

“Sor­ry. You looked sus­pi­cious.”

Smith­back shook his head. “I imag­ine I did.” He glanced around. “Find any­thing?”

“No.”

There was a brief si­lence.

“Who do you think did it? Think it was just some mug­ger?”

Al­though Smith­back was echo­ing the same ques­tion he’d asked him­self mo­ments be­fore, O’Shaugh­nessy mere­ly shrugged. The best thing to do was to keep his mouth shut.

“Sure­ly the po­lice have some kind of the­ory.”

O’Shaugh­nessy shrugged again.

Smith­back stepped clos­er, low­er­ing his voice. “Look, I un­der­stand if it’s con­fi­den­tial. I can quote you ‘not for at­tri­bu­tion.’ ”

O’Shaugh­nessy wasn’t go­ing to fall in­to that trap.

Smith­back sighed, look­ing up at the build­ings with an air of fi­nal­ity. “Well, there’s noth­ing much else to be seen around here. And if you’re go­ing to clam up, I might as well go get a drink. Try to re­cov­er from that fright you gave me.” He snugged the hand­ker­chief back in­to his pock­et. “Night, Of­fi­cer.”

He be­gan to walk away. Then he stopped, as if struck by an idea.

“Want to come along?”

“No, thanks.”

“Come on,” the re­porter said. “You don’t look like you’re on du­ty.”

“I said no.”

Smith­back took a step clos­er. “You know, now that I think about it, maybe we could help each oth­er out here. Know what I mean? I need to keep in touch with this in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Sur­geon.”

“The Sur­geon?”

“Haven’t you heard? That’s what the Post is call­ing this se­ri­al killer. Cheesy, huh? Any­way, I need in­for­ma­tion, and I’ll bet you need in­for­ma­tion. Am I right?”

O’Shaugh­nessy said noth­ing. He did need in­for­ma­tion. But he won­dered if Smith­back re­al­ly had some­thing, or was just bull­shit­ting.

“I’ll lev­el with you, Sergeant. I got scooped on that tourist killing in Cen­tral Park. And now, I have to scram­ble to get new de­vel­op­ments, or my ed­itor will have my ass for brunch. A lit­tle ad­vance no­tice here and there, noth­ing too spe­cif­ic, just a nod from a friend—you, for in­stance. That’s all.”

“What kind of in­for­ma­tion do you have?” O’Shaugh­nessy asked guard­ed­ly. He thought back a minute to what Pen­der­gast had said. “Do you have any­thing on, say, Fairhaven?”

Smith­back rolled his eyes. “Are you kid­ding? I’ve got a sack­ful on him. Not that it’ll do you much good, but I’m will­ing to share. Let’s talk about it over a drink.”

O’Shaugh­nessy glanced up and down the street. De­spite his bet­ter judg­ment, he found him­self tempt­ed. Smith­back might be a hus­tler, but he seemed a de­cent sort of hus­tler. And he’d even worked with Pen­der­gast in the past, though the re­porter didn’t seem too ea­ger to rem­inisce about it. And fi­nal­ly, Pen­der­gast had asked him to put to­geth­er a file on Fairhaven.

“Where?”

Smith­back smiled. “Are you kid­ding? The best bars in New York City are just one block west, on Colum­bus. I know a great place, where all the Mu­se­um types go. It’s called the Bones. Come on, the first round’s on me.”

THIR­TEEN

THE FOG GREW thick­er for a mo­ment. Pen­der­gast wait­ed, main­tain­ing his con­cen­tra­tion. Then through the fog came flick­er­ings of or­ange and yel­low. Pen­der­gast felt heat up­on his face. The fog be­gan to clear.

He was stand­ing out­side J. C. Shot­tum’s Cab­inet of Nat­ural Pro­duc­tions and Cu­riosi­ties. It was night. The cab­inet was burn­ing. An­gry flames leapt from the first- and sec­ond-​sto­ry win­dows, punch­ing through bil­low­ing clouds of black, acrid smoke. Sev­er­al fire­men and a bevy of po­lice were fran­ti­cal­ly rop­ing off the street around the build­ing and push­ing cu­ri­ous on­look­ers back from the con­fla­gra­tion. In­side the rope, sev­er­al knots of fire­fight­ers arced hope­less streams of wa­ter in­to the blaze, while oth­ers scur­ried to douse the gaslights along the side­walk.

The heat was a phys­ical force, a wall. Stand­ing on the street cor­ner, Pen­der­gast’s gaze lin­gered ap­pre­cia­tive­ly on the fire en­gine: a big black boil­er on car­riage wheels, belch­ing steam, Amoskeag Man­ufac­tur­ing Com­pa­ny in gold let­ters on its sweat­ing sides. Then he turned to­ward the on­look­ers. Would Leng be among them, ad­mir­ing his hand­iwork? No, he would have been long gone. Leng was no py­ro­ma­ni­ac. He would be safe­ly en­sconced in his up­town house, lo­ca­tion un­known.

The lo­ca­tion of the house was a great ques­tion. But an­oth­er, per­haps more press­ing, ques­tion re­mained: where had Leng moved his lab­ora­to­ry?

There was a tremen­dous, sear­ing crack; roof tim­bers col­lapsed in­ward with a roil­ing show­er of sparks; an ap­pre­cia­tive mur­mur rose from the crowd. With a fi­nal look at the doomed struc­ture, Pen­der­gast be­gan thread­ing his way through the crowd.

A lit­tle girl rushed up, no old­er than six, thread­bare and fright­en­ing­ly gaunt. She had a bat­tered straw broom in her hand, and she swept the street cor­ner ahead of him in­dus­tri­ous­ly, clear­ing away the dung and pesti­len­tial garbage, hop­ing pa­thet­ical­ly for a coin. “Thank you,” Pen­der­gast said, toss­ing her sev­er­al broad cop­per pen­nies. She looked at the coins, eyes wide at her good for­tune, then curt­sied awk­ward­ly.

“What’s your name, child?” Pen­der­gast asked gen­tly.

The girl looked up at him, as if sur­prised to hear an adult speak to her in a so­lic­itous tone. “Con­stance Greene, sir,” she said.

“Greene?” Pen­der­gast frowned. “Of Wa­ter Street?”

“No, sir. Not—not any­more.” Some­thing seemed to have fright­ened the girl, and, with an­oth­er curt­sy, she turned and melt­ed away down a crowd­ed side street.

Pen­der­gast stared down the foul street and its seething crowds for some time. Then, with a trou­bled ex­pres­sion on his face, he turned and slow­ly re­traced his steps. A bark­er stood in the door­way of Brown’s Restau­rant, de­liv­er­ing the bill of fare in a loud, breath­less, cease­less litany:

Biled­la­man­ca­per­sors.

Rose­beefrose­goorose­mut­to­nan?taters—

Biledaman­cab­bage, veg­etay­bles—

Walkin­sir­takaseat­sir.

Pen­der­gast moved on thought­ful­ly, lis­ten­ing to the City Hall bell toll the ur­gent fire alarm. Mak­ing his way to Park Street, he passed a chemist’s shop, closed and shut­tered, an ar­ray of bot­tles in di­verse sizes and col­ors dec­orat­ing the win­dow: Paine’s Cel­ery Com­pound; Swamp Root; D. & A. Younce’s In­di­an Cure Oil (Good for Man and Beast).

Two blocks down Park, he stopped abrupt­ly. He was ful­ly at­ten­tive now, eyes open to ev­ery de­tail. He had painstak­ing­ly re­searched this re­gion of old New York, and the fog of his mem­ory con­struct re­treat­ed well in­to the dis­tance. Here, Bax­ter and Worth Streets an­gled in sharply, cre­at­ing a crazy-​quilt of in­ter­sec­tions known as the Five Points. In the bleak land­scape of ur­ban de­cay that stretched be­fore him, there was none of the care­free rev­el­ry Pen­der­gast had found ear­li­er, along Bow­ery.

Thir­ty years be­fore, in the 1850s, the “Points” had been the worst slum in all New York, in all Amer­ica, worse even than Lon­don’s Sev­en Di­als. It re­mained a mis­er­able, squalid, dan­ger­ous place: home to fifty thou­sand crim­inals, drug ad­dicts, pros­ti­tutes, or­phans, con­fi­dence men, vil­lains of all shape and de­scrip­tion. The un­even streets were bro­ken and scored in­to dan­ger­ous ruts, brim­ming with garbage and of­fal. Hogs wan­dered about, root­ing and wal­low­ing in the fouled gut­ters. The hous­es seemed pre­ma­ture­ly aged, their win­dows bro­ken, tarpa­per roofs hang­ing free, tim­bers sag­ging. A sin­gle gas lamp threw light in­to the in­ter­sec­tion. On all sides, nar­row streets marched off in­to end­less dark­ness. The doors of the first-​floor tav­erns were flung wide against the sum­mer heat. The smells of liquor and cigar smoke is­sued forth. Wom­en, bare-​breast­ed, lolled in the door­ways, ex­chang­ing ob­scene jeers with whores in the neigh­bor­ing sa­loons or so­lic­it­ing passers­by in lurid tones. Across the way, nick­el-​a-​night flop­hous­es, rid­dled with ver­min and pesti­lence, sat be­tween the shab­by cow-​sheds of fencers of stolen goods.

Pen­der­gast gazed care­ful­ly around at the scene, scru­ti­niz­ing the to­pog­ra­phy, the ar­chi­tec­ture, for any clue, any hid­den link that a mere study of his­tor­ical records could not pro­vide. At last he turned east­ward, where a vast, five-​sto­ry struc­ture sat, de­cayed and list­ing, dark even in the light of the gas lamp. This was the for­mer Old Brew­ery, at one time the worst of all the Five Points ten­ements. Chil­dren who had the mis­for­tune to be born with­in were known to pass months or even years with­out tast­ing the out­side air. Now, thanks to the ef­forts of a char­ita­ble group, it had been re­built as the Five Points Mis­sion. An ear­ly ur­ban re­new­al project for which, in 1880, the good Dr. Enoch Leng had vol­un­teered his med­ical ser­vices, pro bono. He had con­tin­ued to work there in­to the ear­ly ’90s, when the his­tor­ical record on Leng van­ished abrupt­ly.

Pen­der­gast walked slow­ly to­ward the build­ing. An an­cient sign for the Old Brew­ery re­mained paint­ed along its up­per sto­ry, dom­inat­ing the far new­er and clean­er Five Points Mis­sion sign be­neath. He con­sid­ered en­ter­ing the build­ing, then de­cid­ed against it. There was an­oth­er vis­it he had to make first.

Be­hind the Five Points Mis­sion, a tiny al­ley ran north in­to a dark cul-​de-​sac. Moist, fetid air seeped out from the dark­ness. Many years be­fore, when the Points re­gion had been a marshy pond known as the Col­lect, Aaron Burr had in­stalled a large sub­ter­ranean pump for the nat­ural springs at this spot, found­ing the New Am­ster­dam Wa­ter Com­pa­ny. The pond grew in­creas­ing­ly foul, how­ev­er, and even­tu­al­ly had been filled in to make way for ten­ements.

Pen­der­gast paused thought­ful­ly. Lat­er, this al­ley­way had been known as Cow Bay, the most dan­ger­ous street in the Five Points. It had been crowd­ed with tall wood­en ten­ements with names like “Brick­bat Man­sion” and “The Gates of Hell,” ten­ant­ed by vi­olent al­co­holics who would stab a man for the clothes on his back. Like many struc­tures in the Five Points, these were war­rens of vile-​smelling cham­bers, hon­ey­combed with se­cret pan­els and doors that con­nect­ed to oth­er hous­es on ad­join­ing streets by net­works of un­der­ground pas­sage­ways, al­low­ing crim­inals easy es­cape from pur­su­ing law en­force­ment. In the mid-​nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, the street had av­er­aged a mur­der a night. Now it was home to an ice de­liv­ery com­pa­ny, a slaugh­ter­house, and an aban­doned sub­sta­tion of the city’s wa­ter­works, shut down in 1879 when the up­town reser­voir ren­dered it ob­so­lete.

Pen­der­gast moved on an­oth­er block, then turned left on­to Lit­tle Wa­ter Street. At the far cor­ner was the Five Points House of In­dus­try, the oth­er or­phan­age graced with the med­ical at­ten­tion of Enoch Leng. It was a tall Beaux Arts build­ing, punc­tu­at­ed along its north end by a tow­er. A small rect­an­gu­lar wid­ow’s walk, but­tressed by iron fenc­ing, sat atop its mansard roof. The build­ing looked woe­ful­ly out of place among the shab­by wood­en hous­es and ramshack­le squat­ter­ies.

He stared up at the heavy-​browed win­dows. Why had Leng cho­sen to lend his ser­vices to these two mis­sions, one af­ter the oth­er, in 1880—the year be­fore Shot­tum’s Cab­inet burned? If he was look­ing for an end­less source of im­pov­er­ished vic­tims whose ab­sence would cause no alarm, the cab­inet was a bet­ter choice than a work­house. Af­ter all, one could have on­ly so many mys­te­ri­ous dis­ap­pear­ances be­fore some­one grew sus­pi­cious. And why had Leng cho­sen these mis­sions in par­tic­ular? There were count­less oth­ers in low­er Man­hat­tan. Why had Leng de­cid­ed to work—and, pre­sum­ably, draw his pool of vic­tims—from this spot?

Pen­der­gast stepped back on­to the cob­bles, glanc­ing up and down the lane, think­ing. Of all the streets he had trav­eled, Lit­tle Wa­ter Street was the on­ly one no longer ex­tant in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. It had been paved over, built up­on, for­got­ten. He had seen old maps that showed it, nat­ural­ly; but no map ev­er drawn had su­per­im­posed its course on­to present-​day Man­hat­tan . . .

An in­cred­ibly shab­by man with a horse and cart came down the street, ring­ing a bell, col­lect­ing garbage for tips, a brace of tame hogs fol­low­ing be­hind. Pen­der­gast did not heed him. In­stead, he glid­ed back down the nar­row road, paus­ing at the en­trance to Cow Bay. Al­though with the dis­ap­pear­ance of Lit­tle Wa­ter Street it was dif­fi­cult to tell on mod­ern maps, Pen­der­gast now saw that the two mis­sions would both have backed on­to these ter­ri­ble old ten­ements. Those dwellings were gone, but the war­ren of tun­nels that once served their crim­inal res­idents would have re­mained.

He glanced down both sides of the al­ley. Slaugh­ter­house, ice fac­to­ry, aban­doned wa­ter­works . . . It sud­den­ly made per­fect sense.

More slow­ly now, Pen­der­gast walked away, head­ed for Bax­ter Street and points north. He could, of course, have end­ed his jour­ney at this point—have opened his eyes to the present­day books and tubes and mon­itor screens—but he pre­ferred to con­tin­ue the dis­ci­pline of this men­tal ex­er­cise, to take the long way back to Lenox Hill Hos­pi­tal. He was cu­ri­ous to see if the fire at Shot­tum’s Cab­inet had been brought un­der con­trol. Per­haps he would hire a car­riage up­town. Or bet­ter yet, walk up past the Madi­son Square Gar­den cir­cus, past Del­moni­co’s, past the palaces of Fifth Av­enue. There was much to think about, much more than he had pre­vi­ous­ly imag­ined—and 1881 was as good a place as any to do it in.

FOUR­TEEN

NO­RA STOPPED AT the nurs­es’ sta­tion to ask di­rec­tions to Pen­der­gast’s new room. A sea of hos­tile faces greet­ed the ques­tion. Clear­ly, No­ra thought, Pen­der­gast was as pop­ular at Lenox as he had been at St. Luke’s–Roo­sevelt.

She found him ly­ing up in bed, the blinds shut tight against the sun. He looked very tired, his face gray. His blond-​white hair hung limply over his high fore­head, and his eyes were closed. As she en­tered, they slow­ly opened.

“I’m sor­ry,” No­ra said. “This is a bad time.”

“Not at all. I did ask you to see me. Please clear off that chair and sit down.”

No­ra moved the stack of books and pa­pers from the chair to the floor, won­der­ing again what this was about. She’d al­ready giv­en him her re­port about her vis­it with the old la­dy and told him it would be her last as­sign­ment for him. He had to un­der­stand that it was time for her to get back to her own ca­reer. As in­trigu­ing as it was, she was not about to com­mit pro­fes­sion­al hara kiri over this busi­ness.

Pen­der­gast’s eyes had drooped un­til they were al­most closed, but she could still see the pale iris­es be­hind the slit­ted lids.

“How are you?” Cour­tesy re­quired she ask that ques­tion, but there wouldn’t be any oth­ers. She’d lis­ten to what he had to say, then leave.

“Leng ac­quired his vic­tims from the cab­inet it­self,” Pen­der­gast said.

“How do you know?”

“He cap­tured them at the back of one of the halls, most like­ly a small cul-​de-​sac hous­ing a par­tic­ular­ly grue­some ex­hib­it. He would lie in wait un­til a vis­itor was alone, then he’d snatch his vic­tim, take the un­for­tu­nate through a door at the rear of the ex­hib­it, which led down the back stairs to the coal cel­lar. It was a per­fect set­up. Street peo­ple van­ished all the time in that neigh­bor­hood. Un­doubtably, Leng se­lect­ed vic­tims that would not be missed: street urchins, work­house boys and girls.”

He spoke in a mono­tone, as if re­view­ing his find­ings with­in his own mind in­stead of ex­plain­ing them to her.

“From 1872 to 1881 he used the cab­inet for this pur­pose. Nine years. Thir­ty-​six vic­tims that we know of, per­haps many more Leng dis­posed of in some oth­er way. As you know, there had in fact been ru­mors of peo­ple van­ish­ing in the cab­inet. These no doubt served to in­crease its pop­ular­ity.”

No­ra shud­dered.

“Then in 1881 he killed Shot­tum and burned the cab­inet. We of course know why: Shot­tum found out what he was up to. He said as much in his let­ter to Mc­Fad­den. But that let­ter has, in its own way, been mis­lead­ing me all this time. Leng would have killed Shot­tum any­way.” Pen­der­gast paused to take a few breaths. “The con­fronta­tion with Shot­tum mere­ly gave him the ex­cuse he need­ed to burn the cab­inet. You see, phase one of his work was com­plete.”

“Phase one?”

“He had achieved what he set out to do. He per­fect­ed his for­mu­la.”

“You don’t se­ri­ous­ly mean Leng was able to pro­long his own life?”

“He clear­ly be­lieved he could. In his mind, the ex­per­imen­ta­tion phase could cease. Pro­duc­tion could be­gin. Vic­tims would still be re­quired, but many few­er than be­fore. The cab­inet, with its high vol­ume of foot traf­fic, was no longer nec­es­sary. In fact, it had be­come a li­abil­ity. It was im­per­ative for Leng to cov­er his tracks and start afresh.”

There was a si­lence. Then Pen­der­gast re­sumed.

“A year be­fore the cab­inet burned, Leng of­fered his ser­vices to two work­hous­es in the vicin­ity—the Five Points House of In­dus­try and the Five Points Mis­sion. The two were con­nect­ed by the war­ren of old un­der­ground tun­nels that rid­dled the en­tire Five Points area in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. In Leng’s day, a foul al­ley known as Cow Bay lay be­tween the work­hous­es. Along with the sor­did ten­ements you’d ex­pect, Cow Bay was home to an an­cient sub­ter­ranean pump­ing sta­tion dat­ing back to the days of the Col­lect Pond. The wa­ter­works were shut down and sealed for good about a month be­fore Leng al­lied him­self with the work­hous­es. That is no mere co­in­ci­dence of dates.”

“What are you say­ing?”

“The aban­doned wa­ter­works was the site of Leng’s pro­duc­tion lab­ora­to­ry. The place he went af­ter burn­ing Shot­tum’s Cab­inet. It was se­cure, and bet­ter still it pro­vid­ed easy un­der­ground ac­cess to both work­hous­es. An ide­al place to be­gin pro­duc­tion of the sub­stance he be­lieved would pro­long his life. I have the old plans for the wa­ter­works, here.” Pen­der­gast waved his hand, weak­ly.

No­ra glanced over at the com­plex set of di­agrams. She won­dered what had so ex­haust­ed the agent. He had seemed much bet­ter the day be­fore. She hoped he hadn’t tak­en a turn for the worse.

“To­day, of course, the work­hous­es, the ten­ements, even many of the streets are gone. A three-​sto­ry brown­stone was built di­rect­ly above the site of Leng’s pro­duc­tion lab­ora­to­ry. Num­ber 99 Doy­ers Street, erect­ed in the 1920s off Chatham Square. Bro­ken in­to one-​bed­room flats, with a sep­arate two-​bed­room apart­ment in the base­ment. Any traces of Leng’s lab­ora­to­ry would lie un­der that build­ing.”

No­ra thought for a mo­ment. Ex­ca­vat­ing Leng’s pro­duc­tion lab­ora­to­ry would no doubt be a fas­ci­nat­ing ar­chae­olog­ical project. There would be ev­idence there, and as an ar­chae­ol­ogist she could find it. She won­dered, once again, why Pen­der­gast was so in­ter­est­ed in these nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry mur­ders. It would be of some his­tor­ical so­lace to know that Mary Greene’s killer had been brought to light—She abrupt­ly ter­mi­nat­ed the line of thought. She had her own work to do, her own ca­reer to sal­vage. She had to re­mind her­self once again that this was his­to­ry.

Pen­der­gast sighed, turned slight­ly in the bed. “Thank you, Dr. Kel­ly. Now, you’d bet­ter go. I’m bad­ly in need of sleep.”

No­ra glanced at him in sur­prise. She had been ex­pect­ing an­oth­er plea for her help. “Why did you ask to see me, ex­act­ly?”

“You’ve been a great help to me in this in­ves­ti­ga­tion. More than once, you’ve asked for more in­for­ma­tion than I could give you. I as­sumed you wished to know what I’ve dis­cov­ered. You’ve earned that, at the very least. There’s a de­testable term one hears bandied about these days: ‘clo­sure.’ De­testable, but in this case ap­pro­pri­ate. I hope this knowl­edge will bring you some de­gree of clo­sure, and al­low you to con­tin­ue your work at the Mu­se­um with­out a sense of un­fin­ished busi­ness. I of­fer my sin­cer­est thanks for your help. It has been in­valu­able.”

No­ra felt a twinge of of­fense at this abrupt dis­missal. She re­mind­ed her­self that this was what she had want­ed . . . Wasn’t it? Af­ter a mo­ment she spoke. “Thanks for say­ing so. But if you ask me, this busi­ness sounds to­tal­ly un­fin­ished. If you’re right about this, 99 Doy­ers Street seems like the next log­ical stop.”

“That is cor­rect. The base­ment apart­ment is cur­rent­ly un­oc­cu­pied, and an ex­ca­va­tion be­low the liv­ing room floor would be most in­struc­tive. I plan to rent the apart­ment my­self and un­der­take that ex­ca­va­tion. And that is why I must re­cov­er as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. Take care, Dr. Kel­ly.” He shift­ed with an air of fi­nal­ity.

“Who’s go­ing to do the ex­ca­va­tion?” she asked.

“I will find an­oth­er ar­chae­ol­ogist.”

No­ra looked at him sharply. “Where?”

“Through the New Or­leans field of­fice. They are most flex­ible when it comes to my, ah, projects.”

“Right,” said No­ra briskly. “But this isn’t a job for just any ar­chae­ol­ogist. This re­quires some­one with spe­cial skills in—”

“Are you of­fer­ing?”

No­ra was silent.

“Of course you’re not. That’s why I didn’t ask. You’ve more than once ex­pressed your de­sire to re­turn to a more nor­mal course of work. I’ve im­posed up­on you too much as it is. Be­sides, this in­ves­ti­ga­tion has tak­en a dan­ger­ous turn, far more so than I ini­tial­ly as­sumed. An as­sump­tion I have paid for, as you can see. I would not wish you ex­posed to any more dan­ger than you have been al­ready.”

No­ra stood up.

“Well,” she said, “I guess that’s set­tled. I’ve en­joyed work­ing with you, Mr. Pen­der­gast—if ‘en­joy’ is the right word. It’s cer­tain­ly been in­ter­est­ing.” She felt vague­ly dis­sat­is­fied with this out­come, even though it was what she had come down here to achieve.

“In­deed,” said Pen­der­gast. “Most in­ter­est­ing.”

She be­gan to walk to­ward the door, then stopped, re­mem­ber­ing some­thing. “But I may be in touch with you again. I got a note from Rein­hart Puck in the Archives. Says he’s found some new in­for­ma­tion, asked me to stop by lat­er this af­ter­noon. If it seems use­ful, I’ll pass it on.”

Pen­der­gast’s pale eyes were still re­gard­ing her at­ten­tive­ly. “Do that. And again, Dr. Kel­ly, you have my thanks. Be very care­ful.”

She nod­ded, then turned to leave, smil­ing at the bale­ful stares that greet­ed her as she passed the nurs­es’ sta­tion.

FIF­TEEN

THE DOOR TO the Archives gave out a sharp creak as No­ra eased it open. There had been no re­sponse to her knock­ing, and the door was un­locked, in clear vi­ola­tion of reg­ula­tions. Very strange.

The smell of old books, pa­pers, and the odor of cor­rup­tion that seemed to suf­fuse the en­tire Mu­se­um hung in her nos­trils. Puck’s desk lay in the cen­ter of a pool of light, a wall of dark­ness be­yond. Puck him­self was nowhere to be seen.

No­ra checked her watch. Four P.M. She was right on time.

She re­leased the door and it sighed back in­to place. She turned the lock, then ap­proached the desk, heels click­ing on the mar­ble floor. She signed in au­to­mat­ical­ly, scrawl­ing her name at the top of a fresh page in the log­book. Puck’s desk was neater than usu­al, and a sin­gle type­writ­ten note sat in the mid­dle of the green felt pad. She glanced at it. I’m on the tricer­atops in the back.

The tricer­atops, No­ra thought, look­ing in­to the gloom. Leave it to Puck to be off dust­ing old relics. But where the hell was the tricer­atops? She didn’t re­call hav­ing seen one. And there were no lights on in the back that she could see. The damn tricer­atops could be any­where. She looked around: no di­agram of the Archives, ei­ther. Typ­ical.

Feel­ing an un­der­cur­rent of ir­ri­ta­tion, she moved to the banks of ivory light switch­es. She snapped a few on at ran­dom. Lights sprang up here and there, deep with­in the Archives, cast­ing long shad­ows down the rows of met­al shelv­ing. Might as well turn them all on, she thought, flip­ping whole rows of switch­es with the edge of her hand. But even with all the lights, the Archives re­mained cu­ri­ous­ly shad­owy and dim, large pools of dark­ness and long dim aisles pre­dom­inat­ing.

She wait­ed, half ex­pect­ing Puck to call out to her. There was no sound ex­cept the dis­tant tick­ing of steam pipes and the hiss of the forced-​air ducts.

“Mr. Puck?” she called ten­ta­tive­ly.

Her voice re­ver­ber­at­ed and died. No an­swer.

She called again, loud­er this time. The Archives were so vast she won­dered if her voice could pen­etrate to the rear.

For a minute, she con­sid­ered com­ing back an­oth­er time. But Puck’s mes­sage had been most in­sis­tent.

Vague­ly, she re­called see­ing some mount­ed fos­sil skele­tons on her last vis­it. Maybe she would find the tricer­atops among them.

With a sigh, she be­gan walk­ing down one of the aisles, lis­ten­ing to the clat­ter of her shoes against the mar­ble. Al­though the en­trance to the aisle had been bright­ly lit, it soon grew shad­owy and dim. It was amaz­ing how poor­ly il­lu­mi­nat­ed the place was; in the mid­dle sec­tions of the aisles, far from the lights, one al­most need­ed a flash­light to make out the ob­jects stacked on the shelves.

At the next pool of light, No­ra found her­self at a junc­tion from which sev­er­al aisles wan­dered away at a va­ri­ety of an­gles. She paused, con­sid­er­ing which to take. It’s like Hansel and Gre­tel in here, she thought. And I’m fresh out of bread crumbs.

The aisle clos­est to her left went in a di­rec­tion that, she re­mem­bered, led to a group­ing of stuffed an­imals. But its few lights were burned out and it van­ished in­to dark­ness. No­ra shrugged and took the next aisle over.

It felt so dif­fer­ent, walk­ing these pas­sages alone. The last time, she’d been with Pen­der­gast and Puck. She had been think­ing about Shot­tum and hadn’t paid much at­ten­tion to her sur­round­ings. With Puck guid­ing their steps, she hadn’t even both­ered to no­tice the strange jogs these aisles took, the odd an­gles at which they met. It was the most ec­cen­tric lay­out imag­in­able, made even more ec­cen­tric by its vast size.

Her thoughts were in­ter­rupt­ed as the aisle took a sharp turn to the left. Around the cor­ner, she un­ex­pect­ed­ly came up­on a num­ber of free­stand­ing African mam­mals—gi­raffes, a hip­po, a pair of li­ons, wilde­beests, kudu, wa­ter buf­fa­lo. Each was wrapped in plas­tic, be­stow­ing a muf­fled, ghost­ly ap­pear­ance.

No­ra stopped. No sign of a tricer­atops. And once again, the aisles led away in half a dozen di­rec­tions. She chose one at ran­dom, fol­lowed it through one jog, then an­oth­er, com­ing abrupt­ly to an­oth­er in­ter­sec­tion.

This was get­ting ridicu­lous. “Mr. Puck!” she called out loud­ly.

The echoes of her voice grad­ual­ly fad­ed away. The hiss of forced air filled the en­su­ing si­lence.

She didn’t have time for this. She would come back lat­er, and she’d call first to make sure Puck was wait­ing at his desk. Bet­ter still, she’d just tell him to take what­ev­er it was he want­ed to show her di­rect­ly to Pen­der­gast. She was off the case, any­way.

She turned to walk out of the Archives, tak­ing what she thought would be the short­est path. Af­ter a few min­utes, she came to a stop be­side a rhi­no and sev­er­al ze­bras. They looked like lumpy sen­tinels be­neath the om­nipresent plas­tic, giv­ing off a strong smell of paradichloroben­zene.

These aisles didn’t look fa­mil­iar. And she didn’t seem to be any clos­er to the ex­it.

For a mo­ment, she felt a small cur­rent of anx­iety. Then she shook it away with a forced laugh. She’d just make her way back to the gi­raffes, then re­trace her steps from there.

As she turned, her foot land­ed in a small pud­dle of wa­ter. She looked up just as a drop of wa­ter splat­tered on her fore­head. Con­den­sa­tion from the pipes far over­head. She shook it away and moved on.

But she couldn’t seem to find her way back to the gi­raffes.

This was crazy. She’d nav­igat­ed through track­less deserts and dense rain­forests. How could she be lost in a mu­se­um in the mid­dle of New York City?

She looked around, re­al­iz­ing it was her sense of di­rec­tion she had lost. With all these an­gled aisles, these dim­ly lit in­ter­sec­tions, it had be­come im­pos­si­ble to tell where the front desk was. She’d have to—

She abrupt­ly froze, lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly. A soft pat­ter­ing sound. It was hard to tell where it had come from, but it was close.

“Mr. Puck? Is that you?”

Noth­ing.

She lis­tened, and the pat­ter­ing sound came again. Just more wa­ter drip­ping some­where, she thought. Even so, she was more ea­ger than ev­er to find the door.

She chose an aisle at ran­dom and moved down it at a brisk walk, heels click­ing rapid­ly against the mar­ble. On both sides of the aisle, the shelves were cov­ered with bones stacked like cord­wood, each with a yel­low­ing tag tied to its end. The tags flapped and flut­tered in the dead air stirred by her pas­sage. The place was like a crypt. Amid the si­lence, the dark­ness, and the ghoul­ish spec­imens, it was hard not to think about the set of gris­ly mur­ders that had oc­curred just a few years be­fore, with­in this very sub­base­ment. It was still the sub­ject of ru­mor and spec­ula­tion in the staff lounge.

The aisle end­ed in an­oth­er jog.

Damn it, thought No­ra, look­ing up and down the long rows of shelv­ing that van­ished in­to the gloom. An­oth­er welling of anx­iety, hard­er to fight down this time. And then, once again, she heard—or thought she heard—a noise from be­hind. This time it wasn’t a pat­ter­ing, so much as the scrape of a foot on stone.

“Who’s there?” she de­mand­ed, spin­ning around. “Mr. Puck?”

Noth­ing save the hiss of steam and the drip of wa­ter.

She be­gan walk­ing again, a lit­tle faster now, telling her­self not to be afraid; that the nois­es were mere­ly the in­ces­sant shift­ings and set­tlings of an old, de­crepit build­ing. The very cor­ri­dors seemed watch­ful. The click of her heels was un­bear­ably loud.

She turned a cor­ner and stepped in an­oth­er pud­dle of wa­ter. She pulled back in dis­gust. Why didn’t they do some­thing about these old pipes?

She looked at the pud­dle again. The wa­ter was black, greasy—not, in fact, wa­ter at all. Oil had leaked on the floor, or maybe some chem­ical preser­va­tive. It had a strange, sour smell. But it didn’t look like it had leaked from any­where: she was sur­round­ed by shelves cov­ered with mount­ed birds, beaks open, eyes wide, wings up­raised.

What a mess, she thought, turn­ing her ex­pen­sive Bal­ly shoe side­ways to find that the oily liq­uid had soiled the sole and part of the stitch­ing. This place was a dis­grace. She pulled an over­sized hand­ker­chief from her pock­et—a nec­es­sary ac­cou­trement to work­ing in a dusty mu­se­um—and wiped it along the edge of the shoe. And then, abrupt­ly, she froze. Against the white back­ground of the hand­ker­chief, the liq­uid was not black. It was a deep, glis­ten­ing red.

She dropped the hand­ker­chief and took an in­vol­un­tary step back, heart ham­mer­ing. She looked at the pool, stared at it with sud­den hor­ror. It was blood—a whole lot of blood. She looked around wild­ly: where had it come from? Had it leaked out of a spec­imen? But it seemed to be just sit­ting there, all alone—a large pool of blood in the mid­dle of the aisle. She glanced up, but there was noth­ing: just the dim ceil­ing thir­ty feet above, criss­crossed with pipes.

Then she heard what sound­ed like an­oth­er foot­fall, and, through a shelf of spec­imens, she glimpsed move­ment. Then, si­lence re­turned.

But she had def­inite­ly heard some­thing. Move, move, all her in­stincts cried out.

No­ra turned and walked quick­ly down the long aisle. An­oth­er sound came—fast foot­steps? The rus­tle of fab­ric?—and she paused again to lis­ten. Noth­ing but the faint drips from the pipes. She tried to stare through the iso­lat­ed gaps in the shelves. There was a wall of spec­imen jars, snakes coiled in formalde­hyde, and she strained to see through. There seemed to be a shape on the oth­er side, large and black, rip­pled and dis­tort­ed by the stacks of glass jars. She moved . . . and it moved in turn. She was sure of it.

She back­tracked quick­ly, breath com­ing faster, and the dark shape moved as well. It seemed to be pac­ing her in the next aisle—per­haps wait­ing for her to reach ei­ther one end or the oth­er.

She slowed and, strug­gling to mas­ter her fear, tried walk­ing as calm­ly as she could to­ward the end of the aisle. She could see, hear, the shape—so near now—mov­ing as well, keep­ing pace.

“Mr. Puck?” she ven­tured, voice qua­ver­ing.

There was no an­swer.

Sud­den­ly, No­ra found her­self run­ning. She ar­rowed down the aisle, sprint­ing as fast as she could. Swift foot­falls sound­ed in the ad­join­ing aisle.

Ahead was a gap, where her aisle joined the next. She had to get past, out­run the per­son in the ad­join­ing aisle.

She dashed through the gap, glimps­ing for a split sec­ond a huge black fig­ure, met­al flash­ing in its gloved hand. She sprint­ed down the next aisle, through an­oth­er gap, and on down the aisle again. At the next gap, she veered sharply right, head­ing down a new cor­ri­dor. Se­lect­ing an­oth­er aisle at ran­dom, she turned in­to it and ran on through the dim­ness ahead.

Halfway to the next in­ter­sec­tion, she stopped again, heart pound­ing. There was si­lence, and for a mo­ment re­lief surged through her: she had man­aged to lose her pur­suer.

And then she caught the sound of faint breath­ing from the ad­join­ing aisle.

Re­lief dis­ap­peared as quick­ly as it had come. She had not out­run him. No mat­ter what she did, no mat­ter where she ran, he had con­tin­ued to pace her, one aisle over.

“Who are you?” she asked.

There was a faint rus­tle, then an al­most silent laugh.

No­ra looked to the left and right, fight­ing back pan­ic, des­per­ate­ly try­ing to de­ter­mine the best way out. These shelves were cov­ered with stacks of fold­ed skins, parch­ment-​dry, smelling fear­ful­ly of de­cay. Noth­ing looked fa­mil­iar.

Twen­ty feet far­ther down the aisle, she spied a gap in the shelv­ing, on the side away from the un­known pres­ence. She sprint­ed ahead and turned in­to the gap, then dou­bled back in­to yet an­oth­er ad­join­ing aisle. She stopped, crouched, wait­ed.

Foot­falls sound­ed sev­er­al aisles over, com­ing clos­er, then re­ced­ing again. He had lost her.

No­ra turned and be­gan mov­ing, as stealthi­ly as pos­si­ble, through the aisles, try­ing to put as much dis­tance as pos­si­ble be­tween her­self and the pur­suer. But no mat­ter which way she turned, or how fast she ran, when­ev­er she stopped she could hear the foot­falls, rapid and pur­pose­ful, seem­ing to keep pace.

She had to fig­ure out where she was. If she kept run­ning around aim­less­ly, even­tu­al­ly he—it—would catch her.

She looked around. This aisle end­ed in a wall. She was at the edge of the Archives. Now, at least, she could fol­low the wall, make her way to the front.

Crouch­ing, she moved along as quick­ly as she could, lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly for the sound of foot­steps, her eye scan­ning the dim­ness ahead. Sud­den­ly, some­thing yawned out from the gloom: it was a tricer­atops skull, mount­ed on the wall, its out­lines shad­owy and vague in the poor light.

Re­lief flood­ed through her. Puck must be around here some­where; the in­trud­er wouldn’t dare ap­proach them si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

She opened her mouth to call out soft­ly. But then she paused, look­ing more close­ly at the dim out­line of the di­nosaur. Some­thing was odd—the sil­hou­ette was all wrong. She be­gan to move cau­tious­ly to­ward it. And then, abrupt­ly, she stopped once again.

There, im­paled on the horns of the tricer­atops, hung a body, naked from the waist up, arms and legs hang­ing loose. Three bloody horns stuck right through the man’s back. It looked as if the tricer­atops had gored the per­son, hoist­ing him in­to the air.

No­ra took a step back. Her mind took in the de­tails, as if from a long dis­tance away: the bald­ing head with a fringe of gray hair; the flab­by skin; the with­ered arms. Where the horns had speared through the low­er back, the flesh was one long, open wound. Blood had col­lect­ed around the base of the horns, run­ning in dark rivulets around the tor­so and drip­ping on­to the mar­ble.

I’m on the tricer­atops in the back.

In the back.

She heard a scream, re­al­ized that it had come from her own throat.

Blind­ly, she wheeled away and ran, veer­ing once, and again, and then again, rac­ing down the aisles as quick­ly as she could move her legs. And then, abrupt­ly, she found her­self in a cul-​de-​sac. She spun to re­trace her steps—and there, block­ing the end of the row, stood an an­tique, black-​hat­ted fig­ure.

Some­thing gleamed in his gloved hands.

There was nowhere to go but up. With­out an in­stant’s thought, she turned, grabbed the edge of a shelf, and be­gan climb­ing.

The fig­ure came fly­ing down the aisle, black cloak bil­low­ing be­hind.

No­ra was an ex­pe­ri­enced rock climber. Her years as an ar­chae­ol­ogist in Utah, climb­ing to caves and Anasazi cliff dwellings, were not for­got­ten. In a minute she had reached the top shelf, which swayed and groaned un­der the un­ex­pect­ed weight. She turned fran­ti­cal­ly, grabbed the first thing that came to hand—a stuffed fal­con—and looked down once again.

The black-​hat­ted man was al­ready be­low, climb­ing, face ob­scured in deep shad­ow. No­ra aimed, then threw.

The fal­con bounced harm­less­ly off one shoul­der.

She looked around des­per­ate­ly for some­thing else. A box of pa­pers; an­oth­er stuffed an­imal; more box­es. She threw one, then an­oth­er. But they were too light, use­less.

Still the man climbed.

With a sob of ter­ror, she swung over the top shelf and start­ed de­scend­ing the oth­er side. Abrupt­ly, a gloved hand dart­ed be­tween the shelv­ing, caught hold of her shirt. No­ra screamed, rip­ping her­self free. A dim flash of steel and a tiny blade swept past her, miss­ing her eye by inch­es. She swung away as the blade made an­oth­er glit­ter­ing arc to­ward her. Pain abrupt­ly blos­somed in her right shoul­der.

She cried out, lost her grip. Land­ing on her feet, she broke her fall by rolling to one side.

On the far side of the shelv­ing, the man had quick­ly climbed back down to the ground. Now he be­gan climb­ing di­rect­ly through the shelf, kick­ing and knock­ing spec­imen jars and box­es aside.

Again she ran, run­ning wild­ly, blind­ly, from aisle to aisle.

Sud­den­ly, a vast shape rose out of the dim­ness be­fore her. It was a wool­ly mam­moth. No­ra rec­og­nized it im­me­di­ate­ly: she’d been here, once be­fore, with Puck.

But which di­rec­tion was out? As she looked around, No­ra re­al­ized she would nev­er make it—the pur­suer would be up­on her in a mat­ter of sec­onds.

Sud­den­ly, she knew there was on­ly one thing to do.

Reach­ing for the light switch­es at the end of the aisle, she brushed them off with a sin­gle move­ment, plung­ing the sur­round­ing cor­ri­dors once again in­to dark­ness. Quick­ly, she felt be­neath the mam­moth’s scratchy bel­ly. There it was: a wood­en lever. She tugged, and the trap door fell open.

Try­ing to make as lit­tle noise as pos­si­ble, she climbed in­to the hot, stuffy bel­ly, pulling the trap­door up be­hind her.

Then she wait­ed, in­side the mam­moth. The air stank of rot, dust, jerked meat, mush­rooms.

She heard a rapid se­ries of clicks. The lights came back on. A stray beam worked through a small hole in the an­imal’s chest: an eye­hole, for the cir­cus work­er.

No­ra looked out, try­ing to con­trol her rapid breath­ing, to push away the pan­ic that threat­ened to over­whelm her. The man in the der­by hat stood not five feet away, back turned. Slow­ly, he ro­tat­ed him­self through 360 de­grees, look­ing, lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly. He was hold­ing a strange in­stru­ment in his hands: two pol­ished ivory han­dles joined by a thin, flex­ible steel saw with tiny ser­ra­tions. It looked like some kind of dread­ful an­tique sur­gi­cal in­stru­ment. He flexed it, caus­ing the steel wire to bend and shim­my.

His gaze came to rest on the mam­moth. He took a step to­ward it, his face in shad­ow. It was as if he knew this was where she was hid­ing. No­ra tensed, ready­ing her­self to fight to the end.

And then, just as sud­den­ly as he’d ap­proached, he was gone.

“Mr. Puck?” a voice was call­ing. “Mr. Puck, I’m here! Mr. Puck?”

It was Os­car Gibbs.

No­ra wait­ed, too ter­ri­fied to move. The voice came clos­er and, fi­nal­ly, Os­car Gibbs ap­peared around the cor­ner of the aisle.

“Mr. Puck? Where are you?”

With a trem­bling hand, No­ra reached down, un­latched the trap­door, and low­ered her­self out of the bel­ly of the mam­moth. Gibbs turned, jumped back, and stood there, star­ing at her open-​mouthed.

“Did you see him?” No­ra gasped. “Did you see him?”

“Who? What were you do­ing in there? Hey, you’re bleed­ing!”

No­ra looked at her shoul­der. There was a spread­ing stain of blood where the scalpel had nicked her.

Gibbs came clos­er. “Look, I don’t know what you’re do­ing here, or what’s go­ing on, but let’s get you to the nurse’s of­fice. Okay?”

No­ra shook her head. “No. Os­car, you have to call the po­lice, right away. Mr. Puck”—her voice broke for a mo­ment—“Mr. Puck’s been mur­dered. And the mur­der­er is right here. In the Mu­se­um.”

Many Worm

ONE

BILL SMITH­BACK HAD man­aged, with a lit­tle name-​drop­ping here and a lit­tle in­tim­ida­tion there, to get the best seat in the house. “The house” was the press room of One Po­lice Plaza, a cav­ernous space paint­ed the in­sti­tu­tion­al col­or known uni­ver­sal­ly as Vom­it Green. It was now filled to over­flow­ing with scur­ry­ing tele­vi­sion news crews and fran­tic jour­nal­ists. Smith­back loved the elec­tric at­mo­sphere of a big press con­fer­ence, called hasti­ly af­ter some dread­ful event, packed with city of­fi­cials and po­lice brass la­bor­ing un­der the mis­ap­pre­hen­sion that they could spin the un­ruly fourth es­tate of New York.

He re­mained in his seat, calm, legs fold­ed, tape recorder load­ed, and shot­gun mike poised, while pan­de­mo­ni­um raged around him. To his pro­fes­sion­al nose, it smelled dif­fer­ent to­day. There was an un­der­tone of fear. More than fear, ac­tu­al­ly: clos­er to ill-​sup­pressed hys­te­ria. He’d seen it as he’d rid­den the sub­way down­town that morn­ing, walked the streets around City Hall. These three copy­cat killings, one on top of an­oth­er, were just too strange. Peo­ple were talk­ing of noth­ing else. The whole city was on the verge of pan­ic.

Off to one side he caught sight of Bryce Har­ri­man, ex­pos­tu­lat­ing with a po­lice­man who re­fused to let him move clos­er to the front. All that fine vo­ca­tion­al train­ing at Columbia jour­nal­ism school, wast­ed on the New York Post. He should have tak­en a nice qui­et pro­fes­sor­ship at his old al­ma mater, teach­ing cal­low youth how to write a flaw­less in­vert­ed pyra­mid. True, the bas­tard had scooped him on the sec­ond mur­der, on the copy­cat an­gle, but sure­ly that was just luck. Wasn’t it?

There was a stir in the crowd. The wing doors of the press room belched out a group of blue suits, fol­lowed by the may­or of New York City, Ed­ward Mon­te­fiori. The man was tall and sol­id, very much aware that all eyes were up­on him. He paused, nod­ding to ac­quain­tances here and there, his face re­flect­ing the grav­ity of the mo­ment. The New York City may­oral race was in full swing, be­ing con­duct­ed as usu­al at the lev­el of two-​year-​olds. It was im­per­ative that he catch this killer, bring the copy­cat mur­ders to an end; the last thing the may­or want­ed was to give his ri­val yet more fod­der for his nasty tele­vi­sion ad­ver­tise­ments, which had been de­cry­ing the city’s re­cent up­surge in crime.

More peo­ple were com­ing on­to the stage. The may­or’s spokesper­son, Mary Hill, a tall, ex­treme­ly poised African-​Amer­ican wom­an; the fat po­lice cap­tain Sher­wood Custer, in whose precinct this whole mess had start­ed; the po­lice com­mis­sion­er, Rock­er—a tall, weary-​look­ing man—and, fi­nal­ly, Dr. Fred­er­ick Col­lopy, di­rec­tor of the Mu­se­um, fol­lowed by Roger Bris­bane. Smith­back felt a surge of anger when he saw Bris­bane, look­ing ur­bane in a neat­ly tai­lored gray suit. Bris­bane was the one who had screwed up ev­ery­thing be­tween him and No­ra. Even af­ter No­ra’s hor­ri­ble dis­cov­ery of Puck’s mur­dered corpse, af­ter be­ing chased and near­ly caught her­self by the Sur­geon, she had re­fused to see him, to let him com­fort her. It was al­most as if she blamed him for what hap­pened to Puck and Pen­der­gast.

The noise lev­el in the room was be­com­ing deaf­en­ing. The may­or mount­ed the podi­um and raised his hand. At the ges­ture, the room quick­ly fell silent.

The may­or read from a pre­pared state­ment, his Brook­lyn ac­cent fill­ing the room.

“Ladies and gen­tle­men of the press,” he be­gan. “From time to time our great city, be­cause of its size and di­ver­si­ty, has been stalked by se­ri­al killers. Thank­ful­ly, it has been many years since the last such plague. Now, how­ev­er, it ap­pears we are faced with a new se­ri­al killer, a true psy­chopath. Three peo­ple have been mur­dered in the space of a week, and in a par­tic­ular­ly vi­olent way. While the city is now en­joy­ing the low­est mur­der rate of any ma­jor metropoli­tan area in the coun­try—thanks to our vig­or­ous en­force­ment ef­forts and ze­ro tol­er­ance for law­break­ing—this is clear­ly three mur­ders too many. I called this press con­fer­ence to share with the pub­lic the strong and ef­fec­tive steps we are tak­ing to find this killer, and to an­swer as best we can ques­tions you might have about this case and its some­what sen­sa­tion­al as­pects. As you know, open­ness has al­ways been a top pri­or­ity of my ad­min­is­tra­tion. I there­fore have brought with me Karl Rock­er, the po­lice com­mis­sion­er; Sher­wood Custer, precinct cap­tain; Di­rec­tor Fred­er­ick Col­lopy and Vice Pres­ident Roger Bris­bane of the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry, where the lat­est homi­cide was dis­cov­ered. My spokesper­son, Mary Hill, will field the ques­tions. But first, I will ask Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er to give you a brief­ing on the case.”

He stepped back and Rock­er took the mi­cro­phone.

“Thank you, Mr. May­or.” His low, in­tel­li­gent voice, dry as parch­ment, filled the room. “Last Thurs­day, the body of a young wom­an, Doreen Hol­lan­der, was dis­cov­ered in Cen­tral Park. She had been mur­dered, and a pe­cu­liar kind of dis­sec­tion or sur­gi­cal op­er­ation per­formed on her low­er back. While the of­fi­cial au­top­sy was in progress and the re­sults were be­ing eval­uat­ed, a sec­ond killing took place. An­oth­er young wom­an, Mandy Ek­lund, was found in Tomp­kins Square Park. Foren­sic anal­ysis in­di­cat­ed that her man­ner of death, and the vi­olence done to her per­son, matched the killing of Doreen Hol­lan­der. And yes­ter­day, the body of a fifty-​four-​year-​old man, Rein­hart Puck, was dis­cov­ered in the Archives of the New York Mu­se­um. He was the Mu­se­um’s head archivist. The body showed mu­ti­la­tions iden­ti­cal to Ms. Ek­lund’s and Ms. Hol­lan­der’s.”

There was a flur­ry of raised hands, shouts, ges­tures. The com­mis­sion­er quelled them by hold­ing up both hands. “As you know, a let­ter was dis­cov­ered in these same Archives, re­fer­ring to a nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry se­ri­al killer. This let­ter de­scribed sim­ilar mu­ti­la­tions, con­duct­ed as a sci­en­tif­ic ex­per­iment by a doc­tor named Leng, in low­er Man­hat­tan, one hun­dred and twen­ty years ago. The re­mains of thir­ty-​six in­di­vid­uals were dis­cov­ered at a build­ing site on Cather­ine Street, pre­sum­ably the spot where Dr. Leng did his de­praved work.”

There was an­oth­er flur­ry of shouts.

Now, the may­or broke in again. “An ar­ti­cle about the let­ter ap­peared in last week’s New York Times. It de­scribed, in de­tail, the kind of mu­ti­la­tions Leng had per­formed on his vic­tims more than a cen­tu­ry ago, as well as the rea­son why he had car­ried them out.”

The may­or’s eyes roved the crowd and paused mo­men­tar­ily on Smith­back. The jour­nal­ist felt a shiv­er of pride at the im­plied recog­ni­tion. His ar­ti­cle.

“That ar­ti­cle ap­pears to have had an un­for­tu­nate ef­fect: it ap­pears to have stim­ulat­ed a copy­cat killer. A mod­ern psy­chopath.”

What was this? Smith­back’s smug­ness van­ished be­fore a quick­ly ris­ing sense of out­rage.

“I am told by po­lice psy­chi­atrists this killer be­lieves, in some twist­ed way, that by killing these peo­ple he will ac­com­plish what Leng tried to ac­com­plish a cen­tu­ry ago—that is, ex­tend his life span. The, er, sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic ap­proach of the Times ar­ti­cle we be­lieve in­flamed the killer and stim­ulat­ed him to act.”

This was out­ra­geous. The may­or was blam­ing him.

Smith­back looked around and saw that many eyes in the room were on him. He sti­fled his first im­pulse to stand up and protest. He had been do­ing his job as a re­porter. It was just a sto­ry. How dare the may­or make him the scape­goat?

“I am not blam­ing any­one in par­tic­ular,” Mon­te­fiori droned on, “but I would ask you, ladies and gen­tle­men of the press, to please show re­straint in your cov­er­age. We al­ready have three bru­tal killings on our hands. We are de­ter­mined not to al­low any more. All leads are be­ing fol­lowed up vig­or­ous­ly. Let us not in­flame the sit­ua­tion fur­ther. Thank you.”

Mary Hill stepped for­ward to take ques­tions. There was a roar, an in­stant out­cry, as ev­ery­one stood up, ges­tur­ing mad­ly. Smith­back re­mained seat­ed, flush­ing deeply. He felt vi­olat­ed. He tried to col­lect his thoughts, but his shock and out­rage made him un­able to think.

Mary Hill was tak­ing the first ques­tion.

“You said the mur­der­er per­formed an op­er­ation on his vic­tims,” some­body asked. “Can you elab­orate?”

“Ba­si­cal­ly, the low­er por­tion of the spinal cord had been re­moved in all three vic­tims,” the com­mis­sion­er him­self an­swered.

“It’s be­ing said that the lat­est op­er­ation was ac­tu­al­ly per­formed in the Mu­se­um,” shout­ed an­oth­er re­porter. “Is that so?”

“It is true that a large pool of blood was dis­cov­ered in the Archives, not far from the vic­tim. It ap­pears the blood was, in fact, from the vic­tim, but more foren­sic tests are un­der­way. Whether the, er, op­er­ation was ac­tu­al­ly per­formed there must await fur­ther lab work.”

“I un­der­stand that the FBI have been on the scene,” a young wom­an shout­ed. “Could you tell us the na­ture of their in­volve­ment?”

“That is not en­tire­ly cor­rect,” Rock­er an­swered. “An FBI agent has tak­en an un­of­fi­cial in­ter­est in the nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry se­ri­al killings. But he has no con­nec­tion to this case.” “Is it true that the third body was im­paled on the horns of a di­nosaur?”

The com­mis­sion­er winced slight­ly. “Yes, the body was found af­fixed to a tricer­atops skull. Clear­ly, we are deal­ing with a se­ri­ous­ly de­ranged in­di­vid­ual.”

“About the mu­ti­la­tion of the bod­ies. Is it true that on­ly a sur­geon could have done it?”

“It is one lead we are fol­low­ing up.”

“I just want to clar­ify one point,” an­oth­er re­porter said. “Are you say­ing that the Smith­back piece in the Times caused these mur­ders?”

Smith­back turned. It was Bryce Har­ri­man, the shit.

Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er frowned. “What May­or Mon­te­fiori said was—”

Once again, the may­or in­ter­vened. “I was mere­ly call­ing for re­straint. To be sure, we wish that ar­ti­cle had nev­er ap­peared. Three peo­ple might be alive to­day. And the meth­ods the re­porter used to ac­quire his in­for­ma­tion bear some eth­ical scruti­ny, to my mind. But no, I’ve not said the ar­ti­cle caused the killings.”

An­oth­er re­porter: “Isn’t it a bit of a di­ver­sion, Your Hon­or, to blame a re­porter who was on­ly do­ing his job?”

Smith­back craned his neck. Who said that? He was go­ing to buy that man a drink.

“That is not what I said. I mere­ly said—”

“But you clear­ly im­plied that the ar­ti­cle trig­gered the killings.”

He was go­ing to buy that man drinks and din­ner. As Smith­back looked around, he could see many of the re­turn­ing glances were sym­pa­thet­ic. The may­or, in at­tack­ing him, had in­di­rect­ly at­tacked the en­tire press corps. Har­ri­man had shot him­self in the foot by bring­ing up the sub­ject. He felt em­bold­ened: now they would have to call on him. They would have to.

“May I have the next ques­tion, please?” Mary Hill asked.

“Do you have any sus­pects?”

“We’ve been giv­en a very clear de­scrip­tion of the sus­pect’s at­tire,” Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er said. “A tall slen­der Cau­casian male, be­tween six foot and six foot two, wear­ing an old­fash­ioned black coat and a der­by hat, was seen in the Archives around the time Mr. Puck’s body was found. A sim­ilar­ly dressed man, with a rolled um­brel­la or cane, was al­so seen in the vicin­ity of the sec­ond crime scene. I’m not at lib­er­ty to give any de­tails be­yond that.”

Smith­back stood up, waved. Mary Hill ig­nored him.

“Ms. Perez of New York mag­azine. Your ques­tion, please.”

“I have a ques­tion for Dr. Col­lopy of the Mu­se­um. Sir, do you think the killer known as the Sur­geon is a Mu­se­um em­ploy­ee? Giv­en that the most re­cent vic­tim seems to have been killed and dis­sect­ed in the Mu­se­um, I mean.”

Col­lopy cleared his throat and stepped for­ward. “I be­lieve the po­lice are look­ing in­to that,” he said in a well-​mod­ulat­ed voice. “It seems high­ly un­like­ly. All our em­ploy­ees now go through crim­inal back­ground checks, are psy­cho­log­ical­ly pro­filed, and are thor­ough­ly drugtest­ed. And it hasn’t been proven that the killing ac­tu­al­ly took place in the Mu­se­um, I might add.”

There was an­oth­er roar as Hill looked for more ques­tions. Smith­back shout­ed and waved his hands along with the rest. Christ, they weren’t re­al­ly go­ing to ig­nore him?

“Mr. Diller of News­day, your ques­tion please.”

She was avoid­ing him, the witch.

“I’d like to ad­dress my ques­tion to the may­or. Mr. May­or, how is it that the site on Cather­ine Street was ‘in­ad­ver­tent­ly’ de­stroyed? Wasn’t this a site of ma­jor his­tor­ical im­por­tance?”

The may­or stepped for­ward. “No. It was not of his­tor­ical sig­nif­icance—”

“No his­tor­ical sig­nif­icance? The largest se­ri­al killing in the na­tion’s his­to­ry?”

“Mr. Diller, this press con­fer­ence is about the present-​day homi­cides. Please, let’s not con­flate the two. We had no le­gal rea­son to stop con­struc­tion of a hun­dred-​mil­lion-​dol­lar build­ing. The bones and ef­fects were pho­tographed, stud­ied by the med­ical ex­am­in­er, and re­moved for fur­ther anal­ysis. Noth­ing more could be done.”

“Is it per­haps be­cause Moe­gen-​Fairhaven is a ma­jor donor to your cam­paign—”

“Next ques­tion,” rapped out Hill.

Smith­back stood up and shout­ed, “Mr. May­or, since as­per­sions have been cast—”

“Ms. Ep­stein of WN­BC,” cried Mary Hill, her pow­er­ful voice drown­ing him out. A slen­der news­wom­an stood up, hold­ing a mike, a cam­era turned on her.

“Ex­cuse ME!” Smith­back quick­ly took ad­van­tage of the tem­po­rary lull. “Ms. Ep­stein, since I have been per­son­al­ly at­tacked, may I re­spond?”

The fa­mous an­chor­wom­an didn’t pause for a sec­ond. “Of course,” she said gra­cious­ly, and turned to her cam­era­man to make sure he got it on tape.

“I’d like to ad­dress my ques­tion to Mr. Bris­bane,” Smith­back con­tin­ued, not paus­ing for a sec­ond. “Mr. Bris­bane, why has the let­ter that start­ed all this been put off lim­its, along with all the items from the Shot­tum col­lec­tion? The Mu­se­um isn’t try­ing to hide some­thing, is it?”

Bris­bane rose with an easy smile. “Not at all. Those ma­te­ri­als have mere­ly been tem­porar­ily re­moved for con­ser­va­tion. It’s stan­dard Mu­se­um pro­ce­dure. In any case, the let­ter has al­ready in­flamed one copy­cat mur­der­er in­to ac­tion—to re­lease it now would be ir­re­spon­si­ble. The ma­te­ri­als are still avail­able to qual­ified re­searchers.”

“Is it not true that you tried to pre­vent em­ploy­ees from work­ing on the case?”

“Not at all. We’ve co­op­er­at­ed all along. The record speaks for it­self.”

Shit. Smith­back thought fast. “Mr. Bris­bane—”

“Mr. Smith­back, care to give some­one else a turn?” Mary Hill’s voice once again sliced through the air.

“No!” Smith­back cried, to scat­tered laugh­ter. “Mr. Bris­bane, isn’t it true that Moe­gen-​Fairhaven, which gave the Mu­se­um two mil­lion dol­lars last year—not to men­tion the fact that Fairhaven him­self sits on your board—has put pres­sure on the Mu­se­um to stop this in­ves­ti­ga­tion?”

Bris­bane col­ored and Smith­back knew his ques­tion had hit home. “That is an ir­re­spon­si­ble al­le­ga­tion. As I said, we’ve co­op­er­at­ed all along—”

“So you de­ny threat­en­ing your em­ploy­ee, Dr. No­ra Kel­ly, for­bid­ding her to work on the case? Keep in mind, Mr. Bris­bane, that we have yet to hear from No­ra Kel­ly her­self. The one who found the third vic­tim’s body, I might add—and who was chased by the Sur­geon and al­most killed in turn.”

The clear im­pli­ca­tion was that No­ra Kel­ly might have some­thing to say that would not agree with Bris­bane’s ac­count. Bris­bane’s face dark­ened as he re­al­ized he’d been backed in­to a cor­ner. “I will not an­swer these hec­tor­ing ques­tions.” Be­side him, Col­lopy looked grim.

Smith­back felt a swell of tri­umph.

“Mis­ter Smith­back,” said Mary Hill acid­ly, “are you quite done mo­nop­oliz­ing this press con­fer­ence? Clear­ly the nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry homi­cides have noth­ing to do with the cur­rent se­ri­al killings, ex­cept as in­spi­ra­tion.”

“And how do you know that?” Smith­back cried out, his tri­umph now se­cure.

The may­or now turned to him. “Are you sug­gest­ing, sir,” he said face­tious­ly, “that Dr. Leng is still alive and con­tin­uing his busi­ness?”

There was a sol­id round of laugh­ter in the hall.

“Not at all—”

“Then I sug­gest you sit down, my friend.”

Smith­back sat down, amid more laugh­ter, his feel­ings of tri­umph squashed. He had scored a hit, but they knew how to hit back.

As the ques­tions droned on, it slow­ly dawned on him just what he had done, drag­ging No­ra’s name in­to the press con­fer­ence. It didn’t take him near­ly as long to fig­ure out how she would feel about it.

TWO

DOY­ERS STREET WAS a short, nar­row doglet of a lane at the south­east­ern edge of Chi­na­town. A clus­ter of tea shops and gro­cery stores stood at the far end, fes­tooned with bright neon signs in Chi­nese. Dark clouds scud­ded across the sky, whip­ping scraps of pa­per and leaves off the side­walk. There was a dis­tant roll of thun­der. A storm was com­ing.

O’Shaugh­nessy paused at the en­trance of the de­sert­ed lane, and No­ra stopped be­side him. She shiv­ered, with both fear and cold. She could see him peer­ing up and down the side­walk, eyes alert for any sign of dan­ger, any pos­si­bil­ity that they had been fol­lowed. “Num­ber nine­ty-​nine is in the mid­dle of the block,” he said in a low voice. “That brown­stone, there.”

No­ra fol­lowed the in­di­cat­ed di­rec­tion with her eyes. It was a nar­row build­ing like all the oth­ers: a three-​sto­ry struc­ture of dirty green brick.

“Sure you don’t want me to go in with you?” O’Shaugh­nessy asked.

No­ra swal­lowed. “I think it’d be bet­ter if you stayed here and watched the street.”

O’Shaugh­nessy nod­ded, then slipped in­to the shad­ow of a door­way.

Tak­ing a deep breath, No­ra start­ed for­ward. The sealed en­ve­lope con­tain­ing Pen­der­gast’s ban­knotes felt like a lead weight with­in her purse. She shiv­ered again, glanc­ing up and down the dark street, fight­ing her feel­ing of ag­ita­tion.

The at­tack on her, and Puck’s bru­tal mur­der, had changed ev­ery­thing. It had proven these were no mere psy­chot­ic copy­cat killings. It had been care­ful­ly planned. The mur­der­er had ac­cess to the Mu­se­um’s pri­vate spaces. He had used Puck’s old Roy­al type­writ­er to type that note, lur­ing her to the Archives. He had pur­sued her with ter­ri­fy­ing cool­ness. She’d felt the man’s pres­ence, mere inch­es away from her, there in the Archives. She’d even felt the sting of his scalpel. This was no lu­natic: this was some­one who knew ex­act­ly what he was do­ing, and why. What­ev­er the con­nec­tion be­tween the old killings and the new, this had to be stopped. If there was any­thing—any­thing—she could do to get the killer, she was will­ing to do it.

There were an­swers be­neath the floor of Num­ber 99 Doy­ers Street. She was go­ing to find those an­swers.

Her mind re­turned to the ter­ri­fy­ing chase, in par­tic­ular to the flash of the Sur­geon’s scalpel as it flicked to­ward her, faster than a strik­ing snake. It was an im­age that she found her­self un­able to shake. Then the end­less po­lice ques­tion­ing; and af­ter­ward her trip to Pen­der­gast’s bed­side, to tell him she had changed her mind about Doy­ers Street. Pen­der­gast had been alarmed to hear of the at­tack, re­luc­tant at first, but No­ra re­fused to be swayed. With or with­out him, she was go­ing down to Doy­ers. Ul­ti­mate­ly, Pen­der­gast had re­lent­ed: on the con­di­tion that No­ra keep O’Shaugh­nessy by her side at all times. And he had ar­ranged for her to re­ceive the fat pack­et of cash.

She mount­ed the steps to the front door, steel­ing her­self for the task at hand. She no­ticed that the apart­ment names be­side the buzzers were writ­ten in Chi­nese. She pressed the buzzer for Apart­ment 1.

A voice rasped out in Chi­nese.

“I’m the one in­ter­est­ed in rent­ing the base­ment apart­ment,” she called out.

The lock snapped free with a buzz, she pushed on the door, and found her­self in a hall­way lit by flu­ores­cent lights. A nar­row stair­case as­cend­ed to her right. At the end of the hall­way she could hear a door be­ing end­less­ly un­bolt­ed. It opened at last and a stooped, de­pressed-​look­ing man ap­peared, in shirt­sleeves and bag­gy slacks, peer­ing down the hall at her.

No­ra walked up. “Mr. Ling Lee?”

He nod­ded and held the door open for her. Be­yond was a liv­ing room with a green so­fa, a Formi­ca ta­ble, sev­er­al easy chairs, and an elab­orate red-​and gold-​carved bas-​re­lief on the wall, show­ing a pago­da and trees. A chan­de­lier, gross­ly over­sized for the space, dom­inat­ed the room. The wall­pa­per was lilac, the rug red and black.

“Sit down,” the man said. His voice was faint, tired.

She sat down, sink­ing alarm­ing­ly in­to the so­fa.

“How you hear about this apart­ment?” Lee asked. No­ra could see from his ex­pres­sion he was not pleased to see her.

No­ra launched in­to her sto­ry. “A la­dy who works in the Citibank down the block from here told me about it.”

“What la­dy?” Lee asked, more sharply. In Chi­na­town, Pen­der­gast had ex­plained, most land­lords pre­ferred to rent to their own.

“I don’t know her name. My un­cle told me to talk to her, said that she knew where to find an apart­ment in this area. She told me to call you.”

“Your un­cle?”

“Yes. Un­cle Huang. He’s with the DHCR.”

This bit of in­for­ma­tion was greet­ed with a dis­mayed si­lence. Pen­der­gast fig­ured that hav­ing a Chi­nese rel­ative would make it eas­ier for her to get the apart­ment. That he worked for the De­part­ment of Hous­ing and Com­mu­ni­ty Re­new­al—the city di­vi­sion that en­forced the rent laws—made it all the bet­ter.

“Your name?”

“Bet­sy Winchell.”

No­ra no­ticed a large, dark pres­ence move from the kitchen in­to the door­way of the liv­ing room. It was ap­par­ent­ly Lee’s wife, arms fold­ed, three times his size, look­ing very stern.

“Over the phone, you said the apart­ment was avail­able. I’m pre­pared to take it right away. Please show it to me.”

Lee rose from the ta­ble and glanced at his wife. Her arms tight­ened.

“Fol­low me,” he said.

They went back in­to the hall, out the front door, and down the steps. No­ra glanced around quick­ly, but O’Shaugh­nessy was nowhere to be seen. Lee re­moved a key, opened the base­ment apart­ment door, and snapped on the lights. She fol­lowed him in. He closed the door and made a show of re­lock­ing no few­er than four locks.

It was a dis­mal apart­ment, long and dark. The on­ly win­dow was a small, barred square be­side the front door. The walls were of paint­ed brick, once white but now gray, and the floor was cov­ered with old brick pavers, cracked and chipped. No­ra looked at them with pro­fes­sion­al in­ter­est. They were laid but not ce­ment­ed. What was be­neath? Dirt? Sand? Con­crete? The floor looked just un­even and damp enough to have been laid on dirt.

“Kitchen and bed­room in back,” said Lee, not both­er­ing to point.

No­ra walked to the rear of the apart­ment. Here was a cramped kitchen, lead­ing in­to two dark bed­rooms and a bath. There were no clos­ets. A win­dow in the rear wall, be­low grade, al­lowed fee­ble brown light from an air shaft to en­ter be­tween thick steel bars.

No­ra emerged. Lee was ex­am­in­ing the lock on the front door. “Have to fix lock,” he said in a por­ten­tous tone. “Many rob­ber try to get in.”

“You have a lot of break-​ins?”

Lee nod­ded en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly. “Oh yes. Many rob­ber. Very dan­ger­ous.”

“Re­al­ly?”

“Many rob­ber. Many mug­ger.” He shook his head sad­ly.

“The apart­ment looks safe, at least.” No­ra lis­tened. The ceil­ing seemed fair­ly sound­proof—at least, she could hear noth­ing from above.

“Neigh­bor­hood not safe for girl. Ev­ery day, mur­der, mug­ging, rob­ber. Rape.”

No­ra knew that, de­spite its shab­by ap­pear­ance, Chi­na­town was one of the safest neigh­bor­hoods in the city. “I’m not wor­ried,” she said.

“Many rule for apart­ment,” said Lee, try­ing an­oth­er tack.

“Is that right?”

“No mu­sic. No noise. No man at night.” Lee seemed to be search­ing his mind for oth­er stric­tures a young wom­an would find ob­jec­tion­able. “No smoke. No drink. Keep clean ev­ery day.”

No­ra lis­tened, nod­ding her agree­ment. “Good. That sounds per­fect. I like a neat, qui­et place. And I have no boyfriend.” With a re­newed flash of anger she thought of Smith­back and how he had dragged her in­to this mess by pub­lish­ing that ar­ti­cle. To a cer­tain ex­tent Smith­back had been re­spon­si­ble for these copy­cat killings. Just yes­ter­day, he’d had the nerve to bring up her name at the may­or’s news con­fer­ence, for the whole city to hear. She felt cer­tain that, af­ter what hap­pened in the Archives, her long-​term prospects at the Mu­se­um were even more ques­tion­able than be­fore.

“Util­ity not in­clude.”

“Of course.”

“No air-​con­di­tion.”

No­ra nod­ded.

Lee seemed at a loss, then his face bright­ened with a fresh idea. “Af­ter sui­cide, no al­low gun in apart­ment.”

“Sui­cide?”

“Young wom­an hang her­self. Same age as you.”

“A hang­ing? I thought you men­tioned a gun.”

The man looked con­fused for a mo­ment. Then his face bright­ened again. “She hang, but it no work. Then shoot her­self.”

“I see. She fa­vored the com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach.”

“Like you, she no have boyfriend. Very sad.”

“How ter­ri­ble.”

“It hap­pen right in there,” said Lee, point­ing in­to the kitchen. “Not find body for three day. Bad smell.” He rolled his eyes and added, in a dra­mat­ic un­der­tone: “Many worm.”

“How dread­ful,” No­ra said. Then she smiled. “But the apart­ment is just per­fect. I’ll take it.”

Lee’s look of de­pres­sion deep­ened, but he said noth­ing.

She fol­lowed him back up to his apart­ment. No­ra sat back down at the so­fa, un­in­vit­ed. The wife was still there, a formidable pres­ence in the kitchen door­way. Her face was screwed in­to an ex­pres­sion of sus­pi­cion and dis­plea­sure. Her crossed arms looked like bal­sa-​col­ored hams.

The man sat down un­hap­pi­ly.

“So,” said No­ra, “let’s get this over with. I want to rent the apart­ment. I need it im­me­di­ate­ly. To­day. Right now.”

“Have to check ref­er­ence,” Lee replied fee­bly.

“There’s no time and I’m pre­pared to pay cash. I need the apart­ment tonight, or I won’t have a place to sleep.” As she spoke, she re­moved Pen­der­gast’s en­ve­lope. She reached in and took out a brick of hun­dred-​dol­lar bills.

The ap­pear­ance of the mon­ey brought a loud ex­pos­tu­la­tion from the wife. Lee did not re­spond. His eyes were on the cash.

“I have here first month’s rent, last month’s rent, and a month’s de­posit.” No­ra thumped the roll on the table­top. “Six thou­sand six hun­dred dol­lars. Cash. Bring out the lease.”

The apart­ment was dis­mal and the rent bor­dered on out­ra­geous, which was prob­ably why it wasn’t gone al­ready. She hoped that hard cash was some­thing Lee could not af­ford to ig­nore.

There was an­oth­er sharp com­ment from the wife. Lee ig­nored her. He went in­to the back, and re­turned a few min­utes lat­er, lay­ing two leas­es in front of her. They were in Chi­nese. There was a si­lence.

“Need ref­er­ence,” said the wife stolid­ly, switch­ing to En­glish for No­ra’s ben­efit. “Need cred­it check.”

No­ra ig­nored her. “Where do I sign?”

“There,” the man point­ed.

No­ra signed Bet­sy Winchell with a flour­ish on both leas­es, and then hand­wrote on each lease a crude re­ceipt: $6,600 re­ceived by Mr. Ling Lee. “My Un­cle Huang will trans­late it for me. I hope for your sake there’s noth­ing il­le­gal in it. Now you sign. Ini­tial the re­ceipt.”

There was a sharp noise from the wife.

Lee signed his name in Chi­nese; em­bold­ened, it seemed, by the op­po­si­tion of his wife.

“Now give me the keys and we’re done.”

“Have to make copy of keys.”

“You give me those keys. It’s my apart­ment now. I’ll make the copies for you at my own ex­pense. I need to start mov­ing in right away.”

Lee re­luc­tant­ly hand­ed her the keys. No­ra took them, fold­ed one of the leas­es in­to her pock­et, and stood up. “Thank you very much,” she said cheer­ful­ly, hold­ing out her hand.

Lee shook it limply. As the door closed, No­ra heard an­oth­er sharp ir­rup­tion of dis­plea­sure from the wife. This one sound­ed as if it might go on for a long time.

THREE

NO­RA IM­ME­DI­ATE­LY RE­TURNED to the apart­ment be­low. O’Shaug­nessy ap­peared by her side as she un­locked the door. To­geth­er, they slipped in­to the liv­ing room, and No­ra se­cured the door with dead­bolts and chains. Then she moved to the barred win­dow. Two nails stuck out from ei­ther side of the lin­tel, on which some­one had once hung a makeshift cur­tain. She re­moved her coat and hung it across the nails, block­ing the view from out­side.

“Cozy place,” O’Shaugh­nessy said, sniff­ing. “Smells like a crime scene.”

No­ra didn’t an­swer. She was star­ing at the floor, al­ready work­ing out the dig in her mind.

While O’Shaugh­nessy cased the apart­ment, No­ra made a cir­cuit of the liv­ing room, ex­am­in­ing the floor, grid­ding it off, plot­ting her lines of at­tack. Then she knelt and, tak­ing a penknife from her pock­et—a knife her broth­er, Skip, had giv­en her for her six­teenth birth­day and which she nev­er trav­eled with­out—eased it be­tween the edges of two bricks. Slow­ly, de­lib­er­ate­ly, she cut her way through the crust of grime and old floor wax. She rocked the knife back and forth be­tween the bricks, gen­tly loos­en­ing the stonework. Then, bit by bit, she be­gan to work the clos­est brick from its sock­et. In a mo­ment it was free. She pulled it out.

Earth. The damp smell rose to­ward her nos­trils. She poked her fin­ger in­to it: cool, moist, a lit­tle slimy. She probed with the penknife, found it com­pact but yield­ing, with lit­tle grav­el or rocks. Per­fect.

She straight­ened up, looked around. O’Shaugh­nessy was stand­ing be­hind her, look­ing down cu­ri­ous­ly.

“What are you do­ing?” he asked.

“Check­ing the sub­floor­ing.”

“And?”

“It’s old fill, not ce­ment.”

“Is that good?”

“It’s out­stand­ing.”

“If you say so.”

She tapped the brick back in­to place, then stood. She checked her watch. Three o’clock, Fri­day af­ter­noon. The Mu­se­um would close in two hours.

She turned to O’Shaugh­nessy. “Look, Patrick, I need you to get up to my of­fice at the Mu­se­um, plun­der my field lock­er for some tools and equip­ment I’ll need.”

O’Shaugh­nessy shook his head. “Noth­ing do­ing. Pen­der­gast said I was to stay with you.”

“I re­mem­ber. But I’m here now, safe. There must be five locks on that door, I won’t be go­ing any­where. I’ll be a lot safer here than walk­ing the streets. Be­sides, the killer knows where I work. Would you rather I went up­town and you wait­ed here?”

“Why go any­where? What’s the hur­ry? Can’t we wait un­til Pen­der­gast is out of the hos­pi­tal?”

She stared at him. “The clock’s tick­ing, Patrick. There’s a killer out there.”

O’Shaugh­nessy looked at her. Hes­itat­ed.

“We can’t af­ford to just sit around. I hope you’re not go­ing to give me a hard time. I need those tools, and I need them now.”

Still, hes­ita­tion.

No­ra felt her anger rise. “Just do it. Okay?”

O’Shaugh­nessy sighed. “Dou­ble-​lock the door be­hind me, and don’t open it for any­body. Not the land­lord, not the fire de­part­ment, not San­ta Claus. On­ly me. Promise?”

No­ra nod­ded. “I promise.”

“Good, I’ll be back AS­AP.”

She drew up a quick list of items, gave O’Shaugh­nessy di­rec­tions, and locked the door care­ful­ly be­hind him, shut­ting out the sound of the grow­ing storm. Slow­ly, she stepped away from the door, her eyes swivel­ing around the room, com­ing to rest at last on the brick­work be­neath her feet. One hun­dred years be­fore, Leng, for all his ge­nius, could not have an­tic­ipat­ed the reach of mod­ern ar­chae­ol­ogy. She would ex­ca­vate this site with the great­est care, sift­ing through his old lab­ora­to­ry lay­er by lay­er, bring­ing all her skills to bear in or­der to cap­ture even the small­est piece of ev­idence. And there would be ev­idence, she knew that. There was no such thing as a bar­ren ar­chae­olog­ical site. Peo­ple—wher­ev­er they went, what­ev­er they did—al­ways left a record.

Tak­ing out her penknife, she knelt and, once again, be­gan eas­ing the blade be­tween the old bricks. There was a sud­den peal of thun­der, loud­er than any that had come be­fore; she paused, heart beat­ing wild­ly with ter­ror. She forced her feel­ings back un­der con­trol, shak­ing her head rue­ful­ly. No killer was go­ing to stop her from find­ing out what was be­neath this floor. She won­dered briefly what Bris­bane would say to this work. The hell with him, she thought.

She turned the penknife over in her hands, closed it with a sigh. All her pro­fes­sion­al life, she had un­earthed and cat­alogued hu­man bones with­out emo­tion—with no con­nec­tion to the an­cient skele­tons be­yond a shared hu­man­ity. But Mary Greene had proven ut­ter­ly dif­fer­ent. There, out­side the girl’s house, Pen­der­gast had thrown Mary Greene’s short life and aw­ful death in­to sharp re­lief. For the first time, No­ra re­al­ized she had ex­ca­vat­ed, han­dled, the bones of some­one that she could un­der­stand, grieve for. More and more, Pen­der­gast’s tale of Mary Greene was sink­ing in, de­spite her at­tempts to keep a pro­fes­sion­al dis­tance. And now, she had al­most be­come an­oth­er Mary Greene.

That made it per­son­al. Very per­son­al.

Her thoughts were in­ter­rupt­ed by the rat­tle of wind at the door, and an­oth­er, fainter, rum­ble of thun­der. No­ra rose to her knees, opened the penknife again, and be­gan scrap­ing vig­or­ous­ly at the brick­work be­neath her feet. It was go­ing to be a long night.

FOUR

THE WIND SHOOK the barred door, and oc­ca­sion­al flick­ers of light­ning and grum­blings of thun­der pen­etrat­ed the room. Now that O’Shaugh­nessy had re­turned, the two worked to­geth­er, the po­lice­man mov­ing the dirt, No­ra fo­cus­ing on un­cov­er­ing the de­tails. They la­bored by the light of a sin­gle yel­low bulb. The room smelled strong­ly of de­cay­ing earth. The air was close, hu­mid, and sti­fling.

She had opened a four-​square-​me­ter dig in the liv­ing room floor. It had been care­ful­ly grid­ded off, and she had stepped down the ex­ca­va­tion, each me­ter grid to a dif­fer­ent lev­el, al­low­ing her to climb in and out of the deep­en­ing hole. The floor bricks were neat­ly piled against the far wall. The door lead­ing to the kitchen was open, and through it a large pile of brown dirt was vis­ible, piled in the cen­ter of the room atop a sheet of heavy plas­tic. Be­side it was a small­er sheet of plas­tic, con­tain­ing bagged items re­cov­ered from the digsite.

At last No­ra paused, putting her trow­el aside to take stock. She re­moved her safe­ty hel­met, drew the back of her hand across her brow, re­placed the hel­met on her head. It was well past mid­night, and she felt ex­haust­ed. The ex­ca­va­tion at its deep­est point had gone down more than four feet be­low grade: a lot of work. It was dif­fi­cult, al­so, to work this rapid­ly while main­tain­ing a pro­fes­sion­al ex­ca­va­tion.

She turned to O’Shaugh­nessy. “Take five. I’d like to ex­am­ine this soil pro­file.”

“About time.” He straight­ened up, rest­ing on his shov­el. His brow was stream­ing with sweat.

No­ra shone her flash­light along the care­ful­ly ex­posed wall of dirt, read­ing it as one might read a book. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly she would shave off a lit­tle with a trow­el to get a clear­er view.

There was a lay­er of clean fill on the top go­ing down six inch­es—laid, no doubt, as a base for the more re­cent brick floor. Be­low was about three feet of coars­er fill, laced with bits of post-1910 crock­ery and chi­na. But she could see noth­ing from Leng’s lab­ora­to­ry—at least, noth­ing ob­vi­ous. Still, she had flagged and bagged ev­ery­thing, by the book.

Be­neath the coarse fell, they had struck a lay­er con­tain­ing bits of trash, rot­ting weeds, pieces of mold-​blown bot­tles, soup bones, and the skele­ton of a dog: ground de­bris from the days when the site had been a va­cant lot. Un­der that was a lay­er of bricks.

O’Shaugh­nessy stretched, rubbed his back. “Why do we have to dig so far down?”

“In most old cities, the ground lev­el ris­es at a fixed rate over time: in New York it’s about three quar­ters of a me­ter ev­ery hun­dred years.” She point­ed to­ward the bot­tom of the hole. “Back then, that was ground lev­el.”

“So these old bricks be­low are the orig­inal base­ment floor­ing?”

“I think so. The floor of the lab­ora­to­ry.” Leng’s lab­ora­to­ry.

And yet it had yield­ed few clues. There was a re­mark­able lack of de­bris, as if the floor had been swept clean. She had found some bro­ken glass­ware wedged in­to the cracks of the brick; an old fire grate with some coal; a but­ton; a rot­ten trol­ley tick­et, a few oth­er odds and ends. It seemed that Leng had want­ed to leave noth­ing be­hind.

Out­side, a fresh flash of light­ning pen­etrat­ed the coat No­ra had hung over the win­dow. A sec­ond lat­er, thun­der rum­bled. The sin­gle bulb flick­ered, browned, then bright­ened once again.

She con­tin­ued star­ing thought­ful­ly at the floor. At last, she spoke. “First, we need to widen the ex­ca­va­tion. And then, I think we’ll have to go deep­er.”

“Deep­er?” said O’Shaugh­nessy, a note of in­creduli­ty in his voice.

No­ra nod­ded. “Leng left noth­ing on the floor. But that doesn’t mean he left noth­ing be­neath it.”

There was a short, chilly si­lence.

Out­side, Doy­ers Street lay pros­trate un­der a heavy rain. Wa­ter ran down the gut­ters and dis­ap­peared in­to the storm drains, car­ry­ing with it trash, dog turds, drowned rats, rot­ting veg­eta­bles, the guts of fish from the mar­ket down the street. The oc­ca­sion­al flash of light­ning il­lu­mi­nat­ed the dark­ened fa­cades, shoot­ing darts of light in­to the curl­ing fogs that licked and ed­died about the pave­ment.

A stooped fig­ure in a der­by hat, al­most ob­scured be­neath a black um­brel­la, made its way down the nar­row street. The fig­ure moved slow­ly, painful­ly, lean­ing on a cane as it ap­proached. It paused, ev­er so briefly, be­fore Num­ber 99 Doy­ers Street; then it drift­ed on in­to the mi­as­ma of fog, a shad­ow merg­ing with shad­ows un­til one could hard­ly say that it had been there at all.

FIVE

CUSTER LEANED BACK in his over­sized Mediter­ranean of­fice chair with a sigh. It was a quar­ter to twelve on Sat­ur­day morn­ing, and by rights he should have been out with the bowl­ing club, drink­ing beer with his bud­dies. He was a precinct com­man­der, for chris­sakes, not a homi­cide de­tec­tive. Why did they want him in on a frig­ging Sat­ur­day? God­damn point­less pub­lic re­la­tions bull­shit. He’d done noth­ing but sit on his ass all morn­ing, lis­ten­ing to the as­bestos rat­tle in the heat­ing ducts. A waste of a per­fect­ly good week­end.

At least Pen­der­gast was out of ac­tion for the time be­ing. But what, ex­act­ly, had he been up to? When he’d asked O’Shaugh­nessy about it, the man was damned eva­sive. You’d think a cop with a record like his would do him­self a fa­vor, learn what to kiss and when. Well, Custer had had enough. Come Mon­day, he was go­ing to tight­en the leash on that pup­py, but good.

The buzzer on his desk rang, and Custer poked at it an­gri­ly. “What the hell is it now? I was not to be dis­turbed.”

“Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er is on line one, Cap­tain,” came Noyes’s voice, care­ful­ly neu­tral.

Omigod holy shit sono­fabitch, thought Custer. His shak­ing hand hov­ered over the blink­ing light on his tele­phone. What the hell did the com­mis­sion­er want with him? Hadn’t he done ev­ery­thing they’d asked him to do, the may­or, the chief, ev­ery­body? What­ev­er it was, it wasn’t his fault . . .

A fat, trem­bling fin­ger de­pressed the but­ton.

“Custer?” The com­mis­sion­er’s des­ic­cat­ed voice filled his ear.

“What is it, sir?” Custer squeaked, mak­ing a be­lat­ed ef­fort to low­er the pitch of his voice.

“Your man. O’Shaugh­nessy.”

“Yes sir? What about O’Shaugh­nessy?”

“I’m a lit­tle cu­ri­ous here. Why, ex­act­ly, did he re­quest a copy of the foren­sic re­port from the ME’s of­fice on the re­mains found down on Cather­ine Street? Did you au­tho­rize this?” The voice was slow, weary.

What the hell was O’Shaugh­nessy up to? Custer’s mind raced. He could tell the truth, say that O’Shaugh­nessy must have been dis­obey­ing his or­ders. But that would make him look like a fool, a man who couldn’t con­trol his own. On the oth­er hand, he could lie.

He chose the lat­ter, more ha­bit­ual course.

“Com­mis­sion­er?” he man­aged to bring his voice down to a rel­ative­ly mas­cu­line pitch. “I au­tho­rized it. You see, we didn’t have a copy down here for our files. It’s just a for­mal­ity, you know, dot­ting ev­ery t and cross­ing ev­ery i. We do things by the book, sir.”

There was a si­lence. “Custer, since you are so nim­ble with apho­risms, you sure­ly know the ex­pres­sion ‘Let sleep­ing dogs lie’?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I thought the may­or made it clear we were go­ing to let that par­tic­ular sleep­ing dog lie.” Rock­er didn’t sound like he had the great­est faith in the may­or’s judg­ment.

“Yes, sir.”

“O’Shaugh­nessy isn’t free­lanc­ing, is he, Custer? He’s not, by any chance, help­ing that FBI agent while he’s laid up—is he?”

“He’s a sol­id of­fi­cer, loy­al and obe­di­ent. I asked him to get the re­port.”

“In that case, I’m sur­prised at you, Custer. Sure­ly you know that once the re­port is down at the precinct, ev­ery cop there will have ac­cess to it. Which is one step from lay­ing it on the doorstep of the New York Times.”

“I’m sor­ry, sir. I didn’t think of that.”

“I want that re­port—ev­ery copy of that re­port—sent back up to me. Per­son­al­ly. By couri­er. You un­der­stand? No copy is to re­main at precinct.”

“Yes, sir.” Christ, how was he go­ing to do that? He would have to get it from O’Shaugh­nessy, the son of a bitch.

“I get the fun­ny feel­ing, Custer, that you don’t quite ap­pre­ci­ate the full sit­ua­tion here. This Cather­ine Street busi­ness has noth­ing to do with any crim­inal in­ves­ti­ga­tion. It is a his­tor­ical mat­ter. That foren­sic re­port be­longs to Moe­gen-​Fairhaven. It’s pri­vate prop­er­ty. They paid for it and the re­mains were found on their land. Those re­mains have been giv­en a re­spect­ful but anony­mous buri­al in a pri­vate ceme­tery, with the ap­pro­pri­ate re­li­gious cer­emonies, all ar­ranged by Moe­gen-​Fairhaven. The mat­ter is closed. Fol­low me so far?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, Moe­gen-​Fairhaven is a good friend of the may­or—as the may­or has tak­en pains to point out to me—and Mr. Fairhaven him­self is work­ing very hard to see that he is re-​elect­ed. But if this sit­ua­tion gets any more botched up, Fairhaven might not be so en­thu­si­as­tic in his sup­port. He might de­cide to sit this one out. He might even de­cide to throw his weight be­hind the oth­er fel­low who’s run­ning.”

“I un­der­stand, sir.”

“Good. Now we’ve got a psy­chopath out there, this so-​called Sur­geon, carv­ing peo­ple up. If you’d fo­cus your tal­ents on that, Custer, I’d ap­pre­ci­ate it. Good day.”

There was a click as the line went abrupt­ly dead.

Custer sat up in his chair, grip­ping the phone, his porcine frame trem­bling. He swal­lowed, brought his shak­ing voice un­der con­trol, and pressed the buzzer on his desk. “Get O’Shaugh­nessy on the line. Try what­ev­er you need, ra­dio, emer­gen­cy fre­quen­cy, cell, home num­ber, what­ev­er.”

“He’s off du­ty, Cap­tain,” Noyes said.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what he is. Get him.”

“Yes, sir.” And the speak­er crack­led back in­to si­lence.

SIX

NO­RA TOOK HER trow­el, knelt, and be­gan pry­ing up one of the old bricks that made up the an­cient floor. It was rot­ten and wa­ter­logged, and it crum­bled un­der the trow­el. She quick­ly plucked out the pieces, then be­gan pry­ing up its neigh­bors, one af­ter the oth­er. O’Shaugh­nessy stood above her, watch­ing. They had worked through the night, and past noon of the fol­low­ing day, widen­ing the ex­ca­va­tion to eight square me­ters. She felt weary be­yond de­scrip­tion. But this was still one task she want­ed to do her­self.

Once he’d got­ten wind of their progress, Pen­der­gast had forced him­self out of his hos­pi­tal bed—de­spite the fear­ful protests of the doc­tors and nurs­es—and made the jour­ney down to Doy­ers Street him­self. Now he lay near the digsite on an or­tho­pe­dic mat­tress, new­ly de­liv­ered from Dux­iana. He re­mained there, arms across his chest, eyes closed, mov­ing in­fre­quent­ly. With his black suit and pal­lid face, he looked alarm­ing­ly like a corpse. At Pen­der­gast’s re­quest Proc­tor, his chauf­feur, had de­liv­ered a va­ri­ety of items from the Dako­ta apart­ment: a small ta­ble, a Tiffany lamp, and an ar­ray of medicines, unguents, and French choco­lates, along with a stack of ob­scure books and maps.

The soil be­neath the floor of Leng’s old lab­ora­to­ry was wa­ter­logged and foul-​smelling. No­ra cleared a one-​me­ter square of the floor bricks, then be­gan dig­ging a di­ag­onal test trench with her trow­el. Any­thing un­der the floor would not be deep. There wasn’t much far­ther to go. She was al­most in the wa­ter ta­ble.

She struck some­thing. A deft bit of brush­work re­vealed a rust­ed, rot­ten nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry um­brel­la, on­ly its whale­bone skele­ton in­tact. She care­ful­ly cleared around it, pho­tographed it in situ, then re­moved it and laid its rot­ting pieces on a sheet of acid-​free spec­imen pa­per.

“You’ve found some­thing?” Pen­der­gast asked, eyes still closed. A long white hand re­moved a choco­late from a box and placed it in his mouth.

“The re­mains of an um­brel­la.” She worked more quick­ly. The dirt was loos­er, mud­di­er.

Four­teen inch­es down, in the left-​hand cor­ner of the grid, her trow­el struck heav­ily against some­thing. She be­gan clear­ing away the sod­den dirt around it. Then her brush hand jerked aside re­flex­ive­ly. It was a cir­clet of hair about a smooth dome of brown bone. A dis­tant rum­ble of thun­der pierced the si­lence. The storm was still up­on them. She heard a faint in­take of breath from O’Shaugh­nessy.

“Yes?” Pen­der­gast’s voice came in­stant­ly.

“We’ve got a skull here.”

“Keep dig­ging, if you please.” Pen­der­gast didn’t sound sur­prised.

Work­ing care­ful­ly with the brush, heart pound­ing un­com­fort­ably in her chest, No­ra cleared away more dirt. The frontal bone came slow­ly in­to view, then two eye sock­ets, slimy, sticky mat­ter still cling­ing in­side. A foul smell rose and she gagged in­vol­un­tar­ily. This was no clean Anasazi skele­ton that had been buried a thou­sand years in dry sand.

Pluck­ing her T-​shirt up over her nose and mouth, she con­tin­ued. A bit of nasal bone be­came ex­posed, the open­ing cradling a twist­ed piece of car­ti­lage. Then, as the max­il­la was ex­posed, came a flash of met­al.

“Please de­scribe.” Again Pen­der­gast’s weak voice broke the si­lence of the room.

“Give me an­oth­er minute.”

No­ra brushed, work­ing down the cran­io­fa­cial bones. When the face was ex­posed, she sat back on her heels.

“All right. We have a skull of an old­er adult male, with some hair and soft mat­ter re­main­ing, prob­ably due to the anaer­obic en­vi­ron­ment of the site. Just be­low the max­il­la there are two sil­ver teeth, part­ly fall­en from the up­per jaw, at­tached to some old bridge­work. Be­low that, just in­side the jaws, I see a pair of gold spec­ta­cles, one lens of which has black opaque glass.”

“Ah. You have found Tin­bury Mc­Fad­den.” There was a pause and Pen­der­gast added, “We must keep go­ing. Still to be found are James Hen­ry Perce­val and Du­mont Burleigh, mem­bers of the Lyceum and col­leagues of our Dr. Leng. Two peo­ple un­lucky enough to have al­so re­ceived J. C. Shot­tum’s con­fi­dences. The lit­tle cir­cle is com­plete.”

“That re­minds me,” No­ra said. “I re­mem­bered some­thing, while I was dig­ging last night. The first time I asked Puck to show me the Shot­tum ma­te­ri­al, he said in pass­ing that Shot­tum was quite pop­ular these days. I didn’t pay much at­ten­tion to it then. But af­ter what hap­pened, I be­gan to won­der who had—” She stopped.

“Who had made that par­tic­ular jour­ney ahead of us,” Pen­der­gast fin­ished the thought for her.

Sud­den­ly there was the rat­tle of the door­knob.

All eyes turned.

The knob rat­tled, turned, turned again.

There was a se­ries of con­cus­sive raps on the door, which re­ver­ber­at­ed through the small apart­ment. A pause fol­lowed; then a sec­ond vol­ley of fran­tic pound­ing.

O’Shaugh­nessy looked up, hand drop­ping to his au­to­mat­ic. “Who’s that?”

A shrill fe­male voice sound­ed out­side the door. “What go on here? What that smell? What you do in there? Open up!”

“It’s Mrs. Lee,” No­ra said as she rose to her feet. “The land­la­dy.”

Pen­der­gast lay still. His pale cat’s eyes flit­ted open for a mo­ment, then closed again. He looked as if he was set­tling in for a nap.

“Open up! What go on in there?”

No­ra climbed out of the trench, moved to the door. “What’s the prob­lem?” she said, keep­ing her voice steady. O’Shaugh­nessy joined her.

“Prob­lem with smell! Open up!”

“There’s no smell in here,” said No­ra. “It must be com­ing from some­where else.”

“It come from here, up through floor! I smell all night, it much worse now when I come out of apart­ment. Open up!”

“I’m just cook­ing, that’s all. I’ve been tak­ing a cook­ing class, but I guess I’m not very good yet, and—”

“That no cook­ing smell! Smell like shit! This nice apart­ment build­ing! I call po­lice!” An­oth­er fu­ri­ous vol­ley of pound­ing.

No­ra looked at Pen­der­gast, who lay still, wraith-​like, eyes closed. She turned to O’Shaugh­nessy.

“She wants the po­lice,” he said with a shrug.

“But you’re not in uni­form.”

“I’ve got my shield.”

“What are you go­ing to say?”

The pound­ing con­tin­ued.

“The truth, of course.” O’Shaugh­nessy slid to­ward the door, un­did the locks, and let the door fall open.

The squat, heavy­set land­la­dy stood in the door. Her eyes dart­ed past O’Shaugh­nessy, saw the gi­gan­tic hole in the liv­ing room floor, the piles of dirt and bricks be­yond, the ex­posed up­per half of a skele­ton. A look of pro­found hor­ror blos­somed across her face.

O’Shaugh­nessy opened his wal­let to dis­play his shield, but the wom­an seemed not to no­tice. She was trans­fixed by the hole in the floor, the skele­ton grin­ning up at her from the bot­tom.

“Mrs.—Lee, was it? I’m Sergeant O’Shaugh­essy of the New York Po­lice De­part­ment.”

Still the la­dy stared, slack-​jawed.

“There’s been a mur­der in this apart­ment,” O’Shaugh­nessy said mat­ter-​of-​fact­ly. “The body was buried un­der the floor. We’re in­ves­ti­gat­ing. I know it’s a shock. I’m sor­ry, Mrs. Lee.”

Fi­nal­ly, the wom­an seemed to take no­tice of him. She turned slow­ly, look­ing first at his face, then at his badge, then at his gun. “Wha—?”

“A mur­der, Mrs. Lee. In your apart­ment.”

She looked back at the huge hole. With­in it, the skele­ton lay peace­ful­ly, wrapped in its man­tle of earth. Above, in the bed, Pen­der­gast lay still, arms crossed over his chest, in a sim­ilar at­ti­tude of re­pose.

“Now, Mrs. Lee, I’m go­ing to ask you to go back qui­et­ly to your apart­ment. Tell no one about this. Call no one. Lock and bolt your door. Do not let any­one in un­less they show you one of these.” O’Shaugh­nessy shoved the badge clos­er to her face.

“Do you un­der­stand, Mrs. Lee?”

She nod­ded dumb­ly, eyes wide.

“Now go on up­stairs. We need twen­ty-​four hours of ab­so­lute qui­et. Then of course there will be a large group of po­lice ar­riv­ing. Med­ical ex­am­in­ers, foren­sic ex­perts—it will be a mess. Then you can talk. But for now—” He lift­ed a fin­ger to his lips and pan­tomimed an ex­ag­ger­at­ed shh­hh­hh.

Mrs. Lee turned and shuf­fled up the stairs. Her move­ments were slow, like a sleep­walk­er’s. No­ra heard the up­stairs door open, then close. And then all was qui­et once again.

In the si­lence, Pen­der­gast opened one eye. It swiveled around to O’Shaugh­nessy, then to No­ra.

“Well done, you two,” he said in a weak voice. And the faintest of smiles played about his lips.

SEV­EN

AS THE SQUAD CAR car­ry­ing Cap­tain Sher­wood Custer turned the cor­ner on­to Doy­ers Street, the cap­tain stared through the wind­shield, tens­ing at the noisy group of re­porters. It was a small­ish group, but he could see they were the worst of the lot.

Noyes an­gled the car in­to the curb and Custer opened his door, heav­ing his frame out on­to the street. As he ap­proached the brown­stone, the re­porters be­gan call­ing to him. And there was the worst of all, that man—Smith­butt, or what­ev­er—ar­gu­ing with the uni­formed of­fi­cer stand­ing on the front steps. “It isn’t fair!” he was cry­ing in an out­raged tone, over­sized cowlick jig­gling atop his head. “You let him in, so you’ve got to let me in!”

The of­fi­cer ig­nored this, step­ping aside to let Custer pass the yel­low crime scene tape.

“Cap­tain Custer!” the re­porter cried, turn­ing to him: “Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er has re­fused to speak with the press. Will you com­ment on the case, please?”

Custer did not re­spond. The com­mis­sion­er, he thought. The com­mis­sion­er him­self was here. He was go­ing to be chewed out but good. Let this par­tic­ular sleep­ing dog lie, the man had said. Custer had not on­ly wak­ened the dog, but it had bit­ten him in the ass. Thanks to O’Shaugh­nessy.

They signed him in at the door and Custer stepped through, Noyes fol­low­ing at his heels. They made their way quick­ly down to the base­ment apart­ment. Out­side, the re­porter could still be heard, voice raised in protest.

The first thing Custer no­ticed when he stepped in­to the apart­ment was a big hole, lots of dirt. There were the usu­al pho­tog­ra­phers, lights, foren­sics, an ME, the SOC peo­ple. And there was the com­mis­sion­er.

The com­mis­sion­er glanced up and spot­ted him. A spasm of dis­plea­sure went across his face. “Custer!” he called, nod­ding him over.

“Yes, sir.” Custer swal­lowed, grit­ted his teeth. This was it.

“Con­grat­ula­tions.”

Custer froze. Rock­er’s sar­casm was a bad sign. And right in front of ev­ery­body, too.

He stiff­ened. “I’m sor­ry, sir, this was com­plete­ly unau­tho­rized from be­gin­ning to end, and I’m per­son­al­ly go­ing to—”

He felt the com­mis­sion­er’s arm snake around his shoul­der, pull him clos­er. Custer could smell stale cof­fee on his breath. “Custer?”

“Yes sir?”

“Please, just lis­ten,” the com­mis­sion­er mut­tered. “Don’t speak. I’m not here to at­tend to ex­cus­es. I’m here to put you in charge of this in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

This was a re­al­ly bad sign. He’d been vic­tim­ized by the com­mis­sion­er’s sar­casm be­fore, but not like this. Nev­er like this.

Custer blinked. “I’m tru­ly sor­ry, sir—”

“You’re not lis­ten­ing to me, Cap­tain.” Arm still around his shoul­der, the com­mis­sion­er steered Custer away from the press of of­fi­cials, back in­to the rear of the nar­row apart­ment. “I un­der­stand your man O’Shaugh­nessy had some­thing to do with un­cov­er­ing this site.”

“Yes, and I am go­ing to severe­ly rep­ri­mand—”

“Cap­tain, will you let me fin­ish?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The may­or has called me twice this morn­ing. He’s de­light­ed.”

“De­light­ed?” Custer wasn’t sure if this was more sar­casm, or some­thing even worse.

“De­light­ed. The more at­ten­tion that gets de­flect­ed from the new copy­cat mur­ders, the hap­pi­er he is. New mur­ders are very bad for ap­proval rat­ings. Thanks to this dis­cov­ery, you’re the cop of the hour. For the may­or, at least.”

Si­lence. It was clear to Custer that Rock­er didn’t ful­ly share the may­or’s good opin­ion.

“So are we crys­tal-​clear, Cap­tain? This is now of­fi­cial­ly your case.”

“What case?” Custer was mo­men­tar­ily con­fused. Were they open­ing an of­fi­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to these old killings, too?

“The Sur­geon case.” Rock­er waved his hand dis­mis­sive­ly at the huge hole with their skele­tons. “This is noth­ing. This is ar­chae­ol­ogy. This is not a case.”

“Right. Thank you, sir,” Custer said.

“Don’t thank me. Thank the may­or. It was his, ah, sug­ges­tion that you han­dle it.”

Rock­er let his arm slip from Custer’s shoul­der. Then he stood back and looked at the cap­tain: a long, ap­prais­ing glance. “Feel you can do this, Cap­tain?”

Custer nod­ded. The numb­ness was be­gin­ning to fade.

“The first or­der of busi­ness is dam­age con­trol. These old mur­ders will give you a day, maybe two, be­fore the pub­lic’s at­ten­tion re­turns to the Sur­geon. The may­or may like see­ing these old mur­ders get­ting the at­ten­tion, but frankly I don’t. It’ll give the copy­cat killer ideas, egg him on.” He jerked a thumb over his shoul­der. “I brought in Bryce Har­ri­man. You know him?”

“No.”

“He’s the one who first put a fin­ger on the copy­cat an­gle. We need to keep him where we can see him. We’ll give him an ex­clu­sive, but we’ll con­trol the in­for­ma­tion he gets. Un­der­stand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. He’s a nice sort, ea­ger to please. He’s wait­ing out front. Re­mem­ber to keep the con­ver­sa­tion on the old bones and on this site. Not on the Sur­geon or the new killings. The pub­lic may be con­found­ing the two, but we’re sure as hell not.”

Custer turned back to­ward the liv­ing room. But Rock­er put out a hand to stop him.

“And, Cap­tain? Once you’re done with Har­ri­man, I’d sug­gest you get to work on this new case of yours. Get right to work. Catch that killer. You don’t want an­oth­er, fresh­er stiff turn­ing up on your watch—do you? Like I said, you’ve got a lit­tle breath­ing space here. Make use of it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rock­er con­tin­ued to peer at him from be­neath low­ered brows. Then he grunt­ed, nod­ded, and ges­tured Custer on ahead of him.

The liv­ing room was, if pos­si­ble, even more crowd­ed than it had been mo­ments be­fore. At the com­mis­sion­er’s sig­nal, a tall, slen­der man stepped out of the shad­ows: horn-​rimmed glass­es, slicked-​back hair, tweed jack­et, blue ox­ford shirt, tas­seled loafers.

“Mr. Har­ri­man?” Rock­er said. “This is Cap­tain Custer.”

Har­ri­man gave Custer’s hand a man­ly shake. “Nice to meet you in per­son, sir.” Custer re­turned the hand­shake. De­spite his in­stinc­tive dis­trust of the press, he found him­self ap­prov­ing of the man’s def­er­en­tial at­ti­tude. Sir. When was the last time a re­porter had called him sir?

The com­mis­sion­er glanced grave­ly from one man to the oth­er. “Now, if you’ll ex­cuse me, Cap­tain? I have to get back to One Po­lice Plaza.”

Custer nod­ded. “Of course, sir.”

He watched the man’s broad back as it dis­ap­peared through the door.

Noyes was sud­den­ly there, in front of Custer, hand ex­tend­ed. “Al­low me to be the first to con­grat­ulate you, sir.”

Custer shook the limp hand. Then he turned back to Har­ri­man, who was smil­ing be­neath the horn-​rims, im­pec­ca­bly knot­ted repp tie snugged against a but­toned-​down col­lar. A dweeb, with­out doubt. But a very use­ful dweeb. It oc­curred to Custer that giv­ing Har­ri­man an ex­clu­sive would take that oth­er pesky re­porter—the one whose voice was still clam­or­ing out in the street—down a few notch­es. Slow him down, get him off their ass­es for a while. It was brac­ing how quick­ly he was ad­just­ing to his new re­spon­si­bil­ity.

“Cap­tain Custer?” the man said, note­book poised.

“Yeah?”

“May I ask you a few ques­tions?”

Custer ges­tured mag­nan­imous­ly. “Shoot.”

EIGHT

O’SHAUGH­NESSY STEPPED IN­TO the cap­tain’s out­er of­fice, au­to­mat­ical­ly look­ing around for Noyes. He had a pret­ty good idea why Custer want­ed to see him. He won­dered if the sub­ject of the pros­ti­tute’s two hun­dred bucks would come up, as it some­times did when he got a lit­tle too in­de­pen­dent for some ass-​kiss­er’s taste. Nor­mal­ly he wouldn’t care; he’d had years to prac­tice let­ting it all roll off his back. Iron­ic, he thought, that the shit was about to come down now—now, just when he’d got­ten on an in­ves­ti­ga­tion he found him­self car­ing about.

Noyes came around the cor­ner, chew­ing gum, his arms full of pa­pers, his per­pet­ual­ly wet low­er lip hang­ing loose from a row of brown teeth. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you.” He dropped the pile on his desk, took his sweet time sit­ting down, then leaned to­ward a speak­er.

“He’s here,” he called in­to it.

O’Shaugh­nessy sat down, watch­ing Noyes. The man al­ways chewed that nasty, old­fash­ioned, vi­olet-​scent­ed gum fa­vored by dowa­gers and al­co­holics. The out­er of­fice reeked of it.

Ten min­utes lat­er the cap­tain ap­peared in the door, hik­ing up his pants and tuck­ing in his shirt. He jerked his chin at O’Shaugh­nessy to in­di­cate he was ready for him.

O’Shaugh­nessy fol­lowed him back in­to the of­fice. The cap­tain sank heav­ily in­to his chair. He rolled his eyes to­ward O’Shaugh­nessy with a stare that was meant to be tough but on­ly looked bale­ful.

“Je­sus Christ, O’Shaugh­nessy.” He wagged his head from side to side, jowls flap­ping like a bea­gle. “Je­sus H. Christ.”

There was a si­lence.

“Gimme the re­port.”

O’Shaugh­nessy took a long breath. “No.”

“Whad­dya mean, no?”

“I don’t have it any­more. I gave it to Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast.”

The cap­tain stared at O’Shaugh­nessy for at least a minute. “You gave it to that prick?”

“Yes, sir.”

“May I ask why?”

O’Shaugh­nessy did not an­swer im­me­di­ate­ly. Fact was, he didn’t want to get put off this case. He liked work­ing with Pen­der­gast. He liked it a lot. For the first time in years, he found him­self ly­ing awake at night, think­ing about the case, try­ing to fit the pieces to­geth­er, dream­ing up new lines of in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Still, he wasn’t go­ing to kiss ass. Let the show­down come.

“He re­quest­ed it. For his in­ves­ti­ga­tion. You asked me to as­sist him, and that’s what I did.”

The jowls be­gan to quiver. “O’Shaugh­nessy, I thought I made it clear that you were to seem to be help­ful, not to be help­ful.”

O’Shaugh­nessy tried to look puz­zled. “I don’t think I quite un­der­stand you, sir.”

The cap­tain rose from his chair with a roar. “You know damn well what I’m talk­ing about.”

O’Shaugh­nessy stood his ground, feign­ing sur­prise now as well as puz­zle­ment. “No, sir, I don’t.”

The jowls be­gan to shake with rage. “O’Shaugh­nessy, you im­pu­dent lit­tle—” Custer broke off, swal­lowed, tried to get him­self un­der con­trol. Sweat had bro­ken out above his thick, rub­bery up­per lip. He took a deep breath. “I’m putting you down for ad­min­is­tra­tive leave.”

God damn it. “On what grounds?”

“Don’t give me that. You know why. Dis­obey­ing my di­rect or­ders, free­lanc­ing for that FBI agent, un­der­min­ing the de­part­ment—not to men­tion get­ting in­volved in that ex­ca­va­tion down on Doy­ers Street.”

O’Shaugh­nessy knew well that the dis­cov­ery had been a boon to Custer. It had tem­porar­ily tak­en the heat off the may­or, and the may­or had thanked Custer by putting him in charge of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“I fol­lowed pro­ce­dure, sir, in my li­ai­son work with Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast.”

“The hell you did. You’ve kept me in the dark ev­ery step of the way, de­spite these end­less god­damn re­ports you keep fil­ing which you know damn well I don’t have time to read. You went way around me to get that re­port. Christ, O’Shaugh­nessy, I’ve giv­en you ev­ery op­por­tu­ni­ty here, and all you do is piss on me.”

“I’ll file a grievance with the union, sir. And I’d like to state for the record that, as a Catholic, I am deeply of­fend­ed by your pro­fan­ity in­volv­ing the name of Our Sav­ior.”

There was an as­ton­ished si­lence, and O’Shaugh­nessy saw that Custer was about to lose it com­plete­ly. The cap­tain splut­tered, swal­lowed, clenched and un­clenched his fists.

“As for the po­lice union,” said Custer, in a strained, high voice, “bring ’em on. As for the oth­er, don’t think you can out-​Je­sus me, you sanc­ti­mo­nious prick. I’m a church­go­ing man my­self. Now lay your shield and piece down here”—he thumped his desk—“and get your Irish ass out. Go home and boil some pota­toes and cab­bage. You’re on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave pend­ing the re­sult of an In­ter­nal Af­fairs in­ves­ti­ga­tion. An­oth­er In­ter­nal Af­fairs in­ves­ti­ga­tion, I might add. And at the union hear­ing, I’m go­ing to ask for your dis­missal from the force. With your record, that won’t be too hard to jus­ti­fy.”

O’Shaugh­nessy knew this wasn’t an emp­ty threat. He re­moved his gun and badge and dropped them one at a time on the ta­ble.

“Is that all, sir?” he asked, as cool­ly as pos­si­ble.

With sat­is­fac­tion, he saw Custer’s face black­en with rage yet again. “Is that all? Isn’t that enough? You bet­ter start pulling your ré­sumé to­geth­er, O’Shaugh­nessy. I know a Mc­Don­ald’s up in the South Bronx that needs a rent-​a-​cop for the grave­yard shift.”

As O’Shaugh­nessy left, he no­ticed that Noyes’s eyes—brim­ming with wet syco­phan­tic sat­is­fac­tion—fol­lowed him out the door.

He paused on the steps of the sta­tion house, mo­men­tar­ily blind­ed by the sun­light. He thought of the many times he’d trudged up and down these stairs, on yet an­oth­er aim­less pa­trol or point­less piece of bu­reau­crat­ic busy­work. It seemed a lit­tle odd that—de­spite his care­ful­ly groomed at­ti­tude of non­cha­lance—he felt more than a twinge of re­gret. Pen­der­gast and the case would have to make do with­out him. Then he sighed, shrugged, and de­scend­ed the steps. His ca­reer was over, and that was that.

To his sur­prise, a fa­mil­iar car—a Rolls-​Royce Sil­ver Wraith—was idling silent­ly at the curb. The door was opened by the in­vis­ible fig­ure in the rear. O’Shaugh­nessy ap­proached, leaned his head in­side.

“I’ve been put on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave,” he said to the oc­cu­pant of the rear seat.

Pen­der­gast, lean­ing back against the leather, nod­ded. “Over the re­port?”

“Yup. And that mis­take I made five years ago didn’t help any.”

“How un­for­tu­nate. I apol­ogize for my role in your mis­for­tune. But get in, if you please. We don’t have much time.”

“Didn’t you hear what I said?”

“I did. You’re work­ing for me now.”

O’Shaugh­nessy paused.

“It’s all ar­ranged. The pa­per­work is go­ing through as we speak. From time to time, I have need of, ah, con­sult­ing spe­cial­ists.” Pen­der­gast pat­ted a sheaf of pa­pers ly­ing on the seat be­side him. “It’s all spelled out in here. You can sign them in the car. We’ll stop by the FBI of­fice down­town and get you a pho­to ID. It’s not a shield, un­for­tu­nate­ly, but it should serve al­most as well.”

“I’m sor­ry, Mr. Pen­der­gast, but you should know, they’re open­ing an—”

“I know all about it. Get in, please.”

O’Shaugh­nessy climbed in and closed the door be­hind him, feel­ing slight­ly dazed.

Pen­der­gast ges­tured to­ward the pa­pers. “Read them, you won’t find any nasty sur­pris­es. Fifty dol­lars an hour, guar­an­teed min­imum thir­ty hours a week, ben­efits, and the rest.”

“Why are you do­ing this?”

Pen­der­gast gazed at him mild­ly. “Be­cause I’ve seen you rise to the chal­lenge. I need a man with the courage of his con­vic­tions. I’ve seen how you work. You know the streets, you can talk to the peo­ple in a way I can’t. You’re one of them. I’m not. Be­sides, I can’t push this case alone. I need some­one who knows his way around the byzan­tine work­ings of the NYPD. And you have a cer­tain com­pas­sion. Re­mem­ber, I saw that tape. I’m go­ing to need com­pas­sion.”

O’Shaugh­nessy reached for the pa­pers, still dazed. Then he stopped.

“On one con­di­tion,” he said. “You know a lot more about this than you’ve let on. And I don’t like work­ing in the dark.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “You’re quite right. It’s time we had a talk. And once we’ve pro­cessed your pa­pers, that’s the next or­der of busi­ness. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough.” And O’Shaugh­nessy took the pa­pers, scanned them quick­ly.

Pen­der­gast turned to the driv­er. “Fed­er­al Plaza, please, Proc­tor. And quick­ly.”

NINE

NO­RA PAUSED BE­FORE the deep arch­way, carved of sand-​col­ored stone streaked with gray. Al­though it had been re­cent­ly cleaned, the mas­sive Goth­ic en­trance looked old and for­bid­ding. It re­mind­ed No­ra of Traitor’s Gate at the Tow­er of Lon­don. She half ex­pect­ed to see the iron teeth of a portcullis wink­ing from the ceil­ing, de­fen­es­trat­ing knights peer­ing out of ar­row slits above, caul­drons of boil­ing pitch at the ready.

At the base of an ad­join­ing wall, be­fore a low iron rail­ing, No­ra could see the re­mains of half-​burnt can­dles, flow­er petals, and old pic­tures in bro­ken frames. It looked al­most like a shrine. And then she re­al­ized this arch must be the door­way in which John Lennon was shot, and these trin­kets the re­mains of of­fer­ings still left by the faith­ful. And Pen­der­gast him­self had been stabbed near­by, not halfway down the block. She glanced up­ward. The Dako­ta rose above her, its Goth­ic fa­cade over­hung with gables and stone dec­ora­tions. Dark clouds scud­ded above the grim, shad­ow-​haunt­ed tow­ers. What a place to live, she thought. She looked care­ful­ly around, study­ing the land­scape with a cau­tion that had be­come ha­bit­ual since the chase in the Archives. But there was no ob­vi­ous sign of dan­ger. She moved to­ward the build­ing.

Be­side the arch­way, a door­man stood in a large sen­try box of bronze and glass, star­ing im­pla­ca­bly out at Sev­en­ty-​sec­ond Street, silent and erect as a Buck­ing­ham Palace guard. He seemed obliv­ious of her pres­ence. But when she stepped be­neath the arch­way, he was be­fore her in a flash, pleas­ant but un­smil­ing.

“May I help you?” he asked.

“I have an ap­point­ment to see Mr. Pen­der­gast.”

“Your name?”

“No­ra Kel­ly.”

The guard nod­ded, as if ex­pect­ing her. “South­west lob­by,” he said, step­ping aside and point­ing the way. As No­ra walked through the tun­nel to­ward the build­ing’s in­te­ri­or court­yard, she saw the guard re­turn to his sen­try box and pick up a tele­phone.

The el­eva­tor smelled of old leather and pol­ished wood. It rose sev­er­al floors, came to an un­hur­ried stop. Then the doors slid open to re­veal an en­try­way, a sin­gle oak door at its far end, stand­ing open. With­in the door­way stood Agent Pen­der­gast, his slen­der fig­ure haloed in the sub­dued light.

“So glad you could come, Dr. Kel­ly,” he said in his mel­liflu­ous voice, step­ping aside to ush­er her in. His words were, as al­ways, ex­ceed­ing­ly gra­cious, but there was some­thing tired, al­most grim, in his tone. Still re­cov­er­ing, No­ra thought. He looked thin, al­most ca­dav­er­ous, and his face was even whiter than usu­al, if such a thing were pos­si­ble.

No­ra stepped for­ward in­to a high-​ceilinged, win­dow­less room. She looked around cu­ri­ous­ly. Three of the walls were paint­ed a dusky rose, framed above and be­low by black mold­ing. The fourth was made up en­tire­ly of black mar­ble, over which a con­tin­uous sheet of wa­ter ran from ceil­ing to floor. At the base, where the wa­ter gur­gled qui­et­ly in­to a pool, a clus­ter of lo­tus blos­soms float­ed. The room was filled with the soft, pleas­ant sound of wa­ter and the faint per­fume of flow­ers. Two ta­bles of dark lac­quer stood near­by. One held a mossy tray in which grew a set­ting of bon­sai trees—dwarf maples, by the look of them. On the oth­er, in­side an acrylic dis­play cube, the skull of a cat was dis­played on a spi­der mount. Com­ing clos­er, No­ra re­al­ized that the skull was, in fact, carved from a sin­gle piece of Chi­nese jade. It was a work of re­mark­able, con­sum­mate artistry, the stone so thin it was di­aphanous against the black cloth of the base.

Sit­ting near­by on one of sev­er­al small leather so­fas was Sergeant O’Shaugh­nessy, in mufti. He was cross­ing and un­cross­ing his legs and look­ing un­com­fort­able.

Pen­der­gast closed the door and glid­ed to­ward No­ra, hands be­hind his back.

“May I get you any­thing? Min­er­al wa­ter? Lil­let? Sher­ry?”

“Noth­ing, thanks.”

“Then if you will ex­cuse me for a mo­ment.” And Pen­der­gast dis­ap­peared through a door­way that had been set, al­most in­vis­ibly, in­to one of the rose-​col­ored walls.

“Nice place,” she said to O’Shaugh­nessy.

“You don’t know the half of it. Where’d he get all the dough?”

“Bill Smi—That is, a for­mer ac­quain­tance of mine said he’d heard it was old fam­ily mon­ey. Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, some­thing like that.”

“Mmm.”

They lapsed in­to si­lence, lis­ten­ing to the whis­per­ing of the wa­ter. With­in a few min­utes, the door opened again and Pen­der­gast’s head reap­peared.

“If the two of you would be so kind as to come with me?” he asked.

They fol­lowed him through the door and down a long, dim hall­way. Most of the doors they passed were closed, but No­ra caught glimpses of a li­brary—full of leather- and buck­ram-​bound vol­umes and what looked like a rose­wood harp­si­chord—and a nar­row room whose walls were cov­ered with oil paint­ings, four or five high, in heavy gilt frames. An­oth­er, win­dow­less, room had rice pa­per walls and tata­mi mats cov­er­ing its floor. It was spare, al­most stark, and—like the rest of the rooms—very dim­ly lit. Then Pen­der­gast ush­ered them in­to a vast, high-​ceilinged cham­ber of dark, exquisite­ly wrought ma­hogany. An or­nate mar­ble fire­place dom­inat­ed the far end. Three large win­dows looked out over Cen­tral Park. To the right, a de­tailed map of nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry Man­hat­tan cov­ered an en­tire wall. A large ta­ble sat in the room’s cen­ter. Up­on it, sev­er­al ob­jects rest­ing atop a plas­tic sheet: two dozen frag­ments of bro­ken glass pieces, a lump of coal, a rot­ten um­brel­la, and a punched tram car tick­et.

There was no place to sit. No­ra stood back from the ta­ble while Pen­der­gast cir­cled it sev­er­al times in si­lence, star­ing in­tent­ly, like a shark cir­cling its prey. Then he paused, glanc­ing first at her, then at O’Shaugh­nessy. There was an in­ten­si­ty, even an ob­ses­sion, in his eyes that she found dis­turb­ing.

Pen­der­gast turned to the large map, hands be­hind his back once again. For a mo­ment, he sim­ply stared at it. Then he be­gan to speak, soft­ly, al­most to him­self.

“We know where Dr. Leng did his work. But now we are con­front­ed with an even more dif­fi­cult ques­tion. Where did he live? Where did the good doc­tor hide him­self on this teem­ing is­land?

“Thanks to Dr. Kel­ly, we now have some clues to nar­row our search. The tram tick­et you un­earthed was punched for the West Side El­evat­ed Tramway. So it’s safe to as­sume Dr. Leng was a West Sider.” He turned to the map, and, us­ing a red mark­er, drew a line down Fifth Av­enue, di­vid­ing Man­hat­tan in­to two lon­gi­tu­di­nal seg­ments.

“Coal car­ries a unique chem­ical sig­na­ture of im­pu­ri­ties, de­pend­ing on where it is mined. This coal came from a long-​de­funct mine near Had­don­field, New Jer­sey. There was on­ly one dis­trib­utor for this coal in Man­hat­tan, Clark & Sons. They had a de­liv­ery ter­ri­to­ry that ex­tend­ed from 110th Street to 139th Street.”

Pen­der­gast drew two par­al­lel lines across Man­hat­tan, one at 110th Street and one at 139th Street.

“Now we have the um­brel­la. The um­brel­la is made of silk. Silk is a fiber that is smooth to the touch, but un­der a mi­cro­scope shows a rough, al­most toothy tex­ture. When it rains, the silk traps par­ti­cles—in par­tic­ular, pollen. Mi­cro­scop­ic ex­am­ina­tion of the um­brel­la showed it to be heav­ily im­preg­nat­ed with pollen from a weed named Tris­megis­tus gon­falonii, com­mon­ly known as marsh dropseed. It used to grow in bogs all over Man­hat­tan, but by 1900 its range had been re­strict­ed to the marshy ar­eas along the banks of the Hud­son Riv­er.”

He drew a red line down Broad­way, then point­ed to the small square it bor­dered. “Thus, it seems rea­son­able to as­sume that our Dr. Leng lived west of this line, no more than one block from the Hud­son.”

He capped the mark­er, then glanced back at No­ra and O’Shaugh­nessy. “Any com­ments so far?”

“Yes,” said No­ra. “You said Clark & Sons de­liv­ered coal to this area up­town. But why was this coal found down­town in his lab­ora­to­ry?”

“Leng ran his lab­ora­to­ry in se­cret. He couldn’t have coal de­liv­ered there. So he would have brought small amounts of coal down from his house.”

“I see.”

Pen­der­gast con­tin­ued to scru­ti­nize her. “Any­thing else?”

The room was silent.

“Then we can as­sume our Dr. Leng lived on River­side Drive be­tween 110th Street and 139th Street, or on one of the side streets be­tween Broad­way and River­side Drive. That is where we must con­cen­trate our search.”

“You’re still talk­ing hun­dreds, maybe thou­sands, of apart­ment build­ings,” said O’Shaugh­nessy.

“Thir­teen hun­dred and five, to be ex­act. Which brings me to the glass­ware.”

Pen­der­gast silent­ly took an­oth­er turn around the ta­ble, then reached out and picked up a frag­ment of glass with a pair of rub­ber-​tipped tweez­ers, hold­ing it in­to the light.

“I an­alyzed the residue on this glass. It had been care­ful­ly washed, but with mod­ern meth­ods one can de­tect sub­stances down to parts per tril­lion. There was a very cu­ri­ous mix of chem­icals on this glass­ware. I found sim­ilar chem­icals on the glass bits I re­cov­ered from the floor of the char­nel. Quite a fright­en­ing mix­ture, when you be­gin to break it down. And there was one rare or­gan­ic chem­ical, 1,2 alu­mi­no phos­pho­cyanate, the in­gre­di­ents for which could on­ly be pur­chased in five chemists’ shops in Man­hat­tan at the time, be­tween 1890 and 1918, when Leng ap­pears to have used his down­town lab­ora­to­ry. Sergeant O’Shaugh­nessy was most help­ful in track­ing down their lo­ca­tions.”

He made five dots on the map with his mark­er.

“Let us first as­sume Dr. Leng pur­chased his chem­icals at the most con­ve­nient place. As you can see, there is no shop near his lab down­town, so let us pos­tu­late he pur­chased his chem­icals near his house up­town. We can thus elim­inate these two East Side shops. That leaves three on the West Side. But this one is too far down­town, so we can elim­inate it as well.” He made cross­es through three of the five dots. “That leaves these two oth­ers. The ques­tion is, which one?”

Once again, his ques­tion was greet­ed by si­lence. Pen­der­gast laid down the piece of glass and cir­cled the ta­ble yet again, then stopped in front of the map. “He shopped at nei­ther one.”

He paused. “Be­cause 1,2 alu­mi­no phos­pho­cyanate is a dan­ger­ous poi­son. A per­son buy­ing it might at­tract at­ten­tion. So let us as­sume, in­stead, that he shopped at the chemist far­thest from his haunts: his house, the Mu­se­um, the down­town lab. A place where he would not be rec­og­nized. Clear­ly, that has to be this one, here, on East Twelfth Street. New Am­ster­dam Chemists.” He drew a line around the dot. “This is where Leng shopped for his chem­icals.”

Pen­der­gast spun around, pac­ing back and forth be­fore the map. “In a stroke of good for­tune, it turns out New Am­ster­dam Chemists is still in busi­ness. There may be records, even be some resid­ual mem­ory.” He turned to O’Shaugh­nessy. “I will ask you to in­ves­ti­gate. Vis­it the es­tab­lish­ment, and check their old records. Then search for old peo­ple who grew up in the neigh­bor­hood, if nec­es­sary. Treat it as you would a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“Yes, sir.”

There was a brief si­lence. Then Pen­der­gast spoke again.

“I’m con­vinced Dr. Leng didn’t live on any of the side streets be­tween Broad­way and River­side Drive. He lived on River­side Drive it­self. That would nar­row things down from over a thou­sand build­ings to less than a hun­dred.”

O’Shaugh­nessy stared at him. “How do you know Leng lived on the Drive?”

“The grand hous­es were all along River­side Drive. You can still see them, most­ly bro­ken up in­to tiny apart­ments or aban­doned now, but they’re still there—some of them, any­way. Do you re­al­ly think Leng would have lived on a side street, in mid­dle-​class hous­ing? This man had a great deal of mon­ey. I’ve been think­ing about it for some time. He wouldn’t want a place that could be walled in by fu­ture con­struc­tion. He’d want light, a healthy flow of fresh air, and a pleas­ant view of the riv­er. A view that could nev­er be ob­struct­ed. I know he would.”

“But how do you know?” O’Shaugh­nessy asked.

Sud­den­ly, No­ra un­der­stood. “Be­cause he ex­pect­ed to be there for a very, very long time.”

There was a long si­lence in the cool, spa­cious room. A slow, and very un­char­ac­ter­is­tic, smile gath­ered on Pen­der­gast’s face. “Bra­vo,” he said.

He went to the map, and drew a red line down River­side Drive, from 139th Street to 110th. “Here is where we must look for Dr. Leng.”

There was an abrupt, un­com­fort­able si­lence.

“You mean, Dr. Leng’s house,” said O’Shaugh­nessy.

“No,” said Pen­der­gast, speak­ing very de­lib­er­ate­ly. “I mean Dr. Leng.”

Horse’s Tail

ONE

WITH A HUGE sigh, William Smith­back Jr. set­tled in­to the worn wood­en booth in the rear of the Blar­ney Stone Tav­ern. Sit­uat­ed di­rect­ly across the street from the New York Mu­se­um’s south­ern en­trance, the tav­ern was a peren­ni­al haunt of Mu­se­um staffers. They had nick­named the place the Bones be­cause of the own­er’s pen­chant for ham­mer­ing bones of all sizes, shapes, and species in­to ev­ery avail­able sur­face. Mu­se­um wags liked to spec­ulate that, were the po­lice to re­move the bones for ex­am­ina­tion, half of the city’s miss­ing per­sons cas­es still on the books would be solved im­me­di­ate­ly.

Smith­back had spent many long evenings here in years past, note­books and beerspat­tered lap­top in at­ten­dance, work­ing on var­ious books: his book about the Mu­se­um mur­ders; his fol­low-​up book about the Sub­way Mas­sacre. It had al­ways seemed like a home away from home to him, a refuge against the trou­bles of the world. And yet tonight, even the Bones held no con­so­la­tion for him. He re­called a line he’d read some­where—Bren­dan Be­han, per­haps—about hav­ing a thirst so mighty it cast a shad­ow. That’s how he felt.

It had been the worst week of his life—from this ter­ri­ble busi­ness with No­ra to his use­less in­ter­view with Fairhaven. And to top it all, he’d just been scooped by the frig­ging Post—by his old neme­sis Bryce Har­ri­man, no less—twice. First on the tourist mur­der in Cen­tral Park, and then on the bones dis­cov­ered down on Doy­ers Street. By rights, that was his sto­ry. How had that wee­nie Har­ri­man got­ten an ex­clu­sive? He couldn’t get an ex­clu­sive from his own girl­friend, for chris­sakes. Who did he know? To think he, Smith­back, had been kept out­side with the milling hacks while Har­ri­man got the roy­al treat­ment, the in­side sto­ry . . . Christ, he need­ed a drink.

The droopy-​eared wait­er came over, hang­dog fea­tures al­most as fa­mil­iar to Smith­back as his own.

“The usu­al, Mr. Smith­back?”

“No. You got any of the fifty-​year-​old Glen Grant?”

“At thir­ty-​six dol­lars,” the wait­er said dole­ful­ly.

“Bring it. I want to drink some­thing as old as I feel.”

The wait­er fad­ed back in­to the dark, smoky at­mo­sphere. Smith­back checked his watch and looked around ir­ri­ta­bly. He was ten min­utes late, but it looked like O’Shaugh­nessy was even lat­er. He hat­ed peo­ple who were even lat­er than he was, al­most as much as he hat­ed peo­ple who were on time.

The wait­er re­ma­te­ri­al­ized, car­ry­ing a brandy snifter with an inch of am­ber-​col­ored liq­uid in the bot­tom. He placed it rev­er­ent­ly be­fore Smith­back.

Smith­back raised it to his nose, swirled the liq­uid about, in­haled the heady aro­ma of High­land malt, smoke, and fresh wa­ter that, as the Scots said, had flowed through peat and over gran­ite. He felt bet­ter al­ready. As he low­ered the glass, he could see Boy­lan, the pro­pri­etor, in the front, hand­ing a black-​and-​tan over the bar with an arm that looked like it had been carved from a twist of chew­ing to­bac­co. And past Boy­lan was O’Shaugh­nessy, just come in and look­ing about. Smith­back waved, avert­ing his eyes from the cheap polyester suit that prac­ti­cal­ly sparkled, de­spite the dim light and cigar fumes. How could a self-​re­spect­ing man wear a suit like that?

“ ’Tis him­self,” said Smith­back in a dis­grace­ful trav­es­ty of an Irish ac­cent as O’Shaugh­nessy ap­proached.

“Ach, aye,” O’Shaugh­nessy replied, eas­ing in­to the far side of the booth.

The wait­er ap­peared again as if by mag­ic, duck­ing def­er­en­tial­ly.

“The same for him,” said Smith­back, and then added, “you know, the twelve-​year-​old.”

“Of course,” said the wait­er.

“What is it?” O’Shaugh­nessy asked.

“Glen Grant. Sin­gle malt scotch. The best in the world. On me.”

O’Shaugh­nessy grinned. “What, you forc­ing a blu­idy Pres­by­te­ri­an drink down me throat? That’s like lis­ten­ing to Ver­di in trans­la­tion. I’d pre­fer Pow­ers.”

Smith­back shud­dered. “That stuff? Trust me, Irish whisky is bet­ter suit­ed to de-​greas­ing en­gines than to drink­ing. The Irish pro­duce bet­ter writ­ers, the Scots bet­ter whisky.”

The wait­er went off, re­turn­ing with a sec­ond snifter. Smith­back wait­ed as O’Shaugh­nessy sniffed, winced, took a swig.

“Drink­able,” he said af­ter a mo­ment.

As they sipped in si­lence, Smith­back shot a covert glance at the po­lice­man across the ta­ble. So far he’d got­ten pre­cious lit­tle out of their ar­range­ment, al­though he’d giv­en him a pile on Fairhaven. And yet he found he had come to like the guy: O’Shaugh­nessy had a la­con­ic, cyn­ical, even fa­tal­is­tic out­look on life that Smith­back un­der­stood com­plete­ly.

Smith­back sighed and sat back. “So what’s new?”

O’Shaugh­nessy’s face in­stant­ly cloud­ed. “They fired me.”

Smith­back sat up again abrupt­ly. “What? When?”

“Yes­ter­day. Not fired, ex­act­ly. Not yet. Put on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave. They’re open­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.” He glanced up sud­den­ly. “This is just be­tween you and me.”

Smith­back sat back. “Of course.”

“I’ve got a hear­ing next week be­fore the union board, but it looks like I’m done for.”

“Why? Be­cause you did a lit­tle moon­light­ing?”

“Custer’s pissed. He’ll bring up some old his­to­ry. A bribe I took, five years ago. That, along with in­sub­or­di­na­tion and dis­obey­ing or­ders, will be enough to drag me down.”

“That fat-​assed bas­tard.”

There was an­oth­er si­lence. There’s one po­ten­tial source shot to hell, Smith­back thought. Too bad. He’s a de­cent guy.

“I’m work­ing for Pen­der­gast now,” O’Shaugh­nessy added in a very low voice, cradling his drink.

This was even more of a shock. “Pen­der­gast? How so?” Per­haps all was not lost.

“He need­ed a Man Fri­day. Some­one to pound the pave­ment for him, help track things down. At least, that’s what he said. To­mor­row, I’m sup­posed to head down to the East Vil­lage, snoop around a shop where Pen­der­gast thinks Leng might have bought his chem­icals.”

“Je­sus.” Now, this was an in­ter­est­ing de­vel­op­ment in­deed: O’Shaugh­nessy work­ing for Pen­der­gast, no longer shack­led by the NYPD rules about talk­ing to jour­nal­ists. Maybe this was even bet­ter than be­fore.

“If you find some­thing, you’ll let me know?” Smith­back asked.

“That de­pends.”

“On what?”

“On what you can do for us with that some­thing.”

“I’m not sure I un­der­stand.”

“You’re a re­porter, right? You do re­search?”

“It’s my mid­dle name. Why, you guys need my help with some­thing?” Smith­back sud­den­ly glanced away. “I don’t think No­ra would like that.”

“She doesn’t know. Nei­ther does Pen­der­gast.”

Smith­back looked back, sur­prised. But O’Shaugh­nessy didn’t look like he planned to say any­thing else about it. No use try­ing to force any­thing out of this guy, Smith­back thought. I’ll wait till he’s good and ready.

He took a dif­fer­ent tack. “So, how’d you like my file on Fairhaven?”

“Fat. Very fat. Thanks.”

“Just a lot of bull­shit, I’m afraid.”

“Pen­der­gast seemed pleased. He told me to con­grat­ulate you.”

“Pen­der­gast’s a good man,” Smith­back said cau­tious­ly.

O’Shaugh­nessy nod­ded, sipped. “But you al­ways get the sense he knows more than he lets on. All this talk about how we have to be care­ful, how our lives are in dan­ger. But he re­fus­es to spell it all out. And then, out of nowhere, he drops a bomb on you.” His eyes nar­rowed. “And that’s where you may come in.”

Here we go. “Me?”

“I want you to do a lit­tle dig­ging. Find some­thing out for me.” There was a slight hes­ita­tion. “See, I wor­ry the in­jury may have hit Pen­der­gast hard­er than we re­al­ized. He’s got this crazy the­ory. So crazy, when I heard it, I al­most walked out right then.”

“Yeah?” Smith­back took a ca­su­al sip, care­ful­ly con­ceal­ing his in­ter­est. He knew very well what a “crazy the­ory” of Pen­der­gast’s could turn out to mean.

“Yeah. I mean, I like this case. I’d hate to turn away from it. But I can’t work on some­thing that’s nuts.”

“I hear that. So what’s Pen­der­gast’s crazy the­ory?”

O’Shaugh­nessy hes­itat­ed, longer this time. He was clear­ly strug­gling with him­self over this.

Smith­back grit­ted his teeth. Get the man an­oth­er drink.

He waved the wait­er over. “We’ll have an­oth­er round,” he said.

“Make mine Pow­ers.”

“Have it your way. Still on me.”

They wait­ed for the next round to ar­rive.

“How’s the news­pa­per busi­ness?” O’Shaugh­nessy asked.

“Lousy. Got scooped by the Post. Twice.”

“I no­ticed that.”

“I could’ve used some help there, Patrick. The phone call about Doy­ers Street was nice, but it didn’t get me in­side.”

“Hey, I gave you the tip, it’s up to you to get your ass in­side.”

“How’d Har­ri­man get the ex­clu­sive?”

“I don’t know. All I know is, they hate you. They blame you for trig­ger­ing the copy­cat killings.”

Smith­back shook his head. “Prob­ably go­ing to can me now.”

“Not for a scoop.”

“Two scoops. And Patrick, don’t be so naive. This is a blood­suck­ing busi­ness, and you ei­ther suck or get sucked.” The metaphor didn’t have quite the ring Smith­back in­tend­ed, but it con­veyed the mes­sage.

O’Shaugh­nessy laughed mirth­less­ly. “That about sums it up in my busi­ness, too.” His face grew graver. “But I know what it’s like to be canned.”

Smith­back leaned for­ward con­spir­ato­ri­al­ly. Time to push a lit­tle. “So what’s Pen­der­gast’s the­ory?”

O’Shaugh­nessy took a sip of his drink. He seemed to ar­rive at some pri­vate de­ci­sion. “If I tell you, you’ll use your re­sources, see if there’s any chance it’s true?”

“Of course. I’ll do what­ev­er I can.”

“And you’ll keep it to your­self? No sto­ry—at least, not yet?”

That hurt, but Smith­back man­aged to nod in agree­ment.

“Okay.” O’Shaugh­nessy shook his head. “Not that you could print it, any­way. It’s to­tal­ly un­pub­lish­able.”

Smith­back nod­ded. “I un­der­stand.” This was sound­ing bet­ter and bet­ter.

O’Shaugh­nessy glanced at him. “Pen­der­gast thinks this guy Leng is still alive. He thinks Leng suc­ceed­ed in pro­long­ing his life.”

This stopped Smith­back cold. He felt a shock of dis­ap­point­ment. “Shit, Patrick, that is crazy. That’s ab­surd.”

“I told you so.”

Smith­back felt a wave of des­per­ation. This was worse than noth­ing. Pen­der­gast had gone off the deep end. Ev­ery­body knew a copy­cat killer was at work here. Leng, still alive af­ter a cen­tu­ry and a half? The sto­ry he was look­ing for seemed to re­cede fur­ther in­to the dis­tance. He put his head in his hands. “How?”

“Pen­der­gast be­lieves that the ex­am­ina­tion of the bones on Doy­ers Street, the Cather­ine Street au­top­sy re­port, and the Doreen Hol­lan­der au­top­sy re­sults, all show the same ex­act pat­tern of marks.”

Smith­back con­tin­ued to shake his head. “So Leng’s been killing all this time—for, what, the last hun­dred and thir­ty years?”

“That’s what he thinks. He thinks the guy is still liv­ing up on River­side Drive some­where.”

For a mo­ment, Smith­back was silent, toy­ing with the match­es. Pen­der­gast need­ed a long va­ca­tion.

“He’s got No­ra ex­am­in­ing old deeds, iden­ti­fy­ing which hous­es dat­ing pri­or to 1900 weren’t bro­ken in­to apart­ments. Look­ing for prop­er­ty deeds that haven’t gone in­to pro­bate for a very, very long time. That sort of thing. Try­ing to track Leng down.”

A to­tal waste, Smith­back thought. What’s go­ing on with Pen­der­gast? He fin­ished his now taste­less drink.

“Don’t for­get your promise. You’ll look in­to it? Check the obit­uar­ies, comb old is­sues of the Times for any crumbs you can find? See if there’s even a chance Pen­der­gast might be right?”

“Sure, sure.” Je­sus, what a joke. Smith­back was now sor­ry he’d agreed to the ar­range­ment. All it meant was more wast­ed time.

O’Shaugh­nessy looked re­lieved. “Thanks.”

Smith­back dropped the match­es in­to his pock­et, drained his glass. He flagged down the wait­er. “What do we owe you?”

“Nine­ty-​two dol­lars,” the man in­toned sad­ly. As usu­al, there was no tab: Smith­back was sure a good­ly por­tion went in­to the wait­er’s own pock­ets.

“Nine­ty-​two dol­lars!” O’Shaugh­nessy cried. “How many drinks did you have be­fore I ar­rived?”

“The good things in life, Patrick, are not free,” Smith­back said mourn­ful­ly. “That is es­pe­cial­ly true of sin­gle malt Scotch.”

“Think of the poor starv­ing chil­dren.”

“Think of the poor thirsty jour­nal­ists. Next time, you pay. Es­pe­cial­ly if you come armed with a sto­ry that crazy.”

“I told you so. And I hope you won’t mind drink­ing Pow­ers. No Irish­man would be caught dead pay­ing a tab like that. On­ly a Scots­man would dare charge that much for a drink.”

Smith­back turned on­to Colum­bus Av­enue, think­ing. Sud­den­ly, he stopped. While Pen­der­gast’s the­ory was ridicu­lous, it had giv­en him an idea. With all the ex­cite­ment about the copy­cat killings and the Doy­ers Street find, no one had re­al­ly fol­lowed up on Leng him­self. Who was he? Where did he come from? Where did he get his med­ical de­gree? What was his con­nec­tion to the Mu­se­um? Where had he lived?

Now this was good.

A sto­ry on Dr. Enoch Leng, mass mur­der­er. Yes, yes, this was it. This might just be the thing to save his ass at the Times.

Come to think of it, this was bet­ter than good. This guy an­te­dat­ed Jack the Rip­per. Enoch Leng: A Por­trait of Amer­ica’s First Se­ri­al Killer. This could be a cov­er sto­ry for the Times Sun­day Mag­azine. He’d kill two birds with one stone: do the re­search he’d promised O’Shaugh­nessy, while get­ting back­ground on Leng. And he wouldn’t be be­tray­ing any con­fi­dences, of course—be­cause once he’d de­ter­mined when the man died, that would be the end of Pen­der­gast’s crazy the­ory.

He felt a sud­den shiv­er of fear. What if Har­ri­man was al­ready pur­su­ing the sto­ry of Leng? He’d bet­ter get to work right away. At least he had one big ad­van­tage over Har­ri­man: he was a hell of a re­searcher. He’d start with the news­pa­per morgue—look for lit­tle notes, men­tions of Leng or Shot­tum or Mc­Fad­den. And he’d look for more killings with the Leng modus operan­di: the sig­na­ture dis­sec­tion of the spinal cord. Sure­ly Leng had killed more peo­ple than had been found at Cather­ine and Doy­ers Streets. Per­haps some of those oth­er killings had come to light and made the pa­pers.

And then there were the Mu­se­um’s archives. From his ear­li­er book projects, he’d come to know them back­ward and for­ward. Leng had been as­so­ci­at­ed with the Mu­se­um. There would be a gold mine of in­for­ma­tion in there, if on­ly one knew where to find it.

And there would be a side ben­efit: he might just be able to pass along to No­ra the in­for­ma­tion she want­ed about where Leng lived. A lit­tle ges­ture like that might get their re­la­tion­ship back on track. And who knows? It might get Pen­der­gast’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion back on track, as well.

His meet­ing with O’Shaugh­nessy hadn’t been a to­tal loss, af­ter all.

TWO

EAST TWELFTH STREET was a typ­ical East Vil­lage street, O’Shaugh­nessy thought as he turned the cor­ner from Third Av­enue: a mix­ture of punks, would-​be po­ets, ’60s relics, and old-​timers who just didn’t have the en­er­gy or mon­ey to move. The street had im­proved a bit in re­cent years, but there was still a su­per­fluity of beat­en-​down ten­ements among the head shops, wheat-​grass bars, and used-​record ven­dors. He slowed his pace, watch­ing the peo­ple pass­ing by: slum­ming tourists try­ing to look cool; ag­ing punk rock­ers with very dat­ed spiked pur­ple hair; artists in paint-​splat­tered jeans lug­ging can­vas­es; drugged-​out skin­heads in leather with dan­gling chrome doohick­eys. They seemed to give him a wide berth: noth­ing stood out on a New York City street quite like a plain­clothes po­lice of­fi­cer, even one on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave and un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Up ahead now, he could make out the shop. It was a lit­tle hole-​in-​the-​wall of black-​paint­ed brick, shoe­horned be­tween brown­stones that seemed to sag un­der the weight of in­nu­mer­able lay­ers of graf­fi­ti. The win­dows of the shop were thick with dust, and stacked high with an­cient box­es and dis­plays, so fad­ed with age and sun that their la­bels were in­de­ci­pher­able. Small greasy let­ters above the win­dows spelled out New Am­ster­dam Chemists.

O’Shaugh­nessy paused, ex­am­in­ing the shopfront. It seemed hard to be­lieve that an old rel­ic like this could sur­vive, what with a Du­ane Reade on the very next cor­ner. No­body seemed to be go­ing in or out. The place looked dead.

He stepped for­ward again, ap­proach­ing the door. There was a buzzer, and a small sign that read Cash On­ly. He pressed the buzzer, hear­ing it rasp far, far with­in. For what seemed a long time, there was no oth­er noise. Then he heard the ap­proach of shuf­fling foot­steps. A lock turned, the door opened, and a man stood be­fore him. At least, O’Shaugh­nessy thought it was a man: the head was as bald as a bil­liard ball, and the clothes were mas­cu­line, but the face had a kind of strange neu­tral­ity that made sex hard to de­ter­mine.

With­out a word, the per­son turned and shuf­fled away again. O’Shaugh­nessy fol­lowed, glanc­ing around cu­ri­ous­ly. He’d ex­pect­ed to find an old phar­ma­cy, with per­haps an an­cient so­da foun­tain and wood­en shelves stocked with as­pirin and lin­iment. In­stead, the shop was an in­cred­ible rat’s nest of stacked box­es, spi­der­webs, and dust. Sti­fling a cough, O’Shaugh­nessy traced a com­plex path to­ward the back of the store. Here he found a mar­ble counter, scarce­ly less dusty than the rest of the shop. The per­son who’d let him in had tak­en up a po­si­tion be­hind it. Small wood­en box­es were stacked shoul­der high on the wall be­hind the shop­keep­er. O’Shaugh­nessy squint­ed at the pa­per la­bels slid in­to cop­per plac­ards on each box: ama­ranth, nux vom­ica, net­tle, ver­vain, helle­bore, night­shade, nar­cis­sus, shep­herd’s purse, pearl tre­foil. On an ad­join­ing wall were hun­dreds of glass beakers, and be­neath were sev­er­al rows of box­es, chem­ical sym­bols scrawled on their faces in red mark­er. A book ti­tled Wort­cun­ning lay on the counter.

The man—it seemed eas­iest to think of him as a man—stared back at O’Shaugh­nessy, pasty face ex­pec­tant.

“O’Shaugh­nessy, FBI con­sul­tant,” O’Shaugh­nessy said, dis­play­ing the iden­ti­ty card Pen­der­gast had se­cured for him. “I’d like to ask you a few ques­tions, if I might.”

The man scru­ti­nized the card, and for a minute O’Shaugh­nessy thought he was go­ing to chal­lenge it. But the shop­keep­er mere­ly shrugged.

“What kind of peo­ple vis­it your shop?”

“It’s most­ly those wic­cans.” The man screwed up his face.

“Wic­cans?”

“Yeah. Wic­cans. That’s what they call them­selves these days.”

Abrupt­ly, O’Shaugh­nessy un­der­stood. “You mean witch­es.”

The man nod­ded.

“Any­body else? Any, say, doc­tors?”

“No, no­body like that. We get chemists here, too. Some­times hob­by­ists. Health sup­ple­ment types.”

“Any­body who dress­es in an old-​fash­ioned, or un­usu­al fash­ion?”

The man ges­tured in the vague di­rec­tion of East Twelfth Street. “They all dress in an un­usu­al fash­ion.”

O’Shaugh­nessy thought for a mo­ment. “We’re in­ves­ti­gat­ing some old crimes that took place near the turn of the cen­tu­ry. I was won­der­ing if you’ve got any old records I could ex­am­ine, lists of clien­tele and the like.”

“Maybe,” the man said. The voice was high, very breathy.

This an­swer took O’Shaugh­nessy by sur­prise. “What do you mean?”

“The shop burned to the ground in 1924. Af­ter it was re­built, my grand­fa­ther—he was run­ning the place back then—start­ed keep­ing his records in a fire­proof safe. Af­ter my fa­ther took over, he didn’t use the safe much. In fact, he on­ly used it for stor­ing some pos­ses­sions of my grand­fa­ther’s. He passed away three months ago.”

“I’m sor­ry to hear that,” O’Shaugh­nessy said. “How did he die?”

“Stroke, they said. So any­way, a few weeks lat­er, an an­tiques deal­er came by. Looked around the shop, bought a few old pieces of fur­ni­ture. When he saw the safe, he of­fered me a lot of mon­ey if there was any­thing of his­tor­ical val­ue in­side. So I had it drilled.” The man sniffed. “But there was noth­ing much. Tell the truth, I’d been hop­ing for some gold coins, maybe old se­cu­ri­ties or bonds. The fel­low went away dis­ap­point­ed.”

“So what was in­side?”

“Pa­pers. Ledgers. Stuff like that. That’s why I told you, maybe.”

“Can I have a look at this safe?”

The man shrugged. “Why not?”

The safe stood in a dim­ly lit back room, amid stacks of musty box­es and de­cay­ing wood­en crates. It was shoul­der high, made of thick green met­al. There was a shiny cylin­dri­cal hole where the lock mech­anism had been drilled out.

The man pulled the door open, then stepped back as O’Shaugh­nessy came for­ward. He knelt and peered in­side. Dust motes hung like a pall in the air. The con­tents of the safe lay in deep shad­ow.

“Can you turn on some more lights?” O’Shaugh­nessy asked.

“Can’t. Aren’t any more.”

“Got a flash­light handy?”

The man shook his head. “But hold on a sec­ond.” He shuf­fled away, then re­turned a minute lat­er, car­ry­ing a light­ed ta­per in a brass hold­er.

Je­sus, this is un­be­liev­able, O’Shaugh­nessy thought. But he ac­cept­ed the can­dle with mur­mured thanks and held it in­side the safe.

Con­sid­er­ing its large size, the safe was rather emp­ty. O’Shaugh­nessy moved the can­dle around, mak­ing a men­tal in­ven­to­ry of its con­tents. Stacks of old news­pa­pers in one cor­ner; var­ious yel­lowed pa­pers, tied in­to small bun­dles; sev­er­al rows of an­cient-​look­ing ledger books; two more mod­ern-​look­ing vol­umes, bound in gar­ish red plas­tic; half a dozen shoe box­es with dates scrawled on their faces.

Set­ting the can­dle on the floor of the safe, O’Shaugh­nessy grabbed ea­ger­ly at the old ledgers. The first one he opened was sim­ply a shop in­ven­to­ry, for the year 1925: page af­ter page of items, writ­ten in a spi­dery hand. The oth­er vol­umes were sim­ilar: semi­an­nu­al in­ven­to­ries, end­ing in 1942.

“When did your fa­ther take over the shop?” O’Shaugh­nessy asked.

The man thought for a mo­ment. “Dur­ing the war. ’41 maybe, or ’42.”

Makes sense, O’Shaugh­nessy thought. Re­plac­ing the ledgers, he flipped through the stack of news­pa­pers. He found noth­ing but a fresh cloud of dust.

Mov­ing the can­dle to one side, and fight­ing back a ris­ing sense of dis­ap­point­ment, he reached for the bun­dles of pa­pers. These were all bills and in­voic­es from whole­salers, cov­er­ing the same pe­ri­od: 1925 to 1942. No doubt they would match the in­ven­to­ry ledgers.

The red plas­tic vol­umes were clear­ly far too re­cent to be of any in­ter­est. That left just the shoe box­es. One more chance. O’Shaugh­nessy plucked a shoe box from the top of the pile, blew the dust from its lid, opened it.

In­side were old tax re­turns.

Damn it, O’Shaugh­nessy thought as he re­placed the box. He chose an­oth­er at ran­dom, opened the lid. More re­turns.

O’Shaugh­nessy sat back on his haunch­es, can­dle in one hand and shoe box in the oth­er. No won­der the an­tiques deal­er left emp­ty-​hand­ed, he thought. Oh, well. It was worth a try.

With a sigh, he leaned for­ward to re­place the box. As he did so, he glanced once again at the red plas­tic fold­ers. It was strange: the man said his fa­ther on­ly used the safe for stor­ing things of the grand­fa­ther. But plas­tic was a re­cent in­ven­tion, right? Sure­ly lat­er than 1942. Cu­ri­ous, he plucked up one of the vol­umes and flipped it open.

With­in, he saw a dark-​ruled page, full of old, hand­writ­ten en­tries. The page was sooty, par­tial­ly burned, its edges crum­bling away in­to ash.

He glanced around. The pro­pri­etor of the shop had moved away, and was rum­mag­ing in­side a card­board box.

Ea­ger­ly O’Shaugh­nessy snatched both the plas­tic vol­ume and its mate from the safe. Then he blew out the can­dle and stood up.

“Noth­ing much of in­ter­est, I’m afraid.” He held up the vol­umes with feigned non­cha­lance. “But as a for­mal­ity, I’d like to take these down to our of­fice, just for a day or two. With your per­mis­sion, of course. It’ll save you and me lots of pa­per­work, court or­ders, all that kind of thing.”

“Court or­ders?” the man said, a wor­ried ex­pres­sion com­ing over his face. “Sure, sure. Keep them as long as you want.”

Out­side on the street, O’Shaugh­nessy paused to brush dust from his shoul­ders. Rain was threat­en­ing, and lights were com­ing on in the shot­gun flats and cof­fee­hous­es that lined the street. A peal of dis­tant thun­der sound­ed over the hum of traf­fic. O’Shaugh­nessy turned up the col­lar of his jack­et and tucked the vol­umes care­ful­ly un­der one arm as he hur­ried off to­ward Third Av­enue.

From the op­po­site side­walk, in the shad­ow of a brown­stone stair­case, a man watched O’Shaugh­nessy de­part. Now he came for­ward, der­by hat low over a long black coat, cane tap­ping light­ly on the side­walk, and—af­ter look­ing care­ful­ly left and right—slow­ly crossed the street, in the di­rec­tion of New Am­ster­dam Chemists.

THREE

BILL SMITH­BACK LOVED the New York Times news­pa­per morgue: a tall, cool room with rows of met­al shelves groan­ing un­der the weight of leather-​bound vol­umes. On this par­tic­ular morn­ing, the room was com­plete­ly emp­ty. It was rarely used any­more by oth­er re­porters, who pre­ferred to use the dig­itized, on­line edi­tions, which went back on­ly twen­ty-​five years. Or, if nec­es­sary, the mi­cro­film ma­chines, which were a pain but rel­ative­ly fast. Still, Smith­back found there was noth­ing more in­ter­est­ing, or so cu­ri­ous­ly use­ful, as pag­ing through the old num­bers them­selves. You of­ten found lit­tle strings of in­for­ma­tion in suc­ces­sive is­sues—or on ad­join­ing pages—that you would have missed by crank­ing through reels of mi­cro­film at top speed.

When he pro­posed to his ed­itor the idea of a sto­ry on Leng, the man had grunt­ed non­com­mit­tal­ly—a sure sign he liked it. As he was leav­ing, he heard the bug-​eyed mon­ster mut­ter: “Just make damn sure it’s bet­ter than that Fairhaven piece, okay? Some­thing with mar­row.”

Well, it would be bet­ter than Fairhaven. It had to be.

It was af­ter­noon by the time he set­tled in­to the morgue. The li­brar­ian brought him the first of the vol­umes he’d re­quest­ed, and he opened it with rev­er­ence, in­hal­ing the smell of de­cay­ing wood pulp, old ink, mold, and dust. The vol­ume was dat­ed Jan­uary 1881, and he quick­ly found the ar­ti­cle he was look­ing for: the burn­ing of Shot­tum’s cab­inet. It was a front-​page sto­ry, with a hand­some en­grav­ing of the flames. The ar­ti­cle men­tioned that the em­inent Pro­fes­sor John C. Shot­tum was miss­ing and feared dead. Al­so miss­ing, the ar­ti­cle stat­ed, was a man named Enoch Leng, who was vague­ly billed as a board­er at the cab­inet and Shot­tum’s “as­sis­tant.” Clear­ly, the writ­er knew noth­ing about Leng.

Smith­back paged for­ward un­til he found a fol­low-​up sto­ry on the fire, re­port­ing that re­mains be­lieved to be Shot­tum had been found. No men­tion was made of Leng.

Now work­ing back­ward, Smith­back paged through the city sec­tions, look­ing for ar­ti­cles on the Mu­se­um, the Lyceum, or any men­tion of Leng, Shot­tum, or Mc­Fad­den. It was slow go­ing, and Smith­back of­ten found him­self side­tracked by var­ious fas­ci­nat­ing, but un­re­lat­ed, ar­ti­cles.

Af­ter a few hours, he be­gan to get a lit­tle ner­vous. There were plen­ty of ar­ti­cles on the Mu­se­um, a few on the Lyceum, and even oc­ca­sion­al men­tions of Shot­tum and his col­league, Tin­bury Mc­Fad­den. But he could find noth­ing at all on Leng, ex­cept in the re­ports of the meet­ings of the Lyceum, where a “Prof. Enoch Leng” was oc­ca­sion­al­ly list­ed among the at­ten­dees. Leng clear­ly kept a low pro­file.

This is go­ing nowhere, fast, he thought.

He launched in­to a sec­ond line of at­tack, which promised to be much more dif­fi­cult.

Start­ing in 1917, the date that Enoch Leng aban­doned his Doy­ers Street lab­ora­to­ry, Smith­back be­gan pag­ing for­ward, look­ing for any mur­ders that fit the pro­file. There were 365 edi­tions of the Times ev­ery year. In those days, mur­ders were a rare enough oc­cur­rence to usu­al­ly land on the front page, so Smith­back con­fined him­self to pe­rus­ing the front pages—and the obit­uar­ies, look­ing for the an­nounce­ment of Leng’s death which would in­ter­est O’Shaugh­nessy as well as him­self.

There were many mur­ders to read about, and a num­ber of high­ly in­ter­est­ing obit­uar­ies, and Smith­back found him­self fas­ci­nat­ed—too fas­ci­nat­ed. It was slow go­ing.

But then, in the Septem­ber 10, 1918, edi­tion, he came across a head­line, just be­low the fold: Mu­ti­lat­ed Body in Peck Slip Ten­ement. The ar­ti­cle, in an old-​fash­ioned at­tempt to pre­serve read­ers’ del­icate sen­si­bil­ities, did not go in­to de­tail about what the mu­ti­la­tions were, but it ap­peared to in­volve the low­er back.

He read on, all his re­porter’s in­stincts aroused once again. So Leng was still ac­tive, still killing, even af­ter he aban­doned his Doy­ers Street lab.

By the end of the day he had net­ted a half-​dozen ad­di­tion­al mur­ders, about one ev­ery two years, that could be the work of Leng. There might have been oth­ers, undis­cov­ered; or it might be that Leng had stopped hid­ing the bod­ies and was sim­ply leav­ing them in ten­ements in wide­ly scat­tered sec­tions of the city. The vic­tims were al­ways home­less pau­pers. In on­ly one case was the body even iden­ti­fied. They had all been sent to Pot­ter’s Field for buri­al. As a re­sult, no­body had re­marked on the sim­ilar­ities. The po­lice had nev­er made the con­nec­tion among them.

The last mur­der with Leng’s modus operan­di seemed to oc­cur in 1935. Af­ter that, there were plen­ty of mur­ders, but none in­volv­ing the “pe­cu­liar mu­ti­la­tions” that were Leng’s sig­na­ture.

Smith­back did a quick cal­cu­la­tion: Leng ap­peared in New York in the 1870s—prob­ably as a young man of, say, thir­ty. In 1935, he would have been about sev­en­ty. So why did the mur­ders cease?

The an­swer was per­fect­ly ob­vi­ous: Leng had died. He hadn’t found an obit­uary; but then, Leng had kept such a low pro­file that an obit­uary would have been high­ly un­like­ly.

So much for Pen­der­gast’s the­ory, thought Smith­back.

And the more he thought about it, the more he felt sure that Pen­der­gast couldn’t re­al­ly be­lieve such an ab­surd thing. No; Pen­der­gast was throw­ing this out as a red her­ring for some de­vi­ous pur­pose of his own. That was Pen­der­gast through and through—art­ful, wind­ing, oblique. You nev­er knew what he was re­al­ly think­ing, or what his plan was. He would ex­plain all this to O’Shaugh­nessy the next time he saw him; no doubt the cop would be re­lieved to hear Pen­der­gast hadn’t gone off the deep end.

Smith­back scanned an­oth­er year’s worth of obit­uar­ies, but noth­ing on Leng ap­peared. Fig­ures: the guy just cast no shad­ow at all on the his­tor­ical record. It was al­most creepy.

He checked his watch: quit­ting time. He’d been at it for ten straight hours.

But he was off to a good start. In one stroke, he’d un­cov­ered an­oth­er half-​dozen un­solved mur­ders which could like­ly be at­tribut­ed to Leng. He had maybe two more days be­fore his ed­itor start­ed de­mand­ing re­sults. More, if he could show his work was turn­ing up some nuggets of gold.

He eased him­self out of the com­fort­able chair, rubbed his hands to­geth­er. Now that he’d combed the pub­lic record, he was ready to take the next step: Leng’s pri­vate record.

One thing the day’s re­search had re­vealed was that Leng had been a guest re­searcher at the Mu­se­um. Smith­back knew that, back then, all vis­it­ing sci­en­tists had to un­der­go an aca­dem­ic re­view in or­der to gain un­fet­tered ac­cess to the col­lec­tions. The re­view gave such de­tails as the per­son’s age, ed­uca­tion, de­grees, fields of spe­cial­ty, pub­li­ca­tions, mar­ital sta­tus, and ad­dress. This might lead to oth­er trea­sure troves of doc­uments—deeds, leas­es, le­gal ac­tions, so forth. Per­haps Leng could hide from the pub­lic eye—but the Mu­se­um’s records would be a dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

By the time Smith­back was done, he would know Leng like a broth­er.

The thought gave him a de­li­cious shud­der of an­tic­ipa­tion.

FOUR

O’SHAUGH­NESSY STOOD ON the steps out­side the Ja­cob Jav­its Fed­er­al Build­ing. The rain had stopped, and pud­dles lay here and there in the nar­row streets of low­er Man­hat­tan. Pen­der­gast had not been at the Dako­ta, and he was not here, at the Bu­reau. O’Shaugh­nessy felt an odd blend of emo­tions: im­pa­tience, cu­rios­ity, ea­ger­ness. He’d been al­most dis­ap­point­ed that he couldn’t show his find to Pen­der­gast right away. Pen­der­gast would sure­ly see the val­ue of the dis­cov­ery. Maybe it would be the clue they need­ed to break the case.

He ducked be­hind one of the build­ing’s gran­ite pil­lars to in­spect the jour­nals once again. His eye ran down the columned pages, the count­less en­tries of fad­ed blue ink. It had ev­ery­thing: names of pur­chasers, lists of chem­icals, amounts, prices, de­liv­ery ad­dress­es, dates. Poi­sons were list­ed in red. Pen­der­gast was go­ing to love this. Of course, Leng would have made his pur­chas­es un­der a pseudonym, prob­ably us­ing a false ad­dress—but he would have had to use the same pseudonym for each pur­chase. Since Pen­der­gast had al­ready com­piled a list of at least some of the rare chem­icals Leng had used, it would be a sim­ple mat­ter to match that with the pur­chas­es in this book, and, through that, dis­cov­er Leng’s pseudonym. If it was a name Leng used in oth­er trans­ac­tions, this lit­tle book was go­ing to take them very far in­deed.

O’Shaugh­nessy glanced at the vol­umes an­oth­er minute, then tucked them back be­neath his arm and be­gan walk­ing thought­ful­ly down Broad­way, to­ward City Hall and the sub­way. The vol­umes cov­ered the years 1917 through 1923, an­te­dat­ing the fire that burned the chemist’s shop. Clear­ly, they’d been the on­ly things to sur­vive the fire. They had been in the pos­ses­sion of the grand­fa­ther, and the fa­ther had had them re­bound. That was why the an­tiques deal­er hadn’t both­ered to ex­am­ine them: they looked mod­ern. It had been sheer luck that he him­self had—

An­tiques deal­er. Now that he thought about it, it seemed sus­pi­cious that some deal­er just hap­pened to walk in­to the store a few weeks af­ter the old man’s death, in­ter­est­ed in the safe. Per­haps that death hadn’t been an ac­ci­dent, af­ter all. Per­haps the copy­cat killer had been there be­fore him, look­ing for more in­for­ma­tion on Leng’s chem­ical pur­chas­es. But no—that was im­pos­si­ble. The copy­cat killings had be­gun as a re­sult of the ar­ti­cle. This had hap­pened be­fore. O’Shaugh­nessy chas­tised him­self for not get­ting a de­scrip­tion of the deal­er. Well, he could al­ways go back. Pen­der­gast might want to come along him­self.

Sud­den­ly, he stopped. Of their own ac­cord, his feet had tak­en him past the sub­way sta­tion to Ann Street. He be­gan to turn back, then hes­itat­ed. He wasn’t far, he re­al­ized, from 16 Wa­ter Street, the house where Mary Greene had lived. Pen­der­gast had al­ready been down there with No­ra, but O’Shaugh­nessy hadn’t seen it. Not that there was any­thing to see, of course. But now that he was com­mit­ted to this case, he want­ed to see ev­ery­thing, miss noth­ing. He thought back to the Metropoli­tan Mu­se­um of Art: to the pa­thet­ic bit of dress, the des­per­ate note.

It was worth a ten-​minute de­tour. Din­ner could wait.

He con­tin­ued down Ann Street, then turned on­to Gold, whistling Cos­ta Di­va from Belli­ni’s Nor­ma. It was Maria Callas’s sig­na­ture piece, and one of his fa­vorite arias. He was in high spir­its. De­tec­tive work, he was re­dis­cov­er­ing, could ac­tu­al­ly be fun. And he was re­dis­cov­er­ing some­thing else: he had a knack for it.

The set­ting sun broke through the clouds, cast­ing his own shad­ow be­fore him, long and lone­ly down the street. To his left lay the South Street Viaduct and, be­yond, the East Riv­er piers. As he walked, of­fice and fi­nan­cial build­ings be­gan giv­ing way to ten­ements—some sport­ing re-​point­ed brick fa­cades, oth­ers va­cant and hol­low-​look­ing.

It was grow­ing chilly, but the last rays of the sun felt good on his face. He cut left on­to John Street, head­ing to­ward the riv­er. Ahead lay the rows of old piers. A few had been as­phalt­ed and still in use; oth­ers tilt­ed in­to the wa­ter at alarm­ing an­gles; and some were so de­cayed they were noth­ing more than dou­ble rows of posts, stick­ing out of the wa­ter. As the sun dipped out of sight, a dome of af­ter­glow lay across the sky, deep pur­ple grad­ing to yel­low against a ris­ing fog. Across the East Riv­er, lights were com­ing on in the low brown­stones of Brook­lyn. He quick­ened his pace, see­ing his breath in the air.

It was as he passed Pearl Street that O’Shaugh­nessy be­gan to feel that he was be­ing fol­lowed. He wasn’t sure why, ex­act­ly; if, sub­lim­inal­ly, he had heard some­thing, or if it was sim­ply the sixth sense of a beat cop. But he kept walk­ing, not check­ing his stride, not turn­ing around. Ad­min­is­tra­tive leave or no, he had his own .38 Spe­cial strapped un­der his arm, and he knew how to use it. Woe to the mug­ger who thought he looked like an easy tar­get.

He stopped, glanc­ing along the tiny, crooked maze of streets that led down to the wa­ter­front. As he did so, the feel­ing grew stronger. O’Shaugh­nessy had long ago learned to trust such feel­ings. Like most beat cops, he had de­vel­oped a high­ly sen­si­tive street radar that sensed when some­thing was wrong. As a cop, you ei­ther de­vel­oped this radar fast, or you got your ass shot off and re­turned to you, gift-​wrapped by St. Pe­ter in a box with a nice pret­ty red rib­bon. He’d al­most for­got­ten he had the in­stinct. It had seen years of dis­use, but such things died hard.

He con­tin­ued walk­ing un­til he reached the cor­ner of Burl­ing Slip. He turned the cor­ner, step­ping in­to the shad­ows, and quick­ly pressed him­self against the wall, re­mov­ing his Smith & Wes­son at the same time. He wait­ed, breath­ing shal­low­ly. He could hear the faint sound of wa­ter lap­ping the piers, the dis­tant sound of traf­fic, a bark­ing dog. But there was noth­ing else.

He cast an eye around the cor­ner. There was still enough light to see clear­ly. The ten­ements and dock­side ware­hous­es looked de­sert­ed.

He stepped out in­to the half-​light, gun ready, wait­ing. If some­body was fol­low­ing, they’d see his gun. And they would go away.

He slow­ly re­hol­stered the weapon, looked around again, then turned down Wa­ter Street. Why did he still feel he was be­ing fol­lowed? Had his in­stincts rung a false alarm, af­ter all?

As he ap­proached the mid­dle of the block, and Num­ber 16, he thought he saw a dark shape dis­ap­pear around the cor­ner, thought he heard the scrape of a shoe on pave­ment. He sprang for­ward, thoughts of Mary Greene for­got­ten, and whipped around the cor­ner, gun drawn once again.

Fletch­er Street stretched ahead of him, dark and emp­ty. But at the far cor­ner a street lamp shone, and in its glow he could see a shad­ow quick­ly dis­ap­pear­ing. It had been un­mis­tak­able.

He sprint­ed down the block, turned an­oth­er cor­ner. Then he stopped.

A black cat strolled across the emp­ty street, tail held high, tip twitch­ing with each step. He was a few blocks down­wind of the Ful­ton Fish Mar­ket, and the stench of seafood waft­ed in­to his nos­trils. A tug­boat’s horn float­ed mourn­ful­ly up from the har­bor.

O’Shaugh­nessy laughed rue­ful­ly to him­self. He was not nor­mal­ly pre­dis­posed to para­noia, but there was no oth­er word for it. He had been chas­ing a cat. This case must be get­ting to him.

Heft­ing the jour­nals, he con­tin­ued south, to­ward Wall Street and the sub­way.

But this time, there was no doubt: foot­steps, and close. A faint cough.

He turned, pulled his gun again. Now it was dark enough that the edges of the street, the old docks, the stone door­ways, lay in deep shad­ow. Who­ev­er was fol­low­ing him was both per­sis­tent and good. This was not some mug­ger. And the cough was bull­shit. The man want­ed him to know he was be­ing fol­lowed. The man was try­ing to spook him, make him ner­vous, goad him in­to mak­ing a mis­take.

O’Shaugh­nessy turned and ran. Not be­cause of fear, re­al­ly, but be­cause he want­ed to pro­voke the man in­to fol­low­ing. He ran to the end of the block, turned the cor­ner, con­tin­uing halfway down the next block. Then he stopped, silent­ly re­traced his steps, and melt­ed in­to the shad­ow of a door­way. He thought he heard foot­steps run­ning down the block. He braced him­self against the door be­hind him, and wait­ed, gun drawn, ready to spring.

Si­lence. It stretched on for a minute, then two, then five. A cab drove slow­ly by, twin head­lights lanc­ing through the fog and gloom. Cau­tious­ly, O’Shaugh­nessy eased his way out of the door­way, looked around. All was de­sert­ed once again. He be­gan mak­ing his way back down the side­walk in the di­rec­tion from which he’d come, mov­ing slow­ly, keep­ing close to the build­ings. Maybe the man had tak­en a dif­fer­ent turn. Or giv­en up. Or maybe, af­ter all, it was on­ly his imag­ina­tion.

And that was when the dark fig­ure lanced out of an ad­ja­cent door­way—when some­thing came down over his head and tight­ened around his neck—when the sick­ly sweet chem­ical odor abrupt­ly in­vad­ed his nos­trils. One of O’Shaugh­nessy’s hands reached for the hood, while the oth­er con­vul­sive­ly squeezed off a shot. And then he was falling, falling with­out end . . .

The sound of the shot re­ver­ber­at­ed down the emp­ty street, echo­ing and ree­cho­ing off the old build­ings, un­til it died away. And si­lence once more set­tled over the docks and the now emp­ty streets.

FIVE

PATRICK O’SHAUGH­NESSY AWOKE very slow­ly. His head felt as if it had been split open with an axe, his knuck­les throbbed, and his tongue was swollen and metal­lic in his mouth. He opened his eyes, but all was dark­ness. Fear­ing he’d gone blind, he in­stinc­tive­ly drew his arms to­ward his face. He re­al­ized, with a kind of lead­en numb­ness, that they were re­strained. He tugged, and some­thing rat­tled.

Chains. He was shack­led with chains.

He moved his legs and found they were chained as well.

Al­most in­stant­ly, the numb­ness fled, and cold re­al­ity flood­ed over him. The mem­ory of the foot­steps, the cat-​and-​mouse in the de­sert­ed streets, the smoth­er­ing hood, re­turned with stark, piti­less clar­ity. For a mo­ment, he strug­gled fierce­ly, a ter­ri­ble pan­ic bub­bling up in his chest. Then he lay back, try­ing to mas­ter him­self. Pan­ic’s not go­ing to solve any­thing. You have to think.

Where was he?

In a cell of some sort. He’d been tak­en pris­on­er. But by whom?

Al­most as soon as he asked this ques­tion, the an­swer came: by the copy­cat killer. By the Sur­geon.

The fresh wave of pan­ic that greet­ed this re­al­iza­tion was cut short by a sud­den shaft of light—bright, even painful af­ter the en­velop­ing dark­ness.

He looked around quick­ly. He was in a small, bare room of rough-​hewn stone, chained to a floor of cold, damp con­crete. One wall held a door of rust­ed met­al, and the light was stream­ing in through a small slot in its face. The light sud­den­ly di­min­ished, and a voice sound­ed in the slot. O’Shaugh­nessy could see wet red lips mov­ing.

“Please do not dis­com­pose your­self,” the voice said sooth­ing­ly. “All this will be over soon. Strug­gle is un­nec­es­sary.”

The slot rat­tled shut, and O’Shaugh­nessy was once again plunged in­to dark­ness.

He lis­tened as the re­treat­ing steps rang against the stone floor. It was all too clear what was com­ing next. He’d seen the re­sults at the med­ical ex­am­in­er’s of­fice. The Sur­geon would come back; he’d come back, and . . .

Don’t think about that. Think about how to es­cape.

O’Shaugh­nessy tried to re­lax, to con­cen­trate on tak­ing long, slow breaths. Now his po­lice train­ing helped. He felt calm­ness set­tle over him. No sit­ua­tion was ev­er hope­less, and even the most cau­tious crim­inals made mis­takes.

He’d been stupid, his ha­bit­ual cau­tion lost in his ex­cite­ment over find­ing the ledgers. He’d for­got­ten Pen­der­gast’s warn­ing of con­stant dan­ger.

Well, he wouldn’t be stupid any longer.

All this will be over soon, the voice had said. That meant it wouldn’t be long be­fore he’d be com­ing back. O’Shaugh­nessy would be ready.

Be­fore the Sur­geon could do any­thing, he’d have to re­move the shack­les. And that’s when O’Shaugh­nessy would jump him.

But the Sur­geon was clear­ly no fool. The way he’d shad­owed him, am­bushed him: that had tak­en cun­ning, strong nerves. If O’Shaugh­nessy mere­ly pre­tend­ed to be asleep, it wouldn’t be enough.

This was it: do or die. He’d have to make it good.

He took a deep breath, then an­oth­er. And then, clos­ing his eyes, he smashed the shack­les of his arm against his fore­head, rak­ing them lat­er­al­ly from left to right.

The blood be­gan to flow al­most at once. There was pain, too, but that was good: it kept him sharp, gave him some­thing to think about. Wounds to the fore­head tend­ed to bleed a lot; that was good, too.

Now he care­ful­ly lay to one side, po­si­tion­ing him­self to look as if he’d passed out, scrap­ing his head against the rough wall as he slumped to the floor. The stone felt cold against his cheek; the blood warm as it trick­led through his eye­lash­es, down his nose. It would work. It would work. He didn’t want to go out like Doreen Hol­lan­der, torn and stiff on a morgue gur­ney.

Once again, O’Shaugh­nessy quelled a ris­ing pan­ic. It would be over soon. The Sur­geon would re­turn, he’d hear the foot­steps on the stones. The door would open. When the shack­les were re­moved, he’d sur­prise the man, over­whelm him. He’d es­cape with his life, col­lar the copy­cat killer in the pro­cess.

Stay calm. Stay calm. Eyes shut, blood trick­ling on­to the cold damp stone, O’Shaugh­nessy de­lib­er­ate­ly turned his thoughts to opera. His breath­ing grew calmer. And soon, in his mind, the bleak walls of the lit­tle cell be­gan to ring with the exquisite­ly beau­ti­ful strains of O Isis Und Osiris, ris­ing ef­fort­less­ly to­ward street lev­el and the in­vi­olate sky far above.

SIX

PEN­DER­GAST STOOD ON the broad pave­ment, small brown pack­age be­neath one arm, look­ing thought­ful­ly up at the brace of li­ons that guard­ed the en­trance to the New York Pub­lic Li­brary. A brief, drench­ing rain had passed over the city, and the head­lights of the bus­es and taxis shim­mered in count­less pud­dles of wa­ter. Pen­der­gast raised his eyes from the li­ons to the fa­cade be­hind them, long and im­pos­ing, heavy Corinthi­an columns ris­ing to­ward a vast ar­chi­trave. It was past nine P.M., and the li­brary had long since closed: the tides of stu­dents, re­searchers, tourists, un­pub­lished po­ets and schol­ars that swirled about its por­tals by day had re­ced­ed hours be­fore.

He glanced around once more, eyes sweep­ing the stone plaza and the side­walk be­yond. Then he ad­just­ed the pack­age be­neath his arm, and made his way slow­ly up the broad stairs.

To one side of the mas­sive en­trance, a small­er door had been set in­to the gran­ite face of the li­brary. Pen­der­gast ap­proached it, rapped his knuck­les light­ly on the bronze. Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly it swung in­ward, re­veal­ing a li­brary guard. He was very tall, with close­ly cropped blond hair, heav­ily mus­cled. A copy of Or­lan­do Fu­rioso was in one meaty hand.

“Good evening, Agent Pen­der­gast,” the guard said. “How are you this evening?”

“Quite well, Frances, thank you,” Pen­der­gast replied. He nod­ded to­ward the book. “How are you en­joy­ing Ar­ios­to?”

“Very much. Thanks for the sug­ges­tion.”

“I be­lieve I rec­om­mend­ed the Ba­con trans­la­tion.”

“Ne­smith in the mi­crofiche de­part­ment has one. The oth­ers are on loan.”

“Re­mind me to send you down a copy.”

“I’ll do that, sir. Thanks.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded again and passed on, through the en­trance hall and up the mar­ble stairs, hear­ing noth­ing but the sound of his own foot­steps. At the en­trance to Room 315—the Main Read­ing Room—he paused again. In­side, ranks of long wood­en ta­bles lay be­neath yel­low pools of light. Pen­der­gast en­tered, glid­ing to­ward a vast con­struc­tion of dark wood that di­vid­ed the Read­ing Room in­to halves. By day, this was the sta­tion from which li­brary work­ers ac­cept­ed book re­quests from pa­trons and sent them down to the sub­ter­ranean stacks by pneu­mat­ic tube. But now, with the fall of night, the re­ceiv­ing sta­tion was silent and emp­ty.

Pen­der­gast opened a door at one end of the re­ceiv­ing sta­tion, stepped in­side, and made his way to a small door, set in­to a frame be­side a long se­ries of dumb­wait­ers. He opened it and de­scend­ed the stair­case be­yond.

Be­neath the Main Read­ing Room were sev­en lev­els of stacks. The first six lev­els were vast cities of shelv­ing, laid out in pre­cise grids that went on, row af­ter row, stack af­ter stack. The ceil­ings of the stacks were low, and the tall shelves of books claus­tro­pho­bic. And yet, as he walked in the faint light of the first lev­el—tak­ing in the smell of dust, and mildew, and de­com­pos­ing pa­per—Pen­der­gast felt a rare sense of peace. The pain of his stab wound, the heavy bur­den of the case at hand, seemed to ease. At ev­ery turn, ev­ery in­ter­sec­tion, his mind filled with the mem­ory of some pri­or per­am­bu­la­tion: jour­neys of dis­cov­ery, lit­er­ary ex­pe­di­tions that had fre­quent­ly end­ed in in­ves­tiga­tive epipha­nies, abrupt­ly solved cas­es.

But there was no time now for rem­inisc­ing, and Pen­der­gast moved on. Reach­ing a nar­row, even steep­er stair­case, he de­scend­ed deep­er in­to the stacks.

At last, Pen­der­gast emerged from the clos­et-​like stair­well on­to the sev­enth lev­el. Un­like the flaw­less­ly cat­alogued lev­els above it, this was an end­less rat’s nest of mys­te­ri­ous path­ways and cul-​de-​sacs, rarely vis­it­ed de­spite some as­ton­ish­ing col­lec­tions known to be buried here. The air was close and stuffy, as if it had—like the vol­umes it sur­round­ed—not cir­cu­lat­ed for decades. Sev­er­al cor­ri­dors ran away from the stair­well, framed by book­cas­es, cross­ing and re­cross­ing at strange an­gles.

Pen­der­gast paused mo­men­tar­ily. In the si­lence, his hy­per­acute sense of hear­ing picked up a very faint scratch­ing: colonies of sil­ver­fish, gorg­ing their way through an end­less sup­ply of pulp.

And there was an­oth­er sound, too: loud­er and sharp­er. Snip.

Pen­der­gast turned to­ward the sound, track­ing it through the stacks of books, an­gling first one way, then an­oth­er. The sound grew near­er.

Snip. Snip.

Up ahead, Pen­der­gast made out a ha­lo of light. Turn­ing a fi­nal cor­ner, he saw a large wood­en ta­ble, bril­liant­ly lit by a den­tist’s O-​ring lamp. Sev­er­al ob­jects were ar­rayed along one edge of the ta­ble: nee­dle, a spool of heavy fil­ament, a pair of white cot­ton gloves, a book­binder’s knife, a glue pen. Next to them was a stack of ref­er­ence works: Blades’s The En­emies of Books; Ebel­ing’s Ur­ban En­to­mol­ogy; Clapp’s Cu­ra­to­ri­al Care of Works of Art on Pa­per. On a book truck be­side the ta­ble sat a tall pile of old vol­umes in var­ious states of de­com­po­si­tion, cov­ers frayed, hinges bro­ken, spines torn.

A fig­ure sat at the ta­ble, back to Pen­der­gast. A con­fu­sion of long hair, white and very thick, streamed down from the skull on­to the hunched shoul­ders. Snip.

Pen­der­gast leaned against the near­est stack and—keep­ing a po­lite dis­tance—rapped his knuck­les light­ly against the met­al.

“I hear a knock­ing,” the fig­ure quot­ed, in a high yet clear­ly mas­cu­line tone. He did not turn his head. Snip.

Pen­der­gast knocked again.

“Anon, anon!” the man re­spond­ed.

Snip.

Pen­der­gast knocked a third time, more sharply.

The man straight­ened his shoul­ders with an ir­ri­ta­ble sigh. “Wake Dun­can with thy knock­ing!” he cried. “I would thou couldst.”

Then he laid aside a pair of li­brary scis­sors and the old book he had been re­bind­ing, and turned around.

He had thin white eye­brows to match the mane of hair, and the iris­es of his eyes were yel­low, giv­ing him a gaze that seemed leo­nine, al­most fer­al. He saw Pen­der­gast, and his old with­ered face broke in­to a smile. Then he caught sight of the pack­age be­neath Pen­der­gast’s arm, and the smile broad­ened.

“If it isn’t Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast!” he cried. “The ex­tra-​spe­cial, Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast.”

Pen­der­gast in­clined his head. “How are you, Wren?”

“I humbly thank thee, well, well.” The man ges­tured a bony hand to­ward the book truck, the pile of books wait­ing to be re­paired. “But there is so lit­tle time, and so many dam­aged chil­dren.”

The New York Pub­lic Li­brary har­bored many strange souls, but none was stranger than the specter known as Wren. No­body seemed to know any­thing about him: whether Wren was his first name, or his last, or even his re­al name at all. No­body seemed to know where he’d come from, or whether he was of­fi­cial­ly em­ployed by the li­brary. No­body knew where or what he ate—some spec­ulat­ed that he dined on li­brary paste. The on­ly things known about the man was that he had nev­er been seen to leave the li­brary, and that he had a pathfind­er’s in­stinct for the lost trea­sures of the sev­enth lev­el.

Wren looked at his guest, ve­nal yel­low eyes sharp and bright as a hawk’s. “You don’t look like your­self to­day,” he said.

“No doubt.” Pen­der­gast said no more, and Wren seemed not to ex­pect it.

“Let’s see. Did you find—what was it again? Oh, yes—that old Broad­way Wa­ter Com­pa­ny sur­vey and the Five Points chap­books use­ful?”

“Very much so.”

Wren ges­tured to­ward the pack­age. “And what are you lend­ing me to­day, hyp­ocrite lecteur?”

Pen­der­gast leaned away from the book­case, brought the pack­age out from be­neath his arm. “It’s a manuscript of Iphi­ge­nia at Aulis, trans­lat­ed from the an­cient Greek in­to Vul­gate.”

Wren lis­tened, his face be­tray­ing noth­ing.

“The manuscript was il­lu­mi­nat­ed at the old monastery of Sainte-​Chapelle in the late four­teenth cen­tu­ry. One of the last works they pro­duced be­fore the ter­ri­ble con­fla­gra­tion of 1397.”

A spark of in­ter­est flared in the old man’s yel­low eyes.

“The book caught the at­ten­tion of Pope Pius III, who pro­nounced it sac­ri­le­gious and or­dered ev­ery copy burnt. It’s al­so no­table for the scrib­bles and draw­ings made by the scribes in the mar­gins of the manuscript. They are said to de­pict the lost text of Chaucer’s frag­men­tary ‘Cook’s Tale.’ ”

The spark of in­ter­est abrupt­ly burned hot. Wren held out his hands.

Pen­der­gast kept the pack­age just out of reach. “There is one fa­vor I’d re­quest in re­turn.”

Wren re­tract­ed his hands. “Nat­ural­ly.”

“Have you heard of the Wheel­wright Be­quest?”

Wren frowned, shook his head. White locks flew from side to side.

“He was the pres­ident of the city’s Land Of­fice from 1866 to 1894. He was a no­to­ri­ous pack-​rat, and ul­ti­mate­ly do­nat­ed a large num­ber of hand­bills, cir­cu­lars, broad­sides, and oth­er pe­ri­od pub­li­ca­tions to the Li­brary.”

“That ex­plains why I haven’t heard of it,” Wren replied. “It sounds of lit­tle val­ue.”

“In his be­quest, Wheel­wright al­so made a siz­able cash do­na­tion.”

“Which ex­plains why the be­quest would still be ex­tant.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“But it would have been con­signed to the sev­enth lev­el.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded again.

“What’s your in­ter­est, hyp­ocrite lecteur?”

“Ac­cord­ing to the obit­uar­ies, Wheel­wright was at work on a schol­ar­ly his­to­ry of wealthy New York landown­ers when he died. As part of his re­search, he’d kept copies of all the Man­hat­tan house deeds that passed through his of­fice for prop­er­ties over $1,000. I need to ex­am­ine those house deeds.”

Wren’s ex­pres­sion nar­rowed. “Sure­ly that in­for­ma­tion could be more eas­ily ob­tained at the New-​York His­tor­ical So­ci­ety.”

“Yes. So it should have been. But some of the deeds are in­ex­pli­ca­bly miss­ing from their records: a swath of prop­er­ties along River­side Drive, to be pre­cise. I had a man at the So­ci­ety look for them, with­out suc­cess. He was most put out by their ab­sence.”

“So you’ve come to me.”

In re­sponse, Pen­der­gast held out the pack­age.

Wren took it ea­ger­ly, turned it over rev­er­ent­ly in his hands, then slit the wrap­ping pa­per with his knife. He placed the pack­age on the ta­ble and be­gan care­ful­ly peel­ing away the bub­ble wrap. He seemed to have abrupt­ly for­got­ten Pen­der­gast’s pres­ence.

“I’ll be back to ex­am­ine the be­quest—and re­trieve my il­lu­mi­nat­ed manuscript—in fortyeight hours,” Pen­der­gast said.

“It may take longer,” Wren replied, his back to Pen­der­gast. “For all I know, the be­quest no longer ex­ists.”

“I have great faith in your abil­ities.”

Wren mur­mured some­thing in­audi­ble. He donned the gloves, gen­tly un­buck­led the cloi­sonn enam­el fas­ten­ings, stared hun­gri­ly at the hand-​let­tered pages.

“And Wren?”

Some­thing in Pen­der­gast’s tone made the old man look over his shoul­der.

“May I sug­gest you find the be­quest first, and con­tem­plate the manuscript lat­er? Re­mem­ber what hap­pened two years ago.”

Wren’s face took on a look of shock. “Agent Pen­der­gast, you know I al­ways put your in­ter­ests first.”

Pen­der­gast looked in­to the crafty old face, now full of hurt and in­dig­na­tion. “Of course you do.”

And then he abrupt­ly van­ished in­to the shad­owy stacks.

Wren blinked his yel­low eyes, then turned his at­ten­tion back to the il­lu­mi­nat­ed manuscript. He knew ex­act­ly where the be­quest was—it would be a work of fif­teen min­utes to lo­cate. That left forty-​sev­en and three-​quar­ter hours to ex­am­ine the manuscript. Si­lence quick­ly re­turned. It was al­most as if Pen­der­gast’s pres­ence had been mere­ly a dream.

SEV­EN

THE MAN WALKED up River­side Drive, his steps short and pre­cise, the met­al fer­rule of his cane mak­ing a rhyth­mic click on the as­phalt. The sun was ris­ing over the Hud­son Riv­er, turn­ing the wa­ter an oily pink, and the trees in River­side Park stood silent­ly, mo­tion­less, in the chill au­tumn air. He in­haled deeply, his ol­fac­to­ry sense work­ing through the track­less for­est of city smells: the tar and diesel com­ing off the wa­ter, damp­ness from the park, the sour reek of the streets.

He turned the cor­ner, then paused. In the ris­ing light, the short street was de­sert­ed. One block over, he could hear the sounds of traf­fic on Broad­way, see the faint light from the shops. But here it was very qui­et. Most of the build­ings on the street were aban­doned. His own build­ing, in fact, stood be­side a site where, many years be­fore, a small rid­ing ring for Man­hat­tan’s wealth­iest young ladies had been. The ring was long gone, of course, but in its place stood a small, un­named ser­vice drive off the main trunk of River­side, which served to in­su­late his build­ing from traf­fic. The is­land formed by the ser­vice drive sport­ed grass and trees, and a stat­ue of Joan of Arc. It was one of the qui­eter, more for­got­ten places on the is­land of Man­hat­tan—for­got­ten by all, per­haps, save him. It had the ad­di­tion­al ad­van­tage of be­ing roamed by noc­tur­nal gangs and hav­ing a rep­uta­tion for be­ing dan­ger­ous. It was all very con­ve­nient.

He slipped down a car­riage­way, through a side door and in­to a close, musty space. By feel—it was dark, with the win­dows se­cure­ly board­ed over—he made his way down a dim cor­ri­dor, then an­oth­er, to a clos­et door. He opened it. The clos­et was emp­ty. He stepped in­side, turned a knob in the rear wall. It opened noise­less­ly, re­veal­ing stone steps lead­ing down.

At the bot­tom of the steps, the man stopped, feel­ing along the wall un­til his fin­gers found the an­cient light switch. He twist­ed it, and a se­ries of bare bulbs came on, il­lu­mi­nat­ing an old stone pas­sage­way, dank and drip­ping with mois­ture. He hung his black coat on a brass hook, placed his bowler hat on an ad­join­ing hat rack, and dropped his cane in­to an um­brel­la stand. Then he moved down the pas­sage­way, feet ring­ing against the stonework, un­til he reached a heavy iron door, a rect­an­gu­lar slot set high in­to its face.

The slot was closed.

The man paused a mo­ment out­side the room. Then he reached in­to his pock­et for a key, un­locked the iron door, and pushed it open.

Light flood­ed in­to the cell, re­veal­ing a blood­stained floor and wall, chains and cuffs ly­ing in dis­or­ga­nized bands of met­al.

The room was emp­ty. Of course. He swept it with his eyes, smiled. Ev­ery­thing was ready for the next oc­cu­pant.

He closed the door and locked it again, then pro­ceed­ed down the hall to a large sub­ter­ranean room. Switch­ing on the bright elec­tric lights, he ap­proached a stain­less steel gur­ney. Atop the gur­ney lay an old-​fash­ioned Glad­stone bag and two jour­nals, bound in cheap red plas­tic. The man picked up the top jour­nal, turn­ing its pages with great in­ter­est. It was all so won­der­ful­ly iron­ic. By rights, these jour­nals should have per­ished in flames long ago. In the wrong hands, they could have done a great deal of dam­age. Would have done a great deal of dam­age, had he not come along at the right time. But now, they were back where they be­longed.

He re­placed the jour­nal and, more slow­ly, opened the med­ical valise.

In­side, a cylin­dri­cal con­tain­er of hard gray hos­pi­tal plas­tic lay on a smok­ing bed of dry ice chips. The man pulled on a pair of la­tex gloves. Then he re­moved the con­tain­er from the brief­case, placed it on the gur­ney, and un­latched it. He reached in, and, with in­fi­nite cau­tion, with­drew a long, gray, ropy mass. Had it not been for the blood and mat­ter that still ad­hered to the tis­sue, it would have re­sem­bled the kind of heavy ca­ble that sup­ports a bridge, the red­streaked out­er lin­ing filled with thou­sands of tiny, fi­brous strings. A small smile curled the man’s lips, and his pale eyes glit­tered as he stared. He held the mass up to the light, which shone through it with a glow. Then he brought it to a near­by sink, where he care­ful­ly ir­ri­gat­ed it with a bot­tle of dis­tilled wa­ter, wash­ing off the bone chips and oth­er of­fal. Next, he placed the cleaned or­gan in a large ma­chine, closed its top, and turned it on. A high whine filled the stone room as the tis­sue was blend­ed in­to a paste.

At timed in­ter­vals, the man con­sult­ed the pages of a note­book, then added some chem­icals through a rub­ber blad­der in the ma­chine’s lid with deft, pre­cise move­ments. The paste light­ened; clar­ified. And then, his move­ments ev­er so care­ful, the man de­tached the ul­tra­blender and poured the paste in­to a long stain­less tube, placed it in a near­by cen­trifuge, closed the cov­er, and turned a switch. There was a hum­ming noise that grew rapid­ly in pitch, then sta­bi­lized.

Cen­trifug­ing out the serum would take 20.5 min­utes. It was on­ly the first stage in a long pro­cess. One had to be ab­so­lute­ly pre­cise. The slight­est er­ror at any step on­ly mag­ni­fied it­self un­til the fi­nal prod­uct was use­less. But now that he’d de­cid­ed to do all fur­ther har­vest­ing here in the lab­ora­to­ry, rather than in the field, no doubt things would pro­ceed with even greater con­sis­ten­cy.

He turned to the sink, in which sat a large, care­ful­ly rolled tow­el. Tak­ing it by one edge, he raised it, let­ting it un­roll. Half a dozen blood­stained scalpels slid in­to the basin. He be­gan to clean them, slow­ly, lov­ing­ly. They were the old-​fash­ioned kind: heavy, nice­ly bal­anced. Of course, they weren’t as handy as the mod­ern Japanese mod­els with the snap-​in blades, but they felt good in the hand. And they kept an edge. Even in this age of ul­tra­blenders and DNA se­quenc­ing ma­chines, old tools still had their place.

Plac­ing the scalpels in an au­to­clave to dry and ster­il­ize, the man re­moved the gloves, washed his hands very care­ful­ly, then dried them on a linen tow­el. He glanced over, check­ing the progress of the cen­trifuge. And then he moved to a small cab­inet, opened it, and with­drew a piece of pa­per. He placed it on the gur­ney, be­side the brief­case. On the pa­per, in an el­egant cop­per­plate script, were five names:

Pen­der­gast

Kel­ly

Smith­back

O’Shaugh­nessy

Puck

The last name had al­ready been crossed out. Now, the man plucked a foun­tain pen of in­laid lac­quer from his pock­et. And then—neat­ly, for­mal­ly, with long slen­der fin­gers—he drew a beau­ti­ful­ly pre­cise line through the fourth name, end­ing with a lit­tle curlicue flour­ish.

EIGHT

AT HIS FA­VORITE neigh­bor­hood cof­fee shop, Smith­back lin­gered over his break­fast, know­ing the Mu­se­um did not open its doors un­til ten. Once more, he glanced over the pho­to­copies of ar­ti­cles he’d culled from back is­sues of the Times. The more he read them, the more he was sure the old mur­ders were the work of Leng. Even the ge­og­ra­phy seemed con­sis­tent: most of the mur­ders had tak­en place on the Low­er East Side and along the wa­ter­front, about as far away from River­side Drive as you could get.

At nine-​thir­ty he called for the bill and set off down Broad­way for a brac­ing fall walk to the Mu­se­um. He be­gan to whis­tle. While he still had the re­la­tion­ship with No­ra to re­pair, he was an eter­nal op­ti­mist. If he could bring her the in­for­ma­tion she want­ed on a sil­ver plat­ter, that would be a start. She couldn’t stay mad at him for­ev­er. They had so much in com­mon, shared both good and bad times to­geth­er. If on­ly she didn’t have such a tem­per!

He had oth­er rea­sons to be hap­py. Al­though ev­ery now and then his in­stincts failed him—the thing with Fairhaven was a good ex­am­ple—most of the time his jour­nal­ist’s nose was in­fal­li­ble. And his ar­ti­cle on Leng had got­ten off to a good start. Now all he need­ed was to dig up a few per­son­al nuggets to bring the mad­man to life—maybe even a pho­to­graph. And he had an idea of where to get all of it.

He blinked in the bright fall light, in­haled the crisp air.

Years be­fore—dur­ing the time he’d spent writ­ing what had start­ed out as a his­to­ry of the Mu­se­um’s su­per­sti­tion ex­hi­bi­tion—Smith­back had grown to know the Mu­se­um very well. He knew its ec­cen­tric ways, the ins and outs, the short­cuts, the cu­riosa, the hid­den cor­ners and mis­cel­la­neous archives. If there was any in­for­ma­tion about Leng hid­den with­in those walls, Smith­back would find it.

When the great bronze doors opened, Smith­back made sure he buried him­self with­in the throngs, stay­ing as anony­mous as pos­si­ble. He paid the sug­gest­ed ad­mis­sion and pinned on his but­ton, strolling through the Great Ro­tun­da, gap­ing like all the oth­ers at the soar­ing skele­tons.

Soon he broke away from the tourists and worked his way down to the first floor. One of the least known, but most use­ful, archives in the Mu­se­um was here. Col­lo­qui­al­ly known as Old Records, it housed cab­inet up­on fil­ing cab­inet of per­son­nel records, run­ning from the Mu­se­um’s found­ing to about 1986, when the sys­tem was com­put­er­ized and moved to a gleam­ing new space on the fourth floor and giv­en the shiny new name of Hu­man Re­sources. How well he re­mem­bered Old Records: the smell of moth­balls and foxed pa­per, the end­less files on long-​dead Mu­se­um em­ploy­ees, as­so­ciates, and re­searchers. Old Records still con­tained some sen­si­tive ma­te­ri­al, and Smith­back re­mem­bered that it was kept locked and guard­ed. The last time he was in here, it was on of­fi­cial busi­ness and he had a signed per­mis­sion. This time, he was go­ing to have to use a dif­fer­ent ap­proach. The guards might rec­og­nize him; then again, af­ter sev­er­al years, they might not.

He walked through the vast Hall of Birds, echo­ing and emp­ty, con­sid­er­ing how best to pro­ceed. Soon he found him­self be­fore the twin riv­et­ed cop­per doors la­beled Per­son­nel Records, Old. Peer­ing through the crack be­tween them, he could see two guards, sit­ting at a ta­ble, drink­ing cof­fee.

Two guards. Twice the chance of be­ing rec­og­nized, half the chance of pulling a fast one on them. He had to get rid of one.

He took a turn around the hall, still think­ing, as a plan be­gan to take shape. Abrupt­ly, he turned on his heel and walked out in­to the cor­ri­dor, up the stairs, and in­to the huge Selous Memo­ri­al Hall. There, the usu­al cadre of cheer­ful old ladies had tak­en their places at the in­for­ma­tion desk. Smith­back plucked the vis­itor’s but­ton from his lapel and tossed it in a trash bin. Then he strode up to the near­est la­dy.

“I’m Pro­fes­sor Smith­back,” he said, with a smile.

“Yes, Pro­fes­sor. What can I do for you?” The la­dy had curly white hair and vi­olet eyes.

Smith­back gave her his most charm­ing smile. “May I use your phone?”

“Of course.” The wom­an hand­ed him the phone from un­der the desk. Smith­back looked through the near­by mu­se­um phone book, found the num­ber, and di­aled.

“Old Records,” a gruff voice an­swered.

“Is Rook on du­ty there?” Smith­back barked.

“Rook? There’s no Rook here. You got the wrong num­ber, pal.”

Smith­back ex­pelled an ir­ri­tat­ed stream of air in­to the phone. “Who’s on in Records, then?”

“It’s me and O’Neal. Who’s this?” The voice was tru­cu­lent, stupid.

“ ‘Me’? Who’s ‘me’?”

“What’s your prob­lem, friend?” came the re­ply.

Smith­back put on his cold­est, most of­fi­cious voice. “Al­low me to re­peat my­self. May I be so pre­sump­tu­ous to ask who you are, sir, and whether you want to be writ­ten up for in­sub­or­di­na­tion?”

“I’m Bul­ger, sir.” The guard’s gruff man­ner wilt­ed in­stant­ly.

“Bul­ger. I see. You’re the man I need to talk to. This is Mr. Hrum­rehmen in Hu­man Re­sources.” He spoke rapid­ly and an­gri­ly, de­lib­er­ate­ly gar­bling the name.

“Yes, I’m sor­ry, I didn’t re­al­ize. How can I help you, Mr.—?”

“You cer­tain­ly can help me, Bul­ger. There’s a prob­lem here with cer­tain, ah, as­sev­er­ations in your per­son­nel file, Bul­ger.”

“What kind of prob­lem?” The man sound­ed suit­ably alarmed.

“It’s con­fi­den­tial. We’ll dis­cuss it when you get here.”

“When?”

“Now, of course.”

“Yes, sir, but I didn’t catch your name—”

“And tell O’Neal I’m send­ing some­one down to re­view your pro­ce­dures in the mean­time. We’ve had some dis­turb­ing re­ports about lax­ity.”

“Yes, sir, of course, but—?”

Smith­back re­placed the phone. He looked up to find the el­der­ly vol­un­teer eye­ing him cu­ri­ous­ly, even sus­pi­cious­ly.

“What was that all about, Pro­fes­sor?”

Smith­back grinned and drew a hand over his cowlick. “Just a lit­tle trick on a co-​work­er. We’ve got this run­ning joke, see . . . Got­ta do some­thing to light­en up this old pile.”

She smiled. The dear in­no­cent, Smith­back thought a lit­tle guilti­ly as he made a bee­line back down the stairs to Old Records. On the way, he passed one of the guards he’d seen through the crack: huff­ing down the hall, bel­ly jig­gling as he walked, pan­ic writ large on his face. The Hu­man Re­sources of­fice at the Mu­se­um was a no­to­ri­ous­ly feared place, over­staffed like the rest of the ad­min­is­tra­tion. It would take the guard ten min­utes to get there, ten min­utes to wan­der around look­ing for the nonex­is­tent Mr. Hrum­rehmen, and ten min­utes to get back. That would give Smith­back thir­ty min­utes to talk his way in­side and find what he was look­ing for. It wasn’t a lot of time, but Smith­back knew the Mu­se­um’s archival sys­tems in­side and out. He had in­fi­nite con­fi­dence in his abil­ity to find what he need­ed in short or­der.

Once again, he strode down the hall to the cop­per doors of Old Records. He straight­ened his shoul­ders, took a deep breath. Rais­ing one hand, he knocked im­pe­ri­ous­ly.

The door was opened by the re­main­ing se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer. He looked young, bare­ly old enough to be out of high school. He was al­ready spooked. “Yes, how can I help you?”

Smith­back grasped the man’s sur­prised, limp hand while step­ping in­side at the same time.

“O’Neal? I’m Mau­rice Fan­nin from Hu­man Re­sources. They sent me down here to straight­en things out.”

“Straight­en things out?”

Smith­back slid his way in­side, look­ing at the rows of old met­al fil­ing cab­inets, the scarred ta­ble cov­ered with foam cof­fee cups and cigarette butts, the piss-​yel­low walls.

“This is a dis­grace,” he said.

There was an un­com­fort­able si­lence.

Smith­back drilled his eyes in­to O’Neal. “We’ve been do­ing a lit­tle look­ing in­to your area here, and let me tell you, O’Neal, we are not pleased. Not pleased at all.”

O’Neal was im­me­di­ate­ly and ut­ter­ly cowed. “I’m sor­ry, sir. Maybe you should talk to my su­per­vi­sor, Mr. Bul­ger—”

“Oh, we are. We’re hav­ing a long dis­cus­sion with him.” Smith­back looked around again. “When was the last time you had a file check, for ex­am­ple?”

“A what?”

“A file check. When was the last time, O’Neal?”

“Er, I don’t know what that is. My su­per­vi­sor didn’t tell me any­thing about a file check—”

“Strange, he thought you knew all about the pro­ce­dure. Now, that’s what I mean here, O’Neal: slop­py. Very slop­py. Well, from now on, we will be re­quir­ing a month­ly file check.” Smith­back nar­rowed his eyes, strode over to a fil­ing cab­inet, pulled on a draw­er. It was, as he ex­pect­ed, locked.

“It’s locked,” said the guard.

“I can see that. Any id­iot can see that.” He rat­tled the han­dle. “Where’s the key?” “Over there.” The poor guard nod­ded to­ward a wall box. It, too, was locked. It oc­curred to Smith­back that the cli­mate of fear and in­tim­ida­tion the new Mu­se­um ad­min­is­tra­tion had fos­tered was prov­ing most help­ful. The man was so ter­ri­fied, the last thing he would think of do­ing was chal­leng­ing Smith­back or ask­ing for his ID.

“And the key to that?”

“On my chain.”

Smith­back looked around again, his quick eyes tak­ing in ev­ery de­tail un­der the pre­tense of look­ing for fur­ther vi­ola­tions. The fil­ing cab­inets had la­bels on them, each with a date. The dates seemed to run back to 1865, the found­ing year of the Mu­se­um.

Smith­back knew that any out­side re­searchers who were is­sued a pass to the col­lec­tions would have to have been ap­proved by a com­mit­tee of cu­ra­tors. Their de­lib­er­ations, and the files the ap­pli­cant had to fur­nish, should still be in here. Leng al­most cer­tain­ly had such a col­lec­tions pass. If his file were still here, it would con­tain a wealth of per­son­al in­for­ma­tion: full name, ad­dress, ed­uca­tion, de­grees, re­search spe­cial­iza­tion, list of pub­li­ca­tions—per­haps even copies of some of those pub­li­ca­tions. It might even con­tain a pho­to­graph.

He rapped with a knuck­le on the cab­inet marked 1880. “Like this file. When was the last time you file-​checked this draw­er?”

“Ah, as far as I know, nev­er.”

“Nev­er?” Smith­back sound­ed in­cred­ulous. “Well, what are you wait­ing for?”

The guard hus­tled over, un­locked the wall cab­inet, fum­bled for the right key, and un­locked the draw­er.

“Now let me show you how to do a file check.” Smith­back opened the draw­er and plunged his hands in­to the files, ri­fling them, stir­ring up a cloud of dust, think­ing fast. A yel­lowed in­dex card was pok­ing from the first file, and he whipped it out. It list­ed ev­ery file in the draw­er by name, al­pha­bet­ized, dat­ed, cross-​ref­er­enced. This was beau­ti­ful. Thank God for the ear­ly Mu­se­um bu­reau­crats.

“See, you start with this in­dex card.” He waved it in the guard’s face.

The guard nod­ded.

“It lists ev­ery file in the cab­inet. Then you check to see if all the files are there. Sim­ple. That’s a file check.”

“Yes, sir.”

Smith­back quick­ly scanned the list of names on the card. No Leng. He shoved the card back and slammed the draw­er.

“Now we’ll check 1879. Open the draw­er, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

Smith­back drew out the 1879 in­dex card. Again, no Leng was list­ed. “You’ll need to in­sti­tute much more care­ful pro­ce­dures down here, O’Neal. These are ex­treme­ly valu­able his­tor­ical files. Open the next one. ’78.”

“Yes, sir.”

Damn. Still no Leng.

“Let’s take a quick look at some of the oth­ers.” Smith­back had him open up more cab­inets and check the yel­low in­dex cards on each, all the while giv­ing O’Neal a steady stream of ad­vice about the im­por­tance of file-​check­ing. The years crept in­ex­orably back­ward, and Smith­back be­gan to de­spair.

And then, in 1870, he found the name. Leng.

His heart quick­ened. For­get­ting all about the guard, Smith­back flipped quick­ly through the files them­selves, paus­ing at the Ls. Here he slowed, care­ful­ly looked at each one, then looked again. He went through the Ls three times. But the cor­re­spond­ing Leng file was miss­ing.

Smith­back felt crushed. It had been such a good idea.

He straight­ened up, looked at the guard’s fright­ened, ea­ger face. The whole idea was a fail­ure. What a waste of en­er­gy and bril­liance, fright­en­ing this poor guy for noth­ing. It meant start­ing over again, from scratch. But first, he’d bet­ter get his ass out of there be­fore Bul­ger re­turned, dis­grun­tled, spoil­ing for an ar­gu­ment.

“Sir?” the guard prompt­ed.

Smith­back weari­ly closed the draw­er. He glanced at his watch. “I have to be get­ting back. Car­ry on. You’re do­ing a good job here, O’Neal. Keep it up.” He turned to go.

“Mr. Fan­nin?”

For a mo­ment Smith­back won­dered who the man was talk­ing to. Then he re­mem­bered. “Yes?”

“Do the car­bons need a file check al­so?”

“Car­bons?” Smith­back paused.

“The ones in the vault.”

“Vault?”

“The vault. Back there.”

“Er, yes. Of course. Thank you, O’Neal. My over­sight. Show me the vault.”

The young guard led the way through a rear door to a large, old safe with a nick­el wheel and a heavy steel door. “In here.”

Smith­back’s heart sank. It looked like Fort Knox. “Can you open this?”

“It’s not locked any­more. Not since the high-​se­cu­ri­ty area was opened.”

“I see. What are these car­bons?”

“Du­pli­cates of the files back there.”

“Let’s take a look. Open it up.”

O’Neal wres­tled the door open. It re­vealed a small room, crammed with cab­inets. “Let’s take a look at, say, 1870.”

The guard glanced around. “There it is.”

Smith­back made a bee­line for the draw­er, yank­ing it open. The files were on some ear­ly form of pho­to­copy pa­per, like glossy sepia-​toned pho­tographs, fad­ed and blurred. He quick­ly pawed through to the Ls.

There it was. A se­cu­ri­ty clear­ance for Enoch Leng, dat­ed 1870: a few sheets, tis­sue-​thin, fad­ed to light brown, cov­ered in long spi­dery script. With one swift stroke Smith­back slipped them out of the file and in­to his jack­et pock­et, cov­er­ing the mo­tion with a loud cough.

He turned around. “Very good. All this will need to be file-​checked, too, of course.”

He stepped out of the vault. “Lis­ten, O’Neal, oth­er than the file check, you’re do­ing a fine job down here. I’ll put in a good word for you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Fan­nin. I try, I re­al­ly do—”

“Wish I could say the same for Bul­ger. Now there’s some­one with an at­ti­tude.”

“You’re right, sir.”

“Good day, O’Neal.” And Smith­back beat a hasty re­treat.

He was just in time. In the hall, he again passed Bul­ger, strid­ing back, his face red and splotchy, thumbs hooked in his belt loops, lips and bel­ly thrust for­ward ag­gres­sive­ly, keys sway­ing and jin­gling. He looked pissed.

As Smith­back made for the near­est ex­it, it al­most felt as if the pil­fered pa­pers were burn­ing a hole in the lin­ing of his jack­et.

The Old, Dark House

ONE

SAFE­LY ON THE street, Smith­back ducked through the Sev­en­ty-​sev­enth Street gate in­to Cen­tral Park and set­tled on a bench by the lake. The bril­liant fall morn­ing was al­ready warm­ing in­to a love­ly In­di­an sum­mer day. He breathed in the air and thought once again of what a daz­zling re­porter he was. Bryce Har­ri­man couldn’t have got­ten his hands on these pa­pers if he had a year to do it and all the make­up peo­ple of In­dus­tri­al Light and Mag­ic be­hind him. With a sense of de­li­cious an­tic­ipa­tion, he re­moved the three sheets from his pock­et. The faint scent of dust reached his nose as sun­light hit the top page.

It was an old brown car­bon, faint and dif­fi­cult to read. At the top of the first sheet was print­ed: Ap­pli­ca­tion for Ac­cess to the Col­lec­tions: The New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry Ap­pli­cant: Prof. Enoch Leng, M.D., Ph.D. (Ox­on.), O.B.E., F.R.S. &tc.

Rec­om­mender: Pro­fes­sor Tin­bury Mc­Fad­den, De­part­ment of Mam­mal­ogy Sec­on­der: Pro­fes­sor Au­gus­tus Spragg, De­part­ment of Or­nithol­ogy

The ap­pli­cant will please de­scribe to the com­mit­tee, in brief, the pur­pos­es of his ap­pli­ca­tion:

The ap­pli­cant, Dr. Enoch Leng, wish­es ac­cess to the col­lec­tions of an­thro­pol­ogy and mam­mal­ogy to con­duct re­search on tax­on­omy and clas­si­fi­ca­tion, and to pre­pare com­par­ative es­says in phys­ical an­thro­pol­ogy, hu­man os­te­ol­ogy, and phrenol­ogy.

The ap­pli­cant will please state his aca­dem­ic qual­ifi­ca­tions, giv­ing de­grees and hon­ors, with ap­pro­pri­ate dates:

The ap­pli­cant, Prof. Enoch Leng, grad­uat­ed Ar­tium Bac­calau­rei, with First Hon­ors, from Oriel Col­lege, Ox­ford; Doc­tor of Nat­ural Phi­los­ophy, New Col­lege, Ox­ford, with First Hon­ors; Elect­ed Fel­low of the Roy­al So­ci­ety 1865; Elect­ed to White’s, 1868; Award­ed Or­der of the Garter, 1869.

The ap­pli­cant will please state his per­ma­nent domi­cile and his cur­rent lodg­ings in New York, if dif­fer­ent:

Prof. Enoch Leng

891 River­side Drive,

New York New York

Re­search lab­ora­to­ry at

Shot­tum’s Cab­inet of Nat­ural Pro­duc­tions and Cu­riosi­ties

Cather­ine Street, New York

New York

The ap­pli­cant will please at­tach a list of pub­li­ca­tions, and will sup­ply off­prints of at least two for the re­view of the Com­mit­tee.

Smith­back looked through the pa­pers, but re­al­ized he had missed this cru­cial piece.

The dis­po­si­tion of the Com­mit­tee is pre­sent­ed be­low:

Pro­fes­sor is here­by giv­en per­mis­sion to the free and open use of the Col­lec­tions and Li­brary of the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry, this 27th Day of March, 1870.

Au­tho­rized Sig­na­to­ry: Tin­bury Mc­Fad­den

Signed: E. Leng.

Smith­back swore un­der his breath. He felt abrupt­ly de­flat­ed. This was thin—thin in­deed. It was too bad that Leng hadn’t got­ten his de­gree in Amer­ica—that would have been much eas­ier to fol­low up. But maybe he could pry the in­for­ma­tion out of Ox­ford over the tele­phone—al­though it was pos­si­ble the aca­dem­ic hon­ors were false. The list of pub­li­ca­tions would have been much eas­ier to check, and far most in­ter­est­ing, but there was no way he could go back and get it now. It had been such a good idea, and he’d pulled it off so well. Damn.

Smith­back searched through the pa­pers again. No pho­to­graph, no cur­ricu­lum vi­tae, no bi­og­ra­phy giv­ing place and date of birth. The on­ly thing here at all was an ad­dress.

Damn. Damn.

But then, a new thought came to him. He re­called the ad­dress was what No­ra had been try­ing to find. Here, at least, was a peace of­fer­ing.

Smith­back did a quick cal­cu­la­tion: 891 River­side lay up­town, in Harlem some­where. There were a lot of old man­sions still stand­ing along that stretch of River­side Drive: those that re­mained were most­ly aban­doned or bro­ken up in­to apart­ments. Chances were, of course, that Leng’s house had been torn down a long time ago. But there was a chance it might still stand. That might make a good pic­ture, even if it was an old wreck. Es­pe­cial­ly if it was an old wreck. Come to think of it, there might even be bod­ies buried about the premis­es, or walled up in the base­ment. Per­haps Leng’s own body might be there, molder­ing in a cor­ner. That would please O’Shaugh­nessy, help No­ra. And what a great cap­stone for his own ar­ti­cle—the in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist find­ing the corpse of Amer­ica’s first se­ri­al killer. Of course, it was very un­like­ly, but even so . . .

Smith­back checked his watch. Al­most one o’clock.

Oh, God. Such a bril­liant bit of de­tec­tive work and all he’d re­al­ly got was the damn ad­dress. Well, it was a mat­ter of an hour or two to sim­ply go check and see if the house was still stand­ing.

Smith­back stuffed the pa­pers back in­to his pock­et and strolled to Cen­tral Park West. There wasn’t much point in flag­ging down a cab—they’d refuse to take him that far up­town, and once there he’d nev­er find a cab to take him home again. Even though it was broad day­light, he had no in­ten­tion of do­ing any wan­der­ing around in that dan­ger­ous neigh­bor­hood.

The best thing to do might be to rent a car. The Times had a spe­cial ar­range­ment with Hertz, and there was a branch not far away on Colum­bus. Now that he thought about it, if the house did still ex­ist, he’d prob­ably want to check in­side, talk to cur­rent ten­ants, find out if any­thing un­usu­al had come to light dur­ing ren­ova­tions, that sort of thing.

It might be dark be­fore he was through.

That did it: he was rent­ing a car.

Forty-​five min­utes lat­er, he was head­ing up Cen­tral Park West in a sil­ver Tau­rus. His spir­its had risen once again. This still could be a big sto­ry. Af­ter he’d checked on the house, he could do a search of the New York Pub­lic Li­brary, see if he could turn up any pub­lished ar­ti­cles of Leng. Maybe he could even search the po­lice files to see if any­thing un­usu­al had hap­pened in the vicin­ity of Leng’s house dur­ing the time he was alive.

There were still a lot of strong leads to fol­low up here. Leng could be as big as Jack the Rip­per. The sim­ilar­ities were there. All it took was a jour­nal­ist to make it come alive.

With enough in­for­ma­tion, this could be his next book.

He, Smith­back, would be a shoo-​in for that Pulitzer which al­ways seemed to elude him. And even more im­por­tant—well, just as im­por­tant, at least—he’d have a chance to square him­self with No­ra. This would save her and Pen­der­gast a lot of time wad­ing through city deeds. And it would please Pen­der­gast, who he sensed was a silent al­ly. Yes: all in all, this was go­ing to work out well.

Reach­ing the end of the park, he head­ed west on Cathe­dral Park­way, then turned north on­to River­side Drive. As he passed 125th Street he slowed, scan­ning the ad­dress­es of the bro­ken build­ings. Six Hun­dred Sev­en­ty. Sev­en Hun­dred One. An­oth­er ten blocks went by. As he con­tin­ued north, he slowed still fur­ther, hold­ing his breath in an­tic­ipa­tion.

And then his eye alight­ed on 891 River­side Drive.

The house was still stand­ing. He couldn’t be­lieve his luck: Leng’s own house.

He gave it a long, search­ing look as he passed by, then turned right at the next street, 138th, and cir­cled the block, heart beat­ing fast.

Eight Nine­ty-​one was an old Beaux Arts man­sion that took up the en­tire block, sport­ing a pil­lared en­try­way, fes­tooned with Baroque Re­vival dec­ora­tions. There was even a damn coat of arms carved above the door. It was set back from the street by a small ser­vice road, form­ing a tri­an­gle-​shaped is­land that ad­joined River­side Drive. There were no rows of buzzers be­side the door, and the first-​floor win­dows had been se­cure­ly board­ed up and cov­ered with tin. The place, it seemed, had nev­er been bro­ken in­to apart­ments. Like so many old man­sions along the Drive, it had sim­ply been aban­doned years be­fore—too ex­pen­sive to main­tain, too ex­pen­sive to tear down, too ex­pen­sive to re­vamp. Al­most all such build­ings had re­vert­ed to the city for un­paid tax­es. The city sim­ply board­ed them up and ware­housed them.

He leaned over the pas­sen­ger seat, squint­ing for a bet­ter look. The up­per-​sto­ry win­dows were not board­ed up, and none of the panes ap­peared to be bro­ken. It was per­fect. It looked just like the house of a mass mur­der­er. Front page pho­to, here we come. Smith­back could just see his sto­ry gen­er­at­ing a po­lice search of the place, the dis­cov­ery of more bod­ies. This was get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter.

So how best to pro­ceed? A lit­tle peek through a win­dow might be in or­der—pro­vid­ed he could find a place to park.

Pulling away from the curb, he cir­cled the block again, then drove down River­side, look­ing for a park­ing spot. Con­sid­er­ing how poor the neigh­bor­hood was, there were a re­mark­able num­ber of cars: junkers, ag­ing El­do­ra­do pimp­mo­biles, fan­cy SU­Vs with huge speak­ers tilt­ing up from their rear beds. It was six or sev­en blocks be­fore he fi­nal­ly found a semi­le­gal park­ing spot on a side street off River­side. He should have hired a liv­ery driv­er, damn it, and had him wait while he in­spect­ed the house. Now, he had to walk nine blocks through Harlem. Just what he had tried to avoid.

Nudg­ing the rental car in­to the space, he glanced care­ful­ly around. Then he got out of the car, locked it, and—quick­ly, but not so quick­ly as to at­tract at­ten­tion—walked back up to 137th Street.

When he reached the cor­ner, he slowed, saun­ter­ing down the block un­til he came to the porte-​cochère en­trance. Here, he paused to look at the house more care­ful­ly, try­ing to look as ca­su­al as pos­si­ble.

It had once been very grand: a four-​sto­ry struc­ture of mar­ble and brick, with a slate mansard roof, oval win­dows, tow­ers, and a wid­ow’s walk. The fa­cade was en­crust­ed with carved lime­stone de­tails set in­to brick. The street­front was sur­round­ed by a tall spiked iron fence, bro­ken and rusty. The yard was filled with weeds and trash, along with a ri­ot of sumac and ailan­thus bush­es and a pair of dead oaks. Its dark-​browed up­per-​sto­ry win­dows looked out over the Hud­son and the North Riv­er Wa­ter Pol­lu­tion Con­trol Plant.

Smith­back shiv­ered, glanced around one more time, then crossed the ser­vice road and start­ed down the car­riage­way. Gang graf­fi­ti was sprayed all over the once el­egant mar­ble and brick. Wind­blown trash had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed sev­er­al feet deep in the re­cess­es. But in the rear of the car­riage drive, he could see a stout door made of oak. It, too, had been sprayed with graf­fi­ti, but still looked op­er­able. It had nei­ther win­dow nor peep­hole.

Smith­back slipped far­ther down the car­riage­way, keep­ing close to the out­side wall. The place stank of urine and fe­ces. Some­one had dropped a load of used di­apers be­side the door, and a pile of garbage bags lay in a cor­ner, torn apart by dogs and rats. As if on cue, an enor­mous­ly fat rat wad­dled out of the trash, drag­ging its bel­ly, looked in­so­lent­ly at him, then dis­ap­peared back in­to the garbage.

He no­ticed two small, oval win­dows, set on each side of the door. Both were cov­ered with tin, but there might be a way to pry one loose. Ad­vanc­ing, Smith­back care­ful­ly pressed his hand against the clos­est, test­ing it. It was sol­id as a rock: no cracks, no way to see in. The oth­er was just as care­ful­ly cov­ered. He in­spect­ed the seams, look­ing for holes, but there were none. He laid a hand on the oak­en door: again, it felt to­tal­ly sol­id. This house was locked up tight, nigh im­preg­nable. Per­haps it had been locked up since the time of Leng’s death. There might well be per­son­al items in­side. Once again, Smith­back won­dered if the re­mains of vic­tims might al­so be there.

Once the po­lice got their hands on the place, he’d lose his chance to learn any­thing more.

It would be very in­ter­est­ing to see in­side.

He looked up, his eye fol­low­ing the lines of the house. He’d had some rock climb­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, gained from a trip to the canyon coun­try of Utah. The trip where he’d met No­ra. He stepped away, study­ing the fa­cade. There were lots of cor­nices and carv­ings that would make good hand­holds. Here, away from the street, he wasn’t as like­ly to be no­ticed. With a lit­tle luck, he might be able to climb to one of the sec­ond-​sto­ry win­dows. Just for a look.

He glanced back down the car­riage­way. The street was de­sert­ed, the house death­ly silent.

Smith­back rubbed his hands to­geth­er, smoothed his cowlick. And then he set his left wing tip in­to a gap in the low­er course of ma­son­ry and be­gan to climb.

TWO

CAP­TAIN CUSTER CHECKED the clock on the wall of his of­fice. It was near­ly noon. He felt a growl in his ca­pa­cious stom­ach and wished, for at least the twen­ti­eth time, that noon would hur­ry up and come so he could head out to Dil­ly’s Deli, pur­chase a dou­ble corned beef and swiss on rye with ex­tra mayo, and place the mon­strous sand­wich in his mouth. He al­ways got hun­gry when he was ner­vous, and to­day he was very, very ner­vous. It had been bare­ly forty-​eight hours since he’d been put in charge of the Sur­geon case, but al­ready he was get­ting im­pa­tient calls. The may­or had called, the com­mis­sion­er had called. The three mur­ders had the en­tire city close to pan­ick­ing. And yet he had noth­ing to re­port. The breath­ing space he’d bought him­self with that ar­ti­cle on the old bones was just about used up. The fifty de­tec­tives work­ing the case were des­per­ate­ly fol­low­ing up leads, for all the good it did them. But to where? Nowhere. He snort­ed, shook his head. In­com­pe­tent ass-​wipes.

His stom­ach growled again, loud­er this time. Pres­sure and ag­ita­tion en­cir­cled him like a damp bath­house tow­el. If this was what it felt like to be in charge of a big case, he wasn’t sure he liked it.

He glanced at the clock again. Five more min­utes. Not go­ing to lunch be­fore noon was a mat­ter of dis­ci­pline with him. As a po­lice of­fi­cer, he knew dis­ci­pline was key. That was what it was all about. He couldn’t let the pres­sure get to him.

He re­mem­bered how the com­mis­sion­er had stared side­long at him, back in that lit­tle hov­el on Doy­ers Street when he’d as­signed him the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Rock­er hadn’t seemed ex­act­ly con­fi­dent in his abil­ities. Custer re­mem­bered, all too clear­ly, his words of ad­vice: I’d sug­gest you get to work on this new case of yours. Get right to work. Catch that killer. You don’t want an­oth­er, fresh­er stiff turn­ing up on your watch—do you?

The minute hand moved an­oth­er notch.

Maybe more man­pow­er is the an­swer, he thought. He should put an­oth­er dozen de­tec­tives on that mur­der in the Mu­se­um Archives. That was the most re­cent mur­der, that’s where the fresh­est clues would be. That cu­ra­tor who’d found the corpse—the frosty bitch, what’s her name—had been pret­ty close-​mouthed. If he could—

And then, just as the sec­ond hand swept to­ward noon, he had the rev­ela­tion.

The Mu­se­um Archives. The Mu­se­um cu­ra­tor . . .

It was so over­whelm­ing, so blind­ing, that it tem­porar­ily drove all thoughts of corned beef from his head.

The Mu­se­um. The Mu­se­um was the cen­ter around which ev­ery­thing re­volved.

The third mur­der, the bru­tal op­er­ation? It took place in the Mu­se­um.

That ar­chae­ol­ogist, No­ra Kel­ly? Worked for the Mu­se­um.

The in­crim­inat­ing let­ter that re­porter, Smith­bank or what­ev­er, had leaked? The let­ter that start­ed the whole thing? Found in the Mu­se­um’s Archives.

That creepy old guy, Col­lopy, who’d au­tho­rized the re­moval of the let­ter? Di­rec­tor of the Mu­se­um.

Fairhaven? On the Mu­se­um’s board.

The nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry killer? Con­nect­ed to the Mu­se­um.

And the archivist him­self, Puck, had been mur­dered. Why? Be­cause he had dis­cov­ered some­thing. Some­thing in the Archives.

Custer’s mind, un­usu­al­ly clear, be­gan rac­ing over the pos­si­bil­ities, the myr­iad com­bi­na­tions and per­mu­ta­tions. What was need­ed was strong, de­ci­sive ac­tion. What­ev­er it was Puck had found, he would find, too. And that would be key to the mur­der­er.

There was no time to lose, not one minute.

He stood up and punched the in­ter­com. “Noyes? Get in here. Right away.”

The man was in the door­way even be­fore Custer’s fin­ger was off the but­ton.

“I want the top ten de­tec­tives as­signed to the Sur­geon case over here for a con­fi­den­tial brief­ing in my of­fice. Half an hour.”

“Yes, Cap­tain.” Noyes raised a quizzi­cal, but ap­pro­pri­ate­ly ob­se­quious, eye­brow.

“I’ve got it. Noyes, I’ve fig­ured it out.”

Noyes ceased his gum chew­ing. “Sir?”

“The key to the Sur­geon killings is in the Mu­se­um. It’s there, in the Archives. God knows, maybe even the mur­der­er him­self is in there, on the Mu­se­um’s staff.” Custer grabbed his jack­et. “We’re go­ing in there hard and fast, Noyes. They won’t even know what hit them.”

THREE

US­ING COR­NICES AND es­cutcheons as hand- and footholds, Smith­back slow­ly pulled his way up the wall to­ward the stone em­bra­sure of a sec­ond-​sto­ry win­dow. It had been hard­er than he ex­pect­ed, and he’d man­aged to scrape a cheek and mash a fin­ger in the pro­cess. And, of course, he was ru­in­ing a two-​hun­dred-​and-​fifty-​dol­lar pair of hand­made Ital­ian shoes. Maybe the Times would pay. Spread­ea­gled against the side of the house, he felt ridicu­lous­ly ex­posed. There must be an eas­ier way to win a Pulitzer, he thought. He grabbed for the win­dow ledge, pulled him­self up­ward with a grunt of ef­fort. Gain­ing the wide ledge, he re­mained there a mo­ment, catch­ing his breath, look­ing around. The street was still qui­et. No­body seemed to have no­ticed any­thing. He turned his at­ten­tion back to the rip­pled glass of the win­dow.

The room be­yond seemed ut­ter­ly emp­ty and dark. Dust motes hung in the ane­mic shafts of light that slant­ed in­ward. He thought he could make out a closed door in the far wall. But there was noth­ing to give him any in­di­ca­tion of what lay be­yond, in the rest of the house.

If he want­ed to learn any­thing more, he’d have to get in­side.

What could the harm be? The house had clear­ly been de­sert­ed for decades. It was prob­ably city prop­er­ty now, pub­lic prop­er­ty. He’d come this far, done this much. If he left now, he’d have to start all over again. The im­age of his ed­itor’s face, shak­ing a fist­ful of copy, eyes pop­ping with anger, filled his mind. If he was go­ing to charge them for the shoes, he bet­ter have some­thing to show for it.

He tried the win­dow, and, as ex­pect­ed, found it locked—or, per­haps, frozen shut with age. He ex­pe­ri­enced a mo­ment of in­de­ci­sion, looked around again. The thought of clam­ber­ing back down the wall was even less pleas­ant than climb­ing up had been. What he could see from the win­dow told him noth­ing. He had to find a way in—just for the briefest look. He sure as hell couldn’t stay on the ledge for­ev­er. If any­one hap­pened by and saw him . . .

And then he spot­ted the cop car a few blocks south on River­side Drive, cruis­ing slow­ly north. It would not be good at all if they caught sight of him up here—and he had no way to get down in time.

Quick­ly, he pulled off his jack­et, stuffed it in­to a ball, and placed it against one of the low­est of the large panes. Us­ing his shoul­der, he pressed un­til it gave with a sharp crack. He pried out the pieces of glass, laid them on the ledge, and crawled through.

In­side the room, he stood up and peered through the win­dow. All was calm; his en­try hadn’t been no­ticed. Then he turned around, lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly. Si­lence. He sniffed the air. It smelled, not un­pleas­ant­ly, of old wall­pa­per and dust—it was not the stale air he’d been ex­pect­ing. He took a few deep breaths.

Think of the sto­ry. Think of the Pulitzer. Think of No­ra. He would do a quick re­con­nais­sance and then get out.

He wait­ed, al­low­ing his eyes to ad­just to the dim­ness. There was a shelf in the back, and a sin­gle book lay on it. Smith­back walked over and picked it up. It was an old nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry trea­tise ti­tled Mol­lus­ca, with a gold en­grav­ing of a conch on the cov­er. Smith­back felt a slight quick­en­ing of his heart: a nat­ural his­to­ry book. He opened it, hop­ing to find a book­plate read­ing Ex Lib­ris Enoch Leng. But there was noth­ing. He flipped the pages, look­ing for notes, then put the book back.

Noth­ing else for it: time to ex­plore the house.

He care­ful­ly re­moved his shoes, placed them by the win­dow, and pro­ceed­ed in stockinged feet. With care­ful steps he made his way to the closed door. The floor creaked, and he stopped. But the pro­found si­lence re­mained. It was un­like­ly that any­one would be in the house—it looked like even the junkies and bums had been suc­cess­ful­ly kept out—but cau­tion would be wise nonethe­less.

He placed his hand on the door­knob, turned it ev­er so slow­ly, eased the door open an inch. He peered through the crack. Black­ness. He pushed it wider, al­low­ing the dim morn­ing light from the win­dow be­hind him to spill in­to the hall­way. He saw that it was very long, quite grand, with flocked wall­pa­per in a heavy green de­sign. On the walls, in gild­ed al­coves, were paint­ings draped with white sheets. The sheets clung to the heavy frames. At the far end of the hall, a broad set of mar­ble stairs swept down­ward, dis­ap­pear­ing in­to a pool of deep­er dark­ness. At the top of the stairs stood some­thing—a stat­ue, per­haps?—draped in yet an­oth­er white sheet.

Smith­back held his breath. It re­al­ly did look as if the house had been shut up and de­sert­ed since Leng’s death. It was fan­tas­tic. Could all this stuff be Leng’s?

He ven­tured a few steps down the hall. As he did so, the smell of mold and dust be­came suf­fused with some­thing less pleas­ant: some­thing or­gan­ic, sweet, de­cayed. It was as if the rot­ten old heart of the house had fi­nal­ly died.

Per­haps his sus­pi­cions were right, and Leng had en­tombed the bod­ies of his vic­tims be­hind the heavy Vic­to­ri­an wall­pa­per.

He paused, an arm’s length from one of the paint­ings. Cu­ri­ous, he reached out, took the cor­ner of the white sheet, and lift­ed. The rot­ting sheet fell away in a cloud of dust and tat­ters, and he stepped back, mo­men­tar­ily star­tled. A dark paint­ing stood re­vealed. Smith­back peered clos­er. It de­pict­ed a pack of wolves rip­ping apart a deer in a deep wood. It was ghoul­ish in its anatom­ical de­tail, but beau­ti­ful­ly ex­ecut­ed nev­er­the­less, and no doubt worth a for­tune. Cu­rios­ity aroused, Smith­back stepped to the next al­cove and plucked at the sheet, which al­so turned to pow­der at his touch. This paint­ing showed a whale hunt—a great sperm whale, draped with har­poon lines, thrash­ing about in its death throes, a huge jet of bright ar­te­ri­al blood ris­ing from its spouter, while its flukes dashed a boat­ful of har­poon­ers in­to the sea.

Smith­back could hard­ly be­lieve his luck. He had struck pay­dirt. But then, it wasn’t luck: it was the re­sult of hard work and care­ful re­search. Even Pen­der­gast hadn’t yet fig­ured out where Leng lived. This would re­deem his job at the Times, maybe even re­deem his re­la­tion­ship with No­ra. Be­cause he was sure that—what­ev­er in­for­ma­tion about Leng No­ra and Pen­der­gast were look­ing for—it was here.

Smith­back wait­ed, lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly, but there were no sounds from be­low. He moved down the car­pet­ed hall­way in slow, small, noise­less steps. Reach­ing the cov­ered stat­ue at the top of the ban­is­ter, he reached up and grasped at the sheet. As rot­ten as the oth­ers, it fell apart, drop­ping to the ground in a dis­solv­ing heap. A cloud of dust, dry rot, and mold bil­lowed up in­to the air.

At first Smith­back felt a fris­son of fear and in­com­pre­hen­sion at the sight, un­til his mind be­gan to un­der­stand just what he was look­ing at. It was, in fact, noth­ing more than a stuffed chim­panzee, hang­ing from a tree branch. Moths and rats had chewed away most of the face, leav­ing pits and holes that went down to brown bone. The lips were gone as well, giv­ing the chim­panzee the ag­onized grin of a mum­my. One ear hung by a thread of dried flesh, and even as Smith­back watched it fell to the ground with a soft thud. One of the chimp’s hands was hold­ing a wax fruit; the oth­er was clutch­ing its stom­ach, as if in pain. On­ly the beady glass eyes looked fresh, and they stared at Smith­back with ma­ni­acal in­ten­si­ty.

Smith­back felt his heart quick­en. Leng had, af­ter all, been a tax­onomist, col­lec­tor, and mem­ber of the Lyceum. Did he, like Mc­Fad­den and the rest, al­so have a col­lec­tion, a so­called cab­inet of cu­riosi­ties? Was this de­cayed chimp part of his col­lec­tion?

He again ex­pe­ri­enced a mo­ment of in­de­ci­sion. Should he leave now?

Tak­ing a step back from the chim­panzee, he peered down the stair­case. There was no light ex­cept what lit­tle fil­tered in from be­hind nailed boards and wood­en shut­ters. Grad­ual­ly, he be­gan to make out the dim out­lines of what seemed to be a re­cep­tion hall, com­plete with par­quet­ed oak floor. Ly­ing across it were ex­ot­ic skins—ze­bra, li­on, tiger, oryx, cougar. Ranged about were a num­ber of dark ob­jects, al­so draped in white sheets. The pan­eled walls were lined with old cab­inets, cov­ered with rip­pled glass doors. On them sat a num­ber of shad­owy ob­jects in dis­play cas­es, each with a brass plate af­fixed be­low it.

Yes, it was a col­lec­tion—Enoch Leng’s col­lec­tion.

Smith­back stood, clutch­ing the up­per knob of the ban­is­ter. De­spite the fact that noth­ing seemed to have been touched in the house for a hun­dred years, he could feel, deep in his gut, that the house hadn’t been emp­ty all this time. It looked, some­how, tend­ed. It be­spoke the pres­ence of a care­tak­er. He should turn around now and get out.

But the si­lence was pro­found, and he hes­itat­ed. The col­lec­tions be­low were worth a brief look. The in­te­ri­or of this house and its col­lec­tions would play a big role in his ar­ti­cle. He would go down for a mo­ment—just a mo­ment—to see what lay be­neath some of the sheets. He took a care­ful step, and then an­oth­er . . . and then he heard a soft click be­hind him. He spun around, heart pound­ing.

At first, noth­ing looked dif­fer­ent. And then he re­al­ized that the door from which he’d en­tered the hall­way must have closed. He breathed a sigh of re­lief: a gust of wind had come through the bro­ken win­dow and pushed the door shut.

He con­tin­ued down the sweep­ing mar­ble stair­case, hand clutch­ing the ban­is­ter. At the bot­tom he paused, screw­ing up his eyes, peer­ing in­to the even more pro­nounced dark­ness. The smell of rot and de­cay seemed stronger here.

His eyes fo­cused on an ob­ject in the cen­ter of the hall. One of the sheets had be­come so de­cayed that it had al­ready fall­en from the ob­ject it cov­ered. In the dark­ness it looked strange, mis­shapen. Smith­back took a step for­ward, peer­ing in­tent­ly—and sud­den­ly he re­al­ized what it was: the mount­ed spec­imen of a small car­niv­orous di­nosaur. But this di­nosaur was ex­traor­di­nar­ily well pre­served, with fos­silized flesh still cling­ing to the bones, some fos­silized in­ter­nal or­gans, even huge swaths of fos­silized skin. And cov­er­ing the skin were the un­mis­tak­able out­lines of feath­ers.

Smith­back stood, dumb­struck. It was an as­tound­ing spec­imen, of in­cal­cu­la­ble val­ue to sci­ence. Re­cent sci­en­tists had the­orized that some di­nosaurs, even T. Rex, might have had a cov­er­ing of feath­ers. Here was the proof. He glanced down: a brass la­bel read Un­known coelo­rap­tor from Red Deer Riv­er, Al­ber­ta, Cana­da.

Smith­back turned his at­ten­tion to the cab­inets, his eye falling on a se­ries of hu­man skulls. He moved clos­er. The lit­tle brass la­bel be­low them read: Ho­minidae se­ries from Swartkop­je Cave, South Africa. Smith­back could hard­ly be­lieve his eyes. He knew enough about ho­minid fos­sils to know they were ex­ceed­ing­ly rare. These dozen skulls were some of the most com­plete he had ev­er seen. They would rev­olu­tion­ize ho­minid stud­ies.

His eye caught a gleam from the next cab­inet. He stepped up to it. It was crowd­ed with gem­stones, and his eye land­ed on a large, green cut stone the size of a robin’s egg. The la­bel be­low read Di­amond, flaw­less spec­imen from Novot­ney Ter­ra, Siberia, 216 carats, be­lieved to be the on­ly green di­amond in ex­is­tence. Next to it, in an es­pe­cial­ly large case, were im­mense star ru­bies, sap­phires, and more ex­ot­ic stones with names he could hard­ly pro­nounce, wink­ing in the dim re­cess­es—gem­stones equal to the finest ones at the New York Mu­se­um. They seemed to have been giv­en star billing among the oth­er ex­hibits. On a near­by shelf lay a se­ries of gold crys­tals, per­fect­ly beau­ti­ful, lacy as frost, one as large as a grape­fruit. Be­low lay rows of tek­tites, most­ly black mis­shapen things, but some with a beau­ti­ful deep green or vi­olet col­or­ing.

Smith­back took a step back, his mind wrestling with the rich­ness and va­ri­ety of the dis­play. To think all this has stood here, in this ru­ined house, for a hun­dred years . . . He turned away and, on im­pulse, reached out and twitched off the sheet from a small spec­imen be­hind him. The sheet dis­solved, and a strange stuffed an­imal greet­ed his eye: a large, tapir­like mam­mal with a huge muz­zle, pow­er­ful forelegs, bul­bous head, and curv­ing tusks. It was like noth­ing he had ev­er seen be­fore; a freak. He bent down to make out the dim la­bel: On­ly known spec­imen of the Tusked Mega­lope­dus, de­scribed by Pliny, thought to be fan­tas­ti­cal un­til this spec­imen was shot in the Bel­gian Con­go by the En­glish ex­plor­er Col. Sir Hen­ry F. More­ton, in 1869.

Good lord, thought Smith­back: could it be true? A large mam­mal, com­plete­ly un­known to sci­ence? Or was it a fake? Sud­den­ly the thought oc­curred to him: could all these be fakes? But as he looked around, he re­al­ized they were not. Leng would not have col­lect­ed fakes, and even in the dim light he could see that these were re­al. These were re­al. And if the rest of the col­lec­tions in the house were like this, they con­sti­tut­ed pos­si­bly the great­est nat­ural his­to­ry col­lec­tion in the world. This was no mere cab­inet of cu­riosi­ties. It was too dark to take notes, but Smith­back knew he wouldn’t need notes: what he had seen had been im­print­ed up­on his mind for­ev­er.

On­ly once in a life­time was a re­porter giv­en such a sto­ry.

He jerked away an­oth­er sheet, and was greet­ed by the mas­sive, rear­ing fos­sil skele­ton of a short-​faced cave bear, caught in a silent roar, its black teeth like dag­gers. The en­graved brass la­bel on the oak mount­ing stand in­di­cat­ed it had been pulled from the Kutz Canyon Tar Pits, in New Mex­ico.

He whis­pered through the re­cep­tion hall on his stockinged feet, pulling off ad­di­tion­al sheets, ex­pos­ing a whole row of Pleis­tocene mam­mals—each one a mag­nif­icent spec­imen as fine or fin­er than any in a mu­se­um—end­ing with a se­ries of Ne­an­derthal skele­tons, per­fect­ly pre­served, some with weapons, tools, and one sport­ing some sort of neck­lace made out of teeth.

Glanc­ing to one side, he no­ticed a mar­ble arch­way lead­ing in­to a room be­yond. In its cen­ter of the room was a huge, pit­ted me­te­orite, at least eight feet in di­am­eter, sur­round­ed by rows up­on rows of ad­di­tion­al cab­inets.

It was ru­by in col­or.

This was al­most be­yond be­lief.

He looked away, turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the ob­jects ranged about ma­hogany shelves on a near­by wall. There were bizarre masks, flint spear­points, a skull in­laid with turquoise, be­jew­eled knives, toads in jars, thou­sands of but­ter­flies un­der glass: ev­ery­thing ar­ranged with the ut­most at­ten­tion to sys­tem­at­ics and clas­si­fi­ca­tion.

He no­ticed that the light fix­tures weren’t elec­tric. They were gas, each with a lit­tle pipe lead­ing up in­to a man­tle, cov­ered by a cut-​glass shade. It was in­cred­ible. It had to be Leng’s house, just as he had left it. It was as if he had walked out of the house, board­ed it up, and left . . .

Smith­back paused, his ex­cite­ment sud­den­ly abat­ing. Ob­vi­ous­ly, the house hadn’t re­mained like this, un­touched, since Leng’s death. There must be a care­tak­er who came reg­ular­ly. Some­body had put tin over the win­dows and draped the col­lec­tions. The feel­ing that the house was not emp­ty, that some­one was still there, swept over him again.

The si­lence; the watch­ful ex­hibits and grotesque spec­imens; the over­pow­er­ing dark­ness that lay in the cor­ners of the room—and, most of all, the ris­ing stench of rot—brought a grow­ing un­ease that would not be de­nied. He shud­dered in­vol­un­tar­ily. What was he do­ing? There was al­ready enough here for a Pulitzer. He had the sto­ry: now, be smart and get the hell out.

He turned and swift­ly climbed the stairs, pass­ing the chim­panzee and the paint­ings—and then he paused. All the doors along the hall were closed, and it seemed even dark­er than it had a few min­utes be­fore. He re­al­ized he had for­got­ten which door he had come through. It was near the end of the hall, that much he re­mem­bered. He ap­proached the most like­ly, tried the han­dle, and to his sur­prise found it locked. Must have guessed wrong, he thought, mov­ing to the next.

That, too, was locked.

With a ris­ing sense of alarm he tried the door on the oth­er side. It was locked, as well. So was the next, and the next. With a chill prick­ling his spine, he tried the rest—all, ev­ery one, se­cure­ly locked.

Smith­back stood in the dark hall­way, try­ing to con­trol the sud­den pan­ic that threat­ened to par­alyze his limbs.

He was locked in.

FOUR

CUSTER’S UN­MARKED CRUIS­ER pulled up with a sat­is­fy­ing squeal of rub­ber be­fore the Mu­se­um’s se­cu­ri­ty en­trance, five squad cars skid­ding up around him, sirens wail­ing, light bars throw­ing red and white stripes across the Ro­manesque Re­vival fa­cade. He rolled out of the squad car and strode de­ci­sive­ly up the stone steps, a sea of blue in his wake.

At the im­promp­tu meet­ing with his top de­tec­tives, and then in the ride up­town to the Mu­se­um, the the­ory that had hit him like a thun­der­clap be­came a firm, un­shak­able con­vic­tion. Sur­prise and speed is the way to go in this case, he thought as he looked up at the huge pile of gran­ite. Hit ’em hard and fast, leave them reel­ing—that was what his in­struc­tor at the Po­lice Acade­my had al­ways said. It was good ad­vice. The com­mis­sion­er want­ed ac­tion. And it was ac­tion, in the form of Cap­tain Sher­wood Custer, that he was go­ing to get.

A Mu­se­um se­cu­ri­ty guard stood at the door­way, the po­lice lights re­flect­ing off his glass­es. He looked be­wil­dered. Sev­er­al oth­er guards were com­ing up be­hind him, star­ing down the steps, look­ing equal­ly per­plexed. A few tourists were ap­proach­ing up Mu­se­um Drive, cam­eras dan­gling, guide­books in hand. They stopped when they saw the clus­ter of po­lice cars. Af­ter a brief par­ley, the group turned around and head­ed back to­ward a near­by sub­way en­trance.

Custer didn’t both­er to show the grunt his badge. “Cap­tain Custer, Sev­enth Precinct,” he rapped out. “Brevet­ted to Homi­cide.”

The guard swal­lowed painful­ly. “Yes, Cap­tain?”

“Is the Mu­se­um’s se­cu­ri­ty chief in?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get him down here. Right away.”

The guards scur­ried around, and with­in five min­utes a tall man in a tan suit, black hair combed back with a lit­tle too much grease, ar­rived. He’s an un­sa­vory-​look­ing fel­low, Custer thought; but then, so many peo­ple in pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty were. Not good enough to join the re­al force.

The man held out his hand and Custer took it re­luc­tant­ly. “Jack Manet­ti, di­rec­tor of se­cu­ri­ty. What can I do for you, of­fi­cers?”

With­out a word, Custer dis­played the em­bossed, signed, and no­ta­rized bench war­rant he’d man­aged to get is­sued in close to record time. The se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor took it, read it over, hand­ed it back to Custer.

“This is high­ly un­usu­al. May I ask what’s hap­pened?”

“We’ll get to the specifics short­ly,” Custer replied. “For now, this war­rant should be all you need to know. My men will need un­lim­it­ed ac­cess to the Mu­se­um. I’m go­ing to re­quire an in­ter­ro­ga­tion room set up for the ques­tion­ing of se­lect­ed staff. We’ll work as quick­ly as we can, and ev­ery­thing will go smooth­ly—pro­vid­ed we get co­op­er­ation from the Mu­se­um.” He paused, thrust his hands be­hind his back, looked around im­pe­ri­ous­ly. “You re­al­ize, of course, that we have the au­thor­ity to im­pound any items that, in our judg­ment, are ger­mane to the case.” He wasn’t sure what the word ger­mane meant, but the judge had used it in the war­rant, and it sound­ed good.

“But that’s im­pos­si­ble, it’s al­most clos­ing time. Can’t this wait un­til to­mor­row?”

“Jus­tice doesn’t wait, Mr. Manet­ti. I want a com­plete list of Mu­se­um staff. We’ll sin­gle out the in­di­vid­uals we want to ques­tion. If cer­tain staff mem­bers have gone home ear­ly, they’ll need to be called back in. I’m sor­ry, but the Mu­se­um will just have to be in­con­ve­nienced.”

“But this is un­heard of. I’m go­ing to have to check with the Mu­se­um’s di­rec­tor—”

“You do that. In fact, let’s go see him in per­son. I want to make sure we’re clear, clear as crys­tal, on all points of or­der, so that once our in­ves­ti­ga­tions are un­der­way we will not be in­con­ve­nienced or de­layed. Un­der­stood?”

Manet­ti nod­ded, dis­plea­sure con­tract­ing his face. Good, thought Custer: the more up­set and flus­tered ev­ery­one be­came, the quick­er he’d be able to flush out the killer. Keep them guess­ing, don’t give them time to think. He felt ex­hil­arat­ed.

He turned. “Lieu­tenant De­tec­tive Can­nell, take three of­fi­cers and have these gen­tle­men show you to the staff en­trance. I want ev­ery­one leav­ing the premis­es to be ID’d and checked against per­son­nel records. Get phone num­bers, cell num­bers, and ad­dress­es. I want ev­ery­one avail­able to be called back at a mo­ment’s no­tice, if nec­es­sary.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Lieu­tenant De­tec­tive Piles, you come with me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Custer turned a stern eye back on Manet­ti. “Show us the way to Dr. Col­lopy’s of­fice. We have busi­ness to dis­cuss.”

“Fol­low me,” said the se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor, even more un­hap­pi­ly.

Custer mo­tioned to the rest of his men, and they fol­lowed him through great echo­ing halls, up sev­er­al floors in a gi­ant el­eva­tor, and along yet more halls filled with dis­plays—Christ, this place had more than its share of weird shit—un­til at last they reached a grand pan­eled door lead­ing to an even grander pan­eled of­fice. The door was half open, and be­yond sat a small wom­an at a desk. She rose at their ap­proach.

“We’re here to see Dr. Col­lopy,” said Custer, look­ing around, won­der­ing why a sec­re­tary had such a fan­cy of­fice.

“I’m sor­ry, sir,” the wom­an said. “Dr. Col­lopy’s not here.”

“He’s not?” Custer and Manet­ti said in cho­rus.

The sec­re­tary shook her head, look­ing flus­tered. “He hasn’t been back since lunch. Said he had some im­por­tant busi­ness to take care of.”

“But lunch was hours ago,” Custer said. “Isn’t there some way he can be reached?”

“There’s his pri­vate cell phone,” the sec­re­tary said.

“Di­al it.” Custer turned to Manet­ti. “And you, call around to some of the oth­er top brass. See if they know where this Col­lopy is.”

Manet­ti moved off to an­oth­er desk, picked up a phone. The large of­fice fell silent, save for the beep of num­bers be­ing di­aled. Custer looked around. The space was pan­eled in very dark wood, and it was chock-​full of bleak oil paint­ings and for­bid­ding-​look­ing dis­plays parked be­hind glass-​front­ed cab­inets. Christ, it was like a house of hor­rors.

“The cell phone’s turned off, sir,” the sec­re­tary said.

Custer shook his head. “Isn’t there any oth­er num­ber you can call? His house, for ex­am­ple?”

The sec­re­tary and Manet­ti ex­changed looks. “We aren’t sup­posed to call there,” she said, look­ing even more flus­tered.

“I don’t care what you’re sup­posed to do. This is ur­gent po­lice busi­ness. Call his house.”

The sec­re­tary un­locked a desk draw­er, rum­maged through a file of in­dex cards, plucked one out. She looked at it a mo­ment, shield­ing it from Custer’s and Manet­ti’s view. Then she re­placed the card, locked the draw­er, and di­aled a num­ber.

“No­body’s pick­ing up,” she said af­ter a mo­ment.

“Keep ring­ing.”

Half a minute went by. Fi­nal­ly, the sec­re­tary re­placed the phone in its cra­dle. “There’s no an­swer.”

Custer rolled his eyes. “All right, lis­ten. We can’t waste any more time. We have good rea­son to be­lieve that the key to the se­ri­al killer known as the Sur­geon—per­haps even the killer him­self—will be found here in the Mu­se­um. Time is of the essence. I’m go­ing to per­son­al­ly su­per­vise a thor­ough search of the Archives. Lieu­tenant De­tec­tive Piles will be in charge of ques­tion­ing cer­tain staff mem­bers.”

Manet­ti was silent.

“With the Mu­se­um’s co­op­er­ation, I think we can get through this by mid­night, if not soon­er. We’ll need a room for in­ter­ro­ga­tion. We will re­quire pow­er for our record­ing ma­chin­ery, a sound en­gi­neer, and an elec­tri­cian. I will re­quire iden­ti­fi­ca­tion from ev­ery­one, and ac­cess to per­son­nel files on an on­go­ing ba­sis.”

“Just which staff mem­bers are you go­ing to ques­tion?” Manet­ti asked.

“We will de­ter­mine that from the files.”

“We have two thou­sand five hun­dred em­ploy­ees.”

This tem­porar­ily floored Custer. Twen­ty-​five hun­dred peo­ple to run a mu­se­um? What a wel­fare pro­gram. He took a breath, care­ful­ly re­com­pos­ing his fea­tures. “We will deal with that. As a start, we’ll need to in­ter­view, let’s see . . . night watch­men who might have no­ticed any un­usu­al com­ings or go­ings. And that ar­chae­ol­ogist who ex­ca­vat­ed those skele­tons, found the oth­ers down on Doy­ers Street, and—”

“No­ra Kel­ly.”

“Right.”

“The po­lice have al­ready spo­ken with her, I be­lieve.”

“So we’ll be speak­ing with her again. And we’ll want to talk to the head of se­cu­ri­ty—that’s you—about your se­cu­ri­ty ar­range­ments, in the Archives and else­where. I want to ques­tion ev­ery­one con­nect­ed with the Archives and the dis­cov­ery of, ah, Mr. Puck’s body. How’s that for a start?” He gave a quick, ar­ti­fi­cial smile.

There was a si­lence.

“Now, di­rect me to the Archives, please.”

For a mo­ment, Manet­ti just stared at him, as if the sit­ua­tion was be­yond his pow­ers of com­pre­hen­sion.

“Di­rect me to the Archives, Mr. Manet­ti, and make it now, if you please.”

Manet­ti blinked. “Very well, Cap­tain. If you’ll fol­low me.”

As they walked down the sto­ried halls, cops and ad­min­is­tra­tors in tow, Custer felt a huge swelling of ex­cite­ment at his new­ly found self-​con­fi­dence. He’d fi­nal­ly dis­cov­ered his true call­ing. Homi­cide was where he should have been all along. It was ob­vi­ous he was a nat­ural; he had a knack for the work. His be­ing put in charge of this case had not been a fluke. It had been des­tiny.

FIVE

SMITH­BACK STOOD IN the dark hall, strug­gling to con­trol his fright. It was fright that was his prob­lem here, not locked doors. Clear­ly, at least one of them must be un­locked: he had just come through it.

As de­lib­er­ate­ly as he could, he went down the hall once again, try­ing all the doors, shak­ing hard­er this time, even at the cost of mak­ing some noise, push­ing at the jambs, mak­ing sure they weren’t sim­ply stuck. But no, it wasn’t his imag­ina­tion. They were all se­cure­ly locked.

Had some­body locked the door be­hind him? But that was im­pos­si­ble: the room had been emp­ty. A gust of wind had closed it. He shook his head, search­ing un­suc­cess­ful­ly for amuse­ment in his own para­noia.

The doors, he de­cid­ed, must lock au­to­mat­ical­ly when shut. Maybe that was a fea­ture of old hous­es like this. No prob­lem: he would find an­oth­er way out of the house. Down­stairs, through the re­cep­tion hall and out a first floor win­dow or door. Per­haps out the porte-​cochère door, which had ev­ery ap­pear­ance of be­ing func­tion­al—in fact it was prob­ably the very door used by the cus­to­di­an. Re­lief coursed through him at this thought. It would be eas­ier; it would save him the trou­ble of hav­ing to climb back down that out­side wall.

All he had to do was find his way to it through the dark house.

He stood in the hall, wait­ing for his heart­beat to slow. The place was so qui­et, so un­usu­al­ly qui­et, that he found his ears alert for the faintest sound. The si­lence, he told him­self, was a good sign. No cus­to­di­an was around. He prob­ably came on­ly once a week, at most; or maybe on­ly once a year, giv­en all the dust in the place. Smith­back had all the time in the world.

Feel­ing a lit­tle sheep­ish, he made his way back to the head of the stairs and peered down. The car­riage door, it seemed to him, should be to the left, some­where off the re­cep­tion hall. He de­scend­ed the stairs and paused war­ily at the bot­tom, peer­ing again at the strange, end­less dis­plays. Still, no sound. The place was clear­ly de­sert­ed.

He re­mem­bered Pen­der­gast’s the­ory. What if Leng re­al­ly had suc­ceed­ed . . . ?

Smith­back forced him­self to laugh out loud. What the hell was he think­ing about? No­body could live 150 years. The dark­ness, the si­lence, the mys­te­ri­ous col­lec­tions were get­ting to him.

He paused, tak­ing stock. A pas­sage ran off from the hall to the left, in what he thought was the right di­rec­tion. It lay in com­plete dark­ness, yet it seemed the most promis­ing. He should have thought to bring a damn flash­light. No mat­ter: he would try that first.

Step­ping care­ful­ly, avoid­ing the dis­play cas­es and sheet­ed ob­jects, he walked across the hall and in­to the side pas­sage. His pupils re­fused to di­late fur­ther and the cor­ri­dor re­mained pitch black, the dark­ness an al­most pal­pa­ble pres­ence around him. He fum­bled in his pock­et, found the box of match­es he’d picked up at the Blar­ney Stone. He lit one, the scrap­ing and flar­ing of the match un­pleas­ant­ly loud in the still air.

The flick­er­ing light re­vealed a pas­sage lead­ing in­to an­oth­er large room, al­so crammed with wood­en cab­inets. He took a few steps for­ward un­til the match­light died away. Then he went on as far as he dared in­to the black­ness, felt around with his hand, found the door­frame of the room, drew him­self for­ward again. Once he was in­side, he lit an­oth­er match.

Here was a dif­fer­ent kind of col­lec­tion: rows and rows of spec­imens in jars of formalde­hyde. He caught a quick glimpse of rows of gi­gan­tic, star­ing eye­balls in jars—whale eye­balls? Try­ing not to waste the light, he hur­ried for­ward, stum­bling over a large glass jer­oboam on a mar­ble pedestal, filled with what looked like a huge float­ing bag. As he got back on his feet and lit an­oth­er match, he caught a glimpse of the la­bel: Mam­moth stom­ach, con­tain­ing its last meal, from the ice­fields of Siberia . . .

He went quick­ly on, pass­ing as fast as he could be­tween the rows of cab­inets, un­til he ar­rived at a sin­gle wood­en door, bat­tered and scarred. There was a sud­den sharp pain as the match burned his fin­gers. Curs­ing, he dropped it, then lit an­oth­er. In the re­newed flare of light, he opened the door. It led in­to a huge kitchen, tiled in white and black. There was a deep stone fire­place set in­to one wall. The rest of the room was dom­inat­ed by a huge iron stove, a row of ovens, and sev­er­al long ta­bles set with soap­stone sinks. Dozens of pots of green­ish cop­per were sus­pend­ed from ceil­ing hooks. Ev­ery­thing looked de­cayed, cov­ered with a thick lay­er of dust, cob­webs, and mouse drop­pings. It was a dead end.

The house was huge. The match­es wouldn’t last for­ev­er. What would he do when they ran out?

Get a grip, Smith­back, he told him­self. Clear­ly, no one had cooked in this kitchen in a hun­dred years. No­body lived in the house. What was he wor­ry­ing about?

Re­ly­ing on mem­ory, with­out light­ing any more match­es, he back­tracked in­to the large room, feel­ing his way along the glass-​front­ed cas­es. At one point he felt his shoul­der brush against some­thing. A sec­ond lat­er, there was a tremen­dous crash at his feet, and the sud­den bit­ing stench of formalde­hyde. He wait­ed, nerves taut, for the echoes to abate. He pre­pared to light a match, thought bet­ter of it—was formalde­hyde flammable? Bet­ter not ex­per­iment now. He took a step, and his stockinged foot grazed some­thing large, wet, and yield­ing. The spec­imen in the jar. He gin­ger­ly stepped around it.

There had been oth­er doors set in­to the pas­sage­way be­yond. He would try them one at a time. But first, he paused to re­move his socks, which were sod­den with formalde­hyde. Then, step­ping in­to the pas­sage­way, he ven­tured an­oth­er match. He could see four doors, two on the left wall, two on the right.

He opened the clos­est, found an an­cient, zinc-​lined bath­room. Sit­ting in the mid­dle of the tiled floor was the grin­ning skull of an al­losaurus. The sec­ond door front­ed a large clos­et full of stuffed birds; the third, yet an­oth­er clos­et, this one full of stuffed lizards. The fourth opened in­to a scullery, its walls pocked and scarred, rav­aged by trac­eries of mildew.

The match went out and Smith­back stood in the en­fold­ing dark­ness. He could hear the sound of his own ster­torous breath­ing. He felt in the match­book, count­ed with his fin­gers: six left. He fought back—less suc­cess­ful­ly this time—the scrab­bling pan­ic that threat­ened to over­whelm him. He’d been in tough sit­ua­tions be­fore, tougher than this. It’s an emp­ty house. Just find your way out.

He made his way back to the re­cep­tion hall and its shroud­ed col­lec­tions. Be­ing able to see again, no mat­ter how faint­ly, calmed him a lit­tle—there was some­thing ut­ter­ly ter­ri­fy­ing about ab­so­lute dark­ness. He looked around again at the as­tound­ing col­lec­tions, but all he could feel now was a ris­ing dread. The foul smell was stronger here: the sick­ly-​sweet odor of de­cay, of some­thing that by all rights be­longed un­der sev­er­al feet of earth . . .

Smith­back took a se­ries of deep, calm­ing breaths. The thick lay­ers of undis­turbed dust on the floor proved the place was de­sert­ed; that even the care­tak­er, if there was one, hard­ly ev­er came.

He glanced around again, eyes wide against the faint light. On the far side of the hall, a shad­owy arch­way led in­to what looked like a large room. He walked across the hall, bare feet padding on the par­quet floor, and passed be­neath the arch­way. The walls of the room be­yond were pan­eled in dark wood, ris­ing to a cof­fered ceil­ing. This room, too, was filled with dis­plays: some shroud­ed, oth­ers raised on plinths or ar­ma­tures. But the dis­plays them­selves were ut­ter­ly dif­fer­ent from what he had seen be­fore. He stepped for­ward, look­ing around, baf­fle­ment mix­ing with the sharp sense of trep­ida­tion. There were large steam­er trunks, some with glass sides, bound in heavy leather straps; gal­va­nized con­tain­ers like an­tique milk cans, their lids stud­ded with heavy bolts; an odd­ly shaped, over­sized wood­en box, with cop­per-​lined cir­cles cut out of its top and sides; a cof­fin-​shaped crate, pierced by half a dozen swords. On the walls hung ropes, strings of molder­ing ker­chiefs tied end-​to-​end; strait­jack­ets, man­acles, chains, cuffs of var­ious sizes. It was an in­ex­pli­ca­ble, eerie dis­play, made the more un­set­tling by its lack of re­la­tion to what he had seen be­fore.

Smith­back crept on in­to the cen­ter of the room, keep­ing away from the dark cor­ners. The front of the house, he fig­ured, would be straight ahead. The oth­er side of the house had proven a dead end; sure­ly he would have bet­ter luck this way. If need be, he would bat­ter down the front door.

At the far end of the room, an­oth­er pas­sage­way led off in­to dark­ness. He stepped gin­ger­ly in­to it, feel­ing his way along one wall, slid­ing his feet for­ward with small, ten­ta­tive steps. In the faintest of light he could see the hall end­ed in an­oth­er room, much small­er and more in­ti­mate than the ones he had passed through be­fore. The spec­imens were few­er here—just a few cab­inets filled with seashells and some mount­ed dol­phin skele­tons. It seemed to have once been a draw­ing room or par­lor of some kind. Or per­haps—and at the thought, fresh hope surged with­in him—an en­try­way?

The on­ly il­lu­mi­na­tion came from a sin­gle pin­prick of light in the far wall, which sent a pen­cil-​thin beam of light through the dusty air. A tiny hole in one of the board­ed win­dows. With a huge sense of re­lief he quick­ly crossed the room and be­gan feel­ing along the wall with his fin­gers. There was a heavy oak door here. The hope that was ris­ing with­in him grew stronger. His fin­gers fell on a mar­ble door­knob, over­sized and ter­ri­bly cold in his hands. He grasped it ea­ger­ly, turned.

The knob re­fused to budge.

With des­per­ate strength, he tried again. No luck.

He stepped back and, with a groan of de­spair, felt along the edge of the door with his hands, search­ing for a dead­bolt, lock, any­thing. An over­whelm­ing sense of fear re­turned.

Heed­less of the noise now, he threw him­self against the door, once, twice, rush­ing at it with all his weight, try­ing des­per­ate­ly to break it down. The hol­low thumps echoed through the room and down the hall. When the door still re­fused to budge, he stopped and leaned against it with a gasp of pan­ic.

As the last echoes died away, some­thing stirred from with­in the well of black­ness in a far cor­ner of the room. A voice, low and dry as mum­my dust, spoke.

“My dear fel­low, leav­ing so soon? You’ve on­ly just got here.”

SIX

CUSTER BURST THROUGH the door to the Archives and plant­ed him­self in the mid­dle of the en­try­way, hands on his hips. He could hear the pat­ter of heavy-​shod feet as his of­fi­cers fanned out be­hind him. Fast and fu­ri­ous, he re­mind­ed him­self. Don’t give ’em time to think. He ob­served—with more than a lit­tle sat­is­fac­tion—the con­ster­na­tion of the two staff mem­bers who had leapt up at the sight of a dozen uni­formed of­fi­cers bear­ing down on them.

“This area is to be searched,” Custer barked out. Noyes, step­ping for­ward out of Custer’s shad­ow, held up the war­rant in a su­per­flu­ous ges­ture. Custer not­ed, with ap­proval, that Noyes was glar­ing al­most as bale­ful­ly at the archivists as he was him­self.

“But, Cap­tain,” he heard Manet­ti protest, “the place has al­ready been searched. Right af­ter the body of Puck was found, the NYPD had foren­sics teams, dogs, fin­ger­print sweep­ers, pho­tog­ra­phers, and—”

“I’ve seen the re­port, Manet­ti. But that was then. This is now. We have new ev­idence, im­por­tant ev­idence.” Custer looked around im­pa­tient­ly. “Let’s get some light in here, for chris­sakes!”

One of the staff jumped and, pass­ing his hand over a vast clus­ter of an­cient-​look­ing switch­es, turned on a bank of lights with­in.

“Is that the best you can do? It’s as dark as a tomb in here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right.” Custer turned to his de­tec­tives. “You know what to do. Work row by row, shelf by shelf. Leave no stone un­turned.”

There was a pause.

“Well? Get to it, gen­tle­men!”

The men ex­changed brief, un­cer­tain glances. But with­out a ques­tion­ing word they du­ti­ful­ly fanned out in­to the stacks. In a mo­ment they were gone, like wa­ter ab­sorbed in­to a sponge, leav­ing Manet­ti and Custer and the two fright­ened staffers alone by the ref­er­ence desk. The sound of thump­ing, bang­ing, and rat­tling be­gan to echo back down the stacks as Custer’s men start­ed to pull things off the shelves. It was a sat­is­fy­ing sound, the sound of progress.

“Have a seat, Manet­ti,” said Custer, un­able now to keep con­de­scen­sion com­plete­ly out of his voice. “Let’s talk.”

Manet­ti looked around, saw no avail­able chairs, and re­mained stand­ing.

“Okay.” Custer re­moved a leather-​cov­ered note­book and gold pen—pur­chased in Ma­cy’s just af­ter the com­mis­sion­er gave him the new as­sign­ment—and pre­pared to take notes. “So, what we got here in these Archives? A bunch of pa­pers? News­pa­pers? Old take­out menus? What?”

Manet­ti sighed. “The Archives con­tain doc­uments, as well as spec­imens not con­sid­ered im­por­tant enough for the main col­lec­tions. These ma­te­ri­als are avail­able to his­to­ri­ans and oth­ers with a pro­fes­sion­al in­ter­est. It’s a low-​se­cu­ri­ty area.”

“Low se­cu­ri­ty is right,” Custer replied. “Low enough to get this man Puck’s ass hoist­ed on a god­damned pet­ri­fied antler. So where’s the valu­able stuff kept?”

“What’s not in the gen­er­al col­lec­tion is kept in the Se­cure Area, a lo­ca­tion with a sep­arate se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem.”

“What about sign­ing in to these Archives, and all that?”

“There’s a log­book.”

“Where’s the book?”

Manet­ti nod­ded at a mas­sive vol­ume on the desk. “It was pho­to­copied for the po­lice af­ter Puck’s death.”

“And what does it record?”

“Ev­ery­body who en­ters or leaves the Archives area. But the po­lice al­ready no­ticed that some of the most re­cent pages were ra­zored out—”

“Ev­ery­body? Staff as well as vis­it­ing re­searchers?”

“Ev­ery­body. But—”

Custer turned to Noyes, then point­ed at the book. “Bag it.”

Manet­ti looked at him quick­ly. “That’s Mu­se­um prop­er­ty.”

“It was. Now it’s ev­idence.”

“But you’ve al­ready tak­en all the im­por­tant ev­idence, like the type­writ­er those notes were writ­ten on, and the—”

“When we’re done here, you’ll get a re­ceipt for ev­ery­thing.” If you ask nice­ly, Custer thought to him­self. “So, what we got here?” he re­peat­ed.

“Dead files, most­ly, from oth­er Mu­se­um de­part­ments. Pa­pers of his­tor­ical val­ue, mem­os, let­ters, re­ports. Ev­ery­thing but the per­son­nel files and some de­part­men­tal files. The Mu­se­um saves ev­ery­thing, nat­ural­ly, as a pub­lic in­sti­tu­tion.”

“What about that let­ter found here? The one re­port­ed in the pa­pers, de­scrib­ing those killings. How was that found?”

“You’ll have to ask Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast, who found it along with No­ra Kel­ly. He found it hid­den in some kind of box. Made out of an ele­phant’s foot, I be­lieve.”

That No­ra Kel­ly again. Custer made a men­tal note to ques­tion her him­self once he was done here. She’d be his prime sus­pect, if he thought her ca­pa­ble of hoist­ing a heavy­set man on­to a di­nosaur horn. Maybe she had ac­com­plices.

Custer jot­ted some notes. “Has any­thing been moved in or out of here in the past month?”

“There may have been some rou­tine ad­di­tions to the col­lec­tion. I be­lieve that once a month or so they send dead files down here.” Manet­ti paused. “And, af­ter the dis­cov­ery of the let­ter, it and all re­lat­ed doc­uments were sent up­stairs for cu­rat­ing. Along with oth­er ma­te­ri­al.”

Custer nod­ded. “And Col­lopy or­dered that, did he not?”

“Ac­tu­al­ly, I be­lieve it was done at the or­der of the Mu­se­um’s vice pres­ident and gen­er­al coun­sel, Roger Bris­bane.”

Bris­bane: he’d heard that name be­fore, too. Custer made an­oth­er note. “And what, ex­act­ly, did the re­lat­ed doc­uments con­sist of?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Mr. Bris­bane.”

Custer turned to the two mu­se­um em­ploy­ees be­hind the desk. “This guy, Bris­bane. You see him down here a lot?”

“Quite a bit, re­cent­ly,” said one.

“What’s he been do­ing?”

The man shrugged. “Just ask­ing a lot of ques­tions, that’s all.”

“What kind of ques­tions?”

“Ques­tions about No­ra Kel­ly, that FBI guy . . . He want­ed to know what they’d been look­ing at, where they went, that kind of thing. And some jour­nal­ist. He want­ed to know if a jour­nal­ist had been in here. I can’t re­mem­ber the name.”

“Smith­brick?”

“No, but some­thing like that.”

Custer picked up his note­book, flipped through it. There it was. “William Smith­back, Ju­nior.”

“That’s it.”

Custer nod­ded. “How about this Agent Pen­der­gast? Any of you see him?”

The two ex­changed glances. “Just once,” the first man said.

“No­ra Kel­ly?”

“Yup,” said the same man: a young fel­low with hair so short he looked al­most bald.

Custer turned to­ward him. “Did you know Puck?”

The man nod­ded.

“Your name?”

“Os­car. Os­car Gibbs. I was his as­sis­tant.”

“Gibbs, did Puck have any en­emies?”

Custer no­ticed the two men ex­chang­ing an­oth­er glance, more sig­nif­icant this time.

“Well . . .” Gibbs hes­itat­ed, then be­gan again. “Once, Bris­bane came down here and re­al­ly lit in­to Mr. Puck. Scream­ing and yelling, threat­en­ing to bury him, to have him fired.”

“Is that right? Why?”

“Some­thing about Mr. Puck leak­ing dam­ag­ing in­for­ma­tion, fail­ing to re­spect the Mu­se­um’s in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights. Things like that. I think he was mad be­cause Hu­man Re­sources hadn’t backed up his rec­om­men­da­tion to fire Mr. Puck. Said he wasn’t through with him, not by a long shot. That’s re­al­ly all I re­mem­ber.”

“When was this, ex­act­ly?”

Gibbs thought a mo­ment. “Let’s see. That would have been the thir­teenth. No, the twelfth. Oc­to­ber twelfth.”

Custer picked up his note­book again and made an­oth­er no­ta­tion, longer this time. He heard a shat­ter­ing crash from the bow­els of the Archives; a shout; then a pro­tract­ed rip­ping noise. He felt a warm feel­ing of sat­is­fac­tion. There would be no more let­ters hid­den in ele­phants’ feet when he was done. He turned his at­ten­tion back to Gibbs.

“Any oth­er en­emies?”

“No. To tell you the truth, Mr. Puck was one of the nicest peo­ple in the whole Mu­se­um. It was a big shock to see Bris­bane come down on him like that.”

This Bris­bane’s not a pop­ular guy, thought Custer. He turned to Noyes. “Get this man Bris­bane for me, will you? I want to talk to him.”

Noyes moved to­ward the front desk just as the Archives door burst open. Custer turned to see a man dressed in a tuxe­do, his black tie askew, bril­liantined hair hang­ing across his out­raged face.

“What the hell is go­ing on here?” the man shout­ed in Custer’s di­rec­tion. “You just can’t come burst­ing in here like this, turn­ing the place up­side down. Let me see your war­rant!”

Noyes be­gan fum­bling for the war­rant, but Custer stayed him with a sin­gle hand. It was re­mark­able, re­al­ly, how steady his hand felt, how calm and col­lect­ed he was dur­ing all this, the turn­ing point of his en­tire ca­reer. “And who might you be?” he asked in his coolest voice.

“Roger C. Bris­bane III. First vice pres­ident and gen­er­al coun­sel of the Mu­se­um.”

Custer nod­ded. “Ah, Mr. Bris­bane. You’re just the man I want­ed to see.”

SEV­EN

SMITH­BACK FROZE, STAR­ING in­to the pool of dark­ness that lay at the far cor­ner of the room. “Who is that?” he fi­nal­ly man­aged to croak.

There was no re­sponse.

“Are you the care­tak­er?” He gave a strained laugh. “Can you be­lieve it? I’ve locked my­self in.”

Again, si­lence.

Per­haps the voice had been his imag­ina­tion. God knows, he’d seen enough in this house to cure him of ev­er want­ing to watch an­oth­er hor­ror movie.

He tried again. “Well, all I can say is, I’m glad you hap­pened by. If you could help me find my way to the door—”

The sen­tence was choked off by an in­vol­un­tary spasm of fright.

A fig­ure had stepped out in­to the dim light. It was muf­fled in a long dark coat, fea­tures in deep shad­ow un­der a der­by hat. In one up­raised hand was a heavy, old-​fash­ioned scalpel. The ra­zor edge gleamed faint­ly as the man turned it slow­ly, al­most lov­ing­ly, be­tween slen­der fin­gers. In the oth­er hand, a hy­po­der­mic sy­ringe winked and glim­mered.

“An un­ex­pect­ed plea­sure to see you here,” the fig­ure said in a low, dry voice as he ca­ressed the scalpel. “But con­ve­nient. In fact, you’ve ar­rived just in time.”

Some prim­itive in­stinct of self-​preser­va­tion, stronger even than the hor­ror that had seized him, spurred Smith­back in­to ac­tion. He spun and ran. But it was so dark, and the fig­ure moved so blind­ing­ly fast . . .

Lat­er—he didn’t know how much lat­er—Smith­back woke up. There was a tor­por, and a strange, lan­guorous kind of con­fu­sion. He’d had a dream, a ter­ri­ble dream, he re­mem­bered; but it was over now and ev­ery­thing was fine, he would wake to a beau­ti­ful fall morn­ing, the hideous frag­ment­ed mem­ories of the night­mare melt­ing away in­to his sub­con­scious. He’d rise, dress, have his usu­al break­fast of red flan­nel hash at his fa­vorite Greek cof­feeshop, and slow­ly take on once again, as he did ev­ery morn­ing, his mun­dane, worka­day life.

But as his mind grad­ual­ly grew more alert, he re­al­ized that the bro­ken mem­ories, the hor­ri­ble hint­ed frag­ments, were not evap­orat­ing. He had some­how been caught. In the dark. In Leng’s house.

Leng’s house . . .

He shook his head. It throbbed vi­olent­ly at the move­ment.

The man in the der­by hat was the Sur­geon. In Leng’s house.

Sud­den­ly, Smith­back was struck dumb by shock and fear. Of all the ter­ri­ble thoughts that dart­ed through his mind at that ter­ri­ble mo­ment, one stood out from the rest: Pen­der­gast was right. Pen­der­gast was right all along.

Enoch Leng was still alive.

It was Leng him­self who was the Sur­geon.

And Smith­back had walked right in­to his house.

That noise he was hear­ing, that hideous gasp­ing, was his own hy­per­ven­ti­la­tion, the suck of air through tape cov­er­ing his mouth. He forced him­self to slow down, to take stock. There was a strong smell of mold around him, and it was pitch black. The air was cold, damp. The pain in his head in­creased. Smith­back moved his arm to­ward his fore­head, felt it stop abrupt­ly—felt the tug of an iron cuff around his wrist, heard the clank of a chain. What the hell was this?

His heart be­gan to race, faster and faster, as one by one the holes in his mem­ory filled: the end­less echo­ing rooms, the voice from the dark­ness, the man step­ping out of the shad­ows . . . the glit­ter­ing scalpel. Oh, God, was it re­al­ly Leng? Af­ter 130 years? Leng?

He tried to stand in au­to­mat­ic grog­gy pan­ic but fell back again im­me­di­ate­ly, to a cho­rus of clinks and clat­ter­ings. He was stark naked, chained to the ground by his arms and legs, his mouth sealed with heavy tape.

This couldn’t be hap­pen­ing. Oh, Je­sus, this was in­sane.

He hadn’t told any­one he was com­ing up here. No­body knew where he was. No­body even knew he was miss­ing. If on­ly he’d told some­one, the pool sec­re­tary, O’Shaugh­nessy, his great-​grand­fa­ther, his half-​sis­ter, any­one . . .

He lay back, head pound­ing, hy­per­ven­ti­lat­ing again, heart bat­ter­ing in his rib cage.

He had been drugged and chained by the man in black—the man in the der­by hat. That much was clear. The same man who tried to kill Pen­der­gast, no doubt; the same man, prob­ably, who had killed Puck and the oth­ers. The Sur­geon. He was in the dun­geon of the Sur­geon.

The Sur­geon. Pro­fes­sor Enoch Leng.

The sound of a foot­fall brought him to full alert­ness. There was a scrap­ing noise, then a painful­ly bright rect­an­gle of light ap­peared in the wall of dark­ness ahead. In the re­flect­ed light, Smith­back could see he was in a small base­ment room with a ce­ment floor, stone walls and an iron door. He felt a surge of hope, even grat­itude.

A pair of moist lips ap­peared at the iron open­ing. They moved.

“Please do not dis­com­pose your­self,” came the voice. “All this will be over soon. Strug­gle is un­nec­es­sary.”

There was some­thing al­most fa­mil­iar in that voice, and yet in­ex­press­ibly strange and ter­ri­ble, like the whis­pered tones of night­mare.

The slot slid shut, leav­ing Smith­back in dark­ness once more.

All those Dread­ful

Lit­tle Cuts

ONE

THE BIG ROLLS-​ROYCE glid­ed its way along the one-​lane road that crossed Lit­tle Gov­er­nors Is­land. Fog lay thick in the marsh­es and hol­lows, ob­scur­ing the sur­round­ing East Riv­er and the ram­parts of Man­hat­tan that lay be­yond. The head­lights slid past a row of an­cient, long-​dead chest­nut trees, then striped their way across heavy wrought iron gates. As the car stopped, the lights came to rest on a bronze plaque: Mount Mer­cy Hos­pi­tal for the Crim­inal­ly In­sane.

A se­cu­ri­ty guard stepped out of a booth in­to the glare and ap­proached the car. He was heavy­set, tall, friend­ly look­ing. Pen­der­gast low­ered the rear win­dow and the man leaned in­side.

“Vis­it­ing hours are over,” he said.

Pen­der­gast reached in­to his jack­et, re­moved his shield wal­let, opened it for the guard.

The man gave it a long look, and then nod­ded, as if it was all in a day’s work. “And how may we help you, Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast?”

“I’m here to see a pa­tient.”

“And the name of the pa­tient?”

“Pen­der­gast. Miss Cor­nelia De­lamere Pen­der­gast.”

There was a short, un­com­fort­able si­lence.

“Is this of­fi­cial law en­force­ment busi­ness?” The se­cu­ri­ty guard didn’t sound quite so friend­ly any­more.

“It is.”

“All right. I’ll call up to the big house. Dr. Os­trom is on du­ty tonight. You can park your car in the of­fi­cial slot to the left of the main door. They’ll be wait­ing for you in re­cep­tion.”

With­in a few min­utes Pen­der­gast was fol­low­ing the well-​groomed, fas­tid­ious-​look­ing Dr. Os­trom down a long, echo­ing cor­ri­dor. Two guards walked in front, and two be­hind. Fan­cy wain­scot­ing and dec­ora­tive mold­ing could still be glimpsed along the cor­ri­dor, hid­den be­neath in­nu­mer­able lay­ers of in­sti­tu­tion­al paint. A cen­tu­ry be­fore, in the days when con­sump­tion rav­aged all class­es of New York so­ci­ety, Mount Mer­cy Hos­pi­tal had been a grand sana­to­ri­um, cater­ing to the tu­ber­cu­lar off­spring of the rich. Now, thanks in part to its in­su­lar lo­ca­tion, it had be­come a high-​se­cu­ri­ty fa­cil­ity for peo­ple who had com­mit­ted heinous crimes but were found not guilty by rea­son of in­san­ity.

“How is she?” Pen­der­gast asked.

There was a slight hes­ita­tion in the doc­tor’s an­swer. “About the same,” he said.

They stopped at last in front of a thick steel door, a sin­gle barred win­dow sunk in­to its face. One of the for­ward guards un­locked the door, then stood out­side with his part­ner while the oth­er two guards fol­lowed Pen­der­gast with­in.

They were stand­ing in a small “qui­et room” al­most de­void of dec­ora­tion. No pic­tures hung on the light­ly padded walls. There was a plas­tic so­fa, a pair of plas­tic chairs, a sin­gle ta­ble. Ev­ery­thing was bolt­ed to the floor. There was no clock, and the sole flu­ores­cent ceil­ing light was hid­den be­hind heavy wire mesh. There was noth­ing that could be used as a weapon, or to as­sist a sui­cide. In the far wall stood an­oth­er steel door, even thick­er, with­out a win­dow. Warn­ing: Risk of Elope­ment was post­ed above it in large let­ters.

Pen­der­gast took a seat in one of the plas­tic chairs, and crossed his legs.

The two for­ward at­ten­dants dis­ap­peared through the in­ner door. For a few min­utes the small room fell in­to si­lence, punc­tu­at­ed on­ly by the faint sounds of screams and an even fainter, rhyth­mic pound­ing. And then, loud­er and much near­er, came the shrill protest­ing voice of an old wom­an. The door opened, and one of the guards pushed a wheelchair in­to the room. The chair’s five-​point leather re­straint was al­most in­vis­ible be­neath the heavy lay­er of rub­ber that cov­ered ev­ery met­al sur­face.

In the chair, se­cure­ly bound by the re­straints, sat a prim, el­der­ly dowa­ger. She was wear­ing a long, old-​fash­ioned black taffe­ta dress, Vic­to­ri­an but­ton-​up shoes, and a black mourn­ing veil. When she saw Pen­der­gast her com­plaints abrupt­ly ceased.

“Raise my veil,” she com­mand­ed. One of the guards lift­ed it from her face, and, stand­ing well away, laid it down her back.

The wom­an stared at Pen­der­gast, her palsied, liv­er-​spot­ted face trem­bling slight­ly.

Pen­der­gast turned to Dr. Os­trom. “Will you kind­ly leave us alone?”

“Some­one must re­main,” said Os­trom. “And please give the pa­tient some dis­tance, Mr. Pen­der­gast.”

“The last time I vis­it­ed, I was al­lowed a pri­vate mo­ment with my great-​aunt.”

“If you will re­call, Mr. Pen­der­gast, the last time you vis­it­ed—” Os­trom be­gan rather sharply.

Pen­der­gast held up his hand. “So be it.”

“This is a rather late hour to be vis­it­ing. How much time do you need?”

“Fif­teen min­utes.”

“Very well.” The doc­tor nod­ded to the at­ten­dants, who took up places on ei­ther side of the ex­it. Os­trom him­self stood be­fore the out­er door, as far from the wom­an as pos­si­ble, crossed his arms, and wait­ed.

Pen­der­gast tried to pull the chair clos­er, re­mem­bered it was bolt­ed to the floor, and leaned for­ward in­stead, gaz­ing in­tent­ly at the old wom­an.

“How are you, Aunt Cor­nelia?” he asked.

The wom­an bent to­ward him. She whis­pered hoarse­ly, “My dear, how love­ly to see you. May I of­fer you a spot of tea with cream and sug­ar?”

One of the guards snick­ered, but shut up abrupt­ly when Os­trom cast a sharp glance in his di­rec­tion.

“No, thank you, Aunt Cor­nelia.”

“It’s just as well. The ser­vice here has de­clined dread­ful­ly these past few years. It’s so hard to find good help these days. Why haven’t you vis­it­ed me soon­er, my dear? You know that at my age I can­not trav­el.”

Pen­der­gast leaned near­er.

“Mr. Pen­der­gast, not quite so close, if you please,” Dr. Os­trom mur­mured.

Pen­der­gast eased back. “I’ve been work­ing, Aunt Cor­nelia.”

“Work is for the mid­dle class­es, my dear. Pen­der­gasts do not work.”

Pen­der­gast low­ered his voice. “There’s not much time, I’m afraid, Aunt Cor­nelia. I want­ed to ask you some ques­tions. About your great-​un­cle An­toine.”

The old la­dy pursed her lips in a dis­ap­prov­ing line. “Great-​un­cle An­toine? They say he went north, to New York City. Be­came a Yan­kee. But that was many years ago. Long be­fore I was born.”

“Tell me what you know about him, Aunt Cor­nelia.”

“Sure­ly you’ve heard the sto­ries, my boy. It is an un­pleas­ant sub­ject for all of us, you know.”

“I’d like to hear them from you, just the same.”

“Well! He in­her­it­ed the fam­ily ten­den­cy to mad­ness. There but for the grace of God . . .” The old wom­an sighed pity­ing­ly.

“What kind of mad­ness?” Pen­der­gast knew the an­swer, of course; but he need­ed to hear it again. There were al­ways de­tails, nu­ances, that were new.

“Even as a boy he de­vel­oped cer­tain dread­ful ob­ses­sions. He was quite a bril­liant youth, you know: sar­cas­tic, wit­ty, strange. At sev­en you couldn’t beat him in a game of chess or backgam­mon. He ex­celled at whist, and even sug­gest­ed some re­fine­ments that, I un­der­stand, helped de­vel­op auc­tion bridge. He was ter­ri­bly in­ter­est­ed in nat­ural his­to­ry, and start­ed keep­ing quite a col­lec­tion of hor­rid things in his dress­ing room—in­sects, snakes, bones, fos­sils, that sort of thing. He al­so had in­her­it­ed his fa­ther’s in­ter­est in elixirs, restora­tives, chem­icals. And poi­sons.”

A strange gleam came in­to the old la­dy’s black eyes at the men­tion of poi­sons, and both at­ten­dants shift­ed un­easi­ly.

Os­trom cleared his throat. “Mr. Pen­der­gast, how much longer? We don’t want to un­du­ly dis­turb the pa­tient.”

“Ten min­utes.”

“No more.”

The old la­dy went on. “Af­ter the tragedy with his moth­er, he grew moody and reclu­sive. He spent a great deal of time alone, mix­ing up chem­icals. But then, no doubt you know the cause of that fas­ci­na­tion.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“He de­vel­oped his own vari­ant of the fam­ily crest, like an old apothe­cary’s sign it was, three gild­ed balls. He hung it over his door. They say he poi­soned the six fam­ily dogs in an ex­per­iment. And then he be­gan spend­ing a lot of time down . . . down there. Do you know where I mean?”

“Yes.”

“They say he al­ways felt more com­fort­able with the dead than with the liv­ing, you know. And when he wasn’t there, he was over at St. Charles Ceme­tery, with that ap­palling old wom­an Marie LeClaire. You know, Ca­jun voodoo and all that.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded again.

“He helped her with her po­tions and charms and fright­ful lit­tle stick dolls and mak­ing marks on graves. Then there was that un­pleas­ant­ness with her tomb, af­ter she died . . .”

“Un­pleas­ant­ness?”

The old wom­an sighed, low­ered her head. “The in­ter­fer­ence with her grave, the vi­olat­ed body and all those dread­ful lit­tle cuts. Of course you must know that sto­ry.”

“I’ve for­got­ten.” Pen­der­gast’s voice was soft, gen­tle, prob­ing.

“He be­lieved he was go­ing to bring her back to life. There was the ques­tion of whether she had put him up to it be­fore she died, charged him with some kind of dread­ful af­ter-​death as­sign­ment. The miss­ing pieces of flesh were nev­er found, not a one. No, that’s not quite right. I be­lieve they found an ear in the bel­ly of an al­li­ga­tor caught a week lat­er out of the swamp. The ear­ring gave it away, of course.” Her voice trailed off. She turned to one of the at­ten­dants, and spoke in a tone of cold com­mand. “My hair needs at­ten­tion.”

One of the at­ten­dants—the one wear­ing sur­gi­cal gloves—came over and gin­ger­ly pat­ted the wom­an’s hair back in­to place, keep­ing a wary dis­tance.

She turned back to Pen­der­gast.

“She had a kind of sex­ual hold over him, as dread­ful as that sounds, con­sid­er­ing the six­tyyear dif­fer­ence in their ages.” The old la­dy shud­dered, half in dis­gust, half in plea­sure. “Clear­ly, she en­cour­aged his in­ter­est in rein­car­na­tion, mir­acle cures, sil­ly things like that.”

“What did you hear about his dis­ap­pear­ance?”

“It hap­pened at the age of twen­ty-​one, when he came in­to his for­tune. But ‘dis­ap­pear­ance’ re­al­ly isn’t quite the word, you know: he was asked to leave the house. At least, so I’ve been told. He’d be­gun to talk about sav­ing, heal­ing the world—mak­ing up for what his fa­ther had done, I sup­pose—but that cut no mus­tard with the rest of the fam­ily. Years lat­er, when his cousins tried to track down the mon­ey he’d in­her­it­ed and tak­en with him, he seemed to have van­ished in­to thin air. They were ter­ri­bly dis­ap­point­ed. It was so very much mon­ey, you see.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. There was a long si­lence.

“I have one fi­nal ques­tion for you, Aunt Cor­nelia.”

“What is it?”

“It is a moral ques­tion.”

“A moral ques­tion. How cu­ri­ous. Is this con­nect­ed by any chance with Great-​Un­cle An­toine?”

Pen­der­gast did not an­swer di­rect­ly. “For the past month, I have been search­ing for a man. This man is in pos­ses­sion of a se­cret. I am very close to dis­cov­er­ing his where­abouts, and it is on­ly a mat­ter of time un­til I con­front him.”

The old wom­an said noth­ing.

“If I win the con­fronta­tion—which is by no means cer­tain—I may be faced with the ques­tion of what to do with his se­cret. I may be called up­on to make a de­ci­sion that will have, pos­si­bly, a pro­found ef­fect on the fu­ture of the hu­man race.”

“And what is this se­cret?”

Pen­der­gast low­ered his voice to the mer­est ghost of a whis­per.

“I be­lieve it is a med­ical for­mu­la that will al­low any­one, by fol­low­ing a cer­tain reg­imen, to ex­tend his life by at least a cen­tu­ry, per­haps more. It will not van­quish death, but it will sig­nif­icant­ly post­pone it.”

There was a si­lence. The old la­dy’s eyes gleamed anew. “Tell me, how much will this treat­ment cost? Will it be cheap, or dear?”

“I don’t know.”

“And how many oth­ers will have ac­cess to this for­mu­la be­sides your­self?”

“I’ll be the on­ly one. I’ll have very lit­tle time, maybe on­ly sec­onds af­ter it comes in­to my hands, to de­cide what to do with it.”

The si­lence stretched on in­to min­utes. “And how was this for­mu­la de­vel­oped?”

“Suf­fice to say, it cost the lives of many in­no­cent peo­ple. In a sin­gu­lar­ly cru­el fash­ion.”

“That adds a fur­ther di­men­sion to the prob­lem. How­ev­er, the an­swer is quite clear. When this for­mu­la comes in­to your pos­ses­sion, you must de­stroy it im­me­di­ate­ly.”

Pen­der­gast looked at her cu­ri­ous­ly. “Are you quite sure? It’s what med­ical sci­ence has most de­sired since the be­gin­ning.”

“There is an old French curse: may your fond­est wish come true. If this treat­ment is cheap and avail­able to ev­ery­one, it will de­stroy the earth through over­pop­ula­tion. If it is dear and avail­able on­ly to the very rich, it will cause ri­ots, wars, a break­down of the so­cial con­tract. Ei­ther way, it will lead di­rect­ly to hu­man mis­ery. What is the val­ue of a long life, when it is lived in squalor and un­hap­pi­ness?”

“What about the im­mea­sur­able in­crease in wis­dom that this dis­cov­ery will bring, when you con­sid­er the one, maybe two hun­dred years, of ad­di­tion­al learn­ing and study it will af­ford the bril­liant mind? Think, Aunt Cor­nelia, of what some­one like Goethe or Coper­ni­cus or Ein­stein could have done for hu­man­ity with a two-​hun­dred-​year life span.”

The old wom­an scoffed. “The wise and good are out­num­bered a thou­sand to one by the bru­tal and stupid. When you give an Ein­stein two cen­turies to per­fect his sci­ence, you give a thou­sand oth­ers two cen­turies to per­fect their bru­tal­ity.”

This time, the si­lence seemed to stretch in­to min­utes. By the door, Dr. Os­trom stirred rest­less­ly.

“Are you all right, my dear?” the old la­dy asked, look­ing in­tent­ly at Pen­der­gast. “Yes.”

He gazed in­to her dark, strange eyes, so full of wis­dom, in­sight, and the most pro­found in­san­ity. “Thank you, Aunt Cor­nelia,” he said.

Then he straight­ened up. “Dr. Os­trom?”

The doc­tor glanced to­ward him.

“We’re fin­ished here.”

TWO

CUSTER STOOD IN a pool of light be­fore the Archives desk. Clouds of dust—by-​prod­ucts of the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion—bil­lowed out from aisles in the dim­ness be­yond. The pompous ass, Bris­bane, was still protest­ing in the back­ground, but Custer paid lit­tle at­ten­tion.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion, which had start­ed so strong­ly, was bog­ging down. So far his men had found an amaz­ing as­sort­ment of junk—old maps, charts, snake­skins, box­es of teeth, dis­gust­ing uniden­ti­fi­able or­gans pick­led in cen­turies-​old al­co­hol—but not one thing that re­sem­bled an ac­tu­al clue. Custer had been cer­tain that, once in the Archives, the puz­zle would im­me­di­ate­ly fall in­to place; that his new­found in­ves­tiga­tive skill would make the crit­ical con­nec­tion ev­ery­one else had over­looked. But so far there had been no brain­storm, no con­nec­tion. An im­age of Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er’s face—star­ing at him through low­ered, skep­ti­cal brows—hung be­fore his eyes. A feel­ing of un­ease, im­per­fect­ly sup­pressed, be­gan to fil­ter through his limbs. And the place was huge: it would take weeks to search at this rate.

The Mu­se­um lawyer was talk­ing more loud­ly now, and Custer forced him­self to lis­ten.

“This is noth­ing but a fish­ing ex­pe­di­tion,” Bris­bane was say­ing. “You can’t just come in here and turn the place up­side down.” He ges­tured fu­ri­ous­ly at the NYPD ev­idence lock­ers ly­ing on the floor, a ri­ot of ob­jects scat­tered with­in and around them. “And all that is Mu­se­um prop­er­ty!”

Ab­sent­ly, Custer ges­tured to­ward the war­rant that Noyes was hold­ing. “You’ve seen the war­rant.”

“Yes, I have. And it’s not worth the pa­per it’s writ­ten on. I’ve nev­er seen such gen­er­al lan­guage. I protest this war­rant, and I am stat­ing for the record that I will not per­mit the Mu­se­um to be fur­ther searched.”

“Let’s have your boss, Dr. Col­lopy, de­cide that. Has any­body heard from him yet?”

“As the Mu­se­um’s le­gal coun­sel, I’m au­tho­rized to speak for Dr. Col­lopy.”

Custer re­fold­ed his arms gloomi­ly. There came an­oth­er crash from the re­cess­es of the Archives, some shout­ing, and a rip­ping sound. An of­fi­cer soon ap­peared, car­ry­ing a stuffed crocodile, cot­ton pour­ing from a fresh slit in its bel­ly. He laid it in one of the ev­idence lock­ers.

“What the hell are they do­ing back there?” Bris­bane shout­ed. “Hey, you! Yes, you! You’ve dam­aged that spec­imen!”

The of­fi­cer looked at him with a dull ex­pres­sion, then sham­bled back in­to the files.

Custer said noth­ing. His feel­ing of anx­iety in­creased. So far, the ques­tion­ing of Mu­se­um staff hadn’t come up with any­thing ei­ther—just the same old stuff the ear­li­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion had pro­duced. This had been his call, his op­er­ation. His and his alone. If he was wrong—it al­most didn’t bear think­ing, of course, but if—he’d be hung out to dry like last week’s laun­dry.

“I’m go­ing to call Mu­se­um se­cu­ri­ty and have your men es­cort­ed out,” Bris­bane fumed. “This is in­tol­er­able. Where’s Manet­ti?”

“Manet­ti was the man who let us in here,” Custer said dis­tract­ed­ly. What if he’d made a mis­take—a huge mis­take?

“He shouldn’t have done that. Where is he?” Bris­bane turned, found Os­car Gibbs, the Archives as­sis­tant. “Where’s Manet­ti?”

“He left,” Gibbs said.

Custer watched ab­sent­ly, notic­ing how the young man’s in­so­lent tone, his dark look, con­veyed what he thought of Bris­bane. Bris­bane’s not pop­ular, Custer thought again. Got a lot of en­emies. Puck sure must have hat­ed the guy, the way Bris­bane came down on him. Can’t say I blame him one bit for—

And that was when the rev­ela­tion hit him. Like his ini­tial rev­ela­tion, on­ly big­ger: much big­ger. So ob­vi­ous in ret­ro­spect, and yet so dif­fi­cult to first per­ceive. This was the kind of bril­liant leap of in­tu­ition one re­ceived de­part­men­tal ci­ta­tions for. It was a leap of de­duc­tion wor­thy of Sher­lock Holmes.

He turned now, watch­ing Bris­bane sub­tly, but in­tent­ly. The man’s well-​groomed face was glis­ten­ing, his hair askew, eyes glit­ter­ing with anger.

“Left where?” Bris­bane was de­mand­ing.

Gibbs shrugged in­so­lent­ly.

Bris­bane strode over to the desk and picked up the phone. Custer con­tin­ued to watch him. He di­aled a few num­bers, and left low, ex­cit­ed mes­sages.

“Cap­tain Custer,” he said, turn­ing back. “Once again, I am or­der­ing you to re­move your men from the premis­es.”

Custer re­turned the glance from be­tween low­ered lids. He’d have to do this very care­ful­ly.

“Mr. Bris­bane,” he asked, tak­ing what hoped sound­ed like a rea­son­able tone. “Shall we dis­cuss this in your of­fice?”

For a mo­ment, Bris­bane seemed tak­en aback. “My of­fice?”

“It’ll be more pri­vate. Per­haps we needn’t search the Mu­se­um much longer. Per­haps we can set­tle this in your of­fice, now.”

Bris­bane seemed to con­sid­er this. “Very well. Fol­low me.”

Custer nod­ded to his man, Lieu­tenant De­tec­tive Piles. “You take over here.” “Yes, sir.”

Then Custer turned to­ward Noyes. The mer­est crook of his fat fin­ger brought the lit­tle man to his side.

“Noyes, I want you with me,” he mur­mured. “Got your ser­vice piece on you?”

Noyes nod­ded, rheumy eyes glis­ten­ing in the dusky light.

“Good. Then let’s go.”

THREE

THE SLOT OPENED again. In the end­less pe­ri­od of dark­ness and ter­ror, Smith­back had lost his per­cep­tion of time. How long had it been? Ten min­utes? An hour? A day?

The voice spoke, lips once again gleam­ing in the rect­an­gle of light. “How kind of you to vis­it me in my very old and in­ter­est­ing house. I hope you en­joyed see­ing my col­lec­tions. I am par­tic­ular­ly fond of the cory­don. Did you, by chance, see the cory­don?”

Smith­back tried to re­spond, be­lat­ed­ly re­mem­ber­ing that his mouth was taped.

“Ah! How thought­less of me. Do not trou­ble your­self to an­swer. I will speak. You will lis­ten.”

Smith­back’s mind raced through the pos­si­bil­ities for es­cape. There were none.

“Yes, the cory­don is most in­ter­est­ing. As is the mosasaur from the chalk beds of Kansas. And of course the durdag from Ti­bet is quite un­usu­al, one of on­ly two in the world. I un­der­stand it was fash­ioned from the skull of the fif­teenth rein­car­na­tion of the Bud­dha.”

Smith­back heard a dry laugh, like the scat­ter­ing of with­ered leaves.

“Al­to­geth­er a most in­ter­est­ing cab­inet of cu­riosi­ties, my dear Mr. Smith­back. I’m sor­ry that so few peo­ple have had a chance to see it, and that those so hon­ored find them­selves un­able to make a re­turn vis­it.”

There was a si­lence. And then the voice con­tin­ued, soft­ly and gen­tly: “I will do you well, Mr. Smith­back. No ef­fort will be spared.”

A spasm of fear, un­like any­thing he had ev­er known, racked Smith­back’s limbs. I will do you well . . . Do you well . . . Smith­back re­al­ized that he was about to die. In his ex­trem­ity of ter­ror, he did not im­me­di­ate­ly no­tice that Leng had called him by name.

“It will be a mem­orable ex­pe­ri­ence—more mem­orable than those who have come be­fore you. I have made great strides, re­mark­able strides. I have de­vised a most ex­act­ing sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dure. You will be awake to the very end. Con­scious­ness, you see, is the key: I now re­al­ize that. Painstak­ing care will be tak­en, I as­sure you.”

There was a si­lence as Smith­back strug­gled to keep his rea­son about him. The lips pursed. “I shouldn’t want to keep you wait­ing. Shall we pro­ceed to the lab­ora­to­ry?”

A lock rat­tled and the iron door creaked open. The dark fig­ure in the der­by hat who ap­proached was now hold­ing a long hy­po­der­mic nee­dle. A clear drop trem­bled at its end. A pair of round, old-​fash­ioned smoked glass­es were pushed in­to his face.

“This is mere­ly an in­jec­tion to re­lax your mus­cles. Suc­cinyl choline. Very sim­ilar to cu­rare. It’s a par­alyz­ing agent; you’ll find it tends to ren­der the sort of weak­ness one feels in dreams. You know what I mean: the dan­ger is com­ing, you try to es­cape, but you find your­self un­able to move. Have no fear, Mr. Smith­back: though you’ll be un­able to move, you will re­main con­scious through­out much of the op­er­ation, un­til the fi­nal ex­ci­sion and re­moval is per­formed. It will be much more in­ter­est­ing for you that way.”

Smith­back strug­gled as the nee­dle ap­proached.

“You see, it’s a del­icate op­er­ation. It re­quires a steady and high­ly ex­pert hand. We can’t have the pa­tient thrash­ing about dur­ing the pro­ce­dure. The mer­est slip of the scalpel and all would be ru­ined. You might as well dis­pose of the re­source and start afresh.”

Still the nee­dle ap­proached.

“I sug­gest you take a deep breath now, Mr. Smith­back.”

I will do you well . . .

With the strength born of con­sum­mate ter­ror, Smith­back threw him­self from side to side, try­ing to tear free his chains. He opened his mouth against the heavy tape, try­ing des­per­ate­ly to scream, feel­ing the flesh of his lips tear­ing away from his skin un­der the ef­fort. He jerked vi­olent­ly, fight­ing against the man­acles, but the fig­ure with the nee­dle kept ap­proach­ing in­ex­orably—and then he felt the sting of the nee­dle as it slid in­to his flesh, a sen­sa­tion of heat spread­ing through his veins, and then a ter­ri­ble weak­ness: the pre­cise weak­ness Leng had de­scribed, that feel­ing of paral­ysis that hap­pens in the very worst of dreams, at the very worst pos­si­ble mo­ment.

But this, Smith­back knew, was no dream.

FOUR

PO­LICE SERGEANT PAUL J. Finester re­al­ly hat­ed the whole busi­ness. It was a ter­ri­ble, crim­inal, waste of time. He glanced around at the rows of wood­en ta­bles set up in par­al­lel lines across the li­brary car­pet; at the frumpy, tweed-​wear­ing, bug-​eyed, moth-​eat­en char­ac­ters who sat across the ta­bles from the cops. Some looked scared, oth­ers out­raged. Clear­ly, none of these mu­se­um wimps knew any­thing: they were just a bunch of sci­en­tists with bad teeth and even worse breath. Where did they find these char­ac­ters? It made him mad to think of his hard-​earned tax dol­lars sup­port­ing this stone shit­pile. Not just that, but it was al­ready ten P.M., and when he got home his wife was go­ing to kill him. Nev­er mind that it was his job, that he was be­ing paid time and a half, that they had a mort­gage on the fan­cy Cob­ble Hill apart­ment she forced him to buy and a ba­by who cost a for­tune in di­apers. She was still go­ing to kill him. He would come home, din­ner would be a black­ened crisp in the oven—where it had been since six o’clock, at 250 de­grees—the ball and chain would al­ready be in bed with the light out, but still wide awake, ly­ing there like a ram­rod, mad as hell, the ba­by cry­ing and unat­tend­ed. The wife wouldn’t say any­thing when he got in­to the bed, just turn her back to him, with a huge self-​pity­ing sigh, and—

“Finester?”

Finester turned to see his part­ner, O’Grady, star­ing at him.

“You okay, Finester? You look like some­body died.”

Finester sighed. “I wish it was me.”

“Cheese it. We’ve got an­oth­er.”

There was some­thing in O’Grady’s tone that caused Finester to look across their set of desks. In­stead of yet an­oth­er geek, here was a wom­an—an un­usu­al­ly pret­ty wom­an, in fact—with long cop­per hair and hazel eyes, trim ath­let­ic body. He found him­self straight­en­ing up, suck­ing in the gut, flex­ing the bi­ceps. The wom­an sat down across from them, and he caught a whiff of her per­fume: ex­pen­sive, nice, very sub­tle. God, a re­al look­er. He glanced at O’Grady and saw the same trans­for­ma­tion. Finester grabbed his clip­board, ran his eye down the in­ter­ro­ga­tion line­up. So this was No­ra Kel­ly. The fa­mous, in­fa­mous No­ra Kel­ly. The one who found the third body, who’d been chased in the Archives. He hadn’t ex­pect­ed some­one so young. Or so at­trac­tive.

O’Grady beat him to the open­ing. “Dr. Kel­ly, please make your­self com­fort­able.” His voice had tak­en on a silken, hon­eyed tone. “I am Sergeant O’Grady, and this is Sergeant Finester. Do we have per­mis­sion to tape-​record you?”

“If it’s nec­es­sary,” the wom­an said. Her voice wasn’t quite as sexy as her looks. It was clipped, short, ir­ri­tat­ed.

“You have the right to a lawyer,” con­tin­ued O’Grady, his voice still low and sooth­ing, “and you have the right to de­cline our ques­tion­ing. We want you to un­der­stand this is vol­un­tary.”

“And if I refuse?”

O’Grady chuck­led in a friend­ly way. “It’s not my de­ci­sion, you un­der­stand, but they might sub­poe­na you, make you come down to the sta­tion. Lawyers are ex­pen­sive. It would be in­con­ve­nient. We just have a few ques­tions here, no big deal. You’re not a sus­pect. We’re just ask­ing for a lit­tle help.”

“All right,” the wom­an said. “Go ahead. I’ve been ques­tioned sev­er­al times be­fore. I sup­pose once more won’t hurt.”

O’Grady be­gan to speak again, but this time Finester was ready, and he cut O’Grady off. He wasn’t go­ing to sit there like an id­iot while O’Grady did all the talk­ing. The guy was as bad as his wife.

“Dr. Kel­ly,” he said, hasti­ly, per­haps a lit­tle too loud, quick­ly cov­er­ing it with a smile of his own, “we’re de­light­ed you’re will­ing to help us. For the record, please state your full name, ad­dress, the date, and time. There’s a clock on the wall over there, but no, I see you’re wear­ing a watch. It’s just a for­mal­ity, you know, so we can keep our tapes straight, not get them mixed up. We wouldn’t want to ar­rest the wrong per­son.” He chuck­led at his joke and was a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed when she didn’t chuck­le along with him.

O’Grady gave him a pity­ing, con­de­scend­ing look. Finester felt the ir­ri­ta­tion to­ward his part­ner rise. When you got down to it, he re­al­ly couldn’t stand the guy. So much for the un­break­able blue bond. He found him­self wish­ing O’Grady would stop a bul­let some­day soon. Like to­mor­row.

The wom­an stat­ed her name. Then Finester jumped in again and record­ed his own, O’Grady fol­low­ing a lit­tle grudg­ing­ly. Af­ter a few more for­mal­ities, Finester put the back­ground sheet aside and reached for the lat­est list of pre­pared ques­tions. The list seemed longer than be­fore, and he was sur­prised to see some hand­writ­ten en­tries at the bot­tom. They must have just been added, ob­vi­ous­ly in haste. Who the hell had been mess­ing with their in­ter­ro­ga­tion sheets? This whole thing was balls up. To­tal­ly balls up.

O’Grady seized on Finester’s si­lence as an op­por­tu­ni­ty. “Dr. Kel­ly,” he jumped in, “could you please de­scribe in your own words your in­volve­ment in this case? Please take all the time you need to re­call the de­tails. If you don’t re­mem­ber some­thing, or are un­sure about it, feel free to let us know. I’ve found that it’s bet­ter to say you can’t re­mem­ber than to give us de­tails that may not be ac­cu­rate.” He gave her a broad smile, his blue eyes twin­kling with an al­most con­spir­ato­ri­al gleam.

Screw him, thought Finester.

The wom­an gave a testy sigh, crossed her long legs, and be­gan to speak.

FIVE

SMITH­BACK FELT THE paral­ysis, the dread­ful help­less­ness, take com­plete pos­ses­sion of him. His limbs were dead, mo­tion­less, for­eign. He could not blink his eyes. Worst of all—by far, the worst of all—he could not even fill his lungs with air. His body was im­mo­bi­lized. He pan­icked as he tried to work his lungs, strug­gled to draw in breath. It was like drown­ing, on­ly worse.

Leng hov­ered over him now, a dark fig­ure back­lit by the rect­an­gle of the door, spent nee­dle in his hand. His face was a shad­ow be­neath the brow of his der­by hat. A hand reached for­ward, grasped the edge of the duct tape that still par­tial­ly sealed Smith­back’s mouth. “No need for this any­more,” Leng said. With a sharp tug, it was ripped away. “Now, let’s get you in­tu­bat­ed. Af­ter all, it wouldn’t do to have you as­phyx­iate be­fore the pro­ce­dure be­gins.”

Smith­back tried to draw breath for a scream. Noth­ing came but the barest whis­per. His tongue felt thick and im­pos­si­bly large in his mouth. His jaw sagged, a rivulet of sali­va drool­ing down his chin. It was a con­sum­mate strug­gle just to draw in a spoon­ful of air.

The fig­ure took a step back, dis­ap­pear­ing be­yond the door. There was a rat­tle in the hall­way and Leng re­turned, wheel­ing a stain­less steel gur­ney and a large, box­like ma­chine on rub­ber wheels. He po­si­tioned the gur­ney next to Smith­back, then bent over and, with an old iron key, quick­ly un­locked the cuffs around the re­porter’s wrists and legs. Through his ter­ror and de­spair Smith­back could smell the musty, moth­ball odor of an­tique clothes, along with the tang of sweat and a faint whiff of eu­ca­lyp­tus, as if Leng had been suck­ing on a lozenge.

“I’m go­ing to place you on the gur­ney now,” Leng said.

Smith­back felt him­self be­ing lift­ed. And then, cold un­yield­ing met­al pressed against his naked limbs. His nose was run­ning but he could not raise his arm to brush it away. His need for oxy­gen was be­com­ing acute. He was to­tal­ly par­alyzed—but, most ter­ri­ble of all, he re­tained an ut­ter clar­ity of con­scious­ness and sen­sa­tion.

Leng reap­peared in his field of vi­sion, a slen­der plas­tic tube in one hand. Plac­ing his fin­gers on Smith­back’s jaw, Leng pulled the mouth wide. Smith­back felt the tube knock rough­ly against the back of his throat, slide down his tra­chea. How aw­ful to feel the in­tense, un­de­ni­able de­sire to retch—and yet be un­able to make even the slight­est move­ment. There was a hiss as the ven­ti­lat­ing ma­chine filled his lungs with air.

For a mo­ment, the re­lief was so great Smith­back mo­men­tar­ily for­got his predica­ment.

Now the gur­ney was mov­ing. A low, brick­work ceil­ing was pass­ing by over­head, punc­tu­at­ed oc­ca­sion­al­ly by naked bulbs. A mo­ment lat­er, and the ceil­ing changed, ris­ing in­to what seemed a cav­ernous space. The gur­ney swung around again, then came to rest. Leng bent down, out of sight. Smith­back heard four mea­sured clicks, one af­ter the oth­er, as the wheels were locked in place. There were banks of heavy lights, a whiff of al­co­hol and Be­ta­dine that cov­ered a sub­tler, far worse, smell.

Leng slid his arms be­neath Smith­back, raised him up once again, and moved him from the gur­ney to an­oth­er steel ta­ble, wider and even cold­er. The mo­tion was gen­tle, al­most lov­ing.

And then—with a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent mo­tion, eco­nom­ical and amaz­ing­ly strong—he turned Smith­back over on­to his stom­ach.

Smith­back could not close his mouth, and his tongue pressed against the met­al gur­ney, un­will­ing­ly sam­pling the sour chlo­ri­nat­ed taste of dis­in­fec­tants. It made him think about who else might have been on this ta­ble, and what might have hap­pened to them. A wave of fear and nau­sea washed over him. The ven­ti­la­tor tube gur­gled in­side his mouth.

Then Leng ap­proached and, pass­ing his hand across Smith­back’s face, shut his eye­lids.

The ta­ble was cold, so cold. He could hear Leng mov­ing around. There was a pres­sure on his el­bow, a brief sting as an in­tra­venous nee­dle was in­sert­ed near his wrist, the rip­ping sound of med­ical tape be­ing pulled from its can­is­ter. He could smell the eu­ca­lyp­tus breath, hear the low voice. It spoke in a whis­per.

“There will be some pain, I’m afraid,” the voice said as straps were fixed to Smith­back’s limbs. “Rather a lot of pain, in fact. But good sci­ence is nev­er re­al­ly free from pain. So do not dis­com­pose your­self. And if I may of­fer a word of ad­vice?”

Smith­back tried to strug­gle, but his body was far away. The whis­per con­tin­ued, soft and sooth­ing: “Be like the gazelle in the jaws of the li­on: limp, ac­cept­ing, re­signed. Trust me. That is the best way.”

There was the sound of wa­ter rush­ing in a sink, the clink of steel on steel, in­stru­ments slid­ing in a met­al basin. The light in the room grew abrupt­ly brighter. Smith­back’s pulse be­gan to race wild­ly, faster and faster, un­til the ta­ble be­neath him seemed al­most to rock in time with the fran­tic beat­ing of his heart.

SIX

NO­RA SHIFT­ED IN the un­com­fort­able wood­en chair, glanced at her watch for what had to be the fifth time. Ten-​thir­ty. This was like the ques­tion­ing she’d en­dured af­ter find­ing Puck’s body, on­ly worse—much worse. Though she’d de­lib­er­ate­ly kept her sto­ry brief, re­duced her an­swers to mere one-​lin­ers, the ques­tions kept com­ing in an end­less, mo­ron­ic stream. Ques­tions about her work at the Mu­se­um. Ques­tions about be­ing chased by the Sur­geon in the Archives. Ques­tions about the type­writ­ten note Puck—or rather the mur­der­er, pre­tend­ing to be Puck—had sent her, which she’d giv­en to the po­lice long be­fore. All ques­tions she had al­ready an­swered two or three times, to more in­tel­li­gent and thought­ful po­lice of­fi­cers than these. Worse, the two cops sit­ting op­po­site her—one a beefed-​up lit­tle troll, the oth­er de­cent-​look­ing but full of him­self—showed no signs of reach­ing the end of their list. They kept in­ter­rupt­ing each oth­er, dart­ing an­gry looks back and forth, com­pet­ing for heav­en on­ly knew what rea­son. If there was bad blood be­tween these two, they shouldn’t be work­ing to­geth­er. God, what a per­for­mance.

“Dr. Kel­ly,” said the short one, Finester—look­ing for the thou­sandth time at his notes—“we’re al­most through here.”

“Praise be to God.”

This com­ment was met with a short si­lence. Then O’Grady wad­ed in once again, look­ing at a fresh­ly scrib­bled sheet that had just been hand­ed to him.

“You are fa­mil­iar with a Mr. William Smith­back?”

No­ra felt her an­noy­ance giv­ing way to a sud­den wari­ness. “Yes.”

“What is your re­la­tion­ship to Mr. Smith­back?”

“Ex-​boyfriend.”

O’Grady turned the pa­per over in his hands. “We have a re­port here that ear­li­er to­day, Mr. Smith­back im­per­son­at­ed a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer and gained unau­tho­rized clear­ance to some high­se­cu­ri­ty files in the Mu­se­um. Would you know why?”

“No.”

“When was the last time you spoke to Mr. Smith­back?”

No­ra sighed. “I don’t re­mem­ber.”

Finester sat back in his seat, fold­ed his beefy arms. “Take your time, please.” He had a shiny, paste-​col­ored dome of a head, topped by a tuft of hair so thick and coarse it looked like a hairy is­land in the mid­dle of his bald head.

This was in­tol­er­able. “Maybe a week.”

“Un­der what cir­cum­stances?”

“He was ha­rass­ing me in my of­fice.”

“Why?”

“He want­ed to tell me that Agent Pen­der­gast had been stabbed. Mu­se­um se­cu­ri­ty dragged him away. They’ll have a record of it.” What the hell was Smith­back do­ing back in the Mu­se­um? The guy was in­cor­ri­gi­ble.

“You have no idea what Mr. Smith­back was look­ing for?”

“I be­lieve I just said that.”

There was a short si­lence while O’Grady checked his notes. “It says here that Mr. Smith­back—”

No­ra in­ter­rupt­ed im­pa­tient­ly. “Look, why aren’t you pur­su­ing some re­al leads here? Like those type­writ­ten notes of the killer’s, the one sent to me and the one left on Puck’s desk? Ob­vi­ous­ly, the killer is some­body with ac­cess to the Mu­se­um. Why all these ques­tions about Smith­back? I haven’t spo­ken to him in a week. I don’t know any­thing about what he’s up to and, frankly, I couldn’t care less.”

“We have to ask you these ques­tions, Dr. Kel­ly,” O’Grady replied.

“Why?”

“They’re on my list. It’s my job.”

“Je­sus.” She passed a hand over her fore­head. This whole episode was Kafkaesque. “Go ahead.”

“Af­ter a war­rant was put out on Mr. Smith­back, we found his rent­ed car parked on up­per River­side Drive. Would you know why he rent­ed the car?”

“How many times do I have to tell you? I haven’t spo­ken to him in a week.” O’Grady turned over the sheet. “How long have you known Mr. Smith­back?” “Al­most two years.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“In Utah.”

“Un­der what cir­cum­stances?”

“On an ar­chae­olog­ical ex­pe­di­tion.” No­ra was sud­den­ly hav­ing trou­ble pay­ing at­ten­tion to the ques­tions. River­side Drive? What the hell was Smith­back do­ing up there?

“What kind of an ar­chae­olog­ical ex­pe­di­tion?”

No­ra didn’t an­swer.

“Dr. Kel­ly?”

No­ra looked at him. “Where on River­side Drive?”

O’Grady looked con­fused. “I’m sor­ry?”

“Where was Smith­back’s car found on River­side Drive?”

O’Grady fum­bled with the pa­per. “It says here up­per River­side. One hun­dred thir­ty-​first and River­side.”

“One hun­dred thir­ty-​first Street? What was he do­ing up there?”

“That’s just what we were hop­ing you could tell us. Now, about that ar­chae­olog­ical ex­pe­di­tion—”

“And you say he came in this morn­ing, gained ac­cess to some files? What files?”

“Old se­cu­ri­ty files.”

“Which ones?”

O’Grady flipped through some oth­er sheets. “It says here it was an old per­son­nel file.”

“On who?”

“It doesn’t say.”

“How did he do it?”

“Well, it doesn’t say, and—”

“For God’s sake, can’t you find out?”

Pink anger blos­somed across O’Grady’s face. “May we get back to the ques­tions, please?”

“I know some­thing about this,” Finester sud­den­ly broke in. “I was on du­ty ear­li­er to­day. When you were out get­ting donuts and cof­fee, O’Grady. Re­mem­ber?”

O’Grady turned. “In case you’ve for­got­ten, Finester, we’re sup­posed to be the ones ask­ing the ques­tions.”

No­ra gave O’Grady her cold­est stare. “How can I an­swer if you don’t give me the in­for­ma­tion I need?”

O’Grady’s rose-​col­ored face grew red­der. “I don’t see why—”

“She’s right, O’Grady. She has a right to know,” Finester turned to No­ra, pug face lit up by an in­gra­ti­at­ing smile. “Mr. Smith­back lured one of the se­cu­ri­ty guards away with a pho­ny tele­phone call, al­leged­ly from the Hu­man Re­sources of­fice. Then he pre­tend­ed to be from Hu­man Re­sources him­self and per­suad­ed the re­main­ing guard to un­lock cer­tain fil­ing cab­inets. Said he was con­duct­ing some kind of file in­spec­tion.”

“He did?” De­spite her con­cern, No­ra couldn’t help smil­ing to her­self. It was vin­tage Smith­back. “And what were those files, ex­act­ly?”

“Se­cu­ri­ty clear­ances, dat­ing back over a hun­dred years.”

“And that’s why he’s in trou­ble?”

“That’s the least of it. The guard thought he saw him take some pa­pers out of one draw­er. So you can add theft to—”

“Which file draw­er?”

“It was the 1870 per­son­nel file draw­er, I be­lieve,” Finester rec­ol­lect­ed with ob­vi­ous pride. “And af­ter the guard’s sus­pi­cions were aroused, they cross-​checked the files and found that one of them was miss­ing its cov­er sheets. It had been vir­tu­al­ly emp­tied.”

“Which one?”

“It was that one on the nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry se­ri­al killer, what’s-​his-​name. The one writ­ten about in the Times. Clear­ly that’s what he was af­ter, more in­for­ma­tion on—”

“Enoch Leng?”

“Yeah. That’s the guy.”

No­ra sat, stunned.

“Now, can we please get back to the ques­tions, Dr. Kel­ly?” O’Grady in­ter­rupt­ed.

“And his car was found up River­side Drive? At 131st Street? How long had it been there?”

Finester shrugged. “He rent­ed it right af­ter he stole the file. It’s staked out. As soon as he picks it up, we’ll know.”

O’Grady broke in again. “Finester, now that you’ve man­aged to re­veal all the con­fi­den­tial de­tails, maybe you can keep qui­et for a minute. Now, Dr. Kel­ly, this ar­chae­olog­ical ex­pe­di­tion—”

No­ra reached in­to her purse for her cell phone, found it, pulled it out.

“No cell phones, Dr. Kel­ly, un­til we’re fin­ished.” It was O’Grady again, his voice ris­ing in anger.

She dropped the phone back in­to her purse. “Sor­ry. I’ve got to go.”

“You can go as soon as we fin­ish the ques­tions.” O’Grady was livid. “Now, Doc­tor Kel­ly, about that ar­chae­olog­ical ex­pe­di­tion . . .”

No­ra didn’t hear the rest. Her mind was rac­ing.

“Dr. Kel­ly?”

“But can’t we, ah, fin­ish this lat­er?” She tried to smile, tried to put on her most plead­ing look. “Some­thing re­al­ly im­por­tant has just come up.”

O’Grady didn’t re­turn the smile. “This is a crim­inal in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Dr. Kel­ly. We’ll be done when we get to the end of the ques­tions—not be­fore.”

No­ra thought for a mo­ment. Then she looked O’Grady in the eye. “I’ve got to go. Go, go to the bath­room, I mean.”

“Now?”

She nod­ded.

“I’m sor­ry, but we’ll have to ac­com­pa­ny you, then. Those are the rules.”

“In­to the bath­room?”

He blushed. “Of course not, but to the fa­cil­ities. We’ll wait out­side.”

“Then you’d bet­ter hur­ry. I’ve re­al­ly got to go. Bad kid­neys.”

O’Grady and Finester ex­changed glances.

“Bac­te­ri­al in­fec­tion. From a dig in Guatemala.”

The po­lice­men rose with alacrity. They crossed the Rock­efeller Great Room, past the dozens of ta­bles and the end­less over­lap­ping recita­tions of oth­er staff mem­bers, out in­to the main li­brary. No­ra wait­ed, bid­ing her time, as they made their way to­ward the en­trance. No point in sound­ing more of an alarm than was nec­es­sary.

The li­brary it­self was silent, re­searchers and sci­en­tists long since gone. The Great Room lay be­hind them now, the back-​and-​forth of ques­tions and an­swers in­audi­ble. Ahead were the dou­ble doors lead­ing out in­to the hall and the rest rooms be­yond. No­ra ap­proached the doors, the two cops trail­ing in her wake.

Then, with a sud­den burst of speed, she dart­ed through, swing­ing the doors be­hind her, back in­to the faces of the of­fi­cers. She heard the thud of an im­pact, some­thing clat­ter­ing to the ground, a yelp of star­tled sur­prise. And then came a loud bark­ing sound, like a seal giv­ing the alarm, fol­lowed by shouts and run­ning feet. She glanced back. Finester and O’Grady were through the doors and in hot pur­suit.

No­ra was very fit, but Finester and O’Grady sur­prised her. They were fast, too. At the far end of the hall, she glanced back and no­ticed that the taller sergeant, O’Grady, was ac­tu­al­ly gain­ing ground.

She flung open a stair­well door and be­gan fly­ing down the stairs, two at a time. Mo­ments lat­er, the door opened again: she heard loud voic­es, the pound­ing of feet.

She plunged down­ward even more quick­ly. Reach­ing the base­ment, she pushed the pan­ic bar on the door and burst in­to the pa­le­on­to­log­ical stor­age area. A long cor­ri­dor ran ahead, ar­row-​straight, gray and in­sti­tu­tion­al, il­lu­mi­nat­ed by bare bulbs in wire cages. Doors lined both sides: Pro­bis­cidia, Eo­hip­pii, Bovi­dae, Pongi­dae.

The thud­ding of ap­proach­ing feet filled the stair­well be­hind her. Was it pos­si­ble they were still gain­ing? Why couldn’t she have got­ten the two pork­ers at the ta­ble to her left?

She sprint­ed down the hall­way, veered abrupt­ly around a cor­ner, and ran on, think­ing fast. The vast di­nosaur bone stor­age room was near­by. If she was go­ing to lose these two, her best chance lay in there. She dug in­to her purse as she ran: thank God she’d re­mem­bered to bring her lab and stor­age keys along that morn­ing.

She al­most flew past the heavy door, fum­bling with the keys. She turned, jammed her key in­to the lock, and pushed the door open just as the cops came in­to view around the cor­ner.

Shit. They’ve seen me. No­ra closed the door, locked it be­hind her, turned to­ward the long rows of tall met­al stacks, prepar­ing to run.

Then she had an idea.

She un­locked the door again, then took off down the clos­est aisle, turn­ing left at the first cross­ing, then right, an­gling away from the door. At last she dropped in­to a crouch, press­ing her­self in­to the shad­ows, try­ing to catch her breath. She heard the tramp of feet in the cor­ri­dor be­yond. The door rat­tled abrupt­ly.

“Open up!” came O’Grady’s muf­fled roar.

No­ra glanced around quick­ly, search­ing for a bet­ter place to hide. The room was lit on­ly by the dim glow of emer­gen­cy light­ing, high up in the ceil­ing. Ad­di­tion­al lights re­quired a key—stan­dard pro­ce­dure in Mu­se­um stor­age rooms, where light could harm the spec­imens—and the long aisles were cloaked in dark­ness. She heard a grunt, the shiv­er of the door in its frame. She hoped they wouldn’t be stupid enough to break down an un­locked door—that would ru­in ev­ery­thing.

The door shiv­ered un­der the weight of an­oth­er heavy blow. Then they fig­ured it out: it was al­most with re­lief that she heard the jig­gling of the han­dle, the creak of the open­ing door. War­ily, silent­ly, she re­treat­ed far­ther in­to the vast for­est of bones.

The Mu­se­um’s di­nosaur bone col­lec­tion was the largest in the world. The di­nosaurs were stored un­mount­ed, stacked dis­ar­tic­ulat­ed on mas­sive steel shelves. The shelves them­selves were con­struct­ed of steel I-​beams and an­gle iron, riv­et­ed to­geth­er to make a web of shelv­ing strong enough to sup­port thou­sands of tons: vast piles of tree-​trunk-​thick leg­bones, skulls the size of cars, mas­sive slabs of stone ma­trix with bones still imbed­ded, await­ing the prepara­tor’s chis­el. The room smelled like the in­te­ri­or of an an­cient stone cathe­dral.

“We know you’re in here!” came the breath­less voice of Finester.

No­ra re­ced­ed deep­er in­to the shad­ows. A rat scur­ried in front of her, scram­bling for safe­ty with­in a gap­ing al­losaurus eye sock­et. Bones rose on both sides like great heaps of cord­wood, shelves climb­ing in­to the gloom. Like most of the Mu­se­um stor­age rooms, it was an il­log­ical jum­ble of shelves and mis­matched rows, grow­ing by ac­cre­tion over the last cen­tu­ry and a half. A good place to get lost in.

“Run­ning away from the po­lice nev­er did any­one any good, Dr. Kel­ly! Give your­self up now and we’ll go easy on you!”

She shrank be­hind a gi­ant tur­tle al­most the size of a stu­dio apart­ment, try­ing to re­con­struct the lay­out of the vault in her head. She couldn’t re­mem­ber see­ing a rear door in pre­vi­ous vis­its. Most stor­age vaults, for se­cu­ri­ty pur­pos­es, had on­ly one. There was on­ly one way out, and they were block­ing it. She had to get them to move.

“Dr. Kel­ly, I’m sure we can work some­thing out! Please!”

No­ra smiled to her­self. What a pair of blun­der­ers. Smith­back would have had fun with them.

Her smile fad­ed at the thought of Smith­back. She was cer­tain now of what he’d done. Smith­back had gone to Leng’s house. Per­haps he had heard Pen­der­gast’s the­ory—that Leng was alive and still liv­ing in his old house. Per­haps he’d whee­dled it out of O’Shaugh­nessy. The guy could have made He­len Keller talk.

On top of that, he was a good re­searcher. He knew the Mu­se­um’s files. While she and Pen­der­gast were go­ing through deeds, he’d gone straight to the Mu­se­um and hit pay­dirt. And know­ing Smith­back, he’d have run right up to Leng’s house. That’s why he’d rent­ed a car, driv­en it up River­side Drive. Just to check out the house. But Smith­back could nev­er mere­ly check some­thing out. The fool, the damned fool . . .

Cau­tious­ly, No­ra tried di­al­ing Smith­back on her cell phone, muf­fling the sound with the leather of her purse. But the phone was dead: she was sur­round­ed by sev­er­al thou­sand tons of steel shelves and di­nosaur bones, not to men­tion the Mu­se­um over­head. At least it prob­ably meant the ra­dios of the cops would be equal­ly use­less. If her plan worked, that would prove use­ful.

“Dr. Kel­ly!” The voic­es were com­ing from her left now, away from the door.

She crept for­ward be­tween the shelves, strained to catch a glimpse of them, but she could see noth­ing but the beam of a flash­light stab­bing through the dark piles of bone.

There was no more time: she had to get out.

She lis­tened close­ly to the foot­steps of the cops. Good: they seemed to still be to­geth­er. In their joint ea­ger­ness to take cred­it for the col­lar, they’d been too stupid to leave one to guard the door.

“All right!” she called. “I give up! Sor­ry, I guess I just lost my head.”

There was a brief flur­ry of whis­pers.

“We’re com­ing!” O’Grady shout­ed. “Don’t go any­where!”

She heard them mov­ing in her di­rec­tion, more quick­ly now, the flash­light beam wob­bling and weav­ing as they ran. Watch­ing the di­rec­tion of the beam, she scoot­ed away, keep­ing low, an­gling back to­ward the front of the stor­age room, mov­ing as quick­ly and silent­ly as she could.

“Where are you?” she heard a voice cry, fainter now, sev­er­al aisles away. “Dr. Kel­ly?”

“She was over there, O’Grady.”

“Damn it, Finester, you know she was much far­ther—”

In a flash No­ra was out the door. She turned, slammed it shut, turned her key in the lock. In an­oth­er five min­utes she was out on Mu­se­um Drive.

Pant­ing hard, she slipped her cell phone out of her purse again and di­aled.

SEV­EN

THE SIL­VER WRAITH glid­ed noise­less­ly up to the Sev­en­ty-​sec­ond Street curb. Pen­der­gast slid out and stood for a mo­ment in the shad­ow of the Dako­ta, deep in thought, while the car idled.

The in­ter­view with his great-​aunt had left him with an un­fa­mil­iar feel­ing of dread. Yet it was a dread that had been grow­ing with­in him since he first heard of the dis­cov­ery of the char­nel pit be­neath Cather­ine Street.

For many years he had kept a silent vig­il, scan­ning the FBI and In­ter­pol ser­vices, on the look­out for a spe­cif­ic modus operan­di. He’d hoped it would nev­er sur­face—but al­ways, in the back of his mind, had feared it would.

“Good evening, Mr. Pen­der­gast,” the guard said at his ap­proach, step­ping out of the sen­try box. An en­ve­lope lay in his white-​gloved hand. The sight of the en­ve­lope sent Pen­der­gast’s dread soar­ing.

“Thank you, John­son,” Pen­der­gast replied, with­out tak­ing the en­ve­lope. “Did Sergeant O’Shaugh­nessy come by, as I men­tioned he would?”

“No sir. He hasn’t been by all evening.”

Pen­der­gast grew more pen­sive, and there was a long mo­ment of si­lence. “I see. Did you take de­liv­ery of this en­ve­lope?”

“Yes, sir.”

“From whom, may I ask?”

“A nice, old-​fash­ioned sort of gent, sir.”

“In a der­by hat?”

“Pre­cise­ly, sir.”

Pen­der­gast scanned the crisp cop­per­plate on the front of the en­ve­lope: For A. X. L. Pen­der­gast, Esq., D. Phil., The Dako­ta. Per­son­al and Con­fi­den­tial. The en­ve­lope was hand­made from a heavy, old-​fash­ioned laid pa­per, with a deck­le edge. It was pre­cise­ly the sort of pa­per made by the Pen­der­gast fam­ily’s pri­vate sta­tion­er. Al­though the en­ve­lope was yel­low with age, the writ­ing on it was fresh.

Pen­der­gast turned to the guard. “John­son, may I bor­row your gloves?”

The door­man was too well trained to show sur­prise. Don­ning the gloves, Pen­der­gast slipped in­to the ha­lo of light around the sen­try box and broke the en­ve­lope’s seal with the back of his hand. Very gin­ger­ly, he bowed it open, look­ing in­side. There was a sin­gle sheet of pa­per, fold­ed once. In the crease lay a sin­gle small, gray­ish fiber. To the un­trained eye, it looked like a bit of fish­ing line. Pen­der­gast rec­og­nized it as a hu­man nerve strand, un­doubt­ed­ly from the cau­da equina at the base of the spinal cord.

There was no writ­ing on the fold­ed sheet. He an­gled it to­ward the light, but there was noth­ing else at all, not even a wa­ter­mark.

At that mo­ment, his cell phone rang.

Putting the en­ve­lope care­ful­ly aside, Pen­der­gast plucked his phone from his suit pock­et and raised it to his ear.

“Yes?” He spoke in a calm, neu­tral voice.

“It’s No­ra. Lis­ten, Smith­back fig­ured out where Leng lives.”

“And?”

“I think he went up there. I think he went in­to the house.”

The Search

ONE

NO­RA WATCHED THE Sil­ver Wraith ap­proach her at an alarm­ing speed, weav­ing through the Cen­tral Park West traf­fic, red light flash­ing in­con­gru­ous­ly on its dash­board. The car screeched to a stop along­side her as the rear door flew open.

“Get in!” called Pen­der­gast.

She jumped in­side, the sud­den ac­cel­er­ation throw­ing her back against the white leather of the seat.

Pen­der­gast had low­ered the cen­ter arm­rest. He looked straight ahead, his face grim­mer than No­ra had ev­er seen it. He seemed to see noth­ing, no­tice noth­ing, as the car tore north­ward, rock­ing slight­ly, bound­ing over pot­holes and gap­ing cracks in the as­phalt. To No­ra’s right, Cen­tral Park raced by, the trees a blur.

“I tried reach­ing Smith­back on his cell phone,” No­ra said. “He isn’t an­swer­ing.”

Pen­der­gast did not re­ply.

“You re­al­ly be­lieve Leng’s still alive?”

“I know so.”

No­ra was silent a mo­ment. Then she had to ask. “Do you think—Do you think he’s got Smith­back?”

Pen­der­gast did not an­swer im­me­di­ate­ly. “The ex­pense vouch­er Smith­back filled out stat­ed he would re­turn the car by five this evening.”

By five this evening . . . No­ra felt her­self con­sumed by ag­ita­tion and pan­ic. Al­ready, Smith­back was over six hours over­due.

“If he’s parked near Leng’s house, we might just be able to find him.” Pen­der­gast leaned for­ward, slid­ing open the glass pan­el that iso­lat­ed the rear com­part­ment. “Proc­tor, when we reach 131st Street, we’ll be look­ing for a sil­ver Ford Tau­rus, New York li­cense ELI-7734, with rental car de­cals.”

He closed the pan­el, leaned back against the seat. An­oth­er si­lence fell as the car shot left on­to Cathe­dral Park­way and sped to­ward the riv­er.

“We would have known Leng’s ad­dress in forty-​eight hours,” he said, al­most to him­self. “We were very close. A lit­tle more care, a lit­tle more method, was all it would have tak­en. Now, we don’t have forty-​eight hours.”

“How much time do we have?”

“I’m afraid we don’t have any,” Pen­der­gast mur­mured.

TWO

CUSTER WATCHED BRIS­BANE un­lock his of­fice door, open it, then step ir­ri­ta­bly aside to al­low them to en­ter. Custer stepped through the door­way, the flush of re­turn­ing con­fi­dence adding grav­ity to his stride. There was no need to hur­ry; not any­more. He turned, looked around: very clean and mod­ern, lots of chrome and glass. Two large win­dows looked over Cen­tral Park and, be­yond, at the twin­kling wall of lights that made up Fifth Av­enue. His eyes fell to the desk that dom­inat­ed the cen­ter of the room. An­tique inkwell, sil­ver clock, ex­pen­sive knick­knacks. And a glass box full of gem­stones. Cushy, cushy.

“Nice of­fice,” he said.

Shrug­ging the com­pli­ment aside, Bris­bane draped his tuxe­do jack­et over his chair, then sat down be­hind the desk. “I don’t have a lot of time,” he said tru­cu­lent­ly. “It’s eleven o’clock. I ex­pect you to say what you have to say, then have your men va­cate the premis­es un­til we can de­ter­mine a mu­tu­al­ly agree­able course of ac­tion.”

“Of course, of course.” Custer moved about the of­fice, heft­ing a pa­per­weight here, ad­mir­ing a pic­ture there. He could see Bris­bane grow­ing in­creas­ing­ly ir­ri­tat­ed. Good. Let the man stew. Even­tu­al­ly, he’d say some­thing.

“Shall we get on with it, Cap­tain?” Bris­bane point­ed­ly ges­tured for Custer to take a seat.

Just as point­ed­ly, Custer con­tin­ued cir­cling the large of­fice. Ex­cept for the knick­knacks and the case of gems on the desk and the paint­ings on the walls, the of­fice looked bare, save for one wall that con­tained shelv­ing and a clos­et.

“Mr. Bris­bane, I un­der­stand you’re the Mu­se­um’s gen­er­al coun­sel?”

“That’s right.”

“An im­por­tant po­si­tion.”

“As a mat­ter of fact, it is.”

Custer moved to­ward the shelves, ex­am­ined a moth­er-​of-​pearl foun­tain pen dis­played on one of them. “I un­der­stand your feel­ings of in­va­sion here, Mr. Bris­bane.”

“That’s re­as­sur­ing.”

“To a cer­tain ex­tent, you feel it’s your place. You feel pro­tec­tive of the Mu­se­um.”

“I do.”

Custer nod­ded, his gaze mov­ing along the shelf to an an­tique Chi­nese snuff­box set with stones. He picked it up. “Nat­ural­ly, you don’t like a bunch of po­lice­men barg­ing in here.”

“Frankly, I don’t. I’ve told you as much sev­er­al times al­ready. That’s a very valu­able snuff­box, Cap­tain.”

Custer re­turned it, picked up some­thing else. “I imag­ine this whole thing’s been rather hard on you. First, there was the dis­cov­ery of the skele­tons left by that nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry se­ri­al killer. Then there was that let­ter dis­cov­ered in the Mu­se­um’s col­lec­tions. Very un­pleas­ant.”

“The ad­verse pub­lic­ity could have eas­ily harmed the Mu­se­um.”

“Then there was that cu­ra­tor—?”

“No­ra Kel­ly.”

Custer not­ed a new tone creep­ing in­to Bris­bane’s voice: dis­like, dis­ap­proval, per­haps a sense of in­jury.

“The same one who found the skele­tons—and the hid­den let­ter, cor­rect? You didn’t like her work­ing on this case. Wor­ried about ad­verse pub­lic­ity, I sup­pose.”

“I thought she should be do­ing her re­search. That’s what she was be­ing paid to do.”

“You didn’t want her help­ing the po­lice?”

“Nat­ural­ly, I want­ed her to do what she could to help the po­lice. I just didn’t want her ne­glect­ing her mu­se­um du­ties.”

Custer nod­ded sage­ly. “Of course. And then she was chased in the Archives, al­most killed. By the Sur­geon.” He moved to a near­by book­shelf. The on­ly books it con­tained were half a dozen fat le­gal tomes. Even their bind­ings man­aged to look stul­ti­fy­ing­ly dull. He tapped his fin­ger on a spine. “You’re a lawyer?”

“Gen­er­al coun­sel usu­al­ly means lawyer.”

This bounced off Custer with­out leav­ing a dent. “I see. Been here how long?” “A lit­tle over two years.”

“Like it?”

“It’s a very in­ter­est­ing place to work. Now look, I thought we were go­ing to talk about get­ting your men out of here.”

“Soon.” Custer turned. “Vis­it the Archives much?”

“Not so much. More, late­ly, of course, with all the ac­tiv­ity.”

“I see. In­ter­est­ing place, the Archives.” He turned briefly to see the ef­fect of this ob­ser­va­tion on Bris­bane. The eyes. Watch the eyes.

“I sup­pose some find it so.”

“But not you.”

“Box­es of pa­per and moldy spec­imens don’t in­ter­est me.”

“And yet you vis­it­ed there”—Custer con­sult­ed his note­book—“let’s see, no less than eight times in the last ten days.”

“I doubt it was that of­ten. On Mu­se­um busi­ness, in any case.”

“In any case.” He looked shrewd­ly back at Bris­bane. “The Archives. Where the body of Puck was found. Where No­ra Kel­ly was chased.”

“You men­tioned her al­ready.”

“And then there’s Smith­back, that an­noy­ing re­porter?”

“An­noy­ing is an un­der­state­ment.”

“Didn’t want him around, did you? Well, who would?”

“My think­ing ex­act­ly. You’ve heard, of course, how he im­per­son­at­ed a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer? Stole Mu­se­um files?”

“I’ve heard, I’ve heard. Fact is, we’re look­ing for the man, but he seems to have dis­ap­peared. You wouldn’t know where he was, by any chance, would you?” He added a faint em­pha­sis to this last phrase.

“Of course not.”

“Of course not.” Custer re­turned his at­ten­tion to the gems. He stroked the glass case with a fat fin­ger. “And then there’s that FBI agent, Pen­der­gast. The one who was at­tacked. Al­so very an­noy­ing.”

Bris­bane re­mained silent.

“Didn’t much like him around ei­ther—eh, Mr. Bris­bane?”

“We had enough po­lice­men crawl­ing over the place. Why com­pound it with the FBI? And speak­ing of po­lice­men crawl­ing around—”

“It’s just that I find it very cu­ri­ous, Mr. Bris­bane . . .” Custer let the sen­tence trail off.

“What do you find cu­ri­ous, Cap­tain?”

There was a com­mo­tion in the hall­way out­side, then the door opened abrupt­ly. A po­lice sergeant en­tered, dusty, wide-​eyed, sweat­ing.

“Cap­tain!” he gasped. “We were in­ter­view­ing this wom­an just now, a cu­ra­tor, and she locked—”

Custer looked at the man—O’Grady, his name was—re­prov­ing­ly. “Not now, Sergeant. Can’t you see I’m con­duct­ing a con­ver­sa­tion here?”

“But—”

“You heard the cap­tain,” Noyes in­ter­ject­ed, pro­pelling the protest­ing sergeant to­ward the door.

Custer wait­ed un­til the door closed again, then turned back to Bris­bane. “I find it cu­ri­ous how very in­ter­est­ed you’ve been in this case,” he said.

“It’s my job.”

“I know that. You’re a very ded­icat­ed man. I’ve al­so no­ticed your ded­ica­tion in hu­man re­sources mat­ters. Hir­ing, fir­ing . . .”

“That’s cor­rect.”

“Rein­hart Puck, for ex­am­ple.”

“What about him?”

Custer con­sult­ed his note­book again. “Why ex­act­ly did you try to fire Mr. Puck, just two days be­fore his mur­der?”

Bris­bane start­ed to say some­thing, then hes­itat­ed. A new thought seemed to have oc­curred to him.

“Strange tim­ing there, wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Bris­bane?”

The man smiled thin­ly. “Cap­tain, I felt the po­si­tion was ex­tra­ne­ous. The Mu­se­um is hav­ing fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties. And Mr. Puck had been . . . well, he had not been co­op­er­ative. Of course, it had noth­ing to do with the mur­der.”

“But they wouldn’t let you fire him, would they?”

“He’d been with the Mu­se­um over twen­ty-​five years. They felt it might af­fect morale.”

“Must’ve made you an­gry, be­ing shot down like that.”

Bris­bane’s smile froze in place. “Cap­tain, I hope you’re not sug­gest­ing I had any­thing to do with the mur­der.”

Custer raised his eye­brows in mock as­ton­ish­ment. “Am I?”

“Since I as­sume you’re ask­ing a rhetor­ical ques­tion, I won’t both­er to an­swer it.”

Custer smiled. He didn’t know what a rhetor­ical ques­tion was, but he could see that his ques­tions were find­ing their mark. He gave the gem case an­oth­er stroke, then glanced around. He’d cov­ered the of­fice; all that re­mained was the clos­et. He strolled over, put his hand on the han­dle, paused.

“But it did make you an­gry? Be­ing con­tra­dict­ed like that, I mean.”

“No one is pleased to be coun­ter­mand­ed,” Bris­bane replied ici­ly. “The man was an anachro­nism, his work habits clear­ly in­ef­fi­cient. Look at that type­writ­er he in­sist­ed on us­ing for all his cor­re­spon­dence.”

“Yes. The type­writ­er. The one the mur­der­er used to write one—make that two—notes. You knew about that type­writ­er, I take it?”

“Ev­ery­body did. The man was in­fa­mous for re­fus­ing to al­low a com­put­er ter­mi­nal on his desk, re­fus­ing to use e-​mail.”

“I see.” Custer nod­ded, opened the clos­et.

As if on cue, an old-​fash­ioned black der­by hat fell out, bounced across the floor, and rolled in cir­cles un­til it fi­nal­ly came to rest at Custer’s feet.

Custer looked down at it in as­ton­ish­ment. It couldn’t have hap­pened more per­fect­ly if this had been an Agatha Christie mur­der mys­tery. This kind of thing just didn’t hap­pen in re­al po­lice­work. He could hard­ly be­lieve it.

He looked up at Bris­bane, his eye­brows arch­ing quizzi­cal­ly.

Bris­bane looked first con­found­ed, then flus­tered, then an­gry.

“It was for a cos­tume par­ty at the Mu­se­um,” the lawyer said. “You can check for your­self. Ev­ery­one saw me in it. I’ve had it for years.”

Custer poked his head in­to the clos­et, rum­maged around, and re­moved a black um­brel­la, tight­ly furled. He brought it out, stood it up on its point, then re­leased it. The um­brel­la top­pled over be­side the hat. He looked up again at Bris­bane. The sec­onds ticked on.

“This is ab­surd!” ex­plod­ed Bris­bane.

“I haven’t said any­thing,” said Custer. He looked at Noyes. “Did you say any­thing?”

“No, sir, I didn’t say any­thing.”

“So what ex­act­ly, Mr. Bris­bane, is ab­surd?”

“What you’re think­ing—” The man could hard­ly get out the words. “That I’m . . . that, you know . . . Oh, this is per­fect­ly ridicu­lous!”

Custer placed his hands be­hind his back. He came for­ward slow­ly, one step af­ter an­oth­er, un­til he reached the desk. And then, very de­lib­er­ate­ly, he leaned over it.

“What am I think­ing, Mr. Bris­bane?” he asked qui­et­ly.

THREE

THE ROLLS ROCK­ET­ED up River­side, their driv­er weav­ing ex­pert­ly through the lines of traf­fic, thread­ing the big ve­hi­cle through im­pos­si­bly nar­row gaps, some­times forc­ing op­pos­ing cars on­to the curb. It was af­ter eleven P.M., and the traf­fic was be­gin­ning to thin out. But the curbs of River­side and the side streets that led away from it re­mained com­plete­ly jammed with parked cars.

The car swerved on­to 131st Street, slow­ing abrupt­ly. And al­most im­me­di­ate­ly—no more than half a dozen cars in from River­side—No­ra spot­ted it: a sil­ver Ford Tau­rus, New York plate ELI-7734.

Pen­der­gast got out, walked over to the parked car, leaned to­ward the dash­board to ver­ify the VIN. Then he moved around to the pas­sen­ger door and broke the glass with an al­most in­vis­ible jab. The alarm shrieked in protest while he searched the glove com­part­ment and the rest of the in­te­ri­or. In a mo­ment he re­turned.

“The car’s emp­ty,” he told No­ra. “He must have tak­en the ad­dress with him. We’ll have to hope Leng’s house is close by.”

Telling Proc­tor to park at Grant’s Tomb and wait for their call, Pen­der­gast led the way down 131st in long, sweep­ing strides. With­in mo­ments they reached the Drive it­self. River­side Park stretched away across the street, its trees like gaunt sen­tinels at the edge of a vast, un­known tract of dark­ness. Be­yond the park was the Hud­son, glim­mer­ing in the vague moon­light.

No­ra looked left and right, at the count­less blocks of de­crepit apart­ment build­ings, old aban­doned man­sions, and squalid wel­fare ho­tels that stretched in both di­rec­tions. “How are we go­ing to find it?” she asked.

“It will have cer­tain char­ac­ter­is­tics,” Pen­der­gast replied. “It will be a pri­vate house, at least a hun­dred years old, not bro­ken in­to apart­ments. It will prob­ably look aban­doned, but it will be very se­cure. We’ll head south first.”

But be­fore pro­ceed­ing, he stopped and placed a hand on her shoul­der. “Nor­mal­ly, I’d nev­er al­low a civil­ian along on a po­lice ac­tion.”

“But that’s my boyfriend caught—”

Pen­der­gast raised his hand. “We have no time for dis­cus­sion. I have al­ready con­sid­ered care­ful­ly what it is we face. I’m go­ing to be as blunt as pos­si­ble. If we do find Leng’s house, the chances of my suc­ceed­ing with­out as­sis­tance are very small.”

“Good. I wouldn’t let you leave me be­hind, any­way.”

“I know that. I al­so know that, giv­en Leng’s cun­ning, two peo­ple have a bet­ter chance of suc­cess than a large—and loud—of­fi­cial re­sponse. Even if we could get such a re­sponse in time. But I must tell you, Dr. Kel­ly, I am bring­ing you in­to a sit­ua­tion where there are an al­most in­fi­nite num­ber of un­known vari­ables. In short, it is a sit­ua­tion in which it is very pos­si­ble one or both of us may be killed.”

“I’m will­ing to take that risk.”

“One fi­nal com­ment, then. In my opin­ion, Smith­back is al­ready dead, or will be by the time we find the house, get in­side, and se­cure Leng. This res­cue op­er­ation is al­ready, there­fore, a prob­able fail­ure.”

No­ra nod­ded, un­able to re­ply.

With­out an­oth­er word, Pen­der­gast turned and be­gan to walk south.

They passed sev­er­al old hous­es clear­ly bro­ken in­to apart­ments, then a wel­fare ho­tel, the res­ident al­co­holics watch­ing them ap­athet­ical­ly from the steps. Next came a long row of sor­did ten­ements.

And then, at Tie­mann Place, Pen­der­gast paused be­fore an aban­doned build­ing. It was a small town­house, its win­dows board­ed over, the buzzer miss­ing. He stared up at it briefly, then went quick­ly around to the side, peered over a bro­ken rail­ing, re­turned.

“What do you think?” No­ra whis­pered.

“I think we go in.”

Two heavy pieces of ply­wood, chained shut, cov­ered the open­ing where the door had been. Pen­der­gast grasped the lock on the chain. A white hand slid in­to his suit jack­et and emerged, hold­ing a small de­vice with tooth­pick-​like met­al at­tach­ments pro­ject­ing from one end. It gleamed in the re­flect­ed light of the street lamp.

“What’s that?” No­ra asked.

“Elec­tron­ic lock­pick,” Pen­der­gast replied, fit­ting it to the pad­lock. The latch sprung open in his long white hands. He pulled the chain away from the ply­wood and ducked in­side, No­ra fol­low­ing.

A noi­some stench welled out of the dark­ness. Pen­der­gast pulled out his flash­light and shined the beam over a bliz­zard of de­cay: rot­ting garbage, dead rats, ex­posed lath, nee­dles and crack vials, stand­ing pud­dles of rank wa­ter. With­out a word he turned and ex­it­ed, No­ra fol­low­ing.

They worked their way down as far as 120th Street. Here, the neigh­bor­hood im­proved and most of the build­ings were oc­cu­pied.

“There’s no point in go­ing far­ther,” Pen­der­gast said terse­ly. “We’ll head north in­stead.”

They hur­ried back to 131st Street—the point where their search had be­gun—and con­tin­ued north. This proved much slow­er go­ing. The neigh­bor­hood de­te­ri­orat­ed un­til it seemed as if most of the build­ings were aban­doned. Pen­der­gast dis­missed many out of hand, but he broke in­to one, then an­oth­er, then a third, while No­ra watched the street.

At 136th Street they stopped be­fore yet an­oth­er ru­ined house. Pen­der­gast looked to­ward it, scru­ti­niz­ing the fa­cade, then turned his eyes north­ward, silent and with­drawn. He was pale; the ac­tiv­ity had clear­ly taxed his weak­ened frame.

It was as if the en­tire Drive, once lined with el­egant town­hous­es, was now one long, des­olate ru­in. It seemed to No­ra that Leng could be in any one of those hous­es.

Pen­der­gast dropped his eyes to­ward the ground. “It ap­pears,” he said in a low voice, “that Mr. Smith­back had dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing park­ing.”

No­ra nod­ded, feel­ing a ris­ing de­spair. The Sur­geon now had Smith­back at least six hours, per­haps sev­er­al more. She would not fol­low that train of thought to its log­ical con­clu­sion.

FOUR

CUSTER AL­LOWED BRIS­BANE to stew for a minute, then two. And then he smiled—al­most con­spir­ato­ri­al­ly—at the lawyer. “Mind if I . . . ?” he be­gan, nod­ding to­ward the bizarre chrome-​and-​glass chair be­fore Bris­bane’s desk.

Bris­bane nod­ded. “Of course.”

Custer sank down, try­ing to ma­neu­ver his bulk in­to the most com­fort­able po­si­tion the chair would al­low. Then he smiled again. “Now, you were about to say some­thing?” He hiked a pant leg, tried to throw it over the oth­er, but the weird an­gle of the chair knocked it back against the floor. Un­ruf­fled, he cocked his head, rais­ing an eye­brow quizzi­cal­ly across the desk.

Bris­bane’s com­po­sure had re­turned. “Noth­ing. I just thought, with the hat . . .”

“What?”

“Noth­ing.”

“In that case, tell me about the Mu­se­um’s cos­tume par­ty.”

“The Mu­se­um of­ten throws fund-​rais­ers. Hall open­ings, par­ties for big donors, that sort of thing. Once in a while, it’s a cos­tume ball. I al­ways wear the same thing. I dress like an En­glish banker on his way to the City. Der­by hat, pin­striped pants, cut­away.”

“I see.” Custer glanced at the um­brel­la. “And the um­brel­la?”

“Ev­ery­body owns a black um­brel­la.”

A veil had dropped over the man’s emo­tions. Lawyer’s train­ing, no doubt.

“How long have you owned the hat?”

“I al­ready told you.”

“And where did you buy it?”

“Let’s see . . . at an old an­tique shop in the Vil­lage. Or per­haps TriBeCa. Lispinard Street, I be­lieve.”

“How much did it cost?”

“I don’t re­mem­ber. Thir­ty or forty dol­lars.” For a mo­ment, Bris­bane’s com­po­sure slipped ev­er so slight­ly. “Look, why are you so in­ter­est­ed in that hat? A lot of peo­ple own der­by hats.”

Watch the eyes. And the eyes looked pan­icked. The eyes looked guilty.

“Re­al­ly?” Custer replied in an even voice. “A lot of peo­ple? The on­ly per­son I know who owns a der­by hat in New York City is the killer.”

This was the first men­tion of the word “killer,” and Custer gave it a slight, but no­tice­able, em­pha­sis. Re­al­ly, he was play­ing this beau­ti­ful­ly, like a mas­ter an­gler bring­ing in a huge trout. He wished this was be­ing cap­tured on video. The chief would want to see it, per­haps make it avail­able as a train­ing film for as­pir­ing de­tec­tives. “Let’s get back to the um­brel­la.”

“I bought it . . . I can’t re­mem­ber. I’m al­ways buy­ing and los­ing um­brel­las.” Bris­bane shrugged ca­su­al­ly, but his shoul­ders were stiff.

“And the rest of your cos­tume?”

“In the clos­et. Go ahead, take a look.”

Custer had no doubt the rest of the cos­tume would match the de­scrip­tion of a black, old­fash­ioned coat. He ig­nored the at­tempt­ed dis­trac­tion. “Where did you buy it?”

“I think I found the pants and coat at that used for­mal­wear shop near Bloom­ing­dale’s. I just can’t think of the name.”

“No doubt.” Custer glanced search­ing­ly at Bris­bane. “Odd choice for a cos­tume par­ty, don’t you think? En­glish banker, I mean.”

“I dis­like look­ing ridicu­lous. I’ve worn that cos­tume half a dozen times to Mu­se­um par­ties, you can check with any­one. I put that cos­tume to good use.”

“Oh, I have no doubt you put it to good use. Good use in­deed.” Custer glanced over at Noyes. The man was ex­cit­ed, a kind of hun­gry, al­most slaver­ing look on his face. He, at least, re­al­ized what was com­ing.

“Where were you, Mr. Bris­bane, on Oc­to­ber 12, be­tween eleven o’clock in the evening and four o’clock the fol­low­ing morn­ing?” This was the time brack­et the coro­ner had de­ter­mined dur­ing which Puck had been killed.

Bris­bane seemed to think. “Let’s see . . . It’s hard to re­mem­ber.” He laughed again.

Custer laughed, too.

“I can’t re­mem­ber what I did that night. Not pre­cise­ly. Af­ter twelve or one, I would have been in bed, of course. But be­fore then . . . Yes, I re­mem­ber now. I was at home that night. Catch­ing up on my read­ing.”

“And you live alone, Mr. Bris­bane?”

“Yes.”

“So you have no one who can vouch for you be­ing at home? A land­la­dy, per­haps? Girl­friend? Boy friend?”

Bris­bane frowned. “No. No, noth­ing like that. So, if it’s all the same to you—”

“One mo­ment, Mr. Bris­bane. And where did you say you live?”

“I didn’t say. Ninth Street, near Uni­ver­si­ty Place.”

“Hm­mm. No more than a dozen blocks from Tomp­kins Square Park. Where the sec­ond mur­der took place.”

“That’s a very in­ter­est­ing co­in­ci­dence, no doubt.”

“It is.” Custer glanced out the win­dows, where Cen­tral Park lay be­neath a man­tle of dark­ness. “And no doubt it’s a co­in­ci­dence that the first mur­der took place right out there, in the Ram­ble.”

Bris­bane’s frown deep­ened. “Re­al­ly, De­tec­tive, I think we’ve reached the point where ques­tions end and spec­ula­tion be­gins.” He pushed back his chair, pre­pared to stand up. “And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with the busi­ness of clear­ing your men out of this Mu­se­um.”

Custer made a sup­press­ing mo­tion with one hand, glanced again at Noyes. Get ready. “There’s just one oth­er thing. The third mur­der.” He slid a piece of pa­per out of his note­book with a non­cha­lant mo­tion. “Do you know an Os­car Gibbs?”

“Yes, I be­lieve so. Mr. Puck’s as­sis­tant.”

“Ex­act­ly. Ac­cord­ing to the tes­ti­mo­ny of Mr. Gibbs, on the af­ter­noon of Oc­to­ber 12, you and Mr. Puck had a lit­tle, ah, dis­cus­sion in the Archives. This was af­ter you found out that Hu­man Re­sources had not sup­port­ed your rec­om­men­da­tion to fire Puck.”

Bris­bane col­ored slight­ly. “I wouldn’t be­lieve ev­ery­thing you hear.”

Custer smiled. “I don’t, Mr. Bris­bane. Be­lieve me, I don’t.” He fol­lowed this with a long, de­li­cious pause. “Now, this Mr. Os­car Gibbs said that you and Puck were yelling at each oth­er. Or rather, you were yelling at Puck. Care to tell me, in your words, what that was about?”

“I was rep­ri­mand­ing Mr. Puck.”

“What for?”

“Ne­glect­ing my in­struc­tions.”

“Which were?”

“To stick to his job.”

“To stick to his job. How had he been de­vi­at­ing from his job?”

“He was do­ing out­side work, help­ing No­ra Kel­ly with her ex­ter­nal projects, when I had specif­ical­ly—”

It was time. Custer pounced.

“Ac­cord­ing to Mr. Os­car Gibbs, you were (and I will read): scream­ing and yelling and threat­en­ing to bury Mr. Puck. He (that’s you, Mr. Bris­bane) said he wasn’t through by a long shot.” Custer low­ered the pa­per, glanced at Bris­bane. “That’s the word you used: ‘bury.’ ”

“It’s a com­mon fig­ure of speech.”

“And then, not twen­ty-​four hours lat­er, Puck’s body was found, gored on a di­nosaur in the Archives. Af­ter hav­ing been butchered, most like­ly in those very same Archives. An op­er­ation like that takes time, Mr. Bris­bane. Clear­ly, it was done by some­body who knew the Mu­se­um’s ways very well. Some­one with a se­cu­ri­ty clear­ance. Some­one who could move around the Mu­se­um with­out ex­cit­ing no­tice. An in­sid­er, if you will. And then, No­ra Kel­ly gets a pho­ny note, typed on Puck’s type­writ­er, ask­ing her to come down—and she her­self is at­tacked, pur­sued with dead­ly in­tent. No­ra Kel­ly. The oth­er thorn in your side. The third thorn, the FBI agent, was in the hos­pi­tal at this point, hav­ing been at­tacked by some­one wear­ing a der­by hat.”

Bris­bane stared at him in dis­be­lief.

“Why didn’t you want Puck to help No­ra Kel­ly in her—what did you call them—ex­ter­nal projects?”

This was an­swered by si­lence.

“What were you afraid she would find? They would find?”

Bris­bane’s mouth worked briefly. “I . . . I . . .”

Now Custer slipped in the knife. “Why the copy­cat an­gle, Mr. Bris­bane? Was it some­thing you found in the Archives? Is that what prompt­ed you to do it? Was Puck get­ting too close to learn­ing some­thing?”

At this, Bris­bane found his voice at last. He shot to his feet. “Now, just a minute—”

Custer turned. “Of­fi­cer Noyes?”

“Yes?” Noyes re­spond­ed ea­ger­ly.

“Cuff him.”

“No,” Bris­bane gasped. “You fool, you’re mak­ing a ter­ri­ble mis­take—”

Custer worked his way out of the chair—it was not as smooth a mo­tion as he would have wished—and be­gan abrupt­ly boom­ing out the Mi­ran­da rights: “You have the right to re­main silent—”

“This is an out­rage—”

“—you have the right to an at­tor­ney—”

“I will not ac­cept this!”

“—you have the right—”

He thun­dered it out to the bit­ter end, over­rid­ing Bris­bane’s protes­ta­tions. He watched as the glee­ful Noyes slapped the cuffs on the man. It was the most sat­is­fy­ing col­lar Custer could ev­er re­mem­ber. It was, in fact, the sin­gle great­est job of po­lice work he had done in his life. This was the stuff of leg­end. For many years to come, they’d be telling the sto­ry of how Cap­tain Custer put the cuffs on the Sur­geon.

FIVE

PEN­DER­GAST SET OFF up River­side once again, black suit coat open and flap­ping be­hind him in the Man­hat­tan night. No­ra hur­ried af­ter. Her thoughts re­turned to Smith­back, im­pris­oned in one of these gaunt build­ings. She tried to force the im­age from her mind, but it kept re­turn­ing, again and again. She was al­most phys­ical­ly sick with wor­ry about what might be hap­pen­ing—what might have al­ready hap­pened.

She won­dered how she could have been so an­gry with him. It’s true that much of the time he was im­pos­si­ble—a schemer, im­pul­sive, al­ways look­ing for an an­gle, al­ways get­ting him­self in­to trou­ble. And yet many of those same neg­ative qual­ities were his most en­dear­ing. She thought back to how he’d dressed up as a bum to help her re­trieve the old dress from the ex­ca­va­tion; how he’d come to warn her af­ter Pen­der­gast was stabbed. When push came to shove, he was there. She had been aw­ful­ly hard on him. But it was too late to be sor­ry. She sup­pressed a sob of bit­ter re­gret.

They moved past gut­tered man­sions and once el­egant town­hous­es, now fes­ter­ing crack dens and shoot­ing gal­leries for junkies. Pen­der­gast gave each build­ing a search­ing look, al­ways turn­ing away with a lit­tle shake of his head.

No­ra’s thoughts flit­ted briefly to Leng him­self. It seemed im­pos­si­ble that he could still be alive, con­cealed with­in one of these crum­bling dwellings. She glanced up the Drive again. She had to con­cen­trate, try to pick his house out from the oth­ers. Wher­ev­er he lived, it would be com­fort­able. A man who had lived over a hun­dred and fifty years would be ex­ces­sive­ly con­cerned with com­fort. But it would no doubt give the sur­face im­pres­sion of be­ing aban­doned. And it would be well-​nigh im­preg­nable—Leng wouldn’t want any un­ex­pect­ed vis­itors. This was the per­fect neigh­bor­hood for such a place: aban­doned, yet once el­egant; ex­ter­nal­ly shab­by, yet liv­able in­side; board­ed up; very pri­vate.

The trou­ble was, so many of the build­ings met those cri­te­ria.

Then, near the cor­ner of 138th Street, Pen­der­gast stopped dead. He turned, slow­ly, to face yet an­oth­er aban­doned build­ing. It was a large, de­cayed man­sion, a hulk­ing shad­ow of by­gone glo­ry, set back from the street by a small ser­vice drive. Like many oth­ers, the first floor had been se­cure­ly board­ed up with tin. It looked just like a dozen oth­er build­ings they had passed. And yet Pen­der­gast was star­ing at it with an ex­pres­sion of in­tent­ness No­ra had not seen be­fore.

Silent­ly, he turned the cor­ner of 138th Street. No­ra fol­lowed, watch­ing him. The FBI agent moved slow­ly, eyes most­ly on the ground, with just oc­ca­sion­al dart­ed glances up at the build­ing. They con­tin­ued down the block un­til they reached the cor­ner of Broad­way. The mo­ment they turned the cor­ner, Pen­der­gast spoke.

“That’s it.”

“How do you know?”

“The crest carved on the es­cutcheon over the door. Three apothe­cary balls over a sprig of hem­lock.” He waved his hand. “For­give me if I re­serve ex­pla­na­tions for lat­er. Fol­low my lead. And be very, very care­ful.”

He con­tin­ued around the block un­til they reached the cor­ner of River­side Drive and 137th. No­ra looked at the build­ing with a mix­ture of cu­rios­ity, ap­pre­hen­sion, and out­right fear. It was a large, four-​sto­ry, brick-​and-​stone struc­ture that oc­cu­pied the en­tire short block. Its frontage was en­closed in a wrought iron fence, ivy cov­er­ing the rusty point­ed rails. The gar­den with­in was long gone, tak­en over by weeds, bush­es, and garbage. A car­riage drive cir­cled the rear of the house, ex­it­ing on 138th Street. Though the low­er win­dows were se­cure­ly board­ed over, the up­per cours­es re­mained un­blocked, al­though at least one win­dow on the sec­ond sto­ry was bro­ken. She stared up at the crest Pen­der­gast had men­tioned. An in­scrip­tion in Greek ran around its edge.

A gust of wind rus­tled the bare limbs in the yard; the re­flect­ed moon, the scud­ding clouds, flick­ered in the glass panes of the up­per sto­ries. The place looked haunt­ed.

Pen­der­gast ducked in­to the car­riage drive, No­ra fol­low­ing close be­hind. The agent kicked aside some garbage with his shoe and, af­ter a quick look around, stepped up to a sol­id oak door set in­to deep shad­ow be­neath the porte-​cochère. It seemed to No­ra as if Pen­der­gast mere­ly ca­ressed the lock; and then the door opened silent­ly on well-​oiled hinges.

They stepped quick­ly in­side. Pen­der­gast eased the door closed, and No­ra heard the sound of a lock click­ing. A mo­ment of in­tense dark­ness while they stood still, lis­ten­ing for any sounds from with­in. The old house was silent. Af­ter a minute, the yel­low line of Pen­der­gast’s hood­ed flash­light ap­peared, scan­ning the room around them.

They were stand­ing in a small en­try­way. The floor was pol­ished mar­ble, and the walls were pa­pered in heavy vel­vet fab­ric. Dust cov­ered ev­ery­thing. Pen­der­gast stood still, di­rect­ing his light at a se­ries of foot­prints—some shod, some stockinged—that had dis­turbed the dust on the floor. He looked at them for so long, study­ing them as an art stu­dent stud­ies an old mas­ter, that No­ra felt im­pa­tience be­gin to over­whelm her. At last he led the way, slow­ly, through the room and down a short pas­sage lead­ing in­to a large, long hall. It was pan­eled in a very rich, dense wood, and the low ceil­ing was in­tri­cate­ly worked, a blend of the goth­ic and aus­tere.

This hall was full of an odd as­sort­ment of dis­plays No­ra was un­able to com­pre­hend: weird ta­bles, cab­inets, large box­es, iron cages, strange ap­pa­ra­tus.

“A ma­gi­cian’s ware­house,” Pen­der­gast mur­mured in an­swer to her un­spo­ken ques­tion.

They passed through the room, be­neath an arch­way, and in­to a grand re­cep­tion hall. Once again, Pen­der­gast stopped to study sev­er­al lines of foot­prints that crossed and re­crossed the par­quet floor.

“Bare­foot, now,” she heard him say to him­self. “And this time, he was run­ning.”

He quick­ly probed the im­mense space with his beam. No­ra saw an as­ton­ish­ing range of ob­jects: mount­ed skele­tons, fos­sils, glass-​front­ed cab­inets full of won­drous and ter­ri­ble ar­ti­facts, gems, skulls, me­te­orites, iri­des­cent bee­tles. The flash­light played briefly over all. The scent of cob­webs, leather, and old buck­ram hung heavy in the thick air, veil­ing a fainter—and much less pleas­ant—smell.

“What is this place?” No­ra asked.

“Leng’s cab­inet of cu­riosi­ties.” A two-​toned pis­tol had ap­peared in Pen­der­gast’s left hand. The stench was worse now; sick­ly sweet, oily, that filled the air like a wet fog, cling­ing to her hair, limbs, clothes.

He moved for­ward, war­ily, his light play­ing off the var­ious ob­jects in the room. Some of the ob­jects were un­cov­ered, but most were draped. The walls were lined with glass cas­es, and Pen­der­gast moved to­ward them, his flash­light lick­ing from one to the next. The glass sparked and shim­mered as the beam hit it; dark shad­ows, thrown from the ob­jects with­in, reared for­ward as if liv­ing things.

Sud­den­ly, the beam stopped dead. No­ra watched as Pen­der­gast’s pale face lost what lit­tle col­or it nor­mal­ly had. For a mo­ment, he sim­ply stared, mo­tion­less, not even seem­ing to draw breath. Then, very slow­ly, he ap­proached the case. The beam of the flash­light trem­bled a bit as he moved. No­ra fol­lowed, won­der­ing what had had such a gal­van­ic ef­fect on the agent.

The glass case was not like the rest. It did not con­tain a skele­ton, stuffed tro­phy, or car­ven im­age. In­stead, be­hind the glass stood the fig­ure of a dead man, legs and arms strapped up­right be­tween crude iron bars and cuffs, mount­ed as if for mu­se­um dis­play. The man was dressed in se­vere black, with a nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry frock coat and striped pants.

“Who—?” No­ra man­aged to say.

But Pen­der­gast was trans­fixed, hear­ing noth­ing, his face rigid. All his at­ten­tion was con­cen­trat­ed on the mount­ed man. The light played mer­ci­less­ly about the corpse. It lin­gered for a long time on one par­tic­ular de­tail—a pal­lid hand, the flesh shrunk­en and shriv­eled, a sin­gle knuck­le­bone pok­ing from a tear in the rot­ten flesh.

No­ra stared at the ex­posed knuck­le, red and ivory against the parch­ment skin. With a nau­seous lurch in the pit of her stom­ach, she re­al­ized that the hand was miss­ing all its fin­ger­nails; that, in fact, noth­ing re­mained of the fin­ger­tips but bloody stumps, punc­tu­at­ed by pro­trud­ing bones.

Then—slow­ly, in­ex­orably—the light be­gan trav­el­ing up the front of the corpse. The beam rose past the but­tons of the coat, up the starched shirt­front, be­fore at last stop­ping on the face.

It was mum­mi­fied, shrunk­en, wiz­ened. And yet it was sur­pris­ing­ly well pre­served, all the fea­tures mod­eled as fine­ly as if carved from stone. The lips, which had dried and shriv­eled, were drawn back in a ric­tus of mer­ri­ment, ex­pos­ing two beau­ti­ful rows of white teeth. On­ly the eyes were gone: emp­ty sock­ets like bot­tom­less pools no light could il­lu­mi­nate.

There was a hol­low, muf­fled sound of rustling com­ing from in­side the skull.

The jour­ney through the house had al­ready numbed No­ra with hor­ror. But now her mind went blank with an even worse shock: the shock of recog­ni­tion.

She au­to­mat­ical­ly turned, speech­less, to Pen­der­gast. His frame re­mained rigid, his eyes wide and star­ing. What­ev­er it was he had ex­pect­ed to find, it was not this.

She shift­ed her hor­ri­fied gaze back at the corpse. Even in death, there could be no ques­tion. The corpse had the same mar­ble-​col­ored skin, the same re­fined fea­tures, the same thin lips and aquiline nose, the same high smooth fore­head and del­icate chin, the same fine pale hair—as Pen­der­gast him­self.

SIX

CUSTER OB­SERVED THE perp— he’d al­ready be­gun to call him that—with deep sat­is­fac­tion. The man stood in his of­fice, hands cuffed be­hind him, black tie askew and white shirt rum­pled, hair di­sheveled, dark cir­cles of sweat be­neath his armpits. How are the mighty fall­en, in­deed. He’d held out a long time, kept up that ar­ro­gant, im­pa­tient fa­cade. But now, the eyes were red, the lips trem­bling. He hadn’t be­lieved it was re­al­ly go­ing to hap­pen to him. It was the cuffs that did it, Custer thought know­ing­ly to him­self. He had seen it hap­pen many times be­fore, to men a lot tougher than Bris­bane. Some­thing about the cool clasp of the man­acles around your wrists, the re­al­iza­tion that you were un­der ar­rest, pow­er­less—in cus­tody—was more than some peo­ple could take.

The true, the pure, po­lice work was over—now it was just a mat­ter of col­lect­ing all the lit­tle ev­iden­tiary de­tails, work for the low­er ech­elons to com­plete. Custer him­self could take leave of the scene.

He glanced at Noyes and saw ad­mi­ra­tion shin­ing in the small hound face. Then he turned back to the perp.

“Well, Bris­bane,” he said. “It all falls in­to place, doesn’t it?”

Bris­bane looked at him with un­com­pre­hend­ing eyes.

“Mur­der­ers al­ways think they’re smarter than ev­ery­one else. Es­pe­cial­ly the po­lice. But when you get down to it, Bris­bane, you re­al­ly didn’t play it smart at all. Keep­ing the dis­guise right here in your of­fice, for ex­am­ple. And then there was the mat­ter of all those wit­ness­es. Try­ing to hide ev­idence, ly­ing to me about how of­ten you were in the Archives. Killing vic­tims so close to your own place of work, your place of res­idence. The list goes on, doesn’t it?”

The door opened and a uni­formed of­fi­cer slipped a fax in­to Custer’s hand.

“And here’s an­oth­er lit­tle fact just in. Yes, the lit­tle facts can be so in­con­ve­nient.” He read over the fax. “Ah. And now we know where you got your med­ical train­ing, Bris­bane: you were pre-​med at Yale.” He hand­ed the fax to Noyes. “Switched to ge­ol­ogy your ju­nior year. Then to law.” Custer shook his head again, won­der­ing­ly, at the bot­tom­less stu­pid­ity of crim­inals. Bris­bane fi­nal­ly man­aged to speak. “I’m no mur­der­er! Why would I kill those peo­ple?”

Custer shrugged philo­soph­ical­ly. “The very ques­tion I asked you. But then, why do any se­ri­al killers kill? Why did Jack the Rip­per kill? Why Jef­frey Dah­mer? That’s a ques­tion for the psy­chi­atrists to an­swer. Or maybe for God.”

On this note, Custer turned back to Noyes. “Set up a press con­fer­ence for mid­night. One Po­lice Plaza. No, hold on—let’s make it on the front steps of the Mu­se­um. Call the com­mis­sion­er, call the press. And most im­por­tant­ly, call the may­or, on his pri­vate line at Gra­cie Man­sion. This is one call he’ll be hap­py to get out of bed for. Tell them we col­lared the Sur­geon.”

“Yes, sir!” said Noyes, turn­ing to go.

“My God, the pub­lic­ity . . .” Bris­bane’s voice was high, stran­gled. “Cap­tain, I’ll have your badge for this . . .” He choked up with fear and rage, un­able to con­tin­ue.

But Custer wasn’t lis­ten­ing. He’d had an­oth­er mas­ter­stroke.

“Just a minute!” he called to Noyes. “Make sure the may­or knows that he’ll be the star of our show. We’ll let him make the an­nounce­ment.”

As the door closed, Custer turned his thoughts to the may­or. The elec­tion was a week away. He would need the boost. Let­ting him make the an­nounce­ment was a clever move; very clever. Ru­mor had it that the job of com­mis­sion­er would be­come va­cant af­ter re­elec­tion. And, af­ter all, it was nev­er too ear­ly to hope.

SEV­EN

AGAIN, NO­RA LOOKED at Pen­der­gast. And again she was un­nerved by the depth of his shock. His eyes seemed glued to the face of the corpse: the parch­ment skin, the del­icate, aris­to­crat­ic fea­tures, the hair so blond it could have been white.

“The face. It looks just like—” No­ra strug­gled to un­der­stand, to ar­tic­ulate her thoughts.

Pen­der­gast did not re­spond.

“It looks just like you,” No­ra fi­nal­ly man­aged.

“Yes,” came the whis­pered re­sponse. “Very much like me.”

“But who is it—?”

“Enoch Leng.”

Some­thing in the way he said this caused No­ra’s skin to crawl.

“Leng? But how can that be? I thought you said he was alive.”

With a vis­ible ef­fort Pen­der­gast wrenched his eyes from the glass case and turned them on her. In them, she read many things: hor­ror, pain, dread. His face re­mained col­or­less in the dim light.

“He was. Un­til re­cent­ly. Some­one ap­pears to have killed Leng. Tor­tured him to death. And put him in that case. It seems we are now deal­ing with that oth­er some­one.” “I still don’t—”

Pen­der­gast held up one hand. “I can­not speak of it now,” was all he said. He turned from the fig­ure, slow­ly, al­most painful­ly, his light stab­bing far­ther in­to the gloom. No­ra in­haled the an­tique, dust-​laden air. Ev­ery­thing was so strange, so ter­ri­ble and un­ex­pect­ed; the kind of weird­ness that hap­pened on­ly in a night­mare. She tried to calm her pound­ing heart.

“Now he is un­con­scious, be­ing dragged,” whis­pered Pen­der­gast. His eyes were once again on the floor, but his voice and man­ner re­mained dread­ful­ly changed.

With the flash­light as a guide, they fol­lowed the marks across the re­cep­tion hall to a set of closed doors. Pen­der­gast opened them to re­veal a car­pet­ed, well-​ap­point­ed space: a twos­to­ry li­brary, filled with leather-​bound books. The beam probed far­ther, slic­ing through drift­ing clouds of dust. In ad­di­tion to books, No­ra saw that, again, many of the shelves were lined with spec­imens, all care­ful­ly la­beled. There were al­so nu­mer­ous free­stand­ing spec­imens in the room, draped in rot­ting duck can­vas. A va­ri­ety of wing chairs and so­fas were po­si­tioned around the li­brary, the leather dry and split, the stuff­ing un­rav­el­ing.

The beam of the flash­light licked over the walls. A salver sat on a near­by ta­ble, hold­ing a crys­tal de­canter of what had once been port or sher­ry: a brown crust lined its bot­tom. Next to the tray sat a small, emp­ty glass. An un­smoked cigar, shriv­eled and furred with mold, lay along­side it. A fire­place carved of gray mar­ble was set in­to one of the walls, a fire laid but not lit. Be­fore it was a tat­tered ze­bra skin, well chewed by mice. A side­board near­by held more crys­tal de­canters, each with a brown or black sub­stance dried with­in. A ho­minid skull—No­ra rec­og­nized it as Aus­tralo­pithecine—sat on a side ta­ble with a can­dle set in­to it. An open book lay near­by.

Pen­der­gast’s light lin­gered on the open book. No­ra could see it was an an­cient med­ical trea­tise, writ­ten in Latin. The page showed en­grav­ings of a ca­dav­er in var­ious stages of dis­sec­tion. Of all the ob­jects in the li­brary, on­ly this looked fresh, as if it had been han­dled re­cent­ly. Ev­ery­thing else was lay­ered with dust.

Once again, Pen­der­gast turned his at­ten­tion to the floor, where No­ra could clear­ly see marks in the moth-​eat­en, rot­ting car­pet. The marks ap­peared to end at a wall of books.

Now, Pen­der­gast ap­proached the wall. He ran his light over their spines, peer­ing in­tent­ly at the ti­tles. Ev­ery few mo­ments he would stop, re­move a book, glance at it, shove it back. Sud­den­ly—as Pen­der­gast re­moved a par­tic­ular­ly mas­sive tome from a shelf—No­ra heard a loud metal­lic click. Two large rows of ad­join­ing book­shelves sprang open. Pen­der­gast drew them care­ful­ly back, ex­pos­ing a fold­ing brass gate. Be­hind the closed gate lay a door of sol­id maple. It took No­ra a mo­ment to re­al­ize what it was.

“An old el­eva­tor,” she whis­pered.

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “Yes. The old ser­vice el­eva­tor to the base­ment. There was some­thing ex­act­ly like this in—”

He went abrupt­ly silent. As the sound of his voice fad­ed away, No­ra heard what she thought was a noise com­ing from with­in the closed el­eva­tor. A shal­low breath, per­haps, hard­ly more than a moan.

Sud­den­ly, a ter­ri­ble thought burst over No­ra. At the same time, Pen­der­gast stiff­ened vis­ibly.

She let out an in­vol­un­tary gasp. “That’s not—” She couldn’t bring her­self to say Smith­back’s name.

“We must hur­ry.”

Pen­der­gast care­ful­ly ex­am­ined the brass gate with the beam. He reached for­ward, gin­ger­ly tried the han­dle. It did not move. He knelt be­fore the door and, with his head close to the latch­ing mech­anism, ex­am­ined it. No­ra saw him re­move a flat, flex­ible piece of met­al from his suit and slide it in­to the mech­anism. There was a faint click. He worked the shim back and forth, teas­ing and prob­ing at the latch, un­til there was a sec­ond click. Then he stood up and, with in­fi­nite cau­tion, drew back the brass gate. It fold­ed to one side eas­ily, al­most noise­less­ly. Again, Pen­der­gast ap­proached, crouch­ing be­fore the han­dle of the maple door, re­gard­ing it in­tent­ly.

There was an­oth­er sound: again a faint, ag­onized at­tempt to breathe. Her heart filled with dread.

A sud­den rasp­ing noise filled the study. Pen­der­gast jumped back abrupt­ly as the door shot open of its own ac­cord.

No­ra stood trans­fixed with hor­ror. A fig­ure ap­peared in the back of the small com­part­ment. For a mo­ment, it re­mained mo­tion­less. And then, with the sound of rot­ten fab­ric tear­ing away, it slow­ly came top­pling out to­ward them. For a ter­ri­ble mo­ment, No­ra thought it would fall up­on Pen­der­gast. But then the fig­ure jerked abrupt­ly to a stop, held by a rope around its neck, lean­ing to­ward them at a grotesque an­gle, arms swing­ing.

“It’s O’Shaugh­nessy,” said Pen­der­gast.

“O’Shaugh­nessy!”

“Yes. And he’s still alive.” He took a step for­ward and grabbed the body, wrestling it up­right, free­ing the neck from the rope. No­ra came quick­ly to his side and helped him low­er the sergeant to the floor. As she did so, she saw a huge, gap­ing hole in the man’s back. O’Shaugh­nessy coughed once, head lolling.

There was a sud­den jolt; a protest­ing squeal of gears and ma­chin­ery; and then, abrupt­ly, the bot­tom dropped out of their world.

EIGHT

CUSTER LED THE makeshift pro­ces­sion down the long echo­ing halls, to­ward the Great Ro­tun­da and the front steps of the Mu­se­um that lay be­yond. He’d al­lowed Noyes a good half hour to give the press a heads-​up, and while he was wait­ing he’d worked out the prece­dence down to the last de­tail. He came first, of course, fol­lowed by two uni­formed cops with the perp be­tween them, and then a pha­lanx of some twen­ty lieu­tenants and de­tec­tives. Trail­ing them, in turn, was a ragged, dis­mayed, dis­or­ga­nized knot of mu­se­um staffers. This in­clud­ed the head of pub­lic re­la­tions; Manet­ti the se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor; a gag­gle of aides. They were all in a fren­zy, clear­ly out of their depth. If they’d been smart, if they’d as­sist­ed rather than tried to im­pede good po­lice work and due pro­cess, maybe this cir­cus could have been avoid­ed. But now, he was go­ing to make it hard on them. He was go­ing to hold the press con­fer­ence in their own front yard, right on those nice wide steps, with the vast spooky fa­cade of the Mu­se­um as back­drop—per­fect for the ear­ly morn­ing news. The cam­eras would eat it up. And now, as the group crossed the Ro­tun­da, the echoes of their foot­steps min­gling with the mur­mur­ing of voic­es, Custer held his head erect, sucked in his gut. He want­ed to make sure the mo­ment would be well record­ed for pos­ter­ity.

The Mu­se­um’s grand bronze doors opened, and be­yond lay Mu­se­um Drive and a seething mass of press. De­spite the ad­vance ground­work, he was still amazed by how many had gath­ered, like flies to shit. Im­me­di­ate­ly, a bar­rage of flash­es went off, fol­lowed by the sharp, steady bril­liance of the tele­vi­sion cam­era lights. A wave of shout­ed ques­tions broke over him, in­di­vid­ual voic­es in­dis­tin­guish­able in the gen­er­al roar. The steps them­selves had been cor­doned off by po­lice ropes, but as Custer emerged with the perp in tow the wait­ing crowd surged for­ward as one. There was a mo­ment of in­tense ex­cite­ment, fran­tic shout­ing and shov­ing, be­fore the cops re­gained con­trol, push­ing the press back be­hind the po­lice cor­don.

The perp hadn’t said a word for the last twen­ty min­utes, ap­par­ent­ly shocked in­to a stu­por. He was so out of it he hadn’t even both­ered to con­ceal his face as the doors of the Ro­tun­da opened on­to the night air. Now, as the bat­tery of lights hit his face—as he saw the sea of faces, the cam­eras and out­stretched recorders—he ducked his head away from the crowd, cring­ing away from the burst of flash units, and had to be pro­pelled bod­ily along, half dragged, half car­ried, to­ward the wait­ing squad car. At the car, as Custer had in­struct­ed, the two cops hand­ed the perp over to him. He would be the one to thrust the man in­to the back seat. This was the pho­to, Custer knew, that would be splashed across the front page of ev­ery pa­per in town the next morn­ing.

But get­ting hand­ed the perp was like be­ing tossed a 175-pound sack of shit, and he al­most dropped the man try­ing to ma­neu­ver him in the back seat. Suc­cess was achieved at last to a swelling fusil­lade of flash at­tach­ments; the squad car turned on its lights and siren; and nosed for­ward.

Custer watched it ease its way through the crowd, then turned to face the press him­self. He raised his hands like Moses, wait­ing for si­lence to fall. He had no in­ten­tion of steal­ing the may­or’s thun­der—the pic­tures of him bundling the cuffed perp in­to the ve­hi­cle would tell ev­ery­one who had made the col­lar—but he had to say a lit­tle some­thing to keep the crowd con­tained.

“The may­or is on his way,” he called out in a clear, com­mand­ing voice. “He will ar­rive in a few min­utes, and he will have an im­por­tant an­nounce­ment to make. Un­til then, there will be no fur­ther com­ments what­so­ev­er.”

“How’d you get him?” a lone voice shout­ed, and then there was a sud­den roar of ques­tions; fran­tic shout­ing; wav­ing; boomed mikes swing­ing out in his di­rec­tion. But Custer mag­is­te­ri­al­ly turned his back on it all. The elec­tion was less than a week away. Let the may­or make the an­nounce­ment and take the glo­ry. Custer would reap his own re­ward, lat­er.

NINE

THE FIRST THING that re­turned was the pain. No­ra came swim­ming back in­to con­scious­ness, slow­ly, ag­oniz­ing­ly. She moaned, swal­lowed, tried to move. Her side felt lac­er­at­ed. She blinked, blinked again, then re­al­ized she was sur­round­ed by ut­ter dark­ness. She felt blood on her face, but when she tried to touch it her arm re­fused to move. She tried again and re­al­ized that both her arms and legs were chained.

She felt con­fused, as if caught in a dream from which she could not awake. What was go­ing on here? Where was she?

A voice came from the dark­ness, low and weak. “Dr. Kel­ly?”

At the sound of her own name, the dream-​like con­fu­sion be­gan to re­cede. As clar­ity grew, No­ra felt a sud­den shock of fear.

“It’s Pen­der­gast,” the voice mur­mured. “Are you all right?”

“I don’t know. A few bruised ribs, maybe. And you?”

“More or less.”

“What hap­pened?”

There was a si­lence. Then Pen­der­gast spoke again. “I am very, very sor­ry. I should have ex­pect­ed the trap. How bru­tal, us­ing Sergeant O’Shaugh­nessy to bait us like that. Un­ut­ter­ably bru­tal.”

“Is O’Shaugh­nessy—?”

“He was dy­ing when we found him. He can­not have sur­vived.”

“God, how aw­ful,” No­ra sobbed. “How hor­ri­ble.”

“He was a good man, a loy­al man. I am be­yond words.”

There was a long si­lence. So great was No­ra’s fear that it seemed to choke off even her grief and hor­ror at what had hap­pened to O’Shaugh­nessy. She had be­gun to re­al­ize the same was in store for them—as it may have al­ready been for Smith­back.

Pen­der­gast’s weak voice broke the si­lence. “I’ve been un­able to main­tain prop­er in­tel­lec­tu­al dis­tance in this case,” he said. “I’ve sim­ply been too close to it, from the very be­gin­ning. My ev­ery move has been flawed—”

Abrupt­ly, Pen­der­gast fell silent. A few mo­ments lat­er, No­ra heard a noise, and a small rect­an­gle of light slid in­to view high up in the wall be­fore her. It cast just enough light for her to see the out­line of their prison: a small, damp stone cel­lar.

A pair of wet lips hov­ered with­in the rect­an­gle.

“Please do not dis­com­pose your­self,” a voice crooned in a deep, rich ac­cent cu­ri­ous­ly like Pen­der­gast’s own. “All this will be over soon. Strug­gle is un­nec­es­sary. For­give me for not play­ing the host at the present mo­ment, but I have some press­ing busi­ness to take care of. Af­ter­ward, I as­sure you, I will give you the ben­efit of my un­di­vid­ed at­ten­tion.”

The rect­an­gle scraped shut.

For a minute, per­haps two, No­ra re­mained in the dark­ness, hard­ly able to breathe in her ter­ror. She strug­gled to re­take pos­ses­sion of her mind.

“Agent Pen­der­gast?” she whis­pered.

There was no an­swer.

And then the watch­ful dark­ness was rent asun­der by a dis­tant, muf­fled scream—stran­gled, gar­bled, chok­ing.

In­stant­ly, No­ra knew—be­yond the shad­ow of a doubt—that the voice was Smith­back’s.

“Oh my God!” she screamed. “Agent Pen­der­gast, did you hear that?”

Still Pen­der­gast did not an­swer.

“Pen­der­gast!”

The dark­ness con­tin­ued to yield noth­ing but si­lence.

In the Dark

ONE

PEN­DER­GAST CLOSED HIS eyes against the dark­ness. Grad­ual­ly, the chess­board ap­peared, ma­te­ri­al­iz­ing out of a vague haze. The ivory and ebony chess pieces, smoothed by count­less years of han­dling, stood qui­et­ly, wait­ing for the game to be­gin. The chill of the damp stone, the rough grasp of the man­acles, the pain in his ribs, No­ra’s fright­ened voice, the oc­ca­sion­al dis­tant cry, all fell away one by one, leav­ing on­ly an en­fold­ing dark­ness, the board stand­ing qui­et­ly in a pool of yel­low light. And still Pen­der­gast wait­ed, breath­ing deeply, his heart­beat slow­ing. Fi­nal­ly, he reached for­ward, touched a cool chess piece, and ad­vanced his king’s pawn for­ward two spaces. Black coun­tered. The game be­gan, slow­ly at first, then faster, and faster, un­til the pieces flew across the board. Stale­mate. An­oth­er game, and still an­oth­er, with the same re­sults. And then, rather abrupt­ly, came dark­ness—ut­ter dark­ness.

When at last he was ready, Pen­der­gast once again opened his eyes.

He was stand­ing in the wide up­stairs hall­way of the Mai­son de la Rochenoire, the great old New Or­leans house on Dauphine Street in which he had grown up. Orig­inal­ly a monastery erect­ed by an ob­scure Carmelite or­der, the ram­bling pile had been pur­chased by Pen­der­gast’s dis­tant grand­fa­ther many times re­moved in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, and ren­ovat­ed in­to an ec­cen­tric labyrinth of vault­ed rooms and shad­owy cor­ri­dors.

Al­though the Mai­son de la Rochenoire had been burned down by a mob short­ly af­ter Pen­der­gast left for board­ing school in Eng­land, he con­tin­ued to re­turn to it fre­quent­ly. With­in his mind, the struc­ture had be­come more than a house. It had be­come a mem­ory palace, a store­house of knowl­edge and lore, the place for his most in­tense and dif­fi­cult med­ita­tions. All of his own ex­pe­ri­ences and ob­ser­va­tions, all of the many Pen­der­gast fam­ily se­crets, were housed with­in. On­ly here, safe in the man­sion’s Goth­ic bo­som, could he med­itate with­out fear of in­ter­rup­tion.

And there was a great deal to med­itate up­on. For one of the few times in his life, he had known fail­ure. If there was a so­lu­tion to this prob­lem, it would lie some­where with­in these walls—some­where with­in his own mind. Search­ing for the so­lu­tion would mean a phys­ical search of his mem­ory palace.

He strolled pen­sive­ly down the broad, tapestried cor­ri­dor, the rose-​col­ored walls bro­ken at reg­ular in­ter­vals by mar­ble nich­es. Each niche con­tained an exquisite minia­ture leather-​bound book. Some of these had ac­tu­al­ly ex­ist­ed in the old house. Oth­ers were pure mem­ory con­structs—chron­icles of past events, facts, fig­ures, chem­ical for­mu­lae, com­plex math­emat­ical or meta­phys­ical proofs—all stored by Pen­der­gast in the house as a phys­ical ob­ject of mem­ory, for use at some un­known fu­ture date.

Now, he stood be­fore the heavy oak­en door of his own room. Nor­mal­ly he would un­lock the door and linger with­in, sur­round­ed by the fa­mil­iar ob­jects, the com­fort­ing iconog­ra­phy, of his child­hood. But to­day he con­tin­ued on, paus­ing on­ly to pass his fin­gers light­ly over the brass knob of the door. His busi­ness lay else­where, be­low, with things old­er and in­finite­ly stranger.

He had men­tioned to No­ra his in­abil­ity to main­tain prop­er in­tel­lec­tu­al dis­tance in the case, and this was un­de­ni­ably true. This was what had led him, and her—and, to his deep­est sor­row, Patrick O’Shaugh­nessy—in­to the present mis­for­tune. What he had not re­vealed to No­ra was the pro­found shock he felt when he saw the face of the dead man. It was, as he now knew, Enoch Leng—or, more ac­cu­rate­ly, his own great-​grand-​un­cle, An­toine Leng Pen­der­gast.

For Great-​Grand-​Un­cle An­toine had suc­ceed­ed in his youth­ful dream of ex­tend­ing his life.

The last rem­nants of the an­cient Pen­der­gast fam­ily—those who were com­pos men­tis—as­sumed that An­toine had died many years ago, prob­ably in New York, where he had van­ished in the mid nin­teenth cen­tu­ry. A sig­nif­icant por­tion of the Pen­der­gast fam­ily for­tune had van­ished with him, much to the cha­grin of his col­lat­er­al de­scen­dants.

But sev­er­al years be­fore, while work­ing on the case of the Sub­way Mas­sacre, Pen­der­gast—thanks to Wren, his li­brary ac­quain­tance—had stum­bled by chance up­on some old news­pa­per ar­ti­cles. These ar­ti­cles de­scribed a sud­den rash of dis­ap­pear­ances: dis­ap­pear­ances that fol­lowed not long af­ter the date An­toine was sup­posed to have ar­rived in New York. A corpse had been dis­cov­ered, float­ing in the East Riv­er, with the marks of a di­abol­ical kind of surgery. It was a street waif, and the crime was nev­er solved. But cer­tain un­com­fort­able de­tails caused Pen­der­gast to be­lieve it to be the work of An­toine, and to feel the man was at­tempt­ing to achieve his youth­ful dream of im­mor­tal­ity. A pe­rusal of lat­er news­pa­pers brought a half-​dozen sim­ilar crimes to light, stretch­ing as far for­ward as 1935.

The ques­tion, Pen­der­gast re­al­ized, be­came: had Leng suc­ceed­ed? Or had he died in 1935?

Death seemed by far the most like­ly re­sult. And yet, Pen­der­gast had re­mained un­easy. An­toine Leng Pen­der­gast was a man of tran­scen­den­tal ge­nius, com­bined with tran­scen­den­tal mad­ness.

So Pen­der­gast wait­ed and watched. As the last of his line, he’d felt it his re­spon­si­bil­ity to keep vig­il against the un­like­ly chance that, some­day, ev­idence of his an­ces­tor’s con­tin­ued ex­is­tence would resur­face. When he heard of the dis­cov­ery on Cather­ine Street, he im­me­di­ate­ly sus­pect­ed what had hap­pened there, and who was re­spon­si­ble. And when the mur­der of Doreen Hol­lan­der was dis­cov­ered, he knew that what he most dread­ed had come to pass: An­toine Pen­der­gast had suc­ceed­ed in his quest.

But now, An­toine was dead.

There could be no doubt that the mum­mi­fied corpse in the glass case was that of An­toine Pen­der­gast, who had tak­en, in his jour­ney north­ward, the name Enoch Leng. Pen­der­gast had come to the house on River­side Drive ex­pect­ing to con­front his own an­ces­tor. In­stead, he had found his great-​grand-​un­cle tor­tured and mur­dered. Some­one, some­how, had tak­en his place.

Who had killed the man who called him­self Enoch Leng? Who now held them pris­on­er? The corpse of his an­ces­tor was on­ly re­cent­ly dead—the state of the corpse sug­gest­ed that death had oc­curred with­in the last two months—peg­ging the mur­der of Enoch Leng be­fore the dis­cov­ery of the char­nel on Cather­ine Street.

The tim­ing was very, very in­ter­est­ing.

And then there was that oth­er prob­lem—a very qui­et, but per­sis­tent feel­ing that there was a con­nec­tion still to be made here—that had been trou­bling Pen­der­gast al­most since he first set foot with­in Leng’s house.

Now, in­side the mem­ory cross­ing, he con­tin­ued down the hall. The next door—the door that had once been his broth­er’s—had been sealed by Pen­der­gast him­self, nev­er to be opened again. He quick­ly moved on.

The hall­way end­ed in a grand, sweep­ing stair­case lead­ing down to a great hall. A heavy cut-​glass chan­de­lier hov­ered over the mar­ble floor, mount­ing on a gilt chain to a domed trompe l’oeil ceil­ing. Pen­der­gast de­scend­ed the stairs, deep in thought. To one side, a set of tall doors opened in­to a two-​sto­ry li­brary; to the oth­er, a long hall re­treat­ed back in­to shad­ow. Pen­der­gast en­tered this hall first. Orig­inal­ly, this room had been the monastery’s re­fec­to­ry. In his mind, he had fur­nished it with a va­ri­ety of fam­ily heir­looms: heavy rose­wood chif­foniers, over­sized land­scapes by Bier­stadt and Cole. There were oth­er, more un­usu­al heir­looms here, as well: sets of Tarot cards, crys­tal balls, a spir­it-​medi­um ap­pa­ra­tus, chains and cuffs, stage props for il­lu­sion­ists and ma­gi­cians. Oth­er ob­jects lay in the cor­ners, shroud­ed, their out­lines sunken too deeply in­to shad­ow to dis­cern.

As he looked around, his mind once again felt the rip­ples of a dis­tur­bance, of a con­nec­tion not yet made. It was here, it was all around him; it on­ly await­ed his recog­ni­tion. And yet it hov­ered tan­ta­liz­ing­ly out of grasp.

This room could tell him no more. Ex­it­ing, he re-​crossed the echo­ing hall and en­tered the li­brary. He looked around a mo­ment, sa­vor­ing the books, re­al and imag­inary, row up­on com­fort­ing row, that rose to the mold­ed ceil­ing far above. Then he stepped to­ward one of the shelves on the near­est wall. He glanced along the rows, found the book he want­ed, pulled it from the shelf. With a low, al­most noise­less click, the shelf swung away from the wall.

. . . And then, abrupt­ly, Pen­der­gast found him­self back in Leng’s house on River­side Drive, stand­ing in the grand foy­er, sur­round­ed by Leng’s as­ton­ish­ing col­lec­tions.

He hes­itat­ed, mo­men­tar­ily stilled by sur­prise. Such a shift, such a mor­ph­ing of lo­ca­tion, had nev­er hap­pened in a mem­ory cross­ing be­fore.

But as he wait­ed, look­ing around at the shroud­ed skele­tons and shelves cov­ered with trea­sures, the rea­son be­came clear. When he and No­ra first passed through the rooms of Leng’s house—the grand foy­er; the long, low-​ceilinged ex­hib­it hall; the two-​sto­ried li­brary—Pen­der­gast had found him­self ex­pe­ri­enc­ing an un­ex­pect­ed, un­com­fort­able feel­ing of fa­mil­iar­ity. Now he knew why: in his house on River­side Drive, Leng had re-​cre­at­ed, in his own dark and twist­ed way, the old Pen­der­gast man­sion on Dauphine Street.

He had fi­nal­ly made the cru­cial con­nec­tion. Or had he?

Great-​Un­cle An­toine? Aunt Cor­nelia had said. He went north, to New York City. Be­came a Yan­kee. And so he had. But, like all mem­bers of the Pen­der­gast fam­ily, he had been un­able to es­cape his lega­cy. And here in New York, he had re-​cre­at­ed his own Mai­son de la Rochenoire—an ide­al­ized man­sion, where he could amass his col­lec­tions and car­ry on his ex­per­iments, undis­turbed by pry­ing re­la­tions. It was not un­like, Pen­der­gast re­al­ized, the way he him­self had re-​cre­at­ed the Mai­son de la Rochenoire in his own mind, as a mem­ory palace.

This much, at least, was now clear. But his mind re­mained trou­bled. Some­thing else was elud­ing him: a re­al­iza­tion hov­er­ing at the very edge of aware­ness. Leng had a life­time, sev­er­al life­times, in which to com­plete his own cab­inet of cu­riosi­ties. Here it was, all around him, pos­si­bly the finest nat­ural his­to­ry col­lec­tion ev­er as­sem­bled. And yet, as Pen­der­gast looked around, he re­al­ized that the col­lec­tion was in­com­plete. One sec­tion was miss­ing. Not just any sec­tion, in fact, but the cen­tral col­lec­tion: the one thing that had fas­ci­nat­ed the young An­toine Leng Pen­der­gast most. Pen­der­gast felt a grow­ing as­ton­ish­ment. An­toine—as Leng—had had a cen­tu­ry and a half to com­plete this ul­ti­mate cab­inet of cu­riosi­ties. Why was it not here?

Pen­der­gast knew it ex­ist­ed. It must ex­ist. Here, in this house. It was just a ques­tion of where . . .

A sound from the out­side world—a strange­ly muf­fled scream—sud­den­ly in­trud­ed in­to Pen­der­gast’s mem­ory cross­ing. Quick­ly, he with­drew again, plung­ing as deeply as he could in­to the pro­tec­tive dark­ness and fog of his own men­tal con­struct, try­ing to re­cov­er the nec­es­sary pu­ri­ty of con­cen­tra­tion.

Time passed. And then, in his mind, he found him­self once again back in the old house on Dauphine Street, stand­ing in the li­brary.

He wait­ed a mo­ment, re-​ac­cli­mat­ing him­self to the sur­round­ings, giv­ing his new sus­pi­cions and ques­tions time to ma­ture. In his mind’s eye he record­ed them on parch­ment and bound them be­tween gilt cov­ers, plac­ing the book on one of the shelves be­side a long row of sim­ilar books—all books of ques­tions. Then he turned his at­ten­tion to the book­case that had swung open. It re­vealed an el­eva­tor.

He stepped in­to the el­eva­tor at the same, thought­ful pace, and de­scend­ed.

The cel­lar of the for­mer monastery on Dauphine Street was damp, the walls thick with ef­flo­res­cence. The man­sion’s cel­lars con­sist­ed of vast stone pas­sage­ways crust­ed with lime, verdi­gris, and the soot from tal­low can­dles. Pen­der­gast thread­ed his way through the maze, ar­riv­ing at last at a cul-​de-​sac formed by a small, vault­ed room. It was emp­ty, de­void of or­na­ment, save for a sin­gle carv­ing that hung over a bricked-​up arch in one of the walls. The carv­ing was of a shield, con­tain­ing a lid­less eye over two moons: one cres­cent, the oth­er full. Be­low was a li­on, couchant. It was the Pen­der­gast fam­ily crest: the same crest that Leng had per­vert­ed in­to his own es­cutcheon, carved on­to the fa­cade of the man­sion on River­side Drive.

Pen­der­gast ap­proached this wall, stood be­neath the crest for a mo­ment, gaz­ing at it. Then, plac­ing both hands up­on the cold stone, he ap­plied a sharp for­ward pres­sure. The wall in­stant­ly swung away, re­veal­ing a cir­cu­lar stair­case, slop­ing down and away at a sharp an­gle in­to the sub­base­ment.

Pen­der­gast stood at the top of the stairs, feel­ing the steady stream of chill air that waft­ed like a ghost­ly ex­ha­la­tion from the depths be­low. He re­mem­bered the day, many years ago, when he had first been in­duct­ed in­to the fam­ily se­crets: the hid­den pan­el in the li­brary, the stone cham­bers be­neath, the room with the crest. And fi­nal­ly this, the great­est se­cret of all.

In the re­al house on Dauphine Street, the stairs had been dark, ap­proach­able on­ly with a lantern. But in Pen­der­gast’s mind, a faint green­ish light now is­sued up from far be­low. He be­gan to de­scend.

The stairs led down­ward in a spi­ral. At last, Pen­der­gast emerged in­to a short tun­nel that opened in­to a vault­ed space. The floor was earth­en. Long ranks of care­ful­ly mor­tised bricks rose to a groined ceil­ing. Rows of torch­es flamed on the walls, and chunks of frank­in­cense smoked in cop­per bra­ziers, over­lay­ing a much stronger smell of old earth, wet stone, and the dead.

A brick path­way ran down the cen­ter of the room, flanked on both sides by stone tombs and crypts. Some were mar­ble, oth­ers gran­ite. A few were heav­ily dec­orat­ed, carved in­to fan­tas­tic minarets and arabesques; oth­ers were squat, black, mono­lith­ic. Pen­der­gast start­ed down the path, glanc­ing at the bronze doors set in­to the fa­cades, the fa­mil­iar names graven on­to the face plates of tar­nished brass.

What the old monks had used this sub­ter­ranean vault for, Pen­der­gast nev­er learned. But al­most two hun­dred years be­fore, this place had be­come the Pen­der­gast fam­ily necrop­olis. Here, over a dozen gen­er­ations on both sides of the fam­ily—the fall­en line of French aris­to­crats, the mys­te­ri­ous denizens of the deep bay­ou—had been buried or, more fre­quent­ly, re­buried. Pen­der­gast walked on, hands be­hind his back, star­ing at the carved names. Here was Hen­ri Pren­dregast de Mous­que­ton, a sev­en­teenth-​cen­tu­ry moun­te­bank who pulled teeth, per­formed mag­ic and com­edy, and prac­ticed quack medicine. And here, en­cased in a mau­soleum be­decked with quartz minarets, was Ed­uard Pen­dregast, a well-​known Harley Street doc­tor in eigh­teenth-​cen­tu­ry Lon­don. And here, Com­stock Pen­der­gast, famed mes­merist, ma­gi­cian, and men­tor of Har­ry Hou­di­ni.

Pen­der­gast strolled far­ther, pass­ing artists and mur­der­ers, vaudeville per­form­ers and vi­olin prodi­gies. At last he stopped be­side a mau­soleum grander than those around it: a pon­der­ous con­fla­tion of white mar­ble, carved in­to an ex­act repli­ca of the Pen­der­gast man­sion it­self. This was the tomb of Hezeki­ah Pen­der­gast, his own great-​great-​grand­fa­ther. Pen­der­gast let his eye roam over the fa­mil­iar tur­rets and finials, the gabled roof and mul­lioned win­dows. When Hezeki­ah Pen­der­gast ar­rived on the scene, the Pen­der­gast fam­ily for­tune was al­most gone. Hezeki­ah was re­leased in­to the world pen­ni­less, but with big am­bi­tions. Orig­inal­ly a snake-​oil sales­man al­lied with trav­el­ing medicine shows, he soon be­came known as a hip­po­crat­ic sage, a man whose patent medicine could cure al­most any dis­ease. On the big bill, he ap­peared be­tween Al-​Ghazi, the con­tor­tion­ist, and Har­ry N. Parr, Ca­nine In­struc­tor. The medicine he ped­dled dur­ing these shows sold briskly, even at five dol­lars the bot­tle. Hezeki­ah soon es­tab­lished his own trav­el­ing medicine show, and with shrewd mar­ket­ing, Hezeki­ah’s Com­pound Elixir and Glan­du­lar Restora­tive quick­ly be­came the first wide­ly mar­ket­ed patent medicine in Amer­ica. Hezeki­ah Pen­der­gast grew rich be­yond the fond­est vi­sions of avarice.

Pen­der­gast’s eyes swept down­ward, to the deep lay­ers of shad­ow that sur­round­ed the tomb. Ug­ly ru­mors be­gan to sur­face about Hezeki­ah’s Com­pound Elixir with­in a year of its in­tro­duc­tion: tales of mad­ness, de­formed births, wast­ing deaths. And yet sales grew. Doc­tors protest­ed the elixir, call­ing it vi­olent­ly ad­dic­tive and harm­ful to the brain. And still sales grew. Hezeki­ah Pen­der­gast in­tro­duced a high­ly suc­cess­ful for­mu­la for ba­bies, “War­rant­ed to Make Your Child Peace­ful.” In the end, a re­porter for Col­lier’s mag­azine, to­geth­er with a gov­ern­ment chemist, fi­nal­ly ex­posed the elixir as an ad­dic­tive­ly lethal blend of chlo­ro­form, co­caine hy­drochlo­ride, ac­etanilid, and botan­icals. Pro­duc­tion was forced to cease—but not be­fore Hezeki­ah’s own wife had suc­cumbed to the ad­dic­tion and died. Con­stance Leng Pen­der­gast.

An­toine’s moth­er.

Pen­der­gast turned away from the tomb. Then he stopped, glanc­ing back. A small­er, sim­pler mau­soleum of gray gran­ite lay be­side the greater one. The en­graved plaque on its face read, sim­ply, Con­stance.

He paused, re­call­ing the words of his great-​aunt: And then he be­gan spend­ing a lot of time down . . . down there. Do you know where I mean? Pen­der­gast had heard the sto­ries about how the necrop­olis be­came An­toine’s fa­vorite place af­ter his moth­er’s death. He’d spent his days here, year in and year out, in the shad­ow of her tomb, prac­tic­ing the mag­ic tricks his fa­ther and grand­fa­ther had taught him, per­form­ing ex­per­iments on small an­imals—and es­pe­cial­ly work­ing with chem­icals, de­vel­op­ing nos­trums and poi­sons. What else was it Aunt Cor­nelia had said? They say he al­ways felt more com­fort­able with the dead than with the liv­ing.

Pen­der­gast had heard ru­mors even Aunt Cor­nelia had been un­will­ing to hint at: ru­mors worse than the bad busi­ness with Marie LeClaire; ru­mors of cer­tain hideous things found in the deep shad­ows of the tombs; ru­mors of the re­al rea­son be­hind An­toine’s per­ma­nent ban­ish­ment from the house on Dauphine Street. But it wasn’t just the pro­lon­ga­tion of life that had fixed An­toine’s at­ten­tion. No, there had al­ways been some­thing else, some­thing be­hind the pro­lon­ga­tion of life, some project that he had kept the deep­est of se­crets . . .

Pen­der­gast stared at the name­plate as a sud­den rev­ela­tion swept over him. These un­der­ground vaults had been An­toine’s work­place as a child. This is where he had played and stud­ied, col­lect­ed his ap­palling child­hood tro­phies. This was where he had ex­per­iment­ed with his chem­icals; and it was here, in the cool, dark un­der­ground, where he had stored his vast col­lec­tion of com­pounds, botan­icals, chem­icals, and poi­sons. Here, the tem­per­ature and hu­mid­ity nev­er changed: the con­di­tions would be per­fect.

More quick­ly now, Pen­der­gast turned away, walk­ing back down the path­way and pass­ing be­neath the tun­nel, be­gin­ning the long climb back to­ward con­scious­ness. For he knew, at last, where in the house on River­side Drive the miss­ing col­lec­tion of An­toine Pen­der­gast—of Enoch Leng—would be found.

TWO

NO­RA HEARD THE faint rat­tle of a chain, then a faint, whis­pered ex­ha­la­tion of breath from out of the near­by dark­ness. She licked dry lips, worked her mouth in an at­tempt to speak. “Pen­der­gast?”

“I’m here,” came the weak voice.

“I thought you were dead!” Her body spasmed in an in­vol­un­tary sob. “Are you all right?”

“I’m sor­ry I had to leave you. How much time has passed?”

“My God, are you deaf? That mad­man’s do­ing some­thing ter­ri­ble to Bill!”

“Dr. Kel­ly—”

No­ra lunged against her chains. She felt wild with ter­ror and grief, a fren­zy that seemed to phys­ical­ly pos­sess her body. “Get me out of here!”

“Dr. Kel­ly.” Pen­der­gast’s voice was neu­tral. “Be calm. There is some­thing we can do. But you must be calm.”

No­ra stopped strug­gling and sank back, try­ing to con­trol her­self.

“Lean against the wall. Close your eyes. Take deep, reg­ular breaths.” The voice was slow, hyp­not­ic.

No­ra closed her eyes, try­ing to push away the crowd­ing ter­ror, try­ing to reg­ulate her breath­ing.

There was a long si­lence. And then Pen­der­gast spoke again. “All right?”

“I don’t know.”

“Keep breath­ing. Slow­ly. Now?”

“Bet­ter. What hap­pened to you? You re­al­ly fright­ened me, I was sure—”

“There’s no time to ex­plain. You must trust me. And now, I’m go­ing to re­move these chains.”

No­ra felt a twinge of dis­be­lief. There was a clank­ing and rat­tling, fol­lowed by a sud­den si­lence.

She strained against her chains, lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly. What was he do­ing? Had he lost his sens­es?

And then, abrupt­ly, she felt some­one take hold of her el­bow, and si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly a hand slipped over her mouth. “I’m free,” Pen­der­gast’s voice whis­pered in her ear. “Soon you will be, too.”

No­ra felt stu­porous with dis­be­lief. She be­gan to trem­ble.

“Re­lax your limbs. Re­lax them com­plete­ly.”

It was as if he brushed her arms and legs ev­er so light­ly. She felt the cuffs and chains sim­ply fall away. It seemed mag­ical.

“How did—?”

“Lat­er. What kind of shoes are you wear­ing?”

“Why?”

“Just an­swer the ques­tion.”

“Let me think. Bal­ly. Black. Flat heels.”

“I’m go­ing to bor­row one.”

She felt Pen­der­gast’s nar­row hands re­move the shoe. There was a faint noise, a kind of metal­lic scrap­ing sound, and then the shoe was slipped back on­to her foot. Then she heard a low tap­ping, as if the iron cuffs were be­ing struck to­geth­er.

“What are you do­ing?”

“Be very qui­et.”

De­spite her best ef­forts, she felt the ter­ror be­gin to rise again, over­whelm­ing her mind. There hadn’t been any sounds from out­side for sev­er­al min­utes. She sti­fled an­oth­er sob. “Bill—”

Pen­der­gast’s cool, dry hand slipped over hers. “What­ev­er has hap­pened, has hap­pened. Now, I want you to lis­ten to me very care­ful­ly. Re­spond yes by squeez­ing my hand. Do not speak fur­ther.”

No­ra squeezed his hand.

“I need you to be strong. I must tell you that I be­lieve Smith­back is now dead. But there are two oth­er lives here, yours and mine, that need to be saved. And we must stop this man, who­ev­er he is, or many more will die. Do you un­der­stand?”

No­ra squeezed. Hear­ing her worst fears stat­ed so bald­ly seemed al­most to help, a lit­tle.

“I’ve made a small tool out of a piece of met­al from the sole of your shoe. We will es­cape from this cell in a mo­ment—the lock is no doubt quite prim­itive. But you must be ready to do ex­act­ly as I tell you.”

She squeezed.

“You need to know some­thing first. I un­der­stand now, at least in part, what Enoch Leng was do­ing. He wasn’t pro­long­ing his life as an end in it­self. He was pro­long­ing his life as a means to an end. He was work­ing on a project that was even big­ger than ex­tend­ed life—a project he re­al­ized would take sev­er­al life­times to com­plete. That is why he went to the trou­ble of pro­long­ing his life: so that he could ac­com­plish this oth­er thing.”

“What could be big­ger than ex­tend­ed life?” No­ra man­aged to say.

“Hush. I don’t know. But it is mak­ing me very, very afraid.”

There was a si­lence. No­ra could hear Pen­der­gast’s qui­et breath­ing. Then he spoke again. “What­ev­er that project is, it is here, hid­den in this house.”

There was an­oth­er, briefer si­lence.

“Lis­ten very care­ful­ly. I am go­ing to open the door of this cell. I will then go to Leng’s op­er­at­ing room and con­front the man who has tak­en his place. You will re­main hid­den here for ten min­utes—no more, and no less—and then you will go to the op­er­at­ing room your­self. As I say, I be­lieve Smith­back to be dead, but we need to make sure. By that time the im­pos­tor and I will be gone. Do not pur­sue us. No mat­ter what you hear, do not try to help. Do not come to my aid. My con­fronta­tion with this man will be de­ci­sive. One of us will not sur­vive it. The oth­er one will re­turn. Let us hope that per­son is me. Do you un­der­stand so far?”

An­oth­er squeeze.

“If Smith­back is still alive, do what you can. If he’s be­yond help, you are to get out of the base­ment and the house as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. Find your way up­stairs and es­cape from a sec­ond-​sto­ry win­dow—I think you will find all the ex­its on the first floor to be im­pen­etra­ble.”

No­ra wait­ed, lis­ten­ing.

“There is a chance that my plan will fail, and that you will find me dead on the floor of the op­er­at­ing room. In that case, all I can say is you must run for your life, fight for your life—and, if nec­es­sary, take your life. The al­ter­na­tive is too ter­ri­ble. Can you do that?”

No­ra choked back a sob. Then she squeezed his hand once again.

THREE

THE MAN EX­AM­INED the in­ci­sion that ran along the re­source’s low­er spine from L2 to the sacrum. It was a very fine piece of work, the kind he had been so well ap­pre­ci­at­ed for in med­ical school—back be­fore the un­pleas­ant­ness be­gan.

The news­pa­pers had nick­named him the Sur­geon. He liked the name. And as he gazed down, he found it par­tic­ular­ly ap­pro­pri­ate. He’d de­fined the anato­my per­fect­ly. First, a long ver­ti­cal in­ci­sion from the ref­er­ence point along the spinal pro­cess, a sin­gle steady stroke through the skin. Next, he had ex­tend­ed the in­ci­sion down in­to the sub­cu­ta­neous tis­sue, car­ry­ing it as far as the fas­cia, clamp­ing, di­vid­ing, and lig­at­ing the larg­er ves­sels with 3-0 vicryl. He’d opened the fas­cia, then used a pe­riosteal el­eva­tor to strip the mus­cle from the spinous pro­cess­es and lam­inae. He’d been en­joy­ing the work so much that he had tak­en more time at it than in­tend­ed. The par­alyz­ing ef­fects of the suc­cinyl choline had fad­ed, and there had been rather a lot of strug­gling and noise at this point, yet his tie work re­mained as fas­tid­ious as a seam­stress’s. As he cleared the soft tis­sue with a curette, the spinal col­umn grad­ual­ly re­vealed it­self, gray­ish white against the bright red of the sur­round­ing flesh.

The Sur­geon plucked an­oth­er self-​re­tain­ing re­trac­tor from the in­stru­ment bin, then stood back to ex­am­ine the in­ci­sion. He was pleased: it was a text­book job, tight at the cor­ners and spread­ing out slight­ly to­ward the mid­dle. He could see ev­ery­thing: the nerves, the ves­sels, all the mar­velous in­ner ar­chi­tec­ture. Be­yond the lam­ina and lig­amen­tum flavum, he could make out the trans­par­ent du­ra of the spinal cord. With­in, bluish spinal flu­id pulsed in time to the res­pi­ra­tion of the re­source. His pulse quick­ened as he watched the flu­id bathe the cau­da equina. It was un­doubt­ed­ly his finest in­ci­sion to date.

Surgery, he re­flect­ed, was more an art form than a sci­ence, re­quir­ing pa­tience, cre­ativ­ity, in­tu­ition, and a steady hand. There was very lit­tle ra­ti­oci­na­tion in­volved; very lit­tle in­tel­lect came in­to play. It was an ac­tiv­ity at once phys­ical and cre­ative, like paint­ing or sculp­ture. He would have been a good artist—had he cho­sen that route. But of course, there would be time; there would be time . . .

He thought back once again to med­ical school. Now that the anato­my had been de­fined, the next step would nor­mal­ly be to de­fine the pathol­ogy, then cor­rect that pathol­ogy. But, of course, this was the point at which his work de­part­ed from the course of a nor­mal op­er­ation and be­came some­thing clos­er to an au­top­sy.

He looked back to­ward the near­by stand, mak­ing sure that ev­ery­thing he need­ed for the ex­ci­sion—the chis­els, di­amond burr drill, bone wax—was ready. Then he looked at the sur­round­ing mon­itors. Al­though, most re­gret­tably, the re­source had slipped in­to un­con­scious­ness, the vi­tals were still strong. New strides could not be tak­en, but the ex­trac­tion and prepa­ra­tion should be suc­cess­ful nonethe­less.

Turn­ing to­ward the Versed drip in­sert­ed in­to the saline bag hung from the gur­ney, he turned the plas­tic stop­cock to stop the flow: tran­quil­iza­tion, like the in­tu­ba­tion, was no longer nec­es­sary. The trick now would be to keep the re­source alive as far in­to the surgery as pos­si­ble. There was still much to do, start­ing with the bony dis­sec­tion: the re­moval of the lam­ina with a Ker­ri­son rongeur. The goal at this point was to have the vi­tals still de­tectable when the op­er­ation was com­plete, with the cau­da equina re­moved and ly­ing in­tact in the spe­cial chilled cra­dle he had de­signed to re­ceive it. He had reached that goal on­ly twice be­fore—with the slen­der young wom­an and the po­lice­man—but this time he felt a swell of con­fi­dence in him­self and his skills. He knew that he would achieve it again.

So far, ev­ery­thing had gone ac­cord­ing to plan. The great de­tec­tive, Pen­der­gast, whom he had so feared, had proven less than formidable. Us­ing one of the many traps in this strange old house against the agent had proven ridicu­lous­ly easy. The oth­ers were mi­nor ir­ri­tants on­ly. He had re­moved them all, swept them aside with so lit­tle ef­fort it was al­most ris­ible. In fact it was­ris­ible, how pa­thet­ic they all were. The colos­sal stu­pid­ity of the po­lice, the mo­ron­ic Mu­se­um of­fi­cials: how de­light­ful it had all been, how very di­vert­ing. There was a cer­tain jus­tice in the sit­ua­tion, a jus­tice that on­ly he could ap­pre­ci­ate.

And now he had al­most achieved his goal. Al­most. Af­ter these three had been pro­cessed, he felt sure he would be there. And how iron­ic it was that it would be these three, of all peo­ple, who helped him reach it . . .

He smiled slight­ly as he bent down to set an­oth­er self-​re­tain­ing re­trac­tor in­to place. And that was when he saw a small move­ment at the ex­treme edge of his pe­riph­er­al vi­sion.

He turned. It was the FBI agent, Pen­der­gast, ca­su­al­ly lean­ing against a wall just in­side the arch­way lead­ing in­to the op­er­at­ing room.

The man straight­ened, con­trol­ling the high­ly un­pleas­ant sur­prise that rose with­in him. But Pen­der­gast’s hands were emp­ty; he was, of course, un­armed. With one swift, eco­nom­ical move­ment, the Sur­geon took up Pen­der­gast’s own gun—the two-​tone Colt 1911, ly­ing on the in­stru­ment ta­ble—pushed down on the safe­ty with his thumb, and point­ed the weapon at the agent.

Pen­der­gast con­tin­ued to lean against the wall. For the briefest of mo­ments, as the two ex­changed glances, some­thing like as­ton­ish­ment reg­is­tered in the pale cat’s eyes. Then Pen­der­gast spoke.

“So it’s you who tor­tured and killed Enoch Leng. I won­dered who the im­pos­tor was. I am sur­prised. I do not like sur­pris­es, but there it is.”

The man aimed the gun care­ful­ly.

“You’re al­ready hold­ing my weapon,” said Pen­der­gast, show­ing his hands. “I’m un­armed.” He con­tin­ued lean­ing ca­su­al­ly against the wall.

The man tight­ened his fin­ger on the trig­ger. He felt a sec­ond un­pleas­ant sen­sa­tion: in­ter­nal con­flict. Pen­der­gast was a very dan­ger­ous man. It would no doubt be best to pull the trig­ger now and have done with it. But by shoot­ing now, he would ru­in a spec­imen. Be­sides, he need­ed to know how Pen­der­gast had es­caped. And then, there was the girl to con­sid­er . . .

“But it be­gins to make sense,” Pen­der­gast re­sumed. “Yes, I see it now. You’re build­ing that skyscrap­er on Cather­ine Street. You didn’t just dis­cov­er those bod­ies by ac­ci­dent. No—you were look­ing for those bod­ies, weren’t you? You al­ready knew that Leng had buried them there, 130 years ago. And how did you learn about them? Ah, it all falls in­to place: your in­ter­est in the Mu­se­um, your vis­its to the Archives. You were the one who ex­am­ined the Shot­tum ma­te­ri­al be­fore Dr. Kel­ly. No won­der it was all in such dis­ar­ray—you’d al­ready re­moved any­thing you felt use­ful. But you didn’t know about Tin­bury Mc­Fad­den, or the ele­phant’s-​foot box. In­stead, you first learned about Leng and his work, about his lab note­books and jour­nals, from Shot­tum’s per­son­al pa­pers. But when you ul­ti­mate­ly tracked down Leng, and found him alive, he wasn’t as talkative as you would have liked. He didn’t give you the for­mu­la. Even un­der tor­ture, did he? So you had to fall back on what Leng had left be­hind: his vic­tims, his lab, per­haps his jour­nals, buried be­neath Shot­tum’s Cab­inet. And the on­ly way to get to those was to buy the land, tear down the brown­stones above, and dig a foun­da­tion for a new build­ing.” Pen­der­gast nod­ded, al­most to him­self. “Dr. Kel­ly men­tioned miss­ing pages in the Archives log­book; pages re­moved with a ra­zor. Those pages were the ones with your name on them, cor­rect? And the on­ly one who knew you had been a fre­quent vis­itor to the Archives was Puck. So he had to die. Along with those who were al­ready on your own trail: Dr. Kel­ly, Sergeant O’Shaugh­nessy, my­self. Be­cause the clos­er we came to find­ing Leng, the clos­er we came to find­ing you.”

A pained ex­pres­sion came over the agent’s face. “How could I have been so ob­tuse not to see it? It should have be­come clear when I first saw Leng’s corpse. When I re­al­ized Leng had been tor­tured to death be­fore the Cather­ine Street bod­ies were found.”

Fairhaven did not smile. The chain of de­duc­tion was as­ton­ish­ing­ly ac­cu­rate. Just kill him, a voice in his head said.

“What is it the Arab sages call death?” Pen­der­gast went on. “The de­stroy­er of all earth­ly plea­sures. And how true it is: old age, sick­ness, and at last death comes to us all. Some con­sole them­selves with re­li­gion, oth­ers through de­nial, oth­ers through phi­los­ophy or mere sto­icism. But to you, who had al­ways been able to buy ev­ery­thing, death must have seemed a dread­ful in­jus­tice.”

The im­age of his old­er broth­er, Arthur, came un­bid­den to the Sur­geon’s mind: dy­ing of proge­ria, his young face with­ered with se­nile ker­atoses, his limbs twist­ed, his skin cracked with hideous­ly pre­ma­ture age. The fact that the dis­ease was so rare, its caus­es so un­known, had been no com­fort. Pen­der­gast didn’t know ev­ery­thing. Nor would he.

He forced the im­age from his mind. Just kill the man. But some­how his hand would not act—not yet, not un­til he had heard more.

Pen­der­gast nod­ded to­ward the still form on the ta­ble. “You’re nev­er go­ing to get there that way, Mr. Fairhaven. Leng’s skills were in­finite­ly more re­fined than yours. You will nev­er suc­ceed.”

Not true, Fairhaven thought to him­self. I have al­ready suc­ceed­ed. I am Leng as he should have been. On­ly through me can Leng’s work at­tain its truest per­fec­tion . . .

“I know,” Pen­der­gast said. “You’re think­ing I’m wrong. You be­lieve you have suc­ceed­ed. But you have not suc­ceed­ed, and you nev­er will. Ask your­self: Do you feel any dif­fer­ent? Do you feel any re­viv­ifi­ca­tion of the limbs, any quick­en­ing of the life essence? If you’re hon­est with your­self, you can still feel the ter­ri­ble weight of time press­ing on you; that aw­ful, re­lent­less, bod­ily cor­rup­tion that is hap­pen­ing con­stant­ly to us all.” He smiled thin­ly, weari­ly, as if he knew the feel­ing all too well. “You see, you’ve made one fa­tal mis­take.”

The Sur­geon said noth­ing.

“The truth is,” Pen­der­gast said, “you don’t know the first thing about Leng, or his re­al work. Work for which life ex­ten­sion was just a means to an end.”

Years of self-​dis­ci­pline, of high-​lev­el cor­po­rate brinks­man­ship, had taught Fairhaven nev­er to re­veal any­thing: not in the fa­cial ex­pres­sion, not in the ques­tions asked. Yet the sud­den stab of sur­prise he felt, fol­lowed im­me­di­ate­ly by dis­be­lief, was hard to con­ceal. What re­al work? What was Pen­der­gast talk­ing about?

He would not ask. Si­lence was al­ways the best mode of ques­tion­ing. If you re­mained silent, they al­ways talked out the an­swer in the end. It was hu­man na­ture.

But this time it was Pen­der­gast who re­mained silent. He sim­ply stood there, lean­ing al­most in­so­lent­ly against the door­frame, glanc­ing around at the walls of the cham­ber. The si­lence stretched on, and the man be­gan to think of his re­source, ly­ing there on the gur­ney. Gun on Pen­der­gast, he glanced briefly at the vi­tals. Good, but start­ing to flag. If he didn’t get back to work soon, the spec­imen would be spoiled.

Kill him, the voice said again.

“What re­al work?” Fairhaven asked.

Still, Pen­der­gast re­mained silent.

The mer­est spasm of doubt passed through Fairhaven, quick­ly sup­pressed. What was the man’s game? He was wast­ing his time, and there was no doubt a rea­son why he was wast­ing his time, which meant it was best just to kill him now. At least he knew the girl could not es­cape from the base­ment. He would deal with her in good time. Fairhaven’s fin­ger tight­ened on the trig­ger.

At last, Pen­der­gast spoke. “Leng didn’t tell you any­thing in the end, did he? You tor­tured him to no avail, be­cause you’re still thrash­ing about, wast­ing all these peo­ple. But I do know about Leng. I know him very well in­deed. Per­haps you no­ticed the re­sem­blance?”

“What?” Again Fairhaven was tak­en off guard.

“Leng was my great-​grand-​un­cle.”

It hit Fairhaven then. His grip on the weapon loos­ened. He re­mem­bered Leng’s del­icate white face, his white hair, and his very pale blue eyes—eyes that re­gard­ed him with­out beg­ging, with­out plead­ing, with­out be­seech­ing, no mat­ter how hideous it had be­come for him. Pen­der­gast’s eyes were the same. But Leng had died any­way, and so would he.

So would he, the voice echoed, more in­sis­tent­ly. His in­for­ma­tion is not as im­por­tant as his death. This re­source is not worth the risk. Kill him.

The man reap­plied pres­sure to the trig­ger. At this dis­tance, he could not miss.

“It’s hid­den here in the house, you know. Leng’s ul­ti­mate project. But you’ve nev­er found it. All along you’ve been look­ing for the wrong thing. And as a re­sult, you will die a long, slow, wast­ing death of old age. Just like the rest of us. You can­not suc­ceed.”

Squeeze the trig­ger, the voice in his head in­sist­ed.

But there was some­thing in the agent’s tone. He knew some­thing, some­thing im­por­tant. He wasn’t just talk­ing. Fairhaven had dealt with bluffers be­fore, and this man was not bluff­ing.

“Say what you have to say now,” said Fairhaven. “Or you will die in­stant­ly.”

“Come with me. I’ll show you.”

“Show me what?”

“I’ll show you what Leng was re­al­ly work­ing on. It’s in the house. Here, right un­der your nose.”

The voice in his head was no longer lit­tle; it was prac­ti­cal­ly shout­ing. Do not al­low him to con­tin­ue talk­ing, no mat­ter how im­por­tant his in­for­ma­tion may be. And Fairhaven fi­nal­ly heed­ed the wis­dom of that ad­vice.

Pen­der­gast was lean­ing against the wall, off bal­ance, his hands clear­ly in view. It would be im­pos­si­ble for the man, in the time it took to squeeze off one shot, to reach in­side his suit and pull out a back­up weapon. Be­sides, he had no such weapon; Fairhaven had searched him thor­ough­ly. He took a fresh bead on Pen­der­gast, then held his breath, in­creas­ing the pres­sure on the trig­ger. There was a sud­den roar and the gun kicked in his hand. And he knew in­stant­ly: it had been a true shot.

FOUR

THE CELL DOOR stood open, al­low­ing a faint light to fil­ter in from the pas­sage­way be­yond. No­ra wait­ed, shrink­ing back in­to the pool of dark­ness be­hind the cell door. Ten min­utes. Pen­der­gast had said ten min­utes. In the dark, with her heart pound­ing like a sledge­ham­mer, ev­ery minute seemed an hour, and it was al­most im­pos­si­ble to tell the pas­sage of time. She forced her­self to count each sec­ond. A thou­sand one, a thou­sand two . . . Each count made her think of Smith­back, and what might be hap­pen­ing to him. Or had hap­pened to him.

Pen­der­gast had told her he thought Smith­back was dead. He had said this to spare her the shock of dis­cov­er­ing it for her­self. Bill is dead. Bill is dead. She tried to ab­sorb it, but found her mind would not ac­cept the fact. It felt un­re­al. Ev­ery­thing felt un­re­al. A thou­sand thir­ty. A thou­sand thir­ty-​one. The sec­onds rolled on.

At six min­utes and twen­ty-​five sec­onds, the sound of a gun­shot came, deaf­en­ing in the con­fined spaces of the cel­lar.

Her whole body kicked in fear. It was all she could do not to scream. She crouched, wait­ing for the ab­surd skip­ping of her heart to slow. The ter­ri­ble sound echoed and re-​echoed, rum­bling and rolling through the base­ment cor­ri­dors. Fi­nal­ly, si­lence—dead si­lence—re­turned.

She felt her breath com­ing in gasps. Now it was dou­bly hard to count. Pen­der­gast had said to wait ten min­utes. Had an­oth­er minute passed since the shot? She de­cid­ed to re­sume the count again at sev­en min­utes, hop­ing the monotonous, repet­itive ac­tiv­ity would calm her nerves. It did not.

And then she heard the sound of rapid foot­steps ring­ing against stone. They had an un­usu­al, syn­co­pat­ed ca­dence, as if some­one was de­scend­ing a stair­case. The foot­falls quick­ly grew fainter. Si­lence re­turned once again.

At ten min­utes, she stopped count­ing. Time to move.

For a mo­ment, her body re­fused to re­spond. It seemed frozen with dread.

What if the man was still out there? What if she found Smith­back dead? What if Pen­der­gast was dead, too? Would she be able to run, to re­sist, to die, rather than be caught her­self and face a fate far worse?

Spec­ula­tion was use­less. She would sim­ply fol­low Pen­der­gast’s or­ders.

With an im­mense ef­fort of will, she rose from her crouch, then stepped out of the dark­ness, eas­ing her way around the open door. The cor­ri­dor be­yond the cell was long and damp, with ir­reg­ular stone floor and walls, streaked with lime. At the far end was a door that opened in­to a bright room: the lone source of light, it seemed, in the en­tire base­ment. It was in that di­rec­tion Pen­der­gast had gone; that di­rec­tion from which the shot had come; that di­rec­tion from which she’d heard the sound of run­ning feet.

She took a hes­itant step for­ward, and then an­oth­er, walk­ing on trem­bling legs to­ward the bril­liant rect­an­gle of light.

FIVE

THE SUR­GEON COULD hard­ly be­lieve his eyes. Where Pen­der­gast should have been ly­ing dead in a pool of blood, there was noth­ing. The man had van­ished.

He looked around wild­ly. It was in­con­ceiv­able, a phys­ical im­pos­si­bil­ity . . . And then he no­ticed that the sec­tion of wall Pen­der­gast had been lean­ing against was now a door, swiveled par­al­lel to the stone face that sur­round­ed it. A door he nev­er knew ex­ist­ed, de­spite his dili­gent search­es of the house.

The Sur­geon wait­ed, still­ing his mind with a great ef­fort of will. De­lib­er­ation in all things, he had found, was ab­so­lute­ly nec­es­sary for suc­cess. It had brought him this far, and with it he would pre­vail now.

He stepped for­ward, Pen­der­gast’s gun at the ready. On the far side of the open­ing, a stone stair­case led down­ward in­to black­ness. The FBI agent ob­vi­ous­ly want­ed him to fol­low, to de­scend the stair­case whose end was hid­den around the dark curve of the stone wall. It could eas­ily be a trap. In fact, it could on­ly be a trap.

But the Sur­geon re­al­ized he had no choice. He had to stop Pen­der­gast. And he had to find out what lay be­low. He had a gun, and Pen­der­gast was un­armed, per­haps even wound­ed by the shot. He paused, briefly, to ex­am­ine the pis­tol. The Sur­geon knew some­thing about weapons, and he rec­og­nized this as a Les Baer cus­tom, .45 Gov­ern­ment Mod­el. He turned it over in his hands. With the tri­tium night sights and laser grips, eas­ily a three-​thou­sand-​dol­lar hand­gun. Pen­der­gast had good taste. Iron­ic that such a fine weapon would now be used against its own­er.

He stepped back from the false wall. Keep­ing a watch­ful eye on the stair­way, he re­trieved a pow­er­ful flash­light from a near­by draw­er, then dart­ed a re­gret­ful glance to­ward his spec­imen. The vi­tal signs were be­gin­ning to drop now; the op­er­ation was clear­ly spoiled.

He re­turned to the stair­case and shone the flash­light down in­to the gloom. The im­print of Pen­der­gast’s foot­steps was clear­ly vis­ible in the dust that coat­ed the steps. And there was some­thing else, some­thing be­sides the foot­steps: a drop of blood. And an­oth­er.

So he had hit Pen­der­gast. Nev­er­the­less, he would have to re­dou­ble his cau­tion. Wound­ed hu­mans, like wound­ed an­imals, were al­ways the most dan­ger­ous.

He paused at the first step, won­der­ing if he should go af­ter the wom­an first. Was she still chained to the wall? Or had Pen­der­gast man­aged to free her, as well? Ei­ther way, she posed lit­tle dan­ger. The house was a fortress, the base­ment se­cure­ly locked. She would be un­able to es­cape. Pen­der­gast re­mained the more press­ing prob­lem. Once he was dead, the re­main­ing re­source could be tracked down and forced to take the place of Smith­back. He’d made the mis­take of lis­ten­ing to Pen­der­gast once. When he found him, he wouldn’t make that mis­take again. The man would be dead be­fore he even opened his mouth.

The stair­case spi­raled down, down, corkscrew­ing end­less­ly in­to the earth. The Sur­geon de­scend­ed slow­ly, treat­ing each curve as a blind cor­ner be­hind which Pen­der­gast might be ly­ing in wait. At last he reached the bot­tom. The stairs de­bouched in­to a dark, murky room, heavy with the smell of mildew, damp earth, and—what? Am­mo­nia, salts, ben­zene, the faint smell of chem­icals. There was a flur­ry of foot­prints, more drops of blood. Pen­der­gast had stopped here. The Sur­geon shone his light on the near­est wall: a row of old brass lanterns, hang­ing from wood­en pegs. One of the pegs was emp­ty.

He took a step to one side, then—us­ing the stone pil­lar of the stair­case as cov­er—lift­ed his heavy flash­light and shone it in­to the gloom.

An as­ton­ish­ing sight met his eye. A wall of jew­els seemed to wink back at him: a thou­sand, ten thou­sand glit­ter­ing re­flec­tions in myr­iad col­ors, like the re­flec­tive sur­face of a fly’s eye un­der in­tense mag­ni­fi­ca­tion. Sup­press­ing his sur­prise, he moved for­ward cau­tious­ly, gun at the ready.

He found him­self in a nar­row stone cham­ber, pil­lars ris­ing to­ward a low, arched ceil­ing. The walls were lined with count­less glass bot­tles of iden­ti­cal shape and size. They were stored on oak­en shelv­ing that rose from floor to ceil­ing, row up­on row up­on row, crowd­ed dense­ly to­geth­er, shut up be­hind rip­pled glass. He had nev­er seen so many bot­tles in his life. It looked, in fact, like a mu­se­um of liq­uids.

His breath came faster. Here it was: Leng’s fi­nal lab­ora­to­ry. No doubt this was the place where he had per­fect­ed the ar­canum, his for­mu­la for life pro­lon­ga­tion. This place must hold the se­cret for which he had un­suc­cess­ful­ly tor­tured Leng. He re­mem­bered his feel­ing of dis­ap­point­ment, al­most de­spair, when he’d dis­cov­ered that Leng’s heart had stopped beat­ing—when he re­al­ized he had pushed a lit­tle too hard. No mat­ter now: the for­mu­la was right here, un­der his nose, just as Pen­der­gast had said.

But then he re­mem­bered what else Pen­der­gast had said: some­thing about Leng work­ing on some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. That was ab­surd, clear­ly a red her­ring. What could be big­ger than the pro­lon­ga­tion of the hu­man life span? What else could this huge col­lec­tion of chem­icals be for, if not that?

He shook these spec­ula­tions from his mind. Once Pen­der­gast was dealt with and the girl har­vest­ed, there would be plen­ty of time for ex­plo­ration.

He raked the ground with his light. There was more blood, along with a ragged set of foot­prints that head­ed straight through the cor­ri­dor of bot­tles. He had to be care­ful, ex­ceed­ing­ly care­ful. The last thing he want­ed to do was be­gin shoot­ing up these rows of pre­cious liq­uids, de­stroy­ing the very trea­sure he had strived so hard to find. He raised his arm, aimed the hand­gun, ap­plied pres­sure to the grip. A small red dot ap­peared on the far wall. Ex­cel­lent. Al­though the laser would not be sight­ed in pre­cise­ly, it would nev­er­the­less leave lit­tle mar­gin for er­ror.

Re­leas­ing his pres­sure on the laser grip, the Sur­geon moved cau­tious­ly through the vast apothe­cary. Each bot­tle, he could see now, had been metic­ulous­ly la­beled in a spi­dery script, with both a name and a chem­ical for­mu­la. At the far end, he ducked be­neath a low arch­way in­to an iden­ti­cal nar­row room. The bot­tles in the next room were full of sol­id chem­icals—chunks of min­er­als, glit­ter­ing crys­tals, ground pow­ders, met­al shav­ings.

It seemed that the ar­canum, the for­mu­la, was far more com­pli­cat­ed than he had en­vi­sioned. Why else would Leng need all these chem­icals?

He con­tin­ued fol­low­ing Pen­der­gast’s trail. The foot­steps were no longer a sin­gle-​mind­ed bee­line past the end­less rows of glass. In­stead, the Sur­geon be­gan to no­tice quick de­tours in the foot­steps to­ward a par­tic­ular cab­inet or oth­er, al­most as if the man was look­ing for some­thing.

In an­oth­er mo­ment he had reached a Ro­manesque vault at the end of the for­est of cab­inets. A hang­ing tapestry with a fringe of gold bro­cade cov­ered the arch­way be­yond. He edged near­er, keep­ing his body once again be­hind a pil­lar, and part­ed the cur­tain with the gun bar­rel while shin­ing his torch through the gap. An­oth­er room met his eye: larg­er, broad­er, filled with oak­en cas­es front­ed by glass. Pen­der­gast’s trail led right in­to the thick of them.

The Sur­geon crept for­ward with in­fi­nite care. Again, Pen­der­gast’s tracks seemed to ex­plore the col­lec­tion, stop­ping at oc­ca­sion­al cas­es. His tracks had be­gun to take on an ir­reg­ular, weav­ing pat­tern. It was the spoor of a grave­ly wound­ed an­imal. The blood was not di­min­ish­ing. If any­thing, the bleed­ing was get­ting worse. Al­most cer­tain­ly that meant a shot to the gut. There was no need to hur­ry, to force a con­fronta­tion. The longer he wait­ed, the weak­er Pen­der­gast would be­come.

He reached a spot where a larg­er pool of blood shone in the beam of his flash­light. Clear­ly, Pen­der­gast had stopped here. He had been look­ing at some­thing, and the Sur­geon peered in­to the case to see what it was. It wasn’t more chem­icals, as he had as­sumed. In­stead, the case was filled with thou­sands of mount­ed in­sects, all ex­act­ly alike. It was an odd­look­ing bug with sharp horns on its iri­des­cent head. He moved to the next case. Strange: this con­tained bot­tles hous­ing on­ly in­sect parts. Here were bot­tles filled with gos­samer drag­on­fly wings, while over there were oth­ers with what looked like curled-​up ab­domens of hon­ey­bees. Yet oth­ers held in­nu­mer­able tiny, dried-​up white spi­ders. He moved to the next case. It con­tained des­ic­cat­ed sala­man­ders and wrin­kled frogs in a mul­ti­tude of bright col­ors; a row of jars con­tain­ing a va­ri­ety of scor­pi­on tails; oth­er jars full of num­ber­less evil-​look­ing wasps. In the next case were jars hold­ing small dried fish, snails, and oth­er in­sects the Sur­geon had nev­er seen be­fore. It was like some vast witch’s cab­inet for brew­ing po­tions and con­coct­ing spells.

It was quite strange that Leng had felt the need for such a vast col­lec­tion of po­tions and chem­icals. Per­haps, like Isaac New­ton, he had end­ed up wast­ing his life in al­chem­ical ex­per­iments. The “ul­ti­mate project” Pen­der­gast men­tioned might not be a red her­ring, af­ter all. It could very well have been some use­less at­tempt to turn lead in­to gold, or sim­ilar fool’s chal­lenge.

Pen­der­gast’s trail led out of the cab­inets and through an­oth­er arched door­way. The Sur­geon fol­lowed, gun at the ready. Be­yond lay what looked like a se­ries of small­er rooms—clos­er to in­di­vid­ual stone crypts or vaults, ac­tu­al­ly—each con­tain­ing a col­lec­tion of some kind. Pen­der­gast’s trail weaved back and forth be­tween them. More oak­en cab­inets, filled with what looked like bark and leaves and dried flow­ers. He stopped a mo­ment, star­ing around cu­ri­ous­ly.

Then he re­mind­ed him­self that Pen­der­gast was the press­ing is­sue. Judg­ing from the weav­ing tracks, the man was now hav­ing trou­ble walk­ing.

Of course, know­ing Pen­der­gast, it could be a ruse. A new sus­pi­cion arose with­in him, and the Sur­geon crouched be­side the near­est scat­ter­ing of crim­son droplets, touch­ing his fin­gers to one, rub­bing them to­geth­er. Then he tast­ed it. No doubt about it: hu­man blood, and still warm. There could be no way of fak­ing that. Pen­der­gast was def­inite­ly wound­ed. Grave­ly wound­ed.

He stood up, raised the gun again, and moved stealthi­ly for­ward, his flash­light prob­ing the vel­vety dark­ness ahead.

SIX

NO­RA STEPPED WAR­ILY through the door­way. Af­ter the dark­ness of the cell, the light was so bright that she shrank back in­to shad­ow, tem­porar­ily blind­ed. Then she came for­ward again.

As her eyes ad­just­ed, ob­jects be­gan to take form. Met­al ta­bles, cov­ered with gleam­ing in­stru­ments. An emp­ty gur­ney. An open door, lead­ing on­to a de­scend­ing stair­case of rough­hewn stone. And a fig­ure, strapped face­down on­to a stain­less steel op­er­at­ing ta­ble. Ex­cept the ta­ble was dif­fer­ent from oth­ers she had seen. Gut­ters ran down its sides in­to a col­lect­ing cham­ber, full now with blood and flu­id. It was the kind of ta­ble used for an au­top­sy, not an op­er­ation.

The head and tor­so of the fig­ure, as well as the waist and legs, were cov­ered by pale green sheets. On­ly the low­er back re­mained ex­posed. As No­ra came for­ward, she could see a ghast­ly wound: a red gash al­most two feet long. Met­al re­trac­tors had been set, spread­ing the edges of the wound apart. She could see the ex­posed spinal col­umn, pale gray amidst the pinks and reds of ex­posed flesh. The wound had bled freely, red co­ag­ulat­ing trib­utaries that had flowed down ei­ther side of the ver­ti­cal cut, across the ta­ble, and in­to the met­al gut­ters.

No­ra knew, even with­out draw­ing back the sheet, that the body was Smith­back’s. She sup­pressed a cry.

She tried to steady her­self, re­mem­ber­ing what Pen­der­gast had said. There were things that need­ed to be done. And the first was to ver­ify that Smith­back was dead.

She took a step for­ward, glanc­ing quick­ly around the op­er­at­ing the­ater. An IV rack stood be­side the ta­ble, its clear nar­row tube snaking down and dis­ap­pear­ing be­neath the green sheets. Near­by was a large met­al box on wheels, its pan­el fes­tooned with tubes and di­als—prob­ably a ven­ti­la­tor. Sev­er­al bloody scalpels sat in a met­al basin. On a near­by sur­gi­cal tray were for­ceps, ster­ile sponges, a squirt bot­tle of Be­ta­dine so­lu­tion. Oth­er in­stru­ments lay in a scat­ter on the gur­ney, where they had ap­par­ent­ly been dropped when the surgery was in­ter­rupt­ed.

She glanced at the head of the ta­ble, at the rack of ma­chines mon­itor­ing the vi­tal signs. She rec­og­nized an EKG screen, a ghost­ly line of green trac­ing a course from left to right. Trac­ing a heart­beat. My God, she thought sud­den­ly, is it pos­si­ble Bill’s still alive?

No­ra took a rapid step for­ward, reached over the gap­ing in­ci­sion, and lift­ed the sheet away from his shoul­ders. Smith­back’s fea­tures came in­to view: the fa­mil­iar tou­sled hair with the un­re­pen­tant cowlick, the skin­ny arms and shoul­ders, the curl of hair at the nape of his neck. She reached for­ward and touched his neck, felt the faint pulse of the carotid artery.

He was alive. But bare­ly.

Had he been drugged? What should she do? How could she save him?

She re­al­ized she was hy­per­ven­ti­lat­ing, and strug­gled to slow both her breath­ing and her thoughts. She scanned the ma­chines, think­ing back to the pre-​med class­es she’d tak­en in col­lege; to the cours­es in gross anato­my, bi­olog­ical and foren­sic an­thro­pol­ogy in grad­uate school; her brief ex­pe­ri­ence as a hos­pi­tal can­dy striper.

She quick­ly moved on to the next ma­chine, try­ing to frame the over­all sit­ua­tion. The ma­chine was clear­ly a blood pres­sure mon­itor. She glanced at the sys­tolic and di­as­tolic read­outs: 91 over 60. At least he had pres­sure as well as pulse. But it seemed low, too low. Be­side it was an­oth­er ma­chine, con­nect­ed to a line lead­ing to a clip on Smith­back’s in­dex fin­ger. No­ra’s un­cle had worn one of these when he’d been in the hos­pi­tal a year be­fore, suf­fer­ing from con­ges­tive heart fail­ure: it was a pulse-​oxime­ter. It shone a light up­on the fin­ger­nail, and mea­sured the oxy­gen sat­ura­tion of the blood. The read­out was 80. Could that be right? She seemed to re­call that any­thing less than 95 was cause for con­cern.

No­ra looked back now at the EKG ma­chine, at the pulse read­out in its low­er right cor­ner. It stood at 125.

Abrupt­ly, the blood pres­sure me­ter be­gan bleat­ing a warn­ing.

She knelt to­ward Smith­back, lis­ten­ing to his breath­ing. It was rapid and shal­low, bare­ly au­di­ble.

She straight­ened, gaz­ing around at the ma­chines with a moan of de­spair. God, she had to do some­thing. She couldn’t move him; that would mean cer­tain death. What­ev­er she did, she would have to do it here and now. If she couldn’t help him, Smith­back would die.

She fought to con­trol her pan­ic, strug­gled with her mem­ory. What did this all mean: low blood pres­sure; ab­nor­mal­ly fast heart rate; low blood oxy­gen?

Exsan­guina­tion. She looked at the ap­palling pool of blood in the col­lect­ing basin at the bot­tom of the ta­ble. Smith­back was suf­fer­ing from mas­sive blood loss.

How did the body re­act in such cas­es? She thought back to the dis­tant lec­tures she’d on­ly half paid at­ten­tion to. First, by tachy­car­dia, as the heart beat faster in an at­tempt to pro­fuse the tis­sues with oxy­gen. Next, by—what was the damn term?—va­sospasm. She quick­ly stretched out a hand, felt Smith­back’s fin­gers. As she ex­pect­ed, they were ice cold, the skin mot­tled. The body had shut down blood to the ex­trem­ities to max­imize oxy­gen in the crit­ical ar­eas.

The blood pres­sure would be the last to go. And Smith­back’s was al­ready drop­ping. Af­ter that . . .

She did not want to think about what would hap­pen af­ter that.

A wave of sick­ness passed over her. This was in­sane. She wasn’t a doc­tor. Any­thing she did could eas­ily make things worse.

She took a deep breath, star­ing at the raw wound, forc­ing her­self to con­cen­trate. Even if she knew how, clos­ing and su­tur­ing the in­ci­sion would not help: the blood loss was al­ready too great. There was no plas­ma around for a blood trans­fu­sion, and had there been any, ad­min­is­ter­ing a trans­fu­sion was be­yond her abil­ities.

But she knew that pa­tients who had lost a lot of blood could be re­hy­drat­ed with crys­tal­loids or a saline so­lu­tion.

She looked again at the IV rack be­side the ta­ble. A thou­sand-​cc bag of saline so­lu­tion hung from it, tube droop­ing down from the met­al stand and in­to the vein in Smith­back’s wrist. The stop­cock had been shut off. A hy­po­der­mic sy­ringe, half emp­ty, dan­gled near the bot­tom, its nee­dle in­sert­ed in­to the tube. She re­al­ized what it was: a lo­cal mon­itored anaes­thet­ic, prob­ably Versed, giv­en as a drip be­cause Versed doesn’t last much more than five min­utes. It would keep the vic­tim con­scious, but re­duce any re­sis­tance, per­haps. Why hadn’t the Sur­geon used gen­er­al, or spinal, anes­the­sia for the pro­ce­dure?

It didn’t mat­ter. The point was to re­place Smith­back’s flu­ids as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, get his blood pres­sure up—and here were the means to do it.

She plucked the hy­po­der­mic from the IV tube and threw it across the room. Then, reach­ing for the stop­cock at the base of the liter bag of saline, she turned it clock­wise as far as it would go.

It isn’t enough, she thought as she watched the so­lu­tion drip rapid­ly through the tube. It’s not enough to re­place the flu­id vol­ume. Oh, Je­sus, what else can I do?

But there seemed to be noth­ing else she could do.

She stepped back, help­less­ly, eyes dart­ing once again to the ma­chines. Smith­back’s pulse had risen to 140. Even more alarm­ing­ly, his blood pres­sure had dropped to 80 over 45.

She leaned to­ward the gur­ney, took Smith­back’s cold, still hand in hers.

“Damn you, Bill,” she whis­pered, press­ing his hand. “You’ve got to make it. You’ve got to.” She wait­ed, mo­tion­less be­neath the lights, her eyes fixed on the mon­itors. SEV­EN

IN THE STONE CHAM­BERS deep be­neath 891 River­side, the air smelled of dust, an­cient fun­gus, and am­mo­nia. Pen­der­gast moved painful­ly through the dark­ness, lift­ing the hood from the lantern in­fre­quent­ly, as much to in­spect Leng’s cab­inet as to get his bear­ings. He paused, breath­ing hard, at the cen­ter of a room full of glass jars and spec­imen trays. He lis­tened in­tent­ly. His hy­per­acute ears picked up the sound of Fairhaven’s stealthy foot­steps. They were at most one, per­haps two cham­bers away. There was so lit­tle time. He was grave­ly wound­ed, with­out a weapon, bleed­ing heav­ily. If he was to find any way to lev­el the play­ing field, it would have to come from the cab­inet it­self. The on­ly way to de­feat Fairhaven was to un­der­stand Leng’s ul­ti­mate project—to un­der­stand why Leng had been pro­long­ing his life.

He un­cov­ered the lantern again and ex­am­ined the cab­inet in front of him. The jars con­tained dried in­sects, shim­mer­ing with iri­des­cence in the beam of light. The jar was la­beled Pseu­dope­na ve­le­na­tus, which Pen­der­gast rec­og­nized as the false feath­er­wing bee­tle from the Ma­to Grosso swamps, a mild­ly poi­sonous in­sect na­tives used for medicine. In the row be­low, an­oth­er se­ries of jars con­tained the dried-​up corpses of dead­ly Ugan­dan bog spi­ders in bril­liant pur­ples and yel­lows. Pen­der­gast moved down the case, un­cloaked the lantern again. Here were bot­tle af­ter bot­tle of dried lizards: the harm­less al­bi­no cave gekko from Cos­ta Ri­ca, a bot­tle full of dried sali­va glands from the Gi­la mon­ster of the Sono­ran Desert, two jars full of the shriv­eled corpses of the tiny red-​bel­lied lizard of Aus­tralia. Far­ther along were num­ber­less cock­roach­es, from the gi­ant Mada­gas­car hiss­ing cock­roach­es to beau­ti­ful green Cuban roach­es, wink­ing in their jars like tiny emer­ald leaves.

Pen­der­gast re­al­ized these crea­tures had not been col­lect­ed for tax­onom­ic or clas­si­fi­ca­tion pur­pos­es. One did not need a thou­sand bog spi­ders in or­der to do tax­onom­ic stud­ies—and dry­ing in­sects was a poor way to pre­serve their bi­olog­ical de­tails. And they were ar­ranged in these cab­inets in no con­ceiv­able tax­onom­ic or­der.

There was on­ly one an­swer: these in­sects had been col­lect­ed be­cause of the com­plex chem­ical com­pounds they con­tained. This was a col­lec­tion of bi­olog­ical­ly ac­tive com­pounds, pure and sim­ple. It was, in fact, a con­tin­ua­tion of the in­or­gan­ic chem­ical cab­inets he had ob­served in the pre­ced­ing rooms.

Pen­der­gast now felt even more cer­tain that this grand, sub­ter­ranean cab­inet of cu­riosi­ties—this stu­pen­dous col­lec­tion of chem­icals—was di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to Leng’s re­al work. The col­lec­tions here per­fect­ly filled the hole he’d no­ticed in the col­lec­tions dis­played in the house above. This was An­toine Leng Pen­der­gast’s ul­ti­mate cab­inet of cu­riosi­ties.

In con­trast to those oth­er col­lec­tions, how­ev­er, this was clear­ly a work­ing cab­inet: many of the jars were on­ly par­tial­ly full, and some al­most emp­ty. What­ev­er Leng had been do­ing had re­quired an enor­mous va­ri­ety of chem­ical com­pounds. But what had he been do­ing? What was this grand project?

Pen­der­gast cov­ered the lantern again, try­ing to will the pain away long enough to think. Ac­cord­ing to his great-​aunt, just be­fore head­ing north to New York, Leng had talked of sav­ing the hu­man race. He re­mem­bered the word his great-​aunt had used: heal­ing. Leng would heal the world. This vast cab­inet of chem­icals and com­pounds was cen­tral to that project. It was some­thing Leng be­lieved would ben­efit hu­man­ity.

Pen­der­gast felt a sud­den spasm of pain that threat­ened to bend him dou­ble. With a supreme ef­fort of will, he re­cov­ered. He had to keep go­ing, to keep look­ing for the an­swer.

He moved out of the for­est of cab­inets, through an arch­way of hang­ing tapestries, in­to the next room. As he moved, he was racked by a sec­ond in­tense spasm of pain. He stopped, wait­ing for it to pass.

The trick he’d in­tend­ed to play on Fairhaven—duck­ing through the se­cret pan­el with­out be­ing shot—had re­quired exquisite tim­ing. Dur­ing their en­counter, Pen­der­gast had watched Fairhaven’s face in­tent­ly. Al­most with­out ex­cep­tion, peo­ple be­trayed by their ex­pres­sion the mo­ment they de­cid­ed to kill, to pull the trig­ger, to end the life of an­oth­er. But Fairhaven had giv­en no such sig­nal. He had pulled the trig­ger with a cool­ness that had tak­en Pen­der­gast by sur­prise. The man had used Pen­der­gast’s own cus­tom Colt. It was re­gard­ed as one of the most de­pend­able and ac­cu­rate .45 semi­au­to­mat­ics avail­able, and Fairhaven clear­ly knew how to use it. If it hadn’t been for the man’s pause in breath­ing just be­fore squeez­ing off the shot, Pen­der­gast would have tak­en the bul­let dead cen­ter and been killed in­stant­ly.

In­stead, he had tak­en the bul­let in his side. It had passed just be­low the left rib cage and pen­etrat­ed in­to the peri­toneal cav­ity. In as de­tached a way as pos­si­ble, Pen­der­gast once again con­sid­ered the pre­cise form and na­ture of the pain. The bul­let had, at the very least, rup­tured his spleen and per­haps per­fo­rat­ed the sple­net­ic flex­ure of the colon. It had missed the ab­dom­inal aor­ta—he would have bled to death oth­er­wise—but it must have nicked ei­ther the left col­ic vein or some trib­utaries of the por­tal vein, be­cause the blood loss was still grave. The law en­force­ment Black Talon slug had done ex­ten­sive dam­age: the wound would prove fa­tal if not treat­ed with­in a few hours. Worse, it was severe­ly de­bil­itat­ing him, slow­ing him down. The pain was ex­cru­ci­at­ing, but for the most part he could man­age pain. He could not, how­ev­er, man­age the grow­ing numb­ness that was en­fee­bling his limbs. His body, bruised from the re­cent fall and still not ful­ly re­cov­ered from the knife wound, had no re­serves to fall back on. He was fad­ing fast.

Once again, mo­tion­less in the dark, Pen­der­gast re­viewed how his plans had mis­car­ried; how he had mis­cal­cu­lat­ed. From the be­gin­ning, he had known this would be the most dif­fi­cult case of his ca­reer. But what he had not an­tic­ipat­ed were his own psy­cho­log­ical short­com­ings. He had cared too much; the case had be­come too im­por­tant to him. It had col­ored his judg­ment, crip­pled his ob­jec­tiv­ity. And now for the first time he re­al­ized that there was a pos­si­bil­ity—in­deed, a high prob­abil­ity—of fail­ure. And fail­ure meant not on­ly his own death—which was in­con­se­quen­tial—but al­so the deaths of No­ra, Smith­back, and many oth­er in­no­cent peo­ple in the fu­ture.

Pen­der­gast paused to ex­plore the wound with his hand. The bleed­ing was grow­ing worse. He slipped off his jack­et and tied it as tight­ly as he could around his low­er tor­so. Then he un­cloaked the lantern and, once again, held it briefly aloft.

He was in a small­er room now, and he was sur­prised at what he found. In­stead of more chem­ical com­pounds, the tiny space was crowd­ed with cas­es of birds, stuffed with cot­ton. Mi­grat­ing birds. All ar­ranged tax­onom­ical­ly. A su­perb col­lec­tion, even in­clud­ing a suite of nowex­tinct pas­sen­ger pi­geons. But how did this col­lec­tion fit with the rest? Pen­der­gast felt stag­gered. He knew, deep down, that all this fit to­geth­er, was part of some great plan. But what plan?

He stum­bled on, jostling his wound as lit­tle as pos­si­ble, in­to the next room. He lift­ed his light once again, and this time froze in ut­ter as­ton­ish­ment.

Here was a col­lec­tion en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent from the oth­ers. The lantern re­vealed a bizarre ag­gre­ga­tion of cloth­ing and ac­ces­sories, ar­rayed on dress­mak­er’s dum­mies and in cas­es along both walls: rings, col­lars, hats, foun­tain pens, um­brel­las, dress­es, gloves, shoes, watch­es, neck­laces, cra­vats—all care­ful­ly pre­served and ar­ranged as if in a mu­se­um, but this time with no ap­par­ent sys­tem­iza­tion. It seemed very un­like Leng, this hap­haz­ard col­lec­tion from the past two thou­sand years, from all over the world. What did a nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry Parisian man’s white kid glove have to do with a me­dieval gor­get? And what did a pair of an­cient Ro­man ear­rings have to do with an En­glish um­brel­la, or to the Rolex watch sit­ting next to it, or to the flap­per-​era high-​heeled shoes be­side that? Pen­der­gast moved painful­ly for­ward. Against the far wall, in an­oth­er case, were door han­dles of all kinds—none hold­ing the slight­est aes­thet­ic or artis­tic in­ter­est—be­side a row of eigh­teenth-​cen­tu­ry men’s pow­dered wigs.

Pen­der­gast hid the lantern, pon­der­ing. It was an ut­ter­ly bizarre col­lec­tion of com­mon­place ob­jects, none of them par­tic­ular­ly dis­tin­guished, ar­ranged with­out re­gard to pe­ri­od or cat­ego­ry. Yet here they were, pre­served in cas­es as if they were the most pre­cious ob­jects in the world.

As he stood in the dark, lis­ten­ing to the drip of his blood against the stone floor, Pen­der­gast won­dered for the first time if Leng had not, in the end, gone mad. This cer­tain­ly seemed the last col­lec­tion of a mad­man. Per­haps, as he pro­longed his life, the brain had de­te­ri­orat­ed even while the body had not. This grotesque col­lec­tion made no sense.

Pen­der­gast shook his head. Once again, he was re­act­ing emo­tion­al­ly, al­low­ing his judg­ment to be af­fect­ed by feel­ings of fa­mil­ial guilt. Leng had not gone mad. No mad­man could have as­sem­bled the col­lec­tions he had just passed through, per­haps the great­est col­lec­tion of chem­icals, in­or­gan­ic and or­gan­ic, the world had ev­er seen. The tawdry ob­jects in this room were re­lat­ed. There was a sys­tem­at­ic ar­range­ment here, if on­ly he could see it. The key to Leng’s project was here. He had to un­der­stand what Leng was do­ing, and why. Oth­er­wise . . .

Then he heard the scrape of a foot on stone, saw the beam of Fairhaven’s flash­light lance over him. Sud­den­ly, the small red dot of a laser ap­peared on the front of his shirt. He threw him­self side­ways just as the crash of the gun sound­ed in the con­fined space.

He felt the bul­let strike his right el­bow, a sledge­ham­mer blow that knocked him off his feet. He lay on the ground for a mo­ment, as the laser licked through the dusty air. Then he rolled to his feet and limped for­ward, duck­ing from case to case as he crossed the room.

He had al­lowed him­self to be­come dis­tract­ed by the strange col­lec­tion; he had ne­glect­ed to lis­ten for Fairhaven’s ap­proach. Once again, he had failed. With this thought came the re­al­iza­tion that, for the first time, he was about to lose.

He took an­oth­er step for­ward, cradling his shat­tered el­bow. The bul­let seemed to have passed above the me­di­al supra­cond­lar ridge and ex­it­ed near the coro­noid pro­cess of the ul­na. It would ag­gra­vate the blood loss, ren­der him in­ca­pable of re­sis­tance. He must get to the next room. Each room had its own clues, and per­haps the next would re­veal Leng’s se­cret. But as he moved a wave of dizzi­ness hit him, fol­lowed by a stab of nau­sea. He swayed, stead­ied him­self.

Us­ing the re­flect­ed light of Fairhaven’s search­ing beam, he ducked be­neath an arch­way in­to the next room. The ex­er­tion of the fall, the shock of the sec­ond bul­let, had drained the last of his en­er­gy, and the heavy cur­tain of un­con­scious­ness drew ev­er clos­er. He leaned back against the in­side wall, breath­ing hard, eyes wide against the dark­ness.

The flash­light beam stabbed abrupt­ly through the arch­way, then flicked away again. In its brief il­lu­mi­na­tion, Pen­der­gast saw the glit­ter of glass; rows of beakers and re­torts; colum­nar dis­til­la­tion se­tups ris­ing like city spires above long work­ta­bles.

He had pen­etrat­ed Enoch Leng’s se­cret lab.

EIGHT

NO­RA STOOD OVER the met­al ta­ble, her gaze mov­ing from the mon­itor­ing ma­chines to Smith­back’s pal­lid form, then back again. She had re­moved the re­trac­tors, cleaned and dressed the wound as best she could. The bleed­ing had fi­nal­ly stopped. But the dam­age was al­ready done. The blood pres­sure ma­chine con­tin­ued to sound its dire warn­ing. She glanced to­ward the saline bag: it was al­most emp­ty, but the catheter was small, and even at max­imum vol­ume it would be dif­fi­cult to re­plen­ish lost flu­ids quick­ly enough.

She turned abrupt­ly as the sound of a sec­ond shot echoed up from the dark stair­case. It sound­ed faint, muf­fled, as if com­ing from deep un­der­ground.

For a mo­ment she stood mo­tion­less, lanced by fear. What had hap­pened? Had Pen­der­gast shot—or been shot?

Then she turned back to­ward Smith­back’s in­ert form. On­ly one man was go­ing to come up that stair­case: Pen­der­gast, or the oth­er. When the time came, she’d deal with it. Right now, her re­spon­si­bil­ity lay with Smith­back. And she wasn’t go­ing to leave him.

She glanced back at the vi­tals: blood pres­sure down to 70 over 35; the heart rate slow­ing too, now, down to 80 beats per minute. At first, this lat­ter de­vel­op­ment sent re­lief cours­ing through her. But then an­oth­er thought struck, and she raised her palm to Smith­back’s fore­head. It was grow­ing as cold as his limbs had been.

Brady­car­dia, she thought, as pan­ic re­placed the tran­si­to­ry feel­ing of re­lief. When blood loss is per­sis­tent, and there are no more ar­eas for the body to shut down, the pa­tient de­com­pen­sates. The crit­ical ar­eas start to go. The heart slows. And then stops for good.

Hand still on Smith­back’s fore­head, No­ra turned her fran­tic gaze back to the EKG. It looked strange­ly di­min­ished, the spikes small­er, the fre­quen­cy slow­er. The pulse was now 50 beats per minute.

She dropped her hands to Smith­back’s shoul­ders, shook him rough­ly. “Bill!” she cried. “Bill, damn it, come on! Please!”

The peep­ing of the EKG grew er­rat­ic. Slowed.

There was noth­ing more she could do.

She stared at the mon­itors for a mo­ment, a hor­ri­ble feel­ing of pow­er­less­ness steal­ing over her. And then she closed her eyes and let her head sink on­to Smith­back’s shoul­der: bare, mo­tion­less, cold as a mar­ble tomb.

NINE

PEN­DER­GAST STUM­BLED PAST the long ta­bles of the old lab­ora­to­ry. An­oth­er spasm of pain wracked his gut and he paused mo­men­tar­ily, men­tal­ly will­ing it to pass. De­spite the sever­ity of his wounds, he had so far man­aged to keep one cor­ner of his mind clear, sharp, free of dis­trac­tion. He tried to fo­cus on that cor­ner through the thick­en­ing fog of pain; tried to ob­serve and un­der­stand what lay around him.

Titra­tion and dis­til­la­tion ap­pa­ra­tus­es, beakers and re­torts, burn­ers; a vast thick­et of glass­ware and met­al. And yet, de­spite the ex­tent of the equip­ment, there seemed to be few clues to the project Leng had been work­ing on. Chem­istry was chem­istry, and you used the same tools and equip­ment, re­gard­less of what chem­icals you were syn­the­siz­ing or iso­lat­ing. There were a larg­er num­ber of hoods and vin­tage glove box­es than Pen­der­gast ex­pect­ed, im­ply­ing that Leng had been han­dling poi­sons or ra­dioac­tive sub­stances in his lab­ora­to­ry. But even this mere­ly cor­rob­orat­ed what he had al­ready sur­mised.

The on­ly sur­prise had been the state of the lab­ora­to­ry. There was no mass spec­trom­eter, no X-​ray diffrac­tion equip­ment, no elec­trophore­sis ap­pa­ra­tus, and cer­tain­ly no DNA se­quencer. No com­put­ers, noth­ing that seemed to con­tain any in­te­grat­ed cir­cuits. There was noth­ing to re­flect the rev­olu­tion in bio­chem­istry tech­nol­ogy that had oc­curred since the 1960s. Judg­ing by the age of the equip­ment and its ne­glect­ed con­di­tion, it looked, in fact, as if all work in the lab had ceased around fifty years be­fore.

But that made no sense. Leng would cer­tain­ly have availed him­self of the lat­est sci­en­tif­ic de­vel­op­ments, the most mod­ern equip­ment, to help him in his quest. And, un­til very re­cent­ly, the man had been alive.

Could Leng have fin­ished his project? If so, where was it? What was it? Was it some­where in this vast base­ment? Or had he giv­en up?

The flick­er of Fairhaven’s light was lick­ing clos­er now, and Pen­der­gast ceased spec­ulat­ing and forced him­self on­ward. There was a door in the far wall, and he dragged him­self to­ward it through an over­whelm­ing wash of pain. If this was Leng’s lab­ora­to­ry, there would be no more than one, per­haps two, fi­nal work­rooms be­yond. He felt an al­most over­pow­er­ing wave of dizzi­ness. He had reached the point where he could bare­ly walk. The endgame had ar­rived.

And still he didn’t know.

Pen­der­gast pushed the door ajar, took five steps in­to the next room. He un­cloaked the lantern and tried to raise it to get his bear­ings, ex­am­ine the room’s con­tents, make one fi­nal at­tempt at re­solv­ing the mys­tery.

And then his legs buck­led be­neath him.

As he fell, the lantern crashed to the floor, rolling away, its light flick­er­ing crazi­ly across the walls. And along the walls, a hun­dred edges of sharp­ened steel re­flect­ed the light back to­ward him.

TEN

THE SUR­GEON SHONE the light hun­gri­ly around the cham­ber as the echoes of the sec­ond shot died away. The beam il­lu­mi­nat­ed moth-​eat­en cloth­ing, an­cient wood­en dis­play cas­es, motes of dis­turbed dust hang­ing in the air. He was cer­tain he had hit Pen­der­gast again.

The first shot, the gut shot, had been the more se­vere. It would be painful, de­bil­itat­ing, a wound that would grow steadi­ly worse. The last kind of wound you want­ed when you were try­ing to es­cape. The sec­ond shot had hit a limb—an arm, no doubt, giv­en that the FBI agent could still walk. Ex­ceed­ing­ly painful, and with luck it might have nicked the basil­ic vein, adding to Pen­der­gast’s loss of blood.

He stopped where Pen­der­gast had fall­en. There was a small spray of blood against a near­by cab­inet, and a heav­ier smear where the agent had ob­vi­ous­ly rolled across the ground. He stepped back, glanc­ing around with a feel­ing of con­tempt. It was an­oth­er of Leng’s ab­surd col­lec­tions. The man had been a neu­rot­ic col­lec­tor, and the base­ment was of a piece with the rest of the house. There would be no ar­canum here, no philoso­pher’s stone. Pen­der­gast had ob­vi­ous­ly been try­ing to throw him off bal­ance with that talk of Leng’s ul­ti­mate pur­pose. What pur­pose could be more grand than the pro­lon­ga­tion of the hu­man life span? And if this ridicu­lous col­lec­tion of um­brel­las and walk­ing sticks and wigs was an ex­am­ple of Leng’s ul­ti­mate project, then it mere­ly cor­rob­orat­ed how un­fit he was for his own dis­cov­ery. Per­haps with the long, clois­tered years had come mad­ness. Al­though Leng had seemed quite sane when he’d first con­front­ed him, six months be­fore—as much as one could tell any­thing from such a silent, as­cetic fel­low—ap­pear­ances meant noth­ing. One nev­er knew what went on in­side a man’s head. But in the end, it made no dif­fer­ence. Clear­ly, the dis­cov­ery was des­tined for him. Leng was on­ly a ves­sel to bring this stu­pen­dous ad­vance­ment across the years. Like John the Bap­tist, he had mere­ly paved the way. The elixir was Fairhaven’s des­tiny. God had placed it in his path. He would be Leng, as Leng should have been—per­haps would have been, had it not been for his weak­ness­es, his fa­tal flaws.

Once he had achieved suc­cess, he, Fairhaven, would not hole up like a recluse in this house to let the years roll end­less­ly by. Once the trans­for­ma­tion was com­plete—once he had per­fect­ed the elixir, ab­sorbed all Leng had to give in­to him­self—he would emerge, like a but­ter­fly from a pu­pa. He would put his long life to won­der­ful use: trav­el, love, learn­ing, plea­sure, ex­ot­ic ex­pe­ri­ences. Mon­ey would nev­er be a prob­lem.

The Sur­geon forced him­self to put aside these re­flec­tions and once again take up Pen­der­gast’s ir­reg­ular path. The foot­prints were grow­ing smudged at the heels: the man was drag­ging his feet along the ground. Of course, Pen­der­gast could be fak­ing the grav­ity of his wound, but Fairhaven sensed he wasn’t. One couldn’t fake that heavy loss of blood. And the man couldn’t fake that he had been hit—not once, but twice.

Fol­low­ing the trail of blood, he crept through the arch­way in the far wall and en­tered the next room. His flash­light re­vealed what looked like an an­cient lab­ora­to­ry: long ta­bles set up with all man­ner of strange glass­ware, racked in­to fan­tas­tic shapes, tubes and coils and re­torts mount­ing al­most to the ceil­ing of un­dressed rock. It was old and dusty, the test tubes caked with rust-​col­ored de­posits. Leng clear­ly hadn’t used the place in years. On the near­est ta­ble, one of the racks had rust­ed through, caus­ing glass­ware to fall and shat­ter in­to pieces on the dark wood­work.

Pen­der­gast’s ragged steps went straight through this lab, with­out stop­ping, to a door on the far side. Fairhaven fol­lowed more quick­ly now, gun raised, steady pres­sure on the trig­ger. It’s time, he thought to him­self as he ap­proached the door. Time to fin­ish this.

ELEVEN

AS HE EN­TERED the room, Fairhaven im­me­di­ate­ly saw Pen­der­gast: on his knees, head droop­ing, in a widen­ing pool of blood. There was to be no more hid­ing, no more evad­ing, no more clever dis­sem­bling.

The man re­mind­ed Fairhaven of the way an an­imal died when gut-​shot. It didn’t in­stant­ly keel over dead. In­stead, it hap­pened in stages. First, the an­imal stood there, shocked, trem­bling slight­ly. Then it slow­ly kneeled, hold­ing the po­si­tion for a minute or more, as if pray­ing. Then its rear legs col­lapsed in­to a sit­ting po­si­tion. And there it might re­main for sev­er­al min­utes be­fore sud­den­ly rolling on­to its side. The slow-​mo­tion bal­let al­ways end­ed with a spasm, that vi­olent jerk of the legs at the mo­ment of death.

Pen­der­gast was in the sec­ond stage. He could sur­vive as much as a few more hours—help­less as a ba­by, of course. But he wasn’t go­ing to live that long. The chase had been di­vert­ing, but press­ing busi­ness re­mained up­stairs. Smith­back was spoiled by now, but the girl was wait­ing.

The Sur­geon ap­proached Pen­der­gast, gun hand ex­tend­ed, al­low­ing him­self to briefly sa­vor the tri­umph. The clever, the di­abol­ical­ly cun­ning Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast lay be­fore him: stu­porous, un­re­sist­ing. Then he stepped back to give him­self room for the fi­nal shot and, with­out much cu­rios­ity, raised his light to il­lu­mi­nate the room. He wouldn’t want to spoil any­thing with his bul­let, on the re­mote chance this room con­tained any­thing use­ful.

He was amazed at what he saw. Yet an­oth­er bizarre col­lec­tion of Leng’s. On­ly this one was dif­fer­ent. This was all weapons and ar­mor. Swords, dag­gers, cross­bows and bolts, har­que­bus­es, lances, ar­rows, maces were mixed hig­gledy-​pig­gledy with more mod­ern guns, ri­fles, black­jacks, grenades, and rock­et launch­ers. There were al­so me­dieval suits of ar­mor, iron hel­mets, chain-​mail, Crimean, Span­ish-​Amer­ican, and World War I army hel­mets; ear­ly bul­let­proof vests and stacks of am­mu­ni­tion—a ver­ita­ble ar­se­nal, dat­ing from Ro­man times to the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.

The Sur­geon shook his head. The irony was in­cred­ible. If Pen­der­gast had been able to get here a few min­utes ear­li­er, in bet­ter con­di­tion, he could have armed him­self with enough fire­pow­er to fight off a bat­tal­ion. The con­test might have gone very dif­fer­ent­ly. But as it was, he’d spent too much time brows­ing the ear­li­er col­lec­tions. He’d ar­rived here a lit­tle too late. Now he lay there in his own blood, half dead, lantern near his feet. Fairhaven barked a laugh, his voice ring­ing off the vaults, and raised the gun.

The sound of laugh­ter seemed to rouse the agent, who looked up at him, eyes glassy. “All I ask is that you make it quick,” he said.

Don’t let him speak, the voice said. Just kill him.

Fairhaven aimed the gun, plac­ing Pen­der­gast’s head square­ly be­fore the cen­ter dot of the tri­tium sights. A sol­id hit with a hol­low-​point bul­let would ef­fec­tive­ly de­cap­itate the FBI agent. It would be about as quick as you could get. His fin­ger tight­ened on the trig­ger.

And then some­thing oc­curred to him.

Quick was a lot more than Pen­der­gast de­served. The man had caused him a lot of grief. Pen­der­gast had dogged his trail; ru­ined his lat­est spec­imen; brought him anx­iety and suf­fer­ing at the very mo­ment of tri­umph.

As he stood over the agent, he felt a ha­tred rise with­in him; the ha­tred he had felt for the oth­er one, Leng, who had looked so sim­ilar. The ha­tred he had felt for the trustees and pro­fes­sors of his med­ical school, who had re­fused to share his vi­sion. Ha­tred for the pet­ti­ness and small-​mind­ed­ness that kept peo­ple like him from achiev­ing their true great­ness.

So Pen­der­gast want­ed it quick? Not with this ar­se­nal at his dis­pos­al.

He walked over to Pen­der­gast and once again searched the un­re­sist­ing man care­ful­ly, re­coil­ing a lit­tle from the warm sticky blood that soaked his side. Noth­ing. The man had not been able to slip a weapon from the sur­round­ing walls. In fact, he could see that Pen­der­gast’s fal­ter­ing foot­steps led di­rect­ly to the cen­ter of the room, where he had col­lapsed. But it would do to be care­ful. Pen­der­gast, even in this pa­thet­ic state, was dan­ger­ous. If he tried to talk, it would be best to just shoot him. Words, in the mouth of this man, were sub­tle and per­ni­cious.

He looked around again, more care­ful­ly this time. There was ev­ery weapon imag­in­able on the walls. He had read his­to­ries of some of them, stud­ied oth­ers in mu­se­ums. The choice would prove amus­ing.

The word fun came to mind.

Al­ways keep­ing Pen­der­gast in his field of vi­sion, Fairhaven shone his light around, fi­nal­ly se­lect­ing a be­jew­eled sword. He plucked it from the wall, heft­ed it, turned it around in the beam of the flash­light. It would have served his pur­pose, ex­cept it was rather heavy, and the blade was so rusty it looked as if it wouldn’t cut but­ter. Be­sides, the han­dle was sticky and un­pleas­ant. He hung it back up on the shelf, wip­ing his hands on his sur­gi­cal cloth.

Pen­der­gast was still sit­ting, watch­ing him with pale, cloudy eyes. Fairhaven grinned. “Got any pref­er­ences?”

There was no re­ply, but Fairhaven could see a look of pro­found dis­tress cross the agent’s face.

“That’s right, Agent Pen­der­gast. ‘Quick’ is no longer in the cards.”

A slight, ter­ri­fied widen­ing of the eyes was Pen­der­gast’s on­ly re­sponse. It was enough. The Sur­geon felt a swell of sat­is­fac­tion.

He moved along the col­lec­tions, picked up a dag­ger with a han­dle of gold and sil­ver, turned it over, laid it down. Next to it was a hel­met shaped like a man’s head, with spikes in­side that you could screw closed, driv­ing the spikes bit by bit through the skull. Too prim­itive, too messy. Hang­ing on the wall near­by was an over­sized leather fun­nel. He’d heard of this: the tor­tur­er would jam it in­to the vic­tim’s mouth, then pour wa­ter down the vic­tim’s throat un­til the poor wretch ei­ther drowned or ex­plod­ed. Ex­ot­ic, but too time-​con­sum­ing. Near­by was a large wheel on which peo­ple could be bro­ken—too much trou­ble. A cat-​o’-nine tails, stud­ded with iron hooks. He heft­ed it, lashed it over­head, laid it back down, again wip­ing his hands. The stuff was filthy. All this junk had prob­ably been hang­ing around in Leng’s dingy sub­base­ment for more than a cen­tu­ry.

There had to be some­thing here that would be suit­able for his needs. And then his eye fell on an ex­ecu­tion­er’s axe.

“What do you know?” said Fairhaven, his smile broad­en­ing. “Per­haps you’ll get your wish, af­ter all.”

He plucked the axe from its mount­ing hooks and gave it a few swings. The wood­en shaft was al­most five feet long, fit­ted with sev­er­al rows of dull brass nails. It was heavy, but well bal­anced and sharp as a ra­zor. It made a whistling noise as it cut through the air. Sit­ting be­low the axe was the sec­ond part of the ex­ecu­tion­er’s out­fit: a tree stump, well worn and cov­ered with a dark pati­na. A semi­cir­cle had been hol­lowed from it, clear­ly in­tend­ed to re­ceive the neck. It had been well used, as many chop marks at­test­ed. He set down the axe, rolled the block over to Pen­der­gast, tipped it flat, po­si­tioned the block in front of the agent.

Sud­den­ly, Pen­der­gast re­sist­ed, strug­gling fee­bly, and the Sur­geon gave him a bru­tal kick in the side. Pen­der­gast went rigid with pain, then abrupt­ly fell limp. The Sur­geon had a brief, un­pleas­ant sen­sa­tion of déjà vu, re­mem­ber­ing how he had pushed Leng just a lit­tle too hard and end­ed up with a corpse. But no: Pen­der­gast was still con­scious. His eyes, though cloud­ed with pain, re­mained open. He would be present and con­scious when the axe fell. He knew what was com­ing. That was im­por­tant to the Sur­geon: very im­por­tant.

And now an­oth­er thought oc­curred to him. He re­called how, when Anne Bo­leyn was to be put to death, she’d sent for a French ex­ecu­tion­er, skilled in the art of de­cap­itat­ing with a sword. It was a clean­er, quick­er, sur­er death than an axe. She had knelt, head erect, with no un­seem­ly block. And she had tipped the man well.

The Sur­geon heft­ed the axe in his hands. It seemed heavy, heav­ier than it had be­fore. But sure­ly he could swing it true. It would be an in­ter­est­ing chal­lenge to do with­out the block. He shoved the block away with his foot. Pen­der­gast was al­ready kneel­ing as if he had ar­ranged him­self in po­si­tion, hands limp at his sides, head droop­ing, help­less and re­signed.

“Your strug­gles cost you that quick death you asked for,” he said. “But I’m sure we’ll have it off in—oh—no more than two or three strokes. Ei­ther way, you’re about to ex­pe­ri­ence some­thing I’ve al­ways won­dered about. Af­ter the head goes rolling off, how long does the body re­main con­scious? Do you see the world spin­ning around as your head falls in­to the bas­ket of saw­dust? When the ex­ecu­tion­er raised the heads in Tow­er Yard, cry­ing out ‘Be­hold the head of a traitor!,’ the eyes and lips con­tin­ued to move. Did they ac­tu­al­ly see their own head­less corpse?”

He gave the axe a prac­tice swing. Why was it so heavy? And yet he was en­joy­ing draw­ing out this mo­ment. “Did you know that Char­lotte Cor­day, who was guil­lotined for as­sas­si­nat­ing Marat dur­ing the French Rev­olu­tion, blushed af­ter the as­sis­tant ex­ecu­tion­er slapped her sev­ered head be­fore the as­sem­bled crowd? Or how about the pi­rate cap­tain who was caught and sen­tenced to death? They lined up his men in a row. And they told him that af­ter he was be­head­ed, whichev­er men he man­aged to walk past would be re­prieved. So they cut off his head as he stood, and wouldn’t you know it, but that head­less cap­tain be­gan to walk along the row of men, one step at a time. The ex­ecu­tion­er was so up­set that he wouldn’t have any more vic­tims that he stuck out his foot and tripped the cap­tain.”

With this the Sur­geon roared with laugh­ter. Pen­der­gast did not join in.

“Ah well,” Fairhaven said. “I guess I’ll nev­er know how long con­scious­ness lasts af­ter one has lost one’s head. But you will. Short­ly.”

He raised the axe over his right shoul­der, like a bat, and took care­ful aim.

“Give my re­gards to your great-​grand-​un­cle,” he said, as he tensed his mus­cles to de­liv­er the stroke.

TWELVE

NO­RA PIL­LOWED HER head on Smith­back’s shoul­der, tears seep­ing through her closed eye­lids. She felt weak with de­spair. She had done all she could—and yet, all she could was not enough.

And then, through the fog of grief, she re­al­ized some­thing: the beep­ing of the EKG had stead­ied.

She quick­ly raised her head, glanced at the mon­itors. Blood pres­sure had sta­bi­lized, and the pulse had risen slight­ly, to 60 beats per minute.

She stood in the chill room, trem­bling. In the end, the saline so­lu­tion had made the cru­cial dif­fer­ence. Thank you. Thank you.

Smith­back was still alive. But he was far from out of the woods. If she didn’t fur­ther re­plen­ish his flu­id vol­ume, he’d slip in­to shock.

The saline bag was emp­ty. She glanced around the room, spot­ted a small re­frig­er­ator, opened it. In­side were half a dozen liter bags of sim­ilar so­lu­tion, feed­er lines wrapped around them. She pulled one out, de­tached the old line from the catheter, re­moved the emp­ty bag from the IV rack and tossed it aside, then hung the new bag and at­tached its line. She watched the flu­id drib­ble rapid­ly down the clear tube. Through­out, Smith­back’s vi­tal signs re­mained weak but sta­ble. With any luck, he’d make it—if she could get him out of here and to a hos­pi­tal.

She ex­am­ined the gur­ney. It was on wheels, but de­tach­able. There were straps. If she could find a way out of the base­ment, she just might be able to drag the gur­ney up a flight of stairs. It was worth a try.

She searched through the near­by cab­inets, pulled out half a dozen green sur­gi­cal sheets, and cov­ered Smith­back with them. She plucked a med­ical light from one of the cab­inets, slipped it in­to her pock­et. She gave an­oth­er glance at the mon­itors at the head of the op­er­at­ing ta­ble, an­oth­er look in­to the dark open­ing that led down in­to dark­ness. It was from there that the sound of the sec­ond shot had come. But the way out of the house lay up, not down. She hat­ed to leave Smith­back, if on­ly for a mo­ment, but it was vi­tal he get re­al med­ical at­ten­tion as soon as pos­si­ble.

She pulled the flash­light from her pock­et and, cross­ing the room, stepped through the door­way in­to the stone cor­ri­dor be­yond.

It was the work of five min­utes to ex­plore the base­ment, a war­ren of nar­row pas­sages and small damp rooms, all of the same un­dressed stone. The pas­sages were low and dark, and she lost her way more than once. She found the crashed el­eva­tor—and, trag­ical­ly, the corpse of O’Shaugh­nessy—but the el­eva­tor was in­op­er­able, and there was no way up the shaft. Ul­ti­mate­ly, she found a mas­sive iron door, band­ed and riv­et­ed, which clear­ly led up­stairs. It was locked. Pen­der­gast, she thought, might be able to pick the lock—but then Pen­der­gast wasn’t here.

At last she re­turned to the op­er­at­ing room, chilled and de­spon­dent. If there was an­oth­er way out of the base­ment, it was too well hid­den for her to find. They were locked in.

She ap­proached the un­con­scious Smith­back and ca­ressed his brown hair. Once again, her eye fell on the open­ing in the wall that gave on­to a de­scend­ing stair­case. It was pitch black, silent. She re­al­ized it had been silent for what seemed a long time, ev­er since the sec­ond shot. What could have hap­pened? she won­dered. Could Pen­der­gast . . .

“No­ra?”

Smith­back’s voice was bare­ly a whis­per. She glanced down quick­ly. His eyes were open, his pale face tight with pain.

“Bill!” she cried, grab­bing his hands. “Thank God.”

“This is get­ting old,” he mur­mured.

At first, she thought he was deliri­ous. “What?”

“Get­ting hurt, wak­ing up to find you min­is­ter­ing to me. The same thing hap­pened in Utah, re­mem­ber? Once was enough.” He tried to smile, but his face con­tort­ed in agony.

“Bill, don’t talk,” she said, stroking his cheek. “You’re go­ing to be okay. We’re go­ing to get you out of here. I’ll find a—”

But—mer­ci­ful­ly—he had al­ready slipped back in­to un­con­scious­ness.

She glanced at the vi­tals and felt a huge rush of re­lief. They had im­proved—slight­ly. The saline bag con­tin­ued to de­liv­er crit­ical flu­id.

And then she heard the scream.

It came up from the dark stairs, faint and muf­fled. Nev­er­the­less it was the most fright­en­ing, bone-​chill­ing sound she had ev­er heard. It start­ed at a high, tear­ing pitch: shrill, in­hu­man. It re­mained at a pierc­ing high for what seemed at least a minute, then be­gan wa­ver­ing, ul­ulat­ing, be­fore drop­ping in­to a gasp­ing, slob­ber­ing growl. And then there was the dis­tant clang of met­al against stone.

And then, si­lence once again.

She stared at the open­ing in the wall, mind rac­ing through the pos­si­bil­ities. What had hap­pened? Was Pen­der­gast dead? His op­po­nent? Were they both dead?

If Pen­der­gast was hurt, she had to help him. He’d be able to pick the lock on the iron door, or find some oth­er way for them to get Smith­back out of this hell-​hole. On the oth­er hand—if the Sur­geon was still alive, and Pen­der­gast dead—she’d have to face him soon­er or lat­er any­way. It might as well be soon­er: and on her own terms. She was damned if she was go­ing to wait up here, a sit­ting duck, for the Sur­geon to re­turn and pick her off—and then fin­ish the job on Smith­back.

She plucked a large-​blad­ed scalpel from the sur­gi­cal stand. Then—hold­ing the light in one hand and the scalpel in the oth­er—she ap­proached the door­way that led down in­to the sub­base­ment.

The nar­row stone pan­el, swung to one side, had been per­fect­ly dis­guised to look part of the wall. Be­yond was a pool of black­ness. Shin­ing the beam ahead of her, she be­gan de­scend­ing, slow­ly and silent­ly.

Reach­ing the last turn at the bot­tom, she turned off the light and wait­ed, heart beat­ing rapid­ly, won­der­ing what to do. If she shone her light around, it might be­tray her pres­ence, give the Sur­geon—if he was wait­ing out there in the dark­ness—a per­fect tar­get. But with the light off, she sim­ply could not pro­ceed.

The light was a risk she’d have to take. She snapped it back on, stepped out of the stair­well, then gasped in­vol­un­tar­ily.

She was in a long, nar­row room, crowd­ed floor to ceil­ing with bot­tles. Her pow­er­ful beam, lanc­ing through the end­less rows, cast myr­iad glit­ter­ing col­ors about the room, mak­ing her feel as if she was some­how in­side a win­dow of stained glass.

More col­lec­tions. What could all this mean?

But there was no time to pause, no time to won­der. Two sets of foot­prints led on in­to the dark­ness ahead. And there was blood on the dusty floor.

She moved through the room as quick­ly as she could, be­neath an arch­way and in­to an­oth­er room filled with more bot­tles. The trail of foot­steps con­tin­ued on. At the end of this room was an­oth­er arch­way, cov­ered by a fringed tapestry.

She turned off her light and ad­vanced to­ward it. There she wait­ed, in the pitch black, lis­ten­ing. There was no sound. With in­fi­nite care, she drew back the tapestry and peered in­to the dark­ness. She could see noth­ing. The room be­yond seemed emp­ty, but there was no way to be sure: she would sim­ply have to take a chance. She took a deep breath, switched on her light.

The beam il­lu­mi­nat­ed a larg­er room, filled with wood­en dis­play cas­es. She hur­ried ahead, sidestep­ping from case to case, to an arch­way in the far wall that led on in­to a se­ries of small­er vaults. She ducked in­to the near­est and turned off her light again, lis­ten­ing for any sound that might in­di­cate that her pres­ence had been no­ticed. Noth­ing. Turn­ing on the light again, she moved for­ward, in­to a room whose cas­es were filled with frogs and lizards, snakes and roach­es, spi­ders of in­fi­nite shapes and col­ors. Was there no end to Leng’s cab­inet?

At the far end of the room, be­fore an­oth­er low arch­way that led in­to fur­ther dark­ness, she again crouched, turn­ing off her light to lis­ten for any nois­es that might be com­ing from the room be­yond.

It was then she heard the sound.

It came to her faint­ly, echo­ing and dis­tort­ed by its pas­sage through in­ter­ven­ing stone. Re­mote as it was, it in­stant­ly chilled her blood: a low, gib­ber­ing moan, ris­ing and falling in a fiendish ca­dence.

She wait­ed a mo­ment, flesh crawl­ing. For a mo­ment, her mus­cles tensed for an in­vol­un­tary re­treat. But then, with a supreme ef­fort, she steeled her­self. What­ev­er lay be­yond, she would have to con­front it soon­er or lat­er. Pen­der­gast might need her help.

She gath­ered up her courage, switched on her light, and sprint­ed for­ward. She ran past more rooms full of glass-​front­ed cas­es; through a cham­ber that seemed to con­tain old cloth­ing; and then in­to an an­cient lab­ora­to­ry, full of tubes and coils, dust-​heavy ma­chines fes­tooned with di­als and rust­ed switch­es. Here, be­tween the lab ta­bles, she pulled up abrupt­ly, paus­ing to lis­ten again.

There was an­oth­er sound, much clos­er now, per­haps as close as the next room. It was the sound of some­thing walk­ing—sham­bling—to­ward her.

Al­most with­out think­ing, she threw her­self be­neath the near­est ta­ble, switch­ing off her light.

An­oth­er sound came, hideous­ly alien and yet un­mis­tak­ably hu­man. It start­ed as a low chat­ter, a tat­too of rat­tling teeth, punc­tu­at­ed with a few gasps as if for breath. Then came a high keen­ing, at the high­est edge of au­di­bil­ity. Abrupt­ly, the noise stopped. And then No­ra heard, in the si­lence, the foot­steps ap­proach once again.

She re­mained hid­den be­hind the ta­ble, im­mo­bi­lized by fear, as the shuf­fling drew clos­er in the pitch black. All of a sud­den, the dark­ness was ripped apart by a ter­ri­ble shriek. This was im­me­di­ate­ly fol­lowed by a cough­ing, retch­ing sound and the splat­ter of flu­id on stone. The echoes of the shriek died out slow­ly, ring­ing on through the stone cham­bers be­hind her.

No­ra strug­gled to calm her pound­ing heart. De­spite the un­earth­ly sound, the thing that was ap­proach­ing her was hu­man. It had to be, she had to re­mem­ber that. And if it was hu­man, who could it be but Pen­der­gast or the Sur­geon? No­ra felt it had to be the Sur­geon. Per­haps he had been wound­ed by Pen­der­gast. Or per­haps he was ut­ter­ly in­sane.

She had one ad­van­tage: he didn’t seem to know she was there. She could am­bush him, kill him with the scalpel. If she could sum­mon the courage.

She crouched be­hind the lab ta­ble, scalpel in one trem­bling hand and light in the oth­er, wait­ing in the en­fold­ing dark. The sham­bling seemed to have stopped. A minute, an eter­ni­ty, of si­lence ticked by. Then she heard the un­steady foot­steps re­sume. He was now in the room with her.

The foot­steps were ir­reg­ular, punc­tu­at­ed by fre­quent paus­es. An­oth­er minute went by in which there was no move­ment; then, half a dozen jerky foot­steps. And now she could hear breath­ing. Ex­cept it wasn’t nor­mal breath­ing, but a gasp­ing, suck­ing sound, as if air were be­ing drawn down through a wet hole.

There was a sud­den ex­plo­sion of noise as the per­son stum­bled in­to a huge ap­pa­ra­tus, bring­ing it to the ground with a mas­sive crash of glass. The sound echoed and ree­choed through the stone vaults.

Main­tain, No­ra said to her­self. Main­tain. If it’s the Sur­geon, Pen­der­gast must have wound­ed him bad­ly. But then, where was Pen­der­gast? Why wasn’t he pur­su­ing?

The nois­es seemed to be less than twen­ty feet away now. She heard a scrab­bling, a mut­ter­ing and pant­ing, and the tin­kling of some­thing shed­ding bro­ken glass: he was get­ting up from his fall. There was a shuf­fling thump, and an­oth­er. Still he was com­ing, mov­ing with ex­cru­ci­at­ing slow­ness. And all the time came that breath­ing: ster­torous, with a wet gur­gle like air drawn through a leaky snorkel. Noth­ing No­ra had ev­er heard in her life was quite so un­nerv­ing as the sound of that breath­ing.

Ten feet. No­ra gripped the scalpel tighter as adrenaline coursed through her. She would turn on her light and lunge for­ward. Sur­prise would give her the ad­van­tage, es­pe­cial­ly if he was wound­ed.

There was a loud wet snor­ing sound, an­oth­er heavy foot­fall; a gasp, the spas­tic stamp of a foot; si­lence; then the drag­ging of a limb. He was al­most up­on her. She crouched, tens­ing all her mus­cles, ready to blind the man with her light and strike a fa­tal blow.

An­oth­er step, an­oth­er snuf­fle: and she act­ed. She switched on the light—but, in­stead of leap­ing with her scalpel, she froze, arm raised, knife edge glit­ter­ing in the beam of light.

And then she screamed.

THIR­TEEN

CUSTER STOOD ATOP the great flight of steps ris­ing above Mu­se­um Drive, look­ing out over the sea of press with an in­de­scrib­able feel­ing of sat­is­fac­tion. To his left was the may­or of the City of New York, just ar­riv­ing with a gag­gle of aides; to his right, the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice. Just be­hind stood his two top de­tec­tives and his man, Noyes. It was an ex­traor­di­nary as­sem­blage. There were so many on­look­ers, they’d been forced to close Cen­tral Park West to traf­fic. Press he­li­copters hov­ered above them, cam­eras dan­gling, bril­liant spot­lights swivel­ing back and forth. The cap­ture of the Sur­geon, aka Roger C. Bris­bane III—the Mu­se­um’s re­spect­ed gen­er­al coun­sel and first vice pres­ident—had riv­et­ed the me­dia’s at­ten­tion. The copy­cat killer who had ter­ror­ized the city hadn’t been some crazy home­less man, liv­ing in Cen­tral Park on a piece of card­board. It had in­stead been one of the pil­lars of Man­hat­tan so­ci­ety, the smil­ing, cor­dial fix­ture at so many glit­ter­ing fund-​rais­ers and open­ings. Here was a man whose face and im­pec­ca­bly tai­lored fig­ure was of­ten seen in the so­ci­ety pages of Av­enue and Van­ity Fair. And now he stood re­vealed as one of New York’s most no­to­ri­ous se­ri­al killers. What a sto­ry. And he, Custer, had cracked the case sin­gle-​hand­ed­ly.

The may­or was con­fer­ring sot­to voce with the com­mis­sion­er and the Mu­se­um’s di­rec­tor, Col­lopy, who had at last been tracked down to his own West End res­idence. Custer’s gaze lin­gered on Col­lopy. The man had the gaunt, pinched look of a fire-​and-​brim­stone preach­er, and he wore clothes straight out of an old Bela Lu­gosi movie. The po­lice had fi­nal­ly bro­ken down his front door, sus­pect­ing foul play when they ob­served fig­ures mov­ing against the drawn shades. The scut­tle­butt was that the po­lice found him in a pink lace ted­dy, tied to his bed, with his wife and a sec­ond fe­male dressed in dom­ina­trix uni­forms. Star­ing at the man, Custer re­fused to be­lieve such a ru­mor. True, the man’s somber clothes looked just a tad di­sheveled. Still, it was im­pos­si­ble to be­lieve such a pil­lar of pro­pri­ety could ev­er have donned a ted­dy. Wasn’t it?

Now, Custer saw May­or Mon­te­fiori’s eyes dart to­ward him. They were talk­ing about him. Al­though he main­tained his stol­id ex­pres­sion, ar­rang­ing his face in­to a mask of du­ty and obe­di­ence, he was un­able to pre­vent a flush of plea­sure from suf­fus­ing his limbs.

Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er broke away from the may­or and Col­lopy and came over. To Custer’s sur­prise, he did not look al­to­geth­er hap­py.

“Cap­tain.”

“Yes, sir.”

The com­mis­sion­er stood there a mo­ment, in­de­ci­sive, face full of anx­iety. Fi­nal­ly he leaned clos­er. “Are you sure?”

“Sure, sir?”

“Sure that it’s Bris­bane.”

Custer felt a twinge of doubt, but quick­ly stepped down on it. The ev­idence was over­whelm­ing.

“Yes, sir.”

“Did he con­fess?”

“No, not con­fess—ex­act­ly—but he made a num­ber of self-​in­crim­inat­ing state­ments. I ex­pect he’ll con­fess when he’s for­mal­ly ques­tioned. They al­ways do. Se­ri­al killers, I mean. And we found in­crim­inat­ing ev­idence in his Mu­se­um of­fice—”

“No mis­take about it? Mr. Bris­bane is a very promi­nent per­son.”

“No mis­take about it, sir.”

Rock­er scru­ti­nized his face a mo­ment longer. Custer stirred un­easi­ly. He had been ex­pect­ing con­grat­ula­tions, not the third de­gree.

Then the com­mis­sion­er leaned still clos­er and low­ered his voice to a slow, de­lib­er­ate whis­per. “Custer, all I can say is, you’d bet­ter be right.”

“I am right, sir.”

The com­mis­sion­er nod­ded, a look of guard­ed re­lief, still mixed with anx­iety, set­tling on his face.

Now Custer stepped re­spect­ful­ly in­to the back­ground, let­ting the may­or, his aides, Col­lopy, and the com­mis­sion­er ar­range them­selves be­fore the throngs of press. A feel­ing like elec­tric­ity, an an­tic­ipa­to­ry tin­gling, filled the air.

The may­or raised his hand, and a hush fell on the crowd. Custer re­al­ized the man wasn’t even per­mit­ting his aides to in­tro­duce him. He was go­ing to han­dle this per­son­al­ly. With the elec­tion so near, he wasn’t go­ing to let even a crumb of glo­ry es­cape.

“Ladies and gen­tle­men of the press,” the may­or be­gan. “We have made an ar­rest in the case of the se­ri­al killer pop­ular­ly known as the Sur­geon. The sus­pect tak­en in­to cus­tody has been iden­ti­fied as Roger C. Bris­bane III, first vice pres­ident and gen­er­al coun­sel of the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry.”

There was a col­lec­tive gasp. Al­though ev­ery­one in the crowd al­ready knew this, hear­ing it from the may­or made it of­fi­cial.

“Al­though it’s im­por­tant to state that Mr. Bris­bane must nat­ural­ly be pre­sumed in­no­cent at this time, the ev­idence against him is sub­stan­tial.”

There was a brief hush.

“As may­or, I made this case a top pri­or­ity. All avail­able re­sources were brought to bear. I there­fore want to thank, first of all, the fine of­fi­cers of the NYPD, Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er, and the men and wom­en of the homi­cide di­vi­sion, for their tire­less work on this dif­fi­cult case. And I would es­pe­cial­ly like to sin­gle out Cap­tain Sher­wood Custer. As I un­der­stand it, Cap­tain Custer not on­ly head­ed the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, but per­son­al­ly solved the case. I am shocked, as many of you must be, at the most un­usu­al twist this trag­ic case has tak­en. Many of us know Mr. Bris­bane per­son­al­ly. Nev­er­the­less, the com­mis­sion­er has as­sured me in no un­cer­tain terms that they have the right man, and I am sat­is­fied to re­ly on his as­sur­ances.”

He paused.

“Dr. Col­lopy of the Mu­se­um would like to say a few words.”

Hear­ing this, Custer tensed. The di­rec­tor would no doubt put up a dogged de­fense of his own right-​hand man; he’d ques­tion Custer’s po­lice work and in­ves­tiga­tive tech­nique, make him look bad.

Col­lopy stood be­fore the mi­cro­phone, rigid and cor­rect, his arms clasped be­hind his back. He spoke in cool, state­ly, and mea­sured tones.

“First, I wish to add my thanks to the fine men and wom­en of the New York Po­lice De­part­ment, the com­mis­sion­er, and the may­or, for their tire­less work on this trag­ic case. This is a sad day for the Mu­se­um, and for me per­son­al­ly. I wish to ex­tend my deep­est apolo­gies to the City of New York and to the fam­ilies of the vic­tims for the heinous ac­tions of our trust­ed em­ploy­ee.”

Custer lis­tened with grow­ing re­lief. Here, Bris­bane’s own boss was prac­ti­cal­ly throw­ing him to the wolves. So much the bet­ter. And he felt a twinge of re­sent­ment at Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er’s ex­ces­sive con­cern about Bris­bane, which, it seemed, even his own boss didn’t share.

Col­lopy stepped back, and the may­or re­turned to the mi­cro­phone. “I will now take ques­tions,” he said.

There was a roar, a rip­pling flur­ry of hands through the crowd. The may­or’s spokesper­son, Mary Hill, stepped for­ward to man­age the ques­tion­ing.

Custer looked to­ward the crowd. The un­pleas­ant mem­ory of Smith­back’s hang­dog vis­age flit­ted across his mind, and he was glad not to see it among the sea of faces.

Mary Hill had called on some­one, and Custer heard the shout­ed ques­tion. “Why did he do it? Was he re­al­ly try­ing to pro­long his life?”

The may­or shook his head. “I can­not spec­ulate on mo­tive at this time.”

“This is a ques­tion for Cap­tain Custer!” a voice shout­ed. “How did you know it was Bris­bane? What was the smok­ing gun?”

Custer stepped for­ward, once again gath­er­ing his face in­to a mask of sto­lid­ity. “A der­by hat, um­brel­la, and black suit,” he said, sig­nif­icant­ly, and paused. “The so-​called Sur­geon, when he went out to stalk his vic­tims, was seen to wear just such an out­fit. I dis­cov­ered the dis­guise my­self in Mr. Bris­bane’s of­fice.”

“Did you find the mur­der weapon?”

“We are con­tin­uing to search the of­fice, and we have dis­patched teams to search Mr. Bris­bane’s apart­ment and sum­mer house on Long Is­land. The Long Is­land search,” he added sig­nif­icant­ly, “will in­clude ca­dav­er-​trained track­ing dogs.”

“What was the role of the FBI in this case?” a tele­vi­sion re­porter shout­ed.

“Noth­ing,” the com­mis­sion­er an­swered hasti­ly. “There was no role. All the work was done by lo­cal law en­force­ment. An FBI agent did take an un­of­fi­cial in­ter­est ear­ly on, but those leads led nowhere and as far as we know he has aban­doned the case.”

“An­oth­er ques­tion for Cap­tain Custer, please! How does it feel, sir, to have cracked the biggest case since Son of Sam?”

It was that prepped-​out wee­nie, Bryce Har­ri­man. It was the ques­tion he had longed for some­one to ask. Once again, the man had rid­den to his res­cue. It was beau­ti­ful how these things worked out.

Custer sum­moned up his most im­pas­sive mono­tone: “I was just do­ing my du­ty as a po­lice of­fi­cer. Noth­ing less, and noth­ing more.”

Then he stood back and basked, pok­er-​faced, in the end­less flare of flash­bulbs that en­sued.

FOUR­TEEN

THE IM­AGE THAT burst in­to the beam of No­ra’s light was so un­ex­pect­ed, so hor­ri­fy­ing, that she in­stinc­tive­ly scram­bled back­ward, dropped the scalpel, and ran. Her on­ly con­scious de­sire was to put some dis­tance be­tween her­self and the aw­ful sight.

But at the door she stopped. The man—she had to think of him as that—was not fol­low­ing her. In fact, he seemed to be shuf­fling along as be­fore, zom­bie-​like, un­aware of her pres­ence. With a shak­ing hand she trained the light back on him.

The man’s clothes hung from his frame in tat­ters, skin raked and scored and bleed­ing as if by fren­zied scratch­ing. The scalp was torn, skin hang­ing away in flaps from where it had ap­par­ent­ly been ripped from the skull. Tufts of bloody hair re­mained clutched rigid­ly be­tween the fin­gers of the right hand: a hand whose ep­ithe­lial lay­ers were slough­ing away in parch­ment-​like curls of tis­sue. The lips had swollen to a grotesque size, liv­er-​col­ored ba­nanas cov­ered with whitish weals. A tongue, cracked and black­ened, forced its way be­tween them. A wet gar­gling came from deep in­side the throat, and each ef­fort to suck in or ex­pel air caused the tongue to quiver. Through the gaps in the ragged shirt, No­ra could see an­gry­look­ing chan­cres on the chest and ab­domen, weep­ing clear flu­id. Be­low the armpits were thick colonies of pus­tules like small red berries, some of which she saw—with a sick­en­ing sense of fast-​mo­tion pho­tog­ra­phy—were swelling rapid­ly; even as she watched, one burst with a sick­en­ing pop, while more blis­tered and swelled to take its place.

But what hor­ri­fied No­ra most were the eyes. One was twice nor­mal size, blood-​en­gorged, pro­trud­ing freak­ish­ly from the or­bital sock­et. It jit­tered and dart­ed about, rov­ing wild­ly but see­ing noth­ing. The oth­er, in con­trast, was dark and shriv­eled, mo­tion­less, sunken deep be­neath the brow.

A fresh shud­der of re­vul­sion went through No­ra. It must be some pa­thet­ic vic­tim of the Sur­geon. But what had hap­pened to him? What dread­ful tor­ture had he un­der­gone?

As she watched, spell­bound with hor­ror, the fig­ure paused, and seemed to look at her for the first time. The head tilt­ed up and the jit­tery eye paused and ap­peared to fix on her. She tensed, ready for flight. But the mo­ment passed. The fig­ure un­der­went a vi­olent trem­bling from head to toe; then the head dropped down, and it once more re­sumed its quiv­er­ing walk to nowhere.

She turned the light away from the ob­scene spec­ta­cle, feel­ing sick. Worse even than the loath­some sight was her sud­den recog­ni­tion. It had come to her in a flash, when the bloat­ed eye had fixed on hers: she knew this man. As grotesque­ly mal­formed as it now was, she re­mem­bered see­ing that dis­tinc­tive face be­fore, so pow­er­ful, so self-​con­fi­dent, emerg­ing from the back of a limou­sine out­side the Cather­ine Street digsite.

The shock near­ly took her breath away. She looked with hor­ror at the fig­ure’s re­treat­ing back. What had the Sur­geon done to him? Was there any­thing she could do to help?

Even as the thought came to her, she re­al­ized the man was far be­yond help. She low­ered the flash­light from the grotesque form as it shuf­fled slow­ly, aim­less­ly away from her, back to­ward a room be­yond the lab.

She thrust the light for­ward. And then, in the edge of the flash­light’s beam, she made out Pen­der­gast.

He was in the next room, ly­ing on his side, blood pool­ing on the ground be­low him. He looked dead. Near­by, a large, rust­ed axe lay on the floor. Be­yond it was an up­end­ed ex­ecu­tion­er’s block.

Sup­press­ing a cry, she ran through the con­nect­ing arch­way and knelt be­fore him. To her sur­prise, the FBI agent opened his eyes.

“What hap­pened?” she cried. “Are you all right?”

Pen­der­gast smiled weak­ly. “Nev­er bet­ter, Dr. Kel­ly.”

She flashed her light at the pool of blood, at the crim­son stain that cov­ered his shirt­front. “You’re been hurt!”

Pen­der­gast looked at her, his pale eyes cloudy. “Yes. I’m afraid I’ll need your help.”

“But what hap­pened? Where’s the Sur­geon?”

Pen­der­gast’s eyes seem to clear a lit­tle. “Didn’t you see him, ah, walk past?”

“What? The man cov­ered with sores? Fairhaven? He’s the killer?”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“Je­sus! What hap­pened to him?”

“Poi­soned.”

“How?”

“He picked up sev­er­al of the ob­jects in this room. Take care not to fol­low his ex­am­ple. Ev­ery­thing you see here is an ex­per­imen­tal poi­son-​de­liv­ery sys­tem. When he han­dled the var­ious weapons, Fairhaven ab­sorbed quite a cock­tail of poi­sons through his skin: neu­ro­tox­ins and oth­er fast-​act­ing sys­temics, no doubt.”

He grasped her hand with his own, slip­pery with blood. “Smith­back?”

“Alive.”

“Thank God for that.”

“Leng had start­ed to op­er­ate.”

“I know. Is he sta­ble?”

“Yes, but I don’t know for how long. We’ve got to get him—and you—to a hos­pi­tal right away.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “There’s an ac­quain­tance of mine, a doc­tor, who can ar­range ev­ery­thing.”

“How are we go­ing to get out of here?”

Pen­der­gast’s gun lay on the ground near­by, and he reached for it, gri­mac­ing a lit­tle. “Help me up, please. I need to get back to the op­er­at­ing room, to check on Smith­back and stop my own bleed­ing.”

She helped the agent to his feet. Pen­der­gast stum­bled a lit­tle, lean­ing heav­ily on her arm. “Shine your light on our friend a mo­ment, if you please,” he said.

The Fairhaven-​thing was shuf­fling along one wall of the room. He ran in­to a large wood­en cab­inet, stopped, backed up, came for­ward again, as if un­able to ne­go­ti­ate the ob­sta­cle. Pen­der­gast gazed at the thing for a mo­ment, then turned away.

“He’s no longer a threat,” he mur­mured. “Let’s get back up­stairs, as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.”

They re­traced their steps back through the cham­bers of the sub­base­ment, Pen­der­gast stop­ping pe­ri­od­ical­ly to rest. Slow­ly, painful­ly, they mount­ed the stairs.

In the op­er­at­ing room, Smith­back lay on the ta­ble, still un­con­scious. No­ra scanned the mon­itors quick­ly: the vi­tals re­mained weak, but steady. The liter bag of saline was al­most emp­ty, and she re­placed it with a third. Pen­der­gast bent over the jour­nal­ist, drew back the cov­ers, and ex­am­ined him. Af­ter a few mo­ments, he stepped back.

“He’ll sur­vive,” he said sim­ply.

No­ra felt a huge sense of re­lief.

“Now I’m go­ing to need some help. Help me get my jack­et and shirt off.”

No­ra un­tied the jack­et around Pen­der­gast’s mid­sec­tion, then helped him re­move his shirt, ex­pos­ing a ragged hole in his ab­domen, thick­ly en­crust­ed in blood. More blood was drip­ping from his shat­tered el­bow.

“Roll that tray of sur­gi­cal in­stru­ments this way,” he said, ges­tur­ing with his good hand.

No­ra rolled the tray over. She could not help but no­tice that his tor­so, al­though slen­der, was pow­er­ful­ly mus­cled.

“Grab those clamps over there, too, please.” Pen­der­gast swabbed the blood away from the ab­dom­inal wound, then ir­ri­gat­ed it with Be­ta­dine.

“Don’t you want some­thing for the pain? I know there’s some—”

“No time.” Pen­der­gast dropped the bloody gauze to the floor and an­gled the over­head light to­ward the wound in his ab­domen. “I have to tie off these bleed­ers be­fore I grow any weak­er.”

No­ra watched him in­spect the wound.

“Shine that light a lit­tle low­er, would you? There, that’s good. Now, if you’d hand me that clamp?”

Al­though No­ra had a strong stom­ach, watch­ing Pen­der­gast probe his own ab­domen made her feel dis­tinct­ly queasy. Af­ter a mo­ment he laid down the clamp, took up a scalpel, and made a short cut per­pen­dic­ular to the wound.

“You’re not go­ing to op­er­ate on your­self, are you?”

Pen­der­gast shook his head. “Just a quick-​and-​dirty ef­fort to stop the bleed­ing. But I’ve got to reach this col­ic vein, which, with all my ex­er­tion, has un­for­tu­nate­ly re­tract­ed.” He made an­oth­er lit­tle cut, and then probed in­to the wound with a large, tweez­er-​like in­stru­ment.

No­ra winced, tried to think of some­thing else. “How are we go­ing to get out of here?” she asked again.

“Through the base­ment tun­nels. My re­search on this area turned up the fact that a riv­er brig­and once lived along this stretch of River­side. Based on the ex­tent of the cel­lars be­low us, I feel cer­tain now that this was his res­idence. Did you no­tice the su­perb view of the Hud­son the house com­mand­ed?”

“No,” No­ra replied, swal­low­ing. “Can’t say I did.”

“That’s un­der­stand­able, con­sid­er­ing the North Riv­er Wa­ter Pol­lu­tion Con­trol Plant now blocks much of the view,” Pen­der­gast said as he fished a large vein out of the wound with the clamp. “But a hun­dred and fifty years ago, this house would have had a sweep­ing view of the low­er Hud­son. Riv­er pi­rates were fair­ly com­mon in the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. They would slip out on­to the riv­er af­ter dark to hi­jack moored ships or cap­ture pas­sen­gers for ran­som.” He paused while he ex­am­ined the end of the vein. “Leng must have known this. A large sub­base­ment was the first thing he want­ed in a house. I be­lieve we will find a way down to the riv­er, via the sub­base­ment. Hand me that ab­sorbable su­ture, if you please? No, the larg­er one, the 4-0. Thank you.”

No­ra looked on, winc­ing in­ward­ly, as Pen­der­gast lig­at­ed the vein.

“Good,” he said a few mo­ments lat­er, as he re­leased the clamp and put the su­ture aside. “That vein was caus­ing most of the bleed­ing. I can do noth­ing about my spleen, which has ob­vi­ous­ly been per­fo­rat­ed, so I’ll mere­ly cau­ter­ize the small­er bleed­ers and close the wound. Would you hand me the elec­tro­cauter­er, please? Yes, that’s it.”

No­ra hand­ed the de­vice—a nar­row blue pen­cil at the end of a wire, two but­tons marked cut and cau­ter­ize on its side—to the FBI agent. Once again, he bent over his wound. There was a sharp crack­ling sound as he cau­ter­ized a vein. This was fol­lowed by an­oth­er crack­ling noise—much longer this time—and a thin wisp of smoke rose in­to the air. No­ra avert­ed her eyes.

“What was Leng’s ul­ti­mate project?” she asked.

Pen­der­gast did not re­spond im­me­di­ate­ly. “Enoch Leng want­ed to heal the hu­man race,” he said at last, still bent over the wound. “He want­ed to save it.”

For a mo­ment, No­ra wasn’t sure she had heard cor­rect­ly. “Save the hu­man race? But he was killing peo­ple. Scores of peo­ple.”

“So he was.” An­oth­er crack­ling noise.

“Save it how?”

“By elim­inat­ing it.”

No­ra looked back at him.

“That was Leng’s grand project: to rid the earth of hu­man­ity, to save mankind from it­self, from its own un­fit­ness. He was search­ing for the ul­ti­mate poi­son—hence those rooms full of chem­icals, plants, poi­sonous in­sects and rep­tiles. Of course, I had plen­ty of tan­gen­tial ev­idence be­fore: the poi­sonous ma­te­ri­als on the glass frag­ments you un­earthed from Leng’s old lab­ora­to­ry, for ex­am­ple. Or the Greek in­scrip­tion on the es­cutcheon out­side the house. Did you no­tice it?”

No­ra nod­ded her head numbly.

“It’s the fi­nal words of Socrates, spo­ken as he took the fa­tal poi­son.

‘Crito, I owe a cock to As­cle­pius; will you re­mem­ber to pay the debt?’ Yet an­oth­er thing I should have re­al­ized soon­er.” He cau­ter­ized an­oth­er vein. “But it wasn’t un­til I saw the room full of weapons that I made the con­nec­tion and re­al­ized the scope of his plans. Be­cause cre­at­ing the ul­ti­mate poi­son alone wasn’t enough—he would al­so have to cre­ate a de­liv­ery sys­tem, a way to make it reach across the globe. That’s when the more vex­ing, in­ex­pli­ca­ble parts of the cab­inet—the cloth­ing, weapons, mi­gra­to­ry birds, wind­borne spores, and the rest—made sense to me. Among oth­er things, while re­search­ing this de­liv­ery sys­tem, he had col­lect­ed all man­ner of poi­soned ob­jects: cloth­ing, weapons, ac­ces­sories. And much of it was poi­soned by him­self—re­dun­dant ex­per­iments with all man­ner of poi­sons.”

“My God,” No­ra said. “What a crazy scheme.”

“It was an am­bi­tious scheme, cer­tain­ly. One he re­al­ized would take sev­er­al life­times to com­plete. That was why he de­vel­oped his, ah, method of life ex­ten­sion.”

Pen­der­gast put the elec­tro­cauter­er care­ful­ly to one side. “I’ve seen no ev­idence here of any sup­plies for clos­ing in­ci­sions,” he said. “Clear­ly, Fairhaven had no need of them. If you’ll hand me that gauze and the med­ical tape, I’ll but­ter­fly the wound un­til it can be prop­er­ly at­tend­ed to. Again, I’ll need your as­sis­tance.”

No­ra hand­ed him the re­quest­ed items, then helped him close. “Did he suc­ceed in find­ing the ul­ti­mate poi­son?” she asked.

“No. Based on the state of his lab­ora­to­ry, I would say he gave up around 1950.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Pen­der­gast said as he taped gauze over the ex­it wound. The trou­bled look she’d no­ticed ear­li­er re­turned. “It’s very cu­ri­ous. It’s a great mys­tery to me.”

Dress­ing com­plet­ed, Pen­der­gast straight­ened up. Fol­low­ing his in­struc­tions, No­ra helped him make a sling for his in­jured arm us­ing torn sur­gi­cal sheets, then helped him in­to his shirt.

Pen­der­gast turned once again to Smith­back, ex­am­in­ing his un­con­scious form, study­ing the mon­itors at the head of the ta­ble. He felt Smith­back’s pulse, ex­am­ined the dress­ing No­ra had made. Af­ter rum­mag­ing through the cab­inet he brought out a sy­ringe, and in­ject­ed it in­to the saline tube.

“That should keep him com­fort­able un­til you can get out of here and alert my doc­tor,” he said.

“Me?” No­ra said.

“My dear Dr. Kel­ly, some­body has to keep watch over Smith­back. We daren’t move him our­selves. With my arm in a sling and a gun­shot wound in my ab­domen, I fear I’m in no con­di­tion to go any­where, let alone row.”

“I don’t un­der­stand.”

“You will, short­ly. And now, please as­sist me back down these stairs.”

With a fi­nal look at Smith­back, No­ra helped Pen­der­gast back down the stair­case and through the se­ries of stone cham­bers, past the end­less col­lec­tions. Know­ing their pur­pose made them seem even more dread­ful.

At the lab­ora­to­ry, No­ra slowed. She an­gled her light in­to the weapons room be­yond, and saw Fairhaven, still mo­tion­less, sit­ting in the cor­ner. Pen­der­gast re­gard­ed him a mo­ment, then moved to the heavy door in the far wall and eased it open. Be­yond it lay an­oth­er de­scend­ing stair­case, much crud­er, seem­ing­ly fash­ioned out of a nat­ural cav­ity in the earth.

“Where does this go?” No­ra asked as she ap­proached.

“Un­less I’m mis­tak­en, to the riv­er.”

They de­scend­ed the stair­case, the per­fume of mold and heavy hu­mid­ity ris­ing to greet them. At the bot­tom, No­ra’s light re­vealed a stone quay, lapped by wa­ter, with a wa­tery tun­nel lead­ing off in­to dark­ness. An an­cient wood­en boat lay up­turned on the quay.

“The riv­er pi­rate’s lair,” Pen­der­gast said as No­ra shone the light around. “This was how he snuck out to the Hud­son to at­tack ship­ping. If the boat’s still sea­wor­thy, you can take it out in­to the riv­er.”

No­ra an­gled the light to­ward the skiff.

“Can you row?” Pen­der­gast in­quired.

“I’m an ex­pert.”

“Good. I be­lieve you’ll find an aban­doned ma­ri­na a few blocks south of here. Get to a phone as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, call 645-7884; that’s the num­ber of my chauf­feur, Proc­tor. Ex­plain to him what’s hap­pened. He’ll come get you and ar­range ev­ery­thing, in­clud­ing the doc­tor for Smith­back and my­self.”

No­ra turned over the row­boat and slid it in­to the wa­ter. It was old, loose-​joint­ed, and leaky, but it ap­peared to be sea­wor­thy.

“You’ll take care of Bill while I’m gone?” she said.

Pen­der­gast nod­ded, the re­flect­ed wa­ter rip­pling across his pale face.

She stepped gin­ger­ly in­to the boat.

Pen­der­gast stepped for­ward. “Dr. Kel­ly,” he said in a low voice. “There is some­thing more I must tell you.”

She looked up from the boat.

“The au­thor­ities must not know about what is in this house. Some­where with­in these walls, I’m con­vinced, is the for­mu­la for the pro­lon­ga­tion of hu­man life. Do you un­der­stand?”

“I un­der­stand,” No­ra replied af­ter a mo­ment. She stared at him as the full im­port of what he was say­ing be­gan to sink in. The se­cret to pro­longed life: it still seemed in­cred­ible. Un­be­liev­able.

“I must al­so ad­mit to a more per­son­al rea­son for se­cre­cy. I do not wish to bring more in­famy down on the Pen­der­gast name.”

“Leng was your an­ces­tor.”

“Yes. My great-​grand-​un­cle.”

No­ra nod­ded as she fit­ted the oar­locks. It was an an­tique no­tion of fam­ily hon­or; but then, she al­ready knew that Pen­der­gast was a man out of his time.

“My doc­tor will evac­uate Smith­back to a pri­vate hos­pi­tal up­state where they do not ask in­con­ve­nient ques­tions. I will, of course, un­der­go surgery there my­self. We need nev­er men­tion our ad­ven­ture to the au­thor­ities.”

“I un­der­stand,” she re­peat­ed.

“Peo­ple will won­der what hap­pened to Fairhaven. But I doubt very much the po­lice will ev­er iden­ti­fy him as the Sur­geon, or make the con­nec­tion with 891 River­side Drive.”

“Then the Sur­geon’s mur­ders will re­main un­solved? A mys­tery?”

“Yes. But un­solved mur­ders are al­ways the most in­ter­est­ing, don’t you think? Now, re­peat the tele­phone num­ber for me, please.”

“Six four five-​sev­en eight eight four.”

“Ex­cel­lent. Now please hur­ry, Dr. Kel­ly.”

She pushed away from the quay, then turned back to look at Pen­der­gast once again, her boat bob­bing in the shal­low wa­ter.

“One more ques­tion. How in the world did you es­cape from those chains? It seemed like mag­ic.”

In the dim light, she saw Pen­der­gast’s lips part in what ap­peared to be a smile. “It was mag­ic.”

“I don’t un­der­stand.”

“Mag­ic and the Pen­der­gast fam­ily are syn­ony­mous. There have been ma­gi­cians in my lin­eage for ten gen­er­ations. We’ve all dab­bled in it. An­toine Leng Pen­der­gast was no ex­cep­tion: in fact, he was one of the most tal­ent­ed in the fam­ily. Sure­ly you no­ticed the stage ap­pa­ra­tus in the re­fec­to­ry? Not to men­tion the false walls, se­cret pan­els, trap­doors? With­out know­ing it, Fairhaven bound his vic­tims with Leng’s trick cuffs. I rec­og­nized them right away: the Amer­ican Gui­teau hand­cuffs and Bean Prison leg-​irons, fit­ted with a false riv­et that any ma­gi­cian, once man­acled, could re­move with his fin­gers or teeth. To a per­son who knew the se­cret, they were about as se­cure as trans­par­ent tape.”

And Pen­der­gast be­gan laugh­ing soft­ly, al­most to him­self.

No­ra rowed away, the splash­ing of the oars dis­tort­ed in the low, rocky cav­ern. In a few mo­ments she came to a weed-​choked open­ing be­tween two rocks, just large enough to ad­mit the boat. She pushed through and was sud­den­ly on the broad ex­panse of the Hud­son, the vast bulk of the North Riv­er plant ris­ing above her, the great glit­ter­ing arc of the George Wash­ing­ton Bridge loom­ing far­ther to the north. No­ra took a deep breath of the cool, fresh air. She could hard­ly be­lieve they were still alive.

She glanced back at the open­ing through which she had just come. It looked like a tan­gle of weeds and some boul­ders lean­ing to­geth­er—noth­ing more.

As she bent to the oars, the aban­doned ma­ri­na just com­ing in­to view against the dis­tant gleam­ing tow­ers of Mid­town Man­hat­tan, she thought she could still make out—borne on the mid­night wind—the faint sound of Pen­der­gast’s laugh­ter.

Epi­logue:

Ar­canum

FALL HAD TURNED to win­ter: one of those crisp, sun­ny days of ear­ly De­cem­ber be­fore the first snow­fall, when the world seemed al­most crys­talline in its per­fec­tion. As No­ra Kel­ly walked up River­side Drive, hold­ing hands with Bill Smith­back, she looked out over the Hud­son. Al­ready, cakes of ice were drift­ing down from the up­per reach­es. The New Jer­sey Pal­isades were etched in stark sun­light, and the George Wash­ing­ton Bridge seemed to float above the riv­er, sil­very and weight­less.

No­ra and Smith­back had found an apart­ment on West End Av­enue in the Nineties. When Pen­der­gast had con­tact­ed them and asked them to meet him at 891 River­side Drive, they had de­cid­ed to walk the two miles, tak­ing ad­van­tage of the beau­ti­ful day.

For the first time since the hideous dis­cov­ery on Cather­ine Street, No­ra had felt a cer­tain peace re­turn to her life. Her work at the Mu­se­um was pro­gress­ing well. All the car­bon-14 dates on her Utah spec­imens had come back, and they were a grat­ify­ing con­fir­ma­tion of her the­ory re­gard­ing the Anasazi-​Aztec con­nec­tion. There had been a ter­rif­ic house­clean­ing at the Mu­se­um, with a whole new ad­min­is­tra­tion put in place—ex­cept Col­lopy, who had some­how come through it all with his rep­uta­tion and pres­tige in­tact, if not en­hanced. In fact, Col­lopy had of­fered No­ra an im­por­tant ad­min­is­tra­tive post—which she had po­lite­ly de­clined. The un­for­tu­nate Roger Bris­bane had been re­leased: the ar­rest war­rant void­ed a day be­fore the elec­tion, af­ter Bris­bane’s lawyer pro­vid­ed air­tight al­ibis for the time pe­ri­ods of all three copy­cat mur­ders, and an an­gry judge point­ed out there was no phys­ical ev­idence link­ing the man to any crime. Now, Bris­bane was su­ing the city for wrong­ful ar­rest. The pa­pers were scream­ing that the Sur­geon was still at large. The may­or had lost his re-​elec­tion bid. Cap­tain Custer had been bust­ed all the way down to street cop.

There had been a flur­ry of news­pa­per sto­ries about the sud­den dis­ap­pear­ance of An­tho­ny Fairhaven, but the spec­ula­tion had end­ed with an IRS raid on his com­pa­ny. Af­ter that, ev­ery­one as­sumed tax prob­lems were the rea­son for his dis­ap­pear­ance. Word was Fairhaven had been last spot­ted on a beach some­where in the Nether­lands An­tilles, drink­ing daiquiris and read­ing the Wall Street Jour­nal.

Smith­back had spent two weeks at the Fever­sham Clin­ic, north of Cold Spring, where his wound had been sewn and dressed. It had healed sur­pris­ing­ly quick­ly. Pen­der­gast had al­so spent sev­er­al weeks re­cu­per­at­ing at Fever­sham af­ter a se­ries of op­er­ations to his el­bow and ab­domen. Then he had dis­ap­peared, and nei­ther No­ra nor Smith­back had heard from him. Un­til this mys­te­ri­ous sum­mons.

“I still can’t be­lieve we’re up here again,” Smith­back said as they walked north­ward.

“Come on, Bill. Aren’t you cu­ri­ous to see what Pen­der­gast wants?”

“Of course. I just don’t see why it couldn’t be some­place else. Some­place com­fort­able. Like, say, the restau­rant at the Car­lyle.”

“I’m sure we’ll learn the rea­son.”

“I’m sure we will. But if he of­fers me a Leng cock­tail out of one of those ma­son jars, I’m leav­ing.”

Now the old house ap­peared in the dis­tance, up the Drive. Even in the bright sun­light it seemed some­how dark: sprawl­ing, haunt­ed, framed by bare trees, black up­per win­dows star­ing west­ward like emp­ty eye sock­ets.

As if at a sin­gle thought, No­ra and Smith­back paused.

“You know, just the sight of that old pile still scares the be­je­sus out of me,” Smith­back mut­tered. “I’ll tell you, when Fairhaven had me laid out on that op­er­at­ing ta­ble, and I felt the knife slice in­to my—”

“Bill, please,” No­ra plead­ed. Smith­back had grown fond of re­gal­ing her with gory de­tails.

He drew his arm around her. He was wear­ing the blue Ar­mani suit, but it hung a lit­tle loose­ly now, his gaunt frame thin­ner for the or­deal. His face was pale and drawn, but the old hu­mor, the mis­chievous twin­kle, had re­turned to his eyes.

They con­tin­ued walk­ing north, cross­ing 137th Street. There was the car­riage en­trance, still par­tial­ly blocked by wind­blown piles of trash. Smith­back stopped again, and No­ra watched his eye trav­el up the fa­cade of the build­ing, to­ward a bro­ken win­dow on the sec­ond floor. For all his dis­play of brava­do, the writ­er’s face paled for a mo­ment. Then he stepped for­ward res­olute­ly, fol­low­ing No­ra un­der the porte-​cochère, and they knocked.

A minute passed, then two. And then at last the door creaked open, and Pen­der­gast stood be­fore them. He was wear­ing heavy rub­ber gloves, and his el­egant black suit was cov­ered in plas­ter dust. With­out a word of greet­ing he turned away, and they fol­lowed him through silent echo­ing pas­sages to­ward the li­brary. Portable halo­gen lamps were ar­rayed along the hall­ways, throw­ing cold white light on­to the sur­faces of the old house. Even with the light, how­ev­er, No­ra felt a shiv­er of fear as she re­traced the cor­ri­dors. The foul odor of de­cay was gone, re­placed by a faint chem­ical wash. The in­te­ri­or was bare­ly rec­og­niz­able: pan­els had been tak­en off walls, draw­ers stood open, plumb­ing and gas lines ex­posed or re­moved, boards ripped from the floor. It looked as if the house had been torn apart in an un­be­liev­ably ex­haus­tive search.

With­in the li­brary, all the sheets had been re­moved from the skele­tons and mount­ed an­imals. The light was dim­mer here, but No­ra could see that half the shelves were emp­ty, and the floor cov­ered with care­ful­ly piled stacks of books. Pen­der­gast thread­ed his way through them to the vast fire­place in the far wall, then—at last—turned back to­ward his two guests.

“Dr. Kel­ly,” he said, nod­ding to her. “Mr. Smith­back. I’m pleased to see you look­ing well.”

“That Dr. Bloom of yours is as much an artist as he is a sur­geon,” Smith­back replied, with strained hearti­ness. “I hope he takes Blue Cross. I have yet to see the bill.”

Pen­der­gast smiled thin­ly. A brief si­lence en­sued.

“So why are we here, Mr. Pen­der­gast?” No­ra asked.

“You two have been through a ter­ri­ble or­deal,” Pen­der­gast replied as he pulled off the heavy gloves. “More than any­one should ev­er have to en­dure. I feel in large part re­spon­si­ble.”

“Hey, that’s what be­quests are for,” Smith­back replied.

“I’ve learned some things in the last sev­er­al weeks. Far too many are al­ready past help: Mary Greene, Doreen Hol­lan­der, Mandy Ek­lund, Rein­hart Puck, Patrick O’Shaugh­nessy. But for you two, I thought per­haps hear­ing the re­al sto­ry—a sto­ry no­body else must ev­er know—might help ex­or­cize the demons.”

There was an­oth­er brief pause.

“Go ahead,” Smith­back said, in an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent tone of voice.

Pen­der­gast looked from No­ra, to Smith­back, then back again.

“From child­hood, Fairhaven was ob­sessed with mor­tal­ity. His old­er broth­er died at age six­teen of Hutchin­son-​Guil­ford syn­drome.”

“Lit­tle Arthur,” Smith­back said.

Pen­der­gast looked at him cu­ri­ous­ly. “That’s cor­rect.”

“Hutchin­son-​Guil­ford syn­drome?” No­ra asked. “Nev­er heard of it.”

“Al­so known as proge­ria. Af­ter a nor­mal birth, chil­dren be­gin to age ex­treme­ly rapid­ly. Height is stunt­ed. Hair turns gray and then falls out, leav­ing promi­nent veins. There are usu­al­ly no eye­brows or eye­lash­es, and the eyes grow too large for the skull. The skin turns brown and wrin­kled. The long bones be­come de­cal­ci­fied. Ba­si­cal­ly, by ado­les­cence the child has the body of an old man. They be­come sus­cep­ti­ble to atheroscle­ro­sis, strokes, heart at­tacks. The last is what killed Arthur Fairhaven, when he was six­teen.

“His broth­er saw mor­tal­ity com­pressed in­to five or six years of hor­ror. He nev­er got over it. We’re all afraid of death, but for An­tho­ny Fairhaven the fear be­came an ob­ses­sion. He at­tend­ed med­ical school, but af­ter two years was forced to leave for cer­tain unau­tho­rized ex­per­iments he’d un­der­tak­en; I’m still look­ing in­to their ex­act na­ture. So by de­fault he went in­to the fam­ily busi­ness of re­al es­tate. But health re­mained an ob­ses­sion with him. He ex­per­iment­ed with health foods, di­ets, vi­ta­mins and sup­ple­ments, Ger­man spas, Finnish smoke saunas. Tak­ing hope from the Chris­tian promise of eter­nal life, he be­came in­tense­ly re­li­gious—but when his prayers were slow in be­ing an­swered he be­gan hedg­ing his bets, sup­ple­ment­ing his re­li­gious fer­vor with an equal­ly pro­found and mis­placed fer­vor for sci­ence, medicine, and nat­ural his­to­ry. He be­came a huge bene­fac­tor to sev­er­al ob­scure re­search in­sti­tutes, as well as to Columbia Med­ical School, the Smith­so­ni­an, and of course the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry. And he found­ed the Lit­tle Arthur Clin­ic, which in fact has done im­por­tant work on rare dis­eases of chil­dren.

“We can­not be sure, ex­act­ly, when he first learned of Leng. He spent a lot of time dig­ging around in the Mu­se­um Archives, fol­low­ing up some line of re­search or oth­er. At some point, he came across in­for­ma­tion about Leng in the Mu­se­um’s Archives. What­ev­er he found gave him two crit­ical pieces of in­for­ma­tion: the na­ture of Leng’s ex­per­iments, and the lo­ca­tion of his first lab. Here was this man who claimed to have suc­ceed­ed in ex­tend­ing his life. You can imag­ine how Fairhaven must have re­act­ed. He had to find out what this man had done, and if he had re­al­ly suc­ceed­ed. Of course, this is why Puck had to die: he alone knew of Fairhaven’s vis­its to the Archives. He alone knew what Fairhaven had been ex­am­in­ing. This wasn’t a prob­lem un­til we found the Shot­tum let­ter: but then it be­came es­sen­tial to re­move Puck. Even a ca­su­al men­tion by Puck of Fairhaven’s vis­its would have linked him di­rect­ly to Leng. It would have made him sus­pect num­ber one. By lur­ing you down there, Dr. Kel­ly, Fairhaven fig­ured he could kill two birds with one stone. You had proven your­self un­usu­al­ly dan­ger­ous and ef­fec­tive.

“But I get ahead of my­self. Af­ter Fairhaven dis­cov­ered Leng’s work, he next won­dered if Leng had suc­ceed­ed—in oth­er words, if Leng was still alive. So he be­gan to track him down. When I my­self start­ed to hunt for Leng’s where­abouts, I of­ten had the sense some­one had walked the trail be­fore me in the not too dis­tant past.

“Ul­ti­mate­ly, Fairhaven dis­cov­ered where Leng had once lived. He came to this house. Imag­ine his ex­ul­ta­tion when he found my great-​grand-​un­cle still alive—when he re­al­ized that Leng had, in fact, suc­ceed­ed in his at­tempt to pro­long life. Leng had the very se­cret that Fairhaven so des­per­ate­ly want­ed.

“Fairhaven tried to make Leng di­vulge his se­cret. As we know, Leng had aban­doned his ul­ti­mate project. And I now know why. Study­ing the pa­pers in his lab­ora­to­ry, I re­al­ized that Leng’s work stopped abrupt­ly around the first of March 1954. I won­dered a long time about the sig­nif­icance of that date. And then I un­der­stood. That was the date of Cas­tle Bra­vo.”

“Cas­tle Bra­vo?” No­ra echoed.

“The first dry ther­monu­cle­ar bomb, ex­plod­ed at Biki­ni. It ‘ran away’ to fif­teen mega­tons, and the fire­ball ex­pand­ed to four miles in di­am­eter. Leng was con­vinced that, with the in­ven­tion of the ther­monu­cle­ar bomb, the hu­man race was des­tined to kill it­self any­way, and far more ef­fi­cient­ly than he ev­er could. The march of tech­nol­ogy had solved his prob­lem for him. So he gave up his search for the ul­ti­mate poi­son. He could grow old and die in peace, know­ing it was on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore his dream of cur­ing the earth of its hu­man plague came true.

“So, by the time Fairhaven found him, Leng had not tak­en the elixir for many years—since March 1954, in fact. He had grown old. Per­haps he al­most want­ed to die. At any rate, he re­fused, even un­der bru­tal tor­ture, to re­veal his for­mu­la. Fairhaven pushed too hard and killed him.

“But there was still an­oth­er chance for Fairhaven. There was still Leng’s old lab, where cru­cial in­for­ma­tion—both in the form of hu­man re­mains, and es­pe­cial­ly in the form of Leng’s jour­nal—might be found. And Fairhaven knew where the lab was: un­der­neath Shot­tum’s Cab­inet. Of course, the lot was now cov­ered by apart­ment build­ings. But Fairhaven was in the per­fect po­si­tion to buy the land and tear down the build­ings, all in the name of ur­ban re­new­al. Con­struc­tion work­ers I’ve spo­ken to men­tioned that Fairhaven was con­spic­uous­ly present at the site while the foun­da­tion was be­ing dug. He was the sec­ond man to en­ter the char­nel pit, af­ter the work­er who orig­inal­ly found the bones had fled. No doubt he found Leng’s note­book in there. Lat­er, he was able to study the ef­fects tak­en from the tun­nel at his leisure. In­clud­ing the bones—and that, no doubt, is why the marks on both the old corpses and the new were so sim­ilar.

“Now, Fairhaven had Leng’s note­books. He be­gan try­ing to repli­cate Leng’s ex­per­iments, hop­ing to re­trace the path Leng had tak­en. But of course, his at­tempts were am­ateur­ish, with no re­al un­der­stand­ing of Leng’s true work.”

As Pen­der­gast’s nar­ra­tive ceased, the old house set­tled in­to a pro­found si­lence.

“I can’t be­lieve it,” Smith­back said at last. “When I in­ter­viewed him, Fairhaven seemed so con­fi­dent, so calm. So . . . so sane.”

“Mad­ness wears many dis­guis­es,” Pen­der­gast replied. “Fairhaven’s ob­ses­sion was deep, too deep and abid­ing to show it­self open­ly. And one can reach the gates of hell just as eas­ily by short steps as by large. Fairhaven seemed to think that the for­mu­la for longevi­ty had al­ways been des­tined for him. Hav­ing tak­en in Leng’s life essence, he now be­gan to be­lieve that he was Leng—Leng as he should have been. He took on Leng’s per­sona, his man­ner of dress. And the copy­cat killings be­gan. But a dif­fer­ent sort of copy­cat killing than the po­lice ev­er imag­ined. Killings, by the way, that had noth­ing to do with your ar­ti­cle, Mr. Smith­back.”

“Why did he try to kill you?” Smith­back asked. “It was such a risk. I nev­er un­der­stood that.”

“Fairhaven was a man who thought far, far ahead. That was why he was so suc­cess­ful in busi­ness—and, of course, one rea­son why he was so fright­ened of death. When I suc­ceed­ed in find­ing Mary Greene’s ad­dress, he re­al­ized it was on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore I found Leng’s. Whether I be­lieved Leng was alive or dead didn’t mat­ter—he knew I would come to Leng’s house, and then all his ef­forts would be ru­ined. It would ex­pose the con­nec­tion be­tween the mod­ern-​day killer known as the Sur­geon and the old killer named Leng. It was the same with No­ra. She was hot on the trail; she’d been to vis­it Mc­Fad­den’s daugh­ter; she had the ar­chae­olog­ical ex­per­tise I lacked. Clear­ly, it was on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore we fig­ured out where Leng lived. We couldn’t be al­lowed to pro­ceed.”

“And O’Shaugh­nessy? Why kill him?”

Pen­der­gast bowed his head. “I will nev­er for­give my­self for that. I sent O’Shaugh­nessy on what I be­lieved was a safe er­rand, in­ves­ti­gat­ing New Am­ster­dam Chemists, where Leng had pro­cured his chem­icals many years ago. While there, it seems O’Shaugh­nessy had the luck to find some old jour­nals, list­ing chem­ical pur­chas­es in the 1920s. I call it luck, but it turned out to be quite the op­po­site, I’m afraid. I didn’t re­al­ize Fairhaven was on high alert, mon­itor­ing our ev­ery move. When he be­came aware that O’Shaugh­nessy not on­ly knew where Leng bought his chem­icals, but had man­aged to re­trieve some old sales books—which might be ex­treme­ly use­ful, and cer­tain­ly dan­ger­ous in our hands—he had to kill him. Im­me­di­ate­ly.”

“Poor Patrick,” said Smith­back. “What a ter­ri­ble way to die.”

“Ter­ri­ble, ter­ri­ble in­deed,” Pen­der­gast mur­mured, the an­guish all too clear on his face. “And the re­spon­si­bil­ity for it lies on my shoul­ders. He was a good man, and a fine of­fi­cer.”

Look­ing up at the rows of leather-​bound books, at the worm-​eat­en tapestries and peel­ing wall­pa­per, No­ra shiv­ered.

“Oh, God,” Smith­back mur­mured at last, shak­ing his head. “And to think I can’t pub­lish any of this.” Then he looked over at Pen­der­gast. “So what hap­pened to Fairhaven?”

“That which he feared most, death, came at last. In a nod to Poe, I walled up the poor wretch with­in a base­ment al­cove. It would not do for his body to sur­face.”

This was fol­lowed by a short si­lence.

“So what are you go­ing to do with this house and all these col­lec­tions?” No­ra asked.

A wan smile played about Pen­der­gast’s lips. “Through a tor­tu­ous route of in­her­itance, this house and its con­tents have end­ed up in my pos­ses­sion. Some­day, per­haps, some of these col­lec­tions will find their way anony­mous­ly in­to the great mu­se­ums of the world—but not for a very long time.”

“And what’s hap­pened to the house? It’s torn apart.”

“That brings me to one fi­nal re­quest I would make of you both.”

“And that is—?”

“That you come with me.”

They fol­lowed Pen­der­gast down wind­ing pas­sage­ways to the door lead­ing to the porte­cochère. Pen­der­gast opened the door. Out­side, Pen­der­gast’s Rolls was silent­ly idling, jar­ring in this for­lorn neigh­bor­hood.

“Where are we go­ing?” Smith­back asked.

“Gates of Heav­en Ceme­tery.”

The drive out of Man­hat­tan, in­to the crisp win­ter hills of Westch­ester, took half an hour. Dur­ing that time, Pen­der­gast said noth­ing, sit­ting mo­tion­less, wrapped in his own thoughts. At last they passed through the dark met­al gates and be­gan climb­ing the gen­tle curve of a hill. Be­yond lay an­oth­er hill, and then an­oth­er: a vast city of the dead, full of mon­uments and pon­der­ous tombs. In time, the car stopped in a far cor­ner of the ceme­tery, on a rise dot­ted with mar­ble.

Pen­der­gast got out, then led them along a man­icured path to a fresh row of graves. They were long frozen mounds of earth, laid out in ge­omet­ri­cal pre­ci­sion, with­out tomb­stones, flow­ers, or mark­ings of any kind save a spike at each head. Alu­minum frames were set in­to each spike, hold­ing card­board plac­ards, and on each plac­ard was writ­ten a num­ber, streaked with mois­ture, al­ready mildewed and fad­ed.

They walked along the row of graves un­til they came to num­ber 12. Pen­der­gast stopped over it and re­mained there, head bowed, hands clasped as if pray­ing. Be­yond, the weak win­ter sun shone through the twist­ed branch­es of the oaks, and the hill fell away in­to mist.

“Where are we?” Smith­back asked, look­ing around. “Whose graves are these?”

“This is where Fairhaven buried the thir­ty-​six skele­tons from Cather­ine Street. It was a very clever move. It takes a court or­der to get an ex­huma­tion, a long and dif­fi­cult pro­cess. This was the next best thing to cre­ma­tion, which of course he wasn’t al­lowed to do, by law. He did not want any­one to have ac­cess to these skele­tons.”

Pen­der­gast ges­tured. “This grave, num­ber 12, is the fi­nal rest­ing place of Mary Greene. Gone, but no longer for­got­ten.” Pen­der­gast reached in­to his pock­et and re­moved a tat­tered piece of pa­per, fold­ed in­to a small ac­cor­dion. It trem­bled slight­ly in the breeze. He held it out, over the grave, al­most as if it were an of­fer­ing.

“What is that?” Smith­back asked.

“The ar­canum.”

“The what?”

“Leng’s for­mu­la for ex­tend­ing hu­man life. Per­fect­ed. It no longer re­quired the use of hu­man donors. That is why he stopped killing in 1935.”

In the sud­den si­lence, No­ra and Smith­back ex­changed glances.

“Leng even­tu­al­ly worked it out. It wasn’t pos­si­ble un­til the late twen­ties, when cer­tain syn­thet­ic opi­ates and oth­er bio­chem­ical as­says be­came avail­able to him. With this for­mu­la, he no longer had need of vic­tims. Leng did not en­joy killing. He was a sci­en­tist; the killing was mere­ly a re­gret­ful ne­ces­si­ty. Un­like Fairhaven, who clear­ly took plea­sure in it.”

Smith­back stared at the pa­per in dis­be­lief. “You mean to tell me you’re hold­ing the for­mu­la for eter­nal life?”

“There is no such thing as ‘eter­nal life,’ Mr. Smith­back. Not in this world, at least. This course of treat­ment would ex­tend the hu­man life span, by how much ex­act­ly I don’t know. At least a hun­dred years, per­haps longer.”

“Where did you find it?”

“It was hid­den in the house. As I knew it would be. I knew Leng would not have de­stroyed it. He would have kept a sin­gle copy for him­self.” The look of in­ter­nal con­flict in Pen­der­gast’s face seemed to grow stronger. “I had to find it. To let it fall in­to oth­er hands would have been . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Have you looked at it?” No­ra asked.

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“And?”

“It in­volves fair­ly straight­for­ward bio­chem­istry, us­ing chem­icals ob­tain­able at any good chemist’s. It is an or­gan­ic syn­the­sis that any rea­son­ably tal­ent­ed chem­istry grad­uate stu­dent could per­form in a well-​equipped lab­ora­to­ry. But there’s a trick in­volved, an orig­inal twist, which makes it un­like­ly it will be in­de­pen­dent­ly re­dis­cov­ered—at least, not in the fore­see­able fu­ture.”

There was a si­lence. “What are you—what are we—go­ing to do with it?” breathed Smith­back.

As if in an­swer, there was a sharp rasp­ing sound. A small flame now hov­ered over Pen­der­gast’s left hand: a slim gold lighter, burn­ing yel­low in the dim light. With­out say­ing a word, he touched the flame to the end of the pa­per.

“Wait!” cried Smith­back, lung­ing for­ward. Pen­der­gast, hold­ing the burn­ing pa­per aloft, adroit­ly sidestepped his grab.

“What are you do­ing?” Smith­back wheeled around. “For God’s sake, give me that—” The old, ac­cor­dioned sheet was al­ready half gone, black ash curl­ing, break­ing off, drop­ping to the frozen earth of the grave.

“Stop!” Smith­back gasped, step­ping for­ward again. “Think this out! You can’t—”

“I have thought it out,” Pen­der­gast replied. “I’ve done noth­ing, these last six weeks of search­ing, but think it out. It was a mem­ber of the Pen­der­gast fam­ily, to my ev­er­last­ing shame, who brought this for­mu­la to light. So many died for it: so many Mary Greenes that his­to­ry will nev­er know. I, hav­ing un­cov­ered it, must be the one to de­stroy it. Be­lieve me: this is the on­ly way. Noth­ing cre­at­ed out of such suf­fer­ing can be al­lowed to ex­ist.”

The flame had crawled up to the fi­nal edge; Pen­der­gast opened his fin­gers, and the un­burned cor­ner flared in­to ash on its way to the turned earth. Gen­tly, Pen­der­gast pressed it in­to Mary Greene’s grave. When he stepped back, noth­ing re­mained but a black stain in the brown earth.

A brief, shocked si­lence fol­lowed.

Then Smith­back put his head in­to his hands. “I can’t be­lieve it. Did you bring us here just to see that?”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“Why?”

“Be­cause what I have just done was too im­por­tant to do alone. It was an ac­tion that re­quired wit­ness­es—if on­ly for the sake of his­to­ry.”

As No­ra looked at Pen­der­gast, she saw—be­hind the con­flict still ev­ident on his face—a bot­tom­less sor­row, an ex­haus­tion of spir­it.

Smith­back shook his head mis­er­ably. “Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve just de­stroyed the great­est med­ical ad­vance ev­er made.”

The FBI agent spoke again, his voice low now, al­most a whis­per. “Can’t you see? This for­mu­la would have de­stroyed the world. Leng al­ready had the an­swer to his prob­lem right in his hand. Had he re­leased this in­to the world, it would have been the end. He on­ly lacked the ob­jec­tiv­ity to see it.”

Smith­back did not re­ply.

Pen­der­gast glanced at the writ­er for a mo­ment. Then he dropped his gaze to the grave. His shoul­ders seemed to droop.

No­ra had been stand­ing back, watch­ing, lis­ten­ing, with­out say­ing a word. Sud­den­ly, she spoke.

“I un­der­stand,” she said. “I know how dif­fi­cult that de­ci­sion must have been. For what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing.”

As she spoke, Pen­der­gast’s eyes re­mained on the ground. Then, slow­ly, his gaze rose to meet her own. Per­haps it was her imag­ina­tion, but the an­guish in his face seemed to lessen al­most im­per­cep­ti­bly at her words.

“Thank you, No­ra,” he said qui­et­ly.

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